Continuity Snarls in western animation TV shows.
- Played for laughs on American Dad! when Roger explains the background of a character he's made up for himself:Roger: My name is Braff Zacklin. I was an international race car driver. One day, a baby carriage rolled out onto the track so I swerved into the retaining wall to avoid it. The car burst into flames, but the baby miraculously survived... I was that baby.
Steve: That doesn't make any sense.
Roger: I'm Braff Zacklin! - Jeph Loeb has stated in several interviews that Ultimate Spider-Man and Avengers Assemble share the same universe as The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. As you can tell by the first episodes of both Ultimate and Assemble, this would only work in heavy Broad Strokes. The most noticeable contradiction being the apparent age difference between Iron Fist and Luke Cage as seen in Ultimate Spider-Man and The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes! and The Falcon being a rookie in Assemble whereas he was already active in EMH.
- Related to EMH, Chris Yost, Craig Kyle, and Josh Fine have said it, Wolverine and the X-Men (2009), and the "Wolverine" short of Hulk Vs. are all set in the same universe—despite the number of things that contradict each other, like Bruce Banner not remembering Wolverine in WatXM, despite Wolverine's behavior to Banner being the direct cause of both of Banner's main Hulk-outs in the "Wolverine" short.
- This is further complicated in the later seasons of Avengers Assemble. Season 2 featured a guest appearance from Spider-Man, who was the same version as the one from the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon (right down to using the same voice actor and having Spidey retain his habit of breaking the fourth wall). After Ultimate Spider-Man was cancelled and replaced with Marvel's Spider-Man, all subsequent guest appearances on Avengers Assemble used the new version of the character from the latter, despite the sheer number of continuity issues raised by the unexplained switch.
- How exactly Bruce got his powers and became the Hulk is contradicted on two separate occasions. The incident was first shown in "Planet Doom" as a small gamma bomb that went off in a lab near Bruce, ultimately giving him his powers. In "Dehulked", his origin is closer to the The Incredible Hulk film's take on it, with Bruce willingly getting the gamma blasted into him by a laser under the supervision of General Ross. On top of all that, if what A-Bomb said in Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. is supposed to believed, Rick himself was supposed to be there to be saved by Bruce before he got hit by the gamma radiation, although Rick Jones wasn't in "Dehulked".
- Klaw's appearance in "Thunderbolts Revealed" is radically different than how was previously established in Ultimate Spider-Man, which takes place in the same universe: He is human again (albeit briefly), despite the fact that he was a living embodiment of sound prior to this episode; he now resembles his Marvel Cinematic Universe counterpart, as opposed to having his red full-body containment suit, including a different sound generation located on the opposite arm; and, no longer voiced by Matt Lanter, "Klaue" now sports an ambiguously foreign accent that is completely distinct from Lanter's gruff bad guy voice.
- Emil Blonsky, who had his Abomination persona forcibly removed in the Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. episode "Spirit of Vengeance", is a gamma monster again in "Dehulked" with no explanation, though it's possible that this took place before Agents of S.M.A.S.H.
- Egghead begins his villainous career midway through Season 3, despite the fact that he was already a villain Scott Lang sold tech to, according to a line of a dialogue in "Spectrums", a Season 2 episode.
- In Season 3, it was stated that prior to becoming Ant-Man, Scott Lang was a scientist who sold tech to supervillains, and it's implied that this is what landed him in jail. In Season 4, he's now stated to have been a former thief, much like his movie counterpart, but who's to say he hadn't done both?
- Season 4's Halloween Episode is a continuity nightmare. For starters, it stars the original six Avengers and features none of the new recruits, even though by this point in the season, the original Avengers had already been scattered across time and space, and wouldn't return for another five episodes. Next, Iron Man is still with the team, even though he'd been trapped in another dimension at the end of the last season, and wasn't rescued alongside the other Avengers in Season 4. Crimson Widow is also still working for HYDRA, even though she betrayed them in Season 3 and was already shown working alone earlier in Season 4. Finally, the episode ends in the training room of Avengers Tower, even though Season 3 ended with the Avengers moving into the Avengers Compound after the Tower was destroyed, and the replacement Avengers were operating out of the Wakandan Embassy at that point before the compound was repaired. Timeline-wise, the episode really only makes sense if it's meant to be taking place some time prior to the Season 3 finale. While that is assumed to be the case, it creates yet another issue; Season 3 already had a Halloween episode, and if the timeline of Ultron Revolution happened spanned over an entire year, Yelena being with HYDRA still wouldn't make sense since her debut episode was after Season 3's Halloween Episode and during the winter season.
