History Main / MultipleChoicePast

** Creator/JohnByrne's run infamously disregarded every preceding ''Doom Patrol'' series and started continuity anew with a revamped version of the original roster (The Chief, Robotman, Negative Man and Elasti-Girl) that had new characters Nudge, Grunt, Vortex and Faith added as additional recruits before Creator/GeoffJohns took advantage of the CosmicRetcon caused by ''ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis'' to reinstate the preceding series as canon while still retaining the roster established in John Byrne's run before Johns used his run on ''ComicBook/TeenTitans'' to further distance the Doom Patrol from John Byrne's changes. While the established origins for Robotman, Negative Man and Elasti-Girl were more or less left intact, the John Byrne run revealed the shaman of a tribe of natives the Chief once helped out as responsible for crippling the Chief, when before it was General Immortus credited as the one who gave the Chief his handicap.

* In the ''TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness'', multiple explanations are given for several aspects of the game world so that the Storyteller may pick and choose which ones she likes.

** Suspecting a traitor among them in the 82nd issue of ''My Greatest Adventure'', the Chief confides to Rita that he's actually an alien. He also confided other origin stories to Cliff and the Negative Man, telling the former that he was raised in a Tibetan monestary and the latter that he was a model student of Cambridge University. It was actually an elaborate ruse [[FeedTheMole to discover the traitor by checking which story got leaked]]. In the end, it turns out that none of those stories was the real one.

** Creator/JohnByrne's run infamously disregarded every preceding ''Doom Patrol'' series and started continuity anew with a revamped version of the original roster (The Chief, Robotman, Negative Man and Elasti-Girl) that had new characters Nudge, Grunt, Vortex and Faith added as additional recruits before Creator/GeoffJohns took advantage of the CosmicRetcon caused by ''ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis'' to reinstate the preceding series as canon while still retaining the roster established in John Byrne's run. While the established origins for Robotman, Negative Man and Elasti-Girl were more or less left intact, the John Byrne run revealed the shaman of a tribe of natives the Chief once helped out as responsible for crippling the Chief, when before it was General Immortus credited as the one who gave the Chief his handicap.

* ''ComicBook/DoomPatrol'': Suspecting a traitor among them in the 82nd issue of ''My Greatest Adventure'', the Chief confides to Rita that he's actually an alien. He also confided other origin stories to Cliff and the Negative Man, telling the former that he was raised in a Tibetan monestary and the latter that he was a model student of Cambridge University. It was actually an elaborate ruse [[FeedTheMole to discover the traitor by checking which story got leaked]]. In the end, it turns out that none of those stories was the real one.

** Princess Ozma's backstory had retcons even within the books written by Baum himself. Originally the human daughter of Pastoria, she later claimed to be descended of the fairy lineage of Lurline. This creates confusion with her species. Is Ozma human, half-human/half-fairy, or fairy? Furthermore, ''Literature/TheMarvelousLandOfOz'' claims that her father was the king of Oz, but was overthrown by the Wizard, who kidnapped baby Ozma and gave her to the witch Mombi. But after the Wizard's villainous deeds got negative backlash from readers, Baum retconned it in the next book
''Literature/DorothyAndTheWizardInOz'', so that Ozma's grandfather was kidnapped by Mombi long before the Wizard's arrival, and both her father and she were born and raised as Mombi's slaves.

* Princess Ozma of the ''Literature/LandOfOz'' series had retcons even within the books written by Baum himself. Originally the human daughter of Pastoria, she later claimed to be descended of the fairy lineage of Lurline. This creates confusion with her species. Is Ozma human, half-human/half-fairy, or fairy?

* ''Literature/WinnieThePooh'': The intro claims that the reason Edward is nicknamed "Winnie-the-Pooh" is because he was (nick)named after a bear named Winnie and a swan named Pooh, but in "Winnie the Pooh and Some Bees", it claims that he was called Pooh due to the noise he made when he blew flies off his nose. Then, in ''WesternAnimation/MyFriendsTiggerAndPooh'', Rabbit claims that "pooh bears" are a species of bear.

** As the show goes on, it's implied that Dandy is remembering past selves and versions of himself from alternate timelines.

Given that multiple reboots and sliding timelines are so endemic to Creator/DCComics and Creator/MarvelComics in general, almost every legacy comic-book character has this to some extent or another.

* ''ComicBook/{{Aquaman}}'': Black Manta, oh Neptune, Black Manta. If DC had no idea what to do with Aquaman for most of his history, you better believe they didn't know what to do with his ArchEnemy. Pre-''ComicBook/New52'', he had at least three wildly different and convoluted backstories and motivations for his feud with Aquaman, not counting the brief period he claimed to be a militant Black nationalist. You really have to wonder why it took them until 2011 to come up with "[[YouKilledMyFather Aquaman killed his dad]]".

