Adaptation Expansion

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"The movie follows the book, sort of, if you can imagine a cute balloon inflated into a zeppelin."

—Roger Ebert, review of The Cat in the Hat (2003)

This is the complete opposite of Compressed Adaptation. It occurs when a short, very simple tale is given a much bigger adaptation, typically as a feature-length film. To be brought up to feature length, the storyline will have to be padded with some new stuff—a lot of new stuff. Cue Alternate Character Interpretations that require elaborate backstories, minor characters given much larger parts, new characters, and sometimes Plot Holes, Plot Tumors, and a triple dozen subplots that were not in the original work.

This has a tendency to make the story unrecognizable as retelling of the original. In particularly Egregious instances, the original story will end up as one small part of a much larger, more convoluted story. This will usually be the climax, in which case the film essentially gave you an hour or more of Backstory.

This most often happens with movies based on novellas, short stories, video games or children's picture books. A surprisingly common trend is to take a short, succinct children's story and oversaturate it with Darker and Edgier elements and backstory. Usually the edgier elements do not contribute anything aside from scaring the crap out of the young audience.

While this can be done well, this trope is often associated with the complaint "They Changed It, Now It Sucks!" An adaptation In Name Only goes even further than this, throwing out the original plot and making things up out of whole cloth. Remember that Tropes Are Tools.

See also Adaptation Decay, Adaptation Distillation, Compressed Adaptation, Patchwork Story.

Examples of Adaptation Expansion include:

Anime and Manga

  • As a general rule, most anime adaptations of Yonkoma usually have to expand on the sparse-by-necessity gags/scenes from each of the four-panel strips.
  • The first six episodes of Hellsing have significantly more character development and material than the two volumes of the manga they are based on.
    • The remaining 7 on the other hand...
  • Naruto
    • Episode 133 of stretches out almost everything from the manga chapter it was based on, and the adds a whole bunch of things that were never there in the first place, to the point where it's about fifty percent Filler. The catch? It is actually far better than the original story, as when something that dramatic happens it can serve to slow things down for a bit.
    • The anime frequently does this when it wants to add time by ways other than plain old Filler. For example, Temari and Tenten's fight (if you can call it that) was off-screen in the manga, but on-screen in the anime. Shippuden has a filler arc that actually gives one character (Asuma) some backstory (although the anime already did that with pre-Time Skip filler to Kurenai, Anko, and Ibiki) and another detailing the capture and sealing of one of the third tailed beast when in the manga this we only saw half a chapter of this and most of it took place offscreen (which is a good thing, as many were disappointed that we didn't get to see any of this in the manga).
      • Likewise, a filler arc in the anime actually details a character named Utakata who is actually the Junchuriki of the five-tailed slug. Utakata actually does appear in the manga, but was captured off-screen and along with the other Junchuriki sans Gaara, Killer Bee, and Naruto, was absent for about a year until he was resurrected along with all the other junchuriki who were captured by Akatsuki. As a result, we get to know who Utakata is.
    • Episodes 1 and 3 feature Early Bird Cameos by the future members of Team 8 and 10, who don't appear in the manga until the start of the Chunin Exam arc, possibly to acknowledge their existence as part of Naruto's class.
    • The same can be said of Episodes 8 and 10 of the anime Love Hina, which likewise improve upon the manga chapters.
    • How about the infamous 'Unmask Kakashi' episode? It was just a 3-page manga-special, yet they expanded the story with a much better ending.
  • Lucky Star had a lot of new material added into the anime. For example, the entirety of Haruhi.
    • Also, anybody who watched the first episode remembers, for better or for worse, the food discussion that took up roughly half the episode. The manga's version of the discussion? Four strips, focusing on the choco-coronet.
  • The Pokémon anime is a shining example, having perhaps a whole two-thirds of the episodes being content added into the world provided by the games. In fact, they did an entire 36-episode story arc based outside of the established worlds (The Orange Islands - the second season, no less!).
    • While Pokémon Special stays true to the games for the most part, new characterizations and plots do get added on.
  • Subtly done with Azumanga Daioh, which expands just about every joke from the original Yonkoma-style manga. In many cases, the extra length between setup and punchline actually makes the joke funnier (a key example: the famous "Osaka with a knife" incident is infinitely funnier in the anime because of how long passes before you see the weapon).
  • In the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni manga. Some scenes expand on their sound novel counterparts and new scenes are added. The anime is a Compressed Adaptation—to point of being forced. The ending of Tsumihoroboshi-hen in the anime makes more sense, however. And it devotes an entire episode to it. But they do end up screwing the beginning to the associated next arc.
  • The Bleach anime has quite a few added scenes, particularly in the flashback chapters, possibly to ensure that the episodes begin or end at certain appropriate points in the plot. This is sometimes seagued into the middle of canon material such as the flashback episode dealing with Ikkaku and Yumichika's history in the Rukongai before they became shinigami covering how they first met Kenpachi. Th expansion of only a couple of canon manga panels into a full episode has caught out some parts of the fandom who don't realise it's actually an Adaptation Expansion. This is also especially prevalent in the Turn Back the Pendulum Arc, where over half of each of the first two episodes were new material. The Anime also added an entire episode to finally give 3rd Espada Tia Harribel a backstory and motivations, something the Manga did not do.
    • There's also episode 293, whose second half is the animated rendition of the Shocking Swerve from chapter 392 with Hitsugaya almost killing Momo, thinking she was Aizen while under the influence of Kyouka Suigetsu. Not only it's beautifully animated, but after the deed is done and we see the Oh Crap expressions in the captains' faces once they realize what truly happened, we get an extra scene where Hitsugaya, having withdrawn his sword from Momo's body, gently carries her in his arms to a nearby terrace, which is when she asks him why he hurt her before passing out. Then he screams and attacks Aizen in a blind fury. For all the faults the anime has, it was really well-done.//
    • The final battle with Aizen was a very anti-climatic death in the manga, but the anime makes it finally worth it to see Ichigo kicking Aizen's ass.
  • The K-On! anime is well over half new material, which was a given, with it being based on a 4-panel manga.
  • Yu Yu Hakusho has several instances of expansion from the manga, as minor plot points can become mini-subplots. In the anime adaptation of the Yukina arc, part of the pressure is to get to Yukina and prevent Hiei from killing Tarukane out of anger, and Hiei is shown prepared to kill Tarukane before Yukina stops him. In the manga, Botan only mentions that it was good that Hiei did not kill Tarukane, or else they would have to arrest him for killing a human, and Hiei only punches Tarukane once after finding him, saying that Yukina is worth more than he is. Come on, Hiei! You can't kill the guy, but I doubt that any reader would blame you for attempting it, considering what Tarukene is...
  • Inverted with Slayers and its original source of canon, the Light Novel series. The regular series is fifteen books long, and the first half is the basis for one manga series and two seasons of the anime. The Slayers Special/Smash novels take place before the original series. While four movies and six OVAs cover a good amount of Lina's prequel time, there are over thirty novels. As of this writing, Smash is on hiatus, but definitely not cancelled, so it won't end anytime soon. This creates some serious Fridge Logic when it's revealed that the Special/Smash series takes place over the span of two years, while the regular series spans roughly four.
    • The manga adaptation of the Slayers Premium Non-Serial Movie clarifies a few loose plot points and makes Amelia, Zelgadis, and Xellos more active in the events that go on, whereas in the movie, they (especially Xellos) were moving scenery.
  • As a result of having relatively few opportunities to put in filler arcs in recent anime episodes, recent One Piece episodes cover exactly a chapter worth of material to avoid getting closer to where the manga is. As most chapters don't have 20 minutes worth of material, a good portion of the episodes ends up being filler, primarily expanding on scenes, giving what is happening in a single panel more time on-screen and showing what a character who had not been shown in the actual manga chapter is doing (for example, Brook looking for milk before going back to fight Oars in the Thriller Bark Arc).
  • The 2003 anime version of Fullmetal Alchemist deviated from the manga on many points, but even the ones where it stayed the same had additional scenes. The Lior arc, one of the more faithfully adapted ones, goes on for two episodes instead of one chapter, has several added scenes expanding on Rose's backstory, and shows Cornello and his minions giving the Elric brothers more trouble than they did in the manga. Some minor plots are expanded upon, as in the anime, Ed has a Ten-Minute Retirement after Nina's death, during which he encounters and helps arrest Barry the Chopper (whom the brothers don't meet in the manga until his soul is bound to a suit of armor).
  • Suzumiya Haruhi: The original Light Novels story of "Endless Eight" was a short story that tells the story of a Groundhog Day Loop and its resolution, as seen through the 15,498th and final iteration through the loop. The anime, on the other hand has aired eight episodes of this, which depict: (a) an unnumbered iteration where the protagonists don't realize they're in a time loop; (b) six nearly identical subsequent iterations with only cosmetic differences where the SOS brigade discover the loop but, contrary to the short story, don't manage to solve it; and (c) a final episode - iteration number 15,532 - where Kyon finally manages to sever the loop and end the 595 years of repetition upon repetition.
    • Also something of a disappointment as the original story referred to the group doing different things during different loops.
    • The movie, Suzumiya Haruhi no Shoshitsu (The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi) also counts, since it expands a rather short novel into a massive, nearly-three-hours-long feature film. And it does so WONDERFULLY.
  • MAR is an odd example in that the manga ended way before the anime did. The producers however thought the manga ended too with too many loose ends. So an entirely new content was added in near the end of the series resulting in a Gecko Ending. That's right a manga that ended before the anime got a Gecko Ending.
  • Shokojo Sera is an example of Adaptation Expansion done right. While several characters are added or expanded, and the finale is made much more dramatic, the overall story arc is remarkably faithful to the original novel, right down to word-for-word recreations of key scenes - Becky's final march up to the attic comes to mind.
  • The first "chapter" of the Fist of the North Star TV series expands Shin's role from just being a Token Motivational Nemesis by changing the order of events in the story and making his organization bigger than it was in the manga.
  • The Cardcaptor Sakura manga had nineteen cards, the anime had 52.
    • There were also new plot threads and the addition of Meilin.
  • The Tona Gura manga chapters that came out well after the anime was done have added depth to the on-screen personalities of the characters. Even militaristic Marie Kagura has a surprisingly sweet if sad motivation for her attacks on her brother Yuuji beyond their father's orders.
  • Brigadoon Marin and Melan had only two manga volumes, while the anime went well over 20 episodes and introduced several new characters.
  • The Kamen Rider manga Kamen Rider Spirits is essentially an alternate retelling of a 45-minute TV special. It started in 2001, and is still running (though currently on hiatus). Mostly this is because ZX's origin special was focused solely on Murasame/ZX's battle with Badan; Spirits shows what the other nine Showa Kamen Riders were doing after their series, as well as tying everything together by having the remnants of their old enemies joining forces with Badan.