- "New Year's Resolution" raises all sorts of issues about time travel in this series. First of all, time travel can now erase the memories of travelers. Then, Kang explains that if someone is brought to the future, they can only stay there for a short period of time before everything after the point when they left starts to be erased from history. In this episode, Peggy and Howard are in the future for a few hours at most before things start falling apart, while Falcon was trapped in the future for YEARS, and this never seems to happen. Even Baron Heinrich Zemo was in the future for about a few hours and didn't suffer the same problem either. If anything, the Timey-Wimey Ball is in effect in this universe, so the rules of time travel are bound to vary. It also has the same continuity problems as the aforementioned Halloween special, since Iron Man is back on the team without explanation, and the Avengers are still operating out of Avengers Tower. However, that this episode is A Day in the Limelight for Peggy Carter and Howard Stark taking place in the past while involving Time Travel, so the "future" they travel to doesn't necessarily have to be the "present" this episode airs in (which in this case is Season 4).
- Much like the Klaw example, Baron Mordo shows up in Season 4, where he is a black man like his movie counterpart, though retaining his powers, and alignment with Hydra from Ultimate Spider-Man. This is despite the fact that Mordo previously shown up in Ultimate Spider-Man as a white guy.
- In "Beyond," Black Widow states that the Avengers had assumed that Iron Man died after the connection to his dimension was cut off. This is despite the fact that in the first episode of the season, when the cut off happened, the Avengers are very clearly determined to bring him back.
- Iron Man shows up in "Beyond" after being trapped in an alternate dimension when Ultron possessed him in the Season 3 finale. He doesn't have his armor with him, so the implication is he left it, and Ultron, behind in the section of Battleworld made up of No Tech Land, and that's why he's not possessed anymore. The only problem is that Ultron possessed him via the Arc Reactor, not the armor, which is why he had to stay behind in the first place. He needs the Arc Reactor to live, and leaving would mean Ultron would take over again when it reactivated. Tony shouldn't have been able to leave No Tech Land at all.
- Season 5, "Black Panther's Quest" is a continuity nightmare. It's still officially listed as taking place after season 4, "Secret Wars," but several characters are missing without explanation. The crossover with Spider-Man features the Spidey of Marvel's Spider-Man and not Ultimate Spider-Man (a change that also carried on into Guardians of the Galaxy (2015))! The changed character designs are also the same as in Spider-Man 2017. When T'Challa meets with Attuma in Atlantis, he's a completely different character from the tyrant in Red Skull's Cabal in the early seasons. It's like the show just hopped universes between seasons.
- Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation does this to previous works in the Care Bears franchise, from having the Care Bear Cousins grow up with the rest of the Care Bears, instead of separately in The Care Bears Movie.
- Various Cartoon Network shows have been implied to be in the same Universe, perhaps most notably in The Grim Adventures Of The Kids Next Door, but this simply can't be. All of these shows have had their own versions of Santa Claus appear who looks different from the other show. In addition, episodes of shows like Dexter's Laboratory show Negative Continuity like the entire Earth being destroyed or an episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy where Mandy wishes everyone in the world to go away, which can't exist in the same place as shows like Codename: Kids Next Door which clearly have continuity.
- The Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2017) TV spin-off is branded as a prequel to the two movies with Flint Lockwood in high school. If it is truly a prequel, however, then there are some inconsistencies with the movie's canon. Most noticeably, Sam Sparks is attending the Swallow Falls high school with Flint despite it never being established in the either of the two movies that Sam had ever been to Swallow Falls before being sent there in the beginning of the first movie, much less known Flint. Additionally, Manny (Sam's camera man) is also a Swallow Falls resident (which doesn't add up for the same reason as Sam), and Mayor Shelbourne has an actual son (instead of a metaphorical son) who never appeared in either of the movies that are set after this series.
