Alternate Continuity / Video Games

• CP3D: The story of the PSA is completely different to Club Penguin, with Big Bad of the original game Herbert P. Bear not even receiving a mention. The order that parties take place, minigames are developed and buildings are opened is also totally different.
• Die Hard: Vendetta is set in a timeline separate from the movies, with John's old enemy Hans Gruber having a son named Piet serving as the new Big Bad and John McClane's now-adult daughter, Lucy, depicted as a rookie cop. The movies later made the game non-canon with further depictions of Lucy as a non-combatant.
• The Double Dragon games have many plot differences between their original arcade incarnations and their corresponding NES counterparts. Every game in the series since the SNES-exclusive Super Double Dragon was stand-alone, until Arc System Works' Double Dragon IV, following the continuity of the first two games in the series.
• DragonFable appears to be in a different timeline from AdventureQuest, since in DragonFable the Great Fire War started before Battleon was founded. This has been confirmed by the devs.
  • As well, The'Galin is never mentioned in DragonFable, and likewise AdventureQuest never mentions Sepulchure.
  • Oh, and did we forget to mention that AdventureQuest has a completely different map?
• Most of the Final Fantasy games are set in different worlds from each other and most of the stories have nothing to do with each other.
  • Final Fantasy VII Remake is a more specific example. At the outset it looks like it's just going to be a straight remake of the 1997 original with better graphics and more content, but then Sephiroth shows up much earlier than he's supposed to, seemingly possessing knowledge of the "original timeline" and trying to derail the plot to avoid his original defeat. These efforts result in the Planet sending out ghostly beings dubbed Whispers to try and keep things on track, but the game ends with the heroes being tricked into destroying the Whispers, essentially destroying fate itself — not to mention creating an Alternate Timeline where Zack Fair survived his Last Stand in Crisis Core. Given Sephiroth's knowledge of the "original timeline" and the implication that he is a post-Advent Children Sephiroth at that, its likely this game is not just set in an alternate continuity to the original timeline but is actually a sequel to the entire Compilation of Final Fantasy VII as a whole and is continuing on were that continuity's story left off following Dirge of Cerberus secret ending cutscene with Genesis or at least from were Advent Children ended.
• Rockman EXE, also known as Mega Man Battle Network (games' title in English-speaking areas) or MegaMan NT Warrior (anime dub) is essentially an alternate version of the regular Mega Man (Classic) universe, with the major change being that the Robot Masters and other major characters are sentient programs instead of robots. Meanwhile, the games, anime, and manga of EXE are all separate continuities.
  • Also, every game since 3 has been One Game for the Price of Two. Lan seems to remember any experiences he has in either version, even when they're inconsistent; it's as if he personally experienced not one version or the other, but some quantum superposition of the two. (For instance, he remembers both Shuko and Raika after BN4.) The most jarring example is Colonel: MegaMan remembers him well in both versions of BN6, but he only met him briefly in the Team ProtoMan version of 5.
  • Interestingly, the Battle Network/NT Warrior universes and the Classic universe share a common source: Doctor Light and Doctor Wily. They branch off when the Doctor Light of the BN/NTW universe(s) went with Network Technology instead of Robotics, as happened in the Classic universe. Also interestingly, it is because of this that Wily became evil in the first place- he had a degree in Robotics, and in a world about computers and networks, nobody cared about his inventions.
  • What this means is that Wily and Light are the most significant people in the Mega Man Multiverse. What they choose as their discipline ends up revolutionizing the world and completely changing society. It would be interesting to see what would happen if they were geneticists or rocket scientists....wait. No it wouldn't. You'd either get Warp Drive or Ricardo MontalBan.
• In One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2, Ace never quite found Teach in Part 1, so as such never fought him and never went to Impel Down like in the original series. So the Marineford arc never happened, Ace and Whitebeard are both still alive and Teach doesn't have Whitebeard's power (yet...).
• In 2017, Warner Bros. created a subsidiary of its interactive entertainment called Portkey Games dedicated to making games set in the Harry Potter franchise. However both WB and Portkey’s official stance is that the games are only “inspired by” the universe and should not be considered canon. These games include: Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, and Hogwarts Legacy
  • In Hogwarts Legacy, there are a handful of small but significant details that make it stand out from the main universe:
    • The game’s setting of the very early 1890s is conspicuously right before the familiar characters would come onto the scene. Albus Dumbledore was born in 1881 and would have started school in 1892. Gellert Grindelwald would have been born roughly the year after and Aberforth and Ariana later on in the decade. In canon, this would have actually been right around the time she was attacked by the Muggle boys. The only canon character who was an adult at this time who appears is Phineas Nigellus Black who’s only ever appeared in canon via his portraits. The game forgoes the other established academics of this era such as Armando Dippett and Bathilda Bagshot for original characters.
