In a 2016 Family Guy episode titled "Run, Chris, Run!", footage was used from a YouTube video of a glitch in the NES game Double Dribble by user Sw1tched without permission from either Sw1tched or Konami. This would result in the footage being added to YouTube's content ID system as Family Guy footage and accidentally removed. The video was eventually reinstated after intervention from show creator Seth MacFarlane.
Upon the release of Awesome Possum... Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt, Time Warner Interactive was sued by Paul A. Roginski, who claimed that the game copied an unreleased manuscript for a comic book with a similar environmentalist theming and the same protagonist name. The court ruled in favor of Time Warner and Tengen.
The level layouts of The Real Ghostbusters/Garfield Labyrinth/Mickey Mouse IV: Mahou no Labyrinth were directly copied from P.P. Hammer and his Pneumatic Weapon without permission.
The first appearance of a yellow, spherical character named "Puck-Man" with a ravenous appetite was a 1974 bank toy by Tomy, which came in a variety of colors including yellow. It is unknown if the video game character was plagiarized or Pac-Man's design similarities are all a bizarre coincidence, with game creator Toru Iwatani claiming in an unrelated court hearing to have not heard of the toy until after the release of the game. No legal action was taken by Tomy, and the 1970's Tomy Puck-Man toys would be rebranded with Namco's Pac-Man after the success of the game.
The original version of the Bruce Neopet was a photograph of the British celebrity Bruce Forsyth. This was changed to an illustration of Forsyth, and eventually an anthropomorphic penguin.
Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside and Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds were released on the Wii as Pajama Sam: Don’t Fear the Dark and Freddi Fish: Kelp Seed Mystery respectively, alongside Spy Fox: Dry Cereal, which kept its name. However, these ports ran off of the ScummVM emulator engine and did not use proper attribution, leading to all unsold copies of the games being removed from sale and destroyed, and mandatory donations being made to the Free Software Foundation.
The Turrican soundtrack features two tracks that plagiarized the score of the 1986 film "The Transformers: The Movie". The title theme is directly based on the track "Escape", while the ending credits theme features a rearrangement of the track "Death of Optimus Prime".
When Street Fighter 6's preliminary logo was revealed, it was mocked for a variety of reasons, particularly a disconnect from previous series logos and aligning with a widely criticized trend of generic, minimalist or "oversimplified" logos. Some fans noted that the logo strongly resembled an $80 design for an "SF" logo posted on the Adobe Stock Image store by user xcoolee, which had previously been used for a sci-fi convention in France. xcoolee did offer to sell exclusive rights to the logo to Capcom, but was seemingly denied. It was also discovered that a Taiwanese electronics and appliances retailer, Sunfar, had a similar hexagonal logo. On the day after Street Fighter 6's logo reveal, the front page of their website displayed an advertisement with the logo featuring a paint splatter reading the number 6 promoting gaming products, most likely as a promotional parody. It is unknown if either resemblance was a coincidence on Capcom's part, and xcoolee did not state if they knew whether Capcom bought anything from their store or not. The logo of Street Fighter 6 would be updated to appear more stylized before the game's launch in response to the negative reception, although the fan reception to the new logo was not much more positive.
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BMB is a Russian video game studio known for making bootleg Sega Genesis games that feature violent content in their game over and continue screens. Some of the most graphic instances of this plagiarized fan content depict characters such as Mario, Felix the Cat, Iron Man, and Ben 10 as either being bloodied, their head decomposed into a skull, or in more gruesome scenarios like Felix's skin being peeled off of his face. Oftentimes this is accompanied by text directly alluding towards the featured characters' deaths and the consequences of the villains' victories. The background music for these scenes is typically reused in each game, either using the title theme from UWOL: The Quest for Money and/or Corneria's theme from Star Fox. Additionally, while not a game over, BMB's bootleg hack of Angry Birds Star Wars ends with Darth Vader's mask being lifted to unveil a bloodied Bad Piggy.
The "Woohoo!" sound effect played when rescuing a Bikini Bottomite in Drawn to Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition appears to be a plagiarized, sped-up sound effect of Homer Simpson from The Simpsons.
Lemmings was originally going to use a soundtrack of plagarised copyrighted music, something that was common in microcomputer games the decade prior, including pop songs and television theme songs. In the final game, these were swapped for public domain songs, though a sample of Don Messick as Scooby-Doo used for a cover of the Scooby-Doo & Scrappy-Doo theme song would be retained in the How Much is that Doggie in the Window? music track. The Mission: Impossible theme seems to have been chosen in reference to a fad on British television at the time of showing squirrels performing stunts to the song.
In 2016, Nintendo entered a legal dispute with MariCar, an Osaka-based company offering tourists Mario Kart-themed tours of the city using modified go-karts. The service included costumes based on the Mario Kart roster and alluded to the games' items in its advertising, jokingly asking customers not to attack each other with "banana peels" or "red turtle shells." Nintendo filed a complaint with the Japan Patent Office in September, arguing that the company's trademark was deliberately over-evocative of that for Mario Kart. Four months later, however, the office denied Nintendo's request, noting that "MariCar" was not a common abbreviation for Mario Kart, and thus the two trademarks did not conflict.
