Canon Welding: Difference between revisions

No, it's not about literally welding two weapons together to make a double barrel cannon. Although that would be [[More Dakka|awesome.]]

 

 

''Combine them!''

 

 

By combining the two series together, the author can introduce fans of one series to characters they may not be familiar with, inducing them to go out and buy the works in that series, and hopefully attract high sales from fans of both storylines. When done well, it can add a more epic feel to the tale, explore aspects of the two storylines not previously delved into, and make lots of money for the author and his publisher (and there are many examples of this, perhaps most famously ''[[Lord of the Rings]]''). When done poorly, especially with stories with radically different settings or styles, it looks and feels like a shallow money-grab and can potentially be a [[Jump the Shark|shark-jumping]] moment for both series.

 

{{examples}}

 

== Cross-Media ==

* Chris Boucher's prose and audio official and semi-official [[Spin-Off|spin-offs]] to ''[[Doctor Who]]'' and ''[[Blake's 7|Blakes Seven]]'' strongly imply that they take place in the same universe, and more specifically that ''Blake's Seven'' takes place in the same geographical area and time period as Boucher's popular ''[[Doctor Who]]'' story "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S14/E05 The Robots of Death|The Robots of Death]]". Fans disagree over whether they buy this.

* The ''[[Kamen Rider]]'' franchise has had this going since the beginning. The Showa-era shows ([[Kamen Rider (TV series)|original]] through ''[[Kamen Rider Black RX]]'') explicitly took place in the same universe, and the previous Riders would often show up near the end of the latest series to help out [[The Hero|the current hero]]. The movies produced in the hiatus years (''[[Shin Kamen Rider Prologue]]'', ''[[Kamen Rider ZO]]'', ''[[Kamen Rider J]]'') and the Heisei shows (''[[Kamen Rider Kuuga|Kuuga]]'' onwards) abandoned this, except for a few rare [[Crossover]] events. ''[[Kamen Rider Decade]]'' deliberately says that the Heisei shows all occupy their own separate universe...and then has the first nine (''Kuuga'' to ''[[Kamen Rider Kiva|Kiva]]'') forcibly merged, with Decade forced to travel to alternate versions of said worlds in an attempt to fix everything...and then there's the ''Decade'' movie ''All Riders vs. Great Shocker'', which [[Crossover|crosses over]] with the entire Showa-era universe as well. ''Movie War 2010'' also adds ''[[Kamen Rider Double]]'' to the mix. Then ''[[Kamen Rider Fourze]]'' decided to just bite the bullet and imply at the end of episode 2 that every show in the franchise is set in the same universe, with [[Word of God]] saying that they're going to [[Retcon]] the elements of ''Decade'' that didn't work. For extra humor, ''[[Kamen Rider Kabuto]]'' has a brief in-character cameo by the actor who plays Rider-1 in [[The Remake]] ''[[Kamen Rider the First]]'', and ''[[Kamen Rider Ryuki]]'' had a DVD-exclusive joke episode where the protagonist [[All Just a Dream|dreams]] that he teams up with [[Kamen Rider Agito]] to battle Agito's [[Evil Twin]].

** ZO and J fight a multi-seasonal batch of monsters in Kamen Rider World (8-minute theme park thingy, may not be [[Canon]] but never said not to be, and not contradicting anything) which puts ''all three'' hiatus movies (yes, Shin provided a monster) into old-school KR [[Continuity]]. Kuuga's mention of a Professor Hongo (and an imitation of him, which means he ''must'' have known ''the'' Hongo) put Kuuga and Agito into it as well. However, Decade makes the [[Multiverse]] more complicated with its [[Alternate Universe|alternate universes]] bearing variable resemblence to - and ''rarely'' literally being - the worlds of the actual series it's [[Crossover|crossing over]] with. We even get Black and Black RX as separate worlds, as well as Kuuga and Agito, with alternate versions of some of the same people.

** More out-of-series welding: ''Let's Go, Kamen Rider'' also gives us cameos of Inazuman, [[Kikaider]], Kikaider 01, and even ''[[Kaiketsu Zubat]].'' So basically everything with [[Shotaro Ishinomori]]'s name on it officially coexists now, even if you didn't take ''Goranger vs. JAKQ'' (which had ''[[Kamen Rider V 3]], [[Kamen Rider Amazon]], '' and ''[[Kikaider]]'' stated to be fighting the same [[Legion of Doom]] overseas.) seriously before.

