Surprisingly Similar Stories / Uncited Entries

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Uncited Entries 1

• Two children fall into a river and have experiences based on the karma in their lives. It's likely that this is the border between life and death.
  Over the Garden Wall or The Water Babies?
• A corporation is secretly engaging in shady science experiments in a remote and hostile location and through a catastrophic accident opens a portal to a harsh alien realm, unleashing its horrific denizens into our world, who then go on a killing spree and wipe out most of the inhabitants in the laboratory and its surrounding buildings. The hero has to go up against them with little to no aid in an attempt to close the portal that is allowing them in. When he reaches the portal, he discovers the only way to close it is to travel through it into their dimension and destroy some monstrous creature on the other side.
  Half-Life or Doom?
  • Or Stranger Things?
• Our story centres around a forbidden romance, the likes of which are so iconic that the character's names have entered pop culture and are recognizable amongst people who don't know the story. Our heroine is a teenage girl who while heartbreakingly passive throughout most of the story makes a startling act of defiance towards the end. Our hero is well-known for his wordyness and childlike attitude that may make him unsympathetic. The lovers are forbidden from contact by society, most vehemently her parents, but eventually they come together under hard-to-keep secrecy. The story ends in tragedy when they are separated and both of them die.
  Lolita? Or Romeo and Juliet?
• The action of this story takes place within a 3-ringed walled city built to keep out the villains, whose power comes from the sun. But all is not well within the city, as it's ruled by a Puppet King and a shadowy secret police that wipes the people's memories to keep them under control, which happens to a young man with dark brown hair, a fighting style that involves lots of acrobatics and Dual Wielding, two friends, one stoic and black-haired, the other shorter and more emotional, and he has a strong hatred of the villains after they killed his parents that outright pushes him into He Who Fights Monsters territory, though his Black-and-White Insanity does get somewhat better. The first young Anti-Villain we meet must capture the protagonist (who's heir to a long line of people with special peacekeeping powers and who can access his predecessors' memories as a guide) in order to go home and see their father again. (They also have their fair share of tension with the He Who Fights Monsters character, though that seems to have diminished due to one party's mineral-related possible death.) After a hundred years of relative peace and several unsuccessful attempts by the villains to break through the city's walls, they send a team of 3 kids, consisting of a outgoing, friendly one, a shy, quiet one, and a cold, ruthless girl whose name starts with an A, who eventually succeed. The heroes succeed in overthrowing the Secret Police and exposing the Government Conspiracy, though that's more of a Hope Spot than anything else, and the season 2 finale takes place in a cavern lit by glowing crystals.
  Now, is this Avatar: The Last Airbender or Attack on Titan?
• An impulsive young protagonist travels to a thick forest full of Scenery Porn as part of an evil corporation bent on exploiting its natural resources for personal gain. He was not chosen for the job for his intelligence. Through poorly-explained means, he becomes one of the forest's differently-sized and mystical natives. He learns to interact with the environment, falls in love with the first fanservicey native girl he meets, rides their flying mounts, and finally decides to stop the exploitation of his newfound people. After single-handedly destroying one of the corporation's terrible machines (which is much, much larger than himself), he rallies the natives, drives off the humans trying to exploit the natural resources, and uses the power of the forest itself (channeled by the natives) to secure his victory. The audience learns an anviliciously Green Aesop.
  Avatar, or FernGully: The Last Rainforest?
• A young man goes into hibernation, and when he wakes up, he is in the distant future. This young man is a bit of a slob who likes to drink beer and is usually referred to by his last name. He becomes friends with a robot who likes to watch a robot-themed soap opera. He is in love with a woman who is smarter than he is. He has lots of adventures travelling through space, and he is somehow his own ancestor.
  Red Dwarf or Futurama?
• Man comes from another world to harvest a highly valued resource unique to only this strange world whose natives resent outsiders. Ends up being forced to live among the natives and learn their ways from a local girl who he ends up falling in love with. Has to ride a fearsome creature as a rite of passage into manhood, and then becomes the leader of the local clans and leads them to battle against culture from which he originally came.
  Is it Dune? Or Avatar?
• Our heroes obtain an ancient magical artifact from a small, old creature who talks to himself in third person. Said artifact must be destroyed to kill the Evil Overlord, but it can't be destroyed through normal physical or magical powers. Eventually, the artifact that the heroes wear around their neck feels unusually heavy, tries to possess them, and influences the team to split up from conflict.
  The Lord of the Rings, The Deathly Hallows, or Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn?
• Neurotic and emotionally unstable teenage girl falls in love with a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire who attends her high school. There is lots of talking. Eventually, the two get caught up in love triangle with a werecreature that ends with the girl and the werecreature deciding to be Just Friends.
  Twilight or Bakemonogatari?
• Neurotic and emotionally unstable teenage girl, living in a small town in Washington state, learns that an ancient supernatural being is sexually interested in her, and often climbs through her window into her room while she is sleeping.
  Twilight or Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me?
• These two works feature the tale of a Farm Boy who discovers a Plot Coupon sent to a wise old mentor by a captured princess and has his uncle who raised him killed by the impenetrably hooded servants of the Evil Empire. The two set off for justice. The mentor is a former knight who teaches the farmboy how to use his mystical powers in about five days (not that his magic is much use until he becomes stronger) and gives him a sword that belonged to his father before he "bought the farm". Luckily, the farmboy meets up with a Badass Anti-Hero, rescues the princess, who is also a major player in the Rebel army, and joins the rebellion, becoming a key member before going to train with a half-mad old hermit in the forest. After this, he discovers that his father was The Empire's right-hand man and he's been betrayed by his own family...
  Now, are we in fact talking about Inheritance Cycle or Star Wars?
• A blond, tunic-wearing boy and an orphan leaves his home and gains a shiny new sword. He is given advice by a wise old mentor (who eventually leaves him), escapes several fantastic creatures and finds out the true identity of someone close to him. The final duel between him and the villain takes place in their stronghold over a huge pit.
  Star Wars or Ocarina of Time?
• A military man, sent to remote outpost, befriends the indigenous population and comes to sympathise with their cause, making him an intolerable aberration in the military.
  Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, Pocahontas or Avatar?
• Common spaceman turns out to have amazing teleportation powers and can teleport through time.
  The Stars My Destination or Martian Successor Nadesico?
• Clumsy but endearing Japanese school girl meets a mysterious stranger (a Jerk with a Heart of Gold) and before she knows it, she's pulled into supernatural adventures with him and his group. They discover that she has a unique power that they desperately need. Over time The Crew grows close until they are almost like family. Though they try to deny it, eventually the girl and no-longer mysterious stranger admit that they care for each other.
  Is it Inuyasha, Crescent Moon, Fruits Basket, or Black Bird (2006) ?
• The story is a musical starring an ambitious young woman who faces prejudice because of the color of her skin. Her best friend is a perky, spoiled, blonde who loves pink and has her eye on a happy-go-lucky prince. Said prince ends up falling in love with the heroine instead, despite the fact that she is green.
  Wicked or The Princess and the Frog?
• A handsome man travels everywhere in his vehicle, which he loves like a person, and he fights monsters/evil beings. He's incredibly lonely, but there's a second man that he's incredibly close to, though that man may or may not be evil. Lately, a lot of battles have put these two on opposing sides. He meets lots and lots of girls along the way. He's also developed a friendship with an old man, who makes a great and very loyal companion. Along his journey he starts out all adorable, but gradually grows more and more depressed and screwed up.
  Doctor Who or Supernatural?
• In this flash animated cartoon, a young female joins a group consisting of an eccentric, a snarky Tomboy, an unassuming butt-kicker, a rather shy child, and a stubborn workaholic. Together, they protect their domain from evil, while learning about The Power of Friendship.
  • Is their domain The Galleria Mall, or Equestria?
• This Darker and Edgier installment begins with the main hero of the story in heaven after having fallen to his/her death near the end of the previous arc. He/She comes back wrong before getting better. Meanwhile, his/her powerful wizard ally becomes obsessed with increasing hir magical power, and, in a Kick the Dog moment, callously disintegrates a Smug Snake villain who had themselves just crossed the Moral Event Horizon by murdering a likeable supporting character. Said wizard also undergoes a power upgrade combined with a darker, evil new look after hir loved ones are threatened and begins the next arc back to normal but still trying to atone for and deal with what (s)he did during hir flirtation with evil.
  Order of the Stick: Don't Split The Party or Season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
• A God-girl creates an endlessly repeating summer month, because she has unfinished business. Only the resident strange girl remembers the past events, and she decides to do absolutely nothing for thousands of loops, getting quite depressed in the process. At the end, the protagonists' companions (that is "officially" organized as a school club that spends most of its time with board games in a classroom), figures out that teamwork is the solution for breaking the loop. The story also frequently references the sound that cicadas make as the symbol of these summer evenings.
  Endless Eight from Haruhi Suzumiya, or Higurashi: When They Cry?
• You’re trapped in an isolated, sterile facility with only your best friend and an AI who keeps tabs on your every move via a network of cameras to keep you company. The AI is supposedly there to guide you, but after awhile you start to realize there’s something off about it. It then kills your friend and tries to kill you, but through some miracle you manage to break into its inner sanctum to slowly lobotomize it while it protests in a terrifyingly calm voice. And then, just as it's almost all over, the AI proceeds to sing to you.
  Is your name Chell or David Bowman?
• In a society dominated by class prejudice, a young man with incredible strength and ingenuity, who grew up in poverty and had to steal and salvage for survival, is arrested and tattooed so that he can be easily spotted after his release. An incredibly zealous cop makes it a personal campaign to put him back behind bars, complicating The Hero's genuine efforts to help people, such as a friendless, abused woman. Meanwhile, a Love Triangle starts between a young woman, a young man she's known for awhile, and a woman he just met. Although someone initially plans for the guy and girl to die together, she manages to save him at the last minute and wrenches many tears out of the audience when she dies in his arms right before the finale's battle.
  Les Misérables or Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds?
• A painfully average young man meets an eccentric, blithe, spirited, unrestrainable strange girl who violates all rules of common etiquette, propriety, and modesty...and he's inexplicably attracted to her in some bizarre, frightened way. Despite the danger/folly of associating with her, he can't stay away, no matter how uncomfortable her strange habits, such as her history of serial dating, make him.
  Daisy Miller or Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuutsu?
• A group of rebels fighting against the oppressive regime of an immortal godlike being, is led by a Badass who mentors a younger, less confident character for the first third of the story, only to have a Dying Moment of Awesome leading to the rebellion's first victory. The real hero of the story steps forward, and inspired by their Love Interest and their friends, defeats the Big Bad. The heroes establish a democratic state and live in peace briefly, only for it all to collapse into anarchy when it's revealed that the previous villain was only protecting them from the embodiment of entropy and despair. Following numerous reveals, epic cosmic battles, and Heroic Sacrifices, the heroes defeat the great evil and return to live in peace, except for The Hero and their love interest, who do not get such happy endings.
  Mistborn or Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann?
• We open with our antihero, a man with a Scottish name and a nickname that means something significant in Latin. He's a war veteran who now finds himself in a less noble line of work. In the pilot, after a meeting with a potential client goes south, the client explains that it's offensively obvious that our antihero thinks he's better than all this. But does he really? While he doesn't like to talk about his origins, we eventually learn that he grew up as a poor, adopted farmhand before a traumatic event in the war prompted him to transform himself. Now, he struggles to be honorable even as he must constantly deceive. Women in his life: well, there's the one who's been devoted to him for years, but he just takes her for granted. The woman he wants is fiercely independent, and it drives him crazy to have to stand by as she sleeps with an endless succession of other men. Then there's the much younger woman who works for him, but there's no tension there. She's just interested in the new guy, who drives our antihero crazy with his arrogant ambition and elitist style. Witty, feminist, and original, the show enjoys a cult following and critical acclaim. It's never quite made it to the mainstream. Special mention has to go to Christina Hendricks's character, a talented redhead who tries to use a marriage as a means to an end, only to have it backfire horribly.
  Firefly or Mad Men?
• In the future, two guys head to the past. Now in that past, there are two other guys just having fun when the two guys from the future appear. Now in the past, one of them is planning to cause trouble, while the other one is trying to save the world. This heroic act of theirs leads to a misunderstanding with the two guys from this time period the two from the future are in. The misunderstanding then leads to a fight between them. Some time after that fight, the guys that live in this time period find out that the guy they just fought against is trying to save the world and that the other guy is trying to destroy their time period. Then they team up to defeat the guy who wants to destroy the world. After this fight the guy who came from the future to save the world, and the guy who came from the future to destroy the world head back to their own time period. Of course the guy from the future, who came back to save the world gives the two from the time period that he visited a gift for helping him, before heading back to his time.
  Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky or Rockman.EXE: Operate Shooting Star?
• In a world long in decline, there are holy rituals to reverse said decline for a period of time, creating a new Golden Age that leads to much rejoicing amongst the populace. The game's heroine is an anointed holy woman with the power to steer the world towards said Golden Age, but she is far from alone: by the game's second town, she has four companions, one of whom is the hero and viewpoint character. Said hero and heroine become entwined romantically as the game goes on, visiting a handful of shrines full of puzzles that increase her powers until one of her magical attacks is a force to be reckoned with in any battle. However, as the story progresses, the heroine falls out of favor with several groups of powerful people, a member of one of those groups will join up and NOT be a spy, and the heroine must be saved from various situations - though she does rescue herself at least once from a particularly threatening one. There are two major catches, though - her Golden Age is far from permanent due to the sadistically-designed nature of the rituals, and if she succeeds in saving the world and creating her Golden Age, she will perish in the process...and the hero is completely unaware of that fact because those who were in the know couldn't bring themselves to tell him that his plans for a Happily Ever After with the girl were futile. As it is, though, Take a Third Option is exercised at the last second and the world is truly saved after several more hours of gameplay.
  Now, though, is this Final Fantasy X or Tales of Symphonia?
• You wake up one day in a mysterious house. You're the only normal person in town. The others seem to come and go at random. The whole place is shut off from the outside world except for a well-guarded exit controlled by the town and a shoreline that has, at most, one active boat, and is the site of odd things, or half-dead people, constantly washing up onto the beach. Both of these routes only take you to another near-identical village, and even then you inevitably return to your home town anyway. The nominal leader is rarely if ever seen and does nothing at all, but the "second" most powerful figure controls absolutely everything, and yet only ever seems to do any business with you, nobody else. The only buildings are oddly decorated houses, a single clothing store, a single other store that sells everything else, a town hall, which does everything, and a museum, which also revolves entirely around you for no apparent reason. There is only one source of news for the town, and it only ever covers local things. Very local things. And personal ads. Violations of the rules are enforced by an unstoppable entity who will attack you at the drop of a hat when summoned. Incredibly often, the whole town breaks out into a random bizarre celebration. And the most popular fashion accessory? Bizarre parasols.
  Animal Crossing or The Prisoner? Now you can't un-think it.
• An indie Adventure Game in which the protagonist arrives to an abandoned Victorian mansion on England, events happen that prevent him from leaving the house, there's a terrible sordid history about the mansion's previous owners, strange hair-raising noises plague the house, a sinister presence that appears to be supernatural looms in the mansion and its focus is an African artefact, and the inclusion of the Madwoman in the Attic trope.
  5 Days a Stranger or Scratches?
• A dark, but ultimately idealistic seinen anime series starring an extremely morally dubious Tall, Dark, and Handsome Anti-Hero with a Dark and Troubled Past, sister issues, and the apparently unwitting ability to cause anything with two X chromosomes to melt into a puddle of Squee, both in and out of the story. Thanks to his behavior in his Secret Identity, the fandom often compares him to Batman. The plot is a Gray-and-Grey Morality-filled Mêlée à Trois involving a corrupt government, La Résistance, and psychics with one very specific power apiece, of which the protagonist is one. There's a Hero Antagonist with whom there's a certain amount of Ship Tease and UST going on (complicated by the fact that they don't know their friend is the criminal they're trying to stop) and a Mysterious Waif with green hair who knows more than she lets on, is a good bit older than she looks, and has a complicated emotional relationship with the protagonist that may be at least partially romantic. Said green-haired character is obsessively loved by a murderous white-haired and black-hearted pretty boy. The anti-hero also has a Phenotype Stereotype rival who is more personally pleasant but also more ruthless. He is dubbed by Troy Baker. The second season is considered hit-or-miss in part due to a difficult-to-follow plot and the fact that the hero is much less likable for part of it, and features a younger character who shows up near the beginning and joins the protagonist (earning the wrath of part of the fandom for "stealing the real main character's spotlight"). There's a good bit of Pizza Hut Product Placement (to the point that it's become an internet joke), and the soundtrack is amazing.
  Code Geass or Darker than Black?
• A rather posh, blonde girl meets a white rabbit, who leads her to fall into a strange, unfamiliar world, full of talking animals and unusual characters. These include a grumpy bug, a sleepy creature who tells stories that go nowhere, a pair of twins who do battle and a malevolent monarch who wants the protagonist dead.
  Alice in Wonderland or Brandy & Mr. Whiskers?
• Our hero is a sensitive, if rather passive, young man, living in a dystopic society. One of his parents has been notably absent from his life, while the other one is manipulative and controlling. Due to the influence of said parent, he is forced into an uncaring social system that devastates his sense of self-worth and leads him to commit soul-destroying actions. A potential love interest offers temporary relief, but communication problems surface, and the characters drift apart, unable to overcome external pressures and their own insecurities. Under great stress, the protagonist withdraws to the safety of his own mind, walling himself off totally from the world. A Mind Screw sequence drenched in Nightmare Fuel (and loads of Soundtrack Dissonance) results. In the end, however, there is the briefest suggestion that things may be better in the future. Or not.
  Is this Neon Genesis Evangelion? Pink Floyd's The Wall? Or Brazil?
• The setting is France. The protagonist has all the talent he needs to accomplish something but is unable to because of what he is or how he looks. He finds someone who has the necessary physical appearance but none of the talent, and the two scheme so that the protagonist can exercise his powers through the latter.
  Cyrano de Bergerac or Ratatouille?
• Paraphrased from a wonderful person on My Anime List.net: A guy beats the shit out of whiny bitches with superpowers and can negate said superpowers when his right hand makes contact with said whiny bitches.
  Mobile Suit Gundam or A Certain Magical Index?
• The story mainly is mainly focused on the adolescence of a character who is wider considered a Complete Monster in their own universe when they die, and the complicated relationship they have with their best friend of the same gender. The main character is somewhat cynical, very intelligent, and grows into some very strong supernatural powers; the best friend is more idealistic, not as intelligent and tends to react more based on emotions. The lead has a younger sister in a wheelchair, and a mother who died very young and it is revealed at some point the man in charge of the kingdom is the lead's father, whom they loathe. They are sent away by their father to a distant place, where they meet up with the future best friend. They initially loath one another for their differences, but eventually become incredibly close trusting friends. Both, at separate points, indicate that they love another character, and both wish to make the land they live in a better place, but disagree on methods. Eventually this disagreement causes them to end up as enemies; the cynical lead bringing rebellion against rulers, the more idealistic best friend becoming part of the system. The lead causes the best friend to lose the person they both loved, amping up the dislike between the two. Eventually, they confront one another and are willing to forgive each other for their mutual betrayals. The lead is "killed" off, causing much celebration in the land; the best friend is left as the most powerful figure in the newly peaceful realm. There is a lot of Ho Yay between the lead and their best friend.
  Is it Code Geass or Wicked?
• Our four main characters include a borderline retarded man who is always drunk,; the retarded man's wife, whose independence and personality is eschewed for sex appeal; the retarded man's douche of a friend who acts as the voice of reason; and a sociopath who quickly descends into comic relief. Many WACKY AND RANDOM adventures ensue.
  Ctrl+Alt+Del or Family Guy?
• The protagonist of this story is a teenage boy who turns into a girl at the worst possible times. He soon meets his future love interest, a girl named Akane who alternates between shy/calm and rude/bitchy. Eventually, the protagonist soon nets a Harem of both girls and guys which he has trouble escaping. Several characters who enter the story are animals with human-like tendencies. Eventually, the show itself gradually switches from an action series with some fanservice to a comedy that ramps the fanservice up to eleven.
  Ranma ½ or Kämpfer?
• Our protagonist is a young man who wakes up with severe amnesia and the ability to morph his body into living weapons. He discovers that something recently happened (possibly related to him) that is unexpectedly turning ordinary people into mutants. The young man tries to discover the source of his amnesia and stop the mutants from killing everyone, mostly by absorbing their mutations. The young man also deals with two separate organizations. One is an offspring of the military that is solely focused on the annihilation of all mutants, no matter what the cost, and the other is the mutants, led by a mysterious person who can control his/her mutations and wants to kill all humans.
  Generator Rex or [PROTOTYPE]?
• A lighthearted musical retelling of an older work. A young as innocent soprano falls in love with a man in the midst of a single musical number, but is subsequently kidnapped by someone who wants her body and taken from her home and family, thereby putting her innocence and availability at stake. She is rescued but somehow ends up in the hands of another man who wants to marry her. Meanwhile the man she loves learns of her abduction and searches for her. The girl is desperate to go back to the man and her family and is helped by new friends along the way, but many greedy villains, and the hands of fate, keep her and her boyfriend apart. In the end they are reunited against the will of those who want to either marry or showcase her. Initially a commercial failure. Also features characters supposedly being killed but not actually dying. Originally starred Barbara Cook.
  Is it Don Bluth's Thumbelina or Leonard Bernstein's Candide?
• A musical about how a hero leaves home and becomes a celebrity because he dislikes his normal life, or else it has been unkind to him. A villain wants to either enslave him or kill him for his own selfish reasons. In order to weaken the will of the hero, he sends a girl, who works as his slave due to te consequences of her own selfishness, and who also parades around in seductive dress, to seduce him. The girl, however, develops an actual crush on him and helps him escape the villain. In the end, the villain is no longer dominant over the hero and he gets to be with the woman he loves. Involves several instances of characters escaping death, and one instance of the hero being restored to his original self.
  Hercules? Or Damn Yankees? How about Rock-A-Doodle?
• An animated production with lots of flowers symbolism in which a young woman cuts her hair, cross dresses, and poses as a boy with a group of males in an asian country. The good looking leader and love interest doesn't realize the girl's true gender until he sees her partially naked. Is it "Ouran High School Host Club" or "Mulan"?
• A blond man who's pretty good with a sword arrives in the middle of a plot he doesn't understand. His love interest, a brunette, turns out to know more about the plot than she lets on. He meets a mentor character who is strangely similar to a legendary soldier he's otherwise familiar with. He has various battles with a man who refuses to drop dead no matter how many times he's killed and proves why you should hate him by killing someone which agitates a major character. He learns that his childhood was mostly fiction and is repeatedly visited by a person of ambiguous gender with their face covered. He's swallowed by a huge, unnatural sea monster controlled by his father figure, confronts his father figure in a replica of a location he knew from a simulation and fights giant robots.
  Is this Final Fantasy X or Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty?
• A spaceship, with the same name as the series, is on a routine flight and somehow gets a huge distance away from where it's supposed to be. The limited crew, which includes a smug hologram obsessed with slideshows, attempts to get back to Earth. Their experiments with FTL travel are a disaster and most of the entertainment on board is VR gaming, much of which is presented in monochrome. The crew encounter a cyborg who succeeds in becoming unique and integrates with the original crew members, but disagrees with the ship's superior officer whenever possible. The main threats are from cyborgs and genetically-engineered monsters. A central theme is that space travel perhaps isn't as great as it's made out to be. ^note In "DNA", Kryten apparently has enough organic in his brain for the DNA-altering machine to make him human, so, yes, he is technically a cyborg. Is the name of the ship Voyager or Red Dwarf?
• A movie musical with heavy visual effects (though most of them focused on aspects of one particular character) and score by Alan Menken. Stars two protagonists, one girl and one guy. The guy is downtrodden or misunderstood and the girl is blonde. The girl desperately wants to leave her home area but can't. The villain, who is given at least one show-stopping number, acts as a force gradually growing stronger against one of the protagonists, who knows a secret that is vital to the villain's life. The villain also sings songs to keep the protagonist on a leash in order to gain nourishment. Features an adorable green character. One of the characters has a near-death experience caused by the villain. Also, a major plot point involves a plant with some kind of unique supernatural power. At least one of the songs has once been sung by Mandy Moore.
  We're talking about Tangled, right? Or could it be Little Shop of Horrors?
• A man in a long, black coat and his female associate challenge people to possibly deadly games which usually involve blades and makeshift devices. Contestants are briefed on the challenge beforehand and have a few hours to complete the challenge. All the materials required to succeed are available, but they must go to great lengths to acquire them. If they do, there's usually a face-off with their enemies before they can be considered winners. Their games end up being great re-run material for Channel 4.
  This is Saw, of course. Or is it Scrapheap Challenge?
