Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Crack Pairing / Video Games

Go To

  • Super Smash Bros. has its own page.
  • Brawl in the Family has a couple goofier strips ship Lakitu Cloud and Mother Brain (who have a kid named Kracko), and also Ruto and Jabu-Jabu (who have rather ugly kids called Zolas).
  • Counter-Terrorist/Terrorist art exists.◊
  • From the Kirby universe, we have the logic-defying Marx and 02. Yes, really. Now take into consideration that this is a cheerful, light-hearted jester being paired with a being made of darkness, capable of feeling only negative emotions. There's a lot of it, too. However, what may be the most insane of them all is Kirby and Katy Perry.
  • The Kingdom Hearts Fan Vid Okay, Humor Me parodies this, with Selphie explaining crack pairings to Kairi.
  • From Katawa Shoujo, some people like the idea of pairing girls that have absolutely no way to have a plausible relationship. Shizune/Rin is completely impossible since Shizune is deaf and Rin has no arms to make signs or write anything, similar with Shizune/Lily because Lily is blind. The latter case isn't quite as implausible, since Lilly and Shizune have some history together, which, to some, indicates that they can do something like the Deafblind Manual Alphabet to communicate without an intermediary like Misha. Still, things are strained between the two except for when they start to put aside their differences near the end of Lilly's route, at which point she either leaves Japan or stays with her boyfriend Hisao, and the two being first cousins would turn off those who aren't into incest.
  • Chrono Trigger has beget some truly creepy pairings. There's the canonical (Crono/Marle; Kino/Ayla), the somewhat normal that just lack basis (Cyrus/Human!Frog; Crono/Ayla; Crono/Lucca), the just plain odd (Janus/Schala; Frog/Lucca; Janus/Lucca), and, finally, the Squicky (Robo/Lucca; Crono/Magus; Flea/Ayla, Flea/Marle, Flea/Lucca, Magus/Queen Zeal; any pairing involving Lavos).
    • One gag-ending states that Queen Leene married Frog. It causes Marle to scream.
    • Here's one that involves Ayla/Queen Zeal. Enjoy
    • Magus/Schala, Young!Janus/Schala, Magus/Queen Zeal, and Queen Zeal/Lavos all in one story. Enjoy the Brain Bleach. Strangely, it's not pulled off in a cracky way, but it's meant to be serious, and actually is… it's not humorous at all, and actually more depressing for the characters, because it's almost believable.
  • At the beginning of the Golden Sun fandom, there was a lot of random shipping going around. The most common by far were Isaac/Mia, Garet/Jenna (both of which at least have some basis in canon), and qualifying for this trope, Ivan/Sheba. The two are both Wind Adepts and are somewhat snarky teenagers… That's about all they have in common. They barely say two words to each other over the course of both games. Ivan seems worried for her safety (notably yelling "We won't let you lay a finger on Felix or Sheba!" at one point), but only as much as the rest of the party.
  • This guy does a Krizalid/Hong Meiling China pairing. How an insane pyromaniac genetic experiment and a Chinese redhead butt-monkey youkai can love each other is not mentioned.
  • While we're on the subject of Touhou, it seems that any girl can be paired with any other girl, and there will be fans (and fanart) of it. Ferryman of the Higan river Komachi Onozuka and divine shrine maiden Sanae Kochiya? Right here.◊ Mind-reading youkai Satori Komeiji and judge of the dead Eiki Shiki. Done.◊ Immortal fire-slinging Fujiwara no Mokou and shut-in librarian Patchouli Knowledge? Yep.◊ And then there's this.
    • There's a joke that "there are no crack pairings in Touhou." Basically, the whole series is a Random Events Plot, so most pairings are equally unlikely in the first place. The only ship ZUN has officially given any mention is Marisa/Alice, and that was just to say it wasn't his idea.
    • To stay on the topic of Touhou a bit longer, there's even some Crack Pairing between the ladies of Gensokyo and the Kanmusu of KanColle despite them being rivals right now in terms of popularity in Japan. Sure, there's a lot of bad blood due to the Rivalry of the Fandoms between those two games, but some people aren't reluctant to engage in Crossover Shipping, mainly Kiso x Murasa.
