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Fake Crossover
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"Don't worry, bro, none of this is canon."
— Uncle Grandpa, Steven Universe, "Say Uncle"

A Crossover which, for some reason or other, clearly doesn't count even remotely within the continuity of the visiting characters, the host characters, or both. Everyone might look and act the same, but you know these events are actually never going to be referenced again. This is generally due to one of two things, if not both:

  1. Copyright issues. In some cases, character ownership prevents one universe from acknowledging the other outside the special circumstances of the crossover and others like it. For example, the universes of Marvel and DC Comics have crossed over occasionally, but as they are each owned by rival conglomerates, constantly asking permission to have characters from one talk about characters from the other outside of a joke or parody is more of a hassle than it's worth.
  2. Story issues. In other cases, the crossing universes are just so different that having the crossover be canon just doesn't make any sense for one or both of the properties. Maybe the usual tones are different, such as one being a plot-heavy Dramedy and the other a Quirky Work with a loose grip on continuity?note  Maybe the writers feel like acknowledging the crossover would mess with whatever Myth Arc is going on in one of the properties? Or maybe the crossover was really just because Rule of Fun, and how it would make sense was the farthest thing from anyone's mind. Or maybe all three.

See also: Massive Multiplayer Crossover (which have a tendency to fall into this trope), Spiritual Crossover (frequently done for the same reasons as this), Crossover Alternate Universe (creating an alternate continuity for purpose of the crossover) and Comic Relief (if this isn't going to be canon anyway, might as well make things as silly as possible).

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • Progressive, an insurance company with plenty of advertisement, had an advertisement cross over with Sonic the Hedgehog of all characters! Sonic can be seen speeding around in the set as Flo tells him all the ways Sonic can save on his insurance. The scene even uses the invincibility and extra life themes from Sonic the Hedgehog 3, leading to many late Sonic fans who found the songs on YouTube being surprised that the songs existed prior to the commercial.

    Anime and Manga 
  • Akame ga Kill!: The seventh volume had a 2-pages crossover with Arachnid, showing Lubbock and Tatsumi in the latter series' modern world. The whole first page is spent with Lubbo wondering what the female characters of both series should be doing on the next page... just for it to be Kamadouma and Bulat, two secondary Macho Camp characters, sharing a handshake. The final panel then has Sayo and Yoshio, two characters who died in their respective series' opening chapters, wondering how to get a role again.
  • This is a common occurrence in Hiro Mashima's works, where various characters from his older series make appearances in his later works. While they mostly crop up as cameos, two of his biggest examples are Plue from Rave Master, who appears in Fairy Tail, and Happy from the latter series, who similarly makes the jump into EDENS ZERO along with Plue, both being identical-looking yet completely separate characters in each series. He also uses various names of groups, places, and objects in each series, with Etherion, Oración Seis, and the Ten Commandments just to name a few.
  • The Lupin III vs. Detective Conan special and movie can't really take place in the same universe as the two series. Not only has Lupin been mentioned as a fictional character in one of the Case Closed films, but Sherlock Holmes was a real-life person in Lupin's series, yet is still a fictional character in Conan's.
    • Conan's other big crossover partner Magic Kaito is an even messier instance of this, bleeding over into Schrödinger's Canon. In short: Kaitou Kid is such a recurring guest-star that he's made more appearances in Conan than his actual home series, and even his supporting cast (most notably his parents) have gotten some screentime. But his guest appearances never really address the lore of his own series, and Word of God has stated it's not the "real" one who interacts with Conan, apparently out of concern that MK's Fantasy Kitchen Sink setting would completely torpedo Conan's (mostly) sober, logic-driven Police Procedural setting.
    • A more clear-cut example is the crossover between Kaito and YⱯIBA, which even on its first publication was tagged a "dream" story. The plot is much Denser and Wackier than what either series usually runs (Kaito tries to steal an heirloom sword that Sayaka's family was never mentioned to own before), the entire Yaiba cast is shown hanging out at the dojo (something that rarely if ever happens in the main series, where they're usually traveling the world in search of some magic MacGuffin), and nobody ever mentions the story events again.
  • The One Piece X Toriko crossover manga and TV specials, the One Piece and Dragon Ball crossover, Cross Epoch,note  and the crossover special featuring all three. Interestingly, in the Super Collaboration Special, Luffy and Toriko recognize each other from their past meetings but have no idea who Goku is.
  • Kids' WB!'s promos had moments like Team Rocket sneaking into Yu-Gi-Oh!'s Duelist Kingdom, or the entire network's casts going on road trips and doing stunts together.

