Crack Pairing / Western Animation

Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars?
I could really use a wish right now, wish right now, wish right now.
^note Original video by Benson Dancing

Crack Pairings involving characters from Western Animation works.

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• Adventure Time:
  • The Adventure Time fandom has Gumgrab- Prince Gumball and Lemongrab. Prince Gumball is basically a pink Prince Charming, and Lemongrab is a strident, socially inept jerk who has a completely repellant, obnoxious personality. It all started with a crack comic on deviantART and three fateful words: "THREE HOURS BEDROOM!" Even Rebecca Sugar, a writer on the show, "liked" the original Gumgrab comic on her Tumblr, and commented: "Well aren't you forward, Lemongrab!" What makes this pairing weirder are the ambiguously incestuous overtones. Prince Gumball is a genderswapped version of Princess Bubblegum- who created Lemongrab in her laboratory- and the prince is also, in-universe, a fictional character created by the Ice King for his fanfiction. People are shipping Lemongrab with his father from a parallel universe that doesn't even exist.
  • The episode "All the Little People'' has Finn create several of these with tiny duplicates of the series' characters. At the beginning of the episode he and Jake also jokingly discuss Ice King/BMO, and by the end of the episode the tiny duplicates of those very characters hook up on their own.
• DuckTales (1987): The G-rated fanfic author Stretch Snodgrass bizarrely has Sharona go on a date with Launchpad McQuack in the strange crossover story Mr. Monk meets Mr. McDuck. Seems to have led to a What Have I Done moment by Stretch, who minimizes the disturbing implications in advance by assuring the readers it's just "a talk" between Sharona and an adventurer.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • From the original series:
    • 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?
      A: Because we said. Also, it's hot. And funny.And it makes no sense, always a plus.
    • There's a meme circulating DeviantArt that involves drawing several things, one of which is a Crack Pairing. The best is Sokka/"Enemy Birds".
    • 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. Then there's 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 / Jet.
    • Sokka's Space Sword and Toph's Rock.
    • 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, Mai/Aang, 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.^note For those who don't remember who Lt. Jee is, he's this guy,◊ the one who yelled at Zuko for wanting to sail into the storm. 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 and ambition.
    • Maitara.
    • Azula/Sokka from How I Became Yours. Of course, this is helped by, the fic having Azula lose her memories and get her entire personality to be rewritten, and after almost dying, Azula comes back with white hair that makes her look just like Yue. "Sokkla" is also a fairly popular ship in its own right, with many fans citing the fact that they're both intelligent and strategic.
  • The Legend of Korra: The show 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 and Tumblr. The progression seems to have been "Avatar rides spirit guide->Spirit guide is usually the thing that taught their culture bending, like dragons for firebenders and bison for airbenders->Moon taught waterbenders->Yue is the moon now->Korra rides on Yue->Korra and Yue ride each other." This ended up becoming Hilarious in Hindsight by the Grand Finale, as the voice actress of Korra's endgame Love Interest Asami played Yue in The Last Airbender.
• 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.
• 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.
• South Park:
  • In-universe, there's Tweek and Craig, which had already been a crack pairing in some fandom sectors, even though the two boys only had one prior episode together. They were upset enough by it to stage a breakup to get their classmates to stop pairing them, but that didn't go so well either (turns out Tweek had a hidden talent for acting, so for Craig it went from "being annoyed that everyone thought he was gay" to "being annoyed that everyone thought he was gay and a jerk"). By the end of the episode, they decide to start dating anyway, and in later seasons are depicted as an Official Couple.
  • Out of universe, Craig and Tweek are sometimes paired with background girls Esther and Millie, with Craig and Tweek's homosexuality Hand Waved by saying they faked their relationship. Kenny is also paired with another background girl: Lola.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • SpongeBob/Krabby Patty, although it was intended as parody, still seems wrong. Even better in the canon episode in which this happened. 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. This got more than its fair share of attention. Minute Maid is turning our cartoon sailors gay.
• Total Drama:
  • 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 is that 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.
