Fanvid

"Skittles" by Koopiskeva

"I like editing anime clips to music and—and reading fantasy books with convoluted backstories."

— Luz Noceda, The Owl House, "A Lying Witch and a Warden"

Also known as AMVs or Anime/Animated/Amateur Music Videos. Other media have their own acronyms, though AMV is sometimes used as a blanket term as well. The most common are DMVs for doujinshi, GMVs for video games, CMVs (also used for cosplay music videos) for western animated series and comics (if they're not using AMV), Animash and Non/Disney for western animated films or mixed animated media, PMVs for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and MMVs for manga. In Japan they are called MAD for musical animated dojinshi. There is even a Not Safe for Work variant named HMV, which uses Hentai scenes.

In a nutshell, a basic concept is to take recorded footage from your favorite movies or TV shows, set all these edited scenes to your favorite music (maybe add some Fan Art or subtitling) put it all together in a video editor on your PC, then upload it to any video sharing site online and wait for awesome comments to pour in! YouTube is a popular choice.

It's not the most productive activity in the world, but for the most dedicated, it is one of the most time-consuming. Like Fan Fics and Fan Art, making and watching these videos is another way these fans express their consuming obsession over their favourite show.

Naturally, the companies and network executives behind these TV shows and music are mixed on the whole deal. Some companies welcome the support and publicity and even hold competitions for the best video. Others simply turn a blind eye to these videos, neither encouraging them nor forcing them removed under threat of lawsuit. Other companies do that very thing.

Romance-based videos, retellings of canon plotlines, and videos centered around specific characters (often called "tributes") are some of the more prevalent genres. However, countless genres exist, ranging from Gag Dub parodies to crossovers featuring entirely new plotlines and abstract videos which run their source material through every visual effect known to man.

Subcategory of Fan Works. Just like with Fan Fic, Sturgeon's Law applies oh so very much when it comes to the overall quality of the following videos, especially given the young ages and resulting inexperience of some of the creators. See also Fan Film, Fan Animation, and Multi-Animator Project.

A Sister Trope is The Abridged Series. Super-Trope to Simpsonwave.

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Fanvids with Their Own Pages

• AMV Hell
• Anastasia/Quasimodo – We Hit a Wall
• BRAVE TWINS
• Comatose
• From the Ashes
• Frost Killing Hour
• Golden Blond and Jet Black
• Hell Universe
• Illuminated
• John The Hellhound
• Our Tapes
• PONIES The Anthology
• POP Culture
• Supper's Ready Illustrated
• To Belong
• Simpsonwave

Trends

Popular Combinations

Action

• Action scenes to a rock or metal band.
  • Bonus points for any "Linkin Ball Z" (Random Dragon Ball Z scenes to a Linkin Park song). ^note At one point in the early 2000s, when Linkin Park had but a single 12-song album, there were over 14,000 "Linkin Ball Z" music videos at animemusicvideos.org like this for example
  • Multiball angst bonus for a montage of a Troubled, but Cute or Draco in Leather Pants character to "Crawling" (I'm looking at you, Gaara). like this for example
  • "Bodies" by Drowning Pool is a particularly prevalent example. So much that its become the Dead Horse of Fan Vids.
  • It seems like it is popular to combine Disturbed music with Bleach action sequences.
  • Then there's Rammstein:
    • Engel for Neon Genesis Evangelion. Bonus points for the video's central figure being German as well.
    • Sonne set against thematically fitting images from Dark City.
  • The Japanese version of this uses JAM Project songs — usually "Gong" or "Skill" — in much the same way.
• Various anime attack sequences formatted with text and portraits to resemble an attack cutscene from Super Robot Wars. (Japan mostly)
• Violent deaths to "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap. This is a Memetic Mutation from The O.C. and the Saturday Night Live Digital Short parody of that scene, Dear Sister.
• Epic battles to "The End of All Hope" by Nightwish:
  • Halo
  • Kingdom Hearts
  • Lord of the Rings
• Alternately, "Ghost Love Score". Also subject to Memetic Mutation: EPIC maneuver!
• Just about every fandom ever has at least one vid to "Holding Out for a Hero", either the original Bonnie Tyler version or the more ironic Imogen Heap cover.
• "The Final Countdown" by Europe, with all of its epic Narm Charm, is a favorite for Space Opera
• Thirty Seconds to Mars has always been quite popular with fan videos. Songs like "The Kill" and "Attack" are commonly used in action or dramatic videos. "This Is War" is possibly their most popular for action series; check out some examples from Serenity and Mass Effect. Also notable are the popular and well done videos made for Final Fantasy, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and Harry Potter.
• "Twilight", by the Electric Light Orchestra, is very popularly set to Studio Gainax shows, in homage to the DaiCon IV video. There's also a well-known TRON fanvid for it.
• Gorn filled series like Higurashi: When They Cry and Deadman Wonderland are often paired with "The Howling" by Within Temptation, various Mindless Self Indulgence songs, or jokingly "Blood" by My Chemical Romance.
• "Warriors" by Imagine Dragons and anything action related.
• Almost any military-themed action show to music by Sabaton.
  • a common subsection of this is Old-School Dogfighting to Sabaton's "Metal Machine"
• Any dramatic or epic TV show or film (mainly live-action one) Fan Vids, set to that music from Requiem for a Dream. You know the music I'm talking about.
• Basically almost any Shōnen fighter anime set to Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger".
• Shonen anime, especially sports or fighting ones, set to Fort Minor's "Remember The Name".

Characterizations

• An Anti-Hero tribute with any music by Simple Plan.
• "Perfect" by Simple Plan is common for characters who have broken relationships with their parents and "I'm Just A Kid" by the same band is used for young troubled characters.
• Songs frequently used for an Action Girl tribute:
  • "That's What Girls Do" by No Secret
  • Good Charlotte's "Riot Girl".
  • If she's a CuteClumsy Action Girl in any way, "She's Just A Little Bit Dangerous" is a likely song.
  • "That Girl Is Dangerous", is another favorite for any flavor of Action Girl
  • The religious aspect of "Unbreakable" by Fireflight is completely missed by fans. It's extremely common for Action Girl characters with emotional baggage.
  • "One Girl Revolution" by Superchic[k] is also a popular song for Action Girl's.
  • "Bad Reputation" by Joan Jett is used for some girls.
  • Superchic[k]'s "Stand in the Rain" and "One More" seem to be giving "One Girl Revolution" a run for its money these days. The latter's gender neutralness also allows it to expand to male characters as well.
  • Any Avril Lavigne song, really. "Girlfriend" is especially common. This one, however, is...unexpected. (Warning: May make it difficult to watch Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children straight-faced.) There are several Haruhi/Kyon vids to that song. And then, there is this one...Which isn't Haruhi/Kyon.
  • "Do It Like A Dude" by Jessie J is a song that's very commonly used for videos starring The Lad-ette or an Action Girl.
  • "One Woman Army" by Porcelain Black also works for the Action Girl that has a body count or style appropriate to the Dark Action Girl
• Gender Benders and Wholesome Crossdressers get set to "Man, I Feel Like a Woman" by Shania Twain, "Dude Looks Like A Lady" by Aerosmith,, and "Somebody Told Me" by The Killers.
• Characters who are transgender or especially Bishounen to a certain song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
• "HE DIDN'T LIKE ME!"
• Songs for characters with a Superpowered Evil Side or Unstoppable Rage:
  • Expect many videos for the songs "Animal I Have Become" by Three Days Grace, "My Demons" by Starset, "Waking The Demon" by Bullet for My Valentine, or "Down with the Sickness" or "Perfect Insanity" by Disturbed to be used in the videos about them.
  • Linkin Park's "Crawling" and "One Step Closer" are frequently used.
  • Flyleaf's I'm So Sick and Red's Breathe Into Me are popular for this genre too.
  • Skillet's "Monster" is very frequently used.
• If a show or game has at least four characters, and one of them is more powerful (or, in a pinch, fatter) than the others, someone has vidded it to They Might Be Giants' "Particle Man".
• Songs popular with the Magnificent Bastard or Psycho for Hire:
  • "Getting Away with Murder" by Papa Roach. Example: Death Note
  • Lorde's cover of "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" by Tears for Fears is pretty common.
  • Temposhark's "Don't Mess With Me" and Innerpartysystem's "Don't Stop" are both commonplace for Magnificent Bastard characters.
• Pretty much every Woobie or abused/bullied/etc. character has a tribute set to "Concrete Angel" by Martina McBride.
• "Castle Walls" by T.I. ft Christina Aguilera has become popular with the Stepford Smiler, especially if they're an Ojou character. Note that people only use Christina's part, ignoring the rap portion that makes up most of the song.
• "Molly" by Mindless Self Indulgence is common for Tyke Bombs and Cute But Psycho girls.
• "Angel Of Darkness" by Alex C. featuring Yasmin K. with gothic, Anti-Villain, or villainous characters.
• "Breathe Into Me" by Red for anti-hero characters.
• "Primadonna" by Marina Diamandis for the obvious.
• "The Real Sugar Baby" by Stephanie Beard is ironically used for videos featuring The Cutie or Token Mini-Moe characters. Videos for Chibiusa from Sailor Moon are especially common because the song is by one of her English voice actresses.
• "Centuries" by Fallout Boy for badass characters.
• "I Will Not Bow" by Breaking Benjamin and "Not Gonna Die" by Skillet are songs popular for Determinators, very intense action scenes in general, and headstrong action series protagonists where the the stakes are high.
• Videos about a Broken Ace or Stepford Smiler edited with Johnny Cash's cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" are prevalent.
• "The Cost Of The Crown" by Mercedes Lackey for any example of The Chains of Commanding. Thanks to a popular PMV, the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fandom has especially latched onto it as a theme song for Princess Celestia (and thus many tributes to her use it). The Warrior Cats fandom also likes it for Bluestar.
• Cloudcuckoolander characters with Skye Sweetnam's "Sharada". Many videos are inspired by a popular Haruhi Suzumiya video.

