Crossover (fiction)
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A crossover is the placement of two or more otherwise discrete
This is different from a spoof, where one discrete character, setting, or universe, copies another character, setting, or universe, often in a comedic manner.
Background
Official
Crossovers often occur in an official capacity in order for the intellectual property rights holders to reap the financial reward of combining two or more popular, established properties. In other cases, the crossover can serve to introduce a new concept derivative of an older one. Another intention is to give fictional characters more emotional credibility and thus increase immersion for the fans.
Crossovers generally occur between properties owned by a single holder, but they can, more rarely, involve properties from different holders, provided that the inherent legal obstacles can be overcome. They may also involve using characters that have passed into the public domain with those concurrently under copyright protection.
A crossover story may try to explain its own reason for the crossover, such as characters being neighbors (notable examples being the casts from The Golden Girls and Empty Nest) or meeting via dimensional rift or similar phenomenon (a common explanation for science fiction properties that have different owners). Some crossovers are not explained at all. Others are absurd or simply impossible within the fictional setting, and have to be ignored by the series' respective continuities. Still others intentionally make the relations between two or more fictional universes confusing, as with The Simpsons and Futurama, where each show is fiction in the other.
Unofficial
In contrast with legal crossovers, unofficial crossovers are created solely because of the artistic pleasure derived by their creators. Unofficial crossovers often take the form of
Unofficial crossovers can also occur in a "what-if" scenario.
Comics
Crossovers of multiple characters, owned by one company or
The earliest such crossover event was
The first major crossover event was spearheaded by the Marvel Editor-in-Chief at the time,
Animation
Cartoon crossovers are not uncommon, and most of them – like comics or live-action TV shows – will often feature characters owned by the same company or network. One example is
Crossovers are not necessarily composed of characters under common ownership. Two of the most notable cartoon crossovers consisted of characters from different companies. Disney's movie
Another cartoon crossover would occur in 1990,
Webtoons (animated shows from the internet) can also have crossovers with different webtoons, franchises, YouTubers and more. Some examples are when Kate from TomSka's Crash Zoom series makes an appearance in Eddsworld as a trick or treater who possesses Matt and Edd in the episode, "Trick or Threat". In addition to this a couple of characters from Eddsworld make appearances in some Crash Zoom episodes such as "Orcs and Dorks".
Anime and manga
Anime has also participated in many crossover events featuring characters or shows from the same company or network. One of the biggest projects down would be
Manga artist Leiji Matsumoto has been known to cross over the characters of his various stories and characters such as Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express 999, and Queen Millennia, all of which were originally written as separate, self-contained stories. In the Maetel Legend, Queen Promethium is revealed to be having been Yukino Yaoi, the protagonist from Queen Millennia. Matsumoto has also created various crossovers with Space Battleship Yamato, an anime on which he served as director, although the rights to Yamato are actually owned by Yoshinobu Nishizaki.
Film
The first film crossover in a series of
There have been numerous crossovers in Japanese cinema. The boom of kaiju films saw a lot of crossovers produced at Toho Studios, with some of the monsters forming teams in numerous movies, much like the Marvel movie franchise. Godzilla, Mothra and Rodan (Radon) each first appeared in standalone films before being set against each other or even teaming up against stronger enemies. Their first encounter was in 1964, first in Mothra vs. Godzilla and a few months later of all three in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. In 1962, Toho released King Kong vs. Godzilla.
Games
Crossovers in video games occur when otherwise separated fictional characters,
Konami made the first crossover video game featuring Simon Belmont from Castlevania, Universal Pictures' King Kong and Mikey from the Warner Bros. movie The Goonies in Konami Wai Wai World for the Famicom in 1988.
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, released in Japan two months before Super Smash Bros. Brawl, was the first time that Mario and Sonic (as well as their associated characters) appeared in a game together.
Literature
In literature, some authors also engage in crossovers by including characters from different novels they have written in one.
