Expy / Marvel Universe

Marvel Universe

Expy in this franchise.

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Comic Books

Comic Books

The following have their own pages:

• Spider-Man
• X-Men

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• Todd Ziller (hmmm, what happens if we change that "T" to a "G") appeared in The Avengers. As a product of a kludge Super-Soldier program, Project Troubleshooter, which shoved everything they could get into him (including Pym Particles, Mutant Growth Hormone, and etc.). Naturally this worked but in a real messy way and he became something that looked like the brother to a certain Toho monster. Mr. Ziller even has the code-name "American Kaiju".
  • Another expy to show in The Avengers, is the Shadow Colonel. He's a vampire in some very familiar black armour, German-style WWII helmet, a mask housing infra-red goggles with rebreather and a minigun. He's clearly influenced from Colonel Radec and Radec's own influence, the Kerberos Panzer Cop.
• Everett K. Ross from Christopher Priest's Black Panther was heavily based off of Chandler Bing. In fact, according to Priest, the character was even called "Chandler" in the early pre-production phase before they settled on an actual name.
  • Likewise, White Wolf was inspired by Kevin Spacey's character from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, even bearing an uncanny resemblance to Spacey and wearing a similar white business suit.
  • According to Priest's website, Kasper Cole and his supporting cast were all designed to be intentional Expies of Spider-Man and his supporting cast, just with a deconstructive slant. Kasper is a relatable Everyman like Peter Parker, but is even more of a screw-up. His father, "Black Jack" is an Uncle Ben-like figure Kasper looks to for advice, except he's a corrupt cop in jail for drug possession. His mother Ruth is a double Expy, serving as both a stereotypical Jewish Mother version of Aunt May and the Marvel equivalent of Doris Roberts' character from Everybody Loves Raymond. Finally, Kasper's girlfriend Gwen is the requisite Gwen Stacy/Mary Jane-type character (right down to even being named after the former), except she's Korean and their relationship is completely dysfunctional, with Gwen constantly nagging and annoying him instead of being a source of emotional support.
• Cable, who originally started as a Terminator Expy, has at least two Alternate Company Equivalent characters at DC: The Linear Man and Magog. The latter was meant to symbolize everything wrong with The Dark Age of Comic Books.
• Power Man and Iron Fist introduced Captain Hero, a Flying Brick who was actually a young boy with the ability to transform into an adult superhero. He was essentially Marvel's attempt at doing Shazam!.
• Conan the Barbarian: Janissa the Widowmaker for Red Sonja in the most recent Dark Horse Comics series.
• The Daredevil villainess Lady Bullseye is a deliberate Expy of Lady Snowblood, according to Ed Brubaker.
  • When Daredevil was first created and Stan Lee was writing him, Daredevil was little more than an Expy of Spider-Man. Both traveled by swinging around the city, both had an acrobatic fighting style, and both had some kind of enhanced senses that allowed them to spot danger. Daredevil's personality wasn't particularly distinctive either. Thankfully, future writers fleshed out the character. A lot.
• Monica Chang is an expy of Maria Hill, after a fashion. Both are hardcore female S.H.I.E.L.D. agents known for their biting attitude that replaced Nick Fury as the head of the organization at one point or another.
• The 2014 Deathlok series stars new character Henry Hayes, who is very blatantly modeled after the Mike Peterson version of Deathlok from the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV series. Not surprisingly, the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. comic book later used Hayes as part of the cast, having him fill a similar role to the one held by Peterson in the TV show. Why Marvel didn't simply have Mike become an outright Canon Immigrant is unknown.
• Doctor Doom was initially one to Silver Age Lex Luthor: Evil Genius who despises the hero because they blame them for their disfigurement (Lex blaming Superman for causing his baldness was canon at the time). Of course, Lex was eventually retooled from a mad scientist into a Corrupt Corporate Executive and Superman's connection to his baldness was dropped, while Doom remained the same. These days, you're more likely to hear people compare Lex to The Kingpin than anyone else.
• Marvel Comics' Donyell Taylor, originally codenamed Bandit, is an Expy of Marvel's own Gambit, a fact exploited shamelessly by an issue of Gambit's eponymous series when Bandit turns out to be romantically involved with Gambit's ex-wife Belladonna.
