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Stradleyism: The act of dismissing an element of canon altogether on grounds of it being "stupid", without taking the effort to do something interesting with it.
You have an ongoing serial or a Verse of some kind. In the canon of that work is an element that has become an embarrassment or is just plain out of date, one that has been abandoned or is in severe danger of being abandoned. Canon Discontinuity is what happens when that element is written out. Reimagining The Artifact, on the other hand, is what happens when you try and make that element work with the overall tone of the serial.
To qualify, the element must have either been abandoned or been treated purely as The Artifact.
If the problem was with an Artifact Title, this strategy may result in a retroactively- Justified Title.
Related to Reconstruction (when something similar is done for a trope or genre, rather than a character or concept) and Rescued from the Scrappy Heap. Took a Level in Badass is also related. See also Cerebus Retcon, where something similar happens mid-story.
Examples:
Comic Books
- Apache Chief, widely regarded as one of the lamest of the Super Friends, was re-adapted in 2002 by Joe Kelly into a much more interesting character, Manitou Raven
 .
- Many would argue that this is what Brian Michael Bendis has done with Marvel's lesser or dated 1970s characters like Luke Cage and the first Spider-Woman.
- According to his commentary in an Ultimate Spider-Man collection, Bendis seemed to believe he was doing this with Venom when he was brought into that series. Their treatment of the Clone Saga is a more solid example.
- Grant Morrison's Batman has a bunch of these, as part of his quest to make everything canon.
- Grant Morrison loves doing this: in his JLA run, he brought back such goofy stuff as Aquaman's Silver Age imp sidekick Quisp in a way that fit the tone of the new title. And Seven Soldiers was a project whose entire remit was to take dated or underused old characters and re-imagine them for today. All-Star Superman is similarly almost nothing but Reimagining Artifacts from the 1960s and 1950s stories.
- Arguably this is the entire point of Planetary, except when Warren Ellis is savaging superhero characters.
- Superman had several of these:
- Bizarro was a silly character; nowadays, the silly character is around, but the idea of "Flawed Superman clone" (the mechanics, whether there's only one or the process to make them is sufficiently known to allow more to be made, and other details vary) called "Bizarro" has been brought back repeatedly in both the comics and adaptions.
- Krypto the Superdog has recently (by comic-book standards) been brought back... but to keep down the silly factor, he's sufficiently ill-tempered that he has to be kept in the Fortress of Solitude, and thus serves as a guard dog rather than as an Non-Human Sidekick.
- Don Rosa did tons of this in The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.
- DC recently brought back widely-hated Fad Super / Captain Ethnic Vibe, who was killed off in the 80's shortly after his debut. They've given him a less-ridiculous costume and removed the more offensive aspects of his back story (he's no longer a Gang Banger who talks like Al Pacino from Scarface) to make him a more well-rounded character.
- Earth 2 tries to do this with a number of Golden Age characters, reimagining them in a modern context. For instance, Wing is now a young Asian-American cameraman rather than the racist Asian Speekee Engrish caricature he was in the 30's.
- Robin, no matter who it is this month. As comics get Darker and Edgier, a Kid Sidekick is more and more obviously an unethical endangerment of the poor kid, especially since letting them actually die is nothing new. Why is there still always a Robin? Because the kid is usually going to try avenge the Death by Origin Story victim or otherwise operate on his own anyway, and so Bats takes him under his wing to make sure the kid can actually survive his chosen path, and in some cases, be a proper hero instead of crossing the line for vengeance. Sometimes it's also explained that Batman's borderline-instability could easily turn into a He Who Fights Monsters case if he didn't have someone to keep him down to Earth.
- Rick Remender has stated he's fond of this practice, as he considers it a challenge to use obscure or hated characters from periods like the 90's. He's since stated that Onslaught, a widely-hated 90's villain, will be the Big Bad in his Uncanny Avengers run.
- Superman did this with the Clark Kent identity Post Crisis. In the old days, he was just what the TV intro said: Superman, disguised as mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent. He really had no reason to have a human identity, especially after his powers increased to the point that the job at the newspaper in order to find out about dirty deeds was no longer necessary. Post Crisis, he's now more Clark Kent who dresses up as Superman and not the other way around. It's also been said that he likes having something he's good at for reasons other than his Game Breaker powers; being able to throw a whole island into space won't help you win a Pulitzer.
- In X-Men, the New X-Men series ditched the standard superhero threads, a Silver Age convention seen as Narm by the writer in light of today's Darker and Edgier comic stories, for black and yellow leather outfits. When they returned in Astonishing X-Men, we're given a good reason for them: The people need to feel like they can trust their heroes, so a "Darker and Edgier kill squad" look was wrong for them.
