Examples
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Works
- 1984
- The Iron Heel meets We meets Brave New World meets Darkness at Noon.
- or Anne Frank set in the dystopian future
- The 39 Clues:
- Cross The Amazing Race and The Westing Game, plus add history on the side.
- Assassin's Creed meets The Westing Game.
- The Ahriman Trilogy is Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets the Cthulhu Mythos.
- The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is The Pied Piper of Hamelin meets Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH meets Watership Down.
- Angels of Music is Charlie's Angels meets The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (or, given the setting, Les Hommes Mystérieux).
- Nick Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel is William Faulkner meets Gabriel García Márquez, with foetal alcohol syndrome and lots of moonshine.
- Animal Farm; The Russian Revolution meets Babe.
- Animorphs is Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers meets Neon Genesis Evangelion with evangelions replaced with shapeshifting.
- Artemis Fowl has been described by its author as "Die Hard with fairies".
- Atharon was described as Game of Thrones meets MMO game meets Harry Potter.
- Atlanta Nights is The Eye of Argon meets those trashy paperback novels you see at the grocery store. If you pick it up in the Dramatic Reading aisle, you'll be able to get some ham with it.
- The Automatic Detective combines every Film Noir trope with just about every Raygun Gothic trope (albeit, the latter is fairly deconstructed).
- F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Baby Party is basically Rugrats meets classic literature.
- Beat The Reaper is Burn Notice meets Goodfellas meets House written as darkly as possible.
- Blindsight is pretty much House of Leaves meets Sunshine.
- A Boot Stomping a Human Face Forever was described by a reviewer "...someone cloned an amphetamine-addled Philip K. Dick and told him to come up with his own version of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity."
- The Builders:
- Redwall meets The Magnificent Seven.
- Watership Down meets The Magnificent Seven.
- A Canticle for Leibowitz is Fallout meets How the Irish Saved Civilization
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- Captain Underpants: Superman meets The Ren & Stimpy Show meets Invader Zim meets Recess.
- The Chick Tracts are Christian fundamentalism meets Warhammer 40,000 meets South Park.
- Children of the Red King is Harry Potter meets X-Men.
- C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia is Alice in Wonderland meets The Pilgrim's Progress.
- Chronicles of the Kencyrath has the lordly power struggles and incest of A Song of Ice and Fire and a world as strange and deeply magical as L. Frank Baum's original Oz books. But with a real, consistent main character.
- Cinder
- Cinderella meets Robots.
- Cinderella meets Sailor Moon.
- Codex Alera
- Avatar: The Last Airbender meets Pokémon with just a bit of Rome for flavoring and some Zerg thrown in.
- By design. Jim Butcher has said that he was challenged to write a good story that combined the concepts of the Lost Roman Legion with Pokémon.
- A Colder War is Red Scare meets Cthulhu Mythos.
- The Complete World Knowledge series has been described as Pale Fire, as directed by Wes Anderson.
- Coraline:
- Alice in Wonderland meets The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.
- Alice meets Kafka.
- Alice meets Elm Street.
- Alice meets Caligari.
- The fact that the film version was directed by Henry The Nightmare Before Christmas Selick helps.
- The Dark Tower is The Lord of the Rings meets The Magnificent Seven, with a background of Arthurian Legend to boot. This is deliberate.
- The Dinosaur Lords is Jurassic Park meets Game of Thrones. It's even written on the cover.
- The blurbs on The Dresden Files books describe them as "Harry Potter starring Phillip Marlowe." This, as it happens, is dead wrong, since aside from the coincidence of names, the series bears almost no resemblance to Harry Potter. It's more like Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the Old World of Darkness, starring Phillip Marlowe. Incidentally, some of the later blurbs do have this.
- Eaters Of The Dead is intentionally Beowulf meets Ahmad ibn Fadlan's travelogue.
- The Edge Chronicles reads like the result of Roald Dahl and Dr. Seuss teaming up to write a sprawling epic fantasy.
- The Elric Saga is Sword & Sorcery meets Hamlet meets Space Runaway Ideon.
- Enchantress from the Stars is Star Trek meets Avatar
- Ender's Game is RWBY meets Starship Troopers
- Alexander Gordon Smith's Escape from Furnace is The Great Escape meets Warhammer 40,000.
- Everworld is Animorphs meets All Myths Are True.
- Evil Genius Trilogy is Harry Potter meets Soon I Will Be Invincible.
- Faction Paradox is Doctor Who meets The Filth.
- Fifty Shades of Grey is Twilight meets The Story of O.
- Fight Club is The Great Gatsby meets David Lynch meets Heathers.