As the Japanese legal system does not include fair use protections for parodies, Nintendo subsequently sued MariCar the following month for copyright infringement due to the unauthorized inclusion of Mario character costumes. The case was ultimately decided in Nintendo's favor in September 2018, with MariCar being forced to drop the Mario Kart iconography and pay Nintendo ¥10 million (roughly equivalent to $89,000 USD) in damages. The company attempted to appeal the case to the Japanese Supreme Court, who rejected the motion in December 2020 and increased the fine to ¥50 million (approximately $483,000 USD). MariCar has since rebranded as Street Kart in the wake of the lawsuit.
The character Cho'Gath seems to be based off the character the Violator from the American comic book franchise "Spawn". This could be a coincidence, but when the game first launched, the Void (where Cho'Gath is from) was framed more like the world's equivalent to Hell, and the Violator is a minion of Hell.
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In 2018, the Bubsy series fandom Amino was visited by a user named "Beelzebubsy" alleging to have unreleased concept art drawn by Ken Macklin for Bubsy's design in Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind. Bubsy fans immediately noticed that one design - a female Bubsy that was scrapped for being "too sexualized" - bore a close resemblance to "Modern Bubsy", a fan-made interpretation of the character as a depressed transgender prostitute created by SqrlyJack, an artist who hates Bubsy and gained notoriety for being malicious towards Bubsy fans. This connection was further drawn by the presence of another alleged prototypical design inspired by Michael Jackson, who SqrlyJack is known to be a fan of, and his jacket used in the music video to Jackson's song "Beat It", as well as a later post by the same user showing a screenshot of a Bubsy parody from one of her RPG Maker games. The third concept art does have a strong resemblance to a real piece of Bubsy concept art shown in a 1990s magazine, suggesting it may have been traced.
If one observes the hoax concept art closely, they can see that the attempt at replicating Macklin's signature does not completely match up with his real signature, such as having a lowercase a with a double-edged side instead of one, and a lowercase k without a sloped bottom, adding to the already strong suspicion that the concept art was faked.
Another Bubsy fandom member, Xindictive, who was on a Bubsy Discord server with late Bubsy creator Michael Berlyn, has said on occasion that both Berlyn and a former friend of SqrlyJack have confirmed the images to be faked for a fact. However, since the Discord server where these communications presumably took place has been closed as a result of hacking, it is hard to access these direct confirmations.
The first two versions of Pengo use "Popcorn" by Gershon Kingsley as the background music, in the third and fourth, they were swapped for an original tune.
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In September 2021, Neopets attempted to enter the budding Non-fungible Token market with a project called the "Neopets Metaverse", predictably sparking major backlash from the Neopets fandom citing pre-existing criticisms and negative stigmas surrounding NFTs. However, much less predictable were the string of controversies that followed, which involved using the fansite Dress to Impress to make their NFTs (notably signified by one of the tokens having a glitch only present on Dress to Impress and not the official Neopets site), promotion of an R-rated NFT collection titled "Horny Hedgehogs", banning the word "gay" from their Discord server but permitting homophobic slurs, portraying those opposed to NFTs as the "Soyjak" meme, and in secret planning to get the main game developers to implement long-requested features so fans would "shut up" about the NFT project.
When the project first spread, the Neopets Twitter account stated in a direct message that it was a scam, putting doubt on its legitimacy, but the main brand would later would endorse the project. The most infamous endorsement came when the winner of an art contest ended up being an anti-NFT protest image, which they removed and - after being called out - subtly censored it by compressing it so hard that it couldn't be read without extremely close observance.
After two years, Neopets ultimately announced in July 2023 that it would be completely shuttering the Neopets Metaverse project after former CEO of the Metaverse division Dominic Law brokered a "management buyout deal", and that the game would no longer have any cryptocurrency or NFT elements.
The Elf Bowling series has been the subject of multiple bizarre and unprofessional Wikipedia edits by individuals involved with the franchise, something considered poor conduct on the website.
Elf Bowling co-creator Dan "Ferg" Ferguson created a Wikipedia article under the name "Itzaferg" and inserted self-aggrandizing information about his history with the franchise to its page, as well as adding articles that were soon deleted for his company Blockdot and its lesser known, non-Elf Bowling works.
After this, Matthew Lichtenwalter, who bought the rights to Elf Bowling in 2001, attempted to claim that the portable compilation, Elf Bowling 1 & 2 was "unauthorized" using Wikipedia as a platform, writing a signed quote from himself on the Wikipedia article for Elf Bowling, as well as saying that he "created the series [after]" he bought it out.
