Deconstruction Crossover

Doesn’t matter which kid you beat—there’s no way you’re a good father.
Comic by Panic Volkushka

Basically, when you throw many characters belonging to a specific genre (or sometimes a distinct division of this genre — e.g., the works of a certain author) into a Massive Multiplayer Crossover, for the purpose of exploring and deconstructing — and sometimes reconstructing — said genre from a modern viewpoint (which may or may not be Darker and Edgier). It could use the actual characters and settings from said works, or it could limit itself to using Expies if said work isn't quite in the public domain (less common online, because copyrights matter somewhat less when no money changes hands).

Note that the Massive Multiplayer Crossover itself here is just the means, while the goal is the aforementioned genre exploration/deconstruction. Also note that it's only one of the possible uses for a Massive Multiplayer Crossover, which may be implemented for numerous other purposes (e.g., fun, awesomeness, sex appeal, etc.).

A subtrope of Massive Multiplayer Crossover, Deconstruction and sometimes Reconstruction. Fan Fic versions should also be placed under the Deconstruction Fic trope.

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Examples:

• Fan Works

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Anime & Manga

• Re:CREATORS throws together expies of typical protagonists of popular 2010s anime, manga, and games, then watches them clash due to their respective worlds' differences. And that's not even getting to the main villain, who is a fan character that lived through her own author's death...
• Violence Jack has dark, twisted versions of many a Go Nagai character. Considering what most of Go Nagai's characters are like to begin with...

Comic Books

• Alan Moore loves this trope.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vols. 1 & 2 did this with Victorian literature, Black Dossier did this with mostly 1950s British literature, and Vol . 3 did this with early 20th century, 1960s and 1990s-2000s fiction. It's very likely that it was this graphic novel that influenced this trope's popularity in the last decade (especially in comics), so it's probably the Trope Codifier. Note that in the movie a similar Massive Multiplayer Crossover is made mostly for Rule of Funny and Rule of Cool, rather than Deconstruction. Thus, it's not an example of Deconstruction Crossover.
  • Albion (created with Alan Moore's assistance) did this with 1950s-'70s British comics published by IPC.
  • In The Twilight of the Superheroes, a script submitted by Alan Moore to DC, he wanted to do the same with The DCU.
  • The original script for Watchmen was this: a crossover of several Charlton Comics characters intended for deconstructing the superhero genre from a modern viewpoint. The final work uses Captain Ersatzes of the Charlton characters instead.
  • Lost Girls, with art by Melinda Gebbie, crosses the stories of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The deconstructive part comes where instead of fantasy tales, they're all converted into similar stories of sexual awakening, often taking place when the girls are quite young and sometimes with family members.
  • The Youngblood: Judgment Day crossover Moore wrote for Awesome Comics was this in spades, creating an enormous history for the Awesome universe apparently populated entirely by the Captain Ersatz novelty assortment. Among other things, it deconstructed Image Comics' early 90s period, showing it to be a product of a troubled teenager's ideal of what superheroes should be like.
• Fables does this with fairy-tales and nursery rhymes.
• Kingdom Come: It starts with the idea "everything ever produced for DC Comics was canon". All of it, Watchmen, Vertigo Comics, the experimental comics of The '70s, one shot characters from anthology comics, the Super Friends Cartoon, all of it. Then, it took all the contemporary trends in comics, morally questionable storylines, badass Nineties Anti Heroes, heroes and villains being replaced with Darker and Edgier Legacy Characters, and extrapolated them to their logical extremes. Then it took the Silver Age generation of superheroes, and brought their powers to logical extremes, added biblical themes, and gave it to us in a photo-realistic "painted" style to make it more realistic, and disturbing. It certainly counts.
• Planetary did this with various fiction characters and genres. Most of the characters there are pastiches or Captain Ersatzs, and most genres are deconstructed in self-containing stories, regardless of the series' Massive Multiplayer Crossover premise.
• The Sandman (1989) does this with every comic, mythological or historical figure Neil Gaiman could work into the story.
• J.Michael Straszynski's series The Twelve did this with twelve various WWII-era Timely Comics superheroes, exploring the differences between modern and 1940s culture — and the darker aspects of the later.
• Twilight, by Howard Chaykin, did this with DC Comics' Silver Age science fiction characters. No relation to Twilight of the Superheroes. Or that book with sparkling vampires.

