Expy/Video Games

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Hmm...do any of these video game characters look familiar to you?

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Examples of Expies in Video Games include:

• According to David Gaider, one of the top writers at BioWare, virtually every Bioware character is an Expy. When posting about their writing process on the official forums, Gaider said that Bioware's writers build characters by taking characters from other media and giving them new names and backstories. His example was Alistair, who he is heavily based on Xander from Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • Bioware characters also tend to be expies of each other, often sharing personality types, abilities and backstories. This Cracked article scratches the surface.
  • Alistair is the Scottish form of Alexander, meaning Xander and Alistair even have the SAME NAME.
• Any game with a reasonably decent character customization system and wide dialogue options lets you create your own!
• Being based off Plants vs. Zombies, Mini Robot Wars has a lot of these. It still has an original storyline though.
  • For the Minirobots (good guys)
    • Fuzors, being your resource-producing machines, are based off the sunflowers. Papa Fuzors are similar to Twin Sunflowers.
    • Factories produce money, like marigolds.
    • Gunners are like peashooters. They get a rapid-fire upgrade, which is obviously based off the Gatling Pea.
    • Blocker Bots are similar to Wall-Nuts.
    • Mini-Mines are like Potato Mines without the startup time.
    • Freezers are somewhat similar to Snow Peas, although their attack stuns enemies for a short time instead of slowing them down.
    • Missilers are similar to Cat-Tails, as they both shoot homing projectiles that hit enemies all over the screen.
    • Flame-bots are like fume-shrooms, as they use a medium-range attack that hits all enemies in the squares in front of it.
    • The Mini-Bomber is like the Cherry Bombs, both blow up the surrounding eight squares after being placed.
    • The Atomic Bot is based off the Doom-Shroom, except it hits the entire screen and doesn't leave a crater.
    • Floater bots, Buoyer Bots and Submerger Bots are like Lily Pads and Flower Pots, in the sense that they allow you to place land units in the air, on the water, and in the water respectively.
    • Mariner bots are similar to sea-shrooms.
    • Barrier bots act similarly to Pumpkins, you place it on a unit to give it extra protection.
    • D.Shotgunners fire a triple Spread Shot similar to Threepeaters.
  • For the Machines (bad guys)
    • Smashers are similar to the normal zombies, Heavy Smashers are like Coneheads, while Mega Smashers are like Bucketheads.
    • Ultra Cyclers are like pole-vaulting zombies, in the sense that they can jump over gaps.
    • Jumpers are this game's take on the Pogo Zombies- they jump over everything without having to attack.
    • Drillers are based off the Snorkel Zombie. Drillers will tunnel underground until they get in front of a unit, then they will pop up to attack the unit. However, they can be attacked from the top when tunneling.
    • Moles are based off the Digger Zombie, in the sense that they are stealthed when they are underground, and will undermine your units by attaking a vertical column in front of it. Like the Digger, you'll require a unit that causes it to resurface.
    • Rocket Wagons and Blast Tanks are somewhat similar to the Catapult Zombie. They stay at the back and fire projectiles at your units.
    • Time Bombs are similar to the Jack-In-The-Box Zombie, in the sense that they blow up if not destroyed in time.
    • Capsule Cages are like Bungee Zombies, they drop on a minirobot and take it away if not destroyed after a short time.
    • The Giant is like the Gargantuar (loads of HP, instantly crushes your units, slow), and its upgraded variant the Titan is similar to the Giga-Gargantuar.
    • The Destroyer takes its attacks from Dr Zomboss's Zombot. It has a charge move which crushes minirobots in front of it (Zombot's stomp), a Wave Motion Gun that takes out two rows (combination between the fire/ice ball and the winnebago), and a grab move that targets your minirobots before destroying them (like the bungee zombies).
• Sara in Luminous Arc 3 is a complete Expy of Chiaki in the Minami-Ke anime: same voice actress, same voicing, same hair color, same body type, same attitude, and even uses Chiaki's catchphrase "BAKAYAROU" rather often.
  • And from the first Luminous Arc game, Nicolai is pretty much Brock, except with Witches instead of Jennys/Joys.
    • And he gets his own expy in Luminous Arc 2's Kaph.
• In the Valve universe, we have the Scout from Team Fortress 2 and Ellis from Left 4 Dead 2. They're both baseball fans, they dress similarly, have similar personalities ("Grass grows, birds fly, the sun shines, and brotha...I hurt people" "Kill all sons of bitches, that's my 'fficial instructions") and use bats as weapons. They also have very thick accents from different parts of the US.
  • Persona 5's remake (Royal) has Takuto Maraki, whose appearance and goal of creating an illusionary world reminds one of Sosuke Aizen from Bleach. But unlike Sosuke Aizen, Takuto Maraki wishes to create a utopia.
  • There's also Gman from the Half-Life series and the Spy from Team Fortress 2. They both wear nice suits, act very proper and sophisticated (Spy's in game dialogue aside), and we can never seem to tell whose side they're really on. They're also seen carrying briefcases quite often (Gman's briefcase and the intelligence, which could be a whole other comparison altogether). Spy's ability to turn invisible with his watch could be compared to how Gman always seems to disappear whenever he wants.
• In a more mainstream example, we have Samus from Metroid and Master Chief from Halo. Both are from military science fiction (FPS) games that wear full body armor, fight aliens and hardly ever say a word to anyone. They are both part of an elite group of fighters (Samus with the Bounty Hunters, Master Chief with the Spartans), and are considered the best within the groups. They have both fought 2 groups of aliens: A complex race of intelligent aliens, and a parasitic race of aliens (Samus with the Space Pirates and Metroids, and Chief with the Covenant and the Flood). Furthermore, both intelligent races have kicked their asses so many times over that the aliens have given nicknames to them ("The Hunter" for Samus and "The Demon" for Chief)
  • There is no "the Bounty Hunters." There's just a bunch of random bounty hunters Samus briefly worked with in the beginning of one game. If anything, Samus's "elite group of fighters" would be the Chozo, though even that doesn't quite fit the bill.
  • Just because two characters are similar does not mean that one is an expy. What MC and samus have in common could just as easily be due to the rule of cool.
  • Master Chief and Samus? What about Master Chief and the Security Officer from Marathon? Think. Chief wears MJOLNIR Mark V armor. The Officer is all but stated to be a MJOLNIR Mark IV cyborg. Chief's signature weapon is the MA5B Assault Rifle, Officer's is the MA-75 Assault Rifle. It goes on.
  • And don't forget the crewmen from Halo and the BOBs from Marathon.
    • Another Halo example is Emile, a slightly unhinged super soldier who wears an EVA helmet. If you remove the word 'slightly' you get an accurate description of The Meta
      • There's also the comparison between Emile and Ghost from Modern Warfare 2. Both are sarcastic members of a special military squad, and they wear face concealing headwear with skulls on it that they never take off in the game
  • And the far more obvious example with Samus's personality (what little she has) being an expy of Ripley - slight maternal instincts, a personal vendetta against the enemy, a hatred of AI's.......
• A more recent example would be Nico Bellic from Grand Theft Auto IV and John Marston from Red Dead Redemption. From a gameplay perspective, both are the main characters of a Rockstar developed sandbox game with similar controls, and both have the ability to hold tons of weapons on their person. From a story perspective, both are straight talking, cynical, conflicted, badass anti heroes who are trying to escape criminal pasts, have to travel the United States and tend to meet random strangers who use them by performing dangerous tasks for their own ends.
  • Not just Nico Bellic, mind, but also Tommy Vercetti from Vice City.
    • Probably not so much, since Nico and Marston both seem to be conflicted characters, weary of violence, but grudgingly resigned to the inevitability of it despite looking and hoping for another way, while Tommy is an unrepentent (and indeed, proud and happy) psychopath.
    • Continuing the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption comparison, Officer Tenpenny and Agent Edgar Ross. Both are badge wearing Manipulative Bastards and borderline Complete Monsters that never look back on using and abusing CJ/John, and are the main villains of the story
• Elite Beat Agents is the king of this trope. The designs of all of the agents (save for Kahn...no, not "that" Kahn) are americanized versions of their Japanese counterparts in Ouendan, literally making them exported characters.
  • And again in Ouendan 2 where the original ouendan have to face off against a completely different set of expies. If you were lucky enough to download the expansion you could play as the Elite Beat Agents as well. In the end Ouendan 2 wound up having SIXTEEN expies!
