History Main / WriterInducedFanon

* Project Freelancer in ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'' was ''probably'' a project competing with the SPARTAN program, based on Washington's remarks that "there were dozens of projects all trying to come up with the magic bullet to win" during the war with the aliens, [[WordOfGod Burnie]] saying Dr. Church used to work with Dr. Halsey (who was behind the SPARTAN program), and so on, but Spartans are never actually mentioned in-series, aside from semi-canonical references to Master Chief [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness in the first episode]] and some of the PSAs.

* From ''Series/{{NCIS}}'', Ziva having been [[spoiler:raped in Somalia]]. It was hinted at by Gibbs and Vance throughout the beginning of the seventh season and is widely accepted fanon.
** The idea is further used throughout the seventh and eighth seasons to help develop Ziva as a character, as well as her relationships with other characters, most substantially Gibbs, Tony, and her father, but remains non-canonical.
* Renee Walker having been raped on ''Series/TwentyFour''. While it was pretty evident that she was raped by Vladimir Laitanan during the events of Day 8, the writers never more than hinted at the idea that she was also raped when she was undercover with the Russians before. This is one of the most widely accepted pieces of fanon in the 24 fandom, many fans even considering it canonical.
** This idea is later used to help validate what Renee ends up doing to Laitanan.

* Though it is never ''explicitly'' spelled out, the clues add up enough so well that fans of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'' universally accept the idea that [[spoiler:Laguna is TheHero Squall's father.]]
** Likewise, in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' it's never outright stated that [[spoiler: Shadow is Relm's father,]] but it's implied strongly enough that it's regarded as canonical.

* ''Webcomic/HetaliaAxisPowers'': Himaruya has flirted with the idea that Germany is Holy Roman Empire with a memory loss for a long time, but he has yet to confirm it.

** It's assumed by a lot of viewers that Hayley had been molested at some point. Her actual motivation for targeting Jeff [[spoiler: and his accomplice Aaron]] is never stated but Creator/ElliotPage himself believes this to be the case - and played some of her lines with a kind of righteous bitterness, as if coming from a former victim.

This tactic is most often employed when writers want to include an element such as mental illness, rape, in older shows, homosexuality, or another sensitive topic in a plotline or a character's backstory as a means of plot or character development, but don't want to explicitly state it to avoid controversy or alienating certain viewers, and also to subvert censorship. The artistic reasons for doing this is ShowDontTell, it's more interesting to tempt readers to figure this out for themselves than explicitly spell it out. Likewise, the information in question is merely backstory and subtext to the plot in question. If a plot is an adventure/crime/heist/romance story, potentially disturbing and traumatic details might overpower the drama of the genre setting, so for a writer, it's better to put this in the background and leave it for the specially involved reader and viewer.

** The Fifth Doctor's era brought with it a change in how his relationship with the Master was viewed. The idea of the Master as a supervillainous arch-nemesis had been clear since the beginning, but a long run of Master-centric stories in the Fifth Doctor's run shifted it to more of the Master being a [[FoeYay Doctor-obsessed troll]].

* Someone on the fan list for ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfTheGalaxyRangers'' (where several of the show's writers lurk) brought up the disturbing possibility that the Queen didn't put Zachary in the Psychocrypt right after his capture, but decided to [[IHaveYouNowMyPretty take out some frustrations on him first]], especially since the scene where she's standing over his unconscious body was dripping with some disturbing FoeYay. One of the writers delurked to admit that the writers themselves had very off-color speculations about Her Majesty's sex life. It's about a 50-50 split in the fandom whether she "just" used MindRape, or went for something more... inappropriate for an animated show.

* In ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'', Zuko's mother was banished for committing "treasonous acts", however it's never stated what these acts were. Coincidentally, she was banished right around the time Fire Lord Azulon died. It was widely believed amongst the fanbase that she was responsible for his death [[spoiler:[[IKnewIt until it was finally confirmed to be the case in Season 3]]]].

** It's assumed by a lot of viewers that Hayley had been molested at some point. Her actual motivation for targeting Jeff [[spoiler: and his accomplice Aaron]] is never stated but Elliot Page himself believes this to be the case - and played some of her lines with a kind of righteous bitterness, as if coming from a former victim.

