Recursive Fanfiction

aka: Recursive Fic

"I'm a huge fan of The Hunger Games, but I have become an even bigger fan of Hunger Games fan fiction. When I go back and read Suzanne Collins's original novels, I imagine the world and the characters created on this platform. This story is a tribute (pun unintended but appreciated) to some of these stories."

— Opening to 74th Hunger Games: A Fanfic Tribute

Fanfiction is a popular medium, and thanks to the nature of Sturgeon's Law, some of it can indeed be quite good to read.

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And some of that fanfiction may actually become so interesting to some readers, that those readers are inspired to write fanfiction based on those stories, despite the fact (or perhaps because of it, in some cases) that the original story is fanfiction in and of itself…

This is Recursive Fanfiction.

Care should be taken with this trope, as the story that said fanfic is based on must be a fanfiction as well. If the fiction that it is based on is not itself based on another work of fiction, then that’s a normal Fan Fic, and not this trope.

Or, schematically:

Original fiction → regular fanfiction → Recursive Fanfiction → still Recursive Fanfiction, but of a higher (deeper?) level.

The reaction of the author of the original Fan Fic tends to vary. Responses may range:

• At one extreme, they may outright encourage it, and even adopt some or all of it into the canon of their own continuity (creating a shared Fan Verse).
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• They may have a positive reaction, but without "adopting" the new material.
• They may give it ambivalent acknowledgement or ignore it entirely.
• They may express a polite distaste or criticism of the new material.
• At the other extreme, they may, quite ironically, get upset at people for "stealing" their ideas.
• If it's Rule 34 or Squick, that's another story.

Recurring Fanon Character is when this happens to an individual character rather than an entire story. Not to be confused with Meta Fic.

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Examples:

Series with their own pages:

• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

Anime & Manga

• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • A Crown of Stars: This fanfic is the authorized sequel to "A Throne Of Bayonets". After reading that fanfic Strypgia felt that Shinji and Asuka deserved a happier ending, so he asked the author of "A Throne Of Bayonets" permission to continue his story.
  • The Second Try and Aki-chan's Life have a fancomic based on it. And a non-official crossover with Advice and Trust. And a series of short stories. And more.
  • Nobody Dies has several sidestories written by both the author and others, including Six AIs, One Continent and The Kei Files.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion R has Evangelion: Redemption.
• Naruto:
  • Dreaming of Sunshine has a single sidestory by the same author and a lot of fics written by fans. There is a community in ffnet dedicated to collecting the side stories.
  • The One I Love Is...: Several fans wrote a bunch of side-stories, parodies, and even an authorized sequel.
  • An Animated Adaptation of part of the Naruto comic Konoha High School has been produced. It also has some fanart.
• Haruhi Suzumiya:
  • Kyon: Big Damn Hero has Traveller.
  • Meet The Suzumiyas has The Observations of Damon Rizuela, written with permission from JonBob0008.
• The Death Note fandom has at least two fanfics that inspire recursive fanfiction:
  • Poison Apple by RobinRocks and Narroch has five: Human, Doom, My love, The End and Broken Fairytale.
  • PITCH by uberneko-zero has two: A Different Shade of Pitch and Lips.
  • True Elision very recently inspired a Kink Meme fill: The End which in turn got its own sequel Heart. Ironically, the first two are yaoi and the last one is Het.
  • Light and Dark The Adventures of Dark Yagami has inspired several fan sequels: Returning of D'ark, Light and Dark DEUX, SAD GOODBYES, and a Round Robin post game.
• The Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover technically counts, since it contains references to at least four different fanworks (RE-TAKE, Thousand Shinji, Shinji And Warhammer 40 K, and Once More with Feeling). However, it's more notable for being infinitely self recursive.
• Shadow League is a fanfic based off the infamous Dark Fic Pokémon Master, amongst countless others.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers:
  • Say what you will about the infamous Hetalia: Axis Powers "Economic Crisis Gangbang" Kink Meme fill and its content, but it proved popular enough to spawn a plethora of spinoffs about America's PTSD after the event, what would have happened if the other nations had mistaken Canada for America or if America had actually put his Super Strength to good use or chewed out the other nations for their heartlessness, a consensual or at least less disturbing version of it, etc.
  • The Tear Jerker ending of the US/UK Doujin Silencer affected some readers enough to write/draw Fix Fic for it.
  • The infamous Gorn fic Debt has a recursive parody fanfic written by its own authors, in which the first chapter is rewritten as a cosplay game Gone Horribly Wrong in which the China cosplayer turns out to be a psychopath and breaks out the knives. Taking this as an implication that the writers wouldn't mind it being parodied (particularly since they expressed pride that the original Debt nearly ended up on the So Bad, It's Horrible page, back when it had a section for Fanfic), someone made a fanart piece depicting China confronting his replacement (not work safe for swearing, blood, and suggested extreme violence).
  • Not to mention all the fanfics on what the ending could've been for HetaOni...
  • Human Curiosity has a prequel fic, What Curiosity Brings, which is being written with permission by the original fanfiction's author.
• Dungeon Keeper Ami has spawned several of these (though most of them are short one-shots), and there's Dungeon Keeper of Love and Justice, an AU fanfic.
• In Flight has spawned several spin-offs, most notably The Emiya Clan.
• The Dirty Pair fanfic I Am One by Sean Gaffney is a followup to Larry Mann's influential story Experiment 101-E. (The story covers the same basic ground as the sequel Mann co-wrote with Ryan Matthews, Reunions, but goes in a different direction.) Gaffney's sequel to I Am One, Won't Get Fooled Again, raises the stakes on this trope by including several other authors' Dirty Pair original characters as cameos (along with the multiple crossover characters).
• Boy Scouts ½ is a Ranma ½ Elsewhere Fic centering on a group of Self-Insert characters from Massachusetts. When three acquaintances of the creator of Boy Scouts ½ were given cameo appearances in one story, one of those acquaintances began a Spinoff series called Perspectives.
• Game Theory served as a large inspiration for Ragazza Magica Renza Veneti, a crossover with Puella Magi Madoka Magica, though more in the way of setting than plot.
• To the Stars, a Puella Magi Madoka Magica/Hard Sci-Fi mashup set several centuries after the end of the series, has several fanfictions based on the fic's universe, which were integrated into the story canon:
  • The biggest one, Solemnis (and its sequels, Sodales and Aevitas) set a few years before the beginning of the main fic story, following an average Magical Girl as she contracts and through her military training and first battles.
  • Puppets, a spin-off set in a rogue colony hidden from everyone decades before the main story, following a Magical Girl's journey to free her world from its tyrannical regime.
  • Those Who Take The Sword, set during WWI, involving Clarisse Von Rossum, immortal Magical Girl historian and explorer and part of the supporting cast from the main story.
  • It also spawned a couple of non-canon crossover fics, such as Reaching for Eternity (crossover with Minami-ke) or L'Effecto Magico (crossover with Mass Effect)
• Halkegenia Online has numerous fan-made side stories. One of them, Halkegenia Online Zero Hour has grown to be a full size fanfic in its own right, for which people are starting to write fan-made side stories.
• The Elemental Chess Trilogy has a few of these.
• Yesterday Upon The Stair, a My Hero Academia fanfiction, has inspired at least 4 works, which can be found on its Fanfic Rec page. There's even recursive fanfic of a recursive fanfic.

