History Fanon / LiveActionTV

** Bill Mulder is more often than not portrayed in fanfic as having been an [[AbusiveParents abusive father]], whether it be physically, sexually, or both. While the Mulder family was doubtlessly dysfunctional and Bill's ethics are very questionable, there's no canonical evidence he did anything that heinous to his son.

* The ''Series/{{Alias}}'' fandom was eaten alive by various pieces of fanon that rapidly became totally disconnected from the actual characters and events seen on the show, especially where Irian Derevko was concerned. Many of these were ship-linked, but not, and enormous fury was unleashed when it became clear that the series had no chance of following the path the fanon assumed.

*** After the death of actress Thuy Trang in 2001, the fandom has generally agreed that her character Trini Kwan [[TheCharacterDiedWithHim passed away as well]].

** Some fans have taken to calling the Smoke Monster Esau, after biblical Jacob's older brother. This may be BetterThanCanon since the Man in Black's name ended up being, essentially, "Hey You".

* ''Series/AbbottElementary'': Most fans headcanon Melissa as bisexual or lesbian, mainly due to {{shipping}}[=-=]related reasons. In canon, Melissa is only shown to be attracted to males and there is no hint of her being attracted to women.

* In ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
** Fanon stated for years that Mr. Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet, though this isn't backed up by anything on screen. Far from it; the existence of an all-Vulcan crew heavily suggests at least some senior officers would be older than Spock, especially considering Vulcans' longevity. This piece of fanon reached a head with ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', especially when the Vulcan T'Pol actually joins Starfleet later in the series. Several newsgroup members actually took it upon themselves to go through the entirety of ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' to prove that the "Spock was the first" notion was not supported by canon, finding several examples in addition to the all-Vulcan Starfleet vessel mentioned.
** Another thing the fandom agrees on is that, because of their telepathy, Vulcans avoid physical contact like the plague, even though Vulcans on-screen have shown no qualms about touching or being touched. In fact, ''The Original Series'' established that for a long time it wasn't general knowledge among Vulcans that all Vulcans could mind-meld, and it takes training and concentration to be able to do it. Therefore, accidental touch-telepathy is not a thing.
** Spock being the first ever [[HalfHumanHybrid Vulcan-human hybrid]] (to live to adulthood) is not actually confirmed in canon, but you wouldn't know it from the fandom.
** Also on ''Star Trek'': Lt. Sulu was originally only given one name, but the fans came up with a first name for him: Hikaru. This name was then used in the sixth movie, thus [[AscendedFanon turning Fanon into Canon]].
*** Ditto with Nyota Uhura. It took almost 40 years before we heard ''that'' name on-screen (never mind that the name "Nyota" was suggested for the character by the very actress who played her -- Nichelle Nichols)! However this is a zig-zag as a number of an publications had postulated "Penda" as her given name, while others were adamant -- citing apparent comments by Gene Roddenberry -- that Uhura had only one name.
** When actor George Takei publicly came out, it raised further discussion of how often ''Trek'' simply avoided the topic of homosexuality, despite having once been a risk-taking, ground-breaking show. To "fix" this, the third in the big-screen rebooted "Kelvin timeline" films, ''Star Trek Beyond'' revealed that Sulu was gay himself and that he and his husband had a daughter. This led to cries from many, including Takei himself, that this created an impression that Sulu was closeted during the entire TV show (since he's been seen seemingly in love with women, so if he was gay, they'd be [[TheBeard beards]]). Creator/SimonPegg (who aside from playing Scotty also co-wrote the film) [[WordofGod responded]] to this explaining that the Sulu from the films was "different" from the Sulu of the original series and the two [[AuthorsSavingThrow did not share sexualities]]. Still this was worded in a way that some fans interpret both Sulus as bisexual even though Pegg is adamant that his Sulu is homosexual.
** Nurse Chapel's rank is never stated in the show itself, so the fandom universally agreed to give her the rank of junior-grade lieutenant (which later shows tend to give their medical officers, such as Dr. Bashir), and that she was promoted to lieutenant commander for the first film (to reach commander for the fourth film). However, the official metadata for the franchise (which can also be found in her bio data on the official Star Trek website) reveals that her rank on board the ''Enterprise'' was brevet ensign and that she was promoted to lieutenant for the first film (reaching commander for the fourth film). Most fans don't know this, and the few that do usually ignore it in favour of the long-established fanon ranks.
** Fans often refer to Kirk's Enterprise as the flagship of the Federation. While Enterprise-D was the flagship, nothing on-screen suggests that NCC 1701 was anything other that one of a dozen Constitution-class starships. (At least not during the timeframe of the TV series. ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'' is unambiguous that the NCC-1701-A is Starfleet's flagship by that time.)
*** And ''Series/StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds'' has undone this one, with Dr. M'Benga expressly referring to the ''Enterprise'' (the same one Kirk will later command) as "The flagship of Starfleet". It seems unlikely that it would be stripped of that title by the time Kirk takes over, but we will leave the initial entry as it stands, since it remains true that until this semi-retcon, there had been no references to Kirk's ''Enterprise'' as the flagship.
** T'Pau is very often portrayed as Sarek's mother and, by extent, Spock's grandmother, though in canon, her exact relationship outside of being a clan member isn't made clear.
** It's commonly suggested (often taken as fact) that [[Series/StarTrekVoyager Voyager]]'s bio-neural gel packs, which arrange information in a similar manner to the human brain, are the reason Voyager's holograms had a tendency to become sentient (while those on the Enterprise-D did not). However, it was never stated on the show.
