Fans have drawn so many outfits for Katy that Gil wasn't even the first to give her a white fur-trimmed skating dress.
Fans are asked to send in stuff that will be incorporated into the show's Canon or Bonus Material (particularly Side-Story Bonus Art). It could range from lines of dialogue, to costume/character/vehicle/etc. designs, to entire plot points.
A common form is to directly ask fans for stuff, and they send it in. Sometimes there is a contest for a major thing to incorporate. Credit is usually given to the senders, partly as a courtesy to the fans, and partly to avoid Plagiarism.
This may or may not be considered a good thing. If fan-created elements seem to take over the show, it can be seen as the writers going creatively bankrupt (like there is Running the Asylum). On the other hand, some elements help the fans feel like they are part of the show, helping old and new fans stay invested.
A Sub-Trope of Audience Participation (this trope requires a process to submit and apply, unlike the other forms).
A Sister Trope to Ascended Fanon, Ascended Fanfic, Fandom Nod, Ascended Meme (neither one is directly asked for, but they're still incorporated into canon), and Fourth-Wall Mail Slot (which is directly asked for, but usually isn't canon).
Compare Contest Winner Cameo, Crowdfunder Cameo, Make-A-Wish Contribution, Harpo Does Something Funny (having the actors submit stuff that wasn't in the script), Throw It In, Promoted Fanboy, Approval of God.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Goldfish Crackers held a contest where kids could submit their original Goldfish characters. The winning character was a pink fish with a bow who has a crush on Gilbert. They claimed this character would appear in a commercial, but she never did.
- Olympic Mascots: Izzy's rename from "Whatizit" was decided upon by kids from a shortlist of five names sent in by children across the world, with the other suggestions being Kirby, Starz, Zack, and Gleamer. Over 32,000 submissions were received in all. Children also submitted short stories about Izzy in the "Great Adventures of Izzy" writing campaign.
Anime & Manga
- The Digimon series has had a number of fan Digimon contests, with Thunderballmon making it into Digimon Adventure 02; Cyberdramon, Dobermon, and Orochimon making it into Digimon Tamers; Zanbamon, Karatenmon, and Pandamon making it into Digimon Frontier; and Pharoahmon and Scorpiomon making it into Digimon Fusion.
- Doki Doki! PreCure had a contest in conjunction with Kondansha's children's magazines Otomodachi and Tanoshii Youchien
where children aged 2-5 had to draw a new dress for Makoto which would show up in Episode 40. The winner was a girl named Chiba Hiyori.
- Fairy Tail did something like this where fans were allowed to design characters for villains. They showed up as the Hungry Wolf Knights in the Grand Magic Games Arc.
- The first half of episode 67 of Gintama was based on the winning submission for a contest to create an amanto character.
- Gundam:
- Crossbone Gundam features a Mobile Armor, the Elgolela, designed by a fan — Kanetake Ebikawa, who went on to design Mobile Suits for Gundam 00. Likewise, Gundam SEED let fans submit designs for the MSV line; the winner was the Lightning Striker Mecha Expansion Pack for the Strike Gundam. The GuAIZ was also a contest winner.
- Most of the pre-0079 UC timeline was also originally created by fans.
- Gundam Build Fighters and Gundam Build Fighters Try have done this, allowing fans to create suits via three ways — coloring a picture of a Mobile Suit via Gundam Try Age, building an actual Gunpla or using the video game Gundam Breaker and Gundam Breaker 2. The winnses were respectively a red-and-yellow Deathscythe, a black-and-white kitbash of more than five different MS's and a heavily modified Zssa.
- Crossbone Gundam features a Mobile Armor, the Elgolela
- Jewelpet: Certain Jewelpets are the result of character design contests held by Sanrio during the airing of the anime. One of the major Jewelpets, Labra the labradorite polar bear, was the winner of the original 2009 series' contest. Charlotte, Jasper and Sakuran were also created by fans.
- The creators of Kinnikuman and Ultimate Muscle thrive off fan-submissions, with many of the series Ensemble Darkhorses coming from fan characters that caught on, such as Ramenman. In fact, Eiichiro Oda, the creator of One Piece, got his start submitting a character to Kinnikuman as part of its New Chojin Contest. Said character, Pandaman, would go on to make cameos in various One Piece media as a Easter Egg.
- Kirby: Right Back at Ya! hosted two:
- There was a contest for fans to submit art of their own created monsters. The winner was a monster named Sharbon, a bubble-blowing monster that was featured in "Scare Tactics Part 2".
- A second contest was made for fans to submit their own Copy Abilities. The four winners were Water, Top, Iron and Baton. These four would be featured in the two-part "Air Ride in Style" special. Three of the four have been incorporated into the games: Water has been recurring since Kirby's Return to Dream Land, Iron received a spiritual successor in the Metal ability from Kirby: Squeak Squad, and Baton has a counterpart in the Staff ability from Kirby Star Allies.
- A pretty regular feature of Kongoh Bancho; some of the fan-designed Banchos get to be prominent antagonists (three members of The Five Dark Vows, most notably), while others only turn up to get curb stomped by even tougher villains.
- A distinguishing trait of the Love Live! series, where a good amount of content is submitted by fans, such as names for characters, locations, and groups.
- To celebrate the hundredth episode of Shin Lupin III (the "Lupin III: Part II" series), fans were urged to send in ideas for capers for Lupin. Four ideas were chosen and turned into full episodes, and the fan who submitted the idea was listed in the credits as a "story consultant".
- The 2011 anime short film (29 mins) Mai no Mahō to Katei no Hi is the winning story from a contest to create an anime to promote the Toyama Prefectural Family Day (or 'Katei no Hi') (the third Sunday in each month). The contest winner Moeko Shimizu was in fourth grade when she won the contest in 2005.
- One of the Chess Pieces in MÄR was created by a fan of the series.
- Microman ran a contest after the toyline's revival in 2000 to design a character, the winner being Shakunetsu who actually went from being an exclusive figure to having two later mass releases and a starring role in a couple of the manga.
- Monster Musume: The artist Okayado accepted submissions on his Twitter for people to get themselves featured in the manga. Known as Mob Characters, they were heavily featured in chapters based around the onsen, allowing people to get dates with their preferred monstergirls. The sheer amount of cameos numbers in the hundreds, and essentially turned the dating chapters into excuses to see how a multitude of Ascended Fanboys would react to having hot monstergirls flirt with them.
- Studio Gainax once ran a contest for fans of Neon Genesis Evangelion to design a new Angel. While the winner's Angel design was not included in an episode, Gainax did produce official artwork◊ of an Evangelion facing off against it.
- One Piece:
- Eiichiro Oda has directly stated that he writes the canon himself, and as such he will not take suggestions from the fans on this. However, he will gladly take suggestions to anything that is not canon, such as the splash pages that show the Straw Hats with animals. Fans immediately sent him a lot of suggestions, so all such pages are now derived from a reader's idea. He is also known to incorporate fan suggestions for minor character stats, usually in the form of:
JC Reader: "Please make [character]'s birthday [date]!"
Oda: "Okay." - This also applies to mini-comics he does for his data books. One story chosen, "RPG Time", was actually based on a idea from the fan forum Arlong Park, who themselves pooled together and voted on ideas to send to him for it.
- Eiichiro Oda has directly stated that he writes the canon himself, and as such he will not take suggestions from the fans on this. However, he will gladly take suggestions to anything that is not canon, such as the splash pages that show the Straw Hats with animals. Fans immediately sent him a lot of suggestions, so all such pages are now derived from a reader's idea. He is also known to incorporate fan suggestions for minor character stats, usually in the form of:
- The classmates in The Prince of Tennis manga were named by reader submission.
- PriPara:
- The signature Laala uses in was designed by a fan of the series as part of a contest.
- The Idol Time season had a contest to design a new mascot to appear in the anime, with the winner being a rainbow-colored turtle.
- The signature
- Re:CREATORS weaponizes this for the antagonist, Military Uniform Princess. Her true source of power comes from her fan content (both in and out of universe), so every single power they can think of for her can be used is she so chooses. Fan art of her from Pixiv and Twitter also made its way into the show.
- Shinya! Tensai Bakabon had a contest to submit art for the second-to last episode to be used in the ED. Those who couldn't make it were shown off on the official Twitter.
- Shugo Chara! has an episode featuring a Chara made by a fan. The character also had plushies made of it.
- Much like the game it was based on, CoroCoro Comic ran a fashion contest for Splatoon. The winner would have their outfit modelled by Goggles.
- The final volume of the original run of Tokyo Mew Mew had, as its cover art, Ichigo wearing a dress sent in by a fan for a contest.
- The Toriko manga and anime has featured several beasts/ingredients which were the winning entries of contests to design them. The manga goes so far as to actually credit the designer of the beast/ingredient.
- The "Deranged Marriage" arc in Urusei Yatsura has Lum's father trying to set up his daughter with a better husband than Ataru by throwing a huge party and inviting potential suitors from all across the galaxy. The character designs are all submitted by fans, and even have tags hanging off them showing the name and age of the fan who designed them.