• THIS IS IT! is the title of a Lucky Star fanfic of another, long-deleted one titled Cries Unheard, detailing its antagonists' demises that lead to the flash-forward prologue with Miyuki under police interrogation by Yui but never got to play out way back then. That, however, is the only thing its author meant to resolve, albeit with some actual buildup that revolves mostly around Konata and Yutaka's liberation.

Comic Strips

• There's a lot of unofficial Calvinverse stories out there. Among them is The Pez Dispenser and the Reign of Terror.

Films — Animation

• The well-known How to Train Your Dragon fanfiction Hitchups got one, a oneshot based off the story with the author's permission called The Elder's Prediction.
• This occurs at times in The Lion King fandom:
  • The Lion King Adventures is the most famous example, with no shortage of fan fiction being made by the fans. Even the spin-offs have fanfics.
  • "Chronicles of the Pridelands" invented the character Tanabi, Simba’s son. Nearly every TLK fan began using the character in their own Spin-Offspring. His popularity soon declined though, due to the release of the semi-official Six New Adventure book series, which gave Simba a different son, Kopa. The release of the second film with the arrival of Kiara made all but the oldest fans forget Tanabi.
  • Joanna-TLK’s fancomic continues on from the last chapter of Savu0211’s fancomic, which by then, had almost nothing to do with the original films.
  • Koda, Leah, and Asha from The Lion King: Kiara's Reign are three of the more popular Kiara and Kovu offspring characters. They have other fan-works about them.
  • Kuzimu and Azola are two popular fan-characters, to the point where they're mistaken for canon by some fans. They're Zira's parents. Azola is essentially a blue-eyed, lighter furred Zira, while her mate Kuzimu is a dark furred lion. Azola is a sweet Good Parent and Kuzimu is a cruel Abusive Parent. Kuzimu's usually also presented as having killed Azola.
  • Fan-artist Savu0211 is the creator of several popular fan-characters, including Azra (a Scar/Zira fan-child) and Baridi.
• Illuminated is a Jane/Amelia Crossover Couple video that has led to two different novelizations: one complete oneshot and one unfinished Dead Fic.
• Heritage of the Wolf is a series of fan-remakes based on fanfic writer Cyberwulfe's Balto fics.

