Recycled Soundtrack

A theme or element from a work's soundtrack (usually a movie) that gets reused in another work. It may either be an original piece, or a preexisting one that wasn't widely known until being used as soundtrack.

See also Recycled Trailer Music.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The music created for 4Kids Entertainment anime dubs would occasionally be reused in other series. Most notably, the theme which had originally been created to serve as Django's theme was latter reused in other series, including an episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fast Forward.
• The main theme used throughout the entire run of the Case Closed anime is a rearrangement of the main theme from the 1972 detective drama, Taiyou ni Hoero!. Katsuo Ohno is the BGM composer for both series and the reason for the similarity is because one of Case Closed's producers specifically asked Ohno to compose a theme similar to the one from Taiyo ni Hoero!.
• The English dub of Deltora Quest recycled some music from the English dubs of Hamtaro and Monster Rancher.
• Digimon:
  • Saban's English dub of Digimon Adventure recycled the score from its short-lived Masked Rider adaptation. The composer of all this, Udi Harpaz, also wrote some very similar-sounding music for the 1994 Spider-Man cartoon.
  • Also happened to a lesser extent with the show's original score and the score composed for Digimon: The Movie—a few pieces were re-used for 02, and, more egregiously, Tamers.
  • The standard battle theme from Digimon Adventure was taken from the last season of Sailor Moon.
• Dragon Ball:
  • In the two episodes that cross over with Dr. Slump, the music from Dr. Slump's first anime take over instead of Dragon Ball's current score. This was made possible because Kikuchi composed both!
  • The obscure Terebikko game is a notable example of this: for many parts of the anime, Kikuchi would compose new pieces that helped give each part of the story its own flavor. The Terebikko game involves time travelling back to past events, and appropriately re-use the pieces associated with the time periods they visit!
  • The second Ocean dub of Dragon Ball Z is a prime example of this. All the music was recycled, save for the opening theme song and perhaps one or two pieces from later in the dub. The Cell arc used music from the 1994 Ruby-Spears Mega Man cartoon, while the Buu arc also included tracks from the English version of Monster Rancher. Both these shows were previously dubbed by Ocean Productions. Interestingly, this has led some to believe that the earlier Saban BGM from Ocean's Saiyan / Namek Saga dub was also recycled from Mega Man, which is incorrect, although some of that music may have originated from Power Rangers.
  • In addition, Dragon Ball Z Kai had to reuse the entire soundtrack of the original Z series after it was discovered that Kenji Yamamoto's original soundtrack for the show wasn't exactly original. This sounds good in theory, except rather than try and match the original track placement, the pieces were paired with similar-sounding equivalents and then swapped in, meaning a lot of the musical development and themes were carried over and the track selection is still just as limited.
  • The second portion of Kai, The Final Chapters, reused a lot of music that Sumitomo composed for the two modern movies and the Super anime. This helps bridge the gap between Z and Super, but contrasts with "Kikuchi Kai" and anyone familiar with the original Z score.
• Idol Densetsu Eriko: "Ame no Highway" was later rearranged into Might Gaine's 2nd ending theme, "Black Diamond" , both songs were composed by Nobuhiko Kashiwara.
• Idol Angel Yokoso Yoko: Budget strains meant that original music for the show couldn't be commisioned, hence many songs from Idol Densetsu Eriko being re-used.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The fourth Part; Diamond is Unbreakable, will occationally reuse music from Stardust Crusaders, examples can be seen here.
• Monster plays an instrumental version of "Over the Rainbow" in one of its episodes, though this is thematically relevant since it's the song a character's father used to play on his radio station in the past.
• It's common for certain Pretty Cure seasons to reuse instrumental tracks from its predecessors. This was particularly egregious from 2009 to 2012, when the score was done by Yasuharu Takanashi.
• Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance used new renditions of the 1995 music tracks from Neon Genesis Evangelion along with several tracks from His and Her Circumstances^note Hideaki Anno's next series, with music by the same composer and one track from the 1979 semiclassic The Man Who Stole the Sun. Also, in 3.0, Gods Message is a modified version of Light of Babylon from Sagisu's score for Nadia, Out Of The Dark is a slightly modified variant of Stand Up Be Strong from Sagisu's Bleach score, the main theme is a modified variant of Hedgehog's Dilemma from 1.0 and the original series, and in the original series, When I Find Peace of Mind was a modified version of "The Distant Macross" from Sagisu's score for Macross II: Lovers Again.
  • The "Decisive Battle" theme from the original series is actually "007" by John Barry from the James Bond movie From Russia with Love.
• Saban Entertainment's English dubs of anime series such as The Littl' Bits, Maya the Bee, The Noozles, etc., reuse many songs between each other, sometimes one show's theme tune even appears in another.
• Sailor Moon: Mamoru Chiba's accordion-driven leitmotif was a remix of a piece from Goldfish Warning!, which had preceded Sailor Moon in its timeslot and even featured much of its initial staff.
• Sunrise reused parts of the soundtrack for the Captain Harlock movie Arcadia of my Youth in the 1985 Dirty Pair TV anime.

Films — Animation

• Disney Animated Canon:
  • The music played during the scene from The Sword in the Stone where Mad Madame Mim turns into a dragon was actually recycled music from Sleeping Beauty that played during the scene where Maleficent turns into a dragon again.
  • The 60s and 70s era Disney movies (Scored by George Bruns) had a re-occuring "sad" motif. Its first appearance is in 101 Dalmatians, when after the puppies have been kidnapped and the humans have exhausted all legal options, Pongo tells Perdita that it's now up to them. In Sword in the Stone, it plays when Wart is alone in the destroyed kitchen after being told he won't be going to London, and in Robin Hood (1973), it plays during the scene where Prince John is fuming about "The Phony King of England" after having thrown the entire town in jail for it, to name a few examples.
  • The overture for The Jungle Book (1967) was originally written for the 1964 New York World's Fair as music for an exhibit of miniatures at the Ford Pavilion based on different parts of the world.
    • The music played during Baloo's Disney Death at the end of The Jungle Book (1967) was actually recycled from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs during the ending where the seven dwarfs put Snow White's (supposedly) dead body into the glass coffin.
    • And like 101 Dalmatians, The Sword in the Stone and Robin Hood, it also used the "sad" motif score by George Bruns, but unlike them, it uses it twice.
  • About halfway through Aladdin, during the scene where the Genie is looking through his cookbook, a brief snippet of the song "Under the Sea" from the earlier Disney film The Little Mermaid can be heard when Genie can be seen looking at a recipe for "Alaskan King Crab", causing him to pull Sebastian out of said cookbook.
  • "King of Pride Rock" from The Lion King (1994) (specifically, the bit from Simba's Awesome Moment of Crowning) plays near the end of the English version of Shaolin Soccer.
  • Compare the soundtracks of Dinosaur, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Treasure Planet.
  • Stitch! The Movie, the pilot to Lilo & Stitch: The Series, re-used a handful of Alan Silvestri's score from the original Lilo & Stitch.
• In Asterix in Britain, Vladimir Cosma reused part of the music he composed for the Olympic torch relay scene in Ace of Aces for the scene where Julius Caesar's Roman army conquers Britannia during the Britons' weekend break.
• Dingo Pictures' films recycle countless musical cues between each other, such as the jungle tune from Animal Soccer World, Wabuu's leitmotif and the Creepy Circus Music from The Countryside Bears and by extension Wabuu the Cheeky Raccoon, and the Sad Trombone whenever something bad happens.
• A few background music cues in Doug's First Movie were originally used in 101 Dalmatians: The Series. Both shows were created by Jumbo Pictures and were co-composed by Dan Sawyer (Sawyer worked with Fred Newman on Doug and Mark Watters on Dalmatians).
• The Korean infamous animated film Super Kid borrowed some music from the video game Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.
• The "Frozen Fever" song "Making Today a Perfect Day" reutilizes part of the melody of a Cut Song written for Frozen called "Life's Too Short".
• Rango takes a few cues from Pirates of the Caribbean, at one point taking an entire song. One scene also uses a track from Danny Elfman's score for The Kingdom.
• During the scene in Toy Story 3 when the toys are running along the conveyor belt, the music played in Monsters, Inc. when Sulley thinks Boo is going through a trash compactor was re-used by Randy Newman. It isn't fully re-used but it sounds very similar to it.

