Lets propose some out-of-genre crossovers!

[Dargaron]

Hello folks,

Whether it's Batman fighting Xenomorphs or Robocop entering the Mortal Kombat tournament, there are a number of surprising cross-overs even outside the main world of Marvel/DC comic universes. If given a budget, what kind of crossover media would you make, if given the chance?

Personally, I think it would be interesting to try merging Nolan-era Batman and our favorite licensed-to-kill MI6 agent James Bond. Neither possess explicitly supernatural powers, both rely on gadgets with varying degrees of plausibility, and their ostensible forte is "investigation." However, their styles and aesthetics are about as far apart as you can get, with the gruff American Street Vigilante contrasted with the suave, slightly-slimy British Intelligence Officer.

My framing device would probably be a team-up of villains: Either Talia al-Ghul or Black Mask called up their old acquaintance Blofeld proposing a joint venture to seize clandestine control of the greater Gotham area and plunder the tech secrets held by neutral companies in the area (including WayneTech, of course), splitting the proceeds between their organizations.

The Gotham section should probably not take up more than the first act, and the villains' henchmen should probably be successful in acquiring their MacGuffin. This gives our heroes an opportunity to meet each other and team up, but moving the action out of Gotham puts the two on neutral ground, instead of Batman having the homefield advantage. Maybe the heist was successful, but the henchfolks ended up going to ground after their getaway/rendezvous was botched, so now both the villains and the heroes are trying to locate the actual heisters before the other side.

For the final act, our heroes have to infiltrate the SPECTRE safehouse where the Batman villain (still unsure who it should be) has set up shop, facing both Bond-style security as well as Batman-style goons in their dungeon-crawl towards the boss encounter. Standard early 21st century action scene ensues, the place is trashed, and our heroes part ways to pursue their own adventures. Maybe end on a voice-over of Bond drafting his report back to MI6.

But enough about my fan-fiction: what fictional characters would you throw together, either in a novel or on the big screen?

[Tvtyrant]

Yugioh cast in a Korean Murim setting, because I think magic ninja gangsters would be hilarious with their costumes and personalities.

[Psyren]

Since you mention xenomorphs, I'd be curious to see how The Doctor would handle them. I'm sure that's already been done at some point though.

A Buffy / Sabrina crossover would be interesting.

[Jurai]

Battletech and Parks and Rec. I'd love to see how Ron Swanson responds to being out-masculined by a Clan Elemental.

[Lord Raziere]

Since you mention xenomorphs, I'd be curious to see how The Doctor would handle them. I'm sure that's already been done at some point though.

Well...there are a few ways that could turn out. Worst Case scenario, he considers the Xenomorphs something akin to a Dalek. which generally involves killing them in some roundabout way preferable to his sensibilities.

The other way it could go is that the Doctor sees the Xenomorph's ability to adapt and take on the DNA of the host they come from after a human has already fallen victim to a facehugger then modifies that, turns it against them to give the xenomorphs human empathy and minds, infecting the whole hivemind in some clever plan to make the xenomorphs more peaceful, and next thing you know you see the new xenomorph discussing how to reproduce without needing to kill people at a conference and trying to come with medical procedure to do so. same with things like Tyranids, you have even a little bit of human in you, thats something he'll exploit to make you think like one.

now the question is: how does he react to Warhammer 40k in general? he has defeated things stronger than most 40k factions in his weekly routine, the question is whether he'd see the Imperium as just another example of humanity's flaws or whether he'd be horrified/infuriated about them becoming the closest thing to a Dalek they possibly can.

[Rater202]

I imagine that xenomorphs in doctor who would, considering the Master's Latest schemes, end up cyber converted and/or captured and used to infect Timelords.

Or the Daleks seeing a rapidly reproducing and adapting organism dedicated to exterminating al life that isn't itself as a threat both to their domination of the Universe and as an ideological threat(Xenomorphs are constantly making themselves 'impure') and seeking to Ex-Ter-Min-Ate them which... Either the Daleks wipe out the Xenomorphs or the Xenomorphs wipe out the Daleks and now all of the Xenomorphs are easy to kill becuase they've been face-hugging Daleks and, well, Daleks suck as a species.

(For the record, Dark Horse lost the alien a Predator Licenses, and Marvel picked them up. Marvel used to own the rights to publish Doctor Who Comics and Doctor Who's the world are still listed as a canonically Marvel Earth. So...)

