Crossover Grid Key (organized by quadrant)
1. In the center: St Elsewhere's Dr. Turner was investigated for murder by Homicide's Pembleton and Bayliss in the Homicide: Life on the Street episode Mercy. And St Elsewhere's entire run was just a dream inside autistic Tommy Westphall's head. This means every show listed below is a figment of Tommy's mind.
2. Top left: St. Elsewhere's doctors Donald Westphall, Mark Craig and Daniel Auschlander visited Cheers's bar in the Season 3 finale of St. Elsewhere called Cheers. This episode also reveals that Norm used to be an accountant at St. Elsewhere and in the Cheers episode "Little Sister Don't Cha", Carla says that she'll be at St. Eligius when she leaves to have her baby, which is later mentioned again in this crossover episode.
A. Cheers's Norm and Cliff visited Wings' airport in its 2nd season and Frasier and Lillith visited the airport in its 3rd season. Also, when Wings's Brian takes Alex to Boston to see Clint Black in Wings's 4th season, they meet up with Cheers's Rebecca.
i. Cheers spun-off The Tortellis with Carla.
ii. And going back to Cheers it also spun-off Frasier.
(1) The John Larroquette Show's John Hemongway called into Frasier's show.
3. Top left: On Boston Public, Billy Deegan's mother receives a pension from St Elsewhere's St. Eligius Hospital.
A. Boston Public's Principal Steven Harper appeared on an episode of Boston Legal.
i. Judge Isabel Hernandez from Miss Match also appeared on an episode of Boston Legal.
ii. Boston Legal's Ivan and Shirley go have dinner at Melville's, the restaurant above Cheers.
B. Boston Legal spun off of The Practice. The Practice also crossed over with Boston Public. The Practice's Ellenor Frutt and Boston Public's Kevin Riley were old friends and Kevin Riley was represented by The Practice's law firm.
i. The Practice's Ellenor Frutt visited Gideon's Crossing's Dr Gideon about pregnancy complications.
C. Dr. Benjamin Harris appeared as a guest star on both Ally McBeal & Boston Public. Additionally Ally McBeal's Ally and The Practice's Bobby Donnell worked on a case together.
i. Ally McBeal spun off Ally.
4 Top left: On The Wire (episode "That's Got His Own") Junior Bunk from Homicide was mentioned as someone who had once put bad drug products on the market causing deaths. Also, John Munch was in an episode of The Wire titled "Took".
5. Top right: Homicide's John Munch questioned The X-Files' The Lone Gunmen in the episode "Unusual Suspects".
A. The X-Files' Jose Chung was also investigated by Millennium's Frank Black and later X-Files' Mulder and Scully meet Millennium's Frank Black.
B. The X-Files spun-off The Lone Gunmen.
C. In the X-Files episode “Milagro” Mulder & Scully visit a graveyard where Party of Five’s Diana and Nicholas Salinger are buried.
i. Party of Five spun-off Time of Your Life.
D. The X-Files' Mulder is mentioned on Strange Luck by an FBI agent referencing a colleague who works on paranormal cases.
i. Strange Luck’s Chance Harper reads the Eerie, Indiana newspaper.
(1) Eerie, Indiana spun-off Eerie: the Other Deminision.
6. Top right: Chicago Hope's Jeffrey Geiger accepted an organ of a victim on Homicide. Also, St. Elsewhere's Dr. Craig won the (fictional) Cushing Left Anterior Descending Artery Award later won by Chicago Hope's Kate Austin.
i. When cows started dying in Picket Fences’ Rome, Wisconsin, a resident of Rome mentioned all the crazy cow happenings in Delta Glen, Wisconsin which were investigated by X-Files’ Muder and Scully.
A. Chicago Hope's Jefftey Geiger treated Picket Fences' Douglas Wambaugh who came to Chicago with Jill Brock (also of Picket Fences)
B. Early Edition's Gary and Marissa went to Chicago Hope’s hospital for medical treatment.
i. Early Edition's Gary is asked to locate someone for Martial Law's Sammo Law.
(1) Martial Law's Sammo Law chased a suspect to Texas and was aided by Walker, Texas Ranger.
