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This entry is trivia, which is cool and all, but not a trope. On a work, it goes on the Trivia tab.

Following

Flip-Flop of God

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"The author reserves the right to have a better idea."
— Lois McMaster Bujold

Most of the time, the Word of God knows exactly what it's talking about. It's consistent. It's, well, Canon.

Sometimes, however, the Word of God can't quite make up its mind what to say. Maybe the creators haven’t decided what the right answer is, or the audience asked them a question they didn't think they'd have to answer at all. Maybe they actually changed their mind sometime after they gave the original answer. Sometimes, it's simply that they're Lying Creators. Or the "creator" is actually a series of ghost writers as in some franchise series and Depending on the Writer don't do a great job of keeping the character consistent. Either way, a Flip Flop of God is when the Word of God contradicts itself somehow. The fundamental unreliability this reveals — any creator, at any time, might commit this — can be considered an argument in favor of the Death of the Author.

Compare and contrast Shrug of God, when a creator outright refuses to give a direct answer, The Walrus Was Paul, when a creator's message is deliberately confusing, and Depending on the Writer, when the writers end up contradicting each other. Can overlap with this if they later do give a straight answer, or if they contradict an earlier straight answer by saying the detail in question is intentionally ambiguous. Be aware that this trope is not "Word of God being contradicted by a Word of lesser standing (Word of Saint Paul or Word of Dante)". It only applies when Word of God contradicts itself.

Different from Retcon, because retcons are changes to something that happens in the story, instead of the Word of God. Writer Conflicts with Canon is when Word of God and parts of the story itself are at odds.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga 

    Comic Books 
  • Batman: Was Damian Wayne a Child by Rape or not? Son of the Demon (his debut written by Mike Barr) established him as being the product of a consensual affair between Bruce and Talia, only for Batman (Grant Morrison) to retcon it by claiming that Damian was conceived when Bruce was drugged — and then Grant Morrison confessed to completely forgetting about Son of the Demon. 2011 quietly re-retconned Damian back into having been consensually conceived... and then that got re-re-retconned into Damian being a test tube baby.
  • Part of the reason why Marvel's Civil War (2006) event ended up not doing well is because for whatever reason, Marvel's editorial staff at the time, refused to give any straight answers to exactly what the actual wording of the Superhuman Registration Act was, claiming that it would be "too complicated" to understand. As a result, many of the details on how the law worked were effectively left up to the individual writers' interpretation. In addition, the lack of communication between said writers, made a mess of things in the different story-threads around the event, where there are often widely contradictory statements on what the Superhero Registration Act is actually supposed to do or say between almost every book.
  • Deadpool: Deadpool himself admits that whether or not Wade Wilson is his real name depends on who's writing him.
  • The Incredible Hulk: Marvel goes back and forth over whether or not the Hulk has ever accidentally killed someone during his city destroying rampages. This led to a notable Retcon at least once; the Hulk was sent into space for the Planet Hulk storyline because a fight between him and the Thing inadvertently caused the deaths of over twenty people. This was later retconned into severe injuries, which made the whole "shoot him into space" thing into retroactive Disproportionate Retribution.
  • James Robinson was initially very defensive of Justice League: Cry for Justice, and even said in a text piece that he had "No apologies" for any of the controversial elements. Then at a convention, he confessed that killing Lian Harper to give angst to her white grandfather was an editorial decision, and not one he agreed with either.
  • Jaime Hernandez of Love and Rockets made conflicting remarks about whether the "Ti-Girls Adventures"/"God and Science" story was bringing the superhero elements of the early issues fully back into continuity or whether it was a superhero Alternate Universe. When the graphic novel version was published he settled on the latter.
  • For years, Brian Michael Bendis was adamant that Ronin from the New Avengers was always intended to be Maya Lopez in a new identity, despite early publicity materials strongly indicating that the character was actually supposed to be Daredevil in disguise. Bendis eventually confirmed in the first New Avengers hardcover that Ronin was indeed intended to be Daredevil, and that the decision to have it turn out to be Maya instead was a last minute change.
  • When the first volume of Teen Titans: Earth One was released Jeff Lemire stated that the book was not set in the same verse as the other Earth One titles, but instead in a separate standalone continuity where adult superheroes didn’t exist. This was contradicted by Grant Morrison’s The Multiversity which put both Superman: Earth One, Batman: Earth One and this series on Earth-1 of the post New 52 multiverse. DC then released several statements clarifying that the book took place on a world where adult superheroes didn’t yet exist, placing the events of the title as occurring either before or concurrently with Superman Earth One: Volume One.

    Fanfiction 
  • In the intro to The Remake of Calvin and Hobbes: The Movie, Swing123 remarks that he wouldn't be remaking his other two movie fanfics. Not too long later, however, he announced that he would be remaking Lost at Sea.
  • Nimbus Llewelyn, author of The Wizard in the Shadows and Child of the Storm is prone to this — something stated in an A/N can and will be contradicted ten chapters later. Despite his justified claims of a grand plan and littering his stories with the contents of Chekhov's Armoury, he's admitted a tendency towards making up many of the fine details — and some major characters — as he goes along, most notably in the latter story.
    • Early on, he said that the story would pretty closely follow the Harry Potter books and be around 140-150,000 words long, in line with Shadows, his previous long form project. Nearly four years later, it finished at over 820,000 words, longer than the first five Harry Potter books combined and has fairly significantly deviated from the books. The sequel, Ghosts of the Past, was already longer than Shadows after only 10 chapters, taking the combined word count to over a million words for the Storm 'verse alone. It is now longer than Child of the Storm, taking the combined word count to approximately 1.7 million words.
    • Another claim was that Harry would be definitively paired with Ginny Weasley, before stating that Harry would date other people, then eventually saying that he'd 'written himself out of a corner' on that score and Harry and Ginny wouldn't be dating at all.

    Film — Animated 
  • Ice Age: The Meltdown: The supplementary material can't decide to which species of marine reptile Cretaceous belongs to. The Essential Guide refers to him as Ichthyosaurus while online game Ice Age Village and official magazine Ice Age: Animal Collection identifies him as Metriorhynchus. Given his resembles to the latter species, he's most likely Metriorhynchus.
  • One writer for The Lion King II: Simba's Pride has stated that Nuka is Scar's son, while another writer has said that Scar and Zira were never mates.
  • The order in which Ariel's sisters from The Little Mermaid (1989) are in. The earliest materials have Aquata as the oldest but later material usually have Attina, likely due to her crown. Disney has flipped between the two since.
  • Turning Red: The "Nobody Like U" music video shows that Priya's last name is Dewan and Miriam's is Wexler. However the Pixar website says that their last name are Mangal and Mendelsohn, respectively.

