Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Canon Discontinuity / Video Games

Go To

Canon Discontinuity in video games.

  • In a cross-medium example, all Alien vs. Predator games seem to ignore the existence of Alien: Resurrection by depicting xenomorph encounters, Weyland-Yutani xenomorph research facilities, and at least two completely infested planets known to Company executives at a time when the species is supposed to be extinct in known space. The latest game, however, acknowledges one of the Alien vs. Predator films; however, it ignores all previous games.
  • Baldur's Gate:
    • The unpopular novelizations of the series, in which the protagonist was a Jerkass Karma Houdini, was eventually declared non-canonical by Wizards of the Coast. Officially, D&D video games are all non-canonical to the broader tabletop D&D continuity, letting the video game designers shake up the world however they like without worrying about treading on tabletop designers' and players' toes. However, most novels are treated as canonical to the tabletop settings unless stated otherwise (a situation classic Dark Sun and Dragonlance players were familiar with and bemoaned), which is why the Baldur's Gate novel specifically needed excising.
    • The Bhaalspawn saga (as in, there were Bhaalspawn and they all killed each other in a way similar to that explored in the games) was made canonical in 5th edition, noticeably in a way that excised everything from the novels except the broadest of Broad Strokes in that Gorion's Ward had the novel protagonist's name (Abdel Adrian) and class (Fighter). Said Bhaalspawn was then unceremoniously killed in the opening shots of 5th edition, whether by dying at the hands of Viekang or the party when the survivor turns into a feral Slayer and is put down like a wild animal.
  • BioShock:
    • The second episode of Burial at Sea for BioShock Infinite completely nullifies the story of BioShock 2 by making it impossible for certain elements of the game — like the Alpha Series Big Daddies and the link they have with the Little Sisters — to exist within the timeline. Of course, the ending of the main campaign introduced the existence of infinite universes — and by extension, infinite Raptures — so there's probably one where it did happen
    • Burial at Sea also nullifies what's stated in BioShock: Rapture, as in the novel Diane McClintock sees Atlas taking charge of a bread line in the Fishbowl Diner in Pauper's Drop sometime before Christmas Eve 1959, when according to Burial at Sea he should have been imprisoned in Fontaine's Department Store, which is never mentioned in the book. Also, the book doesn't include references to Suchong's contact with an alternate universe, or anything having to do with Elizabeth's presence in the city. Like the above example, we can probably assume that it did not take place in Rapture Prime.
  • Bomberman:
    • Bomberman Act:Zero is not a part of the main continuity, both on account of it being a radical departure from the series' light-hearted mood and from it being a rather terrible game on its own.
    • The pre-NES computer games (one of which used the Market-Based Title Eric and the Floaters), which used entirely different character designs, are pretty clearly out of continuity as well. The manual for Star Parodier lists Bomberman's birth date as "December 20, 1985" (the Japanese release date of the first NES/Famicom game).
  • Parasol Stars, the second sequel to Bubble Bobble, has never had a rerelease (not even in a compilation) and all the spin-off games ignore it.
  • Castlevania:
    • All games (barring the parody game Kid Dracula) were part of the canon in some form or another until Koji Igarashi (the director of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night) took over the series as producer during the development of Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, removing the two Nintendo 64 installments, Legends, and Circle of the Moon from the official timeline. Igarashi clarified that the N64 games and Circle of the Moon were still canonical, but were demoted to "side-story" status. Legends on the other hand, was officially retconned out of the series' continuity and is regarded as an alternate universe story.
    • Castlevania: The Adventure is an odd example. It is included on the official timeline — in part to avoid a continuity error note  — but is largely irrelevant to the series's canon anyway, perhaps because it's only included by mistake. Its characters and events are never acknowledged by any other game in the series, Christopher is absent from all crossover appearances, and is also the only Belmont not featured in Portrait of Ruin's "Greatest Five" Dual Crush, which summons the spirits of every other canon Belmont (bar Julius, who hadn't been born yet chronologically), including Leon — who had a 2D sprite created from scratch just for this one appearance.
  • CONV/RGENCE: A League of Legends Story: With the announcement that Arcane is now canon to the League of Legends main universe of League, this game and its implications of taking place in an Alternate Universe to Arcane's effectively removed it from continuity.
  • Contra:
    • In the late '90s, Konami farmed out the development of two Contra sequels to Hungarian developer Appaloosa (best known for the Ecco the Dolphin series), who produced Contra: Legacy of War for the PS and Saturn in 1996, and C: The Contra Adventure for the PS in 1998. Neither was that well-received by fans and critics alike. In fact, Konami even canceled plans to release a Japanese version of Legacy of War. In 2002, Konami commissioned Nobuya Nakazato (director of Contra III and Hard Corps) to develop the PS2 sequel, Contra: Shattered Soldier. The unlockable timeline of the game mentions all of the past Contra games, with the notable omissions of Legacy of War and Contra Adventure (and Contra Force, which was just a Dolled-Up Installment to begin with).