** ''[[Masked Rider]]'', the not well received American adaptation of ''Black RX'' was launched with a [[Poorly-Disguised Pilot]] in a ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]]'' episode; much later, ''[[Power Rangers in Space]]'' [[Crossover|crossed over]] with ''[[Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation]]'', which makes all three American series share a Verse. All three are produced by Saban, which wasn't so bad back then, but as of 2009...

*** It's gotten to the point that, near as anyone can tell of the yet-unreleased ''[[Kamen Rider x Super Sentai: The Great Superhero War|Kamen Rider X Super Sentai Super Hero Taisen]]'' movie, nobody except MAYBE Marvelous and Decade know what the hell is going on. Even the narrator is baffled.

* There have been countless ''[[Transformers]]''/''[[G.I. Joe]]'' [[Crossover]] comics and, even worse, the ''[[Transformers]]'' comic character [[Death's Head]], who was then involuntarily sent to the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' universe (in the comics only) and then the [[Marvel Universe]], bringing things full circle...except that ''Who'' [[Crossover|crossed over]] with not just ''Blake's Seven'' as mentioned above, but also [[Sherlock Holmes]] '''and''' the [[Cthulhu Mythos]] in the [[Virgin New Adventures|Doctor Who New Adventures]] novel ''All-Consuming Fire'' and...'''[[Public Domain Character|for the sake of Primus, we better stop at Holmes and the Mythos or else this dysfunctional multiverse will be too big for this page...]]'''in fact, given that ''Doctor Who'' is also part of Westphall's mind, and that Holmes is a member of the Wold Newton Family, what we've got here is a truly dysfunctional mess of a [[Multiverse]], lest we forget that there is also existence of what is most likely a [http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v283/factorialinfinity/prlggallifrey.jpg Post-Time War Gallifrey] in the [[Power Rangers]] Universe.

** With the Doctor's cameo in ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' the ''Doctor Who'' episode where the Devil is trapped on an alien planet is starting to make sense. But that's not all considering how the ''[[Angel]]'' villain Illyria crossed over with [[Peter David]]'s comic [[Fallen Angel]] that heavily implies that the man character is [[Supergirl]] from [[Peter David]]'s run on the book. He even stated in an interview that the character Lee is Supergirl.

*** And with Compati Hero Series ''The Great Battle IV'' this would tie in both ''[[Gundam]]'', [[Ultra Series]],and ''[[Kamen Rider]]'', et al. with the aforementioned ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' and...well. Just let your imagination go wild, one supposes.

** It gets better. Courtesy of Axiom Nexus, '''any''' Transformers series can interact with any other.

** Even better, the Transformers franchise itself was an amalgamation of several unrelated lines of Japanese die-cast toys (Jetfire/Skyfire was a [[Macross|VF-1 Valkyrie]]), with most of the welding done by the fine folks at Marvel Comics.

* Once Matt Tracker figure was released as ''Specialist Tracker'' in one of [[G.I. Joe]] toy series, [[MASK]] has been ''adopted'' into G.I.Joe Universe.

* [[Inverted Trope|Inverted]] with the ''[[Starship Titanic]]'' and ''[[Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy]]''. Despite both featuring similar Starship Titanics which undergo similar events in similar settings, the game [[Fridge Logic|explicitly states that they're different universes.]]

* ''[[Return to Labyrinth]]'', the OEL manga sequel to the film ''[[Labyrinth]]'', has cameos by Uncle Traveling Matt from ''[[Fraggle Rock]]'' and the devils from the "Soldier & Death" episode of ''[[The Storyteller (TV series)|The StoryTeller]]'', establishing that these [[Jim Henson]] Company works share a [[The Verse|Verse]].

** Add [[The Muppets]] into the verse - Kermit visited Fraggle Rock and meet its inhabitants in ''[[A Muppet Family Christmas]]''.

** Not "almost". From ''[[Desperation]]'' (1996) to ''[[From a Buick 8]]'' and ''Everything's Eventual'' (2002), 100% of King's fiction output (six novels and two story collections) tied into ''[[The Dark Tower]]'' (at least retroactively). These were bookended by "[[The Dark Tower/Wizard and Glass|Wizard and Glass]]" in 1997 and the conclusion of the Dark Tower series in 2003-04. Plus the aforementioned incorporation of everything back to ''Salem's Lot'' and ''[[The Stand]]'', written before ''[[The Dark Tower/The Gunslinger|The Dark Tower]]''.

** And lest we forget, '''Salem's Lot'' takes place in the same city as ''Jerusalem's Lot'', an earlier short story, confirmed to be in the [[Cthulhu Mythos]]. Therefore, ''The Dark Tower'' series is part of the Mythos by extension. Which also makes it part of the above ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' clusterfuck by extension-extension.