General

• "Bring Me To Life" by Evanescence with... anything. Arguably the wittiest one of these uses footage from Re-Animator.
• Anything to "What I've Done," "Numb," or "In The End" by Linkin Park. No, seriously, anything. Especially ones centered on Starscream from Transformers: Armada. Interestingly, "What I've Done" appeared in the 2007 movie.
• Something epic to a DragonForce song. "Through the Fire and Flames" is merely the most popular.
• Loreena McKennitt songs for... just about every fandom ever.
• Quest, epic journey, war, or any ongoing struggle type stories:
  • Many videos are set to Marching On by OneRepublic. At least 50 for Supernatural
  • Thanks to a popular Attack on Titan amv, Les Friction's "Louder Than Words" has become popular with very actiony or war centric series too.
  • "The Fighter" by The Fray is common for videos involving series with a couple where one dies in a war.
• "Dollhouse" by Melanie Martinez is the song for dysfunctional families and Abusive Parents.
• Songs common for family related videos:
  • "Little Wonders" by Rob Thomas from Meet the Robinsons, a movie about family, is very frequently used for familial videos.
  • "I Bet My Life" by Imagine Dragons is popular.
  • Plumb's "In My Arms" is very popular with moms and their children, despite being a God Is Love Song.
  • Sibling videos with Avicii's "Hey Brother" pop up a lot
  • Hurt's "Somebody To Die For" is popular with strong familial relationships and platonic friendships.
  • NEEDTOBREATHE's "Brother" is common for siblings, though it's actually metaphorical.
• "Pretty Fly For A White Guy" by The Offspring is popular for dorky (ans especially Endearingly Dorky) characters, even if they weren't white.
• "Until The Day I Die" by Story Of The Year is used for rocky friendships and romances.
• "Say Something" by A Great Big World, "See You Again" by Wiz Khalifa, "What Hurts the Most" by Rascal Flatts, and "Safe and Sound" by Taylor Swift are popular for Tear Jerker tributes to characters who were Killed Off for Real or are Posthumous Characters.
• Every October people start making a lot of videos using Marilyn Manson's cover of "This Is Halloween" and the theme to Saw set to horror and gorn heavy series.
• Series and animated films with gorgeous visuals often get set to "Somewhere Only We Know" by Keane or "Little Wonders" by Rob Thomas.
• "Umbrella" by Rihanna is very frequently used for videos about True Companions. People rarely use her version though, and instead opt for any of the various covers.
• Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt" for a sad/angsty montage. Works for just about any fandom.
• Compilations of clips from various animated shows and/or films set to Aqua's "Cartoon Heroes" are reasonably popular.
• Videos of various female characters set to Tata Young's "Sexy Naughty Bitchy Me".
• For an overall tribute to any television series, "The Greatest Show" from The Greatest Showman is quite popular.
• Montages that involve reflecting on the past, romanticized images, and the like often use "Little Dark Age" by MGMT. Sometimes it's not even for a fandom but for Real Life history. The trend is so common that it has it's own page on Know Your Meme.

Genres

• Any show dealing in anyway with supernatural beings and romance combined with Real Life's "Send Me An Angel". (Ah! My Goddess is the most common. Often entitled: "Send Me Belldandy"). There is a Chrono Crusade version — the irony that Chrono is a devil, not an angel.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic and Lemon Demon seem the go-to artists for high energy, wacky comedy vids. (Some AMV contests have actually banned the use of Weird Al music since it renders making a crowd-pleasing, overwhelmingly popular comedy video far too easy.) Case in point Lupin III/"This Is The Life", which even Weird Al has said is better than his own video for the song, which was basically him acting out the lyrics mixed with scenes from the movie it came from Johnny Dangerously. Then there are these two mashups of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic with two of his polka medleys, one with "Polkarama" and the other with"The Angry White Boy Polka". They impressed Al so much that he posted the links of both of them on his Twitter page... which indirectly led to him being offered a guest role on the show.
• As a rule, any Hot-Blooded show goes well with JAM Project.
• If you have a depressing series, one that takes place in a Crapsack World, or one where everyone is messed up expect the Gary Jules cover of Tears for Fears' "Mad World" used at least once in a video.
• On default shonen series tend to have a lot of Skillet, Within Temptation, Breaking Benjamin, Linkin Park, Three Days Grace, and Red videos.
• Have a Tear Jerker or Utsuge series with lots of death, mortal stakes at hand or major deaths? The acoustic version of "Life is Beautiful" by Sixx A.M., and for older amvs "Meant To Live" by Switchfoot, is relatively common.
• Animal related series and movies and symphonic metal are often paired together. Within Temptation probably gets used the most.
• "Remember The Name" by Fort Minor is one of the few rap songs commonly used for action shonen series.
• Florence + the Machine is popular for dramatic series.
• "Chu Chu Lovely" by Maximum The Hormone is frequently used for comedy videos. Often times the maker doesn't realize the actual meaning to the song.
• "Legends Never Die" by Against The Current gets used for a lot of sports anime videos.
• High-speed recaps of the events of long and complicated works, or series of works, to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire". Especially where you can draw a parallel between a person or event mentioned in the song and a character or event in the work.

Sex

• Salacious scenes from various series set to Avenue Q's "The Internet is For Porn".
• "You Give Love a Bad Name" by Bon Jovi for Evil Is Sexy characters.
• Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy" for the Walking Shirtless Scene. Ironic uses have been spotted as well, such as a Flash animation that used the song for Snape.
• Most popular Boys' Love series are set to "Flesh" by Simon Curtis, "Joystick" by Simon Curtis, or the Far cover of "Pony" at one time or another.

