Canon Discontinuity / Western Animation

Canon Discontinuity in western animation TV.

---

Examples:

• With BattleTech, the '90s animated series is said to be an animated show within the game's universe. While events similar to it did happen, they did not occur anywhere near like they did in the cartoon.
• According to Word of God, the Ben 10 episodes set in the future are canonical, and they portray Kevin as an unrepentant villain. However, in Alien Force (under a new creative team), he is a redeemed good guy and remains that way up until the 2016 Continuity Reboot. In addition, the pop-up edition of the episode "Goodbye And Good Riddance" states that the episode is not canonical, and that the real story of Ben's return to Bellwood is the live-action film Race Against Time. The Ultimate Alien episode "Ben 10,000 Returns" officially established these and future "canon inconsistent" events as alternate universes and timelines. Also, in this same episode it is implied that Ben unlocks Buzzshock, as he appears in the intro of the series with the rest of Ben’s alien roster as well as in the comics. However, the Ben 10: Omniverse episode “Max’s Monster” has Buzzshock explicitly being unlocked for the first time.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner! completely ignores the ending of Channel Chasers as (among other things) Timmy is still in fifth grade and still has Cosmo and Wanda as fairy godparents. Come A Fairly Odd Summer, where Timmy performed a Heroic Sacrifice and Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence, and the ending to Channel Chasers is an impossibility. Interestingly, the fanbase loves Channel Chasers and hates the live-action movies, so they tend to call Fanon Discontinuity on them to undo this Canon Discontinuity. Confused yet? Then again, the series itself makes it apparent that the future is never certain, so one can certainly Handwave the live-action movies as alternate futures. However, Word of God says that the live-action movies are the canon ending for the series.
  • Similarly, the Season 9 episode "Let Sleeper Dogs Lie" ignores the events of the episode "The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker", which revealed that Crocker had Cosmo and Wanda as fairy godparents as a kid, but lost them due to Timmy's interference in the episode, causing him to become bitter. This time around, he had Sparky as a pet, was always a complete Jerkass, and simply lost his fairies when he turned 11.
  • Nickelodeon later began airing a tenth season of the show in 2016. Considering they've already added a new major character that Timmy must share Cosmo and Wanda with, this new season seems set to invalidate ALL of the movies.
• One episode of Family Guy involved Lois working as a reporter for Fox News and discovering that Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh (along with a number of other celebrities) are actually just fictional personas created by Fred Savage. A later episode features Rush Limbaugh having a book signing in Quahog, leading to this conversation:
  Chris: But I thought Rush Limbaugh was just a fictional character played by Fred Savage...
  Lois: Where'd you hear that?
  Chris: Fox News.
  Lois: Then it's a lie. Everything Fox News says is a lie.
  Chris: This one's true mom! You saw it with your own eyes and then you reported it on Fox News!
  Lois: Even true things once said on Fox News become lies.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends had the episode "Everyone Knows It's Bendy", with the titular Scrappy being so widely-reviled that Lauren Faust publicly apologized for writing him and tried to declare the episode non-canon. However, it didn't take as Bloo's flooding of the house within the episode received a Call-Back in the Election Day Episode and Bendy's signature appears in the Series Finale.
• Gravity Falls has this with its second Vignette Episode, "Little Gift Shop Of Horrors". While the Framing Device of "Bottomless Pit" is canon (along with Mabel's story), this episode ends with Stan knocking out the customer when they don't want to buy anything, and turning them into one of his displays, which Dipper and Mabel uncharacteristically have no problem with (although it's mainly Played for Laughs). The key word in this episode (there's one in every Season 2 episode that hints at how to solve the cryptograms) is "noncanon", which when used will reveal the message, "CHECK OUT DR. WADDLES’ LATEST BOOK: "A BRIEF HISTORY OF OINK OINK OINK OINK OINK""
• The Heavy Gear animated series is considered by Word of God to be an entertainment broadcast similar to professional wrestling within the Heavy Gear universe, and thus not representative of how things work in the "real" Heavy Gear universe.
• Inspector Gadget (2015) directly continues on from the classic Inspector Gadget, and makes no mention of Gadget and the Gadgetinis whatsoever.
• Jonny Quest: Lance Falk, the head writer of Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures, instigated an official policy to ignore the events of the 1984 series and the two made-for-TV movies on the show.
• King of the Hill: According to a Deleted Scene from "Lucky's Wedding Suit", the episodes "Tankin' it to the Streets"^note the episode where Bill steals an army tank and "Yankee Hankee"^note wherein it's revealed that Hank was born in the Yankee Stadium in New York City never happened and were just weird dreams that Bill had after overeating at a nearby Hungarian restaurant. Out-of-universe, show creator Mike Judge and co-producer Jim Dauterive are on record for disliking both episodes, explaining the plan to retcon them both.
