Crack Pairing
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"Tea ships Harry/Hedwig, by the way." |
Shipping beyond all bounds of sanity. There are official couples and there are couples drawn from more-or-less subjective Subtext, and then there are pairings that make you go "HOOBA JOOBA WHAAAA?!" Characters who are shipped together despite barely even having a relationship in Canon. Sometimes they haven't even met in canon. Sometimes they don't even belong to the same 'verse (that's what cross overs are for, after all) or to the same species. Sometimes they aren't even both carbon-based lifeforms.
Crack pairings range from the making-you-scratch-your-head-in-puzzlement weird, to the eyes-gouging-with-a-fork-inducing weird. But they always leave you asking "Why? By all that is holy, WHY?"
Reasons for writing crack pairing fan works varies. It might be in order to clean up romantic loose ends by bringing together characters left alone, or to erase the memory of a particularly squicky canon pairing. They might be the result of people genuinely searching for a good personality match, or drawing parallels between two characters for whatever reason. A good number are the results of freeform roleplaying. Perhaps they took it on as a challenge to prove they could make it work. Or maybe they did it on a dare. Most often, though, the insanity itself is its own justification, especially to poke fun at more hardcore fans. It can get worryingly serious though... like they actually believe it could happen...
Occasionally, when a fanfic writer gets hold of a crack pairing and makes it convincing enough, that ship gains a following and can even become very popular. It's even been known to influence The Powers That Be.
While crack pairings may show up in crack fics, the two are not necessarily related. A Crack Pairing could very well be treated in a dead serious and realistic way, and a Crack Fic could be gen, or only about traditional pairings.
Note that when characters do have some kind of relationship, no matter how unhealthy, insane or weird their pairing would be, it doesn't count as crack pairing. Contrast with Ho Yay, Foe Yay, No Yay, Twincest, Brother-Sister Incest and even Parental Incest for examples of ships which you may find weird but which are not crack pairings...
For an entire LJ community dedicated to particularly squicky crack pairings, behold VeryWrongSlash, which needs no further explanation.
If one wants to create his/her own Crack pairing (or just wants to see some pairings that may not yet have been added to this page), use the Brain-Hurting Pairer Generator.
See Crossover Ship for shipping characters who don't belong to the same verse. See Cargo Ship for shipping objects. Compare with Ships That Pass in the Night.
Examples should be limited to specific stories, preferably with links, lest the page be overrun with every pairing that has ever crossed anybody's mind.
Advertising
- There's Mac/PC slash out there. Yes, from the Apple commercials. It's John Hodgman and Justin Long having sex, except they have computer ports and plugs instead of human orifices. Aren't you sad you asked now?
- Played for laughs here (scroll down).
- Flo (bubbly Progressive Insurance checkout lady) and Erin (Esurance super-agent.) It's destiny. It exists [dead link]. Naturally. (Not pornographic but not remotely worksafe.)
- There's also art to be found of either (or both) of them with the Geico Gecko.
- Benetton “Unhate” ads
- Mayhem of All State and Profressive's Flo.
Anime and Manga
- Shippo/Koga (Shoga?) from Inuyasha.
- Also from Inuyasha, there is Sesshoumaru/Kirara. Would that be SessKi?
- Naruto is the single most popular source material for anime fanfic on fanfiction.net with nearly a quarter of a million fics. Given its Loads and Loads of Characters and plenty of hints towards potential romance but extremely rare actual commitment, it's been the source of a firestorm of shipping with many stories pairing ships in parallel fleets across the cast. While fandom seems to put its most strenuous support behind Naruto/Sasuke, Naruto/Hinata, Sasuke/Sakura, and Naruto/Sakura, several crackish pairs with little to no canon interaction have become somewhat popular.
- People like to ship Naruto with Ino and Anko due to some similarities in character despite only minimal interaction in canon. An arranged, political marriage is often the device for shipping with Temari and Mei Terumi Naruto doesn't interact much with Tenten either, but people like to make up a shared background as orphans. There are also many fics with him and Tayuya, Hanabi, and Yugito despite never once saying a word to any of these characters. All of these pairings have 100+ or even 1000+ fics, but you can safely say that if a character is female, Naruto has been shipped with her. Or if not, we'll just make the character female, as with the Kyuubi or the androgynous Haku. Or we'll just make Naruto female and ship her with the guys. Or we'll keep him male and still ship him with Itachi of all people or Kakashi.
- They even pair him with his mother Kushina or his father
- To show you how much Naruto can be an Author Avatar for some writers, there are 30 fanfics featuring Samui on fanfiction.net. 26 of the 30 have her paired with Naruto.
- And then there's all the Gary Stu / Harem fics in which Naruto is shipped with every single female character over 14 in the show, regardless of the fact that he's 12-16. Anko is obligatory, and members can reach up in age to even Tsunade.
- Sakura and Kakashi are almost a mainstream pair at this point despite no romantic tension in canon and a large age difference. Sakura also gets a huge amount of villain-shipping. When she's not with all of Akatsuki, she's often with Itachi, Deidara, or Sasori. On the good guy side, Neji, Gaara, Shikamaru and Kiba are common ships as well as going yuri or threesome with Ino. In short, if a character is male, Sakura has been shipped with him. If a character is female and either her age or from Leaf Village, she's probably been shipped with her too.
- Sasuke's signature, semi-popular crack ship (outside of his main yaoi pairings) is with Hinata, who he never once speaks to and who is the only girl in his class that wasn't interested in him. This is often why he goes for her in the first place.
- Kakashi gets shipped with Iruka very often despite them only haven spoken in an argument over the chunin exams. He also ends up with Anko a fair share as a secondary pair despite them never talking. (The latter is likely because, until recently, there were few females anywhere near his age in canon at all.)
- If it doesn't work, make it Iruka/Anko (often as background pairing instead of the main one). If you read most fic in the Fan Fic Recommendations page, you will get the idea.
- There are an awful lot of fics that suggest Anko and Kurenai once had a thing or experimented.
- When Gaara isn't paired off with Naruto or Sakura, he can be seen with Hinata for some strange reason.
- Konohamaru and Hanabi have never been in a scene together and are 1–2 years in age apart, but commonly show up as a side pairing in fics.
- Fics pairing him with Hinata are getting common as well, especially as a side pairing in fics involving Time Skips.
- Konohamaru and Hanabi are not that insane a pairing; they are the younger scions of the first and second-most socially-ranking families in the town, and Hanabi's family in particular is extremely class-conscious about status. He's pretty much the only boy she'd know that she'd be allowed to date. (Also, as their ginormously influential family patriarchs are political allies, and they are apparently the same age and would thus be in the same Academy class, their lack of on-screen camera time together is more a function of their being tertiary supporting cast than it is of them having no plausible social space of contact.)
- Despite having an extremely close relationship with Choji in the manga, you are more likely to find Shikamaru in yaoi fics with Neji, Naruto, and Kiba.
- People like to ship Naruto with Ino and Anko due to some similarities in character despite only minimal interaction in canon. An arranged, political marriage is often the device for shipping with Temari and Mei Terumi Naruto doesn't interact much with Tenten either, but people like to make up a shared background as orphans. There are also many fics with him and Tayuya, Hanabi, and Yugito despite never once saying a word to any of these characters. All of these pairings have 100+ or even 1000+ fics, but you can safely say that if a character is female, Naruto has been shipped with her. Or if not, we'll just make the character female, as with the Kyuubi or the androgynous Haku. Or we'll just make Naruto female and ship her with the guys. Or we'll keep him male and still ship him with Itachi of all people or Kakashi.
- From Suzumiya Haruhi, there's the curiously semi-popular Kyon/Asakura pairing. Asakura (a humanoid interface like Nagato) is deleted partway through the first novel, after trying to kill Kyon to provoke a reaction in Haruhi. It gets better. In The Disappearance Of Haruhi Suzumiya, Kyon winds up in an Alternate Universe where everything is "normal" and winds up getting stabbed by her again near the end, this time for trying to return the world to the way it was ("That was the reason why I was created."). -fandom, anyone?
- Saving Kyon from Suou with a Big Damn Heroes moment, a knife-wielding arm over his shoulder and her mouth directly at the nape of his neck whispering "This human is my prey. If you mean to take him away from me, why, I'd rather do this" probably fuels this pairing quite a bit. It also makes her a lot creepier.