- The DC Animated Universe has a couple because of Justice League:
- In the Superman: The Animated Series episode, "Blasts from the Past, Part 1", Lois Lane makes a snarky remark, saying, "Yeah, and I'm Wonder Woman," which suggests that Wonder Woman was already active in the DCAU. In Justice League, Diana is presented as a rookie and a newbie to Man's World.
- Likewise, the Superman: TAS episode "Apokolips... Now, Part 2" features Forager among the New Gods from New Genesis, yet in "Twilght" he's not yet among their numbers until the end of the episode.
- Similar to the "Boba Fett falls into the Sarlaac three times" example from Star Wars Legends It would seem that the DCAU Harley Quinn attempted a Heel–Face Turn no fewer than three times: The first being on the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Harley's Holiday", where she goes back to being a villain before the end of the episode. In Batman and Harley Quinn she is trying to redeem herself again, and at the end seems to become a normal person with her own tv show according this timeline
however, the movie most likely takes place in 2003, meaning at some point before the Tim Drake incident, she threw it all away and became a villain again. The Joker dies during the Tim Drake scene, and Harley seemingly falls down a pit to her death. At the end, however, we see her (now an old lady) in 2042, where she is now a decent, law abiding person. Third time's the charm, it would seem.
- Due to Canon Welding with the comics it was based on, DuckTales (1987) (and its spin-off Darkwing Duck) is covered on the Comic Books page.
- Parodied in The Fairly OddParents! where it shows all of the different versions of Crimson Chins there are from the different decades of comic books. They all have different appearances, attitudes and one was even banned (the "super edgy 1985" one who swore excessively).
- Played straight in the series with its own continuity, where every new installment seems to invalidate the conclusion of the one that came before it. The inclusion of Poof as a main cast member has brought up some confusion regarding his absence in the finale of the movie Channel Chasers. Also, the addition of Sparky in Season Nine brings more continuity issues, such as Sparky not being there at the end of Channel Chasers (the same contradiction happened with Poof) and his not being in the live-action movies — A Fairly Odd Movie and A Fairly Odd Christmas — both taking place thirteen years after the events of the main series. In A Fairly Odd Movie, there is even a scene in which Wanda states that Timmy doesn't have a dog.
- The biggest one occurs near the end of A Fairly Odd Summer, in which Timmy's Heroic Sacrifice has caused him to turn into a fairy. Despite being touted as the official canonical ending of the series, not even this stuck either, as The Fairly Oddparents Fairly Odder would later render the ending of Fairly OddSummer an impossibility as well by showing a still human Timmy passing Cosmo and Wanda on to his cousins, with no mention of the events of the movie.
- The Season 9 episode "Let Sleeper Dogs Lie" ends up causing this to "The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker" to justify Sparky having been previously owned by Crocker as a child while Cosmo and Wanda were still his fairy godparents (even though Sparky was obviously not there before), despite acknowledging the events of the latter episode by having Timmy still knowing that Cosmo and Wanda were once Crocker's fairy godparents. It also notably changes the circumstances behind Crocker losing Cosmo and Wanda. "Sleeper Dogs" shows Crocker unceremoniously losing Cosmo and Wanda the moment he turned eleven instead of losing them after a time-traveling Timmy accidentally revealed Cosmo and Wanda to the 70s Dimmsdale public, while also showing Crocker to be every bit as rotten as he is as an adult when he was a kid instead of the well-meaning and nice kid he was shown to be in "Secret Origin" before he lost Cosmo and Wanda.
- Hercules: The Animated Series is rather hard to gel with the movie that it's based on. It's about Hercules attending school while trying to be a hero... so, like, set during the film's Training Montage, but before his "first" heroic deed against the Hydra. (Given how dismissive people are of him in the film, they've apparently forgotten his TV-show feats.) Also, in the movie it's a plot point that Hades thinks that Hercules is dead, but here they interact Once per Episode, which also makes it odd that he has to introduce himself to Hercules during the film's Titan invasion. It's best to just to throw up your hands and call it Broad Strokes, though it is somewhat acceptable in light of how it'd be difficult to write a show where your main hero and your main villain never interact or know each other.