** Because alcohol [[NeverGetsDrunk does not affect Vulcans]] in the same way it does humans, fans often turn to chocolate or copious amounts of sugar when they need to get Spock drunk. This does have some deuterocanonical basis, as it shows up in the ''Film/{{Star Trek IV|The Voyage Home}}'' novelization as an explanation for why Spock spends most of the movie acting loopy.
** A common theory about B'Leanna Torres's spirit animal (given her half-Klingon heritage and the fact that she tried to kill it) is that it was a tribble.
** Sources to base fanon on are quite popular in the Star Trek fandom. This shows from how they've erected two big wikipedia-clones: "Memory Alpha" for canon information and "Memory Beta" for everything licensed, but non canon. On the date of this writing, Memory Beta has well over 41,000 articles, 6,000 more than Alpha.
** Before ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact'' Trek fandom at large agreed that Zephram Cochrane's vessel, which he used to test his newly-invented warp engine, was called the ''Bonaventure''. In fact, they accused the film of violating canon due to this. This bit of fanon is based on a line from ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries'' that the ''Bonaventure'' was the "first ship to have warp drive installed". Not only is the animated series of dubious canonical status at best (due to Paramount and Roddenberry refusing to consider it as canon), but the ship shown was clearly a Federation starship, not a privately constructed experimental craft. Assuming the ''Bonaventure'' is canon, she was simply the first Federation Starship to be warp-capable, not the ship Cochrane used.
** Fanon is so pervasive among Trekkies that many of the supposed "canon violations" of ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' were not canon violations at all, but merely new facts which blew away established fanon. Among them was the idea that Starfleet did not exist prior to the forming of the Federation; that Vulcans were, one and all, the noble, honorable people that Spock himself was (despite the starship-load of evidence to the contrary) and were incapable of lying or arrogance; that humans did not encounter Klingons until the early 23rd century (based on a line from [=McCoy=] about when hostilities began), and that the initial encounter with Klingons led to decades of war and the loss of much life (based on Picard's declaration that first contact with Klingons was "disastrous"); that the one-world government on Earth was formed in 2150 (based off speculation from Dr. Crusher about just one country holding out); that Andorians have four genders (based off a line that Andorian wedding ceremonies require four people); not to mention the apparently large number of fans who apparently believed that the [[RubberForeheadAliens Klingon foreheads]] were a mutation that happened between the original series and the movies. Rather than accept that the foreheads were natural but something caused them to go away for a while, fans were vocal that Klingons of the past had smooth foreheads, and that this was canon. Even the episodes explaining this didn't shut them up. Much of this fanon was aided by ''Star Trek'' novels, which are not canon, but it doesn't stop fans from accepting them as such.
** The Vulcan example is particularly amusing in that the fanon drowned out the canon so much that "new facts" weren't even new. In the two episodes of the Original Series where Vulcans other than Spock had any onscreen role, they were shown to carry purely emotional grudges (Spock and Sarek over their longstanding dispute regarding Spock's career), or were duplicitous and cold-bloodedly willing to allow an innocent person to die for their own personal benefit (Spock's fiance T'Pring). The ''Klingons'' had representatives who came off as more noble and genuinely honorable than the Vulcans.
** In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Yesterday's Enterprise", Guinan persuades Worf to try prune juice, and he calls it "a warrior's drink". By ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', this has become his TrademarkFavoriteFood. Fanon assumes that any other Klingon who tastes it will have the same reaction. In the ''Literature/StarTrekTheNextGenerationRelaunch'' novel ''Q & A'', we're told that prune juice is now the Federation's ''primary export'' to the Empire.
** [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness When Trills were first introduced]], they had ridges [[RubberForeheadAlien on their foreheads]], yet in all later appearances, they have no ridges but spots down their sides. Trekkies have explained this by suggesting that the ridged Trills and the spotted Trills are different ethnicities.
** Chakotay is Native American, but his behaviour doesn't match any current real-life Native American tribes/religions. The consensus among viewers is that Native American culture got somewhat lost in history and changed.
** Because Q only shows up in one ''Deep Space Nine'' episode, fans have speculated that either he didn't find Sisko as entertaining as Picard and Janeway because Sisko hit him, or Q was scared away by the fact that the station is near the Prophets.
** While never said in the show, a lot of fans believe that Kirk's tendencies towards self loathing and self blame come from SurvivorsGuilt over the Tarsus IV massacre. Less popular but still around is that he has an eating disorder (or at least a massive passion for food) that comes from the starvation on Tarsus, though this is mostly because of Shatner's real life eating disorders (obsessively working out and nearly starving himself) while playing Kirk.
** One fanon thought experiment is to speculate on what the human hat is in the PlanetOfHats world, and a popular interpretation is that it's a tendency towards the ZanyScheme--and that this is why humans are so successful. Because a Cardassian wouldn't think of [[Film/StarTrekFirstContact trapping a Borg squad in a 40's detective holonovel]], turning off the safety, and destroying them with a hail of HardLight bullets. Or, when an InsaneAdmiral decided to invent a Federation cloaking device, he wasn't content to just copy the Romulan and Klingon sensor shielding--he just had to add the ability to ''phase through solid matter''. (This is somewhat supported by the fact that Federation engineers have quite a reputation for MacGuyvering among their allies and rivals.)