Shipping

• Foe Yay Shipping and the like:
  • Scenes to t.A.T.u.'s "Friend Or Foe"
  • "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga
  • "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails.
  • "I Hate Everything About You" by Three Days Grace.
  • "Love The Way You Lie" by Eminem with just about any Destructive Romance, Masochism Tango or Slap-Slap-Kiss couple you can think of.
  • With lyrics like "Being with you is so dysfunctional/I really shouldn't miss you but I can't let you go", Kelly Clarkson's "My Life Would Suck Without You" is the go-to song if you want to make a video about a couple with a lot of Belligerent Sexual Tension, Will They or Won't They? and Slap-Slap-Kiss. YouTube has at least twenty different videos about Ron and Hermione from Harry Potter that use this song!
  • Using Hellfire from The Hunchback of Notre Dame for Foe Yay Shipping and/or Angel/Devil Shipping seems to be rather popular.
  • Expect to find vids about friendly enemies or brimming with sexual tension set to "Wonderboy" by Tenacious D.
  • Adventure Time's "I'm Just Your Problem" gets used in a lot of protagonist/antagonist videos, especially if they're both female.
  • Miike Snow's "Genghis Khan" for examples of Belligerent Sexual Tension, Foe Yay Shipping, and Dating Catwoman. It became even more popular after the official music video came out and it was about a male supervillain who falls a Tuxedo and Martini spy.
  • Good With Grenades's song "Bruises and Bitemarks" gets used for hero/villain ships, especially gay ones.
  • "Haunted" by Evanescence is popular for villain/heroine ships.
• "Your Love is my Drug" by Kesha is the go-to song for EVERY pairing EVER.
• Avril Lavigne has two songs popular with Die for Our Ship themed videos: Girlfriend and "Sk8er Boi".
• In the mid-to-late 2000s Cascada songs were exceedingly common. "Truly, Madly, Deeply" and "Everytime We Touch" for almost every couple (the latter being especially common in slideshow videos for Naruto ships), "Bad Boy" for Foe Yay Shipping and the obvious, and "Miracle" for dysfunctional romances.
• Songs common for Belligerent Sexual Tension couples and Tsundere characters:
  • John Mellencamp's "Hurts So Good" ("Sometimes love don't feel like it should, you make it — oof — hurt so good."
  • "Hot and Cold" by Katy Perry is a popular choice for Slap-Slap-Kiss.
  • If the Tsundere is violent, and an harem is involved expect "My Wife Met My Girlfriend" to make an appearance.
  • Another common video from the Tsundere's perspective is "He Drives Me Crazy" — usually combining tsuntsun visuals with the deredere music.
  • A Kiss With A Fist by Florence + the Machine is popular.
  • On the flipside, The Click Five's "Just the Girl" reads as an invaritable anthem for the guys who fall in love with tsunderes. "She's So Mean" by Matchbox Twenty, "She's a Lady" by Forever the Sickest Kids, and "Always Gets Her Way" by Smash Mouth are also good choices.
  • Tsundere characters set to "It's Not Like I Like You!!" (a Filk Song based on the archetype) are common.
  • P!nk's "Please Don't Leave Me" gets used a lot for tsunderes.
  • "Tangled Up In Me" by Skye Sweetnam is popular for tsundere characters.
• Couples/Characters that have gone through several incarnations (Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Link and Zelda) will have at LEAST one tribute with "A Thousand Years" by Christina Perri.
• Shippy Tearjerker videos set to Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars." Really, shippy Tearjerker vids set to anything by Snow Patrol.
• As with the previous type, another popular technique is to combine a saccharine Dating Sim theme song with a completely unrelated show.
• "Accidentally in Love" by Counting Crows is often used for two mismatched lovers.
• Songs popular for a Love Triangle:
  • "Two Lovers" by Mary Wells for a Love Triangle, usually if it's Two Guys and a Girl (never mind that the song is actually about one man with a Split Personality).
  • "So In Love With Two" by Mikalia is frequently used for love triangles.
  • "Who's That Girl?" by Hilary Duff. It's also frequently used for Die for Our Ship videos.
  • "Why Can't I?" by Liz Phair for love triangles or Die for Our Ship videos.
  • "Everything You Want" by Vertical Horizon for any love triangle or Fan-Preferred Couple where the girl is with another character.
• "All About Us" by t.A.T.u. is sometimes used for Star-Crossed Lovers.
• Songs common for same-gender romances:
  • "All The Things She Said" by t.A.T.u. is the yuri song of choice.
  • Any time you get a yuri (or non-anime lesbian) couple, expect a lot of t.A.t.U. vids. Uranus and Neptune from Sailor Moon have videos featuring almost their entire discography. This was especially popular in the 2000s, however became less common in the early 2010s.
  • "I Kissed a Girl" by Katy Perry is equally popular, if not more-so, than "All The Things She Said". The song is used for EVERY femslash pairing EVER. Despite the fact that it's a song about experimenting with women while having a boyfriend, it's used in videos about people who are in long term relationships.
  • The male version by Cobra Starship ("I Kissed A Boy") is getting quite popular for slash pairings, even if it's even less fitting.
  • Have a girl with onesided affections towards her friend? "Jenny" by Studio Killers is common, often even if they're requited. Similarly "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You" by Black Kids and the Across the Universe (2007) cover of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand".
  • Or if it's a boy with one-sided affections towards a guy? "Jesse" by Ivri Lider is common.
  • "Parachute" by Ingrid Michaelson is common for couples, especially same gender ones.
  • "If You Were Gay" from Avenue Q for comical videos about Ambiguously Gay characters.
  • "Girls Like Girls" by Hayley Kiyoko appears in many femslash videos. Hayley Kiyoko songs period are commonplace.
  • "She Likes Girls" by Metro Station gets used a bit in femslash videos.
  • "I Wish I Was A Lesbian" by Loudon Wainwright III and "She Has A Girlfriend Now" were popular in the 2000s for comedic videos.
  • "Gay or European?" from Legally Blonde used with any Ambiguously Gay character or characters with a large amount of Ho Yay.
• "I Won't Say (I'm In Love)," from Hercules, or The Cheetah Girls cover, for any UST couple. Or a couple where the vid's maker sees the UST, but the showrunners don't.
• EVERY pairing EVER needs to go along with "Love Story" by Taylor Swift or "Why Don't You And I"? Because all relationships perfectly fit these two songs.
• "Teenage Dream" by Katy Perry is frequently used for any relationship involving teenage characters. "Last Friday Night" is a go-to song for depicting strange situations, Hilarity Ensues, or Big-Lipped Alligator Moment scenes in the canon by implying the characters were intoxicated while it happened.
• "I Like It" by Enrique Iglesias (used prominently in Jersey Shore, of all places) is becoming a popular choice within the Disney/non-Disney crossover video crowd. (See here, here, here and here.)
• It seems like every many sci-fi pairings in general (especially prominent in the Star Trek fandom) have at least one video set to The Calling's "Wherever You Will Go".
• Expect to see at least one video per shipping, alternatively per fandom if its a small one, with "Look at Us Now" by Sarina Paris.
• The Nightmare Before Christmas's "Sally's Song" is a common choice for any pairing, one-sided or not. Either the original or the Amy Lee cover.
• "I Like A Boy In Uniform" by The Pipettes for bisexuals or school-centric romances.
• "Diary of Jane" by Breaking Benjamin used to be popular for all ships, especially dramatic or angsty ones.
• Pretty much every angst couple/unrequited love pairing has a fanvid to "My Skin" by Natalie Merchant thanks to the memetic Lily/Snape vid from Harry Potter.
• "Don't Stand Close To Me" by The Police is frequently used for when a young character has a Precocious Crush on an older character.
• "Malchik Gay" by t.A.T.u. is used for ships where a girl falls for a boy who is gay.
• Trading Yesterday songs are common with sad romance videos. "Just A Little Girl", "May I", "Love Song Requiem", "Shattered", and "She Is The Sunlight" are the most frequently used songs.
• Yandere characters:
  • Both "Crazy Possessive" by Kaci Battaglia and "Super Psycho Love" by Simon Curtis are very commonly used for couples featuring a yandere.
  • The yandere Filk Song "Smoke and Mirrors" is frequently used for yandere characters.
• "Absolutely" by Nine Days used to often get paired with couples involving a Shrinking Violet, Emotionless Girl, or just a sad-looking character.
• "The One That Got Away" by Katy Perry is common for videos of couples that didn't work out (or even with couples that stayed together).

Fandom Specific

Anime and Manga

• Naruto:
  • Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" by Daft Punk with Naruto.
  • Crossfade songs, especially "So Cold", set to Naruto scenes.
  • Three Days Grace songs are commonly used. "Animal I Have Become" is the most popular.
  • Cascada songs for romance videos.
• Not quite as common anymore, but during Dragon Ball Z's heyday, there were innumerable pairings of that series with tracks by DMX.
• One Piece and any song to do with pirates or sailing, Professional Pirate is a popular one. Too bad no-one's done a good one yet..
• There is a notable amount of AMVs for Elfen Lied set to music by Evanescence.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Inexplicably, "Raver's Fantasy" by Tune Up.
  • The Real Sugar Baby" by Stephanie Beard for Chibi Usa, because Beard voiced her.
  • Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune videos using any variety of t.A.T.u. songs.
  • Christina Aguilera's "Fighter" has become increasingly popular for Sailor Moon.
• Literally half of all Rahxephon AMVs use Mindless Self Indulgence, to the point where you have to admit that there are some strong thematic similarities between the two. This was likely inspired by the original creator of the famous "Euphoria" AMV using their song "Faggot" to lampoon his own work on AMV Hell 0.
• There is an insane amount of Hetalia: Axis Powers Fan Vids featuring the song "Europa" by the band Globus. How many? OVER FIFTY different AMV's on YouTube. (And counting.)
• Wolf's Rain:
  • AMVs tend to get set to a lot to Sonata Arctica's music, with probably the most popular songs being "The Cage" and "Ain't Your Fairytale," which fit the themes of Wolf's Rain quite well.
  • Within Temptation is popular, especially "The Howling".
• More than a few people have connected CLANNAD with "Terrible Things" by Mayday Parade. The song is about a man talking to his son about how he fell in love with his wife, married her, and how she eventually died of terminal illness when the child was young.
• "Oh Know You Didn't" from Mercenaries, or "Molly" by Mindless Self Indulgence, with Gunslinger Girl.
• Code Geass videos with "Viva La Vida" by Coldplay are abundant.
• Soul Eater and the Marilyn Manson cover of "This Is Halloween" is a common occurrence.
• As the anime is about classical music and Kaori uses a violin, Lindsey Stirling songs are frequent in Your Lie in April videos.

Comic Books

• "Kryptonite" by 3 Doors Down, "Waiting For Superman" by Daughtry, and "Superman (It's Not Easy)" by Five For Fighting have a lot of Superman videos because the songs reference him.