Films — Animated

• Arthur Christmas draws from multiple contrasting pop-culture interpretations of the character of Santa Claus. Is he St Nicholas? Or an impossibly old man with a team of reindeer and a sleigh? A jolly fat man who enjoys pies and sherry? Or is he a modern, business-minded CEO who applies advanced Magitek to the problem of visiting every child in a single night? Yes. Yes, all of those people either have been, or are vying to become, the Legacy Character of Santa, they all disagree how best to do the job... and they're all related.
• Wreck-It Ralph does this for Video Games by taking them at face value: as characters who do the same things every day, controlled by players. Among cameos from decades worth of games, an Original Generation Punch-Clock Villain from a 1980s-era game get sick of being treated like dirt by the other characters from his game, and decide to sneak into a First-Person Shooter to earn a medal. Hilarity Ensues, and this being a Disney film, ends up triggering an even bigger adventure for himself and others.

Films — Live-Action

• Murder by Death did this with Mystery Fiction in general, using Expies of the most famous characters of Agatha Christie and Dashiell Hammett in particular.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit is probably the Trope Maker on the film side of things. It did this with Toons, The Golden Age of Animation, and Western Animation in general:
  • First it brought together characters from the Disney Animated Canon, Looney Tunes, Mickey Mouse, Betty Boop, Woody Woodpecker, Felix the Cat, and more. Then:
  • It expanded the idea of Animated Actors popularized by Looney Tunes.
  • It showed how insane, harrowing, and dangerous a Toontown would be.
  • How Rule of Funny affects and hinders the lives of Toons in realistic situations (when Roger and Eddie ended up cuffed together, Roger eventually slipped out of the cuffs easily, but he was only able to because there was a comedic opportunity to do so when Eddie was about to resolve the situation himself).
  • What happens when cartoon slapstick and Toon Physics is applied to real people (Eddie's brother was killed by a Piano Drop, and Marvin Acme meets a similair end via safe).
  • It even deconstructed the trope it named, the Roger Rabbit Effect, by showing how Toons living alongside humans are victims of prejudice, like real-world minorities.
    • The original novel, Who Censored Roger Rabbit? was even Darker and Edgier and did it with newspaper comic strip characters instead.

Literature

• The Neil Gaiman novel American Gods does this, along with a healthy dose of All Myths Are True.
• This trope, combined with Direct Line to the Author, is the main premise of many works taking place in Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton Universe.
• Nursery Crime by Jasper Fforde does this with nursery rhyme and fairy tale characters, to the point of postulating an entire murder mystery story around the age-old question of, "Why are the Three Bears' bowls of porridge different temperatures if clearly they were poured at the same time?"
• The novel Silverlock contains characters and settings from Beowulf, Don Quixote, and countless others.
• Jonathan Swift wrote the satirical tract A Tale of a Tub in 1694. It does this with Anthropomorphic Personifications of different sects of Christianity, deconstructing what Swift saw as the "flaws" in each.
• As previously stated, Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary Wolf.