  • The Hidamari Sketch Yonkoma started at around the same time (early 2004) as Lucky Star and both were first animated at roughly the same time (early 2007). Yet, Hidamari Sketch has a much slower pace. It is only through Studio Shaft's expansion (with the insertion of original stories) that it can sustain the 42 episodes it has or will air. Major expansion points: Chika was ascended from a referenced unnamed character to arguably one of the major characters. The anime played up the manga's relatively normal Romantic Two-Girl Friendship content, to the level that Hiro and Sae can be said as platonically married in the anime. Natsume's Tsundere tendencies are magnified in the anime.
  • The manga adaptation of Breath of Fire IV in Comic Blade Avarus manages to be simultaneously an example of this trope and Adaptation Distillation. The manga is a distillation of a 40+ hour JRPG with Multiple Endings, Multiple Plots, and which has been legitimately described in parts as Fetch Quest Hell; however, the manga also added a fair amount of material from the official artbook that was never included in the game.
  • For all the omissions and changes they made, the Fist of the North Star: Legends of the True Savior movies and OVAs feature plenty of new story elements as well. The first four installments did so by retelling events from the manga from the perspective of characters other than Kenshiro, while the fifth movie was actually a Prequel to the manga.
  • An unusual example of this trope is Mobile Suit Gundam when it is adapted into the manga Gundam: The Origin. Being a 43-episode TV series, there's no shortage of source material, but the author, Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, did more than that----he streamlined the original storyline while visiting many background events and character histories. This included Char Anzable and Sayla Mass's childhood and exile, Char's subsequent enrollment in Zeon's military, the path to the One Year War (up to the Battle of Loum, where The Federation's space fleet suffered a devastating defeat) and General Revil's capture and escape. Yasuhiko's adaptation is quite popular in Japan and this expansion is praised by fans.
  • Saiyuki has a lot of built up bits in the anime (the first series filler being a lot less random than the second and third, the filler tends to focus on backstories of the characters being dragged up in some way). Homura (and his arc) was created for the first anime (by the original author though). He does however feature briefly in the manga but his main story is told in the anime. Hazel was originally the same but minekura decided she wanted to do her own arc about him (which is why the anime and manga are very different, the anime writers interpreted her directions differently)
  • Dragon Ball does this with a few episodes. A notable example; in the manga, there's a scene where a female Red Ribbon officer (and apparently the only one in the whole army) presents Commander Red with a Dragon Ball. In the anime adaption of that episode, not only do you see her retrieve it, but later, upon realizing that Goku's attack is going to spell the end of the Army she loots Red's riches and gets the heck out of Dodge.
    • Another notable example was Gohan's training in preparation for the fight with the Saiyans. In the manga, all we see is Gohan going off after discovering the new clothes Piccolo gave him while he was sleeping, and then in the next chapter they skip ahead six months to his training with Piccolo. However, in the anime, we see a good amount of Gohan's adventures on the island Piccolo left him on for those six months, and we get to see him gradually develop from a whiny little kid to a confident, self-sufficient fighter.
    • The search for the six-star dragonball in the Red Ribbon Army Saga is also expanded greatly. In the manga, Goku swoops in, beats up two Mooks, beats up Colonel Silver, and leaves with the dragonball. In the anime, this storyline is expanded to include the Pilaf Gang, Chi-Chi, the Ox King, and a shifty antique shop owner.
  • The Fairy Tail anime, in addition to giving the supporting cast a bit more attention, will add in little bits of foreshadowing that normally didn't appear in the manga until anywhere twenty to a hundred chapters later, making the story seem a hell of a lot more planned. Thus far they've included Laxus's hand signal in one of the very first episodes, turning it into a guild gesture; an early display of Levy's ability to deactivate any form of written spell; a glimpse of the Oracion Seis members as kids in the Tower of Heaven and a cause for their desires; and the mention that Siegrain and Jellal are twins right of the bat rather than wait until the arc was almost over like Mashima did; and even a mildly exasperated sigh from Cana upon hearing Gildarts' name mentioned, very subtly alluding to her daddy issues with him.
    • Story arcs after the first season take an even further step. The Nirvana arc sees the return of Erigor, a minor villain who disappeared from the manga without a trace, even after Lucy speculated he would come back to take revenge, which he does in the anime...but his fight with Natsu doesn't even last five minutes. In fact, he's made the one who Jellal steals his clothes from after reviving, a role given to a nameless Mook in the manga. The Edolas arc gives attention to off-screen events only mentioned in the manga, such as Gajeel's adventure in Edolas that leads to Gray and Erza's rescue, teaming up with his anime-exclusive counterpart to do it, and the Edolas version of Fairy Tail's debate over whether or not to stand up against the army after years of running away from them. After the arc ends, they even dedicate half an episode showing Mystogan ruling Edolas as king and giving the villains their proper punishments while the rest of the world adapts to life without magic. It even gives us the suggestion that the main villain of the arc, Faust, was Makarov's counterpart all along. The Tenrou Island arc fleshes out Ultear's backstory where she is apparently abandoned by her mother and experimented on at the research facility, which turns out to be run by Brain, the villain of the Nirvana arc. And while Natsu and co. are duking it out with Hades, we actually get to see what the rest of the guild is doing as they're holding the fort for their injured (according to the anime, that is fending off already-defeated minor villains who are still hanging around the island).
  • Full Metal Panic!: The Second Raid does this, adapting two short novels into 13 episodes. The first four episodes take place before the novels even start, and add a considerable amount of background to the story. This mostly makes things better, by increasing the personal involvement of the characters in the plot. There's also the addition of entirely new characters, specifically, the fact that two forgettable male henchmen of the villain were replaced with beautiful twin sisters who play a fairly major role as rivals to the protagonists. Their first appearance was nude, together in the shower, then gradually getting dressed while being way too intimate. Because KyoAni.
  • When the game Fire Emblem: Seisen No Keifu was adapted into a manga by shoujo author Mitsuki Oosawa, she decided to add more content and plot development. As a result, this adaptation covers a lot of characterization of the side characters and goes into more detail on what happens within the countries where the battles happen. For instance, it creates a rather big subplot on the... unique situation between Eltosian and Lachesis... though at the cost of making Eltosian's wife a jealous bitch and omitting Lachesis's suitor Beowulf so she can have Fin as her Second Love. The Love Triangle between Levin, Fury and Sylvia develops relatively smoothly, and the losing girl (Sylvia) is given a far more sympathetic role; not to mention, it delves rather well in the psyche of the future Magnificent Bastard and Big Bad, Alvis of Velthomer, making him a Jerkass Woobie.
  • In the Tokko manga the main story ends after Ranmaru awakens his powers, with the remainder of the manga being a side story focusing on a different set of characters. The anime expands on the events leading up to Ranmaru's awakening and expands/continues the story after he awakens his powers. It also expands on the backstories of most of the characters.
  • The original Inuyasha series could be prone to this. One notable example is the defeat of Toukijin whose creation was commissioned by Sesshoumaru from the fangs of a powerful youkai that had hated Inuyasha. The sword takes over its creator Kaijinbou as soon as its made and hunts down Inuyasha whom it hates. Kaijinbou, unable to cope with his own creation's sheer power, explodes and the sword lands in the ground. Not even Toutousai can approach the sword, so powerful is its evil aura. In the manga, Sesshoumaru immediately arrives and defeats and masters Toukijin the second he touches it. In the anime, Adaptation Expansion has the sword begin the corrupt its surrounding area as soon as it lands in the shrine and, since no-one can approach it, Miroku begins to organise the construction of a shrine to try and contain the evil. Only after this Adaptation Expansion does Sesshoumaru finally arrive to defeat and master the sword.
  • The anime adaption of Mirai Nikki gives the background for Marco and Ai, the Battle Couple that make up Seventh, something that wasn't included in the manga. Ai was abandoned by her parents, and taken in by Eighth, and grew very attached to Marco. When Marco tried encouraging her to stop being so clingy, she fell prey to a trap, concocted by some Alpha Bitch students, and was raped by several other students. Marco killed the rapists, and swore to protect Ai from then on.
  • Persona 4: The Animation has several. The game doesn't show the start of Chie and Yukiko's friendship, but the anime does. We get Yu (the protagonist's) personality because he makes his own choices rather than going with ours. We also get to hear one of Rise's songs.
  • In some Detective Conan cases adapted from manga to anime, the anime adds all kinds of details to the basic layouts already given, and sometimes these work really well. A great example is the resolution of the Detectives Koshien case: the manga makes Th Reveal that Koshimizu killed Tokitsu to punish him for driving her best friend to suicide upon wrongfully getting her accused of killing her boss rather straightforward and short, but the anime expands this via also adding flashbacks of the best friend crossing the Despair Event Horizon due to the false accusation and of her jumping into the sea, alongside one that shows the boss herself falling in madness, and concluding with Koshimizu crying as she explains her reasons. It's heartbreaking.
  • The Kodomo No Jikan anime tends to expand conversations, move things around occasionally and change some character development.
  • The 2017 Little Witch Academia, as an adaptation of the 2013 and 2015 films, has a much longer running time. It means the series has less pressure to tell a story within a tight time constraint, leading to loosened pacing, more natural character introductions, and many "relaxed" episodes where the overarching story isn't advanced. There's plenty of new content as well: the Antagonist Professor Croix, Lost Words of Arctus, the backstory of the Cavendish family, and the Inept Mage Atsuko "Akko" Kagari's desperate efforts to learn magic.

