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One very clear way of showing it's The Future is to show that two corporations which nowadays are blood rivals have merged into a Mega Corp.

Played for dystopian drama, this may be a symptom of an Assimilation Plot or One Nation Under Copyright.

In the more distant future, this may also happen to countries, and in the even more distant future, to religions. The Big International Clubs may come into play here. Compare Japan Takes Over the World, China Takes Over the World, Mexico Called; They Want Texas Back. Contrast Balkanize Me and Divided States of America.

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Corporate examples:

• "Winux" (Windows Linux) from Sluggy Freelance
  • Funnier when you realize that, before Microsoft released DOS, they were a UNIX vendor.
• "Samsony" (Samsung Sony) from Schlock Mercenary
  • Of course, Sergeant Schlock's drug of choice being a powdery substance named Ovalqwik, one can infer that the brands Ovomaltine (Ovaltine in the US) and Nestle's Quik have also become a single entity.
  • There was also a reference to playing "Master Chief Mario" on a "WiiBox".
• Demolition Man: "Taco Bell was the only restaurant to survive the Franchise Wars. Now all restaurants are Taco Bell."
• In Fast Times at Fairmont High and Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge, the major entertainment conglomerates include Foxwarner and Spielberg/Rowling.
• The Onion article "All Corporations Merge Into OmniCorp."
• Of Thee I Sing mentions in the patter of "Love Is Sweeping The Country":
  Chevrolet and Ford
  Have felt this cosmic urging;
  They, with one accord,
  Have kissed and now are merging.
• Part of the plot of the novel The Demolished Man was when the head of one mega-corp suggested a merger with his main rival, and the answer he read was no.
• The Simpsons: Fictional companies Matsumoto Fishworks and Tamarabuchi Heavy Manufacturing Concern combined to create Mr. Sparkle dishwashing detergent, whose mascot looks just like Homer.
  • The episode Lisa's Wedding, set in the far-off world of 2010, has Kent Brockman working for "CNNBCBS: A Division of ABC". Fox, on the other hand, became a hardcore porn channel so gradually that nobody even noticed.
• Shadowrun had a few examples of this: Chrysler-Nissan, Daihatsu-Caterpillar, Federated Boeing (Boeing plus McDonnell Douglas, before it happened in Real Life), Fiat-Fokker, Honda-GM, Lear-Cessna, Messerschmidt-Kawasaki, Renault-Fiat and Sikorsky-Bell. Somewhat justified as the first Matrix Crash left all but the most powerful Mega Corps limping, and corporations either merged together in a desperate bid for survival or were swooped up by larger entities.
  • Its main competitor in Cyber Punk RPGs, Cyberpunk 2020, did this as well, though it tended to truncate names ("Toyo-san").
• Tech Infantry has various bits of military and other hardware manufactured either by totally fictional companies (XTRON Labs) or fictional mergers (Boeing Airbus and Sukhoi Grumman build space fighters, for example).
• In one Robert A. Heinlein book, there's Rolls-Skoda, specialists in the production of luxury armoured cars.
  • That's a slightly tenuous truth in that, as nowadays Volkswagen owns both Skoda and Bentley, the latter of which is basically the original Rolls-Royce car company (long since split from Rolls-Royce plc, who make aircraft engines and nowadays let BMW make cars bearing their name). VW also own Audi, Lamborghini, Bugatti and Seat - like the aforementioned General Motors, part of VW's growth over the years has been through buying various other car companies. (And luxury armoured cars are fairly common in the real world too - putting, say, a President in a non-armoured limo is just asking for trouble).
  • Another of his books refers to the "Montgomery Sears catalog." (if anyone remembers old Montgomery Wards)
  • And yet another refers to "Lockheed-Volkswagen" - referred to in the context of rental spaceships, but considering the component companies it probably manufactures ships as well.
• In the future of Marvel 2099, Stark industries was bought out by Japanese corporation Fujikawa, forming Stark-Fujikawa, one of the many Mega-Corporations of the setting. Recursively, Iron Man comics later established Fujikawa as a rival to Stark in The Present Day. The merger even happened in the present day, around the time that Iron Man was stuck in an alternate universe for a year, with Fujikawa CEO's daughter Rumiko becoming Tony's main love interest.
• The DCAU has Wayne-Powers from Batman Beyond.
• True to this trope's name: in Robert J. Sawyer's novel Rollback, Coca-Cola and Pepsi merged at some point in the mid-21st century. The protagonist was delighted he never had to hear a waiter ask apologetically "Is Pepsi okay?" ever again.
• In Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville, the main character passes himself off as a journalist for the Figaro-Pravda.
• Nancy Kress' Beggars In Spain makes extensive use of this trope. Two examples are Samsung-Chrysler and Kessler-Eagle (both manufacturers of motor scooters).
• The EG-R and Xios corporations from Wipeout Fusion merged into EG-X by the time of Wipeout Pulse.
• CHOAM in Dune by Frank Herbert. The Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles is THE corporation in the universe. It sells anything the Spacing Guild can transport (from rice and donkeys to whale fur and the all-important spice). Every House in the Imperium relies upon CHOAM directorship for profits and power.
• David Langford's spoof Ansible from 2095 mentions the publishers HarperCollinsGollanczHodderHeadlinePanPenguinTransworld and ArrowOrbitMillennium. Ironically, since then Gollancz, Hodder Headline, and Millennium have become part of the Orion Group (but then, Random House already owned Transworld and Arrow), suggesting two Coca-Pepsi imprints of one Coca-Pepsi company.
• In the Doctor Who Expanded Universe, Eurogen-Butler in the Bernice Summerfield novel Another Girl, Another Planet is a merger of the Butler Institute from the Virgin New Adventures novel Cat's Cradle: Warhead and Eurogen from the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Seeing I. It later becomes the Spinward Corporation, seen in the Virgin New Adventures novel Deceit.
• Alternate History example: in the Fringe alternate universe, Shell and Exxon have merged into Shexxon.

