Sincerest Form of Flattery

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"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." —Attributed to Charles Caleb Colton

The above quote is an axiom that holds especially true with Follow the Leader. After all, why follow something that you don't think has enough merit to follow?

So this is a Sub-Trope, where the creator of a Follow the Leader work has explicitly stated they are taking something as inspiration for their work.

Just the inspiration being obvious is not enough. There has to be a direct admittance that this is so. Admitting in the form of a Take That might still count, as it's just denying that they are following this trope, even when we know better. For this kind of thing in fiction, see Irritation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery.

Note: We don't require citations like The Other Wiki does, however, since this trope is about comments made by a creator about a work of media, it is highly recommended that citations be provided.

Examples of Sincerest Form of Flattery include:

• Hideki Kamiya, the director of Okami said the Zelda games influenced this game. Although he thought Twilight Princess could have looked better, he admitted that "it's no overstatement to say that I created Okami because of Zelda."
• Comics that have the format of DM of the Rings usually state that is what inspired them, like Darths and Droids.
• The makers of the Wii game The Conduit have stated they are taking tips from Halo, and trying to make the Wii's Halo.
  • They also said they would be glad if other Wii game developers did this to them; specifically their customizable FPS-controls with the Wiimote.
• Ben Mattes, producer of the latest Prince of Persia game, told MTV.com about the influences they used.

"We’ve always been very open about the huge influences that Ico, SoTC and Okami had on us during our development."

• David Jaffe has gone on record saying both that God of War was heavily inspired by Devil May Cry and later on that he think's Devil May Cry's fighting system is better. See for yourself.
  • Likewise, the developers of Dantes Inferno have happily stated they were just out to make a Divine Comedy version of God of War, essentially.
• In an interview, the director of Xenogears was asked "You're a fan of G Gundam, aren't you?" His response was simply to smile.
• Dorf Quest has stated from the beginning that it was inspired by Ruby Quest and was an attempt at another sort of "quest".
• Supposedly, when the Wachowskis were peddling the script for The Matrix, they brought with them a comic book and told prospective buyers that, basically they wanted to do something like that as a movie. The comic in question? Ghost in the Shell.
  • Not just the comic, too. Watch the GITS movie's scene of Kusanagi going invisible. Then watch the Trinity scene. They specifically showed the movie to Joel Silver to give him an idea how they wanted The Matrix to look.
  • Also The Invisibles.
• Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski frequently cited the game Kill.Switch as the inspiration for Gears of War's cover system.
• Around the late '90s a low-budget CD-ROM called "Pac Pack" could be found in many computer stores. While the cover has a decidedly more Pac-Man-ish design than the games contained, the blurb on the back touts plainly that "Pac Guy" is "a Pac-Man ripoff - but a ripoff with style." The various sequels were less audacious, recoloring the main character green and giving him the more lawyer-friendly moniker of "Pea Guy".
• The producers of Tallafornia openly stated that they were trying to make Jersey Shore in Tallaght.
• The developers of Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion have admitted to being heavily influenced by Super Smash Bros.. As mentioned in a Nintendo World Report interview with Papaya Studio's Senior Producer, they even had testers play both games one after another to make their own game feel like SSB as much as possible].
• In a comment on "Here's Three Stories About YouTube Plagiarism" by hbomberguy, filmmaker and Youtuber austinmcconnell admitted to being inspired by soulbrothanumbuh3's editing style in his early videos (Hip Hop background music, quick cuts, similar textual presentation, quips and voice), but he denied having plagiarized soulbrothanumbuh3's videos, also stating that a conflict between the two video creators (detailed in the video) was resolved in good faith.