    • On a related note, the Japanese and American versions of the series had their separate continuities prior to Shattered Soldier. In Japan, the series always took place in the distant future, but in America the early games in the series (namely Contra, Super C and Operation C) had their plots rewritten so that they took place in the then-present. As a result, when they retained the future setting for Contra III, the changed the identities of the two heroes from Bill and Lance to their descendants Jimbo and Sully. With Shattered Soldier, Konami ignored the continuity of the previous American localizations and followed the original Japanese plot more closely.
  • Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time is an interesting example. On one hand, the game acts as the direct continuation of the original PS1 trilogy, completely ignoring everything that came up during the 22 year time gap between Crash 3 and 4. On the other hand, Paul Yan stated that the post-ND entries actually come after in its timeline.
    Paul Yan: ...like this joke that's kinda acknowledging the fact that it's ignoring some of the other sequels that are coming after this in its chronological timeline.
  • The novel Crysis: Legion has been completely rendered non-canonical by the events of Crysis 3. Unfortunately this means that quite a few plot holes closed by the novelization have been opened back up again.
  • The expansion for Diablo, Diablo: Hellfire, is regarded as non-canon. Players and the Blizzard staff aren't too fond of the finished product.
  • In the Double Dragon series, this was done to 1995's Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls with the release of 2018's Double Dragon IV. From 1987 to 1990, Technos released the original trilogy of Double Dragon games with the second and third games being numbered accordingly. In 1992, Technos released Super Double Dragon, which was also a Beat 'em Up game like the three previous entries. Even though it wasn't named "Double Dragon IV", many thought of Super as the official fourth installment of the series, albeit unnumbered. This also includes Tradewest*, who went on to develop and release Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls (with very little input by Technos during development), marketing it as the official fifth installment. Instead of being a beat 'em up game like the previous entries, The Shadow Falls is a Fighting Game that was also a Recursive Adaptation based on the 1993 Double Dragon animated series. After Arc System Works acquired all of Technos' IPs in 2015*, the former continued the Double Dragon series with the release of Double Dragon IV three years later. Not only did this confirm that Super wasn't the official unnumbered fourth installment after all, it also completely disregards The Shadow Falls as the fifth installment since ArcSys didn't label the 2018 IV game with the name "Double Dragon VI" instead.
  • Dragon Age: Origins has several epilogues slides that fall under this. Given that Origins was the first installment of the Dragon Age franchise, epilogues to the main campaign were written with no sequel in mind. In later main installments, some of those epilogues were either ignored or thoroughly retconned in favor of new plot developments. As an example: when allowed to ask for a favor from the ruler of Ferelden as a thank you for saving the world from the Blight, a Dalish player character may ask lands to be granted to the elves, and the epilogue states that this deal is honored; however, this was retconned in Dragon Age II, and never mentioned again in Dragon Age: Inquisition.
  • The now-closed Dragon Ball Online ignored Dragon Ball GT and even certain elements (read: Filler) in the rest of the Dragon Ball anime. This was due to Netmarble only obtaining the license for the manga and not for the anime. This was functionally prophetic considering that GT was later officially discarded from the main continuity by Dragon Ball Super, and Dragon Ball Xenoverse clearly establishes GT as an Alternate Timeline.
  • The Duke Nukem games Time to Kill and Land of the Babes, for the original PlayStation, while decent in their own right, aren't regarded as canonical. The fact that they were made by different developers probably has something to do with that. Neither is the N64-exclusive installment Zero Hour, supposedly.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • Averted with Daggerfall's Multiple Endings. Instead of declaring just one to be canon in the next game, all of them were made canon in a Merging the Branches situation using a Time Crash/Cosmic Retcon known as the "Warp in the West". However, none occurred to the same extent they would have individually - for example, instead of one city-state taking over the entire region, it was split into four with each loyal to the Empire, and Mannimarco did ascend to become a god, but in a rather minor station while leaving behind a "mortal" version of him who now worships the "god" version.
    • The Dark Brotherhood is a recurring Murder, Inc. faction throughout the series. They are known to be led by a mysterious figure known as the "Night Mother". In Morrowind, the "Night Mother" is Severa Magia, an Imperial assassin who brought the Dark Brotherhood to Vvardenfell in an attempt to wipe out the Morag Tong, a Professional Killer organization off of whom the Brotherhood originally split. A high-level Morag Tong quest has you assassinate her. Later games have dropped any connection between the Night Mother and Magia, treating the Night Mother as having been dead for centuries but who continues to lead the Brotherhood posthumously by communicating the "Listener". The fandom has mostly settled on viewing Magia as a high-ranking Brotherhood agent but not the Night Mother herself.