- Some re-imaginings of the first incident involve her trying a different tactic. Haruhi nearly remade the world for catching Asahina playfully pushing against Kyon's back; one can hardly imagine what might happen if she caught him doing something more. It is the obvious, sane choice and likely the one she would've made if she'd only thought of it. You can easily imagine Kyon talking her into it out of self-preservation.
- Taniguchi/Kuyou, anyone? It actually happened in the tenth book.
- Margrave Jeremiah Gottwald/Sayoko Shinozaki has lately become kinda popular in the Code Geass fandom. The pretty fanarts also help. It's "A FUCKING STORM OF LOYALTY".
- Fanon is quite clear on how the Grand Finale plays out: Only Anya and Orange are shown in the ORANGE GROVE because of the "fact" that Sayoko is back at the house cooking for her dear husband and their adopted daughter. Or scaring off thieves and birds eating/stealing the fruits with her l33t Ninja Maid skillz and then joining her little family at home for a nice dinner.
- NinaXTable-kun OTP. It even has some basis in canon
- The Pokémon fandom made a sport of it, with Loads and Loads of Characters and fewer canon ships than you can count on one hand. Fans would spend plenty of time thinking up interesting pairings, giving them clever names, and adding them to a large list. ElderShipping (Ash's Mom/Professor Oak) was probably the most popular, until one wondered if they were hitting on each other in canon. And these ships were not just for humans - Pokemon were used frequently, too. At one point, there was even a subsection for shippings with inanimate objects.
- The inanimate object thing makes perfect sense. After all, who HASN'T been inside of Master Ball?
- There is a page with an insanely long list of Pokemon ships. View it at your own risk!
- Bulbapedia has a comprehensive list of basically every Pokemon shipping in existence. It's 67 pages long.
- There are 649 Pokemon currently released. There are effectively thousands of possible crack pairings to be had. You do the math.
- I did the math. There are 210,276 possible 2-member pairings from a set of 649 individuals.
- To put it in even greater perspective, this is a series that has been going on for 13 years and more than 2/3 of the episodes have a Character Of The Week. Every single one of them has at least two pairings.
- Ghetsis/N. It exists. There's even a DeviantArt page on it. [dead link] WHY GOD WHY?!
- Particularly popular is AltoShipping, which is Ash/Latias (the latter being a jet-dragon-Olympus Mons thing). The reason for this that the 5th movie implied (but not confirmed) Latias to have holographically disguised itself as a girl around Ash's age and kissed him, making it Ash's first kiss. Latias has since been portrayed in some fanfiction and/or fanart, some NSFW, as constantly lustfully thinking of Ash. This pairing is at war with MareShipping, which pairs Ash up with Bianca (no, not that one), the girl Latias likes to disguise itself as, who believe that it really is Bianca and not Latias.
- Digimon Adventure has a few memetic crack pairings. Takeru/Holsmon and Iori/BlackWarGreymon come to mind. A very popular crack pairing in the early days of the fandom was Yamato/Mimi (Mimato). Despite their both liking music and occasionally standing next to each other, they have never had an on-screen conversation. Ever since the second season dropped their love-bombs, however, Digimon fans have enjoyed writing crack pairings and seeing how many they can make work.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
- Most ships within the fandom would undoubtedly qualify. Most pairings consist of Slash Fic, incest, Foe Yay, or any combination of these. It doesn't stop there either. There are pairings like Iggy/Polnareff and Dio/Steamroller.
- Giorno/Jolyne, who not only have never met in canon, but are also blood related. There's even official artwork of this one.
- CLAMP took the cake when they massively shipped Jotaro/Kakyoin with the creation of Jota: their son who hatched from an egg.
- One of the official artbooks has a series of pictures showing the whole cast having a big dance party, and includes a number of pairings that range from the plausible (Trish/Mista, Dio/two of his female minions) to the unlikely (Avdol/Polnareff, Wham/ACDC) to the truly bizarre (Killer Queen/The World and Silver Chariot/Moody Blues).
- Sailor Moon
- Generally anything involving Sailor Pluto while questioning the paternity of Chibiusa will have you reaching for the Brain Bleach. There's also Minako/Rei, which is based on a manga chapter in which Minako asks Rei if she farts.
- Minako/Rei is not that farfetched. Here is a whole manifesto about it.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! is the Shonen form of Sailor Moon in twisted ships. There's the so-called "Hikari/Yami" pairing. A frequent ship is Kaiba/Shizuka (Serenity), based on one line that Kaiba may or may not have said to Shizuka. This when Kaiba doesn't even know who Shizuka is; even if he weren't already in love with a card, he'd reject her on principle for being Jonouchi/Joey's sister, someone who he can't stand (Then again...). But probably hands down the weirdest pairing is Asuka/Judai's TOWEL. (A towel he wore in the Hot Springs Episode). It's become a bit of a running gag.
- There is even a pairing called Unlikelyshipping for crying out loud! It`s Marikx Insector/Weevil. They never met and even if they did, there would be little evidence that they liked each other...
- Death Note:
- There's a video out there dedicated to Light's crackpairings...
- Ryuk/Light, for those yet unfamiliar with the series, this is why. [1]
- Light x Naomi Misora. In canon they share one scene together and he killed her at the end of it. Also very cracky because Het is very much Ew in this fandom.
- BB x Light [2], [3] They never met in canon and it's implied that Light killed him.
- Mello x Light [4] [dead link], [5], [6] [dead link] enemies that never met in canon.
- Mello x Misa [dead link] enemies that never met in canon and Het.
- L x Matt they never met in canon and the age difference is disturbing.
- Light x Matt enemies that never met in canon.
- Matt x Near [7] [dead link] they never said a word to each other in canon.
- BB x Misa [dead link] they never met in canon and again it would be Het.
- Ryuk x Rem very cracky because 1) Shinigami can't have sex and 2) it would be Het and canonically Rem loves Misa.
- Kira x Light (often shipped as an Enemy Within sort of thing) [8], [9] [dead link], [10]
- Watari x Mr. Yagami No Yay at it's finest.
- "My Jersey Boy." Carl from ATHF and Inuyasha. Yeah.
- Bandit KeithXAmericaXStephen Colbert fanart.
- Gunsmith Cats has possibly the first canon crack pairing ever with the latest volume of Gunsmith Cats Burst having Misty and Iron Goldie Musou end up together by the end. In a threesome with the maid, no less.
- There exists a niche fanbase amongst watchers of Gundam Seed Destiny that ship Shinn and Cagalli together, citing that their personalities would have meshed very well if he hadn't blamed Orb for his family's death.
- Thanks to the fact that the characters are all countries even the canon pairings in Axis Powers Hetalia could qualify as crack. Then read the history of each nation and it's not too hard to come up with some reason for a romantic pairing for each and every single pairing.
- Canada/Prussia, started as this & seems like a good example as they have one canon interaction which wasn't even in the "story" of the series. Then we discovered the presence of New Prussia in Canada...It's now one of the more popular ships out there.
- How 'bout England/Mochimerica? It has been done , in accordance with Rule 34. And then there's China/Shinatty-chan.
- Denmark/Lithuania, Iceland/Refridgerator, and Switzerland/Gun.
- Tony/Lithuania. Be warned, following these links may bring bouts of nausea.
- This may not be as crack-ish as you may think. It is stated that Tony happens to be quiet fond of Lithuania, and got jealous when Lithuania was spending more time talking with Americas whale.
- Lady Gaga X Canada has a group on Deviant ART.
- As of the 2010 World Cup, Spain x Paul (The octopus) has a small fan following.
- Due to the English version, Flying Mint Bunny x Herr Shtick is growing in popularity.
- America/Lettuce exists. America being raped by lettuce, to be exact.
- In the Baccano!! visual novel, you can choose an option for Ladd and Claire to get married. Yes, Ladd and Claire.The 2 psycho for hires who hate each other can get married.
- Which makes it canon.
- What makes this even more insane, when you think about it, is that they are getting married in New York in 1931. Not only is this 80 years too early to be legal, homosexual activity was a misdemeanor at the time, punishable by up to 3 months in prison. Do either of these guys really want the police snooping around their backgrounds?
