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"I'm sorry; can you go back to the part about Sonic the Hedgehog meeting MOTHERBLEEPING SPAWN?!"
Boomstick, DEATH BATTLE!

There are Crossovers between works or universes which seem relatively logical, thanks to them being not too different. And then, there are these...

A Weird Crossover is an unlikely crossover between works different enough, be it in themes, tones (e.g. mixing something very dark with something very upbeat), genres (e.g. merging a Science Fiction or Horror franchise with one set in the normal world, or a specific superhero in a kind of setting they are usually not associated with), etc. It can be a full work, but there are many examples using it to create fake movie trailers. Also, there are examples of this trope serving to make a single In-Universe joke, the Weird Crossover work referred In-Universe being a Show Within a Show (or an unlikely project existing In-Universe). The trope is usually Played for Laughs, the joke being the unlikeliness of the crossover.

For obvious reasons (though official weird crossovers exist, sometimes involving universes inside the same franchise, shared copyright ownership, or Public Domain Characters), this trope is often restricted to Game Mods, Fan Art, Fan Fic, and various kinds of Web Original contents.

Of course, Tropes Are Tools is in full effect for these types of stories. A well-written Weird Crossover can be an engaging story that preserves the original spirit of both works in a new setting, while a poorly done one can create all sorts of Glurge and Mood Whiplash that clashes with the tone of the two respective works.

The opposite of Common Crossover, and a specific form of Crack Fic. Canonical (non fanwork) examples turn into Shared Universe. A Super-Trope to Demographic-Dissonant Crossover. Related to Crossover Cosmology. Sometimes leads to Fake Crossover. Can overlap with Intercontinuity Crossover, Massive Multiplayer Crossover, Unexpected Character, and Guest Fighter. When the unlikely combination is a mish-mash of generic creatures or concepts (instead of proper references to specific universes) it's a Fantasy Kitchen Sink or a Sci-Fi Kitchen Sink. Occasionally involved in Real Trailer, Fake Movie. Crossovers between works with very different tones and settings are often a Story-Breaker Team-Up.


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Works Examples:

    Advertising 

    Anime & Manga 

    Comic Books 
  • Both the Alien and Predator franchises have had (separate) official Batman crossover comics.
  • Perhaps not quite as weird as some of the others listed here but Ape Nation is a crossover between Alien Nation and Planet of the Apes. The premise is that the Tenctonese slave ship was sucked into a black hole and arrived on the ape-dominated Earth in the future, landing in the Forbidden Zone. Caan, the captain of the Newcomer ship, has conquest in mind and is opposed by his brother Danada who enters into an alliance with the gorilla General Ollo and a human named Simon, who has the ability to speak. Another major character in the miniseries is named Heston.
  • Archie Comics sometimes makes comics that clash their PG, family-friendly image with adult-aimed series:
  • Even before Warner Bros. absorbed DC Comics, DC had the license to print Looney Tunes comics. In 2000, DC launched the four-issue series Superman and Bugs Bunny wherein the wacky Dodo meets Mr. Mxyzptlk, and they form a partnership to wreak havoc on both universes.
    • 2017 had another round of DC/Looney Tunes crossovers. Of particular note was Batman/Elmer Fudd, which focused on how they're not that different and both trapped in a neverending battle with a chaotic enemy (the Joker and Bugs Bunny, respectively).
    • Another DC/Looney Tunes crossover made around the same time paired Jonah Hex with Yosemite Sam and Foghorn Leghorn.
    • And let's not even get started on the oddity that is Superman Meets the Quik Bunny.
    • DC's Hanna-Barbera Beyond franchise has given us such gems as a Suicide Squad/The Banana Splits crossover.
  • Lobo's Paramilitary Christmas Special - aka "Lobo vs Santa" - features Lobo being hired by the Easter Bunny to whack Santa Claus.
  • There is a very old Disney comic story called "Thumper meets the Seven Dwarfs", where Thumper the rabbit encounters the Seven Dwarfs from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Friend Owl and Flower also appear, and they even encounter the giant from a Mickey Mouse cartoon Brave Little Tailor!
  • Comic tie-ins for the Star Trek (2009) universe had a couple odd crossover choices: DC's Star Trek meets Green Lantern, IDW's Star Trek meets Legion Of Superheroes, Boom! Studios' Star Trek meets Planet of the Apes... for a lot of them, the only thing the two properties had in common was that they'd both gotten a recent reboot or film revival.
    • Prior to that, Marvel put out two Star Trek / X-Men crossovers, one as a comics miniseries and one as a novel.
  • When Dynamite Comics owned Evil Dead, they did some very weird crossovers. Ash meets the Cthulhu Mythos? Well, okay, they both feature a book called the Necronomicon. Ash meets Darkman? Okay, both Sam Raimi creations. Ash meets Xena: Warrior Princess note , or Vampirella? Weird.
  • Spider-Man once helped Cap'n Crunch battle the Soggies, though the conclusion to the story was never published.
  • In Brazil, Monica and Friends, a very popular comic book franchise for kids, had a series of official crossovers in 2018 with the Justice League heroes and their antagonists.
    • The Monica Teen spin-off manga also crossed over with the Justice League for two issues during the same period. While a Monica Teen/Justice League crossover seems less weird in theory, the weirdness in this case comes from the fact that not only the stories in the two issues are not related to each other, but they also contradict each other in several instances (for example, issue #25 establishes that the Justice League comes from an Alternate Universe, while in issue #26 all characters exist in the same universe and Monica and her friends have seen the Justice League saving the world for a long time).
    • Speaking of Monica Teen, they have also previously crossed over with Osamu Tezuka's characters, which also managed to show Sapphire, Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion interacting with each other, despite coming from different works from Tezuka.
  • My Little Pony/Transformers: Friendship in Disguise!: Granted, they're both owned by Hasbro and have comics published by IDW, but still, this is a comic where giant fighting robots interact with cute talking ponies.
  • Scooby-Doo! Team-Up, in which the Mystery Inc gang meet a new DC Comics or Hanna-Barbera character each month, from classic characters like Batman, Wonder Woman, and The Flintstones to more obscure ones like Hong Kong Phooey or Angel and the Ape.
  • One Garfield strip had him joining the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles because he wanted to eat their pizzas, they saw through his disguise when Odie tagged along, he had a turtle shell on his tongue, they beat them up and kicked them out of their lair.
  • With no fanfare, DC Comics dropped a six-issue, Larry Hama miniseries adapting two classic arcade games created by Midway Games in the 80s. Which ones? Spy Hunter and...Paperboy.
  • Marvel Comics once had the license to print comic books based on The Ren & Stimpy Show (the patron saint for the Grossout Show genre). This led to a crossover issue between Spider-Man and Powdered Toast Man because, according to the front cover, "NO ONE demanded it!", apparently.
  • Eminem Vs The Punisher, a 2009 collaboration between Marvel and XXL Magazine.
  • During 2013, IDW held a company-wide Cross Through event featuring Mars Attacks!, as the Martians invaded the universes and timelines of five different series they've all published back then. Some of those were decidedly weird matchups, namely Ghost Busters, KISS and even Popeye!
  • An 80s Marvel Crisis Crossover, The Evolutionary War, involved the High Evolutionary, normally an Avengers/X-Men villain. At the time Marvel was doing a comic based on the sitcom ALF — and they decided to get ALF involved in the crossover too.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 

    Literature 

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Halloween crossover between Bones and Sleepy Hollow. Bones is largely reality based forensic science, albeit with a little Artistic License and any paranormal stuff is Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane territory, while Sleepy Hollow was a fantasy series inspired by the book, that was heavily based in the supernatural. The Bones was pretty mundane aside from Ichabod trying to find a convincing explanation for Brennan of why his handwriting perfectly matched a letter to George Washington written in the 1700s. The Sleepy Hollow half had the remains that had been retrieved from the lab re-animate and Ichabod and Abby had to fight the guy while Booth and Brennan conveniently missed seeing anything that would shake up their characterizations, particularly Brennan’s.
  • In Boy Meets World, professional wrestler Vader appears as the father of Frankie and Herman. His name on the series is Francis Albert Leslie 'Frankie' Stechino, Sr., while the Real Life Vader is Leon Allen White.
  • Scott Bakula had a season or so long arc guest starring on Murphy Brown as Murphy's love interest, and they almost got married. In Bakula's last episode, he leaves the newsroom bullpen via elevator and you see him glowing blue as if he's leaping.
  • Odd Squad: A CBBC promo for Season 2 crosses the show over with, of all shows, Stranger Things. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the promo has never been released outside of the UK, only being seen on CBBC's website, and has gotten no recognition by Netflix.
  • Sanford and Son. A crossover with Hawaii Five-O is heavily invoked in "The Hawaiian Connection" trilogy. While Fred and Lamont get caught up in a diamond smuggling ring that's being investigated by the actual Five-O, references to Steve McGarrett (famous hair and all) are made throughout, implying that in-Sanford-universe, McGarrett actually works for the actual Five-O.
  • A Saturday Night Live sketch from 1999 involved a humorous crossover between Seinfeld and Oz, in which Jerry Seinfeld is incarcerated at Oswald State Correctional Facility, where he casually chats about prison life with Tobias Beecher, Vernon Schillinger, Ryan O'Reilly, and Augustus Hill.
  • Star Trek: Strange New Worlds crosses over with Star Trek: Lower Decks in "Those Old Scientists". While both shows are in the Star Trek Universe, one is an old school, earnest live action show and the other is an aggressively silly animated show. The episode sees two animated characters get sucked into the live action show and played by the actors who voice them.
  • The Supernatural episode "ScoobyNatural" crossed over with an old episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!. While both series share the common ground of featuring paranormal investigators, Scooby-Doo is a kids' show and Supernatural really isn't. In fact, some of the conflict comes from the Winchesters trying to shield Mystery Inc. from the nastier stuff that the latter aren't equipped to deal with.
  • In the The X-Files episode "X-Cops" the producers of an episode of COPS run into Mulder & Scully while filming one of their episodes and end up following them as they investigate one of their cases.