    • A character by the name of Omnius Gaunt is a companion for a number of quests tied into the subplot of Sebastian Swallow trying to find a cure for his sister’s curse. The Gaunts are Voldemort’s mother’s family who tie back to the Peverells from the 13th century. Omnius mentions having a large family including parents, siblings, and at least an aunt. Only about thirty years later in canon, they’d been whittled down to only Voldemort’s grandfather, uncle, and mother and the name died out with them.
    • Acromantulas exist in the Forbidden Forest but it’s established in the books that Hagrid brought them to the school about half a century later when he was a student.
• The Silent Hill series has one main continuity, but much Silent Hill media exists outside of it in mutually-exclusive sub-continuities. The movie exists in its own, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories exists in its own (both are divergent re-interpretations of the first game). The Play Novel and the older comics exist in their own continuities as well. Thankfully, the main continuity is given clear precedence over the splinters: hence, no Continuity Snarl.
• The Simpsons video games:
  • The Simpsons Game is set in a continuity where The Simpsons discover they are video game characters.
  • The Reveal in The Simpsons Hit & Run makes it clear that it cannot take place in the show's continuity. The aliens Kang and Kodos are behind the plot and they start a Zombie Apocalypse in the final level. Aliens and zombies were at most one-off gags or kept to the Treehouse of Terror episodes of the show. The last missions also suggest that Professor Frink, Snake, and Abe die sacrificing themselves to stop Kang and Kodos, when they're all alive in the main series.
• Ultima Online is set in an Alternate Continuity wherein the Avatar never returned to Britannia after the events of the first Ultima game. This screws the countinuity around in countless ways, since he wasn't the Avatar until Ultima IV, and it is indeed possible that the Stranger in the first three games was a different person, or several different people, and the map of Britannia was completely different in each game until it finally took somewhat consistent shape in Ultima IV. And regardless of none of this happening, there's still Britannia in the shape and culture as was defined in Ultima IV, rather than the previous iterations.
• The Metal Gear series has a few alternate continuities. There are two alternate sequels to the original 8-bit game: Snake's Revenge for NES (which was actually the first sequel released, as Hideo Kojima hadn't planned on making one) and Metal Gear: Ghost Babel for Game Boy Color (simply known as "Metal Gear Solid" outside Japan).
  • Metal Gear Ac!d is an Alternate Continuity based on Metal Gear Solid. All it really has in common is a quasi-real-world setting, and the main character, whose personality and backstory are both softened slightly. By the second Acid they'd abandoned all premise of a real-world setting and thrown in lots of cyborgs, People Jars and all sorts of mayhem. This time Solid Snake wasn't even the same character from the previous game — he looked the part and had the same name but turned out to be a clone.
• Spyro the Dragon: In a effort to reboot the franchise, The Legend of Spyro discards all continuity from the previous games except the two main characters, Spyro and Sparx, who still go through major changes in appearance and personality. The developers have gone as far as calling the first game A New Beginning to highlight this.
  • They're clearly throwing in a lot of shout outs, with Sparx in A New Beginning eating butterflies, and the appearance of Hunter — originally a character in Spyro 2.
  • Then, another reboot was attempted with Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, which introduces as many protagonists the players can manage to get.
  • It can be argued that the post-Playstation classic era games take place in an AU from the originals, due to several continuity and characterization differences.
• Kirby: The anime (dubbed as Kirby: Right Back at Ya!) is a separate universe from the games though its overall plot can be seen as a loose adaptation of Kirby's Dream Land and Kirby's Adventure with King Dedede and Nightmare as the main antagonists.
• Shin Megami Tensei has multiple active continuities still getting releases, with even more continuities currently lying fallow. A full breakdown of all these continuities (and how they may or may not fit together) is available on the SMT page.
  • The "original" SMT continuity is not the one that gets the lion's share of the focus these days (though it's still going strong in its own right); that honor goes to the Persona sub-series, which initially spun out of Shin Megami Tensei if.... It's the first branch of SMT to be truly successful overseas (Persona 3, Persona 4 and Persona 5 all breaking six-figures sold overall), turning SMT into a legitimate Cash-Cow Franchise for Atlus.
  • Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse begins during the Neutral route of Shin Megami Tensei IV, and everything goes as usual, though this time from the perspective of a 15-year-old Tokyo native making a name for himself as a fledgling Hunter. Then the Divine Powers step in and things begin to play out very, VERY differently.