- Are you kidding? A bunch of people who don't think they're going to die and also contradict Claire's vague sense of morality. That's pratically a wedding present.
- In the Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle Italian fandom, Shaoron/Yuui (the twin brothers of two of the protagonists in the Alternate Universe omakes) started out as this. Then the pairing caught on (with the help of some very willing fanwriters and pretty Japanese fanart [dead link]), and it's now considered on par with the series' main ships- in Italy, of course. We are waiting for the right time to export it and conquer the world.
- Hellsing has Alucard/everyone, only fueled by Word of God that declared him genderless. And of course, there's Schrodinger/Incognito here.
- It's not that he's genderless - it's that he can be any gender he wants. Either way, Alucard is biologically male, considering his previous status as Vlad Tepes. So not every pairing of his can be considered 'crack'.
- A two part Umineko no Naku Koro ni side story written by the canon's author sees the Stakes give chocolat to other characters on Valentine's Day. Battler just happens to show up when the oldest sister is trying to figure out who she wants to give her's to, and he gives her nicely packaged black tea in return in part two. Off the wall since their only interaction up until that point was her torturing and tormenting him. And fatally wounding him when he went to offer her a croissant.
- Whispy Woods/Lovely. Yes.
- Izaya/Mikado/Anri/Kida. It exists.
- In canon, both Walker and Erika are total crack shippers. Pairings they've wrote include (but are no way limited to) Kadota/Chikage, Erika/Kadota (with BDSM), Shizuo/Izaya, Kadota/Walker (as butlers), Walker/Girls, Female!Kadota/Girls, Shizuo/Kadota/Izaya (you may be sensing a trend here), Fans/Trolls, CDs/DVDs...
- Kimblee x Winry. It [dead link] exists, and it probably has a reason.
- Chiyo's dad (that... cat-potato thing) x Sakaki. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek-f1XKM-GY
- Considering the Loads and Loads of Characters, you'd think Mahou Sensei Negima would have a lot more of this than it does. Tales of Yue's Harem, however, has a little snippet devoted to one that breaks the mind just to consider; Tsukuyomi/Paio.
- And played with somewhat canon Chachazero and Chamo.
- Another bizarre canon example occurs in the epilogue, where it's heavily implied that Hakase marries Kurt Godel, whom she'd never met in the main story.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica 's legions of Yuri Fans are fond of shipping Mami and Charlotte together, as hundreds of fan artists can attest. Which is pretty cute, until you remember that Charlotte was the witch that ate Mami alive. Kyouko/Charlotte also has its fans.
- While there are not too many crack-ships that are super popular from Dragon Ball Z, the writers from the DBZ kink meme seem to be trying their hardest to increase the popularity of crack-pairings. Some examples are:
- Bulma/Yamcha/Vegeta: 1 2
- Android 17/Yamcha: 1 2
- Yamcha/Future Trunks 1
- Marron/Maron (as in pairing up Krillin's daughter with Krillin's ex-girlfriend):1
- Bulma/Future Bulma 1 (Note that Trunks/Future Trunks also exists, just not on that meme. 1)
- There’s also the ever-popular Android 17/Krillin/Android 18 1 2 3
- Actually, all of Dr. Gero's creations seem to like Krillin 1 2
- It should be noted that most of these stories have parts that are not safe for work. Also, there are even more pairings on the meme that can be considered crack pairings.
- The Neon Genesis Evangelion fandom has Kaworu/Rei. Why is this a crack pairing? Because Kaworu is gay for Shinji in canon, so seeing him in love with someone of the opposite sex is very odd.
- Well, Kaworu isn't actually human. It's unlikely he has any idea of sexuality, or if Angels/Clones have sexualities to begin with, so it's entirely possible he could fall for Rei. However, this is still a crack pairing. Why? Because he's an Angel, she's a clone born from Lilith, and the two interact in only few scenes (and that's including End).
- This Shinji/Kyoko fic takes arguably Up to Eleven. Why is that? Because it's Shinji with Asuka's mother, a Posthumous Character whose only scene was basically hanging herself in front of Asuka as child.
Comic Books
- Three NSFW words: Goofus. Slash. Gallant. Note that as far as vague canon is concerned, they might as well be Parallel Universe versions of each other. Since they're in the same universe - consider Goofus Gallant's Evil Twin.
- Doctor Doom. Squirrel Girl. Behold!
- Loki from the Thor comics/movie rapes and tortures Sam Winchester from Supernatural. There is an in-verse explanation for why Sam is there, but this is still completely cracktastic. The fact that it has good reviews and multiple chapters is even more disturbing. So sorry for this.
- In DC Nation, Word of God states the entire in-game universe came about due to a crack ship. The universe started as a varient strand of Hypertime (the old DC concept of a multi-verse) that kept attracting variences and it was easy for characters to find themselves in alternate realities. Starfire found a lover in one of these off-shoot realities and brought him home. The lucky gent? A version of Hugo Weaving who had been fated to die in a car accident, but instead ended up in the equivalent of multi-verse's train stop cafe. After he arrived, the universe threw up its proverbial hands trying to make this strand of reality fit with mainline DC, thus creating its own world. (It also makes all those comic book movies that much more amusing to the players.)
Film
- Bumblebee/Sam, which even has their own live journal community, as does Ironhide/Lennox [dead link], with Barricade/Sam and Optimus Prime/Sam also having a small following. No, it doesn't matter that the robots are several times their human partners size, and have a completely different reproduction process, fans of the ships have found ways around these pesky little details.
- Many of the pairings on the Star Trek XI kink meme. Honorable mention include McCoy/Sarek, Amanda Grayson/Winona Kirk, Sarek/Winona Kirk, Gaila/Uhura, and Chekhov/EVERYBODY. Not to mention Au!Kirk/Spock Prime.
- This person seems to be dedicated entirely to crack pairings. Dimitri from Anastasia with Sinbad, Odette from Swan Princess playing the hypotenuse? Hey, why not? Of course, that particular video is more heartbreaking than it has any right to be...
- David/Sam. Actually not a bad fic.
- Anybody/Jason Voorhees. Anybody.
- The Holiday had a canon example at least for actors with characters played Jack Black and Kate Winslet involved romantically.
- A common crack pairing in the Thor fandom is Loki/Darcy Lewis.
Literature
- The Harry Potter fandom is chock full of them. Doesn't matter how minor the characters are, or how biologically impossible various acts would be. If they exist, they will be shipped. For instance, Hagrid/Dobby and Dobby/Giant Squid.
- Giant Squid/Hogwarts Castle. Ahh, good old Squidwarts. Here's a link.
- J. K. Rowling/Giant Squid fic.
- Harry/Fawkes. Part of a larger fanfic called 'Twas Twisted.
- There is another.
- The Hogwarts Castle/The Shrieking Shack.
- Kingsley/Percy. The fic "Trouble in the Ministry" also features some Remus/Arthur Weasley and Snape/Neville.
- Harry/Hedwig has been done. By a writer called yamigirl121. A tribute, perchance?
- It's been done by more than one person. Do they decide these by spinning a wheel or something?
- There is Dolores Umbridge/Margaret Thatcher slash fiction: here.
- Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce you to Hermione/Sorting Hat?
- Try Dumbledore/Mrs. Norris!! Added bit of horror when you think about what the elder wand looks like.
- The Dangerverse Alternate Universe series has mostly canon and OC pairings, but also contains Charlie/Tonks and Draco/Luna.
- When Daniel Radcliffe hosted SNL they did a Harry Potter sketch set ten years into the future where Hagrid marries Luna!
Luna: "He's huuuuuge!" |
- Royal Ward by "Catstaff" has, as of late 2017, a possibly unique pairing in the process of developing: Sirius Black/Princess Diana (forming during the period where Charles and Diana's marriage was over in everything but name).
- This is, in fact, how the Tropes Ron the Death Eater and Draco in Leather Pants got their starts. Even before Ron and Hermione were recognized as an Official Couple (Harry and Hermione shippings were more common) fanfics often had a plot where Ron was mean or abusive towards Hermione, often resulting in Draco being the one to comfort her.
- For The Lord of the Rings, Legolas/Treebeard. No, really.
