Corrupted Character Copies in Live-Action TV series.
The following have their own pages:
- Andor: Luthen Raal is this for another Lucasfilm character, Indiana Jones. They’re both Adventurer Archaeologists taking on a fascist empire and Living a Double Life as a laidback and charming academic (Luthen’s shop even includes Indy’s whip and other treasures as a Easter Egg). Except whilst Indy is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who never goes too far, Luthen is a Good Is Not Nice Well-Intentioned Extremist who delves deep into He Who Fights Monsters territory.
- Black Mirror:
- The Hot Shot judges in the episode "Fifteen Million Merits" are a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of American Idol's original judging trio. Hope is analogous to Simon Cowell (a tough-love realist), Charity to Paula Abdul (a nicer heart), and Wraith to Randy Jackson (in-between). However, they are at best insincere assholes and at worst exploitative douchebags.
- Robert Daly in "USS Callister" is a shy, introverted genius who feels intimidated, unappreciated, and mistreated by his coworkers. He deals with this by creating a world of illusion in which he plays the intimidating force to simulated versions of the people he can't face in real life. The only difference between Daly and Reginald Barclay is that Lt. Barclay's illusions are just that, and Daly's are sentient.
- Daly's in-game persona is this to James Kirk. Both are dramatic, super-competent space captains who are adored by their crews. But while Kirk is a noble Officer and a Gentleman who puts his crew first and has genuinely earned their love and respect in return, Daly is a Bad Boss who puts his crew in degrading situations to boost his own ego and abuses them into cooperating.
- Community: Mr. Rad from Regional Holiday Music is this to Mr. Schuester from Glee. Both coach their school's Glee Club and both resort to extreme measures to get people to join. However, Mr. Rad is willing to go further than Mr. Schuester would, even committing murder. Also, Mr. Schuester does care about his students and encourages them to follow their dreams. Mr. Rad cares only about winning, chewing Britta out when she starts singing badly.
- River Tam from Firefly is in many ways this for Buffy Summers (from Whedon’s other most well known work). They’re both once innocent girls who were extranormally enhanced becoming Action Girls with Multi-Melee Master skills in the process and even their wardrobe of long slips is quite similar. Also they are also both watched over by an academic paternal male figure (Giles for Buffy/Simon for River). Except while Buffy is a bright and sassy heroine with plenty of quips, River is a dark, creepy and extremely fucked up girl who unlike Buffy hasn’t been Cursed with Awesome but forcibly turned into a weapon. They both have their One-Woman Army moments, but in River’s case her cool badass moments are usually played off to be more alarming than awesome.
- The Villain of the Week of an episode of Highlander is an Immortal Irish boxing trainer, whose appearance and mannerisms are almost entirely modeled on Mick from the Rocky franchise. However unlike Mick, who truly cares about Rocky, he is a callous manipulator who uses the boxers he mentors as a pathway to money and glory; and is also a cold-blooded murderer who kills anyone that gets in his way, using his frail appearance and quirky charm to seem harmless.
- The Heavy of another episode is a deformed and severely mentally handicapped Immortal who lives in the basement of a theatre. However, the true villain is the aging lead singer of an opera performed at the play, who the Immortal is in love with and manipulates him into killing her young rival, making her a corruption of Carlotta in The Phantom of the Opera, and to a lesser extent Esmerelda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
- Kamen Rider Outsiders:
- The alternate Yuto Sakurai is one to Takeshi Hongo, the original Kamen Rider himself. Hongo has been the symbol of justice when he chooses to use his newfound powers to protect mankind from Shocker, who were responsible for altering his body with cybernetic implants. The alternate Yuto Sakurai comes from a Bad Future where he lost his loved ones and is chosen by Zein to take the mantle of the namesake Kamen Rider, using the powers of every Kamen Rider to terrorize humanity into capitulation to Zein's new world order. In short, Yuto is everything what Hongo could have been like if he had sworn loyalty to Shocker rather than protecting mankind.
- Zein, the AI, and the crossover series' Big Bad, is a corrupted version of AkaRed. AkaRed is the embodiment of all Red Sentai Rangers' sense of justice and determination in their fight against evil. He can transform into Red Rangers of previous and current seasons whenever he appears in a Super Sentai anniversary crossover. Zein is presented as a Dark Messiah that seeks to bring salvation to humanity and expunge evil, embodying all the worst qualities of every heroic Rider, and a cautionary tale of "absolute power corrupts absolutely". Zein can Power Copy of every Heisei and Reiwa Riders' Final Forms through the eponymous Rider.
- Psych: The episode "Shawn And Gus In Drag (Racing)" is a Whole-Plot Reference to The Fast and the Furious movies, with Tommy Nix (played by Adam Rodriguez) serving as the Dominic Toretto stand-in, being a Badass Driver who is the leader of a group of close-knit car thieves. However, it is ultimately revealed that Tommy has absolutely none of Dom's positive characteristics. While Dom treated his gang like family and hated betrayal, Tommy murdered one of his gang for trying to go independent and let another one take the fall for his crime.
