Fanon - Television Tropes & Idioms

Due to language and adaptation barriers, nearly all popular anime is subject to fanon levels proportional to their age; Sailor Moon and Ranma ½ are two notable examples. The advent of the Internet has made fact-checking much easier. It has not, however, stopped flame wars about favored characters or plot lines based solely on fanon. Some tropes, such as Akane Tendō's (of Ranma ½) supposed psychotic tendencies, have been so over-elaborated-upon by fans that they become psychotically defensive of their incorrect beliefs.
- The name "Kimiko Tendō" tends to pop up with frightening regularity when referring to Soun Tendō's late wife, even though it originated in Fan Fic.
- Saffron, the Phoenix King, is not a god, a demigod, or any other such thing, and never claimed to be one. Note that this doesn't stop Fan Fic writers from claiming that Ranma "has killed a God", and then have the cast reacting with appropriate awe.
  - To note further, Saffron isn't even dead, as a couple panels after his death you see him in baby form held by Kiima, who is told by Ranma to "raise him right this time!"
- One of the most egregious examples of Fanon taking off (à la Akane turning in to a psycho-hose beast) is Ranma's refusal to fight women. He's never once said that, and in fact at least 40% of his fights are with women. Although he has grumbled occasionally that he doesn't like fighting girls.
  - A related idea is that Ranma will only fight girls when he's in his girl form. Despite the fact that he fought Rouge-Asura, and Kiima with full intent to harm while in male form — and he had no problems when the latter was knocked out of the sky by the rock slide he created. In girl-form, he also fought Herb (before The Reveal) with full seriousness, and the whole issue with Shampoo was caused because he accepted her challenge, and then knocked her down with a kick to the face.
- Still more Ranma fanon holds the idea that long ago a Hibiki ancestor had a perfect sense of direction, only to one day suffer a family tragedy because he wasn't in the right place at the right time. In his grief this Hibiki made an exchange with the Kami, sacrificing the sense of direction for himself and for all future descendants; in return the Kami promised him that he and all his descendants would have the gift of always being in the right place at the right time to help his friends and family. Thus neatly explaining both Ryōga's lack of direction sense, and also why he always shows up at the right place at the right time.
  - Or at least, right time plus two to three weeks.
- Akane's frustration with Ranma "not fighting back" or "not taking her seriously as a fighter" (which loops right back at the first notion) has been taken to ridiculous heights in Fanon, despite being mentioned only a handful of times in the anime — and never at all in the manga. In fact, manga-version Akane knows she can't quite face Ranma in real combat, and it takes a massive powerup to even work up the courage to ask him to spar with her. Coupled with the Wouldnt Hit A Girl exaggeration attributed to Ranma, this is one of the most pervasive and insidious bits of Fanon wedged into Ranma and Akane's relationship.
- There's also quite a bit of Fanon surrounding Ukyō, most notably the notion that she's Ranma's "best friend", the assertion that she was Ranma's first fiancée (contradicted both by Genma and Ukyō herself in her initial appearance) and the equally unfounded assertion that her father forced her to give up her femininity and seek vengeance against the Saotomes, when both the manga and the anime strongly imply that it was all her own idea (which is actually a much more intriguing prospect when you think about it). Both bits of fanon come from, you guessed it, particularly influential fanfics.
- A minor bit of fanon frequently shows up in fanfics that give Ranma an extended hospital visit for surgery or other serious treatment — that doctors, once aware of his curse, will always insist Ranma remain in female form because it's harder to trigger a change and thus cause unexpected further damage. The few times we actually see Ranma in a hospital in the source material, he's always in male form.
- The belief that the Saotome home, in which Nodoka lives alone, is located in Azabu-Juuban.
- In fanfiction, whenever Shampoo's favored weapons are mentioned, they are almost invariably named "bonbori", which is actually a kind of spherical lantern hung outdoors. In fact, it's only recently that they've begun to use the real name; chúi, an obscure form of Chinese mace, noted for being exceptionally heavy (those oversized heads are traditionally completely solid balls of steel).
- The fact that Akane is a horrible martial artist, as said by every character ever in a non-Akane fan fic. Despite the fact that it's ridiculous how well Akane can smash a mob, generally with one, at most two hits to KO and not be struck in the middle of it is just nuts. And these hits are often hard enough to jar loose teeth, in the anime especially. Most of this is either blind hate promoted by either their hatred of Takahashi's works in general, or the fact that they don't like Akane fans and thus take it out on her to piss them off. The oft cited example of her lack of skill is her anger and lack of defense. The former is mostly exaggerated and ignores that Akane generally only hits Ranma when she loses it. The latter ignores the fact that if you KO the opponent, they can't counterattack and the fact that she can take down an armed mob in a matter of minutes without sustaining a hit. They also claim it is unimpressive since they're not martial artists (even when she was perfectly capable of fending off elite Winged Humanoid armed soldiers,) but this is a case of Kung Fu movie blindness than an actual fault, seeing as even the most experienced swordsman will die from a knife to the back. It's even funny to see Ranma or Ryōga lecture her on it, seeing as they both have periods of Unstoppable Rage.
  - Akane's "terrible" skill gets parodied in this fanfic, with the author noting that while Akane sucks compared to Ranma, she only sucks in comparison and "real" people would be a total joke to her.
- Kunō's common ability in fanfic to summon lightning bolts — often out of a blue sky — just by announcing his self-given nickname of "Blue Thunder" is not only exaggerated, it's non-existent. The only time this ever happened was in Ranma's initial encounter with Kunō in the middle of a thunderstorm — it was a purely coincidental instance of Dramatic Thunder, and we never see anything like it happen again.
- Somehow, someone got the idea that Pantyhose Tarō augmented his "winged minotaur" form with Combat Tentacles by applying Spring Of Drowned Octopus water "to eight specific points on his back" (probably because, when splashed with Spring of Drowned Twins water, Happōsai grew an extra bump on the head, since only his first bump got wet.) This makes no sense considering Pantyhose Tarō can also shoot ink out of his fingers, and in any case the manga never explained how he used it — making the simplest explanation (he dunked himself in the spring and the octopus just added to the mix because of Rule Of Funny) the likeliest.
- Some fans seem to take it as an article of faith that Kasumi secretly has a sex drive three times as powerful as that possessed by Happōsai.
Sailor Moon:
- Usagi is not a saint that refuses to kill or hurt anyone. She has killed someone or something in every canon she's been in. Yes, youma are bad thing. Yes, they deserve to die. That does not negate the fact that Usagi is not Batman; she does not have a "though shalt not kill" rule. The anime signifigantly plays down her kills, but she still takes out quite a few baddies.
- The claim that Haruka is frequently mistaken for a man is mostly false, although due to Pronoun Trouble it is used as a introductory gag for some minor characters. Usagi, Minako, and Yūichiro (who all have loaded assumptions) do assume this during their first encounter with her, but the original reaction shot is of the other characters meeting Haruka but not connecting her with the "handsome guy" the two girls keep mentioning. The manga carries the charade of Haruka's gender a little longer as Usagi is the only one to meet her outside of battle for much of the Death Busters arc and she assumes Haruka is a man (especially when Haruka actually kisses her) and Haruka is even drawn significantly more masculine up until her identity as Sailor Uranus comes out. However, once Haruka's identity is discovered, she is shown as far more feminine, wears dresses from time to time, and even wears the female uniform when attending Juuban High in the last storyline (though apparently this is against her will). The anime significantly plays up her cross-dressing compared to the manga, to the point where Haruka is never seen in feminine clothes during the entire run of the show.
  - There's also the Super S special, where Haruka flirts with a maid who clearly thinks Haruka is an attractive guy.
- It is also a common mistake that Sailor Saturn uses an actual attack power to destroy the world, often cited as "Silence Glaive Surprise" for the anime and "Death Reborn Revolution" in the manga. She actually uses no attacks or incantations of any kind — she only has to put the tip of her weapon to the ground. "Silence Glaive Surprise" is explictly shown to be only a distraction in the anime and nothing actually happens until after the attack has ended and Saturn starts forcing her glaive down in the one scene in which she is seen to use either. In the manga, she is shown using Death Reborn Revolution several times with the world perfectly intact. When she is shown to destroy the world, she is shown bringing down her weapon, while saying that she must bring down her weapon, while several of the Senshi all say that her bringing down her weapon is the end of the world.
  - Sailor Saturn has a lot of these — it doesn't help that she's such an enigmatic character. She is frequently attributed to have the powers of "death and rebirth" and that she can recreate the world after destroying it. This is more Fanon — Sailor Moon is explicitly the only person who can create life, and in fact, the one time in the manga that Saturn destroys the world, she tells Sailor Moon that it's her job to bring it back to life.
- A single scene in the manga has led many to believe that Setsuna is in love with Mamoru. The scene itself specifically refers to King Endymion, Mamoru's future self, and is somewhat open on this, but it's never referred to again and Setsuna never pays any special attention to him after she comes to Earth. This never appears in the anime at all. This hasn't stopped numerous fanfics from declaring Setsuna's unending love for Mamoru, or even having him reciprocate it so Usagi can be shipped elsewhere. In fact, the fanon on this subject is so strong that one of the musicals actually incorporated a duet where Queen Beryl and Sailor Pluto lamented their hopeless love for Endymion.
  - Speaking of Queen Beryl, she is played up as suffering from unrequited love for Endymion or even blaming her evil nature on this. In the anime, Queen Beryl doesn't seem to actually express any kind of love towards him, but merely a will to possess a powerful manslave that just so happens to belong to her greatest enemy. In the manga, she outright hates him and kills him herself numerous times when he is of no use to her.
  - I'm pretty sure she at least loved him in the Silver Millennium, what with the stalking and all. Maybe she just liked Serenity.
  - Yet another fanon example of "loves Mamoru/Endymion but can never have him" is Rei. This has a bit more basis than usual, since in the anime they dated for a while. However, aside from episode 136 where Usagi's jealousy is played for laughs, and her comically explosive reaction to the revelation that Chibi-Usa is Usagi and Mamoru's future child, it's never mentioned after the first season. Fanon ignores this so she can angst about the unfairness in life and how much she hates Usagi.
- Because Chibi-Usa doesn't have the same eye or hair colour as Usagi and Mamoru there are many fanfics where one of them isn't her biological parent. The strange part comes when said non-parent is Usagi and Chibi-Usa is having her hair coloured/wearing eye contacts/is under a spell. No explanation is ever given to how Chibi-Usa can use the Silver Crystal and have the crescent moon mark of the Royal Moon family if she's not related to them, or how dying her hair pink and/or wearing red contacts makes her look more like the blond and blue-eyed Usagi.
- The entire belief that people are being forced to obey Usagi because the alternative is to freeze to death or be sent into the far reaches of space. Not only are the only people stated to have been "exiled" there were criminals such as the mass murderer who eventually became Wiseman/Death Phantom but Usagi is flat-out stated to have been elected to her position in the future of Crystal Tokyo by the population of the world.
- The belief that being "purified" leads to mind control. Purification is not only a anime only thing, and is even there shown as the process of outside forces leaving your body. However purification works, what it isn't about enslaving people to one monochrome will, something that the Senshi's enemies often did and what they fought against tooth and nail against.
  - A good example being how when Usagi purified Rei's lecher grandfather when he turned into one of the Seven Great Youma in the Dark Kingdom arc of the anime. If we use the Crystal Tokyo-Fanon definition of purification he should no longer be a lecher but afterward he still was as big as one as ever.
- The common belief that Senshi went out of their way to gain control of the planet either through mind control or as outright conquerors, or manipulating events so that Crystal Tokyo will come about. Heck, at the beginning of the series the girls are set on stopping the Dark Kingdom from destroying the Earth and by the end of the arc Usagi chooses not to recreate the Silver Millennium, wanting to live her life as a semi-normal school girl with her friends and family on Earth.
- The Black Moon family is not a group of freedom fighters. The ancestors of the people who ended up on Nemesis are flat-out stated to be religious nuts who thought that the infinite power of the Ginzuishou and its ability to give people eternal youth went against God's will. They ended up willingly fleeing to Nemesis after being told by Wiseman that if they went there they could gain unlimited power. It should also be noted that the first action that the people of Nemesis took when they returned to Earth was to kill countless innocent people without mercy by bombing the planet and using poison gases on civilians simply because they believed long life went against God. Both sides also state the Black Moon's goals were only about the people's life span and trying to take over Earth.
- The Utopian-Crystal Tokyo or mind controls Crystal Tokyo crap. There is still crime in Crystal Tokyo and people are still capable of being petty and selfish creatures. It's a better world but it isn't perfect. The few examples of people shown outside the Future-Senshi in Crystal Tokyo are the kids that bullied Chibi-Usa and some snobby politicians.
- Setsuna as some figure of of absolute order and/or stasis. Not only is it complete and utter fanon but it also happens to be the complete antithesis of her nature as the "Solider of Change and Revolution".
- The belief that Chaos in Sailor Moon represents "just a little chaos" or is anywhere close to being simply a source of change and growth is utterly false. Chaos in Sailor Moon canon hearkens back to the older myths of Chaos as a freaking primordial source of nothingness and destruction. Every terrible thing, every planet destroyed, every life lost in the SM-verse all lead back to him, corrupting Galaxia and Metallia. Death Phantom, Tau Ceti and Nehellenia were all its incarnations.
  - Tau Ceti is a Star System. I think you mean Pharoh 90.
- The idea of Usagi representing "extreme order" or being a force of stasis. Usagi herself flat-out states the need for there to be change and growth in the universe, no matter how painful that it might be at times. That at times fighting was necessary for a better future. Of how the end of a war would lead to hope for the future and how it was all part of a balance. However Usagi can be considered the avatar of a type of order. The Order that exists in the universe now and allows a universe to have handy little things like, say, laws of nature that allow us, planets, stars, solar systems, galaxies, and so on and so forth to exist. If you consider the universe as a massive clock, then you might say that her job is make sure that the gears continue to spin and to keep anyone from attempting to stop or destroy said gears.
- The portraying of Usagi as some Valley girl or crybaby post-series. Please, give the girl some credit. She beat back several demonic invasions, saved the world several times and managed to redeem an enemy that had supposedly wiped out all life in the galaxy/universe depending on whether you're using the manga or anime. Not to mention several times in anime going to what was certain death for her but being willing to do so anyway. Hell, in the manga Usagi is shown through the series growing into a highly charismatic leader and skilled fighter. And even in the anime (where Usagi tends to be a paler reflection of her manga counterpart) she is shown growing at least some. And while she might have quite a bit of growing to do before she ever reaches the level of the manga version, she is slowly maturing. The dub on the other hand is without hope.
- The false belief that Senshi barely have enough power to destroy a house if that. Usagi during the first arc was shown able to use her healing abilities as a mass area effect to cover all of Tokyo and was also capable (with Mamoru's help) of resurrecting the entire world at the end of said arc as well. By the middle of the series Usagi was easily had enough raw power to destroy the planet. And by the end of series Usagi's abilities have taken another large jump. And while the rest of the Sol-based Senshi are a fair bit behind her, they're still pretty damn powerful by the standards of a magical girl.
- The idea that Chibi-Usa acted like a brat simply because she was a brat. Despite technically being nine hundred years old, her mind was that of a six-year-old kid and like most six-year-olds not only is she often childish but she doesn't always think things through or all that logically. She not only spent the majority of childhood with Setsuna as the person closest to her do to both Usagi and Mamoru being busy with government matters. But was also bullied and harassed by other kids for not being able to grow and who told her how she wasn't the Queen's daughter because she was never seen with the Ginzuishou and being a little kid she took it as a way to prove herself to them. Unfortunately Nemesis happened to bomb Crystal Tokyo just minutes later causing millions within the city to die and for all she knew her mom as well. She had to walk by corpses and know it was her fault that this had happened. But wait there was a way to fix this if she went back into the past and the hero Sailor Moon fixed everything her mother and people would be alive. In her mind her mom would probably hate her but she would at least be alive to do so. Brainwashing a family in order to have a roof over her head simply didn't seem that big of a trade off to save her mother and her whole world especially to a six year old.
Dragon Ball Z fanfiction is almost universally permeated with the notion that Saiyans undergo some sort of physiological/psychic connection when they fall in love, that Saiyans mate for life, refer to their love interests specifically as mates, and that the connection is formed in a process called "bonding" which involves one or both partners biting the other on the neck vampire-style. People may have originally gotten the idea for the psychic connection thing from a scene in the anime where Bulma gets a horrible feeling as Vegeta dies against Majin Buu. However, this is the only scene even close to suggesting this, appearing to show that numerous writers have blown it out of proportion.
- It could also be said for when Videl senses that Gohan is alive despite everyone thinking he's dead.
- Don't forget the purring! According to numerous fanfictions Saiyans begin to purr like cats when they are happy or their tails are stroked.
- Another, less disturbing bit of Fanon is the general acceptance that the heart disease that took Goku out of action in the Android saga and wreaked havoc on the world in the alternate timeline was caught by Goku on Yardrat and brought to Earth.
- Who can forget the infamous saiyan levels? The glorious recolors of the saiyans, all shining in power levels beyond 5. And we thought Akiras Toriyama was crazy...