• This show is the sequel series to another show, becoming Darker and Edgier in the process. Many of the concepts from the first show are Retconned to come from aliens; for example, the protagonist turns out to have descended from aliens, despite looking human. One of the villians from the first series joins up with the hero, now much older than the first series, and the protagonist's female sidekick, the smartest of the group, acts as the group's bonding force. The female sidekick begins having a romance with a dark, brooding villain who switches sides every so often, while the hero becomes friends with one of the most powerful beings in the universe. One of the main plots in the show includes the heroes journeying from planet to planet to find several parts of a whole item which grants power beyond anyone's comprehension. Also, the show is criticized for having quite a lot of filler. The show, which was aired on Cartoon Network, has several sequel series of its own. Whether this is better than the original or not depends on the viewer.
  So, is this Ben 10: Alien Force or Dragon Ball Z?
• Love Makes You Crazy the series. Miyuki Sawashiro voices a foreigner living in Japan, and Hiroshi Kamiya is a well-educated Bishōnen whose family goes for weird names.
  Durarara!! or Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei?
• A young man obsessed with honor and banished by his father falls in love with his closest childhood friend, a Lonely Rich Kid Well, Excuse Me, Princess!. The fandom, however, passionately ships him with a young woman he meets on his travels who has the power to heal, never turns her back on those in need, and comes from a nation whom his own people have persecuted for centuries. The creators are forced to give a direct Take That! to the Fan-Preferred Couple's shippers.
  Ivanhoe or Avatar: The Last Airbender?
• In this Disney Animated Adaptation of a fairy tale, the heroine yearns for excitement and adventure beyond the sheltered world she's known. She falls in love with a man whom she teaches to be less selfish, to the point of sacrificing his own well-being for her freedom, creating a contrast in context between selfless, true love and possessive, controlling, abusive "love." The couple is forced to separate for awhile but soon reunite, only for the villain to stab the guy right before dying during a fall. The girl holds her dying lover in her arms and cries over him, bringing him Back from the Dead via The Power of Love mixed with the effects of an enchanted flower. A peasant marries a royal, and they live Happily Ever After.
  Beauty and the Beast or Tangled?
• This story begins underground, with a burrowing colony whose philosophy is to dig as often as possible to avoid danger from the outside world. One digger, whose name ends with "-imon", accidentally causes animal-like creatures to attack the colony. He is then exiled from said colony, joining up with a large, boisterous friend. Eventually, the digger meets and rescues a young, innocent child who is related to the Big Bad, left for dead. The digger relays his philosophy to said child and, after a Time Skip, they go off to defeat the Big Bad and his forces.
  This is Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, right? Or is it The Lion King 1 ½?
• The Big Bad attacks a heroic character, which results in said character getting a scar on the forehead and in the two of them being linked mentally. This link makes the hero feel unclean and unworthy to be around their friends and it proves to be both useful and dangerous for them both, as they can spy on what their enemies are doing but run the risk of exposing their own secrets and plans to the enemy as well. Eventually, the villain decides it's in his best interest to block the connection, leaving the hero and their companions free to track down and destroy his Soul Jars so they can ultimately destroy him. Anyone Can Die (but not without getting a Dead Guy Junior), and the powers of love, friendship, and having a cause worth fighting for prove to be more Badass than the forces of evil. Religious allegory abounds.
  Dracula or Harry Potter?
• Let's see...four person main cast, but many characters among the guest stars, including politicians, alien ambassadors, allies and a large Rogues Gallery. The field commander is borderline suicidal and lost his family due to tragedy. The Heart is a scientist who likely has the most common sense, but is still a trained fighter. There's a Ph.D. who signed on reluctantly, is grossly underpowered compared to his teammates, but can be really dangerous if pushed. And a walking tank bred to be a fighter who is the only non-human crew. The commander back home has the unenviable task of putting up with both the team's antics and the crooked politicians trying to shut the project down.
  Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers or Stargate SG-1? (Lampshaded here with the German version of the Galaxy Rangers theme)
• A kind-hearted male protagonist in a nice jacket goes back in time to prevent the deaths of those around him. His main skill is to manipulate small objects in order to effect changes in the timeline. When he uses his power, the world turns Deliberately Monochrome and Time Stands Still. The protagonist finds out that the main villain has a twisted, murderous obsession that's gotten worse over the course of many years and a power that directly complements his own. The villain uses this power to directly oppose the hero and Make Wrong What Once Went Right. The result is a complex story spanning multiple timelines, and an ending which is a bit of a Mind Screw if you're not paying attention. The villain can be talked out of his craziness. A mysterious cat proves central to the story, as it time-travels while carrying the source of the hero's power and becomes immortal as a result due to an unexplained temporal effect.
  Which Nintendo DS game is this? Is it Time Hollow, or Ghost Trick?
• Having spent a whole game fighting 'liquid', the good characters fight a team which includes a bald, overweight man who avoids walking, an inappropriately-clothed woman who has her own agenda, and a character who is enough like one of the protagonists to pass for him. Having gained access to a 50-year-old weapons concept, these characters attempt to take over Eagle Land using a superweapon disguised as a science facility and a cyborg lizard, and the President gets involved somehow. It turns out that everything was planned decades ago by a dead bloke. In the finale, the teams realise they have to work together and there's a rush through the superweapon, followed by a battle with the lizard. The superweapon tries to pull a Colony Drop of sorts, and there's a final showdown in front of the superweapon. That old guy who gets killed in the ending? He didn't; the guy with the moustache rescued him and put him in a sort of stasis, but we don't know this until two games and a handheld title of ambiguous canonicity later.
  Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty or Sonic Adventure 2?
• A hyperactive high school girl who is superior to everyone in her class at anything gains a role of power, dragging her perfectly ordinary best friend with her. All is fine and dandy until a Genre Shift occurs, revealing that the girl is a overpowered, causing others to try and take her power for their own use. It's up to her best friend to protect her and the school from these mentally unstable unnatural beings.
  The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya or Medaka Box?
• A girl with low self-esteem (despite being revered like a goddess by everyone around her, especially male admirers, who can't wait to risk their lives to protect her) moves against her will to a dark, gloomy, Gothic landscape. She is in a Star-Crossed Lovers plot with a guy for whom Stalking is Love and who admits that he is bad news but claims he is so madly, passionately in love with her, he can't stay away. She literally can't function when she's separated from him. She meets a Nice Guy who would be a much safer, more dependable partner but rejects him in favor of her bad boy.
  The Mysteries of Udolpho or Twilight?
• We've got an Atlus game here. The story focuses on a messy-haired hero who hears of a mysterious rumor. Around that time, he meets a mysterious girl in white, after which he seems to be trapped in a twisted dream with people who are like people he's met before, but with a radical difference. The hero now has to make a series of choices which will affect how the story plays out. Said hero is also in a Love Triangle with an odd, somewhat exotic girl and the Girl Next Door he's always known.
  Is this Catherine, or the first Persona?
• The story takes place After the End, with a mentally fragile Bishōnen protagonist and his severely messed-up friends. There's an older girl named Misato who hides her sadness by acting perky and sometimes drinking while having a strained relationship to someone from her past, a redhead who only hates the protagonist because she wants attention after being left alone, and an Emotionless Girl who has a mysterious aura to her, but breaks down by the end of the story. The protagonist also has some hidden mommy issues. He does find some normalcy in his two friends, the guy who has a soft spot for his sister and the normal, yet rather off guy. In an alternate continuity, he kills everyone and becomes God (or something).
  Neon Genesis Evangelion, or CROSS†CHANNEL?
• A mysterious, handsome vampire is attracted to and intrigued by a clumsy human girl, who considers herself unattractive, because he can't read her mind. Said vampire is part of a family of vampires whose patriarch is trying to bring them to a new style of life and abandon old-fashioned stereotypes. They are immune to sunlight and garlic. The vampire has a bratty sister who absolutely hates the human girl. The human girl has a variety of friends/allies, including a tribe of pugnacious, loyal fighters and a very attractive man who can shapeshift into a furry animal, and is fighting against an army of evil vampires who have been created as a fighting force.
  The Twilight Saga, or Carpe Jugulum?
• A brilliant but ruthless and rather amoral revolutionary takes on a totalitarian dictatorship in a postapocalyptic world, driven by personal pain from being a victim of said dictatorship's most terrible prison. Along the way, he picks up a teenage girl as a protege and becomes Shrouded in Myth. In the end, he dies, but his death is just the beginning.
  Mistborn: The Final Empire or V for Vendetta?
• A caped nobleman loses his grip on sanity upon the loss of his fiancee, becoming a villain as his entire world and civilization (though not his fancy castle) crumble around him. When the heroes confront him, they bring with them the truth of his fiancee's fate, and her declaration of everlasting love forces him to confront reality as his castle collapses.
  Super Paper Mario or Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box?
• A woman becomes the undisputed ruler of her domain, with the aid of her weak-willed male companion. She believes Happiness Is Mandatory, and so creates a brightly-uniformed Culture Police that ruthlessly deals with people who don't fit her definition of how things should be, subjecting them to Cool and Unusual Punishment. Then the Guile Hero and companion(s) show up, and deliberately defy her, allying with the locals and eventually forcing the ruler to confront the falseness of her beliefs. The heroes then leave, with the people free to act however they want.
  Witches Abroad or "The Happiness Patrol"?
• An evil Fairy Godmother is the power behind the throne, having transformed a frog into a puppet ruler. She wants to consolidate her power by arranging a marriage for kingdom's princess. The princess has other ideas, and allies with the heroes. Lots of Fractured Fairytales take place before the big confrontation during the palace ball, When the Clock Strikes Twelve.
  Witches Abroad again, or Shrek 2?
• A warrior of justice who has dark spiky hair and wears the same blue-and-white outfit every day has just made the wrong enemy. The pretty-boy villain, nominally an agent of justice himself but corrupted by his inflated ego, pretends to be his friend while secretly masterminding a plot to have him taken out of commission. What the villain doesn't count on are the spiky-haired guy's young successors: while the successors may not have been strong enough to take out the villain on their own, they continue their predecessor's work and ultimately expose the truth. The Villainous Breakdown at the end is the stuff of legends.
  Death Note or Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney?
• A half-hour animated sitcom, starring a character from 1930s cartoon shorts. The character is now a father, living in a small town. The villain of the shorts (whose profession in the originals would change to fit the setting) is now a second-hand car dealer, and also has a son. The focus is more on the sons than the fathers, though.
  Goof Troop or Popeye and Son?
• A long-running video game series revolving around a regular hero and villain. On one side, a chubby guy with a mustache and a Trademark Favorite Food. On the other side, a spiky anthropomorphic animal who wants the freedom to do what he wants, but the mustached man always gets in the way. The bad guy has been subject to some Villain Decay, but is occasionally still able to show some badassery. The hero has a girlfriend in pink and an Evil Twin - well, more of an Anti-Hero Twin - and is a major industry mascot, especially in the 16-bit era.
  So, which one is the hero? The human (Super Mario), or the spiky animal (Sonic the Hedgehog)?
• A slacker with a guitar tries to impress a girl with oddly coloured hair and rollerblades by facing a gauntlet of enemies headed by shadowy, yet charismatic man. Along the way, he gains an acoustic theme about his love, a realization about what he's fighting for, and a serious self-confidence boost by the final boss. While treated favorably by critics, it wasn't too profitable.
  Scott Pilgrim or Gitaroo Man?
• A boy who had his mother go to a different plane of existence when he was young grows up to be a Magnificent Bastard Messianic Archetype who controls his own army and confront his Magnificent Bastard father who abandoned him and is working on an Assimilation Plot. One of his Love Interests is a Tsundere red-head with a red Humongous Mecha, and the other is a Deadpan Snarker exotic-haired girl with mysterious origins. He also confronts a secret society of people with special abilities like his own and his rival is a white-haired boy.
  Code Geass or Shinji And Warhammer 40 K?
• A group of British siblings sent to live in the country during World War Two discover magical secrets in the house where they are staying. There's a witch who intends to use her spells to win a war, and a world inhabited by talking animals with a lion as their king, and a climactic battle between good and evil, with swords and magic both in heavy use.
  Now, is the witch the Big Bad or one of the good guys?
• A group of criminals enter into a wealthy man's dreams to trick him out of his secrets. In the course of the adventure, multiple layers of dreams are entered, "bigger guns" are summoned by the protagonists, the ultimate trick involves confronting the dreamer with a loved one that they're estranged from, people are removed from the dream by falling, and there's a risk that people stuck in the dream will enter a form of Limbo and go crazy if they stay in too long.
  Inception or Don Rosa's Dream of a Lifetime?
