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alt title(s): Alternative Continuity 
Left: Main Emeraude, Right: Alternate Emeraude.
Alternate universeFs for fun and profit, where the normal continuity takes an alternate path. The result is an Alternate Continuity — a story that is no less "official" than the original, but which cannot be reconciled with it with regards to backstory or canon. It effectively lives in a different universe. Sometimes this forms the basis of a Series Franchise.
Anime in particular has several diverse distribution paths in Japan, depending on its format — motion pictures in theatres, OVAs in direct-to-consumer sales, and 26+ episode-long series on television. It is not uncommon for an anime to transfer from one distribution path/format to another. This is most frequently seen in shows that enjoy great success as OVAs; they jump to broadcast, and what was once effectively a miniseries becomes a story it takes an entire season to tell. Alternately, a successful series can become a movie.
When such a move is made, it's common for the story to simply be retold in the new medium, often with radical changes in both plot and characterization, creating an Alternate Continuity.
Oftentimes, an alternate continuity is unintentionally started when a show based on an unfinished series of a different medium runs out of material. See Overtook The Manga for this trope in detail.
Be warned, though: sometimes an Alternate Continuity is the occasion for Adaptation Decay. See also Elseworld and Canon Discontinuity.
When a show's writers make the Alternate Continuity their new "main" Continuity while discarding the old one, it becomes a Continuity Reboot.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- El Hazard The Magnificent World was an OVA series that became El-Hazard: Wanderers on TV. In the process most of the relationships Makoto had with the women in his life were altered dramatically, with his primary romantic interest shifting from Ifurita to Princess Rune-Venus.
- Later, a second OVA series based on the first was produced that continued the plot, but introduced several new characters and a new "ultimate weapon of doom". That success was then followed with a 12-episode TV series which pulled a All Just A Dream at the end. A final special was released for the TV series, the required Beach Episode.
- The TV series Revolutionary Girl Utena was turned into a movie, Adolescence of Utena, which attempted to retell the 39-episode story in 100 minutes by filtering it through the hindbrain of Salvador Dali and lacing it with LSD. The result, while visually breathtaking, bears only the most rudimentary resemblance to the original. This is further complicated by the fact that the film is based on an actual book of manga, which is in turn a stylized adaptation and condensation of the series, et cetera.
- So if I have my math right, there are four different continuities.
- RahXephon also made the leap to a movie from TV, attempting to cram its extensive and complex storyline into less than two hours while at the same time providing new Back Story. In the process, one character was completely eliminated, and several others rewritten dramatically (including putting one literally to sleep for most of the film).
- A television series of Ah My Goddess (which had been made into a 5-episode OVA in the early-middle 1990s) premiered in Japan in January 2005. The first episode alone makes it clear that it is an Alternate Continuity, although the exact degree by which it will diverge from the manga and OVAs remains to be seen.
- It ran for one and a half seasons, plus two extra episodes that have not been translated except for Fan Subs. The series was better than the OVAs, in this troper's opinion.
- Tenchi Muyo is perhaps the king of alternate continuities, with at least eight different alternate "worlds" (some, such as Pretty Sammy, have more than one continuity themselves). Oddly enough, the Tenchi movies are not separate continuities in and of themselves, but dovetail into one or the other of the TV series.
- For bonus fun one of the Pretty Sammy series has a minor character who is a cousin on Nanami and Jinnai from El-Hazard linking both meta-series together.
- Futakoi and the second TV series, Futakoi Alternative are a quite obvious example. The first being a fairly normal harem-type anime, while the second was much more madcap comedy.
- Mai-HiME branches off into a few distinct alternate continuities (and even the plots of its anime and manga are distinctly different from one another). There's the Mai-Otome anime and mangaverse, where most of the characters from the previous series are rewritten and placed in a different universe and mixed in with a slew of new characters; and there's the Mai-HiME Destiny light novel series, which does the same thing, but simply moves the girls to a different part of the country.
- Sister Princess and Sister Princess Repure contradict each other on several key points, most notably on whether or not the sisters are living with Wataru. Since these cannot be reconciled, the series are clearly separate continuities.
