@Stormrage : I cannot answer on a lawyer point of view, just as an end user "artist" and as a physician. 1- The notoriety of the character comes into play. The African Queen is a classic, whereas this recent film about a werewolf huntress is known to few. Tauru once made a cute japanese school uniform that I have used in a couple of pics until someone pointed to me that it was Evangelion's Rey Ayanami's school outfit. I knew about the plugsuits from this OAV (Tauru had made them for Poser), but never had heard about the school outfit. In this case, it was the green colour that gave it away. 2- The completeness of the outfit. The Celeste clothes I used are composed of a corselet, pants, shoes, long cloak, and 2 pistols. When I used all these in a single pic, the guy who had ordered the pic told me "hey! it's (insert name here, I just cannot remember), why did you cut her hair ? By the way, I had asked for an original work, not a copycat...". You get the idea. 3- As a physician, it would be a little long to get into how the human mind recognises items, and the circuits involved from the visual perception, to the recognition, to the reminiscences of linked memories. For our topic it's enough to say that when we perceive an image, the brain tries to recognise it. If it is not stored exactly "as is" in our memory, the brain looks for similar memories, checks in what contexts these memories were stored, and tries to see which one matches the current context. It does thus for as many significant points he sees, and then makes a decision. The more "check points" that are matching, the closer the association.