Media Franchise

A collection of distinct series which are often considered as a collective unit under a blanket title. They often, but not always, share a common continuity; even when they do not, they are more closely bound than spinoffs.

While characters may come and go, formats may change from live action to animated and back again, and even production houses/creators may change over time, the thing that remains constant for a franchise is the universe in which it takes place.

In the US, series franchises are fairly rare, and usually result from a series spawning several successful Revivals, though in recent years, an increasing number of successful US series have spawned concurrent franchises, where more than one installment has aired simultaneously.

Franchises are more common in other countries, especially in the Anime and Toku genres of Japan. However, they are frequently implemented by way of Alternate Continuities that employ the same core cast in slightly (or greatly!) different settings, rather than alternate casts in the same continuity. This version is also very common in video games.

Reality shows are also often counted as franchises, with each season being counted as a distinct series in its own right (Thus Survivor is considered a Franchise, whose installments include Survivor: Palau, Survivor: All-Stars, etc.).

A non-exhaustive list of series franchises follows.

Concurrent U.S. franchises

• Law and Order (5 series [6 if you count UK], two PC games)
• CSI (3 series, seven PC games)
• Stargate (Movie, 3 series, two series movies, plus non-canonical Animated Adaptation)

Consecutive U.S. franchises

• Star Trek (5 series [some of which ran concurrently], 11 movies, an Animated Adaptation and a great many video games for pretty much every platform, plus a bazillion tie-in novels)
• Saved by the Bell (3 series, or 4, depending on how Good Morning Miss Bliss is counted)
• Transformers (The main continuity family includes three American cartoons and five Anime series, each of which has at least one accompanying comic and a Manga. There's also another several mangas and a couple of other comics which without corresponding cartoons. Breaking off into alternate universes there's the Japanese-made Robots in Disguise, consisting of a cartoon and manga, and the Unicron Trilogy, which comprises three anime series, each of which has a corresponding comic. More recently, there's been an American live-action movie and a new cartoon, and guess what? Each of those has a comic as well. Oh, and if we tried to list all the tie-in books, toys, clothing, etc? We'd break the internet. And we still can't get enough.)
• G.I. Joe (an uncommonly large number of action figures, 4 different animated series, a live-action film, and comic books and video games)
• Power Rangers by way of Super Sentai below. (18 seasons (officially 19, but one's just a rehash of the first), or 15 series, depending on how you choose to count it.)

Anime and Toku franchises

• Gundam (Eleven series, plus OAV releases, movies, in-canon games and even a ride, some in the same continuity, some not)
• Super Sentai (35 series since 1975)
• Tenchi Muyo! (one OAV series, two TV series, and three movies, one of which is in a different continuity than any of the series)
• El-Hazard: The Magnificent World (three series in continuity, plus a fourth that's an alternate version)
• Digimon (7 series and 9 movies across five continuities, 6 manga series and at least 40 games)
• Macross (now on its third TV series, with three OAV series and two movies, plus an out-of-continuity sequel to the original)
• Kamen Rider (split between the Showa era^[1] and the Heisei era ^[2])
• Sakura Taisen (many video games, a 25-episode anime series and a few OVAs)
• Yu-Gi-Oh! (a long-running card game, four anime series, and countless video games, as well as several manga series, one of which being where the series started from.)
• .hack (3 anime series, 7 games with a tie-in OAV each, plus manga and light novels) and growing! It now includes a movie (sadly non-canon) more manga and games, a few ova, a 4Koma series.
• Pokémon: Five distinct series (original: 1997-2002; Advanced Generation: 2002-2006; Weekly Pokémon Broadcast's sidestory episodes (US: Pokémon Chronicles): 2002-2004; Diamond & Pearl: 2006-2010; Best Wishes: 2010-present) and 13+ annual movies. The anime franchise is just about as big, if not bigger, than the actual video game franchise; see below.
• Yatterman (2 TV series (1977-1979 and 2008-2009), a 2-episode OVA, a 2009 live-action movie and a 2009 anime movie)
• Mai Franchise: My-HiME, Mai-Otome, the Otome-verse spinoffs (Mai-Otome Zwei, Mai-Otome 0 Sifr), and Mai-HiME Destiny.
• Toei produced all of the early Magical Girl shows, starting with Sally the Witch in 1966, meaning that "Magical Girl" was more of a Series Franchise than a genre. This lasted until Ashi Productions' Magical Princess Minky Momo hit the airwaves in 1982.