Films — Live-Action

• Basil Poledouris' score for Cherry 2000 has the theme played during the action sequence at Hoover Dam, which got mostly recycled into a more recognizable main theme: that of Robocop.
• Jerry Goldsmith usually averted this trope like a champ, but there were exceptions:
  • His main theme for the unsold pilot Crosscurrent was repurposed for the main title of Escape from the Planet of the Apes. It's been speculated that as these projects were scored during a difficult time in his life (he was going through a divorce, and his mother had passed away), reusing the theme for a relatively minor project could have helped him get out of a compositional hole.
  • The main theme for The Russia House had previously been written for Wall Street before Goldsmith left the project due to Creative Differences with Oliver Stone (he never did any score for the movie) and then used in his thrownout score for Alien Nation. The third time was the charm.
• The iconic Ennio Morricone piece "Chi Mai" from Maddalena (1971) has been used several times:
  • The 1978 BBC sci-fi serial An Englishman's Castle
  • The British TV show The Times and Life of David Lloyd George (1981). Brits tend to associate it with this as it became a hit single off the back of the show, explicitly billed as "The Theme From...".
  • Used as a leitmotif in the French film Le Professionnel (1981).
  • It was later recycled again in an entirely unrelated TV commercial for dog food.
  • The dog food commercial was itself parodied in Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, by reusing the track yet again.
• The songs "Arrival of the Birds" and "Transformation" by The Cinematic Orchestra (from The Crimson Wing: Mystery of the Flamingos) were reused in the soundtrack for The Theory of Everything.
• "Don't Be What They Made You", which plays over Logan's death in Logan, is reused in Deadpool 2 during Wade's own death scene. Fitting, as he previously mocked Logan by telling the audience he was going to die, too.
• Three of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1973)'s songs were reused from the 1968 opera adaptation After You, Mr. Hyde, including "Something Very, Very Good", its reprise, and "I Bought a Bicycle."
• The movie 9/30/55, about the effect James Dean's demise has on various people, was scored by Leonard Rosenman using the main themes from the Dean movies East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause (both of which were also scored by Rosenman).
• In an example closer to Recycled Score, a portion of the Fistful of Dollars score is featured in another Spaghetti Western, This Man Cant Die.
• "Oye" from Alan Silvestri's score for The Mexican is heard in Hannah Montana: The Movie when the English reporter eats something way too hot for him. Ironically, Silvestri was supposed to score this movie as well but due to a scheduling conflict John Debney replaced him (although Silvestri and Glen Ballard did write the song "Butterfly Fly Away," which Miley and her dad sing onscreen).
• Five tracks from Alan Silvestri's score to MouseHunt show up in Fred Claus due to the fact that the actual score (written by Christophe Beck) was not finished in time for the release of the film.
• Elliot Goldenthal recycled a track from Alien³ and the fight music from Demolition Man in Batman Forever. He did it again with Batman & Robin, not only reusing music from Demolition Man, but recycling the themes for Two-Face and Chase Meridian for Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy, respectively.
• And staying with Alan Silvestri, although Avengers: Age of Ultron was scored by two A-list film composers in the forms of Brian Tyler and Danny Elfman the movie still reuses some Silvestri music from The Avengers, most notably his main theme during the end credits and "Helicarrier" for the scene where said massive flying machine arrives to help get the citizens off the rising city before Ultron can drop it and launch his Extinction Level Event.
• When Carl Davis added scores for Silent films, he would incorporate music he made for said film's sequences in the documentary series Hollywood. Among the films include Ben-Hur (1925), The Big Parade, The Crowd, Flesh and the Devil, The Wind (1928), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), and Greed. In the case of The Thief of Bagdad (1924), Davis used music from Rimsky-Korsakov.
• "Snowflake Music" is a track by Mark Mothersbaugh from the movie Bottle Rocket, which was used again in Rushmore, also directed by Wes Anderson.
• Soundtrack from Universal's Bride of Frankenstein were reused in Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials.
• The Cannon Group, being the Cannon Group, reused music throughout their productions - such as the King Solomon's Mines example listed below, Hercules II (which reused the music Pino Donaggio composed for the first film and Braddock: Missing in Action III (which backed up Jay Chattaway's original score with music from the first movie and Invasion U.S.A. (1985), among others).
• If you listen, you'll notice that "Building the Crate" and "The Chickens are Revolting" from Chicken Run are in Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous. They play while Gracie and Sam are at Treasure Island to rescue Cheryl and Stan. In fact, a whole load of cues from other films are in this one.
• Bogus, which was scored by Rene Dupere, reused "Kalimando" from Cirque du Soleil's Mystère.
• The Outing uses the intro to the theme from Dreamaniac as its opening credits music.
• Free Guy: In the film's penultimate scene, composer Christophe Beck reuses his own score from the climax of Paperman.
• The Godfather's Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score (emphasis on the original) was withdrawn when the Academy realized Nina Rota had recycled themes from scores he had written for other movies. Most notably, the love theme was taken from an earlier movie called Fortunella.
• Akira Ifukube, one of Godzilla's Four Fathers, did this a lot, with much of his score from Great Monster Varan being reused and modified in countless films decades later. In his scores for the Godzilla movies of the 1990's, he would recycle dozens of themes from his Showa Period work, include those from films that TOHO had no part in, such as the Daimajin films. How successful he was at this is up for debate, but due to the obscurity of some titles (not to mention the butchering that many of the older scores went through in the 1950's and 1960's when they were being imported to the US), not many people here in the United States would even recognize that these themes were recycled until the advent of the Internet and YouTube made it easy to listen and compare soundtracks.
• Hans Zimmer used themes from The Rock in at least Gladiator and the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy.
  • Roll Tide, from Crimson Tide, is reused in Deep Blue Sea.
  • "Too Many Notes, Not Enough Rests" from Drop Zone got reused as "He's A Pirate" in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
• John Williams:
  • Due to his busy schedule in 2002, Williams wrote a limited amount of material for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. He managed to compose a few new themes ("Gilderoy Lockhart", "Moaning Myrtle", etc.) and then someone else (William Ross, specifically) was hired to create the Chamber of Secrets soundtrack out of the new themes and the themes from the previous movie, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. As a result, Chamber recycles a lot of musical cues from Philosopher's Stone. For example, the pixie scene uses the same music as the flying keys scene. And the music from the end scene in the Great Hall is a slightly remixed version of "Leaving Hogwarts" from Philosopher's Stone. In fact, it seems Ross had gone into Williams' non-Potter work. The music used for the Quidditch trench chase sounds a whole lot like "The Chase Through Coruscant" from Attack of the Clones. (In subsequent Potter films, music from previous installments other than "Hedwig's Theme" was used very sparingly, resulting in Voldemort having no less than three Leitmotifs at different points in the series.)
  • When the Boggart turns into a giant snake in Prisoner of Azkaban, John Williams quotes the snake theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
  • Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull features the low ostinato from Williams' 'War of the Worlds (2005) score in one scene.
  • For Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the semi-retired Williams was originally only meant to write new themes that would be interpreted by William Ross. Delays in production meant Williams found time to write more original material than expected, albeit with many cues built on earlier Indiana Jones scores. Notably, the unreleased second half of the Tuk Tuk chase extensively remixes the Venice chase music from Last Crusade and also features a section similar to the droid factory cue from Attack of the Clones.
• The music for the "Jews in Space" segment of History of the World Part I is reused as the title song for Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
• The Hunt for Red October, scored by Basil Poledouris, used a track from his score for No Man's Land.
• The main theme of the Japanese movie Yumeji was reused as the main character's Leitmotif in In the Mood for Love.
• James Horner re-used one of the minor themes from Willow in the soundtrack for Once Upon a Forest.
  • He also re-used parts of the Willow soundtrack yet again in The Mask of Zorro.
  • "Ripley's Rescue" from Aliens saw Horner re-use part of the Klingon theme from Star Trek III. Similarly, "Bishop's Countdown" (which itself gets used as a piece of Recycled Trailer Music) borrows from "Kirk's Explosive Reply" from his score for Star Trek II.
  • Parts of the track "Resolution And Hyperspace" from Aliens was used toward the end of the Michael Kamen-scored Die Hard (as was a track from John Scott's score for Man on Fire - the original, not the remake). "Futile Escape" also reuses a recurring motif that Horner first employed in the horror film Wolfen.
  • Also for Aliens, due to Horner being so rushed he was unable to complete the score to his satisfaction, two tracks from Jerry Goldsmith's Alien score^note (which ironically had some its own music replaced by excerpts from Goldsmith's score for Freud and Howard Hanson's 2nd symphony in the final cut ...) are used during the scene where Ripley and Newt flee from the Queen ("The Recovery" and "Face Hugger").
  • The Spiderwick Chronicles: Horner reused the tracks "One Last Wish" and "Casper's Lullaby" from the 1995 Casper movie.
  • Horner was notorious for his repetition — certainly all composers do so, but rarely to the extent that he did.
  • And indeed Horner's score for Battle Beyond the Stars turns up in several Roger Corman efforts in the 1980s. Causing Mystery Science Theater 3000 to joke that James Cameron hired James Horner for Titanic (1997) because "he wanted that Wizards of the Lost Kingdom sound."
  • Very common in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Both Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith directly borrow from The Phantom Menace numerous times (notably, various pieces of Phantom score are tracked into the arena battle in Clones, as well as Anakin and Padme's arrival on Geonosis and numerous other points, while Sith uses cues from Phantom's Podrace scene and climax in the opening act). Sith also uses unused cues from Clones to score the attack on the Jedi Temple and the battles of Kashyyyk and Utaupau; ironically, the cues were originally intended for the aforementioned arena sequence.
  • The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker invoke this with brief, poignant uses of score from A New Hope ("Burning Homestead") and Return of the Jedi ("Vader's Death"), respectively, in a manner that stands out from the films' original music. In a more typical use of this trope, several of the uses of "The Emperor's Theme" in Skywalker are tracked in from Revenge of the Sith.
  • Williams also frequently reuses themes in ways that don't reflect their initial intent. The famous "Duel of the Fates" theme was used as a theme for Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace, but is later used to symbolize Anakin and Sidious in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. In The Last Jedi, Williams uses a variation of Revenge of the Sith's "Battle of the Heroes" theme for the bombing sequence in the opening battle. Even the "Force Theme" itself was initially intended as the theme for Obi-Wan Kenobi.
• Kick-Ass lifts liberally from John Murphy's earlier work on Sunshine and 28 Days Later. His original score had been rejected and after that, two more scores were rejected before a score was finally settled on shortly before opening. In the end, works from five different composers (Murphy, Michael Kamen proteges Ilan Eshkeri and Marius de Vries, Hans Zimmer protege Henry Jackman and Basil Poledouris protege Christopher Lennertz) and many temp tracks (such as work from Ennio Morricone and Danny Elfman) became the score.
• The films Kingdom of the Spiders and Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold respectively reused Jerry Goldsmith's scores to episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959) and the 1985 film King Solomon's Mines without his permission. The latter film also had additional music based on Goldsmith's work.
• Staying with Goldsmith: The Last Hard Men originally had a Leonard Rosenman score, 20th Century-Fox decided to replace it with re-recorded Goldsmith cues from 100 Rifles, Stagecoach,Rio Conchos and Morituri... then they decided to just reuse those cues!
• The 1998 movie Recoil reuses music from LA Heat, as both were made by PM Entertainment.
• The Little Shop of Horrors reused much of the soundtrack from The Wasp Woman.
• Leonard Rosenman reused portions of his "Fellowship" leitmotif from The Lord of the Rings in the main title theme for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
• Bruce Broughton's main theme for Lost in Space sounds very similar to Marahute's motif from his score for The Rescuers Down Under.
• Man on Fire, Black Hawk Down and Gladiator have similar soundtracks. Justified in that all three films were directed by the Scott brothers (Riddley and Tony), and all films used the talents of Lisa Gerrard's vocals for several of the arrangements used in all three films.
• All of the following Philip Glass compositions were reused in The Truman Show: "Anthem - Part 2" from Powaqqatsi, "The Beginning" and "Living Waters" from from Anima Mundi, and "Opening" from Mishima.
• Philip Glass's "Pruit Igoe" and "Prophecies" from Koyaanisqatsi are reused for Dr. Manhattan's origin flashback in Watchmen.
• While Quentin Tarantino movies frequently lift music from other films as part of the director's style, The Hateful Eight is a notable standout, as the film did actually have an official composer - Ennio Morricone, his first Hollywood film score in many year (and his last before his death) - but also made extensive use of unused soundtrack cues from Morricone's score from The Thing (1982) (most notably, the track "Bestiality" is used during the coffee sequence) and Exorcist II: The Heretic. Ironically this would be Morricone's only competitive Oscar-winer.
• The Direct to Video sequel to Richie Rich, Richie Rich's Christmas Wish had a song called "My Way", which was previously heard in the Power Rangers Turbo episode "The Song of Confusion" as "Confusion".
• Robot Holocaust reuses music by Richard Band made for Laserblast (ironically both movies would be lampooned in Mystery Science Theater 3000) although slowed down by 8 octaves.
• Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows reuses a track from Ennio Morricone's Two Mules for Sister Sara when Holmes rides such an animal. Meanwhile, much of Hans Zimmer's score resembles Morricone's Bluebeard.
• The Spider-Man sequels both tracked in music from their predecessor(s) (which really annoyed Danny Elfman, who refused to return for the second sequel — and didn't reunite with Sam Raimi until Oz the Great and Powerful).
• The first two Superman: The Movie sequels had Ken Thorne adapt the John Williams score from the first movie - the producers originally hoped Williams could return to score Superman II, but Williams found he couldn't work with director Richard Lester.
• The Universal Horror films Dracula (1931) and The Mummy (1932) use the same arrangement of music from Swan Lake for their main titles.
• Blade Runner reuses the track "Memories of Green" from soundtrack composer Vangelis' 1980 album See You Later. Meanwhile, parts of the composer's score to the 1975 Mexican film Do You Hear the Dogs Barking?, including the main theme, re-appear in Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, with said main theme accompanying a sequence in episode 12 ("Encyclopedia Galactica") describing a potential first contact scenario as well as playing over the end credits of episode 4 ("One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue").
• In Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022), the fight between Sonic and Knuckles briefly uses the track "I Shrink, Therefore I Am" from Christophe Beck's score for Ant-Man and the Wasp.
• Klaus Schulze's score for Next of Kin (1982) consists of a combination of original compositions and material re-used from the artist's prior studio albums. "Death of an Analogue" from Dig It is used as the main theme, while "Georg Trakl" from X and "Silent Running" from Trancefer also make appearances at various points in the film. Speaking of Klaus Schulze, "Freeze" from the 1983 Austrian horror film Angst was later re-used in Michael Mann's Manhunter, where it appears during the scene where Graham visits Lector in his cell.
• The soundtrack to the 1979 German disaster film The Hamburg Syndrome consists entirely of tracks from Jean-Michel Jarre's signature albums Oxygène and Équinoxe (but primarily the latter) along with existing jazz compositions by Erich Ferstl.
• In Napoleon, Martin Phipps reused "Russia" (which plays during the invasion of Russia by Napoléon Bonaparte in 1812) from his work on 2016's War and Peace (which covers the same events, although in the case of that miniseries it was used for a charge in 1805).