    Comic Books 
  • Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel Superman and Spider-Man: The events of both specials haven't been referenced by either franchise, and since it is assumed that both heroes, their respective supporting casts and Rogue's Galleries have always cohabited the same universe, they cannot take place in mainstream continuity.
  • Most crossovers between Marvel and DC Comics almost never get referenced in their own lines. One exception is JLA/Avengers, which had lasting influences on DC's universe, though the other company's characters can't be mentioned or depicted in flashbacks.
    • Another exception: a mobster named Jimmy Navarone, who first appeared in a Batman/The Punisher crossover gets mentioned in Nightwing Vol. 2 #44. Nightwing remembers that he was "axed by some out-of-town psycho vigilante. The Pulverizer, The Penetrator? I forget.") Amusingly, the writers could have easily made up a new mobster entirely or just picked another minor character for the purposes of that issue (Navarone is only relevant in that another character is his son-in-law), but they chose to go with a call-back to a crossover story instead.
    • Azrael references longtime Punisher foe Jigsaw by name during the Knightsend story arc, indicating that the crossover between Punisher and the Azrael-Batman was either canon for the sake of DC's side of things, or that someone messed up in writing the script for the issue in which it is mentioned. The Batman/Punisher crossover was the second part of a two-part story. The first one? Archie Meets the Punisher, which also Sequel Hooked it.
    • Another lampshade happens in Spider-Man and Batman: Disordered Minds. Spidey mentions his allies the Avengers and the Fantastic Four, then says he keeps waiting for Superman to call him, then is cut off because Batman seems to take slight offense at that.
    • In the introduction to What If?, while listing some examples of previous alternate universe stories, The Watcher notes that it remains unclear if Spider-Man's bout with that colorfully-clad alien happened in this reality or in another.
    • It used to be a roughly-annual tradition, back in the 70's, for both the Justice League and The Avengers to have a story taking place at the Rutland, Vermont Halloween parade. At least once, events in them influenced each other. It even spread to three other comic companies (Whitman, Charlton, and Warp). More info here.
    • One story that started in Aquaman #56 was concluded in Sub-Mariner #72, written by the same author. (Mind you, there was a three year gap between the two issues).
    • After the Marvel Versus DC (1996) crossover, an issue of Extreme Justice showed Blue Beetle stopping a villain using a sticky web substance. He proudly mentioned picking it up from a guy who recently visited from another universe. This earns extra in-joke points because they're both bug-influenced heroes co-created by Steve Ditko.
    • Parallax remembered that Cyborg (the evil Superman clone, not the one from the Teen Titans) once escaped to another universe, and that he had to pursue him. Just that. He does not mention Cyborg's fight with the Silver Surfer or his own fight with Thanos, at the Green Lantern-Silver Surfer crossover.
  • There were a few X-Men + Star Trek: The Next Generation comic crossovers:
    • These were followed by Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who: Assimilation², which was automatically made a Fake Crossover for on both sides via canon policies for both series (Star Trek comics are non-canon, period, whereas as a public broadcaster, the BBC's charter forbids its fiction programs to make plot-critical references to merchandise, which much of the Doctor Who Expanded Universe would qualify as, though the mini-sode "Night of the Doctor" averts that with the Eighth Doctor on screen name-dropping his expanded universe companions)
  • There was, actually, a crossover between Donald Duck and Tintin, entitled Freedom of Art (it hasn't been printed in the U.S. yet, and might never be). However, the current owners of the copyright to Hergé's characters threatened to sue Disney, leading them to slightly tweak the characters' names (Tintin became Denden, Haddock became “Hadciuk”…) and market it as a mere tribute.
  • Topps' Jason vs. Leatherface crossover, taking place after Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, is an Alternate Continuity, as it features characters who are either deceased or have different names in their own stories.