• SNK's The King of Fighters started off as a Massive Multiplayer Crossover between several of their game franchises, but took liberties in order to actually let this happen. For example, Art of Fighting took place in the late 1970s^note As evidenced by in-game data; Ryo's birth year is 1957, and he's 22 in AOF2, but KOF shifted the events up 20 years and resorted to Broad Strokes to keep the cast young and active. Likewise, Fatal Fury Big Bad Geese Howard died in that series, but is still alive in KOF. Eventually, KOF evolved into its own distinct continuity, especially as more emphasis was placed on the Original Generation characters like Kyo Kusanagi, K', and Ash Crimson. On top of that, King of Fighters EX for the Gameboy Advance and the 3D KOF: Maximum Impact each exist within their own separate continuities.
• Tomb Raider features three distinct, main continuities and a handful of "sub-continuities":
  • The original, created by Core Design, consisting of Tomb Raider I through Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.
  • The first reboot, created by Crystal Dynamics, consisting of Tomb Raider: Legend through Tomb Raider: Underworld.
  • The second reboot, also by Crystal Dynamics, consisting of Tomb Raider through Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
  • Certain spin-offs such as Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light are ambiguous as to which pre-existing continuity they take place in, if any. There's also the two movies starring Angelina Jolie, the 2018 movie starring Alicia Vikander, an anthology animated series, countless comics (some of which are explicitly Alternate Continuity, others which take place in one of the game continuities, and others still which crossover with other franchises like Witchblade), and a few tie-in novels (which take place in various game continuities).
• Virtua Quest is a spin-off game from Virtua Fighter. It is a RPG that takes place in the future about a boy who uses "Virtua Soul" to use digital versions of the Virtua Fighters to combat Judgement Six.
• The Pokémon franchise consists of several different sets of continuities:
  • First comes the games, which thanks to One Game for the Price of Two further consist of Alternate Timelines^note The Playable Epilogue from Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire and Alternate Universes^note The Entralink from Pokémon Black and White.
  • Add the trading card game, the (main) anime, quite a few OVAs,^note Pokémon Origins fits here and several manga spawned by these various games, along with Recursive Adaptations for the card game and the Anime series, each of which having added generously to the Pokemon world's mythology, events, and character interactions, and you have a deceptively complex fandom that stumps the uninitiated.
  • Several spin-offs of the games exist, many of which have manga or anime adaptations of their own.
  • On a more obscure note, Takeshi Shudō's novelizations of the anime are fairly revisionist in the approach to events. For example, Ash never obtains the three starters, plus Brock's siblings are only his half-siblings. The Pokémon anime's setting is also portrayed as a Crapsack World, in which a person is legally an adult at age ten.
• The spin-off Klonoa titles are all set in alternate continuities from the main series.
• Ghostbusters: The Video Game considers the original two Ghostbusters films as canon, with several references even to minor details in those films. It does not consider The Real Ghostbusters to be canonical, as most of the characters are depictions of the actors from the movies, instead of the radically different cartoon characters. However, it does borrow some ideas from the cartoon, such as the idea that all Ghosts are made of slime/ectoplasm, and they don't keep Slimer as a friend/pet, but they DO keep him in his own cage separate from the main containment facility.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: For a long-running franchise, it managed to break the barrier of having over fifteen continuities, all within their own canon.
  • We have five separate cartoon series: The comedy and slapstick based Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, the more dramatic Sonic SatAM, Sonic Underground, Sonic Boom (which also has three tie-in video games and a tie-in comic book), and Sonic Prime.
  • The Sonic X anime series. It also had its own tie-in comic book... that is actually set in the Archie continuity mentioned below (albeit in a separate dimension).
  • A largely self-contained OVA series.
  • At least two manga series.
  • The live-action movie and its sequel, which has already been confirmed to have another sequel and a spin-off series.
  • The long-running Archie Sonic comic book was originally based on the SatAM cartoon and later diverged into its own continuity. It has been going from 1993 to 2016, including various Day in the Limelight spinoffs such as Knuckles the Echidna and Sonic Universe. (The IDW comics are now considered part of the main continuity.)
  • In the UK there's the Fleetway Sonic the Comic that ran from 1993-2002 and a collection of stand-alone comic strips which aren't part of that continuity. There's also the novels, a series of Gamebooks by the same writers but forming their own continuity (which includes an Adaptation Expansion of the second Mega Drive game).
  • As for the games, those may even take place in two separate canons as the console titles and handheld titles do not seem to be happening in the same timeline and often contradict each other. That's not even counting games that may not even be considered official canon. Not to mention the fact that the Classic series may be in an entire separate continuity to that of the Modern series, with Sonic Generations mentioning how Classic Sonic is Sonic from the past (and therefore in the same continuity as Modern Sonic) and then Sonic Forces retconning this to Classic Sonic being from another universe (and therefore not in the same continuity as Modern Sonic).
