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alt title(s): Ret Conned; Retroactive Continuity; Ret Cons "You're going to use this opportunity to casually ignore randomly inconvenient plot settings!"
"But keep in mind, is that what really matters is that the status quo will be forever changed until the story is quietly retconned out of existence."
Retcon = Retroactive Continuity.
Reframing past events to serve a current plot need. When the inserted events work with what was previously stated, it's a Revision; when they outright replace it, it's a Rewrite. The ideal Retcon clarifies a question alluded to without adding excessive new questions. In its most basic form, this is any plot point that was not intended from the beginning. The most preferred use is where it contradicts nothing, even though it was changed later on.
While the term comes from comic books, dating to All-Star Squadron #18 in 1983 and shortened to "retcon" by the end of the decade, the technique is much older. Often, it's used to serve a new plot by changing its context; however, it's also done when the creators are caught writing a story that violates continuity and isn't very plausible.
In Marvel Comics, the person who pointed out the problem and at the same time provided a plausible explanation was awarded a Genuine Marvel Comics No-Prize by editor Stan Lee, a tradition that was kept alive by other editors after he became publisher.
See also Ass Pull, but note that not every Retcon is an Ass Pull. An Ass Pull, by definition, is something that was not properly set up before it is sprung on the audience. It is related to Deus Ex Machina. Sometimes a good Retcon can actually improve the current narrative, as with the new Back Story provided for Spike in "Fool For Love" ( Buffy The Vampire Slayer). A good way to get away with a Ret Con is to reveal new implications or motivations for events that have already been established.
Smoother Retcons won't be distinguishable as such, and can even make what was initially an Ass Pull later look like a Xanatos Gambit. (In other words, No Prize it into plausibility and away from the dizzying realm of the Ass Pull)
The Retcon is considered by many to occur when current events contradict the past continuity of the series and is evidence of a Writer On Board. Perhaps more often, the Retcon does not actually violate canon, but rather violates fanon, the set of unstated interpretations usually made by the audience. Most competent writers achieve a Retcon by relying on a less-obvious but still perfectly valid interpretation of what was previously seen.
As the number of twists and misdirections in a story becomes higher, it becomes more difficult to tell whether an event actually is a Retcon (which implies that the writers changed their minds), or a misdirection (which implies that the writers intended the "retconned" version all along, and had been deliberately misleading the audience before). In some cases, it is impossible to tell, short of reading the author's mind. (Even then, it might not helped, as it's entirely possible for an author to be on the fence about what they're planning to do.)
A Retcon may be used as part of an Armed With Canon campaign launched by one author against the work of another author in the same Shared Universe. Over-use of Retcon can result in Continuity Snarl. It can also result in your readers and fans approaching the work with a certain degree of skepticism, cynicism or even complete disinterest, especially if you tend to obviously and quickly Retcon away that which turns out to be unpopular or drastically challenges or changes the status quo — after all, why get involved in your latest Crisis Crossover Event which promises to Change Everything Forever and that Nothing Will Be The Same Again if there's a good chance it'll all just be Ret Conned away after a short period of time?
This happens very easily with prequels when the writers aren't being very careful.
Compare Flip Flop Of God. Tends to come in The Reveal format. May involve Opening A Can Of Clones.
Specific variants: Cerebus Retcon, Re Vision, Re Write and Remember The New Guy.
Examples
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Anime
- Somewhere between volume 5 and 11 of the English-language Great Teacher Onizuka manga, the average age of the protagonist's class gets bumped from 14 to 16.
- The Gundam canon has a pretty significant number of these, but an extremely notable one is the Biosensor from Zeta Gundam. Said to be a device that somehow increases a mobile suit's power based on the pilot's Newtype abilities, the original series events that are attributed to this system are actually far more supernatural in nature. The Zeta Gundam and ZZ Gundam both have the apparent ability to channel the souls of the dead, as well as the pilot's own fury, to increase the power of the unit. The Biosystem explanation may have been added to keep the show closer to a Real Robot style of show, while still allowing these scenes to be unaffected.
- A bigger example would be the resolution of the series itself in the final Compilation Movie, which not only changed the ending from a Downer Ending into a Bittersweet Ending, but also potentially alters the course of two related sequels drastically (if not does away with them entirely). Yoshiyuki Tomino, who created Gundam and directed the Zeta movies in specific, has said that he considers the movies an Alternate Reality, but many fans like to believe that the movies shift the less-popular Gundam ZZ into Dis Continuity territory.