(a) Walker, Texas Ranger spun-off Sons of Thunder.
C. A reporter on Chicago Hope talked to Dr. Austin about having been accepted into the space program and mentions an ER doctor from County was also accepted. In a separate episode of ER Dr. Greene was accepted in the space program.
i. ER’s Dr. Lewis went to New York to look for here sister and was aided by the characters of Third Watch.
(1) A sick suspect on Third Watch triggers an investigation by the characters from Medical Investigation.
7. Top right: St Elsewhere’s Warren Coolidge appeared on an episode of Method & Red.
8. In the St. Elsewhere episode "Santa Claus Is Dead", Dr. Craig mentions serving in the Korean War with his drinking buddy, BJ Hunnicut from M*A*S*H*.
A. M*A*S*H* also spun-off AfterM*A*S*H*.
B. M*A*S*H* also spun-off Trapper John, MD.
C. W*A*L*T*E*R* was a failed M*A*S*H* spinoff that aired instead as a special one shot and focused on the life of Radar after the war.
D. The Fighting Nightingales was a failed M*A*S*H* spinoff that instead aired as a special one shot that focused on a different set of nurses and doctors in the Korean War.
9. Top right: On the series finale of Providence, St. Elsewhere’s St. Eligius was suggested to Dr. Sydney Hansen as a future place of employment.
10. Bottom right: Dr. Morton Chegley from Julia taught a few of the doctors from St. Elsewhere.
11. Bottom right: The White Shadow's Warren Coolidge went to work at St Elsewhere's hospital.
12. Bottom right: St Elsewhere' Elliot Axelrod's cousin visited The Tattingers.
A. The Tattingers was renamed and reworked into Nick and Hillary.
13. Bottom left: St Elsewhere's hospital management company Weigert (was Ecumena) took over Oz's hospital. Also Homicide's detectives watched Oz's Miss Sally on TV.
A. Oz’s Miss Sally is also seen on The Beat.
i. The Beat's Dorigan and Marinelli got help from L&O:Special Victims Unit John Munch.
14. Bottom left: Homicide's John Munch moved to New York and L&O:SVU (and came back to Baltimore for Homicide's movie)
15. Bottom left: Homicide and Law &Order:Classic had four crossovers.
A. L&O:Classic spun off L&O:SVU, L&O:Criminal Intent, L&O: Trial By Jury, and Conviction all four L&Os have had crossover episodes or characters (n.b. L&O:CI, L&O:Trial by Jury & Conviction aren't connected to Homicide just to L&O:SVU and L&O:Classic.)
i. Characters from various Law & Order series have read, referenced or visited the offices of the New York Ledger, the fictional paper from Dick Wolf’s series, Deadline.
ii. L&O:Classic’s Elizabeth Olivet appeared on New York Undercover.
iii. L&O: SVU’s John Munch appeared on the series premiere of Paris Criminal Investigations, a French reworking of Law and Order: Criminal Intent.
iv. In Plain Sight's Mary Shannon appeared in the L&O: CI episode Contracts.
v. The teams from Law and Order: SVU and Chicago PD worked together to solve a case in a two-hour crossover event between the two shows on February 26, 2014.
vi. Chicago PD spun-off from Chicago Fire.
vii. Chicago Med and Chicago justice also spun-off from Chicago Fire.
B. Benson from L&O: SVU visits Los Angeles from L&O: Los Angeles.
16. Bottom Left: In the Degrassi Junior High episode "Nothing to Fear" LD's father is in the hospital and Drs. Wayne Fiscus, Phillip Chandler, Shirley Daniels and Bruce Paltrow are paged on the hospital intercom. Later, in the episode "Sealed with a Kiss", "Dr. Donald Westphall" is paged, loud and clear, over the hospital intercom when Heather & Erica go in for a mono test.
A. Degrassi Junior High was reworked and repurposed from The Kids of Degrassi Street.
B. As the kids in Degrassi Junior High grew up the show changed its title to Degrassi High. 14 years after Degrassi Junior High started, the next generation of students entered Degrassi in Degrassi: The Next Generation. The new spinoff of the show includes 5 of the characters from the original series as well as a few of those original show character's kids.
