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Spin-Off - TV Tropes

The Mario gang takes a break from bickering with each other and putter up.

Son of

After

Spin-Offs are when part of a successful work, usually characters, but sometimes a general concept (first you have the Law, then you have the Order), are taken and given a second show of their own.

From a producer's perspective, it's a chance to explore other aspects of a concept. Actors can find opportunities to grow in their craft, as well as rise in importance by moving from just being part of an ensemble to having a show built around them. For the networks, it's a chance to establish a show with a built-in audience, making it that much easier for them to sell advertising.

Lots of spinoffs go on to be successful shows in their own right, sometimes even surpassing the parent series in popularity. Others crash and burn (Joanie Loves Chachi, anyone?), suggesting that there is no such thing as a sure thing. Nevertheless, networks keep trying them.

• Where a character leaves a show and joins or starts another one, and the two run concurrently. Sometimes called a sister show. Characters may cross over from time to time.
• Where a show comes to an end and a character from it is given his or her own new show. Provides an opportunity to Retool the character as well.
• Where a character is brought on to an existing show simply in order to be spun off, hopefully making some of the original audience into viewers of the new show. (See Poorly Disguised Pilot.)
• The main character is revisited elsewhere in their narrative.
• Reimaginings — the concept is carried into a new show with the same basic premise but other factors and characters are completely new.
• Segment spin-offs — a recurring segment from the show becomes the main attraction.
• A type of Defictionalization — a Show Within a Show gets made into a real show of its own.
• The storyline on one show comes to an end, only to be continued in a new show with a different name.
• Official Fanzine Show — a trope usually applying to Reality TV, usually offering Behind The Scenes info or coverage that wouldn't fit into the main programme, often (but not always) broadcast immediately after the main show, on a sister channel.
• Online Spin-Off — a spin-off that's only shown online, sometimes overlaps with Segment Spin-Off, sometimes a spin-off In Name Only. Generally only an advert for the broadcast programme.
• Shared Continuity — more common nowadays, this spinoff generally carries no characters over from the show that spawned it, though both are in the same continuity, allowing for Crossovers from the original.
• Side-Story: Very similar to the Shared Continuity. However, the side story is typically an independent and smaller scaled story with a definite beginning, middle, and end. It also features a completely different cast of characters who have no meaningful connection to the characters or events of the main epic. Thus, crossovers or cameos by recognized characters are less plausible and may even be perceived as distracting. The concept of a side-story (a story that takes place "to the side" of main events) was popularized by the term's first prominent appearance in reference to stories taking place in the Gundam anime/manga universe.

Spinoffs are Older Than They Think. The character of Falstaff, from Henry IV parts 1 and 2, was given their own play, at Royal request, by William Shakespeare.

See also Distaff Counterpart. When a TV series is successful enough to produce a film spinoff, this is The Movie. Video Game spinoffs often feature the same cast but differing gameplay genres or are Gaiden Games starring one of the secondary or side characters. When the spin-off focuses on the descendant of a character from a previous installment, it's a Spin-Offspring. If the spin-off reimagines the characters as little kids, it's a Spin-Off Babies.

In the television industry, there is a technical difference between the terms "spinoff" and "sequel": a "spinoff" refers specifically to a television show that continues in (more or less) the same era as its predecessor, while a Sequel Series takes place after the parent series' setting. Some older sources will also freely use "spinoff" for any mass-produced merchandise connected to a piece of media, from video games to underpants; more modern terminology will usually favor "tie-in" for that.

Super-Trope of From the Ashes, when a fictional work's ending is the starting point of the Spin-Off.

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 

• 4★Town 4★Real is about 4*Town as they spend their day before the climax of Turning Red.
• Attack on Titan: Attack On Titan Levi Side Story: A Choice With No Regrets manga, which is based on the Choice With No Regrets visual novel included with the Attack On Titan Vol.3 Blu-ray. This spin-off features Levi as the main character and serves as a prologue to the main series.
• Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: Don Patch got his own manga spinoff, Fuwari! Don Patch, in the Saikyou Jump magazine as well as a continuation called Honnori! Don Patch that ran in Jump+. Both are a series of peaceful Slice of Life tales that take place in the modern day rather than the year 300X.
• Brave Witches to Strike Witches, shifting the focus from the 501st to the 502nd Striker Unit.
• Cells at Work! has produced many different Spin-Offs, each tackling a different bodily environment, subject matter, and even intended audience. Spin-Offs include Cells at Work and Friends!, Cells NOT at Work!, Cells at Work! CODE BLACK, Bacteria At Work!, Platelets At Work!, Cells at Work! Baby, Cells At Work! Lady, Cells At Work! White Brigade, Cells At Work! Illegal, Cells At Work! Muscle, Cells at Work!: Cat and Cells at Work!: Medicine.
• A Certain Magical Index spawned several spinoff manga centered around the various science-side characters and the incidents in Academy City, vs the Magic Versus Science conflict focus of Index.
  • A Certain Scientific Railgun, the first spinoff manga series, features Mikoto Misaka and delving into her background, friends, and some of the cases which Judgement handles. It later got a spinoff called Astral Buddy.
  • A Certain Scientific Accelerator, the second spinoff manga series, follows Accelerator and the events after he receives his drama-preserving handicap.
  • A Certain Scientific Dark Matter is a one volume manga centered around Teitoku Kakine, the number 2 Esper of Academy City.
  • A Certain Scientific Mental Out, the third spinoff manga series, focuses on the fifth-ranked Level 5 esper, Misaki Shokuhou, and is considered a follow-up to Astral Buddy.
  • A Certain Dark Side ITEM is a Light Novel series with a manga adaptation focused on the group of teenage mercenaries, ITEM, and their adventures in Academy City's underground, set one year before the main Index series.
• Dragon Ball has an anime follow-up named Dragon Ball GT, set some years after the end of Dragon Ball Z, trying to get back the series to his comedic roots with Goku reverting to a child. It is not based on Akira Toriyama's original manga ^note The manga ends with Goku departing with Uub, the same ending as Dragon Ball Z ,so the original author only contributed on character designs. Word of God stated GT was a side story to the original series.
  • In 2015, Dragon Ball Super premiered -with a manga running concurrent-, being an interquel between the Buu Saga and Goku and Uub's departure, integrating Movie characters Beerus and Whis and concepts like Alternate Universes to the franchise. This time, Akira Toriyama writes the plot outline and Toyotarō makes some plot additions and even designed some Gods of Destruction.
  • There is also a short manga named Dragon Ball: That Time I Got Reincarnated as Yamcha!, where a teenager going to a Dragon Ball event suddenly dies and awakes into the Dragon Ball world as Yamcha, and tries to change the fate of said character.
• Fairy Tail: Several have been serialized:
  • Fairy Tail ZERØ, a backstory series starring Mavis Vermillion about the founding of Fairy Tail
  • Fairy Tail: Ice Trail, which is another backstory about Gray Fullbuster.
  • Fairy Tail: Blue Mistral, another one focused on Wendy and Carla.
  • Fairy Girls, which as the name implies, has the female members of Fairy Tail as the main characters.
  • Fairy Tail Gaiden is a sub-series written by Kyouta Shibano:
    • The Twin Dragons of Saber Tooth, which is focused on Sting and Rogue.
    • Rhodonite, focused on Gajeel.
    • Flash of Great Lightning, detailing the events of Laxus and the Raijin Tribe during Fairy Tail's disbandment.
• Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA: a spinoff Magical Girl story involving Illya as the protagonist.
• Fist of the North Star (Hokuto no Ken) has a series of spinoff works known as the Hokuto no Ken Gaiden series, which centers around side-characters from the original manga, depicting what happened to them prior to the events of Hokuto no Ken, although they do deviate from canon a bit. Almost all of them, with the exception of Yuria Gaiden, were published in Weekly Comic Bunch (the manga anthology that serializes Souten no Ken) at the time the Legends of the True Savior movies were released.
• Genshiken → Kujibiki♡Unbalance was initially a Show Within a Show, meant to represent the typical moe anime, but with the series' success, it ended up being defictionalized.
• Goblin Slayer has Year One (expanding on when Goblin Slayer was just starting out), Brand New Day (adapting a number of side stories) and Daikatana of Singing Death (expanding on Sword Maiden's rise from a broken woman to one of those who slayed the demon lord).
• The Anime Adaptation of IDOLiSH7 has Idolish7: Vibrato, a web series exclusive to Youtube Premium.
• Jewelpet → Jewelpet Twinkle☆ → Jewelpet Sunshine → Jewelpet Kira Deco! → Jewelpet Happiness. All of the series share the same Jewelpets, but not the same characters in general to prevent canon confusion.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has a spin-off with the Thus Spoke Rohan Kishibe series, consisting of several irregularly published one-shots starring Rohan Kishibe, a side character from the manga's fourth part Diamond is Unbreakable. These one-shots features beings more esoteric than Stands and vampires, such as original cryptids and other powerful spirits, some considered gods. Although characters from Part 4 regularly appear, it can be inferred that the spin-off is in a different continuity than the current part.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War has two spin-offs. The first, Kaguya-sama: Love is War Doujin Edition, is basically the main series but Hotter and Sexier. The second, We Want to Talk About Kaguya, is an Innocent Bystander Series told from the perspective of two Recurring Extras as they grossly misinterpret the events of earlier chapters and get involved with the series' Beta Couple.
• Kamisama Minarai: Himitsu no Cocotama has two different spin-offs.
  • Kira Kira Happy ★ Hirake! Cocotama is a Magical Girl-style (sort of) reimagining with only one protagonist and a set of new Cocotamas.
  • Mono No Kamisama Cocotama is about life in the eyes of a Cocotama.
• The Lyrical Nanoha franchises is one long string of these and even started as a spin-off of Triangle Heart 3: Sweet Songs Forever. Within the current canon there's the original series and its three sequels, an audio play spin-off focusing on characters introduces in the third season, a Spin-Offspring manga focusing on Nanoha's adopted daughter, a spin-off of the Spin-Offspring focusing on brand new characters, and an alternate universe manga where everyone plays card games.
• Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid has Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Kanna's Daily Life, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Elma's Office Lady Diary, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Lucoa is my xx, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Fafnir the Recluse, and Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid: Ilulu Has No Clue About Love!
• My Hero Academia:
  • My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is set a few months before the main series. It focuses on a group of vigilante heroes trying to prevent the Psycho Serum Trigger from spreading.
  • My Hero Academia Smash!! is a gag manga showing the characters in chibi form.
  • My Hero Academia: Team-Up Missions focuses on Deku and friends fighting together along with Pro Heroes as part of the ambitious "Team-Up Missions Program".
  • Watashi no Hero Academia (known as My Heroine Academia among english fans), a 4-koma series focusing on the heroines and villainesses.
• Naruto:
  • Rock Lee's Springtime of Youth, a comical spinoff focusing on Rock Lee. It got an anime adaptation as well.
  • Uchiha Sasuke's Sharingan Chronicles, another comical spinoff showing Sasuke and Taka's wacky side.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • The manga series Shinji Ikari Raising Project is based on the video game of the same name. It takes the alternate reality from Episode 26 as inspiration, and as such is more comedic and most of its characters are much more emotional stable, all while keeping their most notable traits, albeit more subdued. Before that, there was Neon Genesis Evangelion: Angelic Days, based on the eponymous game as well. Its characters are alternate versions of the main continuity and it ended with a much happier ending than the anime.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion: Campus Apocalypse is an Elseverse where Shinji attends NERV —which is a Catholic school and he and the other children must use EVAS (not mechas, but wieldable weapons) used to fight Angels (which in this series are parasitic beings which uses human bodies as hosts) in order to secure cores without which Yggdrasil may eventually cause a collapse of reality.
• One Piece has a few:
  • Chopperman, which stars Chopper as a super hero fighting against the evil Dr. Usodabada. It was initially a gag story in one of the databooks, before it was adapted into its own spin-off manga.
  • One Piece Party, a Lighter and Softer comedic spinoff with self-contained stories and Super-Deformed designs.
  • Koisuru One Piece is an odd spin-off as it revolves about three fans of the manga series (even named after Luffy and his crew), who encounter situations similar to their favorite series.
  • Similarly, One Piece: Kobiyama Who Looks Like Koby - Two Piece in a Pod deals with the titular Kobiyama — who oddly enough does not know of the series — and his interactions with other characters who resemble those from the main series.
  • Chin Piece can easily be considered the most bizarre of all, as the main character Kusopp and his friends want to be as great as the Straw Hats, and encounter Chimpy who resembles Luffy and whose penis can stretch like Luffy's.
  • One Piece School, from the same author of Party, which is a middle school AU featuring Coby enrolling into New World Middle school and befriending Luffy and the other Straw Hats as students.
  • Food Wars! Shokugeki no Sanji, a semi-crossover authored by the very creators of Shokugeki no Soma Yūto Tsukuda and Shun Saeki and revolves about Sanji's cooking delighting several characters in the same manner as Soma does in his own series.
• Please Twins! is set one year after the events of Please Teacher!, it shares most locations and many of the first anime characters come back either as cameo or secondary characters.
• Various side story episodes of Pokémon the Series featured former party members after they had left the group. The early ones focusing on Tracey and Misty along with Tournament Arc rival Ritchie were dubbed as the Pokémon Chronicles subseries.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica has Puella Magi Kazumi Magica, which is about another group of magical girls. Its other spin-off, Puella Magi Oriko Magica is either a Prequel or an Interquel. A third spin-off entitled Puella Magi Madoka Magica: The Different Story was released for the Compilation Movie, and it is part Prequel, P.O.V. Sequel, and What If? story. Three new spin-offs began after the premiere of Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion. One is an Oriko Magica prequel. The other ones are Puella Magi Suzune Magica, which is about another group of magical girls, and Puella Magi Tart Magica, which elaborates on a background detail from the anime.
• Ray the Animation is a spin-off of Black Jack, focusing on one of Black Jack's students. The manga is technically one, but Black Jack is merely a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo; as the anime was made by the studio Osamu Tezuka founded, which holds the rights to his creations, it didn't need to obfuscate things that way.
• Saint Seiya produced a crapton of spin-offs:
  • Saint Seiya: Episode.G, drawn by Okada Megumu, who focuses on Gold Saint Aiolia long before the main series. It produced its own spin-off, Saint Seiya: Episode.G Assassin.
  • Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas, another prequel, as well as The Lost Canvas Chronicles.
  • Saint Seiya: Next Dimension, a sequel drawn by Kurumada himself.
  • Saint Seiya: Saintia Sho, which takes place during the events of the main series but focuses on female protagonists.
  • Saint Seiya Omega, a 2012 animated series following a new generation of Saints.
• Summer Time Rendering: Summertime Rendering 2026: The Room that Dreams of Murder is a short, two chapter spinoff that takes place several years after the events of the main story starring Hizuru as she helps her niece solve the mystery of a haunted apartment. The Light Novel Summertime Rendering 2026: Nagumo Ryuunosuke's 100 Views is a direct continuation which follows the two of them as they solve supernatural mysteries around Tokyo.
• There was a manga called Ten - The Blessed Way of the Nice Guy, which was about mahjong being serious business, there was a character called Akagi which was an awesome old man who the characters feared and respected, the character was so popular the author made an spinoff prequel series focused on Akagi's early life, at one point he meets his match in an old man called Washizu, who was so popular the author made a spinoff series focused on Washizu's early life (yes, Fukumoto made a spinoff of a spinoff).
• A concrete anime example is To Heart 2, which takes place in the same school as the original To Heart, only that it is set three years after. Some nods and cameos reinforce this.
• Tweeny Witches has an episodic 6-episode OVA titled Tweeny Witches: The Adventures.
• WWW.WORKING!! to Wagnaria!!, focusing on a different set of employees at a different branch of the Wagnaria restaurant. Franchise wise, the latter is this to the former; anime wise, it's the opposite case (being based on the print collection rather than the original webcomic, which was made long after the latter got its time in the animated sun).
• Yo-kai Watch has two spinoffs: the Spin-Offspring series Yo-kai Watch: Shadowside and the Middle School AU Yo-kai Watch Jam - Yo-kai Academy Y: Close Encounters of the N Kind.

