Tropedia

  • Before making a single edit, Tropedia EXPECTS our site policy and manual of style to be followed. Failure to do so may result in deletion of contributions and blocks of users who refuse to learn to do so. Our policies can be reviewed here.
  • All images MUST now have proper attribution, those who neglect to assign at least the "fair use" licensing to an image may have it deleted. All new pages should use the preloadable templates feature on the edit page to add the appropriate basic page markup. Pages that don't do this will be subject to deletion, with or without explanation.
  • All new trope pages will be made with the "Trope Workshop" found on the "Troper Tools" menu and worked on until they have at least three examples. The Trope workshop specific templates can then be removed and it will be regarded as a regular trope page after being moved to the Main namespace. THIS SHOULD BE WORKING NOW, REPORT ANY ISSUES TO SelfCloak. DON'T MAKE PAGES MANUALLY UNLESS A TEMPLATE IS BROKEN, AND REPORT IT THAT IS THE CASE. PAGES WILL BE DELETED OTHERWISE IF THEY ARE MISSING BASIC MARKUP.

READ MORE

Tropedia
WikEd fancyquotesQuotesBug-silkHeadscratchersIcons-mini-icon extensionPlaying WithUseful NotesMagnifierAnalysisPhoto linkImage LinksHaiku-wide-iconHaikuLaconic
Legendsofsuperflarrow

Legends of Superflarrow

Cquote1

I Am. Through Nature of He who is called "I Speak," I Have Come. Though my Feet shall Touch upon Two Base Earths, I Have Come. My Existence has been used in Stories for generations. One is a Tale of a Cunning Rogue. One is the Epic of a Courageous Knight. Through my Influence, these two shall meet. I Am the Literary Device of Unity. I Am the Trope of Mingling Worlds. I Am Crossover.

A Badass Boast for the Trope.
Cquote2


The classic crossover started itself off as a good way to make the best of what you've got—so if you have two shows on your roster, it's a no-brainer to have the shows and characters cross over every once in a while, especially if one of the shows is less popular than its sibling.

The popular way of doing this is the "true" crossover, in which a storyline will begin in one series and cross over into the next one, encouraging viewers to tune into a show that may be thematically similar but which they do not usually watch.

For example Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a handful of episodes where the characters would head off at the end, only to turn up in Angel straight after. This also worked the other way, with an amulet in Angel turning out to be vitally important for the last-ever episode of Buffy. (This also highlights one of the dangers of Crossovers; if you watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer but not Angel, the amulet appeared to come totally out of nowhere to save the day.) Sometimes this is done to provide the lead-in for a spin-off show, as happened with both of the CSI spin-offs.

Alternatively, a single popular character can cross over from one show into the other for a brief guest appearance; this has the effect of attracting that character's fans from the other show without requiring the writing teams to sync up or creating DVD- and arc-unfriendly episodes. This is very common in comic books, in which most characters are part of a larger universe, such as the Marvel Universe or The DCU. It happens less often in TV and movie properties based on comic books, since they are often made by different production companies.

As more ways of developing connections between shows formed, we ended up with lots of different subtropes of crossover. All of these can be seen on the Crossover Index and any examples for those will be found on their own pages.

Not to be confused with tall wagons, nor with the circuits used in loudspeaker systems to split the audio signal into different frequency bands.

Examples of Crossover include:

Anime and Manga[]

  • Go Nagai has frequently crossed their different works (mainly his Humongous Mecha series) over since the seventies. Some of the main instances are:
    • Mazinger Z and Devilman in Mazinger tai Devilman movie.
    • Great Mazinger and Getter Robo in the movies: Great Mazinger vs Getter Robo, and Great Mazinger vs Getter Robo G.
    • Great Mazinger and UFO Robo Grendizer in the movie: Great Mazinger vs Grendizer
    • Great Mazinger, Getter Robo and UFO Robo Grendizer in the movie: Grendizer, Getter Robot G, Great Mazinger: Kessen! Daikaijuu.
    • Mazinger Z, Devilman and Violence Jack in the CB Chara Go Nagai World OVA series.
    • Mazinger Z, Great Mazinger, UFO Robo Grendizer, Getter Robo and Kotetsu Jeeg in the Super Robo Retsuden manga penned by Ken Ishikawa.
    • Mazinger Z, Great Mazinger, Grendizer, Getter Robo G, Kotetsu Jeeg, Groizer X, Psycho Armor Govarian, God Mazinger and Mazinkaiser in an promotional video.
    • Mazinger Z, Great Mazinger, UFO Robo Grendizer, Getter Robo, Getter Robo G, Devilman and Cutey Honey in the Dynamic Heroes e-manga (also known as Nagai Go Manga Gaiden — Dynamic Heroes or Go Nagai manga heroes crossover collection — Dynamic Heroes), an e-manga released in 2004 and later compiled in tankoubon.
    • Getter Robo and Devilman in the "Devilman vs Getter Robo" manga. At the end of it, Akira and Miki lampshade the trope, joking about whom they will visit the next time.
  • The mangaka group CLAMP have crossed their works over to the point that now they are all in one big, weird world. Some of these are significant to the plot, many seem to be just for fun. A frequent crossover element is the Clamp Campus, a gigantic private school that shows up in CLAMP Campus Detectives, X/1999, Dukylon: CLAMP Defenders, and Man of Many Faces. Characters from Chobits make an appearance in Kobato.. The protagonist of Tokyo Babylon, Sumeragi Subaru, shows up in X/1999. Even their "joke" series Miyuki-chan in Wonderland contains crossovers. In one story, Miyuki ends up as the Damsel In Distress in X/1999. In another, she ends up playing (strip) Mahjong with other characters from CLAMP works. And there are the tribute music videos CLAMP in Wonderland and CLAMP in Wonderland 2 which have segues between all of their series to date.
    • Then there is Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. The entire basic premise is being an Alternate Universe Massive Multiplayer Crossover with characters from most of CLAMP's works showing up, often in different contexts from their original portrayal, such as characters from opposing sides of X/1999 hanging around the same cafe. Two of the main characters are alternate versions of the main characters from Cardcaptor Sakura. AND it is the sister series to Xxx HO Li C. The plots of the two series are so intertwined that they are essentially two vantage points on the same story.
  • The different stories Nasuverse are all colliding in a hilarious new Affectionate Parody called Carnival Phantasm. The first episode featured the characters of Fate Stay Night finding out that the Holy Grail War had become a game show. Numerous people from throughout the Nasuverse can be seen in the audience.
  • Speaking of Nasuverse, in 2010, the main writer of the Lyrical Nanoha franchise has produced two crossover one-shot mangas, Fate Stay Night×Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha×Fate Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya. The titles are rather self-explanatory.
  • "Cross Epoch", a special manga where Dragon Ball and One Piece crossed over.
    • There are also separate anime and manga crossover specials of Toriko and One Piece.
  • In the manga Digimon V-Tamer 01 are a total of 3 non canon crossovers, each being about a hero of the current digimon anime series being space warped and ending up battling an extremely powerful digimon together with Taichi and Zero.
  • In honor of Shounen Sunday's 50th anniversary, the publisher released a DVD including three OVAs for their three most popular animes: Inuyasha, Urusei Yatsura, and Ranma ½. The DVD also included this animated short, where the main characters of the three series met up. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Voltron: The Fleet of Doom, a TV special made for American audience which had Lion Voltron and Vehicle Voltron working together to battle the allied forces of King Zarkon and the Drule Empire.
  • Recently, Conan Edogawa and Lupin III met one another in a movie special.
  • One episode of Dragon Ball took place in Penguin Village.
    • And Doctor Slump's 1997 remake anime has Goku visits Penguin Village. The different is that Arale is now a main character while Goku is a guest star, and Art Evolution.
  • In one episode of the 1980s Astro Boy, the titular robot is taken back in time, along with his sister Uran, the one and only Black Jack and the doctor's assistant/companion Pinoko, in order to save the main character from Princess Knight. Good ol' Tezuka mix-and-match.
  • Leiji Matsumoto's works. Like with CLAMP everything is in the same universe (Yamato and Harlock and Maetel and Emeraldas and the Queen Millennium...) but details do not match (Tenshiro died in three different ways already).
  • Until Death Do Us Part has characters and organizations from Yami no Aegis, by a different author.
  • Pretty Cure All Stars crosses over all the existing Pretty Cure series in one big movie. And there's four of them!