Rules/Exclusions[]
In almost every category of rules/exclusions there are things that we would love to include. However, we cannot cherry pick which one or two or three things in a certain category we would like to include. Instead we would have to include all of a type if we allowed in some of a type. So for simplicity (hah!) and our remaining bits of sanity we do not include any show that is not a narrative live action program with a shared continuity from episode to episode. The particulars of the rules & exclusions are below (along with mentions of what we wish we could include, and often why the category is excluded):
- Crossovers with "real" shows and "real" people.
- Episodes where reality shows exist within a fictional sphere are not included (such as the X-Files/COPS crossover and the Chicago Hope/Entertainment Tonight crossover)
- Episodes where actual people exist within a fictional sphere are not included
- These real/fictional crossovers are often great for a laugh and it is usually really interesting to see the real and fictional spheres meld briefly but there is no way to fully document all of these crossovers and there is no logical stopping point for the inclusion of a show on the grounds of a shared real space.
- Cartoons & Puppets
- There are a few legitimate cartoon & puppet crossovers that we would like to include (namely the Simpsons’ crossovers with 24, Cheers, Dragnet and X-Files and the Sesame Street crossover with L&O:SVU) but opening the door for the Simpsons & Sesame Street would force us to include more than a score of 1960s cartoons. Not only are most of those cartoons bad, but cartoon crossover history is too poorly documented for even our best searching to yield a complete list and the cartoon crossovers were rarely more than cameos. Besides, it would be too strange to have different parts of a fictional universe be live action and different parts be animated. Even though Spongebob Squarepants and The Amazing World of Gumball are cartoons that have live action settings in them, they still can not be counted and have no known crossovers with live action shows to begin with. Another problem is that characters from both live action and animated shows could visit or live in the same location, and it would appear different in the live action and animated shows. Animated characters could also have different numbers of fingers and toes than live action characters.
- The cartoons that are related by loose ties to shows on the grid include: The Simpsons, The Brady Kids, the entire 1960s DC cartoonverse (Superman, Justice League of America, Superboy, etc), the entire 1990s DC cartoonverse (Justice League, Batman Beyond, Gotham Knights, Static Shock, etc), The Addams Family cartoon, Scooby-Doo, and the rest of the Hanna-Barbera cartoonverse.
- Movies with theatrical debuts
- TV miniseries, movies and reunion specials do count (assuming shared continuity with the TV show) as if they were any other episode of the show. Movies that appeared in theaters first do not count even if they have shared continuity with the TV series (X-Files: Fight the Future, Serenity). And they don’t count twice over when they do not share internal continuity (The Brady Bunch Movie (1995), A Very Brady Sequel (1996), Superman & Batman movies, etc.)
- Pilots & Spin offs.
- In order for a pilot or spin off to be included on the grid it must exist as a distinct aired entity. Back-door pilots that only appeared on the main show and were never there own distinct show do not count.
- Anthology series
- Anthology television series (such as The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone) which assume no shared continuity between episodes are excluded because of their lack of internal continuity.
- The Munch Rule
- A few different characters on the grid (John Munch, Mike Logan, Lucy Ricardo, Frasier Crane and others) moved completely from one show to another and then crossed over to a third show for an episode or two. On the grid and the key the crossover is only listed between the show the character was on at the time of the cross and the show he/she crossed onto. For example, any new shows on which John Munch now appears are simply crossovers with L&O:SVU, not L&O:SVU and Homicide: Life on the Street, even though poobala counts them as crossovers with Homicide and L&O: SVU.
The final count[]
The final count: 61 shows are connected to Homicide: Life on the Street and St. Elsewhere, for a grand total of 63 series. The only non-US shows in the Tommyverse are: The Degrassi shows (Canada) and Paris Criminal Investigations (France). Paris Criminal Investigations is the only show not in English in the Tommyverse. The shows span from 1968 (Julia) to the present (4 shows, Law And Order: Special Victims Unit, Chicago Fire and Chicago Police Department, and Chicago Med are still on the air).