• There's often an Expy-like relationship between player characters in video game sequels where you play as a 'blank' character that's supposed to be 'you'. For example, in the Fallout series, the Lone Wanderer from Fallout 3 and the Chosen One from Fallout 2 are copies of the original Vault Dweller from Fallout. In System Shock, the Hacker from the first game is functionally identical to the Soldier from the second game. Also consider the player characters from the The Elder Scrolls series. Similar characters with similar backstories with similar actions available to them are designed to produce similar games with similar interfaces and similar gameplay modes. The list goes on with many series in this vein.
  • Text adventures like Zork avoid it by having more detailed descriptions available.
• Daxter is an expy for Yakko Warner
• Metal Gear Solid has Meryl Silverburgh, an Expy of the original Meryl Silverburgh, a character in Policenauts. The original Meryl, in turn, started life as an Expy/Distaff Counterpart of Solid Snake from Metal Gear. All games were created by Hideo Kojima. He later lifted Benson Cunningham from Snatcher, gave him a celebratory Race Lift, and put him in Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops.
  • After the revelation of Solid Snake being an imperfect clone of his nemesis Big Boss, the appearances were further retconned. Pretty much evident by how Naked Snake (Big Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater) is basically Solid Snake with an eyepatch and 1960s-1970s equipment, complete with the same voice actor, and further evident in Portable Ops Plus with the optional appearance of "Old Snake," aka Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots...
    • It makes sense that Naked would be just like Solid, the latter IS his clone...
  • Dr. Pettrovich Madnar, who was the Metal Gear engineer in Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, was also the head of the Frankenstein Project in Snatcher.
  • Drebin from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, is a blatant expy of Smuggler from Deus Ex. Both characters are sunglasses wearing Dark Skinned Blonds who sell the protagonists weapons, act like they're above everything that's going on around them, and they even have the same voice actor.
• The common criticism of Tetsuya Nomura's work (apart from buckles and zippers) is that he really only knows how to draw a handful of faces, and just adds different eye colors and hair, and maybe mix-and-matches qualities from other character designs he's already done.
  • Though it's a lot more subtle than most examples, Sora of the Kingdom Hearts series is technically an Expy of Mickey Mouse. They share a lot of similar personality traits, and his outfit in the first game was actually based on Mickey's classic look. Appearance-wise, Sora is also the expy of Sion Barzahd from one of Tetsuya Nomura's earlier games, The Bouncer.
  • For a less subtle example from the same series, Axel from Kingdom Hearts II looks quite similar to Reno from Final Fantasy VII (skinny guy with bright red spiky hair and marks under his eyes) and acts like a (somewhat) less homicidal version of him. This isn't helped by the fact that they share the same Japanese, English, French, Spanish, and German voice actors. Nomura has said, "To me, Axel is an existence close to Reno, created in the same concept, but they are different people. Those two are different people but subconsciously alike. I wanted to see how it would be to have completely different characters that are really similar to each other but hold different kind of roles in different worlds."
  • Vexen and Hojo. Both of them are creepy, pale mad scientists who possess a high-pitched cackling laugh and a penchant for doing experiments involving White Haired Pretty Boys. One of the biggest differences is the hair...Vexen's resembles Sephiroth's, who is incidentally Hojo's son.
  • Larxene also somewhat resembles Elena of the Turks in appearance, and in personality, she has Elena's girly enthusiasm...but unlike Elena, it's enthusiasm for inflicting pain and misery. Creepy, eh?
  • Hayner is very similar to Zell from Final Fantasy VIII - not just in looks, but his Hot-Blooded personality and dislike of Seifer.
  • Also, Terra resembles Zack Fair from Final Fantasy VII, even though Zack himself appears in the game as a Cameo. Of course, it's the younger Zack pre Time Skip in Crisis Core, while Terra more resembles the older, battle-hardened Zack.
  • Nomura designed Xion as an Expy of Kairi as a Red Herring, to throw fans off her actual origin of a Sora replica.
  • Here's another: He's The Lancer to his best bud, and early portions of the first game hinted at some kind of Love Triangle. He becomes a Rival Turned Evil, but eventually gets over his Face Heel Turn and spends a large portion of the series as The Atoner. He realizes his weaknesses and confronts his Enemy Within, accepting his darkness and growing stronger from it. Now who am I talking about? Riku or Kain? This could very well be intentional, since Nomura said in an interview relating to Dissidia Final Fantasy that the character he most wished was in the game but wasn't was Kain, and that Kain will definitely be in the sequel if it ever comes around. Nomura's a Kain fanboy.
  • Xehanort, whether it's as Master Xehanort, Xehanort the Deceptive Disciple, Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, or Xemnas, comes off as the bizarre lovechild of Exdeath, Kefka, and Sephiroth. Let's see... White-Haired Pretty Boy? Yup. Complete Monster and Nietzsche Wannabe? Check. Omnicidal Maniac? Hoo boy! Large Ham? "DARKNESS!" A God Am I? In spades. The list goes on... And don't even get me started on Xemnas's use of THE VOID.
• Yoshitaka Amano enjoys reusing character designs and design elements. (He just doesn't get called out on it - at all.) Let's see...
  • Lenna's and Krile's ^{[dead link]} designs, both from Final Fantasy V. Their FMV renders are even worse about this. They are both preceded by Final Fantasy IV's Rosa, the original Amano-pretty-blonde-lady-in-a-leotard-a-cape-some-sashes-and-boots.
  • The unnamed Warrior/Knight depicted in Amano's early illustrations for Final Fantasy I looks quite a bit like a proto-Cecil. The first Dark Knight in the series, Leon, looks like this. The second, pre-Heel Face Turn Cecil, looks like this.
  • Lovely blonde princess rescued from the Big Bad by the hero and his party, who afterward expresses some attraction to the hero. Who am I talking about--Princess Sara from Final Fantasy I, or Princess Hilda from Final Fantasy II? To compound that, Cosmos' design from Dissidia Final Fantasy was explicitly based on Princess Sarah from the first game.
    • Load up one of the newer remakes of FFI & head to Lufenia. Compare their features with those of Cosmos. Not a character, but interesting. Especially since Cosmos comes from a Lufenian woman.
  • The best example of recycling designs from Final Fantasy II for Final Fantasy IV has to be Ricard and Kain, both surnamed Highwind. Look at those pictures. What's more, a Mythology Gag that's All There in the Manual is that Kain's father is named Ricard...and Ricard's son is named Kain.
  • Compare the main heroine of Final Fantasy VI, Terra, with the above-mentioned Lenna and Krile. She's also a near-clone of fellow heroine Celes in gameplay, although after all the above examples, their visual similarity is not that pronounced, as long as you're not dealing with their FMV renders.
  • Setzer is wearing ^{[dead link]} Faris's coat. In Amano's concept for Sephiroth (yes, he did the original concept, really), that long black coat reappears, slightly less baroque this time.
  • Don't forget how Amano has a fondness for pale skin (May be justified with Cecil, given that Lunarians can have pale skin), frizzy white hair, spiked armor, catsuits, capes, eye shadow and black-blue lipstick. The CG-I renders for Final Fantasy IV used for the art illustrate it perfectly. Course, leave it to Fan Dumb to insist that all of his characters are 100% original.
  • The characters are also expys of characters from different series. Zidane from Final Fantasy IX was basically the Final Fantasy version of Goku, and Kefka Palazzo was a direct lift of The Joker from Batman.
• Beyond the visual designs of Nomura and Amano, Final Fantasy recycles a lot of character concepts from game to game. In any given game there's a good chance your main character has Laser-Guided Amnesia and is gonna fall in love with a White Magician Girl. During the game you'll likely to meet up with a Chivalrous Pervert, a woman who is last of her kind, A Hot Chick with a Sword, a stoic badass, an elderly mage, a Genki Girl, a Tagalong Kid, and a female who seems to exist only for fanservice. On the villain side you have The Dragon, who might be a Rival Turned Evil, a Quirky Miniboss Squad, and the Big Bad who leads The Empire. There's a good chance at least one of them is Brainwashed. The Big Bad will either be an Evil Sorcerer clad in Spikes of Villainy, or a Bishonen Woobie who may just be a Well-Intentioned Extremist, and either way will have at least one Evil Plan in motion. The final boss will always be either an Omnicidal Maniac or an Eldritch Abomination.