• Little Bill: Due to the allegations against Bill Cosby, Nickelodeon has chosen to remove Little Bill from its canon of animated series. The show was excluded from its "complete" timeline of Nick animated shows and hasn't been acknowledged by Nickelodeon in any way since 2014.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: This is an issue that tends to recur between the franchise's animated portion (Friendship is Magic and My Little Pony: Equestria Girls) and its printed portion (the comics series and chapter books such as The Journal of the Two Sisters). The official statement from the writers on the matter is that the animated part forms the central canon, and the rest of the Expanded Universe is to be considered canon where it does not conflict with the animated shows. However, a number of such conflicts have cropped up over time.
  • The Season 7 finale, "Shadow Play", deals extensively with the lore of the show's ancient history, and in so doing contradicts a number of previous accounts of the same.
    • The Journal of the Two Sisters, a chapter book focusing on the early lives of Luna and Celestia, states that two discovered the Tree of Harmony while exploring the Everfree Forest on Starswirl's advice. "Shadow Play" contradicts this with The Reveal that the Tree of Harmony was actually grown from a seed planted by Starswirl and the other Pillars shortly before they disappeared. It only grew and was found by the sisters after Starswirl was gone, meaning that he could not have led them to the tree as the book depicts.
    • The Reflections arc of the IDW comic series also comes in conflict with the timing of certain events. In the comic, after the defeat and banishment of Nightmare Moon, Celestia and Starswirl discover a magical mirror that can act as a gateway between worlds and begin exploring the multiverse. However, the reveal in "Shadow Play" that the Elements of Harmony only grew from a magical seed after Starswirl's disappearance conflicts with this. Since Luna and Celestia wielded the Elements together in the past, and Celestia used them to banish Luna when she became Nightmare Moon, these events can only have happened after Starswirl was no longer around.
    • The My Little Pony: FIENDship Is Magic comic focusing on the backstory of the Sirens and their banishment to the human world is largely incompatible with the events of "Shadow Play". The comic's sequence of events is that the sirens arrive in the city of Canterlot and begain using their hypnotic songs to drain the emotions of the citizens, and a lone Starswirl challenges them to a music contest to break their hold over the crowd. When he realizes he cannot win, he resorts to magically sending them to the human world through a magic mirror. The episode's sequence is that the Sirens take over an isolated seaside village, using their hypnotic songs to turn its inhabitants hateful and drive them to fight each other. Starswirl is summoned alongside five other heroes by one of the village's inhabitants, and they banish the Sirens after a straightforward magical fight by tricking them into a temporary portal Starswirl created for the purpose.
  • The Journal of the Two Sisters also states that Commander Hurricane was the only stallion among the Founders, so that the other five — Private Pansy, Smart Cookie, Chancellor Puddinghead, Clover the Clever and Princess Platinum — were by extension all mares. The EQUESTRIA GIRLS short "Forgotten Friendship", however, rather unambiguously refers to Clover as a male.
  • "The Beginning of the End" likewise retcons the entirety of King Sombra's appearances in the comics. In the Siege of the Crystal Empire arc and his own Fiendship is Magic comic, Sombra is given an extensive backstory and, more crucially, a redemption arc following his resurrection from his banishment at the end of "The Crystal Empire", ending with him freed from his evil and joyfully traveling through Equestria. In "The Beginning of the End", Grogar resurrects him again, with no indication of any previous resurrections or of other banishments, Sombra is from the start the same unrepentantly evil, tyrannical monster he was in "The Crystal Empire", and nobody shows any surprise at him behaving like he does. Rarity states Sombra was "dispelled into the ether" last they faced him despite witnessing his resurrection in the comic, ruling out any possibly of the comics events having happened.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show already had an at best loose approach to continuity, but whenever the characters appear in Nicktoons crossovers, they almost never acknowledge the Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon", with the appearances generally being based more on the original show than the adult cartoon.
• The Simpsons already has a Broad Strokes approach to continuity, but some episodes are explicitly stated to have never happened:
  • Every Treehouse of Horror story is out of continuity entirely, which should be pretty obvious by the amount of Everybody Dies Endings. Same goes for "Thanksgiving of Horror". ("Halloween of Horror" is canonical, however.)
  • The much-reviled episode "The Principal and The Pauper", where it's revealed that Principal Skinner is in fact a former street punk pulling a Dead Person Impersonation of the real Seymour Skinner (who wasn't actually dead), has been marked as non-canonical by the writers. Principal Skinner is definitely the genuine article, except on the very few occasions when the episode's referred to for the sake of a usually self-deprecating joke. Lampshaded in "Behind the Laughter" where it presents "The Principal and the Pauper" being written during a period where the Simpsons had a massive falling-out and couldn't stand to be around each other. As a result, the show was forced to resort to "increasingly nonsensical plots and storylines"; cue Principal Skinner announcing he's an impostor.
  • The negatively-received "That 90's Show", which attempted to retcon Marge and Homer meeting and getting married in the 90's instead of the 70's and early 80's, has been completely ignored with later episodes revisiting their past once again using the timeline introduced in "The Way We Was". This means that, as of 2019, Homer Simpson (born in either 1955 or 1956, depending on which date you believe) is effectively in his late-sixties, while Bart (born in 1981) is an even younger-looking 42-year-old than Benjamin Button.