Film - Live Action
- On Star Trek: The Original Series, Dr. McCoy's nickname "Bones" comes from the term "Sawbones", which was an old nickname for doctors. Since the term has fallen from the parlance, the 2009 film had Kirk call McCoy "Bones" because, in his introduction, he explains he's joining Starfleet because "The ex-wife took the whole damn planet in the divorce. All I've got left is my bones.".
- The Dark Knight Rises drops a lot of Selina Kyle's "cat" motif (apart from a costume at a masquerade ball and the papers' habit of calling her "The Cat") — most notably, she's never called "Catwoman". But she does sport a pair of goggles which seem to aid her safecracking attempts, and when folded back onto her head they bear an uncanny resemblance to a pair of cat ears.
Literature
- The Doctor Who Expanded Universe novel Seeing I does this with the mind probe, re-using what is probably THE worst and funniest quote in the history of the show:
No, not the mind probe! * Delivered in a slightly alarmed manner. They probably weren't paying the actor very much.
Live-Action TV
- Ryan Howard of America's version of The Office eventually lost his role as the newcomer for obvious reasons, and went through an arc that saw him become a Corrupt Corporate Executive and then fall from grace. Despite having no storyline to advance, he stuck around because as he is played by an executive producer on the show. Recent seasons have remedied this by making the character into a satire of a hipster, thus giving him something unique to do again.
- A combination of this and Ascended Fanon lent plausibility to the biggest narrative conceit of Doctor Who: that even when the characters stop off somewhere for totally innocent reasons, they will inevitably encounter not just trouble, but extraterrestrial trouble. Fanon for years has been that the TARDIS, which is a living being, purposely drops the Doctor off in places and times where he is needed. This was heavily implied to be true throughout the revived series, and eventually explicitly made canon in "The Doctor's Wife".
- The TARDIS' police box design. At first, in The Sixties, it wasn't anachronistic, but nowadays, characters ask "What is a 'police public call box?'" and the broken chameleon circuit, though part of the setting from day one to a smaller degree*
The First Doctor noticed the TARDIS hadn't adapted to its new location once they left Earth, and it was the first sign that something was quite wrong. They wound up with the more pressing problem of not being able to control their destination. , is sometimes a running gag (It's fixed! ...and its new form is not under the Doctor's control, highly inconvenient, and at least you know how to enter the police box version. It's fixed! ...and when it scans the area and decides on an appropriate form, it's always a police box. Or Donna can fix it with her new time lord knowledge! ...which is about to burn out her brain, and what comes next is not funny.) and the Doctor has at least once admitted that he could probably fix it if he really wanted to, but likes it the way it is.
Tabletop Games
- Pathfinder had several bestiaries dedicated to re-imagining various monsters; in particular, "Misfit Monsters Redeemed" is purely this trope, as they chose the stupidest monsters from the Gygax era and attempted to make them work.
Video Games
- Mortal Kombat's Palette Swap ninjas were a running joke in the series. They were an artifact of a time when limited sprites were able to fit on the hardware available, and so some needed to be reused. From Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance onwards they were all given a complete overhaul and unique looks.
Western Animation
- Similar to the above Apache Chief/Manitou Raven example, the campy characters original to the old Super Friends show were re-imagined as the Ultimen and given a tragic arc in an episode of the DC Animated Universe Justice League series.
- In yet another example, Young Justice: Invasion looks to be doing a more serious, respectful take on Apache Chief and several other of the "Affirmative Action" Super Friends. Samurai and El Dorado become Asami "Sam" Koizumi and Eduardo "Ed" Dorado, losing their stereotypical costumes and quirks in the process.
- Apache Chief's popular for this. The Young Justice version is even named for and voiced by the same guy as his Justice League counterpart. (However, Longshadow is actually his last name, as opposed to Long Shadow as a codename.)
- Beware The Batman will be using the D-list and extremely 80's villain Magpie◊ as a recurring character. Judging by the concept art released, she's been given a 21st century makeover so that she now resembles a flashy, modern pop starlet like Lady Gaga rather than a hair metal groupie.
- The villains in the new Thunder Cats 2011 series are named after each animal they're based on—Lizards, Jackals, etc.—instead of them all being called "Mutants", and often get new names that while still based on their animal, are a bit more imaginative (Vultureman becomes Prefect Vultaire.) Third Earth is populated by many animal races and the Mutants' equivalents are drawn from them.
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