  • All three SNES Final Fantasy main characters are half-breeds of two different worlds.
  • Paine is stated to be a female Squall.
    • Ditto Lightning for Cloud.
    • Wakka from FFX is very similar to Raijin from FFVIII; a lovable oaf who is unquestioningly loyal, is pared up with a short tempered, authoritative woman who keeps him in line, and has a Verbal Tic of asking for confirmation whenever he makes a statement.
• Xenosaga just crawls with Expies from the earlier Xenogears; not surprising, since they were mostly developed by the same people & it is hinted several times that 'Saga is actually a prequel to 'Gears. The best example is probably Jin Uzuki, who even shares his surname with his predecessor Citan Uzuki (even if the latter is only an alias). Mai Magus & her Robot Buddy Leupold are a rare example of a double-expy, as they are based on Maria Balthazar & Siebzehn from Xenogears who are in turn based on Shotaro Kaneda & Tetsujin 28. In fact, more than half of the 'Gears expies that appear in 'Saga are not characters, but mecha.
  • Nephilim is an Expy of Elly from Xenogears, which is made more obvious when she grows up in the ending of episode 3. Elly herself may or may not be an Expy of Elle, from Terranigma, who is similar to Elly both in name and appearance.
• The Huckebein series of Humongous Mecha in Super Robot Wars most certainly do not resemble the titular mecha of a certain long running mecha franchise. The fact they're designed by one of Gundam's more common mechanical designers is completely unintentional.
  • The Original Generation of Super Robot Wars really run on lots of Expies. Super Robot Wars Z introduces us to Asakim Dowin, a darker Expy of Masaki Andoh, justified that he was one of the early original character designs in the beginning of the franchise. Their expy qualities come mainly from their voice actor (Hikaru Midorikawa), drive on revenge and the fact the Shurouga (Asakim's mecha) is pretty much a black/anti-Cybuster (Masaki's mecha): similar attacks, but with added sadism for the Shurouga. That, and while Masaki's just a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, Asakim's a totally sadistic bastard (not nearing a Psycho for Hire or an Ax Crazy fella...but still...)
    • Has no one noticed out that Ibis Douglas and Sleigh Priesty are nothing but less fanservice-y versions of Kazumi and Noriko from Gunbuster? Same hair color, a sisterly bond, and a pretty cool robot that they pilot together. Granted, Ibis is not nearly as Hot-Blooded or busty as Kazumi, but the resemblance is undeniable.
    • Reiji Arisu and Xiaomu, the original characters from Namco X Capcom, are awfully close Expies of Kyosuke Nanbu and Excellen Browning from Super Robot Wars Compact 2/Impact. Not surprisingly, both games had the same director.
      • When I first heard of Namco x Capcom, I was hoping that Dante would be in it. When I saw Reiji, I realised he wouldn't be, since they were too similar. Bishonen demon hunters who use guns and swords and magic, have blonde sidekicks/love interests that are actually demons, dress in read jackets and black pants, father was died due to demons? Pretty blatant to me!
    • Monolith Soft, the developers of Namco x Capcom, then made Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier, which features gender-flipped Expies of Kyosuke and Excellen, a regular Expy of Lamia, plus guest-stars Reiji, Xiaomu, and KOS-MOS herself (also including T-ELOS). The aforementioned director that made Namco x Capcom was involved in this too, so it's no wonder.
      • Strictly, they're not gender-flipped: they're name-flipped. Kaguya Nanbu is the Expy of Excellen, and Haken Browning takes after Kyosuke—although, confusing things a bit, they do resemble their namesakes in some ways, as well; their combat styles are much closer to the characters who share their name than the ones they are more expy-like overall, and Haken is flirtatious, while Kaguya, despite her bouts of ditziness is relatively down-to-earth. Aschen Brodel shouldn't at all remind you of Lamia, but the story justifies it with her being W07, Lamia's predecessor, and basically a combat version of her. Oh, and the Endless Frontier crowd have Kyosuke, Excellen and Lamia's Leitmotifs.
    • The sequel Endless Frontier EXCEED introduces Aledy Nassh, a blatant Folka Albark on foot, with a different hairstyle. He also comes along with an Ialdabaoth Expy painted black.
      • By the way, here's a list of that line of expies: Aledy is the expy of Folka, who is the expy of Kenshiro, who is an expy of Bruce Lee. Ooh, boy...
      • Subverted with Neige Hausen in EXCEED: she may have the "Fairy Dancing" theme song and the Royal Heart Blaster Combination Attack with the Fee-Kleid, the mecha expy of the Fairlion, but she isn't the expy of Super Robot Wars Original Generation's Shine Hausen.
    • Design-wise, Rushbird looks like an Obari-designed robot such as Gravion, while Straybird is pretty similar to Shurouga.
• Fire Emblem: Pick an archetype, any archetype: Jeigan, Kain, Abel, Oguma, Nabarl, Est, Rena, and Julian seem to have counterparts appear in every game.
  • It gets interesting when they have similar/the same Backstories. Kashimu from Mystery of the Emblem and Fir from The Sword of Seal were similar, while Oguma from Mystery of the Emblem and Deick from The Sword of Seal were the same. Kain and Abel in The Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light became Alan and Lance from The Sword of Seal—they're identical. That's just some between the third and sixth games. Really, they all stem from the first/third game.
  • Going beyond just archetypes: Klein, from Sword of Seals, is of noble blood, joins the party as a Level 1 Sniper, is a stern but loving big brother (to Clarine), and can have a relationship with a subordinate who is a Pegasus Knight (Tate/Thite/Thito). All of these are also true of Sacred Stones' Innes (replacing Clarine and Tate with Tana and Vanessa).
  • Also going beyond archtype, Dieck from Sword of Seals looks remarkably like Roronoa Zoro. Don't believe me? Compare their features: short green hair, scarred and very muscular, swordsmen, good relationship with their Nakama, etc.
  • I can't believe nobody's mentioned Marth yet. A good number of lord class main characters in the series (Ike for one) resemble him to some degree. Usually with the blue hair.
    • Actually, Ike was stated by Word of God to be intentionally based off of Hector from Blazing Sword due to Hector's popularity (and given Ike's own popularity despite being one of the more recent FE protagonists, one could say that this worked). However, whereas Hector is impulsive and Hot-Blooded, Ike is (usually) reasonable, level-headed, and mellow, making the similarities to Sigurd/Siglud from Genealogy of the Holy War all the more apparent.
    • Speaking of Hector, he is rather simmilar to Lex from the same game.
• Players of Street Fighter III might notice that many of the characters have an uncanny resemblance to past characters, mostly those from Street Fighter II. Let's count them down shall we?
  • French Hypocrite Remy has the same moveset as Air Force Soldier with an Army Uniform Guile, except that Remy throws his Sonic Booms (which are smaller but otherwise look identical) one-handed. Incidentally, Guile's other Expy from the Alpha series (Charlie) would also throw his Sonic Booms one-handed and preceded Remy by a margin of about four/five years.
  • Failed experiment Necro is a mixture between Yoga guru Dhalsim and the green-and-orange apeman Blanka.
  • Urien (and, by extension, Gill) is really just a magnetism-based Sagat with a few new moves.
    • Seeing as Gill came first and Urien wasn't introduced until 2nd Impact, wouldn't that be the other way around?
  • Ken's apprentice Sean is a better version of joke character Dan, something that's noted in the games.
  • African princess Elena is an all-kicks version of British amnesiac agent Cammy.
  • Dudley, the African-British gentleman boxer, inverts this, as he is the complete opposite of the unchivalrous African-American boxer Balrog.
  • Wrestler dude Alex is based off Proud Warrior Race Guy T. Hawk (and against Hugo, a Captain Ersatz of Hulk Hogan as well). His design is also based on Biff Slamkovich from Saturday Night Slam Masters, whose name was incidentally Aleksey Zalazof in the Japanese version ("Aleksey" is the Russian form of "Alexander").
  • German Gigantic Wrestler Hugo is, quite obviously, based off of Russian Gigantic Wrestler Zangief, though he also has an origin as an enemy character named Andore in Final Fight, who is based off the Original Gigantic Wrestling Master, Andre the Giant.
  • Q = Unwiedly robotic Balrog with slightly Cracker Jack-ish overtones.