- Mega Man NT Warrior is essentially an alternate version of the regular Mega Man universe, with the major change being that the Robot Masters and other major characters are sentient programs instead of robots.
- Meanwhile, the games, anime, and manga of NT Warrior are all separate continuities.
- And! Let's not forget that every game since 3 has been One Game For The Price Of Two. Lan seems to remember any experiences he has in either version, even when they're inconsistent; it's as if he personally experienced not one version or the other, but some quantum superposition of the two. (For instance, he remembers both Shuko and Raika after BN4.) The most jarring example is Colonel: MegaMan remembers him well in both versions of BN6, but he only met him briefly in the Team ProtoMan version of 5.
- The anime adaptation of Rozen Maiden differs significantly from the manga - to the point that none of the events in the second season even happened in the original.
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is an Alternate Continuity of the game and OVA Triangle Heart where her brother and sister are ninja-like bodyguards battling a terrorist group that killed their father (who is alive in Nanoha.)
- The Digimon series had at least six continuities.
- While Digimon Adventure and Adventure 02 shared a continuity, one of the [EXTREMELY] minor characters from 02, Ryou Akiyama, is also a prominent character in Digimon Tamers, which does NOT share a continuity with the two Adventure seasons. The continuity disconnect is not addressed in the English dub or even in the anime, but it is somewhat explained in the video games made for the Wonderswan in Japan (which never made their way stateside).
- The Digimon franchise ven have five mangas, and one of them, V-Tamer has crossover specials with Adventure 02, Frontier and even Ryo of the Digimon games
- Pretty Cure has four continuities and counting (Futari Wa Pretty Cure, Futari Wa Pretty Cure Splash Star, Yes! Pretty Cure 5, and Fresh Pretty Cure)... unless the upcoming "All-Stars" movie decides it doesn't.
- After the series-ending choices the creators of the first Mahou Sensei Negima made, Negima!? decided to not even attempt to follow the manga plot after the basic plot and character concept.
- Yu-Gi-Oh, consists of the original manga continuity which includes a Side Story Yu-Gi-Oh R; the Toei series continuity; the Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters and GX continuity; and an alternate manga retelling of GX. There are also two Non Serial Movies (one for each anime) and the non-canonical Capsule Monsters mini-series. Then there is 5D's, which might be an Alternate Universe.
- X/1999 was released first as a movie, then again as a TV series five years later. The movie, for reasons of length and limited information, had an extremely simplified plotline. Also, both were finished before the manga, and all three killed different characters and resolved the plot in different ways.
- Kujibiki Unbalance has the OVAs included in Genshiken (consisting of episodes 1, 21, and 25 of an imaginary TV series); a radio drama based on this series; and a TV reimagining of the concept, which features very different character designs.
- The manga-ka gave a nod to this difference in the manga, in which the original Kujibiki Unbalance is discussed as though it were also a manga. The changes made in the Kujibiki Unbalance TV series is discussed by the characters in the manga as though it were the first adaptation of "Kuji-an" to video, rather than the second, as it is in our world.
- Bubblegum Crisis does this with its sequel Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040. Ironically, while the initial hardsuit designs were more or less lifted directly off the end of the original series, of the characters, only Big Bad Brian J. Mason has any resemblance to his OAV counterpart. This was done for legal reasons: the team making 2040 had the rights to the hardsuit designs, but not the character designs.
- Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei: Subverted/parodied in the first episode of season 2. The episode initially sets itself up as an alternate continuity, but switches right back to normal half way through the episode.
- Gravitation has some major differences between the manga (that came first) and the anime adaptation. Because the anime series was only 13 episodes long, one character (Maiko) is completely written out. Also, in the anime, Shuichi is already out of high school and signed to NG when he meets Eiri, but in the manga he is still a high school student whose talents are undiscovered.