• This work has become one of the most well-known examples of a popular genre of the late 80s-90s, despite being in many ways a more philosophical Deconstruction of that genre, possibly due to Creator Breakdown. It concerns a young man whose estranged father commands him to become a man of action; contrary to most of the genre's heroes, however, the son struggles with the psychological and philosophical implications of this role, even though there are moments when he performs admirably; in one scene, he performs the sort of action that his father wanted him to while his mother is present. The work lends itself well to Freudian analysis, probably because of the main character's mother issues. His only real confidante is a male friend with whom there is a hint of sexual attraction; one of his female love interests has to be institutionalized before dying along with most of the other characters in an "Everybody Dies" Ending.
  Are we talking about the 1990s or the 1590s?
• This film is set in a small idyllic American town that relies on tourism during its summer months to get by economically. However, a new danger surfaces in the town. The first victims are skinny-dippers. A scientist who is an expert on the subject, and has had many close scrapes with this sort of thing before, is called into town to investigate and survey the danger. He concludes that the danger is real and tries to warn the townsfolk, but is treated with scepticism, especially by the powers that be in the town, who dismiss his concerns, as they fear acknowledging the danger would scare away the tourists their town relies upon. Things get more personal for our hero when someone he is close to has a near fatal incident and is hospitalized, but survives. At a large public gathering, the danger reveals itself to the startled crowds, preventing any further denial. The hero’s boss subsequently apologizes for not having heeded his warnings. In the end, the primary characters become stuck, and the scientist risks his life to try and save the others. He is initially thought dead, but in the end he is discovered to have survived, much to the glee of his companions. The story is inspired by real events that are directly referenced at one point in the film.
  Jaws or Dante's Peak?
• This story is set in a fantasy world that parodies fairy tales. A pretty girl is kidnapped and brought to the highest tower in the land. Two unlikely heroes embark on a quest across the land to rescue her. One is a lazy introvert who lives in an isolated house in the middle of nowhere and would prefer to just be left alone. Though not human, he is a humanoid; husky and significantly larger than his companion. The other is a talkative, outgoing animal companion who sometimes gets on the nerves of others. The girl they are trying to rescue is at risk of turning into a hideous green monster. One of the characters is a large green ogre who wears white and brown and seems intimidating at first, but actually turns out to be a nice guy. A beast guarding the tower performs a Heel–Face Turn. At the end of the story, the villain is presumed dead, but is revealed prior to the credits to still be alive, trapped in some dark, enclosed space. The sequel prominently features a kingdom not seen in the first installment, and has the aforementioned talkative companion get turned into another animal, and seem to revel in their new form, although they are turned back by the end of the story. The story relies on a lot of Squick, references and Toilet Humor.
  Shrek or BanjoKazooie?
• This story is about an ordinary schoolboy with really spiky hair. However, he is unaware that a powerful, sometimes cruel spirit lives inside of him, possessing the boy in times of great emergency. This boy soon becomes friends with many people, eventually meeting three siblings who come from a far-off area: a sister, a brother, and their little psychopathic brother. They all become good eventually, though.
  Yu-Gi-Oh! or Naruto?
• A man is pulled from his enjoyable but uneventful existence up North and thrust into a world he thought he'd left behind. He doesn't appreciate conflict and often disagrees with his superiors' methods, but gets the job done. His rival is a Western fan known for his methods of extracting information, who secretly has a noble purpose. Halfway through, he has to rescue his could-be lover from a family member he didn't know much of. Most of the story involves a Gene of some kind. It's followed by a sequel in which a more feminine counterpart encounters similar situations a few years later. It's often difficult to figure out what's real and what isn't.
  Is this Metal Gear Solid or Life On Mars?
• A man assembles a Badass Crew, who use their various skills and talents to perform a heist that many had thus far considered impossible. The man claims that this mission will be his last job, with the ultimate goal for most crew members being the money at the end. Along the way, our hero ends up jeopardizing the mission due to complications with his ex-wife. In the end, the mission is successful and our hero makes his way home.
  Is this Inception or Ocean's Eleven?
• This show focuses on two main characters: a kind but dim-witted young boy and a non-human who wears little clothing. The two live at the boy's house with his young yet intelligent little sister, and go to school with a variety of unusual characters, all of which are simply regarded as students despite their extraordinary origins. At one point, a ghost schoolgirl possesses the body of one of the protagonists to indulge in her own desires.
  To Love Ru or The Amazing World of Gumball?
• This show is about a lazy, misanthropic, unhygienic man with the emotional capacity of a 12-year old and his young and more successful foil. In each episode, the lazy man drags his foil into some hair-brained scheme, which will inevitably backfire in some way.
  Dan Vs. or Kochikame?
• This story is about aliens that come to Earth. They're here to prevent humans from eventually developing technology that will destroy the universe. They give a Breaking Speech to the humans when they meet face-to-face, and the encounter ends with the aliens being defeated. Whether or not the universe is still doomed is left to the viewer's imagination.
  Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann or Plan 9 from Outer Space?
• A webcomic about Anthropomorphic Personifications of countries, centering on a Power Trio consisting of a scrawny, excitable hedonist with a phobia of being alone, a larger and more level-headed man with whom the first man is in a long-term relationship, and a third character who is reserved, tech-savvy, and something of an outsider to the first two. The comic derives much humor from the inevitable Culture Clash as the various characters interact, and also from re-interpreting historical events as interpersonal relationships. Most of the fans, though, are in it for the ambiguous—and not so ambiguous—yaoi.
  Hetalia: Axis Powers or Scandinavia and the World?
• The setting — seven participants are involved in a battle royale. Each one has certain innate advantages and disadvantages — one is bigger and more powerful than the rest, one finds it easy to create a safe zone at the edge of the conflict and influence events from the sidelines, and so on — but the various skill levels of the participants also have a major impact on their chance of success. What is more, the players tend towards different personalities — one is stupidly honest, another suffers from Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, and in most scenarios there is one guy who thinks he's hot stuff, but in reality doesn't even quite understand the rules, let alone possesses a good chance of winning. In any case, alliances are repeatedly made and broken, long periods of leisurely conversation are followed by scenes of intense action, and although the format points to a There Can Be Only One ending, it is more than possible for two or more to win by cooperating with each other.
  Fate/stay night? Or your average game of Diplomacy? Or even a quick session of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri?
• This is a comic about a young adult living in a video game-esque world. He fights a variety of people who, in his mind, are out to get him, fighting for what he sees to be his true love. However, he isn't as perfect as he thinks.
  Sonichu or Scott Pilgrim?
• A girl becomes friends with her Delicate and Sickly cousin and helps him improve himself in a dark, big, fancy, rambling Gothic mansion, owned by a reclusive, Byronic man (whose sanity began significantly slipping after the death of his beloved), located at the edge of a moor where the wind is always "wutherin'."
  Wuthering Heights or The Secret Garden?
• This story is an epic Space Opera. The main character is an emperor with a prolonged lifespan who finds himself fighting an old foe from his past, and switches between fighting with and aiding another monarchy.
  The Five Star Stories or Hobbes Wars?
• In this video game, a protagonist with a blue and red color scheme and very odd hair is just trying to do his job, but has to deal with a Genki Girl sidekick, a lolitastic Love Freak and a flamboyantly sophisticated rival. All of these characters, particularly the protagonist and his rival, turn out to be more closely connected than we originally thought. In a later game, the blue and red protagonist is replaced by a red and white one with some family issues. Although most of the original cast are nowhere to be seen, the original protagonist is still there, and one female character returns for another important role. The new rival is blonde, famous and plays the guitar, and the new female lead is the subject of a major plot twist toward the end. Also, a blue creature with googly eyes, supposedly based on a Real Life animal, serves as a mascot in the series, and there's one guy who incorporates as much Gratuitous Foreign Language into his daily speech as possible.
  Ace Attorney or Disgaea?
• A group of people are gathered to a mansion on an island and are killed off one by one in accordance to a bizarre poem, with their alleged host nowhere in sight. This group includes devoted servants, a doctor, and a Jerkass detective. The female character who is essential to the plot is still reeling from the harsh rejection of her lover, and it was this rejection that ultimately drove her insane. Some of its adaptations are loved by fans; others are absolutely reviled. And the ending has the fan base sharply divided.
  And Then There Were None or Umineko: When They Cry?
• It takes place in the Pacific Northwest. There's a character whose name begins with "Ed". One of the characters can predict the future, or at least says she can. A guy falls in love with someone in a way that could be interpreted as creepy and stalkerish, and they end up together.
  Twilight, right? Or is it Frasier?
• Two swordsmen, a girl with guns and a super-intelligent Little Miss Badass fight against a large authority that is secretly an evil organization. The white-haired, red and black clad hero holds a massive grudge against a member of his family, but it turns out they aren't so bad. The final boss is a Treacherous Advisor to one of the main characters, who turns out to be both a former hero of legend and the de facto leader of the evil organization.
  Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice or BlazBlue: Continuum Shift?
• A brilliant weapons designer discovers that his weapons are being used by forces of evil and so he stopped building weapons and created a suit to take down those weapons. He had help of a redhead friend, he saved the day.
  Iron Man or Steel.
• A cartoon series whose establishing shot is of the main character, a muscular young woman, wearing a sleeveless shirt and with her arms at her sides, looking down from a high place at a city based on Shanghai.
  Canaan or The Legend of Korra?
• For as long as anyone can remember, the prosperity of civilization has been possible due to the presence of mysterious magical artifacts left behind by an ancient race. These artifacts come in many forms and serve a variety of purposes, from the mundane to the spectacular; from warding off enemies to providing locomotion; from enhancing physical abilities to supplying an entire town with water. Their use is commonplace and widespread. There are institutions devoted to studying the powers of these artifacts. However, some artifacts can also be used as devastating weapons, and there are those who would seize that power for themselves. Indeed, cataclysmic wars in which the artifacts were both fought over and employed have taken place in the past. Now, the artifacts have once again brought conflict sweeping across the land.
  Which artifacts are we talking about? Is it the blastia? Or the remnants? Or maybe Old-Tech?
• An Evil Overlord in a China inspired land wants to Take Over the World but is afraid of a certain race defeating him. So he destroys all of that race except one. Now, it's up to that last guy to save the world with the help of some friends.
  Avatar: The Last Airbender or Kung Fu Panda 2?
• This beloved classic animated movie begins with the birth of the main character, a Talking Animal. He grows a bit older, meets the female lead, and grows very close to a parent who protects him and tells him about where his life is destined to take him. This parent is killed in a disaster during a series of events that began with the lethal intentions of the main villain (a predatory animal with a wounded eye). The grieving main character runs away, and promptly begins meeting new friends, and is then reunited the female lead, who stresses the threat posed by the villain but is initially ignored by the main character. Eventually, however, he comes to his senses, and he and his friends lead an attack on the villain (who ends up falling to his doom). At last, the hero stands on a rock overlooking the land that is his home. If we also mention that he sees his dead parent in a cloud at one point and remembers what he was taught, and that the supporting cast includes a duo of significantly mismatched size and a flying guy who usually frustrates the main character, then it should be obvious to anyone that this movie is The L...
  ...and Before Time or ...ion King?
• This takes place in a world where the time period and technology level/aesthetic don't quite add up. The story centers around a dysfunctional yet tight-knit team of nine mercenaries. Said mercenaries include: a medic; a friendly, easy-going mechanic; a Professional With Standards; an intimidating black person; a soldier who's still stuck on a war that ended long ago; someone who's past is unknown because he is secretive; someone who's past is unknown because he/she is imcomprehensible; an enthusiastic, somewhat childish guy; and a rather large, Hot-Blooded fellow who is very attached to his guns. There are nice hats aplenty.
  Team Fortress 2, or Firefly?
• The Affectionate Parody of Classic Disney Films stars two acquaintances: A fat guy who's main color is green, and a somewhat annoying horse-like animal. Together they go on a huge journey, and have all kinds of strange adventures, including trying to cross a rope bridge but destroying it in the process, at the same time, each one discovering the friend he never had, while the fat green guy is trying to stop some homes from being destroyed. Sometime later in their journey, they encounter a ferocious kitty cat.
  Shrek or The Emperor's New Groove?
• This musical based off a children's book series has characters, including a Funny Animal and a rather messed up, unlucky guy as main characters, in a Slice of Life series going through the seasons. Many adventures ensue, such as a story about flying a kite and various other mundane tasks. It also has very few actors, some playing the parts of others.
  You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown or A Year with Frog and Toad?
• This films stars a pampered pet living in a certain part of the United States. After ending up in his/her species's native land (a Hispanic/Latino country) our protagonist is captured by humans planning on using him/her for illegal purposes. After escaping with the help of a friend of the opposite gender, the duo trek through the country to find our hero/heroine's owner. Meanwhile, these evil humans send their nasty pet off to find our protagonist and bring him/her back. This duo also encounters two locals who serve as comic relief. When the protagonist finds his/her owner, he/she finds love and has Babies Ever After. Also, the animal villain suffer an embarrassing fate right before the credits.