Comic Books

  • Ian Flynn's Mega Man comic is famous for turning a series of video games with little more than Excuse Plots into a full fledged series. Even the arc based on the more plot heavy Full Motion Video game Super Adventure Rockman adds significant elements to the story.

Eastern Animation


Fan Works


Film

  • Any feature-length film based on something that was written by Dr. Seuss.
  • The live-action Pippi Longstocking movies added material to the sequence of stories in the books. The third one, Pippi in the South Seas did indeed have them going to the South Seas—not to visit Pippi's father's island, but to rescue him from pirates.
  • Hollywood turned The Secret Life of Walter Mitty from a classic short story by James Thurber into an overblown Danny Kaye vehicle.
  • The movie adaptations of Mr. Bean showed that the task of writing a plotline for a Sketch Comedy character is not an easy one.
  • Many Saturday Night Live characters have transitioned from Sketch Comedy to feature films: The Blues Brothers, Wayne's World, It's Pat, Stuart Saves His Family, Coneheads, A Night at the Roxbury, Superstar, Ladies Man, and MacGruber. Some became classics, others, uh...didn't.
  • The Polar Express movie, which some critics and audience members complained felt like a 20-minute short with an hour of filler added onto it.
  • The Jumanji movie, which had a far more complex plot than the children's book it was based on. The same goes for the film adaptation of Zathura, Jumanji's Spiritual Successor.
  • The musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is an example of this done well, following the very short story closely, but expanding on it greatly. For example, the story's title, Sobbin Women, becomes the title of one of the songs.
  • It's somewhat arguable whether The Ten Commandments is a well done or poorly done example, but it is undeniable that the film has more to do with Moses' love life than the ten commandments. Not that that was because of a lack of source material. About the commandments, not Moses' love life.
  • Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now follows the plot of the original Daphne DuMaurier short story fairly closely, but greatly expands minor details and subplots, not to mention changing the Backstory.
  • Several James Bond movies, such as Octopussy and The Living Daylights, are expansions of short stories written by Ian Fleming. However, those two are somewhat unusual cases. The film of Octopussy is actually designed as a sequel to the short story (which is completely explained by the title character, so viewers wouldn't need to do homework), while The Living Daylights covers the story's material about Bond helping a defector in its first act, then goes on to have the defector captured among several other plot twists. Octopussy also includes the plot of another story as well, "The Property of a Lady".
    • Another movie is a mishmash: For Your Eyes Only, a combination of the eponymous story and "Risico" (Melina and Gonzales from the former, Kristatos and Columbo from the latter), along with a scene from Live and Let Die (not used in the earlier movie of that name), plus many original elements.
    • The burlesque Casino Royale 1967 actually played out the original novel's story, after a fashion, but that only took up about a tenth of the running time, the rest of it going off in several bizarre tangents.
  • Many movies adapted from Stephen King short stories, such the Children of the Corn series, would be good examples.
    • One of the most notorious instances may be the 1992 film The Lawnmower Man. While elements of the short story technically appear, basically in how the title character dispatches one of his victims, the plot itself was so far removed from the source material, that Stephen King sued to have his name removed from the title.
    • Stand by Me was based on his short story, "The Body".
  • Philip K. Dick adaptations are prone to this.
    • Total Recall, which was an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale". The original story ended shortly after the hero returned to his apartment after visiting Recall, the film keeps going in a different direction from there on.
    • Minority Report. This one was particularly notable as it retained almost nothing of the original, except for the core premise and most of the characters.
    • Imposter
    • Paycheck
  • Johnny Mnemonic, was adapted from a short story by William Gibson. Some added elements were taken from other Gibson stories set in the Sprawl, such as the "monk" assassin.
  • Spielberg's previous work (inherited after Stanley Kubrick's death) was also a short story adaptation, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, from Brian Aldiss' "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long".
  • The film adaptation of the Hudson Talbott children's book We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, transformed a simple Fish Out of Water tale about large prehistoric creatures dropped into the strange new setting of modern-day New York into a full-blown Disneyfied epic. The dinosaurs got some new friends in the form of runaway disillusioned children, an evil circus owner and his Cereal That Makes You Evil (seriously). Walter Cronkite also voices a scientist who gives them a mission of "making children's dreams come true". This is meant to save the world. Somehow. It is well worth it to hunt around for Talbott's sequel book, Going Hollywood. The story has Rex and pals go to Hollywood to have their life story made into a movie. Much They Just Didn't Care-larity ensues. One can't help but wonder...
  • It's a Wonderful Life was adapted from a Christmas card's short story "The Greatest Gift". Three different screenwriters gave up trying to adapt it before Frank Capra got a hold of the rights.
    • You'll notice that the better part of the film isn't even set at Christmas.
  • A Christmas Carol has a lot of adaptations with a lot of expansion. One of the best is the famed Alastair Sim version, in which much more is added to Scrooge's past than was in the book, and as a result, a better job is done showing just how Scrooge came to be the miserly Jerkass everyone knows and hates.
    • Some additional scenes are so common people tend to forget they aren't in the book, such as Tiny Tim and sometimes the other Cratchit children being introduced near the beginning, Bob's shopping for his family, the young Scrooge meeting Belle at Fezziwig's Christmas ball, Scrooge surprising Mrs. Dilber after his journey with the ghosts, and Scrooge going collecting from his overdue accounts.
    • The Reginald Owen version delves a bit more into Scrooge's relationship with Bob Cratchit, as well as with his nephew Fred, although in exchange it omits some of the Darker and Edgier scenes, such as the breakup with Belle in the past and the looting and sale of the deceased Scrooge's possessions in the Bad Future.
    • In the Alistair Sim and George Scott versions, Fan was Scrooge's older sister, and the backstory tells that Scrooge's mother died giving birth to him, and this is why his father sent him off to boarding school. The former also has a scene of Fan's own Death by Childbirth.
      • The Sim Version basically has twice as many scenes as the standard Christmas past visits. In addition to Fan's death, we also get to see Scrooge and Marley help buy out Fezziwig's company, and then they buy the company themselves. The final visitations surround Marley's death. The Present and future visitations are condensed, however.
  • Being There is largely faithful to the book, but finds a more natural conclusion by way of Ben's death. In addition to adding little side-plots with minor characters like Louise the maid and the lawyers (making them more intriguing), and exploring the relationship between Chance and Ben more closely, it also adds a character, Dr. Allenby, who gives the story a climax when he discovers Chance's true identity.
  • The most recent version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has some Adaptation Expansion. We get to explore the backstory of the Pevensies, and a battle that took a couple of pages in the book is the main course of the film.
  • Prince Caspian has even more expansion than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
  • The original Mulan was a short ballad that summarizes the story of a girl who went to war and became a valiant soldier, surprising her comrades when they visited her home and discovered her true gender. Since the original is just a summary, a lot of details would need to be made up whenever the tale gets adapted to film, opera, or TV.
  • The movie Zoolander was based off of a series of shorts that were shown during the VH-1 Fashion Awards.
  • Pretty much every feature film adaptation of the works of Edgar Allan Poe and HP Lovecraft.
    • The Pit And The Pendulum has been made into a film several times - generally these adaptations use the actual scene where the main character gets trapped under a giant swinging blade slowly moving downwards for a climax, but have completely different plots that ultimately lead to the situation.
      • The 2012 version of The Raven also features an adaptation of The Pit and the Pendulum and adds a plot with a killer inspired by the works of Poe.
  • Disney's Dumbo was based on a very short (thirty-six pages) children's book. Even with a decent amount of padding, the final film clocks in at only sixty-four minutes.
  • Brokeback Mountain expands on the short story by going into more detail on the men's lives apart from each other, particularly Jack's relationship with his wife and her family, and Ennis's with his daughters.
  • Roald Dahl's children's novel Fantastic Mr. Fox was adapted by Wes Anderson. Upon viewing the trailer, it seems that much of the expansion comes in the form of focusing on the animals' plans to evade the farmers, and the relationship among the various members of Mr. Fox's friends and family. The ending to the movie was found in Dahl's archives.