• SNK/Playmore has released a bunch of Japan only cellphone games- many of them Dating Sims or Raising Sims that feature alternate versions of characters from its vast Fighting Game library. The Alternate Continuity is especially accented for example, in the games that take place in modern times but have characters from Samurai Spirits show up- quite often as the male protagonist's potential romantic interest. Or in the case of Iroha for one Raising Sim, as a plain old human version that you strive to make the damned best maid in the world.
• Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise features an alternate take on the Fist of the North Star mythos. Instead of wandering the wastes from one settlement to the next, the game takes place in the city of Eden and the surrounding wastes. Characters and events from the manga also appear, but how those events unfold differ from the manga series and are set against the backdrop of the game's new story.
• Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare is in a different continuity than the original series, but the 2008 game is a direct sequel, with Carnby having been kept in stasis by Lucifer since 1938.
• NieR is an Alternate Continuity sequel of Drakengard. While Drakengard 2 happened in the A Ending, where the world is mostly saved, NieR's world happens after the Mind Screw E Ending, where Caim and Angelus end up in Tokyo. According to backstory, Caim and Angelus are actually responsible for devastating the world (Just like he would've wanted).
• Red Dead Redemption was a pretty awesome Wild West sandbox game in its own right, but the creators apparently had a lot more cooked up for John Marston, because then Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare came out six months later. Same Wild West setting, but Marston now has to fight zombies in an Alternate Continuity.
• F-Zero has its main continuity with F-Zero (1990), F-Zero X and F-Zero GX. Its alternate continuities are F-Zero: Maximum Velocity (which takes place 25 years after the events of the first game) and F-Zero: GP Legend (which takes place in 2201, as opposed to the 26th century). GP Legend was received lukewarmly by most fans in the West because of the changes despite being a clear alternate universe.
• One of the more common explanations for why so little of PC-98 games have shown up since Touhou Project moved to Windows is that they're in a separate continuity. Though the PC-98 games barely had continuity...
  • The two main characters and a few other characters and (arguably) locations do return, but they're... drawn a bit differently. Theories abound, this trope being one of them.
• Tron 2.0 was considered the sequel to TRON, until it was rendered non-canon by TRON: Legacy. The prequel comic TRON: Betrayal and Flynn Lives ARG tie-in shows computer scientist Lora Baines Bradley is alive and well by the time of TRON: Legacy.
• BioShock Infinite takes place in another continuity rather than the main BioShock setting. This is actually an important plot point.
• Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds differs from the book and the rock opera that inspired it by taking place in an alternate universe where the humans aren't quite so outmatched, and the Martians remembered to take their flu shots.
• In Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, the good ending is considered canon but, the game Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? is canon from the "normal" ending. You can tell considering that Prinny Laharl shows up as a boss.
  • The Disgaea anime is a re-telling of sorts of the first game, but with countless differences.
• The Harvest Moon games aren't known for having a steady timeline but there are several different continuities at least. The original SNES game shares a continuity with Harvest Moon 64 and Tree of Tranquility, the Distaff Counterpart versions are in different continuities with each other, Friends of Mineral Town take place in the same continuity as A Wonderful Life and DS, the two Game Boy games take place in one continuity of their own...
• Jet Set Radio and Jet Set Radio Future most likely take place in separate continuities.
• There are three continuities in the Twisted Metal series: the original continuity (comprising 1, 2, and Head-On), the universe Black is set in (a Darker and Edgier universe; there was supposed to be a sequel to this one called "Harbor City" but it never came to be), and the universe of the 2012 reboot (so far the only game in its continuity). 3 and 4 have been written out of continuity.
• The Devil May Cry series has the original universe and the alternate universe that DmC: Devil May Cry is set in.
• Sword Art Online has an Alternate Continuity videogame series started with Sword Art Online Infinity Moment made by Banpresto. The game starts off with Kirito killing Heathcliff, however the game still doesn't get cleared unlike how it was in the series proper due to strange glitching in the system, and thus the players must climb up to floor 76 and beyond. It later received an Updated Re Release in Sword Art Online Hollow Fragment, which added on several more story elements, and the sequels, Lost Song and Hollow Realization, take place after the events of Hollow Fragment. Many of the differences include Leafa and Sinon being dragged into SAO thanks to the glitches, Sugo (aka Oberon) taking over as the Big Bad of Aincrad, two new heroines named Philia and Strea joining the main gang, the Alfheim arc changing thanks to Sugo going to jail early, a whole new VRMMO called Sword Art Origin coming out, and Yuuki Konno not dying like in canon.