[TeChameleon]

Something insane like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and GaoGaiGar (Friendship is EXPLOSIONS!) could be fun. Especially since both series basically weaponize the Power of Friendship in oddly similar ways (giant beams of... friendship energy..?). Be rather interesting to see how G-Energy and the Elements of Harmony interacted, heh...

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Venom/101 Dalmatians.

It would need the symbiote to be unwilling to eat people or it would be a short crossover, so probably while it’s in a ‘trying to be a hero’ phase and maybe no permanent host available. I’m not sure how that could be done without it coming off as contrived.

But I very badly want to see Horace and Jasper set a bunch of traps on the floor of some hallway and then a swarm of Venom-possessed puppies go running by on the ceiling. And as for Cruella, what kind of crazy fashionista wouldn’t want shape-shifting clothes?

[dps]

I still like the idea of a Wild, Wild West crossover with Doctor Who, though arguably that's not out of genre as Wild, Wild West could be considered SF.

[JNAProductions]

Venom/101 Dalmatians.

It would need the symbiote to be unwilling to eat people or it would be a short crossover, so probably while it’s in a ‘trying to be a hero’ phase and maybe no permanent host available. I’m not sure how that could be done without it coming off as contrived.

But I very badly want to see Horace and Jasper set a bunch of traps on the floor of some hallway and then a swarm of Venom-possessed puppies go running by on the ceiling. And as for Cruella, what kind of crazy fashionista wouldn’t want shape-shifting clothes?

That is absolutely ridiculous.

I love it.

[Lacco]

Fawlty Towers meets Lovecraft with the style of Grave Encounters.

You get Basil Fawlty, an extremely quirky, yet funny elderly gentleman that runs this hotel with implausible geometry, where you enter one room and find yourself in completely different one. His foreign hired help speaks language nobody can comprehend, his wife spends all the time on phone but still manages to successfully do more than he does with his all efforts, while hungrily eyeing every young and nice male that enters the hotel. Their other helper is a girl that draws pictures nobody can comprehend.

Enter 2020 and a group of paranormal investigators decide to check out this hotel about which they heard. You get to see it Blair Witch style on camera, raw footage of all those "fun" scenes that happen.

...

...ok, scratch that. I'd most probably not watch that. But I still think John Cleese would be downright terrifying in it.

[Knaight]

I'm generally not impressed with crossovers from an artistic merit perspective, which leaves the other major considerations: cold hard cash and deliberately antagonistic art. The former is mostly unpredictable, though there might be opportunities with slamming lucrative properties together willy nilly in ways the rights holders would never have approved of.

For the second, it's more a matter of finding extant fandoms that take themselves too seriously (not a hard thing at all), and are unusually enriched in sufficiently annoying douchebags (not a hard thing at all). I'm thinking there's real potential with distinct groups of hard-sci-fi fans who make a really big deal about the hardness of the science, are familiar enough with one field to make sure it's mostly accurate, and have completely absurd portrayals of other fields.

There's all sorts of options here, but any two works that really embody the "hard physics, ludicrous biology" "hard biology, ludicrous physics" subgenres seem like they'd make particularly fun fireworks.

[Eldan]

Oh, almost none of the crossovers I've read is actually good. It probably comes closest to what I'd consider a guilty pleasure. But it just can be incredible fun to see characters from totally different worlds interacting, or to see characters trying to find out about an entirely new world. I also enjoy the worldbuilding of some, where they are trying to make two different worlds fit together. (One of the more interesting examples, that sadly was only a few chapters long and incomplete was a Dresden Files/Neon Genesis Evangelion crossover, where the Angels were Outsiders, the Impact was the entire Elder Council nuking Antarctica in an attempt to stop them, Nerv and Seele were affiliated with the Venatori Umbrorum and Harry Dresden, local Warden Commander, was sent to Japan as special investigator of the White Council to monitor their Arcanatech projects before they accidentally ripped reality in half.)

[druid91]

The Skaven of Warhammer Fantasy, dropped into Game of Thrones. Just plop Skavenblight down in Westeros and see what happens.

[Eldan]

Interesting. Are we doing it relatively subtly, like most of the Westerosi magical races like the deep ones or brindled men and old school warhammer RPGs, or full on weird gonzo punk warhammer style?

If the first, they are just another shadowy faction in the background, like the Skaven generally are in Sigmar's Empire for most of the story. They bide their time, assassinate the occasional too-successful ruler or too-curious maester and otherwise mostly steal corpses from battlefields, hiding under their global shadow magic while no one believes they exist. Until they feel the Upper World is sufficently weakened that they can unleash a plague and start conquering. Probably sometimes during the Winds of Winter, when the humans are starving and the last few strong armies have exhausted themselves in the Battle of Blood and the Battle of Ice.

