Get Nifty - Other Guest Strips and Crossovers

Other Guest Strips and Crossovers

Abrams invites other well-known webcomic artists to do the strip for a week once or twice a year, while he goes on vacation. A frequent result is a parody of the strip itself, other webcomics, other creative works and/or artists, including Scooby-Doo and Ayn Rand. Clay Yount of Rob and Elliot was guest artist several times prior to taking over Saturday duties. Abrams also has various other artists providing art for Saturdays and Sundays, most recently Stuart Taylor and Lauren Taylor of Chain Bear.

Baen SF author John Ringo was profoundly affected by Sluggy while writing his Legacy of the Aldenata series; as a result, the crew of a massive mobile artillery platform that first appears in the third book of this series (When the Devil Dances) are depicted as die-hard Sluggy fanatics to comedic effect (up to, and including, naming their vehicle after Bun-Bun and painting a giant picture of Bun-Bun on it). They are joined in the fourth book (Hell's Faire), by a character based on the late friend of Pete Abrams who was the inspiration for Riff. A section of original Sluggy comics set in the alternate future world of the novels appears in the end of Hell's Faire, and a sampler of Sluggy storylines is included on the CD-ROM bound into this book. Pete possibly returned the favor shortly thereafter by entitling one subchapter "Hell's Unfair." Another possible Sluggy reference is in the short story "Lets Go to Prague" where one character uses the codeword Kizke. This is the common mispronunciation of the demon K'z'k. (The proper pronunciation has no vowels.)

Also, the first two novels of Ringo's distant-future Council Wars series have appearances by an irascible, treacherous, switchblade-toting, telemarketer-hating AI in a rabbit-shaped body—created by a long-dead fan of an unnamed 20th-century webcomic.

In S.M. Stirling's Conquistador, one of the characters unleashes a self-destruct sequence with the code phrase "Override B-1 oasis". Override B-1 is a program that causes the Sluggy character Oasis to unleash her own level of destruction.

Numerous other webcomics have referenced Sluggy Freelance, and various guest artists on Sluggy Freelance have included their own webcomics' characters in their guest strips, including User Friendly who swapped A.J. for Torg for a week.

Additionally, shortly after the birth of Leah Nicole Abrams in the middle of "The Love Potion" storyline, Sluggy Freelance entered a three-week long side story. The story involved Ki and Fooker of General Protection Fault, Lindesfarne and Ralph of Kevin and Kell, and Bruno and Fiona of Bruno the Bandit attempting to play the roles of Sluggy Freelance characters and find the original cast. Other characters, such as Gav from Nukees, and Trudy from General Protection Fault, made appearances. The non-comic characters from Mystery Science Theater 3000 also appear, in their famous silhouetted form.

There are several implicit cross-overs with R.K. Milholland's Something Positive, where Bun-bun is indirectly referred to. Milholland goes as far as imply that Bun-bun was Aubrey Chorde's bunny when she was a teen, and stole her flick-knife when she was forced to sell him to Kikis' Petstore by her mother. In an episode of Freefall, wolf engineer Florence has caught a couple of rabbits for dinner; the robot Helix thinks they are intended as pets and names them Kevin (presumably after Kevin Dewclaw in Kevin and Kell) and Bun-Bun. The comic is part of the Create a Comic Project.

In the game Munchkin by Steve Jackson Games, a monster card for players to fight against has a picture of a switchblade wielding Bun-Bun. There is a 5 in 6 chance that the monster is a perfectly normal bunny rabbit and a 1 in 6 chance that it is "that" rabbit. Possibly also a reference to the killer rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In the expansion called Munchkin Bites there is a monster card called "The Evil" which refers to a horror story in the comic.