** The idea that the War Chief and the later-introduced Master, who share many similarities, are [[TheNthDoctor one and the same]].

** The idea that the War Chief and the later introduced Master, who share many similarities, are [[TheNthDoctor one and the same]].

*** The Mako Pod was absent during the plot of ''H2O'', and during the time when Ms. Chatham and her friends were mermaids. They only returned after the girls left or were {{depower}}ed, never knowing that three land girls gained mermaid powers while they were gone.
*** The Moon Pool was rebuilt and remodeled by the Mako Pod after it was devastated by Ryan and Sophie in the final episodes of ''H2O''. Inexplicably, Rikki comments that the Moon Pool hasn't changed since she left in the final episode of ''Mako Mermaids'', despite the obvious differences.
*** Every merperson in ''Mako Mermaids'' has a diverse range of magical abilities, in contrast to the ones in ''H2O'' only having unique abilities. This lead to the theory that mermaid powers beyond the ones natural to the girls can be learned. [[AnIcePerson Emma]], [[MakingASplash Cleo]], [[PlayingWithFire Rikki]], and [[{{Transmutation}} Bella]] simply never thought of trying to learn each other's powers, while [[AllYourPowersCombined Charlotte]] learned all of the former three's powers thanks to sheer determination, not by being in the Moon Pool by herself as was theorized in-universe. Supporting this is Rikki clumsily using hydrokinesis and asking Weilan to teach her invisibility in the final episode of ''Mako Mermaids''.
** Mitch from ''H2O'' and Dr. Ross from ''Mako Mermaids'' are played by the same actor, and thus are agreed to be the same person by the fandom.

*** There's more fanon about Buffyverse vampires. Like that they have a psychic connection with the vampires they sire, which is ''sometimes'' true, but that only showed up once, and even then it was only in the form of Angel [[PsychicDreamsForEveryone dreaming about the other vampire's kills]]; it didn't let Angel control him as it does in fanfiction. The fandom also seems to believe that a newly turned vampire is called a 'fledgling.' They are never once referred to as such in canon. Also, while vampires do get stronger with age, there's no particular point at which a vampire becomes a 'master'; it just seems to be a general term used for the leader of a large group of vampires, who is typically the strongest because vampires usually operate on KlingonPromotion and AsskickingEqualsAuthority.

* There is a mounting wave of fanon locating the home of ''Series/TheAddamsFamily'' somewhere in New Jersey -- sometimes in the midst of the Pine Barrens, sometimes in Edgewater, and sometimes in Creator/CharlesAddams' own hometown of Westfield.
* ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'': It's still early, but until {{Canon}} says otherwise, the fandom (and ''especially'' the fanfic writers) seem to be taking an EveryoneIsBi stance on the team of young, attractive agents.