Live-Action TV

• Bob Stewart recycled the theme from his short-lived 1970s game Blankety Blanks on an equally short-lived game from the 1980s, Double Talk.
  • Similarly, the "plonk plonk" timer on Pyramid, which is actually considered part of the soundtrack, was recycled on Go and Double Talk.
  • The theme to another one of Stewart's shows, Jackpot, was later used on This Week in Baseball.
  • In reverse, the Stewart series Chain Reaction borrowed its theme from the notorious flop Supertrain (both shows aired on NBC and got cancelled quickly, though Chain Reaction was cancelled for a morning talk show with David Letterman, not because it was bad).
• Three of the Family Channel's mid-90's game shows - Boggle, Shuffle and Jumble - used the exact same Theme Tune. (And the same set, host, announcer, rules...)
• The UK version of The Apprentice uses music from The Sims 3. Compare the music at the start of this clip with this. It's also used some of Murray Gold's music from Doctor Who, such as "Gridlocked Cassinis" and "My Angel Put The Devil In Me".
• Beakman's World recycled a few cues from the game show version of Scrabble, on which Beakman producer Marijane Miller was once a contestant. (Also odd, considering how the show was produced by Sony- which owns quite a few game shows, but not Scrabble, which belongs to Hasbro and Fremantle Media.)
• Several of the background music for Big Time Rush, most notably the "sneaky" music, is reused in 100 Things to Do Before High School.
• The Doctor Who track "Which One is the Flesh?" was remixed and used in promotional videos for the One World Trade Center observation deck.
  • In addition, the minisode Time Crash reused much of the incidental music from Seasons 19 through 21 as a nod to the Fifth Doctor, who guest starred in the minisode.
• The Theme Tune from Alex Trebek's Double Dare was reused on Jim Perry's Card Sharks a year after the former's cancellation. Both shows even had virtually-identical openings. Meanwhile, the Eubanks/Rafferty version also recycled the MG/HS theme as a car theme.
• Food Network had a Christmas Cookie Challenge series, and when the bakers were explaining the cookies they planned to bake, the soundtrack would switch to the "Neighborhood" theme from The Sims 2
• Many, many, MANY TV shows from the '50s to the '80s reused music cues, often (but not always) written for the actual series. The most dramatic case was The Fugitive, which didn't have any episodes scored at all - it relied on a specially written library and CBS stock music.^note Which may have been why the first print run of the first season's DVD release (controversially) replaced the main soundtrack with sound-alike music.
• The theme from College Mad House was later used on the Lifetime/PAX Game Show Shop 'Til You Drop (which would later lend one of its own prize cues to the USA Network's Quicksilver as its theme song); all three we co-produced by Scott Stone and/or David Stanley.
• The theme from the original Japanese version of Iron Chef was made up of score written by Hans Zimmer (“Show Me Your Firetruck”) for the Backdraft movie soundtrack.
• Jeopardy! would later adopt the "rock" rendition of its theme, used on Rock 'n Roll Jeopardy!, for its special tournaments involving younger players, such as their Teen Tournament.
• The Joe Schmo Show, a parody reality-competition program by the same company and many of the same individuals who worked on The Mole used many of the musical themes created for that program, but without any on-screen credit to the original composer, David Michael Frank.
• For a set of tournament episodes, The Joker's Wild recycled the theme from Break the Bank (1976).
• LA Heat reuses music from PM Entertainment's other movies such as Pure Danger, The Sweeper, and others.
• The Lola & Virginia live action sequel series made in Italy uses the Big Boo's Carousel theme from Super Mario 64 in a pair of episodes as a "silly scene" leitmotif.
• Lost reuses the submarine theme from Medal of Honor. Both works were scored by Michael Giacchino.
• Some of the soundtrack from Masked Rider was later used in Saban's dub of Digimon, and again in Jim Button.
• Ireland's Fittest Family used tracks from Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes.
• The Outer Limits (1963) is all over this trope. Music composed for other series was incorporated into the show, and music composed for the show wound up in other series (and even a couple of movies). Specifics:
  • Some of Dominic Frontiere's music for the first season (including portions of the theme song) originated with his previous project, the New Old West series Stoney Burke.
  • Frontiere's scores for the show were reused for other series such as The Fugitive (especially during the fourth season), The Invaders (1967) and The Rat Patrol, as well as the infamous Esperanto film Incubus.
  • When the series' creative crew was overhauled for the second season, Frontiere was replaced by Harry Lubin. Lubin's theme for the series was a reworking of "Weird", which he'd composed for an episode of The Loretta Young Show, and was then used as the theme for One Step Beyond (1959).
  • Some of Lubin's Outer Limits music was recycled in the B-Movie thriller Nurse Sherri.
• Peaky Blinders prominently features the music of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, most notably in its use of "Red Right Hand" as a Real Song Theme Tune, but also in its frequent reuse of the movie soundtracks by Cave and bandmate Warren Ellis, particularly The Proposition's score.
• The theme to the 1997 game show Peer Pressure would be reused two years later for Pressure 1, another game show made by the same company. The two were often paired together in syndication, with the former show retitled Pressure 2 to justify the latter's strange title.^*Amusingly, Pressure 2 was simply reruns of Peer Pressure with awkward edits to shoehorn the new title in.
• Some music cues from The Price Is Right have fallen under this trope:
  • A remix of the Celebrity Charades theme cropped up at some point.
  • The theme to The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour is presently used as a new-car cue.
  • Another cue is recycled from Edd Kalehoff's "Grandeur" news music pack, made for the CBS flagship, WCBS-2 in New York, in 2000.
  • An early new-car cue became the theme to Family Feud when that show debuted in 1976. Price later brought back the last few bars as an introductory sting for the first playing of Plinko, and has used it since 1980 to introduce Grand Game. What's more, Trivia Trap also used the last bars as a victory cue. Finally, Feud retired that theme in 1994, but brought it back in the 2000s.
  • The Bob Cobert theme used on the original Price from 1961-65 (titled either "A Gift For Giving" or "Window Shopping", depending on who you ask) would be used on two NBC games afterward — Snap Judgment (1967) and You're Putting Me On (1969).
• Red Dwarf's Season VII finale ends with the cast finally returning to the titular ship after spending the entire past two seasons looking for it. It was notable at the time because the theme hadn't been heard in the show since at least Season III and had falled out of use.
• Red Dwarf: Back to Earth re-used a lot of pieces from earlier seasons to save on budget, which was notably shoestring even for a Red Dwarf production.
• The Return Of The Condor Heroes 2006 is an especially bizarre example. Almost all of the series' music was taken from other works. Some of it comes from films — Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, Van Helsing, Master and Commander, Harry Potter, Batman Begins, and King Arthur (2004) — while other parts come from anime like Rurouni Kenshin and Inuyasha.
• Second Chance shared its theme with the 1976 version of I've Got a Secret. The same theme was later used on the Australian version of Family Feud in the 1980s.
• Justified in Shuriken Sentai Ninninger. Episode seven makes liberal use of tracks from the last two Ninja Sentai. Because the leads from said past Sentai are playing Guest-Star Party Member for the week.
• The opening theme to Star Trek: The Next Generation is a combination of Alexander Courage's theme from Star Trek: The Original Series and Jerry Goldsmith's theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, as arranged by Dennis McCarthy. Originally, McCarthy had only planned on using the opening fanfare of the TOS theme with a new composition, which was included on the "Encounter at Farpoint" soundtrack album. The alternate theme became a recurring Leitmotif for Picard in episodes scored by McCarthy. He also favored using the TOS fanfare in his episode scores, while Ron Jones often incorporated the TMP theme.
• Tokkei Winspector reuses parts of its soundtrack from Chōjinki Metalder.
• The music score by Barry Gray for UFO (1970) reused music cues from Gerry Anderson's previous shows (See Puppet Shows below). Space: 1999 did this as well until Gray was replaced with Derek Wadsworth in Season 2.
• Ultra Series: Series' BGMs are re-used across series in different continuities almost all the time. Most notable when an old hero/villain makes a reappearance after their debut series. This practice did not start up until Ultraman Ace when the modern continuity was fully established.
• Because of a composers' strike in 1971, Warner Bros. Television had the Made-for-TV Movie The Eyes Of Charles Sand "scored" with Henry Mancini's music from Wait Until Dark (and reportedly Ron Grainer's for The Ωmega Man). Mancini was understandably not happy about it, since it had been done without his knowledge or permission, and sued the producers. (He won.)
• What Would You Do? used many of the same background cues as its sister Nick show, Wild and Crazy Kids. Both were produced by Woody Fraser and used music composed by Alan Ett.
• An early prize cue from Wheel of Fortune, retired in the early 1990s, became the theme to Merv Griffin's Crosswords over 15 years later. Conversely, one of the other prize cues on Wheel was the theme to the 1978 version of Jeopardy!

