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When The Verse is shaped by multiple creators, writing independently. Many different comic book titles are set in a collective continuity, making it easy to have a Cross Over. In contrast, a single TV series with multiple writers is just the Verse with subcontractors. Likewise, when different continuities by the same author are tied together later by an Intercontinuity Crossover, that's Canon Welding.
The nature of the Shared Universe — multiple independent creators creating one continuity — can easily lead to a Continuity Snarl if it lasts a long time and the different creators don't take care to keep things straight. If a Shared Universe starts relying too heavily on continuity, especially if it's obscure or too reliant on each work in the Verse, a Continuity Lock-Out may occur. When creators disagree on the direction the Verse should take, they may fight Armed With Canon. If some corners of the continuity are "off limits" to some characters to avoid theme-drift or plot derailing, then Superman Stays Out of Gotham.
When they go back centuries, and even further and further, long before copyrights and trademarks, the Shared Universe turns into one or more actual mythologies. Compare with The Verse, Expanded Universe and Canon. Contrast with Shout Out.
Note: just because two shows have had a Cross Over does not mean that they share a universe.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- The Marvel Universe and The DCU are examples of this, with multiple monthly titles who might not even have the same creative team month to month.
- And those two are connected by the Amalgam universe, several canonical crossovers and a few characters who break the fourth wall.
- Ninja High School and Gold Digger loosely share a universe and occasionally engage in crossovers or use each other's villains.
- In the Savage Dragon, there is a shared universe that not only consists of the rest of the Image Universe but also creator-owned properties such as Hell Boy, Madman, and Bone have made appearances. Aside from that, Erik Larsen likes to slip in characters from the Marvel Universe and DC Universe. Often, this consists of characters showing up far in the background, being mention in passing but not shown, or having a single boot or glove visible that indicates that those characters are there but enough is concealed to avoid copyright issues.
- Virtually all of the early Image Comics titles were set in the same universe, with the stars of any given book often making guest appearances in another. However, one of the core ideas of the company was and always has been creator ownership. This caused a Continuity Snarl no less than twice; Once, when Rob Liefeld picked up his characters and left to create Awesome Comics (though he returned after Awesome folded), and again when Jim Lee took his properties, which encompassed about half a dozen titles, and made his Wildstorm Studios into a DC imprint.
- Currently, Invincible shoulders a lot of weight when it comes to establishing a larger Image universe. Characters from Kirkman's other books popping up frequently, and big events (like the funeral of the Guardians of the Globe or the Invincible War) feature just about anyone who's anyone in the company at the time. At one point Mark was even a member of the Pact, a team consisting of him, Zephyr Noble, Firebreather, and Shadowhawk.
Fan Fiction
- Dangerverse fans have written numerous fics of their own set in the same universe, many of which have been integrated into the canon, as well as Alternate Universe Fic aplenty. The author has no qualms about working in ideas from her friends and fans.
- The AU Shadowverse stories about Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha characters Lutecia and Vivio, created by Radiant Beam, also involve many other writers who write about secondary characters in that universe. Each of the various authors tend to write around different themes (spy-thriller, emotional drama, political-thriller, etc) despite writing in the same AU.
Film
- The Transformers Film Series and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra are canonically in the same universe, with there being suggestions that much of the advanced Joe tech came from studying Megatron's frozen body. In addition, Ratchet and Ironhide's vehicle forms can be seen in the Paris sequence. On the other hand, the Transformers movies don't suggest anything about GI Joe, also that they make mention to the actual Presidents of the time periods of the films (George W. Bush and Barack Obama) while GI Joe has their own President.
- G.I. Joe is stated to be "In the near future," meaning that, by the time of the movie, the Autobot/Decepticon War could have ended/left Earth. In that case, one can believe that the futuristic technology of the film is an improvement over Sector 7 and NEST's current tech.
- It's also impied that The Mummy Trilogy take place in the same Universe (Brendan Frazer says his character from G.I. Joe is a descendent of his character from the Mummy). This would also mean that The Scorpion King is set in this universe.
- Travis Van Winkle plays the character Trent De Marco in both Transformers and Michael Bay's Friday the 13th remake, Trent's last name isn't specified in the Transformers movie but it is in the novelization.
- Because Marvel Films holds the rights to all Marvel Comics characters not given to other studios (Spider-Man, X-Men, Blade, Daredevil, etc), they have managed to bridge together a single continuity family with links between the characters stories. Nick Fury makes a cameo in Iron Man referring Tony Stark to the "Avenger Initiative," Tony appears in the film of The Incredible Hulk talking to General Ross about putting a team together (also having a nod to Captain America), Iron Man II gave many hints to The Mighty Thor, and all of this will coalesce into The Avengers movie as a Crisis Crossover.
