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
Cquote1

Monkey God: OK, my turn? Ninjas.
Freya: What? Hey, we all agreed on this medieval knights-and-wizards theme!

Monkey God: So? It's my turn, my choice, I say: NINJA!
—Scene from the creation of the world, The Order of the Stick #274
Cquote2


What happens when All Myths Are True is turned Up to Eleven? You get a Fantasy Kitchen Sink! Everything is true, even if it comes from vastly different origins. So not only are there really fairies, there are ghosts, vampires, werewolves, mummies, Sea Monsters, giant worms, superhuman mutants, technologically advanced Nazis, ninjas, pirates, zombies, robots, Ninja Pirate Zombie Robots, aliens, time travellers, espers, angels, demons, God, Jerkass Gods, Evil Gods, Lazy Gods, Eldritch Abominations, Precursors, magic, psi, chi, and so on. Generally a sure sign of it is when creatures from typically different genres (Sci-Fi, Horror, Fantasy) all exist within the same world with individual origins of their own, each implausible in their own way—leading up to a long series of suspensions of disbelief rather than just one.

In general when you have a Fantasy Kitchen Sink, the premise is mostly used for Monster of the Week plots—where there's one Myth Arc that focuses on a fantastic element and a bunch of totally unrelated sub-arcs about various lesser creatures or beings. There's no overlap between the different genre creatures. The alien bounty hunters do not run into the vampires, the angels, or the superhuman (non-alien involvement) mutants; only the main characters. It's as if there are a bunch of disconnected secret worlds lurking under and above the surface of the real world and the heroes are the only ones who go between them. Occasionally, they do interact in the form of a Monster Mash. The Ancient Conspiracy really are behind everything... but so are The Fair Folk, the Body Snatchers, and the Time Travelers and their plans don't have any connection with each other. For example, the Witch Species never accidentally erase the memories of the supernatural of, say, someone who's secretly a Ninja or vice versa; no matter how indiscriminate either are at enforcing the Masquerade.

Compare this to, for instance, the various Star Trek series, Stargate SG-1 or Babylon 5, where the "magical" aspects are Applied Phlebotinum or the Sufficiently Advanced Alien. They aren't "real" magic. There are Psychic Powers, but they are given a pseudoscientific Techno Babble explanation. If the Science Fiction series does have bona fide magic, like Star Wars, it's Science Fantasy.

The opposite of Meta Origin, in which all of the supernatural elements of a setting come from the same single origin or event. Inevitably results in at least one character who's Seen It All. If the fantasy elements are used to explain how reality really works, it leads to discovering the Magical Underpinnings of Reality.

Compare Crossover Cosmology, Planet Eris, Domino Revelation and Anachronism Stew. May combine with Crapsack World if the Fantasy Kitchen Sink has elements of the Darker and Edgier. If Jesus, Then Aliens is the logic used creating this world. Of course, tends to result in Pals with Jesus and Monster Roommate after a while.

Not to be confused with the literal fictional kitchen sinks.

Examples of Fantasy Kitchen Sink include:


Anime & Manga[]

Cquote1

Announcer: Tenchi will enter a world where alien princesses traverse the galaxy in living ships. Space pirates plunder at will. And Galaxy Police patrol the stars, protecting the innocent. He'll have to deal with bounty hunters, ancient demons, mad scientists... and shared bathroom time.

Cquote2

Card Games[]

  • Magic: The Gathering. With some 10,000+ different cards, it's hard to think of any fantasy concepts that aren't represented.
    • It's all magic, though, with little or no aliens or science fiction. A little Magitek, a fair number of Badass Normal creatures, but the vast majority of it fits into a sword-and-sorcery setting and indeed is connected by one Myth Arc.
    • Worth noting is that within individual settings or "planes", the fantasy concepts that appear tend to be more restricted in scope (eg, a Land of One City plane, a Japanese-myth-inspired plane, a Magitek plane, etc.). Only when taken as a whole does the game itself become a kitchen sink (ie, a game with Lands Of One City and Japanese myth and Magitek, etc.).
    • On the other hand, the annual core sets are specifically designed to embody this trope, introducing cool cards that would have no place in the specific settings (such as Vengeful Pharaoh) as well as reprinting various cards from the game's past
  • The Yu-Gi-Oh Card Game also has this. It features cards based on different folklores and myths from different cultures such as Japanese, Greek, European, Celtic, Nordic, etc. And the list only grows at each new edition. All the robots, superheroes, dinosaurs, ninjas...


Comic Book[]

  • Runaways has particular fun with this, with the original main villain group consisting of two wizards, two mutants, two aliens, two time travelers, two mad scientists, and two Badass Normal crime bosses. By design.
  • Marvel is undoubtedly a Fantasy Kitchen Sink, and is quite happy to have Iron Man beat up on Loki if it feels it'll make a good story. Conan the Barbarian, Transformers, Godzilla, and Zoids all used to be part of the Marvel Universe and elements from those series are still floating around occasionally bumping into the Incredible Hulk, Ghost Rider, or the Fantastic Four. Marvel's very first character was Namor, the New York-hating king of Atlantis, and his nemesis was a fire-shooting android. While characters from completely different genres usually don't mix, and lighter series don't usually cross over with the grimmer ones, nothing is ever off limits.
  • The Sandman universe, from the Sandman comics by Neil Gaiman. (Particularly, but not limited to, Dream's outfits.) But it works, simply by the Rule of Cool. It helps that it's split off from (and may be part of, depending on how convenient it is for a given storyline) The DCU.
    • Also, any anachronisms caused by the Endless don't count, since they're Reality Warpers and can change their surroundings according to their taste/mood.
  • The comic Gold Digger is a great example of this trope, with a few flavors of aliens, were-creatures, dragons, leprechauns, elves, trolls, genetically engineered races, races descended from advanced robots, a time traveling super-intelligent dog, and a dozen other things. Quite often their origins are related but it never nears the level of a Meta Origin.
  • Fables draws upon this, however averts it with the different fables being able to interact with each other.
  • Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics stitch together Nazis, mad scientists, mythical monsters and folklore from all over the world (he used to be part of the Legend-verse, which included Frank Miller's The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot, Art Adams' Monkeyman And O'Brien, John Byrne's Danger Unlimited and Babe, and Mike Allred's Madman.)
  • Carla Speed-McNeil describes her Finder series as "aboriginal sci-fi", set in a world of feathered dinosaurs, genetically engineered centaurs, a race of anthropomorphic lionesses that "crowns" their kings with a metamorphic virus, schools where you can major in prostitution, domed cities based on lost technology, a blind archaeology professor who wears prosthetic legs similar to an ostrich's, mechanical television kudzu, and a clan that appears to be all female and resembles Marlene Dietrich. Oh, and magic is real (albeit not as glamorous as in other worlds.) The whole thing may or may not be set on an Earth of the far-flung future, as archaeologists have dug up films like "Night Of The Hunter" and "The Producers".
  • One character from Chaos comics starts off as a human angel hybrid living in ancient Egypt who gets bit by a vampire and becomes...something not a vampire. She meets demons, monster clowns, death spirits, and the devil, all to be expected but not next to Norse gods.
  • No matter what the incarnation, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lives and breathes this trope. During its formative period, the original Mirage Comic had already established a universe with ninjas, aliens, mutants, time travel, demons, and super-heroes. While they were initially kept somewhat separate, they began interacting following a Broken Masquerade moment in the fourth volume of the comic book. The current cartoon is no different: the fifth season finale, for example, involved superheroes, government agents and ninjas fighting against ancient Japanese demons and their zombie army.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novels incorporate absolutely anything Alan Moore can cram into a panel and not get sued over. However, they all do relate to a certain period of History, or of Literature History. He does keep a coherence.
  • Astro City, unsurprisingly for a superhero reconstruction, has time travelers, vampires, ghosts, robots, living cartoon characters, reptilian monsters, aliens, storm elementals and gorillas with the heads of ants.
  • "The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec", by Jaques Tardi, features crazy scientists, demonic cults, Dinosaurs brought to life, a Neanderthal, Mummies (brought back to life), dead people brought back to life, and it is linked to WWII and the Titanic. You might not believe it by reading this, but it does make sense in context.


