 This is the SF Productions podcast network This episode has crossover appeal from the pop culture bunker. I'm Mindy. I'm Mark You can check out our audio podcast how I got my wife three comics and iTunes or on our website SF podcast network comm The TV industry loves their stunts And one of the most popular is the crossover Yes, we're cast of two or more shows meet. Yeah, this kind of came up because we were talking about Charlie's Angels on love boat on the love boat. Yeah That was weird. I want to see that. Yeah Well, there's a wealth of info about this on online because nerds love lists. Yeah, true. So there's spreadsheets and Huge charts. They're all available. I can see all these flow charts where you know the interconnectedness of shows Absolutely now because there's so much out there I'm only covering American broadcast networks live-action and Existing shows so not not where it's like they're putting people on a show to spin them off Yeah, yeah, and no type of backdoor pilot here Spin-offs as you mentioned are one of the easiest ways to create a crossover Once they're already set up you have the same producers the same studio generally the same network We start with the CSI franchise. Yeah, four shows there plus cold case and without a trace all produced by Jerry Brookheimer and There's a lot of cross pollination going on among those shows exactly There's also of course the law and order franchise five shows plus New York undercover Conviction and homicide all from Dick Wolf. Now. There's I don't know if you talk about it at any point There's also all the Chicago shows from Dick Wolf. Absolutely. And and in fact the Chicago shows also cross over and Do that with law and order shows, right? They've been on law and order SPU We have the Star Trek franchise Five different shows with lots of characters. Yes, even even when it didn't make sense like in the last episode enterprise Yeah There's also the Beverly Hillbillies franchise with three shows. Now one thing hit interesting here is ebb from Green Acres Appears on Beverly Hillbillies, even though they had previously watched Beverly Hillbillies as a TV show on Green Acres and in fact did a play based on the show. They watched Beverly Hillbillies in that universe were like the Kardashians. Yeah It was like reality TV in that universe Yeah, the Cheers characters appeared on Frasier quite a bit in fact the Cheers bar When it when the show ended was removed and replaced with Frasier's apartment. It's the same stage We also have shows on the same network on the same night. This was very popular NBC's Thursday must-see TV characters would cameo on each other shows Friends mad about you Cheers wings Caroline in the city hope and Gloria the single guy now The really interesting thing about friends and mad about you was that they had they each had a character who were sisters They were twin sisters, right? So it was Phoebe and Ursula. Yes, so, you know You'd occasionally get the crossover, but you'd also have her appearing occasionally on both on Man about you as Ursula, right? Yes Phoebe, right now this all culminated in the 1994 blackout Thursday event When a fictional East Coast blackout tied together multiple shows Seinfeld was on that night, but was excluded due to production issues Basically, they weren't included and the show had been shot several weeks earlier and so they couldn't do it later though Paul's character on mad about you turned out to be sub-leasing an old apartment to Kramer So they tied those two shows together. Yes, and then mad about you Later tied their show to the Dick Van Dyke show by having an episode with Alan Brady Oh, that's like that's like 30 or 40 years later. Yeah, exactly ABC counted with their own TGIF crossovers involving Full House, Family Matters, Step by Step, Hagwin and Mr. Cooper, Supreme of the Teenage Witch, and Boy Meets World While CBS made fun of the whole thing with Shameless Monday at crossover involving Everybody Loves Raymond and King of Queens Aaron's spelling shows loved their crossovers. We mentioned Charlie's Angels on the Love Boat Charlie's Angels were on an episode of Vegas Love Boat and Fantasy Island had a crossover in that a guest on the former show played by Lanny Anderson continued on to the latter show So she took a cruise and then she went to Fantasy Island And immediately went to Fantasy Island That's the same character You'd think more people would do that, I don't know You might as well combine them, it's a combo trip you'd save for money You know, I find it totally weird that you cannot watch any of these Aaron's spelling shows online anywhere Yeah, I looked this up and by the way a great source is called Can I Stream dot IT And you can look for any TV show or movie and find out if there's anywhere it legally streams The only thing I could find was