  • Night Thrasher (Bandit's brother and the leader of the New Warriors) was also an Expy of Batman, complete with the same basic origin and Crimefighting with Cash m.o.
• Ghost Rider villain Skinbender is plainly designed to heavily resemble Sailor Venus; true to this inspiration, she falls in love with Ghost Rider when they meet.
• In Howard the Duck vol 3, there is Suzi Pazuzu, wielder of the Doucheblade (Sara Pezzini, Witchblade), villains Ian Whippingham (Ian Nottingham) and Kenneth Flogg (Kenneth Irons), Cain and Abel of the Boarding House of Mystery, and the guests Splatter Gomorrah (Spider Jerusalem), Anthrax (Wesley Dodds, Sandman Mystery Theatre), Hellboozer (John Constantine, Hellblazer), The Interminable (The Endless, The Sandman), and Utah and Ravel (Nevada and Bolero, Nevada).
  • Steve Gerber's creator-owned character "Leonard the Duck" was an expy of Howard the Duck, also created by Gerber, but owned by Marvel Comics. In fact, Leonard's introduction was a complicated situation where Gerber tied a Spider-Man and Howard crossover he was writing for Marvel with a Savage Dragon and Destroyer Duck crossover he was writing for Image Comics, suggesting that Leonard actually is Howard under an assumed name, and the Howard the Duck who's appeared in Marvel Comics since then is a clone. The issue also mentions a Spider-Man expy, Spider-Crab.
• The Maggia in the Marvel Comics mythos was conceived as a thinly-veiled substitute for The Mafia likely due to fears about actual Mafia families taking umbrage at them being depicted in a less-than-flattering light. It didn't help that distribution of periodicals and comics had at least some mob involvement either. Indeed, these fears were proven true years later when mob-led protests against The Godfather took place, and the film's producers settled with the Colombo family as a compromise.
• Star Comics' Royal Roy was basically an Expy of Harvey Comics' Richie Rich, back when the latter company wasn't publishing any books in the early 1980s. It was even handled by the same artist/writer team that created Richie Rich. Royal Roy was however short-lived when Harvey Comics sued Marvel for copyright infringement, alleging that he was too similar to Richie Rich.
• The Sentry was originally an Expy of Hourman because he was Hourman, but was changed to be more like Superman so he could be a pastiche of Golden Age superheroes. His storyline in the first miniseries about his life falling apart because of an addiction to a Super Serum is right out of Hourman's playbook. Age of the Sentry gives him two villainous expies to contend with — Cranio, an Expy of Lex Luthor (as well as the Fantastic Four villain the Wizard), and the Void, here shown as an Expy of the Superman rogue Parasite.
• Dan Slott's run of Silver Surfer blatantly turns the Surfer into an Expy of the Doctor if he unambiguously lived in the Marvel Universe, being a superbeing who wanders around fighting evil, and shows a young Earthwoman with whom he has Unresolved Sexual Tension the wonders of the universe.
• Thanos was intentionally based off of Darkseid — large, bald, blue-haired cosmic alien conquerer with a brutal inevitabiltiy to his actions. According to Jim Starlin, Thanos was always going to be inspired by the New Gods - but originally he looked like the character Metron. Editor Roy Thomas told Starlin: "If you’re going to steal one of the New Gods, at least rip off Darkseid, the really good one!".
• Volstagg of the Warriors Three from The Mighty Thor is heavily based on William Shakespeare's Falstaff.
  • Hogun is visually based on Charles Bronson, although artists after Kirby rarely make this obvious. His stoic demeanour also riffs on the kind of characters Bronson often played.
• Ultron is an admitted Expy of Makino◊, an obscure villain from the Captain Video comic published by Fawcett Comics. According to Roy Thomas, Makino's smiling faceplate and hatred of humans directly inspired Ultron's design and personality.
• According to Brian Bendis, the Bombshells from Ultimate Spider-Man were based on the question "What if the Gilmore Girls had super powers?"
• The Marvel 2099 incarnation of the X-Men has a lot of members who are clearly evocative of some member of the original team. The most obvious are Xi'an (the paternal mentor figure a la Professor X), Skullfire (the leader with energy blasting powers and Power Incontinence, like Cyclops) and Bloodhawk (the mysterious, brooding loner with anger issues and claws, as in Wolverine).
• Detective Martin Soap, the comically unlucky cop from Garth Ennis's pre-MAX work on The Punisher, is an Expy for Detective Paul Bridges, a minor character from an early arc of Preacher.
• In the Disney Kingdoms series Figment 2, Chairman Austin Auckley seems to be one for Dr. Nigel Channing from the third version of Journey into Imagination due to being a stickler for rules and control but loosening up by the end of the story.

