Same Story, Different Names

An author makes a big hit. Then he proceeds to write more stories with essentially the same plot as their first hit.

Compare Spiritual Successor, which is more angled toward sequels than rehashing. See also Expy, Strictly Formula, and Recycled Script.

Anime and Manga

 * Digimon. Every incarnation has a group of kids (except Savers) getting Trapped in Another World (except Zero Two, Tamers and Savers, where strange beings called Digital Monsters live. They find out they're supposed to save that world from evil monsters and things happening in there have some kind of a connection to real world.

Film

 * The Twilight Samurai and The Hidden Blade are both about a poor, extremely humble samurai who just wants to live a simple life. At the same time as he falls in love, he gets dragged into the violent world of politics against his will due to a rare technique of swordsmanship he possesses. Ultimately he uses his technique to escape from his predicament and gets married. Both films are written and directed by Yoji Yamada.
 * Writer/director Kurt Wimmer admitted to rehashing many of the same concepts in Ultraviolet from his previous film Equilibrium. Both are about a superhuman killing machine in a future Dystopia who goes against a quasi-religious, fascist government that is built around fighting something (emotion/virus) that the hero possesses. The hero fights other superhuman enforcers in a number of Curb Stomp Battles to reach the #2 man, who turns out to
 * Two films written and produced by John Hughes and directed by Howard Deutch in the late '80s, Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful, have essentially the same plot but with most of the genders reversed. A poor teenager (Andie/Keith) has an unrequited crush on a rich classmate (Blaine/Amanda), unaware that her/his quirky platonic best friend (Duckie/Watts) is deeply in love with her/him and facing retribution from said rich kid's evil friend/boyfriend (Steff/Hardy). The difference is that, because the test audience didn't like the ending, in Pretty in Pink Andie ended up with Blaine; Hughes wrote Some Kind of Wonderful because he was upset at the Executive Meddling. Some Kind of Wonderful arguably ends up the better movie for it, too, since the story includes Hughes's personal appreciation for art and music, themes which were largely missing from Pretty in Pink.
 * The original Little Shop of Horrors by Roger Corman is a case of Same Story, Different Names-it's essentially Corman's A Bucket of Blood for botanists instead of artists. It's also a case of Same Score Different Names; Corman commissioned the score for both movies, and a later movie, The Wasp Woman, from the same guy. The composer, in the finest traditions of not giving a shit, just handed over the score he wrote for A Bucket of Blood every time.
 * Tyler Perry receives a lot of criticism for this -- just look at his page quote. His movies usually have a black woman in an abusive relationiship (or who was in one) who is a single mom. She will meet a nice working class man, and hate him at first because of that, but they will grow to like each other. Meanwhile, somebody will have a problem with their baby mama, somebody will be on drugs, Madea will discipline some children and there will be some incest involved. But at the end, there will be a church scene where everyone finds Jesus and all is well. His first movie, Diary of a Mad Black Woman actually received decent reviews, but his later movies have been poorly received by critics but made quite a bit of money.

