Shipping beyond all bounds of sanity. There are official couples and there are couples drawn from more-or-less subjective subtext, and then there are pairings that make you go "HOOBA JOOBA WHAAAA?!" Characters who are shipped together despite barely even having a relationship in canon. Sometimes they haven't even met in canon. Sometimes they don't even belong to the same'verse (that's what Crossovers are for, after all) or to the same species. Sometimes they aren't even both carbon-based lifeforms.
Crack pairings range from the making-you-scratch-your-head-in-puzzlement weird, to the eyes-gouging-with-a-fork-inducing weird. But they always leave you asking "Why? By all that is holy, WHY?"
Reasons for writing crack pairing fan works varies. It might be in order to clean up romantic loose ends by bringing together characters left alone, or to erase the memory of a particularly squicky canon pairing. They might be the result of people genuinely searching for a good personality match, or drawing parallels between two characters for whatever reason. A good number are the results of freeform roleplaying . Perhaps they took it on as a challenge to prove they could make it work. Or maybe they did it on a dare. Most often, though, the insanity itself is its own justification, especially to poke fun at more hardcore fans. It can get worryingly serious though... like they actually believe it could happen...
Occasionally, when a fanfic writer gets hold of a crack pairing and makes it convincing enough, that ship gains a following and can even become very popular. It's even been known to influence The Powers That Be.
While crack pairings may show up in crack fics, the two are not necessarily related. A Crack Pairing could very well be treated in a dead serious and realistic way, and a Crack Fic could be gen, or only about traditional pairings.
Note that when characters do have some kind of relationship, no matter how unhealthy, insane or weird their pairing would be, it doesn't count as crack pairing. Contrast with Ho Yay, Foe Yay, No Yay, Twincest, Brother-Sister Incest and even Parental Incest for examples of ships which you may find weird but which are not crack pairings...
For an entire LJ community dedicated to particularly squicky crack pairings, behold VeryWrongSlash, which needs no further explanation.
If one wants to create his/her own Crack pairing (or just wants to see some pairings that may not yet have been added to this page), use the Brain-Hurting Pairer Generator.
See Crossover Ship for shipping characters who don't belong to the same verse. See Cargo Ship for shipping objects. Compare with Ships That Pass In The Night.
Examples should be limited to specific stories, preferably with links, lest the page be overrun with every pairing that has ever crossed anybody's mind.
Warning! There is a strong possibility that you may feel disturbed when reading these examples. Bring some Brain Bleach handy, just in case.
Examples:
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There's Mac/PC slash out there. Yes, from the Apple commercials. It's John Hodgman and Justin Long having sex, except they have computer ports and plugs instead of human orifices. Aren't you sad you asked now?
Naruto is the single most popular source material for anime fanfic on fanfiction.net with nearly a quarter of a million fics. Given its Loads and Loads of Characters and plenty of hints towards potential romance but extremely rare actual commitment, it's been the source of a firestorm of shipping with many stories pairing ships in parallel fleets across the cast. While fandom seems to put its most strenuous support behind Naruto/Sasuke, Naruto/Hinata, Sasuke/Sakura, and Naruto/Sakura, several crackish pairs with little to no canon interaction have become somewhat popular.
People like to ship Naruto with Ino and Anko due to some similarities in character despite only minimal interaction in canon. An arranged, political marriage is often the device for shipping with Temari and Mei Terumi Naruto doesn't interact much with Tenten either, but people like to make up a shared background as orphans. There are also many fics with him and Tayuya, Hanabi, and Yugito despite never once saying a word to any of these characters. All of these pairings have 100+ or even 1000+ fics, but you can safely say that if a character is female, Naruto has been shipped with her. Or if not, we'll just make the character female, as with the Kyuubi or the androgynousHaku. Or we'll just make Naruto female and ship her with the guys. Or we'll keep him male and still ship him with Itachi of all people or Kakashi.
To show you how much Naruto can be an Author Avatar for some writers, there are 30 fanfics featuring the minor character Samui on fanfiction.net. 26 of the 30 have her paired with Naruto.
And then there's all the Gary Stu / Harem fics in which Naruto is shipped with every single woman over 20 in the show, regardless of the fact that he's 12-16. Anko is obligatory, and members can reach up in age to even Tsunade.
Sakura and Kakashi are almost a mainstream pair at this point despite no romantic tension in canon and a large age difference. Sakura also gets a huge amount of villain-shipping. When she's not with all of Akatsuki, she's often with Itachi, Deidara, or Sasori. On the good guy side, Neji, Gaara, Shikamaru and Kiba are common ships as well as going yuri or threesome with Ino. In short, if a character is male, Sakura has been shipped with him. If a character is female and either her age or from Leaf Village, she's probably been shipped with her too.
Sasuke's signature, semi-popular crack ship (outside of his main yaoi pairings) is with Hinata, who he never once speaks to and who is the only girl in his class that wasn't interested in him. This is often why he goes for her in the first place.
Kakashi gets shipped with Iruka very often despite them only haven spoken in an argument over the chunin exams. He also ends up with Anko a fair share as a secondary pair despite them never talking. (The latter is likely because, until recently, there were few females anywhere near his age in canon at all.)
If it doesn't work, make itIruka / Anko (often as background pairing instead of the main one). If you read most fic in the Fan Fic Recommendations page, you will get the idea.
There are an awful lot of fics that suggest Anko and Kurenai once had a thing or experimented.
When Gaara isn't paired off with Naruto or Sakura, he can be seen with Hinata for some strange reason.
Konohamaru and Hanabi have never been in a scene together and are 1-2 years in age apart, but commonly show up as a side pairing in fics.
Fics pairing him with Hinata are getting common as well, especially as a side pairing in fics involving Time Skips.
Despite having an extremely close relationship with Choji in the manga, you are more likely to find Shikamaru in yaoi fics with Neji, Naruto, and Kiba.
