Recurring similar characters in different games.

Playing Overwatch I was curious why Blizzard seemed so eager to bring back the Pudge/Stitches character in the form of Roadhog when most of the other heroes felt so uniquely fresh. Maybe there are some that are some form of callback that I'm missing but it is the one that really caught my attention. But it got me thinking, maybe there are other characters that also appear in games again and again that I might have missed. Anyone got any good suggestions?

The only other one I could think of just now was Cid from the Final Fantasy franchise. Or maybe there games out there that indirectly do this unintentionally (or very intentionally) that you have an example of?

Patches from the Souls series. Don't think he was in DS2, but he was definitely in Demon Souls and DS1, and I think I've heard someone say he is in DS3.

As far as Roadhog not feeling "fresh", that might be because you know who he's based off of. I imagine a lot of people with little to no experience with Pudge or other characters with a similar ability think Roadhog is a breath of fresh air.

Ana's abilities reminded me of Ancient Apparition (the heal prevention) and Elder Titan's stomp (the sleep dart)

Final Fantasy's enjoy to have blonde boy-ish characters in the party. Vaan, Hope, Zidane, Tidus, Cloud, Zell.

Phantom Lancer's model stems from Kimahri from FFX.

He was also in Bloodborne. And referenced in DSII.

As far as Overwatch characters go, aren't Mercy, Hanzo, Tracer, Torbjörn, Junkrat and Pharah pretty much Medic, Huntsman Sniper, Scout, Engineer, Demoman and Soldier?

@pezen: The Final Fantasy games usually have NPCs named Biggs and Wedge in there somewhere too.

I think they just recognize that the idea of an ability to hook someone over to you and then shotgun them in the face is a cool thing to have in the game.

@takoyaki: If you only pay attention to their mechanics, maybe you can formulate an argument like that, but that'd be akin to saying the protagonist in all first person shooters are the same thing. I believe he's saying the similarity with Roadhog goes deeper, in that he's a fat, lumbering abomination of a character like the others he's comparable to, whereas in your other examples the similarities aren't as deep.

Exactly like @veektarius points out, I used Roadhog as an example because the similarities go beyond just skills, it's more like Roadhog, Pudge and Stitches come from the same family and have really weird holiday dinners. Cid is a different beast, that's more the fact that there's someone named something to do with Cid in more or less every game, so the recurring theme there is a lot broader in the filling of the character but there's a frame there named Cid that they use. I want the similarities to be overt yet completely disconnected, like that Phantom Lancer example @onemanarmyy mentioned above.

A weird different example would be the fact that Brock Lesnar is in both WWE and UFC games. In one game 'Brock Lesnar' is a character on a roster of characters. In the other he's an actual mix martial artist competing in an actual sport. Real life made that happen, but it's still a fictional character and a real person simultaneously being the same person and not at the same time in two different games. If that makes any sense at all.

If we're talking about similarities in different games, then one of the most prevalent would be "Shotos" in fighting games. It comes from Shotokan karate, which was what Ryu and Ken's fighting style used to be called, and refers to a fighting game character with some kind of variation on the fireball, dragon punch and hurricane kick. Nearly every fighting game is going to have at least one character with a similar move set.

In the fire emblem series there's a pattern of having a red and a green knight (or most recently red and green ninjas). Anna is also a recurring character as well. Same with the twin bandits I think. I'm going off of some second hand knowledge for the most part though since I started with awakening so feel free to correct me.

Three of the party members in Earthbound Beginnings (Mother 1), Ninten, Ana, and Loid, are basically reused as Ness, Paula, and Jeff in Earthbound. The designs for the former two are nearly identical, and the personalities (what little is shown in game) are practically the same.

Also, though I don't think it's quite what you mean, I couldn't help but notice a familiar face when I started playing UNIEL recently...

Here's some characters from the Zero Escape series...

GTA games have a lot of characters who appear in multiple games. Lazlow and Fernando have been on the radio in every game since III. And there are plenty of other characters that have cameos in the series.

Mass Effect of course had brought back many reoccuring and/or replacement characters. I found the continuity of such a design very compelling during gameplay, while enjoying new charcters in each game too. Of course, since charcters were connected with choices it was likely a compelling 'use of continuity' to most players.

I think Liara T'Soni is my fav.

Forrest Kaysen in Swery's games

@beachthunder: I'm not really picking up what you're putting down.

@alkusanagi: @pezen: While there are usually characters in the Final Fantasy games that are given the same name (like Cid, as previously mentioned), I believe that Gilgamesh (the sword collecting guy) is the only character that actually re-appears as the same person across the various separate titles in the series.. That's unless you also count some of the summoned characters like Ifrit and Shiva etc. but even they were quite different between games.