- Treebeard/Bill the Pony. In horrific detail, at that.
- Somewhere on Adultfanfiction.net a author has written two fics about a relationship between Faramir and Shagrat (an Uruk and captain of the guard of Cirith Ungol, the one who found Frodo in Shelob's lair). Actually, very well written.
- Merry/Pippin/Treebeard and someone's horse/Treebeard.
- Some Discworld fan has written Greebo/Rincewind slash. Fortunately with Greebo in human form. While it's only been done once, it keeps being brought up in discussions of Discworld fanfic.
- A bet on whether it was possible to write Discworld slash resulted in a Death/Librarian pairing. And it was hilarious.
- Similar circumstances resulted in a Luggage/Rincewind. And it was also hilarious.
- Death/Vetinari. It's very Victorian and almost in-character. Adorable.
- Vetinari/Susan. They've never actually met in the books, but it could work. Here's an example. Ignore the typo in the title, the fic's pretty good.
- A bet on whether it was possible to write Discworld slash resulted in a Death/Librarian pairing. And it was hilarious.
- While the words "pairing" and "H.P. Lovecraft" might not sound like something that should ever be mentioned together, August Derleth most certainly did; he paired several Lovecraft's gods with each other and his own creations, creating a convoluted family tree. One particular example stands out: according to Derleth, Cthulhu is the spawn of Yog-Sothoth and Nub, one of Lovecraft's less-known gods. That's not particularly odd, if it weren't for the fact that Nub is a spawn of Shub Niggurath mentioned above. Which presumably makes Yog-Sothoth her father. Yes, you heard me, incestous Eldritch Abominations. You may want to grab the Brain Bleach, lest you Go Mad from the Revelation.
- Bizarrely, this also makes Wilbur and his brother Cthulhu's uncles.
- Clark Ashton Smith, one of Lovecraft's frequent correspondents and another of the original Cthulhu Mythos writers, also produced a "family tree of the gods" (which can be found here). Also, in Lovecraft's story The Dunwich Horror, Yog-Sothoth (an omnipresent superbeing which appears as a mass of spheres) has two children with a human woman. Squicky.
- Warrior Cats is a crack-spawning machine. The most obvious example is JayfeatherxStick, which even has its own ship name. Other notable ones include Female!RowanclawxMale!Rowanclaw, Hollyleafxwarrior code, JayfeatherxBrightheart, and many more.
- Twilight has a ton of these, including:
- Bella/Tyler's Van
- Jane/Seth
- Bella/Alice
- Bella/Rosalie
- Bella/Mike
- Bella/Alec
- Bella/Paul
- Edward/Jacob
- Paul/Seth
- Jacob/Seth
- Emmett/Seth
- Jacob/Paul
- Mike/Eric
Live-Action TV
- Heroes crackships range from the ridiculous to the truly disturbing, and include: Bobhinder (Bob/Mohinder); Chylar (Chandra/Sylar); Chailar (Chai/Sylar); Lyle/West; Lyle/Zach; West/Zach; Moluggles (Mohinder Lizard/Mister Muggles); Mandra (Mohinder/Chandra)(yes, this is the latter); Chandra/Eden; Chandra/HRG and Chandra/Monty. Yes, Monty. Apparently this is because of the portmanteau name "Chonty". Poor Chandra has gained a posthumous reputation as a pervy old man. Also, there are rumours of a Lyle/Sylar fic out there somewhere... (Here it is). There's also Luke/Lyle. Perhaps there's Micah/Wireless.
- The Heroes Slash Manual is an authoritative guide to many things slash in the Heroes universe. It should be noted that "one day" every character will maintain a romantic relationship with Kaito Nakamura, and that Sylar is Mr. Muggles' bitch.
- It's possible Frankie Boyle was just making it up, but he claims there's Mock the Week Slash Fic... and it pairs him and Hugh Dennis.
- Such a thing does indeed exist, and while Frankie/Hugh is one of if not the most common pairing (thus not really a crack pairing as far as the fandom are concerned), it's by no means the only one. There's even an LJ community devoted to it.
- Godai Yuusuke (Kamen Rider Kuuga) and Kazami Yuuka. There is even an entire video series on Nico Nico Douga about it.
- iCarly has these. Some include Sam and PrincipalFranklin. Wendy/Spencer, Carly/Cal.
- Victorious explored Jade/Andre, which would probably rank at 2nd most cracky ship in the main cast behind Jade/Robbie. Including all the Les Yay and Ho Yay ships.
- Glee dedicated two episodes just to descontruct crack pairings: "Laryngitis" had Mercedes/Puck and Brittany/Kurt, "Funk" had Will/Sue with hints of Terri/Finn.
- Make that four, with an out of nowhere episode involving Blaine and Rachel.
- Season 3 has a few: First there was Puck/Shelby and also Artie/Becky. The former worked out much better.
- "Props" was full of them even though they were just a hallucination. We had Tina and Kurt (As Rachel and Finn), Finn and Puck (As Kurt and Blaine), Rachel and Joe (As Tina and Mike) and Mercedes and Artie (As Brittany and Santana)
- In the Community episode "Romantic Expressionism", Jeff says that the reason why they are not like a normal family is that there is nothing stopping them from dating each other. Followed by a long sequence of Ship Tease suggestive glances between all of the characters, which include such crazy pairings as Abed/Britta, Troy/Shirley and Abed/Pierce.
- Counting the Days ships Count von Count with Edward Cullen from Twilight. Hilarity Ensues.
- In a rather notorious episode of Pee-wee's Playhouse, Pee Wee marries a fruit salad.
- In the Series/Merlin fandom, everyone is paired with everyone else, but this pairing still managed to be crack. Morgause and Sir Leon (or Moron, as the pairing is called) haven't even really met each other... They've just met each other's armies. And yet It Makes Sense in Context.
- In the Supernatural fandom, quite a few people ship Dean with his car!
- From Doctor Who, we have Jenny/Susan. For those of you who don't know, they're aunt and niece.
- Just when you the Criminal Minds fandom was relatively normal, they come up with stuff like Reid/Maps and UnSub/BAU Member. In case you are wondering, the Reid/Map pairing has got a very dedicated and growing following.
- Word of God is that Parks and Recreation intentionally set one up with Ann/Tom.
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40,000 has an entire fandom based on Taldeer the Eldar and Liivi the human cybernetic assassin. A self-acknowledged blasphemy to the setting of the series, yet a Guilty Pleasure to many.
- Apparently not completely blasphemy, as there are some old 2nd edition rule books describing a half-Eldar. Of course, 2nd edition has been almost entirely retconned by now...
- The above could still never compare to the Macha/Emperor of Mankind ship that was spawned later, especially considering Macha's existence is based on the Memetic Mutation that she will never get laid, ever.
- Magic the Gathering ran an April Fools' Day joke involving this, pairing Liliana and Gideon Jura.
Video Games
- Samus/Ridley of Metroid (yes, the giant space dragon), made worse as a kind of Foe Yay combined with his being the only constant male (or entity with a name) in her life, not counting her starship computer.
- From the Kirby universe, we have the logic-defying Marx and 02. [dead link] Yes, really. Now take into consideration that this is a cheerful, light-hearted jester being paired with a being made of darkness, capable of feeling only negative emotions. There's [dead link] alot [dead link] of it, too. However what may be the most insane of them all is Kirby and Katey Perry [11] [dead link]
- The Kingdom Hearts Fan Vid Okay, Humor Me parodies this, with Selphie explaining crack pairings to Kairi.
- There are 78 possible pairings within Organization XIII, without throwing Namine into the mix, and there's a legion of fangirls behind every single one.
- And a surprising number behind Luxord/ Lady Gaga.
- Sora/Larxene. Unintentionally, they're quite amusing. Here's a well written drabble to make up for it.
- There is now a Crack Pairing Generator for KH fandom.
- There are 78 possible pairings within Organization XIII, without throwing Namine into the mix, and there's a legion of fangirls behind every single one.
