slightly offbrand bleach aus:
1. ‘Ichigo reincarnates as Kaien’ AU where Ichigo slingshots into the past and into Kaien so hard he turns the Shiba clan head into a ball of reishi. Then a clan member walks in and assumes Ichigo is Kaien suffering the effects of a hair-dye prank that also gave him amnesia. Welcome to Bleach: Fake It To Make It.
2. 'Ichigo is Kaien's reincarnation!' you all say, but none of you are thinking crazy enough. Ichigo is Shiba Miyako's Reincarnation AU.
3. Ichigo’s soul is a series of apartment complexes and stray spirits keep taking up residence in his mindscape. They don’t even pay rent!!!
4. Ichigo sees a picture of Kaien before meeting his hollow, which leads to him incorrectly assuming he’s just got the ghost of Shiba Kaien in his head (aka “‘Ichigo is Kaien’s reincarnation’ except no he literally isn’t”: a comedy of errors)
5. Ichigo may be good at math, but when he was given the equation of ‘doctor father’ + ‘grew up in a clinic’, he somehow ended up at ‘I wanna be a mortician’
6. “Hey guys, welcome back to Karakura Ghostwatch episode 114. Today we’re cleaning a grave and then kicking that Don Kanonji guy’s ass for stealing my channel idea.”
7. Ichigo but he’s a 116 y/o grandpa and still human so the entirety of Bleach is just everyone waiting for this old man to die and become a shinigami. Except Grandpa Ichigo is still the same little shit and refuses to drop dead.
8. Isshin did his best to hide any and all things related to the shinigami from his children. He does not expect the Shiba penchant for fireworks to make a raging comeback. (Zangetsu is a Gun AU)
9. Let it be known that neither Urahara nor Aizen were responsible for half the shit that happened in Karakura. The town is only Like That because of one particularly cursed river. (‘The Sanzu river runs straight through Karakura’ AU)
10. Ichigo can only see souls, no shinigami powers, no Quincy powers, nothing, zilch, nada. He still fights hollows anyway, because Zangetsu is an all-powerful, sentient, cursed sword. (or: What if Excalibur decided its master would be Steve from accounting?)
(extra tidbits in tags)