- The three manga adaptations of Code Geass are all Alternate Continuities of varying degrees. Lelouch of the Rebellion is mostly a straight adaptation of the show, but with no Humongous Mecha and a greater focus on humor. Suzaku of the Counterattack focuses on the Forgotten Childhood Friend to the point of combines three of the anime's characters into a single new one to better suit the plot. Nightmare of Nunnally is a completely alternate take where the hero's Ill Girl little sister becomes a super-powered Loli with a mystical mecha fighting other super-powered Lolis with mystical mecha. The fourth manga is even more bizarre. Lelouch leads the Shinsengumi and the "Black Revolutionaries" in the midst of the Bakamatsu and Geass is the power to summon Knightmare Frames.
- Gundam tends to spawn a lot of these, given how many versions of the same story they have (TV series, movie trilogy, manga, novel, video game...) in addition to the seven different Alternate Universes the franchise has created.
- The Death Note live-action films eventually veer away from the plot as seen in the Manga and Anime versions.
- Rumor has it that an American live-action Adaptation is in the works with Light Yagami being played by Zac Efron
 . There's already a petition against it.
- And who can argue with an internet petition that spells the actor's name wrong?
- In Neon Genesis Evangelion's last episode, Shinji has a vision of his life as a typical high school comedy anime (except, you know, it still has Humongous Mecha) during a Mind Rape. This concept was so popular as to spawn several Dating Sim games and the manga Angelic Days.
- Ai Yori Aoshi started as a manga (now concluded after 17 volumes) that became the anime. The anime rearranged the order and details of some events, but maintained much of the same storyline. It ran for two seasons, but ended before the manga, leaving unresolved the primary Story Arc of whether Kaoru and Aoi will ever be able to publicly get together. Very roughly speaking, the anime covers much of the events from volumes 1 to 12 of the manga.
- The Full Metal Alchemist anime and manga start off practically identical, and then about halfway through begin to diverge hugely. Do not ask people which one is better. And now it has just been announced that a new anime is being worked on...
- The first half of the Magic Knight Rayearth anime and manga are almost identical (barring a couple of Schrodinger's Cats.) The second halves for each follow the same basic premise, but diverge wildly by the inclusion of a Big Bad to the TV series, and the elimination of a minor character's true form.
- However, the OAV, titled simply Rayearth, is an entirely separate continuity: the characters are all (mostly) there, and a few of the relationships survived, but aside from their names, their Elemental Powers, and the existence of Cephiro and Rune Gods, the OAV has nothing to do with the original series. Not even the protagonists' personalities are the same.
- Ghost In The Shell has three alternate continuities: the original manga; the first movie and its sequel; and the Stand Alone Complex television series, with its own sequel movie.
- Jigoku Shoujo is most famous as an anime, but there's also a manga and a short-lived live action show. The manga can more or less coexist with the anime, but the live action show definitely can't — Hajime and Tsugumi have a different backstory and a very different ending to their storyline.
- Record Of Lodoss War has three alternate continuities: the original novel series, the anime OVA, and the manga version of Chronicles of Heroic Knights. While the anime OVA compresses the material down and is usually suggested to be treated as if it ended about halfway in, it contains numerous continuity errors with the original novel and the manga adaptation of that part of the story. Most other manga fit into the core timeline, along with the anime series of Chronicles of Heroic Knights. The manga of Chronicles, however, inexplicably rewrites the second half of the plot completely, reaching a separate but equal Crowning Moment Of Awesome, and is notable for developing secondary characters much more than the series. It's still a separate canon though. Rune Soldier Louie, since it is set on a separate continent and features no returning characters, disregards the differences between the alternate continuities; as for Legend Of Crystania... it fits into the core timeline (non-OVA), but since it came out when most people in the west didn't know of any other Lodoss continuities than the OVA, it propagated the confusion with it's differences; however, even knowing this... it's still not worth watching.
- The various versions of the series starting with the Blood The Last Vampire OVA. There were several manga adaptions of the original concept, each with varying storylines, then the Blood Plus anime took some of the basic character templates and ideas and made a series that bears only a slight resemblance to the original. This again also has several manga adaptions that take different paths.