Literature
- The Cthulhu Mythos is a famous example of this; professional fanfiction set in his world is not only published, but was also acknowledged and supported by Lovecraft before his death.
- C. S. Lewis linked his world to his friend Tolkien's universe in That Hideous Strength.
- Susannah Clarke's short story The Duke of Wellington Misplaces His Horse connects the universes of her novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell to that of Neil Gaiman's novel Stardust.
- Hang on, isn't Stardust already implied to be part of the American Gods -verse already too?
- The Wild Cards books were designed as Shared Universe Anthologies from the ground up.
- Bordertown is a city between the "real world" and Faerie. It was originally created by Terri Windling, but Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, Charles de Lint and several other writers have written stories set there.
- 1632 was originally to be a one-off novel, but due to favorable fan response went beyond that, later expanding into The Grantville Gazette, one of whose main goals is to give previously unknown authors a way to be published, and paid for their work. Unlike with many anthologies, the contributions from other authors affect the "main" story line works. There are very few aspects that are truly forbidden to these authors, primarily those where it would interfere with the prerogatives of Eric Flint, the series creator.
- Thieves' World was a dark fantasy Shared Universe created by Robert Asprin in the late 1970s. It had contributors like Poul Anderson, John Brunner and Marion Zimmer Bradley and generated 12 anthlogies of short stories, seven official novels and a bunch of roleplaying adaptations before writing stopped in 1989. It preemptively dealt with Continuity Snarl with a preface framing story about an old timer talking to a new arrival in the city about how one should not believe everything in the stories one hears, as everyone spins the stories to fit their agendas, to make themselves sound more important in a good story, or less to blame in a bad one, and two people telling the same story may have wildly different variations.
- The universe of the Bolo super-tanks has been shared by everyone from John Ringo to Mercedes Lackey.
- The Russian Death Zone series is worked on by several known Russian sci-fi authors and is loosely based on the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games. Unfortunately, this tends to create certain lapses in continuity. For example, in Andrei Livadny's novels, the Order is portrayed as a rational group that believes in the existence of an otherdimentional point known as the Node based purely on empirical evidence. In Roman Glushkov's books, they are fanatics spouting religious nonsense about the Holy Node before sacrificing themselves for the cause. It could be explained that these are different members of the Order interpreting their teachings, if they were not using the same characters.
- The Liavek anthology series- stories by several different authors, set in and around the titular city. Apparently Liavek started out as a RPG invented by Will Shetterly for his writer's group, The Scribblies; they later fleshed out the setting and produced five volumes of short stories (and a few poems). Two of the authors- John M. Ford and Pamela Dean- later wrote more stories in the same universe.
- The Midnight Rose collective, a group of British SF writers, published several shared-universe anthologies in the early 1990s, with settings including Temps (tongue-in-cheek superhero stories) and The Weerde (shape-shifting aliens are the source of all the world's myths and conspiracies). Contributors included Stephen Baxter, Neil Gaiman, Mary Gentle, David Langford, Kim Newman, and Charles Stross.
- All of Simon R Green's series appear to inhabit the same universe
Live Action TV
- A pretty large number of works have been proposed as taking place in a shared universe named after Tommy Westphall. A grid and an explanation for every connection can be found here
 . The idea revolves around a particular actor who has played the same police officer in over a dozen different shows (ranging from the more realistic Homicide: Life on the Street to the surreal The X-Files), and those shows having a crossover with shows he didn't appear in, and there are some wild implications if you trace it back to the infamous ending to St. Elsewhere.
- Warehouse 13 and Eureka share a universe with Alphas.
- CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: NY, CSI:Miami, Cold Case and Without A Trace are all in the same universe.
- After a great many hints in the various Dan Schneider shows, iCarly canonized that it exists in the same universe as Drake & Josh, Zoey 101 and Victorious.
- The DCLAU, the Disney Channel Live Action Universe, which is comprised of Even Stevens, That's So Raven, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody/On Deck, Hannah Montana, Cory in the House, Wizards of Waverly Place, Zeke And Luther, I'm In The Band, Pair Of Kings, A.N.T. Farm, and Kickin' It.
- The various seasons of Power Rangers are shown to exist in the same Universe. This was most obvious in the early years of the series, which had one, continuing storyline culminating in Power Rangers in Space. Later seasons tend to downplay this, but the various crossovers and reappearing characters establish that the universe is the same. However, Power Rangers RPM takes place in an Alternate Universe, something not made obvious until its crossover with Power Rangers Samurai.