Live-Action Films

Live-Action Films

• Abigail Whistler from Blade: Trinity was created as a stand-in for Rachel van Helsing from the comic book The Tomb of Dracula.
• General Hager from Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer was originally supposed to be Nick Fury, but this had to be changed at the last minute due to rights issues (Fox owns film rights to the FF, while Marvel Studios has rights to Fury). It's especially obvious since one of Hager's conversations with Mr. Fantastic is taken almost word-for-word from a conversation between Mr. Fantastic and Nick Fury in Ultimate Extinction.
• Iron Man Films:
  • Raza from the first movie is an Arabic Expy of Wong-Chu from the comics.
  • Aldrich Killian from Iron Man 3 has almost nothing in common with his comic book counterpart, and has much more in common with Mallen, the Extremis-powered terrorist from Warren Ellis' Iron Man run. More significantly, he's an expy of the modern incarnation of the Mandarin; a suit-wearing criminal mastermind with dragon tattoos.
• X-Men: Days of Future Past:
  • The future Sentinels bear more than a passing resemblance to The Destroyer from Thor, with their height, metallic exterior, Nigh-Invulnerability, and faces that open up to reveal a Death Ray.
  • Their grey coloration, lack of facial features apart from monochromatic eyes and adaptability also evoke the version of Amazo from Justice League.
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine: In the comics, adamantium is a man-made metal that was created in a laboratory. The movie instead establishes that adamantium comes from a meteorite that crashed in a small African nation, where the locals worship it as a sacred treasure. That's pretty much exactly like vibranium, the Wakandan metal from the Black Panther and Captain America comics.