  • NBC Saturday Morning Comics #1 has characters from several shows appearing together on the cover, but they are all self-contained stories.
  • The G.I. Joe comics had two in-continuity crossovers with The Transformers (Marvel) comics during G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel) (with one of them occurring within the regular G.I. Joe series). When the comic was later revived by Devil's Due, the events of both crossovers were retconned and major events in the crossovers that affected the ongoing continuity (such as Dr. Mindbender's revival) had to be explained differently.
    • G.I. Joe actually did this a few times. In The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #268 (1985), Duke makes an unnamed appearance as head of a military unit assigned to carry out the wreckage of the Heroes for Hire building (which the Beyonder had turned into gold). It's the first item at the top of the page here: [1] There was also a short story in Action Force (which G.I. Joe was known as in the UK) in which Quick Kick narrates the story of Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu, and explains that Shang Chi was his master. Quick Kick describes Shang Chi as the greatest artist he's ever known and places him above Iron Fist, Batroc, and Elektra. This was done to introduce readers to the Master of Kung Fu reprints that would become a back-up feature in the Action Force comics. The story can be enjoyed here [2]
    • Similarly, an early issue of The Transformers (Marvel) comics had the Autobots briefly teaming up with Spider-Man, before later issues indicated that the Transformers were in a separate universe from most other Marvel comics. A few issues after Spider-Man teamed up with them, Ratchet traveled to the Savage Land (Marvel's jungle hidden in the Antarctic where dinosaurs, cavemen, etc, still exist) to track down the Dinobots. And of course there was Circuit Breaker, whom Marvel snuck into a Secret Wars II appearance BEFORE her Transformers debut, just to cement her ownership as being wholly Marvel's.
    • Ironically in the original four issue mini, both Nick Fury and Dum Dum Duggan appear and briefly reference Godzilla's Marvel run when news first starts to spread about living robots coming out of Mt. Saint Helens. It should also be noted that the military vehicles used by the army in that episode were in fact G.I. Joe weapons: The MOBAT Tanks and the Wolverine Missile vehicle.
  • Nightstalkers: Issue #4 had a short, one-page story titled "In Memoriam" where Hannibal King pays his respects at the grave of the recently-deceased Superman. It counts because Superman's grave is depicted as very humble-looking and as including his real name, whereas he was actually laid to rest underneath a giant statue of himself and his Secret Identity never uncovered.
  • "Into the Great Unknown" is a Star Wars and Indiana Jones crossover where the Millenium Falcon crash-lands on Indy's homeworld and he finds a very familiar-looking fellow inside, dead.
  • Archie Meets the Punisher as it's obviously too ludicrous to be canon. The comic doesn't take itself too seriously, adding to the joke.
    • Archie vs. Predator and its 2019 sequel are non-canon for both the classic and reboot series. The latter doubly counts since the survivors of the first series crossing over with the reboot characters is portrayed as a "Classic meets Modern" miniseries.
  • Mercury Heat had the arc "Another Bloody Crossover", which started out as an apparent crossover with Crossed, with an outbreak of the Crossed virus on the comic's future colonised Mercury. It's quickly revealed that Crossed exists as a fictional work within the Mercury Heat setting, and the outbreak is because of a mad scientist who is a fan of the comic intentionally creating a computer virus that hacks people's "wetware" brain implants to make them act like Crossed infectees.
  • In 2023, IDW released several comics called "Endless Summer" for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dungeons & Dragons and Sonic the Hedgehog. These have a variant cover that can be connected together, forming one image of all of the characters from these comic books relaxing on one beach, with Sonic running being the reason for the dust clouds seen on the covers of the other comic books. The stories themselves have no connection to each other.