    • The Elder Scrolls Travels is a side-series of small, mobile phone games developed for Java-enabled devices, including the N-Gage. Travels consists of Dawnstar, Stormhold, and Shadowkey, with the canonicity of each unclear at best.
  • Epic Mickey deliberately ignores the fact that Oswald the Lucky Rabbit still appeared in cartoons for many years after Walt Disney lost him. This may be justified as the Disney and Lantz Oswald are treated as two separate characters, but there isn't even an implication given that Ozzie starred in more shorts after Walt lost him.
  • Fallout:
    • This happened to both a good chunk of Fallout 2 and almost all of Fallout Tactics. The former for the reasons stated below, the latter because many of the elements contradict the original game and its backstory. On the other hand, Bethesda seems to have the position that it's valid if it doesn't contradict anything, in relation to 2, and events are canonical, details are not, regarding Tactics. Specifically, when asked about Super Mutants, a Brotherhood Scribe lists fighting them on the West Coast and then near Chicago. Interplay and Black Isle had also dismissed them soon after release, and the tattered remnants of the dev team contributing to the Fallout Bible continue to do so.
    • Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, however, is completely exiled from continuity - while its plot doesn't outright contradict the first 2 games, it does drastically differ in tone. It is also the only game from the Interplay era to have never received a rerelease on digital storefronts.
    • The original ending of Fallout 3 was... vastly unpopular, to say the least (The player is forced to flip a switch that will save the day but also douse them with lethal amounts of radiation. Any companions that are immune to radiation will simply refuse to do it for you.) The Broken Steel DLC fixes that by allowing a companion to flip the switch, or the player do it themselves but be put in a coma for two weeks.
    • Chris Avellone, one of the head writers for Fallout 2, created a series of Fallout Bible posts which made a good portion of the game, particularly the overwhelming number of cheesy pop-culture references, non-canonical. Nearly everything that happened in the town of Broken Hills is non-canonical.
    • Fallout: New Vegas however is full of nods to both Fallout 2 and Fallout: Van Buren, the game that would have been Fallout 3. Its Old World Blues DLC is also partly based on content that was cut from Fallout 2.
  • Monolith Productions chose to ignore the two F.E.A.R. Expansion Packs (which were made by a different company, Vivendi) when they started development on the game's real sequels. As far as the wiki goes, the fandom treats Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate as the Vivendi timeline, Project Origin and on as the Monolith timeline, and First Encounter Assault Recon as belonging to both. Several gameplay and story elements from the expansions were kept, however, such as several groups of Replica reactivating despite Fettel's death, Fettel coming back from said death, a plane crashing in the city at some point after the Origin explosion, the ability to punch open doors, and some weapons including a continuous laser beam.
  • Tetsuya Nomura stated that Final Fantasy VII Remake is a separate continuity to the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII due to the inability to create a consistent feel for the series, and the desire to keep the Remake like the original in feel. The Twist Ending of Remake makes this somewhat moot, as the game appears to be a Stealth Sequel to the 1997 original (and, by extension, the rest of the Compilation) by means of Alternate Timeline, with the implication that the Sephiroth of the original/Compilation timeline is pulling the strings in order to rewrite history and ultimately undo his defeat.
  • Ultimate Custom Night was declared non-canon to the rest of the Five Nights at Freddy's series, as it was basically just an expansion of the infamous Custom Night modes of previous games and given how many animatronics are in from the previous games, including multiple versions of the same character, namely Baby and Springtrap, it's hard to reconcile this into canon without being subject to Continuity Snarl. However, there are enough hints and Easter Eggs to suggest that this is William Afton's Ironic Hell after his Karmic Death in Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator, suggesting this might be canon after all...at least until he finds a way to come back in Five Nights At Freddys VR Help Wanted.
  • Project G.E. Team quietly exiled God Eater Mobile from the God Eater series' continuity, and all traces of that game's existence has been deleted from the official website, especially in the history timeline. It was never been referenced in other God Eater games and the vast majority of GE fans don't even know about that game's existence.
  • In God of War, in an unlockable video the protagonist, Kratos, visits his mother and learns that Zeus was his father. He's not happy to learn this, and plans to take vengeance on Zeus somewhere along the line. Yet in the second game, as Kratos is holding a dying Athena, Athena reveals to him that he is Zeus' son, which Kratos is surprised to hear, but declares that he "has no father". The director of the game acknowledged this error in the extras, and states that he was disappointed that they revealed it in the first game, because he finds it more fitting for it to be dropped on Kratos after he is denied his vengeance. He openly said that he doesn't care about the error.
