Recursive Inspiration is when a work inspires another work which in turn inspires a newer installment of the original work.
For example, someone makes work A, then someone else inspired by work A makes work B, work A gets a new installment or adaptation inspired partly by work B or containing elements from it. Also includes franchises that see a boost in popularity due to being featured in the works they inspired.
Compare Recursive Import, Recursive Translation, Remade for the Export, Recursive Adaptation. Contrast Promoted Fanboy where a fan inspired by a work becomes part of the work; though it can overlap if the promoted fanboy makes a work and then brings aspects of their work over to the franchises they inspired. This trope can happen when the developers of a new entry of a work take inspiration from the work it inspired.
When works take inspiration from their adaptations, it's Ret-Canon. When adaptations take inspiration from previous adaptations, it's Lost in Imitation.
A sub-trivia of Inspiration for the Work. May be the result of Follow the Leader. Is often Hilarious in Hindsight.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The Matrix: The Wachowskis cited Ghost in the Shell as a critical inspiration for the first movie. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex would later pay homage to the first movie with a scene involving the Major using the edge of the rooftop as leverage to pull on the Tachikoma's wire attached to a rogue helicopter in order to help line up a shot for Saito to fire into the cockpit.
Comic Books
- Gen¹³ was very clearly influenced by New Mutants. When it became popular, Marvel Comics responded with Generation X.
- Watchmen was originally a pitch for modernizing DC Comics' acquired assets from Charlton Comics, like The Question and Captain Atom, before Alan Moore decided to overhaul the project with original characters. Watchmen has ended up heavily influencing the characters it homaged, with Ted Kord being saddled with embarrassing health problems (like a heart condition or carpal-tunnel syndrome) and the Question becoming more of a Conspiracy Theorist prone to muttering to himself. The "Pax Americana" chapter of Grant Morrison's The Multiversity took this to its logical conclusion by playing out a Watchmen-like plot with most of the original Charlton characters, albeit with Charlton's Golden Age hero Yellowjacket replacing Thunderbolt for copyright reasons.
Films — Animation
- The Thief and the Cobbler managed to pull this off before it was even finished due to its decades-long Development Hell; its development inspired elements of Disney's Aladdin, and the still-in-production The Thief and the Cobbler then cobbled some aspects of Disney's Aladdin.
Films — Live-Action
- Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two are partly inspired by Star Wars given the latter franchise helped inspire big sci-fi sets on film while being inspired by the original Dune book. Denis Villeneuve even said his version of Dune would be Star Wars for adults
. In contrast, Hans Zimmer purposely avoided having Dune be too orchestral like Star Wars, opting for a more mystic feel to the soundtrack.
- Among the many spectacle-driven sci-fi/space fantasy movies to ride on the coattails of Star Wars' massive success was Flash Gordon (1980), and it so happens that one of George Lucas' biggest inspirations for the concept of Star Wars was the old Flash Gordon film serials from the '30s and '40s.
- The Pirates of the Caribbean movies drew inspiration for their comedy stylings from the Monkey Island video games, whose aesthetic was inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride.
- Akira Kurosawa used American westerns as inspiration for his samurai films, so it's only natural that some of them have been adapted into westerns.
- Seven Samurai was remade as The Magnificent Seven (1960), which itself spawned three sequels, a TV series, and a 2016 remake.
- Yojimbo
- Got an unofficial remake in A Fistful of Dollars, the first of Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy. Kurosawa sued and the matter was eventually settled out of court.
- An authorized adaptation, Last Man Standing, updates the setting to Prohibition and makes the samurai into gangsters but otherwise plays the western tropes pretty straight, putting it halfway between a western and the film's plot inspiration, Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest.
Live-Action TV
- British gameshow The Crystal Maze was inspired by the French Fort Boyard. After the success of The Crystal Maze, Britain got its own version of Fort Boyard.