- In Yatterman, many mechas used by the Terrible Trio were designed by fans.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! has run a number of "create a card" contests, quite a number of which went on to appear in the series.
- In Zatch Bell!, there was a contest where fans design their own mamodo child to feature on a card.
- The creator of the manga Zodiac P.I. held a contest to create one of the little Zodiac sprites that assist the main character, Lili. The winner, Astrea the Libra sprite, was featured in a full chapter with her own name and personality, and even appeared in several omakes!
Comic Books
- Adventure Comics:
- In issue #397 (1970), the editors invited readers to design new versions of Supergirl's costume. Several of them would be featured in the next issues until issue #410 finally featured the winner costume, which Supergirl would wear until 1983.
- Seventies Adventure also had a "Fashions From Fans" feature for the Legion of Super-Heroes, some of which (most notably Saturn Girl's "swimsuit" and Duo Damsel's first costume to split into orange and purple when she used her powers) would later appear in the main story.
- Norm Breyfogle's first published artwork was one of several fan-designed Robin costumes in Batman Family from 1977, 11 years before he became the regular Detective Comics artist.
- John Byrne wrote the Darkseid/Galactus: The Hunger one-shot after a kid at a comic-book convention asked him what would happen if Galactus tried to eat Apokolips.
- The 1980s version of the comic book Dial H for Hero had the protagonists use their H-dials to transform into fan-submitted characters. Harlan Ellison submitted a villain, and a twenty year old fan named Steve Mattsson submitted a character, the Flying Buttress, which he would re-use when he was the co-writer on Superboy and the Ravers.
- Within a loose view of the Disney Ducks Comic Universe canon, certain ideas or fan comics submitted to official creators' blogs and heartily approved by said official creators have got some credit, and are treated as such on the wiki.
- Writer Bill Willingham solicited questions about his Fables series from fans, selected his favorites, and gave in-canon, official responses as a series of vignettes that made up issue #59 of the series.
- To promote the Harley Quinn: Villain of the Year one-shot, DC provided a website for the audience to vote for which villains the awards should go to.
- Katy Keene was able to have all that Costume Porn because the artists actually incorporated outfit submissions from fans. Virtually every submitted outfit has a caption nearby giving credit to whoever sent in the design.
- Millie the Model, Patsy Walker, and My Friend Irma also incorporated costume submissions from fans.
- In the beginning, Samson of Monica's Gang had no name. It was chosen in 1983, at the suggestion of a 2-year-old girl named Roberta Carpi, from Ribeirão Preto. Another contest was held in 1989 when Maggy got a cat as part of her own comic, and a fan named him Vanilla.
- Nightwing: Haley, Nightwing's dog in Nightwing (Tom Taylor), was named by a fan contest.
- Fans can have their submitted characters appear in Pride High. One fan-created character even joined the main cast.
- In an early issue of Savage Dragon fans were asked to design villains, and the winner's character would fight Dragon in an upcoming issue. The winning character was a mutant dockworker who went by Jimbo da Mighty Lobster.
- Spider-Man: The Venom symbiote from Spider-Man was created by a fan named Randy Schueller, who submitted the design for a red-on-black Spider-Man costume to a contest. Mike Zeke altered the design to white-on-black, and the symbiote was born.
- Thunderbolts had two characters created by fans in contests, Charcoal (winner of a Wizard magazine "Create A Villain" contest - remained on the main team for a while until the creator asked for the rights back and it turned out the original agreement was very vague on the legalities, so he was Killed Off for Real) and Humus Sapien (winner of a "Create An X-Man" contest in 1973, but who was never actually used until a small arc nearly 30 years later). There was a parody of the old Hostess ads, Tastee Fruit Pies, which a fan gave to writer Kurt Busiek, and he liked it enough to bring it to Marvel for a redesigned version (albeit a plan to bring one of the artists in those 70s ads fell through).
- Since X-Men: The Krakoan Age, Marvel Comics held an annual ballot for a character to be added to the X-Men's roster, with the winner being revealed in that year's Hellfire Gala one-shot.
- For 2021, the nominees were Armor, Banshee, Boom-Boom, Cannonball, Forge, Marrow, Polaris, Strong Guy, Sunspot, and Tempo. The winner was Polaris, who joins Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Sunfire, Wolverine, Synch and Rogue in the roster.
- For 2022, the nominees were Armor (again), Avalanche, Bling!, Firestar, Gentle, Gorgon, Micromax, Penance, Siryn, and Surge. The winner was Firestar, who joins Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Synch, Iceman, Magik, Forge, and Havok in the roster.
- For 2023, the nominees were Cannonball, Dazzler, Frenzy, Jubilee, the Juggernaut, and Prodigy. The winner who joins the roster of Talon and Synch was... All of Them! Or so it seemed, as they were attacked and killed by Orchis's Nimrod, except for the actual winner of the ballot, the Juggernaut.
Comic Strips
- Doctor Who Magazine: The Vortexians, the Monsters of the Week in the 1995 story "Land of the Blind", were based on the winning entry in a monster-design contest the magazine ran. The three runner-up designs all appeared as cameos in crowd scenes within the story.
- A contest was held to design the character Lena the Hyena in Li'l Abner. The winner was Basil Wolverton, whose design appeared in the Li'l Abner strip as well as in Life magazine.
- Silly Symphony: The inaugural story from the 1932 strip featured a contest in which readers could send in potential names for an unnamed bug character, who would soon be known as Bucky Bug. The winner, Bernice Sable from Minneapolis, received an 18-inch Mickey Mouse doll as a prize.
Fan Works
- The Background Noise of Defiance: In-universe, this seems to be a common practice on Scrap Hunting, where the highest donator in Luke's livestream chat would be allowed to pick the colour and name of any droids he fixes up. As a princess, Leia is able to pitch in such a high donation in Mouse Droids that Luke allows her to name any other future mouse droids he comes across.
- The author of Becoming Female asked her readers whether Sirius should come Back from the Dead, and they decided he should. Later on, she asked whether Crystal (Harry's female name) and Draco should have sex now or wait for marriage. Readers decided on now.
- The character of "Horizon" in Beyond Heroes: Of Sunshine and Red Lyrium appears because of this trope. The author had a small contest on Tumblr and the winner got to create a small side character for inclusion in the fic.
- cool and new web comic: All of the fantrolls featured in "FL1P" and "M8KE H8R P8Y!!" were submitted by fans to o for the sole purpose of killing them all off at the end.
- In Connie And The B Team, the Omega Colony gems are all fan-created Original Characters.
- The creator of Disney High School often asks fans to suggest outfits for the characters to wear. She also created a poll to decide whether Tiana or Kuzco would win the election for class president. (It's the former.)
- In Divided Rainbow, several of the Sicklefin gangsters were submitted by fans.
- The author of the Danny Phantom series, Facing the Future Series, is willing to accept ideas from readers to help enhance the series.
- The author of Later, Traitor took a reader poll to decide how the plot would go on once Frazie reached Thorney Towers. The winning decision was to have original characters incorporated in the story to add new minds to go through.
- In Mass Effect: The Equestrian Equation and its (canceled) sequel, Shades of Twilight, in true Mass Effect fashion, a choice is presented at the end of each chapter that readers could vote on which decision the protagonist would make, letting the fans decide the outcome of the story.
- Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race:
- A couple of fans have given the author ideas he's used in the fic, such as Brain Bot returning in Episode 8 and ProtoMan taking command in Episode 9.
- Splash Woman is getting a Ruby-Spears redesign based on a fan's sprite of an RS-her.
- At one point in My Immortal, Tara asks her readers for suggestions regarding what Sirius' gothic name should be, never mind "Sirius" is fairly gothic already. Apparently, "Hades" was the winning entry.
- In Mega Man Reawakened, in Arc 1, readers were asked to vote which Robot Master Robert would fight first; Cutman was the winner.
- Downplayed with the author of Panem Reborn. In return for server boosting and (previously) winning certain contests on her Discord server, she would give naming privileges for characters in the series. She phased it out due to abuse of the system, plus concerns over people overloading her series with other people's names instead of her creative property.
- The author of Pokémon Reset Bloodlines actually lets others write entire stories taking place in the same continuity as his work, under the condition they check with him first.
- Siren Call:
- After Chapter 9, the author ran a contest where readers could submit a character profile, with two being chosen to be added to the story as one of Anyra's friends and an enemy. When the contest was done, the author admitted that they couldn't choose between the entries and added all of them instead.
- A second character contest was run after Chapter 22, with readers being asked to submit profiles for a boy who would be Anyra's stalker. The winning profile was Carlos Blackwing.
- Shortly after Turnabout Storm was completed, the creator held a "Wright a bad ending contest" for fans to decide what would have happened if the trial had ended with Rainbow Dash being pronounced guilty.
- The authors of both Total Drama Everything and Total Drama Infinite allow their readers to vote on what characters will compete as well as offer ideas for new characters.
Films — Animation
- The Garfield Movie: On the end of the Internet version of the trailer is an ad inviting fans to submit videos of their cats acting like Garfield (adding "dogs are welcome too") for use in the film's marketing campaign.
- The two drawings in The Powerpuff Girls Movie, Bubbles's crayon drawing of the Professor and the wanted poster of him and the girls, were the winners of a contest Cartoon Network held in conjunction with its production.