Music

• In the video for Mariah Carey's "Heartbreaker," the Catfight between Mariah and her rival Bianca features some of Lalo Schifrin's score for Enter the Dragon.
• Johann Sebastian Bach was known to do this on occasion:
  • Likely none of his works was recycled more than Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd (the "Hunting Cantata"). The thirteenth movement was tapped and arranged twice, first as the basis for the Canonic Trio Sonata in F for Violin, Oboe, and Continuo (which is itself often appended to the end of the original movement as a postlude), and then as the second movement in the religious cantata Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt. The seventh movement was also reused in that same cantata as its fourth movement. And finally, the opening of the fifteenth movement also opens the first movement of Man singet mit Freuden vom Sieg.
  • The Preludio from the Partita No. 3 for unaccompanied violin was arranged for organ and orchestra in the cantatas Herr Gott, Beherrscher aller Dinge (whose music has survived in fragmentary form) and Wir danken dir, Gott.
• In an odd case combining this and Rewritten Pop Version, two songs from The Noddy Shop were reused in other works that its' songwriter, Dennis Scott, was involved in:
  • "Bubble Trouble", the song from "Following Directions" that Johnny Crawfish sings when Kate accidentally pours bubble bath in his tank, is used in Dennis Scott's one-man show Just Imagine.
  • "Thank You For Being You", the song the toys and Johnny sing to thank Noah in the Season 1 finale "Noah's Leaving", was re-recorded for a album themed around Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.

Professional Wrestling

• WCW was notorious for doing this:
  • Rey Misterio Jr.'s theme song was originally used by Zodiac, and then inherited by Loch Ness.
  • Steve "Mongo" McMichael's theme song was given to Hak (aka ECW's The Sandman) after Mongo left WCW.
  • La Parka's slap-bass theme song was originally written for Sabu
  • Dennis Rodman used "Voodoo Child", which was used by Hulk Hogan during his nWo run, as his entrance music during his 1999 run. Rodman had previously tag-teamed with Hogan against Diamond Dallas Page and Karl Malone.
  • The West Texas Rednecks' second theme "Good Ol' Boys is a pitched-down version of Jeff Jarrett's first theme with vocals added.
  • Psicosis' theme song was originally created for a masked jobber team called The Creatures.
  • After the Insane Clown Posse left WCW and Vampiro quit using their song "Take It" as his theme, it was passed on to PG13.
  • In his autobiography, Chris Jericho wrote that he heard his original WCW theme on an NBA on TNT broadcast and couldn't keep himself from calling it "Basketball Highlights #12" afterwards.
  • Goldberg's legendary theme "Invasion", was previously used by Pat Tanaka.
• Although WWE engages in this less often than WCW did, it's still been known to happen
  • Kurt Angle's theme song was originally written for The Patriot.
  • "Somebody Call My Momma" was first used by Ernest "The Cat" Miller. Years later, it would be used by Brodus Clay and his Funkadactyls Naomi and Cameron as well as Tensai when he formed a tag team with Clay called "Tons of Funk". Finally, it would be used by Xavier Woods until he joined The New Day. Naomi would use the song in her solo career until she turned heel in 2015 and switched to "Amazing".
  • CM Punk's themes were both recycled. This Fire Burns was the Judgement Day 2006 theme, also used once for Randy Orton. Cult Of Personality was used for a "Stone Cold" Steve Austin video package.
  • Even Hulk Hogan's most well-known theme "Real American" was originally written for the tag team of Barry Windham and Mike Rotunda, the U. S. Express. Hogan's original theme (also used as the title theme for Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling), meanwhile, was an instrumental version of Bonnie Tyler's song "Ravashing" with chants of "Hulk! Hulk!" overlaid.
  • Ricky Steamboat's theme "Dragon" that he's used since his 2009 return was originally used by Último Dragón.
  • AJ Styles's WWE theme, "Phenomenal", was originally intended to be used by James Storm, but Storm left NXT before it could be used.
• This happens slightly more with WWE Divas, with the occasional piece of music, such as "Top Spin" seemingly being passed around at random.
  • Kelly Kelly used a song called "Holla," which was originally used by Candice Michelle.
  • Alicia Fox uses a song called "Party," which was originally used by Maria back during her debut in 2004.
  • Maria Kanellis herself later used a song called "With Legs Like That," which was intended for Stacy Kiebler, who left before it could be used. This created something of an artifact since, while Kiebler is known for being exceptionally leggy, Maria wasn't, and in fact often wrestled in long pants.
• Taryn Terrell first used "A Girl Like That" as her entrance music in WWE, which was originally used by Torrie Wilson. Then she used a track called "Insatiable" which was later used by Layla.
• Michelle McCool's theme "Not Man Enough For Me" was also previously used by Torrie Wilson. Then Layla used it after Michelle left.
• Even TNA is guilty of this. Velvet Sky's first entrance track was later used by ODB.
• According to That Other Wiki, Ring of Honor first gave Lio Rush "Not Dead Yet" as an entrance theme, which long time fans would recognize as belonging to TJ Perkins beforehand. The more distinctive "Feel The Rush" was used by the time they had decided to enter Rush into the Top Prospect Tournament.
• Candy White debuted in LLF using a theme previously used by Lady Jaguar, although it makes more sense for White than Jaguar, and White switched to her Pandora Pecadora gimmick not long afterwards, suggesting it was just a one time thing.
• The theme song to most of WWE's Money in the Bank events is a song created for Donald Trump during his guest appearances on WWE television.
• The Street Profits' theme "Bring the Swag" was originally Team B.A. D.'s "Unity" with a different chorus.
• The Alliance would use Drowning Pool's "Bodies" immediately after it was used for Summerslam 2001. It would eventually be reused again in 2005, and later in 2006 as the theme for the two ECW One Night Stand events, before becoming the de facto theme for the revived ECW brand later on.
• Marilyn Manson's "The Beautiful People" was first used briefly for WWE Raw in March 1999 when it became Raw is War. More known today as the second theme for WWE SmackDown that introduced the fist and mirrors in 2001.
• Ezekiel Jackson's theme "Domination" is a remix of the theme used for the Brawl for All tournament in 1998.

Puppet Shows

• Gerry Anderson's Supermarionation series such as Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons all had music composed by Barry Gray, so it was common to hear music pieces from previous series to appear in the newest. For example, in the Thunderbirds episode "Danger at Ocean Deep" where most of the music composed was made for the Stingray episode "The Big Gun".
• "What a Scary, Scary, Scary, Scary Monster," the theme song from the Eureeka's Castle Halloween Episode "It Came from Beneath the Bed," was later reused in the Gullah Gullah Island Halloween Episode "Gullah Gullah Ghoul-Land."