* ''Series/{{Debra}}'': That the main character Debra is on the autistic spectrum based on her various traits in the show.

*** Here's a brain-fryer for you: "An Unearthly Child" aired one day after John F. Kennedy's shooting in Dallas. "The Deadly Assassin" is a riff of the JFK assassination. Tom Baker is Oswald. The real svengali behind the shooting is The Master. Therefore, the Master is recreating the conditions of ''Doctor Who''[='=]s premiere in order to take control of the show. (Yes, El really postulated this.)

** The decision in the 2005-present revival to introduce romance with regards to the Doctor went against the fanon that the Doctor was asexual or incapable of being aroused by females; that fanon stemmed primarily from a line of dialogue in 1979's "City of Death" in which the Doctor says to a female villain who is trying to distract him with sexiness, "you're a beautiful woman, probably" and the lack of explicit romance throughout the classic series. Ignoring the fact he referred to his own companion, Romana, as being attractive a season earlier. The GenderSwap of the Doctor has further inflamed this debate as it plays into the fanon notion of Time Lords being asexual and genderless.

*** Although after the scripts for The Timeless Children was released, most people think Tecteun is actually The Other not Rassilon.

*** Also a big fanon misconception that Paul Gross was aware of slash, and so deliberately inserted "slashy scenes" into the last two seasons. But an interview he had just before the third season started (and after a number of episodes had probably been filmed) shows that he didn't know anything about slash until the interviewer brought it up, and he's never stated publicly that he added "slashy scenes."

** Sam as being [[RaisedCatholic non-practicing]] or secular Jewish was a common piece of fanon. The show itself eventually had her outright say that she wasn't Jewish.

** It was fanon for a while that Mac's full name was Mccanna Boyd Taylor, Jr. after that was revealed as his father's name. However,that got {{Jossed}} in Season 8 -- his middle name is Llewelyn.

** There was also a very common misconception that Tigh and Adama had served together during the First Cylon War. This was actually shown not to be the case in Season 2, Episode 1, Scattered. They met years after the war, on a freighter. It apparently didn't register with many fans, which is why there was a general uproar when [[spoiler:Tigh turned out to be a Cylon]].
** No one's ever said there are twelve Lords of Kobol, but it's taken for granted by many a fan. Given that they've mentioned gods outside the traditional twelve Olympians and have only used "Lord of Kobol" as a synonym for "god", not a subset, there are probably more than twelve. ''The Caprican'' establishes that Illumini, the second major city on Gemenon, is built around a huge pantheon devoted to dozens of deities.

** And now the idea that Sheldon is asexual is being pushed on Tumblr. But Sheldon has shown that he's attracted to Amy, and he no longer has a problem calling her his girlfriend. He may or may not act more on the attraction, but it's safe to say that he's not asexual. [[WildMassGuessing He could only be ''romantically'' attracted to Amy, though...]] Eventually, they do have sex, with Sheldon initiating it.[[note]] It was a birthday present for her in Season 10.[[/note]]

* In ''Series/{{Ultraviolet}}'' some fans believe (and the packaging of at least one DVD release outright states) that the central characters' un-named organisation is called the CIB. This is a misinterpretation of dialogue in the first episode, in which their cover story when dealing with the police is that they're members of the Complaints Investigation Bureau, the name at the time of the Metropolitan Police's InternalAffairs squad.

** Fans universally agree that [[FanPreferredCouple Josh and Donna]] marry and have kids. Most also agree that their kids would be named either Noah (for Josh's father), Leo (for Josh's father figure and mentor) or Joanie (for Josh's sister who died in a fire while babysitting Josh). If you take the official twitter accounts as canon they actually do have three children -- Leo, Jacqueline Joan and Noah (though Noah is a girl).

** There's a persistent fanon that Inara would lose her Companion license if she began an ongoing unpaid sexual relationship with Mal, although fanon differs as to whether this is because Companions aren't allowed to have unpaid relationships with '''anyone''', or if it's specifically because of Mal's disreputable character. There's nothing in canon to support either idea.
* Before Zoe was shown to be pregnant in the comics, there was a theory going around that Wash might’ve been sterile due to growing up on a heavily polluted world. The revelation he traveled a lot with his dad may explain why he wasn’t.

** A common fan theory is that Zoe refused to got out with Wash until he shaved his mustache, or that she made shaving it a condition of further dating/marriage.