Comic Books[]

  • This was the entire premise of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen—graphic novels and movie both.
  • Archie Comics is not afraid of this. The only real thing that defines the universes (excluding Sonic the Hedgehog and other licensed series) is different towns in America. The Archies performing alongside Josie and the Pussy Cats? Sure!
    • Sabrina however did crossover with Sonic the Hedgehog, in a two part-special that expanded both series.
    • Archie Meets The Punisher. Yes, really.
      • In fairness, the early 90's Frank Castle was essentially a well-equipped assassin, not an amoral wholesale slaughtering machine leaving dozens of bloody corpses everywhere. And he not only engages in less violence here than his usual missions of the time, he even lets his target live. Still, the fact that everyone involved managed to pull it off at all, much less make a pretty good story, is downright amazing.
    • Tiny Titans meets Little Archie. Yes, really.
    • There was also a crossover of Archie and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Here is a review of it, courtesy of Linkara.
    • The "Night At the Comic Book Shop" trade paperback had Archie deal with some old comic characters that Archie Comics punished.
  • José Carioca's universe is set in his home country of Brazil, but he's shown to be friends with Donald Duck in Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros (as well as the ride in the Mexican pavilion at Epcot). Thus, there are occasional crossovers between the Carioca universe and the McDuck Universe. Indeed, there has been a prolonged arc of stories where José visits Duckburg, and interacts with the various characters there.
  • Various Image Comics titles (Invincible, Savage Dragon, Witchblade, etc.) occasionally cross over, but the editorial policy is that what happens in one title doesn't have to affect events in another. Each hero lives in his or her own unique universe that may or may not contain versions of the other heroes. For instance, Invincible's universe has a Savage Dragon and a Witchblade who are more or less the same as their counterparts in their own books and have roughly the same adventures, but what happens in Invincible's book stays there.
  • The very first superhero crossover was a battle between the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner in Marvel Mystery Comics #8-9 (1940). This is the beginning of the Marvel Universe.
    • Actually, the Shield and the Wizard at MLJ met earlier. The Wizard had learned of an impending attack on Pearl Harbor and contacted the Shield. They spent the next few issues fighting the same enemies (the Soviet/Nazi proxies called Moskovians), occasionally crossing paths for a panel or three.
  • Superman and Batman have been appearing in comics together since The Silver Age of Comic Books, and Wonder Woman joining in isn't uncommon, either. Generally they team up, though having them fight each other is always a good way to drawn in readers.
Cquote1

Superman: "We're surrounded, you know. I can hear them all."
Batman: "I think we can take them. Do you think we can take them?"
Superman: "You always think we can take them."
Batman: "Yes, I do."
Superman: "Then, let's do it."

