Early Installment Weirdness / Literature

Early-Installment Weirdness in Literature.

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The following have their own pages:

• Harry Potter

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• The Adrien English Mysteries: Per Word of God Fatal Shadows was originally planned as a standalone novel with a much darker twist, in that Adrien was originally planned to be actually guilty. Jake, smitten with him, would have sacrificed his ideals and possibly his position to help him escape. Traces of this are left in the finished novel and as a result it is darker in tone and harsher towards Adrien's psychological well being. Also the romance elements are very toned down compared to later novels in the series.
• Albert Campion: Campion isn't the main character in the first book he appears in, even though the series is named after him.
• Alex Benedict: A Talent For War is told from Alex's point of view, since he doesn't hire Chase on as an assistant until a fair bit into the novel. All subsequent novels take place from her POV.
• Amelia Bedelia readers accustomed to Lynn Sweat's character designs (seen in almost all of the books written since 1976) might find it jarring to read a book illustrated by one of his predecessors, especially if it shows Amelia Bedelia with no stockings and/or Mr. and Mrs. Rogers (her bosses) with gray hair instead of brown. The first book also portrays Mr. and Mrs. Rogers as a wealthy couple with a mansion, while later books inexplicably relocate them to the suburbs.
• Animorphs:
  • The first book contains several elements that are never mentioned again, such as the ability to broadcast your thoughts to a person in morph when you weren't in morph yourself, or the psychic Info Dump laid on Tobias by Elfangor. The first one of those was addressed by the author as a mistake. She was unsure of how thought speech should work, and by the time she decided it was too late to change the first book (though later editions corrected it). And apparently she went too far the other direction when she had Ax declare, in an early book, that humans couldn't use thought speech at all (even if said human was actually an Andalite in morph), which admittedly doesn't make much sense. That, too, gets retconned away when Ax uses thought speech in human form in a later book.
  • In general, Elfangor's Psychic Powers are more advanced than we see from later Andalites. He appears to be able to feel the kids' fear as they hide, and let them borrow some of his courage. Andalites are never portrayed with such abilities again, with thought-speak basically just being talking with a few extra tricks.
    • Interestingly, this ability reappears much later in The Ellimist Chronicles. Apparently Andalites have always had this ability, but Elfangor is the only modern-day one to use it on-camera.
  • <Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul if I am not mistaken. An honor to meet you.> An odd thing to say, given that a Prequel would later make them integral to each other's origin stories. (This was corrected in the Comic-Book Adaptation, where Visser Three instead says that Elfangor has become a legend since they last met.)
  • A big part of the first book involves the heroes finding out who is a Controller because said person suddenly acted out-of-character. In later parts of the series, Yeerks make a point of acting very in-character, and it's even shown that, by accessing a person's memory, they are brilliant at acting the part. This actually became an important plot point in the pilot episode of the show, as the Animorphs identify Chapman as a Controller because he maintains his habits even when no one is around, in this case, scratching his leg with his foot.
  • Early books say that Hork-Bajir have a biological imperative to make war with each other every sixty or so years, and show that two males close to each other automatically go into an aggressive fight stance. By The Hork-Bajir Chronciles they're such Perfect Pacifist People that Dak literally can't comprehend what's happening when a Controller attacks him.
  • Early books frequently mention races said to be enslaved by the Yeerks (i.e. the Ssstram, Mak and Nahara) which are never encountered or even mentioned afterward.
  • Even the morphs got confused: Marco goes bald eagle at one point, when only Rachel ever uses it.
• Artemis Fowl: The first book notes there being seven fairy races, and also mentions gremlins. They never appear in later books (save for the second's graphic novel adaptation), and when the seven races are codified, they're not on it.
• Arthur: In the very first book Arthur's Nose Arthur and his family are more like actual aardvarks, having extra long noses, the book being about Arthur being dissatisfied with his long nose. All of his other friends also look more like actual animals. Fittingly, this book among the only early books that had not been adapted to an episode of the TV show. By the second book, Arthur's Eyes, he takes on his more familiar look, glasses and all.
• Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg's The Great SF Stories: The first few volumes of Isaac Asimov Presents The Golden Years of Science Fiction, an omnibus series reprint, would present each of the two books with different page numbers and separate introductions. Around Series 3, however, the introductions started to be merged into a cohesive whole and the stories were listed together with one page count.
• The Baby-Sitters Club: The first book, Kristy's Great Idea, illustrates notorious Tomboy Kristy in a blue jumper dress over a striped pink blouse with a headband and kneesocks, and she's described as—like Mary Anne—wearing a blouse, skirt, and saddle shoes when they first meet Stacey. The 1995 reprint—now that the series has firmly established Kristy not liking skirts and dresses much—changes this to her wearing jeans and sneakers; the cover shows Kristy in her now iconic turtleneck and sweatshirt, jeans, and visor.
• Dave Barry's work in the 1980s was noticeably tamer, less biting, and less dependent on his myriad of Running Gags. It was around Dave Barry Slept Here that his Signature Style hit full steam.
  • His first four books also had illustrations by Jerry O'Brien, which were much more cartooonish and wacky, and sometimes had gags that were likely inserted by O'Brien himself. Starting with Homes and Other Black Holes, the art duties went to Jeff MacNelly, best known for Shoe and Pluggers (except for Dave Barry Slept Here and Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need; justified in that the only illustrations in these books were maps). After MacNelly died in 2000, Gary Brookins took over on both Shoe and Dave Barry's work (he had also taken Pluggers several years prior).
• The Belgariad: Belgarath's comment about "well then we'd have to wait another century for the circumstances to be right again" is totally at odds with all the prophecy stuff from later books.
• Blandings Castle:
  • In Something Fresh, Beach is written as a positive hypochondriac who loves to talk about his symptoms; this disappears in later books.
  • When she first appears in Leave it to Psmith, Lady Constance is slightly less unpleasant than she later became, and she also has a henpecked husband, Joe Keeble. Joe never appears again and his death or departure is never acknowledged.
• The Book of the Named: In the first book, Ratha's Creature:
  • Ratha worries that the clan leader Meoran will force her to mate with a much older male. Such a law is never mentioned again in subsequent books; it's likely that Ratha abolished it after becoming clan leader.
  • Her parents, Yaran and Narir, are never mentioned again after the first book. It is canon that the Named care little for familial relations beyond parents of young cubs outside of preventing inbreeding.
  • The first book has the most sexual content in the series.
• Brother Cadfael: The first novel is mostly set far from Shrewsbury and is less of a straight-up mystery than a political drama with a murder in it.
• Captain Underpants:
  • The first book is the only book where the villain (Dr. Diaper) has no intrinsic connection to George and Harold.
  • In the first two books, the Once an Episode Incredibly Graphic Violence Chapter(s) were called the Extremely Graphic Violence Chapter(s). The first three books each had a chapter titled "Busted" as well.
  • The first three books in which Captain Underpants didn't have superpowers are a bit odd to look back on, considering it became a staple of his character.
• Ciaphas Cain: The character was first conceived as a Dirty Coward who became an Accidental Hero, so in his first short story, "Fight or Flight", he actually is like that. That's quite different from the subsequent stories, where he frames himself that way and as a Fake Ultimate Hero, but objectively he's more like a genuine badass who believes himself to be a self-serving, lying coward.
• The Cat Who... Series: The first three books in the series were written in The '60s, and then nothing else was done with it until almost 20 years after the publication of the third book. Those who were introduced to the series via the later novels may find the originals somewhat odd; the books were written to be contemporary, meaning that overnight Qwill jumped from 1968 to 1986. The first three books contain, for instance, 1960s slang terms which may be a bit jarring to a modern reader.
• When C. S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, he had always intended for it to have Christian allegory. However, earlier books weren't as overt as the latter installments. Comparing and contrasting The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to The Last Battle alone reveals several differences, among them:
  • The tone of the books are different. LB is formal, whereas LWW has a bit of a Lemony Narrator feel to it. Early books are also implied to have been Professor Lewis writing the tales down as he was told them by one of the children, most likely Lucy.
  • The first book also had a more whimsical feel to it in regards to the Fantasy Kitchen Sink meets Anachronism Stew tone, what with Mr Tumnus's umbrella, Mrs Beaver's sewing machine and the infamous appearance of Father Christmas. Modern appliances weren't around in the later books.
  • In LWW much is made of the fact that there are no humans in Narnia prior to the arrival of the Pevensie children; Tumnus is even mentioned to have a book titled Is Man a Myth? on his bookshelf. This is a big deal particularly because of a prophecy declaring that a human will herald the end of the White Witch's reign. In The Horse and His Boy, however, we learn that there's a whole kingdom (Archenland) populated by humans right next door to Narnia. In addition, The Magician's Nephew later reveals that humans were present in Narnia literally from the moment it was created, and the first King of Narnia was human.
  • Talking Beasts acted more human in the early books: Mr. Beaver wore boots, for example, and the official illustrations even have Aslan walking on his hind legs. Also, Lewis seems to have started with the idea that all animals were sapient, with Prince Caspian explaining that many "went wild" only due to how bad Narnia's become. The Magician's Nephew makes it clear that Narnia had Talking Beasts and Dumb Beasts were separated from the beginning.
• Conquerors Of Providence: The first three chapters are officially declared non-canon duel to dial the absurdity-levels up to eleven, with the cast regularly Breaking the Fourth Wall to the point where there might not even be one anymore.
• The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids:
  • The titular robots talked in rhyme in their debut, when they were nothing more than a metafictional punchline in a comments section. This trait was dropped almost as soon as the Cupids were spun-off into their own seres of short stories, although it was present in the early tie-in game Cupid Chaos!.
  • In her first appearance, the Queen of the Black Market was an outright antagonist, and came very close to stabbing Tracker on a whim. In later appearances, she became a more sympathetic character — still morally gray at best, but a practical-minded criminal rather than someone liable to personally stab someone For the Evulz. Her bone armour was also originally implied to be made of real bones (given that she jokes about using Darius's spine to add to it), but was revealed in The Grand Multiverse Hotel to largely be fake.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
  • The first book takes place over an entire school year. Later entries would take place over a few months or even only about a week.