  Rio or Beverly Hills Chihuahua?
• A man whose first name is never given, but is referred to with a title, is bored with his life. He meets a badass guy who who the main character tries to be more like. Later he meets a girl, who eventually leaves him because he starts to go crazy. It is later revealed that the badass guy is actually an alter-ego of the main character, who later "dies" due to a shot to the head.
  Is it American Idiot or Fight Club?
• A Diabolical Mastermind creates a mechanical doppelganger of Queen Victoria to replace her during her diamond jubilee.
  The Great Mouse Detective or The Girl in the Steel Corset?
• A very neurotic man gets a job at an establishment. He believes it something strongly, and tries to run a tight ship. However, most of his employees and guests are weird, and his wife is very tired of him. There isn't a day where something goes wrong at said establishment.
  The Brittas Empire or Fawlty Towers?
• A group of people travel to places and always seem to get caught up in some kind of strange occurance. They have a vehicle that they travel in which may not be reliable and one of the groups companions has been or is a dog.
  Doctor Who or Scooby-Doo?
• This film is a cult classic, iconic for its use of B-Movie tropes. In Cold War era America, a traveling couple are forced by circumstances to seek the hospitality of a hammy, Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette sexual deviant who employs an odd-looking Crusty Caretaker and isn't entirely human. It doesn't end happily, but at least many memes are spawned along the way.
  Manos: The Hands of Fate or The Rocky Horror Picture Show?
• This is the Gothic story of a highly talented but equally insane Mad Artist from the early 1900s who is horribly scarred and disfigured, hides behind a mask, dresses all in black, goes around killing people (strangulation being his specialty), and becomes obsessed with a woman who unmasks him dramatically after he kidnaps her. Remakes/adaptations of the original version move said Mad Artist closer to the center as a Villain Protagonist, whereas the heroic female lead was closer to the center in the original version.
  The Phantom of the Opera or House of Wax (1953)?
• An animated story about a career-driven loner who gets stuck in a small town, and reluctantly befriends the locals despite initially thinking they're all crazy. The aid of the protagonist's new friends is invaluable when they eventually leave the town to pursue their original goal. Once the excitement has died down, the protagonist adopts the small town as their new home.
  Cars or the pilot of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic?
• Professor Moriarty seeks to start a world war in the late 19th century so he can sell his Steampunk weaponry to both sides and make a fortune, prompting the protagonists to stop him.
  Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie?
• Two people are stuck in a situation where they live together, even though they don't exactly get on. One is very neurotic and believes he is the best at everything, while the other is more laid back. They have two other friends that the laid back person likes more than the neurotic man. One friend is full of himself and thinks about sex all the time, and the other is of a different ethnic background, but is polite and timid. The laid back guy wants to date a girl that is from a different background than him, but the neurotic guy doesn't think it would ever happen. The couple do get together in the end, though.
  The Big Bang Theory or Red Dwarf?
• Adventure series from the early '90s. A group of colour-coded adventurers travel through various diverse locations, known as 'Zones', trying to gather mystical jewels. Locations generally include ancient ruins and/or castles, mechanical environments and space stations. It often culminates in a time-limited showdown in space, where the jewels make things easier. Later adventures heavily involve a black-haired guy from the past, whose love interest is a dead girl on a space station.
  The Crystal Maze or Sonic the Hedgehog?
• An animated film from the nineties with a message about nature and the environment. A native princess lives in a civilization in the forest with her father and crazy animal sidekick(s), and takes advice from a wise matriarchal figure. When some intruders show up to overrun their land, she meets a long-haired blond guy who wears blue. They learn about each other and fall in love. But a shirtless native is jealous, and an Evil Brit wants to take over their homeland. The native and the guy don't end up together in the end.
  Pocahontas or FernGully: The Last Rainforest?
• Aired in the 1997-98 season, this TV series featured an extragovernmental organization which hires five agents to continue its mission of fighting for justice and protecting mankind. The organization's original mentor is no longer at his post. These five agents are given five vehicles. These vehicles can combine into other machines.
  Team Knight Rider or Power Rangers Turbo?
• An ordinary person meets a mysterious, anarchist Dark Messiah with big plans to change the world. Though some circumstance out of the persons control, they end up living with the Anarchist. Though the two trust each other from the start, it is not until after a Horrific Initiation that the mysterious begins to trust the other person well. The mysterious persons forms a giant army, which ends up in at least one hard to watch casualty. Also, The Dark Messiah ends up dead, but his ideas live on, and in the movie versions of both, at least one important building collapses in an explosion set to Awesome Music.
  Is this Fight Club, Or is this V for Vendetta?
• In a fictional, ultra-fascist alternate version of a real-world country, a tyrannical government forces children to play a game where they must to go to an isolated arena and simultaneously survive the elements and kill each other until only one is left standing, for a bunch of convoluted reasons that basically boil down to For the Evulz. Most of the population knows about this and are aware that anyone can be chosen, making them fearful and paranoid, although the government gives this event heavy media coverage as a way of manipulating the people. Though the game appears to take place in a natural environment, the truth is that the game makers use advanced technology to manipulate the elements and keep the players in check. At the game's start, the players (an even number of boys and girls) are gathered at a central point where they can obtain backpacks filled with supplies, including weapons. Lingering around this point at the wrong time, however, will result in them being blown up. Once the players leave this point, the game officially starts, and it is a common strategy for players to stay around the area during this time to kill as many others as they can. As the game continues, all of the players are given a recount of who has been killed through a broadcast given at a certain time. During one of these games, a young boy and girl with a shared history come together to help each other survive. They are assisted by an older mentor who had previously survived one of these games. Some of their most dangerous opponents are a boy and a girl who have no qualms about killing and are dead set on winning– in fact, the boy ends up being the last survivor outside their group. At one point, one of the female players dies from eating poisonous food that was meant to be eaten by the male lead. When some of the main characters become separated, they use a tactic they had previously discussed of lighting a number of fires and using a bird call to determine where each other is. Over the course of their journey it is revealed that one of them has had long held a crush on the other and the other, despite having someone else back home they have feelings for, eventually reciprocates the feelings. In the end they both survive the game by tricking the game makers, resulting in the death of the game's supervisor. Despite having entertained thoughts of running away earlier, they end up going on to fight the government that created the games.
  The Hunger Games or Battle Royale?
• This series is notorious for its high levels of Nightmare Fuel and complex, ever-deepening plot without too many straight answers. One of the key figures is a man who's always seen smoking a cigarette, first appeared as a background character in the first season, and is involved with a shadowy group of conspirators. In the second season finale, the protagonist and a woman who has joined him on his quest get into a Mexican standoff with a murderous character named Alex K. The same woman disappeared mysteriously in Episode 6 of the season. Plenty of creepy men in suits lurk in the dark depths of the forest in:
  Marble Hornets? Or The X-Files?
• A young girl with no parents, and a special locket as an Orphan's Plot Trinket, dreams of having a loving family. She escapes from her evil guardian, only for a policeman to bring her back to said guardian, who pretends to be overjoyed about it. The second time she gets away, she becomes the subject of an advertisement that causes her to become a Living MacGuffin due to how much money she is worth, especially for the guardian and her hammy male accomplice. The girl ends up with a wealthy father who lives in a mansion, and her friends are given a home. A family musical with its share of ear worms, an Award-Bait Song, and a Villain Song about wealth.
  It's Annie, right? Are you sure it's not Tom and Jerry: The Movie?
• A group of kids become friends and a hang out together. As their get to know each other a love triangle develops between them. One vertex of the triangle dies tragically and all of them drift apart. Several years later the one who was supposed to be dead appears before the main character and causes the once separated friends to come back together and repair their broken relationship. Also one of them is a bit of a jerk who wears fabulous clothes.
  Is it Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day or is it Tales of Graces?
• A famous musical film based on a book, widely hailed as a classic. A young girl wearing blue who has a small animal as a pet is unsatisfied with her normal life and sings an "I Want" Song expressing her longing to be in another world. Shortly afterwards, she is transported to a fantasy world that satirizes the real one, and becomes the Only Sane Girl. She ventures through the world largely by "following" something. While there, she meets many different creatures, including a very unique cat, some talking plants, and a loud and intimidating political leader, whom she confronts. An evil woman becomes intent on killing her because of an accident that wasn't the girl's fault. In the end it turns out to have been All Just a Dream.
  Wait, is this Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz?
• The story centers around an Odd Couple composed of a quirky, immature, dark-haired Mr. Fanservice with unusual eating habits who wears a long billowy coat, and his shorter, lighter haired partner with post-traumatic issues. They investigate murders and have buckets of Ho Yay. The best-known villain of the series is a stylishly creepy Sissy Villain-slash-Evil Genius who just can't stay away from billowy coat boy.
  Descendants of Darkness or Sherlock?
• This is a series of British TV dramas, composed of multiple very short mini-series, that is based (with notable deviations) on a series of classic British tales that are icons of their genre. The title character is a tall, thin, pale Badass Bookworm with curly dark hair, fangirl-bait cheekbones, and an aloof demeanor. He has a best friend/sidekick/foil who is a shorter, fairer-haired, more approachable Badass Adorable. They have lots of homoerotic subtext. One of the major supporting characters is an attractive in his own right older guy who functions as a Reasonable Authority Figure. A lot of the tension in the second miniseries is due to the machinations of an Irishman who has a thing against the main character. The last episode of the second miniseries involves a serious assault against the protagonist's reputation, and ends in a major character making a heartrending Heroic Sacrifice.
  Sherlock? Or Horatio Hornblower?
• A Video Game Sequel. The protagonist of the first game has been kidnapped and is being held captive somewhere. Playing as their younger-sibling-figure, you have to rescue them.
  Donkey Kong Country 2, or Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2?

Uncited Entries 2

• This is a famous cartoon series with a large Periphery Demographic and is extremely popular over the internet, spawning hundreds of memes. The main protagonist's (who's VA's first name starts with a T) friends include a ditzy pink Big Eater, and an action-loving girl with a southern accent. There is also a villain who started out Laughably Evil, but turned out to be Not So Harmless Villains, brainwashing some of the main characters and turning the town into an awful hellhole, which was enough to get him onto the Vile Villain, Saccharine Show page. After this episode, the creator had stepped down. Also, in one episode, the friendly yellow character tried to become "more assertive" with the help of a mentor, but ended up losing friends. In another episode, the Workaholic kept on doing their job without getting any sleep, and went crazy from sleep deprivation. In fact, all of the main characters have had a mental breakdown at least once.
  My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic or Spongebob Squarepants?
• An incredibly talented human being with obvious mental problems is so enchanted with various fiction works that they decide to live those adventures in Real Life. The first time that human being intends to do so the results are disheartening. However, this human being knows another that seems to be its foil: A poor Deadpan Snarker who will get always the worst part in this relationship. Together, they will have adventures in a work of fiction with no definite genre where they will change reality itself.
  Haruhi Suzumiya or Don Quixote?
• A man wakes up finding he has superpowers which eventually develop into godlike power, turning him into an unstoppable tank. However he finds that he is not the only one, and must stop them from causing chaos in the city (which has been quarantined, resulting in a Crapsack World). Eventually he discovers a shady organization is behind the quarantine, and they want you dead.
  [PROTOTYPE] or InFamous?
• British science fiction series. A man from a North West English city, with a thing for leather jackets, ends up out of his time period. His immediate superior is a tall, authoritarian individual who is technically dead. The man's colleagues include a guy who thinks he's a bit of ladies' man, and a bumbling but well-meaning character who lacks assertiveness. The man's love interest is also featured, but is not initially part of the team as such. The overall plot concerns the man trying to get home and, at first, to get back with his initial love interest. Along the way, he encounters his mother as a young woman, and meets himself as a child. He also finds out the truth about his apparently absent father. He does eventually return to a version of his home time, but it's not quite the world he left. After a lot of soul-searching, he returns to the other time.
  Red Dwarf or Life On Mars?
• In this Elemental Powers animated series, whose theme starts with a roll call of the elements in the order "Earth, Fire, Air/Wind, Water," a group of ethnically diverse teenagers (mostly either orphaned or estranged from their parents) unite to save the world after moving in together on an island. The main romance is between a Tomboy with a focus on her power over air and a boy with a Dark and Troubled Past from the big city with power over fire, who bicker as often as they flirt.
  Captain Planet or The Legend of Korra?