- Another rather famous example is Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz, which quietly replaces the TV series' Gundams (designed by Gundam veteran Kunio Okawara) with sleeker designs by Hajime Katoki via a Flash Back prologue. Fandom is split on the issue, and there's quite a bit of Broken Base feuding over which designs are superior.
- One of the most infamous Ret Cons in Gundam history was the end of the Gundam SEED Special Edition. A scene specifically put in to reinforce a main character's death was edited out to enable an exceedingly wallbanging comeback.
- One episode of Digimon Adventure 02 has a flashback of the season one characters giving up their ability to evolve past a certain level (and by extension, their ability to be of any use in a fight). This comes up right in the middle of the season, soon after the Applied Phlebotinum the now-reformed Ken was using to obstruct their evolution is destroyed, and basically comes across as a cheap excuse to keep the old characters out of the Competence Zone.
- Overlapping with All There In The Manual are the Original Story CD dramas, which established things like Mimi witnessing 9/11, but also threw out Runaway Digimon Express, the second Digimon Tamers movie. Tamers' Original Story, "Message in the Packet," revolves around the fact that the Tamers have yet to reunite with their Digimon partners. Tamers' head writer notes that he was not consulted for the movie, but that he appreciated the decision to tackle Ruki's relationship with her father. This may be why Ruki still hums the song "Yuuhi no Yakusoku," which she sang for her father in the movie, in "Message in the Packet."
- It also gave Patamon and Gatomon (two heroes from 01 that made the main cast in 02) a reason to DNA digivolve.
- In the three-episode ending OVA of Love Hina, Love Hina Again, Keitaro is given a half-sister named Kanoko, whom he somehow never thought to mention during the year and a half he spent at the Hina Inn.
- Ayumu and Hinagiku in Hayate The Combat Butler knew each other in the first season (well enough for them to travel to the Parthenon together), but in the second season, they acted as if they'd never met. However, this may be because the show switched animation studios in between seasons.
- This was due to Adaptation Decay. The second season is following the manga more closely.
- Also, season 2 began with one. In the end of season 1, it's stated that Hayate's been their butler for over a year, whereas in the first episode of season 2, Klaus says Hayate's only been their butler for a month.
- Some newer chapters of Bleach contradict Big Bad Aizen Sousuke's description of past events:
- Aizen claims he took Renji, Kira, and Hinamori all under his direct supervision immediately after they joined the 13 Squads, and that Renji was the only one he let go. Then a recent Asspull said that Kira is a former member of the 4th Squad.
- This causes problems because Kira decides he has to call in the fourth division to heal Renji in the Soul Society arc, but in the battle for Karakura town, he goes to heal Rangiku, albeit hoping he hasn't lost too much of his skill, while she's missing a large chunk of her body.
- Aizen says that Urahara Kisuke was exiled for creating a gigai that was untracable, and destroyed the reiatsu of the shinigami using it, both things that Urahara actually did. In the Turn Back the Pendulum chapters, on the other hand, Urahara's exile is the result of Aizen framing him for turning Hirako and the others into Hollows, something Aizen actually did. As this comes in the middle of a speech boasting about how evil he is and how he has fooled and manipulated people for hundreds of years, there's no reason why he'd be lying, either.
- Some character designs have been retconned, and not because of Art Evolution. Compare Ulquiorra ch. 190 to Ulquiorra ch. 341. Nnoitra's zanpakuto magically became smaller and longer. Santa Teresa ch. 261 and Santa Teresa ch.286. Kubo can't even seem to make up his mind on Orihime's hair color, having it alternate between light brown◊ in some color pages, to bright orange in most others.
- In a similar vein, compare Las Noches before to how it has appeared most recently. Granted it WAS a rather long period of time since he had to do a shot of it, but there's no reason he couldn't reference it first. There's no explanation for the lower level and the absolutely massive towers around the perimeter of the place to be missing at all.
- In the third Megami sound stage of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Hayate says that Fate is more of a sister to Vivio, and Nanoha says that while Fate loves Vivio, she is keeping some distance from her. In ViVid, Vivio says she still considers both of them her mothers, and Fate once refers to herself in the third person as "Fate-mama" while talking to Vivio.
Comic Books
- So that one of the X-Men wouldn't end up committing Genocide, Jean Grey was rewritten so that she was never Phoenix and she never died on The Moon. It was the Phoenix Force itself, who took on Jean's appearance and memories (Quasi-confirmed in a later issue of What If..? which showed what would have happened if "Jean" had had her powers stripped rather than committing suicide). Has been retconned several times since then, the latest version is that it was Jean on the Moon. How she ended up in Jamaica Bay a few years after that isn't accounted for (perhaps those Running The Asylum Did Not Do The Research).