- After Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse came out, Marvel Comics asked fans to submit designs and backstories for "Spidersona" characters to be featured in Spider-Verse Vol. 3 (2019). One of those characters, Sun-Spider, appears in the film's sequel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, where she even has lines.
Films — Live-Action
- Godzilla:
- Jet Jaguar in Godzilla vs. Megalon was based on a character created by a contest winner.
- Godzilla vs. Biollante was based on a fan-submitted story idea written by a dentist named Shinichiro Kobayashi. Funny enough, he had submitted a similar story for a similar contest for the Ultra Series back in high school, adapted into the 34th episode of Return of Ultraman "The Life That Can't Be Forgiven", which also featured a giant plant monster created by science gone wrong and fought at Lake Ashi.
- Martin (1977): The Japanese dub cast of the BD release of the film was chosen by the fans, thanks to crowdfunding and with an All-Star Cast to boot.
- For Rebel Moon, Zack Snyder organized a U.S.-only contest for original ideas for aliens, creatures, or mechanized characters who might fit into the Rebel Moon world. A lot of AI-made art had to be weeded out upon the first submissions and a new round of them had to be done as a result. Ten persons won.
- After one of his films flopped, Cecil B. DeMille held a contest in which he asked the public what his next film should be about. The winning entry came from F.C. Nelson, a manufacturer of lubricating oil in Lansing, Michigan. His suggestion ("You cannot break the Ten Commandments — they will break you.") inspired the 1923 silent version of The Ten Commandments.
- As a thank you to Memory Alpha, the main Star Trek fandom wiki, for helping him keep the story facts and details straight while he was writing it, Simon Pegg invited its originators to name a MacGuffin Vulcan mineral for Star Trek Beyond. A bit of research and brainstorming cooked up "vokaya" for the "You gave your girlfriend radioactive jewellery?" scene. They were rewarded — for this and the wiki — with a Special Thanks credit in the film.
- In TRON: Legacy, the audience cheering in the disk wars scene was recorded using attendees of a Tron panel at ComicCon.
Literature
- Repercussions: The Fans Write!, an anthology set in the Aeon 14 universe written mostly by fan fiction authors (plus two stories written by franchise originator MD Cooper and another by the Sentience Wars sub-series' co-author James S. Aaron).
- Bruce Coville's Book of... Nightmares features Steven Prohaska's Halloween Party, which was the winner of a story contest announced in Bruce Coville's Book of Monsters.
- Discworld: The Streets of Ankh-Morpork and The Discworld Companion started out like this: Stephen Briggs happened to mention to Terry Pratchett that he thought the city could be mapped, and he had a card index of references he'd made while doing so. Of course, this meant Briggs went from fan to part of the Discworld cottage industry, at which point the follow-ups arguably stopped being an example.
- For many years, the people running the Doctor Who novels had an open submissions policy, meaning that anybody could submit a novel proposal. As a result the vast majority of books before the series came back were written by fans. At one point, Big Finish ran a Doctor Who short story competition, with the prize being that the winning story would be published in one of their anthologies. In the end, they received so many good submissions that they made an entire volume out of them.
- Since 2016, Big Finish has hosted an annual Doctor Who short story competition in memory of beloved late team member Paul Spragg, allowing fans to submit a synopsis and extract from their proposed story. The winner is invited to turn their idea into a full story, which is then released for free as part of Big Finish's Short Trips range.
- From Goosebumps:
- In 1994, an official "Name a Goosebumps Book" contest sponsored by Scholastic was held, allowing for grade-schoolers to suggest the title for an upcoming book to be released around summer 1995. Over 1,600 titles were submitted, and there ended up being a winner announced on Halloween of that year — Slime Doesn't Pay, suggested by 11-year old Jimmy S. of Glencoe, Illinois. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the book seemingly disappeared... until nearly thirty years later, when Stine's publisher announced that he was finally writing Slime Doesn't Pay for a September 2023 release, albeit as a standalone title.
- In 1998, a similar "name an upcoming Goosebumps story" contest was sponsored by Parachute Press and General Mills. To ensure the story would actually happen this time, R.L. Stine would be visiting the school of the contest's winner and writing the story in person, though the catch would be that it'd end up being a short story rather than a full-fledged novel. Still, this once again provoked thousands of submissions, and the winner came from 10-year old Braden G. of Lacona, Iowa: Dead Dogs Still Fetch, which was not officially printed, but the live session in which it was brainstormed and written was successfully archived in video form.
- L. Frank Baum reportedly got the ideas for many of the later books in the Land of Oz series from fans who wrote him letters.
- The Legacy of the Force series had readers submit suggestions and then vote in a poll to choose Darth Caedus's Sith name, with the runner ups being Darth Acheron, Darth Judicar, Darth Paxis, and Darth Taral.
- In the Rainbow Magic series, readers voted on Mia the Bridesmaid Fairy and Juliet the Valentine Fairy's names.
- Reign of the Seven Spellblades: The characters Jasmine Ames and Rosé Mistral were the winners of a reader submission contest to create an original Kimberly Magic Academy student.
- Author Derek Landy of the series Skulduggery Pleasant created a competition to submit a character during the writing of installment five, Mortal Coil. Charlie Smith won, and his character, Geoffrey Scrutinous, was included in it and subsequent books.
- Many of the later Xanth books incorporated puns from fans, and Piers Anthony would devote whole appendix chapters giving credit to the submitters.
Live-Action TV
- Babylon 5: The mineral Quantium 40 (vital in Jumpgate construction) was named following a poll held by JMS among members of the old GENiE boards.
- Beakman's World ran on science questions submitted by kids.
- Bewitched had the episode "Sisters at Heart" written by several inner city school kids that touched on racial issues. The writing staff only added content to ensure the episode met standards and practices and was of appropriate length. All changes were approved by the students.
- Blue Peter often has contests which ask viewers to submit ideas (such as costume designs or characters) for BBC shows or the program's own productions, with the prize usually being having their entry actually featured. For example: the monster from the Doctor Who episode "Love & Monsters" was designed by the winner of a Blue Peter contest; and the half-a-TARDIS-console-room used by Idris and the Doctor in "The Doctor's Wife" was also designed by a contest winner.
- In 2006, The Colbert Report did a parody of the "Star Wars Kid" in front of a green screen as part of one of its "Better-Know-A-District" segments. After fans started making their own videos using this footage to put Stephen Colbert in different situations, he decided to hold a contest (known as the Green Screen Challenge) to see who could come up with the best video... which George Lucas himself entered (and got 2nd place).
- Diners, Drive-ins and Dives visits restaurants suggested by viewers. In fact, the suggestion form asks that you be available for interview if they decide to visit the place you recommend.
- Dirty Jobs relies on viewers to submit suggestions for jobs to cover. Every episode ends with a clip of Mike Rowe (usually covered in muck) asking for viewers to send in suggestions.
- Doctor Who: The audio soundtracks of the episodes that were junked by the BBC survive thanks to audio recordings made by fans from the original broadcast, which were later returned to the BBC archives. Uniquely, the only colour copy of episodes 2-7 of "The Ambassadors of Death" is an early home video recording made from the story's original US broadcast by a Canadian fan, which is of low quality but was used in the story's DVD reconstruction.
- Until 2011, viewers' artwork was often shown on The Good Night Show.
- The short-lived 2009 comedy In The Motherhood was based on real life stories submitted by viewers.
- Kamen Rider Double had a contest to determine the monster for the annual Hyper Battle DVD. The winner, the The Oyakodon Dopant, even plays into the show's Detective Drama nature by having the Dopant challenge the heroes to identify his ingredients, leading to an Iron Chef-style cook-off between the heroes.
- Each episode of The Loretta Young Show was based on various fan letters she had received.
- The MythBusters requested socks for the Knock Your Socks Off Myth (was originally going to be the "Lost Socks in the Dryer" myth, but they changed their minds). This is in addition to all of the unsolicited items sent in by fans. Many myths to test are suggested by fans on their forum. Most of the retests are based on users in the forum, the exception being the re-retest of the Archimedes death ray requested by Barack Obama.
- The story for the Punky Brewster episode "Cherie Lifesaver" was submitted by a young viewer.
- Seinfeld: In "The Junior Mint", Jerry forgot the name of the woman he was dating; all he knew for sure was that her name sounded like a female body part. The producers of the episode had trouble figuring out what her name should really be. Before the live taping of the show they had a comedian warm up the audience, which was a common procedure for them. When the comedian mentioned the plot of the show, one audience member shouted out "Delores", which Jerry Seinfeld agreed was a better answer than the one the writers had come up with, so he changed the script on the fly to include it.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation accepted fan-written spec scripts throughout its run. Four actually made it into production: "The Bonding," "Measure of a Man," "The Offspring" and "Tin Man." Two other episodes were based on stories supplied by a fan.
- Super Sentai Series: For No.1 Sentai Gozyuger, the series that commemorates the 50th Anniversary of the franchise, a contest named "We're Looking for Your Ideas for the Super Sentai Reds!" was held, where fans could submit their own Red Ranger, with the winner getting an appearance in the series. The winner was Origa Red, submitted by a fan named Luca.