* ''Literature/JohnDiesAtTheEnd'' heavily implies that Dave was raped as a kid, but he refuses to talk about it. All he's willing to disclose is that he was held down by a group of bullies who did something awful to him.

* ''Film/TheHaunting1963'' has Theo acting incredibly affectionate towards Eleanor and she behaves as if she were a love interest. Eleanor's line to Theo about "nature's mistakes" is pretty much GettingCrapPastTheRadar. There was even a planned opening that would have Theo in her apartment finding "I hate you" written on her mirror in lipstick - implying she had just split up with a female lover. Among fans it's universally agreed that Theo at least is gay. The 1999 remake made her an out and out bisexual.

* ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'''s has the very popular theory that Princess Bubblegum and Marceline used to date. WordOfGod has gone back and forth on this one, and the writers try to sneak in as much [[LesYay subtext]] as they can.
** The fact that ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'''s [[CrapsaccharineWorld Ooo]] is supposed to be our world AfterTheEnd when TheMagicComesBack was this until fan-favourite episode "I Remember You" in season four made it explicitly clear, where we see [[OurVampiresAreDifferent Marceline]]'s childhood with ParentalSubstitute Simon Petrikov ([[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity before he fully became the Ice King]]). After this episode, the show isn't shy about discussing this piece of trivia.

** It's assumed by a lot of viewers that Hayley had been molested at some point. Her actual motivation for targeting Jeff [[spoiler: and his accomplice Aaron]] is never stated but Ellen Page herself believes this to be the case - and played some of her lines with a kind of righteous bitterness, as if coming from a former victim.
** A lot of viewers take a line from Hayley that was cut from the film - coupling with Ellen Page's DawsonCasting - that she's OlderThanTheyLook and only posing as a fourteen-year-old.

* Creator/KenAkamatsu's ''Manga/MahouSenseiNegima'', ''Manga/LoveHina'', and ''Manga/AILoveYou'' are ''heavily'' implied to be set in the same {{Verse}}. He can't outright state this because of legal issues.

* ''Anime/AxisPowersHetalia'': Himaruya has flirted with the idea that Germany is Holy Roman Empire with a memory loss for a long time, but he has yet to confirm it. %% Might be an example from the webcomic?

** Terra and Slade both return.

* ''Film/BladeRunner'' has the famous "Deckard is Replicant" issue. Creator/RidleyScott is quite keen on the idea that Deckard is a Replicant over the objections of the screenwriters and Harrison Ford himself. Scott got the idea mid-production. It wasn't originally in the Philip K. Dick novel [[note]] while Deckard in the novel is at one point accused of being an Android, it's quickly revealed to be an attempt at gaslighting him, and is later proven wrong when a self-administered empathy test proves he's human. [[/note]], nor was it planned at pre-production. Harrison Ford feels that Deckard has to be the main human being the audiences can relate to and properly be an AudienceSurrogate and he was openly angry when Scott tried to [[spoiler:insert the Unicorn origami scene since he caught on what he was trying to do]]. Hampton Fancher in any case feels that Deckard's humanity or lack thereof should never be openly addressed and become part of the surface experience of the film, and remain an issue of speculation.

* ''Film/BladeRunner'' has the famous "Deckard is Replicant" issue. Creator/RidleyScott is quite keen on the idea that Deckard is a Replicant over the objections of the screenwriters and Harrison Ford himself. Scott got the idea mid-production. It wasn't originally in the Philip K. Dick novel nor was it planned at pre-production. Harrison Ford feels that Deckard has to be the main human being the audiences can relate to and properly be an AudienceSurrogate and he was openly angry when Scott tried to [[spoiler:insert the Unicorn origami scene since he caught on what he was trying to do]]. Hampton Fancher in any case feels that Deckard's humanity or lack thereof should never be openly addressed and become part of the surface experience of the film, and remain an issue of speculation.