  • Grand Theft Auto Advance is notable in the Grand Theft Auto series for this. Effectively the only game in the series to receive virtually no input from primary GTA developer Rockstar North, it features unique characters (i.e. Mike, Cisco, Jonnie and Yuka) and plot developments (bubonic plague occurring in Liberty City and 8-Ball's arrest that resulted from a Colombian Cartel attack) that are never acknowledged in succeeding GTA games.
  • Gundam: The Battle Master is a fighting game based on the Gundam series, containing an Original Generation of characters and an all new story not connected to any pre-established Gundam season outside of the Mobile Suits represented in that game. It was also abandoned by Bandai following its western conversion into Battle Assault, with not even the Continuity Cavalcade series Gundam Build Fighters and its sequels willing to touch that game with a 10-foot pole. The only acknowledgement the series has gotten since its dormancy is the existence of the Psycho Gundam Mk-IV G-Doors in the Mobile Suit Moon Gundam manga, which implies that the Mk-III introduced in The Battle Master might exist after all... but that just begs the question on how can the Psycho Gundam Mk-III exist if The Battle Master is never referenced?
  • When Gundam Breaker 4 was revealed, it was mentioned that it was a sequel to Gundam Breaker 3, Gundam Breaker Mobile and the anime Gundam Breaker Battlogue but no mention of New Gundam Breaker. As well, it was stated that the mechanics from said game were not coming back, meaning this much maligned game was not making any sort of return.
  • Halo's continuity policy directly addresses this: new material automatically overrides old material in the event of a contradiction, while the games (usually) override Expanded Universe media, which in turn override promotional materials like the "Believe" ad campaign. Thus, the claims in the older books that Elites, Brutes, and Hunters were never encountered until the last year of the Human-Covenant war were overridden by newer material (and updated reprints of said older books) which had them fighting in the war from the very beginning. This is largely because Bungie had a tendency to outright ignore supplemental material in the interest of making the game that they wanted to. An instance where this caused major Fanon Discontinuity is the differing depictions of the Battle of Reach in Halo: The Fall of Reach and Halo: Reach. The former depicted the battle as being a surprise attack that resulted in the complete destruction of the planet within a matter of days. The latter depicts the battle as a prolonged military campaign that rages on over the course of a month. 343 Industries has tried to reconcile the two media, but there still exists major holes.
  • The official sequel to Homeworld completely ignores the stand-alone Expansion Pack Homeworld: Cataclysm. The only possible hint is the suspiciously low numbers of the Bentusi left in the galaxy. While many assume it's because the Vaygr killed the rest, it's difficult to ignore that the plot of Cataclysm has the majority of the Bentusi fleeing to another galaxy to escape the Beast. It's not clear whether this was because Relic's creative team were unhappy with the quality of the gameplay or narrative (introducing mechanics like Support Units and adding horror elements to the story were very much love-it-or-hate-it developments as far as the fanbase was concerned) or confusion over who owned the rights due to the company subcontracting development of Cata to Naughty Dog and then being bought out by Sierra during Homeworld 2's Troubled Production.
  • In the announcement of HuniePop 2, Word of God had stated that HunieCam Studio is non-canon to the series. Given that a number of characters were subject to Age Lift (ex: Nikki was aged up two years, Audrey was aged down three years) in HunieCam Studio, it makes it hard to reconcile with the rest of the series. However, a few HunieCam characters are present in HuniePop 2.
  • The iDOLM@STER 2 appears to ignore the events of iDOLM@STER SP, as it makes no reference of Hibiki and Takane having been part of 961 and never mentions Miki having joined 961 either. The same game also ignores the Awakened Miki storyline from the Xbox 360 game, as Miki not only still dyes her hair blonde, but has also grown it out some more.
  • Kid Icarus: Uprising is treated as the only sequel to the original Kid Icarus, completely ignoring the events of the Game Boy sequel Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters. This is likely because the game hadn't released in Japan until 2012 via the Platform/VirtualConsole service in the region, a mere month before the release of Uprising. The Super Smash Bros. series doesn't make any mention to Of Myths and Monsters either, outside the "Chronicle" section of American NTSC and PAL copies of Brawl simply listing the game and its release date.
  • The 2013 reboot of Killer Instinct on the Xbox One was originally intended to be a follow up to the first two games in the series (and even then, the time travel element of the original sequel was ignored, too). The developer switch from Double Helix to Iron Galaxy brought about a shift in that plan, as Iron Galaxy at first claimed the continuity was on a "sliding timeline" and that the first two games might have happened in some way, but after the re-introductions of Maya and Kim Wu proved to be substantially different from their original incarnations, fans are in agreement the game has since become a Soft Reboot of the series as a whole.