- The Sunny Side Up Show had photos and videos, artwork, messages, online games, and birthday cards all submitted by viewers via Sproutonline.com.
- Ultra Series:
- The Return of Ultraman episode "The Life that Can't be Forgiven" was the winner of a contest to pitch your own Ultraman episode that was held by Tsuburaya Productions at the time. Its writer, a high school student named Shinichiro Kobayashi, would later go on to submit a similar story to Toho under similar circumstances, resulting in Godzilla vs. Biollante.
- Several Monsters of the Week in the franchise were the winners of contests in which children got to submit their own kaiju designs to appear on the shows, notably Ruganogar from Ultraman Max, Taraban from Ultraman Tiga, and both Tepeto and Guyros in Ultraseven.
- In the third season of the game show You Don't Say!, the names and clues used on the bonus board were furnished by home viewers.
- Zoom ran on skits that were based on ideas submitted by other viewers.
Magazines
- Boys' Life had a contest in which readers would submit fanart of their mascot, Pedro the Mailburro, visiting other time periods, to help inspire a new storyline for his comic, The Wacky Adventures of Pedro. The winning picture had a crack in Pedro's mirror-turned-time machine send his top and bottom halves to AD 71,000 IO and AD 2 Tarentum, Italy, respectively.
- In addition to fan art printed in the Mailbox section, Disney Adventures would occasionally run a contest like this. Notable instances were the heroes and villains contest, the winner(s) of which got a comic devoted to their creation.
- Torchwood: The Official Magazine: A contest was run where readers were asked to send in short stories, with the best being published. The ones which were published were "Ash to Ashes", "Rift-Raff", and "Lockdown".
Music
- Alphaville's Crazyshow features three songs with lyrics that were submitted by fans who were subscribed to the band's official e-mail mailing list. The songs are "ZOO" and "Those Wonderful Things" on Disc 1, and "The II Girlz" on Disc 2.
- Barenaked Ladies had a contest for people to send in video of them lip-synching to their song "Wind it Up", and various clips were made into the video.
- Beastie Boys' live DVD Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That! was created by lending audience members camcorders at a show and cutting together the best footage.
- David Bowie's "What's Really Happening?", from 'hours...' (David Bowie Album), features lyrics and backing vocals by a fan named Alex Grant, the winner of a contest on Bowie's official site where fans could submit their own lyrics to the song. Reportedly, all of the then-current members of The Cure also entered the contest individually.
- Welsh alternative rock band Feeder held a fan contest for somebody to make the "Just a Day" music video.
- Peter Gabriel: The music videos for the Dark Side mixes of "The Court" and "Panopticom" were created as part of a contest where people sent in AI-generated animations set to the first four singles from i/o (i.e. "Panopticom", "The Court", "Playing for Time", and the Title Track). The winning video for the former was based on sculptures by prior Gabriel collaborator Tim Shaw, who also designed the cover art for the song's single release, while the video for the latter was made as an allegory for "the boundless possibilities that emerge from the fusion of human creativity and AI."
- The Dick's Picks series of audience recordings of The Grateful Dead concerts.
- For Korn's 1999 album Issues, the band held a fairly high profile fan submission contest for the album's cover art, resulting in the top 4 being released as official album art.
- Rapper Mac Lethal had a series on YouTube in which he rapped lyrics submitted by fans.
- There are two official videos for "Missed the Boat" by Modest Mouse, the winning video from a fan competition and a video featuring clips of several submissions to the contest. The winners of the contest, a duo of film-makers who go by the name "Walter Robot", later became professional music video directors due to the attention the contest garnered for them. They've gone on to direct videos for Death Cab for Cutie, Underoath, and several other artists.
- In 1986, MTV sponsored a contest called "Make My Video" in which viewers were encouraged to send in a video set to Madonna's then recent single "True Blue" (from the album of the same name), with a grand prize of $25,000 (about $75,000 in today's money). Then the channel held an event called "Blue Thursday" on October 30, 1986, where it aired all of the entries, which ranged from semi-professional clips featuring actors shot on film stock, to lip-syncing teens shot on VHS. The winning entry was by a 21-year-old film student named Angel Gracia, who flew from Florida to New York to hand-deliver his entry to the MTV offices when it unexpectedly got returned to him in the mail right before the entry deadline. It was then shown until Madonna's official video for the song debuted. Gracia has since gone on to a professional filmmaking career.
- OK Go's song "I'm Not Through" was the subject of this music video contest — the winning video in particular is a very OK Go-ish Oner.
- Placebo:
- The music video for their cover of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" is made of clips from videos of fans lip-synching.
- The stop-motion music video for "English Summer Rain" was actually a fan creation produced by Grégorie Pinard; the band was so impressed by it that they decided to use it as its official promo video. It actually holds a Guinness World Record for being the world's first official fan-made music video!
- Red Hot Chili Peppers:
- On their 1998 tour, they played a song called "Bunker Hill", which they went on to attempt in the 'Californication' and 'By The Way' sessions, but were never completely happy with it, so a studio version didn't get released. Over this time, fans were constantly asking them about this song. Eventually they decided to remix it to their liking (with a new bassline) and put it out as the B Side of Fortune Faded in 2003.
- The band had a contest in 2007 for fans to make their own video for "Charlie". The winning entry became the official video for the song and appears on their official Youtube channel. This despite the fact that the proposed single release was cancelled.
- The vinyl-exclusive compilation of I'm With You outtakes was named I'm Beside You after the band saw the idea on a fan forum. The songs had previously been released on 7" and digital singles, so discussion had often turned to peoples' compilations of them.
- Sonic Youth:
- The cover of Washing Machine is a picture that was sent in by a fan.
- The band held a music video contest on MTV's 120 Minutes to promote their album Dirty, which asked fans to create a clip for any track on the album. The winner was "Drunken Butterfly", directed by Stephen Hellweg, which featured handmade puppets of the band performing the song. The videos for "Swimsuit Issue" and "Nic Fit" were also submissions from this contest, though both took a more Leave the Camera Running approach — the former consisted of a group of shirtless men smoking while listening to the song, the latter showed a fan running in a field while holding a stuffed animal on fire.
- The concert videos for Space's 'Drop Dead', 'Blow Up Doll' and 'Mister Psycho' were all made by Andy Wilton, a Newcastle filmmaker and huge Space fan. The band liked them so much they used them to accompany the songs at their gigs. Alan Hagar, the guy whose face appears in the 'Mister Psycho' video, has even played guitar with them a couple of times.
- Devin Townsend has invited fans to participate in his productions on a few occasions.
- Devin invited fans to create their own unofficial music videos for "Lucky Animals". The official video was then made by stitching fan submissions together.
- Both discs of Z2 feature the "Universal Choir", composed of the voices of over 3000 fans who submitted recordings of them singing parts of the song.
- Devin invited fans to create their own unofficial music videos
- Pretty much all of Velvet Underground's officially released live albums save for their 1993 reunion are made up of fan recordings.
- Both the cover art and title of Weezer's Maladroit were submitted by fans — the cover was created by a fan for an official contest, while the title was a suggestion made in a less formal thread on the band's official forum asking for album name ideas. They also had fans contribute to the songwriting process less directly: The band would post demos of songs they were considering for the album, and would take fans' reactions into consideration when arranging songs, as well as letting them influence which songs appeared on the album to some extent.
Podcasts
- The Adventure Zone: Balance had fans submit items that the characters could buy at Fantasy Costco.
Puppet Shows
- The Sprout Sharing Show featured videos of viewers doing something like swimming or dancing ballet and drawings which would become animated stories that had been sent in via Sproutonline.com.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- The first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons book Fiend Folio was mostly composed of submissions to the "Fiend Factory" column in White Dwarf (1977). Of note is that several submissions were produced by British author Charles Stross, namely the death knight, the slaadi, and the githyanki and githzerai — all of which have gone on to become some of the game's most iconic monsters.
- The Ranger character class came to be when a fan submitted a letter-to-the-editors proposing a set of rules for a character class transparently based on Aragorn. Gary Gygax filed off the traits most obviously derived from the Tolkien character (such as the inexplicable proficiency with magical viewing devices), and it's been part of the game ever since.
- Heart: The City Beneath: Ahead of the release of the revised 2024 rulebook, players were encouraged to share short epitaphs for characters who'd died in their campaigns. Some of them were then included within the rulebook itself. Although the book doesn't expand on any of the details, this also introduces some new concepts to the Heart's maze of tunnels, including murderous fractal seagulls.
Thought you should know. Art'r Grim died last night, ripped apart by a flock of fractal seagulls
-M - Magic: The Gathering:
- Magic has held a "You Make the Card" event four times, allowing players to submit and vote on cards that would eventually become Forgotten Ancient, Crucible of Worlds, Vanish Into Memory, and Waste Not.
- The now-discontinued annual Magic Invitational tournament invited the game's top players to compete for the chance to submit their own custom card to the game and get their face featured in its artwork. Since the Invitational players included some of the best in the world, many of these cards turned out to be tournament powerhouses, like Dark Confidant, Solemn Simulacrum, and Snapcaster Mage.