- And then there was the episode where Hades and the dead soul of Jafar first compete to try to take down each other's respective heroes, and then get them to fight each other. This takes place after Aladdin and the King of Thieves (as Jasmine explicitly states that Al is her husband). Despite the fact that Hercules takes place in ancient Greece (hundreds if not thousands of years BCE) while Aladdin's time is definitely AD.
- While the films and shorts in Kung Fu Panda fit well continuity wise, the three television series in the franchise not so much.
- Generally the events of Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness fit well with the overall canon of the films, but that changes with the episode "Enter the Dragon" which features Po master the Hero's Chi, but the events of Kung Fu Panda 3 ignores this with Po not knowing what Chi is and learns how to use it for first time in that film.
- In-between the releases of Kung Fu Panda 3 and Kung Fu Panda 4, there were two series released; Kung Fu Panda: The Paws of Destiny & Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight and those shows has Po go from the Dragon Warrior to the Dragon Master and ends both shows with his title as the Dragon Master intact, but Kung Fu Panda 4 ignores this and depicts Po as still being the Dragon Warrior and the film deals with Po having to give up his title as he ranks up as a Spiritual Advisor to the Valley of Peace.
- And while the three shows reference events depicted in each other even continuity with the three series is not perfect, as The Paws of Destiny features a reference to Ke-Pa the main antagonist of "Enter the Dragon" from Legends of Awesomeness which is the episode where Po masters Chi, even though The Paws of Destiny serves as a sequel to the third film which ignored said episode and all three shows depict the current Emperor of China (or Empress in the case of The Paws of Destiny) as being a different character and even species.
- The Little Mermaid (1992) prequel TV series has a couple. In the movie Sebastian barely knows Ariel and is assigned to watch over her after she misses the concert. In the TV series he's part of her True Companions and they act as if they've known each other for years. Additionally Sebastian doesn't discover Ariel's grotto until the "Part of Your World" number - after he's only just been told to keep an eye on her. The TV series has him appearing in the grotto numerous times. Otherwise subverted with other details. Eric appears on the show a couple of times but Ariel never sees him, preserving the continuity of their first meeting in the movie. Likewise Ursula appears but is not defeated and does not interact too much with Ariel. The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning showed Flounder and Ariel meeting for the first time and portrayed Flounder as extroverted and daring. The TV series showed them meeting as children and Flounder is portrayed as timid (but brave when necessary) and cautious in every other media.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Shadow Play", it's stated this is the first time the Cutie Map has summoned all the Mane Six for a friendship problem since Starlight's village. But the My Little Pony: Equestria Girls "Mirror Magic" had all the Mane Six "called away to solve a friendship problem" when Starlight was referred to as "You're Twilight's student" implying it's before she graduated prior to this episode. This could be Starlight's studenthood being past tense or someone other than the Map sending them off, but it lacks the context to verify and no-one but the Map had sent them to solve friendship problems. This isn't the only time the show seemingly contradicted the Expanded Universe, but unlike the books or comics which are secondary canon that are overridden when they conflict with the show, Equestria Girls was confirmed this episode by Continuity Nod and Word of God to be of equal canon status.
- Ninjago has great continuity... for what happens on-screen. Trying to sort out what happened before the pilot, on the other hand (not helped by each season feeling compelled to tie into Wu and Garmadon's history, adding to the mythos of the Elemental Masters, etc.)...
- Regarding Garmadon's backstory: As a child, he was bitten by the Great Devourer, which poisoned him with evil. This development establishes that the Evil Garmadon isn't really him, just something he was forced into. The Tournament of Elements then shows him studying under Master Chen, developing this evil side and even using it to steal Misako (Lloyd's mother)'s affection from Wu, which he feels conflicted about. But any time there's a reference to a battle fought before the series (the Serpentine War, the Hands of Time), Garmadon fought alongside Wu, with no hints at all that there's any evil in him yet. There's even a picture showing Wu, Misako, and Garmadon together showing Garmadon looking exceptionally pale (a physical manifestation of the evil inside him) from before his time with Chen, when flashbacks of Garmadon with Chen show him with a regular LEGO-yellow skin.