Due to the fact that there was never much backstory given in the first place, many Pokémon anime fans have taken to creating their own theories, which can go in just about any direction. They range from the logical (Misty and Brock's surnames, the fate of Jessie's mother, the GS Ball) to the utterly insane (Professor Oak or Giovanni or even Lugia being Ash's father, to name one). And, mixed in with those are a crapload of loosely related fringe theories, that attempt to work in forgotten elements from the games (like Brendan from Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald being May's long-lost childhood friend, for example) or are based entirely on circumstantial evidence. It's about every bit as messy as it sounds. And don't even get started on shipping...
- Giovanni being Ash's father is given evidence in Pokémon Live. I don't remember it that well but I think it was stated that Giovanni and Ash's mother dated in the past.
  - However, Pokémon Live is generally not considered part of the actual show's continuity, which complicates matters.
The idea that Amestris tricked the Ishvalans into attacking them, so that Amestris could invade and conquer them in Fullmetal Alchemist. Actually Ishval was just an area of Amestris that the government tricked into rebelling so that they could crush and massacre them. This is made clear in the manga when several scenes from the Ishval Massacre contradict this such as the fact that the Amestrian army still had Ishvalan soldiers up until the 7th year of the rebellion, they only killed the pure blood Ishvalans (and possibly the half blood Ishvalans) when they needed souls for a Philosopher's stone. Scar's brother also tells Scar that Amestris allows the Ishvalans to worship Ishvala. In addition, the Amestrian government is currently at war with 4 other nations, and is a military dictatorship, like they would need a Xanatos Gambit just to invade a 5th.
- Also it is generally accepted that Edward's pants are leather, despite the fact that they would be, as Vic Mignogna points out, "hard to fight in. Ed's gotta be smarter than that."
There are several of these orbiting Neon Genesis Evangelion, including Misato's haircolor and driving style (though that's probably more Never Live It Down), the name of Touji's Ill Girl little sister, the personalities of Hikari's sisters, Shinji being a skilled chef and even some things that directly contradict canon — like claims that Rei is emotionless, or that Shinji's wardrobe consists entirely of school uniforms, ignoring several occurrences of him in other outfits (excluding the dance outfit and plugsuits).
- The notion that Misato killed Kaji remains popular despite an explicit statement from the show's creator to the contrary. The idea that Naoko Akagi's soul resides in Unit 00 also persists despite it not making any sense whatsoever.
- The fanon name for Touji's little sister, "Mari", now has an uncertain future with a new pilot character in the Rebuild Evangelion movie series being named Mari.
- Also, Shinji being a skilled chef actually made it into canon in the second Rebuild movie.
The Zabi family from Mobile Suit Gundam are a veritable fanon magnet, as they get very little characterization in the series proper. Popular theories include:
- Degwin being of Italian descent and making his fortune mining raw materials for the space colonies on the Moon (though it is canon that Degwin lived on the Moon before Side 3 (the future Zeon) was completed);
- Gihren's estranged wife being a member of Danish royalty (though the thing about him cheating on her with his assistant Cecilia is canon, at least according to the novel) and being fond of cats;
- Saslo (the guy who was blown up with a carbomb by Ramba Ral's dad a few years before the series takes place) being homosexual;
- Dozle's love of sports & dogs;
- Kycilia having a sexual relationship with Char sometime in the past (though she does have some kind of relationship with his lookalike Johnny Ridden in at least one Gaiden manga);
- Garma's various health problems, drug use, musical talent & his mother dying in childbirth (canon sources mention her dying shortly after he was born, but never specify how).
- Another very common fanon theory is the illness Mad Scientist Ginius Sakhalin from 08th MS Team suffers from is Wilson's Disease. Though its name is never mentioned, the symptoms do seem to fit.
Due to its many disparite continuties, Zoids has a fair bit of fanon.
- Bit Cloud and Vega Obscura from New Century are descended from Van Flyheight and Joyce "Raven" Chen from Chaotic Century/Guardian Force respectively.
  - In fact, just aobut any NC character is claimed to be descended from any CC/GF character. Given that there is a thousand years between the series, this is possible.
- Similarly, it is believed that the "Organoid Systems" inside the Liger Zero and Beserk Fury (stated in canon to simply be self-sufficient artificial intelligence programs) are literal organoids; more to the point, they are generally believed to be Zeke and Shadow, respectively. Often tied into this theory is the idea that the Liger Zero and Berserk Fury evolved from Van's Blade Liger and Raven's Geno Breaker.
  - Likewise, it has often been claimed that Leon's red Blade Liger was created by the Organoid Ambient
- Lieutenant/Captain O'Connell from the Chaotic Century and Guardian Force has no given first name, but a slash fanficcer dubbed him Jake and now many fans believe that to be his official name.
- Any attempt to explain Hiltz' Idiot Plot master plan from Guardian Force will inevitably involve fanon speculation, given both the nonsense plan and Hiltz' acute lack of personality.
Up until the recent reveal, Naruto fans had a long-standing theory that the Fourth Hokage's name was Arashi. This had apparently come about through the misunderstanding of a scene in the manga where Jiraiya lays out his frog summoning contract, clearly revealing the place where the Fourth's name was written. The writing itself was illegible nonsense, with Word Of God holding that the Fourth's handwriting was at fault from an in-world perspective. That didn't stop fans from trying to piece it together or photoshop in the blanks, though.
- Although fans got the Fourth's name wrong, they got the who right: He's Naruto's father.
- It's hard not to find a Naruto fan fic that doesn't make reference to "the Council". If the writers are to be believed, this Omniscient Council Of Vagueness can trump anything the Hokage does, to the point where one wonders why they even bother having a Hokage. The closest thing to be found in canon are the Elders, Koharu, Homura, and Danzou, whose only role appears to be as advisers to the Hokage.
  - Canon revelations regarding the Uchiha massacre show that the advisors can, in fact, override the Hokage if they really want to and if all of them but him agree.
- Similar to the Council, according to a lot of fanfic, Naruto was basically physically abused as a child. The freqency varies from regularly, to annualy (anniversery of Kyuubi attack). There is absolutly NO cannon evidance to support this, and the only thing that the villagers were shown to do is ignore him, insult him behind his back, and maybe glare at him.
- The same applies for a legal statute found in Harem Fan Fiction commonly refered to as the Clan Restoration Act. This law states that the last male of a clan may practice polygamy in order to increase the number of children with his or her Bloodline so that the military power of the vilage will increase and that one untimely death will not trunkate a geneticly powerful family tree.
- It is fairly common belief (and device in fanfiction) that Naruto's short height is caused by malnutrition due to him living almost entirely on ramen. Given that he's significantly taller after the Time Skip, he either must have changed his diet or was just a late bloomer in the first place.
- The several Naruto Fan Fiction writers gave the third Hokage's given name as Sasuke, after the famous ninja Sarutobi Sasuke. One of the guide books revealed his given name to be Hiruzen.
- Naruto fanfiction writers also seem to be under the impression that Naruto and the Kyuubi are the best of friends, that they have a mind link, and that Kyuubi refers to Naruto as "kit", despite canon evidence that the Kyuubi is highly resentful of being sealed within him and would most likely tear him to shreds if given the chance. Also, Naruto and the Kyuubi only communicate when Naruto is in his mindscape (although funnily enough, both a casual relations and easy communication between a host and tailed beast turned out to be true for the eight-tails host).
- A sizable portion of those fanfiction writers also believe that the Kyuubi is female, despite his incredibly gravelly voice and male mannerisms. And can turn Naruto female. Or the very least enable pregnancy.
- Evidently the Akatsuki live in the same building and share the same facilities, despite the fact that most of them don't even seem to know one another and are constantly on the move in pairs with minimal contact beyond the sealing ritual.
  - Word Of God actually states that pairs of members each get their own rooms when they stay at inns, for whatever reason.
- And let's not forget the most elaborate Fanon theory of all: "The Legend of the Tailed Beasts". Fans believe it to be a real Japanese myth which Kishimoto bases the designs of the beasts from. It drew upon both Japanese and Chinese mythologies, involving The Eight Immortals and several species of Yokai. The story, in actuality, is a Japanese fanfiction, and even though the author has admitted it to be fake, most fans still believe that's how they really look like. But that may change as recently their true forms and hosts have all been revealed in an recent artbook.
- The Sharingan being a genetic offshoot of the Byakugan was stated to be a rumor and even then only mentioned once, but almost everyone took this to be undeniable evidence and started getting pissy when it turned out they were unrelated and that the Sharingan was derived from the Rinnegan.
- Fans sometimes believe that in the flashback regarding Hinata joining Team Kurenai, Hinata was essentially disowned by her father and adopted by Kurenai, despite her later being seen at the Hyuga compound before leaving to train with her team.
- Something between fanon and just a misconception is that the puppets Sasori made that looks like his parents are made out of their corpses. Actually, he made them from regular materials when he was a child, long before he went crazy enough to do such a thing, and the only known human puppets were made from Hiruko, the Third Kazekage, and himself.
In the Haibane Renmei fandom, Mado of Stone Mill fills in many side-plots that make Glie seem all the more multifaceted and interesting, and is so well-written in Original Flavor that many people consider it up there with the canon.
Even fluff anime isn't immune. Azumanga Daioh has all sorts, ranging from ungiven names (surname for Kaori, given name for Sakaki and Kagura, and background extras such as Rachel Handlebars) up to unrequited crushes (remember, only one is actually shown). Add generous desire for Les Yay and stir.
- A very common belief is that Osaka has forgotten her real name is Ayumu Kasuga. This was never actually seen in either manga or anime, instead being taken from the Tsunami Channel webcomic.
- Another common one is the Nyamo/Yukari pairing. Or, rather, that there WAS one. This appears to have most basis in the fact that they are still single and that Nyamo still puts up with Yukari. Quite a bit of fanon also revolves around the content of the "love letter" and Nyamo's drunken lecture in episode 14, mostly dealing with the aforementioned relationship. See the Azu Dai WMG page and the JBM page for more information.
Similar to Decoy Octopus, Matt from Death Note received almost no characterization in canon; despite this, he is almost universally portrayed in fanworks as a snarky gamer and Only Sane Man to L, Near and Mello.
- Not to mention his hair. He's never shown in any color pages of the original manga, so a hair color was never defined for him. Fanon decided his hair was a lovely maroon color. When the anime came along, he was given a hair color somewhere between navy and dark green, depending on the lighting. Guess which hair color he is still usually drawn with.
Yu-Gi-Oh! has a very vast fanon. The biggest one is the usage of the terms "yami" and "hikari". They refer to the three characters who share their bodies with other beings. Mutou Yuugi is the hikari, the Pharaoh is the yami. Bakura Ryou is the hikari, the spirit of the Ring is the yami. Malik Ishtar is the hikari, his dangerous separate personality is the yami.
- Another one is the name of the spirit in the Ring. His form in Ancient Egypt is never given a name besides "Bakura", but somehow, people have christened him, "Afekia".
- Also, for fanfics in the past, many people tend to turn Yuugi into a character in Ancient Egypt, then give him the name "Heba" or "Haba", which is apparently Arabic for "game".
- The relationship between the spirit of the Ring and his host body, Bakura Ryou (in fanon the spirit takes the name Bakura or Yami Bakura and the host takes the name Ryou), is grossly exaggerated in many ways, the most prominent of which is the spirit being heavily abusive and Bakura being weak and frightful of him. First off, Bakura is hardly even aware of the fact that the spirit is there, considering him as more of a voice in his head. Secondly, the spirit can't form his own solid body, so if he were to abuse Bakura, he would have to damage his own host body, which doesn't serve him in any way, so he'd never do it.
  - Of course, it may be based off the incident in the Monster World arc of the manga where, when Bakura tries to help Yuugi and the gang through trying to control his hand,the spirit uses the spire on his castle model to pierce straight through it. Of all the ways he could have gone about it, he stabbed his hand.
Some parts of the Axis Powers Hetalia fanon is sort of Real Life canon since it is based on interpretations of world events. Others, however, are 100% fanon or only very loosely based on history. Certain pieces of fandom are...
- First type:
  - During the American Civil War or the Korean War (neither touched on by the author), there is a personification of CSA and North Korea. CSA is killed, North Korea is alive and continues to be crazy. In case of Korea this stems from a translation issue, as the Korea in Hetalia canon is South Korea (he's called 韓国 "kankoku", which specifically means South Korea), so presumably there's a canonical North Korea as well.
  - A variation of this is that America has a split personality during this time period.
  - Another one is about North Korea being female. It's based in some Himaruya doddles that have a female Korea.
  - The Holy Roman Empire really did grow up to become Germany. This question is still unresolved in canon though the Valentines strip hints at this one possibly being canon, but the fandom can't stand the thought of HRE being killed. We can't blame the fans, tho.
  - Vietnam's transition from an innocent fisher girl to a hardened warrior.
  - Those who follow the "North Korea is female" fanon bit also give her a similar treatment.
  - Fellow Chinese Girl Taiwan either being a Dragon Lady during World War Two, or having bound feet per China's orders.
- Second type:
  - Egypt's hair. Fanwork almost always described him as longhaired, but a Himaruya doodle showed him without his kefiyeh headgear... and with very short hair◊.
  - Taiwan and Hong Kong being Half Identical Twins, as well as the Italies being twins too. It's neither confirmed nor denied, and in the case of the Asians they haven't even appeared in the strips, So Yeah.
  - Sweden having a war hammer as his Weapon Of Choice... despite having a BFS (and sometimes a quarter-staff) in official art and Himaruya doodles.
  - A large percentage of the fandom believes that Prussia survived his dissolution by the Allies and became East Germany. Opinions are further split on the topic of whether or not he survived the reunification.
  - Wasn't Prussia's transformation into East Germany confirmed by Word Of God? I'm pretty sure it was mentioned in one of the author's notes that he was stuck doing menial jobs for Russia in those times.
  - Denmark being a Yandere for either Sweden or Norway. And Norway being a Tsundere for Denmark.
  - If not made into a Broken Bird, Vietnam will be shown as the East Asian's Team Mom.
- Actually, when many characters are either just mentioned or show up only in supplementary materials, fanon is just around the corner. Since the fans have no real idea of what the characters are like, except for their looks and some basic personality traits spelled in the character profiles, you find yourself with many options to play/write/etc. them. Such as Hong Kong being depicted as a kuudere and Belgium being a mix of The Ojou and Bottle Fairy, personality wise.
Like Naruto and the Kyuubi, Kurama from Yu Yu Hakusho is believed to be in constant telepathic communication with "Youko", his demon self. Futhermore, "Youko" is very bored with being stuck inside a fifteen-year-old virgin and would very much like it to be sexy tiems nao. This one you can blame on the dub: the very first time Kurama transforms back, Youko Kurama's voice tells him "it's up to you now", and calls him Suichi, his dub human name; he answers back in his normal voice. In the Japanese version, Youko Kurama's voice begins the line, and normal-Kurama's voice finishes it as he transforms, implying one consciousness. Also, "Jaganshi" and "Youko" are thought to be Hiei and Kurama's names — they're technically titles, referring to what type of Yokai they are, and the word "Jaganshi" ("Evil Eye Master") is only used in one episode title.
In the Guyver fandom, it's generally accepted that Edward Caerleon, late of the Zoalord Council is Welsh.
As several details in the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha franchise can only be found in supplementary materials like the Sound Stages and manga which the english speaking fanbase wasn't aware of for sometime, western fans took some 'facts' as a matter of course, such as Nanoha copying Fate's Bind spell (she didn't, Yuuno taught her how to do a Bind in the very first Sound Stage) and Reinforce Zwei being the weakened form of the first Reinforce (she's not, she's a completely new Unison Device Hayate designed with the help of Mariel and Yuuno as mentioned in the last Sound Stage of A's). Most of these have died down ever since english-speaking fans learned about the supplementary materials and began translating them.
Fans of the Suzumiya Haruhi anime tend too easily to accept Koizumi's theory that Haruhi is God. Koizumi himself doesn't present it as certain fact; he labels it as a theory and a "worst case scenario" that his Organization is acting on.
- Ironically Koizumi is the one source we know is unreliable. The acceptance of his version comes from the alternatives being Technobabble and the other so heavily redacted as to be meaningless.
It is almost universally accepted among Bleach fans that Ichigo's father Isshin is a member of the shinigami royal guard, despite nothing even coming close to this being mentioned anywhere in the series itself, and the royal guards themselves only being mentioned in passing once.
Digimon's Canon Immigrant Ryo Akiyama's Wonderswan games were never released in English and only one saw a fan translation. However, one fan extrapolated from his and Ken Ichijouji's friendship in the games that Ryo also knew Ken's older brother. Over the years this extrapolation and its getting picked up by other fans has quietly snowballed into the odd Digimon Adventure 02 fan with an interest in pre-series Ken believing the three of them are friends is canon.
Francine is one of the few main characters in the English dub of Samurai Pizza Cats who is not explicitly given a surname. Daniel Kary, webmaster of one of the better-known SPC fan sites, began referring to her as "Francine Manx" sometime in the 1990s, apparently on a whim; the name stuck, and now appears on virtually every web site associated with the series, including the Internet Movie Database.
Thanks to an Eye Catch from the third season of The Slayers, just about every fanfic writer believes that Luna Inverse and The Beast Master, one of the five Dark Lords under Ruby Eyed Shabranigdo, are best friends. This seems to stem mostly from a mixture of the manga (which revealed that the werewolf/troll crossbreed Dilgear did, indeed, heal from his fatal wounds and ended up becoming Luna's pet) not being very available and Luna's willingness to pass off saving the world and claim she was too busy being a part-time waitress, instead insisting that they approach her... "unpredictable" little sister instead. This is despite Luna being known to carry the soul of the chief God of their world within her, essentially making her a Paladin of such power she can kill a dragon with a kitchen knife and a natural enemy to all Mazoku.
Pokemon fanfiction naturally throws around many possibilities on the surnames of half the cast. There seems to be a frequent consensus for a few — Misty's pops up a lot as "Waterflower", and May and Max as "Maple". No idea where the latter comes from, but the former can at least be traced back to a specific episode whose title resulted in fans putting two and (?) together and getting a generally accepted four.