Live-Action TV

• ALF features the titular alien watching Gilligan's Island in one episode and wishing for a more exciting life like the castaways. After falling asleep trying to fill a lagoon he made, he dreams he's on the island with them, complete with some of the original actors returning. It’s a lot less happy. The Howells and Ginger have left for the other side of the island, the remaining castaways are very disfunctional after being stuck with each other for years, and they can't eat Mary Ann's coconut cream pies due to high blood sugar (and being sick of them). In a case of irony, they are pining for Alf's (relatively) normal life of balanced meals, changing clothes, and not hitting each other with hats.
• The first Arrowverse crossover between Arrow and The Flash (2014) is full of both teams poking holes in the way the other operates. Oliver Queen isn't impressed with how the Flash team treats their crusade like a game and points out they cause several problems for themselves because they don't take the job seriously. Meanwhile, the Flash characters are shocked by the brutal methods the Arrow uses to stop criminals and tell him that his personal tragedies don't justify his actions. By the end of the crossover, members of both casts admit the other has a point.
• Once Upon a Time for fairy tales in general and the Disneyfied versions in particular, all while mashing up different stories together, such as Prince Charming was really the pauper to the prince. Many of the episodes are from the POV of the Evil Queen from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." It actually does the term "modern take" literally, as the Dark Curse caused almost everyone to lose their memories of who they were and have memories that would closely match real life.
• The Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode "Those Old Scientists" does this for Trek crossovers. While previous ones tend to be quite seamless as the characters are quite professional, a crossover with Star Trek: Lower Decks throws everything to the wind as the time traveling Boimler and Mariner learn to temper their expectations of their past heroes while Pike and the rest of the Enterprise crew are suffering a headache and a half with their antics.

Theater

• Into the Woods, containing characters from multiple fairy tales and weaving their stories together. The whole thing is deconstructed in the second act.

Video Games

• Super Robot Wars games can turn into this to some degree, by showing how characters from one anime would react when facing plot and characters from others - friendships (Kamina and Ryoma in Z2) and rivalries (Domon and Kazuya in MX) are formed, some characters turns different that in their source material (Shinji and Shinn, very often), some events are averted, villains fight one another (Zonderians vs Radam vs Evolouders vs Eleven Lords of Sol in W) or form alliances (Doctor Hell, Gauron and Hakkeshu in J), not to mention characters making comments about events from other series.
  Char Aznable: Your way will never bring true peace.
  Ryoma Nagare: And dropping a rock on Earth will?
  • The first Super Robot Wars Z is probably the most deconstructionistic entry in the franchise. The fused world is portrayed as a chaos-ravaged, postapocalyptic hell where the protagonists are the one and only good option while the many villainous factions from all the different works dominate the Earth Sphere through sheer superior numbers. The protagonists, in turn, break down and attack each other rather than deal with their shared enemies, partially due to the villains' manipulations, but also due to genuine ideological differences aggravated by the robot pilots' combative personalities. The multiversal plot shows characters reacting to different versions of themselves, such as Classic Ryoma witnessing Armageddon Ryoma and being horrified by his much more violent nature or classic Kouji being surprised at the power of the Mazinkaiser. And at the end of the game, it's revealed that the corner of the multiverse the game is set is has been trapped in a Vicious Cycle of warfare due humanity's inability to stop fighting and in particular the protagonists' inability to actually end their conflicts.

Web Comics

• Breakfast of the Gods does this with breakfast cereal mascots.
• Most of Bleedman's Webcomics (e.g., Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi, Grim Tales from Down Below) do this with various Western Animation cartoons (at the same time changing their drawing styles to an Animesque one). And then FusionFall used that concept as well, retaining the Massive Multiplayer Crossover and the change to an Animesque style, but dropping any hints to Deconstruction.
• Captain SNES: The Game Masta fits into this category fairly well. Not only are many of the villains aware that they are merely video game characters (which is, in at least one case, why they became villains to begin with), but characters who travel from one video game world to another are not always prepared for the different rules. (The comic where Magus writes of his experiences learning from Mario seems a good illustration of this.)
• Cheshire Crossing. Three girls believed to be insane are all sent to a 'boarding school'. But the three girls are Alice Liddell, Wendy Darling, and Dorothy Gale, and their 'teacher' is Mary Poppins.
• Kid Radd seems to do this, but featuring Captain Ersatzes and pastiches rather than actual trademarked Video Game characters. It has its own in universe versions of games like Super Mario Bros., EarthBound (1994), Final Fantasy, and even Deadly Towers and cheesy flash games. It really does well at showing what a character from one genre of games would look like if he was forced into a completely different genre but his character still followed the rules of his original game. For example, how would a platformer character for whom everything does equal damage, and only has four slots in his health bar deal with being put in an RPG where every character has thousands of HP? How would a fighting game character, who needs to take advantage of a character being temporarily stunned after being hit in order to perform combos deal with a platformer character who becomes temporarily invincible after being hit?
• Sire is a comic about the descendants of literary characters reliving their "Sire"s story and having to take cues and morals from the original work so as not to earn a tragic ending. Rare as the characters are aware of the trope and use the deconstruction as a means to survive.