Film[]

  • Van Helsing takes various monsters from 1940s horror movies and does whatever it likes with them, regardless of the books.
  • The Godzilla series and its related films feature dinosaurs that have survived until the present day to be mutated by atomic testing, present-day animals mutated by atomic testing, nearly a dozen different intelligent alien races trying to conquer us with various monsters and Humongous Mecha, Time Travel, mystical creatures and gods of religions that don't really exist, a massive sentient plant made by mixing a rose's DNA with Godzilla's and giving the result a human soul, ghosts, a living pile of sludge, two unrelated subterranean civilizations, Frankenstein's monster, King Kong, humans with powerful psychic powers, a force made of humans born with supernatural strength and agility, a gun that fires black holes, a giant magic gliding lizard whose very presence creates Dramatic Wind, a giant walrus(!) and all other manner of wacky shit.
  • 7 Faces of Dr. Lao includes the eponymous Doctor who is a Chinese philosopher-magician, Merlin, a yeti, Appolonius of Tyana, the Serpent from the Garden of Eden, the Loch Ness Monster, the Greek God Pan, Medusa, all in a 19th Century town in the American West.
  • There are different types of supernatural killers in the form of Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Pinhead, Chucky, and Evil Ash (formerly a Kandarian demon with even more fearsome powers until he merged with Ash's dark side). They all have different origins (though Jason's and Evil Ash's are closer to each other) and different powers, often associated with different types of darkness that have nothing to do with each other. Leatherface isn't even supernatural at all despite being as big a horror icon. Yet Jason Goes to Hell, Bride of Chucky, and Freddy vs. Jason indicate that all seven timelines are joined together. At least Freddy and Jason definitely are.
    • Chris .R. Notarile even made a fan video (which uses good special effects, and masks, making the characters look and sound identical to their appearance in movies) depicting Freddy, Michael, Pinhead, Jason, and Leatherface in the same room.
  • The Cabin in the Woods has every monster in existence (or non-existence, whatever) all in one room. Every creature ever imagined for whatever mythical/horrific purpose in some movie or another shows up here.


Literature[]

