Entertainment to weirdest TV crossovers of all time, according to Rolling Stoneis Crazy features comedy characters in drama episodes, live-action animations and superheroes interacting with common writing stories

It would be easy to call this collaboration between the series Abbott Elementary and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – respectively, a light family comedy about kind teachers and an adult and cynical comedy about five of the worst people ever portrayed on television – “the strangest crossover in TV history.” But that would ignore how many other weird mixtures television has provided us over the years. We have selected a dozen unlikely gender meetings from the early days to the 2020s.

St. Elsewhere + Cheers

The acclaimed medical drama St. Elsewhere I loved unusual crossovers. Frequently, it brought actors reprising small roles of older series like The Bob Newhart Show and The White Shadow And to increase the confusion, he put them in contrast with former castmates who now played different characters in the hospital. But by far, the strangest cross between series took place at the end of season three, when veteran doctors Westphall, Auschlander and Craig passed the famous sitcom bar Cheers To relax after a long day, exchanging jokes with the moody waiver Carla and the goer and cliff goers-the characters of Cheers Making jokes this time without laughter trail.

X + COPS File

In an episode of File X 2000, written by the future creator of Breaking badVince Gilligan, Mulder and Scully investigate a monster that feeds on fear – while everything they do is filmed by the program’s documentary team COPswith the right to theme music and all. And it turns out that this was not the only unusual adventure of the FBI agents …

The Simpsons + File X

An episode of The Simpsons From 1997 reduces Mulder and Scully to two dimensions when they arrive to investigate Homer’s reports on an alien creature wandering the forest around the city. “The Springfield Files“Treats your invited characters with relative seriousness, understanding that just showing your reactions to life with Homer and your class would be funny enough. And the explanation for what Homer saw doesn’t seem so far from what might have appeared in a real episode of File X of that time.

Bones + a heavy family

For relatively direct criminal proceedings, Bones It has taken some unexpected paths over the years. There was a crossover in two parts with Sleepy Hollow – A series of fantasy involving an Ichabod Crane shifted in time and several demonic creatures – as well as a 2009 episode where Booth begins to have hallucinations and conversation with baby Stewie, Family Guy. Strange even more, Stewie’s apparitions are explained as a side effect of a brain tumor Booth develops.

Archer + Bob’s Burgers

H. Jon Benjamin’s two animated comedies – one full of sex jokes, the other one -oriented to their children – crossed in an episode of Archer From 2013, in which a mustache and amnesic sterling finds himself working on a hamburger with a wife and children who look a lot like beautiful, Tina, Gene and Louise.

Arrested Development: Falling Real + Law & Order: SVU

Honestly, I could make an entire list only with the series in which Richard Belzer played detective John Munch – a character who came up in Homicide: Life on the Street And it eventually appeared in 10 different programs, spread over five broadcasters and cable channels. But let’s focus on this specific moment: Munch – which at the time was in the midst of a participation of 15 seasons as supporting in Law & Order: SVU “Pretending to be a teacher to deceive Tobias Fünke and make him deliver incriminating evidence against the Bluth family.”

Alice + The Gatões

The Gatões It was not the most serious drama of all, as virtually all episodes were reverse engineering from the question of which object the boys could jump over their personalized Dodge Charger. Still, in 1983, it was not common to see dramas characters appear in sitcoms. And this was a particularly extensive case, with chief Hogg and Delegate Enos traveling from Hazzard County in Rural Georgia, to Phoenix, Arizona, in an attempt to deceive Mel to sell his restaurant for $ 1. The justification of the series for this: Chief Hogg was a distant cousin of the Jolene waitress, from Alice .

