Fountain of Expies

"And there's a million of us just like me
Who cuss like me; who just don't give a fuck like me
Who dress like me; Who walk, talk, and act like me

And just might be the next best thing, But not quite me!"

—Eminem, The Real Slim Shady

A character who is so popular and impactful that many other characters created afterwards are heavily inspired by it. They share even more than its Character Archetypes, they are its Expies: basically the same old character recycled, with some minor changes, to make it fit into the new setting. The original one gives inspiration not just for their basic Characterization Tropes, but for parts of their relationship dynamics, personality, and appearance.

While too many authors using the same obvious Expies could be considered a worrying trend in terms of originality, it isn't an inherently bad thing. As a longer time passes, creators might be more and more likely to make bigger changes to the character, eventually growing it into a whole new Character Archetype trope on its own. In other cases, it's possible that the resulting characters are too different even for that: Talented writers can explore certain aspects of a character with an expy, and other aspects with another expy, in a way, that if you would compare the two expies, they wouldn't even appear that similar to each other. While it's possible that a Fountain of Expies also serves as a Trope Codifier for the character's most fundamental tropes, other times the shared similarities are more vague.

A Super-Trope to Overused Copycat Character (when a work jokes about how many times a certain character has been copied).

In the following "subtropes" list, only add trope pages whose descriptions are explicitly based on the idea of collecting characters that are based on a first one. There are other tropes that were more indirectly started or codified by certain characters, but these should only be referenced in the second, character-based listing.

Subtropes

• The Ahnold (Arnold Schwarzenegger)
• Alice Allusion (Alice) (sometimes)
• Big Red Devil (Satan)
• Bruce Lee Clone (Bruce Lee)
• The Cape (trope) (Superman)
• Char Clone (Char Aznable)
• The Cowl (Batman)
• Darth Vader Clone (Darth Vader)
• Grandpa God (the "old man" depiction of God)
• Jeanne D'Archetype (Joan of Arc)
• Looks Like Cesare (Cesare)
• Looks Like Orlok (Graf Orlok)
• Malcolm Xerox (Malcolm X)
• Mascot with Attitude (Sonic the Hedgehog)
• The Mean Brit (Simon Cowell)
• Messianic Archetype (Jesus Christ)
• Mr. Alt Disney (Walt Disney)
• A Nazi by Any Other Name (Adolf Hitler and Those Wacky Nazis)
• Phlebotinum Girl (Mecha Show)
• Rei Ayanami Expy (Rei Ayanami)
• Rent-A-Zilla (Godzilla)
• Shana Clone (Shana)
• Shotoclone (Ken and Ryu)
• Teenage Mutant Samurai Wombats (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)
• Trenchcoat Brigade (John Constantine)
• Tuxedo and Martini (James Bond)