  • The Total Drama World Tour episode "Anything Yukon Do I Can Do Better" gives us a brief moment teasing a potential (one-sided) Canon crack pairing in Noah / Bridgette. Made even more unusual by Noah's lack of interaction with Bridgette and the fact the two never really interact again afterwards.
  • One writer ships Heather and Staci—two characters who have nothing in common and have never met in canon—precisely because it was the most absurd Total Drama pairing she could think of. For all that, the writer somehow managed to make it work.
• Jimmy Two-Shoes has Lucius / Heloise. The scary part is how well written the only known fanfic for it is. Never mind the fact that Lucius is Really 700 Years Old and acts like a middle-aged adult while Heloise is a teenager who looks like a small child.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars has an in-universe example in Ziro the Hutt and Sy Snootles. It doesn't end well.
• 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.
  • Loose Lips Sink Ships features Ron/Kim's mom, though it's mostly comedic and the pairing treated as a brief awkward confusion and only results in a peck on the cheek. There's also a continuation by another author.
  • Vacation from the Norm features several crack pairings, but in most cases makes them work in their own weird way. By the end of volume 1, we have; Kim/Ron/Shego, Drakken/Vivian Porter, Motor Ed/Yori, Joss Possible/Felix Renton and Gemini/Betty Director It's implied early on that Betty Director was replaced by an imposter. It's later confirmed that the imposter is the Humanshifting villain Camille Leone. The real Betty Director hooks up with Will Du.
  • For a canon example, the episode "Stop Team Go" featured Shego/Mr. Barkin. Granted, the former was under the influence of a Mirror Morality Machine at the time, and she breaks things off (violently) when she returns to normal at the end of the episode.
• This 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.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has spawned plenty of these.
  • One of the more notable examples early on was Octavia Melody being shipped with Vinyl Scratch. They had only appeared in the show for a few seconds each, and weren't even in the same episode (or town, for that matter). Despite this, a large number of fans declared them as their One True Pairing, simply because they both have musically-themed cutie marks and different musical tastes (Octavia is a classical musician and Vinyl is a techno DJ); creating an Odd Couple dynamic that was played with in a number of fanfics and videos, most famously Epic Wub Time. As of Episode 100 "Slice of Life", Vinyl and Octavia were shown living together in the same house, making the ship effectively canon.
  • On the Derpibooru image board there is a tag called "Twilamp" 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 Golden Oaks Library where she lives.
  • 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.
  • Gummy/Twist. Yep.
  • Rainbow DashxKitchen Sink.
  • MordeTwi is a ship between Twilight Sparkle and Mordecai from Regular Show. It is more popular than you might expect, to the point of getting its own Know Your Meme page.
  • The Hub seemed to liked to ship Pinkie Pie with◊ Dan from◊ Dan Vs.. The relationship began pretty rough.
  • Invoked by the writer of the MLP fanfic The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum, in which he pairs Lightning Dust and Rainbow Dash (It's mentioned in chapter 6) together. Apparently, they now work together as leader and wingpony, ( Probably helped along by Bag of Tirek-induced brainwashing, and the fact that Spitfire resigned from the Wonderbolts in disgust.) with rumors that their relationship is a bit more than professional. There are so many reasons that doesn't work. Then again, considering the TCB!Ponies, it's not like she'd stand out...
  • The official comic book arc "Reflection" pairs Princess Celestia with King Sombra, of all ponies. Although to be fair, this Sombra is really a doppelgänger from a Mirror Universe.
  • The Great and Powerful Trixie and Maud manages to be among the most popular ships involving Maud Pie despite the two having very few connections/similiarities, except for being friends with Starlight Glimmer.
  • Pinkie-Pool. Pinkie Pie X Deadpool. Still a crack pairing, but perhaps not quite as insane as it initially appears to be given that both characters are notorious for breaking the fourth wall.
  • The animation Strangers ships Sweetie Belle and Button Mash together. The two don't have anything in common besides being foals from the same town. Button Mash is little but a background extra. This ship is popular due to Button's Adventures depicting the two drinking milkshakes together.
  • Claro de Luna pairs together Princess Luna and Octavia as a Theme Pairing. At the time of the fic's publishing, Octavia was only a background character in one episode (and an episode that Luna wasn't even in, at that).