  • There is also not much of an underlying "Theme" or a story arc to the first book, therefore it comes off as more of a Random Events Plot compared to the later books.
• Dirty Bertie: The first book is a picture book instead of a novella, and Whiffer the dog isn't referred to by name.
• Discworld:
  • The first two books are direct parodies of Sword and Sorcery fantasy. They featured a lot of elements that were quietly dropped in the later books, which are parodies of just about everything.
  • The shift in human naming conventions is particularly marked, with fantasy-parodic names like Zlorf and Gorphal giving way to conventional names like Fred or Sybil. Equal Rites sees the first ordinary surnames (the Smiths), and Mort (for Mortimer) is the series' first protagonist with a real-world given name. The more fantastic names are reserved for non-human species in later books.
  • The same shift occurs in the political geography of the Discworld itself. The generic fantasy countries in the original conception become, slowly and surely, Fantasy Counterpart Cultures of real countries on Earth. The emphasis shifts from a fantastic magocracy like Krull, or the Pern parody of the Wyrmberg, to a fantastic Australia or a thinly-disguised parody of the Far East (Agatea). The posthumously produced Compleat Discworld Atlas is an attempt to make sense of and reconcile these two visions of the Discworld and it is easy to see the cracks.
  • The city of Quirm was originally generically "foreign" in contrast to the British Ankh-Morpork. Vefore Brindisi became established as the Disc version of Italy, Quirm was sometimes a stand in for things Italian (mention is made of a Pisan-style "Collapsed Tower" and the Leonardo da Vinci analog is Leonard da Quirm). In later books it is very firmly fantasy counterpart France. ^note In later writings the Collapsed Tower is still there, but as an Eiffel analogue
  • Carrot's status among the dwarves shifts as the series progresses. In his first appearance, it's heavily implied that his family talked him into going to Ankh-Morpork because he didn't fit in among dwarves. In a later book, he explains to Vimes that he has performed all the rituals and rites of passages that dwarves go through. And so, genetics aside, he is a dwarf, and other dwarves recognize him as such.
  • The earlier books use "gnome" and "goblin" interchangeably, to the point that the Companion says "a gnome is a goblin found underground, a goblin is a gnome who's come up for air". In later books goblins are a very distinct race that nobody would mistake for a gnome.
  • Pterry is more likely to Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp" in the early novels. Mort's father apparently farms "tharga beasts", and since (unlike vermine or republican bees in later books) nothing amusing is said about them to differ them from Roundworld animals, they might as well be oxen.
  • The Colour of Magic:
    • The Patrician who appears in the first book is unnamed and bears absolutely no resemblance to our favorite Magnificent Bastard Lord Vetinari, to the point where Pterry had to confirm that it was him. In Sourcery he is completely impotent; he's casually transformed into a small lizard by Coin, and spends most of the book that way.
    • Death actively, and with little reason, kills a man in the first book by stopping his heart. This goes directly against his role in later books, as he is strictly a psychopomp who facilitates the process of death instead of causing it, and knows fully well that people are supposed to die on their own time. Also, he rather likes people.
  • In The Light Fantastic and Sourcery, Rincewind uses magic several times: twice when powerful external sources of magic act through him, and once (in The Light Fantastic) when he casts a spell entirely on his own, albeit with near-fatal difficulty. He never uses magic again in the series. (Except possibly in Eric, but that's even more "something else acting through him" than Sourcery.) Also, the reason for his lack of ability was at first stated to be because the Octavo spell occupied his brain, crowding out any other room for learning. In later books, long after it's been expelled, he just appears to have no talent at all.
  • Sourcery: The wizards, considering the various powers of the city, mention "the council of aldermen". The idea Ankh-Morpork has a level of government below the Patrician is never mentioned again. (There's a sort of city council in later books, but it comprises whatever combination of Guild leaders and nobles Vetinari thinks might be useful to the situation at hand, and he has the only vote at meetings.)
  • Guards! Guards!:
    • Much is made of Nobby Nobbs being a clothes horse and having a wardrobe of the latest fashions that he wears off duty. By Feet of Clay, he has no idea what to wear to a posh party until Fred Colon tells him he can just wear his uniform.
    • The adopted dwarf, Carrot, makes reference to female dwarfs ^note Expressly, a parody of Tolkein's reference to their being "so alike to the men that no human eye can tell the difference". Additionally a minor character in Soul Music is a openly female dwarf, and nobody considers this unusual. Starting with Feet of Clay, openly female dwarves are an anomaly, with most forced to hide their true gender by society. (Terry was asked about this, and suggested that some clans were ahead of the curve on this subject, which doesn't entirely work for Carrot, who is shocked by it in Feet of Clay.)
  • Wyrd Sisters: Hwel is the first fairly major dwarf character, and much was made of him being a great playwright, since most dwarfs apparently cannot even read. However, practically all other books portray dwarfs of not only being literate, but deeply respecting the written word to the point where it almost seems like a religion. (The dwarfs are deeply awed by the concept of a “Blackboard Monitor”, somebody trusted enough to erase words.) Although Hwel is still an unusual character, because the writing most dwarfs do seems to be for legal, religious, or professional purposes (treaties/contracts, signage, and letters) rather than creative writing. So Hwel is still Square Race, Round Class, even if dwarfs can now read.
• Dog and Spider Private Investigations: Due to the author intending to pitch the series to former employers the original draft version of Jessica in the first two books was changed to a white woman. When the audiobooks were produced, they ended up based on that draft. Though an explanation was given at the beginning of audiobook 2, the return of Jessica to her intended race will certainly be a weird artifact.
• Dragonriders of Pern:
  • The short story, Weyr Search, that became the opening of Dragonflight and launched the series, has a number of differences from the rest of the book (written years later), and the book has marked differences from the rest of the series. The biggest oddity of Weyr Search is that Lessa has an explicit projective empathic ability that works on humans; she uses it on F'lar. Of note from the book to later novels, the dragons aren't given actual lines — the narration paraphrases their speech to their riders (as with fire lizards later), making it seem more empathic and less explicitly telepathic.
  • The naming conventions of Dragonriders changes between the first book and the rest of the series. In Dragonflight, Lessa and F'lar discuss a newborn baby whose name has the familiar "consonant-apostrophe-three letters" combo. In later books, it's established that male Weyrfolk are given a name that's a combination of the mother's and the father's name, which is changed to a shortened version if they become Dragonriders. For example, in Masterharper of Pern, young F'lar is called Fallarnon.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Storm Front, the first book, matches the tone of the later installments fairly well, but refers to some world-building concepts that were changed in later entries of the series. For instance, there's a reference to vampires being unable to enter homes uninvited because they're creatures of the Nevernever and need to expend constant effort to maintain corporeal form and crossing a threshold uninvited blocks power. The threshold-blocking-power bit is maintained and expanded upon in later books (anything magical doesn't work if you enter a home uninvited), but vampires are established to not be from the Nevernever, and some types like the White court can enter homes more or less freely although they'll be leaving their power behind like everyone else. Also, there's a reference to a singular Queen of the Fae, while late installments establish two separate Fae courts, with three Queens each. Some of this, perhaps, can be slightly justified with Harry not knowing as much as reading up on monsters and concepts he doesn't know a ton about is a pretty frequent event in the series, particularly early on.
  • There's also the issue that in the early books, the author did not know the Chicago area very well, resulting in various errors in geography and architecture. This was remedied later after Butcher did his homework.
  • Shockingly, Storm Front boasts entire chapters in which there are no pop culture references. Even finding a page without any would become rare by the third or fourth book.
  • In Fool Moon, Harry summons the demon Chaunzaggaroth. His conversation with him makes it very clear that Chauncy is supposed to be a fire-and-brimstone Dante's Inferno demon, with it referring to Saint Patrick and the Catholic Church as "the other side." But in Death Masks he tells Murphy that "demons" are just harmful spirits from the Nevernever and that the Fallen which empower the Knights of the Blackened Denarius are the only true Biblical enemies-of-God demons that are active in the world. Of course Clap Your Hands If You Believe is in effect, and some regions of the Nevernever closely resemble the various locations from human mythology as a result. It's entirely possible that Chaunzaggaroth simply comes from a region that mimics Fire and Brimstone Hell, and deliberately invokes the concept during the conversation.
  • The first three or six books focus almost exclusively on cases Harry takes in his job as a wizard-for-hire. In fact the "Wizard Private Eye" was the original idea of the books. Elements of the greater world like the Vampire Courts, the Faerie and the White Council were primarily in the background. The early books add in a number of recurring allies and enemies, as well as expanding on how things like the Faerie and White Council function and impact the world at large. After that, Harry's work as a wizard-for-hire takes a back seat to the point of being entirely gone in many of the later books while the greater overarching plot that was building up to a greater Myth Arc begins to dominate the plot of the individual books rather than being a background element. That said many of the various short stories about Harry set inbetween books still have him do his detective stuff.
  • The chief differences are made manifest by watching the television adaptation of the books. The series was a loose adaptation to begin with, but went into production when only six books had been published, and heavily based their stories on the tone of the first three books. In the series, as with the first few books, the focus is on Harry as a special consultant to the Chicago Police, which is also true of the first few books, wherein he works with the police so often that he considers several of them to be his personal friends. Later, his only contact on the force is Lt. Karrin Murphy, who mostly is shown helping him with his problems rather than the other way around.
• The Elenium, by David Eddings, begins with Sparhawk planning to quietly garrotte someone, which seems quite out-of-character later on; in general the first few chapters seem a lot darker than the rest of it.
• Ender's Game: The Formics are normally referred to as the "Buggers" in this book. This slang gradually disappeared later in the series and is not used in The Film of the Book, since in British English it's a slang term for anal sex.
• The Expanse : Leviathan Wakes is the first book in the series and the only one to have only two PoV characters, barring the prologue and epilogue. Caliban's War raised that number to four, and since Babylon's Ashes the authors have stopped limiting themselves to even that number.