Cquote2
    • If that counts, we may as well mention All Star Comics #3, the comic which created The DCU as a shared universe.
  • Usagi Yojimbo and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mirage had several single-issue gag crossovers in their respective early runs, which culminated, several years later, in a volume of Usagi which centered around a village shaman summoning the Turtles to fight invading ninjas, and the Turtles' subsequent confusion at being landed in a medieval Japan inhabited by talking animals.
  • Marvel's What If series threw in a few of these over the years, notably stories in which Conan the Barbarian fought Captain America (comics) (narrow win for Conan) and Wolverine (Conan wins the first round, Wolverine regenerates and pushes Conan through a portal to the future, where he destroys the universe by throwing a rock at Cyclops' head).
  • Ape Nation. Ape Nation.
  • Marvel's Squadron Supreme limited series (already itself a psuedo-Crossover, featuring a team of Captain Ersatzes from DC Comics) also had a one-issue Crossover with Captain America (comics).
  • Cartoon Network once made a comics story in which Space Ghost's monkey sidekick, Blip, needed to save his friends from Giant Cosmic Monkey Robot and asked Magilla Gorilla, Monkey, and other simians from CN's shows for help. Together they saved the hero and defeated cosmic monkey with a giant banana, soooo...yeah.
    • At one point, they also did a string of Slice of Life segments between commercial breaks where all of the characters were shown coexisting in some sort of vaguely defined urban setting.
  • G.I. Joe and Transformers. While the TV show is limited to the "Old Snake" thing and the hologram of Marissa's dad (see Western Animation below), the comics have crossed over many, many times, even to the point of very important and far-reaching events in one starting in crossovers such as Cobra being the source of Megatron's tank body, and Bumblebee getting blown up real good and later repaired as his new Goldbug form — though if you're from the UK, you got a different Goldbug origin.
  • The various Marvel-DC crossovers that have been published over the years, which imply the existence of a third timeline separate from the Marvel and DC continuities in which both exist alongside each other.
    • There was also the Amalgam Universe, which consists of heroes who merge traits of a hero from each universe. Examples include Iron Man Lantern (take a guess) and Darkclaw, who was Batman and Wolverine (!!!). However, the events of JLA-Avengers are taken as canon for both publishers in their mainstream universes.
  • Judge Dredd has had crossovers with Strontium Dog, Rogue Trooper, Batman, Aliens, and Predator among others.
  • Every so often, the Justice League of America and Justice Society of America team up and have a crossover. In The Bronze Age of Comic Books, it happened every year; nowadays, it's more like every three years or so.
  • In the 90's, DC and Image published a crossover between Batman and Spawn. It's best remembered for completely rejecting the usual "meet, fight, become friends" routine found in most crossover comics. The two heroes hate each other for almost the entire story. At the end, Spawn wonders aloud if they could try to be friends, and Batman responds by burying a batarang in his face.
  • IDW Comics has lots of fun with Crossovers.
    • Their most famous has to be Infestation: Outbreak, where a dimensional gate (which looks suspiciously like a Stargate) unleashes hordes of zombies from another world. Unlike other zombies from this world, these are guided by a single will, the Undermind. They are also somehow capable of infecting technology and other undead creatures. When an elite vampire squad is sent to deal with the situation, one of them, Britt, gets bitten and becomes a vampire/zombie hybrid. Britt uses artillica to open four more dimensional portals, through which the zombies and infected machines pour, along with parts of Britt herself. While the other vampires manage to shut down the portals, the threat has already spread to other worlds. These worlds are those of G.I. Joe, Star Trek, Transformers, and Ghostbusters. All these worlds now have to fight an infestation from a virulence they have not seen, infecting both man and machine.
      • Infestation 2 had the Elder Gods invade the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joe, Dungeons and Dragons, Bat Boy, 30 Days of Night, and the Transformers: Hearts of Steel universes by creating a rift through universes through H.P. Lovecraft's writings.
    • Outside of Infestation, IDW also crossed over Transformers with just about every property it has a license to including Star Trek (Star Trek vs. Transformers), Ghostbusters (Transformers/Ghostbusters), G.I. Joe (too many times to count, see Transformers vs. G.I. Joe for the most recent as of 2020), My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and Back to The Future. At one point, IDW even built a whole universe around Transformers crossovers. They even met the New Avengers once.
    • IDW's line of Ghostbusters comics frequently see the boys in grey meet other versions of the team (such as the all female group from the 2016 film or The Real Ghostbusters) and they've twice cross paths with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. One one-shot even featured The Real Ghostbusters going up against the Mars Attacks Martians.
  • A special magazine published in 2000 by Cartoon Network featured a five-page comic story in which Scooby Doo meets The Powerpuff Girls. Bubbles, as expected, glomps Scooby ("Puppy!!").
  • Some crossovers Linkara has reviewed include Star Trek and X-Men, Eminem and The Punisher, and Superman and the Quik Bunny.
  • Spider-Man vs. Powdered Toast Man here.
  • Asterix In Belgium features a cameo appearance by Dupont and Dupondt (or Thompson and Thomson if you prefer, although they're unnamed here anyway).
  • Bongo Comics produced a mini-series called The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis. The first half is the Planet Express crew being sent into an issue of The Simpsons by the Brain Spawn. The second half is the residents of Springfield being pulled into New New York by one of Professor Farnsworth's inventions. And then it gets weird...


Fan Works[]

See also the list at Crossover/Fanfic.

Films[]

  • This was the entire premise of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemengraphic novels and movie both.
  • Too many Godzilla movie crossovers to list as many of his adversaries (including King Kong and Mothra) had starred in their own films previously. He even had a smackdown with his own the American Godzilla (from the 1998 film) in Godzilla: Final War.
  • Monster Mash films including:
  • Alien vs. Predator
  • The Marvel Cinematic Universe films, starting in 2008, built up a series of increasingly obvious crossovers (using the same actors in almost all cases):
    • The Stinger in Iron Man 2 shows a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent finding Thor's hammer
    • Iron Man 2 includes news footage of events from The Incredible Hulk.
    • Tony Stark appears in The Stinger in The Incredible Hulk (the 2008 one) to comment on those events.
    • Replicas of Captain America's shield appears in three separate movies:
    • S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury and Agent Coulson play roles in several films:
      • Agent Coulson is a minor character in Iron Man, and Nick Fury has a cameo, where he name-drops "The Avengers Initiative", in The Stinger.
      • Both play more significant roles in Iron Man 2, where Fury reveals Howard Stark's S.H.I.E.L.D. connection and Coulson gives Tony Stark Captain America's shield.
        • Black Widow also plays a key role in Iron Man 2.
      • It is Coulson that finds Mjolnir at the end of Iron Man 2, and contacts Fury about it.
      • Coulson plays a major role in Thor, and Nick Fury has a brief cameo.
      • Nick Fury plays a minor role in Captain America: The First Avenger, where he greets a newly-awakened Steve Rogers and invites him to join the Avengers.
    • By the time they got to Thor and Captain America, the crossovers were pretty blatant, as the Avengers movie was starting production and public knowledge:
      • S.H.I.E.L.D. plays a major role in both films, and is shown to be obviously "collecting" superhero-related artifacts and information.
      • Howard Stark (Tony Stark's father) is a major character in Captain America and gets a name-drop in Thor.
    • All the crossovers eventually led up to Avengers: Infinity War where all the heroes joined forces to fight against Thanos. They failed.
  • The 2005 animated film The Batman vs. Dracula.
  • Possibly the largest-scale example of this was when Disney, Warner Bros, and Turner Entertainment teamed up for the 1988 hit movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.
  • The View Askewniverse movies are all connected, mostly by Jay and Silent Bob appearing in every movie. Aside from that, there are numerous events, elements, and secondary characters that intertwine throughout all six films. It also helps that the movies take place in the same state.
  • There is an old film, Hercules, Samson and Ulysses which features the two strong men of the bronze age coming to blows. It's also So Bad It's Good.


Literature[]

  • There are a large number of Sherlock Holmes Crossover pastiches, including at least three that pit the Great Detective against Dracula.
  • Long before the Marvel comics put two Robert E. Howard barbarian heroes together, Howard himself did it: in the Bran Mak Morn story Kings of the Night, Kull of Atlantis makes a special guest appearance. He and Bran team up against the Roman Legions invading Britain.
  • The 1995 novel H: The Story of Heathcliff's Journey Back to Wuthering Heights crosses over the two Bronte sister classics Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.