    Asian Animation 

• Bread Barbershop has two spin-offs, both with educational themes. Wilk's Dessert Story has Wilk, one of the main characters of the original show, teaching viewers the origins of different foods; Bread and Wilk's World Tour has Bread and Wilk learning about different important figures in history.
• Motu Patlu (2012) has two spin-offs.
  • The first is called Inspector Chingum and is about the character Inspector Chingum moving to Shantiwood to fight supervillains sent out by No Baal, the owner of Crime Academy.
  • The second, Guddu The Great, focuses on Guddu the lion from the theatrical film Motu Patlu: King of Kings.
• Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf has a spinoff called Pleasant Goat Fun Class, where the characters are much younger versions of themselves who learn about the world around them.
• South Korean TV animation series Titipo Titipo the Little Train is a spin-off of more famous sister series called Tayo the Little Bus. Two series are set in the same universe and several characters from each series frequently make guest or cameo appearances to each other, almost to the level of Required Spinoff Crossover. Pororo the Little Penguin, another smash hit from the same production company, deals with the separate continuity, but Pororo sticker made an appearance in Titipo as a meaningful prop, making it a Show Within a Show.

    Audio Plays 

    Comic Books 

• Fables → Jack Of Fables, featuring The Trickster of the same name, who was every "Jack" in folk tale or legend, and Fairest, a series of side stories each spotlighting different female secondary characters from the main comic.
• The second volume of Runaways had a Poorly Disguised Pilot for The Loners, a miniseries featuring a group of former teen heroes making questionably-sincere attempts to quit the hero business.
• The Sandman (1989) has several spin-offs following supporting characters, including:
  • Lucifer, which follows the adventures of Lucifer after he quits being Ruler of Hell in The Sandman: Season of Mists.
  • The Thessaliad and Thessaly: Witch for Hire, in which Dream's murderous ex-girlfriend Thessaly deals with new problems brought on by a ghost named Fetch.
  • Death: The High Cost of Living, in which Death takes one day off and spends a day as a mortal, and Death: The Time of Your Life.
  • The Dead Boy Detectives, the ghosts of two deceased schoolboys named Edwin Paine and Charles Rowland who first appeared during the "Season of Mists" arc and subsequently played a major role in The Children's Crusade (Vertigo) before receiving several of their own titles.
• Thor (Marvel Comics) has an interesting relationship with Journey into Mystery. Thor debuted in Journey into Mystery and headlined it for a while before taking over the title completely and later getting another series. 49 years after his debut, Journey into Mystery is introduced as a spin-off taking over Thor's numbering and Thor gets another series.
• Fantastic Four: After the death of the Human Torch, the book ended at issue 588 and was revamped as FF (FF in the title standing for Future Foundation). After 11 issues of FF, Marvel revived the Fantastic Four for issue 600 (the previous issues being FF) and it will continue forward with FF also being released concurrently focusing on the non Fantastic Four members of the Future Foundation.
• The Authority began as a spin-off of Stormwatch. It later spawned two spin-offs of its own — The Monarchy, about the surviving members of Stormwatch, and Kev Hawkins, about a hapless SAS operative who keeps having to team up with the Midnighter. There was also a very short-lived Midnighter solo series. As for Stormwatch, its original incarnation spawned a spin-off about Backlash.
• The original Ms. Marvel started out with amnesia, but was obviously the alter ego of Carol Danvers, formerly a recurring character in Captain Marvel; she soon realized that like Mar-Vell, she had gained her powers from the Kree, and spontaneously named herself after him. Meanwhile, Carol began working at the Daily Bugle, so Spider-Man characters showed up as well.
• Pointedly averted with the DC Comics character Naomi. As creator Brian Michael Bendis noted in this interview, he considers her story too special to have her introduced in a book that isn't hers and spun off from there, necessitating her own self-contained limited series exploring her character and how she became a superhero before she makes her debut within the greater DC Universe in Action Comics #1015.
• Richie Rich is a spin-off of the Little Dot comics. Interestingly, Dot herself would have various stories in the Richie Rich comics as well.
• The Marvel Comics war series Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos had three different spin-offs.
  • Combat Kelly and his Deadly Dozen and Capt. Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders kept the same wartime setting and used a similar approach (although Kelly's squad were Boxed Crooks).
  • Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. was a Time Skip that showed Sgt. Fury's post-war career, introduced S.H.I.E.L.D. to the Marvel Universe and swiftly overshadowed his original series.
• The Crisis Crossover Bloodlines (DC Comics) had several series spun off that focused on the heroes who gained powers after surviving their encounters with the alien parasites, the longest-lasting and most well-known being Hitman (1993), with protagonist Tommy Monaghan debuting in the second Annual issue of The Demon and resurfacing in a couple of arcs in the main comic before he got his own comic that ran for 61 issues.
• Milestone Comics
  • The Deathwish miniseries was a spinoff of Hardware (1993), though the actual protagonist was a transgender cop named Marisa Rahm and Deathwish was a supporting character at best.
  • Blood Syndicate had two spinoff miniseries to its name, My Name is Holocaust (where the unscrupulous criminal Holocaust is the main character) and Wise Son: The White Wolf (a miniseries focusing on Blood Syndicate member Wise Son that started publication shortly after the main series ended).
• X-Men: From the Ashes made an effort to put mutants other than Wolverine in the spotlight, with Phoenix, Dazzler, Storm, Mystique, and Psylocke among others all getting their own solo series. There's also a miniseries centered around the new Sentinels, who are a team of Cyborg Cape Busters as opposed to the previous generations' Killer Robots.
• Batman: The main title (volumes 1940, 2011, 2016) originated as a spinoff from Detective Comics, then an Anthology Comic with Batman as its main feature. A huge number of spin-offs followed:
  • Most of Batman's supporting cast have starred in their own ongoing series; the first was Batman Family (1975), mainly starring Robin (Dick Grayson) and Batgirl (Barbara Gordon). Later examples include Dick Grayson in Nightwing (1995 [miniseries], 1996, 2011, 2016) and Grayson (2014); Jason Todd in Red Hood and the Outlaws (2011, 2016), Red Hood/Arsenal (2014) and Red Hood The Hill (2024 [miniseries]); Tim Drake in Robin (three miniseries, then 1993), Red Robin (2009) and Tim Drake: Robin (2022); Damian Wayne in Robin: Son of Batman (2015) and Robin (2021); various Batgirl series (2000 and 2008 [miniseries] with Cassandra Cain, 2009 with Stephanie Brown, 2011 and 2016 with Barbara Gordon, Batgirls (2021) with all three, and 2024 with Cass again); Duke Thomas in We Are Robin (2015) and Batman and the Signal (2018 [miniseries]); various Azrael series (with Jean-Paul Valley in Batman: Sword of Azrael (1992 [miniseries]) and Azrael (1995), Michael Lane in Battle For the Cowl: Azrael: Death's Dark Knight (2009 [miniseries]) and Azrael (2009), and Jean-Paul again in Sword of Azrael (2022 [miniseries])); Kate Kane in Batwoman (a #0 issue in 2010, then ongoing series in 2011 and 2017); Renee Montoya in Gotham Central (2003); David Zavimbe and Luke Fox in Batwing (2011); Calvin Rose in Talon (2012); and Jace Fox in Future State: Batman (2021 [miniseries]), The Next Batman: Second Son (2021 [miniseries]) and I Am Batman (2021). Anthology comics featuring Batman and his supporting cast include Batman: Urban Legends (2021) and Batman: The Brave and The Bold (2023).
  • Many of Batman's rogues have also starred in their own ongoing series, most prominently Catwoman (1989 [miniseries], 1993, 2001, 2011, 2018) and Harley Quinn (2000, 2014, 2016, 2021, plus a large number of spin-off miniseries). Others include The Joker (1975, 2021 and The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing in 2022), Poison Ivy (2022) and The Penguin (2023). Gotham City Sirens (2009) starred the trio of Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn and Catwoman.
  • Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight (1989): Starring Batman, usually with self-contained story arcs set in his early years (although some were set in the present day), typically with a mature and serious tone. Later effectively replaced by the similar Batman Confidential (2007).
  • Some creators have been given their own comic starring Batman, usually after writing for Batman and/or Detective Comics. Examples include Alan Grant's Batman Shadow Of The Bat (1992), Paul Dini's Batman Streets Of Gotham (2009), Grant Morrison's Batman and Robin (2009) and Batman Incorporated (2010, 2012), David Finch's Batman The Dark Knight (2010, 2011),^note An exception to the rule, as Finch was primarily an artist who hadn't written Batman before, but was nevertheless given his own ongoing Batman comic to write and draw; in 2012, the book was Retooled with Gregg Hurwitz as its new writer and Scott Snyder's All-Star Batman (2016).
    • Batman and Robin (beginning with Dick and Damian as the new Dynamic Duo) continued after Grant Morrison's run, with new volumes in 2011 (which brought Bruce back as Batman) and 2023.
    • Batman Incorporated (with Bruce Wayne leading an international team of Batman-inspired superheroes) was also revived without Morrison in 2022, now with the organization led by Batman's rival Ghost-Maker.
  • Batman and the Outsiders (1983,^note retitled Adventures of the Outsiders after Batman first left the team 2007, 2019): Features a superhero team led by Batman. Alternately titled The Outsiders (1985, 1993, 2003, 2009, 2023^note (mostly unrelated to previous volumes)) when Batman is not part of the team.
  • Birds of Prey (several one-shot specials, then 1998, 2010, 2011, Batgirl and the Birds of Prey in 2016, 2023). Originated as a team-up of Barbara Gordon with Black Canary, evolving into a mostly female-dominated team with other major characters such as Huntress.
  • The Batman Chronicles (1995): Quarterly book containing multiple Batman stories. Together with four monthly Batman titles, there was a new Batman book published every week.
  • Batman Gotham Knights (2000): Another series starring Batman, with broader focus on the entire Batfamily. Retooled from issue #50 to focus on Batman's villains.
  • Gotham Academy (2014), followed by Gotham Academy: Second Semester (2016): The adventures of the Detective Club of the titular Wayne-funded school.
  • Batman and Superman team-up titles began with World's Finest (1941) (originally an anthology), later succeeded by Superman/Batman (2003) and Batman/Superman (2013, 2019). Batman/Superman: World's Finest (2022) is notably set several years in the past, during Dick's time as Robin.