    Comic Strips 
  • Pearls Before Swine frequently features the characters meeting characters from other comic strips, all of which are definitely non-canon for the other strip. A borderline example is a Crossover Punchline with Sally Forth (Howard) during a storyline where Rat is a hotel concierge; the Forths were on vacation at the time, and the same day's Sally had Ted say he'd been speaking to the concierge, but in the PBS strip he asks Rat to find him an escort, which ... probably didn't happen in Sally Forth continuity.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Martial Arts Movie titles may imply a crossover, such as Kung Fu Masters: Jackie Chan vs. Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee vs. Jackie Chan, or Jackie Chan vs. Jet Lee; these are collections of separate movies. Movies like Cinema of Vengeance, Top Fighter and The Deadliest Art may claim to be starring all of the main actors featured on the cover, but are actually documentaries full of Stock Footage interviews and movie clips.
  • An advert for Sky Movies cuts together multiple James Bond car chases to make them appear to be racing/chasing/killing off each other. Since canonically they're all supposed to be the same person...
  • In Pixels, the video game characters are not part of a crossover, as they are aliens appearing as video game characters.

    Literature 

    Live-Action TV 
  • The charity special "Dimensions in Time" was a Doctor Who/EastEnders crossover. Since the shows have since been shown as Mutually Fictional, it's probably fair to say it never happened. (And before the new Doctor Who series established it as such, the tie-in novel First Frontier wrote it off as All Just a Dream).
  • A promo for the Japanese DVD season sets of House featured the title character teaming up with fellow Dr. Jerk Black Jack.
  • One of the sweeter crossover-yet-not-a-crossover moments occurred on I Love Lucy. George Reeves appeared, wearing his Superman costume, and was referred to exclusively as "Superman" by the rest of the cast. The dialogue was designed to avoid spoiling for the children in the audience the illusion that this was the genuine Superman — while making it clear to the adults watching the program that Ricky and Lucy were interacting with the actor George Reeves and calling him Superman merely as a playful but respectful reference to his famous character. There's a meta-joke where Reeves moves a piece of heavy furniture — casually — with one hand — and the adults looked momentarily stunned. Maybe it WAS a crossover?
  • Monk and several of the USA Network shows including The 4400 and Psych were crossed over in a series of their commercials. Since Monk takes place in San Francisco CA, The 4400 in Seattle WA, and Psych in Santa Barbara, CA — it's unlikely the crossover would ever happen canonically to any of the aforementioned shows.
    • USA loves doing this:
      • The campaign leading up to the premiere of In Plain Sight had Mary being visited by characters from USA's other shows, who would give her "housewarming" gifts and welcome her to "the neighborhood". Perhaps the funniest involved WWE wrestler Big Show bringing Mary a gift wrapped folding chair, then being denied access to her bathroom.
      • Similarly, in one ad for Royal Pains, Michael Westen sends Hank Lawson a care package containing sunglasses, sunscreen, and a brick of C4 "because you never know when you'll need a stable plastic explosive."
      • The characters from White Collar have started appearing in these as well - they have done crossover commercials with Psych, WWE Raw (the Big Show again) and Burn Notice.
      • Also, in celebration of Monk's final season, USA released a new round of ads where the characters from all of its currently airing original shows (Burn Notice, Psych, In Plain Sight, Royal Pains, WWE Raw, Law & Order: Criminal Intent) give their opinions and recount their experiences with the titular detective.