- The Forest of Hands and Teeth is Night of the Living Dead (1968) meets The Giver, or Survival Horror meets Dystopia.
- Forever Gate: is marketed it as 'Running Man meets Matrix'.
- The Girl Who Owned a City is (a curiously non-violent) Lord of the Flies meets Atlas Shrugged
- Gone is X-Men meets Lord of the Flies.
- The Goodness Gene is "1984 meets Brave New World", but with more conspiracies and clones.
- A review of Good Omens compares it to "the Book of Revelation as penned by Monty Python's Flying Circus".
- The Half Life Trilogy was described by The Metro as a dark-as-hell Harry Potter meets The Bourne Identity.
- Harry Potter:
- Young Wizards meets Grease.
- Lighter and Softer The Books of Magic
- Young Wizards meets Jennings, with the latter's Not Allowed to Grow Up replaced with massive amounts of Darker and Edgier.
- Matilda meets The Books of Magic in a boarding school.
- Roald Dahl meets J. R. R. Tolkien.
- The Worst Witch meets The Lord of the Rings.
- Thomas Tryon's Harvest Home is The Stepford Wives meets The Wicker Man (1973). note
- Heart of Steel has been described as Beauty and the Beast meets Despicable Me.
- Hero by Perry Moore is Sky High meets X-Men meets The Incredibles
- His Dark Materials is The Revolt of the Angels meets Chronicles of Narnia.
- Stephanie Meyer's The Host:
- Animorphs meets Romeo and Juliet.
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Twilight.
- The House of Night is Twilight meets Sailor Moon meets Harry Potter
- If you want to be more specific, it has the vampire romance from Twilight, the reincarnated princess with her friends who each fill a specific role from Sailor Moon, and the chosen one at a supernatural boarding school from Harry Potter.
- The Hunger Games is Lord of the Flies meets Survivor with a little bit of Les Misérables
- Inheritance Cycle is Star Wars set in Middle Earth with a Little Tales of Earthsea thrown in.
- Stephen King's IT: The Wonder Years and The Little Rascals meets Cosmic Horror Story with some Discworld elements ( giant space turtle!)
- The Judas Strain: National Treasure meets Die Hard meets James Bond meets 28 Days Later, meets G.I. Joe.
- Kire is basically Natsume's Book of Friends meets Harry Potter. With Norwegian myths and fairy tales rather than Japanese, although it got some other European.
- The Kite Runner is A Separate Peace set in Afghanistan with a much more honest narrator.
- The Lady Grace Mysteries are Trixie Belden meets The Royal Diaries.
- Laura und der Silberwolf (Laura and silver Wolf) is Pan's Labyrinth in a Medical Drama setting.
- Latawnya, the Naughty Horse, Learns to Say "No" to Drugs is My Little Pony meets Reefer Madness
- The Looking-Glass Wars is American McGee's Alice meets The Lion King.
- Lord of the Rings:
- The Ring of the Nibelung with Old English/Anglo-Saxon retelling.
- Ring of Gyges and Beowulf sets in Norse Mythology
- The Lost Fleet is essentially what you'd get if Honor Harrington stumbled across Steve Rogers in space and he assumed command.
- The Magisterium is Harry Potter meets Avatar: The Last Airbender.
- Malazan Book of the Fallen is A Song of Ice and Fire meets Dungeons & Dragons or The Elder Scrolls.
- Matched
- Nineteen Eighty-Four meets The Giver.
- The Hunger Games meets Anthem.
- Matilda is Carrie meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (but with a happier ending than either of those books).
- Meg has often been described as Jurassic Park meets Jaws
- Our very own Laconic Wiki describes The Mortal Instruments as The Dresden Files meets Twilight.
- Mouseheart is described by the author as Literature/Warriors meets Literature/Redwall.
- Murderess is basically Daria meets Harry Potter meets The Hobbit with just a dash of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
- The Musicians (Muzykanci) by Andrzej Sapkowski is "The Bremen Town Musicians" meets "The Music of Erich Zann".
- Never Let Me Go is The Island meets The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.
- One review said that if Tim Burton reimagined The Phantom of the Opera'... it would still fall far short of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.
- Nightside series is The Dresden Files meets Neverwhere.
- Parellity is, brace yourselves, a sci-fi The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, mixed with Mad Max/Borderlands, with elements of Halo, Ace Combat, The Lord of the Rings, and starring most of the cast of Firefly.
- The Pendragon Adventure has been described as Harry Potter's American cousin meets Stargate (the whole franchise) meets The Time Tunnel meets Battlestar Galactica (2003) with bits of Back to the Future, The Matrix, Planet of the Apes, and The Godfather thrown in for good measure.