From Suzumiya Haruhi, there's the curiously semi-popular Kyon/Asakura pairing◊. Asakura (a humanoid interface like Nagato) is deleted partway through the first novel, you see, after trying to kill Kyon to provoke a reaction in Haruhi. It gets better. In The Disappearance Of Haruhi Suzumiya, Kyon winds up in an Alternate Universe where everything is "normal" and winds up getting stabbed by her again near the end, this time for trying to return the world to the way it was ("That was the reason why I was created."). Yandere-fandom, anyone?
Saving Kyon from Suou with a Big Damn Heroes moment, a knife-wielding arm over his shoulder and her mouth directly at the nape of his neck whispering "This human is my prey. If you mean to take him away from me, why, I'd rather do this" probably fuels this pairing quite a bit. It also makes her a lot creepier and Yandere.
Some re-imaginings of the first incident involve her trying a different tactic. Haruhi nearly remade the world for catching Asahina playfully pushing against Kyon's back; one can hardly imagine what might happen if she caught him doing something more. It is the obvious, sane choice and likely the one she would've made if she'd only thought of it. You can easily imagine Kyon talking her into it out of self-preservation.
Taniguchi/Kuyou, anyone? It actually happened in the tenth book.
Fanon is quite clear on how the Grand Finale plays out: Only Anya and Orange are shown in the ORANGE GROVE because of the "fact" that Sayoko is back at the house cooking for her dear husband and their adopted daughter. Or scaring off thieves and birds eating/stealing the fruits with her l33t Ninja Maid skillz and then joining her little family at home for a nice dinner.
The Pokémon fandom made a sport of it, with Loads and Loads of Characters and fewer canon ships than you can count on one hand. Fans would spend plenty of time thinking up interesting pairings, giving them clever names, and adding them to a large list. ElderShipping (Ash's Mom/Professor Oak) was probably the most popular, until one wondered if they were hitting on each other in canon. And these ships were not just for humans - Pokémon were used frequently, too. At one point, there was even a subsection for shippings with inanimate objects.
The inanimate object thing makes perfect sense. After all, who HASN'T been inside of Master Ball?
There are 649 Pokémon currently released. There are effectively 210,276 possible 2-member pairings.
To put it in even greater perspective, this is a series that has been going on for 13 years and more than 2/3 of the episodes have a Character Of The Week. Every single one of them has at least two pairings.
Particularly popular is AltoShipping, which is Ash/Latias (the latter being a jet-dragon-Olympus Mons thing). The reason for this that the 5th movie implied (but not confirmed) Latias to have holographically disguised itself as a girl around Ash's age and kissed him, making it Ash's first kiss. Latias has since been portrayed in some fanfiction and/or fanart, some NSFW, as constantly lustfully thinking of Ash. This pairing is at war with MareShipping, which pairs Ash up with Bianca (no, not that one), the girl Latias likes to disguise itself as, who believe that it really is Bianca and not Latias.
Digimon Adventure has a few memetic crack pairings. Takeru/Holsmon and Iori/BlackWarGreymon come to mind. A very popular crack pairing in the early days of the fandom was Yamato/Mimi (Mimato). Despite their both liking music and occasionally standing next to each other, they have never had an on-screen conversation. Ever since the second season dropped their love-bombs, however, Digimon fans have enjoyed writing crack pairings and seeing how many they can make work.
Most ships within the fandom would undoubtedly qualify. Most pairings consist of slash, incest, Foe Yay, or any combination of these. It doesn't stop there either. There are pairings like Iggy/Polnareff and Dio/Steamroller.
Giorno/Jolyne, who not only have never met in canon, but are also blood related. There's even official artwork◊ of this one.
CLAMP took the cake when they massively shipped Jotaro/Kakyoin with the creation of Jota: their son who hatched from an egg.
Generally anything involving Sailor Pluto while questioning the paternity of Chibiusa will have you reaching for the Brain Bleach. There's also Minako/Rei, which is based on a manga chapter in which Minako asks Rei if she farts.
Minako/Rei could also be based on the live-action series, where there is considerable subtext between the two of them. Part of the problem with Sailor Moon is that there are so many different versions of it, each with their own canons, that everything (save the obviously ridiculous) is somehow plausible in at least one continuity or another.
Yu-Gi-Oh! is the shonen form of Sailor Moon in twisted ships. There's the so-called "Hikari/Yami" pairing. A frequent ship is Kaiba/Shizuka (Serenity), based on one line that Kaiba may or may not have said to Shizuka. This when Kaiba doesn't even know who Shizuka is; even if he weren't already in love with a card, he'd reject her on principle for being Jonouchi/Joey's sister, someone who he can't stand (Then again...). But probably hands down the weirdest pairing is Asuka/Judai's TOWEL. (A towel he wore in the Hot Springs Episode). It's become a bit of a running gag.
There is even a pairing called Unlikelyshipping for crying out loud! It`s Marikx Insector/Weevil. They never met and even if they did, there would be little evidence that they liked each other...
Gunsmith Cats has possibly the first canon crack pairing ever with the latest volume of Gunsmith Cats Burst having Misty and Iron Goldie Musou end up together by the end. In a threesome with the maid, no less.
There exists a niche fanbase amongst watchers of Gundam Seed Destiny that ship Shinn and Cagalli together, citing that their personalities would have meshed very well if he hadn't blamed Orb for his family's death.
Thanks to the fact that the characters are all countries, even the canon pairings in Axis Powers Hetalia could qualify as crack. Then read the history of each nation and it's not too hard to come up with some reason for a romantic pairing for each and every single pairing.
Canada/Prussia started as this and is a good example as they have one canon interaction which wasn't even in the "story" of the series. Then we discovered the presence of New Prussia in Canada and things really took off.
Turkey/Iceland became popular after the two were shown hanging out together during the 2010 Christmas event.
In the Baccano! visual novel, you can choose an option for Ladd and Claire to get married. Yes, Ladd and Claire.The 2 psycho for hires who hate each other can get married.
What makes this even more insane, when you think about it, is that they are getting married in New York in 1931. Not only is this 80 years too early to be legal, homosexual activity was a misdemeanor at the time, punishable by up to 3 months in prison. Do either of these guys really want the police snooping around their backgrounds?
