Anonymous Poster #1: Woody is stuck inside Sunnyside with the gang, and has just had his arm torn off by Lotso. Luckily, a rifle through the confiscated items drawer and a bit of duct tape later, Woody has a new arm — a Swiss Army knife duct-taped to his shoulder, Ash Williams style. Now what shall he do with his new arm? Bonus points if you can get Ken to call Woody's new arm "groovy".
Fan Ficon crack. The easiest type of fanfic to write, and one of the hardest to write well (the other types of fanfic that are also hard to write well are ALL the other types of fanfic).
Crack fic is not merely humorous. In fact in many cases it doesn't have to be humorous. While it is similar to Alternate Universe Fic, in that they both change some fundamental aspect of the source material, the "something's different about this" idea taken to the extreme. In its broadest sense, crack fic is any story whose premise and events would be completely implausible in Canon. These frequently include bizarre settings and explorations of improbable relationships between characters — not merely unlikely in canon, as in Foe Yay, but totally irrational and turned up a notch beyond that, as in Crack Pairing.
Crack fic is often considered the result of a challenge, either from someone outside the author or from the author him/herself: "This idea is completely unworkable, but I bet I can make it work." The name stems from the notion that the author must have been ingesting some illegal substance just to think up the idea, let alone write it.
Even more than the rest of the realm of Fan Fic, crack fic is proof of Sturgeon's Law. Much of what is actually labeled as crack fic is pure nonsense, streams of out-of-character absurdity stereotypically written by young teen girls who were "soooooo high on sugar/caffeine/cold medicine/red cordial/crack that I had this great idea lol" and don't understand that "randomness" and the in-jokes they share with their friends do not actual humor make.
The rare and shining well-written crack fic, however, interweaves an outlandish premise with solid characterization, internally consistent logic, and a clear understanding of the rules and feel of the source material (as every writing teacher in history has said, you have to know the rules before you can break them). It's a difficult tightrope to walk, and it's easy to fall off one side or the other into "not quite enough to make the premise work" or "so crazy that it no longer makes any sense." This difficulty frequently drives both authors (who balk at the work involved) and readers (who are often skeptical that the author has really pulled the premise off) away from the genre, but crack fic fans agree that the discovery or creation of a successful story is well worth the search.
Our very own Pitch Generator is basically one giant Crack Fic crossover... generator.
Compare Crack Pairing, Bizarro Fiction.
Funny or Die's When Harry Met SallyII. It starts off staunchly Original Flavor with the mildly cracky premise of Harry in an old folks' home after Sally's death, falling in love for the second time with Helen Mirren's character. Thenthe vampires show up.
Bubba Ho-Tep features an elderly Elvis and JFK (who's brain has been transplanted into a black man's body) fighting a mummy. I swear I'm not making that up. *
Well, if ya wanna get technical, "JFK" actually claims he was dyed that color, and that part of his brain was replaced with a little bag of sand.
Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter is a musical movie in which Jesus, in the modern day, kills vampires... and sings.
The brucesploitation "classic" The Dragon Lives Again, featuring Popeye, Kwai Chang Caine, The One-Armed Swordsman, 007, The Man With No Name, The Godfather, Laurel and Hardy, The Exorcist, Dracula and Emmanuelle with most of them trying to conquer Hell/The Underworld.
Twilight is arguably a Crack Fic of Vampire Mythology. Furthermore, the fourth book, Breaking Dawn is arguably a Crack Fic of itself.
The Rocky HorrorDiscworldShow. Yes, it's official; made with the permission of Richard O'Brien and the enthusiastic encouragement of Terry Pratchett, the only performance took place at the 2010 Discworld Convention. Carrot and Angua are Brad and Janet, Lord Vetinari is Frank-N-Furter and Igor and Igorina are ... oh, you guessed.