    Comic Strips 

    Fan Works 

• Earth's Alien History has the sequel/side story Andromeda Dreams. While the main story is set solely within the Milky Way galaxy, Andromeda Dreams is focused on the various Milky Way Colony Ships sent to the Andromeda galaxy as continuity of species just in case the Reapers succeed in wiping out all life.
• MasterGame is a Geometry Dash custom level spun off from the Altergame level series. While Altergame is made up of smaller mini-games created in Geometry Dash's Level Editor, MasterGame is a larger scope Role-Playing Game made with it.
• The New Adventures of Invader Zim has the anthology New Adventures: Mature Edition, a collection of Loose Canon stories featuring aged up versions of the human characters involved in more mature situations.

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 

• In the John Wick series, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum introduced the Ruska Roma and the Director (Anjelica Huston), and the organization reappeared in John Wick: Chapter 4. Then the spinoff film Ballerina focused on a member of said assassin organization, Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), with Huston also returning as the Director and franchise namesake protagonist John Wick (Keanu Reeves) showing up in two scenes.
• The Mummy Returns featured a mummy trying to raise the Scorpion king and his army from their resting places. The Scorpion King is set thousands of years in the past and features the character's rise to power.
• Grindhouse featured a Fake Trailer for Machete which later became a film of its own. Word of God also states that the Machete from Spy Kids is the same Machete, so it also counts for that film.
• The Graveyard (notable for featuring Mark Salling, pre-Glee) exists in the same universe as the Bloody Murder duology.
• The Star Trek franchise has three spinoff film series to date:
  • Six films were spawned from Star Trek: The Original Series, continuing the adventures of Kirk, Spock, et al., set from two to twenty-five years after the end of the show.
  • Four more spun off from Star Trek: The Next Generation, the first of which also connected to the aforementioned TOS movies.
  • The reboot films ("Abramsverse"/"Kelvin timeline") act as a Spin-Off parallel in an Alternate Timeline to TOS.

    Literature 

• P. D. James' Adam Dalgleish detective novels spun off a short line of two novels about private investigator Cordelia Gray, including a surprise Continuity Cameo by the original detective.
• The Baby-Sitters Club initiated the launch of Baby-Sitters Little Sister (a series all about Karen Brewer, Kristy's seven year old stepsister—which itself had a spinoff focusing on the students in her class and aptly titled The kids in Mrs. Coleman's Class), BSC Mysteries which were the sitters in mystery settings, California Diaries which focused on Dawn after she moved back to California, the Friends Forever series that continued after the end of the main series and only focused on the first four members and was more about interpersonal problems leading up to the series finale, a 1995 feature film, two TV series in 1990 and 2020, and The Baby-Sitters Club graphic novels of the original series—and that spun off graphic novels of the original Baby-Sitters Little Sister series. Whew.
• The Cat on the Run series of books is a spin-off of The Bad Guys series. Set in the same universe, characters such as Tiffany Fluffit and Chuck Melon of Channel 6 Action News are made recurring characters of Cat on the Run, while The Bad Guys themselves have small picture cameos. The series appears to be taking place earlier in the life of The Bad Guys, as The Bad Guys are still put in a negative light, while Tiffany Fluffit is in her far less developed characterization.
• Plantagenet Palliser, a minor character in The Small House at Allingham, one of The Chronicles of Barsetshire by Anthony Trollope, became a main character of Trollope's Palliser series, written in the 1860s and 1870s.
• Dear America spun off Dear Canada (historical stories set in Canada), My America (trilogies focused on one character each and with younger characters), My Name Is America (the Spear Counterpart that focused on male characters), and The Royal Diaries (diaries from the viewpoint of historical royal women when they were young).
• Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid is a spin-off of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, told in a Perspective Flip from Greg Heffley's best friend Rowley Jefferson.
• Doctor Who Expanded Universe:
  • The Doctor Who New Adventures were published by Virgin Publishing under license from the BBC. When the BBC decided to take the license back to start publishing their own Eighth Doctor Adventures, Virgin spun off the Bernice Summerfield novels, which continued to tell similar sci-fi adventure stories using characters and worldbuilding elements that had been created for the New Adventures (and which Virgin consequently retained rights to) or which could be licensed separately from the writers that had created them.
  • One of the Eighth Doctor Adventures novels by Lawrence Miles introduced Faction Paradox, an association of anarchic time-traveling villains. After leaving the series, Miles instituted his own series of Faction Paradox novels.
  • Telos published a series of Doctor Who novellas; one of them, Cabinet of Light, introduced a set of characters who were spun off into the Time Hunter series.
  • Candy Jar Books publish a series of Lethbridge-Stuart novels, mostly but not entirely set before he was The Brigadier. They have also introduced a spin-off of this aimed at a younger audience called The Lucy Wilson Mysteries, starring the Brig's teenaged granddaughter in The Present Day.
• The Dora Wilk Series has Shaman Blues, with the main character being someone who was Put on a Bus for large parts of the parent series.
• The Hobbit would be this were it not for the Development Hell of Tolkien's earlier stories. By the 1910s and 1920s, Tolkien had already completed early versions of what would later be The Silmarillion, but had trouble with finding a publisher and was never quite satisfied with the result anyway. He wrote The Hobbit as a separate project before deciding to set it in the same continuity as his earlier stories, set thousands of years into the future. The book mentions Gondolin and a Necromancer in his dark tower^note At the time, this was Thû, the Lord of Werewolves, though by the next installement, he became Sauron, the Lord of the Rings., but otherwise has an original setting with no shared characters.
• The Iliad and the The Odyssey both cover the same story but through different cultural lenses. The Aeneid also follows the adventures of a minor character from The Iliad, but it was written by a different writer hundreds of years later.
• The minor character of Auri in The Kingkiller Chronicle received a spin-off novella all about her, The Slow Regard of Silent Things.
• The main The Lost Fleet series ends with John Geary bringing said fleet back and then proceeding to force an end to the 100-year-war between the Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds. The immediate spin-off series The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier features many of the same characters and has Geary being sent to a distant part of space in order to look for aliens. The Lost Stars series features new focus characters and deals with the collapse of the Syndicate Worlds after the war. The author is currently working on a prequel trilogy called The Genesis Fleet, detailing the formation of the Alliance centuries prior. There is also a spin-off comic book series Lost Fleet Corsair, focusing on the adventures of Geary's grandnephew Michael.
• Marcus Pocus is a spin-off to the Anna Kadabra series, centering on the titular best friend of Anna.
• The Mercy Thompson series has the spin-off series Alpha and Omega which follows a character introduced in the first book and his wife. A few short stories focusing on other side character are also set in the same universe.
• The Mortal Instruments received the prequel series The Infernal Devices. It is an interesting example; the two series share a couple characters, (namely, Magnus and Camille), but they're not central to either series, and all the other characters are new. Plus, The Infernal Devices takes place 200 years before The Mortal Instruments.
• Murdle has its Junior Variant, Murdle Junior, which is written for a middle grade audience and centered around a group of Kid Detectives (and one cat). Notably, several characters from the main series appear and play major roles.
• Super Powereds has Corpies, focused on the Retired Badass Titan, who decides to return to the Hero life after a 10-year absence following a sex scandal. He makes several appearances in the main series after the spin-off. Two other Corpies characters also make appearances in the main series, and one's full name is mentioned only in the main series. The author is also working on another spin-off called Blades & Barriers.
• Sweet Valley High gave us... dear lord. There were eight different spin-offs of the original series, all but one of them also being about the twins that served as main characters at various points in their lives. The seven that were about the twins were Sweet Valley Twins, Sweet Valley University, Sweet Valley Kids, Sweet Valley Junior High, Sweet Valley Senior Year, Elizabeth, and The Sweet Life. The last spin-off, The Unicorn Club, takes place when the twins are in middle school but focuses on the club instead.
• The Arrivals from the Dark series has a spin-off series called Trevelyan's Mission, taking place in the same universe but centuries later and focusing on a single character (while the Arrivals series largely focuses on different characters from the same family across generations). Unlike the main series, which could be considered military science fiction, the spin-off takes place in a time of peace and focuses on cultural exploration. Notably, both six-book series were largely written in parallel (and both are likely over given Died During Production).
• Woodwalkers And Friends is one to Woodwalkers. The novels of the series are set during or between the events of the original books- for example, Katzige Gefährten is set between the last book of Woodwalkers and the first book of Seawalkers.

    Live-Action TV 

• Game show instances:
  • Family Feud is widely believed to be a spinoff of Match Game in that its questions were formatted similar to the original 60s MG and used national surveys to cull answers (MG used previous studio audiences).
  • 1983's Go is thought to be a spinoff of 1980's Chain Reaction since its front game was the Chain Reaction bonus round.