• In a society divided sharply into two classes of people, the class that has been more or less abused and oppressed by the other for years rebels but goes too far, so they come across more as terrorists than as sympathetic rebels despite the fact that they have a point. They make the horrific punishment of members of the ruling class a recurring public spectacle. A foreign hero who lives across a channel of water from the City of Adventure arrives to stop the rebels and rescue their victims and has several loyal friends who willingly form their Hero Secret Service. An inter-class romance is a major part of the plot. A woman from the rebels' class refuses to join them, believing them to be wrong. Two of the main characters lost their parents when they were children, prompting one to get a Promotion to Parent and become very protective of their sibling. A suave, charismatic, cunning, and very talented Manipulative Bastard of a villain wants the much-younger-than-him heroine to work with him, but when she refuses, he takes her loved one(s) hostage to force her hand. Their confrontation ends with the heroine almost passing out from exhaustion at the end of a long journey before being carried to safety by the man she loves, when things have been rocky between them up until then. A major character has a lot in common with Batman.
  The Scarlet Pimpernel or The Legend of Korra?
• A Deconstructive Parody in which a young man, well past the age of his chosen genre becomes so obsessed with the genre that he goes off and has delusions that make him consider himself to be a hero in said genre. Much conflict comes from his trying to impose the genre's tropes upon normal situations.
  Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger or Don Quixote?
• Possibly autistic guy who likes to punch people has an awkward, chaste romance with a Chinese high school girl until he meets a mysterious, blue-haired woman with a dangerous past and cosmic powers given to her by twisted experiments.
  Scott Pilgrim or Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam?
• A parody of a beloved action genre wherein an inexperienced young man becomes a hero in order to stop an Army of Thieves and Whores hired by a ruthless villain to depopulate a small backwater in order to make way for a lucrative transportation route.
  Blazing Saddles or Gekisou Sentai Carranger?
• Now, let's see. We have: A team of archaeologists that dig out an ancient site that turns out to be a spaceship, a race of incredibly old giant alien beings that have visited Earth time after time in human history and have profoundly influenced human history, a scientist giving a presentation featuring pictograms from different human cultures depicting these beings, a True Believer who is still faithful even after having her beliefs obviously contradicted, a very old man manipulating everything for his own personal gain, a not-quite-human dude whose motives are never entirely clear, and several gruesome deaths.
  What does that add up to? Prometheus? Or is it the 1971 Doctor Who serial The Dæmons?
• A young man and his female hanger-on are dragged into a fight which blurs the boundaries between good and evil, thanks to a major player on their side being in cahoots with the Big Bad. On the way, they pick up someone investigating supernatural events (which everyone in the region seems to be involved in) with a Heterosexual Life Partner who leaves the plot after a while, a person with a close relationship to said investigator, and a strong person who ends up in a dark, small place often with a small group of people. Ultimately, the female hanger-on realizes that the male lead used to be part of the villainous organization, back when it wasn't outright evil, only for another, worse one to take it's place. The ending is deliberately vague, allowing a more optimstic sequel to be made. In this world, the first game's events are generally unknown outside of legend.
  Persona 2: Innocent Sin or Pokémon Colosseum?
• It's After the End, and the protagonists end up being part of an attempt to fight for their lives and ultimately go to a better world than this one. Said protagonists are five adults who are given the ability to transform by the "government" of the desolated world. Among them is a Standardized Leader, a bad boy who has a strong emotional tie to some mysterious girl who is important to the plot, a girl who is both Tomboy and Girly Girl at different times, a Plucky Comic Relief, and an intelligent person.
  Power Rangers RPM, or Digital Devil Saga?
• This story concerns a young, dark haired protagonist who doesn't interact with others a lot. On his journey, he meets a person who is initially quite hostile and has someone close to them injured, a girl who is only vaguely aware of the massive significance she has with the plot and ends up having a god-like version of her be the final obstacle in the story, an upbeat person with mother issues, and a boy with a dark secret that he doesn't reveal until right near the end. There's a dark-haired person who wears sunglasses during one point of the story and is more villainous than he reveals, is ultimately not the Big Bad, and is related to one of the party members. There's also the chance for people to become reach a higher form of existence, but since the basis for this would be one entity linking them together, the girl and the protagonist stop it from happening. Also, the girl has three different versions of her, and changes them throughout the story, but it is barely noticed until it becomes a plot point.
  This is obviously Neon Genesis Evangelion. Or is it Persona?
• This Cartoon Network Deranged Animation series stars a mammal and a bird who live together in the same house. The bird is smarter than the mammal, though both have very hyper and childlike personalities. The two are commonly antagonized by a guy in red who raises his voice a lot.
  Cow and Chicken or Regular Show?
• Three incorporeal beings are looking for host bodies until their android shells are ready. Of these three, two are madly in love while the third is bitterly jealous and wants to break them up. He tries to talk the two of them into keeping their host bodies. The lovers are tempted, but realize it would be wrong to take what they promised only to borrow. Help comes from a powerful if unexpected source- also a disembodied being borrowing a host body.
  Is this the episode of Star Trek: The Original Series known as "Return To Tomorrow" or the episode of Gargoyles known as "Possession"?
• A pair of fictional Star-Crossed Lovers (an Uptown Girl and a young man far below her own class) are separated forever by a real historical, disastrous, nightmarish tragedy involving water that resulted from a combination of the forces of nature and human incompetence/idiocy/laziness/complacency.
  Titanic (1997), or the novel In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden?
• A group of heroes harness The Power of Friendship to defeat a villain. They must find a set of Macguffins that concentrates their positive moral traits into a semi-physical power. Two of the heroes have younger siblings. At the end, it turns out that the power was inside them all along.
  Were they using the Elements of Harmony? Or the Crests and Tags?
• This television show features a preteen protagonist who manages to step up and save the day despite being entirely too young to be gallivanting around the world. He is determined to become a master but is easily distracted and often runs off to chase after various strange yet adorable animals. His favorite creatures are a pointy-eared critter from his old home and a big beast with a bit of an attitude problem that the protagonist can fly around on. At one point he is separated from the flying beast and is emotionally distraught until they reunite. He is accompanied on his journey by two teenagers, one of whom is a girl with an affinity for water and a motherly nature, although she has been known to deliver Amusing Injuries to her often exasperating companions. She originally sticks with the protagonist because he can help her get something she needs, but soon grows to care for him. The mutual attraction between her and the younger boy is obvious but the tension won't be resolved anytime soon. The final member is the oldest of the trio, and thinks of himself as very adult and responsible. He felt limited by his responsibility to be the "man of the house" back home, which is partially why he follows the other two on their crazy adventure. He is actually incredibly competent at what he does, a fact that is often obscured by his remarkable ability to act like a total doofus, especially when attractive girls are present. Throughout their travels, our heroes find themselves pursued by a duo of Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains attempting to gain the respect of their superior, who is much more sinister and enjoys standing with his face obscured by shadows.
  Avatar: The Last Airbender? Or the early seasons of Pokémon: The Series?
• A Trope Overdosed animated work depicting the epic, world-changing adventures of a diverse group of undersupervised young people. While there are obvious fantastic elements, it falls well outside the conventions of Medieval European Fantasy. The cast includes a kind, goofy boy on the brink of adolescence who has air-related elemental powers; a snarky teenage boy with a sword who acts as the Manly Man to the air-power boy's Sensitive Guy; a rather femme Action Girl (whose name begins with the letter K) who tries to be the Team Mom to her similarly-aged friends and has unusual supernatural attributes associated with blood; a badass blind girl (whose name begins with a T) who learned an unusual means of nonvisual perception from supernatural creatures; a sympathetic paraplegic boy (whose name also begins with a T) with a flying wheelchair; an adorable flying bovine; a Badass Adorable girl with some Animesque traits who has an Odd Friendship with a much less cutesy young aristocrat; a snarky young lady who is the Dark Feminine of a Light Feminine and Dark Feminine pair and wields pointy objects; a highly competitive, manipulative, very troubled adolescent girl with an abusive parental figure, who is associated with the color blue and belongs to a technologically advanced, militaristic culture; a cranky but sympathetic adolescent male from the same culture as the aforementioned troubled girl, who is the descendent of a Messianic figure and something of a foil to the goofy boy with wind powers; and a Dante Basco character. The series has a large, active fandom, including an abundance of Shipping, which the creators are aware of and have affectionately parodied.
  Homestuck or Avatar: The Last Airbender?
• A talented, highly eccentric individual from a Commonwealth country relocates to a large American city and grows close to a snarky American of a different ethnic background. They fight crime!
  Due South or Elementary?
• Discomfiting information comes to light when a young adult does some genealogical research and discovers their mixed ancestry.
  The Shadow Over Innsmouth or Secrets & Lies?
• The hero (Chris Evans), having spent to beginning of the story getting the crap beaten out of him, is injected with an experimental serum as part of a plan to defeat a superpowered villain working for a totalitarian government.
  Captain America: The First Avenger or Push?
• This Japanese show takes an odd look at the superhero concept. In it, monsters exist in parallel worlds and only those who become superheroes can fight them. Wishes and contracts are involved with being a superhero, though there is no way out of it once the contract is made, and you must fight. One hero in yellow is taken out early on, emphasizing the tone for the story. Another hero, who is the second main character, makes their wish to heal the one they love after they got into a horrible accident, fights with a sword, and dons a cape. One of the pivotal players of the story is a time traveler who is clearly more powerful than the other heroes combined and uses Game-Breaker powers. They keep repeating time just to save the one they love most from a tragic death, who in the end tells them to stop, ending the vicious cycle once and for all, at the cost of the person's life.
  Are the heroes Magical Girls or Kamen Riders?
  • For bonus Hilarious in Hindsight points, the creator of the former was later brought on for an installment of the latter's franchise, leading to even more comparisons.
• This young adult dystopian trilogy, centered around Star-Crossed Lovers, is told in the present-tense and first-person point of view of an older teenaged female protagonist who is named after a plant that starts with the "k-" sound and contains the letters i, a, and ss. This is unsurprising, since her mother works with plants and has an extensive knowledge of them. She lives in a nation ruled by a totalitarian regime that exploits the lower classes to provide the Bread and Circuses to keep the higher classes happy. She is protective of her one younger sibling whose one-syllable name is spelled "consonant"-r-"vowel"-m. She eventually teams up with another young ally whose name contains three letters and reminds someone strongly of aforementioned younger sibling. A Stepford Smiler female chaperone is assigned to watch her every move and keep her in line. She is torn between her feelings for her oldest, best friend and a boy who once made a strong impression on her when they were children but whom she barely noticed until the ruling powers threw them together for their own sadistic entertainment. Both boys, despite being rivals, are devoted to her and just want her to be happy. Their safety at one point requires her pretending she's madly in love with someone. She ultimately falls for the second boy, and the two of them are sent away with other young people from their nation's outlying districts to be sacrificed over a period of several weeks. The story then focuses on survival in the wilderness and having to make difficult, painful choices about weighing your own survival against others'. They are eventually taken in by the rebellion against the totalitarian government, despite the fact that they can't be trusted any more than the government they're rebelling against. There are frequent references to "odds."
  The Hunger Games or Matched?
• This movie start with the protagonist, an American doctor, and his wife coming to a Western European capital, where he is supposed to attend a scientific conference. They are driven from the airport to their hotel by an immigrant taxi driver. After the two arrive to the hotel, something unexpected and highly unusual happens. This makes the protagonist think there's a criminal conspiracy threatening the life of his wife. The protagonist tries to convince the hotel staff, as well as other local authorities, of the conspiracy, but they remain incredulous. He can't get the American embassy to help him either. So the protagonist has to investigate the mystery alone, in a foreign city whose language he doesn't speak. A black immigrant man leads to him a local woman who might be able to help him. This woman is streetwise, works on the shady side of the law, and is much younger than the middle-aged protagonist, but there is Unresolved Sexual Tension between the two. The woman agrees to help the protagonist if he'll pay her. She takes him to her apartment. While they are there, some bad guys burst in. The protagonist is in the bathroom when this happens, and he manages to escape through the bathroom window and via the roof. He comes back to the apartment and confronts the bad guys. The protagonist finds out the key to the mystery lies in a suitcase he and his wife had lost at the airport. He and the local woman get the suitcase, which indeed helps to solve the mystery. It turns out the conspiracy involves the theft of a top secret technological innovation, as well as Middle Eastern politics. In the finale, one of the two potential love interests for the protagonist is killed, while he gets away with the other. The movie ends with a shot of them leaving the city behind in a moving vehicle.
  Are we talking about Frantic or Unknown (2011)?