Other examples

Anime and Manga

• Hotaru Tomoe/Sailor Saturn from Sailor Moon was so popular for whatever reason that a few Magical Girl series following copied her character in particular, such as Michal Amagi in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch. Tsubame Sanjou from Rurouni Kenshin is also based on her character.
• Yasunori Kato, antagonist of the classic series Doomed Megalopolis, has inspired a slew of imitators, which have in turn inspired others, to the point where it's difficult to tell who inspired who after the original. Characters of his lineage include M. Bison, Washizaki, Rudolph von Stronheim, the Blocken family, Brocken, and Shiliew, while surprisingly, we have a heroic version in the name of Raidou Kuzunoha. Also, they are ALL descended from the Hugo Boss-designed Nazi officer uniforms.
• Goku from Dragon Ball was the original Shonen Idiot Hero. Besides the basic "lovable idiot" aspect of the character, his imitators also tend to copy several other character traits of his, such as his extreme love of fighting, his equally big love of food, his immensely compassionate and unselfish nature, and his lack of sexual awareness. And the improbable hairdo.
  • The hairdo part is Lampshaded by an NPC in Chrono Trigger, the main character of which looks quite a bit like Goku. In fact, he was designed by Toriyama himself.
  • Also, Vegeta himself helped define the concept of The Rival archtype. You could most likely list some of the expies as much as you could the Rei or Shana Clones.
    • And of course Veget himself can be seen as an expy of Piccolo, and Piccolo an expy of Tien. The three of them define The Rival archetype and are all Anti-Heroic, cold, loners, to show the contrast with the heroic, loud, and friendly Goku.
• Another Shonen Jump starter was Yu Yu Hakusho's Sensui. Before him there were just Arrogant Kung Fu Guy and Smug Snake Chessmaster villains in anime/manga, then with his extremely suave persuasions, extremely broken (in more ways than one) {{[[[Story-Breaker Power]] abilities}} and able to turn every little mishap to his advantage, is what defines today's anime/manga (particularly Shonen) villains. Just ask Aizen, Madara, Blackbeard, Byakuran and Father.
  • Though Sensui has some more traditionally direct (as in, based directly on him in particular and not just the type of overpowered shounen Anti-Villain he created) expies as well- Jin Kariya, Chrollo (unsurprisingly, from a manga by the same author) and Homura.
• Captain Harlock is very iconic in Space Opera anime, and he shows up damn near everywhere in anything where there are huge spacey battleships. Notable Harlock expies include Alex Row, stoic renegade captain of the legendary steampunk battleship "Kill'em All" Silvana, and the villainous Vicious, who even has the weird bird, probably to make up for his distinct lack of a battleship.
• In a similar vein to the Rei Ayanami Expy above, Kaworu Nagisa has a similar amount of Expies. You will often find a White-Haired Pretty Boy Bishounen who's Ambiguously Gay and aims for the lead character. If Foe Yay is part of the character, he's more than qualified for the Expy.
• Relena Darlian/Peacecraft, herself the Sayla Mass to Heero Yuy's Amuro Ray and Zechs Merquise's Char Aznable, has expies of her own in Dianna Soreil, Lacus Clyne, Cagalli Yula Athha (who's also partly based on Sayla), Princess Rele, and Marina Ismail, and outside of Gundam, Euphemia Li Brittania (who's also partly based on Lacus).
• Guts is the pretty much the basis for ever "manly" Japanese hero after him. Some examples are Ike and Hector from Fire Emblem and Auron from Final Fantasy X.

Comic Books

• While Superman could be said to be the Trope Codifier for the whole Superhero genre, he is even more directly the inspiration for every single Cape superhero in terms of personality and outfit, and for anyone with the standard Flying Brick powers (including the aforementioned Goku!).
  • Similarly, Batman (himself borrowing heavily from Zorro and The Shadow) gave rise to basically every single Badass Normal in Comics, particularly those that work during the night.
  • If there are expies of Superman and Batman in a story there is probably an Wonder Woman expy somewhere there to complete the Trinity.
  • Robin as well set the pace for the Sidekick in comics. Following his creation, numerous other Kid sidekicks were created, Bucky, Aqualad, Speedy, Kid Flash, the list goes on.
• Wolverine. Nearly every "exciting new character" introduced in the Dark Age of Comics was a cheap knockoff of him.
• Conan the Barbarian: The most well known Barbarian Hero, whenever he's brought to pulps, paperback novels, comics or motion pictures, he always brings with him a slew of imitators.
• In the Golden Age, there were countless Expies of Mandrake the Magician, usually complete with top hat and tails. The most well-remembered one is Zatanna's dad Zatara.
• Spider-Man is often credited as being the Trope Codifier for the non-sidekick Kid Hero. A lot of characters owe much of their characteristics to him such as the latest Blue Beetle and Static.
• Almost without exception, if a work is intended as a parody of/meditation on/deconstruction of/homage to the idea of superheroes in general, there WILL be a Justice League of Expies and/or an expy Fantastic Four.
  • Justice League Expies include the Champions in Soon I Will Be Invincible; the Seven Sentinels in Top Ten; the Honor Guard in Astro City; Marvel's Squadron Supreme; the League of Honor in The Pro; The Guard of Silver Age Sentinels; and the Freedon League of Mutants and Masterminds.
  • Fantastic Four expies include the Parrs of The Incredibles; the Furst Family of Astro City; the Nobles of Noble Causes; Cyborg Superman's backstory in DC Comics; the Atom Family of Mutants and Masterminds; and the Impossibles of The Venture Brothers.