Are you kidding? A bunch of people who don't think they're going to die and also contradict Claire's vague sense of morality. That's practically a wedding present.
In the Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle Italian fandom, Shaoron/Yuui (the twin brothers of two of the protagonists in the Alternate Universe omakes) started out as this. Then the pairing caught on (with the help of some very willing fanwriters and pretty Japanese fanart◊), and it's now considered on par with the series' main ships- in Italy, of course. We are waiting for the right time to export it and conquer the world.
Hellsing has Alucard/everyone, only fueled by Word Of God that declared him genderless. And of course, there's Schrodinger/Incognito here.
It's not that he's genderless - it's that he can be anygender he wants. Either way, Alucard is biologically male, considering his previous status as Vlad Tepes. So not every pairing of his can be considered 'crack'.
In canon, both Walker and Erika are total crack shippers. Pairings they've wrote include (but are no way limited to) Kadota/Chikage, Erika/Kadota (with BDSM), Shizuo/Izaya, Kadota/Walker (as butlers), Walker/Girls, Female!Kadota/Girls, Shizuo/Kadota/Izaya (you may be sensing a trend here), Fans/Trolls, CDs/DVDs...
Another bizarre canon example occurs in the epilogue, where it's heavily implied that Hakase marries Kurt Godel, whom she'd never met in the main story.
One of those yuri fans seems to be the series's character designer/creator, Ume Aoki.
As of late, Sayaka and Homura seems to be parred together... which seems fine, except Homura attempted to kill Sayaka once and the two simply don't get along in cannon.
One can always just screw the pre-Madokami timelines and be totally at peace.
While there are not too many crack-ships that are super popular from Dragon Ball Z, the writers from the DBZ kink meme seem to be trying their hardest to increase the popularity of crack-pairings. Some examples are:
Marron/Maron (as in pairing up Krillin's daughter with Krillin's ex-girlfriend):1
Bulma/Future Bulma1 (Note that Trunks/Future Trunks also exists, just not on that meme. 1)
There’s also the ever-popular Android 17/Krillin/Android 18 123
Actually, all of Dr. Gero's creations seem to like Krillin 12
It should be noted that most of these stories have parts that are not safe for work. Also, there are even more pairings on the meme that can be considered crack pairings.
Piccolo/ChiChi seems to be rather popular on FFnet for some reason (second entry NSFW). 12
The Neon Genesis Evangelion fandom has Kaworu/Rei. Why is this a crack pairing? Because Kaworu is gay for Shinji in canon, so seeing him in love with someone of the opposite sex is very odd.
Well, Kaworu isn't actually human. It's unlikely he has any idea of sexuality, or if Angels/Clones have sexualities to begin with, so it's entirely possible he could fall for Rei. However, this is still a crack pairing. Why? Because he's an Angel, she's a clone born from Lilith, and the two interact in only few scenes (and that's includingEnd).
This Shinji/Kyoko fic takes arguably Up to Eleven. Why is that? Because it's Shinji with Asuka's mother, a Posthumous Character whose only scene was basically hanging herself in front of Asuka as child.
Comic Books
Three NSFW words: Goofus. Slash. Gallant. Note that as far as vague canon is concerned, they might as well be Parallel Universe versions of each other. Since they're in the same universe - consider Goofus Gallant's Evil Twin.
Loki from the Thor comics/movie rapes and tortures Sam Winchester from Supernatural. There is an in-verse explanation for why Sam is there, but this is still completely cracktastic. The fact that it has good reviews and multiple chapters is even more disturbing. So sorry for this.
In DC Nation, Word of God states the entire in-game universe came about due to a crack ship. The universe started as a varient strand of Hypertime (the old DC concept of a multi-verse) that kept attracting variences and it was easy for characters to find themselves in alternate realities. Starfire found a lover in one of these off-shoot realities and brought him home. The lucky gent? A version of Hugo Weaving who had been fated to die in a car accident, but instead ended up in the equivalent of multi-verse's train stop cafe. After he arrived, the universe threw up its proverbial hands trying to make this strand of reality fit with mainline DC, thus creating its own world. (It also makes all those comic book movies that much more amusing to the players.)
The Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comics had a joke scene where Omega acted like he was practically falling in love with Blaze after he saw her using her fire powers to blow stuff up (which also acted as his Crowning Moment of Funny). Ian Flynn said that this was just a joke and there wasen't any possible relationship there. Unfortunately for Flynn, the fans fell in love with it. For context, Omega (full name E-123 Omega) is one of Dr. Eggman's robots bent on revenge against the doc, and Blaze the Cat is a princess from a dimension on turmoil with no time for romance.
In an interview concerning the then-upcoming crossover between the Sonic comic and Archie's own Mega Man comic, Kotaku asked Flynn if there's "any animal/human kissing in the crossover". Flynn answered, "Yes. Hot Amy-on-Wily action." He, of course, admitted he was kidding.
Film
Bumblebee/Sam, which even has their own live journal community, as does Ironhide/Lennox, with Barricade/Sam and Optimus Prime/Sam also having a small following. No, it doesn't matter that the robots are several times their human partners size, and have a completely different reproduction process, fans of the ships have found ways around these pesky little details.
Many of the pairings on the Star Trek XI kink meme. Honorable mention include McCoy/Sarek, Amanda Grayson/Winona Kirk, Sarek/Winona Kirk, Gaila/Uhura, and Chekhov/EVERYBODY. Not to mention Au!Kirk/Spock Prime.
The movie 'A Warrior's Heart' may seem like this for Twilight fans as it pairs up the actors who Alice and Emmett
Literature
The Harry Potter fandom is chock full of them. Doesn't matter how minor the characters are, or how biologically impossible various acts would be. If they exist, they will be shipped. For instance, Hagrid/Dobby and Dobby/Giant Squid.
My Immortal is the undisputed king of this. It includes Hermione/Neville, Snape/Lupin, and Voldermort/Hedwig.
Try Dumbledore/Mrs. Norris!! Added bit of horror when you think about what the elder wand looks like.