    Film — Live-Action 

    Literature 
  • Bret Easton Ellis, the author of American Psycho, can't ever decide if Patrick Bateman was a Serial Killer or of his killing spree was made up in his twisted mind. In the novel it's intentionally left ambiguous.
  • In the Discworld, Terry Pratchett gets around this issue by arguing that there can be such things as alternate pasts. Alternate pasts in the Discworld include;
    • The Vetinari paradox — Vetinari is explicitly stated to have been the Patrician of the first novel, The Colour of Magic. In the first book, the Patrician is a vastly overweight glutton. But over the books the Patrician evolves into a long, thin, extremely abstemious man who believes a slice of bread and a glass of boiled water are a sufficiency. In another early novel, Mort, the Patrician throws riotous drunken parties and keeps a swamp-dragon as a pet — again out of character for Vetinari.
    • The all-female House of Study at the Assassins' Guild School administered by Miss Alice Band is called Tump House. But becomes Mantis House in another writing without explanation.
    • The Arch-Chancellor's Hat is a major plot-point in the early novel Sourcery along with the head wearing it. Here it is presumed utterly destroyed in a magical war. Whilst Coin the sourceror faithfully tries to "put things back as they were" he does not resurrect wizards killed in that war — presumably their magical impedimentia died with them. Yet it re-appears as a plot-point thirty or so books later in Unseen Academicals.
  • Anne McCaffrey couldn't seem to make up her mind about, well, anything related to Dragonriders of Pern. For instance, whether measurements given for the dragons are in feet (really the only feasible size, but a bit small for the early descriptions) or meters (an outright ridiculous figure). Or whether greens are infertile from firestone or genetics (at one point she actually said both in the same sentence).
  • In his later years, Ray Bradbury claimed that his book Fahrenheit 451 was actually about the corrupting power of mass media, when he had previously claimed it was about censorship. It's been somewhat cynically pointed out that Bradbury only began claiming this after he came out in support of right-wing American President, George W. Bush, who was often accused of attempting to silence dissent when he was in office.
  • Harry Potter:
    • In the first few weeks after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released, J. K. Rowling's answers to questions that either went unanswered in the series or about what happened between the end and the epilogue were a bit contradictory. She eventually settled on a single answer for most of them.
    • In an interview she did with Pottercast, Rowling and the interviewers became confused regarding Hannah Abbott's blood status — she had always assumed her to be Muggle-born, but had written that a family member of hers was buried in a wizard cemetery. Her final decision: "Oh, let's just split the difference and call her half-blood."
    • As far as character interpretation is concerned, there are also her claims about Voldemort. She is known to have claimed that he is incapable of feeling love and uses the loveless union that he is a product of as symbolism (if not as a cause of it) to make the point. But then she is also recorded to have said that if Merope lived and raised him he would have turned out different. So how again is someone who is born incapable of any positive emotion towards another being in need of only a mother figure to start feeling?
    • On a more minor note, Rowling apparently couldn't make up her mind on what year Hermione Granger was born - originally she gave Hermione's year of birth as 1980 (same as Harry and Ron) and later changed it to 1979.
    • Over the years, it seems like she's somewhat changed her position on the Dumbledore/Grindelwald romantic relationship, although the true nature of it was always open to personal interpretation. She implied that she'd seen it as somewhat one-sided on Dumbledore's part, claiming that he was in love with Grindelwald but she wasn't quite sure if Grindelwald ever actually loved him back. She posited that he might have been playing along to keep Dumbledore as The Dragon (though, again, there were hints in the book that could be interpreted as it being mutual). note  However, now that she's fleshed out the character in the Fantastic Beasts series, she's settled on it being a mutual romantic relationship and both characters are clearly portrayed as still being in love with each other.
  • L. Frank Baum explicitly cancelled his "Land of Oz" series several times, only to be forced to resume the series for financial reasons and write his way out of whatever corner he'd previously trapped himself in. He started flip-flopping in the first two books. Glinda is happy to send the Scarecrow back to the Emerald City to rule in the first book, but in the second, she refuses to help him regain the throne because the Wizard had usurped it in the first place.
  • J. R. R. Tolkien was continually tinkering with his massive Legendarium, resulting in some contradictions between published materials and what he decided later on top of his intentional mysteries. One example is the origin of the Orcs; he continually tried to reconcile an "evil" race with his Catholic belief that no creature could be inherently evil or incapable of redemption, and there was also the question of if they were tortured Elves or created in some other way by Morgoth (what remained consistent is that evil is incapable of independent creation). Also there are signs that he started considering twisted Men as the origin of Orcs and avoid Elves altogether. In his personal writings, Tolkien's references to Orcs cast Orcishness more as a state of mind than a set of physical characteristics.
  • Stephen King famously dislikes the Stanley Kubrick film version of The Shining, as he considers Jack Nicholson's portrayal of Jack Torrance to have been too crazy and unsympathetic from the start. Yet King has also said that the original novel was written as something of a confession, in which King was dealing with his own alcoholism and his occasional desire to hurt his children. The novel in fact portrays Torrance as deeply troubled from the beginning, although there is certainly more of a tragic descent in the novel than in the film. It seems King's own perspective on his semi-autobiographical character changed in the years after his "confessional" writing of The Shining, and he now prefers Torrance's character to be viewed more sympathetically.
  • Whether or not William Gibson's Sprawl is a dystopia seems to depend on what the general outlook on the future seems to be in the SF Community. When Neuromancer first came out in The '80s, Gibson was adamant that the Sprawl was a dystopia with all the problems of modern urban environments turned up to eleven. Now, twenty years later, Gibson's claiming the exact opposite while simultaneously trying to cosy up to younger, more optimistic writers.
  • Warrior Cats: It was mentioned by the writers that no character was going to use "moon" in their name because they felt this would signify the cat as more beautiful or important than their Clanmates. Bluestar's name was originally "Moonstone" but this was changed. Her mother is named "Moonflower" as an accident. There was a later attempt to change it to "Duskflower", but for continuity reasons Moonflower's name stuck. She was the sole exception until later books gave us Ambermoon and Harveymoon.