  • Have you stepped inside the Ace Attorney fandom lately? There's quite few of these there, too. One of the more interesting ones is SPARTA (Spark Brushel/Lotta Hart) - they never meet in the canon, but there seems to be a rising consensus among the fans that this reporting duo would make a perfect match.
    • Gumshoe's trenchcoat/Badd's trenchcoat. Yes, there is fic.
    • There is a certain following for such weird stuff as Gumshoe/Steak Lunch, most likely triggered by the fact that he actually sued Maya Fey over such a Lunch Box in one of the older trailers for the first DS remake.
    • You know what they say: "If it exists and in the Ace Attorney universe, it has been shipped." There's even Iris/Jean.
    • In the "plausible if they'd ever met" category, we have Kristoph Gavin/Dahlia Hawthorne, a pair of refined, sweetly-smiling poisoners. Given that they're about the same age or would be if Dahlia hadn't been executed for murder and Dahlia canonically spent some time in Germany (under an alias) right around the time Kristoph would have been in college, this is actually terrifyingly possible.
    • Thanks to NicoB, we have The Judge/Komaeda, also known as "Judgamaeda" and "TurkeyBagel."
  • Fire Emblem doesn't even need wacky fan pairings (though there are certainly plenty of those out there): some of the canon pairing possibilities are downright Crack Pairings. Some of the more notorious pairings are: Harken/Vaida from the 7th game, Kyle/Lute from the 8th game, and Astrid/Makalov from the 10th game.
    • Speaking of the ninth and tenth games, shippers with a warped sense of humour have a tendency towards shipping Shinon (a human archer who is unbelievably racist towards Laguz) with Lethe (a Laguz who is unbelievably racist towards humans). You can't get more crack than that.
    • Of course, if you take any support as a pairing possibility, it gets even worse. Florina/Serra, anyone?
    • One guy actually programmed a random number generator and shoved the entire 7th game's playable cast into it to produce the pairings for a fanfic.
    • Fire Emblem: Awakening, which uses Genealogy of the Holy War's pairing system, is a bit better in regards to character relationships actually growing — most of the characters can pair with each other, save for Chrom, Sumia (both have five love interests each, including each other and the Avatar of the opposite gender), certain characters recruited in sidequests or past a certain point in the main story, and the SpotPass-exclusive characters (all of the latter two categories can only end up with the Avatar), but that doesn't stop some unusual ships from slipping through, especially given that there's Ho Yay all over the place. Yarne is a popular pairing choice with most of the second generation males, and even a few of the first.
      • You can even get two crack pairings in the game — Chrom has to marry one of his love options after Chapter 11note , and one of these lovers, Olivia, only joins his army during that chapter. He can marry her, provided that his other choices are dead, married off, or if he avoids them (read: doesn't activate any of their Support conversations) altogether. Then keep him paired up with her for the whole battle, and boom, they're married, and they have an infant daughter two years later. You don't even get to read her Supports until this event is over (and their convos are amusingly awkward). Yet another option is to do all the above and then avoid Olivia too, which will result in Chrom marrying a generic village girl. To be fair, if he's married to Olivia or the maiden, his sister Lissa will lampshade the hell out of it.
    • Fire Emblem: Three Houses has Edelgard/Rhea (and sometimes Edelgard/Rhea/Byleth, which is essentially impossible since Edelgard turns out to be the Flame Emperor, the revolutionary trying to overthrow Rhea's Church of Seiros, and once the truth comes to light, the two become mortal enemies.
    • A handful of people have paired Denning and Monica, two characters who appear in completely different games, because they both repeat the same thing over and over again- Denning repeats that he has a message from Lord Nergal, while Monica repeats "Darling..." over and over.
