Guest Fighter

"Strong with the Force, you are. But not that strong."

Spawn: You've been to other dimensions?
Scorpion: Each has had its own Injustices.
Spawn: Maybe that's why my Soul still burns.

— Mortal Kombat 11

A Guest Fighter is a character that doesn't belong in the setting who just shows up in a Video Game, especially a Fighting Game, much like a Special Guest on a TV show. It seems like if a fighting game hasn't had a full-blown Crossover, it has at least had a Guest Fighter or two.

Guest Fighters are quite the Base Breaking Characters; depending on who you ask, they are either awesome and hilarious because they're fishes out of water bringing all their superpowers and continuity nods to the conflict or detracting from the premise of the established fictional universe and/or a cheap cash grab because they're... fishes out of water. That being said, the Guest Fighters least likely to inflict base breaking are the fishes whose styles and settings are more in water, such as Link in Soulcalibur II, Freddy Krueger in Mortal Kombat 9, or Spawn in Mortal Kombat 11 or guests in Massive Multiplayer Crossover games in which case there is no such thing as a fish out of water. And even then, it's still not a sure bet.

In nearly all cases, those characters are Unexpected Characters and have achieved Just Here for Godzilla for fans of their original franchises, so Guest Fighter can be considered a subtrope of those.

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Examples:

Fighting Games

• Fighter's History:
  • The earliest known fighting game with a guest fighter would have to be the first game by Data East, which its final boss is Karnov from the arcade game of the same name, who also appeared in later titles in the series (and also appeared as an enemy in Bad Dudes and Trio the Punch). However, he wasn't playable until the arcade game was ported to the SNES with a cheat code to play as him.
  • In Fighter's History Dynamite (known in Europe as Karnov's Revenge), another guest fighter appears as an Optional Boss, which was the Ox from Data East's 1984 Karate Champ.
  • In the Japan-exclusive Super Famicom title in the series, Fighter's History: Mizoguchi Kiki Ippatsu!!, the final boss this time is another guest fighter, Chelnov, from the run 'n' gun arcade game Atomic Runner.
  • Makoto Mizoguchi from this series made two appearances as a guest fighter: the first was in Suiko Enbu: Fuu'un Saiki (with Liu Yungmie), while the second was in KOF: Maximum Impact Regulation A.
• Although both the Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting franchises take place in the same universe, Ryo Sakazaki from the Art of Fighting series appearing in Fatal Fury Special (an update of Fatal Fury 2) as the secret final boss counts.
  • Also, following the story from this chronology, Ryo takes the mantle of Mr. Karate appearing in his 30s and changing his look. This older version of Ryo appears as secret character in the 3D reboot of the first Fatal Fury (FF: Wild Ambition), representing Karate in Buriki One (the only known character in a game full of Original Generation characters), as an unlockable character in KOF: Maximum Impact 2 wearing a mask similar to his father Takuma's (apart from using his Another outfit, which takes after his Buriki One appearance) and in NeoGeo Battle Coliseum representing Buriki One instead of Art of Fighting.
  • Geese Howard from Fatal Fury appears as a secret final boss in Art of Fighting 2, though with a different appearance, due to Art of Fighting being placed chronologically before Fatal Fury, thus making the Geese in AOF younger.
  • Truly a remarkable example because from one simple guest appearance, the entire The King of Fighters franchise was given birth (which is like "Guest Fighter: The Game", at least in its original design, as not only did characters from Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting appear on the roster but so too did non-fighting game characters from games such as Psycho Soldier and Ikari Warriors). KoF in itself has had a few guest fighters (particularly in XI where characters from fighting games like Savage Reign and Buriki One got to join the cast). And while it features characters from multiple universes, KOF '94 can be considered the earliest cross-over fighting game.
  • Leaving aside the games that explicitly fold into it, The King of Fighters: Maximum Impact 2 has fun with this trope. Hanzo Hattori and Fio both show up... and are quite confused (Hanzo wonders what happened to ninjitsu when he meets Mai, and Fio mistakes Ralf and Clark for Marco and Tarma, respectively). Its update, Regulation A, also has the aforementioned Mizoguchi, though he's notably the first and only non-SNK character to join the KOF cast.
  • Clark and Ralf make appearances in Metal Slug 6 and 7, as well as one or two of their signature moves. Leona is an add-on character in Metal Slug XX, the PSP re-release of Metal Slug 7. Additionally, Metal Slug Defense has all 3 of them, plus Kyo, Iori, Benimaru, Goro Daimon, Mature, and Vice, as purchasable units.
  • The King of Fighters 2000 has Assist Characters known as strikers to help you out. Some of them are from other SNK games, such as Rocky from Robo Army, Duke Edwards from Burning Fight, and Neo & Geo from Quiz Dai Sousa-sen. (The first two are from Beat em Ups, but Neo & Geo are from, oddly enough, a quiz game.)
  • The King of Fighters XIV has a subversion: The Another World Team is a team seemingly loaded with this trope. Led by Nakoruru, its members include two heroines from Pachislot series: Mui Mui and Love Heart. The subversion is that there is a high chance that they're not temporary guests: the Big Bad of the game has the power to yank beings from another timeline/dimension into the current dimension, possibly forcing the team to take part in canon as opposed to just being 'bonus' characters.
    • And predating this game and going straight with the trope, Nakoruru first appeared in the Game Boy version of KOF '95.
    • And as of XV, Nakoruru returns to the roster alongside Haohmaru and Darli Dagger as a DLC team, the latter two replacing Mui Mui and Love due to rights issues.
• Gon in the console port of Tekken 3. Almost two decades later, Akuma from Street Fighter crashes Tekken 7: Fated Retribution on a mission to hunt down Heihachi Mishima and Kazuya Mishima.
  • Strangely enough, Akuma appears in Tekken 7's Story Mode going after Heihachi and Kazuya as part of a debt he owes to Heihachi's late wife after she saved his life, implying that he may actually be part of Tekken canon now.
  • The first Season Pass DLC character for the console version of Tekken 7 is Fatal Fury's Big Bad Geese Howard, marking the first time an SNK character has appeared in a fighting game with fighters from Bandai Namco's character library (previously, Mai Shiranui and Emile "Lili" de Rochefort came together in the crossover game Queen's Gate: Spiral Chaos).
    • And indirectly, this is the first time Akuma and Geese have been in the same game in 14 years.
  • The Guest Character train keeps going, with Noctis Lucis Caelum from Final Fantasy XV joining the roster.
  • Noctis hit a high level of Unexpected Character for Tekken but it's still a pretty reasonable choice next to Season 2 DLC headliner Negan from The Walking Dead.
• The Soul series is downright notorious for this:
  • Link, Heihachi and Spawn in Soulcalibur II. The catch is that each of these three are exclusive to a single console (GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox, respectively). The HD remake for the Xbox Live Arcade and PSN brings only Heihachi and Spawn back (not Link for obvious reasons), but now both are available across both platforms.
  • Lloyd Irving in Soulcalibur Legends.
  • Darth Vader, Yoda and "The Apprentice" in Soulcalibur IV; the latter is effectively an Early-Bird Cameo. The catch for the first two is each of them are playable from the start exclusively on one console (Vader on PlayStation 3 and Yoda on Xbox 360) and are paid Downloadable Content on the other, making the pair from a technical point of view the first fighting game DLC characters, predating Makoto Nanaya by almost two years.
  • Kratos from God of War in Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny.
  • Ezio Auditore da Firenze in Soulcalibur V.
  • Likewise, Soul Calibur V has a fighting style based on Devil Jin. Tekken's producer, Katsuhito Harada, appears as a bonus character in Quick Battle mode using this style. In the game, he's known under his Twitter handle Harada_TEKKEN, and wears an outfit resembling Heihachi's gi.
  • Geralt of Rivia in Soulcalibur VI. This is followed by 2B from NieR: Automata and Haohmaru from Samurai Shodown as DLC.
  • While not Guest Fighters in the same sense as the others, there are also a number of characters who were created for the series by well-known artists. In this sense, they count as well.
    • Necrid was designed by Spawn creator Todd Mc Farlane for Soulcalibur II, the game which McFarlane also made a toy line for (the making of which was conditional on Necrid's inclusion). He was available on all three console versions.
    • Angol Fear was created by Sgt. Frog creator Mine Yoshizaki. She is a cousin to Angol Mois from that series and made a one-off appearance in chapter 148 of the manga after her debut, making her a genuine retroactive guest.
    • Ashlotte Maedel was created by Oh! Great.
    • Kamikirimusi was created by My-HiME character designer Hirokazu Hisayuki.
    • Scheherazade was created by RahXephon creator Yutaka Izubuchi.
    • Shura was created by Gantz creator Hiroya Oku.
  • All these guest fighters have background stories and plots that sufficiently explain why they are in the series. However, they are never actually referenced again or even hinted about having existed at any point, and have zero impact within the story. The 5 created characters for IV, including Angol Fear, are an exception as they are actually mentioned as part of the story, with Ashlotte having the strongest connection due to her part in the story for V's new Astaroth.
  • Ubisoft's Word of God on Ezio's presence is that it is easily explained through the Animus, the decidedly time-spanning but not universe-spanning Framing Device of the Assassin's Creed universe. Though at one point the Soulcalibur community manager noted the fuzziness of Ezio's timeline during the events of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (the incarnation used in V), suggested that it was actually time/dimensional travel instead of Soul Calibur V itself being a video game inside the Animus. The latter seems to be backed up by Ezio's official profile, which has him retrieving an item from the Templars that seems to briefly transport him to 1607, this leaving erratic readings in the Animus.
  • And Yoshimitsu could be considered one, at least in spirit, given a similar character exists since the first Soulcalibur. While vaguely hinted at first, it was confirmed for V that this Yoshimitsu is the founder of the group the Tekken Yoshimitsu forms part of, and the first in a long line of successors carrying the same name.
  • On top of all that, the very first game subverts this trope with the hidden character Han Myong. He actually has a name in-game, and can be unlocked, but the game's MC only ever refers to him as "Guest Fighter" for some reason, even though this was the first time such a character ever existed.
• Dead or Alive:
  • Nicole-458, a female Spartan from Halo who appears in Dead or Alive 4. It's worth noting that she has never appeared in any actual Halo media, since she was created specifically for DOA4.
  • Akira Yuki, Sarah Bryant, and Pai Chan from Virtua Fighter are playable characters in Dead or Alive 5. Jacky Bryant joins up as well in Dead or Alive 5: Ultimate.
  • In 2016, Dead or Alive 5: Last Round received Naotora Ii from Samurai Warriors and, later in the year, Mai Shiranui from The King of Fighters/Fatal Fury (quite fittingly^note Let's be honest here, she was pretty much a Dead or Alive character before there was a Dead or Alive).
  • Mai returned in Dead or Alive 6, and brought along fellow KOF regular Kula Diamond. Mai returning also marks one of the only examples of a guest character making appearances in multiple installments of a fighting game series (and likely the only such example outside of Smash Bros).
• The Japanese version of Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter had Norimaro, an original character created by Japanese comedian Noritake Kinashi. He carried around a little satchel full of props as he fought. His super move was to fling every prop in the bag in a giant shotgun-blast of random objects. When he won, he'd pull out a little camera, hold it at arm's length, turn it around, and snap a picture of himself. He was removed from the US version, although data for him still exists in the game.
• Akuma appeared in X-Men: Children of the Atom. After that there was Anita from Darkstalkers in Marvel Super Heroes. Similar to The King of Fighters example, the use of Capcom-owned characters in their Marvel Comics-licensed fighting games predicated the start of the Marvel vs. Capcom series.
• Akuma also appeared in the console version of Cyberbots as a mecha under the name "Zero Akuma". This characters was very likely inspired by Cyber Akuma, the final boss in Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter.
• Sakura shows up in the first Rival Schools game. This is finally paid in kind come season 5 of Street Fighter V when Akira Kazama was added as Downloadable Content (it should be noted that Rival Schools exists in the Shared Universe of Street Fighter, much like Final Fight and the characters that crossed over from that series).
• The now-discontinued PC mouse game Street Fighter Online: Mouse Generation had several crossover characters from other licenses, namely Wuxia novels by Jin Yong, Cyborg 009, Kiminori Wakasugi from Detroit Metal City and the title character from Space Sheriff Gavan.
• MegaMan.EXE and Zero are unlockable fighters in Onimusha Blade Warriors.
• K-1 fighter-turned-comedian Bobby Ologun appears as the final boss in the PlayStation 2 port of Power Instinct Matrimelee. He uses much Gratuitous English and has a Beam Spam super called "Bobby Beam".
• In Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3, Arale Norimaki from Doctor Slump is an unlockable character. Arale did appear in episodes 55, 56, and 57 of the first Dragon Ball anime series, so when they said they would put everyone in Budokai Tenkaichi 3, they really meant everyone. And in an example of Guest Stage, Penguin Village is an unlockable stage.
• The Japanese version of Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2 had an alternate costume for Frieza, as his son Kuriza from Akira Toriyama's self-parody manga Neko Majin Z. Neko Majin himself appears as a guest assistant character in the Japanese version of Dragon Ball Z: Supersonic Warriors 2 for the Nintendo DS.
• Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 allows you to use Lars Alexandersson from Tekken 6. Bandai Namco Entertainment has the rights to both series and Naruto author Masashi Kishimoto designed Lars's alternate outfit, so he reappears here with said outfit and redesigned to fit with the art style of the game.
• As an example of a Guest Costume, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 had Goku's outfit as a DLC costume for Naruto. In return, Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z has a Sage Naruto costume for Goku.
• Similar to the WWE Smackdown: Just Bring It! example, Fred Durst was also featured as an unlockable character in the ill-advised fighting game adaptation of Fight Club.
• Similarly, rocker Henry Rollins has a sizably role in Def Jam: Fight for NY, featuring the eponymous rap label's performers. Actors Omar Epps and Danny Trejo also make appearances and are playable characters.
• While not a playable character, Donkey Kong is a not-so-secret challenger in the Wii Punch-Out!! title. He would only appear during the last phase of Career Mode: Mac's Last Stand. Win or lose, once you met him, you could fight him any time in Exhibition Mode. But because all opponents at this point are random, you ran the risk of him being Permanently Missable if you lost the Last Stand before fighting him. And for the GameCube port of EA's Fight Night Round 2, you can play as Little Mac in his SNES appearance.
• Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 has hidden boxers including basketball star Shaquille O'Neal, Bill & Hillary Clinton, and Michael Jackson.
  • Could possibly count Rumbleman, who's basically boxing announcer Michael Buffer hopped up on Venom.
• Ryougi Shiki of The Garden of Sinners in Melty Blood.
  • Melty Blood's Sion Eltnam Atlasia (Renamed "Eltnum") for Under Night In-Birth. She was later joined by Akatsuki from Akatsuki Blitzkampf
  • Melty Blood: Type Lumina features Saber from Fate/stay night. Mash Kyrielight from Fate/Grand Order would also be added in as a DLC character, with the Count of Monte Cristo and Ushiwakamaru from the same game following her afterwards.
• Fate/Unlimited Codes had a guest appearance by the Lancer from the 4th Grail War, who is from the same fictional universe but from a different time period than the one covered by the game.
• ClayFighter 63⅓:
  • Earthworm Jim has appeared as a guest fighter in this game and the PC edition of Battle Arena Toshinden. In the former, he has his own moveset and even his own story and stage, but in the latter, he is just a bonus skin for Rungo Iron.
  • Boogerman from the game of the same name also appeared here, aptly showing a rivalry of sorts with Jim in the story mode.
• Mortal Kombat
  • Mortal Kombat 9:
    • Kratos again in the PlayStation 3 version of the game. Given that Mortal Kombat is set in a multiverse and has a penchant for gore-tastic fighting, Kratos fits right in.
    • And Freddy Krueger also appears as a Downloadable Content character.
  • Mortal Kombat X:
    • Fellow horror icon Jason Voorhees appears as a Downloadable Content character. His announcement date was also fitting — he was announced on a Friday the 13th. A second guest character in the form of Predator also comes over as DLC.
    • Two more guest fighters join Mortal Kombat X through its "Kombat Pack 2": Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and a Xenomorph^note with Tarkatan DNA, courtesy of Baraka from Alien.
    • Additionally, Jax has a DLC "Carl Weathers" costume based on his appearance as Dillon, Dutch's jerkass teammate from Predator.
  • Mortal Kombat 11:
    • The game teased three guest characters for its first Kombat Pack DLC, the first of which being Spawn (like Kratos making his second run as a guest fighter in MK following an appearance in Soulcalibur). Keith David reprised his role from the HBO animated series.
    • And as for the other two guest characters? They ended up being The Joker and the Terminator.
    • The "Aftermath" expansion adds another guest character: RoboCop, with Peter Weller reprising his role from the first two movies.
    • Kombat Pack 2 adds another 80's movie icon, namely John Rambo (with Sylvester Stallone once again reprising his role).
    • There were plans to include Ash Williams as another guest in the game, but copyright issues with the Evil Dead franchise IP prevented it.
• Fighting Vipers:
  • The Japanese Sega Saturn version had PEPSIMAN! as a secret playable character. Only in the original Japanese Sega Saturn release, sadly. Interestingly, the Arcade version has some unused Guest Fighters that were Dummied Out in the final release, that were likely added as a joke and not meant to be in the full game: Sonic, Tails and Takashi Iizuka (director of Sonic Team). However, they are still playable thanks to emulation hacking. Source links. Sonic being there was the result of a bored programmer, and Yuji Naka saw it and loved the idea, thus Sonic the Fighters was born.
  • Sonic the Fighters originally had Honey the Cat, an original character based on the character of the same name from Fighting Vipers. She was Dummied Out in the original Arcade version of the game and the Sonic Gems Collection re-release, but she's now available for play in the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 digital re-release. Also, in an interesting evolution from excised video game character, she appears a character in the Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) series.
  • Here's an obscure one: secret character Del Sol from Fighting Vipers 2 shows up as a guest character in an unreleased Atomiswave fighting game from Sammy called "Force Five".
• Fighters Megamix, aside from being Virtua Fighter 2 vs. Fighting Vipers, also features many weird and out-of-place characters from other Sega AM2 works, who were added clearly Just for Fun. Including Bean the Dynamite, Bark the Polar Bear, Akira and Sarah (from Virtua Fighter Kids), Siba (a scrapped character from the first Virtua Fighter) Janet, Rent A Hero, Hornet (yep, you can fight as a race car), Deku, Mr. Meat and Palm Tree (A 3D version of the palm tree from Sega AM2's logo!). Needless to say, as crazy as this game and its roster was, it was great because it was 100% grade A Guilty Pleasure.
• Cloud, Tifa, Yuffie, Vincent, Zack, and Sephiroth (the latter two making their first playable appearances) in Ehrgeiz, plus the final boss's first form looks suspiciously similar to Red XIII. Incidentally, this was the only reason most fans bought the game.
• Street Fighter X Tekken on PlayStation 3 and Play Station Vita had FIVE Guest Fighters.
  • Firstly, there's Cole MacGrath of Infamous. He's then joined on the same platforms by two cats (Toro and Kuro) that are Sony's mascots in Japan. Plus Bad Box Art Mega Man, and Pac-Man riding a Mokujin robot. The former three are avaliable from the start of the game, while the later two were released as free Downloadable Content. Needless to say, the five of them are major Base Breaking Characters.
  • To an extent, Poison counts as this. She was from the Final Fight video game series, and while she did make an appearance with Hugo in Street Fighter III, she wasn't playable. Street Fighter X Tekken is the first time she's playable in a Street Fighter game.
• Vattroller X for the Game Boy Advance features Zoro, Kogenta and Beet as secret characters who are unlocked by passwords available in Japanese cards of the Vattroller X manga.
• Spider-Man was a guest fighter in the Activision title X-Men: Mutant Academy 2.
• Arm Wrestling (a Punch-Out!! spinoff) involves this; the third round is against Mask X. But, during the round, pull off the mask and looky here, it's Bald Bull from Punch-Out!! The text also says, "Wow!!! Bald Bull!!!"
• Terry Bogard and Benimaru Nikaido in Xuan Dou Zhi Wang. The fact that XD clearly takes inspiration from The King of Fighters has not been lost on fans, which is probably the reason SNK struck a deal with Tencent to put the two in the game in the first place.
• Scorpion is part of the cast of Injustice: Gods Among Us as DLC. A little unusual, sure, but doubles as a Mythology Gag towards Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.
• Injustice 2 features Sub-Zero and Raiden as DLC fighters. Outside of Mortal Kombat, the Dark Horse Comics character Hellboy and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles also appear as DLC.
• Baoh's Ikuro Hashizawa in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle, but only technically as Baoh is another manga by JoJo's Bizarre Adventure creator Hirohiko Araki.
• Akira Yuki again in Sega and Dengeki Bunko's 2D Massive Multiplayer Crossover fighting game Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax, acting as a boss character. Pai Chan serves as his Assist Character. The console versions get two more with Selvaria Bles and her assist character, Alicia Melchiott. On top of that, none of the stages in the game are from any visual novels. Instead, they are from Sega games, such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Phantasy Star Online 2, NiGHTS into Dreams…, and 7th Dragon.
• Divekick has Johnny Gat of the Saints Row series as one of the new characters in the "Addition Edition". Shaundi also appears as an assist character in one of Gat's moves. The fencer from Nidhogg also arrived in a later update.
• Aggressors of Dark Kombat has Kotaro Fuuma from World Heroes making a guest appearance.
• Alongside its original cast of characters, indie game Project G featured Zero from Mega Man X two years before Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 did.
• Killer Instinct (2013) brings in Rash from Battletoads, the Arbiter from Halo, and General RAAM of Gears of War. The Arbiter is a particularly interesting case, because Word of God is that he's not any specific Arbiter, but a Composite Character made up of various Arbiters.
• Newgrounds Rumble's second release included Fancy Pants from Fancy Pants Adventures. Unlike the other characters in the roster, he's not a Newgrounds original.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy video game included General Skarr as a secret character. While he did appear as a minor character in the series down the line, he was originally from Billy & Mandy's sister show, Evil Con Carne.
• Cartoon Network's other fighting game, Titanic Kungfubot Offensive has some playable characters from shows that did not originate from CN, which includes Johnny Test, Duncan, and Chef Hatchet.
• Whenever a big crossover fighting game is coming out, you know that someone's gonna make a fake leak. Some of them are outright jokes. Take this "leak"◊ of John Cena in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 for example.
• For April Fools Day, Skullgirls released a prank saying that Zone-Archive's Zone-Tan would be a playable DLC character. Zone's... *ahem* "fans" would know that her bio and playstyle have references to Zone-Tan's creation and short appearances, such as having a demon slaying mother, welding a size-changing key as a weapon, and, of course, having her pet tentacle monster Lemmy help her out in the fight.
• In the PSP rerelease of Street Fighter Alpha 3, Capcom Fighting Evolution's Ingrid was a playable character. Interestingly, Capcom now retroactively considers her a Street Fighter character with series producer Yoshinori Ono even considering her a possibility as DLC for Street Fighter V. Her appearance in Project X Zone 2 even lists her origin as Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX despite that obviously not being her first game.
• The Super Puzzle Fighter and Super Gem Fighter games featured Super-Deformed versions of Street Fighter and Darkstalkers characters. However, both games had one character that wasn't from either series. Puzzle Fighter had Devilotte from the Giant Mech Fighting Game Cyberbots appear as a secret character, while Gem Fighter had Tessa from Red Earth.
• Mischief Makers' Marina Liteyears made a playable appearence in the Japan Only Rakugaki Showtime. She can even use her trademark shaking abilities after picking up a Smiley Ball.
• Nitroplus Blasterz Heroines Infinite Duel features Saber in all of its versions while Homura and Heart Aino are available as Downloadable Content in the console versions.
• The fighting game Phantom Breaker has Kurisu Makise and Rimi Sakihata as playable characters. Later in the cutesy retro-styled spin-off Beat 'em Up Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds, Kurisu returns as a playable character via DLC; later in November 17th, 2016, a second DLC added Frau Kojiro as a playable character, which can be selected in all modes.
• You could consider the cast of RWBY in Arc System Works' Massive Multiplayer Crossover BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle as Guest Fighters, considering the other three base series are from already existing fighters. As far as DLC goes, though, there's also Yumi, although she at least comes from a video game series (A Fanservice-laden beat 'em up series, but a video game series nonetheless), not to mention Heart from Arcana Heart and Akatsuki and Blitztank from Akatsuki Blitzkampf being added in as well.
• Gundam Battle Assault 3: Featuring Gundam SEED focused solely on, well, Gundam SEED unlike the previous games which were crossover games. That said, it also featured the God and Master Gundams, Wing Zero Custom and Tallgeese III as unlockables.
• The Nicalis developed fighting game Blade Strangers had Inti Creates' Azure Striker Gunvolt and Yacht Club Games' Shovel Knight as playable characters.
• Power Rangers:
  • Power Rangers: Legacy Wars features Street Fighter characters Ryu, Akuma, M. Bison, Cammy, Guile, and Chun-Li (in their Street Fighter V incarnations) starting with the May 16, 2018 update.
  • In another crossover with Street Fighter, Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid features Ryu as the Crimson Hawk Ranger and Chun-Li as the Blue Phoenix Ranger.
• Under certain conditions, Pocket Rumble allows you to fight against different indie characters as bosses: Kick, Fencer, Dust, The Kid, Candyman, Joy, Wyrn, and Ace. Geiger from Fantasy Strike was a stretch goal DLC character on the game's Kickstarter, but the goal wasn't reached.
• Fighting EX Layer has Terry Bogard as a playable character.
  • Like the Million Arthur example below, Arika gets a guest fighter in SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy with a genderbent version of Skullomania as a trade.
    • Amusing to note that Skullomania was a guest fighter in another game, Fighter Maker released two decades prior.
• A two-way street in Million Arthur: Arcana Blood and SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy. The former receives The King of Fighters mainstay Iori Yagami as a console-exclusive character and the latter Thief Arthur as Downloadable Content from Million Arthur (the superseries of Million Arthur: Arcana Blood). MA:AB also gets three other Guest Fighters in addition to Iori for its console and PC release (Yamaneko Arthur from HanGyaku-Sei Million Arthur, an MMO spinoff of said series, Riesz from Trials of Mana, and Koume Sakiyama from Lord of Vermillion 4, a digital collectible card game) but Iori is the only guest from a franchise outside Square Enix's umbrella.
• Tech Romancer, a fighting game by Capcom, included Jin Saotome. Since all characters fight in giant robots, this is one of the few crossover appearances where Jin pilots his Humongous Mecha, Blodia.
• Since Street Fighter and Final Fight take place in the same universe, characters from the latter appear in the former. This includes Guy, Cody, Rolento, Hugo, Poison, Abigail, and Lucia.
• The American Dad! vs Family Guy games had none other than Ryu as the final boss. And yes, it was official.
• The Nickelodeon Super Brawl browser fighting game series featured several characters who aren't owned by the company but appeared in shows that aired on the network. 2 features Skipper, Rico, King Julien and Dr. Blowhole from The Penguins of Madagascar while 3 has B.O.B. and Sqweep from Monsters vs. Aliens (2013), Po and Master Junjie from Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness and the Raving Rabbids from Rabbids Invasion. Gold Ranger and Xandred from Power Rangers Samurai also appeared as playable fighters in the third game, but were removed once the season ended. Characters from Power Rangers Dino Charge and Power Rangers Ninja Steel were featured in subsequent games without being removed.
• The Warden from For Honor joins the cast of the 2019 Samurai Shodown game as the final character of the second season pass, one of the few examples of a guest character in an SNK game that isn't from their own character library.
  • Gongsun Li from the China-only mobile phone game Honor of Kings was later added as free DLC.
  • Hibiki Takane from SNK's own weapon-based fighting series The Last Blade arrives as a Season 3 character. The final character for the same season was Baiken from Arc System Works' Guilty Gear series.
• Tobal 2, an obscure Japan-only fighting game from Square that's mostly only notable for holding the still-unbroken record for most characters in a fighting game, features a chocobo as a guest fighter, complete with a remix of the chocobo theme as background music.
• Giga Bash, a Kaiju fighting game, features four Godzilla characters as DLC fighters consisting of Godzilla himself, the original Gigan, Destoroyah, and the Millennium incarnation of Mechagodzilla.