    Live-Action TV 
  • 24: The writers and producers of the series can't seem to decide whether John Keeler and Wayne Palmer survived their various assassination attempts. A newspaper prop from Redemption seemed to confirm that Palmer's dead, but one of the writers remarked that he wasn't.
  • Depending on if you ask Matthew Graham or Ashley Pharaoh, Jim Keats of Ashes to Ashes (2008) is either Satan incarnate (according to Graham, sometimes), the Antichrist (Graham again, in different interviews), or a high-ranking agent of evil/The Devil/David Bowie (Pharoah, according to Graham).
  • Babylon 5:
    • On Usenet during the broadcast of Season 3, series creator J. Michael Straczynski stated that Valen, the ancient Minbari leader and messiah figure, had no children. In Season 4, the episode "Atonement" revolved around Valen having had children. JMS has admitted to outright lying in order to avoid spoiling future storylines, naming Valen as a specific example.
    • Also, in a behind-the-scenes documentary made during season 1, Jerry Doyle (who played Michael Garibaldi) said that JMS told him that Garibaldi would never get a girl. In the show, Garibaldi ends up reconciling with his old girlfriend Lise in Season 4 and marrying her in Season 5.
  • RDM's flat denial of any possibility of an Adama/Roslin romance in Battlestar Galactica romance. It happened.
  • When Willow's relationship with Tara started budding in Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Joss Whedon was cautious to use the word lesbian, because "then it would stop being about these two people," preferring to not use a label and just see them as two women in love. He also stated that if Oz were ever to come back, the situation would be very complicated because Willow had strong feelings towards both. Flash forward to Season 7, where in an interview Whedon instead outright says Willow is a lesbian. The writers discussed having her hook up with a man after Tara's death, but went with Kennedy because they didn't want to make her "anything less than gay." Then in a 2020 interview Whedon said that, if the show had been made in present day (i.e. the 2020s), Willow would have been bisexual.
  • Doctor Who: Producer Russell T Davies refused to confirm who the Face of Boe is, really. In the DVD commentary for "Last of the Time Lords", Julie Gardner (an executive producer) accused Davies of "back-pedalling" on two characters being obviously the same; Davies had also already added a line of dialogue into "Gridlock" that strongly implied the same thing, which he points out on the same DVD commentary. He's since said that it stops being funny if we ever know either way.
  • Heroes:
    • The producers said Sylar had lost all his stolen abilities, but the last episode of season 2 showed him using telekinesis. Season 3 shows him retaining other powers... all while official canon and Word of God says he lost all of them.
    • The new Word of God attempts to reconcile this, saying he lost all his powers except for his telekinesis and giving a vague rationalization about his previously-unknown empathic abilities. His other powers from season 1 were only demonstrated by a version of him from an alternate future.
    • The producers also initially claimed back in Season 2 that Bennet, Mohinder, and Ando would remain normal humans and not receive superpowers. Season 3 pretty much threw that out the window with regards to Mohinder (who gets Spider powers) and Ando (who can now shoot Hadokens!). The only non-powered human left in the main cast is Badass Normal Mr. Bennet, who doesn't need any lame powers because he's pretty much The Goddamn Batman.
  • iCarly: The week before the "iSaved Your Life" episode aired, a promo aired showing 2 of the main characters kissing. Dan Schneider, in an effort to calm the shippers of a pairing involving a different character, implied it might not be what it appeared. Cue the episode, where they ended up kissing 7 or 8 times, and it was pretty much as it appeared.
  • The producers of Lost were notorious for making claims about the direction of the series and then going against those claims later. It's not exactly clear whether the producers were intentionally misleading, forced in different directions by the network, simply making things up as they went along, or all three.
    • An early Season 1 interview said that there would be no Time Travel. Desmond's consciousness-jumping in Seasons 3 and 4 could be seen as bending this rule, but Season 5 flat-out broke it. Script coordinator Gregg Nations claimed that an early Season 1 episode, "Solitary", was supposed to hint at time travel and time anomalies on the island, but ABC nixed the idea, afraid that people would stop watching if time travel muddled the plot.
    • An interview claimed that Season 3 wouldn't feature Desmond running naked through the jungle, but then there's Desmond running naked through the jungle.
    • Damon Lindeloff claimed in a 2005 interview that the show had no supernatural elements, and everything had a scientific explanation. Even if you take that as only referring to things that had already happened, the statement still covers the Smoke Monster, who turned out to be a former human who became what he is through magic.
  • If the writers for Power Rangers ever claim that a certain series takes place either 20 Minutes into the Future or in an Alternate Continuity, expect a Reunion Show to later shove it back into the present-day main universe.
    • Lost Galaxy and Ninja Storm got this, though SPD has been able to keep its 2025 setting so far; team-ups feature Time Travel. RPM also dodged it by being declared an Alternate Universe, and their team-ups involve crossing dimensions. The more recent Dino Charge seemed destined for it considering it ended with Earth destroyed, before the Rangers travel back in time and prevent the destruction along with the extinction of the dinosaurs — and this was confirmed in the following season, Ninja Steel, which not only involved none of this but also explicitly relegated Dino Charge to another dimension alongside Time Force and RPM when several of its characters reappeared for the 25th anniversary special.
    • There's also Jonathon Tzachor's constant flip-flop over the state of the series' continuity. Initially, it was one whole universe except RPM. Then, he decided that none of the Disney-era series happened (Ninja Storm through RPM). Then, he decided that every season happened in different continuities — even the old-school ones that came before the Super Sentai format was picked up! Which makes Mighty Morphin' Season 3 and Turbo's endings Downer Endings!
  • Quantum Leap:
    • One of the house rules according to creator Donald Bellisario, was that Sam would never leap into a real person. For the first four seasons, he didn't; we only saw "kisses with history". But the rule was suddenly dropped for Season 5, which opened with Sam leaping into Lee Harvey Oswald (a story Bellisario particularly wanted to tell as a counterpunch to Oliver Stone's JFK), and continued with a host of others: Marilyn Monroe's chauffeur, Dr. Ruth, and even the King himself. According to Usenet posts made at the time from someone with connections to the production staff, this was Executive Meddling at work: the only way Bellisario could get Season 5 made was by giving the network execs the stories they wanted, which involved Sam leaping into real people.
    • The writers were never able to decide whether the quantum leaps just placed Sam's mind into the bodies of the people he leaped into, or if they physically swapped bodies and people perceived Sam as the person he replaced. Various episodes have plots which revolve around one or the other being true - for example, Sam is able to walk when he leaps into the body of a double amputee, which would require him to have his own body, but he also manages to give birth when he leaps into the body of a pregnant woman, which would require him to have the other person's body. The writers just went with whichever was more dramatic.
  • The Sopranos creator David Chase didn't help the "Did Tony die in the finale" debate by first stating there was no hidden meaning, then saying "anyone who wants to watch it, it's all there", and then later commenting "there's more than one way of looking at the ending." In other words: Tony's dead. Unless he isn't.
  • Sesame Street: The staff have been inconsistent on whether "Sid" being Cookie Monster's real name (which he claims in the song "The First Time Me Eat Cookie") was true or not. The song's writer, Christine Ferraro, claims that it was non-canon due to simply being "written as a gag", but Cookie Monster's official X/Twitter page has him state that Sid is his real name.
  • Star Trek: Voyager:
    • It's easy to forget that the show commenced with lots of declaration that it would have as little to do with the other shows as possible, and would feature all new aliens. While plenty of new aliens did feature, so did a few who were of established species (Tuvok and Vorek are Vulcans, B'Elanna is half-Klingon and other Klingons appear in one episode, there are Bajorans as background characters, and The Mole is Cardassian.)
    • They initially stated that those two Ferengi who got stuck in the Delta Quadrant in TNG would never appear. However, in "False Profits", they not only appear, they're the episode's main antagonists.
    • Also, the writers initially stated that there would be no Borg. However, the Borg later became a recurring threat, and the recurring characters Seven of Nine, Icheb, Azan, Rebi, and Mezoti, who are all ex-Borg, were introduced.
  • The West Wing: The intended outcome for the seventh season's presidential election has this with the contradictory "gods" being different writers. Lawrence O'Donnell has said that the original intention was for Vinick to win, but this would have been too much of a Downer Ending after already writing John Spencer's (Leo McGarry) death into the show. John Wells has said that Santos winning was always the intent.
  • About The X-Files, Chris Carter made repeated statements that there was no hint of a Mulder/Scully romance. However, later on in the series, they do become an item.

