Heh, get it?
"Canon should not be confused with cannon, although cannon can be used to enforce canon."
That which counts, in terms of
continuity. Coming from religious terms, a "canon" was a stick by which to measure straightness. So in this term, canon is the standard for official works.
Canon, as it applies to television series, is substantially different from its literary counterpart. For example, there is no question of which
Sherlock Holmes stories (the literary works to which the term was applied) are canonical: those written by Doyle are, everything else isn't.
Television canon works much differently, as there are many authors involved. Works not officially sanctioned are generally outside of canon, but what remains inside is more nebulous. Officially licensed material, novelizations and tie-in novels are not usually considered canon. Even broadcast material can be excluded from the canon when decreed by
Word Of God.
The primary issue is that canons for completed works (especially with a single author) are
descriptive, whereas fans attempt to define canon for ongoing works as
prescriptive. If a fact is "canon", you are "not allowed" to contradict it. Of course, the concept of canon is almost entirely a fan-invention. The writers will ignore or include whatever facts they damned well like (which is not to say that the writers totally lack a sense of continuity, but it is a much weaker concept than "canon" as presented by fan communities). Sometimes these things are applied in
Broad Strokes, mixing and matching things that they need to tell the story. Thus, in fan communities, "canon" often boils down to "The bits I like". Fans will attempt to find any excuse to
"de-canonize" facts that they personally find inconvenient.
Historically, this is not entirely dissimilar to the debates which established the canon of Christian religious texts, deciding which of many competing gospels was official. In that case, the decision was made by people with some kind of power to enforce their decisions.
A related term is
Deuterocanon
, which in this context refers to those persons, places and/or events which are not explicitly shown on-screen, but which are considered "official" or close to it. For canon that comes not from the source material but from pronouncements by the creator see
Word Of God. For the contrary idea that something is canon only if it appears in the source material see
Death Of The Author.
This concept is related to the literary term used to describe a body of work that is considered the foremost in quality and significance. For example, if one refers to the English-language literary canon, it is understood that one is speaking of books such as
A Tale Of Two Cities by
Charles Dickens,
Moby Dick by Herman Melville,
Pride And Prejudice by
Jane Austen,
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee,
Heart of Darkness by
Joseph Conrad, and
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald—in other words, most of the books you read in
High School are part of the English-language canon.
Canon should not be confused with
Fanon, but everyone
does it all the time. See
Dis Continuity for when people decide en masse to disregard actual canon, and
Canon Dis Continuity when the writers do it. Alternatively, see the
Continuity Tropes index for all related concepts.
For the similarly titled
Visual Novel, see
Kanon.
Examples of debates on canonicity:
- Doctor Who: To some fans, the 1996 Made For TV Movie never happened, despite statements from subsequent showrunners (and onscreen evidence) that it did. Likewise, the canonicity of the original novels, audios, and webcasts is often debated. There have even been substantial calls to decanonize the entire Seventh Doctor era, on the basis of some people not liking it. A lot. However, for various reasons, the Doctor Who production team have never ruled on what doesn't count (and are unlikely to so); since they're pretty much the only ones who can, what counts or not is down to each fan's decision.
- The Scream of the Shalka is an interesting example. It was an animated webcast, and later novel, that existed to give the fans a 9th Doctor to write stories for and to resurrect the Master, slightly. When the new series came along with their 9th Doctor, the Shalka Doctor was quietly Exiled From Continuity.
- Star Trek: Most debates over elements of Star Trek Enterprise center around the question of whether or not it violates canon. Generally, the source of the debate comes from the confusion between Canon and Fanon.
- In the 1970s, there was serious fan discussion over whether James Blish's novel Spock Must Die! should be regarded as canon, despite the fact that it contained errors against canon (a major plot thread depending on Vulcan internal anatomy being bilaterally symmetrical, when the show had established that it is not) and a blatant rearranging of the universe (ending with the Klingon Empire out of the picture for about the next thousand years).
- Paramount maintains that nothing that didn't happen or wasn't referenced onscreen is canon. However, with recent novels and comics, they have permitted writers to do with the main characters what they wish, and, considering the Series Reboot, it's likely we won't see the "normal" Trek universe on-screen again.
- Star Trek The Animated Series is generally not considered canon (with the possible exception of the episode "Yesteryear", according to the authors of The Star Trek Encyclopedia). The official status does seem to change from year to year, considering how many writers worked on both shows.
