English citations of expy

Noun: "(fandom slang) a character in a work of fiction who is a stand-in for or knockoff of a character from an unrelated work or of a real person" edit

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  • 2013 June 17, Hillary Busis, “'Mad Men': Bob Benson is the new Don Draper”, in Entertainment Weekly[1], archived from the original on April 22, 2017:
    When expys aren't the result of writers plagiarizing their earlier work — see the collective animated offerings of Seth MacFarlane — they're typically introduced in order to extend the life of a long-running show
  • 2014 October 8, Derik Moore, “Free To Play: Bioshock's Andrew Ryan, Ayn Rand and Going Galt”, in Gaming Rebellion[2], archived from the original on June 5, 2017:
    The perfect example in gaming is Andrew Ryan, creator of Rapture, the city under the sea, in Bioshock. I'm fairly certain that the majority of gamers are well aware that Ryan was designed as a deliberate expy of Ayn Rand
  • 2014, Jonathon O'Donnell, "Our Demonic World", in The Devil and Philosophy: The Nature of His Game (ed. Robert Arp), page 120:
    The demon-run Raptor News Network clearly parodies that of the American conservative Fox News Network in both rhetoric and appearance, with its anchorman Bob Barbas being a thinly veiled expy of Bill O’Reilly.
  • 2015, Ali Sajid Imami, "Dr Who: The Time Lord alien who saves many worlds", Pakistan Today, 21 November 2015, page 15:
    A clear expy of ISIS, this group is repeatedly pointed out as a minority, except this minority now has one of their leaders disguised as Clara, a major character that has access to high level military files, including the location of every Zygon on earth.
  • 2018, Amy Nash, "You should be watching Monster Factory", Concrete (University of East Anglia), 27 February 2018, page 21:
    The monsters vary from completely original creations to bizarre expies of famous characters and people, but all of them have their own and the humour never fails to keep things rolling.
  • 2018 September 2, The Big Peat, “The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard”, in Chronicles: Science Fiction & Fantasy Community[3], archived from the original on November 8, 2018:
    The ex-military transport expy of Dr Watson has the right mix of brittle anger, tiredness and idealism; they view the former scholar Sherlock expy with the right mix of fascination and disdain.
  • 2019, Robin Wilde, "The 1990s: A Decade of Adventure", Forge Press (University of Sheffield), 1 March 2019, page 36:
    It can be more or less subtle - Thimbleweed Park is an obvious X Files parody with direct expies of Mulder and Scully as protagonists, so a 1990s setting is the natural choice - but it's present in so many that it's hard to keep count.
  • 2021, Mark Manalang, The Dark Secret of Derek Guerrero, page 272:
    "Don't lie to me! I know you love that series so much! So much that you patterned a lot of your scenes from it! Albert was an expy of Yuto, and Roma was Haruka! []
  • 2021, Felix Faber, "How to design a story: game and narrative in dungeons and dragons", Honi Soit (University of Sydney), Week 10, Semester 1 (2021), page 19:
    One week, I came back with a foppish rogue; the next, with a barely disguised expy of a hardboiled detective.