With great power, comes great discontinuity.
Some crossovers start a storyline in one piece of media and finish it in another. Others bring existing characters to the same place. A crossover alternate universe is where a universe is created solely for the purpose of bringing together characters for whom the above two options aren't available.
This usually happens for one of the following three reasons:
1. A fake crossover is needed. The writers can't simply transport all the characters to an existing universe due to plot necessities or copyright reasons.
2. The original work is not ongoing. It would be impossible to have the characters pop up in existing stories. This is common in Fairy Tale Free For Alls and other works involving public domain characters.
3. The writers need to give the characters backstories different from what they are in their original stories.
Usually (but not always), the universe isn't used again after the crossover finishes. Subtrope of Alternate Universe. Se also Adaptation Amalgamation.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- The Cross Epoch manga takes place in a world where the One Piece and Dragon Ball universes merge together.
Comic Books
- The Amalgam Universe is an universe where DC and Marvel's heroes and villains are fused together.
- The universe where "Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man", "Superman and Spider-Man", "Batman Vs. Hulk", "Batman Vs. The Punisher"... and similar crossovers are set was called Crossover Earth by DC in The Official Crisis on Infinite Earths Indexes and Earth-7642 by Marvel Comics in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.
- At first every Marvel and DC comic book was its own story with its own universe, each being an anthology series. Neither company had originally planned to create a Shared Universe. Then the stories started colliding, creating superhero teams such as the Justice League and The Avengers.
- In the commentary for the collectors' edition of JLA/Avengers, which doesn't use this trope, the universe where all the non-dimension-hopping-involving crossovers was set was called "Earth-$".
- Kill Shakespeare takes place in a universe in which the characters' experiences differ from all of their backstories in the original works.
- Mighty Morphin Power Rangers/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles takes this route. While the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers side of the crossover appears to use the Setting Update and status quo of the early Boom! Studios comic, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles side clearly takes most of its elements from the 1987 cartoon, a dash of 2003 and very little from the concurrent IDW comic.
Films — Animation
- Played with in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The universe is separate from any existing continuity (it was created for the movie) and doesn't initially appear to be a crossover, but that changes about 40 minutes into the film when the other Spider-Men are brought in from other universes.
Films — Live Action
- Though originally intended to be canon, later installments of the Alien and Predator franchise ignore the two Alien vs. Predator movies. Ridley Scott deliberately contradicted them when writing the backstory to Alien prequel, Prometheus. Word of God say that Predators ignores every previous movie in the franchise bar the original.
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit is set in a universe where Disney, Warner Bros. and other cartoon characters are Animated Actors who star in filmed cartoons, coexisting with each other and live-action humans.
Live-Action TV
- Super Sentai:
- The main characters of non-canon spin-off Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger, who are Super Sentai fans, can conjure a delusional dimension where every Super Sentai team exists.
- Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger, which does away with the long-standing Shared Universe concept to give each Sentai their own universe, strongly hints that the world of Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, which was rooted in the Shared Universe more than any other, is one of these; a recurring depiction of all the Super Sentai universes in Zenkaiger has them being represented by team images (as pictured above), the Gokaigers' showing them standing in front of all their predecessors. This indicates that the Gokaiger world has its own versions of the first 34 Super Sentai, justifiable since Gokaiger itself hinges on their existence (one of the Gokaigers' key powers is the ability to assume the forms of previous Super Sentai). This was later expanded to include post-Gokaiger Sentai, with the 10th anniversary Reunion Show Kaizoku Sentai Ten Gokaiger affirming the existence of the 9 Sentai succeeding the Gokaigers.
- The final episodes of the show also mention a "Super Sentai World" where ALL the shows take place that is distinctively different from the Gokaiger world. It's also mentioned in side material that even though every team has a world where they were the major team in it, it doesn't necessarily mean other Sentai teams didn't also happen in the backstory, ranging from Kiramager having Gekiranger to Zyuohger having Gokaiger and thus all the other teams as well. The sequel, Donbrothers, also throws in the idea of other universes having alternate versions of previous Sentai characters, with Zenkaiser Black, an AU of Zenkaiger's main character Kaito with a distinctly different personality, as a supporting character.
Video Games
- Fate/Grand Order, the Crisis Crossover for the Fate series, takes place in its own timeline separate from other works. Played with in that the franchise is known for having Alternate Universes being a known fact in-universe, and that the characters from the other Fate works are explicitly pulled from there with the special Summoning Ritual unique to Grand Order's world or via special crossovers.