    • Additionally, Q is pretty clearly based on a Certain Shotaro Ishinomori creation...
  • Zangief himself is an expy of Haggar from Final Fight, who came out a year before the original Street Fighter II. The manual for the SNES version even lampshaded their similarities by claiming that Zangief copied his moves from Haggar's. Haggar returned the favor by copying Zangief's spin pile drive in Final Fight 2 and even got a few original moves for Ring of Destruction: Slam Masters II.
• Most of the Psychopaths in Dead Rising 2 are mix-and-match expys of the Psychopaths from the first game.
• In Samurai Warriors, the spinoff of the hack and slash series Dynasty Warriors, Sanada Yukimura has a lot of similarities with Zhao Yun, starting from being the pretty poster boy with similar faces, spear as their preferred weapon, and their personalities as a generic soldier, but powerful general. And when both series crossed over, a lot makes comments just how similar they are.
  • Ditto for Cao Cao and Oda Nobunaga, who encounter each other in at least two cutscenes in both games; the first game lampshaded this in dialogue as well.
• The Pokémon series as a whole has a ton of these, especially in the beginning of the games.
  • The primary (male) character of any Pokémon game (except Brendan) is remarkably similar to the original protagonist, Red.
  • Similarly, Wes from Pokémon Colosseum gets his own Expy, Michael, in the sequel Pokémon XD. Not all the fans were happy.
  • With Generation V around the corner, the starters were revealed on various Pokémon sites. The Water-type starter for said generation, Oshawott, vaguely resembles Piplup, the Water-type starter from the previous generation. Notice ^{[dead link]} anything? ^{[dead link]}
    • Subverted when they both evolve. Piplup becomes an emperor, while Oshawott becomes a samurai, and then walks on all fours, due to being a samurai lord-horse combination, in turn due to Nintendo wanting to cram in some Fridge Brilliance.
  • Compare Rattata, Sentret, Zigzagoon, Bidoof, and Patrat (Patrat is even called a Scout Pokémon like Sentret, though they have different ways of keeping watch; the former just constantly keeps watch in a pose with its paw above its eyes, and the latter stands on its long tail to raise itself up).
  • Also, the regional small birds: Pidgey, Starly, and Pidove (compare/contrast Pidgey being a Tiny Bird Pokémon and Pidove being a Tiny Pigeon Pokémon).
  • Each generation seems to introduce at least one cute Electric-type rodent Pokémon: starting with Pikachu, and subsequently followed by Pichu (its pre-evolutionary stage), Plusle, Minun, Pachirisu, Emolga.
  • Each generation introduces at least one legendary Pokémon with a 600 base stat total, with base 100 in each individual stat. These pokemon are generally ridiculously cute, less than 2 inches in height and less than 11 pounds in weight. This trend began with Mew, who was followed by Celebi, Jirachi, Manaphy, Shaymin, and Victini.
  • As only new Pokémon were available for capture in Generation V, the Black and White games were unable to use any of the traditional Com Mons that always populated certain areas in previous games; however, the newer Pokémon that replaced these Com Mons are generally remarkably similar to their predecessors.
    • Zubat, which was found in nearly every cave location in previous games, has been replaced by Woobat. Yeah.
    • Geodude, which were also generic cave Pokémon in previous games, have a Generation V counterpart in Roggenrola. The similarities here are numerous; both are spherical Rock-type Pokémon with Sturdy as one their abilities, which evolve at level 25 and reach their final forms only when traded. They're also both based on geodes.
    • As Geodude and Roggenrola parallel each other, so do Machop and Timburr; both are Fighting-types that reach their final forms through trading.
    • Tentacool as an aquatic Pokémon is infamous, appearing in every stretch of open sea in every game prior to Generation V, often the only Pokémon to be found. In Generation V, Frillish fills a similar role. Both are jellyfish Pokémon.
    • Voltorb and Electrode are Pokémon shaped like Poké Balls, which happen to be the universal overworld icon for any general item; in previous games, attempting to pick up an item could result in being attacked by a Voltorb or Electrode instead. In Generation V, Foongus and Amoonguss are Poké Ball-shaped mushroom Pokémon, often fought when mistaken for items.
    • There's also the fact that Mewtwo, of Generation I fame, is suspiciously similar to Giegue/Giygas' form in MOTHER 1/Earthbound 0. Mewtwo, in turn, has certain traits in common with Lucario of Generation IV, and Zoroark of Generation V. You could also argue that he fills the same niche as Deoxys in Generation III, although that's a stretch.
      • And let's not forget the similarities between Mewtwo and Frieza of Dragonball Z.
    • Sawk and Throh are the Generation V Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan, except that it's possible to obtain both normally in Black and White Versions; one's just way rarer than the other in the wild, depending on the version.
    • Mewtwo, in turn, has expies in the forms of Deoxys in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire and Genosect in Pokémon Black and White. Deoxys is one because it's an extremely powerful Psychic-type with a genetics theme, while Genosect is one because of the fact that it's a product of Mad Science.
  • Each generation also includes Pseudo-Legendaries, rare three-stage Pokemon with a base stat of 600 who are (usually) caught late in the game, (usually) have dragon-like qualities and (usually) have a double weakness to a certain type.
    • Pokémon Red and Blue started the trend with the Dragon/Flying Dragonite, although it's far different from the later Pseudo-Legends in that it's a cute Gentle Giant instead of a vicious predator with a double weakness to Ice.
    • From Pokémon Gold and Silver, we have Tyranitar, a vicious Rock/Dark Godzilla expy that set the trend for future Pseudo-Legends to be more fearsome than friendly, and has a double weakness to Fighting-type attacks.
    • Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire gave us two; The Dragon/Flying Salamence, which is an expy of Dragonite in typing and Tyranitar in fierceness (Its middle stage is even cocoon-like, like Pupitar) and shares Dragonite's double weakness to Ice. Then we have Metagross, who is completely different from the others in that it's a Steel/Psychic-type Spider Tank with no double weakness.
    • Pokémon Diamond and Pearl gave the world Garchomp, a Lightning Bruiser Land Shark with Ground/Dragon typing. It's so powerful, it was banned from competitive play like many actual Legendaries!
    • Pokémon Black and White gave rise to Hydreigon, a Dragon/Dark-type who's an Expy of King Ghidorah, perhaps to compliment Tyranitar. Unlike the others, it's more Special-based.
• Many of the COs in Advance Wars: Day of Ruin are similar in personality and/or abilities to those from the previous games. Partially justified as there are only so many abilities that are helpful to boost.
  • Will is a ground-combat expert who can grant movement boosts to his units, similar to Jake in Dual Strike.
  • Lin is a serious CO who specializes in Fog of War situations, much like Sonja.
  • Tasha is an aerial combat specialist who joined the war because of someone else in the family, like Eagle.
  • Penny is a Creepy Child who enjoys destruction and can take advantage of natural conditions, similar to Lash.
  • Nell from the original Advance Wars was already an expy of Caroline from Super Famicom Wars (both being "Lucky Girls", even Nell's Japanese name, "Catherine", sounds similar to "Caroline"), while rich-boy Colin is based on Billy Gates. Oddly enough Sensei (Yamamoto in Japan) is not an expy of Mister Yamamoto from Super Famicom Wars, who is much closer to Kanbei than anyone else.
• Several characters in The Legend of Zelda series are reprised in different eras with slightly different names, as well as, to a certain extent, Link and Zelda themselves.
  • Marin and Tarin from The Legend of Zelda Links Awakening became Malon and Talon in The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time and other games- also note that Marin was originally a semi-Expy of Zelda herself while Tarin was one of Mario.
  • In The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess, Ilia is a farm girl (like Malon) who has a variation of Epona's Song as her theme. So Ilia is an Expy of Malon, who is an Expy of Marin, who is an Expy of Zelda. That's right, people, the series has Expies of Expies of Expies. Whew!
  • To continue the chain, Zelda is an Expy of [Princess Peach, who is an Expy of Pauline, who is a Captain Ersatz of Ann Darrow.
  • Prince Richard from Link's Awakening, himself a cameo from a Japan-only Game Boy game, became Ralph in Oracle of Ages.
  • Nintendo Power ran a 12-part manga based on The Legend of Zelda a Link To T He Past with the art drawn by Shotaro Ishinomori of Cyborg009 fame. This manga added a new character named Roam who could have been Jet Link's twin.