Live Action TV[]

  • The "Tommy Westphall Universe" (or, alternatively, "The John Munch Principle") ties dozens of television series from the 1970's to the present through the characters of Tommy Westphall from St. Elsewhere (who is revealed to have imagined the entire series in the final scene of the final episode) and John Munch, the Baltimore detective who has made crossover appearances in many television series (including the Law & Order canon, The X-Files and Homicide: Life on the Street). Thanks to Munch's crossovers and cameos, as well as shared elements and names that occur between different franchises and series, a theorem was developed showcasing the connections. More than 90% of all television shows are connected via crossover, including the entire All in The Family franchise, The Wire, the entire Law & Order franchise, every major medical drama made in the 90's and 00's, and many more. Here's a handy diagram for those keeping track.
  • Apparently among Mr. Roark's Fantasy Island magical, mystical abilities is the power to crossover with other Aaron Spelling series.
  • The episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Law & Order: Trial by Jury titled "Night" and "Day," respectively, were crossovers of each other on the same night. The major characters from each series appeared on both episodes, which dealt with a rapist. SVU focused on the investigation and arrest of the rapist, while Trial by Jury focused on the trial. (There was some discontinuity here. At the end of SVU, the case was declared a slamdunk. At the beginning of TBJ, the case became a sure loser.)
    • Most of Law & Order: Trial by Jury was a continuation of a plot that happened earlier in the week from one of the other three series running at the time.
    • Law & Order: Special Victims Unit did this years ago with a 2-part event, "Entitled," the second half of which took place on the original Law & Order. However, this plays havoc with syndication, because the shows are rerun on different networks in America; the SVU episode leaves the viewer hanging without the second half.
    • Law & Order also crossed over with Homicide in what was originally a two-parter. While working together on a single case, the two squads had personality clashes, and normally-infallible characters faltered in unfamiliar settings. In a good move, when this episode is rerun TNT will show both the L&O and Homicide episodes back-to-back, even though they don't usually show Homicide at all.
    • Law and Order: SVU also had a brief crossover from the cast of Law and Order: Los Angeles.
  • ICarly had the crossover episodes "iParty With Victorious" and "iMeet Fred", the former establishing the first explicit connections of the Nick Verse.
  • Community has a great one, involving Cougar Town. Abed mentions that he was allowed on the set of Cougar Town as an extra, and that episode actually exists!
  • The whole point of moving Frasier to Seattle was to prevent network pressure for guest stars from Cheers. They couldn't hold out forever, though.
  • The character of Captain Jack Harkness first appeared in Doctor Who near the end of the 2005 series. At its finale, he was left behind by the Doctor, and was next seen in 2006 starring in his own spinoff, Torchwood. Torchwood ended its first series with Jack running away to rejoin the Doctor, which occurred near the end of Doctor Who's 2007 series in the three-part finale, after which Jack headed back to his team for Torchwood's second series.
    • Jack returns for the series 4 finale, along with Ianto and Gwen. The episode crosses over even further with the return of Sarah Jane—accompanied by her adopted son from her own spinoff series.
    • Likewise, the Doctor has had a guest appearance in The Sarah Jane Adventures, as has the Brigadier (making him the first Classic Who character to appear in a Nu-Who spinoff, but not Nu-Who itself). The final SJA crossover that aired featured the Eleventh Doctor and Jo Jones (née Grant).
  • Martial Law has the appearance of Chuck Norris' character for a couple of episodes. In fact, for that case, you have to watch the continuation of the case in Walker, Texas Ranger if you want to know how it is resolved.
  • Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis have had several instances of crossovers. The most notable are the characters Rodney McKay and Elizabeth Weir. Often times, things that happen in one series have an impact on the other, such as the recovery of a ZPM by SG-1 helping to defend Atlantis during its siege.
    • There was a dedicated episode where SG-1 GOES to Atlantis to find out the secrets of the Deus Ex Machina that'll save the galaxy, in the process both teams save the other one from disaster by the series' two Big Bads.
  • Due to the extra time created by the 2008 Writer's Strike, even some Late Night Talk Shows got in on the action. While The Daily Show and The Colbert Report often have crossovers (as Colbert's character originated on Stewart's show), what makes this special is the addition of Conan of Late Night with Conan O'Brien. The three wound up having a mock feud over then-Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, culminating in a Melee a Trois on Conan's show.
    • Colbert and Jimmy Fallon each had the other crossover in the promotion of a fundraiser competition. It culminated in a performance of Rebecca Black's "Friday" that contained nearly the legal limit of awesome.
  • Casualty and its spin-off Holby City have had four crossovers titled Casualty@Holby City (although they were given a special title, they ran as two-parters in the usual slots): two Christmas Episodes, one Halloween Episode, and a Very Special Episode Organ Donation Awareness Week episode. We have yet to see Casualty@Holby City With Holby Blue, but doubtless it's coming...
    • And it has: although it wasn't called Holby Blue@Holby City, the first episode of Season Two of Holby Blue was a direct continuation of that week's Holby City, both of which featured the medics and the cops.
  • The various Star Trek series saw many of these, beginning with TNG, although events in one series rarely affected the others. The crossovers became more frequent in later years.
  • CSI has crossed over with two other shows within the CSI Verse, CSI: Miami and Without a Trace. Miami, meanwhile, has crossed over twice with CSI: NY, and New York once did so with Cold Case, and the three core CSI programs have recently crossed over with a three-part story featuring Ray Langston. All five are produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and air on CBS, so bringing them together is less complicated than most.
  • All My Children, One Life to Live, and the defunct Loving were all created by Agnes Nixon and share a universe. Numerous crossovers have occurred over the years. In 2004, AMC and OLTL launched an ambitious crossover storyline in which a baby from All My Children was kidnapped to One Life to Live. The story lasted several months.
    • ABC also had a story in 1999 (essentially a ratings stunt) in which Linda Dano's One Life to Live character traveled to All My Children, Port Charles, and General Hospital searching for her long-lost daughter, who turned out to be a fellow soap-hopping character, Skye Chandler.
  • Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps is crossed over with fellow BBC Three shows Grownups (which also stars Sheridan Smith, who plays Janet in Two Pints) and Coming of Age for the show's Comic Relief special.
  • In a desperate attempt to prop up the ratings of its woebegone late '70s sitcom Hello Larry, NBC had the cast make numerous crossover visits to the popular Diff'rent Strokes.
  • Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley had characters appearing on each other's shows fairly regularly, and there was one true crossover storyline that spanned episodes of both series—which was only reasonable, since Laverne and Shirley was a Spin-Off of Happy Days. And just to add a little weirdness to the mix, Mork and Mindy was also a Happy Days spinoff...
  • The Golden Girls, Empty Nest, and Nurses were all made by the same production company and all shared the same Miami setting, so there was predictably a fair amount of crossover among them.
  • Magnum, P.I. had crossovers with Murder, She Wrote and Simon and Simon.
  • Las Vegas and Crossing Jordan crossed over with one another on a regular basis.
  • Everybody Loves Raymond, The King of Queens, and The Nanny also exist in the same universe and have been known to cross over.
  • Two David E. Kelley series, Ally McBeal and The Practice, had a 1998 crossover storyline that encompassed episodes of both shows.
    • Chi McBride's character from Boston Public also crossed over into an episode of Boston Legal.
    • The continuity was thrown for a loop when Peter MacNicol played a one-off character on Boston Legal, a spin-off of The Practice, after having played a lead character on Ally McBeal.
      • And for another loop when the appearance of Bill Smitrovich as a guest star on Boston Legal, in a different role from the cranky, vindictive D.A. he played on The Practice.
      • The role was Not So Different at all. The main difference was that his Boston Legal character worked in a state where Death Penalty was applicable.
      • The most baffling loop-thrower has to be John Laroquette, who had a notable guest appearance as a devious client on The Practice before showing up as regular character Carl Sack in Boston Legal's fourth season.
  • Friends crossed over with The Single Guy, as well as with Mad About You. (A minor character on the latter show, Ursula the waitress, is actually the sort-of-evil twin sister of Friends' Phoebe.)
    • Also, there was a time when Chandler knew Annie Spadaro, of Caroline in The City, that is too a Cameo of the former in this series.