• According to Firaxis Games, XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a separate continuity from the original XCOM series, with 2K Marin's The Bureau: XCOM Declassified serving as a prequel to Enemy Unknown.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The franchise has a confirmed 3 timelines branching from the end of Ocarina of Time: one timeline continues from the future after Link defeats Ganon and returns to his own time, leaving Hyrule with no hero (leading to The Wind Waker), one follows the past after Young Link uses the skills and knowledge he gained as an adult to stop Ganon before he gained power (leading to Majora's Mask), and one results from Link's defeat during Ocarina's final battle against Ganon (leading to A Link to the Past). Ultimately, the events of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are in an ambiguous spot in the series' timeline, and in the latter game, even time travel cannot change the course of history.
  • Hyrule Warriors is a Dynasty Warriors-style game set in yet another Zelda continuity, with no direct ties to the other games but featuring items and characters from all throughout the franchise co-existing in a single world. Sort of like a Super Robot Wars version of Zelda.
• Star Trek Online occupies its own continuity in a version of the Star Trek Prime Universe extrapolated from the canon that existed at the time of release, namely the first five TV series and eleven movies including the Kelvin Timeline films, and adopted Star Trek: Discovery into its continuity once that series came out. The backstory also borrows some details and plots from the Star Trek Novelverse^e.g.Riker and Troi had kids, Picard and Crusher married and had kids, the Romulans had a civil war in the 2380s, Ezri Dax commanded the USS Aventine, and Data (his mind restored in B4's body) took over as captain of the Ent-E., but discards others^e.g.The original Deep Space 9 still guards the wormhole, the two Romulan factions merged back together just in time for Hobus, the Typhon Pact never formed, the bluegills aren't augmented Trill symbiotes, and the Borg stayed away from the Alpha Quadrant until 2409., including the Star Trek: Voyager Relaunch and Star Trek: Destiny and the subsequent series in their entirety. The game also mostly ignores Star Trek: Picard, as that show wildly contradicts almost all of STO's preexisting backstory. A couple things from the show have been retconned in since the 10-year anniversary, however: Seven of Nine still joined the Fenris Rangers per "The Measure of Morality" (her character model was redone to her Picard look from her Star Trek: Voyager look), and an event raid, "Synthwave", depicts a computer simulation of the synth attack on Mars.
• The Castlevania: Lords of Shadow series takes place in a different continuity than the previous Castlevania games. The relationship between the series' heroes the Belmonts and the Big Bad Dracula is fundamentally different in that Dracula is a Belmont and the Fallen Hero of the first Lords of Shadow game.
• The Matrix: Path of Neo either slightly and/or drastically alters, extends or creates all new events and endings to certain scenes from The Matrix. Plus, from the ending Neo lives, which he doesn't in the films. So, it definitely fits this trope.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction is an alternate version of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime's season 4. Its prequel, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Sacred Cards, was an alternate season 2.
• Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals is an alternate-continuity remake of Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals, sharing the same general plotline but taking place in a different world with different lore. The game still includes Mythology Gags to other games in the main Lufia series.
• Sands of Destruction started out as a video game, but while they were producing the game, they decided making The Anime of the Game would be a good way to promote it. A second team produced the anime, and was either given very old copies of game scripts, or else was told to simply do as they pleased, as even characterization is very different. The setting is largely the same, and even somewhat follows the order of places visited to a degree, but what happens in each location is very different. For example, Kyrie doesn't die in the anime. A manga was later released as well, and while it starts out seeming to follow the game, it quickly veers off in its own direction, too. Most fans consider the game to be the "real" canon, but not all of them, and arguments about the merits of the anime are Flame Bait.
• Undertale establishes that each time the player resets the game, starts a new playthrough, or reloads, they're creating a new timeline. Oh, and some characters have Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory.
• The Neptunia series makes heavy use of this, with almost every game outside of the main entries taking place in its own continuity, as well the anime and some manga/light novels with each having its own self-contained continuity. As for the "main" series, the first game and its remake is set in its own continuity entirely (known as the "Super Dimension"), while Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2, Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory, and Megadimension Neptunia VII (alongside their respective remakes) are connected via the cast of mk2 (collectively from the "Hyper Dimension") interacting with and ending up in Alternate Universes in both Victory (known as the "Ultra Dimension") and VII (known as the "Zero Dimension" and "Heart Dimension" which are actually constructs created by a native of the Hyper Dimension). In a way, it shows off the good and bad of this trope, with the good being they can play around with gameplay and settings while keeping the core characters intact and the bad that there's a bit of plotline and character development recycling.