If the second, they just roll over Westeros in 2-5 years, crushing everything under their doomwheels and lightning cannons.

[Tvtyrant]

Interesting. Are we doing it relatively subtly, like most of the Westerosi magical races like the deep ones or brindled men and old school warhammer RPGs, or full on weird gonzo punk warhammer style?

If the first, they are just another shadowy faction in the background, like the Skaven generally are in Sigmar's Empire for most of the story. They bide their time, assassinate the occasional too-successful ruler or too-curious maester and otherwise mostly steal corpses from battlefields, hiding under their global shadow magic while no one believes they exist. Until they feel the Upper World is sufficently weakened that they can unleash a plague and start conquering. Probably sometimes during the Winds of Winter, when the humans are starving and the last few strong armies have exhausted themselves in the Battle of Blood and the Battle of Ice.

If the second, they just roll over Westeros in 2-5 years, crushing everything under their doomwheels and lightning cannons.

Agreed. The Orcs ride dinosaurs and dragons into battle and lose to the Skaven, they would shatter Westeros like bugs.

[Eldan]

Well, there's still an off-chance that the Hightowers pull a star-forged superweapon of the old ones out from under their tower of ominous black rock. Or the Ironborn survive by causing a bloodbath big enough to summon enough Krakens that the Skaven can't get across the sea. Or Bolton really is a body-stealing immortal vampire.

[Durkoala]

Fawlty Towers meets Lovecraft with the style of Grave Encounters.

You get Basil Fawlty, an extremely quirky, yet funny elderly gentleman that runs this hotel with implausible geometry, where you enter one room and find yourself in completely different one. His foreign hired help speaks language nobody can comprehend, his wife spends all the time on phone but still manages to successfully do more than he does with his all efforts, while hungrily eyeing every young and nice male that enters the hotel. Their other helper is a girl that draws pictures nobody can comprehend.

Enter 2020 and a group of paranormal investigators decide to check out this hotel about which they heard. You get to see it Blair Witch style on camera, raw footage of all those "fun" scenes that happen.

...

...ok, scratch that. I'd most probably not watch that. But I still think John Cleese would be downright terrifying in it.

Only living in the world of HP Lovecraft could make Basil Fawlty endearing.

[Lacco]

Only living in the world of HP Lovecraft could make Basil Fawlty endearing.

Re-watched the first one yesterday. C'thulhu Towers is now my headcannon.

[Saintheart]

I'd love to see Roland out of The Dark Tower cast into the Mad Max universe.

I guess that's not really, particularly out of genre, since they're both Westerns at heart, but I've always thought the idea of Roland's worlds fraying as the Dark Tower slowly becomes more unstable seems to match pretty well with the slowly-decaying world we get out of the Mad Max films, particularly Fury Road.

EDIT:

Also, my personal favourite potential crossover:

Spoiler

Show

[TeChameleon]

Also, my personal favourite potential crossover:

Spoiler

Show

I'll see you and raise you.

I love me some superheroes, and am oddly fond of the Cthulhu Mythos, but the two don't cross well... you either get the heroes broken and dying before powers they cannot comprehend (or they themselves get warped into powers that cannot be comprehended and break that way), or you get, well, this.

Dumping the Justice League into the middle of the Lord of the Rings would be fun to watch (from very far away). Even if it probably would end up with Superman beating Sauron to death with Barad-Dur. Which I suppose would be entertaining in its own right

[Rater202]

Technically, the Cthulhu Mythos is part of Marvel Comics canon.

Both becuase Conan the Barbarian is a vital part of Marvel's prehistoric history and Conan's stories took place in a corner of the Mythos(some of Lovecraft's deities are mentioned and extraterrestrial beings are called 'Star-Spawn') with deities lke Set and Shuma-Gorath from Howards Stories remaining a regular threat even in the modern-day and becuase Cthulhu has appeared and been mentioned by name, as have several others.

And the concept of "elder Gods" was inspired by the Mythos and several of Marvel's original Elder Gods definitely share the look.

Spoiler: From the Marvel Wiki

Show

This is Chthon, Elder God of Chaos and the ultimate source of Magic as it is known to humans, best known for being the ultimate source of the Scarlet Witch's powers.