Platform Fighters

• In the case of Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. series, the series started as a Massive Multiplayer Crossover featuring their own franchises, but then began to include content from third-party companies with the third installment.
  • Solid Snake from Metal Gear and Sonic the Hedgehog were the first third-party characters in the series, debuting in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The latter was highly demanded by fans who wanted to see him in a fighting game with Mario (which was why he was added in the game), and the game's website refers to both by the trope name. Solid Snake is a unique case as Hideo Kojima originally asked for Snake to be added to Super Smash Bros. Melee. However, that game was far along in development with no time to add another character, so the developers rainchecked him till Brawl.
  • In Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, Sonic makes a return (but not Snake), and Mega Man and Pac-Man were added as new guest characters for the inital release. Post-release, Ryu from Street Fighter, Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII, and Bayonetta were added as Downloadable Content characters.
  • In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate all the above guest fighters have returned, and Simon and Richter Belmont from Castlevania and Ken from Street Fighter are added, bumping the amount of third-party characters to 10 and marking the first time in the series that a third party franchise gets more than one playable character. Post-release, Downloadable Content for Ultimate is mainly from third-party games, with all but one fighter representing a new series: Joker from Persona 5, four Heroes from Dragon Quest^note Specifically the third, fourth, eighth, and eleventh installments, Banjo-Kazooie, Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters, Steve from Minecraft, Sephiroth as a second fighter from Final Fantasy VII, Kazuya Mishima from Tekken, and Sora from Kingdom Hearts.
  • Two of the bosses that can be fought in both Classic and Adventure Modes in Ultimate are Rathalos of Monster Hunter fame and Dracula (Castlevania).
  • The above fighters, when in the main game and not DLC, also usually bring along other characters from their franchises as Assist Characters or other in-game collectibles. Even some other third-party series without fighters have appeared in this capacity:
    • Tetris (two remixes in all installments starting from Brawl and spirits from Tetris 99 in Ultimate)
    • Rayman (trophies in for 3DS/Wii U and a spirit in Ultimate)
    • BIT.TRIP (a CommanderVideo trophy in for 3DS/Wii U)
    • Monster Hunter (DLC Mii costumes in for 3DS/Wii U and Ultimate, spirits and Rathalos as both a boss and assist in Ultimate)
    • Virtua Fighter (DLC Mii costumes in for 3DS/Wii U and Ultimate, and Akira as an assist in Ultimate)
    • Tekken (a Heihachi DLC Mii costume appeared in for 3DS/Wii U and Ultimate even before Kazuya's release; and Heihachi was considered for the playable roster in the former)
    • Tales of Symphonia (a DLC Lloyd Irving Mii costume in for 3DS/Wii U and Ultimate)
    • The Tower of Druaga (a DLC Gil Mii costume in for 3DS/Wii U and Ultimate)
    • Bomberman (assist, spirit, and a DLC Mii costume in Ultimate)
    • Shovel Knight (assist and spirits in Ultimate)
    • Shantae (spirits and a DLC Mii costume with an accompanying song in Ultimate)
    • Ganbare Goemon (a DLC Goemon Mii costume in Ultimate)
    • Undertale (a DLC Sans Mii costume with an accompanying song in Ultimate)
    • Daemon X Machina (sprits in Ultimate)
    • Resident Evil (spirits in Ultimate)
    • Kunio-kun (spirits in Ultimate)
    • Assassin's Creed (a DLC Altaïr Mii costume in Ultimate)
    • Cuphead (a DLC Cuphead Mii costume with an accompanying song and spirits in Ultimate)
    • Warframe (spirits in Ultimate)
    • Trials of Mana (spirits in Ultimate)
    • Fallout (a DLC Vault Boy costume in Ultimate)
    • Octopath Traveler (spirits in Ultimate)
    • No More Heroes (spirits and a DLC Travis Touchdown costume in Ultimate)
    • Bravely Default II (spirits in Ultimate)
    • Ghosts 'n Goblins (a DLC Arthur costume and spirit in Ultimate)
    • Devil May Cry (a DLC Dante costume in Ultimate)
    • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (a DLC Dragonborn costume in Ultimate)
    • Doom (a DLC Doom Slayer costume in Ultimate)
    • Baten Kaitos Origins, Culdcept Revolt, and Takt of Magic are borderline, as they were developed independently but published by Nintendo. All three have one or two spirits each in Ultimate.
    • A few Raving Rabbids Spirits also appear in Ultimate, but only in their crossover forms from Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle so officially they're considered first-party Mario characters and not guests. However, a regular Rabbid headwear for Mii Fighters was added to Ultimate through DLC.
    • A number of Bandai Namco and SNK franchises have received some minor representation in songs and stage elements, as well as in Pac-Man's case, having a taunt where he summons sprites of various characters from assorted arcade games of his company.
• Three Raving Rabbids with different movesets in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up (One normal, one in Splinter Cell gear, and one in TMNT getup). This caused an eruption of "ruined" cries among the TMNT fanbase. Parodied here.
• PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale has several characters that are from third-party games: Big Daddy (2K Games), Heihachi Mishima (Namco), Dante (Capcom), and Raiden (Konami) are in the launch roster, and Isaac Clarke (EA) is in as Downloadable Content.
• While a huge bulk of Indie Game Battle's roster is from games by Blob Games Studio, there's a lot of characters by other studios, even those whose games aren't released yet. {Or ever...) Out of the massive roster, some notable inclusions are The Kid, Pico, SaladFingers, Goat, Hank, Dust, McPixel, Brad, Phil Eggtree, Fancy Pants, and Duck.
• Rivals of Aether had Ori and Sein from Ori and the Blind Forest as its first Guest Character. The Tower of Heaven also appears as a Guest Stage. A later DLC update added Shovel Knight as a playable character. Ragnir from Brawlhalla also appears as a skin for Maypul.
• Brawlout features Juan from Guacamelee!, the Drifter from Hyper Light Drifter, Yooka and Laylee from Yooka-Laylee, and Hero from Dead Cells as playable characters.
• While Bounty Battle has a large amount of original characters, it features a large amount of guests: Juan, Sherriff Lonestar, Otus, Max, and Raz, amongst others.
• Brawlhalla includes Rayman as a playable character, added on the same day as the release date for the Switch and Xbox One versions. The 3.30 Patch added alternate skins of Shovel Knight, Black Knight, Plague Knight, King Knight, and Specter Knight, and later The Enchantress in patch 3.38. Ranno from Rivals of Aether also appears as Wu Shang's alternate skin. Hellboy, Nimue, Daimio, and Gruagach were added on April 10th, 2019, possibly to promote the 2019 Hellboy movie. Finn, Jake, and Princess Bubblegum were revealed as playable characters at E3 2019. Later at the beginning of December 2019, Stevonnie, Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl were added to the cast. August and November of that same year brought in WWE Superstars John Cena, Becky Lynch, Xavier Woods, Asuka, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Roman Reigns, Undertaker and 'Macho Man' Randy Savage whilst Halloween 2020 Summoned Michonne, Rick and Daryl from their Walker-ridden hellscape with Negan and Maggie following suit the next year. Speaking of 2020, Ben Tennyson joined his CN brethren on June 10th after Lara Croft appeared the February before. Moving into 2021, Po, Tigress and familiar foe Tai Lung emerge in March and are followed up three months later in June by none other than the Ninja Turtles themselves!
• Paperbound has 6 characters from indie games: Goblin King from Tumblestone, The Locksmith and The Gentleman from Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine, Juan from Guacamelee!, Jonviev from Cards and Castles, and Captain Viridian from VVVVVV
• The Switch version of Towerfall added Madeline and Badeline from Celeste as playable characters.
• The Power Stone-esque fighter Combat Core has Zetto, Kizuna, and Ares as playable characters.
• Go All Out has a large original roster, but also includes guest characters: Raptor from Raptor Online, Cole Black from Get Even, Yandere-Chan from Yandere Simulator, Teslakid from Teslagrad, Lord Clonington from World to the West, Breakbone from Kayko and Kokosh, and even Zorro.
• Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion features Captain Planet as an unlockable character, and he's notable for being the only character who isn't a Cartoon Network original - his show having predated the network by two years - although the show did air as reruns on said channel.
• Mighty Fight Federation has ToeJam & Earl and Yooka-Laylee as part of the base roster, with Miriam being added in as part of an update, and with Kunio & Riki added in as DLC.
• Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl:
  • The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters are an interesting case, as they are not Nickelodeon original characters and the franchise was bought by Viacom in 2009, which led to the Nickelodeon-made Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) and Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. However, the character incarnations used here are from the 1987 series, which had never aired on Nick, and were specifically chosen because the developers loved and grew up with that series.
  • Garfield is also not a Nickelodeon character but his franchise was bought by Viacom in 2019 and although he has never had a Nickelodeon-made series, his appearance makes nods to the syndicated animated series, Garfield and Friends, which did air on Nick and other networks.
• Multi Versus has LeBron James. Yes, the actual Real Life National Basketball Association player. He appeared in Space Jam: A New Legacy, a Warner Bros. film, which technically makes him a character by Warner Bros. Discovery, when depicted as his animated self featured in that movie.