- Penthouse is Playboy meets Hustler; Basically the gloss and glamor of Playboy, and the explicit poses of Hustler.
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians is Classical Mythology meets Harry Potter.
- Phantalleum - Dual Crossage is Sword Art Online meets Btooom! meets Digimon Tamers.
- Pride & Prejudice & Zombies is... Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
- Prisoners of Power is 1984 meets Fallout.
- Ready Player One is Sword Art Online meets POP Culture.
- Reconstructing Amelia has been described as Gone Girl meets Pretty Little Liars.
- The Relativity series is Watchmen meets Criminal Minds, with a touch of the 1960s Batman.
- Rhymes With Witches is Mean Girls meets Sabrina the Teenage Witch meets Flowers for Algernon.
- Rivers of London is Neverwhere meets The Bill.
- The Roman Mysteries: The author describes it as The Famous Five plus Nancy Drew meets Gladiator.
- 'Salem's Lot has been described by its author as Peyton Place meets Dracula.
- Obscure kids' series The Sisters Eight is The Powerpuff Girls meets A Series of Unfortunate Events.
- A Series of Unfortunate Events is a darkly comic version of The Night of the Hunter, as written by Tim Burton.
- A Song of Ice and Fire
- Wars of the Roses set in Middle-earth
- Dune set in Middle-earth.
- The War of the Roses narrated by Yoshiyuki Tomino with Kentaro Miura as a consultant.
- "For a succinct summation of Martin's medieval fantasy series, imagine a mix of the literary quality of T.H. White's 'The Once and Future King', the in-your-face, you-are-there grittiness of a movie like 'Braveheart' and the sort of intricate character development found in a quality television show like 'Lost'" - Denver Post
- With George Romero shoehorned in.
- The Accursed Kings meets Memory, Sorrow and Thorn meets The Lord of the Rings with the touch of Peake's and Herbet's writings.
- Sorbet is Inception meets Groundhog Day meets Night of the Living Dead (1968).
- Space Mowgli is The Jungle Book meets H.P. Lovecraft.
- A Symphony of Eternity is Flashman meets Discworld and Legend Of Galactic Heroes. A Space Opera set in a universe that uses magic instead of technology and ramping up the conflict to a Galactic Scale. Oh, it also has a Deathstar with two energy beams and mention that their dozens of other such stations all around the galaxy
- Orson Scott Card's The Tales of Alvin Maker is Harry Potter meets Little House on the Prairie, with a dash of Mormonism.
- Temeraire: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell meets Patrick O'Brian.
- Alternately Dragonriders of Pern meets Aubrey-Maturin, since Word of God says it originated from Aubrey-Maturin Slash Fic. Which explains a lot.
- One of the reviews on the back calls it "Like Jane Austen playing Dungeons & Dragons with Christopher Paolini," which makes one wonder if the reviewer even read the book.
- The Third Policeman is what James Stephens' (another Irish author) absurdist fairytale The Crock of Gold would be if it was retold by Salvador Dali to Mark Z. Danliewski.
- The Thursday Next series, despite apropos-of-nothing comparisons to Harry Potter and Bridget Jones's Diary on the back cover, is really more like Hot Fuzz meets Monty Python's Flying Circus meets Last Action Hero WITH BOOKS. And Blade makes a series of cameos.
- The early books in the in-universe version of the Thursday Next series are described as "Dirty Harry meets Fanny Hill, but with a good deal more sex and violence."
- Nursery Crime is Shrek meets CSI.
- Twilight
- Bram Stoker's Dracula meets Beauty and the Beast.
- Bram Stoker's Dracula meets My Immortal meets X-Men.
- My Immortal minus Harry Potter
- Buffy meets The Vampire Chronicles
- Undead by Kirsty McKay is The Breakfast Club meets Night of the Living Dead (1968) during a school ski trip in Scotland.
- Undead on Arrival is Night of the Living Dead (1968) meets D.O.A..
- The Underland Chronicles is Percy Jackson meets Now and Then Here and There.
- Warhammer 40,000 novels:
- Gaunt's Ghosts is Warhammer 40,000 meets Sharpe.
- Ciaphas Cain is Warhammer 40,000 meets Flashman meets McAuslan meets Blackadder.
- Horus Heresy is Warhammer 40,000 meets Paradise Lost meets Revenge of the Sith
- Warm Bodies is Tarzan meets The Walking Dead.
- Anthony Trolloppe's The Way We Live Now is Pride and Prejudice meets Watchmen.
- When the Windman Comes is Coraline meets Bridge to Terabithia. With Happy Ending.