• Fablehaven: The first book is a mostly cheerful, good-natured, and lighthearted fantasy story about a pair of bickering siblings who discover that their grandparents run a nature preserve for magical creatures. The entire concept is treated with wonder. The later books in the series, however, are extremely dark, changing their tone entirely about what it's like to work in a magical preserve, and don't shy away from violence and death. The entire thing becomes a serious Crapsaccharine World.
• Fifty Shades of Grey: Famously, the beginning is about Ana going to interview Christian for the college newspaper. For the rest of the series, Christian is careful to avoid the press.
• Goosebumps: The early books were more straightforward horror, with relatively realistic depictions of violence and death, lacking much of the melodrama, black comedy, and whimsy that is found in many of the later novels (which, admittedly, could still get dark). The fifth book, Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, is probably the biggest "offender" in this regard; it has no supernatural elements (other than for two pages right near the end) and the villain is basically a Serial Killer/religious fanatic who tries to kidnap the child protagonists in a disturbingly realistic scene with the intention of killing and mummifying them along with the protagonist's uncle. Compare this to most of the books which were both full of supernatural/paranormal stuff and tended to be a combination of goofy and scary.
• Ghosts Don't Eat Potato Chips: Unlike virtually every other installment of the Bailey School Kids series, this one features involvement from an unambiguously real ghost, that of Great-uncle Jasper. But the kids chock it all up to coincidence.
• The Gunslinger, the first book of The Dark Tower, is very different from the later installments, being a fix-up novel made of five short stories, giving it more episodic structure than its successors. It focuses on setting the tone of the post-apocalyptic Mid-world and as a result features very sparse dialogue and a generally somber tone, while the later books tend to favor character interaction and plot progression over melancholy world-building. King later rewrote the book in a tone closer to the rest of the series.
• Drinking Midnight Wine, although indisputably part of Simon R. Green's Greenverse, is a stand-alone full-length novel with more of a sober, mainstream feel than his later Urban Fantasy series (Nightside, Secret Histories, Ghost Finders), which are quick romps that don't take themselves so seriously. Moreover, Midnight Wine depicts the realm of magic as its own parallel reality (Mysterie) which is difficult to access from our own (Veritie), with science being little-known in the former and magic, virtually inoperable in the latter. By comparison, magic and the supernatural are fully integrated with our world in his series works, just kept hidden from the masses, and Mad Science or Magitek are as potent of an influence as the mythical.
• Reading the first edition of the Brothers Grimm's Fairy Tale collection can be quite shocking for many people who are used to later editions. The stepmothers of Snow White and Hansel and Gretel are instead their biological mothers, Cinderella does not go to the first ball (instead watching it from the pigeon roost) and only goes to the second and third, and many tales of French origin appear that don't appear in later editions. In addition, many stories in the first edition are extremely dark, such as "Two Children Play at Slaughter", where one child straight up murders another while playing. These dark stories were mostly cut out of later editions.
• Fear Street: The first novel, The New Girl, had a male main character. Almost every subsequent book in the main series (with some exceptions, such as Double Date and The Perfect Date) had a female protagonist.
• Haruhi Suzumiya: The eponymous character seems more unhinged in the earliest light novels. In the first book, she is jealous enough of Kyon to subconsciously try to destroy the world after Mikuru gets close to him— note that Kyon didn't even notice anything amiss. In later books, she would tell him off if it looked like he was spending too much time with the other girls in the Brigade, but the world wouldn't be in peril or anything. In The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya, Koizumi, Mikuru, and Nagato are outright worried that she will destroy and recreate the world because they were losing a baseball game, which is a little extreme in retrospect. It is not entirely clear whether this is Character Development or not. Also, in The Sighs of Haruhi Suzumiya, Haruhi is capable of causing changes in reality without even a Closed Space, which never happens again. And after Mikuru is traumatized for the first time, she asks Kyon if he will take her if she is ruined for marriage. Later novels will establish that time travels are prohibited from having any relationships with denizens of other times.
• Historia Brittonum:
  • The earliest work offering an account of the supposed career of "King" Arthur. Only that Arthur isn't a king but a general; a certain Ambrosius is considered the most glorious king of the Britons instead; and there's no Merlin, no Sword in the Stone, no Guinevere, no Table Round, no Grail, no Excalibur, and no knights. There's essentially nothing of what defines Arthur in the writings of Chrétien de Troyes and Thomas Malory.
  • Even within the Roman war section of Arthuriana this happens. According to Geoffrey Lucius Tiberius/Hiberius is the Procurator and the Emperor is Leo (who may be based on the Byzantine Emperor Leo I). In all later adaptations Lucius is the Emperor and Leo barely appears.
• Historia Regum Britanniae (History Of The Kings Of Britain): can come across this way. About half the section on Arthur is taken up by a war against Rome. Even though this would remain a feature of Medieval Arthurian Literature later adaptations shifted the focus more to the court and the quests of Knights. Modern-day adaptations likely won't have anything to do with Arthur fighting Rome. Likewise, there is no Sword in the Stone, no Round Table, and no Lancelot (Guinevere hooks up with Mordred instead), Merlin doesn't serve or mentor Arthur, and no Morgan Le Fay, but Arthur has one full sister named Anna. Morgan appears in Geoffrey's related work Vita Merlini where she lives in Avalon and uses her magic for healing instead of evil.
• Honor Harrington: In the first novel On Basilisk Station, the extremely short-ranged Grav Lance that is one of the central plot elements of the book is gone from later installments, as weapon ranges extend from tens to hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions of kilometers, and while Admiral Dame Sonja Hemphill remains quite enamored of her own genius in her later appearances^note and not undeservedly, given that her technological breakthroughs include faster-than-light communication, multi-drive missiles, and FTL missile control, plus a host of others, she is not (unlike in the first book) inclined to take out her frustrations over the failures of systems she developed on the officers trying to employ them in the field. Also of note, this is the only book in the series where non-treecat aliens have any bearing on the plot, while treecats aren't really signalled to be more than an exceptional pet.
• Horatio Hornblower: The books are written in Anachronic Order. Lieutenant Hornblower, published seventh, is the story of how Bush met the title character when they were both young lieutenants. This retcons The Happy Return, published first, where Bush apparently met Captain Hornblower for the first time at the start of the Lydia's voyage.
• The Hunger Games novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes features an In-Universe example with the titular games. The 10th Annual Hunger Games were quite different from the one Katniss Everdeen volunteered as tribute for: the Reaping is done by the district mayors rather than emissaries from the Capitol, the tributes are thrown into a zoo pen rather than being kept in a Gilded Cage and receive no combat training before the Games begin, there's no focus on talents, there's no betting, the mentors are Capitol academy students rather than previous victors (and this is also the first installment of the Games to have mentors at all), and the arena itself is a literal indoor sporting arena rather than the elaborate deathtrap-filled environments of later Games, among other things (the arena being used after a rebel bombing is essentially a Throw It In! which is implied to have inspired said later arenas). It has almost no media presence, unlike the massive publicity machine Katniss is shoved into. Most of these later changes were suggested and later implemented by Coriolanus Snow, and it's suggested that the Games would have been discontinued without them, as viewership numbers are dismal even in the Capitol.
• INVADERS of the ROKUJYOUMA!?: Book 1 is wackier than the rest of the series, being a Harem Genre story (or an Affectionate Parody of one) with a Fantasy Kitchen Sink of girls showing up on the protagonist's doorstep and competing against each other to take over his home. According to the author, it was written this way so that the storyline could be ended quickly (in three books) if sales were low.
• The Irregular at Magic High School: In the first arc, the protagonists act like ordinary teenagers, including casual styles of speech, familial ribbing, and surprise at magician society's elitism. By the time of the second, they are the scarred, codependent, decidedly non-civilian aristocrats that they would remain for the rest of the series. Notably, the P.O.V. Sequel eschews the first few scenes of that arc entirely, replacing them with a more character-consistent short story.
• Joe Books' earliest Disney cinestory books threw away the original script for a new one. As a result, many scenes were shortened, the lyrics for musical numbers were replaced by ordinary spoken lines and so on, despite the end credits being left unchanged. This is especially noticeable in the Frozen book, which was their first. Possibly due to complainants, later books were (and continue to be) direct film-to-comic conversions with the script left unchanged.
• P. G. Wodehouse:
  • "Extricating Young Gussie", the first of Wodehouse's short stories containing Jeeves and Wooster. Bertie's personality and his relationship with Aunt Agatha are all in place, but their family name appears to be "Mannering-Phipps" instead of "Wooster". More noticeably, Jeeves appears for all intents and purposes to be an ordinary valet, and when Bertie gets in trouble and needs help, he has no idea who to ask. The surname "Wooster" and the personality of Jeeves as we know him today don't appear until the second story, aptly titled "Leave It to Jeeves".
  • Ukridge's first appearance, Love Among the Chickens, differs somewhat from the other Ukridge stories. One difference is the length — it's the only novel featuring Ukridge. Another is the narrator, Jeremy Jarnet — unlike Corky in later stories, he has his own plotline (including love interest) in addition to Ukridge's antics. Another difference is that Ukridge has a wife.
• Kushiel's Legacy:
  • Jacqueline Carey doesn't get around to explaining how D'Angelines prevent pregnancy until the third book, where it's revealed that pregnancy can only occur after a prayer to their fertility goddess. The first book, however, has a number of pregnancies that are implied to have been unplanned - Phedre's mother, for example, apparently chose to pray for a second child when she and her husband were so destitute that they were forced to sell their first into indenture, and Alcuin's mother was kicked out by her family for getting pregnant by a passing lord. Carey dodges this slightly by stating that prayers can't be rescinded if you change your mind, they may not be successful right away, and while rape is unusual (D'Angelines consider it heresy) it does happen from time to time, so an unwanted pregnancy isn't impossible.
  • Phedre bleeds the first time she has vaginal intercourse, which is treated as a Virginity Flag. Later books suggest that women of D'Angeline descent do not bleed on first intercourse.