  • Fat Tony's death and subsequent replacement with his identical cousin in "Donnie Fatso" ended up being completely ignored in later episodes, where it's shown that Michael D'Amico is still his son. Similarly Snowball II's death and replacement by a cat that looks and acts exactly same as her in (I Annoyed Grunt) Bot is ignored in later episodes where its mentioned the Simpsons have only owned two cats.
• The Stargate Infinity cartoon is officially not part of the canonical Stargate-verse.
• Star Trek: The Animated Series was largely deemed non-canonical by Paramount for decades, even though writers referenced events from the show and managed to force select elements (most notably "Yesteryear", which told of Spock's childhood and was widely regarded as the cartoon's best episode) into canonicity if only because of their popularity with fans. While the Expanded Universe novels got away with referencing the cartoons, in 1989 Paramount put into its contract with DC Comics that writers could not use or reference the cartoon, much to writer Peter David's horror. Ultimately, to promote the cartoons getting a DVD release, CBS, the new owners of the property, did a fan poll to decide once and for all the canonical status of the cartoon, with fans voting overwhelming to make the company finally acknowledge it as part of the show's official continuity.
• It seems everything Disney made before Steamboat Willie is considered discontinuity as Pete, Mickey, and Minnie Mouse are all labeled as having debuted in it. Pete actually first appeared three years earlier in an Alice Comedy cartoon called Alice Solves the Puzzle, while the other two mice debuted earlier in 1928 in Plane Crazy. Of course considering that their first cartoon featured Attempted Rape by the world’s biggest and most kid-friendly icon, it makes sense Disney does not talk about it; Plane Crazy was completed first, but Steamboat Willie was shown in public first, so Disney considers Mickey and Minnie's debut in the later cartoon.
• Lampshaded in the Fake Crossover of Steven Universe and Uncle Grandpa. When Steven expresses surprise to see him, Uncle Grandpa assures him (and the audience) that "None of this is canon." ^note But this is! BOOM!
• Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars likewise ends its opening crawl by noting "And none of this is canon, so just relax." Having said that, they decided to make a few moves they never would in the body of the main series, like turning Ferb against Phineas, acknowledging what happened to Phineas and Candace's biological father or actually having Phineas and Isabella hook up (though this one did happen in the Flash Forward near the end of the show).
• On The Transformers, the Big Bad Unicron was revealed in season three to have been a Gone Horribly Right experiment by an alien Mad Scientist named "Primacron" - his intent was that Unicron would devour all life in the universe, and then Primacron could repopulate the universe with lifeforms of his own creation and design. All subsequent installments of Transformers have stuck with the idea of Unicron as a Satanic Eldritch Abomination, a concept from the Marvel Transformers comics.
• Spider-Man: The New Animated Series was originally meant to be a bridge between Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, but the Spider-Man Trilogy ignored it as the show depicted Curt Connors as having mutated into the Lizard and died, and 2 and Spider-Man 3 showed a still-living and unmutated Connors. Additionally, the show depicted Peter and Harry as still sharing an apartment whereas the sequels shows Peter living in a rundown apartment and Harry living in his dad's penthouse, and chances are good this took hold with Norman Osborn's death. While probably coincidence, the only things that did carry over were Harry's drinking, and the tense relation between Peter and Harry over Peter taking pictures of Spider-Man.
• Despite Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) starting the Shared Universe that Avengers Assemble, Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H., and Guardians of the Galaxy (2015) also existed in, Guardians and AA's fifth season Spider-Man guest appearance suggests that the series is no longer canon with the universe as Guardians and Panther's Quest presented Spidey more along the lines of his depiction in Marvel's Spider-Man, complete with designs for the Spidey costume and Peter in civilian clothes, the suit being a smart suit, and Robbie Daymond voicing Peter instead of Drake Bell.
• The Mutant Apocalypse arc of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) was originally meant to be the series finale. Nickelodeon decided instead to de-canonize the highly controversial arc, declaring that it happened in "another dimension" and was a non-canon "tale from beyond," while also relegating it to mid-season.
• When asked by a fan about the canonical nature of Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain in relation to the show it was spun-off from, Tom Ruegger established that no, the events of the much-maligned spin-off never canonically happened. This was confirmed in the first Pinky and the Brain short in the 2020 Animaniacs reboot, where it shows that the Brain has been working on his latest plan to take over the world since 1998, when the series' final season took place.
• The Grand Finale of Samurai Jack features Ashi, Jack's fiancee, fading out of existence due to the future timeline no longer existing. This was poorly received by fans, and thus the canonical video game, Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time and Interquel, has her surviving in the true ending.

---