  • The widely derided King's Quest: Mask of Eternity has never shown up on any of the compilation CDs of the King's Quest series and has only since been re-released on GOG.com.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • Nintendo has outright stated that The Legend of Zelda CD-i Games never happened (and not just because Nintendo doesn't own the rights to them). This is taken to such an extreme that an issue of Nintendo Power describes The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks as the first time Zelda is a semi-playable character. She was fully playable in two CD-i games. The official Hyrule Historia, which gives the official timeline of the games, also omits them.
    • Hyrule Warriors is meant to be non-canonical from the get-go, taking place in a world separate from the timeline of the series, although the various eras from the main series are visited during the game's story.
    • Unsurprisingly, the Game & Watch variant of Zelda is not a part of the Zelda timeline.
  • Leisure Suit Larry 4. It doesn't exist. It's not just non-canonical, it was never made. The real-life explanation is that Sierra couldn't think of a good way to continue from Larry 3's happy ending, so they just did a sequel anyway and made the continuity errors it produces part of the plot. The story goes that creator Al Lowe had sworn that there would never be a 4... before agreeing to make another Larry game. To keep his oath, he made 5 and simply had the characters reference Leisure Suit Larry 4: The Missing Floppies, a title that exists in the game's plot. The cleanup for the plot from 3 was an added bonus. The lack of 4 even became a plot point in Space Quest 4; Vohaul had corrupted the master disks and used them to take over Xenon.
  • Legend of Mana is now not considered by Square Enix to be part of the main Mana continuity.
  • Mega Man:
  • Metal Gear:
  • Myst is a little more complicated, as it involves Direct Line to the Author. The first two books (Atrus, Catherine) do not mention the D'ni society as having slaves, just a caste system. Book of D'ni makes it explicit that slavery is repugnant to D'ni society. Then Uru came out, with the storyline's finale in Myst V: End of Ages... again, it seems the author of the books "based" his writings on Catherine's journals, which dismiss the clear slavery of the Bahro, for never entirely cleared reasons. As for Book of D'ni, well, people long gave up making sense of it.
  • The events of Persona 3 spin-off Persona -trinity soul- and Persona 4 sequel Persona x Detective NAOTO were originally intended to be canonical to their games, but their apparent poor reception resulted in both being exiled out of the greater Persona continuity. The most recognition either received was a Discontinuity Nod to the former in Persona 4: Arena, where Akihiko makes plans to quit the Shadow Operatives and become a police officer — his profession in -trinity soul-.
  • Postal III never happened. It's been a Running Gag by Postal developers Running With Scissors to refuse to acknowledge that Postal 3 even exists, as it was not developed by RWS and released to critical and commercial failure. The DLC add-on Postal 2: Paradise Lost, released a few years after 3, explicitly retcons the third game's events as All Just a Dream. The description page for Postal 4: No Regerts casually states that "no third game is known to exist." note 
  • Radical Dreamers, the text-based (and, for a long time, Japan-only) first sequel to Chrono Trigger, was completely thrown out of continuity by the later PS sequel Chrono Cross, which was also something of a remake of Radical Dreamers. The events of that game are thrown into an alternate reality... or something. Series creator Masato Kato originally had much greater plans for Dreamers, but the entire game was rushed. Cross was his way of finishing off his original planned story...and the characters of Trigger, while he was at it.
  • Resident Evil Gaiden, the Game Boy Color installment in the Resident Evil series, has been ignored by every other game in the series because it ends with the heavy implication that Leon Kennedy was killed and replaced by a Voluntary Shapeshifting monster. Notably, this was originally intended to be canon and lead into Resident Evil 4, but the build Gaiden led to ended up scrapped and it was decided to drop the whole thing instead of try to salvage it.
  • The Romeo and Juliet quest in RuneScape, which, as of a September 2010 update, has the dubious honor of being the first (and, so far, only) quest to be completely removed (down to most of the characters) from the game and site features — including a Postbag from the Hedge letter that, by that time, was nearly four years old. The explanation Jagex gave for removing the quest is that it they felt it simply didn't mesh well with the world of Gielinor. Two other former quests (Sheep Shearer and Witch's Potion) simply got demoted to miniquest status, and several other quests were updated or retooled as time went on.
  • Shadowgate 64 completely disregards the 1993 Beyond, probably because so few people would have been able to play it in the first place. The teaser for the then planned 2016 Beyond Shadowgate seems to follow suit.