  • A number of lines in Kushiel's Dart show Phedre's wistfulness for the Night Court and the Terre d'Ange of her youth, implying that before her death, the Night Court experienced a significant decline in prestige and elegance (possibly something like the Revolution, which ended the opulence and excess of the French aristocracy). However, the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers doesn't seem particularly shabby when Moirin arrives in Terre d'Ange three generations later; either it recovered from this decline, or Phedre as an old woman was just grumbling in her memoirs that things were better in her day.
• Land of Oz: The Oz of the first two books is notably different from the Oz in subsequent books. A lot of this can, and has, been explained and justified by Ozma coming to power and radically changing things; for example, the spell that prevents death in Oz apparently depends on a descendant of Lurline being on the throne, explaining why death occurred in the first book when the illegitimate Wizard was on the throne.
• The Last Dragon Chronicles: The first book, The Fire Within, is massively strange in comparison with the rest of the books in the series. The main antagonist is Henry Bacon (who is a grumpy good guy in every other book), and book has a very simple and lighthearted plot about trying to save a one-eyed squirrel from a crow—with some Reality Warping thrown in. The rest of the series, however, is a dark, heady series about mankind's destiny, human nature and the nature of God, quantum physics, and what can only be described as the dissolution of reality at the hands of a group of superbeings. On the side, it also addresses issues like the nature of adultery and the ways in which we cope with grief. The author eventually started a spin-off series that was much closer to the original book, presumably to avoid warping the innocence of children further.
• Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee didn't actually start working together until Skinwalkers, the seventh novel in Tony Hillerman's Leaphorn & Chee mystery series; the first three novels in the series only feature Leaphorn, and the next three only feature Chee (the next installment established that they took place in the same universe). Somewhat tellingly, the film adaptation of The Dark Wind (the fifth installment) actually adds Leaphorn to the story, despite him not being in the book. The very first novel in the series also notably isn't told from Leaphorn's perspective: the POV character is an anthropologist named Bergen McKee, who doesn't appear in any future books.
• Little House on the Prairie: Little House in the Big Woods has less of a narrative than the later books and is organized around a series of stories and general descriptions of the Ingallses' daily life, probably because Laura was so young at the time.
• Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent was written by an angrier, less mature Bryson and it shows. Readers who begin with later works might be surprised at how acidic, anti-American (and arguably elitist) Bryson was before he mellowed. Certainly he seems much less fond of his home town, Des Moines, and his father, and much more of a wannabe Brit. Same goes for Neither Here Nor There, published two years after The Lost Continent. It's certainly rougher and more acidic in tone than his later books.
• Isaac Asimov's The Complete Adventures of Lucky Starr:
  • In the first book, Starr encounters an ancient race of Martians who give him a personal force field and dub him "Space Ranger". It was obviously intended as a hero origin story, but the later books became more detective-focused with a Cold War-tone. The mask was used exactly once more, in the second book, and for radiation shielding rather than disguise.
  • Based on the later volumes, you'd expect the first volume to mention Mars in the title, but it simply nicknames the protagonist "Space Ranger" (which isn't used again).
• Madeline: The first book is a realistic slice-of-life story about the titular little girl having her appendix removed and her friends visiting her in the hospital - a plot line that doesn't even appear until halfway though the book, the first half being devoted to introducing the characters. If it weren't such a famous book in its own right, it would feel very strange compared to the rest of the series, which is much more plot-driven and adventure-oriented, with the later entries even introducing magic and fantasy elements.
• Arly Hanks has a deputy working for her in the first of Joan Hess's Maggody mysteries, and the sheriff's office largely takes over the investigation into Jaylee's death, in contrast to later books when she has no underlings and is railroaded into doing all the grunt-work because Sheriff Dorfer is out fishing or watching baseball. Mrs. Jim Bob actually chews out her husband for hassling Arly, rather than sniping at her in Holier Than Thou fashion, and Jim Bob himself seems genuinely fond of fishing and hunting, rather than using them as a cover for his philandering.
• Magic Journeys is the only book in Mary Graham Bonner's Magic series to be a direct sequel to The Magic Map, instead of being only thematically related to it.
• Magic: the Gathering pre-revision lore from novels, comics and magazines mostly fit with modern canon, but there are plenty of details that are overwritten by later sources. [1][2]
• Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series shows marked differences between the first book, Gardens of the Moon, and the rest of the series. Examples include Tool's hundred-mile-diameter magic-deadening Tellann aura and the interaction of munitions with active magic, among many others. To Malazan fans, this is known as a GotMism. Justified because the first book was written around a decade before any of the other ones.
• Rosemary Wells:
  • The very first Max and Ruby books by Rosemary Wells from 1979 (Max's First Word, Max's New Suit, Max's Ride, and Max's Toys) were all very small compared to later books from the series. Especially Max's First Word where Max's overalls were colored green and the book was only 6 pages long. This would later be used for the "Baby Max And Ruby" series which is geared towards very young children.
  • Rosemary's very first illustration was from a 1971 book "Impossible, Possum"◊. In this book, the animal characters are Partially Civilized Animal instead of a Funny Animal or is set in a World of Funny Animals she's more well-known for.
  • One of her earliest books written was "Benjamin & Tulip" from 1973 which deals with a duo of raccoons causing a fight with each other with their aunt worried about the two. The book contains lines such as "I'm going to beat you up." and "You're cruising for a bruising!". The book was also pretty violent such as Benjamin attempting to throw a big watermelon onto Tulip◊, spitting watermelon seeds at each other◊, Benjamin throwing the same watermelon onto Tulip's face, and Tulip throwing mud all over Benjamin. In modern books, she avoids showing any of her characters showing or attempting any types of violence.
• The Mortal Instruments:
  • The first three books barely make note of the parabatai bond. Strange, considering how important it is in the prequel series. The second half of the series compensates by emphasizing the bond several times.
  • The Forsaken are only significant in City of Bones. After that, they are barely mentioned at all.
• Nick Velvet by Edward D. Hoch: Nick was originally billed as a 'Thief of the Unusual' rather than a 'Thief of the Worthless'. Several early stories feature him stealing items that definitely have a monetary value. The first story has him stealing a rare tiger from a zoo. It was several stories into the series before Hoch settled on the only stealing items with no value aspect that made the character unique.
• Night Watch gives us a lot of this in the first and second books:
  • In the first book, in order to save time, Gesar briefs Anton in a dream. This ability is promptly forgotten and never even mentioned in later books.
  • At the very beginning, Light Mage Anton is searching for a vampire. He drinks blood in order to "pick up the signal" and several times nearly crosses the line. Other vampires sensed him nearly cross the line and regret that he didn't. Except it's never stated what would happen, since there's no such thing as a "Light Vampire". No blood drinking appears to be necessary in later books.
  • The Freeze spell appears to function in an And I Must Scream manner in book 1, freezing only the body. However, in book 6, it's stated to completely freeze the person, so no passage of time is detected by the target.
  • Portals as a way to quickly cross distances only appear from book 2 onward. In book 1, the powerful Dark Mage Zabulon has to cut his way through the deepest layers of the Twilight in order to rescue his protege. Supposedly, Lukyanenko's co-author for the second book convinced him to add portals.
  • In book 1, Gesar mentions some kind of central authority over all the regional Night Watches. After that, we learn that regional Watches exist on their own. The only overall authority is the Inquisition, but they're technically not in charge of the Watches, merely ensuring that they abide by the Grand Treaty.
• Over Sea, Under Stone, the first book of The Dark is Rising, is a rather standard, almost Enid Blyton-esque children's adventure story, with less of the fantasy elements and references to Celtic mythology that defined the later books (they only show up in the second half of the book, and even then they're relatively subtle).
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians:
  • The first few times nymphs are described, they are said to look mainly like normal human girls. Near the end of the series, and continuing on through The Heroes of Olympus, nymphs are described as being rather elf-like in appearance.
  • Initially, several characters were wary of saying certain names, claiming that names were 'powerful' - for instance, when Percy just asks Mr D^note Dionysus what the 'D' in his name stands for, Mr D acts like Percy is asking for permission to hold a dangerous weapon. This was dropped midway through the first book, with no one having issue with Percy saying the names of more violent gods to more violent gods.
  • The first book, having the burden of introducing the world of Classical Mythology to newcomers, goes to great lengths to point out that Greek Mythology is different from Christianity. These include scenes such as Percy being told not to worry too much about the possible existence of a "Capital-G god," and Percy commenting on seeing a televangelist in the Underworld (Annabeth tells him that the Mist probably makes him think he's in Hell). After the first book, Christianity is rarely (or not at all) mentioned.
  • More broadly, starting with The Kane Chronicles, the series/franchise transitioned from Classical Mythology-based Urban Fantasy to a multi-legend Fantasy Kitchen Sink Urban Fantasy instead. Consequently, the afterlife situation is Retconned to be that the dead will naturally find the afterlife that they expect per their beliefs, rather than just seeing an illusory version of their expected afterlife overlaid above the Greek Underworld. ^note  It is also implied that a nonbeliever will instead go to the afterlife of the tradition that they have the most affinity for. The examples of Science Is Wrong prevalent in the first series are all but gone as well, in favor of a more "physical vs spiritual truth" approach to the supernatural elements in the series.
  • Also, in the first book and parts of the second, Percy would usually refer to gods by family names, such as Percy calling Hades "Uncle". By the time the third book rolls around, this is almost completely dropped and gods are treated with much more respect, normally being called Lord or some other official title.
• Rainbow Magic: The first series of books took a while to establish Kirsty and Rachel before sending them to Fairyland, the goblins were built up as major threats, they had to find the fairies themselves rather than magical items, and Jack Frost was captured at the end and nearly melted until the fairies relented.
  • In the US prints, Sunny the Yellow Fairy has a disclaimer on the cover reading "Previously published as Saffron the Yellow Fairy". No other US prints where a fairy's name is changed have this.
  • It was also very clearly meant to be a standalone series. The Weather Fairies series was only made due to its popularity.