Close Anime & Manga

Due to the fact that many people only know of comic book characters in passing or through movies, there are many fanon claims that are taken as canon for various comic book franchises.
- The most prominent example would be the belief that the Joker killed Batman's parents, which stemmed from the 1989 movie. In canon, Batman's parents were either killed by Joe Chill, or an unnamed mugger (depending on the era), not the Joker, who is apparently around the same age as Batman anyway.
- In addition, there is, from the same movie, the Joker's name Jack Napier, which is taken as canon for many fans, though he has no confirmed name in the comics (though many homages to that name have been made). "Napier" is actually something of a joke, appropriately enough: "Jack Napier" is intentionally reminiscent of "jackanape", which is to say, a joker; in this it is something of a Prophetic Name. The name is also an homage to Alan Napier, who played Alfred on the 60's TV show and died shortly before the 1989 movie was made.
  - They toy around with this a lot in the DCAU. In an episode of Batman The Animated Series one of the psychiatrists at Arkham Asylum describes several Bat-villains by their first names, calling the Joker "Jack Napier". In a couple of other episodes they use it as his name, but in a couple they state it's one of his aliases, so they don't really give any confirmation on whether it's canon in that universe or not.
  - The Dark Knight averts this by specifically declaring the Joker has no known real name or any sort of identification.
- In the same vein of people's only knowledge of characters coming from movies, there's the idea that Wolverine and Sabretooth of the X-Men mythos are half-brothers, which, while used in the X Men Origins movie, does not actually apply anywhere else. Though, of course, with Wolverine's past, who can tell?
A Tabletop Games tie-in for The DCU placed Gotham City in New Jersey and Metropolis in Delaware, but these details are never mentioned in any comic books despite numerous fans accepting it as fact. Metropolis has also been described (if only in our world) as New York in the day and Gotham City as New York at night, but that's for poetic reasons; New York exists as a separate entity.
- While Metropolis's location still hasn't been given a canonical placement, there are at least two canon references to Gotham being in New Jersey — Legion of Super Heroes, pre-Zero Hour, made reference to the Bat-Cave being located (by archaeologists) in the Jersey sector of Metropolis, and an issue of Shadow of the Bat showed a character's driver's license, giving him an address in "Gotham City, NJ".
- Arkham Asylum is only one indicator that Gotham is in Massachusetts, it's relationship to Boston analogous to that of Metropolis to Manhattan.
Much like River from Firefly, Gambit often refers to himself in the third person in fanfiction. This happened rarely if at all in the comics. This might, however, have stemmed from the X-Men cartoon of the 90's, in which Gambit did this quite often.
- Strange things happen to Gambit in Russian fandom. 1) He is called Creole nearly all the time (he's Cajun in canon). 2) He's always viewed as an extremely Casanova-type character (which he is not in canon or at least not more than other characters in canon; example — Wolverine). 3) He's bisexual. This has been so ingrained in the fandom that most people seriously believe he is bisexual in canon (!) or at least intended to be. 4) Terrence Dash. Just Terrence Dash. Don't ask... this purely fan-made character (Gambit's gay pairing) is treated almost as if he was canon in the first place.
People have noted that Squirrel Girl's victories against villains far stronger than her is due to her Plot Armor only working in proportion in how strong her foes are, thus she'd lose if she met regular mooks. However, if you'd ask the Bug-Eyed Voice and examined the nuts of one of the mooks which were defeated by her in GLA Issue #2 you'd notice that she is still overpowered against normal mooks who run screaming from "the bringer of Anti-Life!"
- Which logically makes sense. If she's always X% more powerful than her foes, she'll be X% more powerful than a mook too. It'll be a much smaller number, but still an autowin advantage.
Many recent revivals of Golden Age public domain comic book superheroes wind up incorporating fanon into canon because, well, Golden Age comic books are hard to find, leaving writers no choice but to rely on character profiles found throughout the Internet. Many of those profiles have at least some fanon. In fairness, Golden Age comics were never big on continuity, so lots of this fanon comes from attempts to reconcile contradictory details and justify things that just plain didn't make sense.