  • In The Legend of Zelda Majoras Mask, almost all of the significant characters are Expies of Ocarina of Time characters. In some cases, the characters had names in Majora's Mask but not Ocarina of Time, and the Majora's Mask names would become canon in later cameo appearances, even when the characters act more like their Ocarina of Time incarnations (Anju, Mamumu Yan, and Mr. Guru-Guru all got this treatment, for example.) In fact, Gorman got a The Legend of Zelda the Minish Cap cameo, even though Gorman was actually an Expy of a named character (Ingo).
  • The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks has Malladus as the main villain, who is an extremely obvious Expy of Ganon. Not mentioning the Ganondorf like face on his Demon Train form, he possesses Zelda in one stage of the final battle, and in the final stage (by possessing Cole apparently), he becomes a beast-like creature who looks nearly identical to Beast Ganon from Twilight Princess down to the orange hair colour. He's also defeated with a sword through the head eventually, and his depiction in the intro story has a remarkable resemblance to that of Ganon in The Wind Waker.
  • As a Mythology Gag, Fado in Wind Waker resembles (and has a similar role to the the latter's beta role) a character named Fado in Ocarina Of Time, but with their genders flipped. The main difference is that in Japan the former is named "Fodo".
  • In The Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass, Ciela is an expy of Navi from "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time", only a bit less annoying.
  • In The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword, fans were quick to note that the new Jerk Jock character Groose was exceedingly similar in mannerisms (and portions of his appearance) to Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. They're both brutish tough guys who are utterly convinced they can win the heart of the local sweetheart through sheer force of manliness alone, and are willing to sink to dirty levels to do it. This image about sums it up.
    • The big difference is Groose takes quite a few levels in kindness, while Gaston....doesn't.
    • Also from Skyward Sword, Ghirahim is Zelda's answer to Kefka in design and in personality.
• Kurtis from the Disgaea series resembles Jet Link AKA Cyborg 002 from Cyborg 009, having a similar face, being a cyborg, and also demonstrating the powers of flight and super speed in his attacks.
• Lots of Expys of Mega Man Battle Network characters are in Mega Man Star Force, mostly in Geo's circle of friends: Bud Bison is an Expy of Dex, and Sonia Strumm is an Expy of Mayl (Pink theme, ally and crush of Mega Man, etc.), and Luna Platz is an expy of Yai. In the second game, combine the 'rival' and white hair aspects of Chaud/Protoman, with the Evil Loner Badass and affinity for purple auras of Bass, and throw in a pinch of The Only One Allowed to Defeat You, and you get Solo/Rogue.
  • Another Star Force theory makes Luna the Expy of Mayl, while Strumm is the Expy of Roll.
    • Really, a lot of the Expyism in Star Force involves two Battle Network characters having some traits combined into Star Force characters.
  • This is just a few of the expy examples. The amount of Mega Men in the series is absurd (ZX actually makes this a title), and Roll has an Expy in Legends.
  • Based on what little we currently know of them, the sister/brother pair Quentia and Jack of Star Force 3 are quite blatant expys of Pandora and Prometheus, right down to the base personalities (Emotionless Girl and Blood Knight, respectively), and elemental affinities.
  • Mega Man 9's Splash Woman is a expy of Mega Man Zero's Leviathan.
    • Not to mention Tornado Man being one of Harpuia.
  • There's also Model A in Mega Man ZX Advent. Both his appearance and personality are strikingly similar to that of Axl in the X series. He's actually the biometal for Albert, a completely different character.
    • Don't forget the Enemy Mega Men, which blatantly parallel the Four Guardians of Zero. Even their Biometals are expies of them.
    • And of course, Girouette. Bishonen? Check. Badass Long Hair Of Gold? Check. Being The Obi-Wan? Check. Being Mind Controlled and later becoming Sacrificial Lamb/Player Punch? Oh god, check.
  • Concrete Man bears a striking resemblance to Guts Man.
  • Being the very first Sequel Series in the mythology, Mega Man X would technically be the first character to be a blatant Expy. Although, in an ironic twist, he only existed because of that status.
• Warcraft III's scenario and characters seems to be Expying StarCraft, only with some Gender Flip touched in. In a world where Humans Are the Real Monsters, we have one 'only good human'; Raynor and Jaina; who used to be friends with another human that fell to The Dark Side (through Mind Control;) Kerrigan and Arthas. Raynor/Jaina then goes on to leave their usual human companies and team up with Proud Warrior Races (Protoss/Orc, Tauren and Night Elf) against the army of The Dark Side (Zerg/Undead), even though they fought against each other in the past, halting a world apocalypse, all these are chronicled in the first part. Then the Expansion comes, and then Kerrigan/Arthas takes the center stage, working their way up to become the new embodiment of evil (Queen Bitch Of The Universe/New Lich King).
  • Sylvanas is pretty much Kerrigan with a different name.
    • To put it into perspective, what happened to Kerrigan was against her will and hated what she had become but nevertheless was ambitious, powerful and angry enough to embrace becoming the Queen Bitch of the Universe. Sylvanas was transformed against her will and she too hated what she became but could not embrace it, leading her to split from the Scourge and seeking her own path. Arthas was already ambitious and had a vengeful side to him that caused him to cross to the Scourge more or less willingly and embrace what he became, turning to the Lich King.
  • Arthas is also pretty obviously inspired by Elric of Melniboné, and Frostmourne by Stormbringer. They have the same motive, the swords have the same modus operandi (stealing souls of loved ones in particular), and to drive the point home, Arthas even essentially becomes an albino after being possessed.
• StarCraft itself uses a lot of expies, effectively making Warcraft III an expy of an expy.
  • The Power Armor of the Terran marines resemble that of the Space Marines from Warhammer 40,000.
  • The dropship pilot takes it to Captain Ersatz levels.
  • The Zerg are an expy of Warhammer 40,000's Tyranids, which themselves are an expy of the Aliens, making the aforementioned Undead from the Warcraft III example an expy of an expy of an expy.
  • The Battlecruiser captain is an expy of Captain Gloval. Swarthy russian man with a Porn Stache, wearing an officer's cap.
• 3/4 of the party from Earthbound Zero and EarthBound (Ness, Paula, and Jeff) are extremely similar to their predecessors (Ninten, Ana, and Lyoyd). Ness and Ninten are virtually identical in appearance.
  • There are also several characters in Mother 3 who appear to be very similar to previous characters: However, they are almost exclusively NPCs.
• Masked magician Guile from Chrono Cross is an interesting case. He's based off of Magil, a similar masked magician from the other sequel to Chrono Trigger, the Japan-only Radical Dreamers, who turns out to be Magus from the first game, keeping an eye on his sister. Guile was meant to have a similar reveal in Chrono Cross, but that plot point was dropped in favor of focusing on the other 44 playable characters, so the character was re-written as an enigmatic spellcaster...an act that infuriates scythe fans to this day. In Japan, he was named Alf, after Magus' cat, Alfador.
  • There's also Glenn, a green-haired knight who, like Frog from Chrono Trigger, rises from obscurity, claims a legendary sword, and kicks ass and takes names. The major difference is that this Glenn isn't an amphibian.
    • He even shares a dual tech called X-Strike with the silent protagonist: but another key difference is that while Frog is almost absurdly loyal to the Guardian throne, even after he stops being a knight, Glenn betrays the Dragoons to help Serge.
  • Then there's Leah, an expy of Ayla. In the best ending, she even mentions that she'll be naming her daughter Ayla.
  • ...And Luccia, an expy of Lucca.
  • can't forget the similarities of the two tomboys Kid and Marle.
• Another criticism of Akira Toriyama's artwork is how similar a lot of his characters look, in not only just the manga he writes, but also the video games he does the art for. Again, ignore how hard it can be to create a bunch of unique faces period, given how much Akira Toriyama actually does.
  • In Chrono Trigger, Crono looks like a brown-haired Medieval Son Gohan, Marle looks an awful lot like a younger Bulma, Lucca looks like a teenage version of Arale.
    • Good morning ,Crono
  • Dragon Quest is full of characters with similarities to other characters by Toriyama.
    • Lessee, Nimzo/Mildrath's first form in Dragon Quest V looks an awful lot like a Namekian, doesn't he?
    • The final boss of VI, in his first form at least, looks like the Master Roshi from hell, or an incredibly demented Dr. Gero.