      • In the series finale of Psych, Shawn goes to San Francisco to be with Juliet and Gus follows. While the Chief is happy to see them, she mentions they already have a consultant who is implied to be Monk (said consultant is said to be "in the kitchen, alphabetizing the cereal boxes"), making this more interesting.
    • The commercials for Hellboy II: The Golden Army did the same thing, with Big Red meeting up with James Lipton, Chuck, appearing on Ghost Hunters and American Gladiators and doing a "The More You Know" PSA.
    • In 2009, ABC started a new ad campaign called the "ABC House" in which characters from various ABC shows live together under one roof.
      • One such ad seemed designed to toy with Lost fans: Dominic Monaghan, who played Charlie, appears in one of the ads, even though he wasn't on an ABC show at the time. His death is even mentioned in the ad. Fans went wild wondering if the ad confirmed he was coming back to Lost. A few weeks later, he was revealed to be joining the cast of Flash Forward, a new ABC show...although he did appear throughout the final season.
  • The Muppets are prone to this:
    • The Cosby Show had an entire episode of a dream sequence, with the second half involving characters from The Jim Henson Hour.
    • Scrubs made a guest appearance in It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, as Miss Piggy's very brief acting career (she plays a patient who dies during an operation).
      • In turn, Oscar the Grouch, Grover and Elmo from Sesame Street as well as a generic orange Muppet appear in the Scrubs episode "My ABC's". All within J.D.'s Imagine Spots, of course. And in turn, said generic orange Muppet would later make a cameo in a season 40 episode of Sesame Street; the scene in question doesn't mention Scrubs but it does implicitly alludes to it as its subject was x-rays.
    • There was of course The Muppet Show episode where Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, C-3PO and R2-D2 guest starrednote , alongside Mark Hamill, presented in the show as Luke's "cousin". (This was apparently regarded by Lucasfilm as an "Infinities"-level canon material before the massive reorganization of Star Wars continuity.)
    • The Muppet Movie featured Big Bird in a cameo in which he is journeying to New York in order to make it in public television, something that would be out of odds with Sesame Street's treatment of the character.
    • Beaker is supposed to be related to WWE wrestler Sheamus according to a Monday Night Raw Halloween broadcast.
  • Power Rangers has had two cases:
    • Back in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the three-part episode 'A Friend in Need' served as a Poorly Disguised Pilot for the by-then-in-production Masked Rider. However the first episode of Masked Rider proper contradicts what happened in 'A Friend in Need' and besides a passing mention in the final arc of Mighty Morphin', both series never acknowledged each other again.
    • Early in Power Rangers in Space, an episode revolved around the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (specifically the incarnations from Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation) being brainwashed by the villains to attack the Rangers. For obvious copyright reasons, no acknowledgement of the Rangers living in the same world as the Turtles has happened ever since, although the two franchises crossed over again in comic form twenty years later.
  • One episode of Roseanne had Luke and Laura, of General Hospital, talking with Dan and Roseanne about the wacky adventures each couple had experienced throughout their respective marriages.