  • In "Snake Tale E: External Gazer" (featured in the Substance version of Metal Gear Solid 2), the way Snake knows that the Mei Ling he's working with is a warped Alternate Universe counterpart and not herself is that she's married to Solidus. Solidus is as evil and tentacled as ever, and the two seem to be very much in love with each other. Also, the Alternate Universe version of Olga is married to someone, and although we never find out who, the implication is that its Snake.
    • The Metal Gear Solid 3 Secret Theater shorts used these for humour a lot, between EVA/The End, EVA/Sigint, and Naked Snake/John McCone (the CIA Director under Kennedy and Johnson).
    • Metal Gear Solid 4 takes four pairings with little to no basis and makes them all canon. Meryl/Johnny is the one with the most prior canon; Roy/Rose never met (although admittedly, it was just a ruse); Naomi/Otacon got one line in Metal Gear Solid where Otacon says he feels sorry for Naomi but never met; and Naomi/Vamp was just a case of Rule of Sexy.
    • As for pairings fans make, one of the most interestingly handled bits of fan crack is the Fear/Joy/Sorrow Love Triangle from The Cobra Days. Besides the fact that the Fear is in the Joy's unit in Metal Gear Solid 3, there is no implication of a relationship between them. Joy/Sorrow is Canon, but adding the Fear into the mix made for great drama that could have become a little strange as the Fear aged from his very pretty young form into… whatever he is in MGS3.
  • Samus/Master Chief, as per VG Cats.
    • Monty Oum's Haloid also runs with this idea (once our heroes finally band together), only with a twist. You see, the MC in Haloid isn't "Master Chief," but "Master Chick"; she's meant to be Nicole-458 from Dead or Alive 4 as opposed to John-117. And yes, the ending pretty much sees Samus and Nicole hooking up.
  • Godai Yuusuke (Kamen Rider Kuuga) and Kazami Yuuka. There is even an entire video series on Nico Nico Douga about it.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
  • The World Ends with You has Joshua X Rhyme, two characters that don't meet or say a word to each other. Regardless it has a legion of followers on FanFiction.Net, one small example being this community. The general opinion on this? Opposites Attract.
  • There is a comic of Left 4 Dead's Spitter/Smoker. Though we do not actually see the pair make out, the other Infecteds' squicked expressions tell us everything we need to know.
    • Would it be this comic by any chance?
    • There is also the ever popular Zoey/Witch.
  • In Mass Effect:
    • We have the joke pairings of Miranda/Scion and FemShep/Elcor, and the more serious Tali/Legion pairing.
    • See the Mass Effect Crack Pairings Generator. The full list of characters includes not only squadmates and other major characters, but also villains (including Harbinger), unnamed NPCs, inanimate objects, and entire species.
    • The popular Joker/EDI crack ship becomes canon in Mass Effect 3, to literally everyone's surprise.
    • VG Cats brings us some. Especially the third.
    • There's an awful lot of shipping with Shepard in this series, including Legion/Shepard, due to Legion have a serious case of hero worship, having a piece of Shep's armour stuck to it at all times, telling Shepard s/he has a "superior code" and showing a surprising amount of affection for a robot.
    • The rather well-written fic Rock Steady ships Thane/Jack.
    • The fanfic The Translation in Blood ships Spacer Shepard's mother, Rear Admiral Hannah Shepard, with Councilor Sparatus.
    • Citadel has Zaeed attempt to hook up with Samara.
    • And then there's Shepard/Harbinger, based on some of Harbinger's lines while possessing Collector troops in 2. While merely weird in 2, when it appeared that Harbinger was just a scary bug-alien general, bear in mind what was revealed later: Harbinger is a) a really bad guy; b) the size of a very large capital ship, c) an Eldritch Abomination, and d) made from the melted down bodies and souls of earlier Eldritch Abominations. Think about that for a moment.
    • Due to a small but amusing error that resulted in Udina having a picture of Kaidan on his desk, some fans have had fun with the idea that Udina has a one-sided crush.
  • From the Warcraft story Vrykul, there's Frost Vrykul◊ and an Eredar.◊ It also happens to be yuri and the Eredar in question just so happens to be the daughter of Sargeras. It's being pulled off surprisingly.