    • Jessica in VIII looks very similar to Marle, doesn't she?
    • Shu could practically act as Gohan.
    • This was probably intentional in IX, but you can actually make the characters in the game look like Android #17 and Android #18, as well as Lucca, Crono, Goku, Shu (Pretty much almost everyone from Blue Dragon)...
    • Doesn't Abbot Jack's One-Winged Angel form in IX look a bit like Cell?
• In Shadow Hearts: From The New World, Anne Lafitte looks a lot like Anastasia from Covenant.
  • To say nothing of Lady and Killer, whose blatant similarities to the main characters from the previous games caused quite a bit of speculation among fans. Essentially: Killer looks like Yuri with a bad haircut, Lady looks like Alice ... with a bad haircut, Killer has similar dialogue, a similar fighting style, and a similar relationship to Lady, who serves a role very much like Alice's. All of this is probably more than coincidental, given the popularity of the couple from the first two games, but it may have made Lady and Killer Unintentionally Sympathetic antagonists.
• Harvest Moon shamefully plays this to the hilt, deriving many of its NPCs from earlier versions (or even direct copies!) of the same characters. Particularly shameless in Magical Melody and Harvest Moon DS, which added only a handful of new characters and pulled its entire list of normal marriage candidates (i.e. not goddesses, witches, or gender-bending rivals) from older Harvest Moon games.
  • One of the weirder ones is Pierre from Island of Happiness/Sunshine Islands/Frantic Farming, who is the Gourmet from Back To Nature and others as a Adorably Precocious Child instead of a grotesque Gonk.
  • Though this may be missed by fans, Muffy is an Expy of Eve. They're both blond, wear red dresses, work at a bar, are flirty, are outgoing, and they both have abandonment problems.
• Touhou expies include Minamitsu Murasa and Byakuren Hijiri, from Touhou 12 (Undefined Fantastic Object), who share a number of similarities to Chiyuri Kitashirakawa and Yumemi Okazaki, from Touhou 3 (Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream). Both Minamitsu and Chiyuri are young-looking sailor girls; Byakuren and Yumemi are their older superiors. Indeed, one fan hypothesis prior to the release of Undefined Fantastic Object was that Yumemi would be returning (due to her connection to spaceships).
• BlazBlue, being a Spiritual Successor to Guilty Gear, has a number of these:
  • Valkenhayn R. Hellsing is the werewolf version of Slayer.
  • Ragna the Bloodedge, the White-Haired Pretty Boy version of Sol Badguy with only two belts, and uses demonic powers instead of fire.
  • Ky Kiske - Lightning - Knight in Shining Armor + Knight Templar + Ice + Total Asshole = Jin Kisaragi.
  • Iron Tager - Mecha-Potemkin.
  • Arakune: Take Zato-1, replace his Shadow Powers at the cost of Eyesight with Incomprehensible Knowledge at the total loss of Sanity.
  • Bang Shishigami: Chipp Zanuff, take two.
  • Litchi Faye Ling: Jam Kuradoberi's nature (and Instant Kill) + I-No's dressing style + Bridget's playing style + Millia Rage's story connections.
  • Nu-13: Guilty Gear X-era Dizzy. With Justice's Power Armor. Or Cinque with Anubis-like armour.
  • And let's not forget Hazama, who is just too similar to Gin Ichimaru. Even the comparison Rukia makes of Gin to a snake in Chapter 145 fits in, as Hazama has a snake-themed motif.
• Persona 4's Rise Kujikawa, on first glance, looks like Nena Trinity with different hair color and no freckles. While that alone doesn't instantly make her an Expy, it is later revealed that Rise also has the similar cheery, flirtatious personality which functions as a mask (though what they mask is different: Rise is a good girl deep down, and Nena is Cute and Psycho. And they're both voiced by Rie Kugimiya while having nearly NO Tsundere qualities she is famous for and has a knack of wearing Zettai Ryouiki outfit.
  • The "Spacy Girl"'s personality is rather reminiscent of Ayumu "Osaka" Kasuga.
  • Naoto looks almost exactly like the main character from Persona 3, except for the hat and that the lack of hairbangs. Naoto even twirls a gun in battle, much like how the main character from Persona 3 does during a summoning sequence.
    • The hat along with the detective aspirations are a Shout-Out to Raidou Kuzunoha. The line of Naoto's sideburns also closely resembles Raidou's.
• Nel Zelpher from Star Ocean: Till the End of Time has a very similar appearance and fighting style to Fear/Phia from the first Star Ocean. They also tend to act in very not-stereotypically-feminine ways, although it's different for each—Nel tends to be cold and distant, while Fear/Phia is gruff and aggressive.
  • To emphasize this, Phia's combat style in the PSP version is altered to make her even more like Nel, swapping her twin-dagger throwing basic attack for melee twin dagger attacks.
• Donkey Kong Jungle Beat did this on an epic scale to the characters from the DKC series, replacing Diddy Kong with The Helper Monkeys, Rambi with Hoofer, Enguarde with Orco, Squaks with the Helibirds and Flurl, amongst others. The fans of the Rareware games were not amused.
• Cuisses, the Team Pet who can eat skill stones to fuse them from Jeanne D'Arc is an Expy of the Team Pet Toady, who can eat weapons to fuse them from Rogue Galaxy. They're basically identical little purple frogs with similar plot and gameplay roles. The difference amounts to "one talks, and the other makes cute noises", and both games are by developer Level 5.
• Parker from the original Red Faction and Alec Mason from Red Faction: Guerrilla are remarkably similar. They look quite a bit alike, and are both The Quiet One, just short of Heroic Mime, who are pulled into a role as hero and figurehead leader of the titular Red Faction through circumstance rather than choice.
• Guy Cecil from Tales of the Abyss IS Flynn Scifo's replica. Their faces look almost exactly the same (eyes). Personality, not so much. But they both have a sense of justice (though one not as much as the other), and are both the hero's best friend.
  • Actually, this should be reversed. Abyss came before Vesperia, so Flynn is Guy's replica. In fact, the Vesperia art book even goes so far as to point this out by showing Guy's chibi on the page with Flynn's chibi. Namco tried getting around this in the Tales of Vesperia Play Station 3 port, by giving Flynn Luke's costume, but it doesn't really help (and they still gave Flynn a wetsuit-style swimsuit, which is the same that Guy wears).
  • Guy and Flynn are actually, it seems, both expies of Cress Albane (take a look at their artes), it just so happens that they (physically) resemble each other more closely than their common predecessor.
  • The Tales series overflows with Expies. Pretty much every character in a Tales game from the last decade or so is either an evolution of an earlier Tales character or a fusion of two of them.
    • Depends on who does the art, though. Luca in Tales of Innocence DOES look a little like he could be a younger Senel Cooldge and Richard does look a little like Will. (Rex Hasta even looks a bit like Vaclav...albeit more insane.)
• Albus in Castlevania Order of Ecclessia a clear Expy of Balthier from Final Fantasy XII. Not only do they look, and dress almost exactly the same ^{[dead link]}, but they also fight with the same weapon. Unfortunately they don't act the same way, because Albus is a little too emotional to be on any caliber with the capital of cool that is the Sky Pirate.
• Willy's bodyguard Raymond in Double Dragon Advance is based on the nameless final boss from the second NES game. While the Mysterious Warrior's fighting style from Double Dragon II was called "Gen-Satsu-Ken" (Phantom Murder Fist), Raymond's style is known as "Gen-Setsu-Ken" (Phantom Interception Fist).
  • Duke, the Big Bad of Super Double Dragon, also resembles the Mysterious Warrior.
• The Mousemallow species from Viva Pinata is probably inspired in Chu Chu from Revolutionary Girl Utena. They even share the same color, purple. take a look.
• Elyon in Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter is to Fou-lu in Breath of Fire IV as Zechs Marquise is to Char Aznable. And yes, this is even Word of God; the creators actually admitted in the official Dragon Quarter artbook that Elyon was meant as an Alternate Universe Fou-lu expy. This gets more hilarious when you realise that even Elyon's name is a shout-out to this; it's one of the many Hebrew names of God, translating to "The Most High". And Fou-lu was a literal God-Emperor. What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic?
• Nostalgia has Doctor Brown, who looks like Indiana Jones with a Badass Moustache. Melody also looks wicked similar to Lina Inverse, except she's got blue eyes and a different costume.