• A man and a woman are shipped to a remote location and go on largely separate missions which are, ultimately, crucial to each other's success. Guided to some extent by Mission Control, they acquire keys and make their way towards a common goal before a deadline. Both are pursued by a tall, blond, gleefully hammy man with a long coat, who is known only by a code name. He often gets around by helicopter, but he can and does use other forms of transport when he needs to, and at least once disguises himself as a good guy to dupe someone.
  Is this Metal Gear Solid or Interceptor?
• A race of peaceful, yet dangerous and bizarre looking aliens that canapparently mate with other species arrives on earth. They can't communicate with humans, and are immediately shut off from the rest of society, referred to by derogatory names. A young man with an unusual name is imprisoned for experimentation after coming into contact with the aliens (or their technology). Eventually, he develops a friendly bond with the aliens. In the end, the creatures rebel against their captor, escape, and the hero is left permanently changed by his time with them.
  District9 or the Goosebumps novel Egg Monsters From Mars?
• This 3-part dystopian saga tells the story of a heroine's struggle against a totalitarian government 20 Minutes into the Future. She finds the organized La Résistance against the totalitarian regime in the third installment. As a teenager, she is One of the Boys. She has one sibling. Her closest female companion in the story dies. She is at the center of a love polygon, but all the men who are madly in love with her want her to be happy no matter whom she chooses and are willing to do anything to protect and aid her, protect and aid the man she loves, and help them be together. Her oldest, closest childhood friend Did Not Get the Girl. At one point, she must track down the man she loves in a wilderness full of obstacles; she finds him, but they are eventually separated again for a while. She snaps when the man she loves is taken prisoner by the government. The ending is ambiguous; who survived is clear, but the future of their society is not. The plot features significant references/parallels to figures/stories from Greek mythology.
  Atlas Shrugged, The Hunger Games, or Matched?
• The protagonist is a 16-year-old tomboy associated with Fire. She is in a Love Triangle with 2 boys with opposite personalities — one is more aggressive, brooding, a fierce and tough warrior, a protective big brother who has been promoted to parent, slowly starts to realize he's in love with her long after they first met, and is also associated with Fire; the other is very strong but also sweet, sensitive, good at cheering people up, fell almost in Love at First Sight with her, and is associated with the green Earth of spring. Her closest female friend is a beautiful, Spoiled Sweet rich girl who is in love with the first boy but doesn't end up with him. The watch-able form of the story premiered in spring of 2012.
  The Hunger Games or The Legend of Korra?
• Police detective in the Pacific Northwest is blessed or cursed with a magic he doesn't understand and can't control and finds that the world is a much more complicated and less cut-and-dried place than he thought he was. His guide and teacher in using his new magic and navigating this more complex world is a civilian with lupine qualities.
  The Sentinel or Grimm?
• The plot of a Les Yay-filled, female-focused fantasy story starts when an insecure girl with a Friendless Background and No Social Skills starts at a new school, and is soon taken under the wing of a happy-go-lucky, naive Genki Girl whose colour motif is pink, and who has been training her skills in magic. The offer to become a magic-user is given to our protagonist as well, and she accepts it - but after initially doing this favour for the benevolent-seeming Well-Intentioned Extremist villain, she goes on the run to use her magical powers to rebel against a world-spanning corrupt system. After she tries and fails several times to stop her naive friend from helping out the villain, she ends up stoic and cynical. The story ends with the protagonist's friend finally understanding what the protagonist had been trying to tell her all along, and in a moving scene, they promise to never forget each other, and the protagonist's friend promises to finally succeed in what the protagonist had spent the story attempting to do. A subplot of the story concerns a magic-using girl who is slowly driven to evil by her love for a boy who can't love her back.
  Is this story Puella Magi Madoka Magica or Wicked?
• A small, fictional town in rural Japan has been plagued by a string of serial killings with which the police have not been able to find any leads to. It just so happens that around the same time as these killings unfold, a group of high school students awaken to a power that allows them to call forth a manifestation of their will that can fight alongside them. With these newfound powers, these students hope to uncover the mystery behind these killings, and bring the culprit to justice. They share Kappei Yamaguchi, Romi Park, and Showtaro Morikubo in their voice actor list and they both have Fighting Game adaptations.
  JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, or Persona 4?
• The main character's caretaker initiates a genocide against the people they despise, so he and his plucky friends must save everybody before things get out of hand. It's a musical and the Villain Song is very famous.
  Is it The Hunchback of Notre Dame or South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut?
• A streetwise redhead from New York City ends up in a new land full of strange and funny characters. Our hero introduces his new friends to many things from New York and a sort-of Culture Clash ensues. Two of the friends are an egotistical Jerkass and a scientific genius and inventor.
  Is it Futurama or Mike, Lu & Og?
• An Ordinary High School Girl discovers a supernatural family. She ends up in a Love Triangle with two guys of feuding species (an aloof Pretty Boy and a macho dude with Shapeshifting issues) who still manage to overcome their prejudices when the girl is in trouble. She marries one of them eventually.
  Is it a popular novel or manga?
• In a place where old-style values are a way of life, Sinister Minister accuses a sweet innocent of witchcraft and leads a hunt to burn and lynch him.
  The Hunchback of Notre Dame or ParaNorman
• Long ago, the solar system had a Golden Age, every planet had life, and the Moon was its capital. A great darkness escaped; and killed off all worlds but Earth; and only the child of the ruler of the Moon was left. Centuries later, that child brings together a force to defeat the darkness and bring about a new Golden Age.
  Are we talking about Sailor Moon or The Guardians of Childhood?
• A race of Well-Intentioned Extremist aliens comes to Earth to halt the eventual destruction of the universe. Unfortunately for humanity, this plan involves raising an army of the undead. The aliens give several Breaking speeches telling the human protagonists that they really should've been more careful in their endeavors when they discover the full depths of the aliens' terrifying plan. The story ends after the climactic final battle, with the zombie army being dissolved. This production is by far the best-known work of its creator.
  One is a Japanese anime; the other is an American movie made by "the worst director of all time", and is often considered the Trope Codifier for So Bad, It's Good.
• A certain young girl remains stubbornly optimistic despite the misery and horror of her surroundings in this anime produced by Studio Shaft and directed by Akiyuki Shinbo, even when her own normal life comes to an end. Through her sacrifice she is able to save several critically depressed girls from their own misery. No one remembers her now, but she still kindly watches over her acquaintances. This anime stars Ai Nonaka, Chiwa Saitō and Yūko Gotō among others (including Ryōko Shintani, who plays a "normal" girl in this fantastic universe), and is noted for its use of Deranged Animation and cynical worldview (most of the time).
  Is this Puella Magi Madoka Magica or Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei?
• This is the third film in a series, following a reboot of a franchise. While the first movie was a Darker and Edgier Deconstruction of the source material, by this point, Decon-Recon Switch is in full effect, the film explores the positive role the protagonist plays in the world. The protagonist is menaced by a brilliant villain with a weird accent and facial deformity, who wants to destroy everything the protagonist stands for. Finally, while earlier entries in the series had avoided this kind of thing, this film includes a popular character from the source work as well as another character who is revealed to be such via a Full Name Reveal.
  Skyfall or The Dark Knight Rises?
• Humanity is threatened with extinction by the recently-awakened lifeforms who were meant to become the planet's dominant species before the microorganisms that most life evolved from arrived on Earth. It's up to a group of dangerously maladjusted young people to either save the world or put it out of its misery.
  Neon Genesis Evangelion, of course. But have you ever heard of the Rifters Trilogy?
• A charming ne'er-do-well saves the life of an adorable furry nonhuman, who thereafter is his loyal companion. The aforementioned rogue gets mixed up in a sympathetically portrayed rebellion. With Character Development, he becomes less self-centered, becomes a true hero of the rebellion (despite being a Badass Normal in a world in which supernatural powers exist), and wins the heart of a princess. The evil ruling regime is lead by two characters with extraordinary abilities: a manipulative lightning-wielder and a Fallen Hero Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds whose turn to the dark side was driven by a combination of Love Makes You Evil and the other villain's machinations.
  Oz the Great and Powerful or Star Wars?
• The Hero lives in an isolated rural area. However, his adopted father has been adventuring abroad and taken home a sword which the hero later uses. The hero is informed by The Mentor that he is important to the fight against a great enemy to the world. He flees from the enemy with a few friends. Later The Mentor makes a Heroic Sacrifice but eventually he/she gets better.
  The Lord of the Rings or The Wheel of Time?
• The protagonist is a prince who just can't wait to be king; the villain is his close relative and Evil Prince who plans to steal the throne from him and is such a successful Manipulative Bastard that the prince trusts him unquestionably. The villain forms an alliance with his people's enemy, only to double-cross them at the end. The villain tricks the hero into going somewhere beyond the kingdom's borders, where his father has expressly forbidden him to go, and he almost gets killed before said powerful father swoops in and saves him. After this, the prince leaves his kingdom to live in a different, very unfamiliar place, where he meets his love interest and a wise, older mentor, while the villain takes over the kingdom. The villain also tricks the prince into believing he killed his father, even though the audience is shown this is a blatant lie. The prince returns to his kingdom after some other residents leave and find him, learns the truth about his father, defeats the villain in a one-on-one fight on a ledge (from which the villain falls but doesn't die), and has not only grown stronger as a result of his trials but learned that being king doesn't mean doing whatever you want to whoever you want all the time but comes with great responsibility.
  The Lion King (1994) or Thor?
• A man with prodigious powers of illusion and trickery is prohibited from entering the United States, though he dearly wishes to, referring to it as "going home." Meanwhile, a younger man's father has just died in Australia, leaving behind unresolved issues in their relationship, though they were close enough that the son has taken up his father's profession. The son takes his father's body on a flight from Sydney to LAX for the funeral. Once over the ocean, though, the son becomes ensnared in the illusionist's scheme. He's subjected to a series of surreal experiences, culminating in a final reconciliation with his father. Along the way, he's followed by a mysterious series of six numbers, and ends up having to enter them into a device, without ever really understanding what's going on. On the other side of the fourth wall, the audience is surprised by the final revelation that, though parts of the story were illusions, the whole thing did not turn out to be a dream (that we know of, anyway). On the other hand, since the father and son's last name refers to an ancient profession associated with Jesus's apostles, maybe Everybody Is Jesus in Purgatory.
  Wait, whose subconscious are we going through exactly? Robert Fischer's or Jack Shephard's?
• A young man receives the power to transform into a superhero through less than heroic means. Refusing to serve the evil forces than created his powers the new hero rebels and fights against them and in the end saves the world. As a bonus, both heroes are known for riding motorcycles, a trait that is shown in their superhero names.
  Kamen Rider or Ghost Rider?
  • In 2014, the latest hero to hold the respective title drops the traditional bike in favor of a Cool Car.
    Kamen Rider Drive or All-New Ghost Rider?
• A Law Enforcement Unit/Officer from the distant future is stranded in the present after terrorists they were supposed to execute use a time machine to escape. While in the present they come across a person/people who may have shaped the future they come from. There is much dilemma about how their actions will change the future both for better and worse.
  The unit is from Mirai Sentai Timeranger (and its adaptation Power Rangers Time Force). The lone officer is from Continuum
• A child starts out treated badly in an orphanage and ends up adopted by a wealthy gentleman. Seeking to kidnap the child are a poor, money-craving person who takes care of orphans, a vicious criminal, and his girlfriend, one of whom has a Heel–Face Turn in at least one version. The story takes place in a famous city, and one of the characters has a dog.
  Is the child named Oliver or Annie?
• A redheaded orphan girl resides in an institute for young girls in a movie that started off in prose. This girl becomes friends with the unlikeliest of people, which includes a dog. While the movie's first two acts are generally hijinks and the girl showing she is not afraid, despite being worried that she may have to leave the only place she has ever felt loved, the third act consists of her being kidnapped by some fraudsters (at least one of whom appeared earlier in the story). This is so that they can force money out of their target's caretaker. During the finale, the girl discovers she can always live at the home she wishes to be in.
  Now, is this heroine named Madeline or Annie (1982)?
• The story centres on the only active human in a vast, almost lifeless expanse; his animal companion; and a slightly sinister character who orders them around, despite not having a proper physical form. The human's ultimate goals are to revive a woman he seems to care for and to return home with her. From a central base, he explores the wastes with his animal companion, while the other one stays back and leads from behind. Almost every living being they encounter is out to kill them. The human does eventually get to 'revive' the girl, and the one without a physical form is reborn with a body. The human even gets a visit from other humans, but they think he's done wrong, then everything falls down and he's back to being almost alone. The other guy might be dead.
  Is the human's name Dave or Wander?
