A few weeks ago I went to see Clybourne Park on Broadway. It’s an excellent play and after I spent some time reading about it, I discovered that it’s intended to be a sequel to Lorraine Hansbury’s A Raisin in the Sun. I spotted the similarities when I saw it (the first act of Clybourne was clearly dealing with the same situation as Raisin from a different point of view), but one of the characters in Clybourn was intended to be a character from Raisin, with the action taking place immediately after the end of the earlier play.
I’m trying to think of other examples: plays, books, or movies that were in some way sequels to an earlier work, but that fact isn’t obvious. Anything else fit the bill?
Mysterious Island is a sneaky sequel to … Well if you’ve read the book you know, if you don’t know, I guess I won’t tell you here as a spoiler. I’m sure it’s easy enough to Google if you don’t know.
I’m not sure how “sneaky” it is, but I didn’t realize that Silence of the Lambs wasa sequel to Red Dragon/Manhunter until someone mentioned the name “Hannibal Lector”. At the time, SotL was a brand new movie and, unless you’d read Thomas Harris’ novels or seen the Michael Mann film Manhunter, you wouldn’t have any idea who it was. Lector was easily the most compelling character in Manhunter, with far too little screen time – minutes, really. The idea of a film in whivch he was a major chacter was dynamite, and I knew I was in for a treat.
And Ayrton from The Mysterious Island also appears in Verne’s The Children of Captain Grant/In Search of the Castaways. It’s not that much of a connection, though. This isn’t so much a sequel as a “connected reality”, which has become common in fiction.
Speaking of Verne, his An Antarctic Mystery/The Sphinx of the Icefields is a sneaky sequel to Edgar Allen Poe’s The Narratrive of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, which seems to end abruptly with no good resolution. This left the field open for a sequel. Charles Omelyn Dake’s 1899 novel A Strange Discovery is also a sneaky sequel. You could argue that H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness is, as well.
Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age is supposed to take place in the same world as his Snow Crash, several decades down the line; the female protagonist of the latter book has a small role in the former as an old women (something that is not that evident upon first reading the book).
Not to mention its sequel, Broadway Bound. Note all the BBs
But I don’t think these are particularly “sneaky”. They seem pretty straightforward sequels.
Just thought of one. Technically, Cyrano de Bergerac is a sequel in a shared universe of The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan makes a cameo appearance to say that Cyrano is the best swordsman he’s ever seen.
More a shared universe than actual sequel, but two different authors.
High Plains Drifter is based on the premise, “What if Gary Cooper’s character had died in High Noon?”
In Pale Rider, John Russell’s character bears more than a passing resemblance to Lee van Cleef, so you might consider it a sequel to the “dollars” trilogy.
In one episode of Magnum P.I., Magnum meets a retired detective who is trying to locate an old girlfriend who just got out of prison. It was basically a sequel to The Maltese Falcon. (And one of the recurring characters in the TV series, “Ice Pick”, was played by Elisha Cook, Jr., who played Wilmer in the movie.)
Although the characters ended up being owned by different companies, Britt Reid (a.k.a. the Green Hornet) is a descendant of Daniel Reid, the brother of John Reid (a.k.a. the Lone Ranger).
Psychohistorical Crisis is a not-very-sneaky sequel to the Foundation Trilogy. Names of people and locations have been changed, but everything is perfectly recognizeable. (And the author didn’t even bother to call it something other than “Psychohistory,” as evidenced by the title of the novel.)
It’s actually a pretty fun read. The universe is both recognizeably Asimov’s, and recognizeably a product of a later age in the writing of science fiction.
I see a lot of comments to the effect that it’s better than any of the official non-Asimov-written books in the universe.
I was pretty surprised when I found out that The Color of Money was a sequel to The Hustler. IIRC it was when I watched The Hustler for the first time, which would have been years after seeing The Color of Money.
The movie *Die Hard *was based on the book “Nothing Lasts Forever” by Roderick Thorp. This was a sequel to another book called “The Detective”, which was the basis for a 1968 film starring Frank Sinatra. According to the Die Hard IMDb trivia page:
A geriatric Sinatra as McClane would have been pretty awesome. That story might not be entirely accurate, though, as the very same trivia page also claims that Arnold Schwarzenegger was the first actor to be offered the part (with no mention of Sinatra, and Bruce Willis way down on the list), as the movie was originally planned as a sequel to Commando:
So, sort-of-sequel to a Sinatra movie and almost-sequel to a Schwarzenegger movie.
Theatre Shoes is about three children who are sponsored by the (now adult) characters from Ballet Shoes. The books are by Noel Streatfeild. The second group of children have similar characters to the first group, although they never meet and are not related.
In videogames Phantasy Star 3 does not seem to be connected to the earlier two games, in fact rather than sci fi it has a medieval fantasy setting, eventually comes the reveal that it is.
This wouldn’t be surprising as it is common for JRPG sequels to have no connection.
I was going to add the last to Asimov Foundation books, which have characters from the Robot series show up. I guess that’s more of a shared universe thing then a “secret sequel” thing though.
I like the theory of High Plains Drifter being a sequel to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, it works pretty well.
I’m a fan of Italian Westerns, and a while back found one called Ace High, which seemed mostly to be a sequel to an earlier movie titled God Forgives, I Don’t, in which the duo of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer seem to have the same names and characterizations in both movies.
Notably appearing in Ace High, though, is Eli Wallach playing a bandito character very similar to TGTBTU’s Tuco. So while it’s not really official in either respect, Ace High can function as a sequel to two different unrelated movies.
Similarly, there have been several of Donald Westlake’s books made into movies independent of one another that function as sequels of a sort. You could get the movies together of The Hot Rock, with Robert Redford, Bank Shot with George C. Scott, and What’s the Worst That Could Happen with Martin Lawrence(!) and they’re all playing John Dortmunder, however filtered. You could collect, too, Point Blank, Payback, Slayground, The Outfit, and I’m sure I’m missing a few - all of them based on Parker novels.
I like the theory of Pale Rider being a sequel to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, it works pretty well.
I’m a fan of Italian Westerns, and a while back found one called Ace High, which seemed mostly to be a sequel to an earlier movie titled God Forgives, I Don’t, in which the duo of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer seem to have the same names and characterizations in both movies.
Notably appearing in Ace High, though, is Eli Wallach playing a bandito character very similar to TGTBTU’s Tuco. So while it’s not really official in either respect, Ace High can function as a sequel to two different unrelated movies.
At the end of Animal House, the caption states that Niedermeyer was “killed in Vietnam by his own troops.”
In Twilight Zone The Movie, there’s a scene with some soldiers discussing how they killed Niedermeyer.
That story might not be entirely accurate, though, as the very same trivia page also claims that Arnold Schwarzenegger was the first actor to be offered the part (with no mention of Sinatra, and Bruce Willis way down on the list), as the movie was originally planned as a