Films — Live-Action

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon), a MonsterVerse fanfiction set after Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), has so far spawned a series of Interquels and another series of sequel one-shots by two different authors as of December 2021.
• The Private Diary of Elizabeth Quatermain has some, or did at the time it was being written; at least one has since been taken down.
• Star Wars fanfiction author Fialleril created the Tatooine Slave Culture tag with their series The Tatooine Cycle and Double Agent Vader, featuring unique fictional mythology and traditions of resistance. There are now many stories from several authors in this started multiverse.
• The Lost in Time Series has one called Lost in Time: Destiny.
• The Marvel Cinematic Universe fanfiction series Infinite Coffee and Protection Detail is one of the highest rated MCU fanfic series on Archive of Our Own, and checking the "Works Inspired By This One" sections at the ends of the various installments will reveal that it's inspired dozens of fans to create fanfiction of the series themselves, featuring a snarky, protective Bucky Barnes who loves baking.

General/Crossovers

• Diane Castle's multi-crossover Brane of Extraordinary Women series has spawned dozens of fanfics, especially based on The Secret Return of Alex Mack. In fact, almost all the Alex Mack fanfiction in existence is derived from the "Teraverse".
• Drunkard's Walk has inspired a number of fanfics, collectively known as The Drunkard's Stagger.
• Edventure Of The Thousand Year Door has As This Train Goes, a What If? fic asking what would happen if Sarah was the legendary hero and if Edd and the others weren't charged with collecting the Crystal Stars. Sadly, it's a Dead Fic.
• Roommates: This Mega Crossover Fan Webcomic has a whole Expanded Universe worth of fanfiction based on it called the Buildingverse. With five separate spin-offs (Girls Next Door, Down the Street, Superintendent, Meanwhile Upstairs and Only A Dream) having trope pages and if we wanted to be perfectly precise Down the Street is a Girls Next Door fancomic.
  • To make things even more complicated a lot of these works add even more Crossovers or take characters / concepts from yet other fanfiction creating a Tangled Family Tree that rivals the magical people's.^note In this 'verse each and every magical being from every fanon EVER is related somehow.
  • And then there's the fact that Roommates sometimes uses ideas and OCs from Girls Next Door (and its other spin-offs), to the point where they could almost be considered fanfics for each other.
  • To make it "clearer" a flowchart of the relationship between the three main troped ones (misses Meanwhile Upstairs and Only A Dream also adding all would be bad for sanity) and the world here◊. Block arrow main relationship, normal arrow other influence / ascended fannon / etc..
• The Thor/Being Human fanfiction series, Housemates, has a few spin-offs. The first is Clean: a Housemates series story by flutterflap, is a rewrite Series 2 of Being Human in the "Housemates universe". Another is the one-shot The Morning After by Mikkeneko.
• Project Bluefield: The Fire Emblem Fates: Devastation stories are set in an Alternate Continuity of fellow writer The Apocryphal One's Unexplored Chronicles series—specifically, The Invisible Princess and The Lost King. (Project Bluefield's Word Of God says that Fire Emblem Fates: Aftermath may not occur—certainly not in the same way as the original.) Apocrypha's Unexplored Chronicles are in turn fanfiction of Fire Emblem Fates.
• The Maribat AU created by ozmav inspired many spinoffs and AUs based on this fic. This basically started and shaped the Damien (Robin) x Marinette (Ladybug) ship.
• The DC Universe/RWBY fanfic Hunters of Justice ended up inspiring the fanfic Remnant's Mightiest Heroes, which features a similar premise: a comic book villain attacks Remnant, and teams RWBY and JNPR end up on Earth and meeting a team of superheroes—only with the Marvel Universe instead of DC, so Brainiac's role as the one attacking Remnant and the Justice League of America's role as the first superheroes to meet RWBY and JNPR are respectively replaced with Kang the Conqueror and The Avengers.
• The Infinite Loops. It started as a collection of fanfics from Innortal revolving around seven fandoms (Ranma ½, Bleach, Harry Potter, Slayers, Naruto, Sailor Moon and Neon Genesis Evangelion). Now, it's a massive project on SpaceBattles.com with dozens upon dozens of authors, and featuring an insane amount of fandoms; from My Little Pony to Warhammer 40,000, from 1984 to Homestuck, from the Marvel Universe to Goat Simulator. Innortal has expressed his approval.
  • In addition, The Infinite Loops has the possibility of loopers appearing in fanfic settings as one of its rules. For example, the Ree from Nobody Dies is looping, and The Conversion Bureau is a common MLP loops setting.
• Boldores And Boomsticks has accumulated a few series of omake that tell their own stories.
  • Lazy Beacon Days, where another version of Team RWBY comes across and reads a book containing the story, and reacts to both their counterparts' actions, and the things revealed about each other. Blake got the book for free from a bookstore run by Anna.
  • Meanwhile in Mantle, an Apocryphal story about a Leavanny, Petlil, Audino, and Elesa's Emolga that end up on Remnant and fall in with Robyn Hill and her Happy Huntresses.
  • You Teach Me and I'll Teach You is another apocryphal story set after communication and travel between Earth and Remnant has been established. It sees Weiss send Whitley on his own journey to let him grow away from Jacques.
• This happens In-Universe for Cinders and Ashes: the Chronicles of Kamen Rider Dante twice. Hoshi's fanfic, Kamen Rider Dante, gets adapted into a doujinshi by Tachibana. It also manages to get itself fanart by a few talented artists.
• Turnabout Storm, a crossover between Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, was followed by a sequel made by a separate group of fans, Elements of Justice.
• Beyond the Outer Gates Lies... A high school library? continues from where Beyond the Outer Gate Lies... left off.
• With Pearl and Ruby Glowing has several stories written by fans of the series: Campfire Stories, Aftermath, A Story about the Butterfly Prince, and Bound For New Horizons.