Action

• Zone of the Enders: the 2nd Runner features a guest appearance of Gradius's Vic Viper as a Transforming Mecha.
• The promotional sample disk version of NiGHTS into Dreams…, Christmas NiGHTS, had a mode where you could play through Spring Valley as Sonic. Dr. Eggman is also a boss in this version of the game, though he's just a reskinned version of the boss Puffy.
• Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] had characters from The World Ends with You, making it the first Square-Enix world to not be based on Final Fantasy.
• Super Bomberman R has a load of DLC characters from Konami and Hudson's libraries: Vic Viper, an Option, Simon Belmont, Dracula, Alucard, Pyramid Head, a Bubble Head Nurse, Jehuty, Anubis, Reiko, Goemon, Ebisumaru, Shiori Fujisaki, Ayako Katagiri, Princess Tomato, Solid Snake, Naked Snake, Raiden, Bill, Lance, Mimi, Nyami, Upa, Caesar, and Xavier Woods. Additionally, the Switch version includes Tako as a pre-order exclusive, the PlayStation 4 version includes Ratchet & Clank, an Ape Escape monkey, and Toro Inoue, the Xbox One version includes Master Chief, a Grunt, and the Arbiter, and the Steam version includes P-Body and Atlas.
• Mobile Suit Gundam: Encounters In Space on the PlayStation 2 focused solely on the earlier Universal Century (in other words, the original anime as well as Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory and the side story video game Mobile Suit Gundam Side Story: The Blue Destiny) but nonetheless features six Alternate Universe machines: the God and Master Gundams, Wing Zero Custom and Tallgeese III and the Aile Strike and Aegis Gundams, all complete with appropriate pilots. The Japanese version also featured two suits that, while Universal Century, were not strictly canon to the anime: Char's Rick Dom and Casval's Gundam. As it happens, all of these suits were Downloadable Content in the Japanese version but since the Western Playstation 2 didn't have that, almost all except Shar's Dom and Gundam were made available in-game.
• The T-800 Endoskeleton appears as a downloadable skin in Deathgarden: Bloodharvest.

Action-Adventure

• In The Cat Lady, you actually get to meet Joe and Ivy from Downfall (2009). Similar to the Street Fighter-Final Fight example, both Downfall and The Cat Lady share the same universe.
• Deadly Premonition has Forrest Kaysen from another Swery65 game appear in it.
• In the alien invasion game Under the Skin, one of the areas your alien prankster attacks is Raccoon City and your antagonists in that area include Jill Valentine (specifically, the Resident Evil 3: Nemesis version of her).
• The Wonderful 101 has Bayonetta, Jeanne, and Rodin as hidden playable characters.
• Rumble Roses's Reiko was^note The past tense is because the servers are shut down a multiplayer skin on Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence.
• In the Nintendo Switch version of Starlink: Battle for Atlas, Fox McCloud from Star Fox is a playable character along with his Arwing.
• ASDAD: All-Stars Dungeons and Diamonds is a maze-based diamond collection game. Fittingly, Shovel Knight is a playable character. Ittle Dew and Winti- the mascot for Grupo Wintek- are also playable.
• Uncharted:
  • Zeke, Cole McGrath (in both good and evil variations), Nathan Hale, a Chimera Hybrid, Sev and a Helghast Soldier are all available as DLC characters for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves' multiplayer mode.
  • Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception has a Capture Trooper from Killzone 3 as a DLC multiplayer villain.

Beat 'em Up

• In an ironic twist, Ryu is a guest fighter for Asura's Wrath, but he also comes with a complete change in gameplay from the main game to be like Street Fighter IV, Gauges and Life bars included.
  • Akuma/Oni and Evil Ryu are also Guest Fighters.
• Bayonetta is a Guest Fighter in Anarchy Reigns if you preordered the game or bought the DLC.
• In the battle against Matt Groening in The Simpsons Game, Groening will summon Zoidberg and Bender as mooks. Before that, The Simpsons Arcade had the Life in Hell bunnies gang up on you in Krustyland if you weren't careful.
• Paul Phoenix and Marshall Law from Tekken appear in Urban Reign as playable characters.
• River City Ransom: Underground has Abobo and Me from Dad 'n Me as secret bosses and playable characters. Me was included because his creator, Dan Paladin, was a backer for for the game's Kickstarter.
• Streets of Fury Ex has streamers Benzaie, Bob Lennon, Yamato, and Mr. Quaraté as Guest Fighters. Later on The Nostalgia Critic was added as well.
• Tunche features special guest Hat Kid as a playable character, slightly clashing with the "Amazon Jungle" theme.

Card Game

• A few Soul Calibur character cards were available for a limited time in Outcast Odyssey.

Dating Sim

• While they're not technically fighters due to the game being a Dating Sim, Namco High includes three characters from Homestuck (Jane Crocker, Terezi Pyrope, and Davesprite) due to the author being a major part of the development. All three are referred to as "weird exchange students" in the character info.
• Crush Crush developers Red Panda Studio got permission from YandereDev to include Yandere-Chan as a girl you can date in their game. You even fill the role as her Senpai.
  • Later updates added Internet Explorer ^Notew  Renamed Explora in the game due to copyright from I Made A Comic About Internet Explorer and Mallory from another Red Panda Studios game Cabin Fever as dateable girls.
• Modeus from Helltaker was added as a playable character to Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp in the Halloween 2021 update.

First/Third-Person Shooter

• A stylistic reimagining of Team Fortress 2's Pyro was added to the retail version of Killing Floor for those who had both the game and Team Fortress 2 during the Twisted Christmas event. What a 1960s mercenary is doing in a second millennium Zombie-clone outbreak in London is anyone's guess.
• Due to being released by LucasArts, Han Solo and Indiana Jones skins are available to any character (even the girl) in the first Mercenaries game.
• Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict has Raiden as a playable character and Shao Kahn as an announcer.
  • Scorpion, Sub-Zero and Noob Saibot are also playable in the arcade shooter The Grid.
• Scorpion’s definitely Mortal Kombat’s version of Wolverine - he’s playable in Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy as well.
• A fair amount of DLC characters in PAYDAY 2 are characters from films or games added in as part of a cross-promotional campaign. So far, there's John Wick, "Jacket" of Hotline Miami, Bodhi of the Point Break remake, Jimmy from Hardcore Henry, Tony Montana from Scarface and Ethan and Hila Klein of h3h3 Productions.
• Michael Myers and Predator are special items known as Field Orders in Call of Duty: Ghosts. They can only be played as in the Fog and Ruins maps, respectively.
• Cannon Spike is a game that had more Guests than original characters. Cammy, Charlie, Baby Bonnie Hood, Mega Man and Arthur basically band together with some Original Generation characters and shoot shit up.
• Quake III: Arena features Doomguy as a selectable player model, complete with sounds. Its sequel Quake Champions not only features the Doom Slayer, Doomguy's modern counterpart, but also features B.J. Blazkowicz as a playable character.
• In May 2018, Fortnite had the 'Infinity Gauntlet Limited Time Mashup'. The Infinity Gauntlet would spawn on the map randomly and allow the player to play as Thanos to completely destroy their rivals. Similarly, other crossovers also happened as well.
  • To advertise Avengers: Endgame, Fortnite added Captain America's shield, Thor's ax, and Iron Man's gauntlets as weapons.
• Gears 5 features a playable guest appearance of the T-800 and Sarah Connor.
• Lost Planet 2 has Albert Wesker and Frank West playable in all versions of the game, plus Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago in the Xbox 360 version. If you have Resident Evil 5 or Dead Rising save data, you can unlock Wesker and Frank right away.

Free-to-Play

• The How to Train Your Dragon game Dragons Rise Of Berk features Dragon and the Dronkeys as bonus obtainable dragons.
• Mine Turtle from the ASDF Movie series was featured in Monster Legends for a limited time.
• State of Survival had Daryl Dixon and the Joker join the heroes of the settlement in this zombie city builder game.

Gacha Game

• AFK Arena has a faction dedicated to these: the Dimensionals, who wound up stuck in Esperia due to Annih messing with the fabric of the universe, and have a canonical common goal in finding a way to get home. So far, these include: Arthur, Merlin, Nakoruru, Ukyo, Ezio Auditore, Ainz Ooal Gown, Albedo, Joker, Makoto, the Prince of Persia, Leonardo da Vinci, and Wu Kong^note who's considered a Celestial rather than a Dimensional due to his Physical God status. Markiplier and Chica were also spotted in Esperia for a while, though they stayed in the Noble Tavern as Non Player Characters, and the Nian^note Referred to as "Burning Brute" from Chinese mythology is a non-playable boss.
• Dragalia Lost has had a few guest fighters attainable through limited banners or as welfare units.
  • The first instance of guest fighters occurs with a crossover event with Fire Emblem Heroes which added Alfonse, Marth, Veronica, and Fjorm. A year later, more Fire Emblem characters were added as part of a second crossover event with the game. Said characters being Sharena, Peony, Tiki, and Chrom. Alfonse and Sharena can be acquired for free in their respective events while the rest have to be summoned.
  • Mega Man was added as a welfare unit for the crossover event "Mega Man: Chaos Protocol".
  • When an event for Monster Hunter happened three existing adventurers got special Monster Hunter themed alts. Not only that, but Fatalis and two versions of Rathalos were added as playable dragons.
  • Pecorine from Princess Connect! Re:Dive was added to the game as permanent addition to the summon pool, making her the first of any guest in the game to game such a treatment.
  • The Caged Desire event brought the Phantom Thieves Joker, Mona, Panther and Sophie with it and tweaked the UI elements to go with it; Sophie was a welfare unit while the others had to be summoned.
• Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle has Doflamingo as a special card.
• Fist of the North Star: Legends Revive had characters from Virtua Fighter, Street Fighter and Baki the Grappler in addition to Sonic himself, of all people, altogether appear as part of crossover events.
• Honkai Impact 3rd added Asuka Shikinami Langley from Neon Genesis Evangelion as a limited time recruitable character during the "New Century" event in Version 4.5.
  • Version 4.9, titled "Outworld Quest", featured a crossover with sister game Genshin Impact and added Fischl as a permanently obtainable unit, while Keqing was playable in certain event missions.
• Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story had a crossover event with Lyrical Nanoha, where players could unlock Nanoha, Hayate, and Fate.
• Punishing: Gray Raven had 2B, 9S, and A2 from NieR: Automata be recruitable for a limited window during the Untold Naraka event.