    Music 
  • Yngwie Malmsteen has a very well-known instrumental that has been officially known as both "Arpeggios From Hell" and "Molto Arpeggiosa". The "excerpt" (which is actually the majority of the overall composition) that gained YouTube fame is titled the former, with the overall piece titled the latter.
  • Melanie Martinez once said "Milk and Cookies" was about killing her boyfriend but then later said it's about killing a kidnapper. The lyrics make it sound like she's poisoning someone close to her, though its context in the Concept Album makes more sense for it being about the kidnapper in "Tag You're It".
  • Starflyer 59 has a few.
    • According to the Leave Here a Stranger liner notes, the song "When I Learn to Sing" begins with the lyrics "Because of my genes, a problem I don't need..." According to the official Sf59 fakebook, the song in question begins with "Because of machines, that burn the life out of me..."
    • One of the more obscure b-sides is named either "Never Had a Name" or just "Never Had One", depending on whether you consult the liner notes or the label on the disc itself. A slightly less obscure track is named "Magic" on every version released by Tooth & Nail Records, but is named "Majic" on every version released by Burnt Toast Vinyl.
  • In of the most confusing events ever, Crypton first described Vocaloids Kagamine Rin and Len as mirror images, then took that back and called them twins. Later, they ended up taking both statements back and ended up leaving it up to anyone's interpretation. This resulted in one of the most annoying situations for anyone in the fandom, where any video involving Rin and Len resulted in a comment war over which is which.
  • Merle Haggard always played coy about whether his 1969 anti-counterculture anthem "Okie from Muskogee" was meant as a satire of small-town conservatism or was meant to be taken seriously. On one hand, he stated that he wrote it in response to the anti-war protests of the late '60s, which he felt were disparaging the soldiers and led by people who just wanted to complain, but on the other hand, he's also described the song as written through the eyes of a fool, especially as his own views on the war changed later on. Regardless, it became a hit among both the conservative Middle Americans it was celebrating and among the very hippies it was mocking, with a lot of countercultural rock bands of that era covering it (and writing parodies).
  • Mike Oldfield initially denied claims that his third album, Ommadawn, was titled after "amadán," the Gaelic word for "idiot," stating that it was simply a nonsense word that he liked. However, he went back on this in his 2007 autobiography, stating that the album title did indeed mean "idiot."

    Tabletop Games 
  • Try the home game: Have two people send an email to the official Dungeons & Dragons support line, asking the same rules-clarification question about just about anything in any edition. You win the game if both replies are contradictory. Points deducted if you asked about stealth or Polymorph. No points if you used material from Dragon magazine. People say the same thing about Warhammer. The various forums have plenty of examples; basically, if it isn't in the books or the FAQ, it's Cust Serv's house rules. The FAQ's on DnD's Character Optimization forum are often regarded as house rules and nothing more. Oddly, the proper method of offering optimization on those very boards is to adhere to the person's DM's house rules and nothing else, only offering minor suggestions if the DM hasn't already said otherwise. Not that many people do it the proper way.
    • The rules regarding Divine Smite have been flip-flopped after lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford got caught in a tricky situation. Originally, rules-as-written prevented paladins from using Divine Smite on unarmed melee attacks, but this created a conflict with the rules for monks. (One clever player pointed out that under these rules, their paladin couldn't channel divine power through their enchanted holy gauntlets, but could pick up a chair and smite with an improvised weapon.) After he took some heavy ribbing from the Internet, the rules were re-written.
  • Exalted:
    • At one point, Official Errata contained two contradictory answers as to whether Immaculate Monk Dynasts got the Enlightened Charms in addition to their 5 Immaculate Martial Arts Charms or not. Both answers were later removed, leaving it completely up to the ST.
    • Not to mention all the various contradictions (Zeal, anyone?) that spring up if you read all the Charms that were published since the game's release. Sure, the game evolved, changed a bit and everything that goes with it, but it went too far in many aspects, so much so that many of the original statements about the setting are simply incorrect by the "new" standards. For instance, in the First Edition corebook, it's pretty much treated as fact that the Solars ruled over a Golden Age that was only ended due to a possible horrible future coming from it, with the tales about how horrible the Solars were being latter-day fabrications to discredit them. Later books establish that the Solars were arguably worse than the Dragonblooded claim — although even now, some of the claims against the "anathema" are still outright lies. The Second Edition corebook has codified this darkening of the First Age to the core premise.
    • Errata for Dreams of the First Age replaced Zeal with an entirely different charm, banishing that particular issue.
    • The Nameless (and place-changing) lair of Ma-Ha Suchi.
  • In Illuminati: New World Order, it's possible to give a group a temporary attribute, and then give them power-boosts that are only legitimate for that attribute. Such power boosts are normally permanent, but when the attribute goes away, so will the power. The rules say that only permanent power boosts count for victory conditions. So, does a power boost as described above count for victory? Steve Jackson originally said yes. The official FAQ now says no.
  • In Warhammer 40,000, for a while, Games Workshop couldn't decide just who Ollanius Pius was. He went from an ordinary human, to a Terminator (veteran Space Marine), to the Emperor's personal bodyguard, to an ordinary human who just happens to be 30,000 years old. They seem to have settled on the latter.

    Toys 
  • Greg Farshtey, the main writer for BIONICLE, has been known to flip flop on certain matters, such as whether or not Zaktan is definitely dead. At first it was a definite "yes", but later he became ambiguous about it. The character seemingly died in an explosion, which for any other character would be a definite kill, but Zaktan's ability to pull himself together made it highly questionable. Apparently, he came out a couple of years after the story had ended to confirm that the character didn't die. And then Executive Meddling cancelled the story before Farshtey could pull all the plot threads together, leaving Zaktan rather like Schrödinger's Cat.
  • When people pointed out that Alpha Trion being a member of the original Thirteen Transformers in Transformers Aligned Universe clashed with his portrayal in Transformers: Shattered Glass, Hasbro later stated that the Transformers Aligned Universe wasn't part of the larger Transformers multiverse. However, Hasbro later reversed this stance as, starting with Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark (which involves the titular artifact going from the Aligned universe to the universe of the movies and Generation 1 universe), the Ask Vector Prime column (which confirmed the events of Dark Spark revealed the existence of the Aligned universe to the larger Multiverse and reveals that Aligned!Vector isn't the same bot as the one we've seen elsewhere), The Complete AllSpark Almanac, Regeneration One (which has a subplot of Hot Rod seeing all his counterparts, including his Aligned incarnation from the DS version of War for Cybertron), and Andromeda - Axiom Nexus News Reporter (which officially confirmed the Aligned universe being part of the larger multiverse), it's been revealed to be part of the multiverse, after all.