    • Another Warcraft story, this time with Tirion/Darion Mograine and Tirion/A'dal in the SAME STORY! This author has mentioned in her profile that she has a fondness for Tirion/A'dal pairings. So far as anyone knows, this is truly crack pairing and the only story that even mentions the pairing at all. Tirion strangely remains in character for the story, and so does A'dal. The Tirion/Darion interaction is actually done quite well, despite the fact that they're polar opposites and both men.
    • This bit of Tirion/A'dal.
    • The fic has since been removed by FFN.net for, according to the author's profile, being too explicit, but apparently you can still PM the author if you want to read this squicky story for whatever reason.
    • Blizzard themselves seem to have gotten in on it, pairing Azuregos/Spirit Healer. note 
    • The fans get an odd kick out of construing the blistering rivalry between Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream as Belligerent Sexual Tension, which results in occasional fan art/fanfiction, often with a Belligerent Sexual Tension angle.
  • Knights of the Old Republic: Canderous/Bastila. Never mind the fact that he's at least twice her age and that the personality clash would be enough to demolish a small system. But there was "After the Fall," a fanfic where the author (a professional romance novelist!) decided to give it a try, and it became a reasonably popular ship. It kinda helps that Bastila's a case of All Girls Want Bad Boys, and you don't get much worse than a Mandalorian mercenary.
  • Story of Seasons:
  • Dragon Age: Origins: Leliana/Sten, here.
  • The Dissidia Final Fantasy shipdom has Voidshipping, Cloud of Darkness/Exdeath. note  There's also about ten different ways to pair up various villains with heroes, and people exploit these, a lot.
  • The Final Fantasy series in general has quite a few pairs that range from subtext to never meeting (such as Cloud/Lightning and Ignis/Aranea).
    • Freya Crescent/Beatrix is a rather obscure pairing with several supporters behind it, though it is odd in the context that Beatrix assisted in the destruction of Freya's hometown, and though the two ally with each other later in the story, they do not interact with one another at all afterwards.
  • There's a surprisingly large fan-following of the crack pairing Raven/Rita in Tales of Vesperia, despite him being 35 and her 15, and the fact that she's always beating him up and putting him down. That's without getting into the trouble she has with social skills as a result of her upbringing, and Raven's Dark and Troubled Past.
  • Sniper/Glados has a pretty big following based on the fact their voice actors are married (and have encouraged said pairing).
  • This is pretty much the reason that of all the Namco High characters, the Galaga ship is by far the most popular partner.
  • BlazBlue: There is a large amount of Ship-to-Ship Combat that goes on within the fandom; unsurprisingly, characters who have little to nothing to do with each other get paired quite a bit as with any fandom. Carl x Platinum is fairly common on FF, due ostensibly to similar ages, despite the two not interacting very often and having very contrasting personalities. Less common, but in a similar vein, is Carl x Rachel. Ragna x Tsubaki also has some popularity, despite the fact that the two actively hate each other in canon (the hate being especially strong on Tsubaki's end) with the events of Chronophantasma making things even worse, with this series going a long way to making it popular (even appearing in Fan Fic Recs here).
    • Speaking of Tsubaki, there is a small, but nonetheless surprising amount of fan work and fan art that pairs her with Hazama. (Noel gets some of this, too, but that has a scant—and creepy—amount of canonical basis in that Hazama shattered the poor girl's mind to smelt her into Mu-12 and use her as Kusanagi, the Godslayer, followed by Hazama setting up a life-link between them.) Remember, folks, Hazama is the reason (well, one of the main ones) Tsubaki has been so screwed up for the better part of two games.
    • One supposes it's only a matter of time before Hazama x Terumi begins to take off.
    • Japan seems to really like Ragna/Kagura, too...
    • In the West, on the other hand, Makoto/Tager has a small but devoted following.
  • For a game about super fighting robots with an Excuse Plot and a predominately male Cast Herd, the original Mega Man series has a literal armada of crack ships. One of the oddest out there is Sunstar/Roll.