Cougar Town + Community

This crossover may have realized faster than any other on the list. Community I had already established that ABED, addicted to pop culture, loved the sitcom of ABC COUGAR Town. So when an episode was written as a parody of the cultured 80’s movie My dinner with Andréthe writers of Community They thought it would be funny to include an Abed monologue about his disastrous participation as an extra in an episode of COUGAR Town. As the two series had a friendly relationship, the producers of Community sent a text message to the colleagues of COUGAR Town asking if Danny Pudi could really appear at the bottom of a scene in the series – and, after all, both the monologue in Community regarding the special participation in COUGAR Town were filmed the same day the speech was written. (As a form of retribution, the actors Busy Philipps and Dan Byrd, from COUGAR Townthey appear briefly in the Paintball episode of that season of Community. Are they interpreting themselves? Greendale random students? Another thing? Only Abed can say for sure.)

I love Lucy + Superman’s adventures

This is the first remarkable crossover of television, and the level of strangeness depends on a question that the episode does everything not to answer. The eccentric heroin of I love LucyLucy Ricardo, is determined to get Superman to appear at little Ricky’s birthday party and, when all attempts fail, she wears a fantasy (with the right to a football helmet for some reason) to pass the hero. In the end, she ends up trapped in a window edge-and who appears to save her is none other than the man of steel in person, played by George Reeves, the star of Superman’s adventures. But is the actor actually playing Superman or is playing George Reeves playing Superman, as Lucy and Ricky used to receive many celebrities as friends? Reeves was not credited in the episode, and his name is never mentioned, because Lucille Ball and his team wanted to keep the magic for younger viewers. On the other hand, “Superman” also does nothing that requires superpowers (he just pushes a piano – and considering that Reeves was a strong guy and pianos usually have wheels, that doesn’t prove much). That is, it is up to the viewer to decide who really saves the day-and if that means the Ricardo family lives in a world with real superheroes.

Mr. Robot + Alf, the

Although we generally have excluded episodes in which characters from one series just dream that they are interacting with characters from another, we opened an exception to this one – which was simply too strange to be left out. Mr. RobotAs you should remember, it was an intense cyberpunk thriller about a mentally unstable man trying to overthrow the corporation he believed was determined to destroy the world. So, how exactly the hairy and puppet alien alien Alf (real name: Gordon Shumway) fits this scenario? It turns out that while Elliot is brutally picking up in the real world, his mind retreats to a program he loved as a child – just to find that even Alf himself is now dyed by Elliot’s abusive childhood memories. Look, made sense when we watched, okay?

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds + Star Trek: Lower Decks

This episode of Strange New Worlds not only brings animated characters (the clumsy Boimler and the reckless Mariner Lower Decks) For a live-action show, but also transports them from a comedy to a (mainly) drama, and playing with the tones of the series, as Lower Decks It is aimed at a slightly older audience than Strange New Worlds. It shouldn’t work, but somehow it works.

Ally McBeal: My single life + the challenge

During a long career on TV, which went from La Law in the 80s until more recent successes like Big Little Lies and Above any suspicionDavid E. Kelley never had a year better than 1998, when he made history at Emmy by winning in the categories of best comedy series and best drama series, respectively, for Ally McBeal and The Practice. A few months before this initial feat, Kelley joined the two series – the first eccentric and fantasy comedy, with occasional breaks for legal discussions, and the second a more serious and dark story about careful lawyers – to a plot where their respective Boston law firms come together to defend an accused of murder that believed to be Lizy Borden in a life Past. Somehow, the tones of the two series were flexible enough to work together. At the end of that year, Kelley made a second more discreet crossover, where Lara Flynn Boyle appeared in Ally McBeal as your character from The challengeHelen Gamble. With no context, Helen and Ally (Chalista Flockhart) are close to an elevator and – in a comment on how the two actresses were constantly mocking because they are too thin – Helen sarcastically says to Ally: “Maybe you can eat a cookie,” and Ally responds with bitterness, “Maybe we can share.”

+++ Read more: Mother’s Day: 10 movies to watch this Sunday

+++ Read more: All Denzel Washington movies, from the worst to the best, according to Rolling Stone