** Post-''ComicBook/BrightestDay'', he was a treasure hunter who was exploring the Bermuda Triangle with his pregnant wife, and they were abducted and tortured by Xebelians. His wife died and his unborn child was experimented on and grew up to be Aqualad, and he really hated Mera, not Aquaman.

** Lady Shiva started out as a Chinese-American from New York with implied Japanese heritage as well whose well-off parents died in an airplane crash when she was at least in her later teen years. She's since been written as a Chinese national, someone who grew up in the slums of an unspecified South-East Asian country, and a Chinese-American who was orphaned at an early age and grew up homeless. Her sister's murder has happened a couple of different ways with different perpetrators as well.

* ''ComicBook/{{Daredevil}}'': Bullseye has multiple tales about his past life: he is either a CIA agent, a baseball star... he makes up so many stories that no one knows who he really is. The only thing that remains consistent in his claims is that he had AbusiveParents and that [[SelfMadeOrphan he killed them]].

* ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'': A minor example is Doctor Doom, specifically what caused the machine he made to scar his face. ''Did'' Reed Richards mess with it, the resulting explosion scarring Doom's face? Or did Doom simply miscalculate? Was Reed involved at all? Did Ben Grimm fuck with the machine? Hell, how scarred ''was'' his face from the explosion -- in some versions, it was a minor scar and Doom put on his mask before it cooled and ''that'' burned his face.
* ''ComicBook/IronMan'': The Mandarin was originally said to be the child of a British noblewoman and a wealthy descendant of Genghis Khan, with his youth spent receiving the finest education money could buy. Creator/MattFraction's run, however, would later suggest that the Mandarin was actually the son of an opium den prostitute, and that he'd been a gangster and smuggler before he lucked out and found his trademark [[RingOfPower Rings of Power]]. However, he could easily still be a descendant of Genghis Khan, since his descendants are [[ReallyGetsAround about 10% of the population of Asia]].

* Chef Horst in ''WesternAnimation/{{Ratatouille}}'' [[AmbiguousCriminalHistory has served a prison sentence, but nobody knows why]] because every time someone asks, he gives a different explanation ("I defrauded a major corporation." / "I robbed the second-largest bank in France using only a ballpoint pen."), none exactly 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... with Skinner somehow being thrown out of the kitchen. There might be some truth in that one.]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/Shrek1'', Princess Fiona says that a witch cursed her to turn into an ogress at night and locked her in a tower, while ''WesternAnimation/Shrek2'' says that she always turned into an ogress (though possibly the curse happened the day she was born) and her parents locked her up.

** Creator/JRRTolkien never managed to come up with a satisfactory backstory for the Orcs; he had created them so his bad guys had some AlwaysChaoticEvil mooks, but this clashed with his Catholic beliefs that [[WhiteAndGreyMorality no free willed being could be pure evil]]. Origins for the Orcs include: corrupted Elves (featured in the published [[Literature/TheSilmarillion Silmarillion]]), [[AmbiguouslyHuman corrupted Men]] (although this doesn't fit the timeline), intelligent animals (Contradictory to [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings The Cirith Ungol chapter of Return of the King]]) or simply primitive tribes.

** Celebrimbor was established as the grandson of Fëanor in ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', but Tolkien apparently forgot this and came up with two new backstories in his later writings where he was either a Telerin silversmith who acompanied Celeborn from Aman or a Sindar descendant of Daeron.

* In ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'', [[BigBad Father's]] original backstory (an AncientConspiracy that Numbuh One [[CassandraTruth had figured out and told his class]] instead of a report on the Declaration of Independence) had him as Mr. Wigglestein, the first adult -- adults being the creation of kids themselves -- to employ discipline (by spanking a kid who refused to stop demanding him to play "Giddyup"/"Horsie"), leading to the exile of the adults to Cleveland. ''WesternAnimation/OperationZERO'' {{retcon}}ned this, instead making him the cowardly, disgruntled brother of the eponymous legendary operative. He's also revealed to be [[spoiler:Numbuh One's EvilUncle (and by proxy, this makes [[BrainwashedAndCrazy Sector Z/The Delight Children from Down the Lane]] his adoptive cousins and [[GreaterScopeVillain Grandfather]] his ''actual'' grandfather), as Numbuh Zero is Numbuh One's BumblingDad.]]