Film — Animation

• Frozen (2013) with Within Temptation's song "Frozen". Even ignoring the name, the lyrics do fit Elsa surprisingly well. "Ice Queen" is occasionally used as well but it doesn't fit Elsa, unless you're writing her as evil.
• Taylor Swift's "Love Story" is quite popular for Kiara/Kovu from the Romeo and Juliet-esque The Lion King II: Simba's Pride.

Film — Live Action

• Heavy metal to scenes from 300.
• Music by Breaking Benjamin for Harry Potter.
• There's a trend of using songs from The Lion King (1994) with Thor, such as "I Just Can't Wait To Be King" for Thor and "Be Prepared" for Loki.
• Since they did the soundtrack for TRON: Legacy, there's a 50-50 chance any Tron-themed fanvid will use a Daft Punk song.

LiveActionTV

• Since Once Upon a Time uses an amazing amount of shout-outs to Disney Animated Canon, fanvids mashing up Disney film music and the series or even mixing the show's characters and their Disney counterparts are common.

Music

• Sabaton has a veritable cottage industry of YouTubers making music videos of their Horrible History Metal songs from various film, TV, and video game clips. It started as early as 2008 when a Polish fan made a video for the song "40:1"^note about the Battle of Wizna at the start of World War II, where a regiment of 700 Polish soldiers held off a German army numbering 40,000 for three days that went viral, which singlehandedly netted the band a borderline fanatical Polish fandom. After it was taken down for copyright infringement, Sabaton re-uploaded it to their own channel. It even led to Polish filmmaker Jacek Raginis, a descendant of the Polish Army captain from the song, contacting the band with an offer to film an official video (he also later filmed the video for "Uprising").

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000:
  • The type of fanvid that makes the most of Sabaton other than Real Life history is Warhammer 40,000. Which makes sense, given how 40k is laden with historical influences.
  • "Little Dark Age" edits for 40k exist for pretty much every playable faction.

Video Games

• Cutscenes from Final Fantasy to an Evanescence song.

• Magna-Fi's "Who I Am" is an unused theme for Shadow from Sonic The Hedgehog and it is glaringly obvious by the lyrics. Obviously more than a few GMVs, and Sonic X AMVs, exist for him with it.

Western Animation

• Pretty much anything goes well with clips from the Spongebob Squarepants episode "Band Geeks". (A few examples...)
• Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom of the Opera" seems to suit Danny Phantom perfectly. As does Danny Elfman's "This Is Halloween" and Lostprophet's "Rooftops".
• "Animal I Have Become" by Three Days Grace is very commonly put to clips from the Teen Titans episode "The Beast Within".
• Several clips of classic Disney shorts on DTV.
• Several Jem videos use Lady Gaga songs.
• People rarely use hip-hop, rap, or R&B songs for fan-vids period but The Boondocks has a lot with those genres.
• Princess Luna from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Raven from Teen Titans both have a large number of videos about them using "Angel Of Darkness" by Alex C. featuring Yasmin K.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender goes surprisingly well with songs from Hamilton.
• The Simpsons has a lot of sad edits set to XXXTENTACION songs. Many are labeled as Simpsonwave, despite not using vaporwave songs.

X with alternate music

• Grabbing a specific scene, mostly or totally unaltered and unedited, from a work of media, and adding it music from a foreign work, specifically inserted to better blend in, sometimes improving upon the original music placement. In this regard it differs entirely from your traditional AMVs.

Anime and Manga

• Naruto
  • The man who would become Pain, against Rain leader Hanzo.
  • Episode 167, Kyuubi vs Pain, with all the narm that it implies.
  • Sasuke vs Mizukage.
  • Zetsu being a huge troll at the Kage Summit
  • What little there is of Sasuke vs Tsuchikage. But it still works!
  • Jinchuriki Killer Bee vs Akatsuki member Kisame.
  • Madara's fight vs Fu and Torune.
  • The first part of Sasuke vs Danzo.
  • The second part of Sasuke vs Danzo.
  • Sasuke's Rape Face. You know whether to take it seriously or not.
  • Sasuke and Madara talking about having to kill Karin .
  • Sakura's sad attempt to kill Sasuke
• The first battle against Chaos from Heaven's Lost Property set to Emerald Sword.
• Death Note videos will, a clear majority of the time, begin with the shot of the Death Note falling to earth. At least 45% will either 1) summarize the entire series, or 2) take clips exclusively from either or both of the two biggest character death episodes.

Live-Action TV

• In British Formula One fandom anytime the BBC doesn't have the TV rights the new opening titles will show up with "The Chain" by Fleetwood Mac replacing the music.

Video Games

• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
  • Ganon's Castle
  • Ganon.
  • Title screen.
• Portal - The entire context.
• Metal Gear
  • - The Boss' true intentions.
  • - Big Boss' final death.
• Super Mario 64
  • Final Bowser.
  • All three Bowser stages.
• Donkey Kong 64 has its infamous rap replaced.
• Asura's Wrath where the final battle meets Gurren Lagann.
  • Similar, There's also this one.
• Twisted Metal has this song instead of The Rolling Stones "Paint It, Black". Works just as fine.

Web Videos

• Mega64's Dead Rising holds a whole another meaning.

Funny re-cuts

• Re-cutting a show as its own Parody or Affectionate Parody occurs frequently.
• Cut some good scenes, take them out of context and insert in a new one, mix them with awkward silences, gasping or groaning, stir and cook for some time... and viola, you get yourself a Fan Vid so slashy or dirty that the creators' faces would turn red had they chance to see it.
• Crossover re-cuts are fairly popular. Creative fans use several sources with the same performer to find some humour or awkwardness. Alternatively, it's used to add a desired flavour. For instance, Brokeback Mountain music is very popular for Slashy videos or The Twilight Zone for some mystery.
• Fine selections of the best snarks, coolest showdowns or most badass moments are well-liked among viewers.
• Collecting every single utterance of a show's catchphrases or all occurrences of Running Gags in one Fan Vid is favourite sub-category.
• Fandubs, video clips that have had all of the audio removed and replaced by spoken audio, either from another show or by the fan's own voice acting. These are usually humorous in nature, although some fandub projects crop up by fans who hated the original professional dub of a series (or noticed that there wasn't one) and want to give it a better one. As an aside to the copyright infringement issues, humorous fandubs are not considered infringement, at least under US law. Parody and satire are protected free speech under the First Amendment — the decisions in favor of MAD alone could fill a minor law library.
• Snarky MST-like cut reviews with commentaries, either subtitled or dubbed, are popular and fairly more creative than just mixing the scenes with music.
• It has become common to set clips from the Star Wars films to "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)" by Dead or Alive, if only because spinning itself in Star Wars has become a meme.

Other common techniques

• Mixing and matching one show with another's theme song
  • Especially common with sequels
  • Any ensemble show is probably going to have a Sitcom constructed reality vid with the Friends theme.
  • And shows with Elemental Powers (Captain Planet, Sailor Moon, W.I.T.C.H., Avatar...)
  • And Nanoha with (usually) Hot-Blooded mecha anime. Like this... and this... and this...
  • Anything based on the Neon Genesis Evangelion opening. Some examples: Lucky Star, Suzumiya Haruhi, Bobobo-Bo Bo-Bobo, Sailor Moon, and Code Geass.''
  • Also intros based on the second Death Note opening. Here's one from Suzumiya Haruhi, Sailor Moon, and Lucky Star.
  • Fans of Eureka Seven seem to like these. Here's one for Bleach, and another one for Evangelion.
  • And a Pokemon one based on the japanese digimon opening [1] and one for the English dub [2].
  • Cowboy Bebop gets this treatment as well, versions for Neon Genesis Evangelion, Lucky Star and Haruhi Suzumiya exist.
• Using audio from a movie trailer to make your own show trailer. This may involve original footage (example) or clips from another show (example).
• Conversely, overdubbing an existing trailer with dialogue and music from a different show or movie entirely.
• It is popular nowadays for people to make their own trailers for already existing movies
• Dialog from the show is frequently inserted, almost always as an opener or Book Ends.
• This is not, of course, to say that all Fan Videos are like this — but an overwhelming majority of them are. Some have even resulted in Memetic Mutations.
• Crossover Ship videos usually follow their own storylines, unlike most fan-vids that follow the canon stories. This is especially prevalent in the Non/Disney fandoms and the Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons fandoms.