He normally takes the form of a white-haired and red-eyed human, but this is his true form. I'm sure that you can see the resemblance.

[Durkoala]

I'll see you and raise you.

I love me some superheroes, and am oddly fond of the Cthulhu Mythos, but the two don't cross well... you either get the heroes broken and dying before powers they cannot comprehend (or they themselves get warped into powers that cannot be comprehended and break that way), or you get, well, this.

Dumping the Justice League into the middle of the Lord of the Rings would be fun to watch (from very far away). Even if it probably would end up with Superman beating Sauron to death with Barad-Dur. Which I suppose would be entertaining in its own right

Funnily enough, Cliff McNish's Silver YA trilogy (The Silver Child, The Silver City and The Silver World) turns out to be something like this premise. Children across the country start to develop strange mutations for some unknown purpose, which turns out to be to settle the final battle between a planet-eating space worm and a planet-protecting space jellyfish. Both of these entities are rather cosmic horror and the ordeal and mutations are a huge source of stress and suffering for the children.

[TeChameleon]

Technically, the Cthulhu Mythos is part of Marvel Comics canon.

Technically, the Marvel Comics Canon is home to rather a lot of extremely strange things; the Transformers, Godzilla, Doc Savage, Fu Manchu, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Micronauts, Zoids, and even Ren and Stimpy. It's... probably best not to think about it too hard.

[Rater202]

Technically, Transformers were retconned into being separate sometime after the one and only issue that had evidence that they were one and the same due to Hasbro putting some pressure on Marvel to do things a certain way and they didn't want to give an outside company that much influence over their own characters.

And everything that wasn' integrated into the Marvel universe before a certain point is, when MArvel has the license, kept separate from te main universe.They learned their lesson with ROM.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Technically, Transformers were retconned into being separate sometime after the one and only issue that had evidence that they were one and the same due to Hasbro putting some pressure on Marvel to do things a certain way and they didn't want to give an outside company that much influence over their own characters.

So seeing Galactus and Unicron go at it is never going to happen?

Disappointing.

[Dargaron]

Technically, the Marvel Comics Canon is home to rather a lot of extremely strange things; the Transformers, Godzilla, Doc Savage, Fu Manchu, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Micronauts, Zoids, and even Ren and Stimpy. It's... probably best not to think about it too hard.

Because of the later sets of Heroscape, there's technically a direct linkage between Forgotten Realms/Eberron and Marvel Comics Universe. So Drizzt Do'Urden fighting Spiderman was surprisingly close to happening.

[Velaryon]

I'm not usually much of a crossover fan, but I think I want a crossover between WWE and Star Wars. Like, Randy Orton comes outta nowhere to hit an RKO on Palpatine or something dumb like that. It would be good for a few laughs at least.

[Hopeless]

And all I can come up with is a variation of that Australian series involving a mage moving to Earth to escape the constant turmoil on his own world only to have them come pay him a visit!

Except I'd use the MMO craze with one player having managed to roleplay his character into a brief marriage with an elf before being unceremoniously dumped out of the game to deal with real life.

However that elf decides to come looking for him resulting in her plane shifting from her world to here where she begins her search accompanied by their son.

He of course eventually settles down and has a kid with his wife only for their past to come looming as certain forces having discovered this and other worlds they have access to via these MMO's are trying to take advantage.

Of course they mess up royally releasing a number of invading forces least of all their own on their worlds and the world is slowly crumbling in the face of these warring realities.

No those Venom possessed puppies still trumps this!

[Fiery Diamond]

Two actual crossover fanfics that I enjoyed:

-Harry Potter & D&D (Harry Potter and the Natural 20) - Milo, child Wizard from a world that runs on D&D rules and tropes, is accidentally summoned to Britain in the world of Harry Potter and ends up enrolled at Hogwarts. It's a riot.

-Miraculous Ladybug & Detective Conan (Aftermath) - Conan and Kaito Kid visit Paris and end up Akumatized. This one is a short three chapters and was written back in the early days of Miraculous Ladybug.

As for ones I'd like to see... hm. Maybe Alex Verus in the Marvel universe dealing with supervillains? Alex Verus would make a good crossover character in general, actually - his innate powers are subtle enough to the outside observer to avoid triggering any alarm but powerful enough to help him take on significant threats. I'm a big fan of the Alex Verus novels; and I originally found out about them before they were published back when the author (a regular on these forums) was trying to decide on the title for the first book and was asking the Playground what their opinions were on the options.