  • In The Royal Sketchbook, Celestia eventually falls for Rarity and the two begin dating. In canon, they have a near-strictly professional relationship and rarely interact one-on-one.
  • Unfamiliar Patterns is a fanfic that pairs together Rarity and Zecora. It's considered crackish even in-universe.
  • Kindness's Reward is a Hurt/Comfort Fic where Fluttershy takes care of Trixie and the two fall in love.
  • Multiple short stories pair Lightning Dust with Fiddlesticks^note Minor background pony who is basically a Palette Swap of Octavia Melody with a fiddle instead of a cello, also known as Fiddly Faddle or Fiddly Twang.
• There is a segment of The Owl House fandom who ships Hunter with one or both of the Blight twins, although they have never even appeared onscreen together.
  • A common crossover pairing is Hooty and the owl from Duolingo, most likely because they're both owls.
• The Simpsons:
  • An In-Universe example with The Simpsons: Agnes Skinner (Principal Skinner's mother) dates Comic Book Guy for an episode.
  • In the 2010s, shipping together the neighbors Marge and Maude has become increasingly common. Examples include Raphael Bob-Waksberg's poem Does Marge have friends? and the webcomic marge simpson anime. The couple is always treated tragically due to Maude being Killed Off for Real, but that's a part of the appeal of it.
  • marge simpson anime not only has Marge falling for Maude, but she leaves Homer for Abu's wife Manjula.
  • This comic by Panic Volkushka depicts Bart Simpson and Chris Griffin going to couple's therapy. And it's actually really damn good, realistically discussing the baggage they must have from growing up with abusive fathers.
• Due to the recycling of an apartment in an episode of Young Justice (2010), Red Arrow/Red Hood was born.
• The Foxbusters: The episode "Winging It" shows some romantic subtext between Todd (a fox) and Jefferies (A chicken). Yes, bizarre and cracky but also completely adorable when you think about it as Todd is a lovable ditz while Jeffries is a comic relief and both are very dorky.
• Teen Titans (2003):
  • The fandom gives us Robin/Silkie
  • In-universe, we have the Official Couple of Kid Flash/Jinx. Worked just fine in the cartoon. Odds of it ever happening in the comics are nill to non-existant.
• The New Batman Adventures episode "Love is a Croc" gave us a very disturbing pair-up between Killer Croc (an eight-foot-tall Beast Man) and Baby Doll (who Can't Grow Up and dresses like a five-year-old). Granted, Croc was just using her, but Baby Doll's affection was entirely genuine.
• There was (actually, it's still online, if you search for it) a Cartoon Cartoons online game called the "Cartoon Network Summer Resort." For the fourth part of the game, you had to match up 5 girls with 5 guys for a dance that night. The end pairings were Dexter/Buttercup, Double D/Blossom, Courage/Bubbles, Chicken/Dee Dee, and I.R. Baboon/Little Suzie. Keep in mind, this game also featured Johnny Bravo, Mandark, and Og, who could have easily been partners for the latter three.
• With the amount of characters in Superjail!, fans can come up with any sorts of bizarre pairing. The Warden receives some of the strangest options, from himself to his helper robot that he treats as a child. Lord Stingray gets shipped around as well, even with his pet fish.
  • This is even played with in the show, when the Mistress hooks up with Lord Stingray on a whim after taking over the jail. Jared and Charise then attempt to get her to sleep with the Warden to fulfill their own chance of being together, but their hopes are shot down when Alice does so instead. Though some Warden/Mistress fans cried foul after the episode, it spawned fans who began to pair Mistress off with the new option (even though in all likelihood, it'd be one-sided on her part).
• Frostbackscat has a thing for Ms. Frizzle x humanized Bus, and even has pictures of it on her Tumblr page.
• While it was only for a school play, there still was an episode of Codename: Kids Next Door where the play's main couple was played by Numbuh 3 and the Delightful Children from Down the Lane. As in, all five of them.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy:
  • Edd/Kevin (Kevedd) is incredibly popular, despite that there isn't too much talking between them on the show. True, Kevin seems to like Double D a little more than Ed and Eddy (like everyone else, including Sarah^note  Edd used to be paired up with most characters too but now the large majority of the fanfictions pair him only with Kevin), but there are still only three scenes where he's friendly to him in the entire show, and all their other interactions involve Kevin insulting or bullying Edd.