Literature

• Harry Potter:
  • Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality has not only inspired its own fanfics, such as Once Upon a Tower and Nightmares of Azkaban, but "Rational" fics have become a kind of sub-genre. The epilogue was purposely delayed a year to allow sequel fics time to get established, and examples like Ginny Weasley and the Sealed Intelligence started popping up in less than a week.
    • The most famous Rational fic beside Methods, Luminosity, has spawned several fan short stories.
    • Following the Phoenix, a fan AU of Methods of Rationality, has in turn a fan sequel Squiring the Phoenix.
  • The large projects The Shoebox Project, Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness and the Dangerverse have their own fanfic.
  • All the sequels or rewrites to the infamous My Immortal.
  • Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past has inspired G for Ginevra and A Night at the Burrow, which were endorsed by the author of NoFP. Less canonically, NoFP!Harry makes an appearance in The Potter Plot, facing off against other versions of Harry including canon and various fanfics.
  • Make a Wish was the inspiration for Terminal Justice.
  • The Rigel Black Chronicles has inspired a wide variety of recursive fanfics, some very short, and others approximately as long as the original series (specifically, the Revolutionary Arc); the fandom also holds regular gift exchanges in which authors write spinoff stories for each other. The Archive of Our Own tag "Inspired by The Rigel Black Chronicles" has over 300 stories. (And one of those stories, The Detersive Divulge, has in turn inspired its own spin-off, Harry Is Woman Hear Her Roar.)
  • crawlersout has two, both Harry/Grindelwald, with Grindelwald's POV. One is by the original author, called begin again. The other is by Tsume Yuki, called Fineshine.
  • The Fate Changed Now What? was inspired by Fate's Favourite, a Harry/Tom Riddle fic.
  • Kaleidoscope of Magic: Machinations of Time is a spinoff of Kaleidoscope of Magic.
  • Harry Potter Becomes a Communist features brief crossover appearances by rationalist!Quirrell, Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, and Rhysenn Malfoy. All are portrayed as "bourgeois" enemies, and killed off after about ten chapters.
  • The Awakening of a Magus has at least two. The first one is Who Wants to Live Forever by LoneWolf5 (removed due to being a songfic). That one is a Distant Prequel and actually had the details there becoming canon. The second one is called The Oldest Plans, serving as both a Distant Sequel and a Distant Prequel.
• The Hunger Games
  • 74th Games: a Fanfic Tribute describes the events of the first novel from the perspective of Victors developed in the fan fic, The Victors Project. It also features characterizations of the tributes developed in other Hunger Games fan fics.
  • Tales of the Hunger Games adapts the stories of both Cirrus Quell (from the web series of the same name) and Tristan Terrace, where they're "chronicled" from a Capitolcentric viewpoint.
  • Speaking of Tales, the author also left the ending of his series open to listener interpretation, which has inspired a few of his fans to write about what happens after the 100th Hunger Games. Examples include Panem Reborn, After the 100th, Tales of Panem, and Hunger Games Chronicles.
• Worm
  • Internship spawned the fic of the fic Deputy, which has now spawned the fic of the fic of the fic Aegis Must Die, as well as the truly dizzying Emissary: A Deputy Recursive Crossover, which crosses the Taylor from "Deputy Commander" with canon Worm.
  • Sanctioned, already a rewrite of Splintered, has spawned two crossover fics with Sanctioned's QA and Taylor being placed in the worlds of DanMachi in It's Not Wrong To Make Friends In The Dungeon and Battle Action Harem Highschool Side Character Quest in Calibration.
  • Incense And Powdered Diamond began as an omake of Implacable before it was retooled as a different story.
• Warrior Cats:
  • The Troll Fic StarKitsProphcy has numerous reaction fics, fix fics, and parodies. It even has a few animated and comic adaptations.
  • Cabinet Man [COMPLETE Evil!Spottedleaf MAP]'s popularity led to a parody MAP with a Minecraft theme.