• Ramona Quimby: The first book, "Beezus and Ramona", had Ramona's older sister as the protagonist rather than Ramona herself. Also, when Ramona got angry or sad, it was meant to be seen as her just being annoying, while later books established that she was genuinely unhappy and spent a lot of her time trying hard not to be seen as a "pest". The Quimby parents are also referred to as "Mother and Father" by the narration, while the later books' narration would call them "Mr. and Mrs. Quimby."
• The first couple of books in the Ranger's Apprentice series were a fairly standard fantasy, with a chosen one Orphaned Hero who defeats an Evil Overlord and his orc-like mooks, who seem to be controlled by magic. After Will and Evanlyn are kidnapped by Skandians, the series develops into more of an adventure series taking place in a differently-named version of our world, with any supernatural elements mostly turning out to be fakes.
  • Oddly enough, in one of the later books a short scene with a seemingly-supernatural entity comes up and seems jarringly out of place with the series' new tone, even though it's significantly toned-down from the supernatural elements of the first book.
• Redwall:
  • Redwall (1986):
    • The book features a number of references indicating that the animals live in a world where humans also exist, such as a horse cart, a church, taverns, ports, and a direct mention of Portugal. Also, one of the characters was a beaver. In later books, author Brian Jacques made it clear that only animals existed in the Redwall universe, and only animals native to the British Isles, so there were no future appearances of any more beavers (though beavers WERE native to Britain at one time, but they were killed off due to overhunting, and were not brought back until later). And when animals that aren't native to Britain do appear, like the golden hamster in one book, they speak with foreign accents to indicate that they aren't from Mossflower.
    • There are more religious/mystical references, including mentions of heaven and hell and a snake named Asmodeus, after a demon in the Catholic/Orthodox bible. Again, these are toned down in establishing Redwall as its own universe. In the first book, it is also ambiguous whether Sela the fox actually had unique powers. Later in the series, any claims of supernatural powers are explicitly presented as a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax (Psychic Dreams for Everyone and seers remained, however).
  • In an early scene, claims that Cluny's horde is all evil is met with cries of "That's right, give a rat a bad name!" implying that there are rats living in Redwall. This is most certainly not the case in the future.^note Except for Grubbage. The first book also implies generally that not only rats but other "vermin" are not Always Chaotic Evil, but the later books have the opposite being the case, aside from a few exceptions.
  • The animal characters also gradually became more human-like, especially badger characters. In the first book, specific note is always made when Constance rears up on her back feet; in later books, even badgers are assumed to be bipedal.
  • The order of Redwall itself started out as reminiscent of a Catholic monastic order: the members wear habits, they live somewhat sequestered inside their Abbey, and remain celibate for the entirety of their lives. Cornflower gets yelled at for flirting with Matthias, who was then a novice of the order and therefore off-limits; when they get married, Matthias is mentioned to have left the order and lived apart from the monks. In later books, all that's left of this rule is that there is an Abbey. Even Abbesses and Abbots can be married, and not even the habit is required anymore, morphing it into some sort of peaceful commune that's little different from other communities in the forest.
  • Feast scenes in the first couple of books sometimes feature corn and tomatoes. In future books, only Old World produce is available.
  • In most books, hares often interject "wot" or "wot, wot" into sentences as a Verbal Tic. The hare archetype Basil doesn't do this in Redwall. The Salamandastron hares in Mossflower do it, but it's spelled "what". Once Basil picks it up in Mattimeo, "wot" has been settled on.
  • In Mossflower, Bella says that Salamandastron is ruled exclusively by male badgers, and rulership is passed from father to son. In later books there are several female Badger Lords, and it's never mentioned whether any of the Badger Lords after Sunflash are related to each other.
  • The Sword of Martin is renamed "Ratdeath" at the end of the first book. This is never mentioned again.
  • The Bloodwrath was established in Mariel of Redwall as a kind of berserker fury that had been known to occasionally affect some badger lords of Salamandastron in the past, and that Rawnblade was the first to experience it since Boar the Fighter several generations ago. Several books later, Outcast of Redwall retconned Boar's son Sunflash the Mace into having gone into it every time he got into a battle, and the Bloodwrath subsequently became something that all badgers went into every time they got into a battle.
• Matthew Reilly: Contest (Matthew Reilly), his first written book, has much more sci-fi elements (to the point of including aliens) and a lot less emphasis on the military. Ice Station has less-but-still-prevalent sci-fi, such as the spaceship MacGuffin that turns out to be man-made and still quite advanced, while backstory on the ICG provides implications for Ancient Astronauts.
• Roys Bedoys:
  • Early stories would have the phrase “Good choice, Roys Bedoys” used when Roys finally made a good choice. Later stories omitted the phrase.
  • In one early story, Roys insults Loys by saying that the latter “has stinky diapers”. Later stories would establish that Loys is already toilet trained.
• Maura Isles doesn't even exist in The Surgeon, which is technically the first book in the Rizzoli & Isles series, and when she shows up in the second book, she's a minor character with only a few scenes. Rizzoli herself is a secondary character in the first book, and a thoroughly unlikable one at that—brusque, abrasive, almost pathologically jealous of beautiful women because she herself is plain and average looking, so much so that she spends most of the book treating the protagonist/titular character—a rape victim being stalked by a copycat of her assailant—like garbage. But somehow, she got such positive feedback that author Tess Gerritsen nixed plans to kill her off and begun the series of books based on them, alternating between which woman takes the lead role in each novel or splitting it evenly between them.
• The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel:
  • The first book has a line from Scathach that implies she witnessed Joan of Arc's death, and there's another line that alludes to Joan dying young. The very next book has the protagonists meet Joan herself, who has been alive and well for hundreds of years. And Scathach claims to have personally saved her life during her execution, making the line from the first book quite odd.
  • The first book said that the fifth element is Time. No other books reference a fifth element, and the twins only get instructions in the traditional classical elements.
• Sherlock Holmes' characterization was quite a bit different in the first novel, A Study in Scarlet. And Holmes' cocaine habit (introduced in the second novel) stops being mentioned after the 17th story (out of 60) — except in one later story where Watson just brings it up to explain that Holmes no longer uses the drug. While the villain's perspective on things is often given at the end, fully half of A Study in Scarlet is from the perspective of the murderer, takes place in the American West, and is such an anti-Mormon screed that Arthur Conan Doyle actually apologized during a visit to America. The book fully takes the side of the murderer against the evil that is Mormonism.
• In Skulduggery Pleasant, the first Mook we ever see is Immune to Fire, but weak against water - when he falls in a river, his body comes apart like the water was made of acid. Skulduggery explains that this is normal, as "every big spell has a hidden snag", but from that point on, almost all Adept mages have "limitations" instead of "weaknesses - rather than having powers that hurt them, they have powers that don't work in certain situations.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • A Game of Thrones:
    • The book is noticeably more tightly plotted than later installments, with few of the increasingly numerous characters and side-plots of the later books. The reason for this is simple; it was originally conceived as a trilogy with a specific arc for each book, and later was expanded into the currently planned seven-book series.
    • The prologue discusses how a trio of the Night's Watch encounter the White Walkers. The Walkers kill two of the men, while the third flees. The next chapter shows that man being executed as a deserter near Winterfell. Later books go into more detail about the Wall and how it would be difficult to pass it without going through Castle Black, which was nearby.
    • In his initial reverie about dragons, Tyrion recalls Vhagar's skull as visibly smaller than both Meraxes and Balerion. Later canon, particularly Archmaester Gyldayn's Histories, makes clear that Vhagar lived much longer than Meraxes and was nearly as large as Balerion by the end. Whether Meraxes was unusually large for her age (and right between Balerion and Vhagar in size), had a larger skull but a smaller body, or whether Tyrion was somehow mistaken isn't made clear.
    • In the appendices, the list of Targaryen kings describes Aegon II as one year younger than Rhaenyra. Later material has Rhaenyra as ten years older, and there being only a year between them was no longer even remotely plausible, as they had different mothers, Viserys only took one wife at a time, and marrying within half a year of a spouse dying is considered inappropriate.
    • In Jon I, Jon thinks about how younger Stark sons are given lands of their own to rule and, as such, Bran and Rickon will have holdfasts of their own to rule one day while he has nothing, which implies that there would be plenty of minor Stark cadet branches formed from all the younger sons of past generations. One would expect that these minor branches would be introduced in later books, especially during Robb's looming succession crisis in Book 3, but as it turns out, the Starks have absolutely no cadet branches outside of the very distantly related Karstarks and the extinct Greystarks; the closest kin that they have left are through their great grandaunt's marriage to a Vale house.
    • In one of the first Daenerys chapters, grasses of many colors are described by Jorah Mormont. These aren't mentioned again, nor seen by the characters who cross almost the whole Dothraki Sea.
  • The four Wardens (of the four cardinal directions) initially seem to be very important positions that each convey military authority over a quarter of the realm, and Ned objects to Jaime Lannister becoming Warden of the East because he'll eventually succeed his father as Warden of the West as well. Later on, however, they seem to be little more than honorary titles, with each lords' power determined by their feudal and familial ties, and it's firmly established that Kingsguard members like Jaime cannot hold lands or titles. To downplay this discrepancy, in subsequent novels the "Warden of the East" title is only ascribed in the appendices and only mentioned in passing twice.
  • Relatedly, the idea of Jaime inheriting the title of Warden of the West from his father, or being granted the title of Warden of the East, becomes baffling when it’s established that the Kingsguard, of which Jaime is a member, cannot inherit or hold any title at all, as they are sworn to their king in perpetuity and renounce their family claims so they can serve the king without family matters getting in the way. Indeed, part of Jaime’s core character later is his refusal to serve as Tywin’s heir, and he cites being a Kingsguard as his legal excuse that Tywin cannot overturn.
  • Tyrion is introduced vaulting acrobatically down from a ledge above a doorway but as soon as he becomes a PoV character he's constantly described as clumsy and ungainly and his initial acrobatics are never directly referenced again, though they are handwaved in the fifth novel when he disguises himself as a jester and reveals he learned some tumbling tricks as a child.