- Kuroshitsuji has two different continuities: the ongoing manga and the 24-episode anime. The anime not only featured a few differences in the plotlines it took from the manga (such as certain key characters appearing earlier than they were supposed to), but featured entirely new plotlines, supporting characters, and even main villains when it overtook the manga after the 6th freaking episode. Even the supporting characters that had originally appeared in the manga had their long-term roles (Soma and Agni being reoccurring characters in the manga as opposed to simply disappearing at the end of their arc in the anime) and even appearances (Aberline) and personality (both, in the case of Queen Victoria) changed in the anime.
- And of course, the Queen of the Continuities - Sailor Moon! With a manga series (that isn't compatible with it's prequel Sailor V) a 200-episode anime series (a five-season epic that isn't fully compatible with itself), a live-action series, three animated movies (which aren't fully compatible with either anime or manga), and twenty-five stage productions, all of which are different! That makes thirty-one separate continuities! And that's not counting the video-games! So if someone want to debate Sailor Moon "canon" with you, laugh at them.
- Most visual novels adapted into anime have the tendency to have many different continuities. Case in point: Clannad: The TV anime follows the game's True End: Nagisa wins and she and Ushio both do not die, and two OVA productions featuring the two most popular girls winning (Tomoyo's OVA and the to-be-released OVA for Kyou) exist, as well as the Toei movie leaves Nagisa dead and instead focuses on Tomoya's post-traumatic-stress-disorder and his relationship with Ushio.
- Fate Stay Night(as stated below) is another example, with the anime following Fate, and the manga following Unlimited Blade Works. Heaven's Feel makes up for it's lack of exposure with the fan theory that it is the canonical route in the franchise. Supported by Wild Mass Guessing.
- Archer's very existence is this, as his life is said to have followed the events of the Fate route; however, where his life and the Fate route's canon end diverged is unknown.
- Yet another example is the Shuffle TV anime, which ended with the winning girl being Asa Shigure, and the manga, Shuffle!:Days in the Bloom, which had Sia as the winning girl.
- This is subverted in some visual novels: the plot can be pretty linear and straightforward, like in Air. Upon analysis of the storyline, it's obvious that picking Minagi or Kano over Misuzu is a bad end, since Kanna's curse will never be broken, and Misuzu will die and reincarnate in a vicious cycle like she has been doing so (as Kanna) for the previous 1000 years.
- Though not as broken up as some others, Hellsing began as a manga and was made into a TV series. This ran for 13 episodes and was a victim of Overtook The Manga, so the plot began just as the manga's did, but halfway through a new Big Bad was introduced and half the characters of the original plot never got animated. (It ended on with a Cliff Hanger and left a lot of loose ends.) The OVA s, on the other hand, follow the manga very closely. (And despite some rumors, there is no live action movie being made.)
Comic Books
Film
- There's Highlander, then Highlander 2 which considers the original canon, then Highlander 3 which considers the original but not Highlander 2 canon, there's Highlander: Endgame which considers the continuity of the first movie and Highlander: The Series to be true (although that Ret Cons the last season of the show) and an upcoming fifth movie called Highlander: The Source. No, we don't get it either.
- Superman Returns, while set within the universe of the Christopher Reeve movies, takes place five years after the second movie and uses Canon Dis Continuity to ignore the third and fourth films. (Although it is set five years after Superman II, set in 1980, Returns is set in 2006. Please don't think about this too hard.)
- It's because Darkseid, so far unseen in the series, is messing around with time. This will become clear in the next movie as written by Grant Morrison.
- Men In Black had at least two continuities. The first movie ends with J neuralizing K and taking L as a new partner. At the beginning of the second, we find L quit between movies, and the first third of the movie follows J trying to restore K's memories. In the animated series, however, J, K, and L are all agents at the same time. There were a series of tie-in novels with J and L, but these could be slotted into the timespan between movies.
- The most recent incarnation of James Bond in Casino Royale portrays Bond as a new and inexperienced agent. However, it is set in modern times, and therefore after every previous Bond film, and includes several characters that were later additions to the series of films, such as the female M. The movies are also highly inconsistent with the original Ian Fleming novels.