Close Comics

Various explanations for the inconsistencies of how time travel works between the three Terminator movies are fanon. The Terminator movies (and the TV show, for example) never state how it works, just that it does.
Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki, has a fairly complete list of fanon elements that found their way into the official continuity, either as an intentional homage or due to the authors mistaking them for canon.
- And let's not forget SuperShadow, a website that deals almost exclusively in bizarre fanon notions, whose webmaster alleges that he is a close personal friend of George Lucas. SuperShadow is generally avoided by Star Wars fans, and discussing SuperShadow at all in a serious forum will get you slapped. Of course, many of these people can't tell if SuperShadow is run by an idiot, or is just an elaborate prank played on a community that's already rife with ridiculous fanon ideas....
- A particularly irritating bit of fanon (covered in the blurb of this Darths And Droids strip) that many people still can't seem to understand is false is the idea that the "Balance of the Force" refers to the Balance Between Good And Evil and was reached when Anakin killed all but two of the Jedi (Obi-wan and Yoda) leaving the number of Jedi and Sith equal. This is especially weird/frustrating when you consider how many people use the Jedi not thinking this would cause most of them to die out as "evidence" for them being stupid/corrupt and/or the prequel trilogy being an Idiot Plot. Word Of God has stated that "Balance of the Force" means some Jedi, no Sith, and that the previous Jedi order didn't need to die. (And this line of thinking doesn't make much sense, either: an equal number of Jedi and Sith [unless that number was zero] wouldn't engender balance in anything and just cause an unending and highly escalated war.)
- There's also the idea that the midi-chlorians somehow create the Force. There's no indication of that in Canon, and according to Wookieepedia they are merely indicators of Force Sensitivity. There's even an in-universe theory establishing that the Force creates the midi-chlorians.
- The Expanded Universe is full of them. First we have the theory that Luke lost his virginity to Leia right after the Battle of Yavin. Then there's the theory that Anakin is really Ben's father. Sticking to Mara, another theory is about Palpatine's relationship with Mara. Slash fans vary from Everyone Is Bi to attitudes toward homosexuality are as restrictive in the GFFA as they are in Christianity, despite the fact that Jaina thought nothing of Goran and Medrit. And despite Lucas saying the Jedi have sex, the mischaracterization of them as celibate continues to this day. Moving away from sex, most fans believe that Luke was under the Dark Side's influence in the Dark Nest Trilogy.
  - Regarding homosexuality in the GFFA, Bioware caught hell for Juhani, whose article is still a mess from people arguing whether or not she was written as a lesbian. Stanley Woo, her writer at Bioware said unequivocally that the answer is YES.
  - And then we get Karen "Canderous Ordo in Drag" Traviss who settled at least part of the issue by stating that the Mandalorians don't give a shit.
  - Male Exile. How many times was Wookieepedia edited for that one?
  - Ditto with so much as acknowledging Revan could be played as a female. Even the mention of it caused flame wars for a while. Give me a nickel every time some fanboy screams "Revan can't be a girl, it's CANON" and force me to pay a dime back every time someone says "Exile's a chick. It's CANON," and I'd still have enough money for a five-star supper and gas money.
The Big Lebowski: a popular theory among fans is that Donnie is in fact Walter's imaginary friend.
- Which doesn't make sense, because the Dude also acknowledges him a few times during the movie. Unless he is both Walter and the Dude's imaginary friend. But if he was, why would they go to a funeral home after he dies? Unless that was a dream sequence... And so was The cremation scene. The Stranger also refers to Donny, meaning he's also an imaginary friend. And who the hell is bowling with them the whole time?
The Usual Suspects: There are a number of fan theories that identify Keyser Soze as pretty much any member of the cast you care to name.
In The Movie of Prince Caspian, a geeky boy attempts to flirt with Susan at the train station in the first few minutes of the film. A small group of fans have grown attached to him, and christened him Warren. They have also decided that after the rest of Susan's family is killed in the train accident in The Last Battle, Susan marries Warren. Admittedly, this is mostly an attempt to pretend that Susan and Caspian's romance never happened.
Figwit◊ the sexy elf from The Fellowship of the Ring was noticed by fangirls and anyone else who got bored during the Council of Elrond scene; he was adopted by the fandom and given his name, and when he reappeared in RotK, there was much squealing and choking on popcorn.

Close Films

The Harry Potter books, of course, have their fair share:
- Although the vampiric pens Dolores Umbridge forces students to use in Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix are never specifically named at any point, the term "blood quill" has so thoroughly pervaded Potter fandom (primarily via fanfiction) that many are convinced the term is canonical.
- A growing number of Harry Potter fanfic authors seem to be using "Dan" and "Emma" as the names of Hermione's parents. (How very meta.) A smaller group genderswaps these into "Danielle" and "Emmitt", perhaps as an attempt to obscure their origin.
  - A trend which seems to be quickly matched by "Hugo" and "Rose". Because Hermione is just as creative as Harry is...
  - Of course, Hugo and Rose are really named after Ron and Hermione's previous crushes, Viktor Krum (because of Victor Hugo, geddit?) and Madam Rosmerta.
- Similarly, a large number of writers converged upon "Oddment" as the first name of Luna Lovegood's father before Deathly Hallows was released, and some continue to use it in preference to "Xenophilius".
- There was a widespread notion that Ginny's name was short for Virginia, until JKR revealed that her full first name was actually Ginevra.
  - That's because Ginny is virtually always short for Virginia in the real world. See Aerith And Bob.
- The omnipresent fanart claw marks on Remus Lupin's face have no actual basis in the text. In fact, in the third book Harry notices the premature age lines on his face, while giving mention of the giant facial scars a pass.
  - This didn't stop The Movie of Prisoner Of Azkaban from putting them there, though...
- Nowhere are Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs actually referred to as the Marauders. In fact, with regards to the map, they made, it's the singular: "Marauder's", not "Marauders' ".
  - Word Of God claims that they referred to themselves as such.
  - Yeah, but that was after it was widespread fanon. By then it was the easiest way out.
  - A similar one is the fandom insistence that Fred and George routinely refer to themselves/each other as Gred and Forge. This was a one-off joke in the first book, when their mother made them Christmas sweaters with their initials on them. Apparently people really liked it.
- Fanfiction has resulted in the widespread beliefs that Draco Malfoy favors leather pants and that Hermione writes in an enchanted diary which writes back, among other things. You'd think after Chamber of Secrets, someone as intelligent as Hermione would have realized that writing in such a diary would probably not be a very good idea.
- There is a persistent belief that Harry's growth has been stunted by poor diet, the Dursleys' abuse, or both, with some fix fics going so far as to "repair the damage" with magical treatments that restore Harry to his "proper" height (usually in the vicinity of six feet or more). However, if pensieve images can be trusted — and Dumbledore seems to trust them as being more factual than actual memory — Harry learns from Snape's memory in Order of the Phoenix that he and his father (at 15) are almost exactly the same height. On the other hand, it is remarked upon several times in the later books that Harry has grown significantly, though he still isn't as tall as Ron.
- A great many fans are convinced that Azkaban must be in the subarctic waters around or beyond the north end of Great Britain, possibly in the Orkneys. However, according to Prisoner of Azkaban, it is actually several days' walk south of Hogwarts, which probably puts it on a latitude equal to some part of England proper. Given that in Half-Blood Prince, Cornelius Fudge tells the Muggle Prime Minister that Azkaban is in the North Sea, it's probably not much farther north than Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.
  - JK Rowling has said that Sirius went south to Surrey to see Harry first, then went back North to Hogwarts.
- It seems to be an article of faith that at least some of the mysterious devices on Dumbledore's desk and bookshelves monitor Harry's location and condition.
- Many writers assume that other Wizarding cultures/countries are more "advanced" or "enlightened" than Wizarding Britain. However, the little bit we see of Wizarding France and Wizarding Ruritania in Goblet of Fire suggests they are no more or less so than England. And the only thing we hear about Wizarding America is mention of the Salem Institute.
  - Equally popular is the idea that the rest of the world is full of Dark Wizards. Generally these are less fanon and more frequent Straw Men depending on whether or not Britain is evil/incompetent.
- The idea that Hogwarts castle is (semi)sentient and that there is some channel of communication between it and the Headmaster/Headmistress is inexplicably common.
- The name of Draco Malfoy's family home being "Malfoy Manor", which was ultimately canonized in The Deathly Hallows.
- The existence of Soul Bonds.
- The idea that the Gringott's vault from which Harry gets his school supplies money is nothing more than a limited "trust fund" vault, and that the Potters have a separate, immensely larger, "family vault" that Harry will gain access to upon reaching his majority.
- Draco Malfoy and all the other rich purebloods are cool, high-class people misunderstood by those dumb Gryffindors, yet Voldemort is still considered a bad guy for some reason.
- Draco Malfoy is a sex god desired by half the girls in the school (art imitating life?). This one is so codified it tends to be taken for granted and may even show up when Draco is not being portrayed sympathetically.
- Sirius Black in his youth was described as a handsome guy, and somewhat popular with the ladies. Yet it never described him as a playboy who switches between girls faster than he switches between shoes, which most fanfics describe him as.
- A lot of fanart shows that Albus Severus Potter did indeed land himself in Slytherin. Depsite the fact that Harry's fear of being in Slytherin was a major factor in his Sorting into Gryffindor, something he reminded Albus of before he boarded the train.
  - Wouldn't it be ironic if Harry's little spech was the cause of Albus Severus losing this fear? Just saying.
  - There are four houses . . . still, Rose is always in Ravenclaw, Scorpius Malfoy is always in whatever house Al is, and the others kind of fade into the background since the three mentioned can make up a wonderful copy-pasted Neo Trio without Ron. Incidentally, except for Scor being slightly nicer and Al slightly less brave, their personalities are often copy-pasted as well.
- Per fanon, Remus Lupin is and always has been an extremely bookish Shrinking Violet — who, in his youthful incarnation, would come down with a case of the vapors if presented with the flashy and exciting hands-on curriculum his future self taught in PoA. Oh, and his eyes are amber. Always.
- The belief that life debts are magically-enforced. They are in fact only a social convention.
- Spell-chaining, the technique of turning multiple spells into a single continuous casting process by creating sequences that blend the concluding wand movements of one spell into the starting movements of the next. Regardless of how reasonable an idea it seems, it never appeared in the books.
- Gideon and Fabian Prewett are twins, no exceptions, and Fred and George are named [in their initials: F and G] for them.
- Most fans seem to pair off Rosie Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy in all fanfictions regarding the kids. Although this is easily explained, considering in the book Ron warns Rosie to stay away from Scorpius...star crossed lovers and all, very popular with the kids.
A very popular bit of fanon in the Sherlock Holmes fandom is that Dr. Watson's middle name is Hamish; this theory was first devised by Dorothy L. Sayers in order to explain why Watson's wife calls him James in one story although his first name was previously stated to be John (Hamish is the Scottish form of James).
Many Discworld fans complained when later books established that Vetinari went to the Assassins Guild school, when previous books had established he'd invented the modern, legal Assassins Guild. They hadn't, although they did establish he'd legalized the Thieves Guild.
Phantom, Susan Kay's retelling of The Phantom Of The Opera, has achieved this in some parts of the fandom, especially regarding the names of characters who went nameless in the original Gaston Leroux novel (eg. Nadir for the Persian).
Oh, The Lord of the Rings, how we love thee. Apparently, Thranduil is an alcoholic who regularly beats Legolas senseless and Aragorn was orphaned at two. The former is highly unlikely, based on what we know of elves in general (The Hobbit explicitly states that elves can't get drunk) and Legolas in particular, while the latter is downright contradicted by the Appendices (Aragorn's father died when he was two, but his mother lived until he was in his seventies).
- And all the Rivendell Elves have defined personalities: Erestor is the grim headmaster type, Glorfindel is the resident babysitter and Deadpan Snarker, and Elladan and Elrohir are troublemakers (as well as Elrohir being the more sensitive of the two and Elladan having more of a temper).
- This site exists to tell canon apart from fanon, a fairly tricky task since the canon for that particular fandom is notoriously shifty — what with J.R.R Tolkien constantly revising his ideas — and the Film of the Book can't help either.
Many fans of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials assumed that having a dæmon of the same sex indicated homosexuality. This is often considered truth nowadays by most fans, and when asked about the matter Pullman said that he'd never thought about it, but that he liked the idea.
Animorphs: Marco is gay. Notable because (since the characters themselves take turns narrating) the numerous instances of the canon explicitly stating the opposite can be completely disregarded by accounting them to self-denial.
Good Omens: That Gadre'el is Crowley's True Name.