- Zane is a Nindroid (ninja-android). The episode that reveals this has him remembering his father (the man who built him also raised him as a son) telling him "You were built to defend those who cannot defend themselves." Except he was apparently supposed to "defend others" by... living in a tree in the forest, unknown to anyone. His elemental abilities were apparently (somehow) passed onto him by the former Master of Ice, who... stumbled upon them one night, asked for shelter, and then moved on. Wu visited the next day (specifically looking for the ninja who would wield the Ice Shuriken), and yet seems surprised that the Master of Ice (who the show had already established Wu knew and had fought alongside previously) had visited... despite it being the only way Zane could have gotten the ice powers in the first place!
- The Hands of Time arc brings up several. It had previously been established that Nya "was there for" Kai after their father's disappearance... This arc then establishes that, not only is Nya the younger sibling, she was only three when their parents went missing, so how is a three-year-old supposed to "be there" for her older brother? The painting of the climactic battle is stated as being "during the Serpentine War" and is repeatedly established to have occurred 40 years before the present day. How exactly were the Serpentine and the Great Devourer supposed to have faded to legend in 40 years? Specific ages are typically avoided, but one of the characters in the flashback mentions delaying her honeymoon, which would seem to imply that she (and by extension, the others) are young adults at youngest, rather than teenagers, but the next generation of ninja are teenagers in the present day, which means those characters waited another twenty years to reproduce (putting them at maybe 40 when their children were born, which isn't impossible, but stretches credibility), which isn't helped by the aging different characters have gone through. If we say Crux and Acronix, Wu, and the Elemental Masters are approximately the same age, in the 40 years since the battle: Wu and Crux both aged into old men, Acronix (who was sent into the future and therefore didn't age a day) looks and acts like a teenager (he's possibly closer to 20, if we're generous, which would make Crux, his twin, 60, which is a good estimate based on his appearance and behavior, but seems like a lowball estimate for Wu), most of the Elemental Masters don't appear again in the present day, but the few who do Ray and Maya, Kai and Nya's parents look exactly the same as they did in the flashback, meaning either they're incredibly youthful for 60 or they were kids during the first battle who just looked like adults and were already competent blacksmiths.
- PAW Patrol has an origins episode titled "Pups Get A Rubbble" where Rubble is revealed to be a bit of a loner living on his own when Ryder found him, and his love of digging led to him becoming Ryder’s construction pup. Fast forward to the spin-off "Rubble & Crew" he comes from a large family of builders.
- The Scooby-Doo franchise has developed some issues over the years; even ignoring works that are explicitly set in their own continuities like Scooby Goes Hollywood and Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, the exact timeline of the franchise's "main" continuity is a mystery in itself.
- The animated series from 1969's Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! to 1985's The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo all take place in the same continuity, in chronological order. While the earlier shows relied on the "Scooby-Doo" Hoax trope exclusively, in the 80s, the characters started encountering genuinely supernatural spirits and monsters. Scrappy-Doo was added to the cast in 1978 and remained a core part of the cast through 13 Ghosts, while Velma, Fred, and Daphne appeared less frequently. Shaggy also started wearing a red shirt instead of his classic green during this time. These shows collectively feature a heavy dose of Comic-Book Time, given that the gang never grow out of their teenage years even by the mid-80s when they should realistically have reached their thirties, and Scooby dramatically exceeds the life expectancy of a Great Dane in that time as well.
- In the late 1980s, there were three television specials, Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers, Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School, and Scooby-Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf. These seem to loosely follow 13 Ghosts if you squint (Scrappy is part of the cast, Shaggy wears a red shirt, and Fred, Velma and Daphne are nowhere to be seen), but they don't actually jive with each other, for various reasons. In particular, Count Dracula is in both of the latter two specials, but his characterization and appearance are radically different between them, and he does not recognize Scooby and Shaggy in Reluctant Werewolf.