• Agent Carter spun off from Captain America: The First Avenger. Peggy Carter was Cap's main love interest in the 40's, and her show is about her moving on with her life and having adventures of her own after he was frozen in the Arctic and presumed dead. Had the show not been cancelled after two seasons, it would have showed her founding SHIELD with Iron Man's father Howard Stark. The show was later given a Fully Absorbed Finale in Avengers: Endgame when (after seeing Edwin Jarvis and Peggy in The '70s), Steve Rogers elects to stay in the past and live out his life with her.
• Norman Lear's All in the Family spun off multiple shows, some of which had their own spinoffs:
  • Maude focused on the antics of Edith's limousine liberal cousin.
    • Maude had a housekeeper named Florida, who became the lead of the equally successful Good Times. However, its spin-off status is hazy since much of the backstory we're given would have made it impossible for Florida to have been Maude's maid due to living in Chicago.
  • The Jeffersons was about Archie's neighbors, George and Louse Jefferson (natch), who unexpectedly became wealthy and moved away to their own show.
    • Like Florida, their housekeeper Florence later received her own spin-off, Checking In, which was not equally successful — cancelled after four episodes. Florence returned to her former employers.
  • As its original stars moved on to other projects, All in the Family spun off its sequel, Archie Bunker's Place.
    • The sequel itself had a one season spin-off, Gloria, which featured Archie's daughter Gloria, having divorced Mike, starting a new life in New York.
  • The last gasp of the franchise came in 1994, with yet another (short-lived) spinoff: 704 Hauser, about the people who were then living in what had been Archie's house. The adult Joey Stivic (son of Michael and Gloria) drops by for a visit in the first episode.
• America's Funniest Home Videos spun off into America's Funniest People. Unlike the former, which specalized in candid and unscripted funny moments getting caught on-camera and sent in by home viewers, the latter relied on intentionally staged comedy sketches. Both shows were hosted by Full House alumni at their inception (Bob Saget on the former; Dave Coulier on the latter) and both even had Ernie Anderson as the announcer.
• Arrowverse:
  • The Flash (2014) spun off from Arrow. Main character Barry Allen was introduced in a two-parter from Arrow's second season, gaining his super-speed powers at the end, and a later episode that season introduced supporting characters Cisco and Caitlin. Plans for a full-on Backdoor Pilot were cancelled.
  • Both Arrow and The Flash then spun off Legends of Tomorrow, laying the groundwork in their 2015 crossover "Legends of Today" / "Legends of Yesterday".
  • Two animated shows were spun off as well, on the streaming service CW Seed: Vixen and Freedom Fighters: The Ray.
  • Other shows began separately but were added to the Arrowverse retroactively: Supergirl, Constantine and Black Lightning.
  • Batwoman was spun off from the 2018 "Elseworlds" crossover.
  • Superman & Lois was originally developed as a spinoff from Supergirl, with many actors reprising their roles, but was later shown to take place in a different universe.
• You probably wouldn't expect a Ken Burns documentary series, let alone that within his Great American Trilogy, to have one, but Baseball does—specifically, a 2016 two-part miniseries following the life of Brooklyn Dodgers player Jackie Robinson.
• After Steve Wilkos left The Jerry Springer Show after being the director of security there, he was given his own series, The Steve Wilkos Show, which deals with much more serious topics.
• Baptiste is a spinoff from The Missing (2014).
• Battlestar Galactica (2003) → Caprica, a prequel spinoff which follows the creation of Cylons ~50 years before the setting of the parent show.
• Being Human had an online spinoff called Becoming Human which focused on Adam, a character that had featured in an episode of the parent show, and otherwise entirely new characters.
• The Beverly Hillbillies, the other rural big sitcom franchise of the 1960s, spun off Petticoat Junction, which in turn spun off Green Acres.
• Beverly Hills, 90210 had a spin-off, Melrose Place, within two years of its introduction. Melrose Place itself spun off a not-as-successful spin-off Models Inc., which lasted only a season.
• The Big Bang Theory had the After Show prequel Young Sheldon, which itself spun off Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage.
• Bones → The Finder
• The Boys (2019) spun off into Gen V, focusing on an university that trains young supes.
• Breaking Bad has Better Call Saul, which the protagonist is Saul Goodman, Walter White's lawyer and "advisor". The series focus on Saul's life before he was a lawyer under his real name (Jimmy McGill) and also shows what happened to him after the events of Breaking Bad, serving as both a prequel and a sequel to the main series as well.
• The Brittas Empire had a very short one after it's end called Get Fit with Brittas, which was an Edutainment Show where Brittas taught the audience about the importance of healthy living. The other cast members of the show do show up, but not all of them and only in one shot roles.
• Referenced in the Grand Finale of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Amy tricks Jake into believing he's been in a coma for years, and in the intervening period Boyle became the sheriff of a small town in Arizona, where he is also the principal of the local high school.

Jake: OK, that's weird.
Amy: It's actually very funny, and surprisingly heartwarming.