"Can't Smeg Won't Smeg" was the first feature of Red Dwarf Night, the Red DwarfTenth Anniversary Celebration. It is Red Dwarf as a cooking show, based on a real English cooking show. One full of the unintentional hilarity that comes of asking these characters to cook.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl. If canon could be Crack Fic, then Brawl would be the veritable god of the world of crack fic. The entire plot of the story mode makes absolutely no sense and the premise the game works on is that the characters are all actually "trophies" based on various Nintendo characters that have come to life and live in their own world, as playthings, and they face the possiblity of being trapped in their non-living "trophy" forms forever. The reason it works well is because the characters don't have characteristics or personalities. The sole exception is Snake, and as such he acts completely out of character, always questioning the bizarre shit happening around him.
The bonus "External Gazer" short story on the Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance disc is a moving drama about Snake, Otacon and Mei Ling teaming up to battle a giant sea monster from another dimension. Mei Ling turns out to be secretly married to Solidus, and it gets weirder (and increasingly Genre Savvy) from there. It's all told from Snake's first-person point of view, and he's utterly deadpan about everything.
Kingdom Hearts definitely qualifies. It starts as a Final Fantasy/Disney crossover and gets stranger from there. Somewhat mitigated by the fact that by the end, the main conflicts all stem from the main cast, consisting almost entirely of characters made up exclusively for the series; the Final Fantasy characters are merely cameos and side stories. Mocked in thisPenny Arcade strip.
Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe definitely counts. To clarify, Shao Kahn and Darkseid inadvertently get fused into a monster named Dark Kahn who begins fusing the two universes, and makes everyone fight everyone for no reason via his Hate Plague. Yes, it's non-sensical.
The premise of The Simpsons Game is that the eponymous family discover that they are part of a video game. Then they get into the game engine and save 8-bit counterparts of themselves from getting destroyed by Will Wright. Subsequently the characters get into different video games to get key cards that let them find their creator.
Jack's third episode of Totally Non Canon Theater, Frigid McThunderbones. There are no words to describe it except "cracky". Well, and probably also "offensive" (at at least one point to any given reader).
The episode where Duck Dodgers joined theGreen Lantern Corps. Yes, they used the actual DC characters. He went to Oa and fought Sinestro and everything.
On that basis, the episode where he ate poorly made Fugu, hallucinated he was Samurai Quack and fought Aku/Happy Cat, who was actually his father.
There is also episode where Dave Mustaine from Megadeth saves the day. Keep in mind that his early albums are certainly not for young children.
There's a certain word game where one person starts a story with the first sentence, and each person in the group adds on another sentence. With certain groups of people competing to make the story even weirder than it was before, this can get pretty surreal. Also goes for certain improv games. The more formalized version is called "Consequences," and asks a different person to fill in one of the following, in order, then fold the paper so his entry is unreadable and pass to the next person. The items are 1. Man's Name 2. Woman's Name 3. Place 4. Reason they were there 5. What he said 6. How she replied 7. What happened. Hilarity Ensues.
Fan Work Examples:
Specific Authors
Anything written by Oxenstierna D Yuki Rin. Her crack fics have everything and anything a crack fic could have, including musical numbers, parodies, pop culture refrences, Big Lipped Alligator Moments, her OCs for One Piece that are very wacky themselves, cameos made by various anime characters, and even things that should reach Memetic Mutation status.
Essentially anything David Gonterman writes is unintentionally a Crack Fic... of the worst possible kind.
Peter Chimaera book of hsitorical faFfiction is 44 pages of gold. One story, Einstein's Theory of Justice, starts with Einstein "discovering" that he "invented" his Theory of Relativity and ends with a battle with Thomas Edison who used the theory to time travel to that moment to steal it for himself and take the credit. It really picks up once Edison recruits the mummy of Julius Caesar to fight Einstein.
The Door is a Tale Spin/Stargate SG-1 crossover that actually makes sense. Yes, furries and the Stargate universe and it makes sense. Worth a look if you like both franchises.
Oddly, his stories also tend to take on a serious note in later chapters, generally around chapter 3 or 4, with things like plot and character development appearing, without in any way reducing the crack level! In fact, it just gets WORSE.
A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes is a crossover with Axis Powers Hetalia and the Superman universe in which one of the Nation-tans is ensnared by an alien plant called the Black Mercy. Plenty of potential for lulz and suckage, but damned if it's not one of the most well-written and moving fills from the Kink Meme.