  • Garrett P.I. lives in a world where every mythological creature ever conceived (including a few new made up ones) exists.
  • In K.A. Applegate's Everworld, five high school kids enter a different dimension cobbled together by all of the world's gods and goddesses (and thus all their respective mythologies; there's also the whole thing about "aliens," creatures from other dimensions and their own gods who have also wound up in Everworld); however characters associated with these different mythologies frequently interact. Two notable examples from the series come to mind: a plot arc from the first book has the kids find themselves amongst Vikings preparing to attack the Aztecs; the other is a scene from the ninth in which dwarves have dammed up Everworld's version of the Nile (oh, and Everworld-Egypt has been conquered by Amazons). Add to this the fact that the gods are very present (one can climb Mt. Olympus and meet them, for example), and things can get very complicated.
  • Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files has wizards, faeries, at least four kinds of vampires, ghosts, demons, ghouls, five types of werewolves, Lovecraftian Old Ones, numerous Christian/Biblical references.... Mostly in the stories, they stick to European mythology, although other creatures from other myths have been mentioned to exist. However, the different races do interact in alliances and power struggles (in the books, at least), and it's only fantasy; no robots or aliens.
  • American Gods by Neil Gaiman involves gods and goddesses from several real-world mythologies fighting with various new deities born out of modern-day obsessions.
  • Simon R. Green's Deathstalker series is a Science Fiction Kitchen Sink. Clones, telepaths, aliens, rogue artificial intelligences, "Wampyr", Wolflings, cyborgs, a Deadly Decadent Court with intrigue to match, bounty hunters, smugglers, ancient technology, professional rebels, genetic engineering, super drugs, Bread and Circuses, and a Romeo and Juliet couple all appear in the first half of the first book.
    • You forgot ESP, Eldritch Abominations, alternate universes, a deadly cyberspace William Gibson would shake his head at, nanotechnology, laser guns, personal force fields, the chick way too in love with violence, time travel, A God Am I, and super-powered government agents. Though a few of those don't show up in the first book.
    • Two of Green's other series (Nightside and Secret Histories) also use this trope, and blend all of the above scifi elements together with an even greater diversity of fantasy elements. Plus the occasional superhero, toon, or childhood imaginary friend.
  • The universe of Stephen King. Vampires, ghosts, aliens, werewolves, tulpas, demons, etc. all exist in King's world and its alternate dimensions.
  • Tom Holt lives on this trope. The same character, Lin Kortright, appears in both a book devoted to a Darker and Edgier Valhalla and one dedicated to a revisionist St. George and the Dragon. And the J.W.Wells&Co novels are even more extreme, throwing in mermaids, living swords, goblins, dragons, the Fey, the Bank of the Dead, a lich, giants, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Riders of Rohan, God, and a living stapler.
  • Mercedes Lackey is in love with this trope. All of her Urban Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, and her recent 500 Kingdoms series are one big melting pot for everything from Japanese to Russian myths. Kitsune will exist next to katschei, and sidhe will exist with vampires.
  • At the time CS Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, mixing fantasy creatures from different mythologies was not common practice, and raised many eyebrows. His friend Tolkien was especially put off by the idea.
  • Harry Potter features witches, wizards, warlocks, hags, ghosts, banshees, broomsticks, giant spiders, magic carpets, werewolves, vampires, various mythical creatures, giants and fairies; J. K. Rowling once said she didn't realize that she was writing fantasy until the books were marketed that way. Right ...
  • Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville. What starts off with just werewolves and vampires has to date come to include The Fair Folk, psychics, skinwalkers, real magicians, demons, chaos cults, ghosts, and more. Combine this with the fact All Myths Are True weaves the supernatural into well-known tales of literature and religion, as well as there being an Ancient Conspiracy behind everything, and you're all set.
  • Discworld: Among other things it has wizards, witches, dwarves, trolls (sentient beings made of rock), golems, elves, gnomes, phoenixes, vampires, werewolves, zombies, Igors, time traveling monks, dragons, a magical computer, Death, an orangutan librarian, Eldritch Abominations, gods, bureaucratic demons, Nobby Nobbs, sentient luggage, Rock Music, heroes, and kangaroos. But the series did start out as a fantasy satire, so fair enough.
    • Given the Discworld Laws of Narrative Causality, and that belief in a thing makes it real, it's not at all surprising that all of this exists at once.
    • Latterly we've got Orcs, Goblins, Football and a few others.
  • Done by Delia Sherman in Changeling and The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen, set in New York Between, where Folk (supernatural creatures) from many different myth and fairy tale cycles live side by side and frequently interact. Logical, because of New York's multicultural immigrant population.
  • The Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelazny spans a multiverse in which everything can be found. The first five books focus mostly on fantasy (but include machine guns), whereas the second five contain, among others, a sentient magical supercomputer.
  • Elizabeth Bear's New Amsterdam mixes Alternate History (the American colonies still belong to Britain in the early 20th century), Steampunk (Zeppelins) and Weird Science (Nicola Tesla's broadcast energy and death ray) with Functional Magic, vampires, werecreatures and ghosts.
  • In Garth Nix's The Keys to the Kingdom, elements of Christian Theology, Ancient Greek Myth, and European folklore are all present in the House (the 'epicentre of creation' wherein the bulk of the story takes place). The protagonist actually meets the Pied Piper, the Mariner (who is awesome), and an towering old man who is suspiciously similar to Prometheus.These are all seamlessly blended in with the mythos of the story, and often given an interesting twist.
  • Eric Flint's Pyramid series has a pocket dimension which combines the Greek and Egyptian mythos which is the product of the title piece of technology which is the product of a race of what are either Sufficiently Advanced Aliens and/or Cosmic Horrors. Adding to the mess is that at the end of the first book some of the mythological creatures wind up in our world.
  • Soon I Will Be Invincible, a send-up of classic superhero comics. The world's premiere superteam consists of Captain Ersatzs for Superman and Batman, the daughter of a retired superhero and a Green-Skinned Space Babe, a wizard with vaguely defined powers, a fairy, a Beast Man, and a Hollywood Cyborg. Their enemies are likewise suitably diverse.
    • In a similar vein, Bill Willingham's short story A to Z in the Ultimate Big Company Superhero Universe is an extremely tongue-in-cheek look at how all these myriad, conflicting explanations and origins for the characters make such a setting innately a bit of a chaotic mess. With a few wry twists such as real world physics coming into effect when the setting's super-speedster encounters a bullet.
  • The Dirk Gently series by Douglas Adams is characterized by the phrase "everything that mankind had chosen to believe was true": Within the two books there are alien and human ghosts, exploding starships, time travellers, artificial people and horses, inadvertently psychic persons, the Norse gods, and Faustian demons.
    • Well, the monk was artificial, but the horse was real.
  • The universe most of Christopher Moore's stories take place in includes demons, djinns, Coyote, his big brother Anubis, vampires (including vampire rats and cats), a cargo cult, a talking fruit bat, a Sea Monster, Jesus, underwater Humanoid Aliens riding artificial whales, a not-too-bright angel, a localized Zombie Apocalypse, The Grim Reaper (several actually) and Celtic death goddesses.
  • Jakub Wedrowycz has faced or fought genies, demons, vampires (including Dracula himself), sorcerers, ghosts, imps, dragons, gnomes, evil trees, aliens, merfolk, the Grim Reaper, cavemen, and an undead Vladimir Lenin. And that's still not all.
  • Where to begin with the Shannara world? Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, and Gnomes are just the main species and are considered quite normal, then you toss in remnants of a post-apocalyptic future Earth like an evil supercomputer who captured magic users of the Shannara world to recharge its batteries, evil lizard-men, warlocks, witches, werebeasts, shapeshifters, and then the Demons trapped in the Forbidding since Faerie, which consist of every other mythological creature that has ever been conceived.
  • Older Than Feudalism, in The Aeneid, Aeneas sees Centaurs, Scyllae, Briarus, the Hydra of Lerna, Chimaera, the Gorgons and other monsters at the gate of the underworld. In the underworld, he meets spirits of dead heroes as well as those which have yet to be born.
  • The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica. The entire setting, namely the Archipelago of Dreams, is one of these. Where else could there be Pandora's Box, Centaurs, Elves and Fauns, and Peter Pan just to name a few of many, many things? It's an amalgamation of every single fantasy work EVER.
  • Arguably, one of the main plot points of Michael Scott's book series, The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. Every mythological creature/deity ever is real - they're just hiding, usually in their own Pocket Dimensions or among normal people.
  • The Bible, along with its obvious belief in God, angels and demons, also makes reference to other mythical things. Unicorns, giants, sea monsters, behemoths, dragons, the grim reaper, and vague references to flying objects and mystical beings that can be construed as aliens and their space crafts.
    • Although the unicorn, at least, was a mistranslation due to nobody remembering what an aurochs (re'em) was.
  • An Elegy for the Still-living has knights, dragons, talking houses, senient oceans, cyborg prigeons, cartwheeling giraffes, Anthropomorphic Personifications of death, talking dogs, ketchup rivers, a Fisher Kingdom, hallucinogenic perfumes, characters from arhurian legend, reincarnation, and more!
  • Monster Hunter International: Every monster myth known is true. Most can be killed with sufficient application of dakka, explosives, fire, or combinations of the above.
  • The world of The Clown Service contains, among other things, zombies, leprechauns, traditional Jewish golems powered by the true name of God, yetis, time travel, alternate dimensions filled with eldritch abominations, pixies, Chinese dragon gods, and something called the Legion that takes over people's bodies.
  • A Certain Magical Index has magicians (who can create or summon artifacts and beings from every single mythology), angels, demons, dwarves, Saints, Valkyries, an artificial elf, zombies, vampires (though they haven't actually made an appearance), gods and dragons.

Live-Action TV[]