- Red Dwarf being an Affectionate Parody of Sci-Fi has a lot of this with the cast.
- Dave Lister is a Gender Lift take off of Ellen Ripley, a working class technician on a mining spaceship with a pet cat who becomes the Sole Survivor on their respective ships and spends a lot of time as a Human Popsicle. Except whereas Ripley was capable, well-groomed and intelligent Lister is a slobby, incompetent and lazy protagonist. Though Lister does manage kill his fair share drooling space creatures just like Ripley in spite of his shortcomings.
- Lister in general is a big deconstruction of the Space Hero archetype, unlike Kirk or Han Solo he isn’t a dashing stud who regularly makes out with hot women and goes around space saving the day. He’s a bum and a loser who happens to find himself in lost and forced to survive in a dangerous universe and rather than kissing otherworldly green-skinned babes he gets psychically tricked into kissing insectoid brain eaters. Even the times where Lister tries to act the part e.g uttering the classic Take Me to Your Leader it gets called out on by his crewmates. Yet, a lot of episodes do show Lister is actually capable of being a honest to god space hero after all.
- Rimmer is a subversive breakdown of the Space Cadet archetype, like Wesley Crusher or Buck Rogers he aspires to be a high-flyer in the space corps and is hard working. Except unlike other said characters Rimmer is an abject failure who doesn’t fly to the top but becomes a vending machine repairman instead. He’s also a deconstruction of The Captain role (as the highest ranking individual left on the ship) being a Jerkass Dirty Coward who isn’t respected by any of his crew, in contrast to Kirk or Adama. Played straight with his cooler and more heroic Alternate Self Ace Rimmer though.
- Cat is a parody of the Token Non-Human archetypes like Chewbacca and Worf. Rather than being well-meaning and helpful Proud Warrior Race Guy or What Is This Thing You Call "Love"? alien he’s a self-centered narcissist who has no interest emotionally connecting to his human crewmates and expects them to bow down to him.
- Kryten is definitely this for Data as well as the Robot archetype in general. Whereas Data and other Sci-Fi androids are cool and sleek and have great importance on their spaceships. Kryten is a ridiculous, malfunctioning and put upon rust bucket whose main job on board the ship is cleaning up and nannying Lister. Funnily enough though, Kryten does manage to play The Spock-Science Officer role completely straight, wielding the Everything Sensor gizmo on adventures. Although in one out-of-continuity video, when asked why Lister hadn't forgotten the events of "White Hole" as he said would happen, he points out that he doesn't have any kind of qualification in how Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory works.
- Holly is a hilarious deconstructive parody of the Sapient Ship - Spaceship Girl A.I. role like CORA. While other starship computers are useful and by nature extremely intelligent, Holly is deranged, half-witted and massively incompetent forgetting the number 7 and mistaking grit on the monitor for five black holes.
- Dave Lister is a Gender Lift take off of Ellen Ripley, a working class technician on a mining spaceship with a pet cat who becomes the Sole Survivor on their respective ships and spends a lot of time as a Human Popsicle. Except whereas Ripley was capable, well-groomed and intelligent Lister is a slobby, incompetent and lazy protagonist. Though Lister does manage kill his fair share drooling space creatures just like Ripley in spite of his shortcomings.
- Saturday Night Live: Torboto has a virtually identical appearance and similar theme song to Tetsujin 28, but while the latter is controlled by a heroic child to combat injustice, and is portrayed as a righteous role model, the former is a tool of the U.S. government to torture suspected terrorists, serving as a brutal condemnation of the use of torture in The War on Terror.
- Stranger Things: The Big Bad of Season 4 Henry Creel aka Vecna is extremely similar to Charles Xavier especially the younger James McAvoy version. He’s a mutant born in the 40s who has Psychic Powers and felt isolated for it. Except while Charles in spite of his flaws is a All-Loving Hero who wants to coexist with Muggles, Henry is a A God Am I sociopath who killed most of his family upon discovering his powers and seeks to rule humanity as a psychic tyrant similar to Tetsuo.
- Supernatural: The episode "Live Free or Twi Hard" parodies The Twilight Saga with characters copying Edward and Bella. The vampires are exploiting the Romantic Vampire Boy craze to lure in new victims, so "Robert" is really a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who immediately passes her on to his vampire buddies, while "Kristen" is a Brainless Beauty who is forced to write cheesy harlequin romance on the head vampire's orders and is all but stated to have become his Sex Slave.
- Marc in the The Twilight Zone (2019) episode "Try, Try" is this to Phil Connors in Groundhog Day. Like Connors he's trapped in a time loop and uses his infinite attempts to try to seduce a woman. However, while Connors quickly realises he can't force a perfect day with Rita and uses the time to improve himself until she organically falls in love with him herself; Marc keeps iterating a Meet Cute and impromptu date at a museum to try and find the exact sequence of events needed to manipulate Claudia into loving him, and eventually tries to kill her when she doesn't conform to his fantasies.
