10 More Movies You Didn't Know Recycled Footage From Other Films

2. Transformers: The Movie Altered Animation From Fist Of The North Star

Transformers The Movie Fist of the North Star
Toei Animation & /r/MovieDetails

If Disney catch all the flak for recycling animated sequences and backdrops in order to save money, they're certainly not alone in the practise. Toei Animation were also caught out while producing 1986's Transformers: The Movie.

The scene where Unicron (Orson Welles) devours the planet Lithone contains a distinctive shot of Unicron going full ham, that's actually a variation on an extremely similar visual from Fist of the North Star, another animated film from Toei released just five months earlier.

Releasing in the blurry VHS era of 1986 as these films did, Toei presumably figured that nobody would ever notice, or that folks would one day scan through high-resolution re-releases frame-by-frame looking for this sort of thing.

But of course they did, and when viewed together the similarities between the two are basically impossible to dispute.

In this post: 
Pixar
 
Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.