History Main / MultipleChoicePast

* Detective Kate Beckett of Series/{{Castle}} has elements of this. Aside from conversational information for characterization, there are the things she teases Castle about that are never substantiated.

* In TheMightyBoosh, Howard and Vince frequently flash back to their shared past - but without any continuity about what this shared past has been. At one point they insist they are the same age, at another that Howard is ten years older than Vince. Vince may have been raised in the jungle by Brian Ferry or he may have gone to school with Howard. It comes down to RuleOFFunny, of course.
* MarriedWithChildren: Al and Peggy's marriage has a few different versions, but they all have alcohol and/or shotguns in common.

* At DisneyThemeParks, the backstory to ''TheHauntedMansion'' is basically whatever the cast members decide it is that day.
** Also, the burning cabin on TomSawyer Island was originally due to an Indian attack. As TheSavageIndian fell out of favor, the backstory was changed several times before it became a regular cabin.

* {{Gorillaz}}'s bass player / leader Murdoc Niccals can't decide if he was an abused child that grew up in the 1960s/70s, or if he is an immortal being who has watched time since it's very beginnings.
** Then again, you get a different answer from him on generally anything, depending on how knackered he is.

* Nobody's exactly sure what happened in [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/Mothy?from=Main.Mothy Banica Conchita's]] past, but fans have taken a line from the song and [{AbusiveParents run with it]].

* [[WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife Rocko]] is stated in some episodes to have known Filburt as a kid, and in another, he says they met Heffer in high school. In other episodes, though, he apparently left Australia and came to O-Town as an adult. WordOfGod says that the latter is definitive, anything else is just the characters misremembering.
** Filburt meets Rocko in different scenarios. WordOfGod said this is actually because Filburt just has bad memory.

* Joe Kucan became [[VideoGame/CommandAndConquer Kane]] from a scratch off lotto ticket. He won a special election. He won a carnival game. He found the prize in a crackerjack box. He was in the right place, at the right time.
** He was [[spoiler:the Dramatic Director on a [[VideoGame/CommandAndConquer project with almost no funding]].]] Using employees was cheaper than hiring actors.

* ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'' will be going the ''Mass Effect'' route - your protagonist will always be human, but you'll be able to choose between different backgrounds.

* This is quite literally true for [[PlayerCharacter Commander Shepard]] in ''MassEffect''. At character creation, Shepard's appearance, gender and military specialization are filled in by the player, as well as two different sets of background details, with three choices each. Some of them actually affect how the plot unfolds - the early backgrounds each have a unique mission in the first game, while the military ones cause minor dialogue changes at various points.

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* People who are lying tend to do this when asked to repeat details of a story.

* {{Deadpool}} of MarvelComics also has a large number competing origins for his past. There's also some disagreement as to whether Wade Wilson is his real name or a name he stole from someone else. Pretty much the only thing all the origin stories have in common is that his regeneration abilities are a result of time spent as a Weapon X test subject. Like the Joker, Deadpool is insane enough that he probably has no idea himself which one is correct. He does seem fairly certain that Wade Wilson is his real name, however.

** The Constructicons were, in the ''same series'', built by Megatron in 1984, changed into Decepticons by Megatron a few million years ago, and ''built Megatron in the first place.''

* Like his [[FandomRivalry rival Mario]], SonicTheHedgehog has a fairly inconsistent past as well, though the video games themselves have never done much to elaborate on his past. Tails, Dr. Robotn..., er, "Eggman," and especially Blaze have similar inconsistent pasts.

* People who are lying tend to do this when asked to repeat details of a story.

** Primus and Unicron (as well as a few other legendary figures) have been established as "multiversal singularities", which basically means that they do not perceive time in the same way as lesser mortals and therefore [[Retcon retcons]] any seemingly conflicting stories of their past.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Archer}}'s'' origins are left deliberately vague. In ''Double Duece'', Archer is stated to have been born in Morocco while Malory was running from Nazi spies (around 1938), [[spoiler:one of his possible fathers was an Italian executed by UsefulNotes/FascistItaly for speaking out against the government]] and was about six or seven when WorldWarII ended. He's also shown listening to Woodhouse read a telegram from Malory about Operation Ajax in 1953, which ''would'' make him 15, but he looks younger than that, and "Once Bitten" states he was six when Malory was involved in the CIA-backed Guatamalan coup d'état, which took place in 1954, which would place Archer's birthdate in 1948. One possible explaination is an AlternateHistory.