Web Original

• Cartoons in Danganronpa is all about cartoon characters being forced to participate in a Killing Game, but the deconstruction doesn't end there:
  • Everyone is unnerved by how crass Kyle and Cartman can be; Dib notes that they swear more than anyone else in the school and Dipper is confused by Kyle's Terrence and Phillip doll, both because of the Non-Standard Character Design Canadians have in South Park and because he doesn't like Toilet Humor as much as Kyle.
  • Ed's Charles Atlas Superpower may be in full force here, but it has its limits in comparison to the real superheroes—when he, Blossom, Bubbles, and Jenny try to break a wall, he ends up bleeding.
  • On the Danganronpa side, this Killing Game is a lot more lopsided than the canon ones since it has actual superpowered students. Cartman points this, along with the fact that most of the students know at least one other student, as evidence for his theory that it's really some twisted game show, and Monokuma pulls out a lot more stops than he did in the games to make it all work, including making everything nigh-indestructible, (somehow) blocking off Star's Dimensional Scissors, and eventually de-powering the Powerpuff Girls and Jenny so they can't protect the others.
• DEATH BATTLE! can dwell into this, often showing how certain characters would fare against opponents operating by rules of a work different in tone or even completely different genre altogether. Certain tactics, abilities or even personality traits can work to their disadvantage or be exploited by their opponents.
  • One of recurring deconstructions in later seasons occured towards the concept of "the overdog" - a character who is such a dominant force in their story, no one can match them. In Death Battle such characters more often than not turn out to be a Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond and someone on their level may as well be an Outside-Context Problem, especially if that opponnent is Taught by Experience themselves. Michael Myers never faced another slasher, while Jason Voorhees got toe to toe with Freddy Krueger, Ash Williams, Leatherface and even himself, so he is much more in his element. In their respective multiverses no one can match Rick Sanchez's intellect or Unicron's power, but that means they're not used facing their equal or better, while both the Doctor and Galactus have a long history of doing exactly that and coming on top
• The Final Fighting Fantasy series does a good job at this. For the various Final Fantasy characters, it starts off as what looks like a simple poorly written fan fic, but quickly grows the beard and becomes quite epic. It turns out that the legendary weapons of the games were created by the ancients as a way of manipulating the game's protagonists into defeating the forces of evil, and thus restoring balance. However, after evil was defeated, the good guys can't stay around any longer, because they would tip the balance too far towards the light, so, the weapons transport them to another world, where they all meet each other, and (because of the influence the weapons have on their mind) convince them that the characters from the other games are evil. Thus they're forced into a fight to the death. The different characters named "Cid" that appear in every game is actually the same guy, manipulating things from behind the scenes. Unfortunately, Final Fighting Fantasy has been left unfinished.
• Marvel DC After Hours, a Spin-Off of I'm a Marvel... And I'm a DC does this. Season 1 questions the validity of Superman, Season 2 deals with what the heroes would be like if they all went through what Batman did, and Season 3 revolves around the concept of the Continuity Reboot, and what it would be like to go through one. By the end, it is always reconstructed.
• There Will Be Brawl straddles the line of this and a a Darker and Edgier Parody of Nintendo games. It uses a pre-existing Massive Multiplayer Crossover established by the Super Smash Bros. franchise, and then constructs a world based around the end result of innocent and not-so-innocent characters fighting a purposeless war against each other for years.
• Winnie The Pooh meets The Toxic Avenger is a deconstruction of the Pooh's Adventures series, showcasing the difficulties of featuring so many characters in a world not suited for them. Grim is killed by the author after he tries to change the story (mocking the idea of so many powerful characters just sitting on the sidelines), The Powerpuff Girls learn how to swear due to being in a world with a higher age rating, and the constant interference causes Toxie to go insane and try to kill everyone.