- The 1998 direct-to-video film Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island takes a Broad Strokes approach to the earlier shows and ignores the 80s shows and specials completely. It features the gang as young adults after a Time Skip, pursuing different jobs across the country after retiring from monster-hunting. They reunite to investigate a case that ends up being genuinely supernatural, and it's made clear repeatedly that they have never encountered real monsters before this. Scrappy is never mentioned.
- The following direct-to-video films would initially respect Zombie Island's version of events, with the gang still as adults, but that would later change. The fifth film, Scooby-Doo! and the Legend of the Vampire reverted the gang to their original outfits, doing away with the more modern fashion introduced in Zombie Island. This would begin a trend of generally treating the gang as teenagers again, which would become more overt over time.
- Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost brings the events of the original 13 Ghosts cartoon back into the main canon, with Fred and Velma learning about the storyline for the first time, as they were absent from that show. Fred suggests that he's never seen anything truly supernatural before getting dragged into the 13th Ghost case, seemingly booting Zombie Island out of continuity or at least heavily retconning it. Even worse, Scooby and Shaggy claim that they have always been scared of the fake monsters because of their encounters with the 13 Ghosts, which would mean they met the 13 Ghosts before going on any of their other adventures! Also, Scrappy is mentioned for the first time in decades, but not actually shown. This is the only indication he exists at all in the post-Zombie Island canon.
- The very next film, Scooby-Doo: Return to Zombie Island, attempts to make the original Zombie Island fit with the modified timeline with lots of retcons, such as the gang still being teens when they first go to the island, and Velma still believing the spooky stuff was fake even after leaving. Even with heavy retcons to both, Zombie Island and 13 Ghosts remain basically impossible to reconcile with each other, despite both now officially being part of the same timeline. Actually, it's difficult to even reconcile the two Zombie Island movies, given how many details changed between them.
- Due to the sheer length of time it's been on the air coupled with its ageless cast and focus on American cultural commentary, The Simpsons has increasingly severe continuity problems regarding when the characters were born, what generation they belong to, etc. Early episodes, set in the early 1990s, established Marge and Homer as kids of the late 1950s — baby boomers, basically — with Bart and Lisa being kids of the early 1980s. Early episodes flashbacks were completely unambiguous about this — young Homer watching JFK on TV, Lisa's birth overlapping with the 1984 Olympics, and so on. However, the show has survived for so long, it is now impossible to honor this past without absurdity — Lisa cannot still be eight years old in the late 2010s if she was born in the 1980s, etc. Flashbacks in contemporary episodes now have to occur in some vague, unspecified "past" with decade-identifying details scrubbed, though this is not so easily done for certain characters for whom time-sensitive events are a big part of their identity: for example, Abe being a WWII vet, Seymour having served in Vietnam, Marge, Homer, and Artie Ziff having attended a very 70s prom — to say nothing of Disco Stu! It seems many of these details are being quietly retired for snarl reasons.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: The show mostly runs on Negative Continuity, so it seldom has any true examples of this trope, but things can get muddy at points:
- The status of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie as the show's canonical ending is a good example, given that it was written to be one and that any (read: all) the series' episodes where there's still only one Krusty Krab and SpongeBob is still a fry-cook instead of the manager must take place before it. As the series has gone on for many seasons afterward and maintaining what little continuity the show has has become harder, there has been the occasional appearance of something that comes into conflict with the movie's status as the Grand Finale, such as the appearance of various objects from said movie (such as the Goofy Goober guitar and the bag of winds) appearing in the Krusty Krab's lost-and-found in Season 10's "Lost and Found", SpongeBob's seaweed mustache appearing in frame in the "Thank Gosh It's Monday" number to promote The Sponge Bob Movie Sponge Out Of Water, and Mindy attending SpongeBob's surprise birthday party in Season 12's Milestone Celebration "SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout" when Mindy likely didn't even know who SpongeBob was until the events of the first movie.
- While Kamp Koral otherwise causes this trope to the respective pasts of a number of characters (showing that everyone went to summer camp together regardless of their relationship(s) in the original show or how the original show established that certain characters first met), the show actually side-steps this with Sandy by revealing that Kid!Sandy is attending Kamp Koral on behalf of her present-day self to make sure nothing happens to the Krabby Patty secret formula in the past, rather than simply having her already be present alongside everyone else years ago without explanation. The show has not established one way or another if this would change how she and SpongeBob first meet in "Tea at the Treedome" in the original show, if at all, but it's at least one question answered.