  • The 2005 version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory hews closely to its source novel (even including the story of the Indian prince) but also adds an unnecessary backstory about Willy Wonka's strained relationship with his dentist father. Tying in its resolution to that of the main plot causes plenty of Ending Fatigue.
  • 300 is based on a short graphic novel, so it didn't need much expanding. Only Gorgo's plotline in Sparta was added. The graphic novel never returns to Sparta once Leonidas leaves. The relationship between the Captain and his Son is explored a bit more, as is the relationship between the Captain's son and Stellios. The scope of the battles has also been expanded since the movie features creatures and situations that were not present in the graphic novel. Oddly enough, the movie was more of a comic book than the comic book.
  • 3:10 to Yuma was originally a short story of about ten pages, set almost entirely in a hotel room and on the walk to the train. The movie adaptations have both rather broadened the scope.
  • Ernest Hemingway's short story "The Killers" leaves a lot of questions unanswered. The 1946 Film Noir adaptation sends an unlikely detective—an insurance adjuster—to Nick Adams' bar to find out the answers... so the film writers had to come up with some.
  • The Emperor Jones added about an hour or so of prologue to show on screen all the events that had been Backstory in Eugene O'Neill's play.
  • No one has mentioned the adaptation of Susan Orlean's narrative nonfiction book (itself expanded from article to book-length) The Orchid Thief, which is of course Adaptation! It morphed from the true life tale of an orchid poacher in Florida, to twin brothers, car chases, murder, Executive Meddling, Narration, every damn trope in the universe, Author Avatar, etc.
  • Bicentennial Man. Much to everyone's horror, it altered Asimov's reflection on the nature of what it is to be human into a Tastes Like Diabetes love story.
  • Coraline, adapted from the original children's book, makes several significant changes. Most notable are the addition of Wybie, a neighbor boy who turns out to be the grandson of the woman who owns the house and a friend of the Black Cat. The bit with the rag doll is also a movie-only inclusion. The movie also expands on the identity of one of the little girls in the Room Behind The Mirror and her connection to movie-only Wybie, it also completely erases the implication that the Other Mother is one of The Fair Folk whose realm is not the only one out there. The biggest discrepancy here is that in the book, that little girl isn't human, she's a pixie, and the Beldam's first victim.
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald's farcical short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was adapted to a three-hour long epic romantic film. So much was added that much of the story's final act about Benjamin becoming a teenager and then a preteen was cut out.
  • Where the Wild Things Are is a particularly bizarre example. Practically necessary since the original story was 10 sentences long. The story is still, on the surface, a very simple tale about a child running away and playing with imaginary monster friends. But thanks to some intentionally obvious symbolism, the interactions between the monsters tells the underlying story of Max being dragged through his parent's nasty divorce.
  • Talk Radio began life as a monologue-heavy one-act play. The movie used the play as the basis of a Roman à Clef Biopic about Alan Berg, the controversial Denver radio talk show host who was murdered by a white supremacist gang in 1984, with the play's protagonist, Barry Champlain, as a stand-in for Berg.
  • Ugetsu is an example of a well-known adaptation that greatly expanded the material of the original Tales of fMoonlight and Rain, which was a collection of stories unrelated in all but theme. Two stories were spliced together, with a few references from the others, new content was added and an award winning movie was made.
  • Olive the Other Reindeer was turned by Matt Groening and Drew Barrymore from a tiny 20-page children's book into a 90-minute cartoon movie. That rocks. They even preserved the drawing style of the book. You must watch this movie at Christmas.
  • Peter Pan, the 2003 film version put a lot of emphasis on Peter and Wendy's feelings for one another, making a whole side plot that had to be resolved, cuing a Bittersweet Ending and Tear Jerker.
  • Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs expands from original children's book about falling food getting out of proportion, to a movie about quirky scientist who creates an invention that turns water into food, his troubling relationship with his father after the death of his mother, Chicken Brent!, the evil obese mayor, sparking love interest between inventor and secret geek female weather reporter, MR. T!, Monkey!, Ratbirds!, Sardines!, etc...
  • Meet the Robinsons added a whole time travel plot around the children's story A Day With Wilbur Robinson. The second act, where Lewis meets the Robinson family and looks for Grandpa's teeth, is the only part of the movie that's actually in the book.
  • Tim Burton's Corpse Bride was initially a mere short story that he penned (itself based on a folk tale), then decided to expand upon.
  • The Nightmare Before Christmas likewise started as a poem by Tim Burton.
  • Slingblade was first a short film called "Some Folks Call It A Slingblade". Mm-hmm. The short story was reshot to serve as the first scene in the film.
  • The Scarlet Letter film adaptation adds gore, Indian raids, and a whole first act to detail the sexual affair dealt with in the rest of the film.
  • Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Adapted from a one-hour pilot that was never made, and it shows. Instead of relying on adding extra scenes and dialogue, they extended the establishing shots and ship movement sequences, possibly hoping that the audience would be too mesmerized by the special effects to get bored.
  • Night at the Museum significantly expands on the cute tale from the original children's book, adding into it a complete adventure involving an ancient Egyptian tablet.
  • The original play Glengarry Glen Ross did not feature Blake or his scene at all. Most agree the story works a lot better with the added setup.
  • Almost all of the Barbie movies are this, seeing most of them are based off of short tales, such as Barbie in The Nutcracker, Barbie as the Swan Princess, Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses, etc. In Barbie as Rapunzel, the original story is a Dream Sequence.
  • The Box was originally a five-page short story called "Button, Button", written by Richard Matheson. It expanded under the hand of Richard Kelly.
  • The Sorcerer's Apprentice, a 2010 live-action film, based on a short in the animated musical anthology film, Fantasia. No Mickey, but the special effects department had a fun time doing their job. Oh and it managed to include a homage to the short. The short itself is based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's poem "Der Zauberlehrling" (= The Sorcerer's Apprentice).
  • Contrary to what Word of Dante might tell you, The Haunted Mansion has no real backstory. The 2003 movie responded by ascending some fanon and bringing in a few Canon Foreigners.
  • The TV-movie of Kurt Vonnegut's short story Harrison Bergeron is a truly extreme case. The story is a single five-page scene; the movie is 99 minutes long and doesn't have that scene in it.
  • At the time of writing the movie, the Super Mario Bros. series didn't have much story or defined personalities for the characters unless you counted the various cartoon series or somewhat obscure comics. Because of this, the writers of the Super Mario Bros movie had to write the story from the angle of a prequel, exploring how the Mario Bros. became the Super Mario Bros. In the process Mario and Luigi were given an older brother/younger brother dynamic/conflict and Koopa was provided a motivation for needing the Princess.
  • Yellow Submarine, which expanded a Beatles song into an entire movie.
  • Weird Science was adapted from the 1950s comic book of the same name, specifically the story "Made of the Future" in issue #5. The adaption expanded upon and modernised the premise. And given a "Brat Pack" flavour to boot.
  • Shrek was originally a children's book that contained almost nothing that appears in the film.
  • Chronicles of Narnia 2 Prince Caspian: book-Miraz is just a generic tyrant, movie-Miraz is specifically a Borgia/Medici style tyrant. It also adds the rivalry between Peter and Caspian, and Caspian getting Promoted to Love Interest for Susan.
  • Battleship is an adaptation of the game Battleship, which has literally no plot. The enemy fleet is aliens (with peglike missiles among their weapons) who disable radar and envelop the fleet in a shield, establishing a game board of sorts.
  • Harry Potter: Throughout the films, multiple scenes are added; sometimes they are building up on past material, sometimes they are inventing it on the fly for the film's continuity. One of the most prominent examples of the latter: the wonderfully cute and spontaneous dancing sequence between Harry and Hermione in the seventh film, which didn't occur in the books and detracted from the canon couple of Hermione and Ron.
  • This is taken Up To Eleven with the 2023 horror movie Thanksgiving. This was based on a gag trailer in the movie Grindhouse, and director Eli Roth figured it might work as an actual movie. The concept is... weird, but then, so was Grindhouse.
  • Lights Out is only slightly less of this than Thanksgiving, the 2016 thriller based on a three-minute short that was released three years previous.