• The original Super Robot Wars saga had an alternate continuity as well. The original saga was Super Robot Wars 2, Super Robot Wars 3, Super Robot Wars EX and Super Robot Wars 4. Later on, 2 and 4 had remakes, 2G and the F and F Final sagas. 2G added in Mobile Suit Victory Gundam and Mobile Fighter G Gundam while F and F Final added in Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Aim for the Top! GunBuster, Neon Genesis Evangelion and gave us Mazinkaiser.
• YandereDev imagines the Mission Mode of Yandere Simulator as one of these to the game proper, as in Mission Mode Yandere-chan isn't a Yandere, but an assassin for hire.
• Batman: The Telltale Series takes some rather large liberties with the Batman mythology, as among other things, Harvey Dent becomes mayor, it's one of the times the death of the Waynes is an assassination, the Penguin was a childhood friend of Bruce's, and both Thomas Wayne and Vicki Vale underwent Adaptational Villainy with Thomas having been in league with Carmine Falcone and Hamilton Hill, and Vicki Vale being a biological member of the Arkham family, her parents being killed by Thomas, suffering abuse from her adopted parents, and leading a revolt against Gotham's elite because of these things. Also, depending on a choice made towards the end of episode five, either Alfred or Bruce himself will bear a constant reminder of the events of the game. The second season takes it even further: besides killing prominent Bat-Mythos characters like Lucius Fox and the Riddler, the player's choices determine whether Lucius' daughter Tiffany becomes the first Batgirl or a bitter vigilante willing to kill crooks, whether the Joker becomes a heroic vigilante (albeit not a very good one) rather than a psychotic mass murderer as normal, and whether Bruce will continue being Batman at the cost of his surrogate father Alfred walking away from the whole thing.
• The tie-in games of the The Amazing Spider-Man Series ultimately became this because of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The first game was intended to take place after the first movie and features Alistair Smythe as the main villain, Black Cat as a sidequest, and a human/rhino hybrid version of... well, the Rhino. Then despite approving of the use of those characters in the game, Sony went around and changed their minds as the second movie featured a still-breathing Smythe as pre-Electro Max Dillion's boss, Felicia Hardy as Harry's personal assistant, and a more traditional version of the Rhino at the beginning and end of the movie, so the second game retold the events, but set in the universe the first game established, with the movie's main villains Electro and Green Goblin being Demoted to Extra, Gwen Stacy being Adapted Out, and the main villains being The Kingpin and Carnage.
• The Super Smash Bros. games have a canon all to themselves, which was first really introduced in the story mode for Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
• Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions sees a Broad Strokes taken with its versions of the universes present, as among other things, it shows an adult Miguel O'Hara from the regular 2099 universe, yet also with Kron Stone as Scorpion a la Timestorm as opposed to Venom, and the Noir versions of the Green Goblin and Vulture still being alive. Additionally, the DS version doesn't feature the Ultimate universe, and has different villains as Amazing!Peter fights Electro and Tinkerer, Noir!Peter fighting Boomerang and Calypso, Miguel dealing with Vulture and a still-living Silvermane, and Amazing!Peter fighting Mysterio at the end alone.
• Spider-Man: Edge of Time sees a reality where Peter and MJ are still together, yet elements of Brand New Day are used, such as Anti-Venom. Additionally, the DS version features yet again, a different plot with some of the basic elements in common, such as trying to prevent Anti-Venom from killing Peter being removed, making the plot solely about stopping Walker Sloan's plans, and it features more villains, including Peter meeting 2099 versions of Arcade, Big Wheel, and Overdrive, while Miguel fights the Shocker and Menace. Additionally, as opposed to Peter fighting an army cloned from Black Cat, Miguel has to protect the real Felicia Hardy; it's the Rhino who merges with Sloan and Doctor Octopus to make Atrocity in place of Anti-Venom; and there's no psychotic future version of Peter.
• Wolfenstein is a rather confusing case. There is the original series by Muse Software, a 3D series by id Software, a reboot by id and its sequel by Raven and another series by Machinegames that acts both as a sequel to both series and as a reboot. The latter two series seem to form an alternate timeline yet the Machinegames series apparently reboots the reboot series.
• Yo-kai Watch has the games, the anime (and its movies which have an important plot to animated media), and the manga. Notably, some plots from the game and the anime get referenced and renditioned in each other, such as Episodes 25, 47, 77, 88, the first three movies (though loosely in this case), and the Busters T arc, while the two Darker and Edgier Shadowside and Forever Friends movies and the Shadowside anime series inspire most of the plot in ''Yo-kai Watch 4'. Likewise, there are special manga volumes which serve as tie-ins for each of the movies.