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer spun off Angel, featuring the Buffy main characters of Angel and Cordelia, with the guest character Wesley joining later in the series. Crossovers between the two were frequent until Buffy moved to a new network.
• Caerdydd spun into Gwaith Cartref. Neither Emyr nor Sara mentions Lea, Peter, or any of the other characters from the earlier show – which is strange, given how it ended.
• The Carol Burnett Show, later in its run, featured a recurring segment entitled The Family. With Carol Burnett as Eunice, Harvey Norman as her husband Ed, Tim Conway as Ed's employee and sidekick Mickey Hart, and Vicki Lawrence as Eunice's Mama, the sketch-series was an immediate hit and is still fondly remembered by the show's fans. When the series ended, Mama's Family was spun off. Sadly, with only Ms. Lawrence reprising her role, the spinoff never achieved the comic heights of the original.
• Cheers:
  • Cheers had a prior spinoff, Meet the Tortellis, featuring Carla's ex-husband. The show did not last very long.
  • When the series ended, Frasier Crane left Boston to move back home to Seattle, becoming the main character of his own show, Frasier. Crossovers with characters from Cheers were frequent, with all of Sam, Diane, Lilith, Carla, Norm, Cliff, and Woody all making appearances at one point or another.
• The Chica Show is this to Sprout's "The Sunny Side Up Show."
• The Daily Show gave birth to The Colbert Report, which started as a fictional show in commercials promoting The Daily Show and became defictionalized.
• Dallas gave rise to the show Knots Landing. Interestingly enough, Knots Landing was actually shopped first to CBS, but rejected. When Dallas took off, they inserted one of the Ewing brothers and re-shopped Knots Landing as a spin-off. What makes this situation unusual is that when an entire season of Dallas was retconned to have been All Just a Dream, Knots Landing did not do the same for the plot developments it had already built off the events of that season of Dallas – instead, it just stopped referring to its parent show altogether.
• Death in Paradise has two, running concurrently: Beyond Paradise (2023), continuing the story of previous protagonist Humphrey Goodman several years after his departure from the main show, and Return to Paradise, which is a shared continuity spinoff featuring an entirely new setting and cast of characters (with one cameo character from the parent show).
• Department S → Jason King, which gave Peter Wyngarde's flamboyant novelist/detective character his own adventures.
• Doctor Who: Various other television series have been made, set in the Whoniverse.
  • K-9 and Company (1981), teaming up a new incarnation of K9 with Sarah Jane Smith, investigative reporter and the Doctor's former companion, on Earth. Only a pilot episode was made, which aired as a Christmas special.
  • Torchwood (2006-2011), a Darker and Edgier and Hotter and Sexier show about a team of secret agents defending Great Britain from alien threats, led by former companion Captain Jack Harkness. Ran for four series, with the third and fourth series each following serialised story arcs under the respective subtitles Children of Earth and Miracle Day.
  • The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007-2011), a Lighter and Softer show made for CBBC, featuring Sarah Jane Smith encountering aliens and monsters alongside a group of local kids including her adopted Artificial Human son. Ran for five series altogether.
  • K9 (2009-2010), a children's show set 20 Minutes into the Future, featuring the first K9 alongside a group of teens defending Earth from alien menaces. Was made without the BBC's involvement as an Australian-British co-production, and so the only thing linking K9 to the Whoniverse is the presence of the eponymous robot dog: it could not directly reference Doctor Who and vice versa. Ran for one series.
  • Class (2016), set at Coal Hill School, blending science fiction with teen drama. Ran for one series.
  • In the early 2000s, there were four Doctor Who online animated specials featuring the Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors, and an alternate Ninth Doctor.
• The TLC series Dr. Pimple Popper is an inversion of the Online Spin-Off, and is possibly the Ur-Example of a web video property that moved to linear TV. It's an expansion of the YouTube channel of Southern California dermatologist Sandra Lee, who became a major Internet celebrity as "Dr. Pimple Popper".
• The Dukes of Hazzard → Enos, which focused on Deputy Enos Strate moving out West and working for the LAPD.
• EastEnders had a spin-off E20 following a group of teenagers outside of the main cast. Some were later promoted to the main series.
• Eureka and Warehouse 13 are established as a shared canon during an episode on each show in which each had a character visiting from the other. There was also a brief appearance of a recurring Warehouse 13 character in an episode of Alphas, putting all three series in one universe.
• Fantasy Island (2021): The series is one of Fantasy Island, with Mr. Rourke's grand niece Elena now running things.
• FBI led to FBI: Most Wanted and to FBI: International.
• Five Fwd is the parent show for Channel Five's The Gadget Show and Fifth Gear. The former features a formalised news segment which has never been part of the main programme with a different presenter and games reviews and interviews with one of the regular presenters- something that rarely appears in the show proper.
• Home-renovation show Flip Or Flop has a complicated series of spinoffs. When stars Tarek and Christina El Moussa were getting divorced and the show's future was uncertain, HGTV gave them each a separate show — Christina on the Coast (focusing on Christina's interior design business) and Flipping 101 (in which Tarek serves as mentor to novice house-flippers). Flip or Flop continued for a couple more seasons before ending in 2022, meaning all three shows were on HGTV's schedule. Since then, Christina on the Coast received its own spinoff, Christina in the Country (featuring Christina setting up a design business in Tennessee, where she has a home with her new husband), and the original show has a Spiritual Successor with The Flipping El Moussas, in which Tarek is joined by his new wife.
• Friends had a Spin-Off called Joey, focussing on the character of Joey Tribbiani, who was popular enough to get his own show. It revolved around Joey moving to Los Angeles to try and make it as a big star, and introduced new members of Joey's family. Though popular at first, its popularity declined during the second season, causing it to be cancelled mid-season in the US, though the remaining episodes did air overseas and were eventually released on DVD.
• Game of Thrones (based on George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire) has prequel spin-offs so far:
  • House of the Dragon (partly based on Fire & Blood), set one century and a half before the events of the parent show, when the ancestors of Daenerys Targaryen ended up A House Divided and fought each other in a Succession Crisis turned Civil War.
  • A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (based on Tales of Dunk and Egg) is set one century before the events of Game of Thrones and some decades after those of House of the Dragon and features an adventurous knight and yet another Targaryen ancestor.
• Garth Marenghi's Darkplace → Man to Man with Dean Learner. A complicated one - the first show was a metafictional horror parody also featuring "interviews" with the fictional actors and creators involved with the fictional "show". The second show was a parody talk show featuring one of the fictional actors as host.
• General Hospital had Port Charles, which initially focused on a group of interns at the hospital, with a few regular characters imported from the parent show plus other Required Spinoff Crossover character appearances, but then made a sudden shift into a Supernatural Soap Opera centered mostly on a new group of characters.
• The Golden Girls:
  • The series led into Empty Nest, focusing on the life and adventures of the Girls' neighbor and friend Harry, a hospital pediatrician. Occasional crossovers between the two casts took place on both shows. Empty Nest had its own short-lived spinoff, Nurses, which was about the nurses who worked with Harry at the hospital.
  • The Golden Girls had a second spinoff, The Golden Palace, which started after the series finale. With Dorothy off being Happily Married, the remaining three Girls joined forces to purchase and run a hotel called the Golden Palace. It didn't live up to the popularity of the original and only lasted for one season.
• Growing Pains spun off Just the Ten of Us when recurring character Coach Lubbock loses his job at Dewey High and is subsequently offered a teaching job in Eureka, California.
• The Gruen Transfer, an Australian panel show mocking and dissecting real-life examples of advertising, blurs the line between spin-off, New Season, New Name and Retool. The Other Wiki considers it all one single television show with a changing title and shifting focus:
  • Gruen Nation, focusing on political advertising in elections. First ran for four episodes during the 2010 federal election, as an interlude in the third series of The Gruen Transfer. Came back for four more episodes during the 2013 federal election, and then for two episodes during the 2022 federal election.
  • Gruen Planet, with a broader focus on public relations and spin. Began one week after the fourth series of The Gruen Transfer ended; became the main format of the show, running for three series altogether.
  • Gruen Sweat, focusing on advertising for the 2012 London Olympics. Ran for four episodes preceding the fifth series (i.e. the second series of Gruen Planet).
  • Gruen, beginning with the seventh series in 2015, is the latest incarnation of the show: its focus is somewhere between The Gruen Transfer and Gruen Planet.
• Happy Days originated from an episode on the anthology series Love, American Style, spun off into its own series. Garry Marshall used Happy Days as a launching pad for new shows, with varying degrees of success, though only All in the Family could boast more hit spinoffs:
  • Laverne & Shirley (1976-1983): The title characters first appeared in the third season of Happy Days for several episodes. In its third and fourth seasons Laverne and Shirley became more popular than Happy Days, ranked number one in ratings.
  • Blansky's Beauties (1977): Centered on Howard Cunningham's cousin Nancy Blansky, managing a troupe of Las Vegas showgirls. Set in the present-day, unlike its parent show. Among the cast was Eddie Mekka as Joey, the younger cousin of his character Carmine from Laverne and Shirley, and Pat Morita reprising his role of Arnold from Happy Days. After the show's cancellation, main cast members Lynda Goodfriend and Scott Baio debuted on Happy Days as Lori Beth and Chachi respectively.
  • Mork & Mindy (1978-1982), starring Robin Williams as the alien Mork, who first appeared in a one-off Bizarro Episode of Happy Days season 5. (Which was not meant to be a Poorly Disguised Pilot; in fact, Robin Williams was a last-minute substitute for John Byner!) Set in the present day and mostly unconnected to its parent show.
  • Out of the Blue (1979): Centered on the guardian angel Random, who aides Chachi in the season 7 episode "Chachi Sells His Soul." There has been debate over whether this was a true spin-off or not, as the series premiered before the cited episode. It's been suggested that was merely a scheduling error on the network's part. Mork also appears in the series premiere.
  • Katmandu (1980): An unsuccessful pilot episode centered on the girl from the season 7 episode "Fonzie Meets Kat".
  • Joanie Loves Chachi (1982-1983): Features the title characters moving to Chicago and playing in a rock band. While remembered as a flop, it actually had decent ratings the first season and might have been a Quietly Performing Sister Show if the network hadn't played with its scheduling. After its cancellation, Joanie and Chachi moved back to Happy Days.
• Hercules: The Legendary Journeys → Xena: Warrior Princess. Xena was introduced as villain who considered Hercules a Worthy Opponent, but a short-lived romance between the two convinced her to become a hero herself, and her own series revolves around her redemption from her warlord past.
• iCarly set up a spinoff built around Gibby that never got past a pilot. On the other hand, Sam as well as Cat from Victorious went on to, well, Sam & Cat.
• Inspector Morse spun off into Lewis with a minor Time Skip. The series picked up in 2007 after Inspector Morse ended in 2000. In 2012 a second spin-off was started, Endeavour, a Prequel featuring a young Morse as a rookie cop in the 1960s.
• Inspector Rex: Stockinger got his own series after he was transferred to Salzburg. It lasted two seasons.
• The Australian anthology romantic comedy series It's a Date, which mostly revolved around different couples' first dates, inspired the sitcom How to Stay Married, which followed two of the characters from the first episode thirteen years into their marriage (one of them played by the creator of both series, Peter Helliar).
• JAG led to a More Popular Spin-Off about the investigators behind the courtroom cases, NCIS, which takes place at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C. Three spinoffs to date about NCIS teams in other cities with heavy Navy presence have been produced: NCIS: Los Angeles, NCIS: New Orleans, and NCIS: Hawaiʻi. Crossovers between these and other CBS shows give rise to a Shared Universe referred to as the Bellisarioverse after JAG's creator, Donald P. Bellisario.
• Knight Rider spun off Team Knight Rider which focused on five new talking vehicles and heroes.
• Knuckles spun off from the Sonic the Hedgehog film series with Idris Elba reprising his role as Knuckles the Echidna from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022).
• Laguna Beach → The Hills → The City 2008. At the end of the second season of Laguna Beach, lead character Lauren decides to pursue an internship at Teen Vogue and heads off to Los Angeles, while minor background character Heidi (glimpsed in scenes during the second season) also moves to L.A. to live with Lauren and work at another company. That premise became The Hills, which followed both of their adventures in the city. Several seasons later, Whitney Port (Lauren's co-worker at Teen Vogue) decides to move to New York after meeting Kelly Cutrone, the founder of PR firm The People's Revolution. That premise became The City, which lasted for two seasons and had a similar format to The Hills.
• Life on Mars → Ashes to Ashes. This was partly a spin-off and partly a sequel, as it featured a new protagonist, but retained most of the other regular characters from the previous show after a Time Skip.
• Love, Victor is a spin-off of the movie Love, Simon. It takes place a few years after the movie an dit follows a new character named Victor who attends the same school Simon did. When he starts to question his sexuality he decides to write Simon and they become the digital Pen Pals.
• The Sheldon Leonard-produced, Danny Thomas sitcom Make Room for Daddy has one memorable episode in which Thomas encounters a homespun Southern sheriff. The resulting show, The Andy Griffith Show, went on to be an even bigger success than its progenitor. It in turn spun off sister show Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. and sequel Mayberry R.F.D., becoming the first major big "rural sitcom" franchise of the 1960s.
• Man About the House had two spin-offs: George & Mildred and Robin's Nest.
• The Mary Tyler Moore Show spun off two sister series, Rhoda and Phyllis, as well as its retool/sequel spinoff Lou Grant.
• The popularity of M*A*S*H was such that a spinoff was all but inevitable, and it had two: AfterMASH, which brought Klinger, Potter, and Father Mulcahy together again in the United States, and Trapper John, M.D., which was about Trapper John's life after his discharge.
• Odd Squad:
  • OddTube is a Vlog Series spin-off with a first season that focuses on the Season 2 main characters (Otis, Olympia, Oona and Oprah) with Olympia serving as primary host, while its second season shifts focus towards the Season 3 main characters (Opal, Orla, Omar, and Oprah, as the Big O) with Orla serving as primary host. Season 1 is considered canon in the main show, but it's left ambiguous as to whether that is the case with Season 2 as well.
  • There is also the spin-off Odd Squad: Mobile Unit, taking place in the same universe with the same premise but with a different core setting and different characters. It's marketed as a spinoff in countries outside of the United States.
  • Odd Squad UK, which focuses on an Odd Squad precinct in Britain and also takes place in the same universe with different characters, is also marketed as a spinoff in some territories.
• Once Upon a Time (2011) → Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, a mini-series featuring mainly characters related to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, some of whom were later brought into the main series.
• Only Fools and Horses → The Green Green Grass, in which two supporting characters, Boycie and Marlene, relocated from London to rural Shropshire in order to escape the wrath of the Driscoll brothers. Back in The '80s when the original show was at its peak, writer John Sullivan had plans for a sequel called Hot Rod (which would have actually been an After Show as it was basically intended to be Only Fools and Horses without Del Boy) when actor David Jason wanted to leave, but when he changed his mind that plan was shelved.
• Perfect Strangers spun off the minor character of Harriette Winslow, the elevator operator at Balki and Larry's employer, into her own show, Family Matters.
• The first seven seasons of Power Rangers used a few old characters mixed with new ones. Starting with Lightspeed Rescue, they used the no character variant, all set in the same universe, with characters only returning for team-up episodes. The exceptions were Power Rangers: Dino Thunder and Power Rangers Samurai, where Tommy and Bulk returned as main characters, respectively.
• Police Story (1973) had Police Woman, Joe Forrester, and David Cassidy Man Under Cover.
• The Practice had the spin off Boston Legal, where the spinoff was designed around characters originally introduced in the original in a serious case of Final Season Casting.
• Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In spun off the daytime series Letters to Laugh-In, where a celebrity panel read jokes sent in by viewers and were scored by an enclave of judges. It replaced the original Match Game on NBC and ran thirteen weeks.
• Saturday Night Live's "TV Funhouse" segments eventually became their own series.
• Soap's sarcastic butler, Benson, was given his own show, Benson, where the character eventually became Lieutenant Governor of the state.
• Stargate SG-1, which itself was based on the film Stargate, spun off the shows Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe. Atlantis was set in the lost city of Atlantis and began while SG-1 was still running, with occasional crossovers between the shows, and featured many characters who had debuted on SG-1 – including Samantha Carter, who joined the Atlantis main cast for season 4. Universe began after SG-1 and Atlantis had both ended and was set on a ship in intergalactic space, meaning that old characters showed up far less often.
• Star Trek: The Original Series gave rise to a whole universe of spin-offs:
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation was set approximately a century after TOS and focused on a new ship named Enterprise which was the successor to the original.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was spun off from The Next Generation while TNG was still airing. Recurring character Chief Miles O'Brien left TNG to become a main character on DS9 (and eventually TNG main character Worf joined him), and there were substantial crossovers between the two shows in the DS9 pilot "Emissary" and the TNG episode "Birthright Part 1". Some plot threads that began on TNG later concluded on DS9, such as the political conflicts within the Klingon Empire.
  • Star Trek: Voyager began almost immediately after TNG concluded, as the franchise's new "flagship show"; although it does not feature any continuing characters, it does continue various stories and themes originating from TNG and DS9. Some recurring characters from TNG continue to recur on VOY, such as Reginald Barclay and the popular Anti-Villain Q.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise was set more than 110 years before The Original Series, and was arguably a spinoff of TOS, TNG or both.
  • Star Trek: Discovery is set a decade before Star Trek: The Original Series in its first season, and prominently features several characters who originated in TOS: Captain Christopher Pike is a main character in the second season, and characters such as Spock, Sarek, and Harry Mudd have recurring roles. The main character Michael Burnham is also Spock's adopted sister.
  • Star Trek: Picard is spun off from TNG, taking place nearly 30 years after the show ended and featuring a much older, more jaded Jean-Luc Picard.
  • Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is both a spin-off from Discovery and a direct prequel to The Original Series, taking place on the Enterprise during Captain Pike's last five-year mission before Captain Kirk took over command. Many of the show's main characters originated on TOS either as main characters (Spock, Uhura, Chapel) or guest characters (Pike, M'Benga).
  • Each Star Trek series from TNG to ENT featured a crossover at the beginning of each new spin-off as a symbolic "passing the torch": the first episode of TNG included a cameo appearance by an aged Dr. McCoy; the pilot of DS9 prominently featured Captain Picard; the first episode of VOY included a cameo by DS9's Quark; the first episode of ENT showed a video recording of Dr. Zefram Cochrane, a major character in the TNG film Star Trek: First Contact.
• The Suite Life of Zack & Cody → The Suite Life on Deck, where some of the main cast move to a cruise ship to attend a special school.
• That's So Raven spun into Cory in the House after a small Time Skip. CITH takes place some time after TSR, after Raven goes to college.
• Three's Company (adapted from Man About the House) spun off The Ropers (which focuses on Helen and Stanley Roper after they sell the apartment and move away, adapted from George & Mildred) and Three's a Crowd (which dealt with Jack living with his wife Vicky and her father, adapted from Robin's Nest).
• The Toys That Made Us: Series creator Brian Volk-Weiss also created a similarly-title spin-off called The Movies That Made Us.
• In 2013, Ultraman was awarded by the Guinness World Records with the record for most spin-offs (which form the Ultra Series franchise). There were 27 series in 2013, and in 2017 there were 30 series, with the number increasing with every year. Ironically, Ultraman itself is a More Popular Spin-Off of Ultra Q, but since the former show is better known worldwide, it gets the award instead.
• The Vampire Diaries → The Originals. The second series centred around a group of characters who had been the main arc villains in the third season of the original show.
• The Australian game show Hard Quiz was spun off from The Weekly with Charlie Pickering, specifically the regular segment Hard Chat. In one episode, a contestant's special subject was Happy Days, and when Tom Gleeson brought up the Love, American Style example, he then went on to claim that Hard Quiz was, in contrast, completely original.
• The Walking Dead Television Universe: The mother series The Walking Dead spun off into Fear the Walking Dead, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, Tales of the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: Dead City.
• The X-Files featured a trio of recurring characters, conspiracy theorists, known as The Lone Gunmen. They were spun off into their own short-lived eponymous show, The Lone Gunmen.