The DangerverseAlternate Universe series has mostly canon and OC pairings, but also contains Charlie/Tonks and Draco/Luna.
When Daniel Radcliffe hosted SNL they did a Harry Potter sketch set ten years into the future where Hagrid marries Luna!
Luna: "He's huuuuuge!"
From Mock the Week, "Unlikely Lines from the Final Harry Potter Book":
"I'm sorry, Harry, I'm having a baby, and it's yours," said Professor McGonagall.
German fanfiction author Ramuthra has a penchant for these, as examplified by her various oneshots, which range from Snape/Neville to Dudley/Luna, Grindlewald/Marge Dursley and Goyle/Harry.
Three Slytherin Marauders has Snape/Rosemerta the barmaid, Lucius Malfoy/Petunia Dursley, Dudley Dursley/Padma Patil, and the young Tom Riddle from the diary/Nymphadora Tonks.
Somewhere on Adultfanfiction.net a author has written two fics about a relationship between Faramir and Shagrat (an Uruk and captain of the guard of Cirith Ungol, the one who found Frodo in Shelob's lair). Actually, very well written.
Some Discworld fan has written Greebo/Rincewind slash. Fortunately with Greebo in human form. While it's only been done once, it keeps being brought up in discussions of Discworld fanfic.
A bet on whether it was possible to write Discworld slash resulted in a Death/Librarian pairing. And it was hilarious.
Similar circumstances resulted in a Luggage/Rincewind. And it was also hilarious.
Death/Vetinari. It's very Victorian and almost in-character. Adorable.
Vetinari/Susan. They've never actually met in the books, but it could work. Here's an example. Ignore the typo in the title, the fic's pretty good.
While the words "pairing" and "HP Lovecraft" might not sound like something that should ever be mentioned together, August Derleth most certainly did; he paired several Lovecraft's gods with each other and his own creations, creating a convoluted family tree. One particular example stands out: according to Derleth, Cthulhu is the spawn of Yog-Sothoth and Nub, one of Lovecraft's less-known gods. That's not particularly odd, if it weren't for the fact that Nub is a spawn of Shub Niggurath mentioned above. Which presumably makes Yog-Sothoth her father. Yes, you heard me, incestous Eldritch Abominations. You may want to grab the Brain Bleach, lest you Go Mad From The Revelation.
Bizarrely, this also makes Wilbur and his brother Cthulhu's uncles.
Clark Ashton Smith, one of Lovecraft's frequent correspondents and another of the original Cthulhu Mythos writers, also produced a "family tree of the gods" (which can be found here). Also, in Lovecraft's story The Dunwich Horror, Yog-Sothoth (an omnipresent superbeing which appears as a mass of spheres) has two children with a human woman. Squicky.
Katniss/Haymitch has gained a fairly significant following in the Hunger Games fandom. Fan reaction seems to be split between finding it awesome Foe Yay or horrifying No Yay.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians has a couple: Thalia/Nico (kind of impossible given she's an eternal maiden), Rachel/Nico and Leo/Lou Ellen.
The Young Wizards fandom has imagined Nita/Ed. No, really.*
Well, technically shark!Nita/Ed. Yeah.
Les Misérables has multiple crack pairings for most of the characters who are younger than 30 years old by the end of the book, not even getting into the slash pairings among Les Amis del'ABC. The most common crack ship here is Enjolras/Eponine; never mind if Enjolras' only passion is his country, and Eponine is in love with someone else.
Live Action TV
Heroes crackships range from the ridiculous to the truly disturbing, and include: Bobhinder (Bob/Mohinder); Chylar (Chandra/Sylar); Chailar (Chai/Sylar); Lyle/West; Lyle/Zach; West/Zach; Moluggles (Mohinder Lizard/Mister Muggles); Mandra (Mohinder/Chandra)(yes, this is the latter); Chandra/Eden; Chandra/HRG and Chandra/Monty. Yes, Monty. Apparently this is because of the portmanteau name "Chonty". Poor Chandra has gained a posthumous reputation as a pervy old man. Also, there are rumours of a Lyle/Sylar fic out there somewhere... (Here it is). There's also Luke/Lyle. Perhaps there's Micah/Wireless.
The Heroes Slash Manual is an authoritative guide to many things slash in the Heroes universe. It should be noted that "one day" every character will maintain a romantic relationship with Kaito Nakamura, and that Sylar is Mr. Muggles' bitch.
It's possible Frankie Boyle was just making it up, but he claims there's Mock the WeekSlash... and it pairs him and Hugh Dennis.
Such a thing does indeed exist, and while Frankie/Hugh is one of if not the most common pairing (thus not really a crack pairing as far as the fandom are concerned), it's by no means the only one. There's even an LJ community devoted to it.
There were lots of pairing on House MD of varying degrees of crackiness, but some of the canon ones were pretty weird too.
Cameron started off with a thing for House. They went on a date, because she basically blackmailed him into it. He was relatively cordial (for House), but he also made it clear he wasn't interested in pursuing it. By the end of the series, she not only didn't want to date House anymore, but her stated reason for divorcing Chase was that he'd become "toxic just like House." (And her evidence for this is that he did something she wanted to do but didn't have the guts to actually carry out. Amber may have been Cutthroat Bitch, but Cameron was definitely the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.)
Speaking of Amber, Wilson/Amber seemed pretty contrived both to viewers and to House, to the extent that he assumed she was dating Wilson in the hopes that if she was around, House would end up hiring her as one of his fellows.
Lucas/Cuddy was a canon crack pairing. Lampshaded as such in-universe; other characters' reactions to it varied from indifference to disbelief to (in House's case) actively trying to break them up because it was such a bad match.
Fourteen (Foreman/Thirteen) was actually referred to by that name in-universe at least once.
House/Cuddy was pretty popular among fans. The writers decided to show how that would actually work (not all that well).
House/Wilson was also fairly popular among fans. The last few episodes established the Heterosexual Life Partners version of this as more or less true.
Thirteen/Cameron is another popular pairing that could be considered crack, due to them having little to no interaction in canon.