  • Big Wolf on Campus was a kid/teen show on the ABC Family Channel in the early 2000s that featured a high-schooler who was secretly a werewolf, who fought evil creatures along with his friends. They met everything you can think of: vampires, aliens, ghosts, mummies, the devil, the grim reaper, and Santa Claus. This is because every episode was based on an old classic monster movie.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where in addition to the magical baddies, she had to deal with science fictional intelligent androids.
    • Several exceptions ran through Buffy on the 'not interacting with each other.' Most notably a werewolf hunter was eaten by a vampire, a demon-god was attacked by an android, and the military organization were combining cybernetics with demon body parts (although they still did not believe in magic, which was irksome. This lessened slightly once they saw the Slayer was real, but did not impact them or their research, and they continued to act as if she were the only case.)
    • Killer snot monster from outer space.
    • Everyone knows leprechauns don't exist.
    • According to Anya Santa Claus is real, and it's the same person from when the legends first started. The Problem? Santa is really a red and white furred demon that eats children.
    • In an episode of Angel, it's revealed that at one point the Devil built a robot named El Diablo Robotico, which was defeated by Los Hermanos Numeros.
  • Stargate SG-1 might not be categorized under fantasy, but there are many of the same themes in it. Though usually explained with science, a fair amount of ancient myths and conspiracy theories are brought to life in these shows, including what appear to be Roswell aliens, parasites posing as Egyptian gods, and the lost city of Atlantis. In the spin off, Stargate Atlantis, they have actual space vampires that don't drink blood, they suck life. Through their hands. Plus all the Arthurian references later in the series, when the main characters actually meet Merlin and Morgan le Fay (though they are explained as being Ancients) and have to do numerous quests involving pulling a sword from a stone and searching for the Holy Grail (in space).
  • The Munsters is a comedic version of this, with the Frankenstein monster, vampires, and a werewolf all in the same family.
  • Power Rangers is built on this trope. From the first episode, we have an interdimensional wizard with a Buck Rogers-esque robot assistant who Recruit Teenagers with Attitude and give them superpowers and dinosaur-themed Humongous Mecha so they can fight Evil Space Aliens led by an Asian-looking space witch. Due to its length, the show has added more and more weirdness as it goes on; one season can focus on high-tech alien police, the next, a pocket dimension inhabited by fantasy creatures. And they're almost all in the same universe.
    • Its base series, Super Sentai, didn't count as this for some time because each season took place in a different universe. Then along came Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, in which all sentai are in the same verse, and the sentai teams must teach a Ragtag Bunch of Space Pirates how to use their powers, be they magical, technological, or anything in between.
  • Special Unit 2 was a lighter, fluffier version of Supernatural. It had everything except vampires. Because the thought that vampires exist is preposterous.
  • Supernatural has ghosts, demons, angels, zombies, vampires, wendigo, possessed trucks, a Frankenstein-style Mad Scientist who is effectively immortal through the theft of new organs, etc. So far no aliens, though. This was also Lampshaded a bit when one of the brothers said that everyone knew there was no such thing as Bigfoot.
    • Bobby Singer can usually find info on new monsters, after the writers let up on the use of John Winchester's diary. At some point, Team Winchester realized they were dealing with a monster that was entirely unprecedented.
    • The monsters all fit an urban myth feeling, until they started incorporating all kinds of mythology, no matter how much of a square peg, round hole it was.
    • In Hammer of the Gods, various pantheons from around the world sent representatives in a meeting to discuss ways to stop the Judeo-Christian apocalypse. Attendees included Odin, Mercury, Kali, Baldur, and Ganesh, to name a few.
  • The X-Files is perhaps the best example for television where because one paranormal thing is true, all (or at least many) paranormal things are true even when they come from different origins. To the point where they could have filmed an X-Files episode where the aliens do arrive for colonization only to get wailed on by the assorted other monsters of the week who get annoyed about the people coming into their turf.
    • The inspiration for X-Files, Kolchak the Night Stalker, incorporated both standard-issue horror monsters (vampires, werewolves, headless bikers) and mythological entities (rakshasa, a Greek immortal), sci-fi critters sprung from laboratories or the depths of the earth, or psychic phenomena (e.g. a dream-monster that manifests in the real world).
    • Have to laugh at an episode where the Smoking Man resolutely says "There is no God! What we call God is alien!". God himself may not have appeared on the show, but as there's an abundance of supernatural stuff going on regardless (demons, genies, and Lord knows what else) there is a pretty good chance that he is jumping to conclusions.
  • Poltergeist: The Legacy was all about this trope. Various episodes featured ghosts, demons, vampires, werewolves, mummies and genies.
  • Possibly the Ur-example of this trope in television, Dark Shadows started out as a mundane soap opera, but became a Fantasy Kitchen Sink with vampires, ghosts, witchcraft, mad scientists, time travel, alternate realities, and many, many cases of reincarnation.
  • Charmed included witches, vampires, leprechauns, mermaids, angels, demons (and possession), ghosts, genies, werewolves, banshees, warlocks, a wendigo, Egyptian curses, toys coming to life, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, fairies, trolls, different dimensions (or something like that), Pandora, the seven deadly sins, nymphs, ogres, the Furies, the muses...
  • Parodied in an episode of The Colbert Report where Stephen Colbert mentions that someone used a non-existent district in a state to gain votes. He then says this non-existent district has things like Sleestaks, unicorns, leprechauns, Mr. Snuffulapagus, the chupacabra, Vera from Cheers, Charlie Brown's teacher and the protagonist of Fight Club.
  • This episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway? opens with a game of Daytime Talkshow, which normally spoofs one fairy tale or nursery rhyme each time, but slowly mutates into this trope. Apparently the hill that Jack and Jill fetched a pail of water from is not only the same site that Hey Diddle Diddle took place in, but belongs to a landowner that also possesses Humpty Dumpty's wall, and Peter Peter Pumpkineater's in the audience...
  • Round the Twist has anything and everything from ghosts to mermen to cloning machines to magic gum-leaves. Became the Trope Codifier for many episodic children's shows about weird stuff happening to a small group of ordinary schoolkids.
  • The long-running British series Doctor Who has taken nearly every fantasy being and concept and worked it into a story line over the past 50 years, always explaining them in the context of a science fiction story. Yeti, for example, are cyborgs of alien origin. Satan is a large alien being trapped eons ago by the power of a black hole.
  • Kolchak: The Night Stalker, a 1974 television series, featured Darren Mc Gaven in the starring role of investigative newspaper reporter Carl Kolchak, who each week stumbled across a different supernatural story in the city of Chicago. All of the standard monsters were brought out: witches, vampires, werewolves, mummies, and many others. In each episode, Kolchak would cover a mysterious news event, such as a murder or bizarre accidental death, discover the underlying supernatural cause, try to convince his editor and the police to no effect, and eventually defeat the monster without anyone's help, knowledge, or thanks.
  • Danger 5 features World War Two fought in the '60s in a world where the Nazis have dinosaurs with special crystal implants, bullet-proof diamond-women, golden superweapons, and Japanese robot-soldiers. In the last episode, the Danger 5 team heads for Atlantis. The inspiration is more from pulp magazines than fantasy.
  • While Once Upon a Time starts with the premise that all fairy tales characters are real and living in a small town in Maine it has since come to include King Midas, a siren, a genie and a trip to Wonderland. Hints have bee dropped that Oz is out there as well and while the Fairy Tale World is classic fantasy, Storybrooke has a more Magical Realism vibe. Also, although they aren't named there was a cameo by characters who were dead ringers for Chief and Nurse Ratched.
  • Kamen Rider began with the simple story of a cyborg Phlebotinum Rebel from an evil Nazi-esque organisation, then slowly began to involve multiple ancient civilisations, aliens, every variety of monster you can think of, supernatural martial arts using the power of sound, alternate worlds you can enter through shiny surfaces, a universe-destroying journey through all of those things, and currently a mysterious power originating in space. They all regularly team up in movies, and nobody makes a big deal of the fact that a vampire and a body-swapping oni are kicking monsters until they explode.


Tabletop Games[]

  • The original edition of Dungeons & Dragons cites John Carter of Mars (as well as Conan, and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser) in its foreword, despite being for "medieval wargames campaigns" according to the cover. It suggests robots and androids as examples of 'other monsters' which could be used in the game.
    • The game could be considered a Fantasy Kitchen Sink, seeing as how the monster manuals include every legendary or folklore creature in popular culture, as well as drawing from other sources (dinosaurs, anyone?), and creating their own.
    • The Forgotten Realms campaign setting with its Fantasy Counterpart Culture collection is built on this concept, world encompassing traditional knights-and-wizards fantasy, Arabic legends, and a whole continent devoted to a mishmash of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean mythology, in different regions. Unfortunately, most works and all but one videogame get set in the Medieval European Fantasy regions (Sword Coast, Heartlands).
    • Ravenloft could be called a Horror Kitchen Sink, borrowing elements from creepy folklore (ghosts, curses), creepy novels (Dracula-style vampires, mad scientists), creepy movies (Hammer-style werewolves & gypsies), creepy scifi (sea spawn, pod people), and the creepy end of every other D&D game setting.
    • Spelljammer is big enough to incorporate most of the other settings. And cosmologies—worlds riding on huge turtles? That's almost common variety...
Cquote1

...the writer once described his own campaign as a "cosmic vacuum cleaner, sucking up every fantasy idea that crossed its path."