  • Adachi/Nanako in Persona 4. For context, Adachi is a rookie police detective, and Nanako is a 6-year-old girl. Also, Adachi tried to kill Nanako.
    • In Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, you get to do this in-game at the end of the second labyrinth. Your protagonist can be paired with any party member, including the guys, Aigis, and Koromaru, as well as all three Velvet Siblings and Marie. Out of these possibilities, only a little under a quarter of them have any basis in canon beyond a couple of questions you answered in a survey.
    • On the P4 route, Yukiko reveals that she ships Kanji with Rise in one scene. Chie lampshades how little sense that makes. (Kanji is Ambiguously Gay/Bi and doesn't show interest in anyone but Naoto, while Rise has a blatant crush on the Persona 4 protagonist)
    • More recently, some people in the Persona fandom started to ship Tohru Adachi with Sae Niijima from Persona 5 despite the fact that the two never met and the fact that Adachi is a mysogynistic serial killer while Sae is a prosecutor with a strong sense of justice who would be disgusted by Adachi's misogyny. However, most supporters of the ship seem to be well aware of its nature as a crack ship.
  • Pokémon allows you to breed several species that really don't look like they should be mating, most notoriously Skitty (a small pink cat) and Wailord (a blue whale). There's a reason it named a trope.
  • One of the game mechanics of Tomodachi Life is allowing Miis to date and eventually marry each other. The only restrictions for dating is that both Miis be opposite-gender (sadly, no Gay Option for you), be in the same age group (both Kids or both Adults), and not be related to each other by the game mechanics. Why yes, let's have Peach and Makoto Yuuki make babies, why not?
    • And in a similar vein the spiritual sequel of Tomodachi Life, Miitopia, has done away with the more romantic elements, but the relationship mechanics still allow all sorts of characters to become extremely close and have drama born out of jealousy. And the age and gender restriction no longer apply so you can have Gordon Ramsay jealous that Hank Hill is more interested in Chun-Li than in him.
  • Can occur in universe in the third game of the Heroes Rise trilogy, should the player choose to romance Prodigal, the completely off her rocker villain from the first game, or to a lesser extent Jury, the jerk son of your arch nemesis. The game lampshades just how crazy this is.
    • In the second game of the Sequel Series, if you play your cards right, you can romance your player character from the previous games, provided you imported the save, and remained single after Herofallnote . There's even an achievement for it.
  • The Lufia series:
    • Aguro and Jerin from the first game. It doesn't help that they end up living together in the epilogue, but then again, almost all of their interactions are rather catty and Jerin looks like a child due to being half-elven.
    • Tia and Dekar in Lufia II, based solely on the one brief interaction the two of them have, when a heartbroken Tia permanently leaves the party and Dekar tries to console her. In the remake, Curse of the Sinistrals, they have more time together to the point of pairing up after Maxim and Selan's wedding.
    • Speaking of the remake, there's Tia/Iris, based on Iris offering to share a meal with Tia when the other party members are off with their lovers and Tia later mentioning that a statue of a beautiful woman (ironically Iris herself) isn't as pretty as Iris. Plus, it's not like you can have a Lufia game without a romance with the Sinistral of Death...
  • Guilty Gear: Since Xrd came out, a few people seem to like the idea of Ky's son Sin being with his co-ruler/war buddy, Leo Whitefang...
    • On the topic of Leo, there's a bit of art that pairs him off with Ramlethal, too.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's: Almost any animatronic pairings can potentially be considered this. Out of all the games in the franchise, there hasn't been any romantic interaction between the characters in any way.
    • And human ships are not immune either. Willry (William Afton/Henry Emily) is quite popular, despite the two being, respectively, a serial killer and the vengeful father of one of his victims.
  • Undertale:
    • Pretty much any pairing with W.D. Gaster. Why? Because he doesn't exist.
    • A tag glitch once resulted in "Sans" being listed as a pairing on one fanfic. Just, Sans, by himself. This became a fandom injoke, and Toby Fox even once joked that it was his favorite ship.
