#crossover fodder

[skjam]

Pulp Fanfic Crossover Fodder: Dr. Goldfoot

Note: This is primarily based on Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965).

Little is known of the background of Dr. Goldfoot. This includes not knowing his full name, if that even is his birth name, and where if anywhere he got his doctorate. He claimed descent from a pirate, a member of the Inquisition, and Attila the Hun's mentor in violence.

As of 1965, he appeared to be physically in his fifties, and had resided for some years in San Francisco operating a private cemetery and funeral home as a front for his other activities. It was in this year that he invented his best-known device, the Bikini Machine. The Bikini Machine created humanoid female-shaped robots with fairly complex programming, allowing them a limited ability to pass as human women. Each came with a gold-fabric bikini; it's not clear if they had actual female anatomy underneath that cloth.

Dr. Goldfoot supplemented the basic programming by downloading data from computer tapes directly to their memory banks. This was used primarily for giving them the ability to speak knowledgably about their targets' areas of interest.

The plan was to have these "girlbots" marry wealthy men, strip them of their assets, and transfer the wealth to Dr. Goldfoot. His goals beyond that are unclear.

Due to poor instructions by Dr. Goldfoot's henchman Igor. girlbot #12 "Diane" mistook Secret Intelligence Command (SIC) agent Craig Gamble for her target, millionaire Todd Armstrong. Craig, a nitwit only employed by SIC because his uncle Donald J. Pevney was the San Francisco office chief, only understood that the bizarre-acting woman he'd instantly fallen in love with had suddenly abandoned him (when Dr. Goldfoot corrected her commands) but this was enough to put him on the case.

Diane "met cute" with Todd and quickly persuaded him to marry her. At no time was the marriage consummated, but it's not clear if this was due to incapacity on #12's part or a part of a strategy to string Todd along until she possessed all his assets. Eventually, Craig and Todd teamed up to "rescue" Diane from Dr. Goldfoot, despite the fact she'd already been reprogrammed to forget she ever met them.

After a number of hijinks and a chase through San Francisco, Dr. Goldfoot and Igor were seemingly killed by naval bombardment. In reality, they survived, and the two men and Diane replaced the flight crew on a passenger jet to France.

By 1966, Dr. Goldfoot had become separated from Igor and Diane (the latter of whom may have married the German man she was flirting with on the plane) and was operating out of Italy. (Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs) He'd accepted Chinese funding to rebuild his Bikini Machine. This new version created "girlbombs" that could impersonate specific people and explode on command.

This time, the plan was to disrupt NATO war games by assassinating the various generals involved. The plan was thwarted by another SIC agent, Bill Dexter, and two Italian doormen named Franco and Ciccio. Dr. Goldfoot then attempted to detonate a nuclear bomb in Moscow to start World War Three, but this also failed and he was believed killed in the explosion. In fact, he survived, but no further activity of his has been recorded.

By the 1990s, Dr. Goldfoot's girlbot technology had been acquired by Virtucorp, the front organization for Dr. Evil, and somewhat improved. (See Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.)

Girlbots are very sturdy, able to take a collision with a small automobile without being moved or taking noticeable damage. They can be pierced by small arms fire, but unless vital areas are specifically targeted, this does not impair their function in any way. They're also far stronger than they appear. (Fortunately, most of Dr. Goldfoot's girlbots were not programmed to use violence.) They have radio receivers which allow them to receive commands directly from a console Dr. Goldfoot also invented.

The first batch of girlbots, including #12, were mostly able to impersonate human women, but came off as eccentric. They relied on their good looks and aggressive courting tactics to distract targets from realizing there was anything odd.

In addition to the Bikini Machine, Dr. Goldfoot's technology included: opera glasses that sprouted poison spikes (never used on camera), laser lipstick, the ability to remotely control motorcars, and either remote viewing or multiple miniature cameras placed throughout San Francisco. The latter two were incorporated into the same console he used to communicate with the girlbots. He had some way of reviving the (recently?) dead, but the only person he is known to have used it on was Igor.

Dr, Goldfoot bore a strong resemblance to the actor Vincent Price. He always wore gold-fabric slippers, and it was implied at one point that his actual feet were also golden in color. He was fey in his mannerisms, although he did seem to appreciate the aesthetics of his Bikini Machine creations. He put little value on human life, and was fully willing for his girlbots to eliminate competition the hard way.