• Goldstein has Goldstein: Shanah Bet, featuring a few vignettes leading up to Yehudah's bar mitzvah.
• The Les Misérables fanfic Paris Burning became the seed of its own fictional universe with numerous contributors.

Live-Action TV

• There are quite a few stories written by authors other than the original CP Coulter that use original characters from the Glee fanfic Dalton.
• The Harmon Verse, a series of Glee fanfics centred around the Original Character of Jack Harmon. It includes four ongoing novelizations of Glee and over 40 stories altogether.
• The Contract has ended up spawning a number of other fanfics, forming a world known as the Contractverse. They include:
  • Lifeline, a companion piece to The Contract.
  • Exigencies, a Continuation Fic for The Contract.
  • Recovery, Where the Rails Converge, and A Gentle Knock at the Door, all separate sequels to Exigencies.
  • PATIENT, a sequel to A Gentle Knock At The Door.
  • Creepy Pencil Story, a short "What-If" story,
  • Pencils are Dangerous, a sequel series to Creepy Pencil Story.
  • The Kindness of Strangers, a oneshot addition to Pencils are Dangerous.
• Two Two One Bravo Baker, a military AU of the Sherlock universe, has spawned its own works of fanart and fanfic.
• The Mighty Boosh fandom has several rather famous fanfictions, notably Stockholm Syndrome, that were so popular that they spawned countless fanfictions based on it from other authors. The number of fanfictions and fanarts based on Stockholm Syndrome ballooned after it was revealed Noel Fielding himself was a fan of the fanfiction and inserted references to it into a live performance.
• DianeCastle's The Secret Return of Alex Mack has spawned dozens of recursive fanfics, thanks in part to its epic length and regular updates (now completed), including two heartfelt tributes to Pyre after her Heroic Sacrifice in chapter 219. There are so many now that it has spawned the so-called "Teraverse," named after Alex's superhero secret identity Terawatt.
• The Supernatural fanfic Maybe Sprout Wings has inspired a number of other fanfics set in the author's AU. She keeps a running tab of them on the fic's page.

Music

• There are multiple fanfics based around Act 1 and The father of Death by The Protomen. Which themselves are a set of two Dark Alternate Universe Fics based on the original Mega Man game.

Tabletop Games

• This fan art for Warhammer 40,000 ended up becoming the inspiration for Warhammer Idol Month.

Toys

• Lunarstar from Worlds Apart is one of the most popular pre-Friendship is Magic Winged Unicorn characters. She has received a lot of recursive fanart.