  • The first three books identify all chapters, with the exception of the prologues and epilogues, by the first name of the POV character of each chapter. From Book 4 on, GRRM began to switch these out in some cases in favour of descriptive titles of the POV characters.
  • In the first few books, much is made of the North and House Stark in particular being the last that really has a connection to the First Men as the North was never conquered by the Andals. This is what makes them very distinct from the firmly Andal southern realms. Over the course of the series and in supplementary material this has become distinctly less unique, and most major houses and several minor ones are given some connection to the First Men, usually through mythical ancestors who supposedly lived during the Age of Heroes such as Lann the Clever and Garth Greenhand. In particular, a large number of Vale houses (such as the Royces, the Belmores, the Graftons, the Hunters and the Redforts) descend explictly from the First Men, as do as the Blackwoods of the Riverlands (who also still worship the Old Gods) and the Daynes of Dorne. With the introduction of the Thenn people in the third book, who still speak the Old Tongue and live exactly like the First Men did thousands of years ago, it's highlighted that even the North has adopted Andal culture in most respects, such as speaking the Andalic language, using the Andalic script rather than their old runic one, and adopting Andal feudal titles and heraldry. As such, Northerners are no longer at all that distinctive from the Southrons, and, as seen with the Umbers and the Karstarks, can be just as every bit as conniving as them.
  • In the first book, Catelyn states that there are no weirwoods left south of the Neck besides the ones on the Isle of Faces. This claim is contradicted a number of times in later material. While the weirwood in the Blackwoods' keep can be assumed to not have been counted due to being long dead, the series has also described living specimens such as the one in the Dragonstone godswood that was cut and burned alongside the statues of the Seven after Stannis' conversion to the red faith. The preview chapters of The Winds of Winter outright mentions the presence of wild weirwoods in the Rainwood.
  • As later spinoff materials would reveal, the Baratheons can trace their descent back to a Targaryen bastard, making them an unofficial cadet branch of that house. However, in the main series, no mention is made of this and the Baratheons instead only ever used their grandmother's Targaryen blood to justify their claim to the Throne.
• Star Trek: New Frontier: In the first book, written in 1997, prior to the trend towards consistency in the Trek novels (which started around 2001), Danter is said to be a member of the United Federation of Planets. This seems rather odd, seeing as they're most definitely not what we'd expect from the Federation. Indeed, they're openly imperialistic. Later books seem to have retconned this, making Danter definitely an independent nation.
• Star Wars Legends: Older works show this to varying degrees.
  • Two of the earliest novels, both written by Alan Dean Foster, have a lot of this:
    • The novelization of A New Hope is framed as being an old chronicle, numerous scenes are added that were cut from the movie ultimately (including the Jabba meets Han scene added in special editions), Earth animals are commonly mentioned, Luke's squadron is identified as Blue Squadron (which was originally intended in the film, but due to SFX limitations was changed to Red), It also portrays the Emperor as a puppet of the bureaucrats, contradicting his usual characterization. The title Dark Lord of the Sith originally comes from this novelization, appearing nowhere in the original film trilogy. It was used as a title belonging exclusively to Darth Vader, and is implied to refer to a planet or solar system that he rules, rather than to an ancient cabal of evil Force users.
    • Splinter of the Mind's Eye was written after A New Hope and came out but before The Empire Strikes Back, and as such is one of the most notable examples of this trope in the franchise. The Unresolved Sexual Tension between Luke and Leia is very clear, R2-D2 is frequently referred to as a "detoo" unit instead of an R2-series droid, Luke frequently stops to recharge his lightsaber, and Vader knows Luke's full name and planet of origin but doesn't seem to know that they're related.
  • The Thrawn Trilogy, which was the earliest EU work to be set after Return of the Jedi, contains a number of elements that don't match very well with later canon:
    • Rogue Squadron is treated as just another fighter squadron and Wedge Antilles is specifically called out as a "lowly starfighter wing commander" and Luke has to remind the Council who he is. This comes off as rather bizarre when you remember that Wedge helped destroy the Death Star II in Return Of The Jedi, so him being an unknown is rather implausible. Later novels drastically increased the importance and recognition of Wedge and the Rogues (for example, in later stories that take place chronologically earlier, Wedge is nearly Admiral Ackbar's right hand, with the latter having expressed a desire to make that status official and promote Wedge to general, and instrumental to liberating Coruscant). Zahn was careful to include this in Hand of Thrawn, where Rogue Squadron is composed of the best pilots in the galaxy, are never depicted losing one of their number, and are attached to the task force under the command of the Republic's most respected active field commander.
    • Hyperdrive speeds are quoted as "Point Three, Point Four, Point Four Five, Point Five" in increasing order of speed — this being based on the line in the first film that "The Falcon can push point five past lightspeed". This was based on a logarithmic scale Zahn devised where 0 was a dead stop and 1 was infinite speed. Later material changed this to the (arguably less logical) setup that the lower the number is, the faster it is — specifically, it's all based on the idea of 1 as the "baseline" hyperdrive speed, so the "number" of a hyperdrive became the modifier to travel time. i.e., the Falcon is about twice as fast in hyperspace as most ships.
    • A plot-significant one is that it is not widely known to the galaxy's people that Darth Vader is Luke's father or that Luke and Leia are siblings, and it's even not certain to most people that he's dead. Many Legends writers instead assumed that "everyone in the galaxy had seen the films" as far as information about the main characters were concerned; if this was true the Mara-Luke plot arc and the Noghri kidnapping arc couldn't exist — for instance, the Noghri arc relies heavily on Thrawn not being aware that Leia is in any way related to Vader.
    • Thrawn is mentioned as being part human to explain his being a Human Alien other than skin color and glowing eyes. However, this was presently speculation by Han — that he was "at least, not entirely" human — not necessarily as the definitive truth. It would still be used later on, with the Emperor falsifying his records to say he was of mixed blood to try and explain why he made an apparent nonhuman a Grand Admiral, despite his xenophobic policies. (Thrawn was just too good not to use in that position, and being part human would mitigate some of the disagreement of the other Grand Admirals.) It also helps that Thrawn was one of the earliest Human Alien characters in the series; when the book first came out the setting was notable for avoiding it, with even the most humanoid species having at least one really weird feature (such as the head-tails of Twi'leks). Later Legends material established the concept of Near-Humans, Human Subspecies descended from ancient human colonies, which include Thrawn's species.
    • Zahn based his description of Talon Karrde on the character of Avon from Blake's 7, who was clean-shaven. Thus, there was no mention of Karrde having facial hair. However over time the depictions of Karrde have given him beards and/or mustaches (possibly because, rightly or wrongly, artists suspected that Karrde was something of an Author Avatar).
    • Zahn's view of stormtroopers comes from the original meaning of the word, referring to elite soldiers. The deployment of stormtrooper squads is treated like a significant display of force and the potential squandering of a precious resource, a sharp contrast to how they are treated as generic Mooks in pretty much all other media. Later entries by Zahn relegate most of that reputation to elites like the Royal Guard, but he still portrays the image of stormtroopers in their armor as still distinctly unsettling as reminder of the Empire's tyranny to people in the Republic even after the war ends.
    • With the limited number of Jedi and other Force users in the movies at that point, a lot of C'baoth's portrayal as a Jedi had to be created from whole cloth. Some discrepancies, like his use of Force Lightning, can be excused by Luke not knowing enough about being a Jedi to see the problem. Others, like the fact that the records claimed C'baoth started his Jedi training when he was in his twenties, are more difficult to handwave.
    • The very concept of "Dark Jedi", as the Sith did not exist yet. There's a throwaway line about how Vader and his Dark Jedi hunted down the remaining Jedi, when the prequels and later Legends material would establish that Vader was a Sith. The concept of Dark Jedi remained in use in some later Legends works as a catch-all term for Dark Side Force-users who weren't formally affiliated with a specific tradition like the Sith or the Nightsisters, but fell out of favor over time due to being fairly ill-defined.
    • Zahn's implication that Jedi Masters like C'baoth and Yoda did not employ lightsabers (Yoda's battle with a Dark Jedi on Dagobah is described as "a full-scale Force war"), as the only two Jedi Masters featured in the movies, Yoda and the Emperor, didn't use the iconic weapon (Old Ben was not, at the time, identified as a Master) and instead relied entirely upon the Force.
    • When C'baoth dies, his body explodes in an energy of blue fire just like Palpatine's body did. The implication is that all dark side masters explode when they die. This never happens again.
    • Luke's status as a Jedi. By the end of Return of the Jedi, it's clear that Luke is a full-fledged Jedi Knight, and even more so five years later when this trilogy takes place; yet he is still plagued by doubts and insecurities, particularly over his ability to train new Jedi, and he himself is still learning. Come the next major Star Wars story, Dark Empire, Luke has eliminated all his doubts and promoted himself to Jedi Master — even though, in Dark Force Rising, he actually scoffs at the notion that C'baoth had done essentially the same thing. Later, in Hand of Thrawn, Mara Jade actually rips Luke a new one for presuming to declare himself "a Jedi Master with less than ten years on the job".
    • Winter states that "Targeter" was only one of her many Rebellion-era codenames, and she used it for only a few weeks, on one planet, before abandoning it when that particular Rebel cell was attacked and dissolved. However, since she never specifies what any of the other codenames were, she's referred to as Targeter in many stories that take place during the war, including X-Wing Rogue Squadron and Zahn's own Star Wars: Allegiance.
    • Cloaking shields in Star Wars were generally unknown save that small ships were believed to be unable to use them. Zahn described them as being impractical for another reason: they created a double-blind effect. You couldn't see or detect a cloaked ship, but they couldn't see or detect anything beyond the cloaking effect, either. Then the prequels and Clone Wars came along and some ships were described as having cloaking shields that didn't have this effect. The Legends continuity would explain that these were two different kinds of cloaking tech, with the one that wasn't double-blind being much more expensive and relying on very rare and delicate materials. With the Legends continuity now non-canon, there is no discrepancy.