- For Magic 2015, Wizards solicited card designs from several pillars of the gaming community, including Markus Persson, Penny Arcade, Mike Neumann, Edmund McMillen, George Fan, Stone Librande, James Ernest (Cheapass Games), David Sirlin, Brad Muir, Richard Garriott, Justin Gary (Stone Blade Entertainment), Isaiah Cartwright, Rob Pardo, and Brian Fargo.
- Magic has held a "You Make the Card" event four times, allowing players to submit and vote on cards that would eventually become Forgotten Ancient
- RuneQuest: The (in-) famous Durulz, a race of humanoid ducks from the Glorantha setting, started as a one-off joke. One time, players in a campaign led by the game developer scribbled "Duckburg" onto the campaign map, because hey, it was filling out the map somewhere out of the way and gave them a laugh. Then some time later one of them brought a small figurine of a toon duck, declaring to have found what the inhabitants of this "Duckburg" look like.
- Wingspan: Six promo packs of 25 cards each were published in 2025, including birds in regions already in the game.
Toys
- LEGO:
- LEGO loves doing this for the BIONICLE franchise. They've used these sort of contests to establish a variety of Rahi species, Dark Hunters and the character Toa Krakua. These were published in the LEGO Magazine, in guide books, or online.
- A number of them had a surprisingly prominent presence in the story. Though none were immune to being Killed Off for Real, as Ancient and Guardian can tell you. LEGO was also fond of letting the fans design already official but previously unseen characters, either as fan-made LEGO figures or as drawn artwork, which then received official status. Certavus, Surel, his Iron Wolves and Toa Nikila are just a few of these. The Agori villager named Kyry is an interesting case, however: a fan-built model of him was declared canon, but when he appeared in a comic, he looked nothing like the model due to the miscommunication between the writers and the comic artist.
- LEGO Ideas (formerly CUUSOO) is an official channel (currently in open beta) where fans can submit their designs for models and vote on which ones they'd like to see enter production. Fan designs that get 10,000 user votes are sent to LEGO's team for consideration.
- LEGO Worldbuilder takes it even further, allowing users to create their own original (as in, non-licenced) themes and contribute to other people's worlds as well. The "worlds", as they're called, do typically need a high number of votes, but it's more up to the LEGO Group themselves to decide what's made into an official LEGO Franchise.
- LEGO loves doing this for the BIONICLE franchise. They've used these sort of contests to establish a variety of Rahi species, Dark Hunters and the character Toa Krakua. These were published in the LEGO Magazine, in guide books, or online.
- A 1986 contest to design a character for Masters of the Universe was won by an eleven-year-old named Nathan Bitner, with a camera-headed creation called "the Fearless Photog". One of the rewards, in addition to a $100,000 scholarship and other perks, claimed that the winner's character would be released as a toy, but the toy never came to pass. When X-Entertainment posted a blog entry about Photog in 2003, the curious commenters managed to track down and piece together a surprisingly detailed biography of Bitner's life from then on, from being a lead designer for Halo (apparently with a large hand in the creation of Cortana), to the flop of his own startup video game company, filing for bankruptcy, and other rumored scandals. After several months of investigation and minor Internet sensation, word of this finally reached Bitner himself, who by then was a medic serving in the U.S. Army. He was pretty surprised by all the fuss. By the way, Fearless Photog finally got released as an action figure in 2012, over 25 years after the contest, as part of a 30th anniversary Masters of the Universe toy line.
- Transformers:
- In 1999, three Beast Wars Neo characters (Archadis, Mach Kick, and Bazooka) were made from the winning designs of a magazine contest.
- In 2013, Hasbro made a poll to allow people to create a new character choosing between various options in a poll (faction, name, gender, weapon, altmode, color scheme, special abilities, origin place and characterization). The final result was Windblade.
- Hasbro did it again in early 2015, this time to make an entire combiner to tie in with the Combiner Wars subline. This time the poll options were slightly more restricted, in particular because this time the various characters forming the combiner had to be retools of preexistent character molds from the first 2-3 waves of the toyline. This time we got Victorion as our final result.
- In 2025, there was the "Activate Your Alt-Mode" fan vote. It involved choosing a pre-existing character (the options were Starscream, Grimlock, Mirage, and Shockwave), and selecting a new alt-mode from a combination of different options. The winner was Shockwave as an aquatic beast. In the end, Hasbro were the ones to decide what the specific beast was, and they chose a whale.
- The Trash Pack has had "Design Your Own Trashie" contests, where the winners get their design made into an exclusive Trashie figure.
- The American Girl Magazine had a section where readers can submit information about themselves and their family history for a chance to be immortalised as a paper doll in an issue. This ran from the first issue in 1992 until 2001 when the paper doll line was discontinued.
Video Games
- In Academagia, the developers have included many player-written Adventures and Events as part of DLCs.
- Age of Empires:
- In the fall of 2013, Age of Empires II's fan-made expansion Forgotten Empires received official expansion status for the Updated Re-release of the time. The team would eventually be known as Forgotten Empires, which would ultimately assist in future AoE rereleases, including 2019's Definitive Edition of II.
- 14 of the 19 campaigns introduced by the Victors and Vanquished DLC for Definitive Edition were originally fanmade scenarios by Ramsey "Filthydelphia" Abdurrahim before being turned into official content for the game.
- In the fall of 2013, Age of Empires II's fan-made expansion Forgotten Empires
- Angry Birds:
- One 5 year old named Ethan's drawing of a hypothetical level ultimately became the 33rd level of Danger Above. They even added the artist's name as an Easter Egg.
- In 2013, Ben Levi, a total Angry Birds addict, contacted Rovio, requesting them to create a level consisting of a marriage proposal to his girlfriend, Melissa Swift. They did it in an Angry Birds Friends tournament and Swift accepted the proposal. No, we're not kidding.
- All of the Birdday 5 levels were created by fans, as part of a competition called "#MakeTheNextLevel" that was held a few months prior.
- In its later years, Angry Birds Friends has hosted a few tournaments that featured fan-created levels.
- Ruby is a character originally intended to be a reimagining of the Girl Bird from Seasons by Mexican freelance artist and fan KrimaDraws. This version reimagines her as Red's younger sister, which was accepted by Rovio in 2024, appearing as a "Helper Bird" in Angry Birds Friends and in official comics. She finally stars as a playable character in Angry Birds Bounce and Angry Birds Rush.
- One 5 year old named Ethan's drawing of a hypothetical level ultimately became the 33rd level of Danger Above
- The names of three charactersnote in Banjo-Tooie were chosen by winners of a contest held by the UK Official Nintendo Magazine.
- In the first three Game Boy Advance titles for Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, many of the enemies you fight are submitted fan characters.
- Bloons Tower Defense 6 has had two such contests:
- To celebrate 50k subscribers in the BTD6 subreddit, Ninja Kiwi held a map contest, where users would post their ideas and one would make it into the game. Five finalists were chosen (Fireside Trail, Bazaar, Weak Ice, Cherry Blossoms, Geared), and fans got to vote on which one they wanted most. Geared ended up winning, and was added in the 16.0 update. Surprisingly, Bazaar also made it in for the 18.0 update, making it two winning maps rather than only one as promised.
- Another contest was held for the 100k subscriber milestone. This time, fans submitted their concepts and ideas for avatar profile pictures, with multiple winners.
- Brawl Stars occasionally includes fan-created skins based on the winners of online polls.
- During the Kickstarter campaign for Chicory: A Colorful Tale, 10 people backed at the "Fan Artist" tier and 5 at the "Virtuoso" tier, allowing them to submit someone (including themself, or a pet) as the basis for an NPC with dialogue in the final game. For example, a streamer known as IndieAlpaca was inserted into the game as Slushie.
- Since City of Heroes has gone with their "hybrid model" and opened the micro-transaction store, they've added at least two costume sets that were explicitly conceived by fans. On top of that, for its entire run many of the added features (new powersets/archetypes, costumes, etc.) were developed in-house, but based on the most popular requests in the forums.
- Dead Ahead Zombie Warfare: Mobirate is well aware of how much DA:ZW fans love to create their own units and skins, and has given the fandom multiple opportunities to get their ideas added into the game through art contests. Carol, Light Soldier, and Agents were all created by old users of KTPlay, and multiple in-game skins were created by fan-artists on Reddit.
- Dead by Daylight routinely hosts contests for fans to design new cosmetics for the game. It started out just being character skins, but has gone on to also include player icons and banners upon their introduction.
- Nippon Ichi had a contest to pick names for the random name generator for Disgaea 2.
- In a cross-series case of this trope, Woolie Madden (of Two Best Friends Play and Woolie Versus) latched onto a rejected Street Fighter character named Zubaz, a.k.a. "The Baz", and has added him into several games by donating to their Kickstarter campaigns. The Baz debuted in Divekick, and has since appeared in Shovel Knight, Indivisible, and Petal Crash, among other games.
- Duolingo celebrates Fan Art Friday every week, showcasing fan-submitted art of their various characters on their official Facebook and Twitter accounts.
