Crack Pairing / Live-Action TV

• Sweet Home (2020) has no canon pairings (unless you count Jae-heon/Ji-su), but that doesn't stop the shippers. The strangest pairings seen so far:
  • Eun-hyeok/Hyun-su. They don't like each other much and they barely interact at all, but they're the pairing with the most fics on Archive of Our Own.
  • Eun-hyeok/Yi-kyung. In canon they're indifferent to each other at best and downright hostile at worst — and Yi-kyung has a fiancé.
  • Hyun-su/Ui-myeong. Yes, despite Ui-myeong being the Big Bad and Hyun-su killing him.
• Moon Lovers: AO3 has a surprising number of fics pairing Ha-jin with Wang Yo. Odd, because Wang Yo is one of the few princes who shows no romantic interest in Ha-jin (and is also the villain).
• Orphan Black: Rachel Duncan x windows, otherwise known as propane. She's a big fan of staring dramatically out windows, to the point where the official Orphan Black instagram made a joke about it
• Monk: The G-rated fanfic author Stretch Snodgrass bizarrely has Sharona go on a date with Launchpad McQuack in the strange crossover story "Mr. Monk meets Mr. McDuck". Seems to have led to a What Have I Done moment by Stretch, who minimizes the disturbing implications in advance by assuring the readers it's just "a talk" between Sharona and an adventurer.
• 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 Week Slash Fic... 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 a LiveJournal community devoted to it.
• Godai Yuusuke (Kamen Rider Kuuga) and Kazami Yuuka. There is even an entire video series on Nico Nico Douga about it.
• There were lots of House pairings 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 had long given up on House as any kind of romantic partner; she also divorced Chase because he'd become "toxic just like House." Which was a justified take since he murdered a patient, which, in addition to being illegal in and of itself, is also a mortal sin for a physician.
  • 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. House decided to try to actively 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.
  • Around the time of season 2 or 3, Hugh Laurie himself said he wouldn't be surprised if House had slept with Cuddy, Cameron and Wilson by the end of the show's run.
• Henry Danger has these. Although most people ship Henry and Charlotte, quite a few people ship Henry and Ray.
• iCarly has these. Some include Sam and Principal Franklin. Wendy/Spencer, Carly/Cal.
• 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 then 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 canon Crack 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. The only thing that makes it vaguely acceptable is that Rufus's backstory is being a rock star and thus it is somewhat understandable that he might have a connection with her.
• 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.
  • "Paradigms of Human Memory" expands on the Abed/Pierce Crack Pairing via a fanvideo-style compilation of various "long looks" between them, parodying a real fanvideo made to support the Jeff/Annie pairing, including using the same music.
• Counting the Days ships Count von Count with Edward Cullen from The Twilight Saga. Hilarity Ensues.
• 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.
• In the Supernatural fandom, quite a few people ship Dean with his car!
  • Baldur x Gabriel which is crack because Gabriel is LOKI and kills Baldur in Norse myth. Also Baldur hates Gabby.
  • Lucifer x Michael
  • Bobby x Dick Roman. Here's a link to a fanfic featuring them. It's an admitted crack fic, however, and was apparently a dare, but still, ew.
  • There is a really long, detailed fic out there that has Bobby in a relationship with RAPHAEL AS A WOMAN!
  • Adam Milligan x Samandriel is a growing ship even though Adam has been trapped in Hell since season 6 and Samdriel has been killed by Castiel
  • There's a scary number of fics that ship Castiel/Claire Novak, reveling in the incest-y implications. However, since it's a fandom that has thrived on incest shipping of its main characters, it's not that surprising.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had some canon versions of this, albeit very temporary ones, in the episode "Fascination" due to a Love Is in the Air situation in which various characters' latent desires awakened. Some of these desires made sense even if they were unrealistic, such as Jake Sisko developing a crush on Kira Nerys and Kira Nerys suddenly developing a liking for Julian Bashir (who'd done some hitting on her along with every other potentially available woman on the station from the beginning), but Quark getting sweet on Keiko? This effectively clued Commander Sisko to issue a general alert to everyone on the station to cool their jets until the crew could sort out the situation.
• From Doctor Who, we have Jenny/Susan - Jenny is the "daughter"/Opposite-Sex Clone of the Tenth Doctor, while Susan is the granddaughter of the First Doctor.
  • Among similar lines, shipping River Song with Amy or Rory has retroactively become Parental Incest.
  • Doctor/TARDIS is hinted in series 4, and canon as of series 6.
  • Among the other rather infamous pairings out there: Doctor/themself, Clara/herself, and Daleks/anyone.
  • The one which needs explanation even of the character names is Sexy/Lolita. It's Doctor's TARDIS/Master's TARDIS, with the "Sexy" name from the TV episode "The Doctor's Wife" and "Lolita" from Faction Paradox, in which there's a character called Lolita who is strongly implied to be the Master's TARDIS in humanoid form.
• Just when you thought 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.
  • It has such a large following that you can search for the pairing through the FanFiction.net filters.