Film

• It is perhaps easier to count the number of Adventurer Archaeologists who are not Indiana Jones clones than the number of those that are.
  • Indy himself is an Expy of Allan Quatermain.
• Audrey II, who brought you other Man Eating Plants like the Piranha Plants from Super Mario Bros.
• King Kong may be the single most referenced character who is not technically in the public domain, but it hasn't stopped many from copying him (probably because it's rather difficult to copyright a giant ape, whether we all know who it is or not). This was proved when Universal Studios famously sued Nintendo over Donkey Kong; they lost because they'd previously successfully argued a giant ape climbing a building was a public domain.

Literature

• Sherlock Holmes. The inspiration for hundreds of eccentric private detectives in all kinds of settings, many of them explicit Expies, to the extent that from the time he became popular until Trent's Last Case deconstructed the type in 1913, it was well-nigh impossible to find a Great Detective who didn't rip him off, or, for that matter, a crime-solver who wasn't at least a parody of a Great Detective. Several characters inspired by Holmes have become distinctive popular characters in their own right, including Gregory House and Batman.
• Drizzt Do'Urden, as mentioned on the Overused Copycat Character page.
• The Lord of the Rings Big Bad, Sauron- though the Evil Overlord archetype is almost as old as humanity itself, many modern fantasy Overlords owe quite a bit to this guy, particularly if they live in an Evil Tower of Ominousness in Mordor, are He Who Must Not Be Seen for most or all of the story, are Tin Tyrants decorated with Spikes of Villainy, use an Artifact of Doom, which may double as a Soul Jar, and they cannot comprehend good.
  • Also, Elves. Extremely common in fantasy literature, but post-Christianity and pre-Tolkien, fae in general were portrayed as small, cute, harmless, etc.
• The Wizard of Oz gave us: Cyborgs/Androids afraid of losing their humanity (the Tin Man), Cowardly Powerhouses (Cowardly Lion), the most iconic Wicked Witch of them all, and a very typical girl heroine (Dorothy).
• Hawk from the Spenser novels by Robert B Parker codified and popularised the Psycho Sidekick in the private eye subgenre.

Video Games

• Sephiroth of Final Fantasy VII, while hardly the first White-Haired Pretty Boy, did inspire a whole slew of imitators trying to get the same sort of Multiple Demographic Appeal. Just look at the design of Magic: The Gathering's Sorin Markov.
  • That "control other player" part sounds morbidly familiar...
• Kefka. He may well be the inspiration for every Camp, Monster Clown, Nihilist in gaming the world over. Ironic, considering he's frequently considered the FF version of The Joker.
• Inverted in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Every class is an expy of one or more characters from the Films, as are their starships. Companion Characters also channel minor chracters from the films and Expanded Universe.
• If a video game produced after 2001 has a main character who's head to toe in Powered Armor and has any sort of personality, you can bet that said personality will resemble Samus Aran and/or the Master Chief, as will the abilities and limitations of said Powered Armor.

Western Animation

• Back in the early 1930s, every new cartoon character that came along was a Mickey Mouse clone. Ironically, Mickey himself was merely following the formula established the decade before by Felix the Cat, and more than one person has stated that he was merely Disney's previous star Oswald the Lucky Rabbit with round ears and a long tail.
  • Some people theorize that the whole "black skin, white mouth" genre of funny animals started out as an animated version of minstrel shows.