  • Soldier of Fortune: Payback was produced by a low-budget developer, seemingly with a Game Maker program, disregards the characters and story of the previous games.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • The Sonic the Hedgehog Promo Comic was originally the canonical western backstory for Sonic and Robotnik, according to the original US Sonic Bible. Following the release of Sonic Adventure, localizations dropped the old western continuity and started following the original Japanese continuity more faithfully, resulting in this backstory being discarded (although given the game manuals never even acknowledged it, it's arguable if it was ever even established in the first place).
    • Similarly, old western characterizations and concepts like Mobius were dropped after Sonic Adventure, with the characters following their Japanese characterizationsnote  and their world being specifically referred to as the Earthnote . For a long time the only media to continue using Mobius was the Archie comic series as a result of being such a long-running continuity. Eventually even Archie did away with it, following the series' Continuity Reboot.
    • The reimagining of Team Chaotix in Sonic Heroes seemed to imply this as the fate of Knuckles Chaotix. Mighty's "last seen" date on a poster in Sonic Generations being 1993 instead of 1995 didn't help matters. However, TailsTube would later confirm the events are canon.
    • The game that seems to have been hit hardest by this is Sonic Pocket Adventure; according to Ian Flynn, he was barred from even mentioning the game in the Sonic the Hedgehog Encyclo-speed-ia due to undisclosed legal issues, likely involving SNK's hand in creating the game. To put this into perspective, even the other non-canon games were still allowed to be mentioned in the book.
    • Kevin Eva, who was the community manager of Sega Europe in the mid-2000s, stated that Sonic Chronicles is non-canonical to the main games. This was later reaffirmed by comic writers Ian Flynn and Evan Stanley. In addition, the Ken Penders lawsuit with Archie and Sega, which involved using substitutes of his own characters from the comics in the game, makes it very unlikely that elements from the spinoff will ever pop up again. That said, however, a Ferox Chao makes a surprise cameo in Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) issue 33 and the Knuckles Clan being referred to by their Chronicles name.
    • In a rare case of two games that were simultaneously released, Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal appears to do this to Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, as no reference to the latter is ever brought up in the former and Sonic and Lyric apparently meet for the first time with neither recognizing the other.
  • The Speed Rumbler: All material trying to depict Top as Super Joe has been ignored as of 2009 which is further cemented in a 30th anniversary encyclopedia labeling it a change done in the English market.
  • The creators of the Star Control series have made it clear that Star Control 3, which was made without their input and was met with overwhelming fan backlash, never happened. So no, the Precursors aren't cows. Word of God has revealed that some of the things in it are what the creators had intended to do if they'd gotten to make their own sequel, though — such as the part about the Mycon actually being biological terraformers created by the Precursors whose programming has become distorted into a bizarre religion.
  • Satoru Iwata declared back during the later years of the Wii era that the then-current state of the Star Fox series was either after Star Fox: Assault or somewhere before Star Fox Command. More than likely to be the former than the latter, if the available information is any credible, as whilst the appearances of the cast in Super Smash Bros. (from Brawl onward) do make some slight reference of certain of Command's plotlines, they otherwise seem to resemble and behave like their appearances in Assault far more. Specifically, Fox McCloud and Krystal's relationship problems from Command are alluded to in their profiles, but otherwise they're still together and Krystal is still a member of Star Fox (as opposed to joining Star Wolf), Panther Caruso does not speak in third-person and the ships are all pre-Command design-wise. Of course, the following game, Star Fox Zero was a Continuity Reboot of the series (the second one after Star Fox 64), making this a moot point.
  • Star Trek Online: Set in an Alternate Continuity to the Star Trek Novelverse, both are non-canonical to the show. Elements of the 2009 reboot are Exiled from Continuity.
  • Capcom never released an official statement, but it's safe to say that the events of Street Fighter 2010 don't count in Street Fighter continuity since Capcom doesn't talk much about this particular game, with Ken's role in that game never being addressed in any subsequent games. This is because, in the Japanese version, the main character is called Kevin, with his name being changed to Ken in the American localization in order to make a connection with the main games of the series. It helps that the futuristic setting of the year 2010 is now dated.
  • The localized version of Streets of Rage 3 was met with scorn due to the localizers heavily censoring the story (changed the plot of a nuclear bomb threat to general chaos and disorder with generic bombs), changing the colors of the player characters, and making the game a lot harder while also blocking the player from advancing past stage 5 on Easy difficulty. When Streets of Rage 4 was made, any references made to the third game are based on the Japanese version rather than the localized version (which is likely helped by the Japanese version having a popular English Fan Translation designed to undo all of the localization changes).
  • When British game publisher U.S. Gold got the license to produce ports of Strider for home computers in Europe, they took the liberty of producing an exclusive-sequel titled Strider II, which was later remade for the Sega Genesis and Game Gear and released in America under the title of Journey From Darkness: Strider Returns. Capcom later got to make an arcade/PS sequel titled Strider 2, which completely ignored U.S. Gold's own sequel (though since Strider 2 is a huge Time Skip, not much would be different).
