Good artists copy, great artists steal.

I recently watched The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (December, 2008) and was shocked at some of the visual similarities to Uncharted 2 (October, 2009).

For the record, Mummy: Jet Li was pretty awful.

Exhibit A: The Mummy crew and Team Drake both visit an ancient Himalayan village.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (image credit: playstationtrophies.org)

Exhibit B: Yetis, who crash both of the aforementioned parties.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (image credit: ilovetheyeti.blogspot.com)

Exhibit C: Both the Dragon Emperor and Lazarevic seek eternal life in Shangri-La (which Nathan Drake calls "Shambhala").

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (image credit: gamesradar.com)

Although its commercial failure suggests that not many people actually saw The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, I'm not the only one to note some resemblance between these two productions. Did Naughty Dog draw inspiration from Mummy 3 for some of its late-game environment art?

... or did both productions use some common reference material? Yeah, that seems more likely, especially since by 2008 much of Uncharted 2's art should already have been done. In fact, some internet sleuthing shows that some of these common elements may have prior art from 1997, in Tomb Raider II.

So I guess the moral here is that nothing is original (including the very realization that nothing is original).