Theatre

• Jerome Kern regularly recycled songs and incidental music from older musicals into newer ones, and importing and exporting them between American and British musicals. For instance:
  • In Show Boat, Magnolia's pseudo-classical piano theme is a tune from The Beauty Prize (London, 1923), and the romantic string motif in the penultimate scene of the first act is from Dear Sir (1924). Magnolia's waltz, a Cut Song in this show, was recycled from "If We Were on Our Honeymoon," a song interpolated into the imported operetta The Doll Girl in 1913.
  • The opening music from Music in the Air (1932) seems to have been originally written for Love o' Mike (1917), and had already been reused in the lost movie musical Men of the Sky (1930).
  • The opening number of Sitting Pretty (1924) was a slightly altered version of "The Pergola Patrol (Is This Not a Lovely Spot?)" from The Cabaret Girl (London, 1922). "On a Desert Island With You" and "The Enchanted Train" from Sitting Pretty were in turn reused in Three Sisters (London, 1934) as "My Lover, Come Out of the Shadows" and "Dorrie Imagines."
• Rossini's overture to Aureliano in Palmira was recycled for Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra and, most famously, The Barber of Seville.
• Kurt Weill's Prelude to Act II of Street Scene was recycled from incidental music for Leo Lania's play Konjunktur (Berlin, 1928).
• The musical theme La Bohème begins with was recycled by Puccini from his early orchestral work "Capriccio sinfonico." (The tune immediately following this was originally composed for an unfinished opera based on the short story "La lupa" by Giovanni Verga.)
• The My Little Pony (G3) musical The World's Biggest Tea Party has "The Road to Unicornia" use the tune from "We're Glad That Everyone's a Princess" from Princess Promenade. "At Crystal Rainbow Castle" is "Here in Unicornia" from The Runaway Rainbow. "How You Feel" is "Far Apart," also from The Runaway Rainbow. All three are thus also examples of To the Tune of....
• Spamalot reuses "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" from Monty Python's Life of Brian.
• The Overture of Wicked is originally from Stephen Schwartz's earlier rock opera The Survival of St. Joan.
• Leonard Bernstein wrote the score to Wonderful Town in a hurry, and presumably saved time and effort by lifting a few parts from earlier works:
  • The refrain of "Conga!" was previously music for the scene change to the Congacabana in On the Town.
  • The vamp in "Conversation Piece" is from the jazz band piece "Prelude, Fugue and Riffs," parts of which were also incorporated into the ballet "Conquering the City."
• Songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman recycled the song "Let's Be Bad" from Smash for use in the later musical Some Like It Hot, with lyrics and orchestration changes.

Theme Parks

• The "Temple of the Night Hawk" roller coaster in Phantasialand (an amusement park in Germany) actually uses "The Egg Travels" as the ride's background music.
• The Primeval World diorama along the Disneyland Railroad uses the theme from non-Disney film Mysterious Island.

