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Deconstruction Crossover: Difference between revisions
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* ''[[Sandman]]'' does this with every comics, mythological or historical figure Neil Gaiman could work into the story.
* ''[[Kingdom Come]]'': To some extent, it actually fulfilled the idea of ''Twilight of the Superheroes''.
** Basically, it starts with the idea "everything ever produced for [[DC Comics]] was canon". All of it, [[Watchmen]], [[Vertigo Comics]], the [[The Bronze Age of Comic Books|experimental comics of]] [[The Seventies]], One shot characters from anthology comics, the [[Superfriends]] Cartoon, all of it. Then, it took all the [[The Dark Age of Comic Books|contemporary trends in comics]], morally questionable storylines, [[Badass]] [[Nineties Anti-Hero|Nineties Anti Heroes]], heroes and villains being [[Anti-Hero Substitute|replaced]] with [[Darker and Edgier]] [[Legacy Character|Legacy Characters]], and extrapolate them to their logical extremes. Then it took the [[The Golden Age of Comic Books|Golden Age]] Generation of superheroes, and brought their powers to logical extremes, added biblical themes, and gave it to us in a photo-realistic "painted" style to make it more realistic, and disturbing. It certainly counts.
* ''[[Planetary]]'' did this with various fiction characters and genres. Most of the characters there are pastiches or [[Captain Ersatz|Captain Ersatzs]], and most genres are deconstructed in self-containing stories, regardless of the series' [[Massive Multiplayer Crossover]] premise.
* J.Michael Straszynski's unfinished series ''[[The Twelve]]'' did this with [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|twelve]] various WWII-era Timely Comics superheroes, exploring the differences between modern and 1940s culture.
* ''[[Fables]]'' does this with fairy-tales and nursery rhymes.
* ''[[Twilight (Comic Book)|Twilight]]'', by Howard Chaykin, did this with [[DC Comics]]' [[The Silver Age of Comic Books|Silver Age]] science fiction characters. No relation to ''Twilight of the Superheroes''. Or [[Twilight (novel)|that book with sparkling vampires.]]
* The [[JLA-Avengers]] miniseries. The plot of the series was all about the differences between the [[Marvel Universe]] and [[The DCU]]. Compared to the DCU, Marvel is a [[Crapsack World]], and compared to Marvel, DC heroes are just one short, bad day away from [[Beware the Superman]].
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* ''[[Who Framed Roger Rabbit?]]'' did this with [[Toon|Toons]]. The original novel, ''[[Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (Literature)]]'' was even [[Darker and Edgier]] and did it with newspaper comic strip characters instead.
* ''[[Murder By Death]]'' did this with mysteries.
* ''[[Across the Universe (film)|Across the Universe]]'' with the Sixties mythology.
== [[Literature]] ==
* The novel [[wikipedia:Silverlock|Silverlock]] contains characters and settings from Beowulf, Don Quixote, and countless others.
* Jonathan Swift wrote the satirical tract [[wikipedia:Tale of a Tub|A Tale of a Tub]] in 1694. It does this with [[Anthropomorphic Personification|Anthropomorphic Personifications]] of different sects of Christianity, deconstructing what Swift saw as the "flaws" in each.
* The [[Neil Gaiman]] novel ''[[American Gods]]'' does this, along with a healthy dose of [[All Myths Are True]].
* This trope, combined with the [[Literary Agent Hypothesis]], is the main premise of many works taking place in [[Philip Jose Farmer|Philip José Farmer's]] Wold Newton Universe.
* The ''[[Anno Dracula]]'' series by [[Kim Newman]] is a massive hodgepodge of characters vampire and non-vampire, fictional and non-fictional, Victorian and modern, running around in a world where Dracula killed Van Helsing and took over Britain.
* As previously stated, ''[[Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (Literature)]]?'' by [[Gary Wolf]].
* ''[[Nursery Crime]]'' by [[Jasper Fforde]] does this with nursery rhyme and fairy tale characters, to the point of postulating an entire murder mystery story around the age-old question of, "Why are the Three Bears' bowls of porridge different temperatures if clearly they were poured at the same time?"
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* ''[[Breakfast of the Gods]]'' does this with breakfast cereal mascots.
* Most of Bleedman's [[Web Comics]] (e.g., ''[[Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi]]'', ''[[Grim Tales from Down Below]]'') do this with various [[Western Animation]] cartoons (at the same time changing their drawing styles to an [[Animesque]] one).
** And then ''[[Fusion Fall]]'' used that concept aswell, retaining the Massive Multiplayer Crossover and the change to an [[Animesque]] style, but dropping any hints to [[Deconstruction]].
* ''[[Kid Radd]]'' seems to do this, but featuring [[Captain Ersatz|Captain Ersatzes]] and pastiches rather than actual trandemarked [[Video Game]] characters.