Cquote2
    • Planescape is even worse: Steampunk robots? Check. Demons, devils, angels (different types, including Talking Animals), steam and magi-tech, real-world pantheons strewn all over the place.... Expies of dozens of real-world afterlives, and so on and so forth.
  • D&D's archrival, Pathfinder, is this even moreso, as it includes both standard fantasy creatures like goblins, golems and dragons, some direct D&D imports released in the OGL like the Aboleths, Stirges and Otyugh, and delightfully obscure beasties such as the akhlut, the Wendigo, the Nuckelavee and even cryptids like the Mothman and the Chupacabra. Also, public domain beasties such as the Cosmic Horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos and the Jabberwock are included, and even oft-ridiculed monsters from D&D such as the Flumph are brought in thanks to Wizards of the Coast not considering them brand identity like they do with Beholders and Mindflayers!
  • Exalted is one big Fantasy Kitchen Sink which includes Magitek, kung fu, adventurer archaeologists, scheming bureaucratic gods, goth princesses, heroin-pissing dinosaurs, BFS's, manga aesthetics, mythological/biblical inspirations, and anthropomorphic animals, plus the usual vanilla blend of fantasy elements. It should be a trainwreck, yet it all works because of how awesome it is.
  • The Tabletop RPG Rifts has Nazi-equivalents in power armor, dinosaurs in the swampified remnants of the American South, insect aliens from another dimension, psychics and Functional Magic, Atlantis has risen from the ocean, Mexico and the surrounding areas are overrun, and ruled, by Vampires... You get the idea. In this case it's more fantasy roach motel, as things from strange other worlds seem to rift but they don't rift out. Weirdness diffusion, maybe?
  • Warhammer 40,000 takes the fantasy kitchen sink, flings it into the future, arms it to the teeth, changes any morals to fit a Black and Grey Morality, dumps crap all over it, and ramps up the violence quotient to eleven, then covers everything in skulls and spikes.
  • Warhammer Fantasy Battle does the same thing, except without the "IN SPACE" factor.
    • In fact Warhammer Fantasy Battle is far, far more subdued than Warhammer 40,000. While it maintains the Crapsack World element, the more ridiculous elements of 40K background are omitted. It nevertheless evokes this trope pretty hard, with vampires, daemons and the undead butting heads with dwarfs, elves and Lizard people.
  • {Malifaux}}, Greek Myths? check, cowboys? check, zombie hookers? check, horsemen of the apocalypse? check, labour unions and criminal organisation? check fairy tales? Pied piper on steroids. Baba yaga? check, a stage troup? check, Jack the ripper? where did you think those zombie hookers came from ;), genetical manipulation in animals? check, Creppy Child, checks in spades, machines and cyborgs, check, ghosts? check, Sandmann? check, corrupt bureacracy, check, and playable
  • Deadlands has a vast array of supernatural creatures running around the Weird West. The After the End spinoff Hell On Earth goes one better, with a Kitchen Sink Apocalypse, that includes nuclear devastation, zombies, and the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
  • The Pirates Constructable Strategy Game by Wizkids is a naval combat game set sometime before, during, and after the American Revolution/War of 1812 era. When the first set came out, things were fine, but with each new expansion, they seem to be intent on adding a new crazy mechanic. They get alright justifications or are Handwaved most of the time, but it is still silly. They are currently halfway between this and Anachronism Stew. Some of these include:
    • Sea Monsters/Titans
    • Cursed pirates
    • Submarines (based off Jules Verne)
    • Vikings (Handwaved as being northerners who believe Norse Mythology)
    • Bombardiers (Ships with long-range and flame cannons attached to their decks)
    • Turtle ships (which at least existed around the time)
    • "Switchblades" (metal ships with giant pincers attached to the sides)
    • There's also a Pirates of the Caribbean expansion.
  • The point of TORG, which is about various realities invading each other. So, indeed, we can have a monster from a horror reality meet up with heroes from a technocratic reality, and so forth. In a twist, stuff from one "paradigm" tends to malfunction in others, so don't expect ray guns to work in a stone age world.
  • Mutants and Masterminds is designed to allow for this. The flexible point buy system and the distinction between "effect" (mechanics) and descriptors (flavor text with some extra meaning attached) allows characters to be built based on any comic book/fantasy/myth/sci-fi concept they can imagine in order to accommodate the Fantasy Kitchen Sink aspects of the two major comic book companies.
    • Champions: The Super Roleplaying game has been doing this for two decades before M & M even came along.
  • Brikwars has spaceships, pirates, dragons, T-Rexes, Roman bikers, helicopters, pyramids, skyscrapers, knights, tanks... and that's just one page of the rulebook.
  • The Old World of Darkness featured vampires with features from vampire folklore around the world, spirit-loving werewolves fighting a supercorporation that worships the embodiment of evil, demons from hell, a netherworld full of wraiths, mummies, psychics, changelings, wizards based on every real world mythology/religion/occult philosophy imaginable, and a global conspiracy of super-science secret agents who can travel through the spirit world in magic spaceships. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The New World of Darkness has ditched the super science (unless you count the unofficial Genius: The Transgression netbook) but kept variations of virtually everything else, while adding a couple of things of its own.
  • C.J. Carella's Witchcraft has the standard monsters of mythology, witches/wizards, Immortals with Magic-tech, gods, angels and Eldritch Abominations and a myriad of magical traditions to draw from.
  • Lords of Creation allows characters to move around dimensions, with each dimension having its own genre. It allows Game Masters to create worlds that freely mixes magic, with hard sci-fi, and Science Fantasy, with any number of cultures mixed in.
  • Geoffrey McKinney's Carcosa is an old-school supplement for the Original Dungeons & Dragons rules, that mixes sword and sorcery, cosmic horror, and vintage sci-fi.
  • An old-school styled game called Encounter Critical is an off-beat Fantasy Kitchen Sink game, that mixes races and archetypes from Star Wars, Star Trek, and Dungeons & Dragons.
  • Small World is a strategy game which features dozens of fantasy creatures duking it out over territory. The core game alone has Humans, Halflings, Giants, Amazons, Trolls, Wizards, Ghouls, mer-folk (the Tritons), Dwarves, Elves, Rat-men, Sorcerors, Orcs, and Skeletons.


Toys[]

  • Mattel's new Monster High toy/book/media line. The Mummy's daughter is girlfriend to Medusa's son, and the Wolfman's daughter is BFFs with Dracula's and the Frankenstein Monster's progeny. And the zombie member of the cast is also the brain of the group, heh.
  • Bionicle has cyborgs, elemental spirits, Hobbits, an Eldritch Abomination or two, dinosaurs, Fish People, dragons, mutants, zombies, Humongous Mecha and more. And yes, most of these things tend to overlap with one another.
  • A small sampling of the Monster in My Pocket line includes the hydra, werewolf, griffin, tengu, zombie, Mad Scientist, invisible man, Ganesha, Loch Ness Monster, and boogeyman.
  • The early Masters of the Universe toyline is basically this. In fact, in the Toys That Made Us episode of "He-Man", Val Staples even refers to it as "the kitchen sink property".
  • Squishmallows: There are dragons, Bigfoots, fairies, gnomes, unicorns and pegasi, aliens, witches, and elves, among other fantastical creatures. This isn't even getting into the otherwise regular animals with traits of fantasy beings, like skeleton bunnies or caticorn mermaids.