Video Games

• Tommy Tallarico's no stranger to this with his soundtracks, having reused some of his compositions various times:
  • The Beast Engine and Beast Ride levels in Wild 9 use music from MDK and Earthworm Jim ("Facing the Inevitable" and "Buttville: The Descent", respectively).
  • Sonic and the Black Knight features a couple of tracks originally from the 1997 helicopter combat game Black Dawn as music for some of the levels: Molten Mine featured an arranged version (alongside Sonic series regular Jun Senoue) of the "Action Theme" as its BGM, while Great Megalith featured another song from Black Dawn in its original form.
  • On the mention of Black Dawn and its "Action Theme", Tommy had previously reused its original version on the Nintendo 64 version of Knockout Kings 2000 as the music for the training minigames, albeit in a somewhat shortened form.
  • R/C Stunt Copter featured a couple of tracks from the Earthworm Jim series, most notably the main menu music just being the ending theme from the first game but with a guy yelling "STUUUUNT COPTERRRRR!" every now and then, while some of the levels on Free Flight mode (Ruins and Easter Island) had, appropiately enough, "The Flyin' King" from Earthworm Jim 2.
• Grant Kirkhope occasionally reuses music he wrote for canned games or Dummied Out features, as written on his website:
  • Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise
    • "Oven-Fresh Day" was the main theme for the Banjo-Kazooie prototype, Dream. Grant says that after the original concept for Dream was canned, he wanted a good opportunity to use the theme, and the VP series gave him an orchestra to perform it.
    • "Time Flies" is based on the theme for Dream's protagonist, Edison (heard in the demo track, "Chase").
  • "Time Flies" was also used in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts for the theme Nutty Acres. Direct sampling from Chase are especially apparent in the Challenge Theme. And the beginning of "Icicle Chorus" is the post-fanfare portion of the Recurring Riff from Banjo-Kazooie's "Stop 'n' Swop" areas.
  • "Ripen and Bloom" (Day 7) takes direct inspiration from the "Zombie Pirate" theme of Grabbed by the Ghoulies, an earlier title Kirkhope composed for.
  • The Romance Dance for the Jameleon contains a medley of recycled music that shifts from one theme to the next, tying in appropriately with the changing nature of a chameleon. All of the tracks are previous compositions from Grant Kirkhope which include Mayahem Temple from Banjo-Tooie, "Big Belly" from Dream, The remixed rock cover of the Banjo-Kazooie theme from Kameo: Elements of Power and the Ballroom Disco theme from Grabbed by the Ghoulies.
  • Donkey Kong 64:
    • Parts of "Creepy Castle" are based on a level called "Prickly Pear Island" from Dream.
    • In predictable fashion, the theme for Fungi Forest was previously used as the theme to Banjo-Kazooie's Fungus Forest before it was scrapped altogether. The original theme can be heard in Banjo's E3 trailer, reused practically verbatim for Donkey Kong 64.
  • Tiny Kong's Tag Barrel theme is a more upbeat rendition of an early Mumbo's Mountain theme which was saved in the Ticker's Tower area for Banjo-Kazooie.
  • The final battle against King K. Rool uses its bridge for the Skeleton Battle in Grabbed by the Ghoulies.
  • Banjo-Kazooie:
    • Elements of the series' theme and "Freezeezy Peak" (and DK 64's "Gloomy Galleon") can be traced to the theme for Dream's villain, Captain Blackeye.
    • "Mad Monster Mansion" is based on the theme for a troll character called "Bully" (and was originally a faster-paced, Beetlejuice-inspired piece).
    • Tooty's theme is a condensed version of the theme for Dream's love interest, Madeleine.
    • "Atlantis" from Banjo-Tooie uses a slowed-down version of the melody from Dream's map screen.
• If it's an active BEMANI series, it's going to have "FLOWER" in it. Even the TV commercial gets in on it.
• Several Ace Attorney characters have been reusing the same background songs since 2001, remixed appropriately in some cases. The "Suspense" theme has, in fact, appeared in every single game up to date. This is invoked in the last case of Apollo Justice in the segments where Phoenix Wright is the POV character, which uses almost exclusively music from the first games.
• Several tracks in Alphadia 2 are the exact same songs used in the first game, just used in different circumstances.
• The Nintendo 64 version of Army Men: Air Combat makes extensive use of the same soundtrack as BattleTanx: Global Assault, another game by The 3DO Company
• The BGM of "Virtual Insanity", the final world of The Angry Video Game Nerd II: ASSimilation, is an almost-identical arrangement of the BGM for the first game's final level "Laughin' Jokin' Numbnuts", albeit with 16-bit instruments. The boss theme is also mostly recycled.
• ANNO: Mutationem: The Mysterious Console DLC utilizes the soundtrack from the main game throughout each area, and others are used for battle encounters.
• Astro Boy: Omega Factor's ending theme is a slightly slower copy of Gunstar Heroes's ending theme. (Both games were made by Treasure.)
• A rendition of the first stage theme from the Game Boy Bionic Commando can be heard in some areas of Bionic Commando: Elite Forces as well as during its credits.
• Bionic Commando for the NES uses two songs from its otherwise In Name Only arcade predecessor; the Stage 2 theme for the game's main theme, and the Stage 4 theme for Area 8. The remake also recycles the main theme of Commando (Capcom) for its overhead stages.
• BioShock boasted an original score by Gary Schyman along with many licensed pop songs from the period it's set in, but there's also a triumphant theme that plays when Sander Cohen emerges from his office to admire the quadtych you helped him complete. Where did it come from? The 1997 rom-com The Beautician and the Beast, of all places! One has to wonder who at 2K was a fan.
• Fellow Rareware composer Graeme Norgate recycled the Boss tune from Donkey Kong Land as an upbeat ranch rendition for Jade Plateau in Blast Corps. It fits surprisingly well.
• All the characters appearing in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle still have their classic themes used in their home works. The BlazBlue cast who first appeared in the Calamity Trigger to Continuum Shift Extend era have the original versions of their songs from the games and not the Chronophantasma remixes. The RWBY heroines have medley themes made up of their theme songs from their trailers plus other songs from the show's soundtrack; for example Weiss has a mashup of "Mirror Mirror", "It's My Turn" and "This Life is Mine". The BlazBlue and Under Night In-Birth characters who had unique rivalry themes like Ragna and Jin's "Under Heaven Destruction" also see them return as team themes.
• A cover of the general usage score track "Cold War" by Chris Payne and Paul Rogers is used for both the Final Boss music of Bully and the Dante's Theater level in Rainbow Six: Vegas.
• Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium has a track called True Spirit, which serves as the boss theme. However, it originally appeared in Cowboy Bebop, specifically Toys In The Attic.
• Evolution Skateboarding featured a couple of tracks reused from Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. The giant spider boss on the Castle level featured "Dancing in Phantasmic Hell", and after unlocking Simon Belmont it also unlocks Rondo of Blood's arrangement of "Vampire Killer" as one of the in-game songs.
• The Cheetahmen theme in Action 52 (NES) was reused in Cheetahmen II and Syobon Action. Cheetahmen II also reuses the music from the Action 52 game Fuzz Power for its intro cutscene and title screen.
• Clive Barker's Undying entire soundtrack (with the exception of the Main Theme) was shamelessly copypasted from the obscure Jurassic Park FPS Jurassic Park: Trespasser.
• The first stage music of the original Darius ("Captain Neo") is a rearrangement of the Attract Mode theme of the arcade game Metal Soldier Isaac II.
• The remix of I Remember by deadmau5 that plays in the background of the Barcelona level in GoldenEye (Wii) was actually re-used from another game published by Activision, DJ Hero 2.
• Doom:
  • Doom: The music heard in the second level of Episode 2, "The Demons from Adrian's Pen", is based on one of the secret level themes from Wolfenstein 3D.
  • Doom II: The secret maps reuse music from Wolfenstein 3-D and Spear of Destiny.
  • Final Doom: TNT: Evilution reuses several Doom II tracks, but still presents a number of unique themes. In contrast, The Plutonia Experiment does not introduce any new music, so all of its levels reuse the first two games' soundtrack (notably, one of the levels uses the infamous theme showing the death of Doomguy's pet rabbit Daisy at the end of the first game's third episode).
• The Enix adventure game JESUS: Kyoufu no Bio-Monster reuses the overworld theme from Dragon Quest.
• A least a couple tracks from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim were taken directly from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.
• Fallout: New Vegas reuses a few of Inon Zur's ambient soundtracks (though not the battle musics) from Fallout 3, such as Wandering The Wastes (NV Medical Clinic and other buildings), What Remains(at Novac), Lockstep(at the Mojave Outpost), Fortress (Hidden Valley Bunker and Ranger Stations), as well as Mark Morgan's compositions from Fallout 1 and 2, such as Radiation Storm (Lucky 38, Securitron Bunker, Big Mt.), Industrial Junk (Vaults 11 and 34),Metallic Monks (Victor's Shack, Freeside), The Vault of the Future (Vault 22), City of the Dead (Camp Searchlight, Black Mountain), City of Lost Angels (The Fort, various parts of The Divide), Gold Slouch (Wrecked Highwayman), and Dream Town (Vault 21). In turn, a handful of F3 and FNV pieces are recycled in Fallout 4.
• The VS. player fight music in the original Fatal Fury is a rearrangement of Street Smart's first stage theme.
• F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin reuses about half the musics from its predecessor.
• Freddy in Space 3: Chica in Space reuses the DJ Music Man boss music from Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach for the background music during the Final Boss fight against Scott Cawthon.
• Gamer 2 reused a single song from P.A.N.G., an earlier game the developer released on itch.io.
• Ganbare Goemon: Oedo Daikaiten straight up lifted its entire soundtrack from both Mystical Ninja: Starring Goemon and Goemon's Great Adventure. And we're are not taking about remixes but the completely unadulterated original versions of the tracks. This ties with the plot of the game as the villain of the piece is an alien obsessed with recycling that plans to recycle Japan itself and it's up to Goemon and his friends to stop him.
• Joyride from Grand Theft Auto reappeared in Grand Theft Auto III, albeit with the swearing bleeped out.
• Half-Life series has some examples:
  • Half-Life: Blue Shift was supposed to reuse original Kelly Bailey's soundtrack from the original game in Sega Dreamcast version, but instead switched over to Opposing Force soundtrack by Chris Jensen in PC port.
  • Half-Life 2 reused quite a few tracks from the first game. Interestingly, all of them except scare chords got completely different names in HL2 OST.
  • Half-Life: Alyx continues this tradition by reusing couple of songs from the very first game.
  • When the original game and its expansions were rereleased on Steam, for some reason all of the original tracks from the expansions were scrubbed and replaced with tracks from Half-Life. This was finally reversed in 2013, alongside an update to higher quality renditions, in response to a fan request on their recently-opened public bug tracker.
• Hammer Brother reuses the addmusic list data from blackout77's earlier hack Super Mario Kollision 2 right down to the same internal adress, resulting in "Infinity Road" using the Infinity Mijinion port used in Kollision 1's second level. Demo 3's Jumping Fish Ship reuses the theme from Kollision 1's first stage.
• Several of the tracks in Might & Magic: Heroes VI are remixes of music from older Heroes games (mostly Heroes of Might and Magic II), with a couple instead being from Might and Magic proper (there is a 'winter' track which was the music for the Frozen Highlands in Might & Magic VI, for instance).
• The Magician's battle theme in House of the Dead 2 is directly reused from the first game, with the addition of an Ominous Pipe Organ introduction.
• The Trails Series sometimes reuses music from previous games, even if they're from different arcs:
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky:
    • SC recycled all the music from the FC in an effort to both save cost and maintain continuity, as the second game is set immediately after the first.
    • To the delight of many fans, "Sophisticated Fight" from FC makes a return in 3rd, albeit only during the story behind Schera's Star Door.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel
    • The piece played during the military exercise at Garrelia Fortress with the tanks is "Steel Roar (Verge of Death)" from The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure.
    • The song Emma performs for the Class VII concert is "I Swear...," the ending theme of Trails in the Sky SC.
    • Towa's ringtone for her Arcus is "Cry For Me, Cry For You," the opening theme of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in The Sky The 3rd.
    • The dungeon theme "Geofront" and the battle theme "Get Over The Barrier!", both from The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero, are reused in the Divertissement Chapter of Cold Steel II. Likewise, many incidental music from the first game returns in this game.
    • Aside from incidental music from its prequels once again returning, many, many tracks from Zero and Azure returns in Cold Steel III and IV, especially in areas set in Crossbell.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak
    • "Crossbell Cathedral" from The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero returns as the BGM for cathedral areas in the first two games.
    • "Temptation of Wisdom" plays during the Intermission of the second game, as it deals with the D∴G Cult, an organization the theme is associated with.
• Legend of Mana's Marginal Beast boss theme is a sightly revamped version of Parasite Eve's Plosive Attack boss theme. Yoko Shinomura composed the soundtrack of both games.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: Some music themes from Ocarina of Time are imported to this game: Lost Woods, Goron City, Zora's Domain, Lon Lon Ranch and minor themes like the Bazaar/shop's.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: The Goron City, Zora's Domain, and Temple of Time themes from Ocarina of Time got reused again in this game. The game is a distant sequel to the 1998 installment, so it makes sense.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: A prominent number of music tracks from Breath of the Wild are reused in this game. It is justified due to both games featuring the same incarnation of Hyrule and its locations, and Tears of the Kingdom still introduces a good number of new tracks.
• Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out! reuses one of Police Quest 4: Open Season's elevator muzak tunes as Gammie Boysulay's theme.
• The theme of the first level of Magician Lord is reused as the music of the final boss of the first World Heroes.
• The Marathon Game Mod Return To Marathon reuses the song "Flowers in Heaven" from the original game on its title screen. Another scenario, Pfh'Joueur, uses the M1 tune "Aliens Again" on the level "The Medium is the Music".
• Mass Effect:
  • The Vigil theme from the first game's title screen was originally used only there and the scene where you meet the Vigil AI. After making a brief cameo when meeting the Virmire Survivor in 2, it becomes a Bootstrapped Leitmotif in 3, being heard in the end scenes on Tuchanka and Rannoch, the post-credits scene, and a piano version in the Citadel DLC. Fragments of it can also be heard in the Normandy's War Room.
  • When Shepard first boards the Normandy in Mass Effect 2, it plays a somewhat hasty version of the Alliance theme that ends with Sovereign's theme. While this makes little sense considering the ship is a Cerberus vessel, it's actually an unused take of the music that opened the first game. In both sequences, Shepard travels the length of the CIC, only each is in opposite directions.
  • The second and third games make use of the EA buyout to tap into their vast msuic library for diagetic tracks. This includes "Callista" from Need for Speed: High Stakes in the upper section of Club Afterlife, "Lo Fi Epic" (an unused EA Sports Arena Football track) for the lower section, "Happiness" from SSX 3 for the Dark Star Lounge, "Staggered" from Need for Speed: Carbon for Purgatory, and the Citadel DLC uses tracks from The Sims 2 and a great many JunkieXL tracks that originally popped up in SSX Blur.
  • Mass Effect 3 borrows heavily from the soundtracks of the previous two games, particularly Mass Effect 2. There is still a lot of original music, particularly at the very beginning and end, but fans of the previous games' music will notice a lot of familiar material too. This is almost always used in a relevant manner (such as using Collector and Sovereign tracks in relation to the Reapers), but in some cases it still contrasts with the mood of the scene, like using the victorious Normandy reveal music from 2 in the middle of the Earth invasion.
• The Ragna Rock music in Max Payne is a clip from the song "Corruptor" by demoscene producer Skaven(Peter Hajba), who was on the game's development team.
• Medal of Honor:
  • Medal of Honor: Allied Assault has only five original music pieces, the rest are recycled from the first game, Underground, and in the expansion packs, Frontline. Later, Airborne reused a number of Undergrund, Allied Assault, Frontline and even Pacific Assault musics, such as "Snipertown", "Shipyards of Lorient", Escaping Gotha and "Clipping Their Wings".
  • Medal of Honor: Vanguard has even less original music, as only three tracks are original ^NoteAnd even these three were not composed specifically for this game, but rather for Airborne that was released later in the same year., Operation Husky, Operation Varsity and Defusing the Charges, the rest are all reused from previous games.
• Mega Man:
  • Mega Man 9 lifts six songs directly from Mega Man 2.
  • The credits music for Mega Man 4 is the same as 2's title music.