- Chrono Trigger has beget some truly creepy pairings. There's the canonical (Crono/Marle; Kino/Ayla), the somewhat normal that just lack basis (Cyrus/Human!Frog; Crono/Ayla; Crono/Lucca), the just plain odd (Janus/Schala; Frog/Lucca; Janus/Lucca), and, finally, the NO NO NO MAKE IT STOP (Robo/Lucca; Crono/Magus; Magus/Queen Zeal; any pairing involving Lavos).
- One gag-ending states that Queen Leene married Frog. It causes Marle to scream.
- Here's one that involves Ayla/Queen Zeal. Enjoy
- I give you Magus/Schala, Young!Janus/Schala, Magus/Queen Zeal, and Queen Zeal/Lavos all in one story. Enjoy the Brain Bleach. Strangely, its not pulled off in a cracky way, but its meant to be serious, and actually is...its not humorous at all, and actually more depressing for the characters, because its almost believable.
- EmblemShipping Marth and either Ike or Roy. Even though, outside of Super Smash Bros., it's impossible.
- On a similar note, Ness x Lucas. Not too cracky within Smash Bros. canon when you take Subspace Emissary into consideration, but in the actual canon of their series of origin it would require a HUGE time paradox. This pairing also gave birth to Claus x Ninten- two characters who have never met under any circumstances, including Super Smash Bros..
- Ike/Pit or Marth/Pit is just as weird. What do they have in common? Ike's a badass mercenary who "fights for his friends," while Pit is an angel who battles eggplant humanoids. And Marth's an effeminate male. Yeah... let's just say "any pairing inspired by Super Smash Bros." and leave it at that.
- Peach/Zelda. It's crack, yes. But damnit, it WORKS.
- There's Pit/Samus. Yes, an angel and a bounty hunter paired with each other is weird.
- (Hopefully) done mostly as a joke, but Samus x Pikachu. Mercifully, it's usually played for cuteness rather than sexually.
- An actual joke parring: Captain Falcon/Sandbag
- This pairing goes as far as to ship Link with Soren, who was never in Super Smash Bros. to begin with, and so only people who play (or read about) Fire Emblem would know who he is. This is made more Egregious by the fact that most of these people also ship Ike/Pit, when they have all the materials they need to ship the fairly reasonable pairing, Ike/Soren. This link is one of the tame ones.
- The fanfic Luigi's Other Experiment[12] is full of these. Nana/Yoshi, Bowser/Mario/Peach, Mewtwo/Zelda, Ness/Samus/Young Link/Peach, Kirby/Jigglypuff, Roy/Peach, Fox/Samus, Marth/Samus, Captain Falcon/Samus, implied Samus/Mewtwo, Roy/Peach, Yoshi/Mario, Pikachu/Pichu, Young Link/Link, Donkey Kong/himself and Popo/Nana, amognst others.
- LuigixSnake anyone? Must be that Codec Conversation.
- At the beginning of the Golden Sun fandom, there was a lot of random shipping going around. The most common by far were Isaac/Mia, Garet/Jenna (both of which at least have some basis in canon), and qualifying for this trope, Ivan/Sheba. The two are both Wind Adepts and are somewhat snarky teenagers...That's about all they have in common. They barely say two words to each other over the course of both games. Ivan seems worried for her safety (notably yelling "We won't let you lay a finger on Felix or Sheba!" at one point), but only as much as the rest of the party.
- In the Golden Sun fandom, those aren't crack pairings. These are crack pairings.
- And what is possibly the crackiest pairing ever conceived.
- GameFAQs's Lost Age forum, in keeping with the "Kraden is the most awesome character ever" fad, has shipped Kraden with himself, stating that Kraden is too awesome to ship with anyone else.
- In the Golden Sun fandom, those aren't crack pairings. These are crack pairings.
- This guy does a Krizalid/
Hong MeilingChina pairing. How an insane pyromaniac genetic experiment and a Chinese redhead butt-monkey youkai can love each other is not mentioned. - While we're on the subject of Touhou, it seems that any girl can be paired with any other girl, and there will be fans (and fanart) of it. Ferryman of the Higan river Komachi Onozuka and divine shrine maiden Sanae Kochiya? Right here. Mind-reading youkai Satori Komeiji and judge of the dead Shikieiki Yamaxanadu. Done. Immortal fire-slinging Fujiwara no Mokou and shut-in librarian Patchouli Knowledge? Yep. And then there's this.
- Have you stepped inside the Ace Attorney fandom lately? There's quite few of these there, too. One of the more interesting ones is SPARTA (Spark Brushel/Lotta Hart) - they never meet in the canon, but there seems to be a rising consensus among the fans that this reporting duo would make a perfect match.
- Gumshoe's trenchcoat/Badd's trenchcoat. Yes, there is fic.
- There is a certain following for such weird stuff as Gumshoe / Steak Lunch, most likely triggered by the fact that he actually sued Maya Fey over such a Lunch Box in one of the older trailers for the first DS remake.
- Fire Emblem doesn't even need wacky fan pairings (though there are certainly plenty of those out there): some of the canon pairing possibilities are downright Crack Pairings. Examples given on the Troper Tales page are: Sylvia/Claude from the 4th game, Harken/Vaida from the 7th game, Kyle/Lute from the 8th game, and Astrid/Malakov from the 10th game.
- Speaking of the ninth and tenth games, shippers with a warped sense of humour have a tendency towards shipping Shinon (a human archer who is unbelievably racist towards Laguz) with Lethe (a Laguz who is unbelievably racist towards humans).
- Of course, if you take any support as a pairing possibility, it gets even worse. Florina/Serra, anyone?
- One guy actually programmed a random number generator shoved the entire 7th game's playable cast into it to produce the pairings for a fanfic. Some people have way too much free time.
- While it's rarely played for anything other than laughs, fans will often humorously ship Waldo with Carmen Sandiego, for the simple reason that both characters try hard to avoid being found. Maybe this means they'd both be good at finding each other or something.
- In "Snake Tale E: External Gazer" (featured in the Substance version of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty), the way Snake knows that the Mei-Ling he's working with is a warped Alternate Universe counterpart and not herself is that she's married to Solidus. Solidus is as evil and tentacled as ever, and the two seem to be very much in love with each other. Also, the Alternate Universe version of Olga is married to someone, and although we never find out who, the implication is that its Snake.
- The Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater Secret Theater shorts used these for humour a lot, between EVA/The End, EVA/Sigint, and Naked Snake/John McCone (the CIA Director under Kennedy and Johnson).
- Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots takes four pairings with little to no basis and makes them all canon. Meryl/Johnny is the one with the most prior canon; Roy/Rose never met (although admittedly, it was just a ruse); Naomi/Otacon got one line in Metal Gear Solid where Otacon says he feels sorry for Naomi but never met; and Naomi/Vamp was just a case of Rule of Sexy.
- As for pairings fans make, one of the most interestingly handled bits of fan crack is the Fear/Joy/Sorrow love love triangle from The Cobra Days. Besides the fact that the Fear is in the Joy's unit in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, there is no implication of a relationship between them. Joy/Sorrow is canon, but adding the Fear into the mix made for great drama that could have become a little strange as the Fear aged from his very pretty young form into... whatever he is in Metal Gear Solid 3.
- Samus/Master Chief.
- Also present in Haloid.
- Godai Yuusuke (Kamen Rider Kuuga) and Kazami Yuuka. There is even an entire video series on Nico Nico Douga about it.
- The Legend of Zelda: Ever seen Epona/Link? Yeah. And it's more then just this one story...
- No, no, no. It's gotta be Tingle/Link.
- No matter what, it can't get any sicker than Linebeck/Link. Yeah, lots [dead link] and lots [dead link] of fanart [dead link] exists of this one on DeviantArt. (And those are all just from the first page of the search-results, you mind.) Oh, and if you want Fanfiction...
- As for Spirit Tracks, Linebeck x Link shippers are now clenching their teeth due to their inability to kill off Zelda for obvious reasons.
- Redead/Link. Hooo Booooy.
- Navi/Link. Actually confirmed to be canon on Navi's part.
- As if she wasn't annoying enough!
- And Majoras Mask happened because Link left Hyrule to go look for Navi. Aside from Zelda, they're pretty close to being the Official Couple.
- Let's not forget about Link/Floor
- Then we have the four swords pairings. Some of which being Blue/Red, Blue/Vio, Vio/Shadow, and Shadow/Vaati.