Literature

  • Film novelizations inevitably require more detail to fill out the format. You should be prepared for "extra" scenes and dialogue that were cut from the shooting script, as well as inner monologues that give the adapters the chance to show off their narration skills. (Remember that in literature, Talking Is a Free Action.)
  • Flowers for Algernon was initially an award-winning short story by Daniel Keyes. Later on, he adapted it into a full-length award-winning novel.
  • The Flood is Halo adapted into book form. It adds a lot of details which were not in the original game. It also wildly alters existing characters, and introduces a truly awful slapstick pairing of an Elite and a Grunt who fail time and time again to stop the Chief (who has gone from being a quiet but professional soldier in the previous books to being a walking cliche).
  • Descent has been adapted into a trilogy of novels. The novels take the games' scant plot and turn it into several interlocking plotlines involving epic badass piloting, corporate politics made entertaining mainly by Dravis's upgrade from Corrupt Corporate Executive to full-fledged Magnificent Bastard, and a rather comical look at the plot through the aliens' [1] and robots' eyes/sensors.
  • Donna VanLiere's book "The Christmas Shoes" is a detailed story that evolved from New Song's song of the same name. The book added much more to the story than the man who helped the boy buy shoes on Christmas Eve, and became the first in a series of books that continued the stories of the man and boy.
  • How to Teach Physics to Your Dog began its life as a Rabbit Hole Day blog post.
  • Nightfall by Isaac Asimov is an interesting example of adaptation expansion within a single medium. It was originally one of the most mind-bending short stories of early science fiction. He later adapted the same story into a full length novel (for purely commercial reasons, reputedly). Most agree that the novel's only notable virtue is containing the original, in edited form, as a chapter.
  • Similarly, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card began its life as a short story before being expanded into a (much more famous) novel.
  • Wild Things by Dave Eggers is the novel adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are. It was written because of the film.
  • Agatha H and The Airship City and, more, Agatha H and The Clockwork Princess contain material not included in the Girl Genius comics.


Live Action TV

  • The Worst Witch has gone through this several times over. The TV movie padded itself with sequences including a "scaring contest" and an early sequence with Punk Charlotte Rae, and the later series would pad the same adaptation by using the "Ethel's a pig" sequence as the basis for an entire episode (introducing a whole new character in Mr Blossom's nephew Charlie), while adding in a climactic chase through the school grounds. Bizarrely, it's otherwise managed to incorporate adaptations of the next three books pretty much as-is (although The Worst Witch Strikes Again was made into two separate episodes).
    • Many of the episodes in the first two series have new plots not taken from the books, or expanded from small references in the books (e.g the main plot of first episode "The Battle of the Broomsticks" is based around a line mentioning that Mildred's Broom got broken after she flew it into some bins on her first day). The third series is entirely new material, as at that time the books only went up to the second year. Since then two books have come out covering Mildred's third year which are totally different to the third series.
  • Anthology horror series like The Twilight Zone often have episodes based on short stories which expand on the original stories considerably.
    • And, in fact, the show itself got this treatment when some individual episodes were adapted into short graphic novels.
  • The Story Of Tracy Beaker, which had her repeatedly adopted by Cam/sent back to the Dumping Ground over the course of five seasons, along with lots of new material. (In the book, her adoption by Cam is the Happy Ending, and the later books in the series are about her living with Cam.)
  • Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon adapted only the first arc of the manga, while adding in various new elements such as Sailor Luna, Zoicite's loyalty to Endymion, "Nephikichi", Darkury (in addition to Mamoru also turning evil), a teenage clone of Queen Beryl, and different Character Development for many of the characters, particularly Sailor Venus.
  • The original British version of The Office ran 14 episodes and focuses on four main characters. The American adaptation has run over 100 episodes and features a much larger cast.
  • The Being Human (USA) has far more per season than the original, with more plots added alongside the original's. This happens often - the main reason British shows are remade rather than aired straight is that American television has more episodes per season. (Mind you, Syfy seasons are short by American standards and Being Human (UK) has gone up from six to eight episodes per season, so it's no longer a huge example of this. However, sometimes it's a move from a 6-ep UK season to a 22-ep US one.)
  • Gossip Girl, based on an 11 (eventually 12 + spinoff) novel series by Cecily von Ziegesar, has been expanded to a 3+ season series on The CW.
  • V: Originally a two-part miniseries, now turned into a full fledged series.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer was originally a movie, before becoming a seven-season TV series. Specifically, the show depicts what (supposedly) happened after the movie, when the Summers family moved from L.A. to a small California town.
  • Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre expanded on the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
  • When Shit My Dad Says was announced as an upcoming TV series, the Twitter feed it was based on had only 67 tweets. It's safe to say the show contains more words than that per episode.
  • In The Dead Zone TV Series, the Big Bad of the book and movie is still around, but rather than being obsessed with him, our hero is too busy solving the Mystery of the Week to worry much about The End of the World as We Know It.
  • The first season of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers ended up trimming the 50 episodes of Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger that Saban picked up from Toei into 40 episodes, with the "Doomsday" two-parter originally intended to be the finale. However, when the show proved to be a bigger success than expected, Saban had no choice but to contract Toei to shoot additional footage specifically for MMPR, since they were not ready to adapt the Super Sentai franchise's tradition of changing the team's costumes and robots every year. For the remaining twenty episodes of Season 1 and the first thirteen episodes of Season 2, MMPR used completely new action footage which featured the original Zyuranger costumes and robots with all new monsters that were not from any prior Sentai show.
  • The Pretty Little Liars TV series is doing this, adding plots for characters that weren't major in the book, and even adding characters as love interests, probably because the book series only had 8 novels and most of the plot involved them trying to find A.
  • Jeeves and Wooster added plenty of extra material to the short stories being adapted, including events that Bertie wouldn't have seen (and therefore couldn't have narrated).
  • Due to the POV-centred nature of the books, Game of Thrones invented or expanded on scenes featuring major characters who don't have POVs in the books.

