6 Famous Characters You Didn't Know Were Shameless Rip Offs

Posted by Miss Cellania in Cartoon & Comic, Movies & SciFi on April 29, 2009 at 1:29 pm


You’ve heard of X-men, but do you remember Doom Patrol?

Unlike the X-Men, the Doom Patrollers were once normal people who suffered an accident that disfigured them but also gave them superpowers. Shunned by the world for just being plain ugly, the freaks were gathered by Doctor Caulder, a paraplegic, who thought that maybe the world wouldn’t dislike them so much if they used their powers to save the normal people’s asses from giant robots once in a while.

If this sounds somewhat familiar to you, it’s because the same thing as X-Men with the only difference that the smart guy in the wheelchair was bald in one and X-Men uses mutants as an allegory for minorities instead of people with elephantiasis or whatever the heck Doom Patrol was going for.

Cracked looks at six famous characters and their lesser-known precursors. I knew about The Lion King, but I was unfamiliar with the rest. Oh, I knew the last one, too, but I didn’t know how much they had in common. Link


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COMMENT

13 comments to "6 Famous Characters You Didn't Know Were Shameless Rip Offs"

  1. ECA
    April 29th, 2009 at 2:00 pm

    Doom patrol lead to a few rip offs, including FF, fantastic 4..

  2. Triseult
    April 29th, 2009 at 2:22 pm

    Little-known superhero fact: Jesus Christ the Savior is a rip-off of the earlier Vedic deity Mithra.

    :)

  3. zav
    April 29th, 2009 at 3:13 pm

    Jesus has a better PR and Marketing firm. There were at least several virgin births before the J man.

  4. atomicsecrets
    April 29th, 2009 at 3:52 pm

    I like all the comments about Cracked ripping off Mad. Wonderful.

    Also, Superman rips off Doc Savage, too. Savage was the Man of Bronze before the Man of Steel. He also had a Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic.

  5. Mouserz
    April 29th, 2009 at 4:35 pm

    Well to be fair, when I saw the original Japanese version of the Lion King, my eyes and years bled out.

  6. Pox
    April 29th, 2009 at 6:30 pm

    Is that gorilla wielding a gun?

  7. seefish3
    April 29th, 2009 at 8:09 pm

    I loved the Doom Patrol long before I'd even heard of the X- Men.
    Robotman's wiseass comments, Negative man's see-through skeleton under those bandages, and the adolescent voyeur waiting to maybe see up Elasti-girl's skirt when she grew really tall...
    And yes, that's a FRENCH gorilla with a machine gun.

  8. DaveL
    April 30th, 2009 at 1:29 am

    Artists, musicians and story tellers all create new works from past ideas. Except for Dane Cook of course.

  9. GQ
    April 30th, 2009 at 3:44 am

    "that’s a FRENCH gorilla with a machine gun."

    A GAY french Gorilla, no less.

    Though since he was love with the brain of a human, would that make him a gay, French, beastialitist?

  10. GQ
    April 30th, 2009 at 3:46 am

    See here for what I mean:
    http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jz0vR0Ouas4/SC7dM0QZzII/AAAAAAAAAgA/p_hDaXvT ajA/s400/9.jpg

    (The brain was implanted into one of Robotman's bodies. God, I love GRant Morrison... )

  11. seefish3
    April 30th, 2009 at 3:55 am

    @GQ

    I love Grant's run, too, but one issue doesn't make you gay, in my opinion.

    Danny the Street, however, is another story.

  12. seefish3
    April 30th, 2009 at 4:12 am

    And now that I've actually read the article, how can they compare Green Lantern to the Lensmen?
    That's like pointing out similarities between Dick and Jane and Canterbury Tales!

  13. Frau
    April 30th, 2009 at 10:22 am

    I kind of thought Captain America was a rip of Gladiator. Well the premise is. A secret formula.

    Meh - ideas repeat themselves ever couple of years.


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