- Godzilla: Mechagodzilla is the original mechanical dragon kaiju that rises from the sea in a Japanese work, and no doubt heavily inspired Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger's Dragon Caeser, from the obvious comparisons to deeper references like their shared finger missiles or the fact that Mechagodzilla notably fought a kaiju named King Caeser. And yet later incarnations of Mechagodzilla have been seemingly inspired by this homage, with Mechagodzilla 3 (also known as Kiryu)'s form clearly taking heavy inspiration from Dragon Caeser or Legendary Mechagodzilla sporting a drill tail.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Star Trek borrowed heavily from The Lord of the Rings when creating Vulcans to the point of them being commonly referred to as Space Elves. More than half a century later, the creators of Rings of Power, who worked on the Star Trek film reboots, have chosen portray elves as having various lengths of hair and clothing styles, leading some of the background elves to have hair and clothing that is visually similar to Vulcans.
- The Star Trek franchise villains the Borg are often alleged to be inspired by the Doctor Who franchise villains the Cybermen (creepy hive-minded cyborg humanoids who forcibly assimilate other species/cultures and are sometimes treated like techno-undead). Starting with the 2013 TV episode "Nightmare in Silver", the Cybermen have developed additional abilities inspired by those of the Borg, most notably including developing immunity to weapons that have been used on them, and remote assimilation using infectious nanotechnology.
Music
- The Byrds were heavily inspired by The Beatles, centering their sound on the Rickenbacker 12-string guitar that George Harrison played throughout A Hard Day's Night. Then when The Beatles took influence from folk-rock on Rubber Soul, they were clearly inspired in part by The Byrds and their intricate harmonies, especially on "Nowhere Man" and "If I Needed Someone" (which Harrison said was directly inspired by The Byrds' "The Bells of Rhymney").
- Talking Heads were highly influenced by David Bowie, particularly the Berlin Trilogy (Low, "Heroes" Lodger). In turn, Talking Heads were an influence for Bowie on Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps). Bowie had started to be influenced by David Byrne as a songwriter and vocalist at least by "DJ" from Lodger.
Video Games
- Alan Wake: The game's highly meta horror narrative affected at least one author of the SCP Foundation, who in an interview claimed the game as a major inspiration for their own meta narratives. The Foundation would go on to inspire Control, which takes place in the same setting as Alan Wake, and Control would inspire part of the Keter Duty rewrite to reference dimensional thresholds similar to those in Control, and prominent author qntm of There Is No Antimemetics Division fame to write crossover fanfic between TINAD and Control.
- Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night technically counts as this, being a Creator-Driven Successor to Castlevania: Bloodstained took the development approach of Shovel Knight with Kickstarter backers funding the latter. Shovel Knight was partly inspired by the early Castlevania games on the NES among other things.
- Dante's Inferno by Visceral Games is a Hack and Slash game that was clearly made to compete with God of War, which was inspired by Devil May Cry, which in turn was inspired by Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy.
- Death to Spies, which was inspired by the Hitman series, has a mechanic where certain guards would be able to see through your disguise. The World of Assassination Trilogy would implement this mechanic in the form of "enforcers".
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim's Switch port has content from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The developers of Breath of the Wild partly took inspiration from Skyrim.
- The Hobbit (2003) was inspired by The Legend of Zelda franchise as stated by the developers. The Legend of Zelda's setting was inspired by The Lord of the Rings as confirmed by Takashi Tezuka, co-creator of The Legend of Zelda franchise.
- Kingdom Hearts
- The series includes elements from Peter Pan and uses a target lock system popularized by The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Link was actually inspired by Disney's Peter Pan and Ocarina of Time is the game where he takes the most from Peter Pan. Sora, the protagonist of Kingdom Hearts, has met Peter Pan in the former's home franchise and Link in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
- Starting in The New '10s, the Final Fantasy series that Kingdom Hearts took inspiration from would start to incorporate Action RPG elements that Square first started using in the latter series.
- The numerous movie franchises from the 1980s and 1990s that inspired Mortal Kombat have been represented in Mortal Kombat. Terminator: Dark Fate was promoted by Mortal Kombat 11 with the T-800's inclusion, Peter Weller made his first big role reprise as Robocop in Mortal Kombat 11 before reprising the role in RoboCop: Rogue City, another video game.
- John Woo's Stranglehold, the sequel to Hard Boiled which he directed, draws influence from the Max Payne series, in which its Bullet Time gameplay was actually inspired by Woo's aformentioned Hard Boiled movie.