  • The Christmas episode of Father Ted featured the cast of the contemporary Irish comedy Ballykissangel. However, it was a dream sequence.
  • Similar to USA Network above, MeTV commercials often feature characters from shows that air on the channel interacting with each other in silly ways, such as Carol Burnett being prosecuted in court by Perry Mason, MacGyver setting out to rescue Lucy, Kirk and Spock ending up in Mayberry after jumping through The Guardian of Forevernote , and Mama showing up pretty much anywhere in any show's universe.
  • Nickelodeon has done mashup commercials as well. A memorable one back in The '80s featured Danger Mouse as Cinderella, with four clones of Lisa Ruddy as his wicked stepsisters, receiving help from Mister Wizard, and then encountering a "terrible ogre" played by Les Lye.
  • Legends of Tomorrow has one in the most literal sense possible in Season 5: the Legends wander across a filming location for Supernatural while in British Columbia, and at one point poke around the Impala.
  • Kamen Rider
    • The Japanese Super Hero Time block where both it and Super Sentai air has the contemporary Sentai and Riders interact and hang out in bumpers. These have no bearing whenever the two series cross over in specials, episodes or movies.
    • Both Kamen Rider Den-O and Kamen Rider Fourze have met the cast of Crayon Shin-chan; the former has Shinnosuke transforming into Kamen Rider Shin-O with the power of the Three-Assed Pig Imagin, while in the latter he turns into an Astro Switch that lets Fourze undergo a Toon Transformation.
    • The annual Movie Wars films sometimes fit this trope when it comes to the current show (for the cast of the previous show, it tends to be a Postscript Movie or more rarely a Grand Finale). The Rider will gain some kind of movie-exclusive Super Mode or item that never turns up in the series proper, and they'll never think to ask the Riders they met before for help when things start looking bad later in their own series. In a few cases, the movie completely clashes with the series' continuity or the characters' established personalities (the biggest offender being Kamen Rider OOO's portion of Movie Wars Core). Fourze, Drive, Ex-Aid, and Build are among the known exceptions that managed to fit the crossover movies firmly into the shows’ continuities.
    • Kamen Rider OOO's mid-series film, The Shogun and the 21 Core Medals, serves as a pseudo-crossover with the long-running Jidaigeki drama Abarenbo Shogun, with the lead actor coming back to play, if not the same role again, another intentionally-similar version of the same historical figure. While Abarenbo Shogun had ended a few years before, it had never involved any of the weird Science Fantasy stuff that takes place in an average Rider series; plus it gets weird when Eiji is shown watching an episode of Abarenbo Shogun before everything went down. The film can potentially also be considered to be "fake" on OOO's side as well; as there are continuity issues with the main series.
    • Back in the 70s, a magazine had an official photocomic of Kamen Rider V3 helping the infamous Toei-produced version of Spider-Man fight against some mooks of the Iron Cross Army. For obvious legal issues, this has never been referred since.
    • Kamen Rider G has a scene where Decade appears and calls in the other Heisei Riders to give G a pep talk. It's also a one-off special affectionately parodying the entire Kamen Rider franchise, so odds are it's not canon to any of the shows, especially considering the Big Bad of G shows up in Decade as the Big Bad of the World of Kabuto arc with nary a reaction and G himself never appears in any crossover film gathering all Riders (until Kamen Rider Zi-O: Over Quartzer, but that scene also featured Riders from different continuities and even one from an unofficial parody that Toei bought the rights to).