** [[UnnamedParent Timmy's mom and dad]] have several different versions of how they met. When it was first shown in "Father Time", it was stated that they began dating as kids and became a couple when Mr. Turner gave her a trophy he won. "The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker" instead established that Mrs. Turner dated Dinkleberg until college, when Mr. Turner got her on the rebound. Other episodes say they met through a "[[IfICantHaveYou threatmantic]]" letter ("Information Stupor Highway") or that Mrs. Turnet met Mr. Turner in the sporting goods department (which she tells Timmy in "Who's Your Daddy?")

** In-universe, [[ShowWithinAShow comic book hero]] The Crimson Chin has two origin stories. One, described in the show, is that he was a talk show host bitten by a radioactive actor. Then, in a Magazine/NickelodeonMagazine comic involving Timmy following the Crimson Chin's RoguesGallery through different incarnations of the comic, they eventually go to an origin story where he was [[ComicBook/{{Superman}} an alien sent to Earth as a baby]]. Cosmo expresses confusion at this, [[CallBack bringing up the radioactive actor origin]], which Timmy says is a RetCon that they had to come up with [[invoked]][[ScrewedByTheLawyers "after the lawsuit"]].
* Joe Swanson from ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' originally claimed that he lost the use of his legs when he fell off a roof chasing [[Literature/HowTheGrinchStoleChristmas the Grinch]] and broke his legs. Many seasons later, he reveals that he lied out of shame and that a drug lord shot him in the legs repeatedly.

* ''Comicbook/DarkCrisisOnInfiniteEarths'' toys with this premise in its special issue #0. A group of children take a tour through the Hall of Justice, and their guide mentions that the true first meeting of the Comicbook/{{Justice League|Of America}} is often debated. As this is being said, the kids pass by a display depicting the League's battle against the Appellaxian invaders (their original Silver Age origin) and another showing them fighting Comicbook/{{Darkseid}} (the team's rebooted origin from the Comicbook/{{New 52}} [[Comicbook/JusticeLeague2011 run]]).

* In the ''ComicBook/LoisLane'' maxiseries, Renee Montoya remembers the whole thing with teaming up with [[ComicBook/TheQuestion Vic Sage]] during ''ComicBook/FiftyTwo'', including his death, and also remembers that none of it happened. Meeting a Vic who somehow came back from the dead doesn't exactly help. (While it's not explicitly stated, this takes place after ''ComicBook/DCRebirth'', which restored significant elements of DC's pre-''ComicBook/{{Flashpoint}}'' past.) The same goes for Sister Clarice, who remembers being the Radiant and dying in ''Comicbook/FinalCrisis'', and Jessica Midnight, who has the misfortune to suddenly remember being a Checkmate agent, just as everyone connected to Checkmate is being hunted down in ''Event Leviathan''.

* Plot Hole (yes, that's his real name) from ''Webcomic/{{Acrobat}}'', during a story that was supposed to tell his secret origin, told multiple stories, ripping off the origins of {{Franchise/Superman}}, {{Franchise/Batman}} and partly Franchise/SpiderMan, making Plot Twist a villain in every single one - they don't match with each other, or Plot Twist's origin, and hint that Plot Hole doesn't even know what his ArchEnemy really looks like. The only thing he's sure is that he was somehow created by Plot Twist, but even that cannot be found as absolute truth, because he's obviously obsessed with him.

* Winslow in ''ComicStrip/PricklyCity'' rips off Literature/TheBible, Franchise/SpiderMan, and ''Film/TheGodfather'' in telling Carmen his past.

* ''Comicbook/DarkCrisisOnInfiniteEarths'' toys with this premise in its special issue #0. A group of children take a tour through the Hall of Justice, and their guide mentions that the true first meeting of the Comicbook/{{Justice League|Of America}} is often debated. As this is said, the kids pass by a display depicting the League's battle against the Appellaxian invaders (their original Silver Age origin) and another showing them fighting Comicbook/{{Darkseid}} (the team's rebooted origin from the Comicbook/{{New 52}} [[Comicbook/JusticeLeague2011 run]]).

* ''Comicbook/DarkCrisisOnInfiniteEarths'' toys with this premise in its special issue #0. A group of children take a tour through the Hall of Justice, and their guide mentions that the true first meeting of the Comicbook/{{Justice League|Of America}} is often debated. As this is said, the kids pass by a display depicting the League's battle against the Appellaxian invaders (their original Silver Age origin) and another showing them fighting Comicbook/{{Darkseid}} (the team's rebooted origin from the Comicbook/{{New 52}} [[Comicbook/JusticeLeague2011 run]]).