• Word of God is that Parks and Recreation intentionally set one up with Ann/Tom.
• 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.
  • Swan Queen (Emma/Regina) in the beginning of the first. Despite the fact that Regina has repeatedly tried to kill Emma's mother, Emma's father (to a lesser extent, but she still tried), and Emma herself, and succeeded in killing Emma's love interest.
  • In later seasons it becomes less cracky when the two become close friends, are both regarded equally as Henry's moms, and Emma makes a Heroic Sacrifice in the Season 4 finale to save Regina from being consumed by darkness.
• Friends: Ross/Phoebe and Chandler/Rachel are quite popular. The former pair have an adorably quirky friendship but are still Vitriolic Best Buds who disagree on everything from evolution to child-rearing. The latter are The Friends Who Never Hang, and Rachel is often rather scornful of Chandler and his happy marriage with her best friend Monica. It doesn't help that both of these pairings have shared kisses in canon (or that Ross and Phoebe almost had pity sex on a pool table when he found out that his first wife was leaving him for another woman).
• House of Anubis: The most popular one is probably Victor/Corbierre. Note that Corbierre is Victor's stuffed raven. Who he talks to as if it's alive. He even panicked when Fabian "kidnapped" them. Some people have even accepted this shipping as canon. (Granted, it's as close to a romantic pairing as Victor would ever get since Sarah has died and he found out Vera was working for Rufus, and some even like to point out that they are the one pairing to never "break up".)
  • On a smaller scale, KT/Tree is rather popular. Yes, one of the main characters and a tree. It originated when KT's actress, Alexandra Shipp, said in an interview that she wanted KT to have some sort of romance and wouldn't even mind having the character date a tree stump. Fans took it and ran with it.
  • There are also pairings such as Nina/Mick, Patricia/Jerome (notable for having a rather large following for a minor, rarely teased shipping) and all the food pairings.
• On Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Melinda May and the Bus. She gets really upset any time anyone tries to fly it besides her.
• Scrubs had the pairing of Kelso/Laverne as canon. In "My Long Goodbye", out of nowhere, it is revealed that the two hooked up prior to Laverne's marriage.
• The Vampire Diaries: the fandom presents us with Kennett (Kol/Bonnie), who had never interacted on Kol's brief appearance on the show back in season three but got popular enough to make show runner Julie Plec comment on it (and shut it down). They got some really brief interactions later on season four though, which consisted of Kol threatening her life.
• ER fanfic writers thoroughly enjoy this one:
  • Several writers have a knack for pairing mortal enemies and polar opposites Doug Ross and Kerry Weaver, choosing to interpret their numerous clashes as Belligerent Sexual Tension and/or leftover bad feelings from a failed relationship. It doesn't help that Laura Innes did in fact audition for the role of one of Doug's girlfriends before being cast as Weaver.
  • Another series of fanfics titled "Carter Does County" was...Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Thanks to this, pairings included those who he genuinely did have Unresolved Sexual Tension with, while others made no sense given their lack of interaction and/or that they were homosexual pairings between characters who were straight.
  • ER fanfic had plenty of slash pairings that resulted in this. Along with pairing heterosexual characters, the one character who was gay (Kerry), was often paired with women who were straight and/or hated her.
  • The fic "The Eternal Quadrangle" was legendary for this, taking four characters (Kerry, Abby, Luka, Carter) and pairing each of them with the other three at various intervals, interspersing the story with varying versions of threesomes, and finally concluding it with a foursome. Also paired with Hilarious in Hindsight, as Abby did hook up with Luke and Carter at different times throughout the show.
• Sherlock fandom's crack OTP is Anderson/dinosaurs. This started with a Kink Meme prompt that said: "When Anderson masturbates he thinks of dinosaurs."
  • One of the most persistent ones in fanon is Moriarty's love of Sebastian Moran; Moran does exist in the show's universe, but his appearance is so brief and he's not even really named onscreen, so basically 90% of his personality is fanon. It doesn't really matter. In fact, the pairing came about before Moran was introduced in the show. Essentially, the fandom collectively made up a version of Moran as he might exist in the world of the series, paired him with Moriarty, and then when the show introduced the actual Moran-as-in-the-show's-universe, they ignored him.
• Subconscious Desires is a Stranger Things fanfic where Nancy's Mother realizes she has feelings for her daughter after a hypnotherapy session.
• In-universe in Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Jake and Amy's escapades on their honeymoon include them sexually roleplaying as Melvil Dewey (of the Dewey Decimal System) and Holly Gennaro.
• A surprisingly popular ship for Better Call Saul is Lalo x Howard, despite the fact the two characters only technically interact one time in the entire series (and neither character even knows the other exists until that point), and it's Lalo murdering Howard (solely because he didn't want to wait until Howard left the apartment to confront Saul and Kim). A large part of this is because their corpses are secretly buried in the same pit, making them seem Together in Death.
• First Kill: There's a small subset of fans that ship Juliette with Tess, despite them never even meeting.

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