There is a crossover between Dragon Ball Z and The Diary of a Young Girl. Anne lives, falls in love with Goku, and Hitler turns Super Saiyan shortly before Goku vaporizes him. One gets the feeling that this was inspired by an O.D. on a combination of Psychadelics, Ritalin, and bad ingenuity. The fic in question can be found here. It is possible that its genesis lay not in drugs but in a misguided middle schooler coming home from school after learning about the holocaust, thinking, "Man, Hitler sucks! Goku should kick his ass!" And then he set his eyes on the computer, and one of the great legends of fanfiction was born. The fic is read by Bennet the Sage here: [1]. And believe it or not, this kind of already happened in canon. It's called the 12th movie, Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn. No, seriously. Hitler got revived in the 12th movie, and Goten and Trunks kicked his ass in Saiyajin form. It's only in the uncut DVD release. All TV Syndications edit out all scenes with Hitler.
There is a crossover between Seinfeld and Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni in which the entire village of Hinamizawa is somehow moved right next to Jerry's apartment. It featured the main characters of both shows interacting in various ways, the most notable being Kramer and Rika falling in love. The fic ended with Newman becoming possessed by Hinamizawa syndrome and murdering Rika by torturing her. Upon finding the dead body, the fic ended with Kramer shedding a single tear. Unfortunately, it was posted on someone's private website that has since been taken down.
The Insane Cafe RP tetralogy definitely fits. What else can you call a series where Wataru, Dr. Zanasiu, Scooby-Doo, Guilemon, Eevee, Nani, Spyro and Cynder meet and band together to fight a global threat with their base of operations being either a cafe, a small coastal town or a starship?
Someone decided to cross Haruhi Suzumiya with TV Tropes, and later added in the cast of Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni. Whilst it makes perfect sense when you read it, telling someone anything from the story itself is... odd. Like mentioning how Kyon, Nagato, and Tsuruya managed to defeat 24 yakuza in a fight without getting harmed. It's called Kyon: Big Damn Hero.
Outrage!, by Rich Morris, writer of The 10 Doctors. Possibly the only time you will ever see the Sixth Doctor meet Jem and the Holograms. He also has a few one-shots on his blog featuring Bugs Bunny as the Doctor. Yeah. Morris' Jem crossover is especially cracky in that it turns Eric Raymond (Jem's Big Bad) into a disguised Zygon (or is he?) and his toady Techrat into a banished Time Lord.
Shinji and Warhammer 40K. Shinji Ikari (Butt Monkey) gets a Warhammer 40K set at age 6 or so, and it makes him akin to the God-Emperor of Man; that is, inhumanly, INHUMANLYBadass. He fucking turns Eva 01 into a Titan. Kamina would be proud. When it comes to Shinji becoming the Emperor, all signs point to "yes." Later, Shinji leads an army of Terminators, super tanks, and psychics against a horde of zombies. Well, there's something in every chapter. Also, Rei gets fucking orky. The author, on a forum where he has the story proof-read, made a comment that he believed that he has been writing Ritsuko too flat, and that he might have her break through as a Spark. The actual page for this sums it up:
Thousand Shinji and its even more crack-tastic sequel The Open Door, To pick one plot line out off The Open Door: A daemon (who eats souls, and kills people with tentacles) named Lars and Skuld cause an industrial revolution, change the nature of magic and raise a child. Oh, and Skuld is technically the father.
There is a Narutofanfic about what allegedly happened during Itachi's story. Where to start...? Well, he accidentally killed his friend during a spar, accidentally killed the entire clan (after he used the wrong side of his sword to threaten them with... oops)... the list goes on. And his super torture move? He distracts the target then screams in their face. First person to guess what goes here gets a cookie!
This mixes Fullmetal Alchemist and Pokémon together in a very, very weird way. The title, Pokémists: Pocket Alchemists should speak for itself.
This fic from the Death Note fandom has Light/Naomi Misora as the pairing, makes Naomi the narrator, and just takes what it wants. One of the best crack fics in existence despite butchering of grammar.