* Gosho Aoyama's three main works ''[[Detective Conan]]'', ''[[Magic Kaito]]'', and ''[[Yaiba]]!'', have the tendency to merge into one universe. ''[[Magic Kaito]]'' was more or less put on hold in favor of ''[[Detective Conan]]'', but its characters occur so frequently in ''[[Detective Conan]]'' to be the latter's recurring characters. Although, Aoyama also drew the line: ''[[Detective Conan]]'' does not deal with the daily life of the ''[[Magic Kaito]]'' characters.

** On the other hand, ''[[Magic Kaito]]'' is definitively ''in'' the same universe of ''[[Yaiba]]!''; the characters went to the same school called Ekoda, and the ''[[Detective Conan]]'' OVA Conan vs Kaitou Kid vs Yaiba was originally a ''[[Magic Kaito]]'' story arc (and not [[All Just a Dream]]), in which Kaito attempts to steal a magic sword, just before he found out what he was meant to be going after. Not to say, Aoko's gossip mill friend Keiko's "very reliable source" is Sayaka, the main girl in ''[[Yaiba]]!''.

* ''[[Pretty Cure All Stars]].'' 14 magical girls from 4 different continuities save the day. Awesome.

** The second All Stars-movie features 17 magical girls from 5 different continuities. From the previews it seems to feature some of the different baddies, too.

* [[Jack Kirby]] is the [[Trope Codifier]].

** Nowhere is it more extremely apparent than The Secret City Saga (an unsuccessful imprint of Topp Comics created by Kirby using unused ideas from other company's all set in the same universe). Among the most notable was Captain Victory being heavily implied to be [[New Gods|Orion's son]], Teen Agents meeting The Liberty Project from Eclipse Comics, and [[Friday the 13th|Jason Voorhees]] appearing in an issue of Satan's Six (which it was taken even further with them battling in hell suggesting that this took place in between Friday the 13th: The Final Friday) .

** Mind, Marvel started this with the first issue of ''[[Spider-Man]]''. And even before that, Marvel started this 21 years earlier in the Timely Comics era, when Human Torch faced off against Namor the Submariner for the first time. They teamed a few more times over the next few years, and some of the less prominent characters occasionally got involved. Then, in 1946, Timely launched the All-Winners Squad, teaming up existing characters like Captain America, the Human Torch, and the Sub-Mariner (among others)

** DC started it twenty years earlier in All-Star Comics #3 with the Justice Society's first meeting. To this day, it's generally accepted that the Justice Society is the first-ever example of a super hero team lasting longer than a single issue in comics history.

** John Smith did a similar thing from the start in order to make his stories stand out: all his initial ''Future Shocks'' linked in to an organisation called Indigo Prime, and a couple of Indigo Prime agents also appeared in ''Tyranny Rex''. Indigo Prime then got its own series, and eventually crossed over with Smith's [[DC Comics]] series, ''Scarab''.

* [[Alan Moore]], as time has gone on, has turned ''[[League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]'' into this, making vague references to the source material for ''Ozymandias'' and ''The Black Freighter''. Oh, sure, it's only references to the inspirations for them, and Moore would probably rather have his skin boiled than actually go further then that, but this is [[Alan Moore]], ''there are no coincidences''.

** As an aside, Moore is a close friend to Moorcock, close enough that Moorcock has allowed Moore to put in some Moorcock characters into the ''League'' series free of charge.

* [[Frank Miller|Frank Miller's]] [[Batman]] stories: ''[[The Dark Knight Returns]],'' ''[[Batman: Year One]],'' ''[[The Dark Knight Strikes Again]],'' and ''[[All-Star Batman and Robin The Boy Wonder|All-Star Batman and Robin]]'' were originally supposed to be in separate universes, with only ''[[The Dark Knight Returns]]'' and ''[[The Dark Knight Strikes Again]]'' having any clear continuity with each other. With the restoration of the DC [[The Multiverse|Multiverse,]] all of the [[Frank Miller]]-penned Batman stories are now set in Earth-31, which makes ''Year One'' unique in being canon to both Earth-31 and the main DCU.

** Don't forget throwing in a reference to his standalone novel Nemesis in one of the later Foundation books, despite the fact that Nemesis and the Robots/Empire/Foundation books taking place in the same universe makes no sense whatsoever (not even the space-travel physics work the same way).

*** That may have literally been a reference to his ''novel''.

* The final novels in [[Anne Rice]]'s ''[[Vampire Chronicles]]'' tie Lestat's story into that of [[The Mayfair Witches]].