The mad scientist's grasp of geopolitics may have been a little shaky. He sent a girlbot with the appearance of a black woman to marry a person who would have been a white man in South Africa at the height of apartheid.

Crossover potential: A rather silly mad scientist who specializes in creating femi-form robots can have many uses, as long as the story is okay with that kind of humor. Assuming nothing else happens to him, Dr. Goldfoot would die of old age in the early 1990s.

Notably, Dr. Goldfoot's headquarters was not destroyed in the movie, so the U.S. government was presumably able to access his technology and study it. ("Top men.") Also, several girlbots were already out on assignment at the time of his defeat, and are presumably loose ends.

SIC is one of the many splinter intelligence agencies the fictional U.S. government sponsored during this time period to increase plausible deniability. The budget was apparently tiny, with the San Francisco office being headquarters in a two-room office, Craig and his uncle being the only two operatives, and Craig not having access to any spy gadgets or even a gun. (His salary was also miniscule--he considered a cheese sandwich at the cafeteria a suitable date meal.)

The fictional agency your main characters belong to may have absorbed SIC and its records if the story is set post-1966.

Have fun!

@krinsbez

[nerdofspades]

So. I saw this post and got thinking.

Given the common fanon of Amity being Danny's lair/haunt, it would probably be reasonable to wrap that in to the "media black out" that is often used in crossovers.

Specifically, assuming Amity has enough ectoplasmic contamination to respond to Danny on some level, even without Danny becoming the Ghost King, I could easily see Amity becoming.... difficult for outsiders.

If there is one thing Danny is feeling in those early days, it's fear. A desire to hide.

But Amity isn't originally of the Infinite Realms, and Danny is still weak. There's only so much his instincts can change about the town.

But it can slow and distort the news leaving Amity Park. The internet is fine. Mail still comes and goes and there's nothing stopping people from traveling either. But reports of the ghostly attacks... don't always make it. Sometimes they just don't go through at all. The internet gives out and won't send that message. Sometimes it glitches and distorts, becoming unreadable. Sometimes the words shift and change and become something much more mundane.

But as Danny grows and Amity Park adapts to the ectoplasm pouring out of the portal beneath Fenton works, things start getting weirder.

(The internet is never effected. At least, not negatively. Danny still needs to watch videos and play games and be a kid sometimes.)

Travel slowly becomes harder. Especially after Vlad puts the bounty on Phantom and brings in outsiders.

It's slow and gradual, for the most part. The citizens of Amity just. Know better than to try traveling at certain times. You won't get very far.

People from outside don't really notice that they're driving through empty land where there used to be a town.

Amity just. Becomes almost liminal. You can't come or go during the new or full moons. Not on Halloween either. Eventually you can't come or go after sundown period.

Eventually you don't even need the portals to enter the Ghost Zone from Amity. Or to enter Amity Park from the Ghost Zone.

The rules are that are more nebulous than the ones surrounding passage to and from the rest of Earth, but it is entirely possible to follow some paths out in the woods and turn up in the Ghost Zone.

(It gets easier and more predictable after Danny ascends to the throne. The most stable paths are around the palace in the Zone.)

Just. Amity starts to disconnect as soon as Danny opens the portal. And he doesn't know it's because of him.

[digimon-nomu]

Crossover Fodder #1: Bnha x Digimon

Subject: NeoDevimon

Conclusion: NeoDevimon is a nomu

[skjam]

Pulp Crossover Fodder: Serbian Cat People

I'm only using the 1942 movie Cat People here, not the remake, since the continuity isn't fully compatible.

According to Serbian folklore, the "cat people" originated from a village conquered and controlled by the evil Mamelukes in the Ninth Century. Many of the villagers turned to Satanism and black magic under the influence of their foreign overlords. The village was freed from the Mamelukes by King John of Serbia (Jovan Vladimir) after he ascended the throne in 1000 A.D. While most of the Satanists were purged, some remained in hiding and their descendants were cursed with the ability/requirement of transforming into large cats.

Since there is no record of the Mamelukes ever controlling territory in Serbia, this may be a severely distorted retelling of events, or even an outright fabrication. In the movie, our only source of information is Irena Dubrovna, who was orphaned at an early age before her mother could confirm or deny any details, who learned what she knows about the Cat People from her adoptive family.