    Video Games 
  • Batman: Arkham Series:
  • Paul Yan would state several times in interviews for Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time that the post-Naughty Dog entries did in fact happen, but that they happened (or may've happened) in an alternate timeline(s) that may have some impact on the adventure (they never did). But then in an overlooked GDC 2021 presentation, he makes a point about the Lani-Loli gag referring to how the post-ND games come after in its chronological timeline, conflicting with that preconceived notion.
    Paul Yan: ...like this joke that's kinda acknowledging the fact that it's ignoring some of the other sequels that are coming after this in its chronological timeline.
  • Diablo III: Is the male Barbarian the same one from Diablo II or not? Some Blizzard employees say yes, others say no.
  • Fallout:
    • Perhaps due to the series changing hands, the Fallout universe tends to waffle around about mutants. Specifically, the ratios of FEV and radiation required to create Ghouls and Super Mutants and the New California Republic's feelings about mutants. The current rule is that Super Mutants only require FEV, while Ghouls only require radiation (though the amount of time of exposure is also constantly changing). Fallout 2 showed both types of mutants proud to serve in the NCR army, while Fallout: New Vegas has a quest based entirely on the NCR using mercenaries to provoke the mutants so they can justify a slaughter.
    • The change in the NCR's view of Super Mutants and Ghouls is potentially not a flip flop. Fallout 2 has an entire plot line that revolves around a group of humans that vehemently hates both. In addition, Super Mutants and Ghouls aren't remotely common in the NCR and most of both groups are still outright hostile. Once the exceptions started dying off, it is hardly implausible that the NCR started reverting back to viewing them more negatively as a whole.
    • Fallout 3, however, is much more guilty of this. Washington D.C. is no longer completely obliterated, the Enclave was not completely destroyed when their West Coast base was nuked.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • The remake of Final Fantasy III gave the previous Featureless Protagonists (known as the Onion Knights for their starting class) names and personalities, and some materials stated that the four named orphans were the same characters as in the original. But then Dissidia Final Fantasy came out and used the "Onion Knight", who is not any of the remake characters, as the game's representative. Later spin-off games have used both the remake's orphans and the Onion Knight.
    • The hair color of Golbez in Final Fantasy IV. Given his heritage, most fans assumed that he would have white hair like his fellow Lunarians under his helmet. The DS remake gave him brown hair in flashbacks... and then The After Years went and gave him the white hair after all. This led to speculation that his hair whitened with age or that the brief appearance of a brown-haired Golbez at the end of IV is supposed to symbolize how he appeared before Zemus took control, not his literal appearance.
      • Considering Cecil himself is white-haired in all games, promotional material and even the remake's intro movie, but is blond in-game, it is perhaps better to just assume all other sources are canon and the remake just partook in an Adaptational Dye-Job.
    • The ending of Final Fantasy VII shows the city of Midgar Reclaimed by Nature with no signs of human habitation, leading to a lot of arguments over whether this meant humanity had been killed by Meteor. Kazushige Nojima, the game's writer, has claimed that humanity is meant to have survived, and Yusuke Naora, the art director, added to this by saying that he intended to add smoke to the final cutscene to establish that there's some humans living in and around the city. Conversely, Yoshinori Kitase, the game's director, noted that "In a way, I consider that epilogue to be the true happy ending of FFVII. Well, it's a happy ending even though all the human beings are destroyed." Keep in mind, he said this after Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children seemingly established humanity was doing just fine in the aftermath.
  • Final Fight (and Street Fighter by extension):
    • Poison started out as transgender, was changed to a cis woman and is now trans again, if Capcom's really left Final Fight/Street Fighter canon to Capcom USA.
    • Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono stated that, in the U.S. and the rest of the world, Poison is a post-op trans woman, but in Japan, she's a pre-op trans woman. Original design notes for Final Fight suggest the character was always intended to be a newhalf.
    • Akira Nishitani, the developer of Final Fight, insists that it's up to the fans to decide. It's unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.
    • Of course, always conveniently omitted from the discussion is, what about Roxy, dammit? Since Roxy is a literal Palette Swap of Poison, she was ignored outside of one All There in the Manual moment by Capcom USA, declaring the she was a natural female who "always looked up to Poison although she doesn't really dig the cross-dressing thing."
  • Rockstar Games' official stance on Grand Theft Auto is that each graphical generation (2D, 3D, etc.) represents a totally different continuity, which convinced a lot of long time fans that the HD generation's canon would behave differently from that of the others. But the HD generation is loaded with Mythology Gags that seem to suggest otherwise, and some minor plot elements that featured in previous continuities are revealed to still be around. The Epsilon Program, for example, is just as influential in the HD generation as in previous ones, and Lazlow is not only still a celebrity, but a much bigger one than in the preceding generation. Members of the fictional band Love Fist also appear in games from both generations.
  • It seems Naughty Dog simply cannot make up their minds about Seem's gender in Jak and Daxter. One half of official material refers to them as a girl, and the other half as a guy. When the game was first released, two fans, independent of one another, emailed the developer. One got back "Seem is male", while the other received "Seem is a girl."
  • The King of Fighters:
    • SNK seems to change its position as to where fits into the universe of its other games by the day. Either it's an Alternate Continuity to Art of Fighting/Fatal Fury, or it's a follow-up to that universe. However, given that Geese Howard (the Big Bad of Fatal Fury) died in Real Bout Fatal Fury, yet made a triumphant, unexpected appearance in KOF '96 and continues to make the occasional cameo (or rarer playable appearance) in later KOF games, it's a pretty safe bet that KOF has the same basic backstory as the AoF/FF timeline but diverges after that. It's also telling that the cast of AoF is roughly around the same age as their Fatal Fury counterparts despite Art of Fighting presumably taking place in the late 1970s (Fatal Fury is similarly assumed to occur in the 90s) and a young Geese Howard showing up in the second AoF as the True Final Boss (as well as foreshadowing for his role in Fatal Fury in the first place).
    • On a different note, are Iori Yagami's flames blue or purple? The sprites show them to be the latter, but various official sources over the years tended to mix this up frequently (though they seem to have settled on purple as of XII). To further confuse matters, the Yasakani (the clan the Yagami were formerly known as) were said to have crimson (read: orange) flames like the Kusanagi but gained Orochi's blue flames when they struck a deal with it out of jealousy for the Kusanagi. As such, one line of thought is that both statements are technically accurate, with Iori's flames being depicted as purple because they're a combination of red and blue. However, Orochi Chris (one of Orochi's Four Heavenly Kings and the vessel of its eventual rebirth) also uses purple flames like Iori despite not having reddish-orange flames to begin with (and originally, Orochi Chris's flames were going to be black).
    • As the KOF verse has a very loose grasp on the concept of "clones", it's unclear if Kula Diamond, the Anti-K', is truly an Opposite-Sex Clone of series lead Kyo Kusanagi. The NESTS Team story in 2001 has Kula mention that she was "grown from a petri dish" whereas her bio in Maximum Impact 2 (where the general backstory of the pre-existing characters is unaltered despite MI taking place in an Alternate Continuity) instead suggests she's a Clone by Conversion in the manner of K' or Nameless.
    • Shion, The Dragon from The King of Fighters XI, is either male or has no official gender, depending on who and when you ask (although most official sources nowadays affirm that Shion is a he).
  • Due to Ellis being an Unreliable Narrator, the existence of Keith in Left 4 Dead 2 has been of much debate. Valve tried to invoke this trope by saying that "Keith isn't imaginary, except, well, it is a video game, so it's all imaginary."
  • Mega Man:
    • According to Keiji Inafune, Mega Man & Bass exists parallel to Mega Man 9. However, in the ending of 9, Rush projects nine images of Wily doing the exact same actions in different games, and one of them unmistakably takes place in the final boss room in the former. Additionally, the game's original ROM refers to ''MM&B as "Rock 8.5".
    • After the first Mega Man Zero game, many fans wondered about the gender of Harpuia. The character looked feminine (and had a female VA) but acted masculine (none of Leviathan's "don't hold back because I'm a woman" here), and there were no pronouns to settle it. When asked, Capcom of America went with female — which was news to Capcom of Japan. The conflicting Word of God left many fans confused, even after later games made it clear he was male.
  • Moshi Monsters: When asked why the game zigzagged Nobody Poops (players could not add bathrooms to the houses, but toilet references still cropped up in the game), the creators sometimes stated that monsters' biology meant that they didn't need to use toilets, but other times said that it was just Artistic License.
  • Quite common with the Nasuverse, which has a large amount of supplementary material, which often directly contradicts other materials. One particular example is Servants and their memories as Fate/stay night established that Heroic Spirits wouldn't remember their time as Servants in the Holy Grail War and Saber and Gilgamesh only remember the previous war because of special circumstances. Later works like Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star and Fate/Grand Order have them able to remember what happened to themselves in previous works.
  • Nintendo has made many flip flops over the years. For instance...
    • Super Mario Bros.:
      • Sources flip-flop on whether Wario and Waluigi are siblings or not (though they've mostly settled on "not"). It does the same to Toad and Toadette. Even more confusing is when the latter pair is not portrayed as siblings, they're given Ship Tease.
      • The exact relationship between Mario and Peach isn't entirely clear either. Some sources all but outright say that they're an Official Couple, while other sources are more ambiguous. Especially since other characters like Luigi, Daisy, and even Waluigi muddy the situation.
      • Is Yoshi a dinosaur, or a dragon? At first, Nintendo basically used the words interchangeably, before settling on "dino" starting in Super Smash Bros. 64... And then going back to dragon in Super Mario Galaxy 2, and not addressing the issue at all afterwards since it is a fictional species anyway.
      • Whether or not Mario and Luigi's last names are "Mario". Shigeru Miyamoto's stance changes every time he's asked.
      • Due to the overwhelmingly negative fan reaction to Miyamoto retconning the Koopalings into no longer being Bowser's children, Nintendo has since attempted to compromise by stating that their relation to Bowser, whether he's their genetic or adoptive father, a boss who's simply a Father to His Men, or something else, is unknown.
      • Whether Birdo is a guy or a girl. Super Mario Bros. 2 says Birdo is a "guy who thinks he's a girl", but Mario Tennis states Birdo is a girl. Yet, the British versions of Mario Tennis Aces and Super Mario Party state Birdo is a male, yet the American versions state that Birdo is female.
    • Donkey Kong Country:
      • Cranky Kong is either Donkey Kong's dad or grandpa. Further complicating the matter is the question of just whose word to follow. Rare's writer Leigh Loveday has stated that he's DK's father and asked that "if you see Cranky referred to as DK's granddad anywhere, just cover your eyes and hum loudly until it goes away," but Nintendo owns the games (including the characters).
      • This extends to Donkey Kong himself. Is he the son of Donkey Kong Jr., or Junior all grown up? Not helping is Mario Tennis, in which they both appear as playable characters (though, to be fair, Baby Mario also appears in this game and others alongside his adult self) and that Donkey Kong Jr. had effectively been replaced by Diddy Kong.
    • The Legend of Zelda:
    • Pokémon:
      • Is Phione a Legendary/Mythical Pokémon or not? Not even official sources can make up their minds on this one. A general rule is that Legendary and Mythical Pokémon are unable to be bred, even with Ditto. However, Manaphy (which was unambiguously classified as a legendary, but now classed as a Mythical, as detailed below) is an exception (as part of its in-game lore has it hatching from a unique egg). The result of breeding a Manaphy is Phione. It has only so-so stats (which are terrible compared to Manaphy's), learns none of the moves that make Manaphy unique, and doesn't evolve into Manaphy. Basically, it is a gimped version of Manaphy. This would be fine, but it is only obtained by breeding Manaphy or other Phione (it doesn't appear in any regional Pokédex either) and it is still restricted from places like the battle tower/frontier/subway, a distinction which only box legendaries (Pokémon that would appear on the cover of the games) and Mythical Pokémon get. The side games treat it as a bonus character, while the anime treats it as any regular (if rare) Pokémon.
      • On a related note, the difference between Legendary Pokémon and Mythical Pokémon. The Japanese media has always maintained there is a difference, but it wasn't until Gen V before international media did the same, referring to Mythicals as Legendaries beforehand. From a gameplay perspective, the difference is Legendaries can be obtained in-game, while Mythicals need to be obtained from real-life one-of-a-kind events or from some of the spin-offs. Yet, Deoxys is available in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire in the same way Legendaries are despite still being classed as Mythical. And later on, Celebi was given an accessible event in the Virtual Console release of Crystal. Storyline-wise, the difference is non-existent, Mythicals and Legendaries are both rare, have many myths surrounding them, and a good chunk of Mythicals are closely aligned to Legendariesnote .
      • Are Ultra Beasts Legendary Pokémon? Since Ultra Beasts are simply Pokémon (but strong ones) from another dimension, the simple answer would be nonote . Yet, the Mascot Legendaries of Gen VII are all technically Ultra Beasts from a storyline perspective, and comparisons are also made to the Gen IV Mascot Legendaries in regards to the fact they are from different dimensions as wellnote .
    • Outside actual games, Nintendo has twice announced that new hardware would serve as a "third pillar" alongside existing hardware, only to quickly discontinue whatever system it was the obvious successor to. To be fair, these two situations weren't completely the same. While the first case of this was clearly Nintendo hedging their bets — the Game Boy Advance line was still doing incredibly well in sales in 2004, so should the Nintendo DS fail (and everyone assumed it would), they wanted an easy out to dismiss the dual-screen device as a weird experiment — the second was just a bizarre deflection: the Wii U was an undeniable flop when the Nintendo Switch was first announced as "Codename NX", making for an obvious bluff. Nintendo didn't even wait for the Switch's release before discontinuing production on the Wii U, as opposed to GBA systems continuing to be sold until the end of the 2000s.
  • Portal 2 has accumulated several of these, largely due to the creators claiming not to have had a grand narrative in mind while creating the game and therefore not having answers when put on the spot by eager fans.
    • The actual location of the Aperture Science facility. Prior to Portal 2, they said it was in a Cleveland salt mine, but the game itself specifically places the mine in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Much of Aperture's backstory and that of its founder, Cave Johnson, is similarly retconned by the game from previous material, with Valve metaphorically shrugging its shoulders as to which story is true.
    • The ending leaves ambiguous the question of whether GLaDOS actually deletes Caroline's personality, is merely lying about it, or even thought she had but was mistaken. Leaving aside the fact that GLaDOS is an Unreliable Narrator, the creators have waffled on the matter in various interviews, going from claiming that she was telling the truth to that she only might have been.
    • Whether Cave Johnson is still alive, Brain Uploaded or otherwise. Again, they've given vague or contradictory answers when asked the question in interviews.
    • Also there's the question of the turret opera song "Cara Mia" which many see as implying that Chell is the daughter of Cave Johnson and Caroline. Erik Wolpaw has said that the turret song was added without his consent and that in the 'canon' version of Portal 2, Chell is just sent straight to the surface. GLaDOS's voice actress Ellen McLain (who wrote the aforementioned song) has been talking about Chell's parentage as recently as the 2011 VGAs. With both of them having a degree of creative control of Portal's storyline, its likely there will never be a concrete answer.
  • Ratchet & Clank:
  • The Rayman series has been flip-flopping for years as to whether or not the title character's signature floating limbs are one-of-a-kind or not. In the original Rayman game, all characters in Rayman's world had floating limbs, and Rayman himself was nothing special. In the sequel, however, save for his Evil Twin, Rayman was explicitly stated to be one of a kind, because he was created by the fairies who had their own mysterious ideas. Then Rayman Origins came along, and said his limblessness was an accident. Until the Play Station Vita version, which suggested that there'd been at least one other (female) limbless person. And then Rayman Legends comes along, and the alternate Rayman costumes are strongly implied to be different characters — including one inspired by the "Tarayazan" character from the first game.
  • Skullgirls: Peacock's outfit, a dress with bloomers that conceal her legs◊, makes it impossible to tell if her legs are Artificial Limbs like her arms. Alex Ahad has stated a number of conflicting times whether or not her legs are real.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Many Sonic Team employees will tell you conflicting things about the Sonic universe: The manuals can't seem to decide whether Sonic is calm, loves relaxation, and loves nature, or is excitable and unable to sit still at all, let alone enjoy the scenery. They also go back and forth on if Sonic and his friends live on a fictional version of Earth alongside humans, or if they live in another dimension and occasionally visit Earth.
    • Sega employees and the games go back and forth on whether Classic Sonic is Modern Sonic's younger self from the past (as per Sonic Generations) or is from another dimension (as per Sonic Forces). And in the latter, they can't decide whether it's truly another dimension or a split timeline. Further muddying the waters is the fact that in all cases, Modern Sonic is treated as having experienced Classic Sonic's adventures in the past (or at least the classic core games).
    • Loose Canon is to blame for a lot of these inconsistencies; Ken Eva of Sega Europe stated around the time of Forces that Sonic canon is in a state of flux, meaning it's liable to change as Sega sees fit. Notably, supplemental material for Sonic Frontiers threw out the widely disliked and canon-conflicting claim that Sonic's world and the human world were separate despite this being the case for Forces, instead making the separation a figurative one: the "human world" consists of the larger continents and human-populated societies, whereas the "non-human world" consists of the various smaller islands scattered about the planet.
    • Just who has a Super Mode has been a weird thing. Since Sonic 3 & Knuckles, it was accepted that Sonic and Knuckles had Super forms with normal Chaos Emeralds and gain Hyper forms with the Super Emeralds with Tails gaining a Super mode only with the Super Emeralds. However, in Sonic Heroes, Tails and Knuckles don't gain Super forms when Sonic turns Super. It was later stated that only male hedgehogs gain Super transformations, but Sonic Mania and later Sonic Origins explicitly gives Tails, Mighty, Ray and Amy Super modes, only for Sonic Superstars to go back and say, no, only Sonic gains a transformation, everyone else gains "Super Powers".
  • In April 2015, then-supervising director of Steven Universe Ian Jones-Quartey claimed that the game Attack the Light was "level 2 canon", but in March 2019, he said that both Attack the Light and Save the Light are canon.
  • Tekken:
    • Katsuhiro Harada, the chief producer of the series, constantly contradicts what he has said in the past about the games' confusing canon. When fans once called him out for making a statement which directly contradicted the game canon, he stated that he considers that the games are basically a series of branching timelines in which all canons are true.
    • One specific example is the Kazama family tree. Asuka Kazama, debuting in Tekken 5, was introduced as Jin's cousin, and there are several instances in T6 where either Jin and Asuka are referred to as cousins or their parents (Jun and Asuka's unnamed father) are stated to be siblings. This was held up to be true up until the Tekken 7 era, where Harada tweeted that the relation between Jun and Asuka's father was actually more distant. However, as this is currently the only source contradicting the original claim and nothing in-game corroborates Harada's statement, most fans continue to believe that Jin and Asuka are first cousins. With Tekken 8 seeing the return of all the playable Kazamas (and notably serving as Jun's first canonical appearance since the second game), it remains to be seen if this matter will be addressed.
  • The developers of Terraria stated back in May 2014 that version 1.2.4 would be the last update that adds new features to the game. Apparently they changed their mind, as June 2015 saw the release of Version 1.3. And then came version 1.4 in May 2020, which was titled "Journey's End" and marketed as THE final update for Terraria. Fans are, however, still skeptical, and even the dev team has admitted they aren't sure if it's really going to be the final update.
  • This is the reason why Touhou has such massive, intricate fanon, as when series creator ZUN isn't being deliberately obtuse, speaking in riddles, messing with his fans or outright lying, he changes his mind at the drop of his hat. For just three examples, he can barely keep the characters' eye and hair colors from changing between games, talked at length about how Touhou "is not a series" which ended with him admitting that it is a series after all, and reports on whether or not youkai have stopped eating people are wildly contradictory (one states it never happens, one states it is a constant concern for the human inhabitants of Gensoukyou, and another states it is only a concern for those outside of Gensoukyou). ZUN sort of covers for this tendency by making having his supplemental materials come from Unreliable Narrators. It's not the author that's wrong, it's the characters!
  • In one of the first outside resources for Wild ARMs, The Filgaia Chronicle, it was stated that the Filgaia in the first two games and the anime was the same place, just with very large time gaps between works and repeated disasters masking the links. Later resources have instead suggested that each Wild ARMS related work has used a different world that shares the name Filgaia. Some of them dovetail nicely in to each other, but others are hard to reconcile... and some have some of each — for instance, Wild ARMS 4 follows nicely from the original or its remake Alter Code F... except that Guardians work differently in it than any other game in the series, including the original and its remake; in others, they're spirits of the planet, but in 4, they're a sort of special type of ARM. At this point, it's basically anyone's guess what's going on with Filgaia in the various games.