    • When discussing the Katana fleet, Dark Force Rising mentions that the Dreadnought-class heavy cruisers that make it up where the backbone of the Old Republic's fleets until the rise of the Empire, where they were displaced by the new and more powerful Star Destroyers. In later years, however, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, and The Clone Wars all depicted the Old Republic's navy as already relying primarily on an early model of Star Destroyer, the Venator-class, by the time the Clone Wars began, which makes up the majority of Republic warships seen on-screen, while no cruisers appear. Later guidebooks attempt to reconcile this by stating that the Star Destroyers were reserved for clone crews and the most loyal officers, while the Dreadnought-class made up the bulk of planetary defense fleets.
  • In general, before the release of the prequel trilogy, canon information on the Clone Wars was limited to a single line by Obi-Wan in A New Hope, which established that they happened, clones were involved, at least some Jedi fought in them, and not much else. The dominant assumption was that they were wars against clones, which colors how they're described in works published between the two trilogies. An Author's Saving Throw was later set up establishing that the "Clone Masters" mentioned was actually referring to the Kamino Uprising shown in Star Wars: Battlefront II and mentioned in Legacy of the Force.
  • To avoid moments of Early Installment Weirdness, Lucasfilm had forbidden any EU works dealing with the pre-movie lives of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi or Yoda, even unto not allowing writers to identify the race or home planet of Yoda. Lucasfilm didn't say anything about Boba Fett, so some novelists decided to tackle him, only to need some industrial-strength retcons when the prequels came around.
  • Star Wars (Marvel 1977) began to come out around the time of A New Hope. Obi-Wan advises Luke to use all of his anger in a Force attack on Vader, there's a world that Obi-Wan and his two apprentices, Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader had once visited, and a story about a Jedi, set in the past, had the Jedi wearing a space-fashion outfit.
  • The idea of red lightsabers generally being reserved for Sith hadn't become established until as late as Attack of the Clones. Before that, the EU had Jedi using red sabers and Sith using differently colored ones. This created a fairly jarring effect in Dark Empire when Palpatine is shown using a quintessentially good guy blue saber. The early EU also contained several lightsaber colors rarely seen since, such as orange and pink.
• John Steinbeck's first novel, Cup of Gold, was a lighthearted adventure tale about the 17th-century pirate Henry Morgan. His next book, The Pastures of Heaven, shifted focus to the ordinary people of central California, which would continue to be his predominant subject matter for the rest of his career.
• Survivor Dogs: The first book has some terminology differences from future books. The characters describe teddy bears by name but in by the third book bears are referred to as "giantfurs"^note However, it is also shown that Leashed Dogs do learn human terminology from their owners. It's the Free Dogs that reject "longpaw" words. They also refer to the ocean as such, when in future books they don't know what it is and refer to it as an "Endless Lake".
• Sword of Truth: Early books are much more stock fantasies. The most common criticism of the early books was that Goodkind was ripping off The Wheel of Time. It's not until the fourth book that Goodkind began adding his Objectivist philosophy and Author Filibusters, and the series took a much different direction.
• The Thinking Machine: The first story, "My First Experience with the Great Logician", is unusual in that is told in the first person, which none of the other stories are. (Futrelle seems to having been trying to ape the style of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, as Van Dusen performs a Sherlock Scan on the narrator, a feat he never repeats. Following this, Futrelle apparently decided the stories worked better in the third person.) Additionally, the narrator is not Hutchinson Hatch, who acts as The Watson in all the other tales.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • The Hobbit:
    • In general, seems like a somewhat fanciful children's tale compared to The Lord of the Rings; Tolkien hadn't even decided it was going to take place in the context of his wider mythology when he originally wrote it. Although modern editions have removed some of the incongruences, earlier versions have oddities like a railroad in the Shire, and Bilbo musing about taking a trip to China. The Orcs are also referred to as Goblins, with the word Orc only appearing twice, and Elrond's people in Rivendell are referred to as having the blood of both Men and Elves rather than being Elves, which in later established continuity is true only of Elrond himself.
    • Tolkien's view of the dwarves was very different at the time he was writing The Hobbit, being inspired by the often treacherous and cruel dwarfs of Norse mythology (i.e. Regin in the myths of Sigurd). Consequently, the dwarves are written as amoral, greedy, and often useless, with the text going so far as to declare that dwarves as a whole are never heroic, being, at best, "decent[...]if you don't expect too much." By The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien had solidified the idea that dwarves were a staunchly good-aligned people, and had their fair share of great heroes. Several passages of The Silmarillion were rewritten to accommodate this idea — for instance, they went from supplying both sides at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad to their king heroically sacrificing himself to buy time for the retreat, and the character of Mîm went from a vile and craven betrayer to a deeply sympathetic Last of His Kind.
    • In the original version of "Riddles in the Dark", the chapter that introduced Gollum and the Ring in The Hobbit, Gollum offers Bilbo the Ring as a reward for beating him in the game of riddles, and when he can't find it, Gollum willingly leads him out of the cave. Needless to say, this jibes with absolutely none of what Lord of the Rings would establish about Gollum and the Ring, and it was one of the most rewritten chapters of the revised edition (nearly the entire last third is new material). This one actually got acknowledged in-universe; apparently, the original edition was written by Bilbo, and he was an Unreliable Narrator at the time who didn't want to acknowledge that he had essentially stolen the Ring. The true story was set down by Frodo and Sam separately from Bilbo's original narrative explaining why the "false" account showed up first.
    • The Hobbit and the early portions of The Fellowship of the Ring are narrated in a chatty and snarky tone that sounds like the narrator from obvious children novels like Narnia or Mary Poppins, especially when compared to the "ye epic of olde" cadence of The Return of the King. This is because Tolkien originally wrote the Hobbit as a simple children's book, and The Lord of the Rings was (ironically, considering its current length) going to be a short sequel to that story. But the story "grew in the telling" as Tolkien said, and so the early parts of The Fellowship of the Ring, written while Tolkien still thought he was writing another children's book, seem far less solemn than what comes later. From a literary perspective this has the writing becoming more serious as the story becomes more serious — an interesting effect. Unusually, this is justified in-universe. The Hobbit and the pre-Rivendell scenes of The Fellowship of the Ring were written by Bilbo, who takes a typical hobbit-like perspective of cheerful adventure. The rest of The Lord of the Rings is written by Frodo, who was touched by darkness and never fully healed. The ending was written by Sam, who pays more attention to personal relationships. It's not clear if Tolkien intended this from the beginning or added it after he saw what he'd written, but the three in-universe writers fit the styles perfectly.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The earlier parts of The Fellowship of the Ring deal with a lot of characters and concepts that don't really fit with the rest of the story, such as as the Barrow-Wights, Goldberry and Tom Bombadill. The list of odd things about Tom and Goldberry alone could fill up a whole page, but the Barrow Wights are fascinating because, while ghosts are a thing in this world, zombies and liches aren't aside from Wraiths like the Nazgûl.
  • Many of Tolkien's earlier drafts for his mythology have been published, and if anything they seem more fanciful still. In one version Sauron's role in the story of Beren and Lúthien is played by an evil cat, and Beren is an Elf. Aragorn was originally a hobbit named "Trotter", so-called because he had prosthetic wooden feet, and Treebeard was a villainous giant rather than a friendly ent. In The Fall of Gondolin, Balrogs were much more numerous and less powerful than they later became. Whereas in the final versions of The Silmarillion killing a Balrog has only been accomplished thrice (except in the final War of Wrath) and each time it was a Mutual Kill, early drafts had the heroes killing them by the hundreds.
• Tortall Universe: The setting has been subject to some Continuity Drift.
  • In Song of the Lioness, the narrative departs from Alanna's PoV far oftener than the subsequent series (we've hardly ever seen the villain's PoV again). She also tangles with demonic entities and "elementals" which so far haven't shown up again, although the Ysandir did get a namecheck in the Beka Cooper trilogy.
  • In Song of the Lioness, magic users are exclusively referred to as "sorcerer/sorceress", with the exception of Bazhir shamans. It isn't until The Immortals that the word "mage" is used, and even then "sorcerer" is still present in the first book, Wild Magic. After Wild Magic, magic users are exclusively mages, with the exception of healers and Gifted individuals too weak to be a proper mage. The dedication of Lioness Rampant has Tamora Pierce thanking someone for helping her get over her fear of the "M word".
• The Traitor Son Cycle: In the first book, there's a mention of a young dragon's head being one of the trophies in the Harndon castle's hall. From book two onwards, however, dragons are established as being Physical God-level creatures who are very limited in number (there's less than ten of them), so killing one should be a bigger deal. Then again, it might be that in-universe, someone mistook a wyvern for a young dragon.
• Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: The first few installments are much smaller (the first one is only 224 pages) and its articles are far shorter — usually a two-to-three page summary on a topic, followed by a bullet list of trivia. By Uncle John's Ultimate Bathroom Reader, the average size of the book more than doubles as the articles become longer and more in-depth. Eventually, the writers even started including multiple-part articles spread across the book, and an "Extended Sitting" section composed of double-length articles. Their research and copy-editing have also improved significantly.
• Vampire Hunter D: The first volume is quite different from later ones in some respects:
  • In this novel (and its movie adaptation), D is killed in battle with Rei-Ginsei when Rei uses time-bewitching incense (which can convince the senses that day is night or vice-versa when lit) to throw off D's vampire senses. Fortunately for him he's revived by his parasitic left hand. In pretty much every volume of the series after this (though not in the second film, Bloodlust), D is basically an Invincible Hero who no other antagonist can do more than slow down, with the possible exception of his father.
  • It also shows D as more human than the detached, emotionless, almost callous character seen in later books. He insults Rei Ginsei to his face when they confront each other (calling him "the bastard son of the Devil and a hellhound"), may have been about to succumb to Doris' seduction when she comes onto him (actually brushing her hair aside to kiss her), and delivers a withering "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the villagers when they come to take Doris and hand her over to Count Lee, threatening to slaughter them all if they push their luck.
