The other day my mind wandered to a memory of a scene from Hill Street Blues which featured officer Bobby Hill. This of course made me think of young Bobby Hill of King of the Hill. Two characters with the same name, couldn’t be more different.
That in turn reminded me of the period when Friends and ER were on the same channel on the same night. Sometimes you could see Rachel Green and then Rachel Greene (Dr. Mark Greene’s daughter) within an hour of each other. (These two, I think, had more in common than the two Bobby Hills.)
What other homonymous pairs are out there in the world of fictional characters?
In Lost Girls Alan Moore has Wendy Darling (from Peter Pan) married to Harold Potter. His character in a risque fantasy comic is very different from Rowling’s Harry Potter fantasy character, and predates him by several years (having first appeared in 1991)
IIRC, Homer Simpson of the cartoon show was partially named after the “Day of the Locust” character. Matt Groening gave his Simpsons the first names of his family members (his father was named Homer), and while casting about for a surname for his fictitious family thought of Homer Simpson from “The Day of the Locusts.”
Not exactly the same thing, but did you ever see the U.S. version of the original Godzilla? Raymond Burr is intercut into the original (albeit dubbed) Japanese footage to provide a hook for English audiences. Name: Steve Martin.
In To Have and Have Not, Bogart played “Harry Morgan,” not to be confused with the pirate or the actor. There also seems to be a “Harry Morgan” on Dexter. No wonder Bacall called him “Steve.”