Real Life

• A Real Life example, or close to one, is how Sega and Nintendo now work closely together after their intense rivalry in the 90s.
• Another real-life example that surprised some people in the graphic design community: Adobe buying Macromedia.
• Boeing. Once there were dozens of major aviation companies in the US, now only Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and Northrop-Grumman exist.
• Check out General Motors. Most of its "divisions" are the various car companies it has absorbed over the years. Cadillac, Pontiac (originally Oakland), Buick, Opel, Vauxhall, and Holden were all once independent companies, and Daewoo was originally part of a different, South Korean Mega Corp.
  • Chrysler did a bit of the same thing, buying up Dodge from, well, Dodge, and Jeep from American Motors(which was bought from Kaiser Motors, which was also bought from Willys-Overland). And Chrysler itself has been subject to this, first as part of DaimlerChrysler (with Daimler-Benz) in The Nineties, and now as part of Fiat.
  • The auto industry also has a few other examples, including Nissan-Renault, and Volkswagen (which now includes Audi and Lamborghini).
    • Volvo is now owned by Geely Automobile Holdings, and MG by the Nanjing Automobile Group (both Chinese).
• Square Enix: It's right in the name.
  • Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden features the Mega Corp Square Enix Goya.
  • Activision Blizzard
• The two American satellite radio networks, XM and Sirius merged, becoming SiriusXM.
• The shipping companies Cunard (owner of the Lusitania) and White Star Line (owner of the Titanic), bitter rivals for the transatlantic travel during The Edwardian Era, merged in 1934 as a result of The Great Depression.
• The modern Macy's, Inc. is made of this trope, many times over. The Other Wiki lists 31 department store chains that were renamed Macy's...that doesn't count the stores that those chains had previously taken over (including historical rival Gimbels.) Many of them were beloved regional stores like Filene's, Rich's, Foley's and Burdines; many Marshall Field's customers still haven't gotten over it.
  • Of course, as many Midwesterners can attest, this was simply Marshall Field getting a taste of its own medicine (we of the Motor City remember Hudson's!).
  • It's even more complicated than that. The May Company merged with Federated, which then renamed the more lucrative May stores into the more well-known Kaufmanns. Federated then bought Macys and decided to take the now-Kaufmanns that were at this point more lucrative but less well known than Macys and rename them into Macys.
• World Wrestling Entertainment bought up both of its biggest '90s rivals, WCW and ECW, and though both former feds had an angle devoted to them (and ECW had a run as a WWE "brand", neither of them is extant in WWE now. The E has also bought up the rights to the tape libraries of virtually all the important territories in US wrestling as well, including former rival the AWA.
• With the planned AT&T and T-Mobile merger there will be only 3 remaining national cell phone carriers in the US.
  • The US government stepped in to prevent this, lest AT&T become too powerful, but as T-Mobile is drawing its last breaths, this is simply delaying the inevitable.
• Back in The Eighties there were two rival satellite broadcasters in the UK; Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB). Now, there is BSkyB.
• The Scottish football team Inverness Caledonian Thistle was formed in 1994 by a a merger between Inverness Thistle and Caledonian FC. Bitter rivals in the Highland League, they thought (correctly) it would increase their chances of entering the Scottish Third Division. They're now in the Scottish Premier League.