- Community, Cougar Town, and Scrubs exist in one of the more convoluted examples of this trope.
- Abed and Ted Buckland both show up in the Cougar Town Season 2 finale. Laurie and Travis are present for the events of the second paintball war in Community. So far a pretty straight forward example of Shared Universe with Character Overlap. Now things get complicated. Kirsten has previously mentioned watching the first season of Community on DVD. Abed has also mentioned watching Cougar Town, and has compared people he knows to the actors on Scrubs. To sum up, all three series exist in a quantum state of being both in each other continuity and at the same time are fictional series. Wrinkled your brain yet?
- Even better, Abed appears as an extra in Cougar Town, playing some guy in the background. So Community!Abed is an actor playing some random guy (let's call him "Chad") in Cougar Town, which is fictitious to Abed.
- JAG,NCIS, NCIS Los Angeles and the new Hawaii Five-0 are a shared world, as evidenced by Kensi's presence in Hawaii.
- All the Law & Order series share a world with Homicide: Life on the Street, due to John Munch.
- The Filmways-produced Petticoat Junction and Green Acres were both set in the town of Hooterville, and characters from each gravitated to the other fairly regularly.
- The Montecito appears on both Las Vegas and Heroes, and the former has had a Cross Over with Crossing Jordan, which logically means that all three shows exist in the same universe (and two of them are created by the same person)... except that in the Heroes episode "Jump, Push, Fall" Gretchen suggests the titular theory to Claire and tells her that she saw it on an episode of Crossing Jordan (presumably the episode called... "Jump, Push, Fall"). So is Crossing Jordan an actual TV show in this instance, or a reality series, or what? *smashcut* TO BE CONTINUED...
- "The Girls Of Hollywood High," the second of two Poorly Disguised Pilots (for a proposed series about Texan private detectives called Eyes Of Texas) which aired as BJ And The Bear episodes, established that this shares a universe with another Glen A. Larson series - at one point the female PIs pay a visit to the Los Angeles Coroner's Office. John S. Ragin and Robert Ito turn up as the characters they play on that particular series, but Jack Klugman, alias Quincy, is conspicuously (and given how he felt about Glen Larson understandably) absent.
Multi-Type
- Older Than Steam: Perhaps the oldest non-mythology example is the Jianghu (literally "rivers and lakes") fantasy world in which most Chinese wuxia books, films, TV series, etc. are set. Jianghu dates at least to the 14th-century novel Water Margin.
- The various Transformers cartoons and comics were generally regarded as being in separate continuities...until Simon Furman came along. His writing in the comics claimed that the universes were parallel to each other, with Primus and Unicron existing as single entities in all of them simultaneously.
- Speaking of Transformers, it's very common for both that series and GiJoe to exist in the same universe depending on the series. Transformers had even had crossovers with Marvel Comics, as Marvel used to publish the Transformers comic series. Marvel also used to publish Godzilla comics as well, which leads to a whole load of fan favorites occupying the same Earth in one continuity.
- There's a bounty hunter named Deaths Head who first appeared in Transformers comics, then ended up being stranded in the Time Vortex where he met the Seventh Doctor, who subsequently dumped him in the mainstream Marvel universe. Let's chalk it up to the multiverse and save us the headache. (Or MST3K Mantra it)
- What this causes is that you could do a Doctor Who/Army of Darkness crossover. Or, since The Doctor and Rose appeared for one, entirely pointless besides for getting in on the insanity, panel of Buffy Season 8, a Buffy/Army of Darkness crossover. How? Army of Darkness crossed over into Marvel Zombies. Marvel Zombies is part of the Marvel Multiverse. Because of the Death's Head thing, the Whoniverse is also part of this multiverse, as is Army of Darkness due to the MZ thing. Because of that one panel, the Buffyverse is either a part of the Whoniverse or is a part of that same multiverse?
- In an episode of Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, a planet is shown being destroyed, as its location is "ten zero eleven zero zero by zero two from galactic zero in the constellation of Kasterborous", the exact location of Gallifrey......
- Each Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting is its own 'Verse (See the page on D&D for more information), and the associated novels have many different authors, though - like the Star Wars Expanded Universe - the writers usually have to clear their ideas through the universe's owner.
- Dungeons and Dragons also has all of the settings linked in Planescape and Spelljammer, but those are rarely mentioned as existing except for their own continuities.
