9 Movie Sets Recycled In Other Movies

This means Billy Madison is one of Xavier's Gifted Children, right?

by Andrew Pollard
Aliens batman
Fox/Warner Bros

As Stephen King once wrote, "sooner or later everything old is new again".

While King was talking about horror tropes, those words can easily be used as a blanket statement about the film industry. Whether it's certain genres, certain styles of filmmaking or even certain actors, what was once classed as outdated and uninteresting can find itself back in the spotlight and to brand new acclaim.

One other element of the film industry that has so often been dug out and given a fresh lick of paint for modern times, is the very background sets and locations seen across various productions.

More often than you'd likely realise, Hollywood has had a habit of revisiting a particular custom-made set or location and using it time and time again across a wide array of various movies and TV shows. For example, the original Star Trek TV series of the '60s seemed to rehash the same set every other week!

Sticking purely with cinema though, and here are nine such examples of a movie set or location being dug up, cleaned down, and reused for an entirely different project.

9. Scary Movie 4 Becomes Saw III

Aliens batman
Dimension/Lionsgate

In a hugely ironic twist of fate, one of the sets from the fourth entry in the horror-comedy spoof franchise Scary Movie ended up being recycled and used in Saw III.

Like so many other horror pictures, the Saw series is one that has been mocked by the Scary Movie franchise at several turns - and one such moment came in Scary Movie 4.

In that Scary Movie 4 scene, audiences saw Shaquille O'Neal and Dr. Phil doing a send-up of that first Saw film. As both of these celeb guest stars find themselves waking up in a strange bathroom, ankles shackled, Dr. Phil erroneously ends up sawing off the wrong foot in as he looks to free himself.

By the time Saw III went into production just a month after Scary Movie 4's release, the cost-saving decision was made to use the Scary Movie 4 set for some of Saw III's scenes set in the bathroom locale that has become so synonymous with the Saw franchise.

Is this the the first example of a spoof movie seeing its set reused by the property its spoofing? It could well be.

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Senior Writer
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Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.