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Statement: In Rogue One, we are introduced to the very witty, sarcastic, a bit morbid droid known as K-2SO. We find out he has been reprogrammed from his original state. And part of the reprogramming removed his internal filter, so he says any morbid little thing that comes to his circuits.

Observation: In the previous extended canon, there was Knights of the Old Republic's HK-47, a very witty, sarcastic, a bit morbid droid that was also reprogrammed a few times. Same lack of filter.

Query: Was K-2SO inspired or based on HK-47?

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  • In fact, this reddit seems that the whole movie and characters are captain ersatz of old canon reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/5ivhfh/hk47_or_k2so
    – cde
    Commented Dec 28, 2016 at 7:37
  • None of the creators commented on that, but we know that new canon heavily "borrows" from EU in general, and was intended to do so as per official Disney "new canon" announcement.
    – DVK
    Commented Dec 28, 2016 at 21:28

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+100

According to this Entertainment Weekly interview with John Knoll (executive producer and visual effects supervisor, who has worked on the Star Wars series since 1977) the visual design was primarily based on and inspired by imperial droids we've seen in the original trilogy, primarily the scout droids deployed in the beginning of Empire Strikes Back (Viper probe droid) and the interrogation droid from New Hope (IT-O Interrogator).

Comparison

Of course Knoll, as visual effects supervisor, is primarily talking about and concerned with the look of K-2SO, whereas you're more interested in his demeanour. However, there is no proof (that I was able to find) that our beloved Meatbag-caller HK-47 was in any way an inspiration for K-2SO.
(For the sake of completeness, here is the lack of relevant overlaps between the IMDB credits between the two projects)

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    I wonder if they ever would admit such inspiration. Their scandalous scrapping of all the extended universe lore as non-canon (Legends) was not received very well, so for them to blatantly borrow from that lore for inspiration is something I think they understand would be received poorly. It's only when they can take the full character or story and credit the original author that they can get away with it (like with Thrawn in Rebels), because then everything is in order (the author and character are being honoured).
    – Ghoti and Chips
    Commented Oct 9, 2017 at 12:47
  • 2
    Congratulations, this is the winner of the monthly answer challenge.
    – Napoleon Wilson
    Commented Dec 11, 2017 at 1:03
  • Hooray! I'm flattered :D
    – Mara
    Commented Dec 11, 2017 at 8:53

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