Recycled Soundtrack

A theme or element from a work's soundtrack (usually a movie) that gets reused in another work. It may either be an original piece, or a preexisting one that wasn't widely known until being used as soundtrack.

See also Recycled Trailer Music.

Anime and Manga

 * Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance used music from Neon Genesis Evangelion along with several tracks from Kare Kano and one track from the 1979 semiclassic The Man Who Stole the Sun.
 * Monster plays an instrumental version of "Over the Rainbow" in one of its episodes, though this is thematically relevant since it's the song a character's father used to play on his radio station in the past.
 * The Ocean Group dub of Dragon Ball Z reused tracks from previous shows they worked on, including the Mega Man cartoon.
 * Sunrise reused parts of the soundtrack for the Captain Harlock movie Arcadia of my Youth in the 1985 Dirty Pair TV anime.
 * The music created for 4Kids' anime dubs would occasionally be reused in other series. Most notably, the theme which had originally been created to serve as Django's theme was latter reused in other series, including an episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fast Forward.
 * Saban's English dubs of anime series such as The Littl' Bits, Maya the Bee, Noozles, etc., reuse many songs between each other, sometime's one show's theme tune even appears in another.

Film

 * The main theme of the Japanese movie Yumeji was reused as the main character's Leitmotif in In the Mood for Love.
 * James Horner re-used one of the minor themes from Willow in the soundtrack for Once Upon a Forest.
 * He also re-used parts of the Willow soundtrack yet again in The Mask of Zorro.
 * "Ripley's Rescue" from Aliens saw Horner re-use part of the Klingon theme from Star Trek III.
 * Parts of the track "Resolution And Hyperspace" from Aliens was used in Die Hard (as was a track from John Scott's score for Man On Fire - the original, not the remake).
 * James Horner is notorious for his repetition - all composers do so, but rarely to that extent.
 * John Williams quotes his own Yoda's Theme from The Empire Strikes Back in ET the Extraterrestrial when the eponymous alien sees a child trick-or-treating in a Yoda costume.
 * John Williams was too busy to properly do the music on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. He managed to compose a few new themes ("Gilderoy Lockhart", "Moaning Myrtle", etc.) and then someone else (William Ross, specifically) was hired to create the Chamber of Secrets soundtrack out of the new themes and the themes from the previous movie, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. As a result, Chamber recycles a lot of musical cues from Philosopher's Stone. For example, the pixie scene uses the same music as the flying keys scene. And the music from the end scene in the Great Hall is a slightly remixed version of "Leaving Hogwarts" from Philosopher's Stone. In fact, it seems Ross had go into Williams' non-Potter work. The music used for the Quidditch trench chase sounds a whole lot like "The Chase Through Coruscant" from Attack of the Clones. (In subsequent Potter films, music from previous installments other than "Hedwig's Theme" was used very sparingly, resulting in Voldemort having no less than three Leitmotifs at different points in the series.)
 * When the Boggart turns into a giant snake in Prisoner of Azkaban, John Williams quotes the snake theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
 * Hans Zimmer used themes from The Rock in at least Gladiator and the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy.
 * Roll Tide, from Crimson Tide, is reused in Deep Blue Sea.
 * Separated at birth - "Too Many Notes, Not Enough Rests" from Drop Zone and "He's A Pirate" from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
 * Man on Fire, Black Hawk Down and Gladiator have similar soundtracks. Justified in that all three films were directed by the Scott brothers (Riddley and Tony), and all films used the talents of Lisa Gerrard's vocals for several of the arrangements used in all three films.
 * Elliot Goldenthal recycled a track from Alien 3 in Batman Forever.
 * "Snowflake Music" is a track by Mark Mothersbaugh from the movie Bottle Rocket, which was used again in Rushmore, also directed by Wes Anderson.
 * The music for the "Jews in Space" segment of History of the World Part One is reused as the title song for Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
 * Philip Glass's "Pruit Igoe" and "Prophecies" from Koyaanisqatsi are reused for Dr. Manhattan's origin flashback in Watchmen.
 * Soundtrack from Universal's Bride of Frankenstein were reused in Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials.
 * Kick-Ass lifts liberally from John Murphy's earlier work on Sunshine and 28 Days Later.
 * Much of this score was based on recycled cues. John Murphy's original score had been rejected and after that, two more scores were rejected before a score was finally settled on shortly before opening. In the end, works from five different composers (Murphy, Michael Kamen proteges Ilan Eshkeri and Marius de Vries, Hans Zimmer protege Henry Jackman and Basil Poledouris protege Christopher Lennertz) and many temp tracks (such as work from Ennio Morricone and Danny Elfman) became the score.
 * If you listen, you'll notice that Building the Crate and The Chickens are Revolting from Chicken Run are in Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous.
 * In fact, a whole load of cues from other films are in this one.
 * Five tracks from Alan Silvestri's score to Mousehunt show up in Fred Claus due to the fact that the actual score (written by Christophe Beck) was not finished in time for the release of the film.
 * "King of Pride Rock" from The Lion King (specifically, the bit from Simba's Awesome Moment of Crowning) plays near the end of the English version of Shaolin Soccer.
 * The Godfather's Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score (emphasis on the original) was withdrawn when the Academy realized Nina Rota had recycled themes from scores he had written for other movies.
 * The Spider-Man sequels both tracked in music from their predecessor(s) (which really annoyed Danny Elfman, who refused to return for the second sequel - and refused to work with Sam Raimi for years).
 * Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows reuses a track from Ennio Morricone's Two Mules For Sister Sara. Meanwhile, much of Hans Zimmer's score resembles Morricone's Bluebeard.
 * The films Kingdom of the Spiders and Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold respectively reused Jerry Goldsmith's scores to episodes of The Twilight Zone and the 1985 film King Solomon's Mines without his permission. The latter film also had additional music based on Goldsmith's work.
 * The Hunt for Red October, scored by Basil Poledouris, used a track from his score for No Man's Land.