  • Characters from The Love Boat guest-starred in episodes of Charlie's Angels and Martin.
  • Seinfeld and Mad About You crossed over at least once, which generated Fridge Logic when in an episode of the former two characters were seen watching the latter.
  • There hasn't been a direct crossover between The Shield and Sons of Anarchy, but a gang called the One-Niners, based in Los Angeles, has appeared in both shows, indicating that the shows share a continuity. Considering that one of Sons of Anarchy's producers was a writer on The Shield, it's not surprising.
  • All of the series in the Disney Channel Universe tend to have numerous crossovers with each other. In 2006, That's So Raven, Hannah Montana, and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody have crossed over (in a special called That's So Suite Life Of Hannah Montana), and, in 2009, there was an another one with Hannah Montana, The Suite Life on Deck, and Wizards of Waverly Place (Wizards on Deck With Hannah Montana). Interestingly enough for shows with little enough continuity, the characters from The Suite Life and Hannah Montana recalled the previous crossover.
  • There was an episode of Power Rangers that crossed over with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
    • In the realm of examples that don't inflict pain in the viewing audience, from Lost Galaxy on, there's a recurring tradition of the seasonal team-up, a two-parter where the previous season's cast meets up with the current Rangers to deal with a threat that requires their combined powers.
      • There is also a razor-thin line connecting Power Rangers with Doctor Who. In an episode of Lost Galaxy, a set of coordinates to a meteor field are given, which are the same coordinates as Gallifrey (which probably would be nothing but a meteor field now, considering the Time War.) Doctor Who was off the air at the time, but to reciprocate, a Big Finish Audio book referenced a Zordon Nebula. Maybe somebody who works on either show could strengthen this for us.
    • There was also a three-part episode of MMPR that featured the main character of of the Masked Rider series. Interestingly enough, 13 years later...
  • Kamen Rider Decade, itself an anniversary crossover of the previous 9 Kamen Rider titles, became the first Kamen Rider series to cross over with a Super Sentai series, with Tsukasa and Daiki appearing in two episodes of Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, and the Shinkenger appearing in an episode of Decade. This, in turn, was followed by...
  • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, the 35th Anniversary Super Sentai series, features characters who can use the powers of the 34 previous teams, and at least one member of most of the previous teams have appeared on the show.
  • Both Kamen Rider and Super Sentai will team up once again with Kamen Rider X Super Sentai Super Hero Taisen, starring Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger and Kamen Rider Decade, both of which were their respective anniversary series.
  • Ultraman and Kamen Rider had a crossover short in the early 90's, unexpected considering each series is from a different company.
  • Ultraman Mebius has crossovers with older/the original Ultra Series throughout its run. Be it from classic monsters to the older heroes showing up for a team up. The Movie, Ultraman Mebius and the Ultra Brothers takes this to 11.
  • Jack Webb's triumvirate of Adam-12, Dragnet, and Emergency featured several crossovers between the three.
  • The Polish Crime and Punishment Series W-11 and Detektywi made at least one such crossover: an episode on Detektywi was the first part, depicting the eponymous detectives investigating a case; then, for the second part, the policemen of W-11 took over.
  • Eureka and Warehouse 13 have a pair of crossover episodes, where Fargo upgrades the Warehouse's computer system and Claudia visits Eureka. Fargo even managed to MacGyvering a lightsaber with a laser pointer and an artifact. Syfy even used these episodes for a canon crossover ship. Claudia/Fargo. Alphas was also given a crossover with Warehouse 13, although no character in Alphas has yet appeared in either of the others.
  • For one Comic Relief event, British Panel Games Have I Got News for You, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, and They Think Its All Over crossed over. The product was titled Have I Got Buzzcocks All Over.
  • In The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s heyday an episode of Please Don't Eat The Daisies had the children believing their father was a spy after seeing him pass a matchbook to Illya Kuryakin in an innocuous (or was it?) encounter. Hilarity ensues until, in the show's concluding scene, someone is brought in to convince the children that they've jumped to a foolish conclusion. It is Robert Vaughn whom the kids recognize instantly as Napoleon Solo.
  • Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess. You know Xena has Jumped the Shark when the Big Bad is defeated in the other show.
  • Commercial example involving Monks Adrian Monk and The Dead Zones Johnny Smith. Three versions of the promos have them avoiding touching other people/things (at a detectives association meeting) and exhibiting their Blessed with Suck/Cursed with Awesome (Monk's OCD on corn counting and Smith's psychic ability with a punch bowl). The USA Network aired both of their shows at the same time.
  • Word of God says that if Psych hadn't made Leverage a fictional show within Psychs universe, Leverages Eliot would have had an uncle named Henry.
  • The WB once had a night dedicated to crossing over their shows. A character from one show would pop up in another, mostly for laughs and night contribute much to episode's plot. It was parodied in that night's episode of Unhappily Ever After, wherein Jackee Harry and hinted that The Wayans Bros were "waiting in the car".
  • Breakout Kings : In the third episode of the first season, Prison Break's T-Bag....breaks out from a prison. An unprecedented case of a character crossing over to a show on a completely different network but not so surprising considering both show have the same producers (and an obvious common theme).
  • Kate Monday (or was it Pat Tuesday?) and George Frankly from Square One TV's Mathnet appeared on Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?.
  • Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood made appearances on each other's shows.
  • While at the beach, Logan and Carlos of Big Time Rush meet up with Patchy the Pirate of SpongeBob SquarePants
  • Mikey and Paul Jr. from American Chopper head down to Baton Rouge to hang out with the guys from Sons of Guns.
  • In the ninth season premiere of Two and A Half Men (the one after Charlie got McLeaned), among the people looking to buy Charlie's house are Dharma and Greg.
  • The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman had regular crossovers, with two-part and three-part stories involving both shows (most notably "Kill Oscar," which had parts 1 and 3 on Jaime Sommers's show with the middle part on Steve Austin's). Curiously, although both series aired on ITV in Britain, the crossover episodes weren't treated as such: all three parts of "Kill Oscar" and both parts of "Welcome Home, Jaime" were aired as episodes of The Bionic Woman, while both parts of "The Return Of Bigfoot" were shown via The Six Million Dollar Man.
  • A 1968 Thanksgiving episode of The Beverly Hillbillies had that show's characters traveling to Hooterville, leading to a three-way crossover between The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction and Green Acres. Earlier episodes of Green Acres had shown Hootervillians watching the fictional Clampetts on TV and even producing an amateur play based on The Beverly Hillbillies TV show.
  • USA Network had a set of commercials crossing over their various shows; Adrian Monk and Johnny Smith are each thankful the other doesn't want to shake hands; Johnny and Shawn Spencer debate who has the worse past; until they notice Monk counting his food; etc.
  • Kensi from NCIS: Los Angeles made a guest appearance on the revival of Hawaii Five-O.
    • Abby Scuito from the parent series NCIS appeared in an episode of NCIS: Los Angeles.
    • And then NCIS: Los Angeles and Hawaii Five-0 did a two-way crossover where Callen and Sam came to Hawaii to prevent a black-market bioweapons buy, then Danno and Chin Ho went to L.A. to stop one of the involved parties from unleashing the bioweapon in question.
  • Naturally, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel did it several times. Except during season 6/3, when Buffy's Channel Hop made it a lot harder and they were essentially banned. Then the ban was lifted, and crossovers happened again.
  • The Fox show The Finder, besides having been given a Backdoor Pilot from Bones, later had a crossover from the same when Sweets popped up to do a psychological evaluation of Walter.
  • Tinsel was crossed over by Jacob's Cross during the brief engagement between Phillip Ade-Williams and Chi-Chi Nwachukwu-Abayomi.
  • Shonda Rhimes' Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice have crossovers seemingly every five episodes or so. Now that Rhimes has developed a new show, Scandal, one wonders just what kind of menage a trois is in store.
  • Comic Relief did a crossover short between The Vicar of Dibley and Ballykissangel called "Ballykissdibley".
  • Brooklyn Nine-Nine and New Girl had characters from the other show pop up when the New Girl cast went to New York.
  • Pictured above: The Arrowverse. There's a Crisis Crossover each year. Both the best thing about the Shared Universe and the worst given all the increasing Continuity Lock Out each one creates.