- Dwarf Fortress has a large sub-forum for suggestions that the creator is known to frequently read, but the only confirmed example of this trope was when a number of players got together and provided some numbers for -among other things- correct tensile strengths and molar hardness of various metal alloys and the real-life mass and density of sand. note
- While still under development, The Elder Scrolls Online had fans send in suggestions for the name of a Dunmer in the game.
- Elephant Games, the developer of various PC mystery hidden object games like Grim Tales, Haunted Hotel, and Detectives United, hosted their first contest of this nature in April 2022. Fan fiction was solicited on their Facebook page and prizes were awarded to the top four stories (it was supposed to be top three but there was a tie for second place), with the grand prize winner having their story published in the company's monthly newsletter.
- Final Fantasy:
- The Festivalist dressphere from Final Fantasy X-2, for each of the three girls, was based off of drawings by a very young Japanese fan of the series as part of a contest advertised in Final Fantasy X-2 Ultimania.
- Final Fantasy XIV has contests run from time to time where players can submit designs for new gear, hairstyles, clothing, and the like, with winning designs being implemented into the game.
- The Community Time Rifts added to A Hat in Time with Death Wish were originally fan-made level mods.
- The fan letters in the arcade version of The iDOLM@STER are taken from submissions to the official website in the lead-up to the game's release.
- In Kingdom Hearts, a contest was held where the winning fan would get to name one of the upcoming game's special super-bosses. The winner was a boy named Kurt Zisa, who promptly named the boss after himself.
- The Last Stand update for Left 4 Dead 2 is a Valve-endorsed patch content made by prominent members of the community. The update has a two map campaign based on a survival map from the first game, includes new melee weapons, more achievements, and tons of quality of life updates.
- Mago by Dream Potion Games held a contest where people could design their own bosses. The winners end up being Dorada, Marakur and Eggvil.
- Massive Chalice, a Kickstarter funded game, allowed backers (above a certain level) to construct their own bloodlines, allowing the creation of standards, house colours, character names, mottoes, and battle cries. These were then split into thematic and non-thematic content, allowing the player to choose to live with content that adds to the immersion of the game or stuff designed to make players laugh (or both if desired).
- Mega Man:
- Occasionally, Capcom (through none other than Dr. Wily) would hold a contest asking for drawings of Robot Masters to be in the next Mega Man game. Most were held in Japan, except for Mega Man 6, which was an American tie-in with Nintendo Power that gave us Wind Man and Knight Man. The creator of both Dust Man from Mega Man 4 and Crystal Man from Mega Man 5 was Yusuke Murata, who you may know as the main artist for One-Punch Man. They would bring it back for Mega Man: Dual Override.
- This was also done with Mega Man Legends 3, where the fans helped out with ideas and with choosing character designs. Unfortunately, the game ended up canceled.
- The tradition continued in the Mega Man Battle Network games, with most of Mr. Famous's NetNavis (GateMan, KendoMan and FootMan) being fan-made, as well as a few of the plot-relevant bosses, like MistMan, BowlMan, KingMan, LaserMan, VideoMan, CircusMan, ElementMan and JudgeMan. VideoMan's creator also designed the boss's entire stage
- Star Force has fan-designed superbosses appearing in the second and third game.
- The Nintendo 3DS version of the Mega Man Legacy Collection contains exclusive Challenge Mode levels submitted by the fanbase, which complement the existing Challenge Mode levels and are unlocked using the Mega Man amiibo.
- Mighty No. 9, as Keiji Inafune's Creator-Driven Successor to Mega Man, also followed its lead in this regard, such as fans choosing Call's character design and designing an enemy. The fans took it a step further with making sure that one of Call's designs would still make it into the final game. This design, Design D, would be used as the overall design for the Final Boss Trinity.
- The 2010 remake of NBA Jam held a contest for fans to submit new catchphrases for the game, and the winners received a "Special Thanks" in the credits. One of the winners was a young man named Austin Hargrave, better known later on as PeanutButterGamer.
- The My Tamagotchi Forever character Neliatchi was the winner of a contest held prior to the game's release where fans had to come up with their own Tamagotchis.
- Free Software/Open Source games like OpenArena and Nexuiz/Xonotic are composed entirely of fan-made content.
- PAYDAY 2 has followed in the footsteps of CS:GO and allows players to make their own skins for the weapons in the game, then submit them to the Steam Workshop for peer review, in hopes of getting them into the next Safe, thus making them available in-game. In addition, multiple fan-made 'quality of life improvement' mods have been implemented into the game itself, such as HoxHUD's cheater labelling system.
- All three guest characters in Petal Crash (The Baz, Libbie, and Mimi) were contributed by backers who pledged to the $2,000 Secret Character tier on the game's Kickstarter page.
- During Phantasy Star Online 2's Anniversary season, Sega holds an item design contest consisting of costumes, weaponry and accessories. The top 3 winners of each category (with some honorable mentions) get their designs in the game.
- Planet Coaster had a building contest to celebrate the release of the Go-Karts update. The winning track, Princess Amelie's Castle Karts, was made an official blueprint in the next update.
- The developers of Project Zomboid are very supportive of their prolific modding community, and they've even found some mods worthy of folding back into the base game. Features to randomize or save your character build are an example, but the most visible is the Erosion mod that causes the environment to gradually overgrow and deteriorate over time.
- Portal: Still Alive on the Xbox 360 as well as the game's later rerelease on the Nintendo Switch includes additional levels which are taken from a fan-made map pack that was a recreation of the previously released fan-game Portal: The Flash Version, which impressed Valve so much that they purchased the levels from the creators outright.
- Ratchet & Clank:
- The Spiral of Death from A Crack in Time was the winner of the "My Blaster Runs Hot" fanmade weapon contest.
- The Bancho Ratchet skin in the same game was the winning design for a Japanese skin contest.
- All four playable characters in All 4 One have one skin designed by fans:
- Ratchet's is the Skeleton outfit, based on a proposed "Heck Fire" skin.
- Clank turns into Fish Bowl Clank, complete with water and fish.
- Captain Qwark dons a suit of knight armor.
- Dr. Nefarious becomes the lava-lamp headed Groovy Nefarious.
- The Spiral of Death from A Crack in Time was the winner of the "My Blaster Runs Hot" fanmade weapon contest.
- Various end-game dungeons in Realm of the Mad God, namely The Shatters and the Lost Halls, were originally fan suggestions.
- RimWorld: Players that supported a specific amount on the game's Kickstarter campaign (or are ready to pay a bit extra for their copy of the full game after its release) could create a colonist that may appear in other players' copies of the game. These act just like any other colonist aside from having unique backgrounds and/or sharing their name with the donator. The game's options menu even allows you to filter submitted names and add them as "preferred" character names in case you get attached to any of them aside from your own.
- Rivals of Aether:
- The creators ran a Twitter poll to determine whether Ayala the rabbit or Elliana the snake would join the roster. Elliana won, though Ayala would eventually get compensation as an unlockable skin for Elliana.
- Four user-created characters from the Steam Workshop (Mollo, Hodan, Pomme, and Olympia) were added to the official roster, including for the Nintendo Switch version. These characters are now fully part of Aether canon, with Mollo appearing in the comic books and Olympia appearing in cutscenes in Dungeons of Aether.
- Another OK Go example: Their song "White Knuckles" was subject to a fan mix contest, with the winner (Big Robot Remix) being added to Rock Band via RBN.
- On multiple occasions, RuneScape has solicited fan ideas for content. The pub in southeast Ardougne, for example, was designed and voted on by players, and the name of the sea monster Thalassus from the "Deadliest Catch" quest was suggested and selected by the public.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- BioWare held a competition during the production of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood which let the fans name one of the alien races seen later in the game. The winning name was Zoah, a reference to Panzer Dragoon.
- Subverted in the case of Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, where a piece of fan art of Sonia was mistaken for official art of Amy Rose, and used as a texture in the Wii version of the game. The offending texture was removed in later print runs once it was caught, and removed via patch from the PS3/360 release.
- This is one of SOUND VOLTEX's major gimmicks. The Sound Voltex Floor campaign allows fans to submit their own songs for inclusion within the game. Many submissions in Sound Voltex Booth are remixes of existing BEMANI songs, although artists have started submitting more original songs, especially in Sound Voltex II.
- Splatoon:
- Splatoon 1 and Splatoon 2 each held a clothing gear designing contest, run by Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu. The winning fan designs, the Traditional Gear (a sushi chef's clothes) and the Ghillie Suit Style (a seaweed-themed ghillie suit) were both added into their respective games as part of a free update. Famitsu also ran a contest for graffiti designs in Splatoon 2, with the winning design◊ added to the floor of Walleye Warehouse.
- CoroCoro Comic also held one such contest for Splatoon 2. In this case, however, the winning Mecha Suit was only made available via a code given away in the magazine. As a result, the clothing gear was only available to Japanese players.