  • The intro of Mega Man 2 reuses the first part of Mega Man's ending theme.
  • Possibly one of the better uses of this trope by Megaman comes from Mega Man Legends. Where the theme of Megaman Juno was actually written three hundred years ago by Johann Sebastian Bach.
  • Battle themes from previous Mega Man Battle Network games (1-4, plus Japan-exclusive 4.5 Real Operation) can be heard in 5 Double Team DS if those games are in the GBA port of the DS.
  • The Mega Man X series has plenty.
    • Mega Man X5 brings back Bubble Crab's theme from Mega Man X2 for Duff McWhalen's stage. Later on in the Virus stages, there is the first Mega Man game's Wily stage boss theme for the battle with the Black Devil,^note With a distorted Wily mark in the background and X1's Sigma stage boss theme for the Rangda Bangda II.
    • Mega Man X6 has an extended version of X-Hunter stage 3's theme (also from X2) during the first two Gate stages, and a combination of all of the Sigma battle themes from the first two games (except the second form from X1) heard during the final battle.
• The main theme of Metal Gear Ac!d is actually a countermelody from the piece "Big Shell" from the Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty soundtrack, lifted and orchestrated In the Style of the Metal Gear Solid theme.
• The end theme in Metal Gear Solid was used in Ape Escape 3, albeit as part of a Metal Gear parody.
• The Metal Max series has used a remix of the original NES bounty boss theme, Battle With the Wanted, in every installment across seven console generations. Compare: Metal Max, Metal Max 2, Returns, Metal Saga, Metal Max 3, Reloaded,, Metal Max 4, and Metal Max Xeno.
• Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, the Spiritual Successor (promoted to sequel) to Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap, features an extensive soundtrack that includes reprises of pretty much all of its songs.
• The NES port of Defender II reuses music from Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!.
• Netstorm used a score from the mecha-game Shattered Steel.
• Nightshade (2003) uses the track "Golden Palace when you visit said location. The track itself originally came from the 2002 Shinobi game.
• The NiGHTS into Dreams… track "Message From Nightopia" is directly reused in Sonic Adventure's NiGHTS pinball minigame.
• All of the Nintendo Entertainment System black-boxed "Sports Series" games — Pro Wrestling, Baseball, Tennis, and Volleyball — use the same title screen tune. Pro Wrestling also recycles NES Punch-Out!!'s crowd noise.
• Ori and the Will of the Wisps reuses the Theme Music Power-Up piece "Restoring The Light, Facing The Dark" from Ori and the Blind Forest as Climactic Music during escape sequences and boss battles. The end credits arrangement of it, "Light of Nibel", also returns as part of the Credits Medley.
• Most of the stages in Pac-Man Vs. reuse music tracks from previous games in the Pac-Man series. The final maze, Haunted Hall, reuses a track from Pac-Man Arrangement (1996), while the previous four mazes use the four main level themes from Pac-Mania.
• Panzer Dragoon Orta makes liberal use of songs from Panzer Dragoon Saga during its side story about Iva Demilcol. Saga itself reuses a track from Panzer Dragon Zwei when Edge has to fight the final boss from that game, the Guardian Dragon.
• On the initial launch of Pokémon GO, wild Pokemon, when encountered at night, share the same music as the day encounter. An update later changes it to have a night encounter theme and a night overworld theme. Also, March 2018 adds quests, and some of the rewards are wild Pokemon. The music that plays during these quest encounters have the same music that plays when you are given the bonus challenge to catch a Raid Boss Pokemon. This extends to Moltres, who is encountered when a player achieves a Research Breakthrough before May 2018, which in turn leads to Moltres appearing outside of its Raid encounters, and Zapdos, who is also encountered via Research Breakthroughs starting in May.
• In Polyroll, the Wadget Island theme is reused from the developers' earlier game Clash Force, where it was the Bonus Stage theme.
• All the music in Power Bomberman originates from previous installments in the franchise. More specifically, over a hundred of these tracks serve as background music during the game's Battle Mode, while Score Mode lifts its soundtrack from the game it's remaking – Bomberman for NES.
• A large portion of the music in Red Faction is reused in Red Faction II.
• Rengoku: The opening cutscene for the second game uses the Evacuation theme from Armageddon (1998).
• In Resident Evil 2, about half of the music cues were salvaged from the scrapped prototype nicknamed Resident Evil 1.5., including the Factory, Marshalling Yard, Laboratory, Culture Experiment Room, and 4th Survivor BGM's, and the "First" and "Third Malformation of G" battle themes.
• Resident Evil 4's Mercenaries mode reused two songs from P.N.03, which used the same engine, notably "Mission 4" and "Mission 8", for Krauser and Hunk, respectively.
• Since the video game adaptation of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith was finished before the soundtrack of the movie was fully recorded, it instead uses music from the other five movies that were made at the time.
• The versions of the Road Rash trilogy on EA Replay for the PSP strangely lacked the original music, and in its place featured a selection of songs from the first three Need for Speed games, most notably "Feta Cheese" from Need for Speed II as it was the sole song used for almost all of Road Rash (the Redwood Forest track used "Power Slide" from The Need for Speed instead) and all of Road Rash II. Road Rash 3 used more songs, most of them from Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit, and some of the menu music on EA Replay (which also plays on Road Rash 3's Brazil track) included a couple of songs from the original NFS ("Rampant" and a shortened "Funkn' Bubba").
• SD Gundam G Generation provides the de-facto themes of Gundam manga and novels whenever they appear in other video games. Super Robot Wars V in particular features a nested instance: it fully recycles the battle themes of Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam, Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam: Skull Heart, and Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway's Flash from the Gundam VS Series, which were themselves arranged versions of G-Gen tracks.
• In Shadowrun Returns there is a remix of "Walking the Shadows" from the SNES game, which plays during the Final Battle.
• Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, being a direct Alternate Continuity sequel to Shin Megami Tensei IV, reuses a lot of its themes, although Apocalpyse also brings in a fair number of new tracks too, such as a new random battle theme and themes for the new antagonists, the Divine Powers.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island features an unused boss tune later reused in Sonic the Hedgehog 4.
  • Two themes from the Mega Drive (Genesis) version of Flickies Island, Green Grove Act 1 and Panic Puppet Act 1, are remixed for Sonic Adventure in Windy Valley and Twinkle Park respectively. Twinkle Park also reuses an unused track originally intended to play in the Knuckles special stages.
  • When Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was ported to PC as part of the Sonic & Knuckles Collection, the game reused several tracks, including those for Carnival Night Zone, Ice Cap Zone, and Launch Base Zone, from a prototype version of the game that was made before Michael Jackson and Brad Buxer's involvement. In turn, these songs were carried over to the Sonic Origins Collection.
  • The Edutainment Game Sonic's Schoolhouse uses in its intro the song from the slot machine bonus stage of Sonic 3.
  • Sonic Pocket Adventure recycled the soundtrack directly from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, plus one theme from Sonic Jam. For one instance, Secret Plant Zone Act 1 is a remix of Angel Island Zone Act 2.
  • In Sonic Advance 3, Sunset Hill uses an arranged version of the theme song of Green Hill Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog.
  • The 8-bit version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 uses a remix of the Japanese Sonic the Hedgehog CD theme song for the stage Green Hills Zone, though since Sonic 2 was released first it's not reuse so much as concurrent use.
  • Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine uses the final boss theme from Puyo Puyo as its 2-player versus theme. "Theme of Puyo Puyo" is also present in the game's code, albeit unused, although a remix of it plays during the ending.
  • Sonic's victory theme in the Super Smash Bros. series is directly taken from Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), making Sonic the only Smash fighter without a rearranged victory theme.
• In Soulcalibur III, the song that plays on Raphael's stage is a reworked version of the background music in Nina and Anna Williams' Tekken 5 ending.
• SpongeBob's Boating Bash reuses some music tracks from SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab during the events, with the songs for the Starfishman to the Rescue, Super-Sized Patty, and Rocket Rodeo levels among those to get recycled.
• The title Epic Adventures from Spore Add-On Galactic Adventures was re-used as one of the themes for the final battle of Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell.
• The PS1 trilogy of Spyro the Dragon uses the same music for all three games' ending credits, although in 2 and 3 the track is cut (shorter)
• Tim Follin's original score for the game adaptation of Starsky & Hutch was later reused for the "Funk" music set on Ford Racing 2. Both games came out in 2003 (within months of each other, even) and were both by the same publisher, Empire Interactive. Coincidentally, one of the vehicles featured on Ford Racing 2 is the Gran Torino, albeit without the same paintjob as its famed Starsky & Hutch counterpart.
• Star Wars videogames did it multiple times:
  • X-Wing, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance use the score from the original trilogy.
  • While the original release of TIE Fighter has plenty of original music, but the Gold edition replaces the entire soundtrack with the original trilogy score.
  • Dark Forces is the only game in the series to have an original soundtrack - the other four all cut together parts of the original movie trilogy's score.
  • Star Wars: Rebel Assault II, in addition to numerous familiar pieces from the original trilogy, uses the Cut Song "Sail Barge Assault (Alternate)" during the "Mining Facility" and "Escaping The Star Destroyer" chapters.
  • Half of Shadows of the Empire's soundtrack is recycled from A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, the rest consists of original compositions.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels: Almost all of Koji Kondo's classic compositions from the original Super Mario Bros. were recycled here. In addition, a "Burning Rubber" sound (later recycled in Super Mario Bros. 3) was added, as was a "Wind blowing" sound. The ending theme was also given a complete makeover, similar to VS., only with an extended bridge and octave change.
  • New Super Mario Bros. reuses two tracks from Super Mario 64 DS, the Wing Cap theme which is used as the Super Star invincibility theme and the minigame Game Over jingle (which is a slight arrangement of Super Mario Bros.'s classic death jingle) which made it into the main campaign of New Super Mario Bros. as the jingle for losing a life. It continues to be used as of 2019's New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe and Super Mario Maker 2, released 14 years and 34 years after 64 DS and SMB respectively, despite the 3D games in the meantime getting new death jingles.
  • New Super Mario Bros. 2 and New Super Mario Bros. U were infamous for this, thanks to their soundtracks recycling almost all tracks from New Super Mario Bros. Wii, with tracks receiving little to no changes and very few new tracks created for the games. U introduced more music—including, at last, the third original Ground Theme in the New Super Mario Bros. lineage—but left other major tracks, like Wii's arrangement of the Underground Theme, intact.
  • Super Mario Run: Most of the course tracks are reused directly from New Super Mario Bros. U, however, both the Ground and Underground themes were rearranged completely for this game and the rest of the soundtrack is new, including everything in the Remix 10 mode.
  • Super Mario Galaxy 2: Some of the levels from this game actually reuse music from the first Super Mario Galaxy game. Examples include:
    • "Honeybloom and Honeyhop Galaxies" = "Honeyhive Galaxy"
    • "Rolling Masterpiece and Rolling Coaster Galaxies" = "Rolling Green and Rolling Gizmo Galaxies"
    • "Supermassive, Mario Squared, and Twisty Trials Galaxies" = "Toy Time Galaxy"
    • "Topman's Tower" = "Buoy Base Galaxy"
    • "Shiverburn Galaxy" = "Freezeflame Galaxy"
    • "Grandmaster Galaxy" = "Gusty Garden Galaxy", "Good Egg Galaxy", and "Bowser's Galaxy Reactor"
    • "The Perfect Run" = "Comet Observatory"
  • Super Mario 3D Land actually reuses some of the music from both Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2! It's especially noticeable with the Ghost House music in this game.
  • Super Mario 3D World takes the World Crown theme directly from Super Mario Galaxy's "Rosalina in the Observatory".
  • Mario Party Advance: Several minigame themes are lifted from Mario Party 3 and 4, albeit adapted to the GBA's lower audio capacity.
  • Mario Party: Island Tour: The game reuses tracks and sound effects from Mario Party 9, which was created by same developers as this one. This also means Island Tour is the first game in the series to reuse a theme for the minigame instructions instead of having its own.
• Syobon Action used the themes from Cheetahmen, Spelunker (NES version) and Ghosts 'n Goblins.
• Syphon Filter 2's revisit to the Pharcom Expo Center reuses the music from the first game. The title theme tune is also directly reused.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection: This 1980s-90s game compilation reused, as its menu theme, the Stage 1 Area 1 "Sewer" track from the 2003 video game.
• Tekken 2 re-used tracks from the first game for the sub-bosses, save for newcomer Baek, who got an original theme, leaving Venezia (Venice) as the only stage BGM that wasn't reused. The Statue stage in Tekken 4 also re-used the arcade soundtrack from the first two games.
• Tiny Toon Adventures games:
  • Buster Busts Loose re-arranges many pieces of BGM from the series, including the theme song, the music during the cutscenes (lifted from one of the title cards), the boss fight against Dizzy Devil (a music piece by Fred Steiner used in many episodes, but most notably "Rock 'n Roar"), the bonus game intro music (lifted from "The Weirdest Stories Ever Told" short, "Robin Hare"), the haunted mansion theme (lifted from "The ACME Home Shopping Show" short, "I Was a Teenage Bunnysitter"), the first half of the balloon level (lifted from "A Quack in the Quarks"), and the second half of the balloon level (lifted from the "How Sweetie It Is" short, "Let's Do Lunch").
  • Tiny Toon Adventures 2: Trouble in Wackyland for the NES also uses the "Rock 'n Roar" music in the bumper car stage.
  • Similarly, Buster's Hidden Treasure re-arranged a few pieces from the show: One of the level themes, the underwater theme, and Montana Max's level theme, the final boss theme, and the Sneezer weapon (used during "Son of the Wacko World of Sports") were all used in the show.
• Tokyo Xanadu reused Terminal Room, Jona Sacred's theme from The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure, as Yuuki's theme.
• Twisted Metal 2 shares two music tracks with the simultaneously released Jet Moto, namely Quake Zone Rumble/Snowblind, and Field of Screams/Blackwater Falls.
• Undertale:
  • According to Word of God, "Heartache", "Nyeh Heh Heh!", and its Boss Remix "Bonetrousle" were all composed for an unidentified earlier RPG project that was never finished.
  • "Fallen Down" was originally written for the EarthBound fan album "I Miss You".
  • "Another Medium" is a more fleshed-out remix of Toby Fox's earlier composition "Patient", which was itself based on "Doctor" from the Homestuck soundtrack.
  • Of course, Toby Fox's Creator Thumbprint "MEGALOVANIA" (originating from The Halloween Hack) is used here too as the final boss theme in the No Mercy route.
• Unlimited Saga and Final Fantasy XIII share composers; Unlimited Saga's battle theme was recycled into Final Fantasy XIII's.
• While most of the tracks from Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour use music from the rides they're based on, three tracks had songs recycled from other, completely unrelated games. The DINOSAUR track uses the theme from the Prehistory Channel level of Gex: Enter the Gecko. The Blizzard Beach track uses a slightly rearranged version of Totally Scrooged from Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko. The Rock 'n' Roller Coaster track uses the theme from the Aqueous Major level of space shooter Total Eclipse. All four games were developed by Crystal Dynamics.
• WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$ reuses quite a few tunes from the Wario Land series, notably Wario Land 4. For instance, a version of the Curious Factory theme is recycled as part of the Paper Plane soundtrack. And the Crescent Moon Village theme is reused for the ending cutscene. It also recycles sound effects, with his laugh sound effects coming from Wario Land 4 as well (including his elevator entrance laugh being the one heard when you enter a portal in said game).
• Music from the 1988 NES game Wayne Gretzky Hockey was reused in the 1991 NES adaptation of Where's Waldo?. ^*The tune used at the start of the hockey game played when you found Waldo, and the goal score cue of the former became the game over theme of the latter. Both games were released by Bethesda Softworks & THQ.
• Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal re-used a couple of pieces from the first and second games. Including tracks from the first game is notable because that title's music was in mono: Up Your Arsenal has stereo music, thus it's one of the few places with stereo R&C1 music.
• The mobile game Ni No Kuni: Cross Worlds uses music from the original game, including the main theme and the battle music. Credit is given to Joe Hisashi on the opening screen.
• The Hex borrows the track "Sanctuary" from Pony Island.