- Super Mario Odyssey has Mario able to possess animals and creatures in a manner similar to the transformations in Banjo-Kazooie, which was inspired by Super Mario 64.
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has a huge roster consisting of many eras of video games, mainly platformers from the 1980s and 1990s, to boost its sales, its inspiration comes from the idea of having many third-party characters alongside Nintendo characters. Many of the franchises represented were influenced one way or another by Nintendo themselves as Castlevania and Mega Man, featuring Simon and the titular hero respectively, debuted on the NES; Sonic and Sora were made as Alternate Company Equivalents to Mario; Banjo and Kazooie were made during the explosion of 3D platformers in the '90s as a result from Super Mario 64; Bayonetta was inspired at least partially by Zelda games; Ryu and Ken hail from the very series that established the fighting game genre that Smash Bros. is a part of; Fatal Fury was a major inspiration for Masahiro Sakurai to make Smash and has now seen a boost in popularity due to Terry's inclusion in Smash.
- Uncharted drew a lot of comparisons to Tomb Raider since they both star Adventure Archaeologists, with many nicknaming Uncharted as "Dude Raider" when it was first revealed. It's only fitting then, then from Tomb Raider (2013) onward, the Tomb Raider series would borrow a lot from Uncharted in turn.
Web Animation
- Fully Ramblomatic: Discussed by Yazhtee Croshaw in his review of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle:
Yazhtzee: [The game] divides its time between bullying Nazis and solving remarkably functional puzzles and platforming challenges in ancient tombs — no territory that hasn't been thoroughly covered by the likes of Tomb Raider and Uncharted in the course of ripping off Indiana Jones, which I guess is only fair.
Web Original
- The Slender Man Mythos: Since it began filming a matter of days after the first Slender Man images were released, Marble Hornets' Operator ripped pretty much only the design (Tall, faceless man in a suit) from Surge's creation. The monster's method of psychological torment, corruption of electronic devices, and use of human proxies were all elements of the Operator that were lent back to become well-known and accepted pieces of Slendy lore.
Western Animation
- DuckTales
- The rolling boulder trap in Raiders of the Lost Ark was inspired by the Disney Ducks Comic Universe story "The Seven Cities of Cibola" from 1954, as acknowledged by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. When DuckTales (1987) was created, not only was the series logo inspired by the Indiana Jones one, but one episode was titled "Raiders of the Lost Harp".
- The Carl Barks Disney Ducks Comic Universe inspired Osamu Tezuka, now widely regarded as the Father of Manga and Godfather of Anime, to create works like Astro Boy. In DuckTales (2017), inspired by the Disney Ducks comics, the episode "Astro B.O.Y.D.!" was heavily inspired by Astro Boy and other anime, as it takes place in the Ducks universe version of Japan and features a goodhearted robot child who was forsaken by his creator and becomes a hero.
- Rick and Morty is based on the short animation The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti, a crude and vulgar parody of Back to the Future's main characters Emmett Brown and Marty McFly. In 2021, Adult Swim produced Rick and Morty: C-132, short clips meant to be a trailer for a fictional live-action installment of Rick and Morty, where Rick Sanchez was played by none other than Christopher Lloyd. In short, Lloyd briefly played the part of a Corrupted Character Copy of his most famous movie role!
- In 2009, Robot Chicken introduced Strawberry Shortcake parody character Bitch Pudding, an Alpha Bitch well known for her sassy, rude and insensitive personality, who Strawberry and friends can't stand. In 2021, Strawberry Shortcake: Berry in the Big City introduced Bread Pudding, who is characterized by a similar personality to Bitch Pudding, though in a more family-friendly manner due to the target audience. Showrunner Michael Vogel seemingly confirmed that the similarities were intentional.
Real Life
- When New Jersey legalized casino gambling in The '70s, they decided to restrict it to Atlantic City and add the stipulation that only resort properties could offer it, which led Atlantic City to Retool itself along the lines of Las Vegas. As a direct result, Las Vegas saw a decline in visitors, as East Coast residents elected to go to Atlantic City instead. In response, Vegas decided to emulate Atlantic City and started building mega-resorts that offered attractions beyond gambling.