- To be fair, this is more of a Continuity Reboot, which only retains a single character (M) played by the same person. An M has always been around, though.
- The above does have a point though, as when Dame Judi Dench started playing M there was a comment made about her being the first "female M." Having a woman M in Casino Royale firmly places this in Alternate Continuity territory.
- The Godzilla series has done this several times to the point where each of the movies from Godzilla 2000 and onward (with the exception of the two with Mechagodzilla) are their own continuity branching off from the original.
- The direct-to-DVD Tinker Bell movie is an entirely different continuity from the Disney Fairies series of books, with only a handful of characters in common.
- Through time travel, Star Trek (2009) creates one for Star Trek The Original Series, blending this with Continuity Reboot.
- The Harry Potter film series in relation to the book series. Each film follows the basic storyline of its book counterpart, but too much is changed for it to be the same canon. The video game adaptations, meanwhile, mix and match elements of the book and movie canons as it serves them.
Literature
- In an extreme case, none of the adaptations of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy are compatible.
- In case people are curious, there are nine adaptations of THHGTTG: The book, the radio series, the TV series, the movie, the stage show, the comic, the LP album, the computer game, and the towel.
- Douglas Adams once said that he deliberately went out of his way to make sure that every iteration directly conflicted with every other iteration.
Live Action TV
- When the original Doctor Who series was taken off the air, the BBC chose to allow it to continue as a series of novels. Oh, and some audio books. And some comics. Each of these ignored, and often contradicted, the canon of the other media. (Except, to confuse things further, when they didn't; individual writers would often refer to their own stories regardless of what medium they were in.) Exactly which, if any, of these the new series takes as canon is unknown; the fact that one of the novels was adapted into a two-part episode with a different Doctor to the novel (and many of the themes removed, and a vastly reduced body count) further complicates this.
- The final novel in the Eighth Doctor Adventures series, The Gallifrey Chronicles, suggested that the complex events of the Eighth Doctor's lifespan led to the creation of three possible Ninth Doctors, implied to be the Ninth Doctors from the parody The Curse of Fatal Death (Rowan Atkinson), the web animation Scream of the Shalka (Richard E Grant) and the TV Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston).
- Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles branches off from the movie continuity after T2: Judgement Day - Sarah and John Connor leap through time from 1999 to 2007, skipping Sarah's death from cancer in 2002 and the date at which Judgement Day would have happened if Rise of the Machines were canon. Terminator Salvation, on the other hand, carries on from the Rise of the Machines continuity.
- Well, for a series with that much time travel, it's a wonder it didn't develop alternate continuities sooner.
- Stargate SG-1 continues from Stargate the movie, disregarding Devlin and Emmerich's backstory and the five novels based on it. And if the two movie sequels to Stargate had been made (not to be confused with the two movie sequels to SG-1, which actually were made), they would have disregarded both, resulting in yet a third continuity.
- The Red Dwarf novels take place in a different continuity to the TV series and then after "Grant Naylor" split up, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor each wrote separate third novels.
Tabletop Games
- When the Star Fleet Battles game was established in 1979, it was based on the entirety of Star Trek canon that existed at the time, which is to say the original series, the animated series, and an assortment of Fan Fiction. As the canon began to expand and mature over the decades, the result was that SFB, which only had a license for said pre-1979 canon, came to be an alternate continuity where the movies and spinoff series are disregarded.
Video Games
- Ultima Online is set in an alternate continuity wherein the Avatar never returned to Britannia after the events of the first Ultima game.
- Which screws the countinuity around in countless of ways, since he wasn't the Avatar until Ultima IV, and it's indeed possible that the Stranger in the first three games was a different person, or several different people, and even the map of Britannia was completely different in each game until it finally took somewhat consistent shape in Ultima IV. And regardless of none of this happening, there's still Britannia in the shape and culture as was defined in Ultima IV, rather than the previous iterations.