- The "Capcom Universe" in which every Capcom series exists in the same setting, separated only by time and space. It was officially created for Capcom Fighting Jam and is the setting used for all Capcom vs. games following it...although plot developments suggest there are in fact multiples of this "Capcom universe" or that Negative Continuity is in affect.
- Marvel vs. Capcom series take place in a separate Marvel universe called Earth-30847.
- Injustice takes place in one of the DC lore's many unaccounted for alternate universes. In the first game, various versions of DC characters travel into this world to battle their counterparts. In the second, DLC opens the door to many guest characters from outside DC, all having the excuse of being brought in from other realities as well.
- The Project × Zone games take place in a crossover world inhabited by Original Generation characters that has a red-hot go at being a crossover of crossovers between Capcom, Namco, and Sega. If disparate characters have ever shared a spotlight before (i.e. Street Fighter X Tekken, Marvel vs. Capcom), expect them to recognize each other here. However, PXZ and its sequel are explicitly a Post-Script Season to each and every one of its sources to avoid plot conflicts, while several plot threads in both games are a direct continuation of the events of Namco × Capcom (and, to a lesser extent, Endless Frontier).
- Super Smash Bros., particularly the story modes in Brawl and Ultimate, establish a universe where all the Nintendo characters (plus Snake, Cloud, the Belmonts, etc.) co-exist in the same universe. Even more extreme in Ultimate, where The Legend of Zelda, Castlevania and Fire Emblem characters are drawn from different points in their own continuities' timeline. note While it was hinted before, in one of Ultimate's pre-release streams, Sakurai confirmed that the characters in the Smash Bros. games are toys in the realm of imagination.
- According to Eiji Aonuma, Hyrule Warriors takes place in an separate dimension from the canonical games of The Legend of Zelda, and thus does not fall within any of the three timelines revealed in Hyrule Historia. There's a Link, Zelda, Impa, and Ganondorf in this dimension (given the Legacy Character nature of those four), but all other returning Zelda characters (such as Midna, Darunia, and Fi) are pulled from portals into other timelines in order to make this crossover possible.
- Shonen Jump crossover games:
- J-Stars Victory VS is a crossover of several Shonen Jump series that takes place in a world called "Jump World".
- Jump Force is the same way, taking place where all Jump universes collide.
- Rakenzarn Tales makes its own world called Rakenzarn into order to bring together bunches of existing characters from varying series.
- Kingdom Hearts takes place in a universe where Disney and Square Enix universes collide. Specifically, the implication is that nearly every entry of the Disney Animated Canon, most Pixar films, films and features falling outside of either category (ex. The Nightmare Before Christmas, Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers), and even live-action movies like TRON and Pirates of the Caribbean are connected on the Disney side. Square's side of the crossover is currently more limited, mainly consisting of AU versions of various Final Fantasy characters (with the possible exception of Auron in Kingdom Hearts II, hinted to be a younger version pulled from a point in time prior to FFX). Additionally, the cast of The World Ends with You play a supporting role in Dream Drop Distance and elements from Einhänder made their way into the Gummi Ship segments of Kingdom Hearts III (including two enemies appearing as Optional Bosses).
- The Super Robot Wars games are basically this as the settings of each game are tailor-made to accommodate all the series in any given game's roster. This is especially highlighted with how the games utilize Gundam shows from the Universal Century timeline, as they tend to feature characters from shows that are canonically set years, or even decades, apart from one another. For example, in Super Robot Wars GC, Kamille and Judau can be seen fighting alongside One-Year War-era Amuro, and Super Robot Wars Alpha 1 features a take on the Gryps Conflict featuring characters ranging from War in the Pocket (which canonically took place near the end of the One-Year War) to Victory Gundam (which takes place over 70 years after the One-Year War).
Web Animation
- It appears that in Sonic for Hire, the universes of every video game in existence co-exist with each other. While for the most part, the characters featured in the series stick to the roles they have in their respective games, there are numerous other characters who have grown out of their original roles. For starters, the eponymous Sonic is now living in an apartment and has to resort to finding jobs to make ends meet. Additionally, Knuckles is the owner of a BurgerTime restaurant, Eggman is less evil, and Mario is now a mob boss.
Web Videos
- This series of videos
show what if DC and Marvel share the same cinematic universe.