• Much of Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 2's cast are expies of characters from the original storyline, to different degrees, in both the character design and personality (and the voice actors). The most blatant example is probably the odd-eyed Artificial Human onmyouji Abe no Yasutsugu who even inherits Yasuaki's Catch Phrase "no problem" to an extent. An interesting case is Yukari-hime and Misono, both of whom are expies of Fuji-hime from Haruka 1; although Misono being a boy, the similarity is limited to his appearance, as his personality is quite a bit different, while Yukari is a more direct expy of Fuji.
  • While the "expy" characteristic of the cast was slightly toned down in later games compared to Haruka 2, it is pretty obvious that the character designs are still being recycled, just with more significant alterations. This trend continues, as was recently shown by the pictures of the characters from the upcoming fifth installment of the series, which prompted fans to start drawing comparisons to previous games once again.
• Mitsumete Knight, which is a Spiritual Successor of Tokimeki Memorial 1, got a few Expies, some more obvious than the others (for example, Hanna is a mix of Yuko Asahina and Nozomi Kiyokawa, Priscilla has some traits of Yumi, and Gene is a Megumi Mikihara who has taken numerous levels in badass). But the most obvious ones are :
  • Lesley (of Ayako Katagiri, sharing a love of painting and a fear of water),
  • Linda (of Mira Kagami, having the same hair color, the same haughty voice and attitude, a similar Noblewoman's Laugh, and comparable Hidden Depths),
  • and Johan (of Rei Ijuin, being both rivals of the protagonists, sharing the same arrogant and Screw the Rules, I Have Money attitudes and a love for roses).
• One of the cast of Dragon Age is an assassin sent by the king after The Hero and fails to kill them but joins the party if his life is spared in turn, is a Casanova with a Lovable Rogue sort of persona, and has a Spanish accent. Oh, and he even loves leather boots and is short with pointed ears and a striped face. Hmm...
  • • Note: This is from the above admitted masters of Expies, Bioware. Another character is an expy of Xander
  • The Qunari are Scary Dogmatic Aliens with a strict caste system, almost religious devotion to that system, a grasp of technology beyond that of anyone else, a strong aversion to magic, and accept outsiders into their ranks so long as the outsiders accept to be bound by their rules. Tau, much?
    • Unlike the Tau though, the Qunari are very, very far from being short and terrible in close-quarters combat.
• White-haired, red-eyed, powerful and well-endowed (Dark) Action Girl in a tight-fitting black getup who's (unreasonably) loyal to her master and a member of an ancient race, whose powers her master gains in some form. Eh, doc, we talkin' Reinforce I from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's (2005-2006) or Selvaria Bles from Valkyria Chronicles (2008)?
• The Club has Finn or Leonard Shelby in it.
• Pangya brings us Max, who is Sephiroth if he were to take up sports.
• Drachma from Skies of Arcadia is a ship captain with a missing limb who's obsessed with getting revenge on a whale.
• According to Cracked (assuming their information is accurate) Mario, Pauline, and Donkey Kong were originally going to be Popeye, Olive Oyl, and Bluto respectively. (Donkey Kong and Bluto do have a similar ape-like body and early Donkey King had the same "angry" mouth as Bluto).
• Mostly unknown in the states, Princess Gradriel in Vanillaware's cult hit Princess Crown has a long list of expies and growing. The cute girl swinging a large sword while wearing a dress mixed with plate armor was too fun of a design not to spread. She's practically become the patron saint of royal ladies of war.
  • La Pucelle's Eclair, including her Dark Form.
  • Capcom's Gaia Masters has Princess Tiara.
  • Saber of Fate/stay night fame, though also mixed with Agrias.
  • Though a departure in weapon and dress, Gwendolyn carries on many of Gradriel's traits (namely eating habits) since her game is a Spiritual Successor.
  • Yggdra of Yggdra Union takes the classic silhouette to morally ambiguous territories of conquest.
  • More of a cameo, a different princess of the same name and costume shows up in Etrian Odyssey II.

Since Gradriel herself and all expies but Saber are barely known, she avoids becoming an Overused Copycat Character.

• Both Miko SHMUP Heroines Sayo Yuuki from Shikigami no Shiro and Reimu Hakurei from Touhou are said to be based on Sayo-chan/Pocky from Kiki Kaikai/Pocky and Rocky. The Bigger Sayo actually shares the same name and arcade publisher (Taito). Reimu in her PC-98 form is essentially Sayo-chan with Purple hair and a bow instead of an headband, and the creator of Touhou apparently was an Ascended Fanboy of Taito.
• If planes can have Expies, the one in this Just Cause 2 video can be mistaken for a X-02 Wyvern from Ace Combat, apart from the two sets of fins and the visible ordnance.
• Dr. Eggman's robot companions in Sonic Colors, Orbot and Cubot, strangely resemble Decoe and Bocoe from Sonic X, who themselves are expies of Scratch and Grounder from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.
  • Also Ix for Fintevius, who himself is one of Dr. Zachary.
    • Mecha Knuckles in Sonic Advance for Metal Knuckles.
• WWE Day of Reckoning has expies of its own characters in its story mode. You play through it once, choose the Raw brand as your character's home, and notice how the storyline captures the characters, their mannerisms, and their motivations very well... and then you play through it again on the Smackdown brand and notice how the Smackdown wrestlers are shoehorned into the exact same storyline. The game even invents a new stable, the New Ministry of Darkness, to be Smackdown's expy of Evolution.
• Grand Master Meio from Strider and Osmund Saddler from Resident Evil 4 both resemble the Emperor from Star Wars, and the latter even has a similar voice. The former also has a Death Star-style space station.
• City of Heroes has these everywhere - millionaire playboy with no actual superpowers Justin Sinclair and kilt-clad time traveler Mender Lazarus are only two of the many.
  • The most obvious example is actually Statesman himself.
• Regina from Dino Crisis is an expy of Jill from Resident Evil. In Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, you can unlock Regina's outfit.
  • Speaking of Jill, she is an expy of Fiona for Resident Evil 5.
• Bowser in New Super Mario Bros.. is an expy of Crocomire in Super Metroid, both of which fall into magma and slip out of their flesh like a banana from its peel.
  • Similarly, Dimentio from Super Paper Mario is essentially the Mario equivalent of Kefka Palazzo, as they are Laughably Evil, sociopathic Monster Clowns who end up betraying their boss later on and attempt to destroy the world/all worlds. His boss, Count Bleck, likewise, is very similar to Count Dracula in terms of backstory.
• Eboshidori, the first boss of Ikaruga, with its elongated headgear and sauropod-like legs, looks like the Xenomorph Queen.
  • Series wise, Count Bleck and Dimentio are expies of Sir Grodus and Beldam of the Shadow Sirens. Grodus and Count Bleck are both the primary antagonists of their respective games. Their goals involve destroying the world. Beldam and Dimentio pretend to be loyal to their bosses. They also use a main character's body as a host of the final boss (Grodus was aware of that plan. However, he wasn't aware that he wasn't able to control the Shadow Queen). Additionally, when they reveal their true intentions, they almost kill their boss.
• Maou or Kyouhei Samejima is such an obvious expy of Lelouch from Code Geass. They look alike, they are both voiced by Jun Fukuyama, use revenge as their motif, is an absolute Chessmaster and Magnificent Bastard (in fact, Maou is probably a better Chess Master than Lelouch considering how he never failed), both are leaders of terrorist organizations and both sacrifice their life at the end of the story The only difference between them is that Maou does not have a magical eye and is purely evil while Lelouch is good.
• Ben and Dan from Ben There, Dan That! and Time Gentlemen Please are reasonably blatant expies of Sam and Max - mostly notable because Ben and Dan frequently lampshade it. One of Ben's responses when looking at Dan is to call him 'the Max to my Sam', and they occasionally affectionately call each other 'Max' and 'Sam'. The main difference in terms of character is that Max's sociopathic violence has been given to Ben, leaving Dan as a Cloudcuckoolander and having him act as voice of reason when Ben does something disgusting or borderline evil in the pursuit of adventure.