- Plus becoming Phoenix in the first place was a retcon. Xavier basically went "Oh, she had this powerful other self in her the whole time, that I just sealed away."
- From an X Men fan-parody film on Magneto's retcon survival: "No, that was actually Xorn's twin brother possessed by the sentient mold Sublime, pretending to be me, pretending to be Xorn." As crazy as that sounds, the parody writer is not making that up.
Beast: That defies all logic!
- "Hey guys, there was a secret team of X-Men that I, Professor Xavier, sent off to their deaths. I really didn't mention it before because I thought that it would have been far too depressing for you guys, and because I am the biggest bastard on the planet. Now go on out there and save that world that both hates and fears us!" (X-Men: Deadly Genesis seemed like it was designed for the sole purpose of smearing Professor Xavier's reputation.)
- Its well known that Death Is Cheap in comics, except as an old comic nerd phrase goes Bucky, Uncle Ben, and Jason Todd. Fans can no longer use that phrase after two of the three have since been revived, and Uncle Ben has come back for some cameos
- The absolute champion of retcons is pretty much the best known superhero in the world, Superman. His origin, early years, and powers have been revamped a ridiculous number of times just in "official" comic book continuity (and not counting in-story changes). Just to start:
- Superman's powers were originally a result of evolution (according to the text narration, Superman's people were what humans would become in ten thousand years). As Superman's powers increased and changed, they were attributed to the differences in gravity and finally the radiation from the sun.
- Krypton has alternated between a 1950s-ish superscience planet with Space Clothes to a cold, sterile planet with everything made out of crystal and nearly emotionless inhabitants, to a borderline police-state where everyone dresses like Doctor Strange.
- Sometimes he's been the only survivor, and at other times (such as now in continuity), Earth has enough surviving Kryptonians to theoretically rescue the species from extinction with decent genetic diversity.
- His rocket was sometimes also an artificial womb so that he was actually "born" on Earth, or he was placed into it as a baby who'd been born the old fashioned way on Krypton.
- In the first episode of the Superman radio serial, he emerged from the rocket fully grown and already wearing his Superman suit.
- His powers vastly increased over time until the "Man Of Steel" reboot in the 1980s when they were drastically reduced, but have crept back up slightly again.
- He either had superhuman powers as a baby (often played for comedy), or gradually gained them in his teens (often played to rip-off X-Men "coming of age"-esque plots).
- Everything from Krypton is nigh indestructible on Earth, sometimes it's only the Kryptonians, sometimes only clothing that's in direct contact with their skin.
- In the Silver Age, Superman was once Superboy and faced off against his once-friend-then-nemesis, Mad Scientist Lex Luthor, and time-travelled to the 30th Century to be a member of the Legion of Super Heroes. Then he didn't do that and only assumed a costumed identity in his early 20s, meeting billionaire industrialist Lex Luthor for the first time. Now he did travel in time as a teenager, and was friends with Lex Luthor (once again Super Genius) as a child. Except when he didn't travel in time and only met the Legionnaires once when they popped back to visit him as a (nonsuperhero) kid.
- Speaking of the Legion, for those keeping count, we're up to three different versions in current DC Comics continuity.
- In another notable comic-book retcon, Batman is now known as a superhero who refuses to use a gun or to kill (well, most of the time). This was not true in the first year or so, although he didn't actually kill humans very often and most villains died from Karmic Death. See Pay Evil Unto Evil.
- Batman has enough to fill the list. One of the most notable concerns events in the story arc Hush. The titular villain appears revealed as long dead Robin Jason Todd, before he turns out to be an imposter (and not the real Hush, at that). Later, a ret con revises the story so that it was a resurrected Todd after all, but he escaped to be replaced by the imposter mid-battle.
- The Spider Man stories "One More Day" and "Brand New Day" infamously altered twenty years worth of continuity by erasing Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson's marriage from continuity. This happened because Spider-Man saved his aunt's life by making a deal with Mephisto, a "demon" character typically used as the Marvel Universe stand-in for the Devil.
- Not that before was any picnic. Like with JMS's "Spider-Totem" story, implying that there was fate or something profound lingering over Spider-Man's simple origin story.
- Still doesn't explain why Pete didn't simply take Aunt May to the X-Men, who have a member with healing powers strong enough to regrow a man's heart within seconds, fast enough to stop him from dying after it's been ripped out.