The first popular crossover in literature was the 1885 Mark Twain novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which had an important guest appearance by Tom Sawyer. Similarly, Lady Glencora Palliser from the Pallisers series of Anthony Trollope appears towards the end of Miss Mackenzie, a novel published between the first and second Palliser novels in 1865, a character first introduced in the novel, Can You Forgive Her? (1864). Andrew Lang's 1890 collection, Old Friends: Essays in Epistolary Parody, contains letters combining characters from different sources, including one based on Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.[3]
Illustrator Howard Pyle conceived his work Twilight Land as one such crossover. In it, a nameless narrator is transported to "Twilight Land" and meets famous fairy tale characters for a soirée in an inn: Mother Goose, Cinderella, Fortunatus, Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin, Boots, the Valiant Little Tailor, and others gather in the framing device and tell each other adventurous tales featuring other literary personages.[4]
French author Jules Lemaître wrote a sort of sequel to Cinderella, named Princess Mimi, where Cinderella's daughter is courted by Polyphemus and Charles Perrault's Hop-o'-My-Thumb.[5][6]
Public domain
It is also common for authors to 'crossover' characters who have passed into the public domain, and thus do not require copyright or royalty payments for their use in other works. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill is another example of this, as all of the main characters and most of the secondary / background characters are fictional characters whose copyright has expired, and all are characters of different authors and creators brought together within one massive extended universe. Many of the works of Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton family sequences (which has also been explored and developed by other authors) also utilize and interweave numerous otherwise unrelated fictional characters into a rich family history by speculating familial connections between them (such as a blood-relationship between Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan). Roger Zelazny's novel A Night in the Lonesome October combines Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Frankenstein, Jack the Ripper, and the Cthulhu Mythos, although he never specifically identifies them as such ("The Count", "The Good Doctor", "Jack", etc.).
Occasionally, authors will include into crossovers classic fictional characters whose copyright is still held by the original authors (or at least their estates), but who are nevertheless considered iconic or 'mythic' enough to be recognised from a few character traits or descriptions without being directly named (thus not requiring royalties payments to be made to the copyright holder). A prominent example occurs within The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume One, wherein a character who is clearly intended in appearance and description by other characters to be Dr. Fu Manchu appears as a significant villain; however, as this character was not in the public domain at the time of writing and the rights still held by the estate of his creator Sax Rohmer, he is not directly named as such in the work and is only referred to as 'the Devil Doctor'.
Television series
Between established shows
Crossovers involving principals can also occur when the characters have no prior relationship, but are related by time period, locale or profession. The Law and Order series, for example, afford a commonality of setting and profession which lends itself to crossovers, both within the franchise and in a wider universe. Following the cancellation of the ABC soap opera One Life to Live and its high-rated finale, several characters crossed over into the network's remaining soap opera General Hospital, remaining in the same timeline as their former show.
Though most common on shows of the same
Mad About You and Friends share another type of "network crossover". On rare occasions, networks have chosen to theme an entire night's programming around a crossover "event". In one case, a New York City
In 2013, the Canadian crime drama series Republic of Doyle and Murdoch Mysteries produced a crossover,[9] which was complicated by the shows' incompatible historical settings; Murdoch Mysteries is a historical series set in the 1890s, while Republic of Doyle is set in the present day. The problem was solved by having the actors cross over as relatives of their primary characters; Allan Hawco appeared on the November 25, 2013 episode of Murdoch Mysteries as Jacob Doyle, a 19th-century ancestor of his regular character Jake Doyle, while Yannick Bisson appeared on a January 2014 episode of Republic of Doyle as Bill Murdoch, a 21st-century descendant of his regular character William Murdoch.[9]
The earliest example of a crossover in children's television was
Promotional cameos
Crossovers can take the form of a promotional cameo appearance, used to draw attention to another work of fiction, with little rational explanation in the context of the hosting show's narrative. When not clearly presented as parody, this is frequently scorned by fans as blatant commercialism. A notable example of this is The Simpsons episode "A Star Is Burns", in which the character of Jay Sherman (from The Critic) appeared. It originally aired on March 5, 1995, on FOX right before The Critic began its second season, its first season having aired on ABC. This episode was largely condemned by fans of The Simpsons as existing to promote The Critic, an animated series considered inferior by comparison. Even Simpsons creator Matt Groening objected, preferring to remove his name from the credits of that particular episode in protest.[10]
Spin-offs
In its simplest and most common form, a television crossover involves a starring character on a parent show appearing on a
More complex multi-production franchises can utilize crossovers of characters to serve as a device in establishing continuity in a shared fictional universe. This crossover is common in the
The distinction between "spin-off" and "crossover" is sometimes narrow. The two terms can become especially conflated if two shows are linked by a guest star with a single appearance. There is debate, for instance over whether Out of the Blue is a spin-off of Happy Days, or whether the star of Out of the Blue merely crossed over into Happy Days.