Hack and Slash

• Warriors Orochi 3 has five guest fighters: Joan of Arc, Achilles, Nemea, Ryu Hayabusa, and Ayane. The Ultimate version introduces Rachel, Momiji, Kasumi, Sophitia and Sterkenburg Cranach.
• Bayonetta 2 and the Nintendo ports of Bayonetta have special costumes that replace the original sound effects.
  • The Mushroom Kingdom Princess and Sarasaland Princess costumes replace Halos with Gold Coins, and Bayonetta can summon Bowser instead of Madama Butterfly to attack when using Wicked Weaves. She'll even have a cute Mario or Luigi plush doll attached to her hip. Bayonetta can also use the Chain Chomp as a weapon, while donning a Mario Costume.
  • The Hero of Hyrule costume replaces Halos with Rupees and the sounds effects with SFX from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Hideki Kamiya's favorite Legend of Zelda game. The Shuraba will be replaced with the Master Sword, and can allow her to damage flaming enemies without taking damage. The Hylian Shield on her wrist will also allow her to parry attacks.
  • The Galactic Bounty Hunter costume will have Bayonetta use the Arm Cannon for gun attacks. When she uses Panther Within, she uses Samus's Morph Ball mode, and double jumping makes her use the Screw Attack.'
  • Finally, only in Bayonetta 2 the Star Mercenary gives off Star Fox 64 sound effects, and replaces Love is Blue with mini Arwings that shoot lasers. If you wear this costume in Chapter 16: Sovereign Power, you'll control an Arwing instead of a jet, and can fire Smart Bombs.
  • If Jeanne wears these costumes, her sound effects will be from the game's first entries: The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Star Fox.
• Befitting of a fanservicy series, Ayane, Sousaku, Kan-u and Ryofu appear in Senran Kagura: Estival Versus. Peach Beach Splash ups the ante by adding Marie Rose, Honoka, Ryomo, Sonico, Rinka and Ranka, and Neptune.
• Neptunia x Senran Kagura: Ninja Wars is a game that brings the Senran Kagura and Neptunia franchises together. However, it also features Goh from the Shinobido series, albeit a gender-swapped version of him.

Minigame Game

• WarioWare: D.I.Y. used to have microgames based on Shantae, World of Goo, Super Meat Boy, BIT.TRIP, Swim, Ikachan!, Max And The Magic Marker, Toki Tori, Jett Rocket, And Yet It Moves, and Chronos Twin that could be downloaded through Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, but they are now unobtainable thanks to the servers being shut down.

MMORPG

• The Cartoon Network MMORPG FusionFall has representation from almost every major Cartoon Network show from the 90s until 2009. There's also appearances from Johnny Test and Dukey from Johnny Test, which was a Canadian show created for Teletoon, Agent K9 from the movie Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore^note Simply put, it was Product Placement, and TOM, the host of Toonami, which was canceled at the time.
  • Costumes based on Legend Of The Guardians The Owls Of Gahoole were featured when the movie was released.
• In Granblue Fantasy, you can recruit many from other franchises to fight alongside you. Such as:
  • Ryu, Chun-Li, Rashid, Karin,
  • Lina, Naga,
  • Amira, Cerberus, Albert, Vania, Forte,
  • Sakura, Erica, Gemini,
  • Rin, Uzuki, Mio, Kirari, Brynhildr/Ranko,
  • Cure Black and Cure White,
  • Stahn Aileron, Tear Grants, Milla Maxwell and Elize Lutus...
  • Haohmaru and Nakoruru, with Shiro Tokisada Amakusa as an NPC.
• Lost Saga has a boatload of guest characters: Ragna, Jin/Noel, Rachael, Hakumen, Platinum, and Hazama from BlazBlue, Sol and May/Johnny from Guilty Gear, Haohmaru, Nakoruru, and Galford from Samurai Shodown, and Kyo, Iori, and Mai from The King of Fighters. The can only be bought with in-game currency, and typically have stronger equipment.
• Final Fantasy XIV has Rathalos as a special Superboss.
• Onmyōji had a few guests from Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan, Mononoke, Hozuki's Coolheadedness, and Inuyasha. However, these characters were available for a limited time.

MOBA

• MOBA Legends has Chucky, Kong, and RoboCop as playable characters.
• Smite:
  • Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long are skins for Thanatos, Freya, Amaterasu, and Terra, respectively, all in their outfits introduced in Volume Seven of the show, with Ruby having her classic Volumes 1-3 attire as a Prestige Track.
  • Aang, Zuko, and Korra are skins for Merlin, Susano, and Skadi, with Aang and Korra's Prestige Tracks being their Avatar States and Zuko's being his Blue Spirit outfit. Azula and Iroh were later added as skins for Pele and Bacchus.
  • Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo are skins for Osiris, Sun Wukong, Loki, and Mercury, with Prestige Tracks based on their 1987 designs. Splinter, Shredder, and Krang were later added as skins for Haichiman, Ravana, and Xiang Tian.
  • Eleven, Chief Hopper, the Demogorgon, and the Mind Flayer are skins for Scylla, Apollo, Bakasura, and Sylvanus. Eleven and Hopper have Prestige Tracks based on Season Three of the show.
  • Optimus Prime, Megatron, and Starscream are skins for Geb, Ra, and Jing Wei, with Prestige Tracks based on the G1 cartoon.
  • Rocko, Danny Phantom, Invader Zim, Jenny Wakeman and Powdered Toast Man are skins for Danzaburou, Janus, Cupid, Freya and Gilgamesh.
• In Honor of Kings, way before Gongsun Li guested in Samurai Shodown above, the MOBA roster has already received SNK guests in form of Mai Shiranui, Haohmaru (only as a skin for Miyamoto Musashi), Ukyo Tachibana, Nakoruru and Charlotte Christine Colde.
  • In the internationalized version, Arena of Valor, the guests instead come from DC Comics, including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash and The Joker. There's also one more guest from an Indonesian franchise: Wiro Sableng. Those are the playable heroes, there are also guest skins on existing heroes, featuring Harley Quinn, Kirito, Asuna, Ichigo Kurosaki, Byakuya Kuchiki, Toshiro Hitsugaya, Shinjiro Hayata/Ultraman, Dan Moroboshi/Seven, Tanjiro Kamado, Nezuko Kamado, Zenitsu Agatsuma, and Inosuke Hashibira.

Party Game

• Move or Die added characters from Rick and Morty as free DLC characters.
• Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout has a few outfits based on characters from different franchises, which include: Alyx Vance, Gordon Freeman, Jacket, The Scout and Bulletkin.

Platformer

• Mega Man Universe would have had Ryu as one of the playable characters. Arthur also shows up in the cinematic teaser trailer.
• LEGO Adaptation Game:
  • Indiana Jones can be unlocked in LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga by viewing a trailer for LEGO Indiana Jones. Likewise, Han Solo is unlockable in LEGO Indiana Jones (both cases doubling as an Actor Allusion).
  • Adam West, Kevin Smith, and Green Loontern are unlockable characters in LEGO Batman 3, with Adam West doubling as the "In Peril" character for the game and the narrator of the bonus mission.
  • In LEGO The Incredibles, several characters from other Pixar movies are playable, which include Woody, Flik, Sulley, Dory, Lightning McQueen, Linguini, WALL•E, Russell, Merida, Bing Bong, Spot, Miguel, and even Junior the Lamp.
• Dante pops up as an unlockable player character in the PS2 version of Viewtiful Joe.
• The Baz from Two Best Friends Play appears as a fighter in Divekick and an optional boss in Shovel Knight. The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of the game features Kratos and the Battletoads as bosses.
• Skylanders:
  • Donkey Kong and Bowser are playable in the Wii U version of Skylanders: SuperChargers and the Wii and Nintendo 3DS-exclusive spin-off Skylanders: SuperChargers Racing. Their figures function as Skylander figures in the games and can also double as amiibo.
  • Skylanders: Imaginators introduces the ability to play as Crash Bandicoot and Dr. Neo Cortex. Unlike Donkey Kong and Bowser, their figures are compatible with all versions of the game.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario Maker:
    • Nearly every character with an amiibo figure is playable in the game as a Mystery Mushroom costume (only available in the original Super Mario Bros. style). This means the entire vanilla roster of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U^note the only featured Smash characters not from the base game are Mewtwo and Lucas, the squid kids and a squid from Splatoon, the titular character from Chibi-Robo!, and almost every major NPC from the Animal Crossing series. Additionally, Nikki, Slippy, Peppy, an Arwing, Dr. Lobe, Tingle, the Wii Balance Board from Wii Fit, Ashley, and Totem Link are unlockable costumes despite not having amiibo.
    • Shinya Arino is also a Mystery Mushroom costume, unlocked by clearing a course made by him.
    • Necky, the mascot of the Japanese website Famitsu and a GLA Mercedes Benz are unlocked by completing the "Yoshi is Awesome" and the "Mercedes-Benz Jump'n'Drive" events.
    • Later updates and events would add obscure Nintendo characters like Master Belch, Barbara the Bat, Yu Ayasaki, Ayumi Tachibana, Donbe and Hikari from Shin Onigashima, Iris Archwell, Mallo, Bubbles, and Dr. Kawashima, along with completely left-field characters like Chitoge Kirisaki, the members of BABYMETAL, Kitty White, My Melody, and Shaun the Sheep.
  • Super Mario Maker 2: The 2.0 update adds a power-up exclusive to the SMB1 style that turns the player into Link (with a slightly modified version of his appearance from his first game). And unlike the first SMM, where transforming into any character through the Mystery Mushroom didn't give the player abilities related to that character, turning into Link in this game gives the player his abilities such as using the Master Sword, his bow and arrow, etc.
• Toonami's TOM made an appearance in Sly 2: Band Of Thieves, basically acting like a reskinned Alarm Clock.
• One of the playable characters in The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures is the Bullshit Man, the star of a different webshow made by James Rolfe called You Know What's Bullshit?
• They Bleed Pixels' bonus worlds are based on Seraph, exp. magazine, and Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure. They were actually made by the original creators themselves.
• The Kirby series' reoccurring bosses Lololo & Lalala were actually stars of their own series before they fought against the pink puffball.
• Runbow has 19 playable characters from other franchises: Shovel Knight, Rusty, Swift from Sportsball, Juan, Tostada, Scram Kitty, CommanderVideo, Commandergirl Video, Xeodrifter Max, Princess from Chariot, Drifter, Teslamancer, A.R.I.D., Gunvolt, and even Unity-Chan! Downloadable Content later added Lilac from Freedom Planet and Shantae from the series of the same name.
• Guppy's Quest has many guest characters from indie games, including Pico, Root & Digby, Salad Fingers, Shady, The Kid, Captain Viridian, Woodle Tree, and Zee Tee.
• While you have to beat them in their secret boss fight first, Plague Knight, Chica, Dr. Fetus, Aban Hawkins, and Balrog appear as playable characters in Free Mode of Creepy Castle.
• Joggernauts' guest joggers are Cowpokes and Commander Video
• Super Monkey Ball:
  • The HD remake of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz includes Sonic the Hedgehog (in his classic design) as an unlockable character.
  • Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania includes Sonic once again, but it also includes Tails (in his classic design as well), Beat from Jet Set Radio, and Kiryu from Yakuza. Later DLC for the game includes Morgana from Persona 5, Hello Kitty, Suezo from Monster Rancher, and three Sega consoles (the Game Gear, the Sega Saturn, and the Sega Dreamcast).
• If you collect all 30 Golden Skulls, you can unlock Curly Brace in 1001 Spikes.
• Umihara Kawase Fresh! has two of these, each with their own story: Cotton (wearing an outfit similar to Kawase's) and Curly Brace.