Victorious explored Jade/Andre, which would probably rank at 2nd most cracky ship in the main cast behind Jade/Robbie. Including all the Les Yay and Ho Yay ships.
Glee dedicated two episodes just to descontruct crack pairings: "Laryngitis" had Mercedes/Puck and Brittany/Kurt, "Funk" had Will/Sue with hints of Terri/Finn.
Make that four, with an out of nowhere episode involving Blaine and Rachel.
Season 3 has a few: First there was Puck/Shelby and also Artie/Becky. The former worked out much better.
"Props" was full of them even though they were just a hallucination. We had Tina and Kurt (As Rachel and Finn), Finn and Puck (As Kurt and Blaine), Rachel and Joe (As Tina and Mike) and Mercedes and Artie (As Brittany and Santana)
Gossip Girl has a canonCrack Ship. Rufus Humphrey and Lisa Loeb. Yes. The one-hit wonder singer. She was in an episode early in the show's run, got name dropped a couple more times, and in a flashforward her and Rufus are together.
In the Community episode "Romantic Expressionism", Jeff says that the reason why they are not like a normal family is that there is nothing stopping them from dating each other. Followed by a long sequence of Ship Tease suggestive glances between all of the characters, which include such crazy pairings as Abed/Britta, Troy/Shirley and Abed/Pierce.
In a rather notorious episode of Pee-Wee's Playhouse, Pee Wee marries a fruit salad.
In the Merlin fandom, everyone is paired with everyone else, but this pairing still managed to be crack. Morgause and Sir Leon (or Moron, as the pairing is called) haven't even really met each other... They've just met each other's armies. And yet It Makes Sense in Context.
Really cracked when you consider that Susan is heavily implied to be dead.
But that's the beauty of Time Travel...Jenny could just go back to a time when Susan was still alive...
Just when you the Criminal Minds fandom was relatively normal, they come up with stuff like Reid/Maps and UnSub/BAU Member. In case you are wondering, the Reid/Map pairing has got a very dedicated and growing following.
Part of Once Upon A Time fandom was shipping Sleeping Hook (Captain Hook/Aurora) not just before his debut episode, but from the very beginning of the second season. Never mind that they had no real interaction until the eighth episode at which point things veered straight into Mind Game Ship territory when he ripped her heart out to control her—although he did give it back.
The shipping isn't helped by the fact that the actor and actress have been semi-romantically linked on TV before, on The Tudors: Aurora as Princess Mary Tudor and Hook as a German prince who came to England to woo her.
Ever since the season two finale where it was revealed that Hook spent some time genuinely bonding with Baelfire as a father figure, there has been a lot of Hook/Baelfire fics coming out.
Earlier in season one, Mary Margaret (Snow White) went on a date with Dr. Whale. Come season two, it's discovered that Dr. Whale is actually Dr. Frankenstein.
Tabletop Games
Basically encouraged in Exalted. One of the more prominent examples given is the epic romance of a sentient forest made of mirrors and a black hole shaped like a giant boar.
Apparently not completely blasphemy, as there are some old 2nd edition rule books describing a half-Eldar. Of course, 2nd edition has been almost entirely retconned by now...
The above could still never compare to the Macha/Emperor of Mankind ship that was spawned later, especially considering Macha's existence is based on the Memetic Mutation that she will never get laid, ever.
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'salotofit,too. However what may be the most insane of them all is Kirby and Katy Perry[10]
There are 78 possible pairings within Organization XIII, without throwing Namine into the mix, and there's a legion of fangirls behind every single one.
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 NO NO NO MAKE IT STOP (Robo/Lucca; Crono/Magus; Magus/Queen Zeal; any pairing involving Lavos).
One gag-ending states that Queen Leene married Frog. It causes Marle to scream.
I give you Magus/Schala, Young!Janus/Schala, Magus/Queen Zeal, and Queen Zeal/Lavos all in one story. Enjoy the Brain Bleach. Strangely, its not pulled off in a cracky way, but its meant to be serious, and actually is...its not humorous at all, and actually more depressing for the characters, because its almost believable.
There's Pit/Samus. Yes, an angel and a bounty hunter paired with each other is weird. This may be because of the fact that the original Metroid and the original Kid Icarus'' shared a Game Engine.
This pairing goes as far as to ship Link with Soren, who was never in SSB to begin with, and so only people who play (or read about) Fire Emblem would know who he is. This is made more egregious by the fact that most of these people also ship Ike/Pit, when they have all the materials they need to ship the already fairly reasonable pairing, Ike/Soren. This link is one of the tame ones.
The fanfic Luigi's Other Experiment[11] is full of these. Nana/Yoshi, Bowser/Mario/Peach, Mewtwo/Zelda, Ness/Samus/Young Link/Peach, Kirby/Jigglypuff, Roy/Peach, Fox/Samus, Marth/Samus, Captain Falcon/Samus, implied Samus/Mewtwo, Roy/Peach, Yoshi/Mario, Pikachu/Pichu, Young Link/Link, Donkey Kong/himself and Popo/Nana, amognst others.
By the same author as above, Jigglypuff/Nana[12] Note that the author claims she doesn't mean for it to be crack.
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.
And what is possibly the crackiest pairing ever conceived.
Game FAQS's Lost Age forum, in keeping with the "Kraden is the most awesome character ever" fad, has shipped Kraden with himself, stating that Kraden is too awesome to ship with anyone else.
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.
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.
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.
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. Examples given on the Troper Tales page 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).
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 shoved the entire 7th game's playable cast into it to produce the pairings for a fanfic.
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 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 littlestrange as the Fear aged from his very prettyyoung form into... whatever he is in Metal Gear Solid 3.
Then we have the four swords pairings. Some of which being Blue/Red, Blue/Vio, Vio/Shadow, and Shadow/Vaati.
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, 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.
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 fanfic The Translation In Blood ships Spacer Shepard's mother, Rear Admiral Hannah Shepard, with Councilor Sparatus.
From Warcraft story Vrykul a 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. Its 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.