- The World Ends With You has Joshua X Rhyme, two characters that don't meet or say a word to each other. Regardless it has a legion of followers on Fanfiction, one small example being this community. The general opinion on this? Opposites Attract.
- In Mass Effect:
- We have the joke pairings of Miranda/Scion and FemShep/Elcor, and the more serious Tali/Legion pairing.
- This is what happens when you blend memes. Damn it, Internet!
- See the Mass Effect Crack Pairings Generator. The full list of characters includes not only squadmates and other major characters, but also villains (including Harbinger), unnamed NPCs, inanimate objects, and entire species.
- The popular Joker/EDI crack ship becomes canon in Mass Effect 3, to literally everyone's surprise.
- From Warcraft story Vrykul a Frost Vrykul [dead link] and an Eredar. [dead link] It also happens to be Yuri and the Eredar in question just so happens to be the daughter of Sargeras. Its being pulled off surprisingly.
- Another Warcraft story, this time with Tirion/Darion Mograine and Tirion/A'dal in the SAME STORY! This author has mentioned in her profile that she has a fondness for Tirion/A'dal pairings. So far as anyone knows, this is truly crack pairing and the only story that even mentions the pairing at all. Tirion strangely remains in character for the story, and so does A'dal. The Tirion/Darion interaction is actually done quite well, despite the fact that they're polar opposites and both men.
- Stumbled upon this fic by the same author of the creepy Tirion/A'dal slash fic. And OH DEAR GOD HELP ME!. Deathwing rapes Alexstrasza's dead body, and then rapes Thrall. The crackiest Warcraft fic ever. Despite the horrid things that happen in this fic, it strangely has a happy ending. Enjoy trying to sear this out of your mind.
- Canderous/Bastila. Never mind the fact that he's at least twice her age and that the personality clash would be enough to demolish a small system.
- Harvest Moon Animal Parade has inspired such pairings as GillxToby, JinxLuke and several others.
- Dragon Age: Leliana/Sten, here. Whuh?
- And the Warden/Urthemiel. Yes, the Archdemon. Brain Bleach please. And, possibly worst of all, Bann Teagan/the Broodmother. Squick.
- From Wario Ware we have Ashely/Penny, and yes, this is a sex story. With a dash a Ashely/Red to boot!
- The Dissidia Final Fantasy shipdom has Voidshipping, Cloud Of Darkness/Exdeath. There's also about ten different ways to pair up various villains with heroes, and people exploit these, a lot.
Web Comics
- Someone actually wrote up a The Order of the Stick crack pairing generator on the forums. Apparently d6 and d20 dice can be just as twisted as we can.
- There's a story on FF.net that's within 'The Dreamer fandom that ships Beatrice Whaley/Alexander Hamilton. It's actually very well written. Can be viewed here.
- The sprite comic Akuma TH features several "official" in-universe pairings that would fall under this, but the most notable has got to be the pairing of Sonic the Hedgehog and Wendy Koopa.
- Axe Cop and Abraham Lincoln. This one is actually canon.
- Following Dora and Marten's breakup in Questionable Content, a vigorous thread on the QC forum is shipping him with everyone from Hannelore and Marigold to Amir and Yelling Bird.
- Scandinavia and The World takes the nationshipping of Hetalia and ups the ante with Wales/New Zealand. It would be offensive if it wasn't so cute...
- Homestuck takes this Up to Eleven, with art being drawn by the author himself depicting the pairing [dead link] of Cal and Colonel Sassacre. (Better known as Sassacal.)
- And now Jack/Jade actually has canon evidence.
- "Laundry". Bro/Redglare (Terezi's ancestor).
- Then there's the canon crack pairing: the aforementioned Colonel Sassacre was married to Betty Crocker, who in Homestuck is/was apparently the Troll Empress.
- Someone created a crack paring generator.
- Eridan/Roxy is somewhat popular due to their common interest in wizards.
- In Problem Sleuth Weasel King + Madame Murel.
- Not to mention the Demimonde Semigoddess and Fiesta Ace Dick.
- For a crossover between the two: Professor Honeybee/Serenity.
Web Original
- Homestar Runner apparently has a huge, active shipping community for a cartoon with a running gag about having "Only One Girl".
- Alluded to canonically here, with the pair being Marzipan x The Cheat.
- In the SBemail "montage", Strong Bad has a romance with a wagon full of pancakes.
- I'm a Marvel And I'm a DC - plenty, but mainly Green Goblin/Harley Quinn.
- Disney World of War has many crack ships, mainly because it is a massive crossover of the Disney Classics and Pixar. Some crack ships that are canon are Pangel (Patch from 101 Dalmatians and Angel from Lady and the Tramp 2), Scatani (Scamp from Lady and the Tramp 2 and Vitani from Lion King 2) and Berlielle (Berlioz from the Aristocats and Danielle from Lady and the Tramp 2).
- The biggest crack ship, bordering on outright Squick, is Sarafina (Lion King)/ Reuben (Lilo and Stitch)! There has been many debates on whether this is the work of a Troll or if Sarafina's player is just bonkers.
- At 10:27; I MARRIED A WOLLYWOG!
- Despite the fact that she's a Psycho Lesbian and has made that fact very clear, ever since the crossover review of Heavy Metal, fandom is shipping Diamanda Hagan with either The Nostalgia Critic or Ask That Guy With The Glasses.
- RWBY shippers compulsively (and tongue-in-cheek) ship everyone in the cast with everyone else, completely with Portmanteau Couple Names where possible, such as "Nuts and Dolts" for Penny/Ruby and "Arkos" for Jaune/Pyrrha. It quickly got to the point where a massive spreadsheet indexing every possible couple has been created, and gets updated as new characters are introduced each season.
- Not so much an example in itself, but definitely celebrating the concept, is VivifxAMV's video "Ship Happens" (and the song which provides its soundtrack, "I Ship It" by Not Literally Productions).
Western Animation
- In Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom, there's a whole community dedicated to the love of Zhao (as in Admiral Zhao) and Hahn (as in Princess Yue's fiance who appears in the S1 finale). Their only interaction was Hahn trying to ambush Zhao after disguising himself as one of Zhao's soldiers, but ruining it by loudly announcing his attempts to kill "Admiral Choy", then being casually thrown off the ship. In their own words:
Q: Why Zhao and Hahn? |
- Haru/Azula, or Harula, is surprisingly well loved.
- See also the Avatar entry on Portmanteau Couple Name for some "official" Crack Pairings.
- There's a meme circulating DeviantArt that involves drawing several things, one of which is a Crack Pairing. The best is Sokka/"Enemy Birds".
- A minor running gag on 4chan's Comics and Cartoons board: Foamy Mouth Guy and Freestyle Kid (the kid who danced in his own distinct manner in Season 3 episode The Headband), affectionately named "Foamstyle".
- Some (Not saying any names) LiveJournal communities make a goal of finding the biggest crackships in the fandom. So far there's Yue/Chong, Appa/Momo, Appa/Bosco, and so forth. They occasionally even shipped them with members of the production crew... which one of them stumbled onto.
- Oh, please - CAPSLOCK_ATLA has gotten way crackier than those ships. Ba Sing Se/The Drill, Aang's old glider/Aang's new glider, Roku/Volcano, Mako/Mako's scarf, The Cabbage Merchant/cabbages, the owlcat from "Tales of Ba sing Se"/the owlcat from "The Puppetmaster", Joo Dee/Ozai, Jet/Zhao (although that one kind of makes sense, seeing as how they're both dead)... the list goes on and on and on.
- And if you can't decide what crack ship to support, consult the wheel of shipping.
- Foamy/Suki has been declared canon by Bryke.
That actually happened a few years back. Suki isn't too proud of it. |
- There is a Ty Lee/Hahn fanfic that was extremely well written, and not at all cracky actually. Go check out RadiantBeam on ff.net
- Anything involving Jet, since he's supposed to be dead. Jetko (Jet/Zuko) seems to be the most popular, but there is one artist who ships Mai [dead link]/Jet.
- Sokka's Space Sword and Toph's Rock.
- Didn't they both come from the same meteor? So would this count as incest?
- Mai/Fruit Tart.