Video Games[]

  • Marvel Ultimate Alliance lets you have a party consisting of Doctor Strange, the half-vampire Blade, Iron Man, and one of the X-Men fight Doctor Doom, Galactus, and Loki.
  • The Sims 2, quite notoriously for a simulation game (albeit one that doesn't take itself very seriously), does feature this trope! Your Sims can plead with The Grim Reaper for the life of another household member, get abducted by aliens (and get a Face Full of Alien Wingwong, if they're male), get bitten by a wolf and become a werewolf, become a vampire, come back as a zombie, get eaten by a Man-Eating Plant, become a plant-like being themselves, live with Bigfoot... the list goes on.
  • Nethack is probably the biggest offender, because the monsters and items are all pieced together from bunches and bunches of completely unrelated books. It can include grid bugs from Tron and goblins from Lord of the Rings on the same level, for example. (It also has actual kitchen sinks.)
    • "One-horned, one-eyed people eaters", "microscopic space fleets", "battlemechs", "The Luggage", "master lichens"(!) and various other weird critters shown instead of the real monsters when hallucinating.
    • The Slash'EM variant throws in even more stuff, the best example probably being lightsabers.
  • Kingdom of Loathing includes the entire list at the top of the page, plus Nethack monsters, the Penguin Mafia, Pastamancy, an actual Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot, Uncle Crimbo, and an equippable kitchen sink for good measure. The game is tongue-in-cheek and full of pop culture references, so anything is possible in KoL.
  • Castlevania uses undead, abomination, evil, and various other strange creatures from the folklore of every culture and tradition these days. Some of them aren't even from fiction, but from real life—dodo birds have been spotted in one game, and various games have variably-undead dinosaurs. Stock Gothic Horror monsters generally form the backbone of Dracula's armies though.
  • The Final Fantasy series draws on this, with gods and goddesses from every culture in the world, as well as the run of the mill robots, mummies, vampires, etc.
  • Dungeon Fighter Online starts out seeming like an ordinary fantasy setting, with elves and goblins and "Dark Elves", and other similar things. But then you find the psychic puppets, ninjas, cthulhu cultists, WWII-era soldiers, giant robots, cyborg gorillas, and as of the latest patch, mutant pirate alligators.
  • The Touhou Project features Gensokyo, a Fantasy Kitchen Sink. A popular Fanon theory holds that anything which becomes fantasy appears in Gensokyo, though this has little solid canonicity.
    • The fanon theory is mostly based on musings from Rinnosuke—in Silent Sinner in Blue, he claims that information on space travel showed up in Gensokyo once enough people in the real world started believing the Apollo Moon Landing was faked. In Curiosities of Lotus Asia, Rinnosuke wonders if an influx of crested ibis birds was due to impending extinction.[1]
    • This theory is canon as of Ten Desires, where Toyosatomimi no Miko's reincarnation mausoleum is transported from Japan to Gensokyo when people forget about her deeds and legends.
  • Shin Megami Tensei. YHVH and Vishnu have a tenuous alliance. Lucifer is buddy-buddy with Surt. Lilith and her succubi keep trying to get into the hero's pants. Loki was last seen poking Taira no Masakado in the eye with a sword he stole when Athena wasn't looking. Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne stated unequivocally that one goddess wasn't real: the Christo-Roman-Wiccan goddess Aradia. But who's the one to tell you Aradia isn't real, you ask? If you're asking, you've not played enough. Aradia tells you this when you speak to her. Obviously.
  • Done in the early Ultima games, using any fantasy creature from D&D Richard Garriott could think of plus space ships and laser guns. Averted in sequels Ultima IV-VI as the number of monsters are narrowed down, and there are no elves, halflings, or orcs in sight, making the setting richer by showing less is more. Redone in Ultima Online, with elves, orcs, ninja, samurai, paladins, necromancers, cyborgs, and anything else the developers can think of, making the setting more generic (and sorely disappointing Lord British).
  • The World of Warcraft universe has at least four sets of Deities, all of which are real and influence their own little niche in the world. Due to the open nature of the game, players interact with and influence all four of these divine beings.
    • The Old Gods are a Lovecraftian group who either created the world, or are older than creation, depending on who you ask. Player mainly interacts by punching.
    • There are the Titans who are largely credited with creating creation and subduing the Old Gods. Titans themselves only appeared in lore, players in game only deal with the servants - of which there are two sets: Dragon Aspects (dragons empowered by the Titans; they control various aspects of the world - such as Life, Time, the Emerald Dream, Earth and Magic) and Norse Mythology themed Guardians of Ulduar. They either employ players' help in dealing with the above or have gone crazy and must be fought.
    • The "Light", which is the closest thing to a Christian God in the universe. Naturally, Paladins and Priests get their power from this source. The world also has a race of beings called the Naaru who are more or less manifestations of the Light.
    • Finally, the various troll tribes each have their own set of animal gods. What's more, the gods from different tribes interact with each other from time to time. So, although a given tribe will only worship one set of animal gods, their existence is not mutually exclusive. Also see All Trolls Are Different.
      • The Light is more like a non-theistic philosophy. However, there is also Elune, the monotheistic goddess of the night-elves, and numerous demigods and Ancients.
      • And werewolves, gargoyles, zombies, hydras, centaurs...For a long time, vampires were the only fantastic or mythical creatures not to be found in World of Warcraft. Then the second expansion came out and introduced the darkfallen - blood-drinking undead elves.
      • Vampires have been in Warcraft since the Nathrezim/Dreadlords appeared in Warcraft 3. They look less vampiric and more demonic in World of Warcraft though, especially since they're so large now.
    • The Warcraft franchise, being inspired by D&D, Warhammer and Tolkien, have creatures from all over European mythology, as well as Hebrew folklore, Native American mythology, Indian mythology, horror movies... well, if you can think of a mythological creature that isn't already somewhere in WoW or mentioned somewhere, Blizzard is probably slapping their heads and saying, "Of course!"
  • The Nasuverse gives us Vampires, magic Church Militants, demons, devils, dragons, Medusa, Medea, Hercules, Cuchulain etc. and all sorts of mythical beasts. Plus, reincarnation, zombies, a Cosmic Horror or two, more magic, japanese demons too... Most of this is merely mentioned in passing or a brief plot point, but bonus points for what is important overlapping ie. the Church deals with vampires, but they're also related to the Grail Wars (Archer also seems quite familiar with killing vampiric creatures like Zouken Matou) and Atlas Alchemists, who made a weapon that can kill the previously mentioned cosmic horrors. One of whom is a vampire, or something.
  • Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier. The titular world, "Endless Frontier" consists of several mini-dimensions with varies in theme. Result in world where Valkyries use Laser Blade, Elves give up bow in favor of sub-machinegun, geek ogre with magic tome, Cyberpunk cowboy and werewolf Samurai are common sight as well as some Eldritch Abomination.
  • Fall From Heaven, a Game Mod for Civilization IV, has every fantasy trope from orcs to dwarves to elves, with nations of wizards, vampires, ghosts, and pirates, a religion based on the worship of Eldritch Abominations, with other random like werewolves and jinn thrown in for good measure.
    • Another mod, Fictionalization IV, has a similar mishmash of things from various fantasy tropes as well as superheroes, mecha, and other tropes from sci-fi.
  • The Sonic the Hedgehog series has Funny Animals, some with amazing powers such as |telekinesis & pyrokinesis, sentient androids, powerful gems, prophecies, mystical beings, aliens, time |travel, genies, faeries, ghosts, werewolves, parallel worlds, and a host of other things.
  • City of Heroes, obviously based on comic books, revels in this. During the course of a career, the average hero (or villain) will face mutants, aliens, alternate dimensional aliens, alternate dimensional mutant aliens, alternate dimensional versions of heroes, alternate dimensional versions of villains, demons, cosmic horrors, mobsters, evil corporations, government conspiracies, ancient conspiracies, evil mastermind conspiracies, ghosts, spirits of nature, robots, robots animated by psychic power, Nazis, vampires, werewolves, purse-snatchers, gods, alien gods, time travel, travel to other dimensions, mercenaries, government agents, free-lance vigilantes...while coming from a background that has just as weird a mix. Want to be an archer with miraculous healing powers and force fields who can later learn to suck the souls from your enemies, all because you grew up a mutant? You can!
  • Darkstalkers
  • The King's Quest series. Full stop. The Expanded Universe material explains the reason for it. Magical creatures, mythological beings, wizards, and other fantastic entities fled into a parallel dimension (called the Withdrawal in the player's guide) to escape encroaching modernity that threatened their existence.
  • Pokémon. It has psychics (too many to count), phoenixes (Moltres (Western) and Ho-Oh (Eastern)), a dryad (Celebi), an Arkan Sonney (Lucky Piggy - it is a white hedgehog that flees people and gives them luck if caught; Shaymin is one), and that doesn't even scratch it. The best is that it has Mew (ancestor of all Pokémon, and as such represents Darwinian evolution) and Arceus (the CREATOR Pokémon, which came before all others), which contradict each other at first glance.
  • Daibanchou - Big bang Age is full of this trope. You can recruit super-powered high school students, military personnel, tanks, animals, vampires, a Frankenstein monster, mad scientists, mikos, Shintoist priests, ninjas, an alien, a demon, a yakuza boss, an elf, an Egyptian loli queen (with Egypt being in Japan, no less), Arabians, a halfbreed between a lion and Indiana Jones, a giant robot, a mummy, a humunculus, a cat... thing, a loli in a huge armor, a magical girl, an angel, a stereotypical Yu-Gi-Oh fanboy, a nurse, a floating crystal head and clay-potteries... And who do you fight against with these guys? The military, vampires, ninjas, zombies, either crusaders or pirates and finally, demons...
  • The mythological allusions in La-Mulana range freely from Japanese to Egyptian to Mesoamerican.
  • The Elder Scrolls series started out this way until, starting with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, it began to distinguish itself from the typical fantasy setting. A good 90% of the many available Game Mods send it careening headfirst right back into FKS territory, however.
  • The SaGa series as a whole combines this with a healthy dose of Schizo-Tech. A notable example from the second game is the deity lineup: Ashura/Asura (Indian), Venus and Apollo (Roman), Odin (Nordic), and Isis (originally Egyptian, but appears here in her Greco-Roman incarnation with Athena's shield and for some reason a Samurai sword).
  • Dominions draws on a wide range of mythologies for its different colorful nations, ranging from the well-known (Arcoscephale is Greece) to the obscure (Hinnom, Ashdod, and Gath are descended from the Nephilim of Jewish apochrypha).
  • Asura's Wrath is a Science Fantasy, Hindu Mythology and Buddhism equivalent of this, though played around with in that the story is specifically set in the extremely far future and that the main race of beings, Demigods, were based on upon said mentioned mythologies.
  • Actually a card video game with a comic book based on it (or the other way around), but Urban Rivals fit this trope. There are mad scientists, undeads, superheroes, aliens, cyborgs, radical feminists and more recently time travelers, and a lot of other things in a single badass city. They all know what the others are, so some are many of these at the same time.


