Dream Tropes Wiki/They Copied It, So It Sucks!

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There's a high demand for innovation and new ideas, so if a new work has similarities to an older or more popular one, expect those similarities to be the dominant subject in discussion about the work, even if they're entirely superficial. Some people go on to say that if you can't come up with an original idea, don't even bother trying to make the work, despite the fact that most original works get ignored because of lack of advertising or that it's just not something publishers recognize and they're afraid to give it a chance. It's often a Catch-22 when genuine attempts to shake up the market are ignored, whereas Strictly Formula works fly off the shelves because of the familiarity, despite the criticisms of lack of originality.

Of course, many times creators do borrow ideas from another work as inspiration to create new stories and concepts. Considering that just about everything has been done, it's difficult to properly think of something new and fresh. This is not always the case, however, as sometimes creators deliberately try to copy a particular franchise as soon as its success becomes evident. They will immediately try to make something to compete — and most of the time it will fail miserably, because it was rushed or just implemented poorly. Other times it might come up with a really cool and ingenious new spin on the idea, and still never reach the same kind of popularity as its competition because somehow being too much like the original is deplorable.

The error here is the automatic assumption that just because something is similar, it can't have any value on its own merits. If everything that was derivative was that bad, it wouldn't be done so much. Some can actually be quite good on their own. And enough followers can even go From Clones to Genre.

This assumption can be infuriating to creators of products that are similar to products being designed simultaneously. Their options are to either reduce the quality of your work in order to get it out first, or be written off as a cheap imitation of the competitor's product (which they probably watered down to be first out of the gate). Many "ripoffs" were in fact in development at the same time, but due to the development window for most modern media, could be released months or even years apart. This can also make the fans of the more "popular" feature look really hypocritical if the alleged victim of ripoffs wasn't all that original to begin with. In extreme cases, an older, lesser known work is accused of copying the more popular work that borrowed from it. This is often a huge Berserk Button for fans of the original and the original creator. Has also been known as "The Hydrox Effect" because people assumed that Hydrox was a knock-off of Oreo, even though Hydrox came out in 1908 and Oreo, which came out in 1912, was inspired by Hydrox.

The absurd extreme of this is when old-timers show off their long memories by dismissing new shows as rehashes of older productions which a lot of the times undermine the vast history of things that came before it outside of Small Reference Pools. The idea this trope exists as much in the modern era is a little sad. Putting it bluntly, if you have the time to be reading this page and having a bad reaction to it, perhaps it's time to learn a little more. The examples below could very well be a nice place to start.

You'll notice that sometimes this trope is invoked not only by rival fans and trolly haters, but people who actually aren't fans of the genre, even so much as hating it in its entirety. You'll notice that when people are typically not fans of a genre or series, similar to its cousin It's the Same, So It Sucks. The two almost go hand-in-hand, this way, since a non-fan would not really notice how many subtle differences since, after all, they see it and aren't looking for that stuff, that is, if they actually see the work they're invoking this trope, on. Sometimes people are actually calling out things based upon meta-concepts of the genre. Expect to see criticisms of this type in the form of a list comparing the two works using broad generalizations.

This is the justification behind Sequelphobia. Compare Older Than They Think. Compare and sometimes contrast with "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny when the original suffers due to amount (and sometimes the quality) of similar works released later. Not to be confused with They Changed It, Now It Sucks!, where a sequel or an official adaptation changes an aspect of an original work for better or worse. Also not to be confused with It's the Same, Now It Sucks!, the polar opposite.

See also It's Been Done. Related to Plagiarism, which takes this trope to its logical extreme by directly ripping off entire unchanged portions of another work. And that's a sucky thing to do.

Not to be confused with Shoddy Knockoff Product and The Mockbuster, which is for works which do copy other works and do suck.

## Examples

### Films - Animated

* *The Drillimation Movie* did face criticism for being such a rip-off of *South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut*.

### Live-Action TV

* Viva's *Guardian Trappers* was accused of ripping the most popular tokusatsu franchises *Neo-Shifters* and *Bionicle* off.
* Many Croyeans and El Kadsreians both describe *Veronica's Closet* and *Jesse* knockoffs/ripoffs of *Caroline in the City*.

### Western Animation

* Maddox City for being a "Fat Albert ripoff".