Literature

 * Dan Brown. Except for the settings and MacGuffins of each story, they're all the same. The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, Digital Fortress, Deception Point -- all written by the same exact formula to a hundred details of specificity.
 * Agatha Christie sometimes did this in short stories.
 * The plot of "The Market Basing Mystery" (1923) was used to create its novella length Distaff Counterpart "Murder in the Mews" (1937).
 * The short story "The Plymouth Express" (1923) was expanded and reworked into the novel The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) with a change of killer and motive.
 * "The Submarine Plans" (1924) was expanded to create "The Incredible Theft" (1937).
 * The plot of "The Kidnapped Prime Minister" (1924) was reused in "The Girdle of Hippolyta" (1939), with the victim changed from a male politician to a young schoolgirl and a corresponding change of motive.
 * The central plot device of the Harley Quin short story "The Sign in the Sky" (1925) is also the key device in the Hercule Poirot novel Taken at the Flood (1948).
 * The plot of the Miss Marple short story "The Blue Geranium" (1929) was reused in the Hercule Poirot short story "The Lernaean Hydra" (1939).
 * "The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest" (1932) was expanded to create "The Mystery of the Spanish Chest" (1960).
 * The Hercule Poirot short story "Yellow Iris" (1937) was expanded, reworked, and reused as the Colonel Race novel Sparkling Cyanide (1945) with a change of killer and motive.
 * The plot of the Miss Marple novel The Moving Finger (1942) was reused in the Hercule Poirot novel The Clocks (1963) by replacing the letter with a telephone call and changing the victim from a maid to an office worker..
 * In Cards on the Table, Ariadne Oliver is asked if she's ever reused a plot, and Poirot instantly mentions "The Lotus Murder" and "The Clue of the Candle-Wax" - which from the descriptions are her versions of Murder on the Links and "The Adventure of the Submarine Plans".
 * Gordon Korman made his name with This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall! featuring Crazy Awesome Bruno Walton and his Only Sane Man roommate, Boots O'Neill. In addition to writing several sequels to the book, he also wrote several other "Crazy Awesome Guy and his Only Sane Man best friend get up to Crazy Enough to Work schemes" books before eventually branching out. Such as:
 * I Want to Go Home = summer camp version.
 * Who Is Bugs Potter? and its sequel = this time they're musicians.
 * Our Man Weston = with twins.
 * Don't Care High = Bruno and Boots team at the world's most apathetic high school.
 * A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag = this time, Bruno has the world's worst luck and is trying to finagle a trip to the world's luckiest island.
 * Almost all of the fantasy novels by L.E. Modesitt Jr., and even some of his science fiction novels, feel like the same story with a different coat of paint. Luckily for him, it's still a pretty good story (and it's really nice paint).
 * Julian F. Thompson's big hit was The Grounding of Group Six, about five teenagers whose Rich Bitch parents paid a school to have them killed off. The guy hired to do the killing does a Heel Face Turn when he realizes that the kids aren't the monsters he was told they were. Then they all run off and hide in the woods, form a Nakama, and Pair the Spares. He also wrote several other books on the "five or six kids get dumped by parents, run off together to the woods, form a Nakama and Pair the Spares" theme, such as:
 * Gypsyworld = takes place in another world, and some of the kids were gotten rid of by their parents and some were just stolen, but the gypsies won't tell them which was which. Otherwise, same as Group 6 but with an eco-theme.
 * A Band of Angels = kids on the run again from the government.
 * Most of David Gemmels books feature and old hero who becomes a mentor to a young hero, a fiery damsel who is rarely in distress, a magical order, and a hopeless battle.
 * Most of David Eddings' work is like this, following a very clear High Fantasy outline with lots of Expys, Lampshade Hanging, and snark (though he did tend to play around a bit with what personalities occupied what roles- in The Belgariad, for example, The Hero is a farmboy Chosen One and the Big Bad is a God of Evil in the traditional Satanic vein; in The Elenium, the roles are held by a Knight in Sour Armor and an Eldritch Abomination, respectively).
 * There's a beautiful Lampshade Hanging in The Mallorean (the sequel to The Belgariad), where the characters realise they're following the same prophecy again.
 * Jack McDevitt: Some Adventurer Archaeologists find a clue leading them to a lost location full of ancient knowledge. There's probably a government or corporation messing things up, whether unintentionally or malignantly. Someone WILL sacrifice him or herself, either for their comrades or to protect the knowledge (Sometimes this is by way of Redemption Equals Death (see the next item). There will be a Face Heel Turn or a Heel Face Turn. One or two couples will develop - generally someone in one such will die, leaving their partner devastated. When they find the cache, some huge catastrophe will destroy all of what they find except when they can carry while running away, or they'll be an epoch too late. Either way, their discovery changes everything.
 * Goosebumps. It's a given that the main character will be 12 years old, that they will be unpopular, and that they are doing at least one of the following things: moving to a new house, going to camp, visiting relatives, or working on a school project. They will encounter strange and spooky things but will make it out fine, until the last second where the surprise Twist Ending kicks in and they turn out to be dogs or something.
 * Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End both take place in the same fictional priory in medieval England. They are both about a genius architect whose building project and love life are constantly threatened by conservative townsfolk, the church, politics, and petty rivalries.
 * Jodi Picoult's books all have the same (general) formula after she wrote My Sisters Keeper, which was(and still is) her most successful book: People (usually centering on the woman) living a normal life(in some New England town), something big happens/happened to them (i.e. husband is cheating, child is arrested) and there ends up being a court case either involving family members (i.e a family member committed a crime) or involving family members suing each other. Usually the court case involves children or teens. Expect one child to be severely ill and wiser than their years. The parents will/already did forget about the other child, if there is one. It is often a Tear Jerker, but is successful because of that(the judge/jury feels sorry for the defendant). Usually there is a Shocking Swerve near the end, and somebody dies. Examples include: Vanishing Acts, House Rules, Handle With Care, and more.
 * Sarah Dessen's books almost always follow this formula: . The girl has an annoying, messed up family situation (usually moves a lot), girl doesn't know how to deal with it, girl meets boy, boy fixes everything in girl's hypothetical world, and then there's always that moment when Girl and Boy are going to have a falling out, but they'll be back together by the end. Only some of her earliest novels (That Summer, Someone Like You, Dreamland) don't follow this formula.
 * Karel Čapek did this with his play RUR and the novel War With the Newts. The major difference was that in the one case, the robot rebellion involved actual robots (well, sort of...) and in the other case, involved a strange race of sentient newts that were enslaved/treated like robots. Because of the different media, though, both works stand pretty well on their own (though R.U.R. is far more famous, if only because it originated the term "robot").
 * Vivian Vande Velde's Dragon Bait and Companions of the Night tell virtually the same story: a teenage female protagonist with a Missing Mom suffers a false accusation due to coincidental circumstances, and subsequently both her and her father's lives are endangered. Enter a Tall, Dark and Snarky Really Seven Hundred Years Old supernatural male lead who offers to guide the heroine in her quest for vindication. Despite the man's general dangerousness and untrustworthiness, the heroine accepts because she has no one else to turn to, and she quickly finds herself growing attached to him as he leads her around. This culminates in the capture of both the male lead and the heroine by the main villain. The villain is killed in such a way that the heroine is not (fully) responsible. The heroine then saves the male lead from his one weakness - daylight - and the books end on an ambiguously positive note. The difference? The male lead in Dragon's Bait is a dragon; in Companions of the Night, he's a much more marketable vampire.
 * Felicia Bond's childrens' books hardly even bother with different names. Start with If You Give a Mouse A Cookie, then try If You Give a Bear A Brownie. If you liked that, you're sure to like If You Give A Cat A Cupcake!
 * Cassandra Clare. So far, both of her series have been about an ordinary teenage girl who learns she has magical powers her conveniently absent parents hid from her. Unable to go home, she finds herself living at the local Extranormal Institute and gets into a love triangle between a Deadpan Snarker and a Nice Guy. The villain, who has mysterious ties to her parentage, aims to Take Over the World with the help of her evil older brother.
 * It's also worth noting that most of the characters in The Mortal Instruments are expies from the Draco Trilogy, her Harry Potter fanfiction.