episodes of Charlie's Angels are available on Voodoo to purchase at $199 apiece Yeah I don't know, we don't know why spelling shows are that way Maybe they just think nobody wants to watch them, I don't know There were multi-part episodes that started in one show and ended on another We had Iron Side and the Bold Ones Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman Different Strokes and Hello Larry Magnum PI and Murder She Wrote That one strikes me as very odd ER and Third Watch And we mentioned Dick Wolf's Chicago franchise is basically nothing but a crossover Yeah, all the Chicago shows are so interrelated In this past season we just had Bones and Sleepy Hollow crossover Oh and that was just horrible It was terrible We also have cases of cameos and these are really weird Superman was on I Love Lucy Lurch from Adam's Family And Colonel Clink from Hogan's Heroes were in Batman window gags This is when they're climbing up the wall and somebody pops out the window We had Face Man from the A-Team Arnold Jackson from Different Strokes June Cleaver from Leave It To Beaver The Hulk, Kit from Knight Rider And Aunt Esther from Sanford and Son were all in the same episode of Amazing Stories And then Mr. Carlin from the Bob Newhart show was on an episode of Alph In fact, Mr. Carlin is on several different shows But not as many as a character we will soon mention We also have strange crossovers One example is Community where Abed appeared on an episode of Cougar Town as an extra And then mentions it on his show Because Community was a very meta show But you mentioned these overarching crossover concepts The first one being the Munch principle John Munch, played by Richard Belzer First appeared on Homicide in 1993 And then his character there retires from the police force And goes to work in New York on Law & Order And over 20 years his character showed up on Law & Order S-U-V-S-V-U Highest S-U-V Law & Order, tried by Jury Arrested Development, X-Files The Wire, The Beat, 30 Rock And not to mention he showed up animated on The Simpsons Plus a Jimmy Kimmel live episode in character So it's 10 shows in all He played the same character in live action longer than any other character He beats Frazier Crane and Marshall Dillon from Frazier & Gunsmoke respectively But this all pales in comparison to The Tommy Westfall Theory This came out of a blog entry by Dwayne McDuffie in 2002 A comic book writer who died in 2011 Tommy was a rarely seen character on St. Elsewhere This 80's medical drama He's the autistic son of one of the lead characters And we learn in the final scene of the series That the entire series was made up in Tommy's head Because he's holding a snow globe with a hospital in it Now the problem here is that St. Elsewhere characters I think basically because NBC wanted to cross promoter on his shows Characters from that show appeared on Cheers & Homicide And shares continuity or characters with The White Shadow It's Gary Shandling's show, Mash and the Bob Newhart Show That's another case of Mr. Carlin appeared on St. Elsewhere And some of those shows then generated crossovers of their own It is all begat here There's a Tommy Westfall Universe site That as of last year found links to 419 TV series Some of which are very tentative such as Easter Eggs in the background Like there'd be a company in show A That's on a sign in the background on show B So like, oh those must be in the same continuity This goes all the way back to Isle of Lucy in 1951 So really all of these TV shows are imaginary Well, daaar But the idea is that all of these shows are technically in the same continuity Yes And finally we just got a cross network crossover Flash and Supergirl both from the same producers Who have multiple shows in the same continuity With Flash and Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow But we had an earlier cross network crossover this season When Constantine appeared on Arrow However, you gotta put an asterisk on that Because Constantine had already been cancelled by that point I have to say, I really did enjoy that Flash Supergirl crossover And technically, they're not in the same universe That's right, they made it clear It's separate continuities He vibrated His way into that other continuity Is an alternator, you know So don't expect that to happen all the time Although they're talking about doing another one next year already Well and well they should Didn't the JLA appear in the JSA to a yearly crossover in the comics So it's just gonna be another crisis And while you're waiting for that crisis to occur You can check out our radio podcast How I got my wife to read comics on iTunes Or on our website, sfpodcastnetwork.com From the pop culture bunker, I'm Indy And I'm Mark, thanks for watching I'm off to another crossover Mark's gonna go appear on another show