*** There are two conflicting accounts of the Amazons' origins, both of which have issues. One, presented in ''Magainze/WhiteDwarf'' 307, has it that they were favored servants of the Old Ones, created to be their undying servants and left behind to guard the sacred places when Chaos came and the Old Ones vanished. This version conflicts with the Lizardmen's claims to the same status, which are backed by their eldest members having personal memories of this origin. The other, also from ''White Dwarf'' as well as the Lizardmen 5th Edition codex, has them as a cadre of Norse warrior women who left Skeggi behind over an ideological conflict with the Norse men, who wanted them to StayInTheKitchen, and settled the Amaxon river, where they took to using jungle drugs to extend their lifespans and armed themselves with stolen Lizardman artifacts. This fails to account for there being encounters with the Amazons recorded long before Skeggi existed. One possible solution claims that the Skeggi women were not the original Amazons, but were instead inducted into the preexisting Amazon culture to bolster its fading numbers.

** ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'': The origins of Voland, the leader of a notorious mercenary company, are the subject of wild theorizing, due in large part to him keeping a tight lid on the subject. The more sedate speculations assume him to be a disgraced noble from the Empire, some believe him to be the Emperor's bastard son, and the wilder theories include one where he's the child of the Fay Enchantress of Bretonnia and a one-pig named Eric.
** In ''TabletopGame/WarhammerAgeOfSigmar'', opinion is divided amongst the scholars of the Mortal Realms as to the origins of the [[TheAlcoholic Aleguzzler]] [[OurGiantsAreBigger Gargants]]. Some think they are the degenerate dependents of a race of titanic builders while others theorise that they are the offspring of the zodiac godbeast Behemat. There is even a theory that they are refugees from somewhere outside the Mortal Realms. As for the Gargants themselves, they are generally too drunk to care about their origins.

** DC's writers still have no idea what to do with Mon-El/Valor. His initial origin was that he was a Daxamite with amnesia who encountered Clark in his days as Superboy and was initially believed to be Superboy's brother before his memory was jogged by exposure to the lead box containing a piece of Kryptonite the Kents kept in a safe, afterwards Clark sent him to the Phantom Zone until he could be cured of the lead poisoning, eventually being freed periodically from the Phantom Zone by the Legion in the 30th century and given a temporary antidote for his lead poisoning each time. Every continuity in succession has since vastly altered the details of his origin except for the broad strokes of being trapped in the Phantom Zone before eventually being freed by the Legion in the 30th century, with the origin of the name Mon-El even being inconsistent[[note]]The original origin had it formed from assuming he was part of the House of El and his fascination with a calendar displaying the day of Monday, while the post-Zero Hour version spelled the name as "M'Onel" and established it to be Martian for "He Who Wanders"[[/note]]. The Brian Michael Bendis run ended up completely disregarding what was established before and went with making Mon-El a legitimate Kryptonian and Superman's descendant.

** DC's writers still have no idea what to do with Mon-El/Valor. His initial origin was that he was a Daxamite with amnesia who encountered Clark in his days as Superboy and was initially believed to be Superboy's brother before his memory was jogged by exposure to the lead box containing a piece of Kryptonite the Kents kept in a safe, afterwards Clark sent him to the Phantom Zone until he could be cured of the lead poisoning, eventually being freed periodically from the Phantom Zone by the Legion in the 30th century and given a temporary antidote for his lead poisining each time. Every continuity in succession has since vastly altered the details of his origin except for the broad strokes of being trapped in the Phantom Zone before eventually being freed by the Legion in the 30th century, with the origin of the name Mon-El even being inconsistent[[note]]The original origin had it formed from assuming he was part of the House of El and his fascination with a calendar displaying the day of Monday, while the post-Zero Hour version spelled the name as "M'Onel" and established it to be Martian for "He Who Wanders"[[/note]]. The Brian Michael Bendis run ended up completely disregarding what was established before and went with making Mon-El a legitimate Kryptonian and Superman's descendant.

* ''ComicBook/ThePhantomStranger'': One issue of ''ComicBook/SecretOrigins'' gave four different, mutually exclusive origins for the mysterious Phantom Stranger. Either he was a man named Isaac who was cursed to wander the Earth for eternity as penance for having a hand in the flagellation of Jesus Christ, a man who lived during Biblical times and became the Stranger when he was BarredFromTheAfterlife after committing suicide, he's part of a StableTimeLoop where he created himself by possessing a scientist and going back to the Big Bang to thwart an effort to prevent it from happening or a fallen angel whose eternal journey is the result of refusing to take a side during Lucifer's rebellion. According to the WordOfGod, they're ''all'' true.

* ''ComicBook/ThePhantomStranger'': One issue of ''ComicBook/SecretOrigins'' gave four different, mutually exclusive origins for the mysterious Phantom Stranger. According to the WordOfGod, they're ''all'' true.

