The Forgotten TV Crossover Episodes Only Geeks Will Remember

Fans of ABC’s Abbott Elementary were thrilled to hear that a season 4 episode will feature a crossover event. Social media users immediately put on their thinking caps and speculated as to who would be making an appearance in the halls of the downtrodden Philadelphia grade school. Knowing the show is aired on a network owned by Disney, you can expect it to be someone in the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (here’s hoping Carmy or Syd from The Bear travel to Philly *fingers crossed*)

The TV crossover used to be a great way for networks to promote two shows at the same time, but as the streaming era took over the tendency to apply this advertising method has dwindled. We thought it would be a great time to look back on the TV crossovers that only small screen purists will remember. Some of these crossovers are old enough that even your parents might not remember them!

Abed Mingles in Cougar Town

Cult NBC hit sitcom Community’s use of meta-humor and pop culture references would make even Deadpool and Wolverine blush. Dan Harmon’s team leveraged fandom knowledge in new ways to connect his show to others in obscure manners and blaze a trail for future endeavors such as Rick and Morty. No joke symbolized the series’ brilliant self-referential fixation like Abed’s cameo in Cougar Town. 

Danny Pudi’s quirky character tells Jeff (Joel McHale) about a cameo he had in Courteney Cox’s comedy from the 2010s. Fans who watched the TBS series were then treated to a scene in which Abed appears in the background of an eatery, helping to prove Community’s uncanny ability to hit home runs in surrealist ways.

Urkel Visits the Tanners

Full House epitomized the family sitcom during the 1980s and 1990s, for better and for worse. If any show could give it a run in the corny department, though, it would be Family Matters. Both shows applied a liberal count of background musical numbers and overdramatic family drama to intoxicate overworked parents who had to watch the show with their adoring children every Friday night.

In a fun and extremely cheesy crossover event on ABC’s T.G.I.F. lineup, Steve Urkel (Jaleel White) from Family Matters invades the lives of the Tanner family on Full House. From learning how to walk with swag with Uncle Jesse (John Stamos) to providing life advice to Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin), Urkel flashed all of his usual catchphrases until the sap was pouring out of the rabbit ears on the TV set!

The Golden Girls Try to Cure Empty Nest Syndrome

With a putrid 3.6-star rating on IMDb, the “Empty Nests” episode of The Golden Girls introduced a primitive version of a nearly decade-long sitcom on NBC. The gals get to know their neighbors, played by Rita Moreno and Paul Dooley, but none of the usual comedic zip tinges the lines delivered by the legends. 

Empty Nest eventually turned into a venerable and underrated classic once freed from the constraints of its terrible pilot. Estelle Getty even became a regular starting in 1993, an idea that allowed The Golden Girls to live on while not taking the spotlight away from Empty Nest’s characters.

Ray Barone Travels to Queens

Kevin James used to appear on Everybody Loves Raymond years before he got his show, The King of Queens. CBS was able to test James’ ability to perform on the sitcom stage without any of the consequences of a flop. Clearly, the people backstage were impressed and gave the jolly, overweight comedian the aforementioned show where he bickered with his father-in-law and argued with his wife Carrie for almost an entire decade. 

Ray Romano and Kevin James possess great chemistry and it already felt like King of Queens existed in Raymond’s universe because of his introduction on that series, so Ray’s character then appeared several times on James’ show. It almost made too much sense to pass up on that opportunity, and the Eye Network certainly didn’t. Other characters from Raymond such as Marie (Doris Roberts) and Frank (Peter Boyle) also made cameos. 

Superman Surprises The Ricardos

Not many TV fans today are old enough to remember watching I Love Lucy weekly. The most important sitcom of the 1950s paved the way for comedians, women, and network television executives to take a chance on creative series that families and married couples could relate to. One of the prime examples of the show flexing its brilliance came when George Reeves appeared as his version of Superman in the episode “Lucy and Superman”. 

Reeves played the world’s most famous hero throughout the 1950s in The Adventures of Superman and reprised his role here. It set a standard in the industry for what sitcoms could accomplish when they brought celebrities and other characters onto a set. 

Jimmy and Timmy Create Nickelodeon Nirvana

Jimmy Neutron and Timmy Turner were two of Nick’s best characters during the 2000s. Both rambunctious boys who get into mischief due to otherworldly powers (Jimmy’s genius intellect and Timmy’s fairies), the stories in The Fairly Odd Parents and The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius were always a match made in heaven. Nickelodeon realized how great the chemistry would be between the two cartoon icons and weaved contrasting animation styles into a comical potpourri, hence the birth of “The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour.” 

Last Man Standing Creates the Tim Allen Multiverse

Once upon a time, Tim Allen was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Between playing Santa Claus, Buzz Lightyear, and Tim Taylor on Home Improvement, the former stand-up comedian was a fixture of 1990s family funnies. Allen’s second sitcom on ABC, Last Man Standing, gave him the chance to dabble in politics and try on a different coat of paint for his sitcom style. Mike Baxter is more grouchy than Tim Taylor, but he still knows his way around a sports car.

Allen used a final season episode of Last Man Standing to inundate the small screen with two different versions of himself. The Tool Man visits Mike Baxter to fix up his home, and Allen gets to banter back and forth with his past and present. Sitcom junkies and millennials alike were surely instantly transported back to their childhoods as Tim shoved as many references to his career as he could into the 22 minutes of “Dual Time.” 

Fun side note: this wasn’t the first time Home Improvement leaked into Last Man Standing, as both Patricia Richardson and Jonathan Taylor Thomas appeared earlier in the series.