• A Massively Multiplayer Crossover with truckloads of Alternate Continuity Disney characters, a Big Bad obssessed with taking hearts and preventing happy endings, a town no one seems to know where it came from and that no one seems able to leave, where identites are split, erased, stolen, and re-written. Our hero (or at least he thinks he is) is a kid with light brown hair who can travel in and out of worlds as he pleases, armed with The Power of Love, The Power of Friendship, a journal containing the clues behind the massive conspiracy (albeit with plenty of incomplete data and false leads), and a keyring that seems to lock or unlock any door.
  Is that kid Sora or Henry?
• The story involves peril, adventure, and shadowy conspiratorial goings-on, but the emotional heart centers around an Odd Couple of two men who are very fond of each other. The younger one is a genius Guile Hero with killer cheekbones who has sociopathic tendencies but remains on the side of good (in an antiheroic sort of way) and could even be seen as a bit of an understated woobie (or at least a sympathetic Broken Ace). The older one is a bit shorter, more cute than male-model handsome, very competent in his own skill set, and rather nicer than his partner. One of the guys has an ambiguous disorder. The other once served in the military and is an excellent shot. A sexually ambiguous dark-haired young man with a fondness for messing with the guys' heads makes an appearance as a villain. Who are this dynamic duo?
  Adamska and Hal, in Stray, or Sherlock and John, in Sherlock?
• This video game from the Noughties, often considered the third in its series, features a protagonist whose name is derived from the way he goes about missions and the name of a reptile. He is sent on a mission to a faraway land, because his superiors believe him to be the only one capable of doing it. He starts by chasing a woman who has handed some valuable items from the protagonist's land to a depraved villain with sinister intentions for them. He is assisted by, among others, an English-accented military man with a lot of Bond references about him, a large but intelligent individual who provides equipment support, and a blonde woman who appears to be straddling both sides. Eventually, he arrives at the villain's mountain base, scorches them and blasts them into something. The villain somehow survives to return for a vehicular battle, after which they finally meet their burning demise. The female antagonist is ultimately killed in a final showdown at a lake.
  The protagonist: is he Naked Snake or Spyro the Dragon?
• A legendary hero takes on a quest for a blonde girl and, accompanied by his regular comrade, sets out to help her. Shortly after arriving, he befriends a young girl under the tutelage of a professor, and begins assembling a force of natives to accomplish his goals. The blonde spends much of the game in the custody of a seemingly cybernetic character whose intentions are unclear to begin with. The Big Bad has an AI under his command, but it doesn't seem to know who to fight with. As the story progresses, the hero grows his fledgling army and travels through a forest, where he encounters a new female companion, before tackling a gigantic mech. Shortly after that, he visits a gloomy town with a dark secret. Before he can get the bottom of what's going on, he has to track down a character by visiting a variety of locations he has previously cleared. The AI turns against its controller, but pays with its 'life'. The blonde is the final boss.
  Is the legendary hero's name Mario or Big Boss?
• A mere mortal gains ownership of a book of doom that could grant one powers akin to a God. Soon, people start falling victim to the power of the book and an investigation led by a genius of Improbable Age begins. However, they fail to catch the master of the book even though said master is right under their noses as the book of doom continues to fill its pages with its many victims. It doesn't help that other-worldly immortals connected to the book are helping its mortal owner evade capture, and that the owner of the book is an idealistic youth who you would never suspect. Is the book's mortal master named Yagami...
  Light or Hayate?
• A black-haired teenager attends a boarding school that teaches magic. The teenager learns that they are destined to fight an undead sorcerer they had encountered as an infant and who was responsible for their father's death. The undead sorcerer is revealed to have been very handsome in life, but is now a horrifying monster. Along the way, the teenager must rescue their future love interest from a form of magical captivity and is aided by a snarky atoner who makes no secret of his dislike for them, but aids them anywar for personal reasons. The final battle takes place back at the boarding school where the students and an adult fighting force must team up to prevent the undead sorcerer from recovering his Soul Jar. The story is set in a world where there is a sharp divide between magical and mundane and many muggles don't believe magic exists, and one of the major themes is that using magic to cheat or control death is a violation against the natural order.
  Is the teenager named Harry Potter or Sabriel?
• The main character of this surreal, fourth-wall-breaking turn-based RPG is a stoic person wielding a baseball bat who is sent on an important mission by aliens. This mission involves seeking out and defeating "guardians" who protect various important areas. The main character is joined in this mission by three helpers whom he meets during their adventure. After defeating every guardian, the main character next goes to a very strange land based on someone's mind and memories, and after passing several points of no return, the game eventually culminates in an emotional final battle whose outcome is decided by the player themselves.
  OFF or EarthBound (1994)?
• A group of hardass, ruggedly handsome dudes played by actors who would soon become famous afterwards fight a desperate, defensive action against faceless hordes with a severe technological handicap after their high command makes a series of mistakes. The importance of the men's duty as soldiers is emphasized while the actual morality of the conflict is generally avoided. Each movie has a scene which serves to show that, regardless of the gap in technology, both sides of the fight still have fundamentally the same warrior culture.
  Black Hawk Down or Zulu?
• This is the story of a troubled person who is tasked to rescue a woman from the highest part of the tallest tower of a distant land, which is protected by a powerful winged beast (who becomes an ally right at the end of the story). Our hero is doing this for personal gain, and is planning on handing over the woman to a third party to return to his previous way of life. He soon discovers the lady he has saved is far more powerful than her sheltered upbringing would suggest, and he gradually begins to develop feelings for her. She also demonstrates a cunning, unladylike side to her that greatly surprises the man, and she uses the time spent in captivity to develop unorthodox skills for the outside world.
  Is this Shrek, or is it Bioshock Infinite?
• In a movie based off a cartoon, the main characters have to travel a long way while their home is in danger, their only ally being a bespectacled character in green. They finally reach their destination, but it's not all as it seems and they have to make a life-changing decision. When they get back, however, they have to rescue everyone they know from a villainous maniac. The town is saved by a yellow idiot.
  The Spongebob Squarepants Movie or The Simpsons Movie?
• Two different works that involve a young man meeting a princess as youths, then go on to save her several years later while riding a horse, accompanied by fairies, wielding a magical sword and shield, and fighting off a horde of monsters with their Evil Overlord who goes One-Winged Angel in the final battle.
  Sleeping Beauty or The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time?
• This story is about a couple. The male appears human and can change his appearance, the female is a blonde named Rose. Their job is to protect the human world from dangerous creatures, although some can be friendly. In their second season together, Rose discovers she can be part of a whole family again, having been separated from them as a baby. After a battle she ends up leaving him and going to live with her family, causing him to believe he will never find her again.
  Now can the male change at will or just when he's dying?
• An ordinary, but brilliant boy gains a special power with one specific use and lots of caveats. He uses this power to realize his dream of changing the world for the better... by destroying the old one. He does this with a cryptic-sounding secret identity and incredible planning, while assisted by the ancient entity that gave him his powers. Meanwhile, he must masquerade as an ordinary high school student while avoiding being found out and captured by his own father, who helps lead the force against him. Death Note or Code Geass?
• This adult animation is set in the north-east of the United States. While not as well-known as their creator's other show, there is still a significantly large fanbase. The characters include a patriotic, no-nonsense man who always thinks that he is right - and rarely is - and goes abroad to fight for his freedom; a ditz who wears pink and has over-bearing, Oriental parents and is married to someone who goes away to fight; a grey, non-human, alcoholic Jerk with a Heart of Gold who always has some scheme or other, whose best friend is a young man who wears a red jacket; a nerdy, ginger boy who goes often goes against his father's wishes; a liberal young woman who tries to help everyone get along and cares about the earth, who has an (originally) on-again/off-again relationship with a dim, but kind-hearted young man whom she marries and an aquatic Butt-Monkey with a doctorate. This show contains aliens, occasionally time-travel and a psychotic Santa.
  Now is this Futurama or American Dad!?
• An Aesop with a three-part narrative structure in which a protagonist, past his idealistic youth and in dire need of an intervention lest he suffer damnation after death, is contacted by a Spirit Advisor looking to atone for its own misdeeds that takes him to an alternate reality which he is unable to interact with or influence but which shows him the error of his ways and eventually restores him to a state of youthful purity.
  It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol, or Dante's Inferno?
• A series following the lives of four kids who claim to be best friends but act like total jerks to each other. The characters live in a place whose name starts with an 'S'. One of the group is a sociopathic jerkass, one is kind and cares about others' welfare, and one is indestructible and keeps getting killed in different ways. Most of the people on the show are complete morons. The show provides social commentary and does copious amounts of adult humour. Is it South Park or Kaeloo?
• This animated series is about an ordinary student who stumbles upon a powerful object hidden in a basement. Using new abilities granted by their find, the main character becomes a protector of their city (which eventually leads to fighting the reincarnation of a character who supposedly died long ago). Our hero must do their work in secret however, even from their family (which is only one parent and a brother, since the other parent is deceased), which means they still have to go to school and find time to manage their love life (which later includes two love interests). In their quest the main character is assisted by a mentor figure and a female classmate who discovered our hero's secret. Although this is never told in the series proper, a related work reveals that the main character is a descendant of the person who created the object the hero found in the beginning.
  Is this Batman Beyond or Cardcaptor Sakura?
• An episode of a Nick Jr. series with a wintery setting where a group of characters are searching for a monster. The Only Sane Man (Only Sane Woman in the former) is trying to convince the others that there's no monster, but when the group finds the titular monster, She in the former, he in the latter is the first to Freak Out. Is it "The Yeti" or "Pups Save a Snow Monster"?
• A teenager living in a small town gains mysterious powers that include the ability to "rewind" time and fix broken objects, which they use to investigate a Serial Killer stalking the townsfolk. They are joined in their quest by, among others, a gentle and soft-spoken young boy who's constantly getting beaten up, a punky-looking kid everyone assumes is up to no good, an artistic Asian guy with a high and tight haircut and a fat kid with an annoying voice. Now, is this teenager a boy on a bizarre adventure, or a girl with a strange life?
• A Crisis Crossover released in 2018 where characters of several different works of fiction, some of which are usually enemies, get together to fight off a powerful threat and, at some point in the story, a good chunk of the heroes die without a fight, leaving its veterans (or one of them) as the Sole Survivor(s). Also, the overall roster involves a living plant.
  Avengers: Infinity War or Super Smash Bros. Ultimate?
• An animated movie wherein an adorkable princess voiced by Tara Strong turns into a mermaid and ventures to an underwater city with her friends, stealing (or attempting to steal) an ancient, powerful treasure kept safe by its ruler. Said princess ends up paying dearly for it when the villains get a hold of her following this mistake, and the Big Bad now has a magical stick-like weapon which gives them untold amounts of magical power. Once the aforementioned princess is saved by her friends, she plays an integral role in stopping the villain, and after all is said and done, the underwater city ends up socializing with the surface world more often. The denizens of the city also easily forgive the princess for this slight.
  The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, or My Little Pony: The Movie (2017)?
• A proud powerful race of intergalactic warriors capable of annihilating entire civilizations with ease with a society that values strength. Some of them even decide to build a life on planets they fight for.
  Dragon Ball Z or Invincible?
• The main character who is a scientist fascinated by dinosaurs is suddenly forced to survive after becoming trapped with a bunch of dinosaurs when humanity has discovered how to clone them using DNA and have created an isolated man-made ecosystem and now there is now a debate about wether the public should be allowed to pay to see these creatures or not. Jurassic Park, or Our Lady of the Sauropods?
• A lone disillusioned warrior seeks out the last dragon and then they end up going on a quest and picking up several allies on their journey to defeat a malevolent force and save the world, at the cost of the dragon’s life. Dragonheart, or Raya and the Last Dragon?
• A childlike artificial creation who has a father-son dynamic with his maker (Played by Tom Hanks) and their animal companion go on an adventure where the creation has to learn to become more human. Pinocchio (2022, Disney), or Finch?
• A historical figure leads their people in a rebellion against the oppressive rule of the English in order to gain back their freedom and independence. Braveheart, Michael Collins, or Gandhi?
• A graphic novel by a venerable and respected writer taking place After the End, where the protagonist journeys across the wasteland on a quest to confront the warmongers responsible for the destruction of Earth. Upon finding them in an underground fallout shelter, they promise to undo the damage they caused using advanced technology and give the protagonist a privileged position in the new world, but the protagonist is unmoved by their pleas and proceeds to slaughter them all, even if it means humanity may be doomed to extinction as a result. Now, is the protagonist a young woman or a battle-scarred old man?
• An animated movie about a green, grumpy and solitary humanoid with a Animal Companion who goes on an undertaking that is initially for selfish reasons but on their journey they learn the value of kindness and friendship and become a better version of themselves, Shrek or The Grinch (2018)?

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