    Podcasts 

• Canceled Too Soon:
  • The podcast was inspired from a segment on the hosts' other (and since ended) podcast The B Movies Podcast, where Bibbs and Witney reviewed the first season of Shadowhunters weekly.
  • The podcast has a spin-off of its own: All the Best, a monthly Patreon-exclusive podcast where Bibbs and Witney review every movie nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture by year.

    Pro Wrestling 

• The Heartland Wrestling Association was one to WCW, "Adrenaline" being one to "Nitro". Focusing mainly on developmental wrestlers who may or may not "graduate" to WCW's main roster or elsewhere, Heartland ended up running shows and training successful wrestlers well after WCW went out of business.
• Oz Academy was originally based around Mayumi Ozaki's attempts to train new wrestlers for the Power Stable of the same name to aid her in her campaign against the GAEA promotion. After GAEA closed down, Oz Academy became increasingly self contained, though a rivalry with GAEA's would be successor Sendai Girls Pro Wrestling periodically rises to the surface. As of 2018, wrestlers associated with Oz Academy also started smashing their ways onto shows of GAEA's other would be successor, Marvelous.
• Pro Wrestling Sem straddles the line between spinoff and B Show in regards to Pro Wrestling NOAH, focusing mainly on the misadventures of Naomichi Marufuji and KENTA as they coach rookies from the NOAH dojo in much smaller buildings than NOAH usually runs in. Mitsuharu Misawa said he got the idea from working in westside Xtreme wrestling. The show stopped happening when KENTA left NOAH.
• Strangely, Pro Wrestling RESPECT started out as a spin off to both Ring of Honor and SHIMMER, focused mainly around the students of their academy. However, it eventually drifted into "Wrestling Is Respect", one of many "Wrestling Is" promotions that serve as spin offs to Chikara(and ended up being the longest lasting of them).
• Inheriting its name from ECW's training facility, House Of Hardcore started doing their own shows as a spin-off of Family Wrestling Entertainment, with school head Tommy Dreamer was their champion.
• Money in the Bank started off life as an annual gimmick match at WrestleMania and proved so popular that it got spun off into its own PPV, and now features MITB matches for both genders, much like the Royal Rumble. TLC (another show based around a multi-person ladder match) and Hell in a Cell used to be examples, but got axed when Triple H took over the book.
• The Scotland-based Insane Championship Wrestling opened a sister promotion called Fierce Females in 2012, in order to give more focus to said group. However, FF and ICW parted ways in 2014 and ICW started a women's division that ran on the same shows as all its other talent instead.
• Ring Ka King was to be a spin-off of TNA based in India, though it only lasted a single televised season.
• New Borinquen Pro Wrestling was a developmental territory of The World Wrestling League that was based around independent circuit and former IWA Puerto Rico wrestler tryouts, in addition to a stronger focus on "strong style" (if the name didn't make that clear). It is another "farm league" that has chugged along after its larger partner closed down. And it didn't return to being its farm league when WWL started back up.
• CZW started "Dojo Wars" in 2014, based around the students of its dojo and those (hopefully) destined for WSU's locker room. Sometimes they get into scuffles with students from other wrestling schools.
• RISE initially started as a feeder program for SHIMMER's Sparkle Showcase but quickly became a much more ambitious project, running shows across the United States, linking up with Impact Wrestling and STARDOM, reviving Bull Nakano's feud with STARDOM executive Madusa, which in turn revived Gokumon-to and filming a weekly show.
• All Elite Wrestling was an unintentional one to Ring of Honor. Cody took Dave Meltzer's claim ROH couldn't draw 10,000 fans into an arena as a challenge. But when ROH instead gave Cody and The Young Bucks the okay to try to draw a crowd that large on their own, All In did just that and then some. The show's success led to the trio meeting billionaire Tony Khan, and with his finances, and a roster of departing ex-ROH talent, AEW was formed. It ended up becoming a More Popular Spin-Off, with Khan buying ROH in 2022 and rebooting it as a sister promotion to AEW.

    Radio 

• The rare example of the nonfiction spinoff: This American Life → Serial. Serial takes the essential format of a This American Life investigative story (which typically lasts 15-20 minutes, although sometimes it can take a whole hour) and stretches it out over a twelve-episode season's worth of 45-minute(ish) episodes. It was explicitly called a spinoff by the TAL crew, features TAL producer Sarah Koenig as its presenter/investigator/producer, and inherits a lot of both personnel and style from the mothership. It was also launched by a completely undisguised pilot, in which the first episode of Serial was aired as an episode of This American Life (Episode #537, "The Alibi").
• Eileen is a spin-off from Welsh-language TV soap opera Pobol y Cwm, following the titular character after she moves away from the village of Cwmderi.
• Fibber McGee and Molly helped pioneer this in American broadcasting, with The Great Gildersleeve (centered on the McGees' blowhard neighbor after he moved away) and Beulah (the McGees' maid goes to work for a new family). Beulah was the first radio show to star an African-American performer, and successfully moved to television.
• I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue:
  • The show was spun off from I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, featuring (at first) most of the same performers (plus Humphrey Lyttelton as chairman) but in a ridiculous Panel Game rather than a Sketch Show. It has been running since 1972, far surpassing the original (which had a very respectable run itself).
  • I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue eventually got a Spin-Off of its own. In one of the games, which involves improvising a comedic dialogue that suggests the title of a book, film etc. (usually by way of an elaborate pun), one pair of contestants would usually adopt the characters of a pair of eccentric Scotsmen, exchanging numerous puns and double-entendres along the way. These characters were spun off into their own scripted comedy series, You'll Have Had Your Tea: The Doings of Hamish and Dougal.
• It Sticks Out Half a Mile was a spin-off of Dad's Army broadcast between 1983-84. It centred around Hodges, Pike, and Wilson teaming up to renovate the abandoned pier in a nearby seaside town. The pilot featured Mainwaring and Wilson, but Arthur Lowe died soon afterwards, and Mainwaring was replaced with Hodges. Then, when John Le Mesurier passed away after recording one series, it was decided to just put it to rest (as a direct Dad's Army spin-off, at least). It was later turned into an original TV series called High & Dry starring Bernard Cribbins and Richard Wilson.

    Theatre 

    Toys 

• American Girl has done this multiple times. The Bitty Baby line started as "Our New Baby," designed to introduce children to the concept of a new baby in the house and is now its own brand. AG Minis was a brand of minature light-up rooms that let buyers design small rooms, aimed at older children. The WellieWishers line is the more sucessful attempt to fill the age gap between the Bitty Baby and main line, as there was no AG brand specifically aimed at early elementary students (which was first attempted as the Hopscotch Hill brand.) Girls of Many Lands was an attempt to aim at older consumers again, with display dolls and chapter books focused on girls around the world instead of just within the United States. And the 22-book series History Mysteries focused on mystery stories that were set at times in American History that—at the time of the series—hadn't been covered by the main historical characters.
• Monster High had the spin off Ever After High, which focused on the children of fairy tale characters; they were connected by the character C. A. Cupid, who transferred from one school to the other.
• In 1986, My Little Pony introduced the Pony Friends, which was the Little Pony concept applied to animals that aren't ponies. The Pony Friends are part of the regular My Little Pony line, but that same year a separate line was launched called Fairy Tails, which stars birds. It was a short-lived line. Another Spin-Off followed in 1991 with My Pretty Mermaids, which takes the Little Pony concept and applies it to mermaids. Of course, its launch year coincided with a development in the My Little Pony lineup, namely the introduction of the Fancy Mermaid Ponies. As with Fairy Tails, My Pretty Mermaids was short-lived. And although the three lines and their stories are separate, they do have a Recurring Element in the rainbow, which is always used as a point of reference where the characters live.