Video Game franchises

• Perhaps the king of them all, Super Mario Bros. (9 in the main series if counting the first Yoshi's Island, plus many, many spinoffs, a movie, several television series, a comic book series and a breakfast cereal.)
• Final Fantasy (13 in the main series plus a few spinoffs (and two true sequels), plus two movies and two TV series)
• Dragon Quest (9 in the main series plus a Mon spinoff series and a few others, plus Anime series)
• Street Fighter (4 "officially" in the main series, though SF II has many variations, plus numerous spinoffs and crossovers, plus movie and TV series and Manga.)
• Mortal Kombat (9 in the main series [counting the DC Universe crossover], 3 spinoff adventure games, two movies and a third in the works, two TV series, several comic books and a Collectible Card Game)
• King of Fighters (which itself started as a Massive Multiplayer Crossover for SNK's other fighting games before becoming its own game series, plus a series of animated shorts. Currently on its twelfth game, as well as two in the Maximum Impact Alternate Continuity)
• Mega Man (10 in the main series, 9 in the Mega Man X series, 7 in the Mega Man Battle Network series (counting different editions as part of the same game), 5 in the Game Boy series, 4 in the Mega Man Zero series, 2 in the Mega Man ZX series, 3 in the Mega Man Star Force series, 3 in the Mega Man Legends series, an American TV series, and three Anime series, plus comic book series)
• The Legend of Zelda (15+ games, and that's not going into spinoffs and The Legend of Zelda CDI Games, featuring at least 8 Links and 9 Zeldas)
• Metroid (9+ games, including a Video Game Remake)
• Resident Evil (At least nine games, plus four movies)
• Myst (6+ games, depending on how you count, and 3 novels)
• Pac-Man (A game for each member of the family, plus Supers, Manias, Lands, and Worlds galore. And, of course, a breakfast cereal and a Saturday morning cartoon. This, of course, is before you count the several re-releases of the classic stuff...)
• Suikoden (5 games in the main series, plus 3 spinoffs)
• Sonic the Hedgehog (the number of games that feature characters from the series was well over a hundred around 2001. Three American cartoon series, the Sonic X anime, an OVA in The Nineties, at least two official long-running comic books [one of them ongoing])
• Pokémon (Five generations of games, plus spinoffs for each in genres like puzzles and pet sims. Then there's a several manga, the anime (which, as previously listed, is almost a franchise in itself), and the Trading Card Game. Probably the most successful translation of a video game to other media, which has led to Adaptation Displacement among some people.)
• Bomberman (20+ games and still running since the mid-1980s)
• Castlevania (15+ games since 1987)
• Fire Emblem (12 games across different Nintendo platforms with a 13th upcoming, also incorporates several manga adaptations, an OVA adaptation, and a card game)
• Command & Conquer (10+ games, including spinoffs, plus a few novelizations)
• Shin Megami Tensei (Three in the main series, Four Devil Summoner, Six Persona (counting The Journey and The Answer separately), Two Digital Devil Saga, Two Digital Devil Story, and a truckload of spin offs.)
• Phantasy Star (four standard console RPGs, followed by four MMORPGs and expansion packs)
• Dynasty Warriors
• the Touhou project (13 official games, six spinoffs, including Hisoutensoku, and lots and lots of doujinshi)
• Tomb Raider (8 games, 1 remake and 2 films, one of them financially successful)
• Electronic Arts/Maxis' Sim franchise (five official SimCity games, three The Sims games, and many, many spinoffs from the former (including The Sims itself) and expansion packs for the latter)
• Bubble Bobble (two to three "officially" in its original series which branched off, although there are three second-installments and two third-installments, not counting subsequent games, one spinoff and its own four-installment arcade series, sub-series, and subsequent games.)
• Warcraft (three generations of real time strategy games, plus expansions, then World of Warcraft, an MMO, plus its expansions, and numerous spin off books of varying quality and canonicalness)
• Super Robot Wars
• The Tales (series)
• To Heart and To Heart 2 (3 visual novels, 3 TV series, a To Heart manga and god knows how many To Heart 2 OVAs are there)
• Breath of Fire (five main games in the series: the first three of which are officially in the same universe, the fifth in an Alternate Universe, and the fourth being a position best described as controversial; two manga adaptations and a manga Spin-Off of I which were officially directed by Capcom; Novelization of III and IV; a manga adaptation of IV which was officially directed by Capcom; numerous licensed 4-koma and anthology comics of IV (and one licensed 4-koma of III); four separate Gaiden Game treatments of IV for Japanese smartphones; artbooks (including separate artbooks for each series and a compilation artbook) containing a great deal of All There in the Manual material never mentioned in the games; AND there's the additional complication of remakes of I and II to shortly be licensed to Square Enix)
• When They Cry (four main games under two separate titles [[[Higurashi]], Higurashi Kai, Umineko no Naku Koro ni, Umineko Chiru], two fandiscs, two spin-off fighting games and several console ports, as well as animated and manga adaptations for both series)

Literature franchises

• Most of Frank Herbert's books and short stories (especially his non-Dune works) share many common historical aspects, despite being set across vast expanses of spacetime.
• Larry Niven's Known Space, which includes the Ringworld series of novels, the Man-Kzin Wars series, and even a Star Trek: The Animated Series episode (which is why TAS isn't in continuity with the live-action Star Trek series.)

Cross-media franchises

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Five seasons on radio and one on television, five books (six if you count And Another Thing), two short stories, a computer game, three theatrical performances (including one musical), two singles, a feature film, three comic books, two records, and two bath towels—all in their own continuities mutated off the first two radio series and last three books—the result is that, for all that mess, it covers somewhere around six installments of one story.
• .hack is just plain ridiculous about this:
  • The first wave, Project .hack, originally consisted of the .hack//Sign anime, the Infection, Mutation, Outbreak and Quarantine games (which were each bundled with an episode of the OVA series .hack//Liminality), and the .hack Legend of the Twilight manga. Other canon included the .hack//AI buster light novels. Then there were two manga adaptations of the games, XXXX and Another Birth (from BlackRose's point of view), neither of which are canon.
  • The second wave consisted mainly of the second anime, .hack//Roots, and the .hack GU Games (Rebirth, Reminisce and Redemption). There was also a CGI movie adaptation, a manga adaptaion and a light novel adaptation of the games, all of which were done differently.
  • The third, and probably final, wave consists of the anime .hack//Quantum and .hack//LINK, which could refer to a manga or a PSP game that (as far as I can tell) follow the same story. There's also a movie in the works.

1. ↑ 7 series from 1971-1981 and 2 series in 1987-1989 (all of which take place in the same universe), then 1 Direct to Video film in 1992 and 2 theatrical features in 1993-1994 (which occupy their own little continuities).
2. ↑ one TV series per year from 2000-present, each of which has at least one movie, all seperated by The Multiverse as mapped out by Kamen Rider Decade.