- Back at DC, the revamp of Firestorm in the late '80s when John Ostrander took over. This was the start of the idea of the "Firestorm Matrix," and culminated in the character going from nuclear man to fire elemental. Oh, and by the way, the nuclear power plant explosion that fused Ronnie Raymond and Martin Stein? That was not just fate, not just a coincidence. You see, Stein was singled out to be the "true" Firestorm/Fire Elemental all along!
- Which led to Ronnie and Mikhail Arkadin leaving the Matrix and Stein entering it to bring Firestorm to his "pure" form to fight the villain Brimstone. Raymond would later return as "classic" Firestorm in the '90s with Stein as Elemental Firestorm as a separate character. Then when Jason Rusch became Firestorm, Stein returned somehow in humanoid form.
- The fastest turnaround in retcon history may appear in Uncanny X-Men Annual #2. Serving as both a prequel and installment to Dark Reign, it does away with Namor being presented as a skeevy, smelly, creepy old man by turning the dialogue between him and Emma subtly flirtatious. Shame he couldn't do anything about Emma being written as a valley girl.
- Wolverine's claws originally appeared to be part of his glove, so the revelation that they were part of his body may or may not be considered a retcon. Later X-rays of his arms clearly showed that the claws were implants with mechanical housings and an extension/retraction mechanism. When it was later "revealed" that his claws were a natural part of his skeletal system, the conflict with the earlier x-rays was never mentioned.
- Similarly, Wolverine's eternal rival Sabertooth first appeared in Iron Fist as a psychopathic human murderer who wore clawed gloves.
- In his early X-Men appearances, Wolverine's skeleton was said to be reinforced with strips of adamantium. The current incarnation has the adamantium fused throughout his bones at a molecular level.
- In issue #34 of Deadpool, it is revealed that Deadpool is not actually Wade Wilson, but stole the identity from the man who would become T-Ray. This was later retconned in such a senseless, ham-handed way into a trick by T-Ray to mess with Deadpool's head that most fans didn't even remember it until it was restated in Cable & Deadpool.
- Despite the fact that Cassandra Cain's entire upbringing was a never ending training from hell, she did love her father, and yet she ran away from him. The reason was that her first kill was the very first time she had witnessed death up close and due to her body reading abilities she thought it to be very, very, scary. Thus she found out her upbrining was evil. Now enter the last issue of Adam Beechen's mini series about her where it is revealed that she hated her dad all along, and that she had actually witnessed her father commiting murder up close many times before her first kill.
- Writers for Fantastic Four initially couldn't decide whether or not the title characters kept their identities secret through Clark Kenting. The retcon was a combination—they thought their identities were secret, and everyone else was humoring them.
- A rather controversial retcon happened in the Green Lantern series. When DC wanted to reimagine the series, Hal Jordan (the Green Lantern) pulled a Face Heel Turn and became a super-villain named Parallax, who killed all the other Green Lanterns. Then, he turned back to Face in time to sacrifice himself to save the world. After this, Hal was replaced by Kyle Rayner. Poor Kyle never seemed to quite catch on with fans, so after a few years DC decided to bring Hal back. In order to smooth over his Face Heel Turn with fans, it was revealed that he never was actually evil, he was possessed by a cosmic being of fear named Parallax.
- This change was also another entry in the long list of retcons of the Green Lantern's "yellow weakness." First, Green Lantern was weak against the color yellow because of a necessary impurity in his power, then it was revealed that the restriction wasn't necessary at all, it was something artificial the Guardians imposed on the Green Lanterns to keep them from going power-crazy. When Kyle became the only Green Lantern, the yellow impurity was removed. In Green Lantern: Rebirth it was retconned so that the yellow impurity was caused by the alien entity Parallax being trapped inside the Central Power Battery that gave all the Green Lanterns their power, and Kyle didn't have the yellow weakness because Parallax had been set free by Hal. Since then, the current manifestation of "the yellow impurity" is that the Green Lantern can only use his power against the color yellow if he knows the (most current retconned) source of the yellow impurity, and consciously overcomes his fear.
- Star Wars: Jedi vs. Sith is basically an official Fix Fic that fits together disparate elements from the Prequel trilogy that conflict with the original trilogy (1,000 years vs. 1,000 generations for the Republic), elements from the Prequel trilogy that conflict with each other, the Valley of the Jedi from Jedi Knight II, some novellas that were in part themselves Ret Cons for the Dark Forces Saga, among other things, and still manages to have a good story. YMMV if you find Star Wars characters using bows and arrows and wooden-hulled, sailing ship-shaped spacecraft to be jarring.
