Reused Character Design / Western Animation

• The animated short Goliath II features a crocodile based on Tick-Tock the crocodile from Peter Pan, and owls based on the owls in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Bambi and Sleeping Beauty. The design of the elephants come from Dumbo, and were reused later in The Jungle Book.
• The design for the businessmen from Adventure Time is very similar to a businessman costume that an adventurer wore in an episode of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. Also, the adventurer costume that the businessman wore in the Flapjack episode greatly resembles Billy from Adventure Time if he were human. Considering Pendleton Ward storyboarded the Flapjack episode, it makes sense.
• While My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic regularly reuses character designs to fill up background scenes (the fanbase has taken to naming and giving personalities to the most common ones, which these later becoming Ascended Fanon), one background pony in "Sweet and Elite" stuck out like a sore thumb because the reused model in question was of Princess Luna, a major recurring character with a speaking role. Many fans took this as a not-so-subtle hint towards... something. Wild Mass Guessing went haywire for weeks until one of the show's staff chimed in.
• Il Était Une Fois... did this all the time, with all their series, though that's more in Universal-Adaptor Cast territory.
  • "Il était une fois l'homme" tells the entire history of humanity using the same small roster of characters taking up all the roles of famous (and not-so-famous) people who made up history, from the creation of earth all the way to a theoretical Bad Future as a final environmental aesop.
  • The same roster also forms the core of the expanded cast for the sci-fi animation Il était une fois l'espace.
• In Time Masters, the character Jaffar has the face of Lieutenant Blueberry.
• Captain Caveman in Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels looks almost identical to the Slag Brothers in Wacky Races, just with eyes not covered by bangs.
• It's become common for the DC Universe Animated Original Movies to reuse designs from Young Justice (2010). For instance, Sarah Charles from Justice League: War is just a Palette Swap of Serling Roquette, while Angela Chen from Justice League vs. Teen Titans is just a slightly tweaked Catherine Cobert. This is due to Phil Borrousa being the primary character designer.
  • When Young Justice was revived for season 3, it went the other way. Lois Lane, for example, looks almost exactly as she did in Justice League: Throne of Atlantis .
• In Robin Hood: Mischief in Sherwood, Robin Hood and his gang meet two different girls with the exact same design; Eleanor in "Best of Enemies" and Gwendolyn in "Damsel in Distress".
• Mumbly, who was first a detective in the 1976 season of Hanna-Barbera's The Tom and Jerry Show, then an antagonist on Laff-A-Lympics, was a redesign of Muttley, Dick Dastardly's dog on Wacky Races. The only differences were fur color (Muttley light green, Mumbly light blue), ears (Muttley's were black, Mumbly's were his fur color) and attire (Muttley a collar then flying helmet and scarf, Mumbly an orange trenchcoat). Both had the dog Mugger from the movie Hey There, It's Yogi Bear! (1964) as a predecessor. All three dogs were voiced by Don Messick. In Laff-A-Lympics, there is also Dread Baron, Dick Dastardly's expy, in a comic book written by Mark Evanier, it is revealed that both are brothers.
  • Quite a few HB shows did this. In some instances, model sheets of older characters were literally traced for new ones.
• Ralph Wolf from Chuck Jones' Looney Tunes series of Wolf/Sheepdog cartoons was a complete clone of Wile E. Coyote except for his nose (Ralph's was red while Wile E.'s was black). It didn't originate that way as in the first film, the wolf looked more or less like a Jones-designed cartoon wolf.
• On The Brady Kids, the kids' dog, Moptop, was a duplicate of Jughead Jones' pet, Hot Dog, save for the fur color. Moptop's animation was repurposed from Hot Dog as well.
• Mr. Peevly from The Hair Bear Bunch bears a striking resemblance to Pertwee from Where's Huddles?.
• Pos from Skippy: Adventures in Bushtown is the same duplicate and voice as Slick from Blinky Bill.
  • Even a whole bunch of minor characters have the same character designs from Blinky Bill.
• Examples from The Simpsons:
  • Homer Simpson and Krusty the Clown were originally meant to be the same character, with Bart ironically revering Krusty more than Homer. Their similarities still inspired a few gags on the show, however, and the plot of one episode even hinges on this.
  • In "Bart Sells His Soul", the girl who complains about her soda resembles Samantha Stankey from "Bart's Friend Falls in Love", albeit much younger. In recent seasons, her design is reused as a nameless Springfield Elementary student.
  • When Jane Goodall guest starred in "Gorillas on the Mast" the animators just reused the design of her Expy Joan Bushwell from "Simpson Safari".
• Some of the character designs from Frosty Returns resemble Peanuts characters, which is no surprise, as Bill Melendez worked on both shows.
• Multiple side characters from Sabrina: The Animated Series were reused for both the TV movie Sabrina: Friends Forever and the sequel series Sabrina's Secret Life: the most blatant offenders are a triad of female background characters that were recolored first in Friends Forever as Portia and her lackeys, and then in Secret Life as Cassandra and her lackeys, and Maritza from Secret Life that is just Chloe from the original show with different clothes, slightly lighter skintone and a different face.
• The All-New Popeye Hour has at least three:
  • In "Alpine for You", Olive's lamb, Fleecy, is an almost exact copy of Lambsy Divey.
  • In "Around the World in 80 Hours", one of the gamblers is a Palette Swap of Sylvester Sneekly.
  • In "Beyond the Spinach Brick Road", the Midgkin resembles Scoots from The Cattanooga Cats.
• Spear, the caveman protagonist of Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal (2019) looks nearly identical to the caveman from the Dexter's Laboratory episode "Old Flame", also directed by Genndy.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog: Certain characters recur in completely different supporting roles. Probably the most recognizable case is the mustachioed general who also appears as an archaeologist, a ship's captain, a cop, and similar roles.
  • Another noteworthy one is a Top-Heavy Guy who appears as guards, ninjas, orderlies, etc. Often a group of guards will all be copies of this guy.
  • Although creatures usually had unique designs, the computer virus from "Hard Drive Courage" is nearly identical to the space worm from "Mission to the Sun".
• Wendal T. Wolf from Taz-Mania is designed like a basic rehash of Calamity Coyote from Tiny Toon Adventures, with a similar color scheme for their fur and noses, but subtle bodily differences.
• Rick and Morty is at least the fourth cartoon from Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon featuring a brown-haired boy and spiky-haired old man, following Doc and Mharti, The Unmarketables, and Paloni Pitch Presentation.
• Ninjago: Tox and Paleman, two Elemental Masters competing in Season 4's Tournament of Elements, use the designs of Toxikita and Invisable from the LEGO Ultra Agents line.
• Pirata And Capitano has quadrupedal, funnel-mouthed creatures with the same basic design as Dodos from Jelly Jamm, mouth aside.
• The Patrick Star Show has Granny Tentacles, who looks identical to Squidward's mother's design after season 4 on SpongeBob SquarePants. As Granny ended up being a prominent recurring character, Squidward's mother was redesigned when she showed up with an important role in "Momageddon".