  • Life Is Strange:
    • Due to Schedule Slip, a few fans jumped onto Chloe/The Principal's Chair she wants to steal. Not to be outdone, there is Max and the Lamp she almost knocks over in Episode 1. They even have Portmanteau names! And, yes, there is fic.
  • OMORI: though it's mostly played for laughs, Hero/Something. Because, you know, Something is technically Mari?
  • Due to the nature of Overwatch most ships tend to fall into this category. For reference there four categories.
    • The "canon evidence supports the potential of this ship" category which is the smallest and only includes: any of the five founders with each other (Jack, Gabriel, Reinhardt, Torbjorn, and Ana), Reaper/McCree, Genji/Zenyatta, Junkrat/Roadhog, and (to a certain extent) Widowmaker/Tracer
    • The "they have in-game interactions, but the game isn't canon so it's kind of vague" category which includes ships like: McCree/Hanzo, Mei/Zarya, D.Va/Lucio, Hanzo/Widowmaker, Mercy/Reaper etc.
    • The "there is evidence to support that they know each other, but no actual confirmation" category which includes: McCree/Genji, Mercy/Pharah, Tracer/Genji, McCree/Sombra, basically any ship involving any former Overwatch members with another former member.
    • And of course the "there is literally nothing between these characters, yet they're still shipped" category which is the largest and includes ships such as: Junkrat/Symmetra, Mercy/Roadhog, Lucio/Genji, Symmetra/Pharah, Zarya/Mercy, etc.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • The franchise is... unique in the regard that a lot of the fanbase is both flexible and yet not flexible about shipping at the same time. Some religiously defend their favourites but others just sort of ship anything with anything else, either for a laugh or out of spite for another pairing.
    • Some more specific examples include Sonic/Vanilla, basically Anyone/Eggman, Tails/Tornado (his plane, for those unaware — though Sonic Boom played around with this for a while) and Sonic/...Classic Sonic, who is either his younger self OR from another dimension, depending on what thread you follow.
    • Some people claim that Sega was doing this when they paired Sonic and Princess Elise in Sonic 2006.
  • Yandere Simulator:
    • Ayano/Anyone not Taro Yamada (Budo is the most common), given that she's an extreme case of Single-Target Sexuality for him.
    • There's fan art of Midori/Flame Demon, stemming from popular Let's Player Jay from the Kubz Scouts' playthrough of the April Fool's Day fangame Burning Love, where he named the main character (who goes on a date with the Flame Demon) after her.
  • In Persona 5, due to the nature of Pair the Spares and the relative popularity of Ryuji/Ann and Yusuke/Futaba as Ship Mates to the MC and Makoto, Haru has a tendency to get paired up a lot with Akechi in the fandom. This is all despite the fact that in the actual game itself Akechi murders her father.
  • Pretty much every Metroid pairing is crack by definition, barring maybe the sharply unpopular Samus/Adam; the number of times Samus has interacted onscreen with someone human is pretty small. Samus/Rundas or Samus/Gandrayda are at least verging on possibility, but then there's Samus/Dark Samus or Samus/Ridley, where all their onscreen interactions are boss fights. Outside of Samus, one of the sillier pairings is Dark Samus/SA-X, both Evil Knockoff characters who are essentially deranged parasites in rough humanoid shapes, and being a Metroid and an X parasite, are basically designed to kill each other. But then again, that just means they have so much in common!
  • Fate/Grand Order fans are fond of these, with a particularly silly one being Artoria Lancer Alter and Florence Nightingale. While it does have canonical basis, the event where it was, er, "canonized" was also a Bizarro Episode where they were explicitly roleplaying as characters from Journey to the West. Nonetheless, the fact that it was one of the few times that Lalter got any characterization caused some to gleefully latch onto it.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! The Duelists of the Roses has many characters from the anime recast as historical figures from the War of the Roses. Whether intentional or not, Pegasus and Mai are cast as two figures who ended up marrying after the war.

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top