Mythology[]

  • Older Than Feudalism example: the classical tale of Jason and the Argonauts brought together many mythological heroes in a sort of Justice League Ancient Greece. "Hero" in Classical Mythology was an awfully vague term (as Larry Gonick put it, heroes aren't necessarily heroic, just excessive), and since the mission was to steal an item (the Golden Fleece) "Justice League" isn't a terribly good name for them....
  • Maid Marian, the shepherdess, featured in many pastoral plays popular at May festivities. Then there was a fad for Robin Hood plays. Then someone put the two characters together. It worked so well that Maid Marian is best known as a Robin Hood character, even though her independent existence predates him.
  • Lancelot du Lac was the hero of a cycle of French stories before some canny balladeer decided to send him to Camelot to join up with King Arthur. The rest is... well, not quite history, but you get the idea.


Radio[]

  • An arguable one, similar to the Comic Relief Panel Game crossovers above, the New Year 2010 episode of The BBC Radio 4 comedy panel game The Unbelievable Truth featured Stephen Fry, Alan Davies, regular QI panelist Rob Brydon and QI producer John Lloyd. The format of the game was unchanged, but the "obvious answer" klaxon was added. Much to the satisfaction of the other players (and host David Mitchell), Stephen set it off twice.
  • The Archers had a crossover with Gardener's Question Time for Easter 2011, where the real-life panel, chaired by the real-life Eric Robson answered questions from the population of Ambridge.
  • Two episodes of The Goon Show featured guest appearances by Jack Train as Colonel Chinstrap from ITMA, a popular comedy show from the previous decade.
  • Batman and Robin made frequent appearances on The Adventures of Superman.


Tabletop Games[]

  • "Reality Storm: When Worlds Collide" crossed over Hero Games' Champions and Guardians Of Order's Silver Age Sentinels, co-produced by both companies. The adventure itself was dual-statted, but the book also included official conversion notes between the Tri-Stat d10 system and 5th edition Hero System.
  • Dungeons & Dragons did this with the second edition meta-settings Planescape and Spelljammer connect individual settings' worlds into one Multiverse. So the characters of Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk and Dragonlance can take a ride and visit each other. Planar travel reaches isolated places such as Dark Sun and Ravenloft. The latter hardly is a desirable destination, so it has The Mists that can appear in normal worlds and abduct the PCs to the Demiplane of Dread.
    • The Spelljammer novels of The Cloakmaster Cycle demonstrated such a campaign, with most of the first book taking place on Krynn, only gradually introducing the concept of spelljamming to the hero. Later he visited two of less known locations on Toril. At least Forgotten Realms actively supported the meeting with other worlds by dropping mentions in its own sources.
  • West End Games' Paranoia had a trilogy of crossovers under the banner "Vulture Warriors of Dimension X". The first two adventures crossed over with Cyberpunk 2013 and Twilight 2000, while the third adventure used time- and dimension-travel as a campaign hook for open-ended crossovers with other franchises.


Theatre[]


Video Games[]


Visual Novels[]

  • Despite being an internally consistent multiverse, the Nasuverse only has crossovers in incredibly round-about ways. Part of the problem is, well, Word of God stated that some of the characters simply cannot exist in the same universe for Canon reasons.
    • Zelretch was seen in the Prologue to Tsukihime with a young Arcueid. He also appears for one scene in the "Heaven's Feel" route to Fate Stay Night, walking in from Another Dimension to meet Rin.
    • Aoko Aozaki spends time in the beginning of Tsukihime with a young Shiki Tohno. Her sister, Tohko Aozaki, is the Older and Wiser of (arguably) Tsukihime-prototype, Kara no Kyoukai. Despite each of them knowing a different Shiki (each possessing the Mystic Eyes) it's explicitly stated that Tohko and Arcueid cannot exist in the same universe (and most likely, Shiki Ryougi and Shiki Tohno can't, either).
      • Shiki T.'s eyes are a genetic thing from the Nanaya. Shiki R.'s are really Mystic Eyes. I don't know what's up with Tohko and Arcueid.
        • It's more along the lines of "Tohko's goal contradicts with the existence of True Ancestor Arcueid", though Nasu hasn't really made it clear on why. And Mystic Eyes are just... eyes with special powers. Many, many characters have them, just that there can't be more than one possessor of the Eyes of Death Perception.
        • Shiki's Eyes of Death Perception is different from the genetic eyes of the Nanaya. Since both Shikis are from closely associated families of assassin though, it might be related to genetic. However Ryougi's family does not possess special eyes. The reason why only one can exist might be due to the nature of those eyes. Given that they are potentially insanely powerful and you can't just have people running around with such things, it might be a case of The Chosen One.
        • It's just chance. The Eyes of Death Perception have a rare chance of showing up in their respective families. It's not that they can't exist in the same universe, it's that the chances are very, very low.
  • In Maji de Watashi ni Koi Shinasai!, members of the Kuonji household shows up in several places, as they live in the neighbouring area. In one of the routes they even spend the night in that mansion. Naturally, one of them mentions that Yukie has a nice voice.