Video Games

• Friday Night Funkin':
  • Friday Night Funkin': Corruption is a popular reskin/overhaul mod that takes the FNF cast and adds a Zombie Apocalypse-styled conflict, turning each of the characters corrupted; making them tar black with pink maniac expressions. As such, there are many, many mods based off it, typically following the basic premise of Corrupted BF facing against a preexisting FNF mod characters to corrupt them by the end of the week/song. Consequently, many of these mods are heavily formulaic and of low-quality, with Phantom Fear blocking all recursive mods in an attempt to avoid those confusing fanmade with the official story till it's done.
  • A multi case for the Game Mod Monika.exe - it is created by same team of the Doki Doki Literature Club! crossover mod Doki Doki Takeover!, and is itself a mod of fellow game mod Vs Sonic.exe, replacing that mod's cast with horrific versions of the Doki Doki cast.
• Touhou Project:
  • PatchCon! Defend the Library!: Touhou Ningyougeki is a based on the premise of the puppets reproducing in the wild to populate and integrate into the world following the events of Patchouli's and Marisa's puppet armies getting nuked by the impatient former, resulting in the multiple Pokémon ROM hacks that replace the Mons with the Touhou cast.
  • People seems to like the concept of Advent Cirno a lot, and there are a lot of fanarts of it in Pixiv.
  • Many Touhou Project doujins use personality quirks ascribed/invented/Flanderized by previous authors (such as Sakuya's A-Cup Angst, Aya's paparazzi behavior, Cirno's idiocy, etc.) that have no basis in canon, due in part to the lack of Character Development in the official games and Word Of God that comes out years later people are used to the fanon personalities. For example, most doujin portray Keine as teaching human and youkai children alike despite it being official that she doesn't like youkai. Similarly, Momiji is often shown as Aya's long-suffering subordinate when they actually don't like each other very much.
• Pokémon:
  • Poké Wars has spawned at least twelve fics based on Cornova's world.
  • There have been multiple fanfics written based on Black Adventures.
  • And a huge community based on Pokéumans, with literally hundreds of members.
• The infamous Portal fic ITS MY LIFE! has at least several. It doesn't help that one of the authors of those fics largely drew elements from another shared universe based on Portal, namely the Portal: The 4th Millennium franchise.
• Kynrind's Capture is one based on the Porn with Plot Warcraft fic, Ethereum Gladiator.
• Subverted with Morphic, where a new author was supposedly going to write his own sequel to the original fic... only it turns out the whole thing was planned out ahead of time by the original author as part of an elaborate April Fool's prank.
• The Oolite project is a Fan Remake of Elite, so all Oolite fan works are essentially Elite fan works by proxy. Additionally, the game is also highly moddable; well-received Oolite Expansion Packs inspire authors to incorporate their features into their fics, and new ideas from fanfic writers in turn inspire new OXPS. Furthermore, developers and community regulars frequently include versions of one another's in-game personas in their own fan works.
• Dragon Age fandom has spawned Feynite, an author whose work seems to inspire a significant amount of this.
• This is extremely prominent in Undertale fandom, which has not only a Fan Verse, but an expansive fan multiverse. Among the fanworks there is an endless tangle of Alternate Universe Fic, where there are more popular AUs than most fandoms get total AUs, and there are several AUs of AUs; for example, Flowerfell, an alternate universe of the preexisting AU Underfell, gave rise to the fanfic Overgrowth, which itself spawned several more fics. There are also mashups of AUs, such as Swapfell, which combines the Darker and Edgier Underfell AU with the role-swapped Underswap AU. To go with all that, there are many fanfics where different versions of the characters from assorted AUs interact.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic.exe is one of the most famous fanfics in the Sonic fandom, if not in the creepypasta fandom, to the point it gained a large variety of fan games and fanfics.
  • This occasionally happens to very popular OCs and especially fan-children. For example, one artist created a Boom-verse Sonic/Amy daughter named Aurora which has received fanart and fanfics from others. It's especially impressive considering the... infamous reputation of Sonic Original Characters, even on the website where they are popular.
    • A half-example of this is the Custom Hero feature from Sonic Forces. It's technically an official character who you can design to be any character you want, hence the half-example bit, but the template design of a red wolf is so popular that people are drawing it in spades, and asking SEGA to make him an actual character in and of his own right.
  • Someone created a design for Shadow the Hedgehog's long-dead sister-figure Maria Robotnik as a hedgehog. Since then, Maria the Hedgehog is a mainstay of Sonic fanworks. Try to find Maria fanart or even fanfics, and you'll undeniably find Maria the Hedgehog fanworks too. Some have an Excuse Plot of "What if Maria was reincarnated or resurrected as a hedgehog?" while others just make her a hedgehog just because.
  • The most current one of these comes from Sonic Mania. The boss fight of the remade Flying Battery Zone, a spider, has Eggman hung upside down within the machine. An artist by the username of Alpha Gamboa, however, saw something else entirely and created an image of what they saw. Meet Eggette (or Omelette, if you prefer), a fan character who is essentially to Eggman what Bowser Jr is to Bowser, and has become so popular that fan art, videos and even custom boss themes have been made for her. Not bad for a comical misinterpretation of an upside-down sprite.
  • Similar to with Maria, a fan-design for Elise as a Funny Animal was created. Almost all Sonic/Elise fanart uses it instead of Elise's canon human design.
• Quarter-Life: Halfway To Destruction has QuarterLife: Origin of Doom, which also ties it into Half-Life: Full Life Consequences. Notable in that it explains a number of random occurrences in the first fic, explaining the origin of the headcrab officer, the wepon John Freeman finds in Ravenholdm, who wrote "u sudnt come here" on the sign, the origins of the zombie goasts, and even goes so far as to explain where the Combine hug tower at the end of the saga comes from.' Now in machinima form by PKMNEmerald.
• The immensely popular novel-length Dream SMP AU fanfiction Passerine has inspired an entire category of recursive fanworks on Archive Of Our Own. Notable entries include You Don't Bring Me Flowers Anymore by Shrai, in which normal canon DSMP!Tommy and Passerine!Tommy switch places after Passerine!Tommy's death, and Kaleidoscope by ExpositionFairy, an unofficial direct continuation that incorporates some other well-known DSMP story arcs into the AU and expands the setting to include characters from other popular Minecraft Youtube series.
• The Crown Atomic is a fan fiction written for the Game Mod Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg, specifically a version of the mod ported over to Darkest Hour, which itself started life as a fan-made overhaul of Hearts of Iron II. In other words, this is a fan work of a fan work of a fan work — four layers deep.
• Link and Mipha's triplets from Offspring have some fanart based off of them.
• The fan game Danganronpa Another and its sequel Super Danganronpa Another 2 have spawned quite a few fan works of their own, including the ongoing Nextgenronpa, which stars the children of several members of the cast.
• Beyond Skyrim, a massive multi-team Game Mod project for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, have always cited Tamriel Rebuilt, a similarly ambitious modding project for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind as one of its main inspirations. In the case of Beyond Skyrim's own Morrowind project, the close relationship between the two projects are taken it a bit further, as the team have stated that they will at least partially share their in-house lore with Tamriel Rebuild's team.
• The Persona 5 fic The Delinquent and His Lover, was revived by another author after four years as a Dead Fic.

