Fake Crossover

A Crossover which, for some reason or other, clearly doesn't count even remotely within the visiting characters' continuity. The characters might look and act the same, but you know these events are never going to be referenced in their own show. This may be due to copyright or because one continuity clashes too much with the other.

See also: Massive Multiplayer Crossover

"The Red Panda: So, does this count as a crossover? Jack Justice: Don't push it."
 * 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.
 * The Simpsons has done this innumerable times, such as when Harry Morgan appeared as Bill Gannon or when David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson appeared as Mulder and Scully.
 * A more blatant example would be when Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist appeared on South Park and was incinerated by lava.
 * In "Super Best Friends", the cast of That's My Bush! is shown in the White House. While both shows were created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, it still counts as fake since That's My Bush! is a live action show.
 * 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.
 * Particularly since The 4400 has been cancelled. Sigh.
 * 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 The 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 and Order: Criminal Intent) give their opinions and recount their experiences with the titular detective.
 * The commercials for the second Hellboy movie 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 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....
 * Pictured is the charity special "Dimensions In Time", 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 New Adventures novel First Frontier wrote it off as All Just a Dream).
 * 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.
 * Super Smash Bros.. in general, The Subspace Emissary (aka Super Smash Bros. Brawl's adventure mode) in particular, as all of the characters are living trophies that look like the actual characters.
 * Which leads to the very strange occurrence of Link and Yoshi fighting against Mario and Pit.
 * On The Venture Brothers, Race Bannon from Jonny Quest makes an appearance in "Ice Station-- Impossible!", but dies onscreen. In the season 2 episode "Twenty Years to Midnight", the group has an encounter with a deranged, drug-addled, middle-aged Jonny Quest.
 * In the third season you see Hadji working a desk job for Dr. Venture, Race in a flash-back torturing a SPHINX operative, Jonny working at a day camp hosted on the Venture compound, and Dr. Zin visits him.
 * From season three onward, the creators have walked this back a bit, referring to Johnny only by his first name and Dr. Zin only as "Doctor Z". This is due to an upcoming Live Action Adaptation of Jonny Quest currently in development, which forced the writers to be more subtle about who the characters really are by turning them into pastiches of the Quest cast.
 * The scene in the Family Guy episode "Movin' Out (Brian's Song)" involving Quagmire and The Simpsons...
 * As well as the American Dad characters in "Lois Kills Stewie", which was all just a simulation.
 * But if it was an actual simulation, would this still be considered a Fake Crossover, or would the characters really exist in the Family Guy setting?
 * Don't forget Roger's cameo at the end of the time-traveling season 5 finale.
 * Another Family Guy episode featured Hugh Laurie guesting as Dr. Gregory House. Obviously not canon unless House moved his entire practice from New Jersey to Rhode Island for a week, then moved back. Not to mention his breaking the fourth wall at one point.
 * The crossover between The Angry Video Game Nerd and Captain S in which Cap and the Nerd team up to save rescue Santa Claus was explicitly non-canon within Cap's continuity. Just as well, as the Nerd was totally neutered - he was only allowed to swear once (which was bleeped).
 * This seems to be canon in Nerd videos. What canon there is, anyway...
 * Most crossovers between Marvel and DC Comics never get referenced in their own lines. The 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.
 * Amusing lampshade: A villain that first appeared in a Batman/Punisher crossover turned up in Nightwing. Nightwing had a rare memory lapse about the name of the other guy he met him with. ("Out-of-town psycho vigilante... want to say 'The Puncturer'? Something like that...")
 * What makes it awesome is that 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.
 * 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: http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix4/rutlandvt.htm
 * 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).
 * Are we also assuming that Guiding Light did not in fact take place in the Marvel Universe? ...good.
 * Another amusing lampshade: After the DC vs. Marvel/Marvel vs. DC 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.
 * The Christmas episode of Father Ted featured the cast of the contemporary Irish comedy Ballykissangel. However, it was a dream sequence.
 * Not quite even a fake crossover, but thinly veiled version of Arrested Development character GOB appeared on Sesame Street.
 * In the intermission of an episode of Black Jack Justice, the Red Panda and the Flying Squirrel show up to deliver a contractually-obligated anniversary wish... and Jack and Trixie get annoyed at them "horning in on our racket". This results in a Cat Fight between the Squirrel and Trixie, and the men getting very distracted by it. At the end:


 * 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 Image universes?
 * Oh really? It could work...maybe...
 * 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 cannon.
 * Actually, there is a Soul Calibur crossover under the Star Wars label: Visions of the Blade and both titular weapons made appearances. However, it was published under the Infinities label and is non-canon. Like the Indiana Jones crossover where the Millenium Falcon crash-lands on Indie's homeworld and he finds a very familiar-looking fellow inside, dead.
 * Hercules: The Animated Series crossed over with Aladdin. OK, all were spinoffs of the Disney Animated Canon. But Ancient Greece and Medieval Arabia are millennia apart...
 * Which never stopped the villain Mechanikles.
 * The G.I. Joe comics had two in-continuity crossovers with the Transformers Generation 1 comics during the Marvel run (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 ) had to be explained differently.
 * G.I. Joe actually did this a few times. In Amazing Spider Man #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: 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
 * Similarly, an early issue of the Transformers comics had the Autobots briefly teaming up with Spider-Man, before later issues indicated that the Transformers were in a seperate universe from most other Marvel comics.
 * 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.
 * "Beans", a three-part crossover between (arguably) the three most popular Super Smash Bros.. Melée/Brawl machinimas on YouTube.
 * Greg Weisman (Creator of both Gargoyles and The Spectacular Spider-Man) staged a radio play for a con that was a crossover between his two shows. Naturally, it falls under this trope.
 * 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.
 * The events of "Mesal Gear Solid: Snake Escape" and "Snake vs. Monkey" will unlikely be referenced in any future Metal Gear or Ape Escape game.
 * Basically any game in Capcom's Vs series (i.e: Marvel vs. Capcom, SNK vs. Capcom, Tatsunokovs Capcom).
 * There were a few X-Men + Star Trek the Next Generation comic crossovers, which is Hilarious in Hindsight now that the movies are out.
 * And NOW there's an upcoming Ghostbusters, Star Trek, Transformers and G.I. Joe comic with Zombies crossover event coming up!
 * The Cosby Show had an entire episode of a dream sequence, with the second half involving characters from The Jim Henson Hour.
 * Several Sesame Street Muppets guest-starred in one episode of Scrubs. All within J.D.'s Imagine Spots of course.
 * Scrubs returned the favor by making 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).
 * Stewie Griffin on Bones.
 * Woody Allen's play God has as one of its characters Blanche DuBois, who escaped the two men who were trying to put her into a straitjacket at the end of A Streetcar Named Desire and wants desperately to get herself into a play where God exists.
 * 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.
 * A series of promotional shorts for The Hub had Pinkie Pie messing with Dan from Dan Vs..
 * A promo for the Japanese DVD season sets of House featured the title character teaming up with fellow Dr. Jerk Black Jack.
 * A promo of Danball Senki features the main characters arriving at the club room of Raimon football club.
 * In the same vein, there are a set of Despicable Me ads for Japan set in Inazuma Eleven verse as seen here.