This old article may no longer serve much purpose on the current Dozerfleet Database, but "The Liebniz-Newton Effect" was a way to attempt to explain an observation made at Dozerfleet that has since been commented on numerous times by other scholars: the Theory of Multiple Discovery.
The old article named itself after the mutual publication of discoveries in calculus by Gottfried Liebniz and Isaac Newton, leading to the two at one point suspecting that they'd stolen each other's ideas. Hollywood has observed this trend occur quite often, as studios race to capitalize and out-do each other while cashing in on various trends as they come and go, resulting in the "twin films" phenomenon.
John DeBruyn, who was at one point the administrator of Blue Moon Inn Online and who was initially selected to play Prince Volkonir for the since-canceled 2008 film Volkonir, once complained that he had been working for many years on a TV show concept for an alternate history world littered with Asian mysticism themes. However, the release in 2003 of Avatar: The Last Airbender, with very similar themes, dashed his hopes that his own premise would ever be taken seriously.
The old article also noted that Tail Sting and Snakes on a Plane both appear to have been adaptations of the original script Venom, not to be confused with the similarly-titled-but-otherwise-unrelated 2018 Sony Marvel film.
Armageddon and Deep Impact were also cited as examples of the phenomenon, as were Antz and A Bug's Life. It's debatable if March of the Penguins and Surf's Up had anything to do with each other. Yet, their rush to capitalize on the sudden popularity of penguins also led to Madagascar, and Happy Feet coming out around the same time. Before this, The Pebble and the Penguin and VeggieTales: The Toy That Saved Christmas also featured penguins heavily.
The issue has been muddied, as accusations of theft and plagairism abound in the debates over many works with eerie similarities. This is made worse by cases of actual theft. Infamously, The Wild was subjected to sabotage and espionage, leading to Dreamworks hearing of its premise and then rushing to release Madagascar to film first. By the time Disney had The Wild ready for release, confused filmgoers accused The Wild of being a knockoff of Madagascar, when it was the other way around.
Dozerfleet works also ran into multiple discovery issues:
- Around the same time that the Classic Gerosha continuity was running, production on Ciem bumped into issues with having some superficial similarities between its protagonist, Candi Flippo-Levens, and the titular Candi in artist Starline Hodge's Candi webcomic strip, popular at the time.
- Liquidon Ethereteel from Stationery Voyagers was originally going to be called "Liquilight," until the discovery of Liqui-Lights brand pens. While he was designed after a Gilette Liquid Paper whiteout pen, naming himself after a different company's trademark was a bridge too far.
- Neone Delft of Stationery Voyagers was originally going to be called "Neoni," until another creator's trademarked anime character was discovered to already bear that name.
- Karen Mindoche of the Trapezoid Kids bears a lot of superficial similarities to the Karen Sympathy from The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, in spite being created long before Dozerfleet's founder was even aware of the plot of that movie.
- Gordon Lomken from Stationery Voyagers was a staunch defender of Creationism and had virtually all the answers. So someone killed him. He was originally inspired by the character of Chandra Suresh from Heroes, but bears a lot in common with the character of Thomas Whitfield in Australian author Julie Cave's novel Deadly Disclosures. Until 2012, Miss Cave and the Dozerfleet founder had not had any contact or even awareness of each other.
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