Examples:

Multiple Mediums

• MikuMikuDance can make Machinima and is focused on Vocaloid characters, meaning many fan videos are made with it. There have even been "MMD Cup" tournaments held on Nico Nico Douga.
• Ever since Michael Jackson's death, almost all AMVs of his songs have been labeled as tributes to him.
• This AMV flawlessly sets scenes from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann to "I'll Make A Man Out Of You" from Mulan, complete with syncing up the lyrics to Kamina's mouth movements. It's achieved quite a memetic status in the fandom, and for excellent reason; it's actually chillingly powerful at certain points.
  • "I'll Make A Man Out Of You" is, in general, ludicrously popular for vids, especially for shounen. This Avatar: The Last Airbender vid is the best.
  • Someone on Tumblr modified the Lyrics to fit The Legend of Korra and now there's a lot of videos on youtube with people singing it, and a few fanvids. There's also some with the original song
• The recent games in the Ace Combat series seem to invariably have their trailers used as grist for the fanvid mill. Observe:
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's: here
  • Haruhi Suzumiya: here and here
  • Persona: here
  • The Idolmaster: here
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica: here
• After the original trailer for 300 was released, it was pretty common to see clips from other works synced up to the trailer's audio. A couple notable examples:
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
  • God of War
  • Spongebob Squarepants
  • Happy Feet.
  • Kirby of the Stars, with Meta Knight as Leonidas.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica meets Inception here. And it is awesome.
• Ahh, Gurren Lagann. So badass even your leitmotifs can up the coolness factor of something by tenfold. Here's a wonderful little music video syncing Viral's Leitmotif, "Nikopol", with the Assassin's Creed series that makes Desmond's ancestors even more epic.

Anime & Manga

• What may be the very first version of this trope were the 1981 and 1983 creations for DAICON III and IV by the people who would go on to found Studio Gainax. The video can be seen on YouTube, of course.
  • ...Leading to a modern tribute made with the ever-present MikuMikuDance.
  • Live-action vidding traces its roots back even earlier, to the '70s. Read.
• "A Fair(y) Use Tale was made by a professor to explain copyright law and fair use, with each word lifted from various Disney movies! "Enjoy."
• ADV Films included four fan-made anime music videos on disk 7 of the DVD release of Noir as an Easter Egg. You can find them by going to the moment where Kirika kills Chloe in the arena, and then pressing any of the four direction keys — each one leads to a different video.
• A Fan Vid of a completely different kind — a fan-made "trailer" for the as-yet unbegun Live-Action Adaptation of Neon Genesis Evangelion, assembled from bits and pieces of other movies and cut scenes from an Evangelion video game — can currently be found on YouTube.
• This trope was popularized by two "professional" music videos by Matthew Sweet: "Girlfriend" and "I've Been Waiting", featuring footage from Space Adventure Cobra and Urusei Yatsura, respectively. Both were seen on MTV in the very early 90s (back when MTV showed videos).
  • Another "Professional" video was Ghostface Killah's Daytona 500, which featured footage of Speed Racer
• Bubblegum Crisis had the Hurricane Live OVAs, featuring Fan Vid-style montages from the series set to its Insert Songs.
• In a distant age, a Fan Vid was created. Forged from Azumanga Daioh video and Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trailers' audio, it now passes from master to master throughout YouTube. It is "The Lord of the Yen". It wants to be found.
• Speaking of Azumanga Daioh, Yukari and her driving skills is just a perfect match for Weird Al Yankovic's She Drives Like Crazy. Yes.
• "Senshi on Springer", a fan-made music video for "Jerry Springer" by Weird Al Yankovic, featuring clips from Sailor Moon and well, The Jerry Springer Show. It's Made of Win.
• The AMV Hell series is a compilation of short fan vids (not always AMVs) ranging from the funny to the serious. One of the most famous ones was Osaka from Azumanga Daioh mixed with Ellen Feiss from the Apple commercials, with the video edited so Osaka's eyes are bloodshot like a stoner's. It's like...a bummer.
  • The 30 second Lucky Star/Death Note mashup intro was voted as most popular segment from AMV Hell that a full version was made.
  • It should be noted that, as a whole, the AMV Hell series is something on an inversion and Take That! against most other fan-made vids; many normal vids are centered around a specific lyric/scene combination, and the rest of the video is built around that, making many of them 90% longer than they have to be. The AMV Hell clips are short enough to get the joke in and get out of the way for the next clip. And it works beautifully.
• Possibly the ultimate example of effort and attention to detail in an AMV: "Woolongs For Nothing" by Box of Mystery, which perfectly reproduces Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing" video with characters from Cowboy Bebop.
  • A serious competitor for that title is this EGSMV for Howie Day's "Collide". The creator technically didn't create any images in it, but he somehow managed to transmute Dan Shive's static comics into true animated clips?
• The Princess Tutu AMV "Håll om mig nu (Hold me now)" fits the show itself extremely well.
  • Danse De Raven is another way to prove to your doubting friends that yes, an anime called Princess Tutu is absolutely epic.
• Because of this fanvid (Spoilers for Code Geass R2), Coldplay's Viva La Vida has basically become Lelouch's theme song.
• Extremely elaborate anime Opening/Ending parodies, such as this example (which mixes Code Geass and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann), seem to be fairly popular among users of the Japanese video hosting site Nico Nico Douga. English-speaking viewers quickly caught on, and now whole YouTube channels exist that are dedicated to uploading them for all to see.
  • One person particularly good at this is Yoraee. Who, of all things, recreates anime openings using the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003 series. Which is awesome in its own right. They make good MVs as well that are worth a watch.
    • The second opening to Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei is a popular target. Just one of many.
  • Soul Eater meets South Park. FULL STOP.
  • Gurren Lagann with the first Pokémon opening. Words cannot describe the win.
• Instead focusing on proper sequencing, and matching of the song to the subject: ""She's Just Oblivious" (featuring Haruhi Suzumiya). It has actually repeatedly broken into the top ten rated music videos (in Canada).
• The Nakanai Kimi to Nageki/Aganai no Sekai/Gensou videos are well known to large numbers of When They Cry fans. Somewhat interesting, as the makers apparently do all the artwork themselves too. Here's a small sampler, but beware of spoilers!
• One of the catchier songs to hit Japan in recent times is this Lucky Star video featuring a double remix of a Touhou Project song.
• Code Geass never looked this good. Video comes courtesy of a certain Wakamura P, who is nearly legendary on some corners of the Internet. These days I hear he's doing mostly Idolmaster MADs.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's has the nice "Lyrical On Fire" video. Warning, extremely high quality.
• Vocaloid videos will always fall into this category due to there not being an actual anime (yet). Example. (warning, sad.) Videos of this type will more often than not have fan-created music as well (since this is what Vocaloid software is for).
  • Jihaku. Just...Jihaku.
• Hellsing seems to make a good mix with Disturbed. Here's a good example
  • Hellsing also seems to be a good match with E Nomine music.
  • "Aim For the Head"
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann + DragonForce = Epic GODLY
  • Gurren Lagann + 300 = even more so.
• Any "Hare Hare Yukai" video. Usually crossed with other anime themes.
  • Any "Motteke! Sailor Fuku" video as well, variations of which popularly involve: Haruhi Suzumiya (here), Yu-Gi-Oh!, Hetalia: Axis Powers, Kingdom Hearts (here), etc.
• Ever notice the striking resemblance (setting aside the beard) between Dan Rather and Gendo Ikari? Well, that's part of our world tonight. Time for us to bug out.
• The video for Wamdue Project's "King of My Castle" (with Ghost in the Shell (1995) footage) is the only AMV so far to get to MTV.
• "As the World Crashes Down" (video viewable on YouTube) is a haunting look at this Crapsack World through the lens of anime and the soundtrack of Tesla's "Heaven Nine Eleven".
• "Shounen Bushido": 69 animes, near flawless lip syncing, And a song that suits the Shonen theme to a T. Simply epic.
  • And parodied mercilessly as the end credits sequence of AMV Hell 3.
• This one for Full Metal Panic! and "Holdin Out For a Hero", walks the fine line between parody and straight up awesome.
• AMV Hell The Motion Pictures (3 and 4).
• Here is a Berserk montage that uses Iron Savior's "Never Say Die". Maybe it's a bit heroic for the setting but it works pretty well.
• Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team + Nightwish's "Tenth Man Down" = Shellshock (YouTube link), quite possibly the greatest Gundam AMV ever.
• Death Note fits with Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street so well it's scary: fake trailer, "Epiphany", "Demon Student of Fleet Street"
  • For some reason Death Note and Family Guy also mixes well: "Stupid Girlfriend" (Misa-bashing is a national sport...), Over, "Shot Me In The Foot", "How Death Note Should Have Ended"
  • So does Death Note and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: Brand New Day, Slipping, Everything Light Ever, On The Rise, Bad Horse Chorus, and the hilarious "Death Note Bad Horse Parody".
  • "You Disappoint Me"
  • And crossing over with the mentioned Doctor Who meme, there's this hilarious Death Note fanvid set to "I Can't Decide".
  • Justice Guy (Super Heroes)
  • The Legend of Kira
  • There are quite a few tear jerkers especially centered around the ending.
  • Audioswap with Battlestar Galactica.
  • There's some really freaky ones to Korn: "Seen It All" and "Dead Bodies Everywhere"
  • "You're Gonna Go Far Kid"
  • awesomeness
  • Will the real Kira please stand up?
  • And to "Be Prepared" from The Lion King (1994)...
  • ...And even more fun with Soundtrack Dissonance.
• Here is a anime mash-up of the story of The Wizard of Oz, starring Osaka as Dorothy (and Kamineko as Toto), Luffy as the Scarecrow, Alphonse Elric as the Tin Man, Kon from Bleach as the Cowardly Lion. With Chicken Run music (strangely fitting).
  • From the same creator and thematically similar is The Wedding Rings. The Twist Ending is that it's a sequel to the first AMV
• This video is the most impressive example of it. It features a cross between K-On! and Gundam 00 in one of the most impressive culmination of it. It features a completely unrelated song to either series but the animation itself is the most powerful where the creator was able to fuse the two series into a completely plausible parallel that was unprecedented. It was so realistic to the point where it was scary that it WASN'T real.
• Sometimes a shipping vid takes it one step further and manages to pair characters from different sources. This K-On!/Hyouka AMV is particularly interesting example.
• This award-winning mashup of The Legend of Black Heaven with Jonathan Coulton's "Code Monkey".
• The more uncommon mmv (manga music video) rare for a reason. Berserk with death metal. Surprising, isn't it?
• This YuYu Hakusho video set to the Ghostbusters theme music is very well synced and put together, originally done sometime in the early 2000's by Hot Fudge Productions.
• This is an amazing mixed AMV. The technical editing skill is amazing even though some of the clips are a little weird. But the skill.
• "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" by The Offspring is very popular for Fan Vids about Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist: here's an example.
• Episode 167 of Naruto Shippuden was heavily criticized. After seeing this, your opinion may improve. An extremely hammy fight with the fight music of extremely hammy boss King K. Rool.
  • And now Kakashi vs Pain has been done here, this time coupled with Chrono Trigger's World Revolution.
  • Sasuke & Hydra Orochimaru vs Itachi & Susanoo meet The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's Ganon theme quite well here.
  • It works too with non-fighting scenes, as Akatsuki's sealing of Gaara's demon meets the OST of Dragon Ball Z rather well here.
  • The EPITOME of Tear Jerker can be found here, where Naruto Shippuden meets John Williams' rendition of Anakin burning in Star Wars Episode III.
  • Hidan kills Asuma. Entirely unaltered scene, with Banjo-Kazooie's Death of Gruntilda. You bet it's fitting.
  • Jiraiya vs Pain meets Pokémon Black and White's N final theme.
  • Naruto vs Sasuke at VOTE meets Puppet Zelda from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
  • Madara vs Fu and Torune meets no less than The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's GANONDORF battle theme.
  • Sasuke vs Raikage meets equally bloodlusted Gruntilda from Banjo Tooie.
  • Gaara vs Deidara. Star Wars Shadows of The Empire - Skyhook Battle. DO WANT.
    • Every single one of the above videos has been taken down, replacements are needed.
• Lots of people have said that the women of Black Lagoon are like wild animals. Now you have proof.
• The World God Only Knows doesn't have very many good ones yet, but there are a few very appropriate examples.
  • Inversely, some videos have used the first season's bombastic rock opera theme song to good effect.
• Someone connected the dots between the multinational harem aspect of Infinite Stratos and the first Modern Warfare 3 trailer's focus on multinational conflict (with the implication that harems bring conflicts). It fits.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion vid, a tribute to Shinji to "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want": [3]
• What happens when Spike Speigel goes after Vash the Stampede and the $$60B bounty on his head? Tainted Donuts happens.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Alien Nine mixed together with a remix of O fortuna.
• Act of Genesis, a beautiful AMV by Aggressor. While focusing mainly on Heaven's Lost Property it's a mix of several anime's with a powerful message.
• Macross Plus has been described as Super Dimension Fortress Macross meets Top Gun. As this AMV shows, this is exactly right. (It helps that Kawamori originally intended to make an animated adaptation of Top Gun).
• Fate/Zero's resident big brother figure Broskander the Great seems to have applied for a Dos Equis Commercial... Thus, he has finally become "The most interesting man in the World..."
• This AMV is a send up/parody to-of all thing- James Bond films, by combining Sailor Moon, City Hunter, and Duran Duran's theme to the movie A View to a Kill.
• "This is Halloween" is a very popular one, to the extent that it introduced many people to Soul Eater.
• This AMV (*spoilers*) for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure combines scenes from the 2012 anime version of Part 1 with the theme from the never-released-on-DVD film from 5-6 years earlier.
• Seems after spending the night with his girlfriend Yuno, Yukki wants to let everyone know... with help from The Lonely Island.
  • And apparently, same with Tusk after sleeping with Ange for three days and nights...
• Speaking of Future Diary, this vid to the tune of "A Little Piece of Heaven" fits to the overall theme of the story in more ways than one.
• This AMV of Kotoura-san blends euphoricly Awesome Music along with some meaningfully impactful dialog taken straight from the show. It somehow does an even better job of summarizing the show's mood and atmosphere in just one and a half minutes than its already-infamous Downer Beginning.
• This showcases (*spoilers*) how well Death Grips and Neon Genesis Evangelion go together, especially during the last few episodes and movie.
• Girls und Panzer's Hippo Team are giving testament to livin' "the StuG Life"... to the tune of Chamillionaire.
  • Speaking of GuP, this vid to the tune of the main theme for Pride FC.
  • With the release of der Film, someone managed to demonstrate the old adage of "JAM Project makes anything awesome" through arguably one of, if not the most Hot-Blooded Girls und Panzer Music Video Tribute in recent memory.
  • In what may be the perfect match up: I Am A Sensha-Do Champion
• Evil Spider's award winning Cowboy Bebop AMV features the song "Cells" by The Servant (best known for being the theme of the Sin City movie) and turns the plot of Bebop into a revenge story ala The Crow where Spike attempts to take down the Big Bad, a Corrupt Politician/Villain with Good Publicity whose Co-Dragons Vicious and Faye Valentine attempted to kill Spike and succeeded in killing his lover, (Cher from Wolf's Rain) in the process.
• What does one get when the Film Trailer for Deadpool gets mixed with the cast from the Anime adaptation of One-Punch Man? DeadPunch, that's what.
  • Even comes with the Red Band version, too.
• An early official example is this video. It's from the very 80s OAV Cipher the Video (also known as just Cipher) and is set to the song "Let's Hear It For The Boy" by Deniece Williams.