Newspaper Comics

  • The Mickey Mouse newspaper strip started out with an adaptation of the first Mickey Mouse short produced, Plane Crazy, but after Minnie parachutes off the plane, Mickey runs into a storm and finds himself crash landed on an island filled with pirates, and the strip goes on from there...

Radio

Theatre

  • The stage versions of Disney's animated features can be up to an hour longer than their source material, almost entirely through adding new songs. Characters who did not sing in the movie get songs, sometimes more than one; characters who did sing... sing even more. For instance, Gaston bribing the asylum keeper in Beauty and the Beast? That's the basis for a song. Eric dancing with Ariel in The Little Mermaid? That's the basis for a song.
    • The stage musical of Aladdin includes three brand new numbers: "A Million Miles Away", "Somebody's Got Your Back", and "Wedding Day Suite"(which incorporates Jafar's reprise of "Prince Ali"), in addition to reinstating the previously cut songs "Why Me", "Proud of Your Boy", "Call Me a Princess", "Babkak, Omar, Aladdin, Kassim", and "High Adventure", and the formerly-deleted characters who sing the latter two, now serving as the story's narrators.
  • Two for the Seesaw had a cast of two and required no more than two apartment settings on either side of a split stage. When it was adapted into the musical Seesaw, half a dozen minor characters and many additional settings were added. The result was not a hit.
  • Choreographer Jerome Robbins and composer Leonard Bernstein created a 20-minute ballet called Fancy Free, and used it as the basis for their first Broadway musical, On the Town. The adaptation was loose enough that no music was recycled.
  • Most of the second act of The Nutcracker is original to Tchaikovsky.
  • Pretty much all of the Gilbert and Sullivan works are expansions on short stories, poems, and other of W.S.Gilbert's writings. Of these, the poems ("The Bab Ballads" have also remained fairly popular, especially in Britain, but copyright claims by the magazines he published meant his only attempt to publish a collection of stories ended up getting pulled from the market. See Gilbert and Sullivan for more.
  • The Musical of Vanities added a Distant Finale where the characters reunite in their home town in The Eighties, remedying the rather anticlimactic (and rather unhappy) ending of the original. Also, in the off-Broadway production, the story is told from a How We Got Here point of view, rather than directly following the girls through the ages.
  • Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street follows the Christopher Bond version of the Demon Barber, giving him realistic motives instead of just being a one-dimensional bad guy.
  • When Shakespeare turned Thomas Lodge's novella Rosalynde into the play As You Like It, he added several characters of his own (most notably Jaques, Touchstone and Audrey) and had them recur frequently as comedy relief.


