Crack Pairing

Rule 34: even hippos and tortoises follow it.

"Tea ships Harry/Hedwig, by the way."

—Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series

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.

Examples of Crack Pairing include:

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.
  • 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.
  • 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, you see, 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 and .
    • 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
  • 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:
  • "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.
    • And while we are on the subject, Father and Dante. No, really.
  • 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!
    • Actually a 'shop of this Doom / Azula image. Which, bizarrely, makes far more sense.
  • 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


Literature

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).
  • For Lord of the Rings, Legolas/Treebeard. No, really.
  • 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.
  • 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

Video Games

Webcomics


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 S Bemail "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.

"I'm just a goblin, standing in front of a clown, asking her to love him. What's so complicated about that?"

  • 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.


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?
A: Because we said. Also, it's hot. And funny.And it makes no sense, always a plus.

    • 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.

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.) Twice, admittedly, but talk about Slap Slap Kiss.
  • The Kim Possible fandom has a few favorite ships that can be considered crack.
  • 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


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 period weren't the average 5 lb toy dogs we know of today. Before they were bred down to their current size in the late 1800s, Poms were more like 30 lb 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.
  1. ↑ Wait, you don't remember who Lt. Jee is? He's this guy, the one who yelled at Zuko for wanting to sail into the storm.
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