- The Metal Gear series has a few alternate continuities. There are two alternate sequels to the original game: Snake's Revenge for NES (which was actually the first sequel released, as Hideo Kojima hadn't planned on making one) and Ghost Babel for Game Boy Color.
- Metal Gear Acid is an alternate continuity based on Metal Gear Solid. All it really has in common is a quasi-real-world setting, and the main character, whose personality and backstory are both softened slightly. By the second Acid they'd abandoned all premise of a real-world setting and thrown in lots of cyborgs, People Jars and all sorts of mayhem. This time the main character wasn't even the same - he looked the part and had the same name but turned out to be a biological machine made in the main character's likeness.
- In a partially successful effort to salvage the fallen Spyro franchise, the Legend of Spyro trilogy completely discards all continuity from the previous games except the two main characters, Spyro and Sparx, who still go through major changes in appearance and personality. The developers have gone as far as calling the first game A New Beginning to highlight this.
- They're clearly throwing in a lot of shout outs, with Sparx in ANB eating butterflies, and with the upcoming appearance of Hunter - originally a character in Spyro 2.
- The Nasuverse in general.
- The Tsukihime game has five character routes that cannot all be possible in the same universe. The anime adaptation makes deviations of its own. The Melty Blood fighting game is based on a planned-but-unreleased route from the game. Stories in the game's sequel, Kagetsu Tohya, also follow different continuities from each other, following game routes or just making up scenarios. After Kagetsu Tohya was made, the game's creator admitted the "canon" route never made it into the original game.
- Word Of God has also stated that all the routes are technically canon anyway, due to them being potential outcomes of the main scenario.
- Let's do Fate/stay night too. The game has three radically different routes. The anime mostly follows the main route, but mixes in elements and events from the other two. The manga mostly follows the second route. And there's a sequel, Fate/hollow ataraxia, which doesn't clearly indicate which route it follows. (The nature of the story makes this possible.)
- It stays closest to the Heaven's Feel route, but no route has actually been outright declared as a "main" route.
- Really, the Nasuverse makes a lot more sense if you stop trying to get a clear, linear continuity out of it...
- Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne and Persona 3 both kick off Alternate Continuities for their series.
- Maybe. Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army seems to say that all of the Shin Megami Tensei games happen in the same continuity.
- Mind telling me where a black sun that turns people to stone fits in with the other games?
- Or how it works out that the world ends in Shin Megami Tensei and possibly ends even worse in Shin Megami Tensei 2, but is just fine for the third End Of The World As We Know It in Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne? And what about Last Bible? Or Devil Children? Last Bible takes place in a fantasy world, and Devil Children works completely differently from everything else, taking place in a multiversal setting where the only people who can summon demons are children descended from demons.
- Besides, all the Persona games are in the same continuity. Word Of God and all that.
- Oh, but it gets worse. The Devil Summoner games all take place in the same continuity as the Persona games as well, and Shin Megami Tensei: IF is hinted to be included in it as well.
- Maybe not. A scene in Persona 4 implies that Raidou Kuzunoha is a fictional character in their world. Of course, the detective agency that Raidou worked for exists in Persona 2...
- On the other hand, Raidou Kuzunoha worked at the Narumi Detective Agency and the one in Persona 2 is called the Kuzunoha Detective Agency.
- The Kuzunoha Detective Agency is from the original Devil Summoner series, not the PS2 prequels.
- Based on the evidence presented in the various games, If... is the point at which a branching point can occur — depending on just how well-known the events of If... become, the events of the firt part of Shin Megami Tensei play out differently — if it's ignored, we get the apocalypse seen in Shin Megami Tensei. If it's recognized, we get the original Devil Summoner series, before the prequels. Persona 1 and 2 may or may not take place in this continuity with Devil Summoner. If Persona 3 and 4 does take place in the same continuity as Persona 1 and 2, they would also be in this indefinite position, but the very way the world works differs so greatly between the first three games and the latter two that it's unlikely they do, Word Of God or not.