- A rather controversial retcon by the same author as the Green Lantern example was in The Flash Rebirth. Barry Allen came back (which was fine) but now instead of the previous "Happy Family" he had, his father was accused of the murder of Allen's mother. Really it was Professor Zoom, who went back in time and killed Barry's mom to ruin Barry's life. The first Geoff Con that everyone was fine with.
Film
- An interesting example occurs in the film version of The Bourne Ultimatum: At the end of The Bourne Supremacy, Jason Bourne calls CIA Deputy Director Pamela Landy, who reveals his real name, birthdate, and birthplace, before they arrange a meeting elsewhere in the city. This exact same scene occurs in the middle of Ultimatum, after we learn how she came across this information, before we learn that 1) the meeting was a diversion so Bourne could break into the CIA's headquarters and steal the documents he needed, and 2) the "birthdate" she gave him was actually a code for the address of the CIA facility in which Bourne was trained.
- This semi-twist has generally been referred to as "awesome" or thereabouts.
- The Star Wars prequels possibly set the record for biggest number of ret-cons in a major motion picture series in the shortest screen time.
- In Star Wars Episode VI, Leia tells Luke that she remembers her real mother; however in Episode III, we see that her mother (Padme) dies shortly after giving birth to both twins— thus either presenting a serious Ret Con, or else making Leia the most amazing infant-prodigy known in terms of early-childhood memory (particularly since Luke was born first, but remembers nothing).
- ...In Episode IV, Obi-Wan mentions that Anakin wanted Luke to have his lightsaber when he was old enough. However, unless Obi-Wan heard Anakin screaming something very different than what was said onscreen as he was being roasted alive on the shores of Mustafar, this is altered quite drastically in Episode III. Though some fans shrug it off with it being From A Certain Point Of View.
- Come on, what would anyone have said in his position? Would you expect someone to say, "Here, Luke, this is the light saber I essentially grave robbed from your pop when I left presumed dead a char broiled extra crispy corpse on the lip of a volcano wasting away after screaming how much he hated me when I chopped off his limbs and left him to roast"?
- ...In Episode VI, Obi-Wan mentions that, when he first met Anakin, he was already a great pilot. But, come Episode I, the story appeared quite differently. Anakin had never so much as touched a ship when Obi-Wan met him and his only vehicle-related experience came from a single race that he not only did not win, but failed to even finish.
- Actually, when they both met face to face, Anakin had actually won the race that would lead to his being freed.
- ...In Episode V, Obi-Wan mentions that Yoda was the Jedi Master that trained him. Episode I would change this to be Qui-Gon Jin.
- Episode II suggests that most young Jedi in training are supervised by Yoda at one point or another. Also, although Qui-Gon was his personal teacher, all jedi during that time period could consider Yoda to be their "teacher" (though it's still not quite what you'd think Obi-Wan meant).
- Leia mentions in her message to Obi-Wan that he served (her) father during the clone wars. Except her father was a Senator by that point, and while Obi-Wan was leading the Republic's armies as a Jedi General, he never was in the service of Bail Organa. He did serve Leia's biological mother as a bodyguard however.
- This is probably referenced near the end of Episode III, where Bail Organa helps Obi-Wan and Yoda out in their attempts to eliminate the Sith, and later the hiding of the twins.
- Hell, the original Star Wars trilogy had nearly as many retcons added to it: Vader becoming Luke's father rather than killing Luke's father, Leia becoming Luke's twin sister rather than a completely unrelated princess (and a few years younger than Luke to boot), Owen Lars going from Luke's biological uncle to Ben's brother (in deleted dialogue from ROTJ) to Anakin's stepbrother in the prequels just to name a few.
- The Reveal towards the end of Lethal Weapon 2 that the death of Riggs' wife was no accident but rather a botched attempt by the villains to kill Riggs himself back when he with Narcotics working at Long Beach.
- In Jurassic Park, the T-Rex didn't eat Dr. Grant because it couldn't see moving objects (in the book, this was in fact a result of splicing dinosaur DNA with frog DNA). In the sequel, this was retconned to rather be that Grant's theories on the T-Rex were wrong, and in fact it ignored him because it wasn't hungry.
- In Spider-Man 3, Sandman is suddenly revealed to have been Uncle Ben's REAL killer, and not the guy established as such in the first film.