* Lucien of ''Character Issues'' continuously claims that his father died in a variety of ways, ranging from crushed by a TV to poisoned by an Elf-like creature which snuck into his house at midnight every night. Depending on the view point, this is either hilarious or NightmareFuel.

Compare: ContinuitySnarl, ExpansionPackPast, NegativeContinuity, SlidingTimescale, BroadStrokes.

* ''VideoGame/DragonAgeIIIInquisition'' will be going the ''Mass Effect'' route - your protagonist will always be human, but you'll be able to choose between different backgrounds.

*** The book ''[[StarTrekDeepSpaceNineAStitchInTime A Stitch in Time]]'' has Garak remember his childhood and the real reason he was exiled, while walking through the ruins of Cardassia. He killed a high-level official, who caught Garak with his wife (all three went to school together). Interestingly, his boss and father Enabran Tain actually ordered the assassination, but it was the semi-public way Garak did it that got him kicked out of the Obsidian Order.

* An early examples comes from Film/TwoLaneBlacktop'': the unnamed driver in the GTO gives a number of conflicting stories about his past. It's clear that they're all lies because his last story conflicts with information we see in the film.

* There isn't really a uniform origin for Herbie, "TheLoveBug", and each movie reinforces that fact. Details on the works page.

-->-- '''SelfDemonstrating/TheJoker''', ''TheKillingJoke''

* In ''WesternAnimation/Futurama'', the circumstances of Bender's "birth" change every time the event is brought up.

* In TransformersGeneration1, the Constructicons had no less than three wholly separate and contradictory origins in the cartoon ''alone''. First, that they were built on Earth by Megatron in 1985. Then, that they were Autobots from Cybertron reprogrammed by Megatron millions of years ago. Then that they were Decepticons who built Megatron in the first place years before ''that''.

** One of those multiple choice futures takes place... in 2010. Kind of weird to think about, [[NightmareFuel since Maggie was now born in]] ''2009''.

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', the GodEmperor has some shades of this. Originally he was created by a group of incredibly powerful shamans in the year 8,000 BC. Newer versions keep the 8,000 BC date but drop the shamans. Then there's the [[SelfProclaimedLiar possibility]] that the Emperor was actually born in the Age of Strife (26,000 AD or so).

* [[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Mario]], having a canon that's basically built on RuleOfFun, has a few different origin stories. Americans of the 80's and early 90's might have known Mario and Luigi as two plumbers from Brooklyn who got sucked into a pipe and ended up in the Mushroom Kingdom, but newer games insist that they've ''always'' lived in the Mushroom Kingdom, as little sense as that makes. Other regions just avoided origin stories.

* Like his [[FandomRivalry rival Mario]], SonicTheHedgehog has a fairly inconsistent past as well, though the video games themselves have never done much to elaborate on his past. Tails, Dr. [[strike: Robotnik]] Eggman, and especially Blaze have similar inconsistent pasts.
* ''StreetFighter'': Charlie Nash encountered M.Bison during a [wartime mission/secret operation/solo assignment] in [Cambodia/America/Venezuela/a Shadaloo base near Thailand]. Charlie prevailed over the dictator but tragically [turned his back and got zapped/was blasted by a Shadaloo gunner/failed to escape the base before it blew up/suffered some mysterious terrible fate]. Guile wanted to prevent it, of course, but [didn't know Charlie was in danger/wasn't strong enough/wasn't fast enough/realized Charlie did what he had to do]. One thing is certain, though, [he's dead/he's missing, presumed dead/he got turned into Shadow/and as soon as I figure out what the hell it is, I'll let you know].

** In the 80s, an issue of ''TheQuestion'' reinvented the Riddler; his real name was Edward Nashton, and he changed it to Edward Nygma when he became the Riddler. His obsession with riddles wasn't born from cheating in a school competition and wanting to prove how clever he was; it was a compulsion to tell the truth due to a violent father. It also claimed that he was never a major Batman villain. Later, NeilGaiman wrote a ''Secret Origins'' story in which Riddler retells his classic origin, before adding "Or maybe I'm a frustrated second-rater called Nashton with a meaningless schtick!"

* Chef Horst in ''WesternAnimation/{{Ratatouille}}'' has served a prison sentence, but nobody knows why because every time someone asks, he gives a different explanation ("I robbed the second-largest bank in France using only a ballpoint pen."), none plausible ("I created a hole in the ozone over Avignon.") and probably none true either ("I killed a man. With ''this'' thumb"). [[spoiler:The thumb story comes back when he scares off former-Chef Skinner with it]].