Web Comics[]

  • The main character in Here Wolf debuted in the comic book Horndog, and there are occasionally crossovers from time to time.
  • Irregular Webcomic does this from time to time, sometimes in ways you might not imagine.
  • Least I Could Do recently had a huge one with characters from every video game webcomic (and a few others), all fighting each other to the death. Rayne died multiple times, but always came back due to them being clones. Combatants included Dinosaur Comics, Eight Bit Theater, Looking for Group, Ctrl+Alt+Del, Penny Arcade, Xkcd, Cyanide & Happiness, and many, many others. Also, John dressed as the Green Lantern and Rayne's car became a Transformers. And he got it on with some superhero babes.
    • Sadly, the long-awaited battle between Black Mage and Richard the Warlock never happened since they were apparently on the same side, but 's not to say it never will. You never know with Sohmer and Lar.
      • Props if you noticed the background of the first 8-Bit Theater in Rayne and John's apartment window on one of the pages.
  • Something*Positive (and all of Randy's other strips by proxy except for Super Stupor), Queen of Wands (and Punch an Pie by proxy), Penny and Aggie, Questionable Content, Scandal Sheet!, and Girls with Slingshots are all part of the same webcomic universe. Using S* P as a node, this is the beginning of the Grand Unified Webcomic Universe.
  • It's been established in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob that Molly likes to write Crack Fic crossover Fanfics, like The Brothers Karamazov meet Harold and The Purple Crayon (Harold uses his purple crayon to break Dmitri out of a Siberian prison). One of her fics got illustrated to appear on Dr. McNinja's website, thusly.
    • The strip itself has had brief cameos by characters from Melonpool, Zortic, Everyday Heroes, and Zeera the Space Pirate.
  • One of the earliest webcomic crossovers was a week of strips in 1998 between User Friendly and Sluggy Freelance where Torg temps at the ISP while Riff ends up battling the Coffee Monster.
  • Emergency Exit is quite famous for its very extensive crossover with Parallel Dementia, notably having a drastic effect on the plots of both series. It was also very, very long. Emergency Exit also had a crossover with Beyond Reality before that (Though that crossover didn't really effect the plot at all) and later had a second crossover with Parallel Dementia that consisted largely of Fall and Eddie having a conversation, with several big revelations made.
  • Jix has at least two crossovers from the creator's other series Dragon City. Both of which involve stories told about encounters with dragons, both of which were also mentioned in Dragon City, but without the Jix characters. Both times it involved main characters.
  • Also, in Dragon City, there were four major crossovers from Jix. One was when an Ambis (the alien species from Jix) tried to take over the dragons' world, another instance when one of the villains tried to kill Erin because he thought the previous crossover was still disguised as her, one was when Jonas got kidnapped by one of Jix's minor villains, and the last was when Lauren and Jix saved Erin from her editor.
  • In summer 2010, the world was introduced to an Axe Cop and Dr. McNinja crossover. And it was awesome.
  • Fans had a crossover with Penny and Aggie recently, or at least the version of Penny and Aggie that exists in the Fans-verse. Charlotte turns to dark magic during the story and after being taken into custody by Aegis, ends up reluctantly helping them in their fight against The Order.
  • Nerf Now explains the reasoning behind this.
  • Eerie Cuties got crossover-ed back in its Spin-Offs Magick Chicks and Dangerously Chloe.
  • Evil Plan the Webcomic had a brief and chilling crossover with the creator's other work Sire as of Chapter 7.
  • What's New with Phil and Dixie throws in a few ideas.
Cquote1

Deadlands is a game combining two unconnected categories — Western and Horror. As a result of the popularity of this refreshing juxtaposition, we can expect a slew of new games created by stitching together various "best selling" categories. Here's a preview...

Cquote2

Web Original[]


Western Animation[]

  • Hanna-Barbera did this a lot. Scooby Doo was usually the host show. Other Hanna-Barbera examples are Laff-A-Lympics and Yogi's Gang.
    • The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones was one of the few movies they did of this.
    • Perhaps the most notorious use of this was Scooby-Doo in Arabian Nights.
    • There was a multi-episode arc of Space Ghost where the title character went up against the Council of Doom, each of whom managed to defeat Space Ghost and banish him to some other realm/time/planet, just so the other Hanna-Barbera heroes of that setting could help save him. This allowed Space Ghost to team up with the Herculoids, Mightor, Shazzan, and Super Moby Dick.
    • The 1981-82 Hanna-Barbera show Space Stars was also built around this trope. Each hourlong episode would have a short eight- to 10-minute segment starring one of the show's hero teams: Space Ghost, The Herculoids, the Teen Force, and Astro from The Jetsons. The last five to 10 minutes of the show would then be a "Space Stars Finale" team-up between two or more of the groups against a common foe.
    • Johnny Bravo, "Bravo-Dooby-Doo": Johnny hitches a ride with the cast of Scooby Doo to his great-aunt's mansion. At the end, Speed Buggy shows up.
      • A later episode has a past incarnation of Johnny meeting Fred Flintstone.
      • The later seasons had a lot of episodes revolving around him meeting other cartoon characters. Blue Falcon, Huckleberry Finn, Weird Al Yankovic...
    • Yogi Bear and Boo Boo once turned up in a Flintstones episode. Apparently, those bears are really, really old.
    • A rare live-action to animation crossover took place on The Flintstones when Samantha and Darrin moved in next door. How old is Samantha, anyway?
  • The Venture Brothers started off as a parody of Jonny Quest. Eventually, characters from Jonny Quest started showing up on the show... or at least demented versions of them.
  • Matt Groening's shows The Simpsons and Futurama tend to crossover for brief instances, including in the futuristic Simpsons episode "Future Drama".
Cquote1

[Homer and Bart accidentally pick up Bender of Futurama while driving through a portal tunnel]
Bender: Oh boy! You guys are gonna be my best friends, right?
Homer: You wish, loser!
[Throws Bender out the car.]