Web Comics

• Homestuck out the wastechute. Fans will create alternate universes, the alternate universes will become popular, people will write fanfics set in the alternative universes... and then there's the fanart of alternative universes.
  • The Grand Battle is the most notorious in having fanart and other fan stuff based on itself.
  • There is genderbent fanart of a cosplay of a fanart of a memetic guy who randomly got into a picture of cosplay.
  • Unwanted Free Ugly Troll gets one in Loophole.
  • The greater Replay Value Universe currently includes at least one roleplay that draws from a roleplaying-game handbook, which itself was written as a recap of the original freeform roleplay, which in turn is based on Sburb Glitch FAQ. The author of the Glitch FAQ was apparently so intimidated by the size of his accidental subfandom that he evaporated.
• Girls Next Door to Roommates

Web Original

• There is a whole community of people writing fanfiction based on Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series.
• Vaguely Recalling JoJo
  • There's a edit of Jean Pierre Polnareff in M.U.G.E.N, which uses Polnareff's Oh, Crap! face and vanilla.ice's voice and sounds.
  • A fan also recreated the scene where they confronted the truck in the Miku Miku Dance 3-D modelling program.
• Much, if not most, of the fanworks surrounding Don't Hug Me I'm Scared are based on a particular piece of fanart depicting the Clock and the Notepad in humanoid form, and center around their flanderized fanon personalities, which really have nothing much to do with the original videos.
• A Scotsman in Egypt (a Total War campaign where Scotland takes over the world) has a prequel by a different author in which Egyptian refugees make their new home in Scotland.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time has an In-Universe example. Ice King wrote a Rule 63 fanfic of the show, in the episode "Fionna and Cake." The episode "Bad Little Boy" has Marceline then writing her own continuation of it, followed by LSP in "The Prince Who Wanted Everything". Taken to its logical conclusion in "Five Short Tables". At the end of the episode the Ice Queen, Ice King's Author Avatar, tells how the Ice President is orating a fanfic to Flynn and Jacques about Lynn the Person's adventures. That's at least four layers of story right there.
• In Avengers of the Multi-verse, while the crossover story follows the canon endings of Sym-Bionic Titan, Ben 10: Omniverse, The Secret Saturdays and Generator Rex, for the Danny Phantom, Kim Possible and American Dragon: Jake Long aspects, the author drew from the Facing the Future Series for the former and The More Things Change Series for the latter two.
• Cat-Ra: Prank Buddies is a side-story for the She-Ra and the Princesses of Power AU fic Cat-Ra, taking place during the latter's second season. The writer was a reviewer who wanted to see a story in which Catra and Frosta bond over their shared love of pranking, as the fic only mentions the duo doing so in passing; the original author liked the idea and suggested they write it themselves.
• This has happened a number of times in the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers fandom.
  • Rachel's Caretaker is a sequel to Matt Plotecher's movie script Somemouse to Watch Over Me.
  • The instant popularity of The Nowakverse and its main original character, starting with Under the Bridge already, has led to a whole number of fics by different authors set in the same universe.
  • The J.A.M. liked The Enduring Man-Child's Consummation, itself a sequel to the same author's Home Is Where You Hang Upside Down, so much that he wrote a tangent with two alternative endings and a highly-acclaimed sequel to each of these, Death of a Comedian and I Dream of the New Ranger.
  • The Midnightverse got one big fan named RR-Crusader who not only joined the forum where it was posted to tell the author how much he liked it, but even wrote a fic in the same universe, Knight Rangers, a Crossover with Knight Rider.
  • Midnight Man himself included the two main original characters from BOC42's Closer Than a Brother in the Dinner for One parody Dinner For One Mouse. From the idea to getting BOC42's consent to publishing the finished work, this project took only a few hours on New Year's Eve, 2006.
• Danny Phantom has some of these, which are often Dark Fic. These include, among others, assorted variations on "ghost hunger" (an idea which started with a series of fanfics called "Ghosts Must Dine"), and several stories based on Lab Rat (including a crossover where Dr. House patches up Danny after the fact).
• Daria:
  • The fanfic God Save the Esteem has spawned a prequel, Moving Pictures, as well as numerous other stories up to and including the obligatory lesbian Slash Fic. Subverted as they both started being written at around the same time, so it's more likely that it's two different, but similar series that ended up sharing their continuity.