* [[Series/DoctorWho The Doctor's]] MysteriousPast has had messy implications heaped on it by every passing writer for the past fifty two years:
** The First Doctor is implied to be an outlaw, exiled from his home planet and forbidden from returning. Later fans and writers have run with the implication, as well as some EarlyInstallmentWeirdness, to suggest his fear of interfering with past events (or, from a Doylist perspective, the fact that only the first Doctor ever had purely historical adventures) is to avoid catching the attention of the Time Lords, and that he left Susan on earth in the 2164 so that she wouldn't be caught by them as well.

** The Fourth Doctor's immediate and urgent abandonment of Earth in general and UNIT in particular was likewise projected onto the past incarnations of the character, reframing his escape from Gallifrey as having been not because of some obscure but terrible crime or the death of his family, but more because he just couldn't sit still for one more second when he had the option to travel all of time and space. Even when given the opportunity to rule Gallifrey and "fix it" as he sought fit, he eagerly left it behind. Around this time, the concept of "Renegades" became somewhat more solid: The Doctor and the Master were so called because their actual names are, to some degree left to Fanon to clarify, unspeakable. The Fourth Doctor also was seemingly intended by long time writer Robert Holmes to be the final (or, at least, penultimate) Doctor, when it was revealed that Time Lords only have 12 regenerations, and an episode seemed to imply the Doctor had held 8 different faces before the televised first Doctor.

** The Sixth Doctor's era cast the Doctor's wildly-inconsistent personalities into new light by revealing a possible future incarnation, a rules-obsessed LawfulEvil lackey of Gallifrey known as the Valeyard (which Fanon has interpreted to mean "a Doctor of Law"). The exact nature of the Valeyard is so ambiguous, though, that every sinister turn the Doctor has taken since then has been identified as the Valeyard (Grandfather Paradox, The Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor, the Flesh Ganger Doctor, even the War Doctor when he was first introduced as a cliffhanger), a title it was recently confirmed the Doctor will yet someday bear.

** The Eighth Doctor's somewhat absent era [[FanficFuel makes it rife]] for fandom interpretation. When the series returned with the Ninth Doctor, the implication was that the horrors of the Time War had been experienced by the Eighth Doctor, a somewhat inoffensive and charming character for whom it would all be [[TheWoobie terribly crushing]] to have to experience. Conveniently, the books had been wrapped up in an incredibly dense and yet incredibly unclear narrative about a war in time that destroyed Gallifrey for years by that point, so Fandom set about merging the two concepts in various ways. The Eighth Doctor was also the Doctor who ([[IncrediblyLamePun heh heh]]) infamously declared himself half-human, but in circumstances where he could be either joking or lying. The film seems to treat the words literally, implying one half of his body is human and the other half is not, just further complicating matters.
** The Ninth Doctor's era introduced the Time War to the series, creating a new justification for why he was the most important and unique of all Time Lords (namely, [[TheLastOfHisKind the rest were all dead]]). It also seemed to imply that the first ever companion, the Doctor's granddaughter Susan, was dead as well. Other mysteries lurk in the Ninth Doctor's era, mostly revolving around how fresh his face was in his first episode and whether he knew or had anything to do with Jack Harkness's past life. The big mystery, though, is whether the Ninth Doctor A: is canonically Bisexual, and/or B: is the first Bisexual Doctor.

* Fans of ''VideoGame/Psychonauts'' have come to the conclusion that psychic kids tend to mature much faster than non-psychics. The kids at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp range from ages 7-13, but they act like they are much older. Their unusually mature personalities might simply be due to [[MostWritersAreAdults Most Writers Being Adults]], but there is a lot of evidence to support this idea.
** It's heavily implied that there is a lot of prejudice against psychics in the rest of the world, and most of the kids have severe [[DysfuntionJunction mental issues]].

This is where writers want to include an idea -- any element contributing to the plot or a character -- in canonicity, but don't want to explicitly state it. As a work-around, the writers hint at the idea until it's [[{{Fanon}} accepted by most of the fandom]]. These hints are usually strong enough that most of the fandom gets the right idea fairly quickly, but not so strong that they can't be ignored or attributed to something else if the viewer dislikes the idea being hinted at. The point is, after all, getting the idea across to a large portion of the fandom while offering a less convenient, but still plausible, alternative explanation for those viewers who don't want to believe.