Video Games

  • The Adventure Game of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, which was written by the original author, Harlan Ellison, gave each of the five protagonists extensive backstories. This included Nimdok, who in the short story, never even revealed his real name. (He still doesn't, incidentally.) The player also has the chance to improve on the Downer Ending of the original story by guiding the protagonists through specific tests set up by the evil computer. The game's designer, David Sears, asked Ellison during development why this evil computer chose these particular five people to torture. The question fired Ellison's imagination and thus the characters received more development in the game. Despite that the game has its flaws and isn't perfect, this is a very good way to show that Tropes Are Not Bad.
  • STALKER is a large, 20+ hour computer game loosely based around the movie by the same name, a 163 minute minimalistic presentation emphasizing long takes and simple scenes, which was itself based around a short novel called Roadside Picnic. C-consciousness, the various factions, and exist to pad the story in the video game.
  • Video games based on movies, especially in recent years, will inevitably end up doing this if they don't want their game to be shorter than the movie. A good example is Kung Fu Panda, which adds in a ton of levels involving fighting various factions that have randomly chosen to attack rather than, y'know, train.
    • This tradition goes all the way back to the good ole days, where the hero from a movie (whether or not the movie is based on existing material) will usually have to fight a bunch of henchmen or even freakish oddities that not only didn't appear in the film, but would have no place in it. There are many examples with the Back to The Future NES games probably being the most egregious.
  • Games based on superhero will often try to make the playing field more even, so a character possessing titanic strength in the comics will be just somewhat stronger than a regular guy (e.g. Superman and Batman) and some characters will be possessed of powers that just never existed in the comics, usually including attacks that clear the screen of all the bad guys.
  • The Warriors serves as a prequel to the movie, explaining the characters' backstories. The final missions was actually the movie's story, plus an extra epilogue.
  • The Sega CD version of Snatcher features an extended opening sequences that adapts the prologue comic from the manual which depicts Gillian and Jaime's last conversation before Gillian begins first night as a JUNKER agent. It also features extends ending that reveals what happened to Mika and Katrina before Gillian leaves to destroy the Snatchers' main base at Russia.
  • Turok - In the original comics, a pair of Indians get stuck in a valley full of Dinosaurs. That's it. In the video games, 'Turok' is a title given to the eldest child in the 'Fireseed' family, assigned to protect the portal between Earth and another dimension where 'Time has no meaning'. Tal'Set Fireseed (Turok: Dinosaur Hunter), Joshua Fireseed (Turok 2: Seeds of Evil), and Danielle Fireseed (Turok 3: Shadows of Oblivion) take up the mantle and venture to the Lost Lands, stopping Omnicidal Maniacs from taking it over and hunting down the Bio-mechanical Dinosaurs, Demons and Aliens that have spilled through into our world. Read that over and look at how we got from "Two Indians in Prehistoric Valley" to that Video Game Plot.
  • The Godfather: The Game expands on some parts the movie skims over. For example, in the movie, Bruno Tattaglia's whacking is given just an offhand mention. It gets expanded into a plotline mission in the game.
  • Super Robot Wars Original Generation will generally expand on the cast by giving them more detailed backgrounds. For example, in Super Robot Wars Alpha 2, Ibis Douglas' past is hinted about but never explained in full detail. This is expanded in Original Generation 2 to show her as a weak pilot who dreams of going off to the stars and being chosen for that reason.
    • The rest of the series occasionally does this as well, particularly for characters whose deaths have been prevented.
    • One of the most prominent example, is the manga for Alpha Gaiden, which involves Time Travel. here, they show what happen during the timespan beetwen the first game and Alpha Gaiden(which is only reffered in one-two lines in the game), some background of Machinery Childrens, the last machinery children, some expansion on the battles and what exactly happened to the cast from the previous game that is left on the past. Some of them have been incorporated in Super Robot Wars Original Generation.
  • The Star Wars Battlefront games add battles that were implied or logical extensions of the films, such as the theft of the Death Star plans and the liberation of Cloud City.
  • Spider-Man 2 is based upon the movie, but adds loads of characters and villains that would never have made it into the film due to time (e.g. Black Cat, Shocker, Rhino). In this case, fans liked it.
  • All of the Lego Adaptation Games like to do this.
  • In Golden Eye 1997, several levels take place in the nine-year gap between the opening sequence and the proper beginning of the film. This includes Bond visiting a nuclear silo (and seeing Ouromov) and visiting the incomplete Severnaya bunker. Later on, near the end of the game, Bond also pursues Alec Trevelyan through a series of flooded caverns as the villain runs towards the control centre antenna.
  • In the N64 adaptation of The World Is Not Enough, there was a subway sequence not featured in the film (set between the boat chase and "Cigar Girl"'s suicide), among other additions.
  • Like the film, the video game of The Haunted Mansion had to build a brand new backstory for the mansion, including a backstory for Madame Leota.
  • In The Lord of the Rings Online Turbine has been forced to do this in order to make an MMO out of Tolkien's work. More specifically it gives more back story to the events taking place outside of The Fellowship's journey. Most of these take place immediately before and during the events depicted in Lord of the Rings, but they occasionally give flashbacks taking place well before.
  • The console ports of Return to Castle Wolfenstein have a prologue mission set in Egypt, not found in the PC version.
  • The SNES port of Prince of Persia added many new levels and traps, as well as boss battles.
  • The PlayStation 2 version of Splinter Cell has an additional mission at a nuclear power plant, to make up for the system's graphical limitations.
  • Katawa Shoujo is an insane case. The internationally-developed Visual Novel is based on a Japanese concept page showing the heroines, and it was not even coloured originally.
  • Iron Tank, the NES adaptation of SNK's TNK III, was greatly expanded from its arcade counterpart, with branching paths, bosses, new enemies and weapons, and plenty of Engrish dialogue ("Watch out, use radar, gigantic enemy objects up ahead!"). In fact, most NES adaptations of arcade games did this, making up for the severe technical shortcomings of the time with additional content. Sometimes they ended up being completely different from their predecessors, and sometimes even surpassed the original in gamers' memories (Bionic Commando, Ninja Gaiden, and Rygar being prime examples of the latter).
  • The Pitfall arcade game, strangely enough produced by Sega, featured enhanced versions of the overworld of the first Pitfall and the underworld of the second, and added Minecart Madness and Temple of Doom stages. The Atari 800 computer version of Pitfall II was also expanded.
  • Areas 4 and 8 in the SMS version of Wonder Boy were exclusive to that version, and featured entirely new environments and enemies. The boss levels of each were set in Bubbly Clouds and featured tougher bosses that threw lightning and had different theme music than the rest. The sequel's SMS port also had an extra stage set in a Ghost Town.
  • The TurboGrafx-16 CD version of Raiden, in addition to the obligatory Redbook music, had two additional levels with their own music pieces. Much later, the Xbox 360 port of Raiden IV also had two exclusive stages, somewhat alleviating the short length of the original arcade game.
  • Debatable with Parasite Eve; it is an adaptation of a franchise that started out as a movie and a novel, but at the same time, acts more as a sequel/continuation of the original story where it happens in a new location, this time New York.
  • realMyst adds a new Age to the original Myst, plus additional backstory tying it into the wider story of Atrus's family and people.
  • Hudson Soft's Challenger for the Famicom took most of the gameplay and the English title of Stop the Express and made this the first stage of an otherwise original Action Adventure game.
  • The SNES port of Sonic Blast Man is a standard beat 'em up in which the bonus game in between levels is the actual arcade game, with a much lower chance of injuring yourself.
  • In Rockman 6: Unique Harassment, a Rom Hack of Mega Man 6, Mega Man will be facing off against a completely different roster of Robot Masters with the exception of Tomahawk Man. Even then, he uses a completely different pattern. The Fortress bosses have also been changed up completely. In a twist, Mr. X is the one who uses the flying saucer [2] instead of Dr. Wily. The real Dr. Wily fight is instead a marathon boss using recycled ships from Mega Man 1, Mega Man 5, and Mega Man 2 in that order.

Web Comics

To Prevent World Peace was originally intended as a short story about magical girl villains. It, er, blossomed out of control. At last count, the author planned for sixteen chapters and was thinking of creating other short stories around the same characters.

Web Original

  • The classic Creepypasta "Genetic Memory" is written as a theory esposed to the reader. The illustrated version contained in this video adds a frame story and a Twist Ending.
  • The two blog posts Tom Stranger began as were included as chapters in the audio drama, and received more content. The second received this moreso, as the bulk of it was jokes about Barack Obama, who had done a few more things deemed worthy of mockery between the publications.

Western Animation

  • Coming back to How the Grinch Stole Christmas, If you read the original book, you'll notice that it lacks Seuss' whimsical naming conventions. According to legend, he wrote it on a dare that he not use his signature made-up words. Note that in the cartoon, with the bet no longer an issue, entire verses are added with the names in full effect.
  • The cartoon adaptation of The Bear gives backstory as to how he ended up in the girl's town in the first place (followed a bird, got stuck on an ice flow and taken to a zoo by a cargo ship), along with sending him back to the Arctic at the end. It also gives him a reason for visiting the girl, to return the teddy bear she dropped. In the book, he just comes and goes from the house and there wasn't a sequence with a bear made out of stars.
  • While the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon's adaptations of comic book stories are usually paced to correspond to their source material—one issue will almost always translate into one episode—two exceptions stand out. The first is the arc composed by the episodes "The Search for Splinter", "Turtles in Space", and "Secret Origins" multi-parters, which take five issues' worth of material and expands it into ten, while the second is its adaptation of "Sons of the Silent Age", which, after completing a mostly faithful adaptation of the comic book by the fifteen-minute mark, fills out the rest of the episode with a plot about preventing an uncared-for nuclear power plant from spilling radioactive material into the river which was the setting for the story.
  • Fox's Peter Pan and The Pirates massively expanded on the mythos of Peter Pan - and how. All the characters - Peter, Wendy, John, Michael, all the Lost Boys, Tinker Bell, even Jane, Hook and all his pirates, Big Chief Little Panther and Tiger Lily - are all greatly fleshed out in terms of characterisation, and all get a Day in The Limelight at one time or another, as well as some extra characters who were made up just for the show, like Hook's brother Captain Patch, Tiger Lily's brother Hard-To-Hit, the fairies and their King and Queen, and many others. It was also considered to be rather an Adaptation Distillation too.
    • Same as the above goes for Peter Pan No Bouken, again with all the characters occasionally getting the focus on them for at least an episode each, plus a bunch of new characters - most importantly with Princess Luna and her evil grandmother Sinistra.
  1. ↑ (The games quietly forgot about the aliens.)
  2. ↑ Based on the Wily Saucer from Mega Man 10
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