  • The Daria fandom also has a lot of Original Characters who pop up in other people's stories, even if the fanfics aren't supposed to share continuity; usually their creators give the green light for their use, or they're included as an in-joke. Popular ones include Veronica, a hypothetical third Morgendorffer sister, and Danielle Todds, a female lover interest for Quinn if you don't want to use a canon character.
• In the Goof Troop fandom, there are several stories based on one fan's extensive mythos surrounding an Alternative Character Interpretation of Bradley Uppercrust's backstory (specifically one that makes him a Jerkass Woobie); Turning Back Time and Vying For Your Affection are stories that seem to be better-known than anything the original author did.
• Gravity Falls has the Reverse Falls AU. What started as just a What If? has turned into dozens of fanfics, fanarts, and fanvids. The concept revolves around a role reversal where the Pine twins are in Gideon's role, while Gideon and Pacifica trade places with Dipper and Mabel.
• An Ideal Gift is centered around Irrilia, a popular fanmade Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) character created by Myrling.
• In the Grand Finale of Kim Possible, "Graduation, Part 2", Warhok intending to mount Kim Possible as a trophy for Warmonnga inspired a fanart of Kim's head mounted on Warmonga's wall. Which itself inspired this fanfic For the Pride of Lorwardia, which birthed a few fanfics involving Kim becoming a Lorwardian trophy, usually by Public Execution. Notable stories are Midnight Savior, Nightmare, and Dead Man Switch.
• The Kim Possible fanfic A Small Possibility, with the author's given permission, has spawned many a Kim/Shego fanfic featuring their spawn from the original, Kasy Ann and Sheki Go.
• Miraculous Ladybug:
  • Bakery "Enemies"
    • Bakery Enemies AU is a drabble series by Keyseeker, usually involving Marinette and Adrien finding out the other's Secret Identity.
    • A Dark Fic example exists with Remembering Games and Daisy Chains and Laughs..., where Adrien is killed accidentally by a paranoid Marinette.
  • The Karma of Lies has a few examples, such as:
    • Tales of Karmic Lies Aftermath serves as a Continuation exploring how several characters deal with the events of the original story.
    • What Goes Around Comes Around, by the same author as Tales of Karmic Lies Aftermath, explores the idea of Gabriel discovering Ladybug's secret identity and striking first.
    • Karma Overbalance, meanwhile, questions the severity of the karmic backlash Adrien recieved.
  • The concepts for the The Lament Series (ChaoticNeutral) inspired works like Recklessness, putting the authors' own spins on those ideas.
• The Misfits Series, a Fusion Fic of X-Men: Evolution and G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, has inspired many spin-offs, some of which crossover with other series.
• Phineas and Ferb fandom has a Fan-Created Offspring pairing for which many people have taken to writing fanfic, Thomas Fletcher (son of Ferb and Vanessa) and Marie Garcia-Shapiro Flynn (daughter of Phineas and Isabella). They have their own Portmanteau Couple Name (Thomarie) and a ton of art for them on DeviantArt. There's even artwork of them signed by the Latin-American voice actors for the show.
• Shadow of the Guardian by Conveyus-Prime is based on Shebakoby's Fan Fic, notably Prisoner of Destiny and The Big Capture of 1999-2006, and it has become a shared Fan Verse.
• The fanfic Strays, hosted in the Young Justice Kink Meme, has several future-fics set to it and attached its thread despite the story still being in its early stages and in the process of being fleshed out. There is also fanart for it, featuring the costume designs for the Batkids' new hero identities.
• Super Edventure Tale of the Prognosticus (created by the author of Ed Abuse) is advertised as a sequel to Edventure Of The Thousand Year Door. The author claims that he created this fanfic in support of the original, and is not claiming to steal anything. He even claims that if the author of the original asks for him to take the story down, he would do so. So far, nothing's happened.
• This Superjail! one-shot fic is actually a sequel/epilogue to Fix You, written with the original author's given permission of course.
  • Et Mundus Eos is a sequel to Extended Stay, written with the original author's consent.
• The Total Drama Alternate Universe Fic Total Drama Do Over has a crossover fanfiction set in the Pokémon universe, titled "TDDO Pokemon Adventures."
• Universe Falls, a Fusion Fic of Gravity Falls and Steven Universe, has inspired a few fanfics of its own, based on fan AUs from both franchises, such as Reverse Pines/Steven Diamond, Gravity Rises/Momswap, or the original author's own "UF Swap" alternate universe where Steven is a normal kid and Dipper and Mabel are the human/gem hybrids.

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