Top 10 Crossover Events in History

We all thought "Avengers: Infinity War" was the greatest crossover event in history, but the internet taught us otherwise. Welcome to WatchMojo.com and today we’ll be counting down our picks for the Top 10 Ambitious Crossover Events of in History.

Inspired by the internet's creativity and ability to meme literally anything and everything, we’re looking at unprecedented crossovers featuring characters from different franchises or universes coming together, before Marvel's Infinity War did it. The magnitude of the event and the historical significance of the crossover will be given more importance than the actual quality of it.

The upcoming MonsterVerse version of this showdown is hardly going to be the first time Godzilla and King Kong met for an epic duel! As the third film in the Godzilla franchise, Toho Limited brought over Skull Island's monstrous ape for a showdown. A celebration of the company 30 years in production, King Kong vs. Godzilla satirized Japan's Television Industry by having a medicine company pit the two giants against each other for the sake of publicity. Admittedly, the film is pretty cheesy and dated, but that only enhances its charm. Featuring new scenes and sound, a heavily edited English version was released a year later.

Nearly two decades in the making; New Line and Paramount had been trying to bring these two slasher movie legends together since the late '80s. Due to licensing problems, fans of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th had to wait until 2003 for this dream matchup. Serving as the finale for both franchises, Freddy vs. Jason saw the forgotten Kreuger manipulating Voorhees to cause mayhem in Springwood. Not a big fan of sharing, Jason reluctance to leave any victims for Freddy leads to the horror icons trading blows, resulting in an awesome but short fight.

“Batman” (1966-68)

Yes, Batman and Bruce Lee shared a screen! A staple of television in the late '60s, Adam West's Batman butted heads with some unique people during the show's run. After appearing for a short cameo in an earlier episode, the episode "A Piece of Action" saw The Green Hornet and Bruce Lee's Kato join the Caped Crusaders to take down a counterfeiting scheme. While The Green Hornet was canceled after a single season, we can always look back fondly on that time Robin held his own against Bruce Lee.

Who has not wished to see Wolverine go up against Akuma? In the early '90s, Capcom released a string of Marvel-licensed fighting games with mechanics similar to Street Fighter II and Darkstalkers. Obviously, the next logical step was to cut out the middleman and combine all the characters! Inaugurated with X-Men vs. Street Fighter, the Marvel vs. Capcom franchise pits each brand's most beloved character in glorious and over-the-top tag-team battles for supremacy! With representatives from Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, and Dead Rising; Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 boasted 50 playable characters. While some were let down by the number of characters in the series’ latest offering, it certainly didn't take away from the series' legacy.

Nostalgia in video game form. Combining the joined efforts of Disney and Square Enix, Kingdom Hearts sees a young boy named Sora traveling to different universes to fight against the Heartless. It just so happens these worlds are based on Disney movies and Sora is joined on his journey by Donald Duck and Goofy who encounter and even fight a slew of familiar Final Fantasy characters. What’s interesting is that while Final Fantasy and Disney are the selling points, Kingdom Hearts has carved out a tone and universe all its own.

“One Piece” (1999-)

If there one thing capable of mobilizing Luffy, Goku, and Toriko, it would have to be meat! With Toei handling the animation for all three series, the studio just needed an excuse to film a crossover. Split into an episode of Toriko and One Piece; this special saw the Z Fighters, the Straw Hats, and the Four Heavenly Gourmet Hunters competing in a race for food. While the second half depicts the characters coming together to defeat a common enemy, the real highlight is the earlier fight between Luffy, Toriko, and Goku! Just to keep things interesting, Goku forgets about Super Saiyan 2 or 3.

Inaugurated by a hilarious commercial starring a host of gaming mascots, Nintendo hit the gold mine with this crossover event. Initially a Japan exclusive, Super Smash Bros. earned a worldwide release after selling more than a million copies. The definitive multiplayer fighting game, Nintendo's franchise asks players to decide who would win in a match between Mario, Link, Samus, and Mewtwo. With the roster expanding with each new release, Super Smash Bros. got so big that even third-party characters like Bayonetta, Megaman, and Sonic the Hedgehog starting to get in on the fun.

The concept of a cinematic shared universe predates Marvel by more than half a century. After spending the better part of the 1930s scaring audiences with a string of monster movies, Universal tested the waters for a crossover with Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Happy enough with the results, the studio's House of Frankenstein took things further and embraced the idea of a massive monster mashup. For the first time ever; Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, the Wolf Man, and the hunchback and the mad doctor all showed up for one movie! The movie paved the way for Abbott and Costello’s run-ins with the Universal Monsters.

At one point, Marvel and DC decided to just publish their fan-fiction. Amalgam Comics refers to the imprint co-published by the Big Two titans of the comics world in the mid to late '90s. A spin-off from the highly-anticipated DC vs. Marvel miniseries, this crossover saw the physical incarnation of each brand fighting to see which universe should survive. Taking place in an alternate reality, a bunch of Marvel and DC characters merged to form amalgamations like Wolverine and Batman's Dark Claw or Superman and Captain America's Super-Soldier. The Amalgam Universe holds a strange and special place in comic book history.

Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.

“Alien Vs. Predator” franchise (1989-)

“Shell Shocked”
“Power Rangers in Space” (1998-99)

“Wreck-It Ralph” (2012)

A cinematic masterpiece and a heartwarming celebration of American Animation's Golden Age. Directed by Back to the Future's Robert Zemeckis and based on a novel by Gary K. Wolf, Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a neo-noir fantasy film set in a universe where toons are real. Co-produced by Steven Spielberg's Ambling Entertainment, the Jaws director convinced studios like Warner Bros. to allow their iconic characters to be used in the film. With over a hundred cameos from eight different studios, where else can someone see Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny in the same scene?