"The DS and GBA versions were not approved or authorized by NStorm and were extremely poor copies of the code and art by original creators Ferguson and Bielinski. Myself, along with millions of fans all over the world loved the original artwork of Ferguson in all its pixelized glory and this unauthorized release caused sever [sic] harm to the brand that took several years to recover from." ~ Matthew Lichtenwalter, Commotion Interactive
It seems highly unlikely that the Elf Bowling ports were actually unauthorized, as no legal action was taken, nor did any of the developers or publishers of the release attempt to hide their work on it at any point.
In 2018, rapper Soulja Boy attempted to sell his own line of video game consoles, collectively called the SouljaGame line, sold for $149.99 for a console and $99.99 for a handheld. Advertising claimed that the consoles would be compatible with a variety of consoles' games, including modern platforms like the PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch. These, quite obviously, did not have such compatibility, but rather were a generic retro emulator console one could find on small business-oriented retail websites such as Wish and AliExpress loaded with pirated and modified games from the Neo Geo; NES; Game Boy Advance; Game Boy Color; Game Boy; Sega Genesis; SNES; Master System; Game Gear; and PlayStation libraries sold at a markup. The only difference from these pre-existing consoles being a photograph of Soulja printed onto the box. Soulja Boy would eventually stop selling SouljaGame consoles, with the website for the console redirecting to Nintendo's 3DS website.
The NES Punch-Out!! theme was plagiarized from the Gillette razors "Look Sharp, Be Sharp" jingle, which was used as the opening theme song for the American sports program Gillette Cavalcade of Sports, best known for its boxing programming, in the 1950s.
The first appearance of a yellow, spherical character named "Puck-Man" with a ravenous appetite was a 1974 bank toy by Tomy, which came in a variety of colors including yellow. It is unknown if the video game character was plagiarized or Pac-Man's design similarities are all a bizarre coincidence, with game creator Toru Iwatani claiming in an unrelated court hearing to have not heard of the toy until after the release of the game. No legal action was taken by Tomy, and the 1970's Tomy Puck-Man toys would be rebranded with Namco's Pac-Man after the success of the game.
The original version of the Bruce Neopet was a photograph of the British celebrity Bruce Forsyth. This was changed to an illustration of Forsyth, and eventually an anthropomorphic penguin.
When Street Fighter 6's preliminary logo was revealed, it was mocked for a variety of reasons, particularly a disconnect from previous series logos and aligning with a widely criticized trend of generic, minimalist or "oversimplified" logos. Some fans noted that the logo strongly resembled an $80 design for an "SF" logo posted on the Adobe Stock Image store by user xcoolee, which had previously been used for a sci-fi convention in France. xcoolee did offer to sell exclusive rights to the logo to Capcom, but was seemingly denied. It was also discovered that a Taiwanese electronics and appliances retailer, Sunfar, had a similar hexagonal logo. On the day after Street Fighter 6's logo reveal, the front page of their website displayed an advertisement with the logo featuring a paint splatter reading the number 6 promoting gaming products, most likely as a promotional parody. It is unknown if either resemblance was a coincidence on Capcom's part, and xcoolee did not state if they knew whether Capcom bought anything from their store or not. The logo of Street Fighter 6 would be updated to appear more stylized before the game's launch in response to the negative reception, although the fan reception to the new logo was not much more positive.
The "Woohoo!" sound effect played when rescuing a Bikini Bottomite in Drawn to Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition appears to be a plagiarized, sped-up sound effect of Homer Simpson from The Simpsons.
In 2016, Nintendo entered a legal dispute with MariCar, an Osaka-based company offering tourists Mario Kart-themed tours of the city using modified go-karts. The service included costumes based on the Mario Kart roster and alluded to the games' items in its advertising, jokingly asking customers not to attack each other with "banana peels" or "red turtle shells." Nintendo filed a complaint with the Japan Patent Office in September, arguing that the company's trademark was deliberately over-evocative of that for Mario Kart. Four months later, however, the office denied Nintendo's request, noting that "MariCar" was not a common abbreviation for Mario Kart, and thus the two trademarks did not conflict.
The character Cho'Gath seems to be based off the character the Violator from the American comic book franchise "Spawn". This could be a coincidence, but when the game first launched, the Void (where Cho'Gath is from) was framed more like the world's equivalent to Hell, and the Violator is a minion of Hell.
In 2018, rapper Soulja Boy attempted to sell his own line of video game consoles, collectively called the SouljaGame line, sold for $149.99 for a console and $99.99 for a handheld. Advertising claimed that the consoles would be compatible with a variety of consoles' games, including modern platforms like the PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch. These, quite obviously, did not have such compatibility, but rather were a generic retro emulator console one could find on small business-oriented retail websites such as Wish and AliExpress loaded with pirated and modified games from the Neo Geo; NES; Game Boy Advance; Game Boy Color; Game Boy; Sega Genesis; SNES; Master System; Game Gear; and PlayStation libraries sold at a markup. The only difference from these pre-existing consoles being a photograph of Soulja printed onto the box. Soulja Boy would eventually stop selling SouljaGame consoles, with the website for the console redirecting to Nintendo's 3DS website.