- Splatoon 1 and Splatoon 2 each held a clothing gear designing contest, run by Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu. The winning fan designs, the Traditional Gear (a sushi chef's clothes) and the Ghillie Suit Style (a seaweed-themed ghillie suit) were both added into their respective games as part of a free update. Famitsu also ran a contest for graffiti designs in Splatoon 2, with the winning design
- Star Trek Online had the Foundry, an in-game Level Editor that allowed players to code and submit their own missions that are then playable in the main game from a submenu. Foundry missions pay out varying amounts of dilithium based on the average length of time it takes players to beat them. Cryptic set up a similar Foundry for STO's younger sister Neverwinter. However, as of early 2019, the Foundry has been discontinued as the programmers who built it weren't with the company anymore, making maintaining and fixing the Foundry too time and resource consuming.
- Star Wars: Galaxies did this often. Sony often held contests on the official forums that subscribers could enter. Not only would the winners have their artwork or stories featured in the game, but it had the added benefit of making these fan submissions official Star Wars Expanded Universe canon.
- The art book that comes with the Street Fighter 25th Anniversary Collector's Set is comprised entirely of fan-made artwork. The collection also includes two discs of fan-made music remixes.
- Team Fortress 2:
- The game added fan-created "community" weapons to the list of items that can be found during game. Several fan-created maps were also added to the official list of maps.
- This concept has been since expanded into the "Steam Workshop", which is also available for several other games. note
- Since 2015, each "Scream Fortress" and "Smissmas" update added multiple fan-submitted cosmetics, unusual effects, and themed maps to the game, usually lifted straight from the workshop. The creators of these cosmetics get a unique copy of the item with the "Creator's Spark" unusual effect and an amount of the proceeds for the item, and map creators can be contributed to directly by buying "stamps" for a particular map.
- The Invasion Update of October 2015 featured exclusively community-made content.
- In 2023, two community-made game modes were officially added to the game: Versus Saxton Hale in the Summer Update and Zombie Infection in the Scream Fortress XV update.
- Terraria held a contest where fans had a chance to get their costume designs into the actual game for the 1.4 Journey's End update. There were six winners, and the costumes are the Timeless Traveler set, TV Head set, Plaguebringer set, Wandering set, Floret Protector set, and Capricorn set.
- TNT: Evolution, part of Final Doom, was originally a fan creation. However, the mappers, TeamTNT, were approached by id Software to have the megawad published. This was met with some controversy because the megawad was going to be a freeware release.
- Undertale features a number of monsters included as part of a kickstarter incentive. Three of these are combat encounters in the game: Glyde, who attacks after meeting a strange set of requirements, Muffet, who is fought as part of the main storyline, and So Sorry, a "secret" character who was adapted from a backer's fantroll.
- The Unreal Engine 4 reboot of Unreal Tournament is being developed by both Epic Games themselves and the Unreal community, furthering this trope.
- The Venus Blood series used these as a reward in Ninetail's Kickstarter projects for those who contribute enough. The new content from the viewers include new common units, H-scenes for at least one common unit, and new scenes featuring named heroines via popularity polls.
- There's a whole category in Warframe for skins, both weapons and armors, and helmets, created by fans, called "TennoGen" in-game.
- Quite a sizable chunk of the game content, from warframes like Chroma to weapons like the Mios, were originally fan-submitted designs circulating the forums before being introduced in the game.
- After the developers made modding tools for World in Conflict available to gamers, several fan-created multiplayer maps have been distributed via Massgate, along with official maps.
- Several mods for World of Warcraft became so popular among the players that Blizzard ended up implementing their own version into the core game.
- Each game in the X-Universe series has an add-on Bonus Pack by forum member Lucike, containing a group of scripts to make players' lives easier, digitally signed by Egosoft so your savegame doesn't get marked as ***modified***. Additionally the X-Superbox series collection includes three fan-made soundtracks, additional signed scripts, and PDF versions of fan fiction from the forums. And the 3.0 patch (scroll down a ways) for X3: Albion Prelude is be largely composed of content written by the AP Community Project, a group of high-profile X modders.
- Yo-kai Watch:
- Yo-kai Watch 2 has two of its new Yo-kai created from fan submissions for a contest: So-Sorree and Dracunyan.
- Likewise, Yo-kai Watch 3 has Sighborg Y and Horizontail from a similar fan-submission contest.
- Shogunyan's Shadowside form in Yo-kai Watch 4 was the winner of a "Design a Shadowside form contest."
Web Animation
- Happy Tree Friends: In 2013, Mondo Media had a series of two contests called Truffles' Video Bomb Competition. Fans were asked to submit their own character designs and vote on the submissions. In the first contest, the two winning characters were Unicornius and Tricksy, who later appeared in "Pet Peeve". In the second contest, the winner was Rudy, who later appeared in "A Vicious Cycle".
Webcomics
- This used to be the case for Bittersweet Candy Bowl, but Veronica was having problems when people wanted their characters taken out of the work, thus, she no longer puts any Original Characters into the comic.
- Drowtales writers' have created the system, where in to fill the ever increasing cast of character in their chapters, readers can pay to have their own original charactersnote inserted into the story, to fulfill rules as extras, mooks or full on side characters. While it does help the comic financially and creatively, it has created an obvious system where unnamed or minor side characters are going to be the victims of the plot, but paid characters usually survive without major harm, sometimes unexpectedly so.
- Irregular Webcomic!: In one story arc for the Martian theme, the Martians force Ishmael out of his room so they can use his computer to invade the world, with no reason given other than, "We have to start somewhere." The actual reason for this is given in a winning caption contest entry, where the Martians are trying to bid on a Doomsday Machine at eBay. Of course, not all of the submitted entries revolve around their invasion plan, with some entries having the Martians use the computer for other purposes.
- MS Paint Adventures worked like this: The readers on the forums submitted commands to the characters in the story and author Andrew Hussie would draw the characters acting them out. The first two adventures were the result of Hussie taking every command suggested. For Problem Sleuth, Hussie manually pick-and-chose commands instead of using every suggestion, resulting in a more cohesive narrative that didn't involve the characters constantly indulging in Vulgar Humor or uneccesarily murdering each other. For Homestuck, Hussie had to stop taking suggestions after 2010 because the comic had massively blown up in popularity.
- As an Interactive Comic, Homestuck has a lot. Most main characters (the humans and trolls, in particular), were named by fan suggestions, and the comic has entire albums of fan-submitted music.
- The highest tier of the Hiveswap Kickstarter promised to include the benefactor's fantroll in the official comic. The two characters submitted did appear... for two panels, and then they died. There was actually a higher tier where the fan trolls would survive for more than a couple pages. An even more expensive tier would have apparently made the fan character "the most important character in Homestuck." Neither of these tiers were chosen by any of the backers because they were comically expensive.
- "A Brief Moment of Culture", aka "Jeffrey Wells's Very Long Narbonic Fanfic" was declared canon and serialised in the Sunday slot. This led to Jeff and Shaenon collaborating on Skin Horse.
- Similar to the Narbonic example above, "The Last Temptation of Leslie Bean" by T. Campbell was a Shortpacked! fanfic which Willis declared canon and serialised on the site.
- Skin Horse's topmost Kickstarter reward is "Arbiter of Reality", where the person gets to co-write a week of the strip. The two winners so far are Rob Reed with Wrinkle in Time and David Blake with Ghosts I Have Been.
- Supervillainous does this a lot. More specifically:
- Pages:
- Supervillains:
- A.V. aka Alien Visitor by Trippitise
- Superheros:
- Habanero Devil by Justonalark
- Blaze by Michael Foley and Mose Simon
- Goofather by Gianluca Burdon
- Wi-Fu by Yatu Xu
- Alpha and Omega by Mose Simon
- Germania by Caterina Schafer
- Morf by Tippitise
- Focus by Darius Drake
- Tales to Behold has frequent guest appearances by Burst Lion, Ionic Angel, Ultimate Power, Cassandra, and Rockslab, all of whom were created by fans of the series.
- Trevor (2020): Some of the characters were designed by readers who won a cameo contest run by the author, who gives credit for each of the designs on the official cast page. The characters that came about as a result of the contest were:
- Dr. Harkam Stern.
- Dr. Enid Binns.
- Dr. Purdy Seaton.
- Albert White, the security guard.
- For Chapters 13-14 of Yokoka's Quest, the author asked readers to submit their fan characters. Many have appeared in background roles throughout the village and as competitors in The Big Race.
Web Original
- The Angry Video Game Nerd's review of Deadly Towers consists almost entirely of lines written by fans.
- Atop the Fourth Wall:
- Pollo's new robot design was decided by a submission contest. As was the theme song. Even the songs that weren't chosen got their due when being played as ending themes.
- Later, Linkara would expand his Patreon, allowing fans to pay to make him cover anything (within reason). Originally with four $50 slots, it sold out so fast that it was changed to two $100 slots instead. The ability to buy it opens up somewhat randomly and is first come first serve, but has led to episodes on everything from Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines to Homestuck to Franken Fran. Surprisingly, more people use it to show him works they love than they do to torment him with terrible works.
- asdfmovie:
- In 2010, TomSka hosted an "asdfcomp" inviting fans to submit their own asdfmovie jokes. The winner, "New Dog," was then included at the start of asdfmovie3.
- He took this to the next level with fansdfmovie, an instalment consisting entirely of fan-submitted jokes which were then fully animated and voiced.