    Webcomics 
  • El Goonish Shive: Originally, Dan was very against referring to the Aberrations as Vampires, since he envisioned them as have different origins and designs than most vampires, with the only similarities being that they were once human, they eat people, and they may have similar powers like hypnotism and immortality. He even had Susan go out of her way to refer to the first Aberration she met as a "not-vampire" and explain in detail that he wasn't a vampire even if he seemed similar to one. Eventually though, Dan realized he shot himself in the foot trying too hard to differentiate the Aberrations from Vampires to the point where that's all fans could associate them with, and decided in-canon that everyone just refers to them as Vampires even if they are still technically something completely different.

    Web Original 
  • The issue of Carnivore Confusion in Darwin's Soldiers has been inconsistently addressed. Serris has said that anthro and "normal" animals exist and eating "normal" animals was acceptable. But he has also said to assume that all meat is seafood.
  • Kid Time Storytime:
    • Corny's age. In the comments of one video, Eileen/Storyteller claims that Corny is 126, which is about five in human years, but on the official website, it says she's four and a half. Also, Eileen tried to explain Corny squeaking instead of talking in earlier videos by stating that she was still learning to speak (which should mean that she was one then and aged three or four years), yet none of the other characters have aged.
    • Hooty's reason for not being able to speak. The official website first said that he was autistic, then later it said he was just learning English as a second language.
  • Neopets:
    • The creators have been a bit back-and-forth over whether Neopets in plots grow hair or if they're wearing wigs.
    • Before 2021, in which the creators decided that cars should be able to exist in Neopia after all, they stated that they didn't. As such, many players asked about Nigel, a character who appeared to drive a car long before cars were allowed to exist. Sometimes, they claimed that Nigel owned the only car in Neopia, sometimes they claimed it was just a pretend car, and other times they basically said, "Move along, nothing to see here!".
    • When asked how to get a Chocolate Chia, the creators first said you could get one from feeding a Chia a lot of chocolate, but later said that it could only happen from the Lab Ray or from Naia's quests.