Parodic crossovers
Often, the problems of bringing together two shows with different narrative ambitions make the writing of a crossover burdensome. Such difficulties are encountered by
Parodic crossovers can be directly established as being outside the continuity of one or all of the properties being crossed over. A good example is the crossover between The Simpsons and The X-Files, which was largely accepted as being outside standard X-Files continuity.
They can occur by virtue of a dream sequence, in which the characters of one show will appear as part of a dream had by a character on another show. This method was perhaps used most famously to explain to audiences that the entirety of Newhart had been the dream of Bob Newhart's character on The Bob Newhart Show. It has more recently been used to demonstrate that cast members of The Young and the Restless appeared in a dream of a character on The King of Queens.
Parodic crossovers can take the form of "gag" cameos by characters of one property appearing on another. Crossovers of this type can also be completely wordless. This type of crossover is more common on animated programs, such as when Bender found and ate Bart Simpson's shorts on Futurama, or Milhouse had a talking Bender doll on The Simpsons. This would seem to be another case when a popular franchise is acknowledged as fiction and not a crossover of the stories.
Perhaps the most obvious parodic crossover is found when characters from two series interact outside either series. This occurs most commonly on a sketch comedy show or as a humorous interlude on an award telecast. Such crossovers may sometimes involve the real actors—for example, a sketch on Royal Canadian Air Farce saw Yasir and Sarah from Little Mosque on the Prairie buying the gas station from Corner Gas, with many of the characters in the sketch being portrayed by the shows' real actors—although they may also feature one genuine star from the show amid a cast comprised otherwise of the sketch show's own stable of actors. Parodic crossovers can be used to lend
German crossover
One of the earlier instances of crossovers in TV productions outside the US is the episode Unter Brüdern (1990), which was produced by WDR and DFF as a crossover between the West German crime series Tatort and the East German crime series Polizeiruf 110. Their respective popular heroes Horst Schimanski and Peter Fuchs join forces to solve a case in the turmoil of the time after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The episode was produced during the short transition period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany.
See also
- Amalgam Comics
- Canon (fiction)
- Callback (comedy)
- Continuity (fiction)
- Cross-licensing
- Fanfiction
- Fictional character
- Fictional universe
- Shared universe
- Tommy Westphall
- Wold Newton family
References
- ISBN 9780472053483.
- ^ "One Piece and Dragon Ball Z Collide in this TV Special". Kotaku. 8 April 2013. Retrieved 2020-03-18.
- Project MUSE 76001
- ^ Pyle, Howard. Twilight Land. New York: Harper, 1894.
- ^ "Princess Mimi", The Living Age (1921).
- ^ "Cinderella's Daughter". In: The Ruby fairy book. Comprising stories by Jules Le Maitre, J. Wenzig, Flora Schmals, F.C. Younger, Luigi Capuani, John C. Winder, Canning Williams, Daniel Riche and others; with 78 illustrations by H.R. Millar. London: Hutchinson & Co. [1900] pp. 3–18.
- ^ epguides.com listing for Pandora's Box, the episode which kicked off "Blackout Thursday" on NBC. Archived 2007-10-12 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Crossover Event: "The Time Ball"". poobala.com.
- ^ a b "Celebrating the Can-combo of Republic of Doyle and Murdoch Mysteries". National Post. November 25, 2013. Archived from the original on December 12, 2013.
- ^ Various reactions, including Matt Groening's, to A Star Is Burns Archived 2007-08-10 at the Wayback Machine
External links
- Thoughts On Crossovers In General (Kathryn Andersen) An essay musing on the numerous elements necessary to a successful crossover (primarily aimed at fan-written fiction).
- World Newton Universe Crossover Chronology Crossovers which build upon and take place in Philip José Farmer's World Newton continuity.
- "On Crossovers", Jess Nevins' history of the fictional crossover