- The never-produced series Star Trek: Phase II (which morphed into Star Trek The Motion Picture) was to have been based around a second five-year mission of the original Starship Enterprise. Many canonical Trek sources, including a book written by Trek technical consultant Michael Okuda, suggest that this mission did in fact take place after the movie. It appears to be a tacit assumption made by Trek production staff. However, Gene Roddenberry and Paramount decided in 1988 that only live-action events seen on screen qualify as canonical Star Trek, scripts written for this mission remains less than fully-canonical. (Compare Word Of Dante.)
- Power Rangers Wild Force: The canonicity of the series' tenth anniversary episode "Forever Red" was so hotly debated that most forums have banned discussion of the matter entirely.
- Like, Star Wars, Babylon 5 also has canonical licensed tie-in media.
- Red Dwarf: From the third season onward, the broadcast version of events was generally superseded by the interpretation offered in the novel Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers.
- Lost's ARGs and tie-in video game have mixed canonicity, and the showrunners have used the podcast to declare what can be taken as canon and what cannot. More strangely, the show's "enhanced" episodes contain informational pop-ups written by the ABC promo department, not the show's writers, so even these are of disputed canonicity.
- Many games (and especially Visual Novels) have the problem of the story branching into Multiple Endings, thus creating a number of mutually exclusive but canonical happenings. This becomes particularly relevant when the source material is adapted to a linear medium like a TV series and one of the paths has to be chosen, adding "extra canonicity" to it. The same applies to sequels. Choose wrong, and the original fans will be up in arms; and there likely is no right answer. See Tsukihime for an example.
- In the games Wing Commander III and Wing Commander IV, which also had novelizations contracted out by Origin, you are given several choices as to an action path to take, as part of the "interactive movie" feature of those games. Origin (later bought by EA) has declared that the choices taken in the novels are the official history of the in-character universe. Sorry, Locanda IV.
- Metal Gear Solid has two endings, one in which Snake's love interest Meryl dies and another in which she survives. Initially, the creators decided to handle the issue by simply ignoring it; Metal Gear Solid 2's story neither contradicts nor confirms either ending, making them both possible. It wasn't until the fourth game that we found out that Meryl lived.
- Fighting Games have their own problems when they introduce an actual narrative into the mix; usually they involve some kind of tournament or Big Bad that every single character (often more than a dozen!) is trying to triumph over, each with his or her own ending for doing so. When a sequel rolls around, it can be a Herculean task to figure out who won the previous game, which other characters had endings that could play out even if they didn't win, and which have been relegated to what-if scenarios.
- I'm still trying to figure out how Mortal Kombat II came about when only one character could have had their own ending...I assume Liu Kang won and spared everyone?
- This is especially a problem in games such as Tales of Symphonia, where the game varies slightly by which character you choose as Soul Mate for the main character. And thus begin the Shipping Wars.
- Odd for a Nintendo game since Nintendo hardly makes sequels, but mention Super Mario Bros. 2 and you're going to get people who either claim the Japanese version (aka The Lost Levels) is the true Mario 2 or that the American veggie tossing version is the true sequel. Naturally, Nintendo is pretty mum on this issue.
- Legend Of Zelda. Unless purely dedicated to such discussion, most forums will either ban or flame anybody who brings up the heavily-debated question about what order the games happen in.
- One of the few well-accepted facts is that Ocarina of Time causes the continuity to branch into two separate timelines — one seeding from the "past", where Ganondorf never gets the Triforce, and one from the "future", with Hyrule recovering from the Evil King's disastrous reign. This is one of the simplest and least controversial features of the timeline.
- Pikmin. In the bad ending of Pikmin 1, Olimar fails in collecting all the ship parts and doesn't make it home. This obviously isn't canon because in Pikmin 2 he lands on Hocotate and it is requested that he go back.
- This also happens in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. The game assumes that you got the most perfect ending possible in the predecessor, Path of Radiance. This means that you would have had all possible characters recruited and alive, as well as having defeated The Black Knight, a boss battle you could escape. This makes less sense as Radiant Dawn offers you to transfer your game save from Path of Radiance to draw from it and alter things in the game. On the other hand, the story of Radiant Dawn would be somewhat boring if all characters had died in Path of Radiance.
Toys
- Pretty much all Dragonlance fans regard the stories written by Margaret Weis and/or Tracy Hickman as being the official canon, but attitudes towards the books written by other authors range widely.
- All things created by J.K. Rowling are considered Canon in Harry Potter; however, there are several cases where statements in interviews or on her website were contradicted by later books.
- Though usually she just had to be careful not to spoil anything in interviews, because people would ask about anything.
- The Cthulhu Mythos canon is sometimes only the work of HP Lovecraft, but sometimes also the work of August Derleth.
- Per Word Of God, only the Peanuts comic strip counts as canon, not the animated TV specials and movies. However, a lot of casual fans aren't really aware of this.
