15 Popular Characters (That Were Yoinked From Someone Else)
![15 Popular Characters (That Were Yoinked From Someone Else)](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/8/3/776383_320x180.jpg)
Creativity is a finite resource, especially when you're working on a deadline. Your boss pressures you, or you really need that paycheck, and suddenly you're changing someone else's work just enough to avoid a lawsuit. Or maybe you don't have any of those pressures, but you figure you can get away with it and go, "why the hell not." Whatever the reason, these "homages" happen more frequently than you think, especially when it comes to comic book characters. When the superhero reading public is split between two giants, it’s no wonder that each one takes from the other – after all, if the competition is making something that readers like, why wouldn’t something similar work for them? It’s the way of the colorful, pulpy business. We have shown you some cases before, and here you have a few more instances that'll leave you thinking, "wow, they really just have no shame."
![THANOS IS AN EDITORIALLY-MANDATED KNOCK-OFF OF DARKSEID. Artist Jim Starlin took some cues from DC's New Gods for his new character, but wasn't trying to rip off Darkseid. Then his editor, Roy Thomas, said that he should just go ahead and do exactly that.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/0/776390.jpg)
![CAPTAIN AMERICA GOT HIS SHIELD FROM THE SHIELD. Cap is the most enduring of an entire flock of patriotic-themed superheroes born during World War II.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/7/776397.jpg)
Source: CBR
![BATMAN BEGAN AS A BAT-EARED COPY OF THE SHADOW. IO hadow HENTS MAGAZINE TWICE A MONTH COVEO YTK PBLAE coes The first Batman comic recycled the entire plot of an adventure of pulp crimefighter The Shadow. Walter Gibson, The Shadow's creator, saw Batman asa clowned-up version of his own](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/8/776398.jpg)
Sources: CBR, Walter B. Gibson and the Shadow, by Thomas J. Shimmeld
![SUPERMAN WAS A SHAZAM WANNABE DESPITE THE FACT THAT HE CAME FIRST). While Shazam/ Captain Marvel did begin as a nagic-powered Superman clone, a lot of Supes' powers and mythos were lifted over time from the more popular Captain Marvel's comics. Then DC sued Shazam's publisher into oblivion, pretending the](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/3/776393.jpg)
Source: Nerdist
![THE PUNISHER WAS COPIED FROM A NOVEL SERIES. Punisher's creator Gerry Conway admits he was inspired by Don Pendleton's The Executioner book series, also about a Vietnam vet who wages war on crime after his family is killed.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/5/776395.jpg)
Source: CBR
![RAIDEN COMES FROM LIGHTNING IN BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA. Mortal Kombat's co-creator John Tobias has acknowledged the movie's influence- but even if he never did, there isn't a huge cross-section of lampshade hat-wearing, lightning-spewing, mystical Asians, is there?](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/8/7/776387.jpg)
More: 5 Beloved Characters (Who Were Actually Blatant Rip-Offs)
![AQUAMAN WASN'T A NAMOR RIP-OFF... AT FIRST. When Aquaman was created, he didn't have a lot in common with Marvel's Namor, other than being water-based. Years later, his origin was revised to make him the son of an Atlantean princess and a human dude- just like Namor.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/9/776399.jpg)
Source: Nerdist
![RYU WAS LIFTED FROM A '70S MANGA. A character in Karate Baka Ichidai is a karate expert named Yoshiji Soeno (himself based on a real person). The creators of Street Fighter just changed Soeno's and put him into their game.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/2/776392.jpg)
![TOP CAT IS A GIMMICKY SGT. BILKO. Hanna-Barbera never hid that their cartoons were rip-offs of popular shows. For Top Cat, they turned the streetwise Army officer and his platoon into alley cats. They even brought an actor from the show to voice his own feline counterpart.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/0/0/776400.jpg)
More: 5 Beloved Characters (Who Were Actually Blatant Rip-Offs)
![FOGHORN LEGHORN IS A FEATHERED VERSION OF A RADIO CHARACTER. The rooster's personality and speech patterns were based, I say, were based on Senator Beauregard Claghorn, played by comedian Kenny Delmar. Like many cartoons of the time, Foghorn was a nod to a popular character he outlived.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/4/776394.jpg)
![SON GOKU EVOLVED FROM A CENTURIES-OLD MONKEY. Young Goku has a monkey's tail because the original was an actual monkey from the traditional Asian story Journey to the West. Just like Son Goku, the monkey (called Sun Wukong) rides a cloud and becomes more and more powerful.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/6/776396.jpg)
Source: Screen Rant
![SOLID SNAKE RIPS OFF SNAKE PLISSKEN (OR SO JOHN CARPENTER THINKS). Carpenter has called Metal Gear Solid kind of a rip-off of Escape From New York, but is against suing, as he personally likes Hideo Kojima. (Kojima denies the characters are related.)](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/1/776391.jpg)
Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, IGN
![ULTRON HAS THE SMILE OF A CAPTAIN VIDEO VILLAIN. Roy Thomas, UItron's creator, remembered a one- shot robotic foe in a Captain Video comic named Makino, and showed it to artist Steve Buscema. Buscema went ahead and drew UItron to look like](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/8/6/776386.jpg)
![SWAMP THING MAN THING AND BOTH RIP OFF THE SAME... UH, THING. DC's Swamp Thing was nearly identical to Marvel's an-Thing, which came out a short time earlier (and the writers were roommates, to boot). Marvel never sued, as that might have revealed that Man-Thing himself looked an awful](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/8/9/776389.jpg)
![VISION IS A SHAMELESS KNOCK-OFF OF RED TORNADO ... OR IS HE? With Marvel's sentient android first appearing two months after DC's milar-looking sentient android in 1968, it looks like an open-and-shut case. Except that Vision has existed since 1940 (he just wasn't an android at first). More like an open-and-still-open](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/8/8/776388.jpg)
Sources: Comic Coverage, Heavy.com