- Suki/Azula. Most involving Suki's time in prison. Must have been the way Azula referred to her as "My favorite prisoner."
- Three from the same artist: Hahn/Azula [dead link], Mai/Aang [dead link], and Iroh/Suki.
- Song/Earth King
- Earth King/Jun is more popular than you might expect.
- One of the show's producers/artists (Giancarlo Volpe) posted this as an April Fools Day joke.
- Also Maikoh.
- While probably not the most crackiest pairing in the fandom, Azutara (Azula/Katara) deserves mentioning as it is not as uncommon as you would think. This shows quite well (albeit in a rather funny manner) what fans like about it, y'know, besides the 'Two lovely ladies getting it on' factor.
- Zuko/Lt. Jee has a surprisingly devoted fanbase.[1] Despite the fact that Jee had about four minutes of screen time, there has been a ship week, one WIP long fic of incredible quality, and a few other small fics and illustrations scattered across the fandom. This pairing seems to be unusual in that the fanworks for it are all very well-done.
- Azula/Zhao seems to have quite a large fanbase, but they're perfectly matched in sadism [dead link] and ambition!
- Maitara.
- The Legend of Korra had crack pairings develop well in advance of airing, in particular, Korra/Yue the Moon Spirit with a separation of 70 years and a metaphysical plane proving no obstacle to the pairing's Memetic Mutation on deviantArt.
- Danny Phantom has tons of them. The best one has to be Danny/Fenton Thermos. It was started to poke fun at how ridiculous the ship wars were getting, but it caught on.
- There are also MANY Danny/OC pairings.
- For Ben 10 Gwen/Kevin was a crack pairing, until it was canonized by Ben 10 Alien Force.
- Transformers fandom in general is made up of crack pairings, often with characters who have had little or no interaction in the show/comics. There are very few individuals who haven't been paired with someone at some point and often in very bizarre combinations. This is probably at least partly the fault of the Transformers Anonymous Kink Meme.
- Starscream, the fandom's Memetic Rape Victim, has a lot of this. The craziest might be Starscream/Devastaor. Improbable Species Compatibility is almost an understatement.
- Jack and Arcee from Transformers Prime. To be fair, the writers are partially to blame for this. The first thing that Jack did upon seeing Arcee (while still in motorbike form) was run his hands all over her while talking sensuously to her (using female pronouns) about how much he'd like to ride her. Jack even says to her during an emotional moment "But you were my first." He meant first motorbike.
- And now Jack's mom is being paired up with Optimus Prime. Guess robo-love runs in the Darby family.
- South Park is just full of crack pairings. We could go on all day.
- Craig/Tweek, which is the most popular couple. Despite them having met only once and that was a setup fight.
- Kenny/Butters, despite the fact that they haven't really interacted at all and Butters has only ever talked to Kenny as part of the group.
- SpongeBob/Krabby Patty, although it was intended as parody, still seems wrong.
- Even better in the canon episode in which this happened. If memory serves, SpongeBob ends up murdering a flock of clams to protect "Patty" from being eaten.
- Even earlier, in the episode "Just One Bite", Squidward has a dream/fantasy sequence where he falls in love with and marries a Krabby Patty.
- Popeye/Bluto. And in an orange juice commercial, no less.
- Olive Oyl's expression at the end says everything. Poor stick figure lady.
- This got more than its fair share of attention. Minute Maid is turning our cartoon sailors gay!
- Total Drama Island: there exists a fan-film named "William Country", that has Cody/a Palette Swap of him. The only difference is that the swap has black hair (bad by its own, Cody has brown.), and his hair is messier (well, the hair and the clothes, but still...). Screw Yourself, anyone? The best part? The Fan Film is said to be 90 minutes long, and the remaining clips not taken down (see on the page) add up to quite a bit. And it has good animation, almost matching the show's style. Yes, someone put that much work into a fan fic of Cody being gay with himself. Think about it.
- Total Drama World Tour gives us a potential (one-sided) Canon crack pairing. Brace yourselves for... Noah/Bridgette! yeah...
- It should be noted that this show actually has this a lot given that its cast is basically twenty-odd teenagers with distinct personalities and quite a bit of random Ship Tease. Some of the more popular ones, like Ezekiel/Izzy, actually count as Fan Preferred Couples, even if the characters involved have no real romance (or even any interaction) in canon.
- When designing Dr Facilier for The Princess and the Frog, animator Bruce Smith went through the thought process of what the child of Captain Hook and 101Dalmations's Cruella De Vil would look like.
- Jimmy Two-Shoes has Lucius/Heloise. The scary part is how well written the only known fanfic for it is.
- From Finding Nemo there's Nemo/Gill. Yes. There is.
- While this is often ignored, it is significant that Who Framed Roger Rabbit? gave us a canon example with Roger/Jessica.
- Star Wars: Clone Wars: Jedi Master Shaak Ti/General Grievous, a pairing whose only argument is that Shaak wasn't killed by Grievous (read: managed to escape with her life the first time, spared because Grievous needed a living witness the second time.) Talk about Slap Slap Kiss.
- The Kim Possible fandom has a few favorite ships that can be considered crack.
- Kim/Rufus had one story written for it, a story so infamous that it was banned in less than a day and still causes some of the older members of the Kimmunity to wince when they hear the line "Oh YES! Rufus, you ARE the Tunnellord!".
- Tara/Drakken was written in one story. Felt more like a Throw It In moment but still counts.
- Tara/Shego
- BetViv is strangely popular pairing even though they are not in the same spheres of influence and never appear together. Especially liked by Kigo fans as a complimentary pairing.
- Betty/Gil one-shot. The pairing makes no sense and the story itself even alludes to some Betty/Gemini affections.
- The story Attractions, Reactions, and Complications has Betty/Monique.
- The unfortunately likely dead fic Acting Out features the unique developments of Bonnie and Joss though it never actually gets to the real shipping.
- Wrongsick is an accurately named well-written story featuring the pairing of Duff Killigan and 'DNAmy' Hall.
- This story has a crack pairing that can't be listed due to ruining the surprise.
- Duff Killigan/Betty Director.
- This horrid thing. Jane/Beavis.
- Included in a possibly Squick post on Usenet newsgroup is a story which includes a crack pairing of Liono and Snarf of Thundercats which is certainly NSFW even though text-only.
- X-Men: Evolution has a lot. Probably the weirdest is Pietro/anyone, due to Pietro's notable lack of interest in anyone but himself, and X-23/Anyone, since she only interacted with Madame Hydra (Ended with blowing up an aircraft), Guantlet (ended the same as Hydra) and Logan (ended each time with her shouting at him angrily and him trying to stop her from possibly killing someone). Then, of course, Pietro/X-23 has a large following, for god knows why.
- Before the series started, anyone who read the comics would of thought of Scott/Rogue as this, then during the series, Rogue developed a crush on Scott and it got a large following. As notable, they do actually have a lot in common that was, suprisingly, not noticed beforehand.
- My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic has a few of these:
- There is a category on Ponibooru (a MLP image board) called "Twilamp [dead link]" for art and short fiction depicting the passionate relationship that Twilight Sparkle shares with the lantern that hangs outside one of the windows of the library/tree that she lives in.
- Celestia x Discord has shown up more than a few times in fan fiction. In canon, the two are mortal enemies with one having encased the other in stone because he threw the land into chaos. This kind of fic frequently simply postulates a more cordial relationship between them in the suitably distant past, interpreting Discord's and Celestia's on-screen exchange as Like an Old Married Couple-type bickering.
- DisPie (Discord x Pinkie Pie) seems to be popular, too.
- Discord x Queen Chrysalis or ChrysCord, if you will, seems to be picking up in popularity as well.
- The Great and Powerful Trixie Falls in Love with a (sentient) Pine Cone. Actually lampshaded by the description, which offers an internet to anyone who can complete the story without going "what" at least once.
- This one [dead link] is a gem.
- Bloomberg is an apple tree that Applejack literally treats as her baby because apples are Serious Business to her. Tom is an inanimate boulder whom Rarity fawns over because Discord had enchanted her to think of it as a giant diamond. Tom/Bloomberg has had several shipfics.
- Spike/Gummy. Well, um, at least they're both reptiles...
- Flim Flam. No really.