    Theatre 
  • Avenue Q and Fiddler on the Roof had a hilarious one of these for the 2008 Easter Bonnet competition in which everyone was Jewish and lived on "Avenue Jew"; obviously it didn't affect the plotline of either show.

    Toys 
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossovers, including Star Trek: The Original Series, Universal Monsters, and Troll dolls, were typically the source material characters amalgamated with the four main turtles.
  • Transformers:
    • The Animorphs crossover has characters turning into animals like in the source material, but it does not actually involve Transformers.
    • The G.I. Joe and the Transformers San Diego Comic-Con exclusives feature characters from both series. The sets are mostly commemorative instead of presenting a new story to justify the crossover.
    • The crossover with Star Wars features ships that turn into giant versions of Star Wars characters, fitting into continuity with your imagination.
      • This has also happened with other crossover toys. The Excuse Plot for the Marvel crossover line was that Mr. Fantastic and Iron Man gave the heroes vehicles that turned into large versions of themselves, while Doctor Doom did the same with villains. Other properties haven't gotten better treatment, with there being official Transformers toys for Hello Kitty, Mickey Mouse, Peanuts having no in-universe explanation on why they have transforming mecha based on them.

    Video Games 
  • In Angry Birds Transformers, the Eggspark turns the birds and pigs into the Autobirds and Deceptihogs, so the Angry Birds characters are only playing as the Transformers characters.
  • The Battle Cats crossovers usually feature characters based on the source material instead of the actual characters.
  • PlayStation Move Heroes makes no sense when it comes to the Sly Cooper timeline. The most logical conclusion is that it takes place between the second and third games, since Bentley is using his hoverchair and Sly hasn't retired from heisting, but in the opening cutscene, they are trying to break Murray, who is supposed to be on a worldwide journey of enlightenment, out of prison.
  • Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney's special episodes couldn't possibly exist within the Ace Attorney timeline. Besides the fact that those episodes gleefully break the fourth wall, Maya uses Luke Atmey's Borrowed Catchphrase "Zvarri!" and Phoenix still clearly has his badge, so it can be concluded that the main events of the game must take place between Case 3-2 on October 11-14, 2018 and the 4-4 past segment on April 19, 2019. While this gives ample time for the events in Labyrinthia to take place, it's explicitly mentioned that the special episodes take place a year afterwards, putting them in late 2019 or early 2020. By this point, Phoenix is disbarred and Maya is off training to be the Master of the Fey clan, so there is no logical reason for the Ace Attorney characters to be in London at all.
  • A Video Game and Digital Pinball Table example: In addition to the titular hedgehog, Sonic Pinball Party also features NiGHTS and Samba de Amigo, but the three characters never actually interact with each other.
  • Do you really think Soul Edge or Soul Calibur will ever show up in the Star Wars, The Legend of Zelda, God of War or Imagenote  universes?
    • While the Soul series does share continuity with Tekken (Soul's Yoshimitsu is the ancestor of Tekken's Yoshimitsu), Heihachi's appearance in Soul Calibur II was not canon.
    • While there was a Soul Calibur crossover with Star Wars: Visions of the Blade, and both titular weapons made appearances, it was published under the Infinities label and is non-canon.
  • The "realness" of Nintendo Crossovers depends on where the franchises sit on the Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness and it's possible for a crossover to be one-sided. Kid Icarus: Uprising and Metal Gear Solid are both games with very little regard for the fourth wall but only the former references the events of Super Smash Bros.. Kirby meeting Samus in Kirby's Dream Land 3 is a mandatory part of the game which needs to be done for 100% Completion, but it's unlikely the Metroid series will ever acknowledge Samus' alleged trip to Popstar. She also never slept in Peach's bed, but Mario seeing her and Link is canon, because everything in the Mario franchise is canon.
  • Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE, a Crossover between Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem, takes place in its own standalone continuity with elements of both franchises, albeit it would become more connected to the latter after many of its characters became available in Fire Emblem Heroes.
  • Mortal Kombat does this a lot too. None of the endings in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe make sense when applied to their respective worlds, and it has been confirmed as non-canon by Word of God. The same can be said of the Guest Fighters who appear in the later games (Kratos, and Freddy Krueger in Mortal Kombat 9 and Jason Voorhees, Predator, Leatherface, and the Alien in Mortal Kombat X); the explanations as to why these guys are Kombatants make little sense when their own canon histories are applied.
  • The events of "Mesal Gear Solid: Snake Escape" and "Snake vs. Monkey" are unlikely to be referenced in any future Metal Gear or Ape Escape game.
  • A promo of LBX: Little Battlers eXperience features the main characters arriving at the club room of Raimon football club.
  • Normally, one would expect Namco × Capcom, which uses a shared world concept, and it's followups the Endless Frontier and Project × Zone games would fall into this easily. And for most of the series' involved they do. Until Super Robot Wars: Original Generation: The Moon Dwellers brought Endless Frontier's Haken Browning to the OG series, mentioning his meeting with Sanger Zonvolt in the first Project X Zone. This makes NxC/PXZ's shared world an explicit part of the Super Robot Wars multiverse.