- The King Of Fighters may or may not be an alternate continuity to the Art Of Fighting and Fatal Fury universe, depending on SNK's mood today (they've said it is and it isn't at different times). What is certain is that the Maximum Impact series is an alternate continuity to The King of Fighters.
- The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker was moved to an Alternate Continuity from the one depicted in Twilight Princess, both of which sprang from the ending of Ocarina of Time. It wasn't due to any real faults with the game; merely that Nintendo understood that most fans didn't really want every new sequel to take place in a flooded Hyrule.
- It's generally believed that this is a nod to the popular split-timeline fanon-theory: When Zelda sent Oo T Link back into his childhood, she accidentally created a second timeline. The "sent-back" timeline had Link growing up to become a hero again and ends in Twilight Princess, while in the "original" timeline Link is erased from existence and Hyrule is defenseless against Ganondorf, which leads into "The wind waker".
- Tomb Raider went through a Continuity Reboot when Crystal Dynamics took over. Probably for the best, as the continuing story in the last three games was crap, very dull and wasn't going anywhere interesting.
- Virtua Quest is a spinoff game from Virtua Fighter. It is a RPG that takes place in the future about a boy who uses "Virtua Soul" to use digital versions of the Virtua Fighters to combat Judgement Six.
- Not only do the Pokemon games themselves have various continuities - the main RPGs, the Mystery Dungeon series - but even within the continuities it is often unclear how the games are connected. Fans still debate over when Pokemon Colosseum and Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness take place, and the glaring gap between the first and second Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games has everyone stumped.
- Add this to the fact that the same games spawned an anime and several manga that have each added generously to the Pokemon world's mythology, events, and character interactions, and you have a deceptively complex fandom that stumps the uninitiated.
- It is thought that Red/Blue/Green/Firered/Leafgreen take place at the same time as Ruby/Sapphire,while Diamond/Pearl is at the same time as Gold/Silver/Heartgold/Soulsilver. Yellow is at the same time as Emerald,and Platinum is at the same time as Crystal. However,which adventure begins first,in each of the two timelines is a mystery,but most people say that the Hoenn games are a bit before the Kanto games,and that the Shinoh games begin a bit after Gold/Kris/Soul's adventure begins.
- Giant spoiler warning for Ever17 to the extent if you know this ahead of time, story is pretty much ruined for you. Subverted. All events of the original four paths actually happen plus some stuff they leave out to avoid ruining the climax. They're tied together by happening on two different points in the timeline plus an attempted fix so that the ending would be less bittersweet/downer, depending on the route.
Web Original
Western Animation
- Transformers, to the point where even dedicated fans still can't really keep track without a map◊. This is compounded by the companies responsible for the franchise in the US and Japan actually disagreeing on continuity - Transformers: Cybertron (known as Galaxy Force in Japan), for instance, is a standalone series according to Takara, but Hasbro considers it to be in continuity with the previous two franchises in the "Unicron Trilogy"; Armada aka Micron Legend and Energon aka Super Link. Many toy design elements make it clear that this was the original intent, but that the Japanese makers of the animated series took it upon themselves to declare it a standalone continuity, requiring some awkward redubbing in the American version to link it back to the Trilogy.
- The problem is also compounded by Takara attempting to stuff everything (bar the Unicron Trilogy and Animated) into the Generation 1 universe.
- Takara later retconned Cybertron back into being a sequel to Arm/Ene.
- And, of course, the new Transformers Animated is off on its own continuity.
- Not to mention the multiple incarnations of the Generation 1 universe in the comics.
- And all the children's books.
- And the Armada/discontinued Energon comic.
- Sat AM Sonic The Hedgehog is very different from the games, the titular character being the only perfect match between them. Unfortunately, Sega doesn't quite understand that that SatAM is an Alternate Continuity, and so has caused sometimes painful Executive Meddling in the Archie comic based on it to attempt to use it as a merchandising vehicle for the almost-completely-unrelated game series. The other TV shows (Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic Underground, and Sonic X) and comics also qualify.
- Ben 10 has What If episodes like What If Gwen got the Omnitrix or What if Ben went to school and everyone found out about his power. They did this a lot.
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