Let's say that a show strongly hints at the possibility of Susie having lost a baby as a teenager. Almost all of the fans accept this, but the hints are vague enough so that they can also be interpreted to support the idea that the baby that died was Susie's younger sister. Confirmation for the supporters of the first theory would come in the form of Susie over-empathizing with a mother who has just lost her baby and being very tight-lipped when Joe asks her why (why would be tight lipped if it was her sister?) and getting teary-eyed when watching mothers interact with their children. So while Susie losing her sister fits with the hints (though not as well as the more widely accepted story), it doesn't explain either of these situations, where Susie losing her daughter does.

Of course, there are alternate explanations for both of these situations, but really only one that explains them both, and the show has already hinted at it repeatedly. This is where writers want to include an idea -- any element contributing to the plot or a character -- in canonicity, but don't want to explicitly state it. As a work-around, the writers hint at the idea until it's [[{{Fanon}} accepted by most of the fandom]]. These hints are usually strong enough that most of the fandom gets the right idea fairly quickly, but not so strong that they can't be ignored or attributed to something else if the viewer dislikes the idea being hinted at. The point is, after all, getting the idea across to a large portion of the fandom while offering a less convenient, but still plausible, alternative explanation for those viewers who don't want to believe.

* ''Series/AxisPowersHetalia'': Himaruya has flirted with the idea that Germany is Holy Roman Empire with a memory loss for a long time, but he has yet to confirm it.

* For an example dating back all the way to the first generation, it was assumed for years by fans that Mr. Fuji, of Lavender Town, was the scientist who created Mewtwo in the games, who then retired to the Pokémon Tower to repent. Though Mewtwo's creator in [[Anime/PokemonTheFirstMovie the movie]] is called ''Dr.'' Fuji, [[YouDontLookLikeYou he looks nothing like his game counterpart]] and their personalities are very different -- however, this is par for the course for the early anime, so it deterred no one from thinking that it is true in game canonicity as well as anime canonicity. Despite one line of dialogue that might ''possibly'' suggest that Game!Fuji was at Cinnabar Island at the time that Mewtwo was cloned[[note]]though all it says is that he is friends with Blaine, and [[PixelHunt few people would have read it before the remakes came out]][[/note]] there was still no clear evidence that Mr. Fuji even knows of Mewtwo's existence. However, the ''Anime/PokemonOrigins'' special ''does'' have him be the only person in Kanto who knows about Mewtwo, but still does not go out and say that he in particular cloned him. Most fans have taken it as confirmation, though.

* Creator/JudeLaw and Creator/RobertDowneyJr discussed the HoYay between Franchise/SherlockHolmes and [[TheWatson John Watson]] at length in interviews to the point of leading several groups into believing (with either [[YaoiFangirl positive]] or [[HeteronormativeCrusader negative]] reactions) that the gay subtext between the characters would actually become ''text'' within the film. The [[Film/SherlockHolmes actual film portrayal]] is a fairly straightforward {{Bromance}} between two HeterosexualLifePartners who both have female love interests.

* Hitchcock's ''Film/{{Rope}}'' is an adaptation of a play written by a gay author (Arthur Laurents), starring a bisexual lead actor (Farley Granger) and based on the Leopold and Loeb case of thrill-seeking homosexual dandies. The film doesn't mention homosexuality once anywhere in the film (thanks to UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode) but it's incredibly obvious from the setting, the context and the dialogue.
* ''Film/TaxiDriver'' has Travis Bickle as a Vietnam War veteran. In the film this is casually hinted and not specified. Scorsese and Schrader discuss the subtext as if it had always been part of the film.

** ''Film/BladeRunner'' has the famous "Deckard is Replicant" issue. Creator/RidleyScott is quite keen on the idea that Deckard is a Replicant over the objections of the screenwriters and Harrison Ford himself. Scott got the idea mid-production. It wasn't originally in the Philip K. Dick novel nor was it planned at pre-production. Harrison Ford feels that Deckard has to be the main human being the audiences can relate to and properly be an AudienceSurrogate and he was openly angry when Scott tried to [[spoiler:insert the Unicorn origami scene since he caught on what he was trying to do]]. Hampton Fancher in any case feels that Deckard's humanity or lack thereof should never be openly addressed and become part of the surface experience of the film, and remain an issue of speculation.