Close Literature

Doctor Who: In order to justify the belief that Time Lords are sterile, it is widely accepted that although Susan always referred to the Doctor as her grandfather, and other characters always treated her as such, the two are not biologically related, and she just calls him that as a sign of affection.
- This has been repudiated by a couple of off-hand comments in the new series; the Doctor, at the very least, considers himself a father and a grandfather, and likes being thought of as a being with a sex drive.
- On the other hand, the somewhat more fan-friendly Big Finish Spin Off audios have had the Doctor repeatedly claim that he never had children, and never ever does the thing you typically need to do in order to have children.
- The Expanded Universe novels Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible and Lungbarrow by Marc Platt, derived partly from the aborted Cartmel Masterplan (a backstory never fully revealed because of the series' cancellation), explained everything. They said that a curse had made the ancient Time Lords infertile. They now reproduced artificially, using devices called Looms to genetically "assemble" new Time Lords. The second book also explained the backstory for the Doctor's relationship with Susan. In simple terms, the Doctor just time-traveled back in time to when they still had children, and took her. (Of course, their relationship had already gotten explained away by an Expanded Universe short story entitled "Birth of a Renegade", written by Doctor Who's then-script editor, Eric Saward, who had gotten canned by the time the Cartmel Masterplan got going, so he had no input there. Though it gives Susan an entirely different backstory in several other ways, both Lungbarrow and "Birth of A Renegade" make Susan the Doctor's adopted grand-daughter.)
  - The Cartmel Masterplan is Jossed, but the people at Big Finish may have been right. The Tenth Doctor has fathered a child involuntarily: apparently cloning techniques and Time Lords mix oddly. And he hugs and kisses a lot. But he's never gone further than that, as far as we know.
- Similar attempts have been made to excuse the much-derided statement in the TV movie that the Doctor is half-human: besides the obvious "his mother was human and his father was a Time Lord" one that people seem to hate, there are things like "he was given human blood just before his regeneration and that made him half-human", "he regenerated into a half-human on purpose", "his mother was a Time Lady who used the Chameleon Arch from the new series to become human", "he was joking"... The new series has not, and probably never will, address this. (Lungbarrow gave a jokey rationale for this, as well, but only in passing.)
  - As of "Journey's End", this is no longer canon in the new series. The metacrisis Doctor is disgusted to be part-human and implies that such a thing has never happened before.
  - IDW's The Forgotten comic (Issue 5, for the pedantic) gives us this lovely line: "I once convinced my most-hated enemy that I was half-human with nothing more than a wide-eyed expression, a few words and a half-broken Chameleon Arch."
- According to some fans, any spin-off which claims Time Lords have two hearts before they regenerate for the first time is clearly in violation of a couple of lines in the series which suggest that the very elderly first Doctor only has one.
  - The series was making up continuity as they went along, and in fact, the two hearts bit didn't come up until the third Doctor, after two regenerations.
  - But it is clear, Fanon-wise, that the First Doctor only had one heart, and not just from dialogue—Ian Chesterton took his pulse and likely would've noticed if there was more than one pulse going. Assuming that the extra heart came at the Doctor's first regeneration, and not later, is the Fanon equivalent of Occam's Razor.
  - But, the medical scan of the Second Doctor in The Wheel in Space showed no abnormalities, i.e. no second heart.
A popular fanon theory speculates that the Doctor and the Master were brothers, before RTD made very clear that it wasn't so. The show itself even poked fun of the clichedness of the theory in the new series.
Star Trek: The claim that Mr. Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet is not canonical, but it didn't stop fans from becoming outraged with Star Trek Enterprise when T'Pol — who was emphatically not a member of Starfleet — was assigned to duty on the Enterprise. Star Trek Enterprise also violated Fanon by having an Earth Starfleet prior to the existence of the Federation, resulting in many fans complaining the date of the Federation Starfleet's founding had been changed. (How the people convinced that Spock was the "first Vulcan in Starfleet" explain the entire crew of the Intrepid, the Constitution-class starship manned entirely by Vulcans that was eaten by the Giant Space Amoeba in the Original Series, is something of a mystery. The existence of the Intrepid crew clearly shows that Spock cannot have been the first Vulcan to attend the Academy. However, he may easily have been the first half Vulcan to do so).
- That doesn't necessarily violate fanon. U.S.S. Intrepid had her keel laid down after the Enterprise did, and a good while after at that. It's possible her crew is made up of Vulcans who followed Spock into Starfleet.
- Star Trek Enterprise also aroused outrage in some circles with its portrayal of Vulcans as being capable of underhanded deviousness (but entirely logical underhanded deviousness) and arrogance. Evidently those fans based Vulcans on the character of Spock, who was generally noble. This despite examples such as the sole episode of the original series set on Vulcan where underhanded deviousness and arrogance were on display front and center, the traitorous Valeris in Star Trek 6, and Spock himself.
  Saavik: You lied.
  Spock: I exaggerated.
  - This troper viewed the portrayal as a misguided attempt at Darkerand Edgier
  - Enterprise's Vulcans were later retconned into followers of the flawed interpretation of Surak's teaching, which may suggest that "real" Vulcans generally are supposed to be as noble as Spock, or at least nobler than they were portrayed.
- Also on Star Trek: Lt. Sulu was originally only given one name, but the fans came up with a first name for him: Hikaru. This name was then used in the sixth movie, thus turning Fanon into Canon.
  - Ditto with Nyota Uhura. It took almost 40 years before we heard THAT name on-screen!
- Separating the saucer section of the Enterprise from the remainder of the ship was long speculated in Fanon before it happened on screen. The potential was hinted at in promotional and supporting materials though (e.g. the 'Star Trek Technical Manual'').
  - This results from the TOS episode "the Apple" in which Kirk gives an order to prepare for "emergency saucer seperation."
- It is generally accepted among fans of the new movie that Kirk was sent to Tarsus IV after the "car incident", even though it's an alternate timeline, and so was present for the massacre as Kirk Prime was. It's not unusual for this to be a profound influence on his character in fic. The notion has also crept in that nu!Kirk studied under Hoshi Sato, who was said to be on Tarsus IV at the time of the massacre.
Despite the fact that we've only seen them dating men, Olivia and Alex on Law & Order: SVU are claimed as lesbians by the show's large lesbian fanbase. Some of these fans were outraged when, in the episode "Ghost", Alex told Olivia about the man she'd been seeing. The term "manvil" was coined to describe the show supposedly dropping anvils that Alex likes men. Said accusation neatly ignores the possibility of bisexuality, but as always Subtext is where you find it. And of course, it wasn't nearly so bad as Serena Southerlyn's last minute coming out.
- Word Of God declared that there was, in fact, UST between the two women. The actress who plays Alex basically admitted that something was going on:
  Stephanie March: I'm not saying we're not... I'm not saying we're not in love.
Buffy fandom reacted badly to Andrew being seen heading off for a night on the town with two attractive women, since he's "obviously" gay. Joss Whedon has since stated that Andrew was supposed to be headed off for a night on the town with a mixed-sex group. Remember, it's Italy.
- There was a belief among some fans that "Buffy" was a nickname, and the Slayer's "real" first name was actually "Elizabeth". This has apparently has been Jossed by Joss, but there still seems to be a faction that clings to it. (In the real world, "Buffy" derives from "Elizabeth" through the toddler mispronunciation "Ewizabuff.")
- After she came out during the fourth season, The fandom quietly decided that Willow had a huge crush on Giles' girlfriend Jenny during the second season. It's one of those things that just makes sense, what with Jenny inspiring Willow to start dabble in magic, the thing that later would become a not-so-subtle metaphor for lesbian sex. Whetever she had/has similar feeling for Buffy is debatable.
On Gilmore Girls, the character Tristin repeatedly called Rory "Mary" as a nod to her innocent appearance and actions. In fanon, Rory and other characters often call Tristin "Bible Boy" though it was never spoken onscreen.
With 500+ significant characters in 15 seasons, Power Rangers has a fairly hefty showing of this, to the point where some of the fanon actually conflicts with itself, and not just canon. Rangerwiki, a PR Wiki, has a list of some of the more common instances of fanon.
- One notable example of PR fanon becoming canon happened in 2002: a long-time fan began writing for the show in its tenth season, and made multiple references to an older fandom-wide missing episode hoax in a pivotal episode, suddenly canonizing the hoax's storyline.
There is a recent mounting wave of fanon locating the home of The Addams Family somewhere in New Jersey — sometimes in the midst of the Pine Barrens, sometimes in Edgewater, and sometimes in Charles Addams' own hometown of Westfield.
- Jossed by the fact that their car was registered to either the production company or George Barris, and on those occasions where the front or back is shown, no effort was made to conceal or disguise the California plates.
  - Then again, one episode showed that they were somewhere close enough to a Soviet embassy that a phone book local to the embassy would list them. In the 1960s, that would place them within an hour's drive of either Washington or New York, making Westfield or Edgewater good candidates, but anywhere in California somewhat unlikely.
Heroes has accumulated quite a bit of fanon. Popular theories include:
- Sylar has superhuman endurance, and also the Jossed idea that he eats brains.
- Lyle is adopted.
  - Confirmed in a deleted scene from the first season; it may or may not still be canon.
- Adam is the ancestor of most, if not all, of the Heroes.
- Mohinder went to boarding school in England, hence the accent.
- Nathan is eleven years older than Peter (his exact age is unknown).
- Mohinder's unnamed mother tends to be called Anjali in fics.
- Sylar's original ability has the side-effect of allowing him to always know the exact time.
- Claude is either bisexual or completely gay, along with the rest of the male characters. Some people think he named his pigeons.
- Elle is the mother of Sylar/Gabriel's son Noah in the future. While it's widely recognized that it's not technically canon, few realize it's not even hinted or implied.
  - Making Kid Noah a biological descendant of either (but especially both) creates not only timeline, but casting problems. The actor appeared to be about 5-8 years of age when Knox kills him. Yet, if the Exposed Future is 4 years after the Volume 3 Present, then how did Kid Noah grow from an embryo to a very-mature 3-year-old in that little time period? Then again...
Many Firefly fanfics have River referring to herself exclusively in the third person. This only occurred on two occasions in canon, one of which was in sarcasm.
- Additionally, many fanfics also have Mal adressing River as "Little Albatross" or just "Albatross." The only basis this has in canon is a scene between Mal and The Operative in which The Operative compares River to the albatross from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, stating that she would "rain destruction down on [him] and [his] ship." Mal respons by pointing out that "an albatross was a ship's good luck, till some idiot killed it."
- Mal refers to River as "Little Albatross" during the lift-off of Serenity at the end of the Big Damn Movie, but you're right; it's not exactly common.
Battlestar Galactica fans have been known to take a deleted scene where Elosha refers to a jealous god starting a war on Kobol as canon — despite it being, y'know, deleted — and thus extrapolating that the Thirteenth Tribe were monotheists. The most current Word Of God is that they were polytheists like the others (as evidenced by their Temple of Aurora), and the exodus from Kobol was the result of man "stealing fire" from the gods by creating life. The last five survivors of the Thirteenth Tribe became monotheists after meeting the monotheistic Centurions.
- This troper dimly recalls the "Jealous God" thing being true/somehow relevant in the original BSG, which would be why the scene exists.
- There was also a very common misconception that Tigh and Adama had served together during the First Cylon War. This was actually shown not to be the case in Season 2, Episode 1, Scattered. They met years after the war, on a freighter. It apparently didn't register with many fans, which is why there was a general uproar when Tigh turned out to be a Cylon.
- No one's ever said there are twelve Lords of Kobol, but it's taken for granted by many a fan. Given that they've mentioned gods outside the traditional twelve Olympians and have only used "Lord of Kobol" as a synonym for "god", not a subset, there are probably more than twelve.
About half of the episodes of Highlander: The Series are set in an unnamed city in the Pacific Northwest. Fans unanimously referred to this city as "Seacouver" (a portmanteau of "Seattle" and "Vancouver") but this was never explicitly stated on the show itself. The "Watcher CD" given away with VHS box sets (and, later, the DVD extras) finally made this name official.
Fanon for The Lone Gunmen can be traced back to a handful of very old fanfics. These include: the idea that Langley used to be addicted to drugs, and giving him the nickname "Ree," the speculation that Frohike had served in Vietnam as a sniper, and that Byers was a widower. Another fanon element defiantly ignores the aptly-named episode "Jump The Shark" to state that Fletcher was lying through his teeth (with the Gunmen's strangely OOC behavior being offered up as "proof") and/or that the Gunmen faked their deaths.
The Shield has Ronnie Gardocki, an Ascended Extra character who was the subject to much fanon as far as fans of the character grafting onto him a personality of Ronnie being a geeky cop who fell in with the bad crowd that was the Strike Team, as opposed to be being inherently corrupt. While the show and actor David Rees Snell largely embraced this fandom-based viewpoint towards the character (indeed, a plot point in the season seven premire was based around the notion of Ronnie having never killed a man in cold blood until that episode), it didn't stop the actor from acknowledging how his fans often downplayed his character's willingness to do bad things, pointing out that Ronnie had to been somewhat evil in order to have been recruited into the Strike Team.
Lost fanon is mainly theories that become so widely accepted that they're taken as canon. Of course, this is generally because of massive hints. Jacob's nemesis being the Smoke Monster, and Richard being first mate of the Black Rock are all common.

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Vocaloid: Perhaps the ultimate example of the power of Fanon.

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The Bible never says what the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge actually is. The forbidden fruit being an apple is just an assumption. So whether or not The Bible is fiction, the apple is not in there. Yet that does make this Older Than Feudalism. There are many possible explanations for where the apple image comes from, but the Bible itself never says. One possible linguistic explanation lies in the fact that at one time, the word "apple" was used to refer to all fruits (much in the way that "meat" referred to all food).
- Another explanation involving language is that the Latin words for 'evil' (malus) and 'apple' (malum) are similiar and even converge in certain declensions. When the Vulgate was being translated, it's possible that one of the monks mistranslated that particular word and the mistake just stuck.
- The Bible also never states that there were three wise men, either. There were three gifts, but many scholars theorize that there were many more wise men. It never even says they were men; Magi were officials at the Persian court, and some Magi were female.
  - In addition to that, it never says when Jesus was born. The best indicator it gives is that the flocks were in the fields, which puts the wet season of December Right Out.
  - This claim was never really made by the early church to begin with, as Christmas is just Saturnalia and other pagan festivities re-imagined for purposes of conversion. The symbolism was considered more important than celebrating Jesus' literal birthday.
- Along a similar vein, the well-known story of Jonah being swallowed by a whale only really refers to him being swallowed by a "great fish" in the text, not a whale. The only source to actually describe the fish in any detail is the Talmud, which claims that the fish which swallowed Jonah was actually created specifically for this purpose, and was unique.
  - On the other hand, the Hebrew term translated as "great fish" refers to any fish-like sea creature. Also, when Jesus describes the story, he refers to it specifically as a whale. The Greek word translated "whale", cetos (where we get our word "cetacean"), refers exclusively to whales.
- Much of the image and story of Satan is mostly not described in the Bible itself and comes from later holy texts in history.
  - Many popular depictions of Satan are at least partially if not completely pagan in origin, particularly from Greek Mythology. A red satyr-like monster with a penchant for pentagrams who lives in hell eternally torturing people? Totally not canon by Biblical standards (if you'll pardon the pun).
- Mary Magdalene is never referred to as a prostitute. The popular belief that she was one was started in 591 AD by Pope Gregory I when he identified her in a sermon as being the same person as the "woman who was a sinner" mentioned in Luke 7:36-50; later commentators expanded upon this and turned her image from an adulterous woman to a full-blown prostitute, the better to portray her role as the penitent. It wasn't until the 20th Century that the Catholic Church refuted this transformation, and even then, The DaVinci Code and other such novels trumpeted the "slur" against her loud and long.
- Lilith was an Expy from various Babylonian and Sumerian myths and is not in the Bible. The weak justification often given for her existence is that the line "male and female created He them" appears before the passage about Eve's creation. She does appear in various pre-Christianity Jewish texts.
- Authorship of various books and epistles. In particular, John the Evangelist writes quite differently from John of Patmos, the author of Revelation.
- Mary's perpetual virginity. An inversion of the usual reason fanons exist.