** It has it's own in universe versions of games like ''[[Super Mario Bros.]]'', ''[[Earthbound]]'', ''[[Final Fantasy]]'', and even ''Deadly Towers'' and cheesy flash games. It really does well at showing what a character from one genre of games would look like if he was forced into a completely different genre but his character still followed the rules of his original game. For example, how would a platformer character for whom everything does equal damage, and only has four slots in his health bar deal with being put in an RPG where every character has thousands of HP? How would a fighting game character, who needs to take advantage of a character being temporarily stunned after being hit in order to perform combos deal with a platformer character who becomes temporarily invincible after being hit?
* ''[[Captain SNES]]'' fits into this category fairly well. Not only are many of the villains aware that they are merely video game characters (which is, in at least one case, [[Go Mad From the Revelation|why they became villains to begin with]]), but characters who travel from one video game world to another are not always prepared for the different rules. (The [http://www.captainsnes.com/2002/10/26/219-the-ways-of-the-mushroom/ comic] where [[Chrono Trigger|Magus]] writes of his experiences learning from [[Super Mario Brothers|Mario]] seems a good illustration of this.)
* ''[[Chess Piece]]'' more and more.
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== [[Web Original]] ==
* ''[[There Will Be Brawl]]'' does this with [[Nintendo]] [[Video Games|games]]. It uses a pre-existing Massive Multiplayer Crossover established by the [[Super Smash Bros.]] franchise, and makes references to a number of movies, such as [[Silence of the Lambs]].
** It's not so much a true Deconstruction as a [[Darker and Edgier]] [[Parody]].
* The [http://www.newgrounds.com/collection/finalfightingfantasy Final Fighting Fantasy] Flash series on [[Newgrounds]] does a good job at this. For the various [[Final Fantasy]] Characters, it starts off as what looks like a simple poorly writen fan fic, but quickly [[Growing the Beard|grows the beard]] and becomes quite epic.<br />It turns out that the [[Infinity+1 Sword|legendary weapons]] of the games where created by the ancients as a way of manipulating the game's protagonists into defeating the forces of evil, and thus restoring balance, however, after evil was defeated, the good guys can't stay around any longer, because they would tip the balance to far towards the light, so, the weapons transport them to another world, where they all meet each other, and (because of the influence the weapons have on their mind) convince them that the characters from the other games are evil, and thus they're forced into a fight to the death. The different characters named "Cid" that appear in every game is actually the same guy, manipulating things from behind the scenes. Unfortunatly, [[Final Fighting Fantasy]] has [[Dead Fic|been left unfinished]]
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Most of the humor in ''[[Robot Chicken]]'' comes from this. For example, there's ''[[Beavis and Butthead]]'' join the ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'', and ''[[MTV]] Exposed'' on [[Barbie]] and [[Bratz]]. Of course this is used mostly for [[Deconstructive Parody|comedic purposes]].
* The point of ''[[Drawn Together]]'' was to be like this, they took [[Captain Ersatz|Captain Ersatzes]] of [[Superman]] (Captain Hero), [[Pokémon|Pikachu]] (Ling Ling), [[The Legend of Zelda|Link]] (Xandir), [[Betty Boop]] (Toot), [[Josie and the Pussy Cats]] (Foxxy), the [[Disney Princess|Disney Princesses]] (Clara), [[SpongeBob SquarePants]] (Wooldoor) and vulgar flash cartoons (Spanky) and put them in one house as a Parody of every [[Reality Show]] ever made. Unfortunately it [[Seasonal Rot|quickly devolved]] into [[Dead Baby Comedy|dead baby humor]].
* [[The Venture Brothers]]. The Monarch is a deconstruction all the Campy Supervillians of [[The Sixties]]. Brock Sampson was something of a deconstruction of every [[Action Hero]] ever made, The Titular brothers themselves are a deconstruction of [[The Hardy Boys]] and [[Jonny Quest]]. Oh, and let's not forget how they turned the gang from [[Scooby Doo]] into a Manson family type collection of [[The Sixties|60s]] and [[The Seventies|70s]] era [[Serial Killer|Serial Killers]].
** Don't forget their rather interesting take on [[Fantastic Four (Comic Book)|Fantastic Four]]
* [[Turtles Forever]] Has the ninja turtles from the 1980 cartoon, the turtles from the 2000s cartoon, and the turtles from the comic meet.
** And it. Is. Awesome! Ahem--to clarify how well this actually works as a deconstructive crossover, the antics and personalities of the '80s Turtles--somewhat exaggerated but still grounded in the source material--annoy, confound, and irritate the 2003 turtles to no end. Even Michealangelo, eventually. Then they meet the original turtles (as written in issue 1), and even the 2003 guys seem like plushies by comparison. Yet, in the end, all versions of the Turtles are deemed just as valid as the others.
** It's been complained that the 1980 Turtles seem more cowardly. Of course they are; they're in a different world where they are not the main characters, the fourth wall is more rigidly in place, and the [[Big Bad]] is both ruthless and competent. Goodbye, [[Plot Armor]].
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