- And then it goes on to retcon that, too, and takes things right back to the original story.
- Kopa, Simba and Nala's son mentioned in the storybook The Lion King: Six New Adventures, was ditched and replaced with Kiara in the sequal to The Lion King without explanation.
Literature
- In-verse example: 1984 is hugely based off this trope. Big Brother can rewrite history at will, and the masses have to eat it up.
- In the Honor Harrington series, later books (and short stories, although they are set earlier in the timeline) reveal that Honor is the result of genetic modification that gives her enhanced physical abilities and an increased metabolism. It raises issues about incidents in the early books she's described as accomplishing because of practice, training, and being raised on a higher-gravity world, instead of being inherently stronger and faster.
- In the first book, when the story of Pavel Young's attempted rape and its aftermath is mentioned, the resulting stomping of said aforementioned rapist-wannabe is given as due to her martial arts training and world of origin. In Field of Dishonor, the winning of the duel is implied to be due to her rage and relentless practice. It's only well into later books that it's revealed she had a tad more of an edge than just the learned skills.
- Also in the Honor Harrington series, David Weber had to Ret Con the length of ships versus their weight, as he'd initially neglected the Square-Cube law, leaving the smallest warships about right but the biggest ones "not quite as dense as cigar smoke."
- From the Harry Potter series: in Harry Potter and the Philosophers' Stone, Dumbledore flies to London for a supposed meeting, then flies back, arriving just in time to save Harry from Quirrellmort. We were probably supposed to believe that he was on broomstick. But later books introduce the ideas that wizards have instantaneous methods of travel: Floo Powder, Apparition, etc. Book 5 tells us Dumbledore went on a flying horse (Thestral) because he wanted to arrive late because the Ministry (who were supposed to have called the meeting) were annoying him. But couldn't he have just taken Floo Powder at a later time?
- In one of the earlier books, the phrase "hit-wizards" was used to describe wizards that, in later books, once the word was made up, would be called Aurors. Another change is that in earlier books, the spell to move things was "Mobiliarbus..." as opposed to later in the books when it became "Locomotor...".
- The Lestat that appears in Interview With A Vampire is a rather stupid, petty villain with a streak in banal evil. Anne Rice wrote in her later books that this portrayal was merely Louis' spiteful gossip and/or misunderstandings.
- If The Vampire Lestat is read before Interview With A Vampire, the impression that Louis is giving the account as a bitter ex-love becomes pretty unmistakable.
- In the Jurassic Park novel, Ian Malcolm is very definitely dead. They're even trying to get through diplomatic red tape to get him buried. By the time of The Lost World, Malcolm is alive and well, having only been... mostly dead.
- In Stephen King's Misery, psychotic nurse Annie Wilkes forces Paul Sheldon to retcon the death of Misery Chastain in his series of romance novels. His first attempt is to simply Rewrite it, but he is forced to do a Revision in which Misery was buried alive in a coma when Annie considers the rewrite to be cheating.
- In the Sherlock Holmes stories, Arthur Conan Doyle originally intended Holmes to die in "The Final Problem" (as the name kinda implies), but the Holmes fans were so furious (there's a story that an old lady screamed "murderer" at him on the street) that in the end Conan Doyle had to Ret Con his hero back to life in "The Adventure of the Empty House". Opinion pretty divided on whether this is a good thing or not: there are some very good Holmes stories after he comes back, but overall the quality does go down, due to Conan Doyle not really caring any more.
- Given that at the end of The Final Problem no one saw Holmes die, and there was no body found, I have always believed that Doyle deliberately left himself with a way to bring Holmes back, if he wanted to.
- Virtually every popular legend in public domain has been retconned past belief. Two of the best known to English-speakers:
- King Arthur. This was heavily ret-conned twice in the Middle Ages, once to shoe-horn it into the newly invented practice of courtly love (inventing Launcelot in the process), once to fit it into the Grail legends (inventing both Galahad and Percival in the process). Subsequent writers have thrown out large chunks of the mythos to use it and to paper over cracks. For instance, Vera Chapman, in The Green Knight, concluded that the boorish Gawain of later tales could not the gentle knight of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and had to give him a nephew, also named Gawain, to make the tale work.
- Robin Hood. The very oldest ballads show the writers trying to retcon two locations for him, between the commonly known Sherwood and the nearby Barnsdale. In the original ballads, he
- Did not live in the time of Richard the Lion-Hearted but of a King Edward. (Which King Edward, the ballads do not make clear.)