Films — Animation

• This AMV featuring Wreck-It Ralph and Ralph Breaks the Internet, and set to Chord Overstreet's "Hold On", is a poignant video that recaps the friendship between Ralph and Vanellope.

Films — Live-Action

• Experimental 1936 film Rose Hobart involved a guy who was a huge fan of actress Rose Hobart. He took a print of her 1931 feature film East of Borneo and cut it down from 77 minutes to 19 minutes, basicallly reducing the movie to only shots of Rose Hobart. He also tinted the whole thing blue, slowed it down to silent film speed, removed the sound track and dubbed on a new soundtrack of peppy Brazilian samba music, and intercut footage of a solar eclipse for some reason. So, this trope is Older Than They Think.
• This Fan Vid of The Dark Knight set to "Deranged" by Coheed and Cambria which is a song about the Joker.
• A video called "Three Ways to Die" reframes Inglourious Basterds as Le Film Artistique.
• A love theme montage for Amélie.
• Couple District 13's insane Le Parkour scene, and an epic tune from the N64 smashhit Goldeneye 007, and you get this.
• One of the more popular videos in the Watchmen fandom is "If U Seek Adrian"- a tribute to Adrian Veidt's magnificent powers of Foe Romance Subtext.
• Harry Potter and Repo! meet surprisingly well in "Hogwarts! The Genetic Opera".
• Given the dark nature of the 1920 movie The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, you'd think metal or something would be a great fit. However, there's an AMV that combines Caligari with Billy Joel's "River Of Dreams."
• "The Pure and the Tainted" is an excellent mash-up of footage from both TRON and TRON: Legacy, depicting a Battle in the Center of the Mind between Tron and his Rinzler programming.
• A chap named Ivan Guerrero pioneered the concept of "premakes," which combine footage from different older films in order to retell a more modern film. The most notable of these is for a film made in 1954 called Ghost Busters, which starred Dean Martin as Dr. Raymond Stantz, Bob Hope as Dr. Peter Venkman, and Fred MacMurray as Dr. Egon Spengler. It is very well-done, and gained mention in newspapers and magazines. Ivan has done other films, such as Indiana Jones and The Empire Strikes Back, both of which were well-received by George Lucas himself.
• A much recent example: Pacific Rim... to the tune of Megas XLR.
• Thor/Loki shippers, have some Friendship is Witchcraft.
• "Uptown Funk" by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars with dance scenes from 66 classic movie musicals.
  • This does the same thing with "Can't Stop the Feeling."
• Take scenes from the horror movie Pulse 3, put them to the song "Take on Me" by the band A Ha, and you get a cute impossible romance between a normal teenage girl and a cyber ghost that she brings to life; in the theme of the song's original music video.
• "Escape from No Return" slows down Nu Shooz's "Point of No Return to vaporwave tempo and sets it to clips of Escape from New York.
• When Eminem's "Godzilla" dropped in January 2020, it only took a few days for a fan of the namesake King of the Monsters to drop a video fusing both.
• The Matrix of Leadership of Sauron must be destroyed. All the funnier now that Hugo Weaving voiced Megatron in Transformers (2007).