Music

 * The critically/fan-acclaimed albums for Metallica tend to be down to an 8-9 song formula. Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, ...And Justice For All, and Death Magnetic all follow a similar structure to the music, with varying music lengths based on how advanced CD/LP technology is at the time. Each opens with a song that sounds like most of the rest of the album that also has an unusual intro (acoustic, fade-in, heartbeat) before the album's title track if it has one. Track four is generally lighter or slower ("One" and "The Day That Never Comes" have identical song structures) and the peniltimate track is an instrumental.
 * King Crimson tends to cycle with two-three albums sounding similar to each other, followed by a New Sound Album. Examples being the similarities for Lark's Tongue in Aspic, Red, and Starless and Bible Black.

Theatre

 * The Kabuki plays of Chikamatsu Monzaemon, a man regularly referred to as the 'Japanese Shakespeare'. Courier for Hades, Love Suicides at Amijima, and Love at Sea all follow the same plot: a man (usually poor or made poor at the beginning of the story) is in love with a courtesan, but doesn't have enough money to pay her ransom. The protagonist has a rival, who wants the courtesan for himself, and so the protagonist steals money to pay the ransom. None of the characters in any of these plays live happily ever after. Oh Monzaemon, you really know how to work a crowd.

Live Action TV

 * Many television shows have basically the same plot in every episode.

Video Games

 * Mario. Dear God, Mario...
 * To be fair, story is never an important part of his games, but still...
 * Mega Man 1-6 (and 9 and 10) are infamous for this. They all are essentially exactly the same, gameplay wise, just with different levels and bosses.
 * Sonic Adventure tells the story of Dr. Eggman discovering a Sealed Evil in A Can, trying to use it to build his evil empire, and finding out at the end that Evil Is Not a Toy. Switch the title and you have the plot of the next half a dozen games in the series across consoles and handhelds.
 * Metal Gear 2, Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2, and (to a slightly lesser extent) Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops and Metal Gear: Ghost Babel have extremely, extremely similar plots, events and setpieces, with only the names/justification changed (although the similarity between MGS1 and MGS2 is lampshaded/deconstructed by the story). Metal Gear, Metal Gear Solid 3 and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker have suspiciously similar plots to each other as well, although it's not as clear as with the first four. Metal Gear Solid 4 had its own plot, and, coincidentally or otherwise, it's more often than the others considered by fans to be really incoherent and bad.
 * Metal Gear Ac!d and its sequel have very similar stories, events and setpieces to each other, too. (Snake infiltrates a laboratory performing experiments on children due to the urging of a general keeping information from him, gets a blond female Ms. Fanservice assistant, develops a rivalry with an enemy Brute who is actually a pretty nice guy, is stalked somewhat homoerotically by the lead scientist in the base, is constantly plagued by the suspicion that his memories may be lies and he may just be the Tomato in The Mirror, and ends up in the thrall of the manipulations of an extremely powerful little girl with the spirit of a dead person living on inside them.) The similarity between them is lampshaded in the story with a couple of obvious Nostalgia Levels, but not justified at all. They also both do callbacks to Metal Gear Solid with levels where you have to go out of your way to get sniper rifles.
 * In every main series Pokémon game there's this kid who just got his/her first Pokémon. He/She goes travelling around the world and eventually becomes Pokémon Champion. He/She somehow manages to get in issues with Team Rocket/Magma/Aqua/Galactic/Plasma/whatever and foil Giovanni/Archer/Maxie/Archie////whoever's evil plans.