- In 2010, TomSka hosted an "asdfcomp" inviting fans to submit their own asdfmovie jokes. The winner, "New Dog," was then included at the start of asdfmovie3
- The British Railway Stories: Simon Martin hosted a contest wherein fans could create their own characters to appear in an episode of the series (specifically, episode 17X, "The Ghosts Of Engines Past"), with the top three winners being the ones to appear in the episode. The winners were Wensley (3rd place), Harry (2nd place), and Alf (1st place).
- The CinemaSins video for Iron Man 3 consists entirely out of fan-submitted content.
- Many Darwin's Soldiers side-stories written by the other players/fans have become canonized.
- How It Should Have Ended used fan-produced writing for the video "How The Amazing Spider Man Should Have Ended". Similarly, fans wrote one scene for "How Iron Man 3 Should Have Ended", specifically the scene when Tony meets the kid.
- Jacksfilms has Yesterday I Asked You, which is made up of fan-submitted answers to Jack's questions. There's also JackAsk, where viewers submit Q&A questions, and Your Grammar Sucks, where they submit poorly written comments for him to read.
- JoshA20 asked on Twitter for fans to send him SBI Rust fan art, and said that he would choose some to display in-game.
- Many games crowd-funded on Kickstarter or similar sites offer the option of submitting content as perks for backers. Generally, this is something minor like naming NPCs.
- The Thursday after MatPat officially stepped down as host, viewers of his theory channels are polled as to which episodes of their shows should be the premieres for their new hosts.
- For Game Theory (premiering 2 pm EST on Saturday, March 16th), the choices were Poppy Playtime, KinitoPET, Welcome Home, or Fortnite. The Poppy Playtime theory, entitled "Don't Trust Ollie", became Tom's premiere as host.
- For Film Theory (premiering 2 pm EST on Sunday, March 17th), the choices were GÜBY, Kung Fu Panda, Dune, or Disney. "Kung Fu Panda's Cycle of EVIL!" became Lee's premiere as host.
- For Food Theory (premiering 7 pm EST on Tuesday, March 19th), the choices were "MrBeast NEW Feastables Recipe", "What do the different buttons on your microwave do?", "The BEST Spicy Chicken Sandwich", or "Is Panera Bread Fast Food?". "I Found the SPICIEST Fast Food Chicken Sandwich!" became Santi's premiere as host.
- For Style Theory (premiering 7 pm EST on Thursday, March 21st), the choices were "Can You 'Shop Like A Billionaire' On Temu", "'Body Shape' Myth Busting", "How To Optimize Your Closet", or "Best Way to Shave Your Legs!". "You're Shaving Your Legs WRONG!" became Amy's premiere as host.
- For Game Theory (premiering 2 pm EST on Saturday, March 16th), the choices were Poppy Playtime, KinitoPET, Welcome Home, or Fortnite. The Poppy Playtime theory, entitled "Don't Trust Ollie
- Nobody Here:
- The website was translated to Japanese by a group of fans, which was later added to be an official part of the site. More info here.
- The fish cursors in "Download" were made by a fan by the name of Sanneke.
- The website was translated to Japanese by a group of fans, which was later added to be an official part of the site. More info here
- The infamous Retsupurae video "Adults React to PewDiePie" consists of clips, submitted by Retsupurae fans, of PewDiePie's gameplay and commentary with a corner-cam of themselves supplying their (unimpressed) reactions to his antics.
- The RiffTrax for Batman & Robin was of lines sent in by fans.
- Rooster Teeth held a contest for RWBY where fans were asked to design Velvet Scarlatina's battle gear. This was the winning design.
- Nearly all canon content on Sagan 4 is submitted by fans to be reviewed before being added to canon, rather than being created only by an "official" crew. Although all contributors are considered a part of the "Sagan 4 team", this only signifies that a given person has contributed to canon at least once, and there is actually no restriction on who can participate nor is there any obligation for any member to continue submitting content.
- Sailor Moon Abridged used gags written by fans in its 50th episode.
- Sam & Mickey often get new story ideas from suggestions viewers make in comments.
- Sips used the song "Stunt Crew" as the intro for "Rambling with Sips". He and Lewis Brindley also used a number of fan-made thumbnails for their joint channel, "Team Double Dragon".
- The Sun Whale Defense Solutions logo in TekkitLive was designed by a fan.
- The final episode of the Two Best Friends Play LP of The Punisher ends with a montage of submitted fan art of "Pun-Pun Kill-Chan", a Rule 63 version of The Punisher.
- The Unusual Suspect used some jokes based on suggestions by commenters in his green screen skit video parodying Spider-Man 1.
- Unwanted Houseguest: The 30th episode of "TRUE Scary Stories" features stories submitted by viewers of the channel.
Western Animation
- The Adventure Time episode "Jake vs. Me-Mow" featured a new character (Me-Mow) based on a drawing made by a young fan (used as the episode's title card).
- Arthur:
- The stories Arthur and his friends wrote for the "Andy and Company" show in the episode Arthur S4 E4 - "The Contest" / "Prove It" were written by contest winner Holly Holland. She was name-dropped at the end of the episode, with the bridging segment featuring her.
- There was a paraplegic character named Lydia Fox, who was the winning entry in a contest to create and pitch a new character with a disability.
- The Beetlejuice episode "Brides of Funkenstein" was written by Sharon Chamberland, a then-teenage girl from Maine. Nelvana paid her $250note for the idea.
- An interesting case with Blaze and the Monster Machines crossing this over with So My Kids Can Watch. Jenna Dewan's character Bunny was inspired by a drawing her then 5-year-old daughter drew of a fan character for the show.
- Bob's Burgers: The creators held a fan art contest, and used the backgrounds and character designs from over sixty different artists in the season eight premiere "Brunchsquatch", with the art style changing between scenes.
- Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers: Famously attempted as early as 1990. After the show had ended, a fan named David Walker submitted a complete episode script named "Miami Munks" to Disney as a possible season 4 episode. They turned it down for two reasons: For one, Disney didn't accept fan content. Besides, they had no intention to continue CDRR anyway. Instead of resigning, David must have understood quickly that Fan Fiction was the Rangers' future and published Miami Munks as the first CDRR fanfic, long before actual fanfic was written.
- Dexter's Laboratory has an episode, "Dexter and Computress Get Mandark!", that looks like it was animated by a small child. The story was written, and narrated, by a young fan.note
- The Ed, Edd n Eddy episode "Here's Mud In Your Ed" was inspired by Kit Topp, webmistress of an Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy fan site.
- Fudêncio e Seus Amigos: In March 2007, a MTV Overdrive blog post asked fans to submit videos of persimmons being destroyed in absurd and strange ways, as an homage to the main character: the Born Unlucky, persimmon-headed Conrado. The favorite submissions were put into the episode "Concurso Destrua o Caqui" (lit. Contest Destroy the Persimmon). While the episode itself and most submissions are currently lost media, the winner video can be watched here.
- When the second season of Futurama was being localized for Germany, suggestions for the episode titles were collected on de.rec.tv.futurama. And yes, several of them were actually used. They never did something like this again, however.
- The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode, "Keep Calm and Flutter On" was written by Teddy Antonio, who on IntenseDebate claims to be a fan who met Meghan McCarthy (the story editor of Season 3).
- Oscar's Orchestra once ran a "design your own character" contest. The result: Ken the Totally Radical Keyboard and Surfer Dude.
- Pound Puppies (2010) had an episode with a puppy named Cinnamon. Wonder how that puppy got that name? Viewers had to vote for the name online.
- An In-Universe example in the Ready Jet Go! episode "Commander Cressida Story Contest". The prize for winning the titular story contest is to have your story in an official Commander Cressida comic.
- The creators of South Park asked fans to submit their shipping fan art (yaoi specifically) of Tweek and Craig, already a highly popular fan pairing for a decade, promising to include some of the fan art in an upcoming episode... a few days later, they announced "Tweek x Craig", which featured many images submitted by fans. The pairing has been canon ever since, and collecting yaoi images (these produced by the show's artists) was a side activity in South Park: The Fractured but Whole.
- The Simpsons: Fox ran the "Best. Character. Ever." contest in 2009 in honor of the series' 20th anniversary, where fans could submit ideas for new characters. Of the 25,000 entries received, the winner was Peggy Black. Her character, Ricardo Bomba, would debut in "Million Dollar Maybe" – and was killed off after less than a minute of screen time. Evidently, the writers really weren't on board with the idea.
- The producers of Thomas & Friends ran a "name a character" contest in partnership with a magazine. The winner, Luke Sharp, coined the name of Arthur, a maroon-colored LMS Ivatt Class tank engine who debuted in series 7, naming him in honor of his late grandfather.
- The Tiny Toon Adventures episode "Buster and Babs Go Hawaiian" was written by young fans. Naturally, when Buster complains about the quality of the episode, he likens it to being written by 13-year-olds.
Babs: 13-year-olds did write it.
Buster: Oh, well, that explains it. - Season 2 of Wander Over Yonder introduced the "Galactic Villain Leaderboard" and Lord Hater's struggles to move to the top of the board. Many of the names on the board, as posted on story designer Frank Argones's Tumblr blog, are taken from OC villains created by fans.