* ComicBook/{{Hawkman}}'s past has so many embedded possibilities that it's become a ContinuitySnarl.

** DC's writers still have no idea what to do with Mon-El/Valor. His initial origin was that he was a Daxamite with amnesia who encountered Clark in his days as Superboy and was initially believed to be Superboy's brother before his memory was jogged by exposure to the lead box containing a piece of Kryptonite the Kents kept in a safe, afterwards Clark sent him to the Phantom Zone until he could be cured of the lead poisoning, eventually being freed periodically from the Phantom Zone by the Legion in the 30th century and given a temporary antidote for his lead poisining each time. Every continuity in succession has since vastly altered the details of his origin except for the broad strokes of being trapped in the Phantom Zone before eventually being freed by the Legion in the 30th century, with the origin of the name Mon-El even being inconsistent[[note]]The original origin had it formed from assuming he was part of the House of El and his fascination with a calendar displaying the day of Monday, while the post-Zero Hour version spelled the name as "M'Onel" and established it to be Martian for "He Who Wanders"[[/note]]. The Brain Michael Bendis run ended up completely disregarding what was established before and went with making Mon-El a legitimate Kryptonian and Superman's descendant.

** DC's writers still have no idea what to do with Mon-El/Valor.

** Plastic Man's sidekick Woozy Winks has had three different origins. The original Quality Comics continuity established that he gained the power to be immune to injury as a reward for saving a sorcerer from drowning and turned to crime until he encountered Plastic Man and was convinced to go straight, the 1988 miniseries by Phil Foglio made it so that Woozy was a former inmate of Arkham Asylum who became Plastic Man's sidekick by [[InterruptedSuicide distracting him before he could jump off a bridge]] and a 1999 one-shot by Ty Templeton gave an origin where Woozy was once a [[FormerlyFit physically fit]] secret agent named Green Cobra who became the dimwit we know as today when he was stuffed in a locker with a bleeding Plastic Man by a supervillain called the Dart and had his brain damaged from inhaling the fumes of Plastic Man's airplane glue-like blood.

* On ''Series/{{Justified}}: City Priemval'', Clement Mansell and Sandy Stanton have identified the Albanian Skender Lulgjuraj as a potential mark to steal money from. In "Backstabbers," Clement tells Skender that if his mother hadn't been carried away by a tornado, they'd be having this meeting in Lawton, Oklahoma. When Sandy asks how he's never told him this, he says it was a day like any other in which his mother was slaving away, hanging wash on the line, a pot on the stove inside. Then the wind picked up and the sky turned dark and ugly. They next thing they knew, she was above the fruited plain, teams of hounds out searching for her, but never found a trace. Later on in the season, in "The Smoking Gun," he tells his attorney Carolyn Wilder the same story, except in this version, he says his mother was indisposed because this is what people do, they let you down. He waited for the man in her bed to leave, not "the first asshole from Glenn Pool to be in her bed, but he was the last." After his car disappeared down the dirt road, he took his .22 and shot his mother in the throat because the last thing he wanted her to see before he told her to close her eyes tight and pulled the trigger was her son's face. He then tells Carolyn that maybe this story is just bull and that a tornado carried her away. Given everything else seen of him in the series, though, he probably did actually kill her.

* In ''ComicBook/AstroCity'', Crackerjack's origins is whatever fanciful yarn he can tell at the spur of the moment. At different times he's claimed to be from a circus family that got abducted and trained by aliens, an Olympic hopeful who was sabotaged by a competitor, a determined survivor of Polio, a genetically-engineered member of a spy cult... Even his long-time girlfriend Quarrel has no idea which -- if any -- is the truth.

* Crackerjack of ''ComicBook/AstroCity'' has given many stories about his origins, none of which have been verified or even consistent. His longtime lover Quarrel has given up trying to figure it out.

** Gil-Galad is an infamous version of this regards to his parentage. He was at various times, a descendant of Fëanor, the son of Finrod Felagund, the son of Fingon(the version the published ''Silmarillion'' went with), or a son of Orodeth. Christopher Tolkien has admited that given the tangle he should have left his parentage ambiguous.

* [[Myth/ArthurianLegend King Arthur]] had a magic sword named Excalibur. There are two famous stories in which Arthur gets a magic sword: in one, he pulls out The Sword in the Stone, and in the other, he receives it from the Lady of the Lake. Different writers have dealt with this in different ways; one common variation is that Excalibur and the Sword in the Stone are two different swords, and the Lady of the lake gives Excalibur to Arthur after the Sword in the Stone breaks.