- Given that Urban Arcana is our Earth, only with hidden fantasy elements, the Earth that Forgotten Realms canonically is connected to*
And hilariously so: among other things, the first edition of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting was canonically written with the help of Elminster is probably that Earth. Planescape, at least, has a connection to Urban Arcana via a shared character that namedrops Sigil and has a way to traverse the Shadow that otherwise acts as a boundary between Urban Arcana and the rest of the multiverse.
- The Warhammer 40,000 universe is shared by a large number of writers; the sheer scale of the setting in both space and time helps avoid continuity problems.
- In early versions of the background, it was heavily hinted that the Warhammer Fantasy world was part of a planet cut off from the rest of the universe by warp storms, explaining the many shared elements. However, mentioning this nowadays is liable to get you bundled into a van and never seen again.
- Word Of God places Dr. Horrible\'s Sing-Along Blog, The Tick and the Venture Brothers in the same universe.
- Spells R Us was started off with Bill Hart's story A Strangeness at the Frat House and then became not so much a universe but a single series of the same character in the same errant shop all ending up with customers being transformed into something.
Video Games
- Fable, Frogger, Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat and The Elder Scrolls share the same universe.
- Portal shares a universe with Half-Life.
- The Super Mario and Donkey Kong series exist in the same universe, as shown through Donkey Kong, Diddy, Dixie, and Funky appearing in Mario spin-offs, as well as Mario and Yoshi appearing in Donkey Kong Country 2. Additionally, due to first appearing in Super Mario World and Super Mario Land 2 respectively, the Yoshi, Wario Land, and WarioWare series are also part of the expanded Super Mario Universe. The entire Shared Universe of Mario, however, is much, MUCH larger.
- Street Fighter, Final Fight, Saturday Night Slam Masters and Captain Commando take place in the same universe. Rival Schools may also be part of it.
- A few Final Fight characters (namely Guy, Sodom, Rolento, and Cody) have appeared as fighters in the Street Fighter Alpha series, with stages and endings featuring cameos by other characters. Andore appears in Street Fighter III under the name of "Hugo" with Poison acting as his manager. Both, Guy and Cody returned in Super Street Fighter IV. Additionally, Chun-Li makes a cameo in Stage 1 of Final Fight 2 and the portable versions of Alpha 3 features Maki as an extra character.
- Haggar appeared in Slam Masters as a wrestler. The U.S. localization refers to him as the "former mayor of Metro City", although the original Japanese storyline actually places the games before Haggar was elected. A couple of Street Fighter characters have cameos in the Slam Masters series (such as Chun-Li, Honda, and Balrog) and the Slam Masters are referenced in Hugo's ending in 2nd Impact.
- Captain Commando takes place in a futuristic version of Metro City. A sculpt of Mike Haggar is featured in the game as an bonus item, and Ginzu the Ninja is a future successor of Guy in the Bushin style of Ninjutsu.
- The first Rival Schools features Sakura as a playable character (although, her blood type is different from the one given in the Alpha series). Moreover, the Nekketsu Seisyun Nikki spin-offs has Hinata studying the "Ken Masters style of Karate" and Iinchou/Chairperson learning "Saikyou-Style" through mail. On the other hand, there are a few date discrepancies according to the first game's intro and Sakura's storyline (in which she's yet to meet Ryu, placing the series pre-Street Fighter Alpha 3).
- While not part of the main Street Fighter continuity, the Arika-developed Street Fighter EX games shares a couple of characters (Allen and Blair) with their independently developed arcade game Fighting Layer.
- Koei's Warriors Orochi was made to confirm that it's series Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors take place in the same universe but the second trailer of Warriors Orochi 3 more or less confirms Koei's other games Warriors Legends Of Troy and Blade Storm The Hundred Years War due to the presence of Achilles and Jeanne D'Arc. But it also confirms that it's business partner Tecmo series Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive series take place there due to the presence of Ryu Hayabusa. By extension it might also might also put it in the same universe as the Halo Series due to the Spartan Nicole's Presence in Dead Or Alive 4.
- The Ultima series features references to the Wing Commander series. In Ultima I there were spaceships that in Ultima 7: The Black Gate was explained to be the spaceship of the Kilrathi. As pointed out by Spoony here.
- Dig Dug, Baraduke (or Alien Sector if you prefer), and Mr. Driller are set in the same world, by virtue of Taizo Hori and Toby "Kissy" Masuyo being the parents of Susumu, Ataru, and Taiyo Hori (the first of the three being The Hero of the Mr. Driller series) and the events of the first Dig Dug being referenced directly in Mr. Driller (the "Dig Dug incident").
- EVE Online and the upcoming FPS DUST 514 are part of the same universe... literally. Players will be able to accept contracts and do missions for the player-run companies of EVE Online, and even form their own corporations that EVE Online players will be able to join.