    Video Games 

• Ghosts 'n Goblins's recurring enemy the Red Arremer became such an infamous bane to arcade goers that it received its own subseries of action-RPGs, Gargoyle's Quest. To a lesser extent, Maximo: Ghosts to Glory and its sequel are considered a Spiritual Successor to the Ghosts 'n Goblins line but played in a 3D space.
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney had a spin off series. Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth was a mystery solving game and featured the prosecutor from the first game as the main character.
• The Portal series is a spinoff from Half-Life. It features new characters and setting, but has references to the events of Half-Life.
• The Shin Megami Tensei series has several concurrent timelines, with the main timeline and the if.../Persona timeline being the most notable ones. Nocturne implies that many if not all the timelines are canon within the same multiverse. Shin Megami Tensei itself was a spinoff of the original Megami Tensei games on the Famicom, although the name change was mostly due to trademark reasons, as the original Megami Tensei was a tie-in to the first book in Aya Nishitani's Digital Devil Story series.
• The Persona RPG subseries itself has multiple spin-offs. Persona 4 Arena and Persona 4 Arena Ultimax are fighting game sequels to Persona 3 and Persona 4, Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight is a Rhythm Game side story to Persona 3, while Persona 4: Dancing All Night is a Rhythm Game sequel to Persona 4, and Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight is this to Persona 5. Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth is a crossover of Persona 3 and 4 with Etrian Odyssey-style gameplay, and Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth adds 5 to the mix.
• The Dynasty Warriors franchise was successful enough to spawn quite a few spinoffs. The spinoffs basically just take the original mob hack'n'slash gameplay formula of Dynasty Warriors, and apply it to different settings and universes. Some of them are even licensed properties, such as anime, manga, or other video game franchises.
  • The Empires expansions are spinoffs of the main games. They contain the same hack'n'slash core gameplay for battles, but with a more strategic approach, allowing for battle formations, politics, kingdom-building, and simulation.
  • Samurai Warriors originally started as a spinoff to Dynasty Warriors. Its popularity and success has lead it to becoming its own separate series, with its own spinoffs, sequels, and expansions. Yep, this is a spinoff that spawned spinoffs of itself.
  • Warriors Orochi was a spinoff that brought the cast of Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors together.
  • Dynasty Warriors: Gundam, crossed over with the Gundam franchise.
  • Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage, based on Fist of the North Star.
  • One Piece: Pirate Warriors, based on the popular manga One Piece.
  • Hyrule Warriors, based on the The Legend of Zelda franchise. It is also one to The Legend Of Zelda. A non-canon entry handled by Tecmo-Koei that uses gameplay similar to Dynasty Warriors but with a Zelda twist (like incorporating Zelda items into combat). It's basically Zelda meets Dynasty Warriors. In 2020, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, based in and ultimately, an Alternate Timeline game to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was released.
  • Arslan: The Warriors of Legend, based on the 2015 anime adaptation of The Heroic Legend of Arslan.
  • Berserk and the Band of the Hawk, based on Berserk.
  • Musou Stars was a spinoff that incorporated characters from across Koei Tecmo's intellectual properties.
  • Fire Emblem Warriors, based on the Fire Emblem video game franchise. Like Zelda above, is also one to the Fire Emblem franchise, as well as a non-canon entry handled by Tecmo-Koei that uses gameplay similar to Dynasty Warriors but with a Fire Emblem twist (like incorporating Fire Emblem strategic elements into combat). It's basically Fire Emblem meets Dynasty Warriors. Similarly to Age of Calamity, a What If? game based on Fire Emblem: Three Houses, named Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, was released in 2022.
• Gwent: The Witcher Card Game: Popular demand for more of the sidequest Mini-Game from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt led to this standalone game.
• The Super Mario Bros. franchise has loads of spinoffs, since only the mainline platformer games are officially the core installments.
  • Mario Kart, Mario Party, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, and other sports just to name a few. Mario itself is a spinoff of the Donkey Kong franchise, though the latter is treated as a spinoff of the former by most people, including Nintendo themselves.
  • Luigi's Mansion is a spinoff series starring Mario's brother Luigi, serving as a family-friendly take on the Survival Horror genre, mixed with puzzle-solving and Defanged Horrors.
  • The Wario and Yoshi's Island series are spinoffs of the Mario series that have developed enough of their own identity to be considered franchises in their own right.
  • Super Mario 3D World gave Captain Toad, whom originated from Super Mario Galaxy, his own personal levels. They served as a sort of Backdoor Pilot, as they eventually spun-off into their own full-fledged game: Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker.
  • Super Princess Peach and Princess Peach: Showtime! are spinoff games starring Mario's love interest, Princess Peach.
• Like a Dragon (formerly Yakuza) has several:
  • Judgment, a Gaiden Game that uses the general setting of Yakuza and the Tojo Clan, but none of the central characters appear besides a few shout outs here and there. The action instead focuses on disgraced lawyer turned Private Detective Takayuki Yagami as he searches through Kamurocho's underworld for a Serial Killer, while also dealing with some of the franchises trademark wackyness along the way.
  • Ryū ga Gotoku Kenzan! and Ryū ga Gotoku Ishin!, a pair of (Japan exclusive) Jidaigeki spinoffs that see the main Yakuza characters taking up the roles of various real-life figures in Japanese history (with Kiryu "playing" the role of Miyamoto Musashi and Sakamoto Ryoma, respectively).
  • Yakuza: Dead Souls; Yakuza AS A THIRD PERSON ZOMBIE SHOOTER! Nearly became a Franchise Killer in the U.S. due to its poor reception.
  • Black Panther, another Japan exclusive for the PSP, focused on a delinquent named Tatsuya Ukyo as he tries to survive after killing a Tojo associate in a botched robbery.
  • Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, a licensed spin-off based on the Fist of the North Star series, placing the characters and setting of the manga into the Yakuza games' engine, with Takaya Kuroda, the voice of Yakuza protagonist Kazuma Kiryu, portraying Kenshiro.
• An interesting case with Red Alert, which was originally supposed to be a prequel to Command & Conquer. However, the tone of the game proved a little too campy for C&C, so it was decided to split the series, despite Kane, the Big Bad of C&C being present in the original Red Alert. As such, both series have moved on in separate directions. Some fans speculate that the two endings of Red Alert mark a Point of Divergence: the Allied victory results in the Red Alert series, while the Soviet victory (where Kane makes an appearance) results in the main C&C series.
• The Dragon Slayer series has split off into two seperate series: The Xanadu series, and the Legend of Heroes series. Both proved to be so popular that the Dragon Slayer moniker is no longer used, and the Legend of Heroes series even got its own More Popular Spin-Off with the Trails series.
• The arcade game Grobda is a spinoff of Xevious, which features tank enemies called Grobdas.
• A lesser known arcade game called Pistol Daimyo no Bouken (The Adventures of Pistol Shogun), is a spinoff of the arcade game that was released in the U.S. on the TurboGrafx-16 as Bravoman, where Pistol Shogun appears as a boss.
• Pokémon has had many, many spinoffs over the years.
  • Pokémon GO is an Augmented Reality game where the player has to travel around the real world to catch 'em all. The game immediately blew up in popularity, casting the largest spotlight the franchise has had on itself since the late '90s.
  • Aside from GO, Pokémon has had plenty of other mobile games, including Pokémon Duel (a digital board game), Pokémon Masters (a 3v3 game with similar combat to the main series) and Pokémon Quest (an action-adventure game).
  • The Pokémon mini was an entire console dedicated to small Pokémon spinoffs. It didn't stay on shelves long enough to get many, though.
  • Detective Pikachu is a dialogue focused mystery-adventure game where the player is tasked with solving crimes alongside the titular character. It also spawned a movie in 2019 and a sequel in 2023.
  • Pokémon Stadium and its Spiritual Successor, Battle Revolution were recreations of the classic battle system featured in the mainline entries, but with 3D models for all of the Mons. The latter two Stadium titles also had various minigames for players tired of traditional battling. These games have seemingly been discontinued after 3D models entered the main series.
  • Pokémon Colosseum and XD: Gale of Darkness were, similarly to the Stadium series, adaptations of the standard Pokémon gameplay into 3D; however, these games also adapted the RPG progression of the main series, along with possessing a Darker and Edgier story where the player steals and rehabilitates corrupted Pokémon from the villains.
  • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, the longest running spinoff series as of now, are entries in the Mystery Dungeon series of Roguelikes. The games are most well known for their narratives, putting a stronger, more emotional emphasis on their stories than most of the mainline games.
  • Pokémon Snap and its 2021 sequel New Pokémon Snap are games that task players to take photos of Pokémon in an on-rails perspective, ranking them based on the quality of the photos.
  • Pokémon Trading Card Game is an adaptation of the Collectible Card Game of the same name, with the addition of RPG style progression and a plot in the same style as the normal games. It got a Japan only sequel, and many years later Pokémon TCG Online came out, which serves as a much more direct adaptation of the card game.
  • Pokémon Ranger was a trilogy that focused on the Nintendo DS' touch screen, having the player draw circles around Pokémon to capture them and use them to bypass obstacles.
  • Pokémon Conquest is a Crossover between the Pokémon and Nobunaga's Ambition series of games, taking the gameplay and Warring States based characters of the latter series, and putting them into a Pokémon themed plot where they fight their battles using the titular monsters.
  • Pokémon Rumble is a series of top-down beat 'em ups with a toy-collecting theme.
  • Pokkén Tournament is an arena based fighting game which, as the title suggests, is made by the creators of Tekken.
  • Pokémon Trozei! and Pokémon Shuffle are both icon based Match 3 puzzle games.
  • Pokémon Puzzle League and Puzzle Challenge are entires in the Panel de Pon series of competitive puzzle games, with a Pokémon skin.
  • Pokémon Dash is a top-down racing game where the player guides a Pikachu through checkpoints with the DS stylus.
  • Hey You, Pikachu!, Pokémon Channel and PokéPark Wii are all Pikachu focused spinoffs aimed at younger audiences, with gameplay ranging from playing a collection of minigames, to doing different activities with Pikachu, to watching television.
  • Pokémon Pinball is exactly what you'd expect from the title. As is Pokémon Picross.
• Harvest Moon (Natsume) has the 2019 puzzle spinoff Harvest Moon: Mad Dash.
• Story of Seasons has a few spinoffs including:
  • Puzzle De Harvest Moon and its sequel Harvest Moon: Frantic Farming, a puzzle game.
  • Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon, the 10th anniversary title.
  • Doraemon: Story of Seasons, the Doraemon crossover.
  • Rune Factory, which started as a fantasy themed Harvest Moon game, that has become a series of its own.
• Yo-kai Watch:
  • Yo-kai Watch: Wibble Wobble is a mobile puzzle spinoff.
  • Yo-kai Watch Blasters and its Japanese-only sequel are yokai-focused spinoffs expanding upon a game-mode in Yo-kai Watch 2.
  • Yo-kai Sangokushi is a collaboration with the Sangokushi series of Koei-Tecmo, featuring the Yo-kai modeled after important characters of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novels. It was popular enough to get segments in the anime series and a mobile spinoff.
  • Yo-kai Watch World is an Augmented Reality game where you befriend yokai using your mobile phone.
• Britannic: Patroness of the Mediterranean is a spin-off project from the developer's main project, the currently in development Titanic Honor and Glory, produced in response to the overwhelmingly positive reception to the teams Centenary Anniversary sinking video. By happy coincidence, this Spin Off First approach acts as a sort of Demo for the main game, as it features peared down versions of the main draws of Honor and Glory, namely the tour mode of the ship recreated as accurately as possible (in this case it's a 2-for-1 deal because we get spaces and exteriors of the ship as both the hospital ship she was, and as the ocean liner she should have been), and the Real Time sinking (though in this case there are no historical figures the player can interact with).
• Dragon Quest IV: Torneko went on to star in the first of Chunsoft's "Mysterious Dungeon" series of Roguelike games which first appeared on the Super NES.
• The Epic Battle Fantasy series has multiple spinoffs, one of them turning into a series of its own:
  • Bullet Heaven series:
    • Bullet Heaven
    • Bullet Heaven 2
  • Adventure Story
• The Soundodger series has the spinoff soundodgerLIVE, which reworks its music-based bullet hell gameplay to use motion controls with Kinect rather than the standard mouse cursor movement.

    Web Animation 

• Ayasaki-san is a spin-off of Kanon's RomCom Mangas, focusing on Miyu Ayasaki, a girl who appears cold and cool but is in fact just shy and cannot confess her feelings to Chiaki Akaba.
• CRiTORA started out as a little-known web comic named Avey, which, in turn, repurposed a couple of Mixels fan characters.
• The Debbie and Carrie Show had several such spinoffs, including "The Hudson Phamily Show" (which lasted one season and featured a rock band of family members in Los Angeles), "The Sims of Boston" (which was later retooled into a subplot of the original show) "Debbie and Carrie: the Next Generation" (set about 40 years after the first one started, lasting four seasons and featuring some of the same characters as the original series), "The Cultbusters" (a spinoff of Debbie and Carrie, the Next Generation and featuring a group in Chicago) and "Grolok and Pelabong" (set 100,000 years ago and featuring a family of cavedwellers that first appeared in Debbie and Carrie: the Next Generation).
• Gotham Girls is a spin-off of Batman: The Animated Series, focusing on Catwoman, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy and Batgirl.
• Hazbin Hotel has Helluva Boss which is set in the same universe and sometimes even references characters and events from the former.
• Object Shows:
  • Battle For Dream Island: All-Stars has Battle For Dream Island: Moon Mix which happens at the same time as All Stars but is disconnected from the main series and somehow outlasted it when the former is undergoing a Soft Reboot.
  • Battle for Object Destination got one with Earthquake where Flip Phone (The host of the main series) gets kidnapped by another Game Show Host for their Japanese-esque game show. From there, he and five other kidnapped contestants have to solve puzzles before an earthquake hits the island they are abducted to and kills them all. Alas, neither shows lasted long after the creator was exposed for sketchy behaviors around a minor.
  • Object Knockout revolves around the two pilots of Objects Around the World, Octopus Hanger and Ctrl-Z, who are hosting their own competition show in their plane.
• 1 Minute Melee is a spin-off of ScrewAttack's DEATH BATTLE!. While Death Battle is made up of roughly 20 minute-long episodes where the hosts put exhaustive research and comparisons into two combatants and their respective strengths, skills and weaknesses, and decides the winner based on that, OMM is far more simply a match-up between two fictional combatants where the fights last no longer than 60 seconds and the winner is determined by Author Appeal. It's basically meant for DB fans who are Just Here for Godzilla.
• RWBY has a comedic spinoff called RWBY Chibi.
• Sunset Paradise is a spin-off from Supermarioglitchy4's Super Mario 64 Bloopers staring it’s most iconic Breakout Character, Meggy Spletzer, and her misadventures while on vacationing on the island of Port Aurora.