• The cast of the Golden Sun games has been pretty formulaic: There are four heroes that can command classical elements, of which the Earth character is the leader and Heroic Mime. Cool Old Guy Kraden may also tag along for a while. The villains are two obviously not-normal-humans from an obscure society, a man in shades of blue and a woman in red/pink, assisted by a blue-haired man with his own agenda (in fact, the same blue-haired man). The sequels have played slightly with the heroes setup; The Lost Age by having the original games' heroes join to make a party of eight, and Dark Dawn by having eight heroes that are Expies of both the previous games' parties: the first four are direct descendants of the original heroes, and the second four have parallels to the Lost Age heroes with the elements mixed up: a Bishonen (Felix and Amiti), a Lady of War (Jenna and Sveta), an older sailor (Piers and Eoleo), and a young spiritual girl (Sheba and Himi).
• Red and Blue from SaGa Frontier noticeably resemble characters by the same name from Treasure Hunter G. Red is nearly identical between the two games, but the two versions of Blue are a bit different.
• Devilotte and Doronjo. One is a blonde, female comedic villain from a mecha game who is constantly accompanied by two male minions... while the other is a blonde, female comedic villain from a mecha anime who is constantly accompanied by two male minions. Lampshaded in Doronjo's ending in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, where she ends up going after Devilotte for stealing her gimmick.
• Following Word of God, Beowulf from Devil May Cry 3 is strongly inspired on the mythological demon Pazuzu.
• A mouthy teenager with an attitude who goes on adventures whose name begins with "S", and a pink Distaff Counterpart who's head over heels for him but he doesn't like her back and shows discomfort at this crush? Are we talking about Sonic and Amy or Spyro and Ember?
• The hentai Dating Sim Season of the Sakura gets rather extreme with this, as every major character is taken from a popular mid- to late 1990s anime with only minor changes to their personalities and/or appearances. The girls you can get with include Hikaru Shidou, Umi Ryuzaki, and Fuu Hououji, Rei Ayanami, Asuka Sohryu Langley, Meimi Haneoka and Seira Mimori; most of them are renamed, but they didn't even bother doing so with Meimi and Seira.
• Xoda from Noitu Love 2 is a female expy of Noitu from the first game, and Almond is a male expy of Lori from the first game.
• Senator Nick Richards from Tropico 4. He is not a crook.
• Upon the Cultural Translation of Tecmo's Captain Tsubasa to be released as Tecmo Cup Soccer Game, the series ended up creating a huge amount of expies of the original anime/manga casts. The EU only game on Sega Genesis, Tecmo Cup Football Game, features a whole different storyline, but still retains the expies of the original characters, with an exception of David being Robert's older brother rather than a bestfriend like how Misaki is to Tsubasa.
• In the first Freddi Fish game, you can sometimes come across an Expy of Putt-Putt in fish form, who even shares the same first name as his voice actor.
• Very common in the Nasuverse. With Kara no Kyoukai being Nasu's first big work, expect to find reused character designs, personalities, behavioral patterns and backstories when compared to Tsukihime and Fate/stay night. For starters, Mikiya from Kn K and Tohno Shiki from Tsukihime are similar in looks and personality, but Mikiya lacks a surpressed killer instinct or the power to make use of it. Now the main characters of Kn K and Tsukihime both have the same basic power and style, constantly surpress a powerful desire to commit murder, were raised by families devoted to killing demons and even share the same name, Shiki. However, it may be a borderline case since Ryougi is rather different from Tohno personality-wise, and she has, well, boobs. Then there's Azaka, who shares a general design, incestious crush on her brother and fire-based powers with Akiha. Enjou Tomoe from the fifth film looks very similar to Emiya Shiro, the protagonist of FSN. There's also the character of Asagami Fujino, who is very similar to FSN's Sakura in looks, backstory and hidden killer-nature. Three major villains across the Verse, Araya Souren of Kn K, Nero Chaos of Tsukihime and Kotomine Kirei of FSN, share a general design for long black clothes, a tendency towards Hannibal Lecture and even the same voice actors. Also, SHIKI from Tsukihime is similar to Shinji from FSN and Roa, perhaps, is a bit reminiscient of Gilgamesh, what with lusting after the main heroine and all. Though, Lio was the first one to have this nasty habit. Oh, and the aforementioned regular Tohno Shiki has a few things in common with a certain other Shinji as well.
• Augustus Cole ("The Cole Train") from Gears of War is Terry Tate, Office Linebacker, a joke character from a series of Reebok commercials.
• Inazuma Eleven GO plays this with the manager trio, Sorano Aoi, Seto Midori, and Yamana Akane are expies to the prequel's Aki Kino, Raimon Natsumi, and Otonoshi Haruna.
  • The commentator Kakuma Ayumu is this to Kakuma Keita. After all, they're brothers that have a common interest and share the same VA.
• In Prototype, the Blackwatch organization is pretty much the Blue Unit from Stephen King's Dreamcatcher. They're similar paramilitary oganizations that are above the law, have a mandate to contain "infections," are commanded by a mentally unstable General Ripper and have a subordinate who questions their superior for excessive actions and eventually betrays them. Both organizations get shut down by the conventional military. Both organizations even use the same type of Apache attack helicopter. Give Blue Unit gas masks, and they would be Blackwatch.
• Belltower Heavies from Deus Ex Human Revolution wear armour that resembles bomb squad suits and bring More Dakka, similar to the Juggernauts of Modern Warfare 2.
• Lololo and Lalala (aka Fololo and Falala) from the Kirby series are based on Lolo and his girlfriend Lala from the Adventures of Lolo series.
• Rock Howard is an insteresting case: Not only he is an expy of Kaede (with his Super Mode activated) from The Last Blade, he got two expies based on him: Leina Vance from Queen's Blade (personality and background) and Gilgamesh from Fate/stay night (looks).
  • This is funnier if you know that Leina's VA voiced Saber who was Gilgamesh's lover in the past.
  • Even more hilarious if you know that Leina pulls off an attack who looks like Rock's (and his father Geese) famous Raging Storm in the Queen's Blade OVA.
• The Hattori brothers Ryūichi and Ryūji from the Downtown Nekketsu series are obviously modeled after Billy and Jimmy Lee from Double Dragon. (They were renamed Randy and Andy in River City Ransom, the localization of the first game where they appeared.)
• Two factions are fighting each other. One can appear out of nowhere, while the other fields nigh-unstoppable tanks. Are we talking about Nod and GDI or the Allies and Soviets?
• Rusty Hearts: A Bare-Fisted Monk Chinese Girl named Meilin(g)? Why does that sound familiar?
• SolForce from Sword of the Stars is one for EarthForce from Babylon 5. The name and functions are similar, the backstory of SolForce involves a democratic administration being suborned by jingoist militants that eventually get pushed back, just like the other, and the creators have even admitted to being fans of the show.
• Many of the characters in Final Fantasy XII are Expies of characters from Skies of Arcadia. The two most obvious ones are Vaan/Vyse (four letter name that starts with 'v', wants to become a sky pirate) and Penelo/Aika (similar character design, role as the implied love interest).
  • Balthier and Fran are also Expies of another pair of pirates with a cool ship, namely Han Solo and Chewbacca. Balthier, like Han, is a former imperial who rebelled when he grew disgusted with how they operated, before saving Chewie/Fran from them.
• The Butcher in Silent Hill Origins and the Bogeyman in Silent Hill Homecoming are expies of Pyramid Head in Silent Hill 2.
• The Donkey Kong Country games have many of the same enemy character designs given different names in each game. For example, the Klaptraps in the first game become Klampons in the second and Krimps in the third; they are also much like the Snapjaws from Donkey Kong Jr..
• Kreia from Knights of the Old Republic II is an expy of Ravel Puzzlewell from Planescape: Torment. Both of them are blind, elderly, sharp-tongued Trickster Mentor characters. And their creator Chris Avellone has stated in an interview that he created Kreia because he "thought it would be cool to be in an adventuring party with Ravel!".
  • Darth Sion (also from KOTOR 2) bears a strong resemblance to The Nameless One (also from Planescape: Torment) and is also an immortal.
• Wrath from The Binding of Isaac is very similar to bomberman.
• Dark Souls has the Taurus Demon, who looks suspiciously like Zodd from Berserk
• When Baraka was introduced in Mortal Kombat 2, he was called one of a "nomadic race of mutants" (his people would later be called Tarakans in Deadly Alliance) he's got retractable blades in his wrists, a very keen sense of smell... Many fans have wondered it the dev team had a certain Canadian comic book hero in mind when they designed him.

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