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Super Mario Bros. Special: Despite being an officially licensed 2D Mario platformer, it's been excluded from the official list of platformers in the franchise. It doesn't appear in any of the Nintendo websites, and isn't listed (let alone covered in detail) in the Super Mario Encyclopedia.
    • Hotel Mario for the CD-i is disregarded by fans, critics and Nintendo developers alike. Since the canon in Mario is otherwise very loose and flexible, the case of Hotel Mario is unique in its kind: It's not referenced at all in the Nintendo-produced games, Mythology Gag or otherwise outside of its sound effects being reused.
    • All the educational Mario PC games released in the 1990s (Mario Is Missing!, Mario Teaches Typing and its sequel, Mario's Time Machine, etc.) have fallen into this for two reasons: 1) Nintendo doesn't own them, and 2) they are considered some of the worst Mario games ever made by fans, critics and developers.
    • Banjo-Kazooie and Conker's Bad Fur Day were originally part of a Shared Universe with Donkey Kong and by extension, Mario. This is no longer true following Rare's transfer to Microsoft, and indeed both characters were removed from the DS remake of Diddy Kong Racing. In Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Banjo still mentions what happened in Diddy Kong Racing in a Continuity Nod, but seems like all the Broad Strokes and Negative Continuity in the world can't get around copyrights. Another issue is that Conker originally starred in a family-friendly game (Conker's Pocket Tales on the Game Boy Color), and the N64 title was going to be so, but it was changed during development into an adult-only game full of violence and swearing.
    • Nintendo has officially declared Super Mario 64 to be the first time Mario was voiced by Charles Martinet, completely omitting earlier instances like Mario's Game Gallery.
  • A rather odd case for Banpresto's Super Robot Wars: Original Generation. Original Generation (OG1) lets players choose between Ryusei Date and Kyosuke Nanbu, whose stories co-exist with one another for the first half of the game. It's only until the second half events unfold differently for either character. Come Original Generation 2 (OG2), events state only Ryusei's second half of OG1 happened; Kyosuke's second half is never mentioned at all. While this drops loads of foreshadowing from Kyosuke's second half of OG1, fans were quick enough to deduce Banpresto did this to show that OG1 was never meant to be played in favour for Kyosuke, but the sequel was, since the game was primarily focused on his story from Super Robot Wars Impact. Strangely enough, Kai Kitamura seems to know the other members of the cast very well, even though he's a permanent character in Kyosuke's route. And to celebrate SRW's 15th anniversary, Banpresto released Original Generations (OGs), a Video Game Remake on the PlayStation 2 of both GBA games, which rehashes the storyline to include Early Bird Cameos, new Humongous Mecha, the cast of Super Robot Wars Reversal, new characters and a major personality change to Axel Almer.
  • The developers of Them's Fightin' Herds had a collection of chapters called The Book of Lore made by Lauren Faust which gave extra details on its lore and the backstories of the six original playable Champions. Though sometime later, they decided to ditch the whole first Volume as canon and retell the events within the game's story mode itself. Sure enough in the first chapter, the start of Arizona's adventure played out very differently then in the Book of Lore, with the only thing in common was her father telling her she was "too young". Though keep in mind most of the character's general backstories are still the same note , just the details of how they happened are discarded.
  • The old version of the Toontown Online downloading screen showed the lore for the Cog enemies (this can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8KkaCuRZBg), however this was never mentioned again except for one quote from the CEO boss battle: "No! The Chairman won't like this."
  • The first five Touhou Project games for the PC-98 exist in a weird state where they're not completely discontinuity, but enough for that status to be widely accepted. The following games for Windows make very few references to the PC-98 games, and what little that carried over is greatly changed. ZUN himself, when questioned, only says that we could ignore the PC-98 games instead of saying anything stronger. Doesn't help that Hopeless Masquerade had almost all characters of the Windows games up to that point in the background if not outright playable, but none of the PC-98 characters bar Alice and Yuuka, who were already brought back in earlier games. Fans were severely disappointed at the missed opportunity.
  • When it first came out in 2003, TRON 2.0 was supposed to be the official sequel to the movie TRON, since it seemed almost certain that Disney would never make a second film. Seven years later, when they actually did release another movie, the continuity differences between TRON: Legacy and 2.0 proved irreconcilable, so 2.0 was rendered non-canonical.
  • The first sequel to the original Twilight Syndrome duology was Moonlight Syndrome, a game spearheaded by Suda51 which was a radical departure from the original's tone and storytelling. Given Suda's decision to make the game so hugely contrasting to its predecessor as well as subject the original duology's main characters to some rather unkind fates, the sequels that later came out under Spike Chunsoft after Human Entertainment's closure decided to ignore Moonlight altogether.