** Actually, they were tied together much before that, notably by the Talamasca (introduced in ''Queen of the Damned'' and later a key player in both the vampires and witches novels) and a few common supporting characters like Aaron Lightner. In other words, the Witches novels avowedly take place in the same world as the ''Vampire Chronicles'' from day one, though their interactions increase substantially over time. Hints in ''The Vampire Lestat'' also indicate that Rice's least-liked novel, ''The Mummy,'' also shares a continuity with these series.

* The [[Cthulhu Mythos]] is full of this:

** [[H.P. Lovecraft|HP Lovecraft]]'s story ''The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath'' ties most of his early standalone [[Short Story|short stories]] into the Dreamlands Cycle, and also brings in ''Pickman's Model'' and the Randolph Carter stories. At the end, the Dreamlands Cycle is linked to the [[Cthulhu Mythos]], though a few stories (such as the early "Dagon") ''may'' be outside the grand continuity. Several other authors have expanded this, notably [[August Derleth]] and [[Clark Ashton Smith]].

*** Cthulhu, Azathoth, and Yog Sothoth are mentioned this way all the time.

*** Even the weird demonesque race beneath the Earth from "The Rats in the Walls" seems to be referenced in "The Whisperer in Darkness" despite seeming to be completely unrelated.

** This was essentially the point behind the "Mythos". Lovecraft would sprinkle references to it in otherwise totally unrelated works (and hoped other authors would do the same, and add to it) in order to give the impression of a deep and ancient mythology.

* Tony Hillerman once had two series, one featuring Navajo cop Jim Chee and one featuring Navajo cop Joe Leaphorn. There is now only the Leaphorn & Chee Mysteries.

* First ''The Poet'' and ''Blood Work'' got sucked into [[Michael Connelly]]'s Harry Bosch universe, now ''Void Moon'' has been caught in the gravity well, too. Of course, unlike many of the other entries here, Harry Bosch's "world" is that of LAPD Homicide, and so referencing or including a few of Michael Connelly's stand alone novels doesn't really require much in the way of a [[Retcon]].

* Before he's done, F. Paul Wilson's ''Adversary Cycle'' bids fair to weave in practically every book and short story the man has ever written.

* [[Jules Verne]] connected ''[[The Mysterious Island]]'' with his earlier books ''[[Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea]]'' and ''[[In Search of the Castaways]]'' by adding Captain Nemo from the former and Tom Ayrton from the latter to the cast of characters; however it opened a few [[Plot Hole|plot holes]], not to mention that the time period doesn't match.

* [[David Gemmell]] has stated that all his books take place in the same world, despite covering vastly different territory, such as a low-magic fairly standard fantasy world (''[[Drenai Tales]]''), a post-apocalyptic world (''The Jerusalem Man'') and our own world (an Arthurian duology and a duology set in ancient Greece).

* The ninth [[Fighting Fantasy]] gamebook, ''Caverns of the Snow Witch'', took the player on a tour of all the major locations from the previous eight books, establishing that they all took place in the same land of Allansia. The monster manual ''Out of the Pit'' then expanded this world: Allansia and The Old World, the setting for the ''Sourcery'' series of gamebooks, were two continents on the world of Titan.

* Many, if not ''all'', of the books written by [[Ted Dekker]] are in the same continuity, as one book references characters from seemingly unrelated books.

** The ''[[Planescape]]'' and ''[[Spelljammer]]'' meta-settings provided a mechanism for crossing over between published campaign worlds. ''Spelljammer'' showed that they most of them existed in different solar systems of the Prime Material Plane, encased in crystal spheres, and one could travel between them in skyships called spelljammers. ''Planescape'' takes place mostly in the Outer Planes, but allows for portals to any Prime Material Plane world.

** There was also the [[Inn Between the Worlds|World Serpent Inn]], which even links campaign settings which are explicitly not part of the Planescape/Spelljammer cosmology, such as ''[[Eberron]]''.

** The "legendary" settings of the various AD&D Historical Reference books were eventually revealed - in the appendix to ''[[Time Travel|Chronomancer]]'' - to be the past of Gothic Earth from ''[[Ravenloft]]: Masque of the Red Death''...which in turn may the past of one of the magical [[D20 Modern]] settings - probably Shadow Chasers (the Red Death gets mentioned in the ''Menace Manual'').