Live-Action TV

• In January 2008, a Firefly/Serenity video set to "Defying Gravity" (from the musical Wicked) garnered the approval and recommendation of no less than Joss Whedon himself.
• Doctor Who:
  • A fan-created "The Five Doctors", which is essentially a very high-budget YouTube Poop.
  • The Master dancing in the show to part of "I Can't Decide" by Scissor Sisters also led to the creation of fan vids set to that song which included clips of him dancing to it, creating an interesting recursive effect. Here is one of about 300 of them.
  • One played for chilling effect is "Handlebars", about the Tenth Doctor. It plays up his goofy aspects at the start, but as the song becomes darker, the video shifts to showing his dangerous side and megalomaniac tendencies, with the consequences to foe and friend alike. It was made before the subtext finally became canon in "The Waters of Mars", with many reactions to the episode talking about Ten "going Handlebars".
  • Doctor Who Confidential used to air their own fan-type vids occasionally, usually tributes to a character who was leaving. The episode for The Parting of the Ways had one for the Ninth Doctor set to Snow Patrol's "Run" (the title of which was the Ninth Doctor's first ever line). Except on the DVD release.
  • The credits for Matt Smith's third season, in the style of the credits for Iron Man 3. Can You Dig It?
• Now with over a million views, this was one of the first Kirk/Spock videos and has been played at several (non-slash!) major conventions. It's a bit disturbing, but a classic.
• "Ordinary Day" by Vanessa Carlton is very popular for Doctor Who vids, like this one.
• One notable video is the impressive Addicted To ''Lost'', whose makers actually tweaked the audio of the original song ("Addicted To Love") so that Robert Palmer appears to be singing the new title line. The kicker? This isn't technically a fanvid. It's an actual promotional video that aired on ABC during the 2005 Super Bowl.
• The unofficial theme song for Gomez and Morticia Addams appears to be "The Masochism Tango" from Tom Lehrer. Not surprising, as they're Happily Married with a side of Too Kinky to Torture
• This may not exactly be popular, but there are also Power Rangers/{insert whatevermedia here} crossovers, with characters from the other show/game/whatever 'starring' as any respective Power Ranger.
• A very funny (and appropriate) fanvid for Torchwood is set to "Banned from Argo" by Leslie Fish & the Dehorn Crew. The verse about finding "the captain" engaged in group sex with five kinds of aliens? Yeah, the line was written for James Kirk, but Jack Harkness manages to out-do Kirk for Boldly Coming.
• Despite being over thirty years old, Blake's 7 has some awesome fanvids. This one is a very wry one about the cheesy production values. This one lampshades and parodies the bleak tone. This one wins for being a marvelous piece of meta-fiction. The song itself is practically filk with the two lead singers playing the main characters, the clips are depicting the events sung about in the song, and the band itself was named for the series.
  • Blake's 7 actually had an official vid on the Season 2 DVDs that set Brian Croucher's version of The Dragon, Travis, to Dire Straits' "The Man's Too Strong". Including some actual Blake/Travis innuendo
• Community spoofed an actual fanvid of their show in the episode "Paradigms of Human Memory". Annie brings up all the glances and Will They or Won't They? moments she and Jeff have had and it cuts to a silly Noodle Incident montage set to the love song "Gravity" by Sara Bareilles. Jeff points out you could do the same thing with Pierce and Abed and a montage of innocuous moments between those two set to the same song is shown. It is an Affectionate Parody(or as creator Dan Harmon tweeted "homage") to a real Jeff/Annie fanvid made two months after the show premiered.
• Heroes character tributes are popular. Like Sylar for instance. Also mixing and matching music or dialogue from other series.
• THE X FILES: THE TWILIGHT ZONE: The X-Files meets The Simpsons meets The Twilight Zone (1959). High quality editing and immensely amusing.
• Favorite Mulderisms and Scullyisms and Mulderisms and Scullyisms, pt2 by snakey973. Great selection of snarks and funny moments. Fitting music and captions.
• X-Files // Crack!Vid and X-Files // Crack!Vid pt2 by snakey973. The vids have both hilarious and poignant scenes, very good editing and very well chosen dialogue and music. It includes Crossover quotes from various movies and shows Played for Laughs. Running Joke is Scully's new theme: a song by Lily Allen "Fuck You" which appears whenever someone bothers or insults her, or plainly tries to fuck with her or Mulder.
• Videos by acoupleanutcases are legendary in Horatio Hornblower fandom. Especially noteworthy is "Roll Call" when Hornblower characters resemble and talk like The Muppets, "Hornblower Spoof", poking fun at Ho Yay moments of the show, and "Brokeback Hornblower", an obligatory re-cut with music from Brokeback Mountain with excellently chosen lines and scenes, which turns Horatio and Archie from Heterosexual Life-Partners into a gay couple. Link to the playlist.
• One of the more highly regarded Fan Vid's is Johan Ohberg's "Oz Gangs" video series, begun in 2009 and ended recently in late 2013, a series of videos that blend music with footage and dialogue from the HBO show Oz that showcases the members of the gangs and factions in Oswald State Penitentiary. The full playlist can be found here
• The White Queen, despite only running one season, has an outpouring of such videos, even years after it ended. The sequel The White Princess received the same treatment - sometimes even the same songs.

Music

• This fan music video of "Kids" by MGMT is not only 4 times as popular as the official video, the creators of the video have a cameo in "Electric Feel".
• Although Madonna originally had a video produced for her song "True Blue" from the album of the same name, she through MTV ran a contest to have a fan-produced video be the one that would be the "official" video for the song on the network.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000 has Damnatus, remarkable in that the only other films of the franchise are the official Ultramarines, a short called Inquisitor, and various video-game cutscenes.

Video Games

• Touhou Project has so many of these that they require their own page.

• Super Mario 64 has Bowser's levels with imported EPIC music.
• Here are some Kingdom Hearts AMVs set to the Goof Troop theme song, the Ducktales theme, the Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers theme, and the Gargoyles theme. They are all awesome.
  • Here's another one set to Within Temptation's "See Who I Am" and it is pure, unadulterated awesome (and also won Anime Boston's Best of Show).
  • This one sets the song "Defying Gravity" to the plot of 358/2 Days, very good lip-syncing. It manages to turn the most depressing game in the series into borderline uplifting.
• There are many "Emerald Sword" vids out there, but this vid set to The Legend of Zelda clips is so epic it almost matches any Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann vid in pure awesomeness.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has its title screen to the opening music of Mega Man X7 here.
• Civilization II gets a fan music video set to Coldplay's "Viva La Vida," complete with scenes of the game's advisors and World Wonder clips. It works.
• This vid uses E.S. Posthumus' "Unstoppable" to make an awesome trailer for the Subspace Emissary mode in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
• Someone noted the similarities between Psychonauts and Inception. Then they decided to use clips of the former with audio of the latter's trailer. The result was phenomenal.
• Fate/stay night is a popular one for MADs, due to it's action Visual Novel nature. However, none of them manage to beat the Guilty Sky MAD which somehow manages to give a rapid recap of the entire game. If you've beaten every route, you WILL be reminded of the most important scenes, if you haven't, spoilers!
• Elsewhere in the Nasuverse, Fate/Grand Order has quite a few of its own - one standout example is this one, set to "The Last of the Real Ones" and made to commemorate the game's 5th anniversary.
• Portal combined with The Nightmare Before Christmas? This is Aperture and The Wheatley Song are exactly that. The former even gained enough popularity to be noticed by Valve themselves.
• Yume Nikki has some songs.
• This Sonic the Hedgehog fanvid set to "Mmm Yeah" by Austin Mahone uses various clips and shots from the games, anime, and cartoon and Fan Art to celebrate all 9 het Sonic/Shadow/Silver/Amy/Sally/Blaze ships!
  • The one for "Break Your Heart" by Taoi Cruz also does this, but on a sadder scale.
  • While those videos were obvious Windows Movie Maker creations, the same creator's fanvids since 2019 have more flashy visual effects, such as the one for "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen, themed after Sonic/Amy, and even those from 2017-8 tried to be flashy with Windows Movie Marker, such as the one for a sped up mashup of "Middle" and "Closer", themed after Silver/Blaze. (SallyRose975's fanvids are indeed flashy, sometimes even Epileptic Flashing Lights, so not recommended for those with photosensitive epilepsy.)
• StormRedDesert was a notable Sonic the Hedgehog fanvidder before disappearing in 2015, using footage from Sonic media in tune with both popular and Sonic songs. An example with "When Can I See You Again" by Owl City.
• Fan made Bioshock Infinite launch trailer set to the tune of Johnny Cash's God's Gonna Cut You Down.
• Even some of the more unlikely games are prone of getting these, such as Drakengard meeting Attack on Titan.
• Ever thought that Le Parkour on a tank cannot be done? The Russian blokes who made this vid from World of Tanks sure did not.
• Speaking of World of Tanks, remember when someone merged the two versions of the Wehrmacht anthem Panzerlied (The instrumentals from the Girls und Panzer version with the vocals from Battle of the Bulge)? Someone used that to showcase the might of the German Tank Tech Tree.
• Ever wondered how "Raise your Flag" by Man With a Mission would fit in the setting of KanColle? "Iron-Blooded Fleet Girls" got that covered. (Note: Nicozon link)
  • Even covers the Anime adaptation as well. (Note: also Nicozon link)