- Rainbow DashxKitchen Sink.
- In a non-romantic example, ask any Brony about a purple and blonde unicorn filly named Dinky, and half of them will probably tell you that she's Derpy's daughter. This, despite the two of them having never appeared next to each other in the show, and all canon evidence suggesting that Dinky is part of a family of unicorns. The more unicorns the show introduces into Dinky's immediate family, the more complex the fanon rationalizations become for how a Derpy can still be her mother despite being a Pegasus.
- To be fair, we weren't out of season 2 before we had a canonical married couple of earth ponies who gave birth to fraternal twin children - one a unicorn, and one a pegasus. When the nearest unicorn or pegasus blood relation was at least three generations back on the family tree. A pegasus and a unicorn hypothetically having a unicorn filly is barely even a blip on this kind of radar.
- Bloo x Frankie is a very popular pairing among Rule 34 artists. Or So I Heard, anyway...
- Care Bears: Some fans ship Beastly X Shreeky.
- For some baffling reason, a lot of Transformers Prime fangirls like pairing Starscream with a Vehicon that has a similar voice (both voiced by Steve Blum). They've named the Vehicon "Steve" since, like all Vehicons, he has no official name, and call the pairing "SteveScream". By the way, Starscream has rarely interacted with the Vehicons as anything other than a commanding officer, and when he does, it's usually by punching them. Which is why they made the relationship "loving, but abusive (with "Steve" liking the abuse)". Wow, Stockholm Syndrome much?!
- An In-Universe example with The Simpsons: Agnes Skinner (Principal Skinner's mother) dates Comic Book Guy for an episode.
Other
- Jinx/Shadow. Wait, HUH?
- Shadow/Shrek the Ogre. [dead link]
- Voldemort/pikachu. I'm serious
- Che Guevara/Betty Boop. No, I'm not kidding.
- Goku/Anne Frank. Yes, THAT Anne Frank. The real life one that died during the Holocaust. The writer seemed to just want to give her a happy ending, but anything with Hitler turning Super Saiyan is just too insane to not list.
- There was an old website [dead link] where Marilyn Manson and C-ko Kotobuki were paired up.
- Knowing Marilyn Manson, he'd probably genuinely love (or, at the very least, claim to love, in order to shock people) C-Ko's cooking.
- Golden Sun Realm's forums recently took it upon themselves to create pair after pair after pair. Most of them, predictably, were crack. Real-life characters and forum members in any order? Oh, yes.
- In Sam Moyeps Swine Flu: The Musical, Swine Flu is paired with Flo from Progressive.
- There is a fic pairing the Old Spice Guy and Sassy Gay Friend. It's PG and it's actually quite humorous.
- The respective character actors for Alice and Mad Hatter at the Disney Theme Parks apparently ship their characters together, as they engage in quite a bit of Ship Teasing.
- For a very meta example, TV Tropes / Wikipedia. You know it's out there.
- Ariel (yes, the Disney mermaid) and Thrax (yes, the deadly virus from Osmosis Jones) have been paired together.
- A Cargo Ship Crossover pairing: Crowley's Bentley/Dean's Impala[14].
- Jesus and Hitler: A Romance. That is all.
- Pedobear and Justin Bieber
- Frollo/Chel Yes, the creepy priest from The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the chick from Road to El Dorado. No, I don't know either.
- Frollo/Mother Gothel exists. [dead link] Kind of disturbing just how well it fits, really.
- An online Fanfiction.net roleplay known as Deadly Mistakes takes this to new levels; almost all of the roleplay characters are the resulting children of crackpairings (and almost all of them are crossovers, not that they think all crossover ships are cracky). The "parent pairings" range from mild (Timothy Q. Mouse/Miss Kitty) to disturbing (The Penguin/Sandy Cheeks), to nightmare-inducing (Harbinger/Sandy Cheeks). However, the childrens' parents usually don't end up in an actual relationship together, though there have been exceptions...
- The children themselves have also ended up being paired off with each other as well. The relationships they end up in are usually much more compatible in comparison to the ones involving their biological parents, ultimately averting this trope.
- Even then some of the roleplayers have had fun crack-shipping some of them in a different thread dedicated to (you guessed it) crackpairs. At least one person's gone so far as to actually start crack-shipping two characters that haven't even been in the roleplay yet despite both of them being set to show up in it since very early on. (Neither have appeared yet due to one roleplayer having Real Life get in the way and the other...well, hasn't really said.)
- It's been confirmed within the roleplay that the Local Lad and the Acid Queen (named Reginald and Anna, respectfully), two parents of two different children in the roleplay (the couple itself doesn't have one between the two of them), ended up getting married a few years before the roleplay's events. Never mind that they never met in their respective canon...
- The children themselves have also ended up being paired off with each other as well. The relationships they end up in are usually much more compatible in comparison to the ones involving their biological parents, ultimately averting this trope.
- Even Mythological creatures aren't immune to this, even in the Middle Ages. The Griffin is considered the mortal enemy of horses, and in fact preys on them. You know what a Hippogriff is? Evidently the result of either desperation, a dare, or a night of hard-booze or something. Then again...
- Actually, every entry in Topless Robot's Fan Fiction category contains at least one example of Crack Pairing. Along with Nausea Fuel, Nightmare Fuel, Squick, No Yay and desperate need for Brain Bleach for readers and therapy for authors.
- Carmen Sandiego and Waldo have inspired Fan Fics and Fan Art all over the Internet.
Real Life
- This New Yorker cover ships Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, at that point bitter rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination
- Real Life subject: This hamster and snake, at the Tokyo zoo, given Owen/Mzee a run for their money.
- Just go on Youtube and look up "[insert animal name] [insert different animal name] sex" and see what pops up. It's mostly dog/cat sex, but rewards await the creative and depraved.
- During the mid-1980s in Vermont, a wandering male moose met and fell in love with a female cow.
- At least one editorial cartoonist used this image to represent the Reagan Administration cosying up with Iran in the Iron-Contra scandal.
- Neil Gaiman apparently ships George W. Bush/Saddam Hussein.
- The Pet Shop Boys song "I'm With Stupid" is a satire of the relationship between George Bush and Tony Blair, done as a gay love song.
- A fanfic of this pairing (not written by Gaiman) once existed on Livejournal a while back.
- There is a rather large Livejournal community devoted to slashing Mike Carden (guitarist for the band The Academy Is...) and Kevin Jonas (of the Jonas Brothers), despite them being lesser known members of their bands, apparently having nothing in common, and most likely never having met. Oh, and Kevin's married. The pairing is popular enough that in Google's autofill, "Mike Carden Kevin Jonas" is currently the ninth suggestion you get for Mike's name (and I've seen it as high as #4).
- It's fifth on Bing right now.
- Ivan the Terrible once proposed to Elizabeth I. For serious. She did not accept, because he was crazy, they were different religions, and the United Kingdom of Russia-England that would result would be the least stable thing to ever exist in Europe.
- Of course, every male monarch in Europe alive during Elizabeth's reign probably proposed to her at some point, either for themselves or on behalf of their relatives. Great Britain would have made quite the nice dowry, after all.
- Hockey player and tweeter Paul "Biz Nasty" Bissonnette ships himself with Pippa, Kate Middleton's younger sister. His comments regarding Ms. Middleton have led to the creation of a Twitter account dedicated to getting them together
- Chris Colfer/Diet Coke is a canon example. The US Diet Coke twitter tweeted about him following them back. He compares their relationship to Thelma and Louise.
- It is thought that in 1766 a male wolf mated with a Pomeranian resulting in nine pups. There's no telling what those puppies ended up looking like.
- Keep in mind that Pomeranians at that time weren't the average five-pound toy dogs we know of today. Before they were bred down to their current size in the late 1800s, Poms were more like thirty-pound dogs, just a little bit smaller than their closest relative, the Keeshond. So a Pomeranian at that time breeding with a wolf would be similar to modern wolf/dog breeding pairs.
- An American Idol fanfic once shipped season 10 Lauren Alaina with New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow.
- Cher once dated Tom Cruise
- B.o.B.'s career contains a few musical crack pairings with feature artists you would not expect on a rapper's song. These include Hayley Williams, Rivers Cuomo, and Taylor Swift.