Western Animation

• The point of Drawn Together was to be like this, they took Captain Ersatzes of Superman (Captain Hero), Pikachu (Ling Ling), Link (Xandir), Betty Boop (Toot), Josie and the Pussycats (Foxxy), the Disney Princesses (Clara), SpongeBob SquarePants (Wooldoor) and vulgar flash cartoons (Spanky) and put them in one house as a Parody of every Reality Show ever made. Unfortunately it quickly devolved into Vulgar Humor.
• "The Simpsons Guy", a crossover between The Simpsons and Family Guy, showcases just how different the two settings are by painstakingly pointing out how much more the latter relies on Black Comedy, is Bloodier and Gorier, and overall has a much Darker and Edgier portrayal to its cast than the former. The Simpsons characters are repeatedly horrified by and disgusted at the Family Guy group's antics, whilst the Family Guy crew dismiss the Simpsons as lame, weak and pathetic.
• Most of the humor in Robot Chicken comes from this. For example, there's Beavis and Butt-Head joining the Teen Titans, and MTV Exposed on Barbie and Bratz. Of course this is used mostly for comedic purposes.
• Turtles Forever has the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from the 1987 cartoon, the Turtles from the 2003 cartoon and the Turtles from the Mirage comics meet. To clarify how well this actually works as a deconstructive crossover, the antics and personalities of the '80s Turtles—somewhat exaggerated but still grounded in the source material—annoy, confound, and irritate the 2003 turtles to no end. Even Michelangelo, eventually. Then they meet the original Mirage turtles (as written in issue 1), and even the 2003 guys seem like plushies by comparison ^note The Mirage Turtles explicitly say they've been trained by Splinter to kill Shredder to avenge Hamato Yoshi, something that neither the '80s nor 2003 Splinters did.. Yet, in the end, all versions of the Turtles are deemed just as valid as the others. Complaints have been made that the 1987 Turtles seem more cowardly. Of course they are; they're in a different world where they are not the main characters, the fourth wall is more rigidly in place, and the Big Bad is both ruthless and competent. They lost their Plot Armor and they know it.
  • The 2012 cartoon likewise has its own take on how such a deconstructive crossover plays out, when the 2012 turtles meet the 1987 ones in a few episodes across the final two seasons. The antics and personalities of the '80s turtles (more grounded in the source material than Turtles Forever) annoy and baffle the 2012 turtles except for Michelangelo (who is just as immature as his counterpart), although they eventually come to respect them. Moreover, the '80s turtles' creative, slapstick tactics prove completely useless against the 2012 Bebop and Rocksteady, who are vastly more dangerous than the original bumbling '80s Bebop and Rocksteady, to the point that the 2012 turtles had to give them proper ninja training in order to stand a chance.
• The Venture Brothers: The Monarch is a deconstruction all the Campy Supervillains of The '60s, Brock Sampson was something of a deconstruction of every Action Hero ever made, and the titular brothers themselves are a deconstruction of The Hardy Boys and Jonny Quest. They also turned the gang from Scooby-Doo into a Manson Family-type collection of 60s and 70s era Serial Killers. They also have a rather interesting take on Fantastic Four. Strangely enough, many of the characters they're based on are either shown or mentioned to exist as well.

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