Puzzle Game

• In the Mobile Phone Game Game of Dice, guests have included The King of Fighters characters Athena Asamiya, Iori Yagami, Kyo Kusanagi, and Mai Shiranui, South Korean actor Lee Kwang-Soo, Gangnam Style PSY, and Sanrio characters Cinnamoroll, Hello Kitty, Kero Kero Keroppi, My Melody, and Pom Pom Purin.
• KASIORI, a sweets-themed puzzle game by Success, has Cotton as a playable character.
• Puzzle & Dragons has featured characters from Angry Birds, Batman, The DCU, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon's Dogma, Clash of Clans, Crystal Defenders, Final Fantasy, Emil Chronicle Online, Fist of the North Star, GROOVE COASTER, Gunma no Yabou, Hello Kitty, Hunter × Hunter, Monster Hunter, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Princess Punt, Ragnarok Odyssey ACE, Ragnarok Online, Saint Seiya, Taiko no Tatsujin, and many, many more and counting.
• In the Wii U Scribblenauts Unlimited you could summon characters and items from the Mario and Zelda series. They have their own voices and have special reactions to certain items. (For example, if you summon a go-kart, Toad will run towards it and hop on!)
  • The Japanese release of the original Scribblenauts featured various Konami characters for the player to summon, these being Old Snake, Solid Snake, Big Boss, Alucard, Goemon, Ebisumaru, Power Pro-kun, Mimi, Nyami, Vic Viper, Shiori Fujisaki and Manaka Takane. These were also kept on the Japanese version of Super, with the exception of the Metal Gear characters (likely because their names contain adjectives) and, strangely, Ebisumaru.
  • Nyan Cat and Keyboard Cat were also characters you could summon in Unlimited. However, Warner Bros was sued because both cats' use were unauthorized. The lawsuit was later worked out. Nyan Cat and Keyboard Cat will make future appearances in the series, but the creators will be paid.
• Oh...Sir!! The Insult Simulator features Lo Wang of Shadow Warrior, Serious Sam, and The Postal Dude.
• Nicalis Super Gem Fighter clone Crystal Crisis featured characters from non-Niclais works such as Astro Boy, Black Jack, President Thompson and a Zombie from 8bits Fanatics' The Tempura of the Dead, Akuji from Akuji the Demon, and, perhaps most unexpected, Johnny Turbo, the mascot for the Turbo Duo.
• Project QT has White Horn Unicorn Attack on Moe available for a limited time. Likewise, Erica from Project QT also appeared in Attack on Moe during said period of time.
  • Another Project QT collab had Yandere-Chan and Info-Chan available for a limited time.
• Puyo Puyo:
  • The mobile game Puyo Puyo!! Quest has had many, many crossover characters over its lifetime, both with other Sega properties and completely unrelated ones. Some of the featured series include Sonic the Hedgehog (including the movie), Sakura Wars (both the original and Sakura Wars (2019)), Shenmue, Space Channel 5, Persona, Vocaloid, Chain Chronicle, Live Powerful Pro Baseball, Bleach, Cardcaptor Sakura, Case Closed, Doctor Slump, GeGeGe no Kitarō, Gintama, Haikyuu!!, Lupin III, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ojamajo Doremi, Osomatsu-san, Sailor Moon, Saint Seiya, Sanrio, and Yes! Pretty Cure 5.
  • Doubles as a Company Cross Reference, given that both series are made by the same company, but the first post-release update for Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 added in Sonic the Hedgehog as a playable character, complete with new artwork and voice clips.
• Petal Crash has quite a good few of them, half of them being Kickstarter backer contributions. They are The Baz (courtesy of the people behind Two Best Friends Play), Libbie the Cyber Oryx (originally intended to be the mascot of the open-source LibreOffice as part of a contest before being released into the public domain), Mimi (specifically made for the game), Arlet (from Grapple Force Rena and unlike the others has his own character slot when unlocked), Nova the Squirrel (from the homebrew NES title of the same name) and Milla Basset (from Freedom Planet).

Racing Game

• Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing with Banjo-Kazooie for the Xbox 360. The other versions of the game are merely Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing; Mario was considered for the Wii version, but alas existed the Olympic Games, uhhh, games... The sequel has Danica Patrick, a real-life NASCAR and ex-IndyCar driver, and Ralph from Disney's Wreck-It Ralph, along with members of the RED team from Team Fortress 2 exclusive to the Steam version of the game. Other Steam-exclusive characters include a Football Manager, General Winter from Company of Heroes 2, Willemus from Total War: Rome II, and one of the members of the Yogscast (the last one is DLC, released for charity).
• Miis and Xbox Live Avatars have been playable in the Sonic and All-Stars racing games since the start.
• Test Drive 5 for the PlayStation had the Fear Factory (one of the bands who supplied the music) wagon.
• Klonoa in Moto GP.
• Mario Kart:
  • The arcade Mario Kart games (by Bandai Namco Entertainment) have Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Blinky, Mametchi (a Tamagotchi), and Don (from Taiko no Tatsujin); this is notable for being the first crossover between the Namco and Bandai halves of the merged Bandai Namco Entertainment company.
  • Meanwhile, Mario Kart DS offers R.O.B., and beginning in Mario Kart Wii you can play as your Mii. DLC for 8 adds more crossover characters; Link of The Legend of Zelda fame and the Villager and Isabelle from Animal Crossing. Its Updated Re-release Deluxe also added Inkling Boy and Girl.
  • The Blue Falcon from F-Zero made its Mario Kart debut in Mario Kart Wii, and was a DLC kart in Mario Kart 8.
  • The Mii is a secret character in Mario Kart Wii, 7, and 8. Wuhu Loop and Maka Wuhu from Wii Sports Resort are also tracks in the game.
  • A Mercedes-Benz GLA was actually DLC in MK8, making it the first time a real car is in the Mario Kart series.
  • Mario Kart 8's DLC stages include Mute City, Big Blue, Animal Crossing, Hyrule Circuit, and Excitebike Arena, each with little references to their original series.
  • The notoriously difficult Rainbow Road race track makes an appearance in F-Zero X. And in turn, the Mario Kart clone Pac-Man World Rally (published, not developed, by Namco) has the Prince of All Cosmos, a Pooka and a Fygar; the PSP version also has the exclusive characters of Mappy and Mr. Driller.
• In the Excite series, Boulder from Excite Truck was a guest racer in Excitebots.
• The fan-favorite Hornet car re-appears in Daytona USA 2, alongside USA 2's new cars. It's identical to the way it performed in the first game: same build, same speed, same camera angles, and it can pull off 4-1-4 shifting! Hornet is also available as DLC for the PlayStation Vita version of Ridge Racer, '94 blocky look and all.
• The Virtua Formula in the Sega Genesis port of OutRunners, only accessible through a code but is the fastest and grippiest of all the selectable cars in the game.
• Chocobo Racing had Aya Brae from Parasite Eve and Jack from The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner appear as secret characters.
• Diddy Kong Racing's case is actually a subversion. It's the first time Banjo or Conker made an appearance in a video game^note DKR was released in 1997, Banjo-Kazooie was released in 1998, and Conker's Pocket Tales was released in 1999. However, they were owned by Rare, which was later bought by Microsoft. Banjo and Conker did not appear in the Updated Re-release Diddy Kong Racing DS, but Tiptup did. He also made his first appearance in Diddy Kong Racing but became a minor character in the Banjo series. His status as a minor character is probably the reason he stayed on the roster.
• Atari Karts' entire roster is original- except Bentley Bear who was from Crystal Castles.
• Power Drift has hidden bonus tracks in which the player controls guest vehicles from Sega's previous deluxe arcade racers: the Hang-On bike and the After Burner jet.
• The Sonic the Hedgehog spinoff series Sonic Riders had guest characters in the first two games. NiGHTS was in both games, along with Ulala and Aiai in Riders and Amigo and Billy Hatcher in Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity. All three installments of the series feature Extreme Gears based on Crazy Taxi and Hang-On, and the first game features an Extreme Gear modeled after Opa-Opa.
• The Game Boy Advance version of Crash Nitro Kart had Spyro appear as a secret character.
• Likewise, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled not only brings Spyro back, but also adds in Hunter and Gnasty Gnorc as well.
• The arcade racer Super Bikes 2 features the Terminator bike and TRON Light-cycle among its bikes. Not only that, the T-800 and a Tron character are among the riders.
• In addition to the Madagascar characters you'd expect, Madagascar Kartz also features fellow Dreamworks Animation characters Shrek and B.O.B. as unlockable racers.
• As the name suggests, Super Indie Karts is a crossover racing game focused on characters from indie games. However, ToeJam & Earl were included as special guests.
• Jack Frost and Black Frost of Shin Megami Tensei appears as hidden boarders in SBK: Snowboard Kids.
• Forza Horizon 3 and 4 include fictional vehicles from other video games. These include the Warthog, Quartz Regalia, and Quadra V-Tech^note Horizon 4 only.
• A variation for a Defictionalized car: GT by Citröen from Gran Turismo series appeared in Asphalt games (since 8) and The Crew 2

Rhythm Game

• In a Rhythm Game example example: the song "Just Mario", by "Ubisoft meets Nintendo", in the Wii version of Just Dance 3. The in-game dancer is even dressed in a Mario costume.
  • Just Dance 2015 has Let It Go from Frozen and Tetris appear as songs. Let It Go has Elsa and Anna appear as the dancers, while the Tetris dancers are dressed up as Tetriminos. ("Tetris Blocks")
• Vocaloid GUMI appears in Popn Music as an opponent character in the songs that she sings, but unlike 99% of other characters, she is not playable.
• Persona 4: Dancing All Night had Hatsune Miku. Project Diva was developed by Dingo, who assisted in Dancing All Night's development.
• Taiko no Tatsujin: Don to Katsu no Jikuu Daibouken features a number of unlikely guest characters in Adventure Mode, including Kirby and King Dedede, Jibanyan, the Felynes, Phoenix Wright, Reimu, Marisa, and Sakuya, Rakitama, Tamazo and even Koro-sensei. Kusuo Saiki appears as a DLC character.
• The second Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan game features the Elite Beat Agents as unlockable characters.
• In Rhythm Heaven Megamix, your reward for clearing all the challenge levels is a pair of extra challenges featuring characters from the WarioWare series.
• Meat Boy is a recurring character in the BIT.TRIP series, appearing as a background character in RUNNER, Runner2, and FLUX, and as a powerup in FATE.
  • The "Good Friends" DLC pack for Runner2 adds Dr. Fetus, Josef, Quote, Raz, and Spelunky Guy as playable characters. The Steam version includes ATLAS as well.
  • Runner3 lets you play as Dave, Shovel Knight, and Eddie Riggs.
• Cytus II has Hatsune Miku (who was Temporary Online Content, and no longer available) and Kizuna Ai as purchasable characters, each adding some of their songs as well as a story that integrates them into the world of Cytus.
• Friday Night Funkin' features a few guest fighters, usually well-known characters hailing from Newgrounds. Skid and Pump were introduced for the Week 2 Halloween update, Pico was put in the game for the Week 3 update and Tankman, Newgrounds' mascot, appears in Week 7.

Roguelike

• Absented Age: Squarebound:
  • Astrake (in Silvana's body) from RealityMinds and Iris from Soaring Machinariae can be used in Arcade mode.
  • In the postgame infinite dungeon, Parking Lot Depths, the player can summon an ally, Scale, who comes from Craft the Mapcrafter: Gathering Magic Words.
• Crypt Of The Necrodancer has skins of characters from Shiren the Wanderer and Danganronpa.