    Webcomics 

• Basic Instructions once played with the concept in the strip "How to Create a Spin-Off", with the idea of Butt-Monkey Rick getting his own comic. It was never meant to seriously take off, but the man who inspired Rick did use the character's popularity to briefly run his own spin-off blog called "Asking the Wrong Guy", playing Rick answering reader's questions.
• The action-oriented Jet Dream title spawned two spin-offs: It's Cookie, a teen humor comic starring T-Girl Cookie Jarr, and My Jet Dream Romance, a romance comic that focuses on the love lives of the T-Girls.
• Lauren Ipsum originally appeared near the end of The Fuzzy Princess before gaining her own series.
• Maddie series → Outsiders, which follows the lives of same-sex lovers Siobhan Pattinson and Ebony Larsson, previously secondary characters.
• Precocious has a spinoff Copper Road, about the character Kaitlyn Hu and the "other side of the class" that lives on Copper Road.
• Pusheen the Cat started out as a character in a webcomic called Everyday Cute. This series soon proved to be a More Popular Spin-Off and survives whereas Everyday Cute withered and died in 2011.

    Web Original 

• The Avocado is an unofficial spinoff of The AV Club, created by commenters on that site looking to create their own venue for pop culture reviews and discussion. Was originally called "The AV Club After Dark", but the initials AVCAD over time morphed into the word AVOCADO.
• The Freakin Awesome Network, as well as its forum, was spun off from the original WrestleCrap forums in October 2010; its placeholder name was "The 'Crap" during the transistion.
• SCP Foundation → The Wanderer's Library, Global Occult Coalition and the Church of the Broken God. The Library, the GOC and the Church all originated as enemies of the Foundation (in the Library's case, it's the de facto headquarters of a group called the Serpent's Hand), but were interesting enough they received their own wikis.
• Superman 86 To 99, a blog dedicated to recapping Superman's run from The Man of Steel to Superman Vol. 2 #150 (the last issue by Dan Jurgens before a new creative team took over), got a spinoff called Green Lantern 94 To 04, which similarly looks into Green Lantern from Emerald Twilight to Green Lantern Vol. 3 #181 (the last issue by Ron Marz before Geoff Johns revamped the franchise with Green Lantern: Rebirth) with a side of Guy Gardner (especially Beau Smith's run on Guy's comics).

    Web Videos 

• The edutainment The Ben Heck Show had the 2011 special Halloween Episode Ghost Hunting with Ben Heck!, which is a thinly veiled pilot for the America's Most Haunted pinball.
• Dream SMP has Tales From the SMP, a series of one-shot roleplay livestreams focused on Karl's time travel adventures, interspersed with his own character arc between adventures. Sometimes, these streams feature characters that are ancestors or descendants of characters we see in the main series.
• The Happy Video Game Nerd: His 'SSFF' and 'Is it really that bad?' series of videos, usually featuring his friend Calvin. They're all improvised, edited-for-length-and-highlights videos of Derek playing various games not featured on HVGN.
• SMPLive has two: SMP Classic, a server that features SMPLive members playing on old versions of Minecraft, and TekkitLive, a modded server using the Tekkit Classic modpack that skews more roleplay-focused than the comedic main server.

    Western Animation 

• Family Guy would spawn The Cleveland Show, featuring Cleveland Brown, which originated from Family Guy.
• Wacky Races would spin off Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop in 1969. At midseason, CBS switched Wacky Races, which aired at 12:30 PM ET, with Penelope Pitstop (10 AM ET), essentially making the 9:30 AM time period the Dick Dastardly Hour.
• Arthur → Postcards from Buster. The spin-off is an extension of an Arthur episode also titled "Postcards from Buster", where Buster leaves to explore the world with his father.
• The Flintstones has a spin-off called The Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm Show about the children of the couples who starred in the original show.
• The finale of Hong Kong Phooey featured three inept cowboys who were unofficially named "Posse Impossible". Three years later they would get a cartoon of their own as a segment of the 1977 show CB Bears.
• Cosgrove Hall did this in a conga line. Count Duckula was a spin-off from Danger Mouse and Victor & Hugo was a spin-off from Count Duckula.
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch became so popular on The Archie Comedy Hour that she was given her own show, Sabrina and The Groovie Goolies, a year later. Sabrina would star in a standalone series after that.
• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius spun off Planet Sheen, where Sheen accidentally gets stranded on an alien planet.
• The Aristocats:
• Dora the Explorer spun off Go, Diego, Go! (which is about Dora's cousin who rescues wild animals) and Dora and Friends: Into the City! (where Dora is aged up and has adventures with a new group of friends).
• Cow and Chicken became a three-C&C shorts show when I Am Weasel broke off from it on its own.
• Grim & Evil:
  • The "Grim" part of Grim & Evil would break off on its own to become The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy while the "Evil" part became Evil Con Carne. Billy & Mandy would have the more prolific run.
  • Underfist was a pilot for a spin-off of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, starring Hoss Delgado, Irwin, Jeffy the Spider, General Skarr and Fred Fredberger. It never got past the hour-long special telecast.
• Yogi Bear is probably the earliest example of a made-for-TV cartoon as it began as a segment of The Huckleberry Hound Show three years earlier.
• Some of the segments featured on Oh Yeah! Cartoons were the pilots for The Fairly OddParents!, My Life as a Teenage Robot, and ChalkZone.
• The World of David the Gnome was spun off into The Wisdom of the Gnomes with no room for crossovers since David and his wife die in the last episode of their series. Although they did make an appearance in flashback in the last episode.
• The Simpsons began life as a series of short skits on The Tracey Ullman Show.
• World of Winx is this to Winx Club.
• The PBS Kids series Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood is a spin off to Mister Rogers' Neighborhood complete with a similar opening.
• Total Drama:
  • Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race is a spinoff of Total Drama that parodies The Amazing Race instead of Survivor with a different host, four of the contestants from the parent show (Noah, Owen, Geoff and Leonard) appearing as competitors, and a few cameos from or mentions of the old cast here and there.
  • Total DramaRama, which was revealed on December 19, 2017 as Total Drama Daycare, serves as the second spinoff to Total Drama, adapting 11 of the original 22 contestants^note Beth, Bridgette, Cody, Courtney, Duncan, Gwen, Harold, Izzy, Leshawna, Noah, and Owen (and Jude from 6teen) as toddlers at a daycare run by Chef Hatchet. Like with the prior spin-off, other characters from the previous shows cameo here and there.
• The Amazing Spiez!, is a spinoff of Totally Spies! centered around 3 separate, younger WHOOP agents. Jerry is still featured prominently like in the core show, and Sam, Alex, and Clover occasionally have cameos in this series, but otherwise it could be argued that this is just a carbon copy of Totally Spies but with different leads and villains. The show only lasted 2 seasons before getting canceled.
• Unikitty! is another LEGO Movie spin-off, featuring secondary character Unikitty.
• Though can be surprising for some people, Daria is a spin-off of Beavis and Butt-Head. She was originally a recurring classmate of theirs and would make cynical remarks about their stupidity. Her own show kicked off when her family moved from Texas to the East Coast. While Beavis And Butthead may have had a larger pop culture impact, Daria was a much more intelligent dramedy, examining the pains and insecurities of adolescence. To this day it retains a cult following and a very vocal fanbase.
• Shaun the Sheep is a spin-off from Wallace & Gromit using the Shaun character of one of their shorts. Shaun the Sheep at the same time has a spin-off with Timmy Time with Timmy the lamb as the protagonist of a show for toddlers.
• If you don't know that the Tiny Toons had a spin-off series named The Plucky Show with the character of Plucky as the protagonist, don't feel bad. A lot of people don't like it as the show was not very popular and ran for only one season. Although the term "spin-off" might be an overstatement considering that most of the show's epsiodes consisted in clips from the original cartoon.
• Due to the Pinky and the Brain sketches' popularity in Animaniacs, a spin-off series with them was made: Pinky and the Brain. Then a Crossover/spin-off was made, called Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain, with the Tiny Toons' character Elmyra in probably one of the most questioned moves ever done in animated television.
• The common consensus among fans is to consider Darkwing Duck as a spin-off of DuckTales (1987) as the character of Launchpad Mc Quack appears in both but is one of the protagonists in the former. Nevertheless according to Word of God; show creator Tad Stone, Darkwing Duck happens in a different universe than DuckTales (1987) with Launchpad as just an alternate version. If this is canonical inside the Disney Animated Universe, of course, is up to debate.
• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls is a spin-off of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, taking place in a parallel universe and starring the teenage human equivalents of the main characters. Word of God states that while both works are canon to each other (Sunset Shimmer was indeed Celestia's previous student, Starswirl did banish the sirens to the human world, etc.), the team deliberately avoids writing Equestria Girls plots that could affect the main universe for simplicity's sake.
• Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto were each the stars of their own animated shorts, spinning off from the Mickey Mouse shorts.
• Humphrey the Bear also was a spinoff character originating from a Goofy short to recurring in Donald Duck into his very own.
• Popeye made his first (animated) appearance in a Betty Boop cartoon, before getting his own (arguably more popular) series. It should be noted that his appearance in the Betty Boop cartoon was an intentional Poorly Disguised Pilot, and that the short itself barely features her.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show While there are the same characters from the original series, Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon" this is an adult version.
• Space Ghost Coast to Coast, a prime-time parody talk show featuring repurposed animation from the sixties cartoon Space Ghost, got a spin-off called Cartoon Planet starring Space Ghost, Zorak, and Brak hosting old cartoons and bantering with each other in silly skits. An ad for Cartoon Planet even had the characters discussing the phenomenon of spin-offs.
• Once again, Star Trek provides multiple entries:
  • Star Trek: The Animated Series directly continued from Star Trek: The Original Series with most of the same crew.
  • Star Trek: Lower Decks is set shortly after the last TNG film, Star Trek: Nemesis, and departs from tradition by following a group of low-level ensigns on an unremarkable starship doing mop-up for the more glamourous crews featured in other shows. There have been a handful of cameos from previous series to date, as well as a wealth of references to past events and characters.
  • Star Trek: Prodigy is set a few years after Star Trek: Voyager in the same part of the galaxy, and has a hologram version of Captain Janeway from VOY as one of its main characters.
• Rintindumb: The show is a spin-off of the Lucky Luke comics starring Luke's dog, Rantanplan, known as "Rintindumb" here. It mainly shows little snippets where Rintindumb does something to live up to his given name.
• SpongeBob SquarePants has had two spin-offs. Kamp Koral is about a younger SpongeBob and his friends at a summer camp. The Patrick Star Show has Patrick and a cast of new characters as his family — it's much Denser and Wackier than the original show. While the focus is mainly on Patrick, SpongeBob is a recurring character.
• Like Happy Days, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home was a spin-off of Love, American Style.

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