    Western Animation 
  • Arthur
    • Is Prunella a rat or a poodle? Different sources say different things, though the most common consensus is she's a rat who just has curly hair, since her face looks a lot like Mr. Ratburn's.
    • In one interview, Marc Brown said that the character of Marina was a "variation of a dog," despite looking like a rabbit. In a discussion with fans, producer/director Greg Bailey said that Marina is a rabbit, the designers had given her a dog nose by mistake, and it went unnoticed until after the fact.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Originally Sozin was implied to have been relatively young when he started the war and ruled for the first 70 years of it before dying, his son Azulon was said to have ruled the next 23 years before dying and passing the title to Ozai for the past 6-7 years before the present. Things got strange during the third season when it revealed that Sozin was actually Avatar Roku's age and began the war at 82. Word of God Hand Waved this by stating that Sozin ruled for 20 years after he started the war, Azulon was born the year the war started and ruled the next 75 years of the war, and Ozai in turn ruled for the last 5 years of the war.
    • There is a disagreement about whether the show was ever supposed to have a fourth season. Head writer Aaron Ehsasz has claimed that "there was a moment in time when we all thought we would do a 4th season", and that the reason it wasn't done was because series creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Kontiezko decided to focus on making the the live action film adaptation instead. However, when they were asked about this in an interview, Kontiezko and DiMartino said that there were never any discussions concerning a fourth season; the series ending after three seasons was always the plan and they never thought about continuing the story until they were approached to do the comics a few years later.
  • The original head writer of The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Christopher Yost, denied rumors that Ultimate Spider-Man takes place in the same universe, despite Disney XD airing them as part of the same block every Sunday. Jeph Loeb, who became the executive producer for Spider-Man and some episodes from the second season of The Avengers, went on to confirm those rumors. Viewers have pointed out that if Loeb is to believed, then it would open up a mess of contradictions, such as the differing ages of Iron Fist and Luke Cage in both shows. It was also initially reported that Avengers Assemble would be set in the same universe as Ultimate Spider-Man. It's since been confirmed by both Loeb and the creators that Assemble is a sequel to Earth's Mightiest Heroes, albeit with past events only brought up in Broad Strokes, if at all.
    • A flashback in Episode 8 clearly shows the characters with their costumes and art style from EMH, making it seem as though they definitely consider it a sequel. However, this would likely only count in the Broad Strokes, since The Falcon's origin directly contradicts the three episodes of EMH he appeared in. The sequence also uses a Thor costume from season one of EMH, but season two garb for everyone else. Though this is because plans for a sequel series to EMH was in the works before the plug was pulled to make a series closer to the films.
    • Yost had also flip flopped over whether or not EMH was in direct continuity or not with Wolverine and the X-Men, which he also worked on though not as head writer (which, depending on who you ask, was either Greg Johnson or Craig Kyle, but both of whom were definitely more in control of that series than Yost). Yost initially said that the original intention was for W&TXM and EMH to be in the same universe but the idea was discarded when W&TXM was cancelled. He then turned around and said the two series could still coexist in the same universe if fans wanted them to (Steve Blum voices Wolverine in both for whatever that's worth, along with Fred Tatasciore as the Hulk and Alex Désert as Nick Fury).
  • Ben 10: Regarding the Ben 10,000 timeline, the timeline that Ben visited in the "Ben 10,000" episode of the original series, the franchise's various creative leads have had conflicting ideas on it. Original series story editor Matt Wayne and the episode's pop-up trivia state that it's simply one of Ben's many possible futures; Alien Force/Ultimate Alien producer Dwayne McDuffie stated that it was never our Ben's timeline; Omniverse art director Derrick J. Wyatt stated that it is our Ben's timeline; and franchise co-creator Duncan Rouleau just plain isn't sure.
  • Classic Disney Shorts:
    • Disney has flipped flopped between whether Chip 'n Dale are brothers or just friends. Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers and related media has them as being unrelated Heterosexual Life-Partners, while the classic shorts and works that play off them depict the duo as brothers.
    • Are Minnie Mouse and Mickey Mouse married, or just dating? Walt once stated that they're married but can be shown at any state of romance if the plot demands for it, but the company still flip-flops about this.
    • Over the years, Disney's come to like the ambiguity in regards to Mickey and Minnie's relationship; it keeps everything more flexible that way. Back in the mid-1980s, Disney's marketeers actually planned a massive marketing push after the disastrous Totally Minnie campaign note  in which, after years of speculation, Mickey and Minnie were finally going to tie the knot in a huge ceremony at Disneyland... and there was a MASSIVE push-back from older animators and Imagineers within the company, who fought tooth-and-nail to prevent it from happening.
  • Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous isn't clear about whether the Spinosaurus the campers encounter on Mantah Corps's island is the same as the one in Jurassic Park III. Series producer Scott Kreamer claims this to be the case, while Colin Trevorrow says he thinks of the two as separate individuals.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • Whether or not Scootaloo will fly. Lauren Faust stated that Scootaloo was initially conceived as being disabled such that she would never fly, then while the show was actually airing claimed that she "hadn't figured it out yet", then stepped down as showrunner. Much later, "Growing Up is Hard to Do" showed Scootaloo as an adult with child-sized wings. Shortly after it first aired, one of the staff confirmed via twitter that that was indeed meant to indicate an actual disability, but included the line "But fans are welcome to interpret things how they like", given that there's another side character in the show (Bulk Biceps) who can fly despite having even smaller wings.
    • After "Slice of Life" aired, the writers claimed that Lyra and Bon Bon were just friends, but in "The Big Mac Question", they got married.
  • Ninjago: To explain Season 8's character design changes which resulted from the intervening movie, the writers used the previous season's time travel plot to imply the Butterfly Effect is what changed the ninja's appearances, which meant the ninja themselves unaware of the change. The writers confirmed on Twitter that this was the case, but Tommy Andreasen, co-creator and producer of the series, has stated that there is no in-universe explanation. The show itself aligns more with Andreasen's interpretation, because the ninja have their original designs in flashbacks and old photos, which would not be the case if time travel had changed history so they had always had their new appearances. Additionally, the later mini-movie written by Andreasen entitled "Elemental Rider" had the characters acknowledging that they used to look different.
  • John Kricfalusi seems to change his mind whenever people ask about the duo's sexuality in The Ren & Stimpy Show. He has gone from saying that "it's none of his business", to saying that Ren is bisexual, to that they are canonically gay. Eventually, he declared that their sexuality depends on if it would make a given episode funnier.
  • The Simpsons: Aside from the infamous Where the Hell Is Springfield?, Matt Groening has switched back and forth on the vague ending of "The Last Temptation of Homer", sometimes implying that Homer did have sex with co-worker Mindy (imagining she was Marge), and stating on other occasions that Homer never cheated on Marge (and never would).

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