- Did not rob from the rich to give to the poor. At best, he did not rob the poor. This was introduced to the legend in Tudor times.
- Did not associate with Maid Marian or Friar Tuck. Both of these characters were added in Tudor times, when Robin Hood became a character in May games, which already featured Marian and Tuck.
- Did not have Alan a Dale in his band. Alan was invented in Victorian times.
- Did not lead the Merry Men as a band of equals, but maintained strict feudal precedence.
- Was an extremely, indeed murderously violent man.
- Had no associations with national politics but only with local foes such as the Sheriff. Sir Walter Scott invented a role for him against Prince John in King Richard's absence to plug some holes in his Ivanhoe.
- Given that none of these legends have any continuity to them except how the story-teller chooses to tell it, it's not fair to call alternate interpretations "retcons."
- Len Deighton's Hook Line & Sinker trilogy retconned the events of his earlier Game, Set & Match trilogy. In the latter trilogy, Bernie Samson discovered that his wife was a deep cover agent for the Russians. The former trilogy changed this so that his wife was actually working as a deep cover agent for the British with her defection as a bluff
- The Dragon Lance War of Souls trilogy retcons the role of Chaos, "Father of the Gods" to "delusional god who thinks he's father of the gods."
- Not to mention retconning out the ending of Dragons of Summer Flame. Not only does Tasslehoff not die, but Takhsis steals the entire world, somehow pretending to be Fizban while departing with Raistlin. This couldn't have happened, because Raistlin somehow ends back with the gods, a major plot point in Dragons of a Vanished Moon.
- Officially, there's now another Chaos retcon. He's an Eldritch Abomination equal and opposite to the Highgod; while not the ultimate creator, the universe was, in a sense, created from him, and he is as far above the gods as they are above mortals.
- Another retcon is the conception of Steel Brightblade, which no character knew about until The Second Generation.
- Don Quixote. Part 2, which was written a decade after the publication of Part 1, is predicated on the idea that Part 1 was published as non-fiction in his world. This gives the author an opportunity to address contradictions in the original work, by having a character who had read it ask Quixote himself for explanations of what really happened.
- The Hobbit was written well before JRR Tolkien came up with the plot for The Lord Of The Rings. In the original story, Gollum's wager for the Riddle Game was a "present", which turned out to be the ring. Once The Lord Of The Rings existed, having Gollum ever do anything which might lead to him losing the Ring suddenly made no sense at all, and so that chapter had to be Ret Conned. Tolkien dealt with it by making Bilbo an Unreliable Narrator, and having Gandalf shake the "true" story out of him during The Lord Of The Rings.
- The character of Elrond is also slightly different from one book to the other: when Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, he gave him the name of Elrond, which he had previously used in drafts of The Silmarillion for the son of Eärendil, but did not make him the same character, which is why it isn't clear in The Hobbit whether Elrond is actually counted among Elves - he appears to be a Man. It was only when writing The Lord Of The Rings that Tolkien explicitly made the character that appeared in the Hobbit, and the character that appeared in The Silmarillion, one and the same. (Some have argued that this creates another problem, since Elrond, a descendant of Turgon, should perhaps have laid claim to his great-grandfather's sword.)
- Since Glamdring was wielded by Gandalf, one of the Wizards and a Maiar, it makes considerable sense for Elrond to have given or loaned it to him; particularly as Cirdan had already given one of the Three Rings of the Elves — Narya, the Ring of Fire — to Gandalf.
- In The Odyssey, there are two sirens. Yet there is art that depicts three. How to fix, how to fix — obviously, one of them committed suicide in a rage after Jason and the Argonauts! And another one after Odysseus got away! (Which raises the question of how the third one died. . . they never did settle that.) Older Than Feudalism. . . .
- Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey directs the fateful mission to Saturn, but The Film Of The Book goes to Jupiter (according to The Other Wiki, because the special effects team couldn't make a satisfactory ring effect for Saturn). When Clarke wrote 2010, he decided that Jupiter worked better for the new plot and went with it.
- Since the Cthulhu Mythos has had so many authors over so many years, lots of stuff gets retconned back and forth. Particularly notable is August Derleth's oft-reviled attempt to impose Elemental Rock Paper Scissors and a good/evil dichotomy on Cosmic Horror and fans revising the wings of Elder Things and Mi-Go (which were originally said to allow them to fly through space) to solar sails.