Stumbled upon this fic by the same author of the creepy Tirion/A'dal slash fic. And OH DEAR GOD HELP ME!. Deathwing rapes Alexstrasza's dead body, and then rapes Thrall. The crackiest Warcraft fic ever. Despite the horrid things that happen in this fic, it strangely has a happy ending. Enjoy trying to sear this out of your mind.
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 Azuregos is an ancient dragon, and the Spirit Healer is a spirit thingie which exists only in the realm of the dead to resurrect dead players. Azuregos got sick of being killed over and over by the players, so one day he decided to stay in the dead realm with his beloved Spirit Healer. It's a long story.
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 if the two came into contact.
For those not in the know, Cloud Of Darkness and Exdeath are both Eldritch Abomination servants of the void, and both are technically genderless despite taking on humanish forms. Their pre-battle dialogue and some screentime they have together also says they have contrasting ideals of what the void really is, and don't like each other for said reason
There's a story on FF.net that's within 'The Dreamer fandom that ships Beatrice Whaley/Alexander Hamilton. It's actually very well written. Can be viewed here.
The sprite comic Akuma TH features several "official" in-universe pairings that would fall under this, but the most notable has got to be the pairing of Sonic the Hedgehog and Wendy Koopa.
Following Dora and Marten's breakup in Questionable Content, a vigorous thread on the QC forum is shipping him with everyone from Hannelore and Marigold to Amir and Yelling Bird.
And now Jack/Jade actually has canon evidence. (Though admittedly, it's more of a master/dog than boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, entirely due to the influence of Becquerel's prototyping.
Then there's the canon crack pairing: the aforementioned Colonel Sassacre was married to Betty Crocker, who in Homestuck is/was apparently the Troll Empress.
Multiple people ended up creating either crack pairing generators or fics entirely dedicated to crack pairings, one per chapter.
As one of the bonuses for the HomestuckKick Starter, people who bought a certain reward tier were given two random embroidered patches associated with two random characters. According to the author of the comic, the pairing associated with the two random patches you receive "is your officially designated OTP". Naturally, this could result in the donor being locked into some pretty weird matchups like Jane/Eridan or Equius/Calliope, officially, forever.
Roxy/Dirk's Auto-Responder is actively referred to, by Dirk's Auto-Responder, as this.
"I'm just a goblin, standing in front of a clown, asking her to love him. What's so complicated about that?"
Disney World Of War has many crack ships, mainly because it is a massive crossover of the Disney Classics and Pixar. Some crack ships that are canon are Pangel (Patch from 101 Dalmatians and Angel from Lady and the Tramp 2), Scatani (Scamp from Lady and the Tramp 2 and Vitani from Lion King 2) and Berlielle (Berlioz from the Aristocats and Danielle from Lady and the Tramp 2).
The biggest crack ship, bordering on outright Squick, is Sarafina (Lion King)/ Reuben (Lilo and Stitch)! There has been many debates on whether this is the work of a Troll or if Sarafina's player is just bonkers.
From The Runaway Guys' Mario Party 2 Let's Play, after Chuggaaconroy makes a pun involving jinxing things and the Pokémon Jynx, a remark from Nintendo Capri Sun caused Proton Jon to request fanart shipping Chugaa X Jynx. Chuggaa does something similar later though, after noticing the AI controlled Wario being paired up with Jon in minigames a lot, he requests Jon X Wario fanart.
Ladies and gentlemen, we (a word which here means "Cracked") regrettably present: Professor Snape and The Teletubbies. And four other pairings that seem perfectly normal by comparison.
In Avatar The Last Airbender fandom, there's a whole community dedicated to the love of Zhao (as in Admiral Zhao) and Hahn (as in Princess Yue's fiance who appears in the S1 finale). Their only interaction was Hahn trying to ambush Zhao after disguising himself as one of Zhao's soldiers, but ruining it by loudly announcing his attempts to kill "Admiral Choy", then being casually thrown off the ship. In their own words:
A minor running gag on 4chan's Comics and Cartoons board: Foamy Mouth Guy and Freestyle Kid (the kid who danced in his own distinct manner in Season 3 episode The Headband), affectionately named "Foamstyle".
Some (Not saying any names)LiveJournal communities make a goal of finding the biggest crackships in the fandom. So far there's Yue/Chong, Appa/Momo, Appa/Bosco, and so forth. They occasionally even shipped them with members of the production crew... which one of them stumbled onto.
Oh, please - CAPSLOCK_ATLA has gotten way crackier than those ships. Ba Sing Se/The Drill, Aang's old glider/Aang's new glider, Roku/Volcano, Mako/Mako's scarf, The Cabbage Merchant/cabbages, the owlcat from "Tales of Ba sing Se"/the owlcat from "The Puppetmaster", Joo Dee/Ozai, Jet/Zhao (although that one kind of makes sense, seeing as how they're both dead)... the list goes on and on and on.
And if you can't decide what crack ship to support, consult the wheel of shipping.
While probably not the most crackiest pairing in the fandom, Azutara (Azula/Katara) deserves mentioning as it is not as uncommon as you would think. This shows quite well (albeit in a rather funny manner) what fans like about it, y'know, besides the 'Two lovely ladies getting it on' factor.
Zuko/Lt. Jee has a surprisingly devoted fanbase.note Wait, you don't remember who Lt. Jee is? He's this guy,◊ the one who yelled at Zuko for wanting to sail into the storm. Despite the fact that Jee had about four minutes of screen time, there has been a ship week, one WIP long fic of incredible quality, and a few other small fics and illustrations scattered across the fandom. This pairing seems to be unusual in that the fanworks for it are all very well-done.
Also, Howrra. Howl is the fan-named Hot Order-of-the-White-Lotus guard who appears for all of about five seconds. The pairing has racked up a truly impressive amount of fanart.
Danny Phantom has tons of them. The best one has to be Danny/Fenton Thermos. It was started to poke fun at how ridiculous the ship wars were getting, but it caught on.
Transformers fandom in general is made up of crack pairings, often with characters who have had little or no interaction in the show/comics. There are very few individuals who haven't been paired with someone at some point and often in very bizarre combinations. This is probably at least partly the fault of the Transformers Anonymous Kink Meme.