Web Animation

• A lot of videos made with Garry's Mod tend to use music from other works, usually from video games.

Western Animation

• Any cartoon composed by Michael Tavera tends to reuse music from another cartoon he worked on. For instance...
  • The Emperor's New School, at least twice, reused music from The Land Before Time sequels, and both were composed by Michael Tavera.
    • The song "Kronk for Hire" was often used as background music in Phineas and Ferb, usually in scenes where characters are explaining something.
  • Season 1 of Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) had Michael Tavera's score borrow liberally from the Back to the Future animated series. This is most noticeable with the opening title card theme/Sonic's leitmotif, which is exactly the same as Alan Silvestri's theme from the movies.
• The main theme to Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? was actually taken from Mozart's Singt dem großen Bassa Lieder.
• One episode of Action League NOW! recycled the theme from, of all things, Britain's ITV News at Ten; titled The Awakening, it's been used since the program's debut in 1967; the version used in the episode was used from 1992 to 1999.
• A few background music cues on ChalkZone were re-used cues from The Fairly OddParents!. Both shows were scored by Guy Moon, and were produced at the same studio. Season one's recycled cues came from the original shorts for OddParents (it should be noted that ChalkZone was delayed for two years, and was actually produced before OddParents was made into a full series), and season two and the first half of season three re-used cues from the first, second, and third seasons of OddParents. The last episode to use a re-used cue was "Let's Twister Again", which used a cue from Abra-Catastrophe! in one scene. Afterwards, Geoff Levin took over composing while Guy Moon was busy with Danny Phantom.
• The 1958 Crusader Rabbit story arc "The Great Baseball Mystery" uses a tune called "Holiday Jaunt" (by Kurt Rehfeld) as background music in a late chapter. Three years later the tune would be the first theme for the game show Password.
• The opening theme for the cartoon adaptation of Dilbert is an instrumental rearrangement of Danny Elfman's earlier song "Forbidden Zone", which was the title theme for the film of the same name.
• This was a regular occurence in series by Hanna-Barbera, extending all the way to the 1980s (although it didn't happen in every single show they made). Several songs from A Christmas Story were reused in A Flintstone Christmas, regardless of whether they make sense in the new context.
• In the Brazilian airing of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983), the dubbing studio, for some unkwnown reason, replaced part of the original soundtrack of some episodes (especially the ones that don't include Skeletor) with other songs. One of these songs is "Timesteps", composed by Wendy Carlos for the soundtrack of A Clockwork Orange. It played in the episode "The House of Shokoti" and fit the episode surprisingly well.
• A musical segment that played during the Justice League episode "In Blackest Night" when the League first fought against the Manhunters is reused in the Teen Titans episode "Titan Rising" when the Titans fight against Slade's giant mechanical worms.
• The Winston Sharples background music from Famous Studios (later renamed Paramount Cartoon Studios) were repurposed by Total Television in their King Leonardo and His Short Subjects (season two, outsourced to Gamma Studios in Mexico) and Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales (season one, also outsourced to Gamma).
• Looney Tunes: The Ford-Lennon shorts and movies from the late 80's to the mid 90's reused music from many classic cartoons composed by Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn.
• In Lucky Luke, several tracks from the score of Ballad of the Daltons were reused in the series, due to composer Claude Bolling working on every animated Lucky Luke installment between 1971 and 1992.
• The Peanuts specials from 1992 to 2006 scored by David Benoit combine this with Rearrange the Song. The bulk of their musical soundtracks are old Vince Guaraldi compositions from previous Peanuts specials often given a more "modern" flavor (usually 1980s-1990s jazz-rock), or sometimes theming the music to a special, like You're In the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown featuring NFL-flavored arrangements of some of the Guaraldi tunes.
• The 2010 series of Pound Puppies occasionally lifts snippets from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, specifically a piece of "Cutie Mark Crusaders" and an instrumental of part of "Love is in Bloom" (though it was heard in PP long before it appeared in FIM).
• Many episodes of The Raccoons have cues reused from The Raccoons and the Lost Star, which was produced two years before the series began in 1985.
• A lot of the background music used in Atomic Betty was later reused for other shows produced by Breakthrough Entertainment, including Jimmy Two-Shoes and Producing Parker.
• Rambo: The Force of Freedom is permeated with Jerry Goldsmith's music from Rambo: First Blood Part II, supplemented with some new tracks by Shuki Levy and Haim Saban.
• As for Sky Commanders, the instrumentals of the song, "Turn on the Night" by Steve McClintlock was repurposed as the intro theme of the show.
• The background music of Teen Titans Go! features some recycled music from MAD, which the creators also worked on.
• In an instance of this happening in the same franchise, Thundercats Roar uses the exact same background music as the original 1985 series.
• Many of the music cues by Filmation are reused in their works, such as Quacula, The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show, Fraidy Cat, and Wacky and Packy, just to name a few.
• An action scene in the third season of Transformers: Prime appears to lift a section of music from the Modern Warfare 3 track "London Attack"; Brian Tyler is the composer for the series, and also scored said game.
• Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc? (1972) ends with an in-flight showing of the Looney Tunes short "What's Up, Doc?", in which Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd sing the title song, thus resulting in a Title Drop for both works.

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