Cquote2
    • Then there was the time The Simpsons crossed over with The Critic, which Matt Groening was against due to his hatred for The Critic and his promise at the time that his cartoon series would be different from other sitcoms (read: it wouldn't do cheap crossovers for ratings). Because of this, Matt Groening's name is not shown in the credits to "A Star is Burns" (making it the only instance that this has happened). Ironically, Groening's name appears in the credits of the season eight episodes "The Springfield Files" (which is also a crossover episode, only with Mulder and Scully from The X-Files) and "Hurricane Neddy" (which featured a brief scene of Jay Sherman in a mental hospital room repeatedly spouting his catch phrase "It stinks!", with a doctor trying to calm him down), as well as the episodes that briefly crossed over with Futurama and the season 18 episode "24 Minutes" (which is a crossover with the show Twenty Four).
    • And one of the show's couch gags featured The Simpsons meeting their Tracy Ullman Show counterparts sitting on the sofa.
    • And then, in Season 26, the show properly crossed over in "Simpsonrama."
  • The 1987, 2003, and original comic book versions of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, in Turtles Forever.
  • Spider-Man: The Animated Series had a crossover with the 90's X-Men animated series. It was considered a big deal because it was a completely different animation studio involving the then current roster from X-Men in a show that was not their own. Even more impressive was the effort put in to keeping all the same cast (save for one, Gambit, presumably for contractual or scheduling reasons) for the sake of continuity. Even more fun, the crossover remains in continuity for Spider-Man, as Storm returns during the series' adaptation of the Secret Wars crossover event.
    • The Marvel cartoons from around this era were frequently cameo-ing in each other's series, as well (though it's hard to know if they were the same characters as the other cartoons; they all take place in a Marvel Universe, where a Spider-Man, Human Torch, etc. would likely exist somewhere.) You never know who'll be briefly shown watching from a rooftop, or looking up at the Pillar of Light in the distance when something really big goes down. Also, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk, etc. guest starred in each other's shows often enough to make the 90s Marvel cartoons a Diniverse of sorts — you can connect the dots through all of them.
  • It was a bit more subtle than most of these examples, but G.I. Joe crossed over with Transformers Generation 1 in the episode "Only Human". A masked character named "Old Snake" (voiced by Chris Latta) helps the Big Bad of the week with a machine to put Transformers' minds into synthetic human bodies. After the plan inevitably fails, Old Snake escapes and idly muses that "they just don't make terrorists like they used to", then raises his arms and yells "COBRAAAAAA!", ending in a coughing fit.
    • At the time the episode aired, it initially had a hard time fitting in with the events of G.I. Joe: The Movie, where Cobra Commander was transformed into an humanoid yellow cobra-man and then finally doomed to a fate as an actual non-anthropomorphic cobra. However in "Only Human", Cobra Commander is obviously humanoid and visible from his torn-up gloves are hands covered in yellow scales; presumably in reference to when he was transformed into a yellow-scaled snake man in the movie. Through what was likely coincidence, this seemingly erroneous depiction of a future Cobra Commander was later made to make sense: In 1989 (three years after "Only Human" originally aired), DiC produced a continuation of the G.I. Joe animated series, beginning with the five-part mini-series "Operation: Dragonfire". In this mini-series, Cobra Commander is still just a snake, but he's eventually returned into a humanoid form (specifically the snake-man form) by the Baroness.
    • And from the same season, recurring character Marissa Faireborne was obviously the daughter of Flint (Dashiell R. Faireborne) and Lady Jaye. The DVD commentary for Transformers: The Movie finally admitted this officially.
      • One "cameo" was made when a hologram version of an aged Flint was used in order to trick Marissa in one episode.
    • In a more meta case, all of Marvel/Sunbow's cartoons of The Eighties (Transformers, G.I. Joe, Inhumanoids, Jem etc.) were tied into each other via Hector Ramirez, an Expy of television reporter Geraldo Rivera. Hector would show up just about any time a story needed a television reporter, suggesting the shows all resided in a shared universe.
  • The all-too-trippy anti-drug PSA Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue?
  • The Fairly OddParents and The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron crossed over three times. This was an interesting exercise because one show is Thick Line Animation while the other is computer-generated, requiring the characters to be re-animated in the appropriate style while in the "other" show's universe.
  • Cartoon Network has done many promo spots for itself using odd and unusual crossovers such as Shaggy from Scooby-Doo and Droopy Dog discussing what they call The Pound Puppies in France while driving a (live-action) convertible in (live-action) L.A., à la Pulp Fiction.
    • Another showed a group of sidekicks discussing their position at Hadji's, while Chicken protested that he was a co-star, not a sidekick. "My name is in the title, for cryin' out loud!"
    • There's one line of promos they did called "Perfect as It Is", which show that certain cartoon character cross pairings just don't work out right. Take a look at "Tom and Speedy" (there was also "Road Runner & Dexter" and "Batman and Inch High Private Eye".
    • Cartoon Network liked the concept of having their characters in one workplace. It's even shown on the Friday Nights intro.
    • "Tom and Speedy" could work. After all, Speedy Gonzales' nemesis is Sylvester, which is just Tom with a lispy voice.
    • The Superfriends and The Powerpuff Girls here.
    • Yet another had Fred Flintstone, Chicken, and Thundarr the Barbarian returning from lunch and futilely searching for a parking space. Thundarr is incensed that Papa Smurf has a reserved space:
Cquote1

Thundarr: Can no leader go untainted?!

Cquote2
Cquote1

"WORST. CAMEO. EVER!"

Cquote2
  • A brief subtle cross over in The Whiteboard, a quantum coffee maker dinosaur pays a visit here.
  • An episode of The Zeta Project crossed over with Batman Beyond, justified in this case as the former was a spinoff of the latter. (Due to Bob Kane's contractual billing being what it is, this is also the only episode where the opening titles omit the "Created by Robert Goodman" credit — the end credits specify Kane's being behind Batman, with Goodman being behind the characters for the spinoff.)
  • Rankin/Bass Productions did it with Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July, combining Rudolph with Frosty the Snowman, Frosty's Winter Wonderland, Rudolph's Shiny New Year, and it appears that Santa Claus is Comin' to Town and The Year Without a Santa Claus may figure in, but mostly in dialogue references rather than character appearances. Strangely, there were never any crossovers with characters from the original Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer special—they only appeared again in Rudolph and the Island of Misfit Toys.
  • He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra: Princess of Power did this more than once, as special episodes. Made sense, since they were siblings, but every time it happened it was a big deal. The two would do their transformation sequences simultaneously, making for a doubly psych-up scene. Strangely[3] though, despite being in the same place at the time, they would then each appear in front of their respective castles, which were located in different countries.
  1. Five screened Sammo's adventures, but not Cordell's
  2. the Japanese name for the Castlevania series
  3. or not, if you're a cheap scene-recycling animation house