6 Famous Characters That Were Rip-Offs

Disclaimer: I do not endorse this article nor its beliefs, I merely found it interesting and am just presenting it to Comicvine. I am also not sure about the validity of this website either, but it's a pretty interesting article nonetheless.

I'm not sure if anyone has read this article yet, but it discusses the origins of 6 famous characters and how they're rip-offs of obscure and largely unknown original sources.

The Article

Calm down, disclaimers aren't usually needed on the Vine.

Oh & as for the article: #IDon'tCare.

Noted about the disclaimers. You could have just read the article and left without saying a single word, lol.

Yeah - I knew about majority of that, except the Green Lantern thing and the Cobra thing. Those one's I hadn't seen before. So 4 out of 6... Not that it really matters. Something is always inspired by something else.

Who hasn't read the article before? Cracked and their list are quite popular.

Nothing is original.

There's a difference between inspired and a ripoff.

You forgot to link the one with spider girl. Who came way before spiderman

This..so much of this.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. But the one thing that was most apparent to me as a rip-off was that Lion King comparison to Kimba the White Lion. The X-men can be seen as an understandable inspiration from the wheelchair mentors, and the heroes themselves differed after that. However, too many similarities with Kimba and Simba, especially those poses seen within the screenshot, also the art style is very similar. When the voice actor for Simba was hired, he actually thought the project was going to be related to Kimba the White Lion. I personally have never seen Kimba yet to express a definitive opinion of whether or not it's a rip-off, but so far that's a lot of compelling evidence. An inspiration from an original concept can only go so far without borrowing the majority of the concepts.

They must have forgotten to add... Aquaman

Muahahahahjajajajaja

Seriously, I.never knew about Kimba. I'm super surprised about Cobra, and the last part was funny, "You see anything with Zorro in it you'll parent's will die."

Muahahahahjajajajaja HaHaHaHaha

Well, some of those are pretty inaccurate...

First of all, the opera from which green lantern is inspired was pretty generic. I mean, superior being giving men a unique weapon to fight in a wide weird world? Sounds like half sci-fi stories. And Batman is openly inspired by Zorro's MO, it is also stated in the comics. Bruce himself remembers fondly the last movie he watched with his parents.

Now, the Lion King thing I knew, and it does seem very similar.

But as usual, people confuse rip-off and inspired by. Almost everything is inspired by something. Is what you make of it that determines its dignity.

That article is ancient, I've seen this years ago.

how about more obvious ones

quicksilver copied the flash

hawkeye copied green arrow

black cat copied catwoman

ant man and atom (dont know who came first)

jester copied the joker

elktra and talia are similar

namor and aquaman copied each other

Cobra are a rip-off of Hydra, yet Marvel created both...?

@fil123: If Aquaman and Namor copied eacH otHer tHen Hawkeye and Green Arrow copied eacH otHer.

June'sVeryOwn IsBack

The Cobra/Kobra/ Hydra thing is pretty obvious though you can easily add more to that list....easily stretching back to the early 1900s, with time and effort, im sure you can stretch it back even further possibly centuries...

Anyone who didn't know the batman/ Zorro connection , doesn't REALLY read comicbooks, just looks at the pictures. that one has been mentioned time and time again.

Lion King was a shocker to me,

BUT SUPERMAN... now you're grasping straws...particularly since you can probably trace them both back to the same origin (possibly different paths) back to Hercules of Greek myth (as half god, he was almost alien to the people of earth as well).. and certainly there are more recent examples of the basic premise.(two men invented calculus without ever knowing the other existed, the same may be true here)

@m3th: namor was first, but aquaman was first to be mention king of atlantis

@fil123: Green Arrow was first but Hawkeye was tHe first to Have a flamboyant personality.

-SOULO-