A Word on Originality

I've always been impressed by some of the characters in League that seem to mimic, or in some cases parody, pre-existing figures, but I've simultaneously wondered about how this affects the originals. I recently found this post (http://imgur.com/gallery/8hONl) that kind of helped me understand a question that I'd been wanting to ask for a while. The question is something along the lines of "Is it ok if League characters that were inspired by someone else's work become more well known than the original work?" I see there being two sides to the conundrum; one says that if Riot can make a more memorable character then they deserve any praise and attention that they get, and the other says that Riot is a large, mainstream corporation that get's a lot of attention already, so they might not even be making a "better" character but getting more out of it simply because they're well-established. The example in the post I mentioned above talks about an artist who created characters that seem to have inspired Kindred. I'm wondering if this artist doesn't at least deserve some form of recognition for inspiring the character (if that was indeed the case) if not legal rights and monetary compensation.