The X-Files and Seinfeld inhabit a (big) shared universe

[TithonusSyndrome]

So I've got strep throat and new year's celebrations are out of the question. Starting with a steady drip of Seinfeld, one thing led to Wikipedia, and Wikipedia led to this:

Michael Richards made a guest appearance as Cosmo Kramer on Mad About You, merging the two continuities.



Lisa Kudrow's recurring role on Mad About You as the waitress Ursula was retconned into the twin sister of her character on Friends, Pheobe, merging the three continuities together.

Lisa Kudrow won the role [of Pheobe] because the producers liked her recurring role as Ursula, the waitress in Mad About You. The characters were connected to make them twin sisters.

From there, Matt LeBlanc's Friends character, Joey, made an appearance on Caroline In The City:

Notable guest appearances
Matthew Perry – As his Friends character, Chandler Bing (identified as such in the closing titles). Meets Annie in the video store on "Caroline and the Folks."

Caroline In The City also featured Niles and Daphne from Frasier in a guest role:

Notable guest appearances

...

Jane Leeves and David Hyde Pierce – Briefly playing Daphne Moon and Niles Crane, their characters from the NBC sitcom Frasier at the end of the 1995 episode "Caroline and the Bad Back"

Frasier, being a spinoff of Cheers, now ties into the 80's hospital drama St. Elsewhere, when Drs. Westphall, Auschlander, and Craig stop into the bar:

The third season's finale featured Drs. Westphall, Auschlander, and Craig visiting the titular pub of Cheers (also set in Boston) for a drink. During the 2nd season of Cheers, barmaid Carla Tortelli (Rhea Perlman) gave birth to a child at St. Eligius, and here expresses her displeasure about her hospitalization there, even getting into a verbal altercation with Dr. Craig.

From St. Elsewhere, this snowballing kludge then ties into Homicide: Life On The Streets on three separate counts:

Two St. Elsewhere characters were carried over to the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street, which was executive produced by St. Elsewhere alumnus Tom Fontana. In an episode in season six entitled "Mercy", Alfre Woodard reprises her role of Dr. Roxanne Turner, who is accused of illegally euthanizing a cancer patient. Woodard was nominated for an Emmy Award as Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for her performance. In other Homicide episodes, the character of Detective Tim Bayliss (played by Kyle Secor) develops a bad back and is treated by an offscreen "Dr. Ehrlich". In the Homicide: The Movie finale, Ed Begley, Jr., makes an uncredited appearance as Dr. Victor Ehrlich.

And to those who know, being tied into Homicide basically means being tied into everything due to a single, very mobile man; the Detective John Munch.

The character John Munch, played by Richard Belzer, has appeared in several other shows, such as The Beat, The X-Files, Arrested Development, The Wire and Law & Order: Trial by Jury and Law & Order: SVU.

So there you have it. There are aliens in Seinfeld, Cheers, Frasier and Arrested Development.

Have a happy new year!

[Crazedwraith]

From there, Matt LeBlanc's Friends character, Joey, made an appearance on Caroline In The City:

Notable guest appearances
Matthew Perry – As his Friends character, Chandler Bing (identified as such in the closing titles). Meets Annie in the video store on "Caroline and the Folks."

I sense a lack of proof reading.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Aw fuck, so do I. I'll play the sick card. I guess it's all the same, since the connection still holds.

[Zablorg]

Tith, there must be a rational explanation for all this!

[TithonusSyndrome]

I think this is the rational explanation; now we know why we never meet Kramer's offscreen friends like Corky Ramirez or Bob Sacamano.

[Ahriman238]

I heard once that every tv show ever produced can be linked to a show that's linked to a show, that's linked to St. Elsewhere. Also, the last episode of St. Elsewhere revealed the entire show took place in the imagination of an autistic child. Draw your own conclusions.

[Spekio]

I am surprised no one mentioned this. It's a couple of years old, btw.

[Gandalf]

Some of those are a bit of a stretch.

It says that nBSG and Firefly are in the same universe. I presume this is because of the (vaguely) Firefly class ship seen in the background of the miniseries. I don't know if that's enough to say "Same universe!"

[FaxModem1]

I am surprised no one mentioned this. It's a couple of years old, btw.

I actually did a topic on this a while ago. Right here in fact.

[Cykeisme]

Some of those are a bit of a stretch.

It says that nBSG and Firefly are in the same universe. I presume this is because of the (vaguely) Firefly class ship seen in the background of the miniseries. I don't know if that's enough to say "Same universe!"

Agreed, many of the relations are rather tenuous.

For one, in the example you gave, the events of nBSG and Firefly take place at different times relative to their the fictional versions of 21st century Earth: one in the distant past, and one in the future. Identifying that background ship in the past as a Firefly class is anachronistic (actually it's just stupid).
Even if they were in the same continuity, they're separated by a tremendous gap in time.


The St. Elsewhere-imaginity-world stuff is just wanking.
I suppose it's interesting, nevertheless

[Ahriman238]

I don't know if the connection is a single shot of a firefly transport (which would seem more homage then crossover.)

In any case, the other things that stick in my mind regarding shared universes is A.) every Quentin Tarantino movie, linked by things like the cigarette company and one of the Bastards having the same surname as a Pulp Fiction character and B.) the latest crop of Sci-fi (sorry, "SyFy") series, namely Eureka, Alphas and Warehouse 13 being a shared universe through guest stars.

[bilateralrope]

I heard once that every tv show ever produced can be linked to a show that's linked to a show, that's linked to St. Elsewhere. Also, the last episode of St. Elsewhere revealed the entire show took place in the imagination of an autistic child. Draw your own conclusions.

So St. Elsewhere didn't happen in its own continuity ?

All it shows is that the TV shows the other characters are from exist as TV shows within the St. Elsewhere continuity.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Significant portions of that "crossover map" have to be bullshit. How do Knight Rider and Star Trek coexist so closely, when the Federation struggled with AI for so long? KITT is at least as much of an artificial person as Data.

I heard once that every tv show ever produced can be linked to a show that's linked to a show, that's linked to St. Elsewhere. Also, the last episode of St. Elsewhere revealed the entire show took place in the imagination of an autistic child. Draw your own conclusions.

The last episode of St. Elsewhere revealed Tommy Westphall gazing into a crystal ball. Nothing else. It does not follow that he dreamed up such a vast and rich universe of characters, many with interpersonal drama the likes of which autistic people often struggle to understand, any more than it does the lesser hypothesis that he simply dreamed up the events of the finale. If I have a dream with Stephen Harper in it, is Stephen Harper exclusively a character in my dream? Beyond that, we've got the computing power limitations of a single human brain during the course of one dream that, autistic or not, take us back into a lot of stuff discussed in the Inception thread.

Tommy Westphall didn't dream up all of St. Elsewhere, much less any affiliated shows. He's lucky to have dreamed up the finale, much like Bob Newhart did during the "Newhart" finale.

[Ahriman238]

Never actually saw or cared about St. Elsewhere, just repeating something a friend told me, which I'm pretty sure he got off someone else.

Even if it were so, what it would it mean beyond some incredibly obscure meta joke? That TV isn't real? Color me shocked.

[jwl]

Marvel has done a ton of crossovers, too.

[Zwinmar]

Fiction is fiction? Go figure. Most producers would gladly do a crossover if they could get the licensing without paying.