Jack and Arcee from Transformers Prime. To be fair, the writers are partially to blame for this. The first thing that Jack did upon seeing Arcee (while still in motorbike form) was run his hands all over her while talking sensuously to her (using female pronouns) about how much he'd like to ride her. Jack even says to her during an emotional moment "But you were my first." He meant first motorbike.
And now Jack's mom is being paired up with Optimus Prime. Guess robo-love runs in the Darby family.
South Park is just full of crack pairings. We could go on all day.
Kenny/Butters, despite the fact that they haven't really interacted at all and Butters has only ever talked to Kenny as part of the group.
...And then came along the episode "Going Native", in which Butters not only considers Kenny much nicer than the rest of the boys, but lets him tag along for his adventure in Hawaii.
Even better in the canon episode in which this happened. If memory serves, SpongeBob ends up murdering a flock of clams to protect "Patty" from being eaten.
Even earlier, in the episode "Just One Bite", Squidward has a dream/fantasy sequence where he falls in love with and marries a Krabby Patty.
Total Drama Island: there exists a fan-film named "William Country", that has Cody/a Palette Swapof him. The only difference is that the swap has black hair (bad by its own, Cody has brown.), and his hair is messier (well, the hair and the clothes, but still...). Screw Yourself, anyone? The best part? The Fan Film is said to be 90 minutes long, and the remaining clips not taken down (see on the page) add up to quite a bit. And it has good animation, almost matching the show's style. Yes, someone put that much work into a fan fic of Cody being gay with himself. Think about it.
Total Drama World Tour gives us a potential (one-sided) Canon crack pairing. Brace yourselves for... Noah / Bridgette! yeah...
It should be noted that this show actually has this a lot given that its cast is basically twenty-odd teenagers with distinct personalities and quite a bit of random Ship Tease. Some of the more popular ones, like Ezekiel / Izzy, actually count as Fan Preferred Couples, even if the characters involved have no real romance (or even any interaction) in canon.
When designing Dr Facilier for The Princess and the Frog, animator Bruce Smith went through the thought process of what the child of Captain Hook and 101Dalmations's Cruella De Vil would look like.
Star Wars: Clone Wars: Jedi Master Shaak Ti/General Grievous, a pairing whose only argument is that Shaak wasn't killed by Grievous (read: managed to escape with her life.) Twice, admittedly, but talk about Slap-Slap-Kiss.
The Kim Possible fandom has a few favorite ships that can be considered crack.
Kim/Rufus had one story written for it, a story so infamous that it was banned in less than a day and still causes some of the older members of the Kimmunity to wince when they hear the line "Oh YES! Rufus, you ARE the Tunnellord!".
Tara/Drakken was written in one story. Felt more like a Throw It In moment but still counts.
BetViv is strangelypopularpairing even though they are not in the same spheres of influence and never appear together. Especially liked by Kigo fans as a complimentary pairing.
The Adventure Time fandom has Gumgrab- Prince Gumball and Lemongrab. Prince Gumball is basically a pink Prince Charming, and Lemongrab is a strident, socially retarded jerk who has a completely repellant, obnoxious personality. It all started with a crack comic on deviantART and three fateful words: "THREE HOURS BEDROOM!" Even Rebecca Sugar, a writer on the show, "liked" the original Gumgrab comic on her Tumblr, and commented: "Well aren't you forward, Lemongrab!" What makes this pairing weirder are the ambiguously incestuous overtones. Prince Gumball is a genderswapped version of Princess Bubblegum- who created Lemongrab in her laboratory- and the prince is also, in-universe, a fictional character created by the Ice King for his fanfiction. People are shipping Lemongrab with his father from a parallel universe that doesn't even exist. What.
The episode "All the Little People'' has Finn create several of these with tiny duplicates of the series' characters. At the beginning of the episode he and Jake also jokingly discuss Ice King/BMO, and by the end of the episode the tiny duplicates of those very characters hook up on their own.
Included in a possibly Squick post on Usenet newsgroup is a story which includes a crack pairing of Liono and Snarf of ThunderCats which is certainly NSFW even though text-only.
X-Men: Evolution has a lot. Probably the weirdest is Pietro/anyone, due to Pietro's notable lack of interest in anyone but himself, and X-23/Anyone, since she only interacted with Madame Hydra (Ended with blowing up an aircraft), Guantlet (ended the same as Hydra) and Logan (ended each time with her shouting at him angrily and him trying to stop her from possibly killing someone). Then, of course, Pietro/X-23 has a large following, for god knows why.
Before the series started, anyone who read the comics would of thought of Scott/Rogue as this, then during the series, Rogue developed a crush on Scott and it got a large following. As notable, they do actually have a lot in common that was, suprisingly, not noticed beforehand.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has a few of these, but one of the more notable examples is Octavia being shipped with Vinyl Scratch. They've only appeared in the show for a few seconds each, and they weren't even in the same episode (or town, for that matter). Surely enough though, a fair number of fans have already gone ahead and declared them as their One True Pairing, simply because they both have musically-themed cutie marks and different musical tastes (Octavia is a classical musician and Vinyl Scratch is a techno DJ).
There is a category on Ponibooru (a MLP image board) called "Twilamp" for art and short fiction depicting the passionate relationship that Twilight Sparkle shares with the lantern that hangs outside one of the windows of the library/tree that she lives in.
DisPie (Discord x Pinkie Pie) seems to be popular, too.
Bloomberg is an apple tree that Applejack literally treats as her baby because apples are Serious Business to her. Tom is an inanimate boulder whom Rarity fawns over because Discord had enchanted her to think of it as a giant diamond. Tom/Bloomberg has had several shipfics.
Spike/Gummy. Well, um, at least they're both reptiles...