    • Similarly, the previous game also treated the appearances of three of it's characters in Another Century's Episode R as an actual disappearance that gets resolved in that game.
  • While Jacket as a character in PAYDAY 2 is canon, the differing time-frames and the ending of the second game makes the events of his home series incompatible with that of Payday. This is in contrast to the rest of the guest characters, whose movies are implied to have "already happened" (or will happen).
  • Persona 5: The Phantom X: Following Mayumi Hashimoto's addition to The Phantom X in the Global/JP version as a Synergy Bond partner and summonable Phantom Idol, Mayumi was asked for her opinion of Joker's Arsene Wing car from Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, since she wants to be a Racing Queen. The crossover is only limited to this post, as it can't fit neatly into canon anywhere.
  • In Virtua Quest, the characters of Virtua Fighter exist as data in the Nexus, a virtual world.
  • Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists: Atelier of a New Land brings together characters from the many different continuities of the Atelier Series. However, these aren't the actual protagonists of past games being transported to this game's world, rather, they're characters who just happen to look and sound exactly like them while having lived in this universe all along.
  • Warriors Orochi falls heavily under the story issues banner. The series is primarily a crossover between Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors. Since both of the aforementioned series mainly adapt historical events, it’s very much a Foregone Conclusion that we won’t see either main series have their cast talk about the epic battles they had with warriors of the past or future.
  • Almost every Disney world visited in the Kingdom Hearts games are meant to be alternate versions of the settings from the original works, as their stories are Broad Strokes retellings half the time and clearly not the original versions (despite Tetsuya Nomura's self-admitted headcanon that he imagines Sora and co. entering the actual stories of the movies when he writes them). The sole confirmed exception to this is the Toy Box world in Kingdom Hearts III, for which Word of God states that Pixar refused to let Toy Story be represented as a simple retelling and so worked collaboratively with Square Enix to write its story as a canonical Toy Story 2.5 set within the continuity of the original films. It can be inferred that the same applies to the Monstropolis world.
  • The NES versions of Lode Runner and Bomberman are set in the same universe, as the enemy robots from the former game was used as the design for the titular protagonist for the latter, who is ultimately revealed to be the Lode Runner himself after having been turned into a robot. But because Lode Runner was not a Hudson Soft property, later games ignored this connection, with the later TurboGrafx-16 version of Bomberman having to come up with a new origin story.
  • The Revenge of Shinobi for the Genesis features a shapeshifting enemy character as the end boss of the sixth stage who has two forms: in the first form he is a pastiche of Spider-Man, but after sustaining sufficient damage, he turns into a winged version of Batman. In later revisions, the two forms were redesigned and turned into separate enemies. While the Batman-esque form became more Devilman-looking in the revised versions, the Spider-Man-like form became a cameo from the actual Spider-Man himself with official Marvel endorsement (due to the fact that Marvel licensed out the character for a separate Genesis game), who fights Joe Musashi for a bit before he leaves after sustaining sufficient damage.
  • Shadow Generations: In the Movie DLC pack, Shadow the Hedgehog from the Sonic the Hedgehog game universe enters the real-world Tokyo from Paramount's Movie universe and even transforms into his movie counterpart in body and voice. However, the level is treated as another world that Shadow enters and departs just as quickly, leaving no real-lasting consequences to Shadow Generations or the movie universe as a whole. Even Shadow's comment about his return is more or less a nod towards his movie counterpart's plan and vengeance in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024).
  • Azur Lane had a crossover event with hololive which had its own story. The vtubers were seemingly transported to the game's world while in the middle of their Minecraft livestreams. This results to various Minecraft elements being present within the stages and the storynote , albeit altered or are vaguely described as to be legally distinct.

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Video Example(s):

"House meets Black Jack"

This one off, non-canonical commercial brings Dr. Gregory House and the unlicensed surgeon Black Jack, together for the first and only time ever, as part of a cross promotion between the TV Series, House and the Black Jack OVAs.

Example of:
Fake Crossover

★★★★★ 5 (13 votes)
(Leave a comment)

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"House meets Black Jack"

This one off, non-canonical commercial brings Dr. Gregory House and the unlicensed surgeon Black Jack, together for the first and only time ever, as part of a cross promotion between the TV Series, House and the Black Jack OVAs.

(Leave a comment)

How well does it match the trope?

5 (13 votes)

Example of:

Main / FakeCrossOver

Media sources:

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