Close Religion

The Ordial Plane is a concept that turns up very frequently in Planescape fan work, based on the assumption that the Astral and Ethereal Planes should have a third counterpart in accordance to the Rule Of Three and which would complete the circle between the Inner, Outer, and Material Planes.

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Due to the vagueness (or, more accurately, inaccessibility) of Street Fighter's storylines, as well as incorrect facts/mistranslations printed in game manuals, the Street Fighter series has quite a lot of fanon material that is taken as canon by many.
- The fighting style of Ryu and Ken that has been passed down to them by Gouken has never been named in the Japanese versions of the games. A lot of Street Fighter fans outside Japan have misinterpreted the term ansatsuken (literally "assassination fist") as the name of their art. However, ansatsuken is actually a common Japanese term in fiction and in fact, Gen's unrelated fighting style has also been referred as an ansatsuken as well in the series. The fighting style of Ryu and Ken is not an ansatsuken itself, but the three special techniques they use (the Hadoken, Shoryuken, and Tatsumaki Senpukyaku) were originally part of the assassination art that Gouken and Gouki learned from Goutetsu before Gouken refined them into non-lethal purely defensive techniques. Capcom USA's localization staff hasn't been helping matters either, often referring to Ryu and Ken's style "Ansatsuken" in source material (ignoring its use of the word as a general term).
- That the character Akuma is a demon, or at least a generally evil character; in fact, he is more of an Blood Knight. Demon is more of a description of how he fights. (Not to mention the literal translation of his name.)
  - Have Kim Kaphwan fight Akuma in one of the Capcom vs. SNK games and you'll see that Kim, who has a strong sense of justice and can simply look at an opponent to tell if he's evil or not, does not use his 'Evil is unforgivable' intro with Akuma, which he does for just about any bad guy.
  - In Capcom vs. SNK 2 he uses the "Aku wa yurusan...!" quote against Akuma and his Shin form, but in SVC Chaos: SNK vs. Capcom he does not. Curious and curiouser...
  - Akuma has murderous intent by giving in to Satsui no Hadou and has likely killed before. To Kim Kaphwan, Akuma would technically be "evil" because he is a murderer, not because he is inherently evil.
  - Likely? His very first appearance involves killing M. Bison spectacularly in Super Street Fighter II Turbo, and in his backstory, he killed his sensei and his brother (well, sort of).
- In order to explain why Guy has two Bushin-ryu predecessors (Genryusai in Final Fight 2 and Zeku in the Street Fighter Alpha series), sone fans have postulated the idea that Genryusai was actually Zeku's master.
- Another fairly popular one is the idea that Charlie got turned into Shadow, just like in the Marvel Vs Capcom series. Even the most recent comic books used this idea.
In the numerous dojinshi works revolving around the Touhou video game series, the fans have almost unanimously turned several characters into chew toys (Alice Margatroid, Hong Mei Ling, Youmu...) regardless of whether or not anything in the official works points to such a fate. In Alice's case, the fanon version is almost the complete opposite of the canon version.
- Interestingly enough, some fanon aspects have been confirmed in canon. The character Keine, while originally only shown as a "protector of the human village" with some connection to history through her abilities, was almost always portrayed as a schoolteacher in dojinshi — and then was confirmed as being a teacher in the second book. The series' creator is extremely supportive of fanworks of all types, so it's very likely a case of fanon turning into canon.
- Two nameless miniboss type fights from The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil were later named after their fanon nicknames by ZUN: Daiyousei (lit.: greater fairy) and Koakuma (lit.: little devil). They haven't had any canon apearance since then but are used consistently as foils for related characters (Cirno and Patchouli, respectively) in fan-works.
- There has been fan art that actually separated canon and fanon Sakuya into two distinct personalities (Flowering Sakuya and Luna Dial Sakuya, respectively). A lot of people on the forum he frequents mistook Luna for the canon personality. Then a certain well-known dojin circle released an anime adaptation...
In Super Mario Bros fandom, the tendency to use the Super Mario Bros Super Show personalities of the Koopalings paired with the games' names for them is a pervasive piece of fanon, despite allusions to their Canon personalities in Super Mario World. In fact, these personalities are so popular that quite a bit of SMB fanfic is exclusively about the Koopalings!
- Another example is the widespread belief that the Mario Brothers originated in Brooklyn and ended up in the Mushroom World through a freak accident. This idea seems to have originated in the Western cartoon as well. Meanwhile, the Yoshi's Island series of games flat-out state that the Mario Bros. were born in the Mushroom Kingdom (although, if this is true, one has to wonder where all these humans—and their thick Italian accents—are coming from). Of course, there's nothing yet prohibiting the idea that they may have moved to Brooklyn at some point in their lives.
- Let's not forget the idea that the "modern" Mario, born in the Mushroom Kingdom as seen in Yoshi's Island, is the son of Jumpman, the "original" Mario.
  - Here's another one from the film/cartoon: The Mario Bros. having the actual last name "Mario." This was never stated in the games, and in fact Mario and Luigi's last name is never given.
  - Except in The Movie, in which Mario and Luigi give their last name as Mario, making this, at the least, Word Of Dante.
  - One debated subject is whether or not Mario's archnemesis Bowser actually has a last name. Bowser's JP name was "Koopa", while his US name is King Bowser. The fact that Bowser was called "King Koopa" in the TV shows and some other media (such as, one Stars On Ice show) doesn't help matters much (although in the episode "Crimewave Clyde", Mario did refer to him as Bowser). It's been speculated that "Koopa" is a surname and Bowser is in fact his first name. Nowhere in the games have the two names have been used together; of course, the fact that Bowser's children are all surnamed Koopa does point to the surname theory being correct.
  - From the SMB 1 instruction booklet: "One day the kingdom of the peaceful mushroom people was invaded by the Koopa, a tribe of turtles famous for their black magic." So, the Koopa is the name of the species. Bowser is their king.
  - Technically, one of the Koopalings being named "Morton Koopa, Jr." suggests that Bowser's full name would have to be Morton "Bowser" Koopa, Sr. That or their mother was named Morton, which is even more disturbing. This, of course, assumes that Morton Senior wasn't Morton Junior's grandfather, or they don't have an uncle named Morton... basically, there has to be a Morton in that family tree somewhere.
  - Hmmm... Princess Morton "Peach" Toadstool, Sr. has a nice ring to it.
  - And don't get us started on Bowser Jr.
- Most SMB Fanon originates from Lemmy's Land. Its fairly large, mostly serious Fan Fiction section is where most of the internet's SMB fanon spawns, while the "Scribbles" section is usually there to make a laughing stock of every Mario character. The "Interviews" often go both ways.
- On a non-Koopalings related note, there's Wario and Waluigi as brothers.
  - There is one possible reference to this in Mario Party 5, as when you pair the two their team name is the Wicked Bros. The thing that makes this only a possibility and not definitive proof? Much less related characters can also sport names to the tune of Adjective Bros. Really, the surprising thing is just that Wicked isn't usually used as their last name based off this.
One relatively decent self-insert character in SatAM Sonic The Hedgehog fanfic, Bookshire Draftwood the elderly raccoon doctor, grew so popular and filled such an obvious hole in the cast that he actually became part of fanon. Archie Comics subsequently tried to make their own doctor character, Dr. Quack, but he was considerably less sympathetic and endearing and thus wasn't so well-received by the fanbase.
- Elsewhere in Sonic The Hedgehog, the game Shadow the Hedgehog gave the titular character the ability to carry and use weapons, usually guns of one type or another. Some fans had already decided that, because (in canon) someone very important to him was shot, Shadow hated guns and would never use them. They proceeded to complain that his use of guns was Character Derailment.
  - To be fair, reasons for this assumption also included his rather pronounced superiority complex and the fact that he could throw Chaos Spears around with his mind, thus rendering common ballistic projectiles somewhat redundant.
  - Another example of Fanon. Shadow has no superiority complex in the games, "The Ultimate Life Form" is the title he was given by Gerald and GUN and is a matter of fact, he is the Ultimate Life Form. He also has no problem calling Sonic the true Ultimate Life Form at the end of Sonic Adventure 2 during the final battle. And it's extremely rare to find Shadow using Chaos Spear in the games. Archie's head writer Ian Flynn, who has stated that he won't let Shadow use guns in the comics, has also stated that it's perfectly in character for Shadow to be using weapons, since he is the type of person who would use anything to get anything he wants. So Word Of God has confirmed this to be the case, for the comics atleast.
  - "You're comparing yourself to me? Hah! You're not even good enough to be my fake!" "My name is Shadow, I'm the world's Ultimate Life Form!" "How Pathetic!" (referring the the police force that attempts to detain him at radical highway) "Hmph, Pathetic Humans!" "I am... the ultimate...life..." "I'm the coolest!" "I told you, I'm the ultimate." "Hm, too easy for me!" "Ultimate Victory!" And of course, "I must not be a full power here..." (because I got a E) He certainly talks like he has a superiority complex. This preventing him from fighting dirty or using guns is Fanon extrapolation, but he does canonically claim to be superior to the other characters.
- Also G-Merl's name is fanon, Sonic Advance 3 and Word Of God implies that he's really Emerl from Sonic Battle. Also in Sonic Unleashed, Eggman's robot sidekick is given the fanon name Ergo, because he says "Ergo" allot.
  - There was a theory going around for a while that the Babylonians built Emerl, due to the text calling the awakened Gizoid a god at one point, and the legend stating that Babylon was destroyed by an angry god for their hubris. Naturally, Chronicles laid this one to rest.
The cult classic NES game The Guardian Legend has a great example of Fanon. In the original Japanese game, the Guardian of Earth was apparently named Miria in the instruction manual, but the English language release left her unnamed. In the years after its release, the game saw a few fanfics put up online, one of which referred to the Guardian as Alyssa. For some reason, this caught on, and she's been referred to by that name by almost any fan of the game since. Look up TGL on almost any retro gaming site now and it will probably mention Alyssa.
Marth from Fire Emblem is often believed to have a connection with Roy and Ike even though their games don't even take place in the same universe.
- The appearance of the characters in Super Smash Bros. games most likely contributes to this speculation.
Speaking of Super Smash Bros., it was a very popular idea (save one notable exception), before Brawl came out and gave the Smashers an actual world they lived in via the Subspace Emissary mode, that the Smashers lived in a Reality Show / Big Brother-esque giant mansion, with Master Hand presiding over them all as the lord of the mansion and being some kind of God figure that occasionally came down to play with them all. Given the ramifications of 25+ possibly violent and/or crazy people living in the same house, this inevitably led to a ton of Character Derailment and Flanderization.
The Warcraft setting of Blizzard fame has also been repeatedly subjected to fanon, and every game release (and now, every other patch release in the MMO World of Warcraft) was filled with wild speculation from fans — speculation that would often evolve into fully written documents on the subject, carefully doctored images, and even their own WoWWiki pages. Some of the least grounded and most fan-developed theories that took fire over the internet included naming the high elven gods (this has happened TWICE, despite many canon sources acknowledging that high elves follow the Holy Light, when they even care about religion), the new Alliance race in the Burning Crusade being night elf spirits possessing the bodies of demons, the second WoW expansion being focused around the Maelstrom with naga and pandaren as races (it proved to be Wrath of the Lich King instead). Blizzard forums also frequently suffers hostile reactions from fans when the company fails to meet fanon expectations — pretty much every patch, since the company has a history of surprising its players that predates WoW.
There is a somewhat large number of Final Fantasy VII fans who still refer to Aerith as Aeris, due to the fact that was the transliteration of her name used in the original game. It's been corrected to the spelling preferred by the creators for the other games in the sub-series, but due to the eight years between FFVII and FFAC, the name Aeris has stuck for many people. For most, it's just an honest mistake caused by being used to calling her Aeris, but some people flat out refuse to admit that her canon name is Aerith in all regions. Articles on Wikipedia about her even go back and forth within a single article as a result of the massive edit and flame wars over what her name is, choosing to say her name is "Aeris" in Final Fantasy VII and "Aerith" in...everything else. If Square ever does go ahead with the much dreamed for remake of Final Fantasy VII, it can only be imagined how all of these people will cope when they inevitably call her "Aerith" again.
- Also FF VII has created Fanon's myth on his own, e.g. the 'Sepiroth is good' belief (mainly for fangirls) and a quite popular sidelong article about all the biblic references, magical numbers, character relations and so on a fan seemed to 'discover' within the game, which the creators 'secretly included', but which are mostly either plot devices or random number events.
- Fanon also has Sephiroth's pre-meltdown military rank as "General," even though in canon he is only referred to as SOLDIER 1st Class. It's a minor point and not at all offensive, but it's still worth pointing out.
- It had long been debated that the world was destroyed at the end of Final Fantasy VII. There was a serious outcry from the fans of that theory that Square was actually violating canon when they announced the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, which includes two direct sequels that explictly show the world alive and well.
  - In the same vein, there's a tiny amount of ambiguity at the end of Final Fantasy X as to the fate of Tidus. Despite the ending credits showing Tidus arriving in Spira again, before the announcement of the sequel, many fans argued that the scene was only metaphorical. This was not enough to stem the outcry that Final Fantasy X 2 was retconning what they believed to be "one of gaming's greatest tragedies" by depicting Tidus' return to Spira in the exact same FMV clip they used in X and thus proving it wasn't supposed to be metaphorical at all.
In Final Fantasy X-2 fanfiction (if it's not just handwaved) Shuyin is generally held to be the real-world prototype of Tidus. The parallels between their love lives are usually dismissed as coincidental though.
A popular Fanon concept interprets the ending of Final Fantasy VIII as revealing that Rinoa and the game's main villain, Ultimecia, are actually the same person and that Rinoa will eventually become that person. They get really upset when its pointed out that not only does the game provide no evidence for this theory, but that Word Of God already dictated that Sorceresses only have a normal human lifespan in the Ultimania guide released at the time of the game's release. Whereas Ultimecia is explicitly stated in the game itself to have been born "hundreds of years" in the future.
- This is not really Fanon as much as it is Epileptic Trees, seeing as the majority of Final Fantasy VIII fans disagree with the few who devotedly support this theory, usually pointing out the blatant lack of evidence for it.
While Sonic games aren't particularly known for deep plot-lines, one persistent fan theory would make Shadow, the series' resident Sonic clone, literally a copy of (Super) Sonic, despite having been genetically engineered fifty years before the series began. In Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic faces off against... well, Knuckles in the Hidden Palace Zone, a secret holding place for the Master Emerald. In the background of the battle is a mural that depicts a yellow, hedgehog-shaped thing flying and fighting a giant robot over the Master Emerald in a somewhat subtle bit of Foreshadowing, created thousands of years earlier by the ancient Echidna civilization. Later in Sonic Battle, reading the diary of Professor Gerald, Shadow's creator, shows that the man has spent a great deal of time researching the very same Echidnas that made the above mural. This is insignificant on its own, until one considers some of the similarities between Shadow and Super Sonic; both hover above the ground in place of running, both have tussled, unkempt-looking spines, both have red eyes, both are immortal (though in different ways), and both possess extraordinary control over the Chaos Emeralds. Although the implications of Sonic being a warrior of prophecy and Shadow being a copy of him via that prophecy could easily become one of the deepest aspect of the entire plot, it unfortunately doesn't seem like it will be capitalized on.
In Kingdom Hearts, due to the general vagueness of a lot of the inner mechanics of the universe, a couple theories have become embraced by the fandom. One notable one is the explanation for Kairi's keyblade. In game, Riku just gives her a keyblade out of nowhere during a sequence in Kingdom Hearts II, which she uses during the sequence and seems to lose it by her next appearance. Sora gets a second keyblade in many of his Drive forms. By connecting these two details together, the assumption that gets made is that "copy keyblades" can be made and either used in the off-hand or given to someone else, with it vanishing when it's no longer necessary.
- The Truth of the matter is, Kairi's Keyblade is still Riku's. He's just letting her use it to defend herself. As offical sources discribe it as thus "e Riku's 'Way to the Dawn' and Kairi's Keyblade are naturally the same type of Keyblade as Sora's. However there is no particular explanation for the Soul Eater's transfer and occurrence, as well as Riku's handing it to Kairi."
- Kingdom Hearts II, especially, has become the manifestation of Het Is Ew. It is said that there are two distinct parts of Kingdom Hearts: the part where everyone is a badass that can hold their own in battles that would make Goku and Vegeta cringe, and the part that consists of a castle full of gay men that spend their time playing pranks on each other and having sex.
  - The gay men are specifically Organization XIII members, with the exception of Larxene and Xion, who are female. Erm. Sort of female, in Xion's case.
  - Because most of the Organization XIII members have little in the way of character development, fans have developed their own personalities. Demyx is ditzy, Roxas is pretty and innocent, Marluxia is totally girly, Luxord is British and snarky, Axel is mischievous and perverted, Saix is alternatively crazy or a puppy (or both), Zexion is snooty, Lexaeus works out a lot and is rather dense, Vexen is a mad scientist, Xaldin is sadistically cruel, Larxene is more sadistically cruel, Xigbar is either a cool war veteran type or a little kid, and Xemnas is their mysterious boss who just wants to be alone most of the time.
  - Suprisingly, most of that seems confirmed by 358/2 Days. Most of it.
  - The aforementioned characterization of Lexaeus is particularly baffling. Rather dense? He had very little screen time, yet most of it consisted of engaging in intelligent conversation with Zexion. Plus, he WAS a scientist before he became a Nobody, so it's highly unlikely he'd have gotten that job if he was an idiot.
  - People see "huge quiet guy with a BFS... BFA... whatever" and go straight to "dumb brute," apparently.
  - As for their backgrounds before they were Nobodies, it's very common to write Demyx as either a merman from Atlantica or a rockstar.
  - Namine, like her "other self" Kairi, never had all that much character development in the games she appeared in. Alot of fangirls, on the other hand, latch onto her for Fanon, often making her the Yaoi Fangirl to the other Nobodies, or to Sora and Riku.
In Resident Evil 4, it's mentioned that Krauser faked his death in a crash, but the game never says what type. Fan-made bios and descriptions of the game generally claim he faked his death in a helicopter crash.
The Legend Of Zelda has gained quite a bit of fanon, such as Zelda's mother being dead. And Saria, Link's Unlucky Childhood Friend being the one who raised him. This particular bit of fanon is often used as an argument against the Link/Saria ship to boot.
- It's also been fanonized that Midna's race, the Twili, are the very same who created Majora's Mask. Midna's helmet bears many of the markings the mask has, not to mention that the Twili were banished to a dark and forsaken realm for trying to use evil magic to attain more power than they were entitled to, which is what the Happy Mask Salesman tells Link about the mask's makers.
  - Another theory regarding the Twili is that they are what remain of the Sheikah from Ocarina of Time. The two theories are not incompatible.
Many fansites address the Metal Gear Solid 4 character Sunny as "Sunny Gurlukovich", which is her mother's surname. However, the character is only addressed as "Sunny" and never as "Sunny Gurlukovich".
- Also, Liquid Snake fans seem to more or less agree on his name. It's James, apparently. Though some folks seem to think it to be John since that was Naked Snake's name.
  - To explain spoiled bit: Zero was the one to put together the project to clone Big Boss. Since his real name is David Oh and we know Solid's real name is David, some believe that Liquid was named after Big Boss, thus John. Where Solidus' name comes from is anyone's guess. Not that anyone cares about Solidus.
Two bits of common fanon in the Ace Attorney fandom would be calling Manfred von Karma the "Demon God" Prosecutor and that the reason Manfred adopted Miles Edgeworth was partly for an heir, this coming from his aristocratic attitude. Of course, this makes no sense given that canonically Von Karma explicitly screams that he always hated Edgeworth for scarring his arm with the mis-fired gun during the incident that led to Von Karma murdering his father and taking in Edgeworth in the first place. The reason he took him in was to set up an elaborate Xanatos Gambit to ruin Edgeworth's life by making him believe he murdered his own father instead of Von Karma.
Aside from the shipping wars that dominated the Golden Sun fandom near the start, there were also a couple of random ideas that passed into fanon. For one, there was the idea that the Adepts were naturally averse to their opposite element: Mars (fire) Adepts were afraid of water, Jupiter (wind) Adepts hated the desert, and so on. Nothing in the game really supported this (Garet, the party's strongest Mars Adept, is excited to see the ocean, whereas no one liked trekking through the Lamakan Desert), but aside from the aforementioned, it didn't contradict too much and was a fun way to add personality to the characters, so it stuck.
- Another idea that caught on for a while before it faded out was referring to Isaac as, for some reason, Isaac-chan.
The gender of NiGHTS from Nights Into Dreams is never stated in any of the games. The first game's manual refers to it as "he, she or it", the second game avoids gender pronouns and gives it a female voice, and Word Of God has stated more than once that NiGHTS doesn't have a specific gender. While most fans picks a gender they see it as, it's still a generally agreed fanon that NiGHTS choose what gender it feels like being. This is opposite of the early days of fandom, where any opinion that wasn't "NiGHTS is male and that's canon!" led to condescending, implications that you weren't a true fan, and/or being banned. There are still a few fans like this, but thankfully they're a minority.
- Going with the Nights Into Dreams bit, the character of all the other characters (excepting Reala and NiGHTS itself) is completely based in fanon, to the extent that some people complained when the second game was released, saying that the characters "weren't true to canon". This seems to have been remedied somewhat over time, however characters such as Jackle are still prone to this.
  - Ni GHTS and Reala are still prone to fanon-based characterization, since it was only in Jo D they got obvious personalities... and even then not everyone sees it as canon.
Any discussion of Silent Hill tends to rely heavily on this, as much of the actual story elements are either widely open to interpretation or, if you live in Japan, it's all there in the manual.
It's long been stated by certain Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross fans that the royal family of Zeal dye their hair blue. This is never stated in the games or by Word Of God, though it's often told by fans that someone in Chronopolis says it (they don't) or was mistranslated in the US (it wasn't) or it was in the PS 1 remake (it wasn't) or again, that it was left out in the US (it still wasn't). The theory mainly exists to explain why Schala has blond hair in Chrono Cross, because the game never explains Kid, who is explicitly Schala's clone, is blond, as well as Schala herself in the closing scenes of the game. There are many that understand this to simply be fan theory, but internet legend sometimes elevates this to canon.
There's a truckload of old theories concerning the Megaman series and its spinoffs; one dealt with the last names of most of the X series characters (Signas Lancaster, Marty Gisbon, Iris Thorne, etc.). The best was "Zero Omega".
- Zero killing most/the whole cast of the original series (this has been Jossed). This was populized by Bob And George.
- The DWN robot masters living in Wily's fortress inbetween/during the games.
Thanks to Fan Preferred Couple (and filling out the armour so well) Shepard is female.
- This one is hampered by all of the BioWare promotional material focusing on the distinct male Shepard. Then there's the fact that the default male Shep's model can't be altered, while femme Shep can, and the huge following male Shep has, and his "definitive" gender would seem to be male.
- A rarer one is that, due to Male!Shep's voice actor being Canadian, an Earthborn-origin male Shepard is thus Canadian.
Thanks to one scene between Admiral Tolwyn and Col. Devereaux, in Wing Commander II, it's widely believed by the fandom that the Phase Transit Cannon on the TCS Concordia has a tendency to blow up. All the actual scene says is that it's not safe to fire when at only 60% power, and that from a character known for being strictly "by the book", making it likely that Angel was thinking of technical documentation that errs on the side of caution.
It's often stated that in Pokemon that Tauros and Miltank are opposite gender-counterparts of the same mon like the Nidoran line(s) and Volbeat/Illumise, but this has never been stated in the games or the anime (and unlike the others this has no basis in gameplay, as Miltank Eggs will always be Miltank, and, like other male-only mon, Tauros can only have eggs with Ditto, which always become Tauros).

