Same Story, Different Names: Difference between revisions

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

{{examples|Examples:}}

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* Writer/director Kurt Wimmer admitted to rehashing many of the same concepts in ''[[Ultraviolet]]'' from his previous film ''[[Equilibrium]]''. Both are about a [[Boring Invincible Hero|superhuman killing machine]] in a future [[Dystopia]] who goes against a [[Knight Templar|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 Battle|Curb Stomp Battles]]s to reach the #2 man, who turns out to {{spoiler|A: have the same prohibited thing as the hero, B: be the real leader of the government, and C: be the toughest opponent of all.}}

* Two films written and produced by [[John Hughes]] and directed by Howard Deutch in the late '80s, ''[[Pretty in Pink (Film)|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, [[Focus Group Ending|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 ''[[The Little Shop of Horrors|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 -- justthis—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.

* [[Dan Brown]]. Except for the settings and [[MacGuffin|MacGuffins]]s of each story, they're all the same. ''[[The Da Vinci Code]], [[Angels and& Demons]], [[Digital Fortress]], [[Deception Point]]'' -- all—all written by the same exact formula to a hundred details of specificity.

* [[Agatha Christie (Creator)|Agatha Christie]] sometimes did this in short stories.

* Jack McDevitt: Some [[Adventurer Archaeologist|Adventurer Archaeologists]]s find a clue leading them to a lost location full of ancient knowledge. There's probably a government or corporation messing things up, whether [[Obstructive Bureaucrat|unintentionally]] or [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|malignantly]]. Someone WILL [[Heroic Sacrifice|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 [[Nothing Is the Same Anymore|changes everything]].

* 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 SistersSister's 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 Withwith Care]]'', and more.

* Karel Čapek did this with his play ''[[RUR (Theatre)R.U.R.|RUR]]'' and the novel ''[[War With the Newts (Literature)|War Withwith the Newts]]''. The major difference was that in the one case, the [[Robot Rebellion|robot rebellion]] involved actual robots (well, sort of...) and in the other case, involved a strange race of sentient newts that were [[Slave Race|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 [[Trope Namer|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 [[Our Dragons Are Different|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 (Literature)|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 [[Secret Legacy|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 [[Betty and Veronica|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.

* 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"<ref> ...And Justice For All</ref> and "The Day That Never Comes"<ref> Death Magnetic</ref> have identical song structures) and the peniltimate track is an instrumental.

* ''[[Mario]]''. Dear ''God'', Mario...

** To be fair, story is never an important part of his games, but still...

* ''[[Mega Man (Videovideo Gamegame)|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 (Video Game)|Sonic Adventure]]'' tells the story of Dr. Eggman discovering a [[Sealed Evil in Aa 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: Sons of Liberty]]'', 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 [[They Changed It, Now It Sucks|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 [[The Brute|Brute]] who is [[Worthy Opponent|actually a pretty]] [[Punch Clock Villain|nice guy]], is [[Stalker Withwith a Crush|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 Thethe 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 Level|Nostalgia Levels]]s, 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.

[[Category:Same Story, Different Names]]