- Take Watership Down, add a bit of Medium, with just a dash of Night of the Living Dead (1968) and a pinch of existentialism. Add a sprig of Fantastic Racism and Noble Savage to taste, and you've got Warrior Cats.
- The Word and the Void is what happens when Terminator meets Urban Fantasy in a Dying Town setting.
- World War Z has been described as Children of Men, meets Syriana, meets Night of the Living Dead (1968).
- Or Night of the Living Dead as done by Ken Burns.
- Worm can best be summed as Heroes meet Godzilla meet H.P. Lovecraft with the darkness and moral ambiguity of Game of Thrones.
- Joe Hill's You Will Hear The Locust Sing is intentionally The Metamorphosis meets Them!
- Roger Zelazny loved to do this with mythology and science fiction:
- His first novel, This Immortal (aka Call Me Conrad) has a lot of Greek Mythology meets Science Fiction.
- Lord of Light is Hindu Mythology meets Science Fiction.
- Creatures of Light and Darkness is Egyptian Mythology meets Science Fiction.
- Eye of Cat is Native American Mythology meets Science Fiction.
- The Mask of Loki is Norse Mythology meets Science Fiction.
Characters
- Bill the Galactic Hero is Duke Nukem meets The Tick.
- On the basic level, Willy Wonka from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is Santa Claus meets a Mad Scientist. Depending on the adaptation, the description can be refined further:
- In the 1971 film adaptation he's The Doctor filtered through the Disney Animated Canon.
- In the 2005 film adaptation the filmmakers' comments suggest him to be an amalgamation of Howard Hughes, Anna Wintour, and Charles Foster Kane with the Stepford Smiler veneer of an Excited Kids' Show Host.
- In the 2013 stage musical he's a Disney Animated Canon villain crossbred with a Mad Artist...but more or less on the side of good.
- Codex Alera: Tavi is Emperor Augustus with Aang's powers and Thrawn's military genius.
- The Dark Tower: Roland Deschain is Geralt of Rivia meets The Man With no Name.
- Discworld
- The Nac Mac Feegle are smurfs meets Violent Glaswegians.
- Rincewind started out as Bilbo Baggins with Blackadder's sarcasm, and gradually had The Arthur Dent added to the mix.
- Bilbo Baggins meets Kim Man-seob.
- Doctor Who New Adventures: Bernice Summerfield is Bridget Jones meets Lara Croft.
- The Dresden Files: Harry Dresden is John Constantine meets Spider-Man doing Philip Marlowe's work.
- The Elric Saga: Elric is Geralt of Rivia meets Shinji Ikari meets Edward Cullen.
- More like Kullervo meets Hamlet meets Ars Goetia in a Sword & Sorcery world gone wrong.
- Evil Genius Trilogy: Cadel Piggott is Harry Potter meets Light Yagami.
- Harry Potter: Harry Potter is Matilda Wormwood meets Boo Radley meets Frodo Baggins
- Lord Voldemort is Sauron with Adolf Hitler elements.
- The Hunger Games: Peeta Mellark is a Michael Cera character in a Battle Royale scenario.
- C. S. Lewis and others have described Fanny Price of Mansfield Park as "a Charlotte Brontë heroine lost in a Jane Austen novel."
- In Musashi, Oko is Yuri Kagami meets Sheila Dembro.
- Skulduggery Pleasant: Stephanie Edgley is Nancy Drew meets Willow Rosenberg
- Teito Monogatari: Yasunori Kato is Dracula meets Aleister Crowley meets M. Bison
- The Thrawn Trilogy: According to his author, Grand Admiral Thrawn is Erwin Rommel meets Robert E. Lee, Hannibal Barca, Alexander the Great, and Sherlock Holmes. Thrawn's intelligent. But unlike Alexander the Great, he isn't a crybaby.
- Twilight:
- Edward Cullen is Dracula and/or Spike meets Itsuki Koizumi meets the My Immortal version of Draco Malfoy and a disco ball. Maybe throw in some Heathcliff, too. But without the irony of Heathcliff's character.
- Bella Swan is Ebony Meets The Kimberly
- With Archie Andrews thrown in.
- The Witcher: Geralt of Rivia is Batman meets the Jedi meets 80's Action Hero meets Solid Snake in a Medieval Dark Fantasy Power Politics setting similar in tone and style to A Song of Ice and Fire.
- Worm: Taylor Hebert is Carrie's Carrie White (bullied superpowered teenager) meets Magneto (very powerful supervillain with a large amount of moral ambiguity) with the powers of Smite's Ah Muzen Cab.
- Armsmaster starts as Batman meets MysteryMen's Captain Amazing with the technological genius of IronMan. As Defiant, he is Kain meets DC Cyborg.