A Bleach fanfic version of this: Love and the Art of War. Nanao X Zaraki. In the words of the author, "Nanao X ...Zaraki? I have no excuse, explanation, or defense of this pairing whatsoever. So very, very sorry. The crack! It burns!" And it's actually good.
Slope, a Death Note crack fic. This fic is only particularly funny due to its radically understated final line.
Gurren Jesus is a story where Jesus Christ saves Kamina. Then they ride motorcycles and fight nazis, including Hitler dressed up as Chester Cheetah. And it is awesome.
In this one-shot Bleach fic, Aizen is accidentally defeated by being molested by Chizuru, who only saw him from the back and assumed from his super-longmullet of power that he was a girl. No summary can possibly do justice to the sheer cracky hilarity.
In Uninvited Guests, Yachiru burns entire 11th division while baking a cake, Hitsugaya talks with a secretly evil imaginary cat, and Godzilla appears for some reason. The catch? Once you read it, everything makes sense... a lot. This is one of rare Crack Fic that manages to be both insane yet remarkably reasonable. Also, it's the closest and the best thing we have to BleachAbridged Series.
This lovely Axis Powers Hetalia fic. The plot involves Austria's mole coming to life, and causing mayhem. Yes, you read that correctly. His mole. The author, though, fully acknoledges the weirdness, and the characters frequently break the fourth wall to comment on how strange the events happening are, and there are many pop culture refrences. The full title? The extremely amazing ballad of Austria's annoying mole and their amazing adventures when said mole comes to life: An Axis Powers HetaliaTroll Fic of EPICNESS!!! (a.k.a. the shorter title, "The Annoying Mole, a HetaliaTroll Fic").
The Wizard of Oz 3: Dorothy Goes To Hell, an animated Fan Sequel to Return to Oz made by James Rolfe, in which Dorothy, accompanied by a talking feces-encrusted pickle, travels to Oz on a sandcrawler to take the Red Brick Road to Hell and stop Satan and his brother Lucifer before they can blow up the world with an evil cyborg version of Jesus. Yes, really.
Literature
As a side effect of having such a large fandom, Harry Potter has more crack fics than you can shake a stick at.
We simply cannot have a page about crack fics without mentioning the incomparable My Immortal.
The Misadventures of Draco Malfoy, Ferret Summary: Snape turns Draco into a ferret for his own protection. He would've been safer with the Dark Lord. Warnings: m'preg, multiple beastialities, and Gryffindors. This is a hilarious romp on the weird side of what happens when a half-baked plan and a little magic go horribly awry. Snape turned Draco into a female ferret by mistake. I'm sure you can guess what happens.
The Torment of Love features Harry attempting to romance Hedwig, with dramatic results.
There is a legend of Polish Internet in the form of Magical Adventures of Winnie the Pooh story cycle. The characters spend most of their time boozing cheap wines or whoring, Owl is a pedophile, Christopher Robin a Flamboyant Gay, Eeyore's real name is "Hannibal Lektor", and Piglet is proud to wield the longest member in the forest (which happens — the forest, not the member, duh — to be located somewhere in Poland, presumably east of Warsaw).
Six Days The Animorphs Were Idiots, by one of the co-authors of Cinnamon Bunzuh! is an Animorphs fanfiction that features, among other things, Visser Three adopting cats, Cassie forming a whale-worshipping cult, and Rachel finally getting some much needed therapy. Notable for keeping everyone very much in character, despite the odd turn of events.
Counts of Blood, a crossover between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Muppets with Count Von Count visiting his old friend The Master in Sunnydale. Let's just say that the Count is not entirely sane, nor is he kid-friendly. It's wonderful. If Sesame Street and The Muppet Show had never been aired, and the word "frog" swapped with, say, "reporter", it would be just another Buffy fic — albeit VERY well written.
The Master frowned, moving towards his guest. "I have been trying to be a bit less excessive about object lessons this century. I don't want another mathematician like that fellow."
One purple hand waved, and there smaller vampire shrugged. "I have medications for that now. There shouldn't be another situation like that as long as I take my pills. Thirty six little green pills for a twelve day visit."