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Spoofed in a Shortpacked! comic. One of the characters discusses striking a TV commercial with Doc Brown from Back To The Future from her personal canon, because she can't see where it could fit in with the trilogy.
Bob And George almost single-handedly created the idea of the Cataclysm in Mega Man fandom, as an explanation for the absence of the original series characters (or any mention of them) in the X series. The most common interpretation of it is that Zero went on a rampage after his initial activation, killing Dr. Light, Mega Man (as well as the rest of the Light-bots), Bass, and even Wily himself before being shut down by Sigma; this interpretation has absolutely no basis in the canon itself. Other authors also attempt to explain why no records of Dr. Wily or Mega Man (among others) seem to exist in 21XX. Possibly the best version of this story can be found here.
- And eventually, round about the time of the release of Mega Man 9, Word Of God more or less Jossed the apocalypse theory, when Keiji Inafune basically said, "no, Zero did not kill the Light family".
- A slightly more sane theory is that the general populace of 21XX do know about Dr. Light, Dr. Wily et al (the first game's instruction manual has Dr. Cain recognizing Light's name, after all), it's just that nobody wants to talk about a series of wars that happened 100 years before while they're busy fighting for their lives against renegade robots.
In a weird example of Memetic Mutation, the fan-webcomic The Last Days Of FOXHOUND created a lot of this in the Metal Gear Solid fandom. Most of the slightly more plausible concepts are considered pretty iron-clad — such as Mantis and Ocelot hating each other, and Mantis's working for The Patriots. Decoy Octopus suffers particularly; as he was never actually given a personality in the games, most FOXHOUND-centric fic including him will involve the witty, easy-going character from the comic. Octopus also suffers from (read: enjoys every minute of) a huge power-up — the character in the canon was simply a skilled mimic who had undergone extensive plastic surgery in order to flatten his face for better use of latex masks. The comic, however portrayed him as an out-and-out shapeshifter capable of morphing into anyone by drinking their blood and taking a small cocktail of drugs. The fandom generally gravitates towards the more mundane explanations for events in the Magic-Realist canon, but Octopus is an exception.
Due to its slow pace and tendency of its author to keep quiet about everything from age to hair colour, Megatokyo tends to amass enormous amounts of fanon, examples including Ed's hair colour being red, Junko being the class rep and Miho living at the Cave of Evil. Only one of these ended up being correct.
- Another commonly heald notion was that Ping is anatomically incorrect. Supporters of this theory cite an off-hand comment from Tsubasa claiming that Ping is a "Non-H model," although he never elaborated on that point. This idea has in fact been on jossed no less than three occasions first by Miho, who had just finished bathing with Ping, mentioning that she is indeed anatomically correct; second by Word Of God implying that Ping is capable of giving birth; and finally (and conclusively) by Ping herself in this strip.
Because it often parodies the rules of the Dungeons & Dragons game, many fans of the The Order of the Stick hold the game rules as fanon, creating game statistics for the characters and then using those statistics (or really, any rules they can find) to argue why certain events in the comic should not have happened the way they did. This, despite the author's repeated Word of God insistence that he doesn't follow the rules closely when writing scenes and fans shouldn't expect them to line up. And even if he were adhering to the rules strictly, he's already specifically mentioned custom classes and feats, so there's no way to know what stats any given character has anyway.
- This is bound to get more interesting now that 4E is out, as the author has stated that he will use 4 when necessary to make a good joke even though the strip remains centered on 3.5.
  - There's also the idea that Lord Tyrinar and Elan & Nale's father are one and the same. It seems like this is where the plotline is going, and it would make such perfect dramatic sense that it's been almost universally assumed by the fans for years now, but it hasn't been confirmed in the strip itself or by Wordof God.
- It was Fanon for a while that Belkar was Chaotic Good, but this was Jossed.
  - No, it was an Epileptic Tree that had some very vocal supporters (actually, CN probably had more) but never a majority view.