Religious examples:

• Dune has several examples of religious mergers: the Orange Catholic Bible implies a fusion of Catholicism and Protestantism, and it also has the Buddhislamic Zensunni, Zenshia and Zensufi sects.
  • Appendix II from the original clearly states that the Orange Catholic Bible was an effort of the Council of Ecumenical Translators which was made up of representatives of all faiths with more than a million followers. The result was supposed to be a universal (i.e. catholic) representation of beliefs. It was not well received. At first.
• Firefly is a subtle example, as the only explicitly religious ceremony it shows is a funeral which combines Christian and Buddhist elements, which may just be Artistic License - Religion.
• The Western Branch of American Reform Presbylutheranism from The Simpsons .
• Father Changstein El-Gamal of the First Amalgamated Church on Futurama.
• The Church of the Global Standard Deity (GSD for short) in the Thursday Next series.
• Pitch Black has 'Chrislam' pilgrims heading for the planet of New Mecca.
• Truth in Television: The United Church of Canada was formed by the merger of the Methodists, most of the Presbyterians, and the Congregationalists. A similar set-up occurred with the Uniting Church in Australia. In fact, uniting churches is quite common.
• In the Eppy/Orion era of Grendel, Christianity has been reunified under the Pope at Vatican Quest.
• Philip K. Dick was particularly fond of this: in several novels (notably The Divine Invasion) there was a merger between the Catholic Church and the Soviet Union in the backstory.
• The Life of Pi's main character, Piscine Molitor Patel, was born a Hindu but chooses to simultaneously practice both Islam and Christianity as he grows up. His reason: he "just wants to love God."
• Enigma Babylon One World Faith in the Left Behind books, which consists of Roman Catholicism merged with various Christian sects that would not hold to fundamentalist doctrine (as defined by the books' authors and the Tribulation Force characters) as well as other world religions.
• Andromeda has Wayism, founded by a Magog who found God and decided all religions were true.
• Pangaeism, the most politically correct religion ever, is briefly mentioned in Last Res0rt, apparently they have a minor holy war every time a new species is contacted and the scripture needs to be revised to include their mythology.

Geopolitical examples:

• An episode of The Simpsons mentions the 51st state of the United States, Saudi-Israelia.
  • Wasn't it called North Takoma, which is where Springfield is in?
• The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway has the United Island Kingdoms of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Cuba Libre (popularly known as Cubritannia).
• In the Fairly OddParents episode where Timmy wished that he was always right, Crocker asked him how many states there were and Timmy said 49. Suddenly, North and South Dakota reunited into one state.
  "The Dakotas have settled their differences!"
  • Amusingly enough, this has been seriously proposed should Puerto Rico or Washington, DC become a state.
• The CoDominium series features a future where the United States and Soviet Union decided to stop fighting and cooperate in carving up the planet (and then the galaxy) together. This, of course, had to get retconned after The Great Politics Mess-Up.
• The Alliance from the Firefly 'verse started out as an alliance between the United States and China.
• In the sci-fi book Skinned by Robin Wassermann, China and India have merged into Chindia.
• Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia in 1984.
  • Interestingly, it's been speculated that the truth is even more terrifying: The three powers may actually be one global superpower, and that the "war" is nothing but a fabrication to keep the population of the world constantly occupied with the war, and thus unable to form thoughts of rebellion. Of course, if that's true, it means that the government is in fact dropping bombs on its own citizens. Have fun sleeping tonight.
    • The opposite might also be true: "Oceania" may only comprise of the UK (or Airstrip One), as a sort of British quasi-North Korea.
• Shadowrun's UCAS - the United Canadian and American States.
  • Which is a combination of this trope and Balkanize Me - the US split apart somewhat, and parts of it reformed with Canada.
• The Weyland-Yutani Corporation from the Alien franchise is, according to Word Of God, meant to imply that England and Japan either merged or jointly rule in the future.
  • The film Alien vs Predator features Weyland Industries. The sequel Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem briefly shows a character named Ms. Yutani. A comic book or video game shows two businessmen deciding to merge their companies together, one is CEO of Weyland Industries and the other is an Asian man (presumably CEO of Yutani).
  • Alien Resurrection takes it further by mentioning Weyland-Yutani got bought out by Wal-Mart. No, seriously.
• At the end of the "Go God Go" episode of South Park, the world has done away with all -isms. However, there is still war, as "French-Chinese thinks they have the rights to Hawaii." (which means they still kept Imperialism, apparently)
  • I remember that episode, too, and took it as being that, even without "isms" to hide behind, people were still greedy and nations were still attacking one another. They simply weren't using excuses anymore.
• Capcom's video game series Strider is implied to be this: "Ah, Strider Hiryu! He will never leave Eurasia alive!"
• In the sci-fi webcomic Starslip, the crew is sent to explore a Ghost Ship that once belonged to the "Canamerexican Alliance". The comic is set so far in the future that this conglomeration is now just a part of their ancient history, having given way to global and interstellar governments.

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