    Music 
  • At one of the stranger points during the 60s, The Monkees and Jimi Hendrix toured together. Apparently, the thinking behind this was that the Monkees were trying to increase their cool cred, while Hendrix was trying to get more mainstream popularity. Needless to say, the tour did not go well, mainly because the audiences were primarily made up of screaming young girls.
  • Bing Crosby and David Bowie singing Christmas music together. Could there be two more dissimilar musicians in any universe? For bonus points, the cheesy banter of the christmas special quickly gives way to a pair of master musicians creating a beautiful blending of old and new sounds.
  • Rave.DJ allows the user to input any two YouTube videos of reasonable length to create a mashup, allowing a Weird Crossover between any two songs. Do you want to combine Rotary Dial and Bubblegum Bitch? Not only has it been done, but it works surprisingly well.

    Music Videos 
  • The music video to Fall Out Boy's "The Carpal Tunnel Of Love" is a crossover with Happy Tree Friends, a cartoon where the entire joke is adorable animal characters dying in various gorey ways. The music video stays true to this theme by featuring the characters (including Funny Animal versions of the band) all dying in true HTF fashion.

    Podcasts 

    Roleplay 

    Pro Wrestling 
  • In 1999 SFX Motorsports began building WCW themed monster trucks. Chad Fortune of The Pit Crew Tag Team and Madusa were the only wrestlers who drove their own trucks and since WCW buried both of them, they became more famous as monster truck drivers than pro wrestlers, especially Fortune, who retired from wrestling completely. Madusa still appeared on the shows of World Wonder Ring ST★RDOM, National Wrestling Alliance, RISE and such, even if her driving commitments prevented her from wrestling on them.
  • The year was 1990. WCW aired the pay-per-view Capitol Combat, which involved, alongside some genuinely excellent matches, Sting being rescued from the Four Horsemen by... Robocop? Then later in 1998, Chucky would make an appearance to plug his latest movie.
  • Quite a few reality shows have crossed over with pro wrestling shows. Dana White: Lookin' For A Fight going with UFC and or Jerry Lawler's Memphis Wrestling isn't so weird. Jackass(Fake Crossover with TNA), Jersey Shore(actual crossovers with TNA and Juggalo Championship Wrestling), Survivor(With Impact Wrestling and Ring of Honor only being its most notable examples) are very weird. In-Universe, the Dave Prazak and Lenny Leonard were embarrassed to see Johnny Fairplay in the ring.
  • While Kaiju Big Battel is technically staying in the same genre when it crosses over with other pro wrestling promotions, it doesn't happen very often for very good reasons. Even when those wrestlers come from other "weird" promotions like Pro Wrestling ZERO1, Chikara or Dramatic Dream Team(for escalating levels of weirdness) they still tend to stick out like sore thumbs, to say nothing of the mostly regular wrestlers working for the WWN family promotions.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Interstitial: Our Hearts Intertwined is designed to facilitate these, as one can imagine from the actual play described in the podcasts folder above. The mission statement is to play as existing characters, throw them together, and take them to worlds contradictory to their own.

    Toys 

    Video Games 

Commercial Video Games

Non-Commercial Video Games / Fan Games / Game Mods

    Web Animation 

    Web Original 

    Web Videos 

    Western Animation 

In-Universe Examples


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Robot Chicken

The crossover youve been waiting for

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