Web Animation

• Eddie at The LMV does Literal Music Videos by covering songs and creating terrible (their words) animated music videos to them, such as "Doo Wah Diddy Diddy" by Manfred Mann and "She's Kinda Hot" by 5 Seconds of Summer.

Web Comics

• There's a Top 10 Webcomic list that plays alot like a music video. Here it is talking about each comic and here it is without the talking, pretty much as a music video.
• The Beast Legion webcomic has it's own Animated Intro by the creator.
• Girl Genius put to "The Phoenix" by Fall Out Boy is about as awesome as it sounds.
• Lecravian has earned a name for himself in the MS Paint Adventures fandom for doing a terrific series of tribute videos for Problem Sleuth and Homestuck that take the events of the series, string them together at warp speed, and add some kickass music to accompany it all.
  • There's quite a few fanvids for Homestuck, thanks in part to its huge library of flash animation and artwork to draw from. Given its penchant for Zodiac motifs, "Weird Al" Yankovic's "That's Your Horoscope For Today" in particular has inspired lots of parodies.
  • On the subject of Homestuck tributes, let's see How Far We've Come.
  • This May 2012 flash page of the comic itself (warning, spoilers!) brings to mind a Fan Vid, as a large percentage of it is a repeat of older panels of the comic, popping up for no other reason than that they fit the lyrics.

Web Videos

• Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series is one of the better examples of the humorous type of Fan Vid. (See also Gag Dub.) They also do a version of the another shows theme, by making a Yu-Gi-Oh! version of the Neon Genesis Evangelion opener.
• "Rorschach's Sing Along Journal", a strange fusion of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and Watchmen.
• Inverted in Doctor Steel's music video for "Back and Forth", where he made a Video Full of Film Clips of his fans dancing and singing along to his music.
  • Several of his fans have made impressive FanVids (which Dr. Steel encourages), most notably:
    • Caleb Allen's masterful portrayal of "Lament for a Toy Factory".
    • Starkravenmad's Flash videos to "Back and Forth", "Fibonacci Sequence" and "Build the Robots".
• New to YouTube: Literal Music Video
• Several Happy Tree Friends fan AMVs have been favourited by MondoMedia (its creators) on YouTube, such as Giggles Tribute -- What I've Done -- Linkin Park by sandiegoborn32, happy tree friends- flippy music video by oracle56 and Happy Tree Friends -- I Believe In Father Christmas by AnthonyRobertPrice. They also occasionally subscribe to some YouTube users who make Happy Tree Friends fan videos.
• That Dude in the Suede used to make AMVs and send them to Christchurch AMV competitions.
• This goodbye/tribute to The Nostalgia Critic has the honor of being described as the best one that Doug Walker has ever seen.

Western Animation

• Back during the 1980s and '90s, the Disney Channel frequently ran DTV, a series of music videos of popular songs set to appropriately-themed clips from the company's animated films (and even some live-action ones on occasion). For instance, they had a music video of "Splish Splash" by Bobby Darrin set to clips of Disney cartoon characters getting washed or taking a bath, and "Owner of a Lonely Heart" by Yes set entirely to the Silly Symphony Elmer Elephant. DTV would even spin off a few NBC TV specials featuring shortened music videos.
• Similarly, Cartoon Network did a few, only using more contemporary artists.
• This video of Moral Orel set to "Save Me" by Aimee Mann, which perfectly captures the motion picture soundtrack music video feel, gained the praise of series creator Dino Stamatopoulos on his Facebook page.
• "The End of the World". A Teen Titans video set to "The Scientist" by Coldplay, it focuses on Robin and Raven during "The End". Features clever use of a Talky Bookend at the beginning, and mostly avoids flashy effects.
• Probably the most popular Fan Vid to use a Western Animation work: "Hey Ya! Charlie Brown!"
• This video sets Jars of Clay's "Mirrors and Smoke" to scenes from Superfriends—with the video clips edited to make Superman's lip-flaps match the lyrics. The band liked it so much that they uploaded it on their YouTube channel.
• You wouldn't think Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Nightmare Before Christmas would go well together, but "Kidnap the Avatar" quickly proves you wrong.
• Any doubts about the combination of Transformers: Prime and The Prince of Egypt are swiftly silenced by "The Prince of Cybertron".
• Avatar: The Last Airbender has The Kings and Queens of Avatar (by 30 Seconds to Mars), and Marching On (by One Republic). Warning about Marching On; the video... pulses excessively. It may give you a headache. It's still a good video, though.
  • The Legend of Korra has this tribute to the bloodbending brothers, set to the song You Treat Me Like a Stranger; though its a refreshing cover by Gavin Mikhail. Perfect.
    • And then there's this masterful video, A New Hope by Broken Iris. As well as this one, When You Believe from the religious movie, Prince of Egypt, that fits extremely well and is positively tear-inducing.
    • Here's an amazing AMV set to "This is War" by 30 Seconds to Mars. It was inspired by the Avatar Parallels tumblr blog, and the parallels shown in the video are done beautifully.
• March Of The Titans uses clips from both Batman: The Animated Series and Teen Titans, focusing in on the life of Robin (the Dick Grayson one, although the BtAS clips are of Tim Drake, the Teen Titans Robin is clearly Dick) using "Welcome to the Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance.
• Within the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fandom, these are commonly called PMVs (Pony Music Video). The fandom is as prolific with these as they are with every fanwork imaginable, but even then some rise above the flock. Those with their own page are listed here.
• One fan of Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension made an AMV using clips from the TV movie and the song New Divide by Linkin Park, depicting how Phineas felt used when he realized Perry was a secret agent.
  • The same user made an AMV entitled Mike Feels Like a Monster, combining the song, "Monster" by Music/Skillet with clips from Total Drama Season 4 (Total Drama Revenge of the Island) to describe Mike's conflict with his evil alter ego.
• The iconic Sweet Victory sequence from Spongebob Squarepants has been frequently re-edited to have Spongebob singing other awesome music, such as Living on a Prayer.
• Childhood Creativity Studios is a channel dedicated to making CMVs using clips from various pieces of Western Animation (and the occasional Web Animation, like RWBY). The videos themselves vary in quality, especially when it comes to crossovers.
• Dark Simpsons is a channel revolving around edited videos of The Simpsons that tell stories of pedophilia, corruption, murder, depression, suicide, etc. — all Played for Laughs.

Real Life

• Another early progenitor of the modern Fan Vid: Fighter Fling, created by none other than the F-14 Tomcat fighter squadrons of the United States Navy. That's right, even the hotshot Top Gun types were into this sort of thing! From 1989 to 2004 (when the Tomcat's retirement was announced), the squadrons would produce one long yearbook-like video of Tomcats and their crew acting badass or Bunny-Eared set to whatever music was popular at the time. Every so often, clips or entire Fighter Fling videos appear on YouTube, but as they are no less copyright violations than the average modern-day Fan Vid, they are often taken down due to DMCA.
  • The final Fighter Fling produced in 2004 included a sendup of Van Halen's "Right Now" music video, centered upon the final days of the F-14 Tomcat's service history.
  • This sequence from Fighter Fling 2004 says it all. You will never doubt the quirkiness of the United States military ever again.
• Footage of Hitler's army being deployed seems to fit well with Krook's March from Donkey Kong Country 2 here, as it does with John Williams' Imperial March here.
• You can find a lot of NATO fanvids - yes, really! - under the banner of "NATOWave". It's usually footage of NATO armed forces put to songs like "Death Squad" (Perturbator) or (slowed + reverb) "Lay All Your Love On Me" (Abba).

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