"Much better than three mathematicians in several hundred pieces," the Master shook his head.
"One mathematician, in one hundred and sewen boxes. With a diagram of where they all went," the Count corrected. "I let his assistant go."
Stargate Atlantis fandom has a thing about penguins, or more specifically, about turning its characters into penguins. John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, and Carson Beckett have all turned into penguins (the former two in multiple works). And then there was that time when McKay was a dinosaur. Or when Sheppard was a rainbow and McKay was a unicorn. Or the one where they were girl scout cookies. Socks. Ice cubes.
The Fourth Wall series, a Supernatural crack fic that features Sam being sad because everyone's jumped on the Dean/Castiel bandwagon and no fanfiction is being written about him anymore, Dean finally realising that he does love that trenchcoat-wearing Angel, Castiel eating everything remotely sugary in sight and Lucifer playing poker for M&Ms. It's amazing.
Uh Oh Spagettio is a cracky Smallville fic involving Clark trying to find a "double bactrian camel". Yeah...
The Kink Meme for the Sherlock fandom spawned a running joke that's managed to filter through into a number of non-crack fanfics regarding Anderson having an... interest in dinosaurs. Not as popular, but also present is the idea that John Watson is in love with jam, and that his character is made of kittens (more to do with the fact the actor that plays him is Martin Freeman).
Day of the Barney distinguishes itself from the typical anti-Barney & Friends fic with its insane premise of casting Barney as a villain hellbent on taking over the world... A demonic, immortal, genuinely terrifying and competent villain, we mean.
You may be unsurprised to find this. It is the greatest work of pornography ever written. About Tetris.
In M Is Bad, Mario gets drunk at a party then rapes Luigi.
Cid Wars has the Cids from Final Fantasys 2-7 teaming up to stop the first Cid, cut from the first game, whose evil plot involves hypnotizing people with Pokémon and Hanson, and something about Kudzu.
The Not so Villainous Duo, a The Legend of Zelda crack fic where Ganondorf blackmails Vaati into stopping Link. They spend 17 chapters on increasingly random and failed attempts and eventually get defeated by Dark Link, who was hired to do so by the author
Lexaeus Loves Hot Topic, a Kingdom Hearts fanfic with appearances by Harry Potter characters. The already strange premise appears to be characters from the two franchises meeting in a normal, 21st-century American shopping mall. The execution, though, is what really sells it as Crack Fic, being a (to be very charitable) disjointed stream-of-consciousness narrative, eschewing typical structure in favor of imagery through disjointed phrases and occasional syntactic contradictions, such as a narrative sentence becoming dialogue halfway through. A descriptor might almost be My ImmortalmeetsFinnegans Wake.
Stray is relatively down to earth, apart from the homemade time machine, a rather trippy sequence in the afterlife, and the fact that it's all done in the service of an epic love affair between a character from the 1960s and a character from the 2000s who have no on-screen interactions in the source material.
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Stage of History, a Soul Series fanfic, is one of those rare well-written crack fics. It begins with Yoshimitsu being mistaken for Jesus, and ends with Setsuka trying to destroy the world with the Infinite Impobability Drive, and a climactic battle with CATS for no good reason.
Once upon a time a fan challenged fanfic writers to write the craziest story that they could come up with so that he could post it on his site. The site is long gone, taking the stories with it. One of the stories was a little gem called Empire Evil, a cross between Resident Evil and Final Fantasy VI.
Final Fantasy XVI: Revenge of the Fishglobe! — One review puts it this way: "Revenge of the Fishglobe is not intelligent, nor sophisticated, nor cleverly crafted. But silly and stupid as it is, I have seldom laughed more in any given 5 minutes than when I was reading this fic." The author himself puts it this way: "If this story makes any sense to you, you need serious professional help."
Dissidia: Final Fantasy, because of its nature as a Massively Multiplayer Crossover for the whole Final Fantasymultiverse, could count on its own as one of the "official examples" above... but the sequel (although plot-wise it's more of a prequel) has a "quest editor" mode, which, as you can guess, can allow the player to, technically, write his own fan-fic and then make it playable. Which, of course, is awesome. Until you take Sturgeon's Law into account, since it kicks in as soon as one of the first quests (if not the first) made for the game gets uploaded on Youtube, and then you find out that, in the uploader's own words, it's about Tifa's skirt.