While the Cat People were never numerous for reasons that will become obvious, they survived into modern times, and some of them moved out of Serbia in the early 20th Century. It's known that two of them resided in New York City in the 1930s, Irena and an unnamed woman who called her "sister."

The Cat People are so called because under the influence of intense emotion, they turn into large, panther-like cats. While in feline form, the Cat Person becomes murderous. Unfortunately, the passion felt during sex is one of the best-known triggers, meaning that a female Cat Person is at high risk of killing her partner, as apparently happened to Irena's father. But fear and intense jealousy can also trigger the transformation. (It's possible that male offspring of Cat People don't actually transform and are just carriers, explaining their long-term survival.)

It's not known how much of the human intellect is present in a transformed Cat Person. Irena was apparently able to manipulate light switches and doorknobs while transformed, despite the lack of opposable thumbs.

Unlike other therianthropes, Serbian Cat People do not gain any supernatural protections during their transformations, being vulnerable to any attack that would harm a normal large cat.

In human form, Cat People are physically indistinguishable from normal humans, though the "sister" did her makeup and hair in a fashion that was distinctly "feline." Birds are instinctively afraid of Cat People in human form and will attempt to escape their presence.

It may be difficult to gain information on Cat People. As mentioned, the Serbian folklore is of dubious provenance, and having only recently emerged in other countries, most scholars will not have even heard of them. Officially, the events surrounding Irena Dubrovna were explained as her operating under a severe delusion, dismissing all circumstantial evidence to the contrary.

Irena died childless, and a report of her ghost appearing in Tarrytown, New York cannot be confirmed.

For crossover purposes, a protagonist may be asked to look into the existence of the "sister" or possible other Cat People by someone who doubts the official account. They might be instructed to eliminate this "monster" or recruit her.

If a Cat Person needs to be more powerful to fit the story, it's possible that one raised by a parent Cat Person will also have been trained in black magic.

@krinsbez

[skjam]

Pulp Crossover Fodder: Orochi

Orochi created by Kazuo Umezz in his "Orochi" manga series, there's also a live action movie.

Orochi (presumably named after the multi-headed snake monster) appears to be a generically pretty young Japanese woman. She can pass for anywhere between 16 and 22 depending on what she's wearing. Her actual age is unknown, though she's been around since at least the 18th Century. Her origin and the source of her powers are also unknown.

Orochi possesses a strong curiosity about the lives of ordinary humans, and wanders Japan in search of interesting events. She seems to possess some sense of who is going to be interesting, experiencing it as having her attention drawn to a particular person. Once her attention is drawn, she will follow that person's activities off and on for years or decades until she learns why her attention was drawn. (It's not stated, but she also seems to have a sense for when to dip back into a person's life.)

Orochi's powers are ill-defined, but she has several known feats.

Orochi can, by touching a person's forehead, alter their short-term memory to make it appear that she is someone who is supposed to be there. She often uses this to get temporary jobs as a maid or nurse. (All indications are that she is a competent nurse but obviously her licensing is questionable.) She can also search the memories of unconscious people by touching them, seeing their flashbacks. She can also see what's going on inside buildings she's previously been in by seeing through the eyes of paintings or photographs.

At one point, Orochi attempted to bring a dead person back to life. Him coming back wrong might be an issue with her inexperience (she'd never tried it before) or an inherent flaw in the process.

The one known limitation to Orochi's agelessness is that every hundred years she must sleep for two decades to maintain her immortality. If she takes grievous bodily damage, this can trigger the need for sleep early. (Internal evidence suggests her most recent sleep was approximately 1990-2010.) During her most recent sleep, Orochi found her consciousness inhabiting but unable to control or affect a human host.

While Orochi is fully capable of functioning within human society, she does not form long-term friendships with mortals, and is often just a face in the crowd. She seldom interferes in people's lives, being content to observe.

It's not known if Orochi can leave Japan; perhaps she finds that nation sufficient to whet her curiosity.

The most obvious crossover potential is for a long-lived or exceptionally perceptive character to realize that Orochi has appeared multiple times near strange events and hasn't aged. That person then might delve into her secrets, or be distracted by the weird goings on that she's currently observing.

@krinsbez

[digimon-nomu]

Crossover Fodder #2: Kingdom Hearts x Digimon

Subject: ClavisAngemon

Conclusion: ClavisAngemon is a keyblade wielder