  • After Singletrac died, 989 Studios took over the Twisted Metal series and produced Twisted Metal 3 and 4 on PlayStation. Once Incognito Entertainment (a studio consisting largely of Singletrac employees) regained the rights to the series, they made Twisted Metal Black, which was much Darker and Edgier than the original two games and set in its own continuity. The only PlayStationPortable entry in the franchise, Head-On, is set after the second game and ignores the 989 entries. The post-989 entries were much better received, to the point that Head-On is considered by fans to be the "true" Twisted Metal 3.
  • The Ultimate Spider-Man game was initially touted as being 100 percent canonical in the comic book continuity. Unfortunately, the comic eventually moved in a direction that made it flat-out impossible to treat the game as canonical, so Brian Bendis ended up writing a Broad Strokes Pragmatic Adaptation that imported the most relevant bits of the game, while roundly ignoring the elements that didn't fit.
  • Epic has admitted that Unreal Tournament 2003 isn't a complete game, first by refining the original game into Unreal Tournament 2004 with many of the previously missing features and offering a rebate to 2003 owners who bought 2004, then by numbering the sequel Unreal Tournament III. Strangely enough, the backstory of 2004 doesn't override that of 2003, claiming that every event of 2003 happened (such as Malcolm being defeated by Gorge). The same can't be said for the original Unreal Championship, which was set in an Alternate Universe.
  • The "Another End" ending of Virtue's Last Reward was declared non-canon by director Kotaro Uchikoshi, since it went way too far into meta-fiction, with characters addressing the player directly. The ending was tacked on as an afterthought and was never intended to be canon and the end canonically ended with "END or BEGGINNING" ending. Indeed, the next (and final) installment of the Zero Escape series, Zero Time Dilemma, doesn't follow any plotline from "Another End."
  • If you search for the Virus Invasion series, you'll find Virus Invasion 1 through 7; however, there actually existed an eighth game which was removed from the timeline. As it was subjected to an Orwellian Retcon, it is somewhat of a Missing Episode these days. It has a story behind it which sounds like it was taken from a creepypasta. Firstly, it was an Oddly Named Sequel called Little Bear's Adventure. It took place at approximately the same point in the timeline as Virus Invasion 2, but was actually made first, shortly after VI1, and used the same (rather glitchy) engine. It was Darker and Edgier too: Ever notice how you play as yellow little bear in VI1 but cyan little bear in VI2? Well, that's because the first little bear never actually escaped; he was abandoned somewhere when the others left, becoming the protagonist of Little Bear's Adventure. He tries to escape again, but fails, dying at the end.
  • World of Warcraft:
    • Most of what is said in the Warcraft tabletop game is ignored, especially considering Whitewolf and Blizzard Entertainment broke off ties.
    • While most of the Warcraft comic series is considered canon, the protagonist of it, Med'an, was written out of the lore due to his incredibly negative reception. Most of his accomplishments still happened, but are instead attributed to other people in the story (notably, Valeera is now the one who defeated Cho'gall).
    • The official canon compendium World of Warcraft Chronicles: Volume III recaps the story of Warcraft III, its expansion, and WoW through Cataclysm. In the process fixing canon issues which arose and assigning canon resolutions to most of the raid encounters. As such, any time an Alliance guild cleared BWL or a Horde guild killed C'Thun (to list a couple examples) is officially non-canon — "Horde Champions" killed Neferian and "Alliance Champions" stormed AQ40.
  • WWE '13, features a story mode that allows you to play through the company's Attitude Era as many of its top stars at the time. The first part lets you play as D-Generation X which, as fans who were watching back then remember, started out as the trio of Shawn Michaels, Triple H, and Chyna. In the game's retelling of the story, it's just Shawn and Trips. Whether this was a license rights issue or an Orwellian Retcon related to Chyna parting ways with the company on bad terms is known only to those involved.
  • While XCOM 2 retroactively rendered XCOM: Enemy Unknown a "Shaggy Dog" Story by revealing that XCOM lost the First War to the aliens (and that any successful campaigns you might have played through were in-universe simulations the Commander dreamed of while hooked up to the aliens' neural network), the first game was still canon within the universe of the series. However the expansion, Enemy Within, was completely ignored by the sequel, and all the additions it brought to the table (Meld, gene modding, MEC troopers, EXALT, new enemy units like Mechtoids and Seekers) were never referenced again, even when it would make sense for them to be (for example the second game includes SPARK units as a robotic soldier created by Dr. Shen, but never touches on the MEC troopers that were Enemy Within's rough equivalent to them).
  • Ys:

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top