  • Interestingly, while the movie Yo-kai Watch Jam The Movie: Yo-kai Academy Y - Can a Cat be a Hero? initially seemed like an alternate continuity for the anime, the sequel Yo-kai Watch Jam - Yo-kai Academy Y: Close Encounters of the N Kind reveals that the ominous threat seen in the final scene of Yo-kai Watch! was an alien entity who decimated the Yo-kai World, releasing the Yo-kai criminal Mikettio and splitting him into three Yo-kai (Bakera, Goromi, and Bluepon) in the process, forcing Enma and Zazel to flee to the Y-Gakuen universe and Enma to keep himself dormant within Emma Daiouji (daugher of Kinya Daiouji, Lord Enma Gouen's own reincarnation). Also, some Classic Yo-kai managed to survive, keeping themselves safe within Earth Walker. Also, Episode 53 reveals that Jinpei, Jibanyan's reincarnation, is Amy's grandson and Miho's son.
• The Inazuma Eleven: Ares series is an alternate continuity of the second game from the original Inazuma Eleven series, where aliens never attacked the earth. Because of that, some things change, like Fubuki Atsuya and Kira Hiroto being Spared by the Adaptation ^note Hiroto's death is the main reason why his father gave the aliea meteorite to the children from his orphanage, a meteorite which gave them superhuman powers and wanted to show it to the rest of Japan under the pretext of an alien invasion in order to avenge his death. Episode 27 of the anime (the episode where aliens debuted) is also remade as a special episode named "Inazuma Eleven Reloaded".
• Doom: The original Doom, Doom II: Hell on Earth, and Doom 64 (plus various associated WADs) all take place in the same continuity: Basically, The Legions of Hell invade the Union Aerospace Corporation space station on Phobos thanks to teleportation experiments that used Hell as an Extra-Dimensional Shortcut, and then go on to invade Earth. However, other continuities add their own twist to this.
  • The novels start out paralleling the video games. However, the monsters are alien bio-robots, controlled by a race of Plant Aliens, rather than literal demons from Hell.
  • The 2005 movie has the monsters result from a Super-Soldier project conducted by pre-historic humans on Mars, which leads to a Zombie Apocalypse when it bonded to and supercharged "genetic markers for evil."
  • Doom³ returns to literal demons from literal Hell because of teleportation fuckery, but this time the UAC base is on Mars proper. Also, the project head intentionally let them through as part of his Faustian pact with Hell, rather than the demons showing up because of a teleporter accident. Rather than a ballz-to-the-wallz action shooter, it's a System Shock-like Survival Horror game.
  • Played with by Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal. This time, the UAC isn't messing around with teleporters, but mining "Argent Energy" from Hell in order to solve an energy crisis on Earth, only it to corrupt several of their employees into becoming Hell worshipers. There's also some new backstory involving the ancient civilization of Argent D'Nur, which fought against Hell in ages past. However, the Doom Slayer himself is revealed in Eternal to be the exact same Doomguy from the original games, just transported somehow into an alternate dimension sometime after the end of 64. Interestingly, Hell itself is now implied to connect to all dimensions across spacetime, meaning that even Doom 3 might be connected to the other games.
• Prince of Persia has at least 5 continuities: the original trilogy consisting of Prince of Persia, Prince of Persia 2 and Prince of Persia 3D, the Sands of Time saga consisting of The Sands of Times, Warrior Within, The Two Thrones, Battles of Prince of Persia and the four different versions of The Forgotten Sands, the short lived 2008 Reboot consisting of Prince of Persia (2008) and The Fallen King, the movie and the Comic Book.
• Grand Theft Auto has three different alternate continuities nicknamed the 2D Era (or Universe), the 3D Era, and the HD Era. Interestingly, the 3D and HD eras do share one point of continuity: their in-game radio stations, movies, TV shows, and other media, which this wiki calls GTA Radio and which has largely remained constant since the release of Grand Theft Auto III in 2001 even as the rest of the series has switched to a new continuity.
  • The 2D Era begins with Grand Theft Auto (Classic) (set and released in 1997), includes that game's expansion packs GTA: London 1969 and London 1961 (both set in The '60s), and ends with Grand Theft Auto 2 (set 20 Minutes into the Future).
  • The 3D Era chronologically begins with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (set in 1984), goes on to Vice City (set in 1986), San Andreas (set in 1992), Liberty City Stories (set in 1998), and GTA Advance (set in 1999), and ends on GTA III (set in 2001).