Live-Action TV

Live-Action TV

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
  • The Norse Paganists group in "The Well" seem to be pretty much the MCU version of the Wrecking Crew, a group of criminals from the comics who were similarly granted superhuman strength by a metal bar imbued with Asgardian magic, but lack real fighting skills.
  • Tobias Ford's teleporting ability by means of traveling through a hell dimension in a puff of smoke is unique to Nightcrawler from the X-Men.
  • Gordon's teleportation is similar to Nightcrawler's, even including the smoke effect.
  • Alisha's power of duplication is exactly the same as Jamie Madrox's.
  • Granted, Shock and Awe is a fairly generic superpower, but nevertheless Lincoln could be compared to the young X-Man Bolt.
  • Joey Gutierrez eems to be one for Sebastian Druid of the comic book version of the Secret Warriors, being a dorky Audience Surrogate who's introduced with no control of his powers but comes back some time later having gained competence and confidence. He even somewhat looks like Druid.
  • Hive is more or less a stand-in for Apocalypse; his backstory, immortality, goals, and overall personality have far more in common with that character than the comics Hive.
  • US Senator Ellen Nadeer's anti-Inhuman demagoguery and extremist attitude make her a very close Distaff Counterpart for Senator Robert Kelly from the X-Men film series (although Kelly was much more sympathetic than her and eventually changed his views about superpowered people).
  • Anton Ivanov His status as a human whose brain commands a near-inexhaustible supply of LMD bodies while kept on life support puts him in the same boat as the comics' Dum Dum Dugan.
  • Tucker Shockley seems to be the MCU version of Nitro, the alter ego of Robert Hunter. Both can transform into a volatile gaseous state and explode, and then reform their body. Hunter is a normal human who acquired his powers from Kree experimentation. Shockley gains his powers from being an Inhuman. Shockley still gains his powers from Kree experimentation, but here it's the same kind that created many of the show's other superhumans.
  • Ruby shares some similarities to the Sin, the daughter of Red Skull. This includes being raised by a woman with ties to Hydra. Both raised by a woman with ties to HYDRA (Hale for Ruby and Susan Scarbo a.k.a. Mother Night for Sin) and indoctrinated in its fascist ideology since childhood. Both psychotic and expert fighters. Both are the daughters of prominent members of HYDRA (though Ruby's says she was "engineered" and her actual parentage is never revealed). Ruby's combat outfit also looks similar to that of Sin's.
  • Sarge's transformed state has a few similarities with X-Men villain Ord.
  • Izel's backstory as a destructive monster from another dimension who hates all living things, combined with the legion of alien minions at her disposal, bring comic villain Annihilus to mind.
  • Nathaniel Malick seems to be the MCU version of the X-Men villain of Mister Sinister, who believed in cultivating and redistributing powers from mutants to those deemed worthy. They even share the same first name.
• Eclipse from The Gifted (2017) is based off of Sunspot from the New Mutants (particularly as he appeared in X-Men: Days of Future Past), being a Latino mutant with solar powers.
• Spider-Man (Japan)
  • In Episode 17, when Samson the wrestler turns into a Machine BEM, he resembles The Thing.
  • Saeko Yoshida, Amazoness' civilian identity, is a gender flipped version of J. Jonah Jameson.
  • Professor Monster is also loosely based on Doctor Doom.
• The Amazing Spider-Man (1978): Rita Conway for Glory Grant, and Doctor Moon for Miles Warren (the Jackal).

Western Animation

Western Animation

• Iron Man: The Animated Series had a Canon Foreigner villainess named Hypnotia, who was a thinly-veiled Expy of Enchantress from the Thor comics.
  • Elastika, another Canon Foreigner villainess, was an Expy of Zarana from G.I. Joe.
• Marvel Rising: Initiation: The comic book version of Spider-Gwen exists in an alternate universe where it was Gwen Stacy, not her nerdy best friend Peter Parker, who was bitten by the radioactive spider. Since the Marvel Rising cartoon takes place in the mainstream Marvel Universe (where Peter Parker is presumably already Spider-Man), Gwen's nerdy best friend is a Canon Foreigner named Kevin, who serves the same basic role. He even looks very similar to Peter and gets killed off like him too.
• In The Spectacular Spider-Man, Tombstone was made into an expy of the Kingpin, who couldn't be used due to legal issues.
• Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends:
  • When created for the cartoon, Firestar's civilian identity bore a resemblance to Mary Jane Watson. The resemblance was actually remarked upon in the comics sometime later. Likewise, her superhero powers make her a clear Expy of The Human Torch, the only difference being the gender swap to give Spidey an Amazing Female Friend.
  • Iceman's sister Lightwave was an expy of Aurora from the X-Men and Alpha Flight.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series:
  • The show has a minor recurring expy of Sharon Carter named "Agent X".
  • Lt. Terri Lee is basically a Race Lifted version of Jean DeWolff.
• Spider-Man: The New Animated Series
  • Lewis Wyler (Turbo Jet) is loosely based on Rocket Racer, mainly in being an African-American villain with technology that gives him super speed.
  • Talon is loosely based on Black Cat and was even originally intended to be this continuity's version of Black Cat before the MTV executives persuaded the creators to retool the character to be more like her voice actress.
  • Dr. Zellner reminds many fans of Miles Warren, the mastermind of the The Clone Saga.
• Colonel Moss from Wolverine and the X-Men (2009) was heavily based on Ultimate John Wraith, right down to having the same mustache and a backstory involving Wolverine scarring his face.
• Korvac from Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) is an expy of Thanos, even though Korvac himself originated in the comics as well. His status as a cosmic tyrant and the leader of the Chitauri both come to Thanos, especially the MCU version.
  • The show's version of Scorpion is a ninja with a grappling hook. Hmmm...