-->''"Canon should not be confused with [[RougeAnglesOfSatin cannon]], although cannon can be used to enforce canon."''

That which counts, in terms of {{continuity}}. Coming from religious terms, a "canon" was a stick by which to measure straightness. So in this term, canon is the standard for official works.

Canon, as it applies to television series, is a substantially different concept from its literary counterpart. For example, there is no question of which ''SherlockHolmes' stories (the literary works to which the term was applied) are canonical: those written by Doyle are, everything else isn't. Likewise, the canonical works of Shakespeare are only open to debate in terms of whether or not they were actually written by the bard.

Television canon works much differently, as there are many authors involved. Works not officially sanctioned are generally outside of canon, but what remains inside is more nebulous. Officially licensed material, novelizations and tie-in novels are not usually considered canon. Even broadcast material can be excluded from the canon when decreed by WordOfGod.

The primary issue is that canons for completed works (especially with a single author) are ''descriptive'', whereas fans attempt to define canon for ongoing works as ''prescriptive''. If a fact is "canon", you are "not allowed" to contradict it. Of course, the concept of canon is almost entirely a fan-invention. The writers will ignore or include whatever facts they damned well like (which is not to say that the writers totally lack a sense of continuity, but it is a much weaker concept than "canon" as presented by fan communities). Sometimes these things are applied in BroadStrokes, mixing and matching things that they need to tell the story. Thus, in fan communities, "canon" often boils down to "The bits I like". Fans will attempt to find any excuse to [[DisContinuity "de-canonize"]] facts that they personally find inconvenient.

Historically, this is not entirely dissimilar to the debates which established the canon of Christian religious texts, deciding which of many competing gospels was official. In that case, the decision was made by people with some kind of power to enforce their decisions.

A related term is [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterocanonical_books Deuterocanon]], which in this context refers to those persons, places and/or events which are not explicitly shown on-screen, but which are considered "official" or close to it. For canon that comes not from the source material but from pronouncements by the creator see WordOfGod. For the contrary idea that something is canon only if it appears in the source material see DeathOfTheAuthor.

Canon should not be confused with {{Fanon}}, but everyone [[WordOfDante does it all the time]]. See DisContinuity for when people decide en masse to disregard actual canon, and CanonDisContinuity when the writers do it. Alternatively, see the ContinuityTropes index for all related concepts.

For the similarly titled anime, see ''{{Kanon}}''.
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'''Examples of debates on canonicity:'''

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[[folder: Film ]]

* The ''StarWars'' canon is [[http://www.canonwars.com/weblog/2005/09/ecce-starlog.html explictly]] [[http://forums.starwars.com/thread.jspa?threadID=222689&start=612 patterned]] [[http://www.canonwars.com/weblog/2008/04/once-again-yet-another-new-lucas-quote.html after]] ''StarTrek'' canon. However, since the ''StarWarsExpandedUniverse'' has its own canon hierarchy, most people don't realize that and consider ''EU'' canon as ''the'' ''Star Wars'' canon. The struggles to retcon ''EU'' to accommodate new ''[[TheCloneWars Clone Wars]]'' material [[http://karentraviss.typepad.com/blog/2009/08/end-of-one-era-start-of-another.html has actually cause one SW EU author to quit]]. For more on this, see ExpandedUniverse (and the ''StarWarsExpandedUniverse'').
** The EU isn't really considered canon by George Lucas, but it's a heck of a lot more concise and connected than {{Star Trek}}'s EU, and actually makes an effort to make everything canonical and fit together unless contradicted elsewhere.

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[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* ''DoctorWho'': To some fans, the 1996 MadeForTVMovie [[DisContinuity doesn't count as canon]], despite official BBC statements (and onscreen evidence) that it does. Likewise, the canonicity of the original novels, audios, and webcasts is often debated. There have even been substantial calls to decanonize the entire Seventh Doctor era, on the basis of some people not liking it. A lot. However, for various reasons, the ''Doctor Who'' production team are unlikely to rule on what doesn't count, and since they're pretty much the only ones who ''can'', what counts or not is down to each fan's decision.
** ''The Scream of the Shalka'' is an interesting example. It was an animated webcast, and later novel, that existed to give the fans a 9th Doctor to write stories for and to resurrect the Master, slightly. When the new series came along with ''their'' 9th Doctor, the Shalka Doctor was quietly ExiledFromContinuity.
* ''StarTrek'': Most debates over elements of ''StarTrekEnterprise'' center around the question of whether or not it violates canon. Generally, the source of the debate comes from the confusion between Canon and {{Fanon}}.
** In the 1970s, there was serious fan discussion over whether James Blish's novel ''Spock Must Die!'' should be regarded as canon, despite the fact that it contained errors against canon (a major plot thread depending on Vulcan internal anatomy being bilaterally symmetrical, when the show had established that it is not) and a blatant rearranging of the universe (ending with the Klingon Empire out of the picture for about the next thousand years).
*** [[WordOfGod Paramount]] maintains that nothing that didn't happen or wasn't referenced onscreen is canon. However, with recent novels and comics, they have permitted writers to do with the main characters what they wish, and, considering the SeriesReboot, it's likely we won't see the "normal" Trek universe on-screen again.
** ''StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries'' is generally not considered canon (with the possible exception of the episode "Yesteryear", according to the authors of ''The Star Trek Encyclopedia''). The official status does seem to change from year to year, considering how many writers worked on both shows.
** The never-produced series ''[[StarTrekPhaseII Star Trek: Phase II]]'' (which morphed into ''Star Trek The Motion Picture'') was to have been based around a second five-year mission of the original Starship Enterprise. Many canonical ''Trek'' sources, including a book written by ''Trek'' technical consultant Michael Okuda, suggest that this mission did in fact take place after the movie. It appears to be a tacit assumption made by ''Trek'' production staff. However, GeneRoddenberry and Paramount decided in 1988 that only live-action events seen on screen qualify as canonical ''StarTrek'', scripts written for this mission remains less than fully-canonical. (Compare WordOfDante.)
* ''PowerRangersWildForce'': The canonicity of [[PowerRangers the series]]' tenth anniversary episode "Forever Red" was so hotly debated that most forums have banned discussion of the matter entirely.
* Like, ''Star Wars'', ''[[BabylonFive Babylon 5]]'' also has canonical licensed tie-in media.
* ''RedDwarf'': From the third season onward, the broadcast version of events was generally superseded by the interpretation offered in the novel ''Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers''.
*''{{Lost}}'''s {{ARG}}s and tie-in video game have mixed canonicity, and the showrunners have used the podcast to declare what can be taken as canon and what cannot. More strangely, the show's "enhanced" episodes contain informational pop-ups written by the ABC promo department, not the show's writers, so even these are of disputed canonicity.