Role Playing Game

• Brave Frontier features characters from The King of Fighters, Phantom of the Kill, and Tales of Link.
• In Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, in addition to characters from throughout the Final Fantasy games, characters appear from Brave Frontier, Dragon Quest Monsters, Imperial Saga, Monster Hunter Explore, NieR: Automata, and Romancing SaGa 3. Randi, Primm, and Popoi from Secret of Mana and pop singer Ariana Grande are also playable.
• Genshin Impact added Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn as a playable character in update 2.1 for owners of the PS4/PS5 version of the game, then for other systems in 2.2.
• Infinity Dungeon Evolution has cameos from Buff Knight, Dungeon999F, and other Mobile Phone Games.
• Lord of Vermilion features characters from Drakengard and Valkyrie Profile. Lord of Vermilion II features characters from Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy XI, Final Fantasy XIV, Lord of Arcana, Magic: The Gathering, Romancing SaGa 2, Romancing SaGa 3, Secret of Mana, and Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth. Lord of Vermilion Re:2 features characters from Black★Rock Shooter, BlazBlue, Final Fantasy IX, The King of Fighters, Persona 3, Persona 4 and Touhou Project.
• Lost Crusade has the appearance of characters from Lord of Vermillion III.
• Phantom of the Kill features the appearance of characters from Brave Frontier.
• Soul Hunters has the appearance of Ezio from Assassin's Creed, Rayman from Rayman, The Prince from The Prince of Persia and Batman.
• A rare Massive Multiplayer Crossover version: Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 (by Banpresto) featured Temjin, Fei-Yen the Knight, and Apharmd the Hatter, three mechs from Sega's Virtual-ON series.
  • Super Robot Wars K has brought them back again, this time incorporating the Virtual-ON storyline into the game. Which essentially makes them canon immigrants.
• Rondo of Swords features Izuna and Shino from Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja and Cotton from Fantastic Night Dreams Cotton as hidden characters. They are ridiculously broken.
• While not unique characters, Haseo and Ovan have costumes in .hack Link belonging to characters from Tales of Graces. They are the only characters in the game to do so.
• What Could Have Been example: the developers of the Wii port of Marvel Ultimate Alliance considered putting Link and Samus as characters.
• Dante of Devil May Cry fame appears as a boss in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. And with a little effort, he can be added to your party's ranks. Later versions would replace him with Raidou Kuzunoha.
• Cloud is a secret character in Final Fantasy Tactics. Aerith makes a cameo appearance, but isn't playable. The PSP version adds Balthier and Luso, who are technically from the same universe as Tactics, but from a different time period.
• Code Name: S.T.E.A.M lets you play as characters from Fire Emblem if you scan their respective amiibo on the 3DS's touch screen.
• Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII had made an appearance in Final Fantasy XIV through random events and she would help players fight Final Fantasy XIII themed monsters. Completing the event would earn players gear and hairstyles based on Lightning's game.
• Project X Zone 2, being a Massive Multiplayer Crossover of Capcom, Namco Bandai, and Sega franchises, has a couple guest characters from Nintendo: Fiora from Xenoblade Chronicles and Chrom and Lucina from Fire Emblem: Awakening. Also, Metal Face appears as a boss and Risen are enemies.
• In Digimon World Re:Digitize, you can battle against Lili and Sebastian from Tekken. Her Digimon is a slug-like Numemon named Catherine, who's evolution line is a total Ugly Duckling story. It transforms from a slug, to a literal piece of crap, to a giant teddy bear, until it finally evolves into Lilithmon. Sebastian on the other hand has a Seraphimon, who frequently butts heads with Catherine when she's fully evolved. And then there's the fact that you can fight Lili when she's in a pink Monzaemon costume...
• Yo-Kai Watch has Don-Chan as a befriendable Yo-kai in the second and third games. In the third game, there are a Moogle variant of Jibanyan and Jibanyan riding a Chocobo as befriendable Yo-kai as well.
• Indivisible includes appearances from Lab Zero Games's own Annie from the Skullgirls universe as well as Shantae, Shovel Knight, Juan from Guacamelee!, and others. Or rather, it was going to, until issues within Lab Zero cut those plans short.
• One of Five Nights at Freddy's World's secret bosses is none other than "Chipper's Revenge", an evil robot version of the protagonist of Scott Cawthon's Chipper & Sons Lumber Co. series. These kid-friendly games were heavily criticized, and that criticism influenced Cawthon to create Five Nights at Freddy's. Chipper's lines after defeating him references this.
  Chipper's Revenge: "My world was lush and beautiful, full of strange and colorful creatures! But no, that wasn't enough for you. You wanted to be scared. You wanted to feel dread. And what happened to me? What happened to us? Obscurity..."
  • A later update to the game also added Coffee from The Desolate Hope as a secret party member.
• In Megadimension Neptunia VII, God Eater-chan is a personification of God Eater, Nitroplus-chan is a personification of nitro+, and Million Arthur-chan is a personification of Kaku-San-Sei Million Arthur.
• 16-bit versions of Cloud and Tifa replace Locke and Celes in Return of the Dark Sorcerer.
• Monster Hunter Stories includes Epona as a recruitable Monstie.
• Monster Hunter: World:
  • The v.5 update introduced the Behemoth in its Final Fantasy XIV incarnation as a huntable monster, a first for the franchise.
  • Armor sets of Ryu and Sakura, Aloy, Bayek, and Mega Man (for the Palico) are available as DLC. Unlike the Dante armor set, these change your character's appearance and voice to match that of the character.
  • Geralt appears as a playable character in a DLC quest line, bringing The Witcher mechanics with him. A Leshen appears as a huntable monster in the same quest, and by completing his hunt (and the much harder Ancient Leshen hunt) the player can unlock armor that turns their character into Geralt or Ciri.
  • Iceborne, the first expansion for World, adds in an event for Resident Evil 2 Remake that gives the player layered armor to turn them into Leon Kennedy or Claire Redfield — and turns the Handler into Mr. X.
• Monster Hunter Frontier G has costumes of Saber, Archer and Rin Tohsaka that come with their own unique weapons.
  • Kaiji Itō and Mikoko Sakazaki from Kaiji were playable in a promotional event, with events and minigames inspired by the series included.
• Vyse, Aika, and Fina appear as two playable soldiers and a medic in Valkyria Chronicles.
  • Like the original, Valkyria Chronicles II has Emilia Percival from Phantasy Star Portable 2 as a bonus Armored Tech unit.
  • Like the previous two, Valkyria Chronicles III has Vyse, Aika, and Fina from the first game, and Nagisa from Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity.
• Queen's Gate: Spiral Chaos, an ecchi redesign of the Queen's Blade series, has had a girl from pretty much every major fighting game featured as a playable character. This includes Lili, Mai, Mina, Cham Cham, Iroha, Dizzy, Noel, Kasumi, Ivy, Taki, and Phyrra. The only girl not from a fighting game is Wonder Momo.
• There's a special dungeon in Diablo III where you can fight Clickers, Stalkers and Bloaters.
• Within Girls' Frontline, you can get special "T-Dolls" to join your party: Noel Vermillion, Elphelt Valentine, and a large assortment of girls from Collapse Acadamy 2^note the predecessor to Honkai Impact 3rd, VA-11 HALL-A and DJMAX.
• Epic Seven
  • For a limited time, Sol Badguy, Baiken, Dizzy and I-no were playable characters.
  • Taiko No Tatsujin V Version guests appear to help deliver "death blows": Reiko Nagase, Kamata SYNCI, Saul, Gordon, Propa, the Propaganda Girls, GUMI, IA, ASF-X Shinden II, Adol Christin, Rean Schwarzer, Kazuya, Lili, Mormin, Koro-sensei, Uzuki Shimamura, Rin Shibuya, Mio Honda, 765Pro Allstars, Julius, Ciel, and even the Wagakki Band, Kazuchika Okada, and Sachiko Kobayashi. Kobayashi herself also appears as a boss.
• Dengeki Bunko: Crossing Void had Hatsune Miku, Kagimin Rin and Len, and Megurine Luka as both playable and assist characters.
• Grand Summoners, as a Gatcha game, has had many crossovers that had units playable for a limited time, including Kill la Kill, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Goblin Slayer, The Rising of the Shield Hero, and YuYu Hakusho.
• Union League is another mobile RPG that has has collabs with KonoSuba, The Seven Deadly Sins, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Music/Vocaloid, Fairy Tail, Fullmetal Alchemist, YuYu Hakusho, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works].
• Attack on Titan characters were unlockable during the summer of 2020 in The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2:
  • KOS-MOS appears in as an optional recruitable rare blade. Prepare to spend hundreds of core crystals trying to get her.
  • As of 1.4.0 update, T-elos appears as a recruitable blade. She can be obtained in New Game Plus.
  • Shulk and Fiora from the first game, and Elma from Xenoblade Chronicles X also appear as recruitable blades.

Sandbox

• Retro City Rampage features CommanderVideo, Meat Boy, Mr. Destructoid and Minecraft's Steve as secret characters.

Shoot 'em Up

• Armed Police Batrider has guest appearances from what the Attract Mode calls "Raizing All-Stars"—five Mahou Daisakusen charactes and two Battle Garegga characters (each with two ships to their name).
• Gunbird 2 featured Aine and Morrigan as hidden characters (the latter being only in the Sega Dreamcast version, which was published by Capcom).
• In Blue Wish Resurrection Plus, Eden's Edge/Eve is available for play. In the creator, X.X's next game, Eden's Aegis, Eve and Ridmie from Eden's Edge and Green Wind respectively are available for play if certain conditions are met.
• In the Mobile Phone Game Galaga Wars, ships from Galaxian, StarBlade, and Xevious are available.
• Paul Phoenix and Heihachi Mishima of Tekken in Xevious 3D/G, of all things.
• Dangun Feveron has the cat from Cave's Puzzle Game Uo Poko as a hidden ship.
• In all the Raiden Fighters games, the ship roster includes several guest fighters, including the player ships from Raiden II (Homing Lasers included) and Viper Phase 1 and Miclus, Seibu Kaihatsu's infrequently-seen mascot character.
• Tyrian 2000 has the Pretzel Pete Truck from the unreleased game Pretzel Pete as a secret ship used in Super Arcade Mode.
• DariusBurst: Chronicle Saviours adds several ships from other shmup titles as DLC:
  • The Taito pack adds the Inter Gray from Night Striker, the Black Fly from Metal Black and the X-LAY from RayForce.
  • The Sega pack adds the TRY-Z from Galaxy Force, the Harrier from Space Harrier and the Opa-Opa from Fantasy Zone.
  • The CAVE pack adds the Delta Sword from DoDonPachi Resurrection, Windia from Deathsmiles and the Tiger Schwert from Ketsui
  • The Eighting pack adds the Wild Snail from Battle Garegga, the Swordfish from Soukyugurentai and Miyamoto the Samurai Dragon from Sorcer Striker.
  • The Capcom pack adds the Tanikura Saber from Varth Operation Thunderstorm, the Mobilesuit from Hyper Dyne Side Arms and the Gambler from Progear.
• The unfunded indie game ''Komodo Crunchtime'' was going to have Skullomania from Street Fighter EX as a playable character.
• Acceleration of Suguri features QP from QP Shooting, another Shoot 'Em Up series made by the same developer, and Sora from the then-upcoming game sora as Guest Fighters. In QP's case however, her game never made it to the west, making her into another trope.
• The Steam version of Trouble Witches has Natta de Cotton from Fantastic Night Dreams Cotton as a DLC character. Notably, selecting her will carry over certain mechanics from her own game, such as replacing the game's soundtrack with that of Cotton's, and going through a bonus "Tea Time" round after every stage.
• Superlative Night Dreams: Cotton Rock 'n' Roll has four of these to choose from: Saiva Ria from Psyvariar, Fine from Starfighter Sanvein, Luffie from Doki Doki Poyacchio and Kawase from Umihara Kawase.
• Senko no Ronde 2 features the Valken from Assault Suits Valken and Temjin from Virtual-ON as DLC guest fighters.
• Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation had DLC planes based on the girls from The Idolmaster. The trend was continued in Ace Combat: Assault Horizon and Ace Combat Infinity.
• Alice Gear Aegis had Kasumi and Marie Rose as playable for a limited time. The event also came with Dead or Alive costumes the other characters could wear.

Simulation

• The Sims 4: The Snowy Escape expansion introduced Kaori Nishidake, the teenage Japanese Genki Girl from the SSX series of snowboarding games, as a resident of the new town of Mt. Komorebi, in keeping with the pack's focus on winter activities (including a ski resort) and Japanese aesthetics.