  • The HD Era begins with Grand Theft Auto IV (set and released in 2008) and includes that game's expansions The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony (set around the same time as GTA IV), Chinatown Wars (set and released in 2009), GTA V (set and released in 2013), and GTA Online (an ongoing live service that has spanned roughly a decade since 2013). It will continue with GTA VI (to be set and released in 2025).
• When Ubisoft took over the Might and Magic franchise, they billed their new, entirely fantasy, setting of Ashan as a Continuity Reboot, which is true insofar as Heroes campaigns and most other spin-offs are concerned... but not always true for individual Heroes scenarios, of which multiple ones that come with the games take place in the classic New World Computing continuity. Might & Magic X implies that the new and classic continuities all are in the same Verse and simply separated by where they take place, but as Ashan does its own thing and has, if it does share the common backstory, forgotten it, effectively it acts as an Alternate Continuity.
• There are at least four different continuities in the Rayman games:
  • The first game takes place in a surreal, cartoony world where everyone has Floating Limbs. Some characters, like the Magician, Taryazan and the Musician and his family, are even of the same species as Rayman.
  • Then there is the Rayman 2: The Great Escape universe that serves as the setting for all subsequent games (Rayman M, Rayman 3) and including the first three Raving Rabbids games, a slightly more realistic fantasy realm. There are no ties to the universe or storyline from the first game and Rayman is now the only limbless character, which is explicitly noted to make him stand out in the backstory.^note A cameo by the General from Tonic Trouble suggests that Tonic Trouble takes place in this universe too. Tonic Trouble takes place on a surreal version of Earth where everyone has Floating Limbs, which flatly contradicts the slightly more realistic version of Earth we see in the Rabbids spin-off games, so let's keep things from getting too complicated and keep that out of the discussion, shall we?
  • Then there is the TV series which has yet another different cast and universe. The presence of Admiral Razorbeard, the antagonist of Rayman 2, suggests that it might have tied into the main universe had it been allowed to run for more than four episodes.
  • Rayman Origins and its sequel Rayman Legends, which combine elements of the first two universes (the tv series is still out of luck) as an attempt at Canon Welding. Origins was originally supposed to be a prequel, however the story and setting end up contradicting earlier games, for example by changing characters like the Magician into a Teensie. In effect this ends up being a fourth continuity.
• While Batman: Arkham Asylum initially seemed consistent with the history of the comics, Batman: Arkham City is where it diverged, presenting Bruce's confrontation with Hugo Strange as the first time they'd fought. Batman: Arkham Knight confirms this as all three games tell End of an Era stories about the final years of Bruce Wayne as Batman in that universe.
• DC Universe Online is an odd one. When it first started, it was already something of an alternate universe as it took place in a post-Infinite Crisis universe with a few changes (like Barry Allen being the Flash). As of 2020, it's become a strange mish-mash of Silver Age, pre-Flashpoint and DC Rebirth eras.
• Two versions of the fourth Ys game (both of which were outsourced by Falcom) were produced concurrently, Ys IV: Mask of the Sun for the Super Famicom (Falcom's previous canonical version) and Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys for the PC Engine CD. They have the same characters and places but are completely different in terms of plot. Years later, Falcom made an internally developed version of Ys IV called Ys: Memories of Celceta, which replaces Mask of the Sun, though it has more in common with that game than The Dawn of Ys.
• In 2013, an archived version of RuneScape from 2007 was brought back. At first, this older version was an exact copy of the game as it was in the past, but over the years, new story elements suggest it's set in a different continuity from the modern version of the game.
• Disney Infinity
  • The Incredibles playset is set in a Metroville where Syndrome did not kidnap Jack-Jack and simply sent more of his robots on the city.
  • Likewise, the Monsters University playset is set in a continuity where Mike and Sulley weren't expelled from campus and Randall remained friendly towards them.
  • The Pirates playset takes in a continuity with trace elements of the second and third movies.
• Due to copyright ownership issues, Star Control: Origins is set in a different continuity from Star Control and Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters (well, and Star Control 3, whose canonicity is disputed). The basic elements are there, and there are numerous references to Star Control II (the most popular in the series), including hints that both continuities might exist in alternate worlds. Notably, they also take place in different times. Star Control II starts in 2155, while Origins starts in 2088.
• Five Nights at Freddy's: Both the books and the movie are set in self-contained continuities entirely separate to that of the games. This is most apparent with the movie, as while in the games William Afton has three children, which is a central part of the story and the whole reason Afton goes on his child murder spree to begin with, in the movie Vanessa is Afton's only daughter. Mike Schmidt, originally an alias for Michael Afton in the games, is entirely unrelated to William in the movie. The books do have the games as a starting point, most apparent with the Tales from the Pizzaplex series, but the stories they tell contradict the games at several points.