What Makes Something a Spiritual Successor?

I was looking at the Spiritual Successor page and noticed that some of the justifications for what makes something a Spiritual Successor seemed a bit surface level. This is an example I found under Literature:

• The Hunger Games to Jack London's The Iron Heel. Ernest Everhard in the latter speculates that the Oligarchy will eventually generate so much wealth from the exploitation of the labour classes that they will have nothing to do with it but engage in vast feats of engineering such as building enormous, spectacular cities. In the former the Capitol has, every year for the past seventy-five, built a forcefield enclosed arena packed with so much technology that everything is on camera, the weather can be changed, rivers can be turned off, huge parts of the arena can be made to spin, or earthquakes and avalanches can be triggered.

The thing is, there are plenty of Dystopias where the ruling elite use their wealth on opulent building projects. It really isn't something unique to the Hunger Games. It seems more like a general trope of dystopias. Now the Hunger Games does focus on how these building projects are used to distract the populace, which seems to be what the The Iron Heel is implying. If that's the case, I could understand why this is considered a Spiritual Successor. Here's an example I found under television:

• Series/It'sAlwaysSunnyinPhiladelphia is one to Series/Seinfeld, both being sitcoms where the entirety of the basic premise is that the main characters are terrible people who never learn anything. The elevator pitch for the show was "Seinfeld on crack." It's also been noted that it's essentially an Irish-American foil to the quintessentially Jewish-American sitcom Seinfeld.

My issue with this example is that it focuses on one aspect of the shows, the main characters are Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonists. It seems to me that this is a low bar to consider something a Spiritual Successor. Anything could be considered a Spiritual Successor to Series/Seinfeld if it has an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist who doesn't learn something from their experiences. However, I will admit that very few sitcoms share that set up, making those shows unique. So if these shows are filling a unique niche, I could understand why Series/It'sAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia is considered a Spiritual Successor to Series/Seinfeld.

Am I wrong in thinking the justifications for these examples are a bit thin or is there something I'm missing?

Edited by ShawnRi on Mar 1st 2019 at 7:25:33 AM

Spiritual Successor needs to be done by the same creator, or at least the same company.

If it isn't, it's likely Spiritual Licensee

Wow, some of those example pages could use serious cleanup. It's always been a magnet for questionable entries (once seeing a Spiritual Successor listed that preceded the other work) but I don't remember it being that bad.

A clear list of criteria for inclusion would probably be a good idea as well.