On the official Dwarf Fortress forums dwells a Crossover between Dwarf Fortress and Star Control II which purports to explain the origin of the "Adamantine Space Elevator" (a spike of adamantine ascending thousands of z-levels into the sky of one DF-generated world, probably due to an amusing Good Bad Bug). It's here.
Doukutsu Days and its sequel, Cave Story fanfics that add nonsensical plot points at every turn. For one, Quote starts talking.
Iji is this to Iji. Various crossover madness and silly things happening here and there, Gurren Lagann-grade Hot Bloodedness, mad science... and we're still waiting for the kitchen sink.
The Transformers Animated crack fic You Never ARGH WHAT AM I WEARING? featured Starscream having sex with Blitzwing, a character with multiple personalities. Blitzwing was wearing high heels, fishnet tights, and a thong all through the fanfic. What made the fanfic even more crack was finding out which personality was really in charge when it started.
Beast Wars has its own Crack Fic in "Beast Wars: Make it Real Big" ...where to even begin. At some point Optimus evolves into Rapidash, Cheetor dies but continues to contribute to the dialogue via gas emissions and the character of Airazor turns out to be a cleverly disguises "Airazor Bomb."
Osama's Last Stand by Fireand'chutes777 is one of those rare examples of a Crack Fic done right. The basic premise is simple: Action Girl heroine Kim Possible is called in by President Bush after Al-Qaeda attacks America on April 23rd, 2007 to kick aforementioned terrorist organization to the curb (hence the title). It should be an exaggerated stream of Girl Power and Eagleland patriotism, it should have terrible grammar and be wrapped up in one chapter, it shouldspit in the face of basic physics, but what happened instead was a 128,000 word novel that would not look out of place at all in a book store with the name Tom Clancy printed in big bold letters on the front (ironic in that the author hadn't even touched a Tom Clancy book until he was done with the third story in his series). Even though the author himself admits the reader needs to apply a healthy dose of Willing Suspension of Disbelief to get past some of the set-up, once one does it's a very enjoyable story for any technothriller fan.
William Country is a literal crack fic in that the animator reportedly did drugs while making it. The plot itself is fairly strait forward (although it does involve a character in a relationship with an Original Character who looks like himself), but there are countless unusual moments, related to the plot or otherwise, and bizzare background events (such as a bunch of buses flipping around while Chris is narrating). All in all, it's somewhat surreal.
Iron Man: Kindergarten Adventures is proclaimed by the author to be crack, probably because the West Virginia Mothman becomes central to the plot in the last chapter.
Horny Lil' Devils takes the Horny Devils trope and applies it to the entire cast of Kim Possible. Notable for keeping the characters recognizable while totally ignoring everything in canon (chapter five is titled: "Punching Canon in the Throat). It's utterly hysterical from start to finish. Too bad it seems to be a Dead Fic, though.
Beating the Heat: The main (sorry, mane) characters of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magicgo into an Element of Harmony-induced heat... and surprisingly it doesn't devolve into a porn story. Instead the plot is focused around the six mares (and soon everypony else) resisting their urges long enough to stop the heat before it spreads through every pony in the land, including the two princesses, and the entire world ends in one massive orgy. What sex does happen is generally not referenced explicitly and played thoroughly for laughs; the story instead focuses on the absurdity of the situation.
On the same page as Nazi fan fictions, there is a rare historical Crack Fic on the internet about a paring between a Mary Sue type character and Josef Mengele. Let that sink in for a while. A story full of IKEA Erotica, featuring a mutant Mary Sue, and Josef Mengele.
This generator tends to come up with these. For instance:
This fanfic is about Tony the Tiger (Frosted Flakes commercials) fighting Cybermen with an army of clones.
You're a Real Tiger, Crackle. A legendary cereal-box mascot Slash coupling of Tony the Tiger and Crackle (of Rice Krispies fame) that was clearly written on a dare, and then only for the rude punchline.