Web Comics[]

  • Finder's Keepers puts it rather bluntly: "Every myth, every belief, every dream, every nightmare, they all are residents of this side. The Veil separates the Every-Day from the Every-Daydream. If Humanity has dreamt it up, you'll find it lurking around here somewhere."
  • Sluggy Freelance in the biggest way. One story arc had a Demonic Invader hurled back in time by a Mad Scientist's ray gun. Another had a talking rabbit wage war on a mutated, alien Santa Claus, only to get hurled into another dimension where Time Stands Still and Space Pirates reign supreme. And another had the same Mad Scientist, a witch, and a Badass Normal with a talking sword break into a zombie lair to recover Government Conspiracy files on a Brainwashed, immortal assassin who has the potential to change or even destroy the Web of Fate. And that's not even getting into the satanic kittens. And the Sampire!
  • By now it's less of a question of what kind of monster will show up in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja as it is which ones will not. So far there's been ninjas, vampires, dinosaurs, zombies, robots, popular fast food mascots, and more.
  • As the page quote implies, Order of the Stick has its own version with justification: the world was made by three pantheons (the Norse and Babylonian gods, along with the twelve animal spirits of the Chinese Zodiac) and taking turns to ensure a fair representation for all. This is actually the second world the three sets of gods made; the original, which was made along with the Greek gods, was created amongst too much in-fighting and led to an Eldritch Abomination that killed the Olympians and destroyed the original world, which is why the gods cooperated on the new world, which serves as the monster's prison.
  • Irregular Webcomic is this, and bad puns.
  • Gunnerkrigg Court takes this trope, runs with it, and makes it both awesome and internally consistent. Ridiculously Human Robots? Check. Fairies? Check. Bedsheet Ghosts? Yes. Trickster God Coyote, Reynaerde The Fox, Isengrim the Wolf? Check. Odin and Valkyries? Somewhere here. ... Psychic hacking? Check. Elementals? Yes. Elves? Kind of. Dragons? Several subspecies. And then there's a Chickcharney.
  • Axe Cop features dragons, witches, unicorns, aliens, robots, dinosaurs, wizards, ninjas, werewolves, vampires, superheroes, and policemen. Everything that a 6-year-old boy would find cool. Maybe that's because the writer is a 6-year-old boy.
  • El Goonish Shive has Alternate Universes, elves, wizards, dragons (of a kind), werewolves (well, not any more - or at least Pandora is sure she was quite thorough), elemental golems, vampires (sort of), body snatchers, chimeras, talking animals, and multiple species of aliens.
  • The Dreadful has, in less than 50 pages, presented a devil girl hero, a centaur, an elf, a dwarf who actually manages to avert Our Dwarves Are All the Same, a preaching minotaur, an angel, and whatever Jeanne Noelle is. And a fairy.
  • The Snail Factory features a menagerie of bizarre creatures, including various gods, demons and deities from different cultures, mutants, prehistoric creatures, mermaids and intelligent fungus.
  • Eerie Cuties main cast includes vampires, a succubus, a werewolf, a catboy, a Catgirl were-ocelot, "a melusine", and a possessing spirit of some kind; other students and teachers include witches, ghosts, fairies, ifrit, grim reaper, two reptoids, cyclops, man with possessed arm, Mad Scientist, futakuchi-onna and some not-yet-identified folk looking like humans with a pair of insect antennae in their hair are the third most represented species on-screen (after presumably baseline humans and vampires). There are also Slayers - apparently, physically enhanced and mentally resistant humans.
    • Spin-Offs (Magick Chicks and Dangerously Chloe) add psychics and ninjas. And Greek gods. And pixies. And more demons. And angels. And more Grim Reaper.
  • The Dragon Doctors features adventurer-doctors who band together to solve all the bizarre ailments that occur in a world where magic is real. So far they've turned a gorgon human, had fairies and ogres as patients, dealt with a Japanese "kotodama master" curse, extracted a Thing-like parasite, and the backstory includes several magical wars as well as a war against Vampires and another against beast men. The local detective is an alien woman made of blue crystals. Goro has alluded to performing heart surgery on dragon (from the inside!) while wearing power armor.

