While The Avengers might have had the most characters from other franchises all converging in one place, fictional crossovers are hardly anything new. But it's a tricky business -- even if two franchises share the same fans, that doesn't mean it makes any goddamned sense for the characters to show up in the same universe. Still, some absolutely insane crossovers came extremely close to happening. Like ...

5 Ghost Rider Was to Switch Places With Casper the Friendly Ghost

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That is not a parody headline.

Casper the Friendly Ghost was a mild-mannered little sprite with enough innocuous charm to go around. In his Harvey Comics series, he would get into harmless adventures without any real consequences, like finding a lost dog or some goddamned thing like that. This is not to be confused with Ghost Rider, the Marvel Comics character and Nicolas Cage charity, which is a demon with a flaming skull that feeds on the souls of evil men and screams through the night on a haunted motorcycle.



Wait, the character or Nic Cage?

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For some insane reason, comic book writer Ivan Velez Jr. pitched the idea of a Casper/Ghost Rider crossover to both Marvel and the makers of Casper with a full outline, possibly to silence the howling banshees in his mind. Velez imagined a scenario in which an evil villain replaces Richie Rich's father and shakes up the Harvey Comics universe so badly that Wendy the Witch casts a spell to bolster Casper's powers (what powers he possesses beyond being a joyless specter of our own mortality remains unclear).

At any rate, Wendy apparently casts too much magic and accidentally summons Ghost Rider, transporting Casper to a heroin-soaked puddle in Hell's Kitchen in his place. Casper somehow manages to thwart a bank robber, while Ghost Rider presumably rules the Harvey universe until the two finally switch places again, leaving behind a legion of young Casper fans with a literary shell-shocking usually reserved for Watership Down and Old Yeller.



"Wendy ... the shit I've seen ... the shit I've done ..."

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How We Were Spared

Marvel signed off on Velez's pitch, because as the fire-peeing scene in the latest Ghost Rider movie clearly demonstrated, they do not give one single shit about making the character look ridiculous. Harvey, perhaps fearful of how fans of Casper and Richie Rich would react to a tortured servant of the devil suddenly appearing in the pages of their comics, decided to pass.

We should mention that this wasn't far removed from another batshit insane crossover premise that actually made it to print, when Archie of Archie Comics crossed paths with the Punisher, who sticks an Uzi in Archie's face while they both lament their current situation.