** The Shadow World is also explicitly part of the Mage cosmology. The only problem we currently have with the cosmology is the "Two Arcadias" hypothesis. In Mage, [[Arcadia]] is the [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence|Supernal]] Realm of Time and Fate, and separated from the human world by the [[Eldritch Abomination|Abyss]], a massive rent in reality; while in ''[[Changeling: The Lost]]'', Arcadia is a realm where humans are kidnapped off to and transformed into Changelings. Some believe that these are two different realms, while others believe they are the same realm. The books state that the answer is to be determined by the [[Game Master]], but offers suggestions for both options. It's also possible that [[Take a Third Option|both are true]]: there is a "Fallen" Arcadia and a "Supernal" Arcadia which were originally one realm and now separated by the Abyss, but the Watchtower of the Lunargent Thorn bridges the gap and allows them to intersect and interact.

** ''[[Exalted]]'' was an inversion. The original concept for the game was for it to be set in the forgotten, mythical prehistory of the ''Old World of Darkness''... but it was ultimately decided not to make this an absolute of the setting, and reduce the connections to common setting elements and parallels that hint at the possibility. The tagline "Before there was a world of darkness..." is [[The Artifact]] of the original concept.

* ''[[Rifts]]''. Want ''Robotech'' mecha to fight the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles alongside unicorn-riding cyborgs, only to have them all ambushed by eldritch abominations? Rifts. Palladium games specifically published conversion books for incorporating their other franchises into Rifts rules.

* The ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'' and ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' universes (universi? universeses?) used to be linked, although the linking statements were made by mad characters. The whole saga/background is told through an [[Unreliable Narrator]] anyway. [[Word of God|Games Workshop]] has stated that the link is now done away with, since it was mostly silly anyway.

** To elaborate, Warhammer world used to be a planet in the 40k universe, surrounded by warp storms that made it inaccessible for the rest of the galaxy. Nowdays they exist in separate universes, but there appears to be a small link between them in the form of the Warp (the Chaos Gods are the same in each universe, and some people in Warhammer world have gotten visions of Chaos in 40 universe. For example, in ''Liber Chaotica: Book of Khorne'', it's all but outright stated the author is having visions of Abaddon's 13th Black Crusade. Also the [[Precursors|Old Ones]] in ''Warhammer'' appear to be the same as the ones in 40k, and a fan theory suggests they escaped from 40k universe to ''Warhammer'' one after the War in Heavens). There is no real interaction between the two universes, however, unless you count some daemon characters popping up in both universes and a few magic items that have a suspicious resemblance to 40k technology.

* ''[[Mega Man Legends]]'' was originally in its own [[Continuity]] (hence jokes and references to the original series being a [[Show Within a Show]]). However, the recent ''[[Mega Man Zero]]'' and ''[[Mega Man ZX]]'' [[Video Game|games]] have more directly connected it as being the far distant future of the original ''[[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]]'' and ''[[Mega Man X]]''.

* When SNK made ''Art of Fighting 2'', they decided to officially make the ''[[Art of Fighting]]'' series part of the same [[Continuity]] as the ''[[Fatal Fury]]'' series. To explain why the ''[[Art of Fighting]]'' cast were not around during the events of the ''[[Fatal Fury]]'' games, they made the ''[[Art of Fighting]]'' series a [[Prequel]] to the ''[[Fatal Fury]]'' series by setting it ten years before and putting a young Geese Howard as the [[True Final Boss]] in ''Art of Fighting 2'' (back when he was still the police commissioner of South Town). When SNK later wanted to cross the ''[[Fatal Fury]]'' cast with the ''[[Art of Fighting]]'' cast in ''[[The King of Fighters]]'' games, they had to place the third series in a separate [[Continuity]].

* The ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' series has a few counts of direct crossover, such as Gilgamesh (seems to be the same person in every game he appears in) and Cloud (who features as a guest character in ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'').

** Ivalice Alliance series was the first attempt to make a Final Fantasy universe that included more than one game and in fact includes games without the Final Fantasy name. ''[[Vagrant Story]]'', ''Final Fantasy Tactics'',[[Crystal Defenders]], and the [[Development Hell|not yet released]] Fortress, and [[Final Fantasy XII]] series are among the comfirmed games to take place in the Ivalice universe.

 

== Western Animation ==

** There was also an episode of ''[[Hercules (Disney film)|Hercules]]'' in which Jafar and Hades cut a deal to eliminate each other's enemies, resulting in an ''[[Aladdin (Disney film)|Aladdin]]'' [[Crossover]].

** ''[[Gargoyles]]''' [[Word of God]], [[Greg Weisman]], says it shares its universe with ''[[Atlantis: The Lost Empire|Atlantis the Lost Empire]]'' - or at least, each 'verse includes a [[Broad Strokes]] version of the other franchise. (This occurred when Weisman worked on an ''Atlantis'' TV [[Spin-Off]] - but the series, including the ''Gargoyles'' [[Cross Through]] episode, got canned when the movie bombed.)