Live-Action TV

 * The theme from the original Japanese version of Iron Chef was made up of score written by Hans Zimmer (“Show Me Your Firetruck”) for the Backdraft movie soundtrack.
 * Some of the soundtrack from Masked Rider was later used in Saban's dub of Digimon, and again in Jim Button.
 * The opening theme to Star Trek the Next Generation was a peppy, uptempo remix of the main theme used in Star Trek the Motion Picture.
 * Some music cues from The Price Is Right have fallen under this trope:
 * A remix of the Celebrity Charades theme cropped up at some point.
 * The theme to The Match Game Hollywood Squares Hour is presently used as a new-car cue.
 * An early new-car cue became the theme to Family Feud when that show debuted in 1976. Price later brought back the last few bars as an introductory sting for the first playing of Plinko, and has used it since 1980 to introduce Grand Game. What's more, Trivia Trap also used the last bars as a victory cue. Finally, Feud retired that theme in 1994, but brought it back in the 2000s.
 * The Bob Cobert theme used on the orignal Price from 1961-65 (titled either "A Gift For Giving" or "Window Shopping", depending on who you ask) would be used on two NBC games afterward — Snap Judgment (1967) and You're Putting Me On (1969).
 * Second Chance shared its theme with the 1976 version of I've Got a Secret. The same theme was later used on the Australian version of Family Feud in the 1980s.
 * An early prize cue from Wheel of Fortune, retired in the early 1990s, became the theme to Merv Griffin's Crosswords over 15 years later.
 * Conversely, one of the other prize cues on Wheel was the theme to the 1978 version of Jeopardy!
 * The Theme Tune from Alex Trebek's Double Dare was reused on Jim Perry's Card Sharks a year after the former's cancellation. Both shows even had virtually-identical openings.
 * The theme from College Mad House was later used on the Lifetime/PAX Game Show Shop 'til You Drop (which would later lend one of its own prize cues to Quicksilver as its theme song).
 * Three of the Family Channel's mid-90's game shows - Boggle, Shuffle and Jumble - used the exact same Theme Tune. (And the same set, host, announcer...)
 * Bob Stewart recycled the theme from his short-lived 1970s game Blankety Blanks on an equally short-lived game from the 1980s, Double Talk.
 * Similarly, the "plonk plonk" timer on Pyramid, which is actually considered part of the soundtrack, was recycled on Go.
 * The theme to another one of Stewart's shows, Jackpot, was later used on This Week in Baseball.
 * The Joe Schmo Show, a parody reality-competition program by the same company and many of the same individuals who worked on The Mole used many of the musical themes created for that program, but without any on-screen credit to the original composer, David Michael Frank.
 * What Would You Do? used many of the same background cues as its sister Nick show, Wild and Crazy Kids. Both were produced by Woody Fraser and used music composed by Alan Ett.
 * Many, many, MANY TV shows from the '50s to the '80s reused music cues, often (but not always) written for the actual series.

Music

 * In the video for Mariah Carey's "Heartbreaker," the Cat Fight between Mariah and her rival Bianca features some of Lalo Schifrin's score for Enter the Dragon.

