This will be hard to describe and I suspect we’ll see a few answers outside of the parameters. I can only think of two examples:
Brad Dourif’s Role in The first season X-Files episode “Beyond the Sea” is the Gemini Killer from Exorcist 3 in everything but name.
Lena Olin in Alias might as well be the Russian assassin she plays in Romeo Is Bleeding.
So, I don’t mean roles like Darren McGavin in X-Files. Where they wanted him to actually play Kolchak, but he refused so they used him in a dissimilar role.
I don’t mean easter eggs like Richard Mulligan playing Custer in Little Big Man and sorta for a bit in Teachers…those are both movies anyway… Or direct roles like George C. Scott as Patton in The Last Days of Patton.
Here’s an interesting ourobouros of “what, exactly, inspired what”—
The movie American Graffiti was released in 1973. It had an ensemble cast without a clear lead, but Ron Howard played one of the more prominent roles. The movie was extremely successful, demonstrating an audience appetite for 1950s nostalgia.
The TV series “Happy Days” began airing in 1974. Not only did it have a very similar nostalgic view of the 1950s, it ported over AG’s Howard as its lead actor. Everyone assumed “Happy Days” was basically a knockoff of AG, including taking its lead.
Except — “Happy Days” was originally created as a TV pilot in 1971. It was well regarded, but it didn’t make it to air, because there wasn’t yet a clear audience for what it was offering. That is, until AG blew up the box office, at which point the network dug out the pilot and resurrected the show. In other words, the success of AG made “Happy Days” possible, but the genesis of the show actually pre-dates AG.
And here’s the kicker: George Lucas saw that unaired pilot, and cast Ron Howard in AG based on his performance there.
So the proto-“Happy Days” partly inspired AG, and then AG being successful made “Happy Days” possible, and Ron Howard was involved in all three stages. Kind of a wacky little Hollywood tale, I think.
Happy Days is a good one though like you explained its convulated.
Radar doesn’t count as its the same actor playing the same character. Albiet with some personality changes.
Thought of another one. Roddy McDowell as Galen in The Planet of the Apes TV series. Though thats a lot more direct then some producers sitting around saying, “Did you see Romeo Is Bleeding??? What if that character was Sydneys mom??”
Yeah, I should have more clearly said the series didn’t go anywhere following that trial episode, which is differentiated from standalone pilots that are never aired at all (as Jules says in Pulp Fiction, they “become nothin’”).
Robert Sheehan was cast in The Umbrella Academy playing a part incredibly similar to his character in Misfits. Klaus could easily have been an older version of Nathan.
Didn’t Cindy Williams also appear both in American Graffiti and Happy Days, also playing a similar character (Ron Howard’s character’s love interest) in both AG and HD?
At the time I first saw it, I said that Christian Slater’s character in Very Bad Things is who his character in Heathers would have become, had he survived high school.
The producers of Lone Wolf McQuade sued Chuck Norris over Walker Texas Ranger because they thought there were too many similarities between the two. (They lost by the way.)
In McCloud Meets Dracula, the detective is searching for a killer who thinks he is a vampire. The prime suspect is an elderly gentleman who, in his youth, was an actor famous for playing Dracula.
The role was played by John Carradine.
I think Elisha Cook, Jr. was probably cast as the gangster “Icepick” in Magnum, P.I. because he had played Wilmer the gunsel in The Maltese Falcon.
Well, in the early days of the TV show, TV Radar was a lot like Movie Radar: running schemes, drinking alcohol, etc. As the show went on, Radar’s portrayal changed, to the naive, sweet-natured Iowa farmboy.
Two TV series, rather than including a movie, but in Star Trek: The Next Generation, actor Robert Duncan McNeill played a dishonorably-discharged Starfleet cadet named Nick Locarno in the episode “The First Duty.”
During development of Star Trek: Voyager, the producers considered using Locarno as a character, but wanted to change some of the character’s backstory. So, they created a new character, Tom Paris, who had many of the same characteristics as Locarno (including having been dishonorably discharged from Starfleet), and once again cast McNeill in the role.
When Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore was rejiggered from a movie into a sitcom, the character of Flo was played by Diane Ladd in the film and Polly Holliday in the series. When Holliday left the show to front an ill-advised Flo spin-off, Diane Ladd replaced her as a character named Belle, essentially reprising her film character only without the catchphrases and Texas twang.