  • Nazz/Marie, which seems to exist to pair two of the prettiest girls in the show. Especially since the two of them have never had a non-hostile interaction on screen, and the Kankers in general regard Nazz as a hussie who's out to steal their boyfriends. It should be noted, that the Nazz/Marie pairing was established in the fandom, even before the 2013 Kevedd craze.
  • In-Universe, the conflict in the special "Hanky Panky Hullabaloo" came about because a pair of cupids (that look suspiciously like Jimmy and Sarah) forced Double D and May together. The climax involves the cupids, in an attempt to stop the fighting between the Eds and the Kankers, force other crack pairings: Kevin/Lee, Nazz/Johnny, Ed/Sandwich, Eddy/Plank, and a one sided Marie/Rolf. Rolf, who avoided all the cupid arrows, snaps everyone out of it by throwing dirty mop water on them.
• The Loud House: Carol x Luna. It's actually really well-written.
• Jem: How Stormer Got Her Groove Back ships together Riot and Stormer as Opposites Attract. The two have almost no interactions and the ones they have are negative.
• Steven Universe:
  • No One Said Life Was Gonna Be Fair is a humanized Alternate Universe Fic that features various couples. Most are mundane ones like Amethyst/Peridot or Lapis/Jasper, but the main pairing is Greg and Jasper. The two haven't even talked in canon.
  • Blueswap AU is an entire fanverse about pairing together Greg and Blue Diamond. In canon, Blue Diamond sees human as little more than pets. In the AU, Blue Diamond visits Earth one day to mourn Pink Diamond, meets and falls in love with Greg, and eventually has Steven.
• Done In-Universe in The Amazing World of Gumball episode "The Shippening". In this episode, Sarah buys a cursed notebook from the Awesome Store that makes whatever she draws therein come to life, unbeknownst to Sarah herself. This being Sarah, she draws numerous Crack Pairing scenarios in the book, unknowingly igniting a wave of bizarre love stories all over Elmore.
• Beavis And Butthead: Discussed In-Universe in "Beavis and Butt-Head Meet God, Part 2" while watching Bananarama's "Venus" video:
  BUTT-HEAD: "These chicks should marry GWAR."
  BEAVIS: "Yeah, yeah, that would be cool!"
  BUTT-HEAD: "Their kids would be like the coolest people ever lived."
  BEAVIS: "Yeah, and they would rule Antarctica."
  BUTT-HEAD: "They would rule the entire world."
• Miraculous Ladybug: The two of them barely interact in canon, and their few interactions so far have been entirely negative, but for whatever reason Chloé x Kagami has become a popular ship in the fandom. This one has shades of Pair the Spares. Both of them are alternate love interests for Adrien, so pairing them up would remove some obstacles in the path of him hooking up with Marinette. Curiously, it's also common in anti-Lila fics, where the two are often made into Marinette's allies against Lila's plots.
• Final Space: Sheryl Goodspeed and Avocato in are often paired up mostly because many see Avocato as a good replacement to John Goodspeed, despite little to no interaction onscreen.
• In mid-2021, fans of The Mr. Men Show began shipping Mr. Rude and Mr. Stubborn, who not only hate each other, but only appear in two segments together, because they see them as Like an Old Married Couple.
• Gravity Falls: In canon, Dipper Pines and Bill Cypher are The Hero and the Big Bad, respectively, but that is the extent of their connection. Dipper is neither Bill's arch-enemy nor the person who plays the biggest part in finally defeating him. They have absolutely zero friendly interactions, and absolutely zero romantic or sexual interactions (not even creepy Foe Romance Subtext). You wouldn't know that going by Archive of Our Own, where 19.6% of all Gravity Falls fics are Dipper/Bill. For contrast, the next romantic ship is Dipper/Pacifica (his only real love interest in the show), at 4.1%.

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