- Trying to fit every work in The Lion King franchise into a single continuity is... challenging, to say at least.
- Following the original movie, first there was the spin-off book titled The Lion King: Six New Adventures, naming Simba's son "Kopa" and telling a story about how Scar got his scar.
- The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, a straight-up sequel that ignored Kopa's existence and replaced him with a female cub named Kiara - whose presentation ceremony, as shown in the beginning of the film, looks completely different from the ceremony seen at the end of the original film. Furthermore it introduced a pride of lions, led by a lioness named Zira, who were supportive of Scar, despite their existence not even being mentioned in the original movie, where Scar seems to have a 0% Approval Rating.
- The Lion King 1 ½ retold the events of the original movie from a Perspective Flip, showing how Timon and Pumbaa met and how their raised Simba - but it often ignored continuity in favor of Rule of Funny. The montage of Timon and Pumbaa appearing in every scene of the original movie just straight-up flies in the face of any continuity.
- Timon & Pumbaa told a different version of how Timon and Pumbaa met, and is a lot Denser and Wackier than anything else in the franchise, including the characters getting more anthropomorphized and interacting with humans and man-made objects. It's the best to treat this as a completely Alternate Continuity.
- The Lion Guard makes the whole thing even more confusing:
- The protagonist is Simba's son Kion who is Kiara's younger brother, but was nowhere to be seen in the sequel. He's also a completely different character than Kopa. The final season of said series reveals where Kion was during the film — he was looking for the Tree of Life with the rest of the guard outside the Pride Lands.
- Mufasa's ghost seems to be able to appear to Kion at any time to advise him - which begs the question why he never appeared to his own son and left him living in guilt for many years.
- Scar is revealed to have been the member of the former Lion Guard, possessing the power of the Roar of the Elders and using it to kill his fellow Guard members. Why Mufasa trusted him after such a heinous act is a mystery. Furthermore, Scar is implied to have died in the fire below Pride Rock, whereas in the movie he was clearly eaten by his hyena minions. A promotional clip from Season 3 also shows a story regarding how Scar got his scar, which is completely different from the one in The Lion King: Six New Adventures.
- Zira's pride is introduced in one episode, but they seem to be completely unaware of the other villains' plot to summon Scar, and Scar's spirit also seems to ignore them.
- And then, there is the stage musical and the photo-realistic remake, which are just re-tellings of the original story in a different medium.
- In Rick and Morty Rick has abandoned his universe and taken the place of one from a Parallel Universe three or four times. His original universe he abandoned when he first discovered interdimensional travel after an alternate version of himself killed his wife and daughter, he eventually moved to the universe of the Rick that killed his family taking his place in his family. Then he abandoned that universe with Morty after they accidently turned everyone in it into grotesque "Cronenberg's", a possible third time occurred in "Morty's Mind Blowers" after Morty messed with squirrels though this has mostly been treated as Negative Continuity and finally in "Solaricks" a creature called Mr Frundles possesses the whole earth and makes it uninhabitable forcing the whole family to move. In spite of all this, characters from Rick's past such as Bird Person, Unity and Mr Nimbus still have knowledge that could only apply to our Rick like the death of Diane or his obsessive pursuit of her killer. Also in "The ABC's of Beth" Rick recalls building a secial world called "Froopyland" when Beth was little to keep her away from the other kids because she was a Creepy Child and to prove his point pulls out a box full of disturbing items she asked him to build her a a child. While this backstory makes sense for the Beth we're currently following it would be wildly out of character for the loving father Rick was portrayed as being for his original Beth.
- Winx Club's spinoff, World of Winx, has the girls go undercover as talent scouts on Earth to investigate the disappearance of the contestants, while trying to keep their fairy identities hidden. This contradicts the fourth season of the original show, where the girls must convince Earth to believe in fairies while simultaneously revealing their identities in return.