Web Original[]


Western Animation[]

  • Adventure Time is this, in spades- ninjas, zombies, cyborgs, talking candy and animals, aliens, a lich, a legendary hero (who fought a bear, and the aforementioned lich, among other things), knights, psychic worms, a post-apocalyptic setting, a talking video-game system, unicorn/rainbow hybrid "rainicorns", princesses out the wazoo, and at least one dragon. And so on, et cetera.
  • Although Barbie and the Diamond Castle seems to take place in a standard Fairy Tale setting (dragons, trolls, girls who make their living selling flowers), it also throws Muses (who live in a castle) into the mix.
  • Disenchantment is an attempt at this, incorporating as many myths, fairy tales and mythical creatures as it can get away with without being too close to Game of Thrones.
  • Family Guy. The underlying reality of the show is deliberately tenuous anyway.
  • Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends takes place in a world where anything children believe in can come to life, which has obvious implications on the world's population...
  • Gargoyles began with the titular characters being the lone survivors of a long-vanished race of semi-magical creatures. Over the seasons, it branched out to give us more gargoyles, fairies, witches, sorcerers, normal people cursed with immortality, living Native American spirits, Greek gods, The Loch Ness Monster, King Arthur, the list went on and on. That's not even counting the weirdness that was man-made, like the evil clones, cyborg mercenaries, nanomachines, sentient robots and the global-spanning conspiracies. (Although most of the supernatural creatures that they encountered were eventually given a Meta Origin as Oberon's children).
    • King Arthur (as if to drive this point home THE King Arthur) encapsulates the entire series in one statement; "All things are true... few things are accurate."
  • The Simpsons uses the Fantasy Kitchen Sink approach, with aliens, killer robots, zombies, James Bond-ish supervillains, the Judeo-Christian God, Native American deities, leprechauns, "The Formidable Mulk",and the Loch Ness Monster all apparently existing within the same universe. This is true even if you don't count the non-canonical Treehouse of Horror episodes.
  • Jokingly referenced in an episode of The Venture Brothers, where pirates board the Venture family's ship.
Cquote1

Hank: Brock, if pirates really exist, then Santa Claus and The Tooth Fairy could even be real, right?! It's like all bets are off!
Brock: Hank, nobody ever said pirates don't exist.
Hank: So you agree with me that this is impossible!

Cquote2
  • Practically every children's adventure cartoon with a modern Earth setting and fantastic elements that does not use a Meta Origin (i.e. Danny Phantom = "everything's caused by ghosts" or American Dragon: Jake Long = "everything's caused by magical creatures") will use a Fantasy Kitchen Sink approach, with the heroes encountering all sorts of things: aliens, robots, vampires, ninjas, and alien robot vampire ninjas. See Jonny Quest, Kim Possible, Ben 10, etc.
    • However, Ben 10 Alien Force establishes the Meta Origin of all being aliens. Except the magic, which is simply quantified as being a type of science involving manipulatable energy which some species are better suited to than others... but humans can still use it without alien blood.
  • Thundercats was made of this trope. It starts out with one feline humanoid alien race being chased by other mutant alien races after their planet's gyroscope blew up, introduced a ghost mentor... They all crashland on a planet called Third Earth, inhabited by android robot bears, an evil mummy that transforms into an evil flying supermummy with the help of ancient demonic spirits, with an enemy of the week that is either a Nazi starship captain (Shiner), cybernetic killer pirates (Hammerhand), a sort of yeti king who rides a giant snowcat (Snowman), a timetravelling samurai (Hachiman) or an egyptian prince with a magic mindcontrol helmet who was trapped by the sphinx in an alternate dimension... And merchandising on steroids: the Thundertank, Cat's Lair, and various other massive metal machines. Oh, there was a female space cop as well. And hydras. And Grune the Destroyer appears to be an undead villain from the dawn of time. And volcano gods. And amazonian girl-ninjas of the treetops. And unicorns. And the Dobermen (aargh, aargh). And dead parents, telepathy and addiction. The entire thing was written on crack.
  • The Fairly OddParents has fairies, genies, pixies, aliens, robots, mermaids, krakens, and everything in between.
  • Ugly Americans follows the life of social worker at the Dept. of Integration in New York City. Those in need of integration? Vampires, zombies, werewolves, land-whales, mermaids, and various people human and 'other'.
  • South Park has had things like angels, demons, ghosts, zombies, succubi, gnomes, wizards, dragons, and aliens. That is not even getting into Imaginationland.
    • In the commentary for one of the Imaginationland episodes, Matt and Trey talked about an idea for a zombie vampiwerepichaun, or something to that effect, which they said was a leprechaun bitten by a werewolf and a vampire that gets killed and becomes a zombie, much like the Penny Arcade example above.
  • Teen Titans has an alien, a cyborg and a demon as part of the same team, and their opponents are quite varied as well. They even fight a Brain In a Jar and talking gorilla team!
  • Swat Kats ran with this in multiple directions: of the five major recurring villains, one was a mutant Mad Scientist, one an undead sorcerer, one a Diabolical Mastermind with a small army of demonic henchmen, and the last two were a husband-wife pair of gangster robots. Some of the one-shot villains included aliens (twice), ghosts (also twice), and a Volcano Demon. One of the best examples is possibly the episode "A Bright and Shiny Future" where the evil undead sorcerer Pastmaster goes Twenty Minutes Into the Future and revives the robot gangster Metallikats, creating a Bad Future where the SWAT Kats have been killed and Megakat City conquered by robot hordes. Pastmaster then goes back in time (to the presumed "present") and pulls those SWAT Kats ahead into the Bad Future to ensure their total destruction.
  • Centurions was a Science Fiction series, filled with Technology Porn and set Twenty Minutes Into the Future. On top of that, the writers introduced Dracula, Merlin, a Hot Witch and her Evil Twin sister, an army of mummies, Atlantis, Psychic Powers and accidental Time Travel into various episodes.
  • In Transformers G1 there are a few episodes that the eponymous robots end up in a fantasy plot involving magic in it.


Other[]

  • A mainstay of Weekly World News - aliens advise the president, Congress is full of zombies (sure that's made up?), Dick Cheney is a robot, Satan was captured by American soldiers in Iraq, mermen have been found in the South Pacific and Bigfoot is advertising his crash diet.
    • Don't be silly. Dick Cheney is obviously a vampire.
      • Five bucks says he's related to Bat Boy!
  • Film star Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle dollhouse, completed in 1935 and displayed at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, features elements of all the silent film actress's favorite stories from childhood. Classic fairy tales like Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel appear side by side with Arthurian myth, the Arabian Nights, literary characters like Gulliver and Robinson Crusoe, authentic historical artifacts and religious icons from all over the world, and a 20th-century Santa Claus and Mickey Mouse.


Real Life and Religion[]

  • World history contains everything from knights to tyrants, from religions to supercomputers, from ninjas to pirates, and from headhunter tribes to spaceflight.
  • Our imagination.
  • Many neo-pagan religions hold a view point similar to this, believing elves, dwarfs, fairies and other supernatural beings exist. They're much more likely to be the modern "nice" versions than the original pagan fair folk.
  • As the Ancient Romans conquered areas, they would incorporate the local mythology into their own, leading to a state religion in which nearly every god and creature from England to India coexisted, and one was free to worship whatever they wanted so long as they worshiped the Emperor and they weren't planning on rebelling against the authorities as well.
  • Halloween. Things like vampires, witches, and Frankenstein's monster, which are associated with Halloween, come from different sources.
  • Dreams often play like an Every-Genre Kitchen Sink.
  • Omnism is that belief that all religions ever conceived are true - or, at least, contain some truth in it. Many type of syncretic religions can apply, actually.
  • New Age authors will often describe worlds and dimensions with Dragons, Elves, Fairies, and Unicorns, as part of The Multiverse.
  • In Wicca, doing this is called "eclecticism", wherein practitioners will mix and match gods and spirits from many different religious traditions and is genuinely very inclusive.
  1. It wasn't--at the time that particular story was published, Crested Ibises were actually being reintroduced into Japan thanks to a massive breeding program in Japan and China running for decades prior, and Rinnosuke notes shortly after thinking the Ibis might prove his theory correct that it was found near the entrance to the Hakurei Shrine, thus meaning it found its way into Gensokyo by accident.