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In Neopets, a popular fan-made Neopian Times piece ("Poor Dr_Death") managed to define just about everything pertaining to the owners of the pound/adoption center. Most notably, the anonymous Uni was given a name, and nobody has found cause to dispute Dr_Death's characterization as a lovable Deadpan Snarker. (At least, not until his official appearance suddenly became much Lighter And Softer with the rest of the website, but that's another issue.)

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Transformers fandom has surprisingly little Fanon, and most of it is pretty minor, but there are examples.
- The group-name "Seekers" for Starscream and other Decepticon jets of the same general build was fanon and later used in official sources.
- The Minibots were never officially referred to as such. The toys were sold as "mini vehicles".
- Different characters in different parts of the Transformers multiverse tend to be given the same names and similar designs; for example, G1 Red Alert and Armada Red Alert or G1 Wheeljack and Energon Downshift, yet these secondary characters are generally not regarded as the "same" person. However, some fans believe that each Optimus Prime and Megatron (with the exception of Beast Wars Megatron who was a Legacy Character in canon) are Alternate Universe versions of the same two basic people, while others think each Optimus and Megs are different, cosmically unrelated individuals, who just happens to coincidentally share the same name and role as all the others.
- You find quite a lot of fanon if you read enough Fan Fic.
  - Starscream is either a helpless victim of Megatron's domestic abuse, or a cunning, invincible Badass. Sometimes both.
  - Because Starscream has an immortal spark, he is actually a god. Possibly Primus, despite the whole "evil" thing.
  - All the Seekers share a kinship simply because they look alike.
  - Building on that, all Seekers exist in Trines and share a deep spiritual bond (sometimes sexual, sometimes familiar) with their Wingmates. The same is often applied to Gestalt teams like the Aerialbots or the Constructicons.
  - Galvatron and Megatron are not the same mech. Megatron is still floating in space somewhere, despite the fact that we clearly see Unicron upgrading Megatron's body in The Movie.
  - Hot Rod was part of a conspiracy with the Decepticons to kill Optimus Prime. This is why he jumped in front of Megatron during The Movie, only to be taken hostage so Prime couldn't shoot back.
  - Seeker wings are extremely sensitive if you know what I mean...
  - This also applies to 'doorwings', aka car doors that stick out from the back of certain Autobots in robot form, and any wires hidden all that armor.
  - Everybody hates the humans and Wheelie and secretly plot behind their backs to kill them all. Yes, even Optimus. Everyone.
  - Screw that. Wheelie is secretly plotting the complete and utter destruction of all sentient beings around him, starting with the brutal third murder of Optimus Prime...
  - In Beast Wars, Rampage is the son of Starscream. As in biological son, not spiritual son.
  - Beast Wars' Rampage is not, in fact, a psychopath. He's simply misunderstood and depressed.
  - Perceptor is actually the estranged and abused son of Megatron.
  - It took us this long to get to Cybertronian courtship and reproduction? Well, apparently, according to the Yaoi Fangirls, Transformers have two ways to reproduce amongst themselves. The Allspark, or "spark-bonding." Basically in Cybertronian "marriage" Transformers enter into a symbiosis, merging their sparks together. They become one being in one body, it's incredibly romantic (wall-banging). Also, when two sparks merge this causes an Overload of the two sparks and creates a third spark. Baby Transformers are known as sparklings. Depending on the writer if male bots can reproduce, or just females. And why are females so rare? Megatron killed them all in a fit of madness and preemptive elimination of the hypotenuse.
  - It is worth noting that this particular bit of fanon is contraditory to the canon- that they reproduce by manually building a new transformer (or protoform in the case of Transformers Animated), and the spark comes from the local Vector Sigma node/The Allspark/The Creation Matrix. The most romantic bit that can possibly occur is maybe hands touching when constructing the new chassis.
- A more general case is transplanting traits from one incarnation of a character to another (for example, Animated Shockwave being a Mad Scientist like his G1 incarnation.)
Gadget And The Gadgetinis, a sequel of Inspector Gadget, inspired a fan to post information about a false third series called "Go Go Gadegetinis" on imdb.com and wikipedia. In this "show" Gadget is paired with a female Inspector Prince. In addition to providing an explanation for Penny's parents, they got in the crossfire between Gagdet and MAD and died, Dr. Claw is finally captured and Gadget and Prince are married at the end. The article on wikipedia still references this hoax.
Kim Possible fanwriters had long assumed that Kim's mother had the given name Anne, as her two brothers are named for her father's first and middle names, since "Anne" is Kim's middle name. In the last episode, Kim's mother is addressed as Annie by Uncle Slim, meaning in all likelihood this was either right all along. Of course, the creators participated in a few online forums from time to time, and it's possibly they made the decision to give her this name only after so many people asked about it.
Avatar the Last Airbender, due to largely its implied and All There In The Manual worldbuilding, has a lot of this, along with character interpretation. A relatively less likely to be contested one is that Jet's Freedom Fighters all go by nicknames assigned by their leader Jet.
- One somewhat frustrating example is some people still insist that bending ability and talent is a case of Lamarck Was Right and/or Superpowerful Genetics. This is despite the fact that Katara and Toph are the only benders in their families, there being a set of twins where only one was a bender, it being said that people first learned bending from non-human sources, and Word Of God speaking to the contrary several times, saying that bending manifests due to a mix of genetics, spirituality, and training.
  - Technically, while Toph's parents are never shown earth bending, that doesn't mean that they aren't earth benders. On the other hand, Toph learned earthbending from badgermoles anyway. In fact, the Original earth bending was learned from badgermoles, just as dragons taught firebending, air bison taught airbending, and the Moon inspired waterbending. Unless those people are somehow part animal (and part-moon), that would indicate it's not genetic.
  - Yue, at least, demonstrates that someone can be, if not genetically, then spiritually part moon, and yet she's still not a waterbender.
- It is widely accepted Fanon (for whatever reason) that Azula is a flaming dyke. (Pun intended.) She's also a serial rapist, if you believe the fanon. Her victims include Mai, Ty Lee, Suki, Sokka and Zuko.
  - Another Azula fan-theory getting passed around in some circles, possibly as a twisted spinoff of the above fanon, is that she has a strapon that she calls "The Dragon Down South" (with which the aforementioned raping is done. This includes the men).
- When first introduced Toph and Aang were 12, Azula and Katara were 14, Sokka, Suki, and Mai were 15, and Zuko was 16, and by the end of the series about one year had passed. Any other exact ages are fanon, especially the insanity of how the hell someone as Bishonen as Ozai is Iroh's brother.
- A popular notion in fanfiction is that citizens of the Fire Nation worship the Sun Spirit as a god and call it Agni. Several factors contribute to this bit of Fanon: 1) As waterbenders are empowered by the moon, and the Northern Water Tribe worships the Moon Spirit, so firebenders are empowered by the sun, therefore it seems logical that the Fire Nation would worship a Sun Spirit. 2) Agni is the name of the god of fire in Hindu mythology, and the Fire Nation has a custom of firebending duels called "Agni-Kai." 3) You have to give Fire Nation characters something to say when they feel like swearing. This was later clarified. The original firebenders the Sun Warriors worshipped the sun as the source of firebending, but the Fire Nation forgot about the sun, and instead drew on personal rage and drive to fuel their firebending. No mention of a god named Agni has ever come up, but that's to be expected since the Avatarverse has spirits, but no mention of gods, and for the most part, mortals don't know the names of spirits either.
- For a mockery of all this, see The Ember Island Players.
Teen Titans. The city the youthful heroes protect is never named in the series. No, really, it isn't. Everyone knows it's called Jump City, though. Just like everyone knows Red X's Secret Identity is Jason Todd.
- At least the latter's name does come up as one of Beast Boy's Red X theories. It's obviously only for the one-off Mythology Gag that makes absolutely no sense in a serious context.
- Plus the name Jump City came from the Teen Titans Go! tie-in comic series.
A lot of Code Lyoko fanfiction has the story set in Bolougne-Billancourt, an area near Paris, France, because that's where the factory that the show's Factory was based off of once was. The name of the show's city has never actually been said — and don't even try looking to the dub for answers.
- In the upcoming series of Code Lyoko prose novels, the city is named Kadic. Makes sense.
- A bonus Fanon for Code Lyoko is the idea the Franz Hopper worked on Project Carthage at some time before creating XANA to destroy it, but that information is not specifically stated anywhere in the series. However, considering its popularity as a theory, if it isn't already canon, it is likely to become canon.
  - This idea certainly comes from the montage during the end credits starting Season 2, showing an old picture of Franz Hopper among other scientists and labeled "Project Carthage".
- Another thing that's never really stated is that (most of) the Men in Black, who appear throughout the show, are from this same organization. It's probably pretty easy to assume, though. Franz Hopper working against PC... men in black suits show up to take him away...
- Also, since the characters have really slanted eyes with little black dots as pupils, people keep creating fanon eye colors for them. Some characters have had eye colors animated — Aelita has been shown to have Green Eyes on multiple occasions, Ulrich sometimes has brown eyes in earlier episodes, and William was shown to have dark blue eyes in one Season 4 episode. As for the rest, fans generally agree that Jérémie's eyes are light blue, Yumi's are some dark/black color, and Odd's are purple, green, or in some cases both.
- Because Jérémie tends to spend more time working on programs for Lyoko than actually spending time with Aelita, fans assume she and his computer have an intense rivalry. She rarely calls him out on this in the series, and actually seems to accept it later.
Everyone keeps referring to Tecna as half-android, even though the only legitimate hint to such is a few throwaway lines in the non-4Kids dub of one scene in an S1 episode: "I've not been programmed for dating." "I'm going to go switch myself off now." (Goes off to sleep) Check it.
A mild example for X Men Evolution: quite a few fanfic writers made Rogue a fan of Anne Rice after seeing that she had a taste for vampire novels in the episode "Spykecam".
In fanfics, Fry's middle name is almost always James or John.
Danny Phantom has some. Most fans believe Paulina's last name is Sanchez, that Lancer's first name is William (after William Shakespeare), that Ghost Writer's name is really Devan (meaning poet), that Danny's middle name is James and fans are divided between Vlad having a ghost sense or not. Most people also believe that Ember's inspiration for RemEmber was an unloyal boyfriend.
Michael Demcio was the first to use the names Chip Maplewood and Dale Oakmont in his epic Chip And Dale Rescue Rangers Fan Fic Rhyme and Reason, released in 1996 as the first of its kind. Ever since, these names have been established as fanon.
The Lion King. Many fans believe that Simba and Nala had a son, named Kopa, who was either then killed by Zira,or otherise died, or is at least gone somewhere awaiting a fanfic plot that re-unites him with his lost family. A confusing example, as Kopa was a character in the semi- or non-canonical storybook The Lion King: Six New Adventures published between the two movies, but was then never mentioned in TLK 2. This has been speculated to be due to grief or something, although it's more likely that he was just retconned out of existence. It's speculated that he, and not Kiara, was the cub pictured at the end of the original movie.
- In a purer example, it's basically required in fanfics that should Kiara and Kovu have a son, he be named Tanabi.
About every third South Park fanfic mentions Kyle's gorgeous green eyes. But on the show his eyes are drawn as white ovals with black dots for pupils. Who knows what Matt and Trey would say if you asked them what color they really are.
In Invader Zim, pretty much anything about Irken mating is fanon. This includes various ideas, like that they lay eggs, males can become pregnant or, for that matter, that they mate at all, since from what one sees on the show it all seems to be done in a factory.
- Dib and Gaz's last name is Membrane, since their father is "Professor Membrane." Word Of God says that Membrane is the Professor's first name; the creators didn't want to give Dib a last name.
- Questions of Dib and Gaz's mom. There are two general theories on this: one is that they had a mom (usually a Mary Sue who looked a lot like Gaz) and that she died, often in some sort of lab accident. This can lead to angst for all the surviving family members, including Membrane (his workaholism is often linked to grief). The other theory is that Membrane created Dib as a lab experiment, a storyline Word Of God claims they might have pursued if the show hadn't been cancelled. How Gaz fits into that theory is up to the fan to decide.
Adventures Of The Galaxy Rangers, because of the relatively small size and inter-connectivity of its fanfic writing base, has a lot of solid fanon elements. One of them was giving Niko a surname, Dal'Ariel (Niko Dal'Ariel meaning literally, "Niko, student of Ariel"). When Koch Vision sent out a press release regarding putting the series on DVD, they included the fanon surname. The fanbase then had to admit to Kosh that it was "just" fanon.
The Real Ghostbusters has a bit of this. For example, it's generally accepted that Winston was in Nam and Egon makes great cocoa.
Ezekiel in Total Drama Island has shown very little personality in the show itself, aside from having sexist views, but fanon Ezekiel is inevitably portrayed as a down-on-his-luck, misunderstood nice guy.
- Beyond that, some fans take him to be some kind of Memetic Badass; basically, if he had actually made it past the first challenge, it's assumed he would have won all the others.

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