In a non-romantic example, ask any Brony about a purple and blonde unicorn filly named Dinky, and half of them will probably tell you that she's Derpy's daughter. This, despite the two of them having never appeared next to each other in the show, and all canon evidence suggesting that Dinky is part of a family of unicorns. The more unicorns the show introduces into Dinky's immediate family, the more complex the fanon rationalizations become for how a Derpy can still be her mother despite being a Pegasus. Although, in the episode "Baby Cakes", it has been shown that Earth Ponies can have unicorn and pegasus children, so why shouldn't a pegasus have a unicorn child?
For some baffling reason, a lot of Transformers Prime fangirls like pairing Starscream with a Vehicon that has a similar voice (both voiced by Steve Blum). They've named the Vehicon "Steve" since, like all Vehicons, he has no official name, and call the pairing "SteveScream". By the way, Starscream has rarely interacted with the Vehicons as anything other than a commanding officer, and when he does, it's usually by punching them. Which is why they made the relationship "loving, but abusive (with "Steve" liking the abuse)". Wow, Stockholm Syndrome much?!
An In-Universe example with The Simpsons: Agnes Skinner (Principal Skinner's mother) dates Comic Book Guy for an episode.
The Foxbusters episode Winging It shows some romantic subtext between Todd (a fox) and Jefferies (A chicken). Yes, bizarre and cracky but also completely adorable when you think about it as Todd is a lovable ditz while Jeffries is a comic relief and both are highly Adorkable.
In-universe, we have the Official Couple of Kid Flash/Jinx. Worked just fine in the cartoon. Odds of it ever happening in the comics? Nill to non-existant.
The New Batman Adventures episode "Love is a Croc" gave us a very disturbing pair-up between Killer Croc (an eight-foot-tall Beast Man) and Baby Doll (who Can't Grow Up and dresses like a five-year-old). Granted, Croc was just using her, but Baby Doll's affection was entirely genuine.
There was (actually, it's still online, if you search for it) a Cartoon Cartoon online game called the "Cartoon Network Summer Resort." For the fourth part of the game, you had to match up 5 girls with 5 guys for a dance that night. The end pairings were Dexter/Buttercup, Double D/Blossom, Courage/Bubbles, Chicken/Dee Dee, and I.R. Baboon/Little Suzie. Keep in mind, this game also featured Johnny Bravo, Mandark, and Og, who could have easily been partners for the latter three.
Goku/Anne Frank. Yes, THAT Anne Frank. The real life one that died during the Holocaust. The writer seemed to just want to give her a happy ending, but anything with Hitler turning Super Saiyan is just too insane to not list.
The respective character actors for Alice and Mad Hatter at the Disney Theme Parks apparently ship their characters together, as they engage in quite a bit of Ship Teasing.
The children themselves have ended up being paired off with each other as well. The relationships they end up in are usually much more compatible in comparison to the ones involving their biological parents, thus averting this trope.
Even then some of the roleplayers used to have fun crack-shipping some of them in a different thread dedicated to (you guessed it) crackpairs. Some of them went so far as to actually start crack-shipping characters that had never even been in the roleplay yet (or possibly never will, either).
Even Mythological creatures aren't immune to this, even in the Middle Ages. The Griffin is considered the mortal enemy of horses, and in fact preys on them. You know what a Hippogriff is? Evidently the result of either desperation, a dare, or a night of hard-booze or something. Then again...
In the BIONICLE fandom, a couple of eerie pairings have emerged, although the weirdest would have to be the Onua and Gorast ships. Yes, the Toa of Earth and locustlike Makuta.
This New Yorker cover◊ ships Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, at that point bitter rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. (The cover's joke is about a Clinton ad which implied that Obama would not be ready for a "3AM phone call", so the shipping may just be an incidential consequence of the joke requiring them to share a bed next to the same phone.)
Just go on Youtube and look up "[insert animal name] [insert different animal name] sex" and see what pops up. It's mostly dog/cat sex, but rewards await the creative and depraved.
During the mid-1980s in Vermont, a wandering male moose met and fell in love with a female cow.
At least one editorial cartoonist used this image to represent the Reagan Administration cosying up with Iran in the Iron-Contra scandal.
The Pet Shop Boys song "I'm With Stupid" is a satire of the relationship between George Bush and Tony Blair, done as a gay love song.
A fanfic of this pairing (not written by Gaiman) once existed on Livejournal a while back.
There is a rather large Livejournal community devoted to slashing Mike Carden (guitarist for the band The Academy Is...) and Kevin Jonas (of the Jonas Brothers), despite them being lesser known members of their bands, apparently having nothing in common, and most likely never having met. Oh, and Kevin's married. The pairing is popular enough that in Google's autofill, "Mike Carden Kevin Jonas" is currently the ninth suggestion you get for Mike's name (and I've seen it as high as #4).
It's fifth on Bing right now.
Ivan the Terrible once proposed to Elizabeth I. For serious. She did not accept, because he was crazy, they were different religions, and the United Kingdom of Russia-England that would result would be the least stable thing to ever exist in Europe.
Of course, every male monarch in Europe alive during Elizabeth's reign probably proposed to her at some point, either for themselves or on behalf of their relatives. England would have made quite the nice dowry, after all.
Chris Colfer/Diet Coke is a canon example. The US Diet Coke twitter tweeted about him following them back. He compares their relationship to Thelma & Louise.
And now that Taylor Swift (who's known for breakup songs) has done a Diet Coke ad, her too.
It is thought that in 1766 a male wolf mated with a Pomeranian resulting in nine pups. There's no telling what those puppies ended up looking like.
Keep in mind that Pomeranians at that time period weren't the average 5 lb toy dogs we know of today. Before they were bred down to their current size in the late 1800s, Poms were more like 30 lb dogs, just a little bit smaller than their closest relative, the Keeshond. So a Pomeranian at that time breeding with a wolf would be similar to modern wolf/dog breeding pairs.
An American Idol fanfic once shipped season 10 Lauren Alaina with New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow.
B.o.B.'s career contains a few musical crack pairings with feature artists you would not expect on a rapper's song. These include Hayley Williams, Rivers Cuomo, and Taylor Swift.
Ladies and gentleman, I give you Linkin Park Fanfiction [15] That's right. An entire website dedicated to mostly shipping the band members, plus with other bands.