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[[folder: Video Games ]]

* Many games (and especially {{Visual Novel}}s) have the problem of the story branching into MultipleEndings, thus creating a number of mutually exclusive but canonical happenings. This becomes particularly relevant when the source material is adapted to a linear medium like a TV series and [[RoadCone one of the paths has to be chosen]], adding "extra canonicity" to it. The same applies to sequels. Choose wrong, and the original fans will be up in arms; and there likely is no right answer. See ''{{Tsukihime}}'' for an example.
** In the games ''WingCommander III'' and ''WingCommander IV'', which also had novelizations contracted out by Origin, you are given several choices as to an action path to take, as part of the "interactive movie" feature of those games. Origin (later bought by EA) has declared that the choices taken in the novels are the official history of the in-character universe. [[DepopulationBomb Sorry, Locanda IV.]]
*FightingGames have their own problems when they introduce an actual narrative into the mix; usually they involve some kind of tournament or BigBad that every single character (often more than a dozen!) is trying to triumph over, each with his or her own ending for doing so. When a sequel rolls around, it can be a Herculean task to figure out who won the previous game, which other characters had endings that could play out even if they ''didn't'' win, and which have been relegated to what-if scenarios.
** I'm still trying to figure out how ''MortalKombat II'' came about when only one character could have had their own ending...I assume Liu Kang won and spared everyone?
* Odd for a Nintendo game since Nintendo hardly makes sequels, but mention ''SuperMarioBros. 2'' and you're going to get people who either claim the [[NoExportForYou Japanese version]] (aka The Lost Levels) is the true Mario 2 or that the [[DolledUpInstallment American veggie tossing version]] is the true sequel. Naturally, Nintendo is pretty mum on this issue.
* ''LegendOfZelda''. Unless purely dedicated to such discussion, most forums will either ban or flame anybody who brings up the heavily-debated question about what order the games happen in.
* ''{{Pikmin}}''. In the bad ending of ''Pikmin 1'', Olimar fails in collecting all the ship parts and doesn't make it home. This obviously isn't canon because in ''Pikmin 2'' he lands on Hocotate and it is requested that he go back.

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[[folder: Toys ]]

* ''{{Transformers}}'', with all its spin-offs, is a massive [[ContinuitySnarl canon snarl]]. [[TransformersGeneration1 Generation 1]] and 2, ''BeastWars'' and ''Beast Machines'' are the main canon, sort of, but there's also Robots in Disguise, the UnicronTrilogy, the live-action movies and the new TransformersAnimated. Linnaean taxonomy has nothing on [[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Continuity_family Transformers continuity families]] of multiple micro-continuities, including conflicting stuff like toys' "tech spec" bios and the kiddie cartoon shows. And then the "Universe" comics seem to have made it all a Marvel/DC-style ''[[TheMultiverse multiverse]]'', where characters pop in and out of continuities with alarming frequency.

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[[folder: Literature ]]

* Pretty much all ''{{Dragonlance}}'' fans regard the stories written by Margaret Weis and/or Tracy Hickman as being the official canon, but attitudes towards the books written by other authors range widely.
* All things created by J.K. Rowling are considered {{Canon}} in ''HarryPotter''; however, there are several cases where statements in interviews or on her website were contradicted by later books.
** Though usually she just had to be careful not to spoil anything in interviews, because people would ask about ''anything''.

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[[folder: Newspaper Comics ]]

* Per WordOfGod, only the ''{{Peanuts}}'' comic strip counts as canon, not the animated TV specials and movies. However, a lot of casual fans aren't really aware of this.
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