Sports Games

• New International Track & Field is a sports game for the Nintendo DS. The characters are big-headed and Super-Deformed, and overall it has a kiddie aesthetic. It was also published by Konami, who thought it a good idea to put a bunch of their characters in it. These vary from the fitting, such as the mascot of their Pro Baseball series with similar styling, to the somewhat out there but not terrible weird, like Simon Belmont and Sparkster, to completely family-unfriendly characters like Pyramid Head and Evil Rose.
• The Gamecube version of NBA Street 3 has Mario, Luigi and Peach as playable characters to make up for the console's lack of online play. Plus, all versions of the game have the Beastie Boys as a secret team.
  • SSX On Tour also had the trio (Cube only, obviously.)
  • SSX 3 also had Stretch, one of the characters from NBA Street, as a secret character, as well as all the characters from the previous games.
    • And in that same game, the secret character Churchill debuted as a Quake III: Arena custom skin. Yes, it's true!
    • Stretch's inclusion in SSX 3 mirrors SSX riders Zoe and Moby's status as unlockable characters in the original NBA Street, along with Tracey from Sled Storm. Also in that game? R&B group 3LW.
    • Also Zoe and Psymon were playable in Sled Storm.
• Also notorious for this: the Tony Hawk's series had some weird guest skaters. Some are from Activision's game catalog (the Doom guy, Guitar Hero characters), others licensed by the company (Spider-Man, Wolverine, Shrek), and musicians as well (Billie Joe Armstrong, Travis Barker, MCA). The rest are there just for fun, fictional (Darth Maul and Jango Fett; Eddie; Bigfoot) or not (Benjamin Franklin?!).
  • Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 featured the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from the IDW comic series and Tyler, the Creator as DLC characters.
• Kelly Slaters Pro Surfer had Tony Hawk as a bonus surfer. Kelly Slater was previously a bonus skater in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3.
• Similarly, Mario Hoops 3-on-3 featured a White Mage, Black Mage, Ninja, Moogle, and Cactuar from Final Fantasy, due to Square Enix being the developer. Mario Sports Mix featured the same guest characters, plus Slime from Dragon Quest, and added Behemoth as a boss.
• NBA Jam featured anyone and everyone from the designers to President Bill Clinton as hidden characters.
  • Of particular note is that the NBA asked Midway to remove Raiden, Scorpion, Sub-Zero and Reptile of Mortal Kombat fame from later revisions of NBA Jam Tournament Edition because they were not at ease with MK being Rated M for Money. You read that right.
  • Then again, a notable guest in Electronic Arts' installment is Isaac Clarke from Dead Space. Apparently, either NBA has issues with characters from fighting games and yet has no problem featuring a character who gets graphically chopped up by necromorphs or the times have changed on the subject of video game violence since the Mortal Kombat controversy.
  • They seemed to change their minds on this early, as Raiden and Shinnok are playable in NFL Blitz. Scorpion and Sub-Zero also made appearances in MLB Sluggers, but that was made by a different company.
• Virtua Striker 3 and 2002 has a Sonic team consisting of the hedgehog and his friends. Yuji Naka is also an announcer and coach of Sonic’s team.
• NHL 12 features an All-Legend Team, made up of NHL greats like Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Gordie Howe, Ray Bourque, among others. You can even put them on your favourite teams, presenting interesting situations all around.
• Jak, Daxter, Ratchet, Clank, Kratos, Sackboy, Kat, and Toro have all made appearances in some of the later Hot Shots Golf games.
  • Needles "Sweet Tooth" Kane, Sir Daniel Fortesque, and Gex appear as unlockable characters in the American and European releases of Hot Shots Golf 2.
  • In Hot Shots Tennis: Get a Grip, you can play as one of the Helghast from Killzone (and recruit another as an umpire), but you have to beat them first.
• The Surf's Up video game featured Elliot from Open Season as a Secret Character.
• EA Sports UFC had Bruce Lee as a Secret Character. The sequel, EA Sports UFC 2, made Joe Rogan a hidden character (unlockable by using the Konami Code on the title screen) while bumping Bruce Lee to Downloadable Content status in addition to offering Mike Tyson as DLC as well.
  • Back in THQ's days, they put Shaquille O'Neal in as a fighter in UFC Undisputed 2010. We must assume his fighting style was listed as Shaq Fu.
• Pro Baseball Famista 2011 for the Nintendo 3DS includes various Namco characters as guest players, including Siegfried from the Soul Series, Nina and Heihachi from Tekken, Haruka, Miki, and Chihaya from The Idolmaster, the title character of Klonoa, and - perhaps the strangest of all - the XFA-27 fighter jet from Ace Combat.
• In the Gamecube version of Fight Night Round 2, Little Mac, as he appears in Super Punch-Out!! is a playable character, allowing him to go up against real life boxing greats like Muhammad Ali.
• The Slash and Bust versions of Haohmaru and Nakoruru are playable in Freestyle 2: Street Basketball.
• Shironeko Tennis has had characters from Re:Zero, A Certain Magical Index, YuYu Hakusho, Gintama, The Prince of Tennis, Sgt. Frog, Yo-Kai Watch, Vocaloid, Kizuna AI, Pop Team Epic, K-On!, and Attack on Titan - but only for a limited time. It is a gacha game, after all.

Stealth-Based Game

• Among the original students that wander the school in Yandere Simulator, there's Pippi, the mascot of the rhythm game osu!. She even plays osu! in the game. However, just because she's from another series doesn't mean she's immune to the wrath of the school's local Yandere (i.e. you)...

Strategy Game

• The Battle Cats has featured characters from Annihilation City, Dragon League A/Dragon League X, Dragon Poker, Merc Storia, Princess Punt Sweets/Princess Punt 2, Survive! Mola Mola!, Monster Hunter, Million Arthur, Mr.Ninja!! Fever, Metal Slug Defense, and Yakuza Apocalypse.
• One mission in Warcraft III is infamous for having a Hydralisk you can add to your forces. The character models for Terran Marines and Zerglings are also available.
• Interestingly, Plague Inc., a game about killing humanity with diseases, got its first official Guest Fighter in the form of the Simian Flu from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, which was a result of a partnership with 20th Century Fox.
• Toy Soldiers: War Chest features Duke and Cobra Commander from G.I. Joe, Ezio Auditore da Firenze from Assassin's Creed and He-Man from Masters of the Universe.
• Rondo of Swords features other Success characters Shino, Izuna and Cotton.
• Evil Genius 2 has the Pyro from Team Fortress 2 as a free DLC Henchman with the "Pyro Pack" DLC. Better yet, you can decide whether to recruit a RED Pyro or BLU Pyro (with the one you don't recruit becoming an enemy).

Survival Horror

• A few Resident Evil titles have a habit of including playable characters in their minigames that are not involved in the main story.
  • The Extreme Battle mode in Resident Evil 2 features Chris Redfield.
  • The Mercenaries mode in Resident Evil 4 features Hunk.
  • Mercenaries Return in Resident Evil 5 features Barry Burton and Rebecca Chambers.
• An update to Zombie Army Trilogy added the 8 characters from Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 as playable characters. This was relatively simple to do, as Zombie Army does not have voice acting, so all they had to do was get the license rights then plug the character models into their engine.
• The specimen in Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion are all Homages and expies of various horror tropes and creatures. With the exception of White Face, the main villain of Imscared and Lisa from P.T..
• Dead by Daylight has had quite a bit:
  • In 2016, they added Michael Myers and Laurie Strode.
  • In 2017, Leatherface, Freddy Krueger and Quentin Smith were introduced. Bill Overbeck was also added as free DLC on the Steam version, but wouldn't be added to the console versions of the game until 2019.
  • In 2018, Amanda Young and David Tapp joined the roster.
  • In 2019, Ash Williams, The Ghostface, The Demogorgon, Nancy Wheeler and Steve Harrington were all added.
  • In 2020, Cheryl Mason and Pyramid Head were added too.
  • In 2021, The Nemesis, Jill Valentine, and Leon S. Kennedy are part of the game. Later that year, Pinhead would be added too.
  • In 2022, Yoichi Asakawa and Sadako were added, then Resident Evil became the first franchise to gain additional representatives with Albert Wesker, Ada Wong and Rebecca Chambers.
• Dying Light introduced Bill Overbeck as a new free DLC outfit in a Left 4 Dead 2 crossover event in October 2020.
• Fatal Frame V: Maiden of Black Water has an unlockable side story starring Ayane from Dead or Alive. As expected of a horror game, Ninja Ayane is Brought Down to Normal when her deadly skills prove ineffective against ghosts that are already dead. Fortunately, she gains a magical set of tattoos and magical flashlight to help her against the ghosts.
• Similar to Dead by Daylight, the Dark Deception multiplayer spin-off game, Dark Deception: Monsters and Mortals has characters and levels from other horror games:
  • Prisoner Borisov, The Brute, and The Fiend appear as playable characters, with the Hisa Maru Cargo Ship as its level.
  • Cheryl pops up as a playable character in this game as well, alongside fellow Mortal Cybil Bennett. Robbie the Rabbit and the Nurse appear as Monsters, while Pyramid Head is a Boss Monster. Silent Hill is their home stage.
  • For Yandere Simulator representatives, Ayano Aishi appears as a Monster. At the same time, Info-Chan, Taro Yamada and his sister Hanako appear as Mortals. Fun Girl is this DLC's Boss Monster, Akademi High is the DLC's level, and the Police appear as unplayable hazards.
  • Youtubers Dawko, SuperHorrorBro, 8-Bit Ryan, and CoryxKenshin appear as DLC characters.
• Alucard and Leon Belmont appear as free DLC characters in OBAKEIDORO.

Wrestling Games

• Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst is a playable character in both the PS2 WWF Smackdown: Just Bring It! and the Xbox's concurrent WWF RAW. Rumor has it, this was one of the conditions for allowing the developers to use the song "Rollin'", which was The Undertaker's entrance theme at the time, in the game.
  • The later WWE games feature hidden "legends"; in other words, popular wrestlers from WWE's past.
  • WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2011 also features Rob Van Dam, who hadn't been in WWE for a couple of years prior to the game beginning development and, indeed, signed with TNA shortly after its release. He's listed as a "Free Agent", not as a Legend (the only other characters so designated are the Red and Green demonstration models, Paul Bearer, and the Undertaker's druid). Apparently, the dev team were just really big RVD fans and wanted to use him in the game very badly.
  • WWE '12 featured the returns of Brock Lesnar (a few months shy of his outright return in 2012) and Eddie Guerrero. As an aside, custom wrestlers could also have their listed hometown set as Stilwater.
  • WWE '13 featured Mike Tyson.
  • WWE 2K15 features Sting, the first wrestler to be featured in the game despite never actually having wrestled for WWE until shortly after the game's release.
  • WWE 2K16 features not one, but two versions of the Terminator.

Vehicular Combat

• Twisted Metal
  • Rob Zombie shows up as a driver in Twisted Metal 4.
  • A Warhawk from the the game of the same name is the Final Boss in Twisted Metal: Black. Serves also as a Call-Back, as the original Warhawk was developed by the same team that did the first two Twisted Metal games and Black.
• While not "characters" per se, Rocket League features a few "guest cars": first is the PS4-exclusive Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal, and DLC later added the DeLorean from Back to the Future, a handful of Batmobiles, a Jurassic World Jeep, some Fast and Furious cars, some Hot Wheels cars, the Ecto-1, KITT, the Battle Bus from Fortnite, a handful of NASCAR and Formula One cars and several real-life Cool Cars. The Xbox One version has a variation of the Warthog from Halo and the Armadillo from Gears of War join the roster. The Nintendo Switch version meanwhile has cars based on Super Mario Bros. and Metroid.
• Beyond Games' Motor Mayhem included three characters from Ultra Vortek, a mediocre Mortal Kombat clone: Volcana, Grok, and Buzzsaw
• Jak X had Ratchet from Ratchet & Clank as an unlock using an Old Save Bonus from either Ratchet: Deadlocked or Ratchet & Clank (2016) depending on the console^note on the PlayStation 2 for Deadlocked, and the PlayStation 4 for the 2016 game.

Visual Novel

• In VA-11 HALL-A, you can trigger the appearance of three guest characters from Read Only Memories by serving a secret drink to specific characters at certain points of the game.

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