- The Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden series both take place in the same universe, complete with having characters originating in one becoming plot-integral in the other. Of course, characters will change looks to match the art style of the respective games.
- The presence of both Seath the Scaleless and Patches the Hyena seem to indicate that Dark Souls shares the same world and universe as the Kings Field series and Demon's Souls.
- Brøderbund Software tried to work the Bungeling Empire into most of its early 1980s action games. Choplifter and Lode Runner had it All There in the Manual; Raid on Bungeling Bay had it in the title but wasn't really a sequel to anything.
- Space Harrier is set in the Fantasy Zone; several Fantasy Zone games reference it to various degrees. The culmination of this was the unreleased crossover game Space Fantasy Zone.
Webcomics
- Webcomics tend to be chock full of Crossovers and Shout Outs, but very few non-Spin-Off comics have Shared Universes. Among those that do:
- Something Positive and Queen of Wands/Punch And Pie
- More recently, Something Positive and Girls with Slingshots
- Also recently, Something Positive and Penny and Aggie
- Melonpool and the Walkyverse
- In fact, all of the above apparently share a universe now, since characters from Something Positive and Girls with Slingshots have recently appeared in Shortpacked!.
- Questionable Content as well, though mainly as the odd cameo (and an implied spacewarp between the Shortpacked store and Coffee of Doom, which is actually pretty reasonable by QC standards at least.)
- Questionable Content also shows Kim Ross, cybernetic protagonist of Dresden Codak, laughing at Pintsize's mishaps in an IRC.
- The pre-reboot version of Zortic was also part of the Melonpool-verse. Ralph and Splink were officially half-brothers. This hasn't been mentioned since the reboot.
- Melonpool, Ralph, Splink, and Zortic have all appeared in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! Aparently Voluptua knows Ralph and Splink's family.
- Neko The Kitty and Catharsis not only share a universe, they share an apartment building.
- The Wotch and The Accidental Centaurs
- Ryan North believes that his Dinosaur Comics and Andrew Hussie's Homestuck share a universe.
- The [International Comic Continuity International Comic Continuity] was created specifically to make a Shared Universe.
Web Original
- By definition, roleplaying boards such as Survival of the Fittest are Shared Universes, since each handler has his own spin on the story.
- The Whateley Universe. Right now, there are about a dozen authors writing about twice that many main characters. And that doesn't count the Fan Fic.
- Many Internet writing circles take the form of shared universes. Some such universes have been around continuously since the mid-1980s.
- The Randomverse contains multiple roleplays run by different people. They include The Death Series, The Insane Quest, Smile For The Camera and TV Tropes The Adventure.
- Jason Bortz, M. S. Patterson, and Christopher Wright share a universe informally titled "The Foldspace Universe." It's the setting for Pay Me, Bug!, among others.
- "In My World" and "Inspector Dan Rather" seem to take place in the same over-the-top-ridiculous universe, although they are told from very different points of view and rarely overlap. The only "Inspector Dan Rather" story not told from Rather's delusional point-of-view seems to confirm this.
- Several "imprints" on the superhero fiction newsgroup rec.arts.comics.creative, notably the Legion of Net.Heroes and Academy Of Super Heroes.
Western Animation
- Rugrats, The Wild Thornberries, and Rocket Power.
- Family Guy and The Cleveland Show, along with American Dad.
- A subtle link exists among four of Marvel and Sunbow's Merchandise Driven 1980s cartoons — the character of Hector Ramirez, a thinly veiled parody of Geraldo Rivera, appears in Inhumanoids, G.I. Joe, Transformers Generation 1 and Jem, though this has not been confirmed.
- In Transformers Animated: The All Spark Almanac II, Vector Prime confirms that all these shows and {{C.O.P.S.}} take place in the Transformers generation 1 continuity.
- Since the Looney Tunes characters are the teachers to the Tiny Toon Adventures characters, this makes an obvious example. A not-so-obvious addenum to this is that the Looney Tunes characters also made several cameos on Animaniacs and Histeria, which therefore means they too share the same universe. Additionally, the Animaniacs characters made cameos on Freakazoid! (and vice versa) so this also makes this part of the WB Animated Universe (as it has been nicknamed).
- While it's pretty obvious that DuckTales and Darkwing Duck share the same universe due to sharing one of the main characters, The Legend Of The Chaos God storyline in Disney Adventures also placed Tale Spin, Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers and Goof Troop in it as well.
- The DCAU.
- The Cartoon Network universe was first established with "The Grim Adventures of the KND". It consists of:
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