Theatre

 * Leonard Bernstein wrote the score to Wonderful Town in a hurry, and presumably saved time and effort by lifting a few parts from earlier works:
 * The refrain of "Conga!" was previously music for the scene change to the Congacabana in On the Town.
 * The vamp in "Conversation Piece" is from the jazz band piece "Prelude, Fugue and Riffs," parts of which were also incorporated into the ballet "Conquering the City."

Video Games

 * Mega Man 9 lifts six songs directly from Mega Man 2.
 * The credits music for Mega Man 4 is the same as 2's title music.
 * The theme of the first level of Magician Lord is reused as the music of the final boss of the first World Heroes.
 * The end theme in Metal Gear Solid was used in Ape Escape 3, albeit as part of a Metal Gear parody.
 * The main theme of Metal Gear Acid is actually a countermelody from the piece "Big Shell" from the Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty soundtrack, lifted and orchestrated In the Style Of the Metal Gear Solid theme.
 * Some of the levels of Super Mario Galaxy 2 actually reuse music from the first Super Mario Galaxy game. Examples include:
 * "Honeybloom and Honeyhop Galaxies" = "Honeyhive Galaxy"
 * "Rolling Masterpiece and Rolling Coaster Galaxies" = "Rolling Green and Rolling Gizmo Galaxies"
 * "Supermassive, Mario Squared, and Twisty Trials Galaxies" = "Toy Time Galaxy"
 * "Topman's Tower" = "Buoy Base Galaxy"
 * "Shiverburn Galaxy" = "Freezeflame Galaxy"
 * = "Gusty Garden Galaxy", "Good Egg Galaxy", and "Bowser's Galaxy Reactor"
 * = "Comet Observatory"
 * Also, for some reason Primal Dialga's theme can be heard during parts of this battle theme against Bowser Jr. in those games.
 * Super Mario 3D Land actually reused some of the music from both Galaxy and Galaxy 2! It's especially noticable with the Ghost House music in this game.
 * RTS Netstorm used a score from the mecha-game Shattered Steel.
 * Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island featured an unused boss tune later reused in Sonic the Hedgehog 4
 * A least a couple tracks from The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim were taken directly from The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind''.
 * Clive Barker's Undying entire soundtrack (with the exception of the Main Theme) was shamelessly copypasted from the obscure Jurassic Park FPS Trespasser.
 * Tommy Tallarico's no stranger to this with his soundtracks: the Beast Engine and Beast Ride levels in Wild 9 use music from MDK and Earthworm Jim, and Molten Mine in Sonic and the Black Knight is a rearrangement of "Action Theme" from Black Dawn.
 * Syphon Filter 2's revisit to the Pharcom Expo Center reuses the music from the first game.
 * Resident Evil 4's Mercenaries mode reused five songs from P.N.03, which used the same engine.
 * Super Mario XP reuses background music from various Castlevania games.

Western Animation

 * Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc? (1972) ends with an in-flight showing of the Looney Tunes short "What's Up, Doc?", in which Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd sing the title song, thus resulting in a Title Drop, for both.
 * The "Temple of the Night Hawk" roller coaster in Phantasialand (an amusement park in Germany) actually uses "The Egg Travels" as the ride's background music.
 * Also, compare the soundtracks of Dinosaur, Atlantis the Lost Empire, and Treasure Planet. Notice any similarities?
 * The music played during the scene from The Sword in the Stone where Mad Madame Mim turns into a dragon was actually recycled music from Sleeping Beauty that played during the scene where Maleficent turns into a um, guess...
 * the 60s and 70s era Disney movies had a re-occuring "sad" motif. (In Sword in the Stone, it plays when Wart is alone in the destroyed kitchen after being told he won't be going to London, and in Robin Hood, it plays during the scene where Prince John is fuming about "The Phony King of England" after having thrown the entire town in jail for it, to name a few examples.)
 * The music played during Baloo's Disney Death at the end of The Jungle Book was actually recycled from Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs during the ending where the seven dwarfs put Snow White's (supposedly) dead body into the glass coffin.
 * About halfway through Aladdin, during the scene where the Genie is looking through his cookbook, a brief snippet of the song "Under the Sea" from the earlier Disney film The Little Mermaid can be heard when Genie can be seen looking at a recipe for "Alaskan King Crab", causing him to pull Sebastian out of said cookbook.
 * The 1958 Crusader Rabbit story arc "The Great Baseball Mystery" uses a tune called "Holiday Jaunt" (by Kurt Rehfeld) as background music in a late chapter. Three years later the tune would be the first theme for the game show Password.
 * Rango takes a few cues from Pirates of the Caribbean, at one point taking an entire song.
 * One scene also uses a track from Danny Elfman's score for The Kingdom.