  • Humanity being bred to have an innate case of Laser-Guided Amnesia should they discover a vampiric weakness. This was phased out in later novels and dropped completely.
• Warhammer 40,000: The first Gaunt's Ghosts book is near unrecognisable compared to the later ones. Instead of a huge cast, there's a handful of core cast and a bunch of Red Shirts. Instead of the Ghosts being an elite unit that take few casualties compared to other regiments, they die like flies. Instead of swift, dynamic battles, the first battle is trench warfare. ^note Indeed, when trench warfare reappears five books later, it's because of the incompetence of the local government and the Guard officers take every opportunity to note how bloody stupid and wasteful it is. Instead of the top brass ranging from decent to less-than-competent, the Ghosts' superiors are outright malicious and spiteful, along with an Inquisitor. Even a few Chaos Space Marines appear and are killed (relatively) easily, yet almost never appear in other books and when they do they're The Juggernaut. This is easily explained by how the Imperial Guard in Warhammer 40,000 originally were portrayed as helpless Cannon Fodder led by idiots and maniacs, but Gaunt's Ghosts transformed their perception and their portrayal into a genuine Badass Army.
• Warrior Cats: The first series, and the first book in particular, has a lot of material which doesn't jive with later books:
  • Each Clan keeps mostly to itself and doesn't know much about what's going on elsewhere in the forest, and the other Clans' territories are generally a mystery to them. Tigerclaw freaks out in the first book when they take Yellowfang as a prisoner because he thinks that now ShadowClan will know where the ThunderClan camp is, and that they'll need to move, while in later books (even ones that take place around the same timeframe) they actually visit each other's camps on a fairly regular basis. Likewise, in the first book, they say a few times that "that cat must have been killed by an enemy patrol" and just forget about it — most notably the ShadowClan leader's death — when later on such an event would be huge news and they would actually confront the other Clan and try to figure out what happened. This is probably partly because since the first book they've established exact rules for the previously-vague warrior code, one of which forbids killing except for rare circumstances.
  • The terminology changes a bit, such as the way the cats use hyphens and capitalizations in words (i.e. "Clan mate" becomes "Clanmate"). Also, the first book uses the word "queen" for any female cat, but later on it only gets used for females currently pregnant or nursing kits, and "she-cat" becomes the general word for "female".
  • The Clans are a lot more formal early on. In later books cats refer to parents by name rather than calling them "mother" or "father", and in the early books there is almost no use of slang such as "cool". In contrast, the Gatherings in the first series tend to be different groups of cats mixing and talking about current events — for example, a senior warrior talking to a group of apprentices, or a young warrior joining a bunch of elders and medicine cats in a discussion, while later it's mostly cats sticking with their own age group and gossiping.
  • Mates aren't, for the most part, treated as major relationships in the first series, and it is mentioned that warrior fathers don't stay close to their kits (with one or two rare exceptions). In the third series, one cat who has kits as the result of a one-night stand (which in and of itself is rare later on) is criticized because he doesn't want to play with his kits, and in the third and fourth series especially everyone gossips about young couples and young cats talk about who they like.
  • Early on, cats are rarely mentioned by name unless they actually have speaking lines in a scene, and sometimes not even then. In The Prophecy Begins, you're likely to see something like "Tigerclaw and a patrol of warriors were leaving the camp" while in Power of Three or Omen of the Stars it would be more like "Bumblestripe, Thornclaw, Cinderheart, and Ivypaw were leaving the camp on a hunting patrol". Cats at gatherings and in battles are also usually just described as, for instance, "a silver tabby" or "a dark queen" more often than they are named, generally giving the impression of larger and less tight-knit Clan societies than later becomes the norm. Kits get this treatment, too, leading to the odd effect of cats (in the first three books) not seeming to have names at all until they're apprenticed (with Cloudtail seemingly being the exception due to the circumstances behind his joining ThunderClan) .
  • The timing of cats' apprenticeships is weirdly off in series one, and their general ages. This is sometimes due to retcon, but it still leaves The Prophecy Begins arc very weird timing-wise, especially when it comes to kits and apprentices. Ravenpaw refers to Sandpaw and Dustpaw as being apprenticed for longer than he, Graypaw, and Firepaw, despite the fact that he and Dustpaw are littermates and should have started training at the same time (and, for that matter, the fact that Ravenpaw and Sandpaw are brothers is also never brought up; later books put more emphasis on sibling relationships). Fireheart and Graystripe become warriors before Sandstorm and Dustpelt, which isn't that odd considering they'd just done something heroic, but they'd only been training for three moons at most. Thornclaw and Brightheart start their apprentice training in the book after their siblings Brackenfur and Cinderpelt do, for no discernible reason. Cloudtail also starts his training before his foster siblings Ashfur and Ferncloud, despite the fact that he is younger than them, being born a book after them.
  • The Dark Forest was originally treated as purgatory where cats endlessly walked alone in a starless, prey-less forest. It was later changed into something more social, where the Dark Forest cats interact with one another and even train together.
  • In Into the Wild, six-moon-old cats like Graypaw and Firepaw are referred to as kittens (as, in real life, 6-12 month olds are considered kittens). Future books make a clearer distinction between kits (0-5 moons) and apprentices. The terminology is also off as the books use "kit" rather than "kitten". Into the Wild makes reference to "kitten-cough", which is never referred to again and stands out due to its usage of "kitten" over "kit".
  • In Into the Wild, Bluestar laments about how "never before have we had so few apprentices in training", since there's just Dustpaw, Sandpaw, Graypaw, and Ravenpaw before she invites Rusty to join the Clan. Books taking place both before and after Into the Wild show that four apprentices at a time isn't at all out of the ordinary.
  • In Fire and Ice, Tigerclaw suggests that Darkstripe and Longtail be given a second apprentice each, and Bluestar replies that she considered it but had reasons for deciding against it. Aside from one cat later asking to take on the she-cat he likes as a second apprentice — which is mostly played for laughs — there's no other reference in the series to cats being the official mentor to more than one apprentice at a time.
• The Wheel of Time:
  • Mat Cauthon as presented in The Eye of the World and The Great Hunt is practically a different character from the Mat we know from later books.
    • When we first meet him he's preoccupied with playing tricks for laughs, but at no point in the first two books does he flirt with women and hardly mentions gambling or dice. There is exactly one scene of him dicing with others, but Perrin and Loial are depicted in the scene doing the same. Rand refers to Mat as a "gambler" in a throwaway reference, but that's it. When he wakes up in Book 3, after being healed from a magical malady, one of the first things he makes sure he still has are his dice, something he's thereafter depicted as never being without, being such a inveterate gambler that he even names his horse "Pips".
    • He also is never implied to have even held a quarterstaff, let alone be so good with one that he can take out two master swordsmen.
  • Near the beginning of The Eye of the World is the single instance where a trolloc's name is learned — Narg — and the single instance where a trolloc — the same one — speaks understandably to a point-of-view character.
  • The magic system isn't really codified until the third book, and so the early books show people using the One Power to do some things that don't fit with later applications as well as some contradictory rules.
    • Moiraine says that her bond with her Warder can't tell where he is but, in later books, both Aes Sedai and Warders know where their bonded half is (at least a direction and vague idea of distance).
    • At one point, Moiraine uses her staff to misdirect followers by casting their scent and footprints in a different direction. While moving air itself is shown to be fairly trivial, creating a long enough trail of footprints to fool followers doesn't seem like something that would fit with what she should be able to do.
    • Moiraine also creates massive walls of flame and severe earthquakes to combat a large group of enemies; this level of power isn't displayed later and her fighting with the One Power is limited to hurling single balls of fire and spontaneous ignition.
    • Moiraine creates a "bending" to render the party invisible and calls it a "simple feat". It's later revealed to be a lost art. Moiraine's ability to do this without other Aes Sedai knowing is partially handwaved once the ability is "rediscovered" by noting that some Aes Sedai discover abilities and keep them to themselves.
    • In later books, any channeler (of the appropriate sex) can passively see weaves made by other channelers but none of the channeling characters see weaves until the channeling is developed in the later books.
    • In the early books, Moiraine claims that being a channeler provides an intrinsic protection (as well as an aura of protection to others nearby) from evil influence as well as granting the ability to sense evil. None of the channelers later show this intrinsic resistance and have to rely on active "wards" to keep evil parties from influencing them.
• Wings of Fire: The prologue of the first book calls Hvitur an "ice dragon" instead of an IceWing at one point. It also switches to a different perspective halfway through, but in the rest of the series, each chapter is only from one perspective.
• Winnie the Pooh: The poems, written before the stories, feature Pooh and Christopher Robin but are very different from the stories. Pooh is more explicitly a Living Toy, whereas in the stories it was a little more ambiguous as to whether he was a toy or an anthropomorphic bear based on a toy. He also lives in a house instead of in the forest. The most prominent difference is that there are more humans around: the other kids John, Anne, and Mary Jane, Alice the babysitter, Christopher Robin's parents, and his Imaginary Friend Binker to name a few.
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: Most people who've read the story these days know little of the numerous sequels that followed. They'd be shocked at how many of the rules were rewritten even between the first and second books. Issues such as the existence of money, the actual number of witches (and related magic users) in the land, whether or not the Emerald City is actually green, and if people can actually die were altered drastically over the first few sequels. No doubt this is because while the rules found in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz can work within the plot of that particular story, they proved too confining when others had to be written.
• Xanth, by Piers Anthony:
  • In the first book, there are mundane animals like chipmunks and hawks in Xanth, and the animals have a Magic Talent just like most people do. The infamous puns are almost completely absent. Later on, Anthony decided that everything in Xanth either "had magic" or "was magic", and all animals and plants became of the "was magic" type.
  • The first few books are dark in tone, and form a genuine fantasy trilogy. Xanth started an exploration of a fantasy world where everyone has one specific talent. Then it got more parodic, more comedic, even cartoonish, and is now a full-blown Running the Asylum cash cow.

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