- The Sword Of Truth series: Presumably to explain the inconsistencies in the timeline generated by the official version of the Magic of Orden, the final book reveals that the Book of Counted Shadows, supposedly the instuction manual to safely use the power of Orden, is a fake So far, so neat and tidy, until you remember that the climax of the first book and a large chunk of the plot of the second book (and, indirectly, most of the rest of the series) rest on Richard awakening his Gift by using it to kill his father - by tricking him into opening the wrong box - which doesn't apply if there never was a right box, meaning Richard's Gift should not have awakened. Not that the logic was entirely convincing to begin with...
Live Action TV
- The Star Trek franchise is a Shared Universe spanning more than forty years, with writing of, to put it kindly, variable quality. Naturally, it has suffered many retcons:
- The Klingon makeup change was just better budgeting from the show to the movies. Worf's scene in Deep Space Nine in the flashback turned it into an actual plot point.
- In the end, Star Trek Enterprise resolved the matter once and for all, proposing that the change was a side effect to the cure for a fast-spreading plague.
- The changes we see in Kang, Koloth and Kor are alluded to as well, as the episode ends with a Klingon doctor speculating on the fortune to be made in the reconstructive surgery business — an option seasoned veterans who had acquired fame and fortune in their younger days, but probably not for young starship commanders looking to make names for themselves. (And neatly ties up the early version of the Klingon makeup used in Star Trek The Motion Picture: the result of botched reconstructive surgery)
- Exactly the same thing happened to the Ferengi between TNG and DS 9, turning from a mighty empire with warships that seriously threatened the Enterprise into a one-note joke race of scheming cowards.
- TNG's pilot, "Encounter at Farpoint", implied that the Ferengi were known for eating sentient beings. This was never brought up again.
- That seems more like discontinuity on the writers' part. A reputation for eating your partners would seem to be bad for business.
- And then again between TNG and Voyager, the Borg changed from assimilating only technology to being essentially techno-vampires.
- In the final episode of Star Trek The Original Series, "Turnabout Intruder", Dr. Janice Lester pulls a Grand Theft Me on Kirk to break through the glass ceiling, because even in the utopian future of Star Trek, women were apparently barred from service as starship captains. This embarrassing piece of 1960's male chauvinism was retconned out by attributing it to the delusions of a mentally unstable woman, despite Kirk's explicit on-screen acceptance of both the accuracy of her accusations, and the injustice of the policy.
- You could argue that Kirk was playing along, having gotten tired of constantly trying to explain the truth to her. Still, that interpretation removes the whole point of the episode. The really tragic thing, though, was it was the last episode of the series. What a way to go out.
- Star Trek The Next Generation has a revelation that excessive warp speeds are causing holes in spacetime (in an Anvilicious Aesop about pollution and the environment), which prompts the Federation to limit ships to Warp 5. Characters in a couple of subsequent episodes pay lip service to the "speed limit" right before they break it, but after that it is forgotten completely, with the general Fan Wank being that an improved version of the Warp Drive that didn't mess up subspace was invented. May also apply to what ought to be the inevitable ramifications of a new technology or application thereof, such as retrieving a heretofore-disintegrated crew member out of the pattern buffers of the transporter.
- In Peter David's Star Trek New Frontier novels, there's an offhand reference from a character who can "see" spacetime about the damage still being done by warp travel. Of course, David loves tossing in little offhand references to all sorts of things from Star Trek history that pretty much all other writers (and fans) ignore, sometimes preferring to forget.
- This got so noted that fanfiction writers No-Prized it, coming up with the dual ideas of the ruts worn in spactime healing over a period of time and simply changing your routes to avoid cumulative Spatial Fatigue.
- In Star Trek Voyager, The Mole Seska claimed to Chakotay that she impregnated herself by stealing his DNA. She also told Kazon leader Cullah, who she was sleeping with, that the baby was his. After the baby was born and was clearly a Cardassian/human hybrid with no Kazon-like features, Cullah was naturally pretty pissed off, which led us into the season ending cliffhanger. However, between seasons everyone decided that the Kazon weren't up to the job of being the show's big recurring bad guys they were envisioned as, much like the Ferengi on TNG, so they decided to drop them from the show entirely. This involved Seska dying, and Cullah running away with the baby. Naturally, fans wouldn't accept Chakotay's kid being raised by the Kazon, however unwillingly he fathered it, so just before this the Doctor reveals it is actually Cullah's baby after all. The baby's appearance is Hand Waved by saying there's never been a Cardassian/Kazon hybrid before so before now no one knew what one would look like, and it'll probably develop Kazon features as it ages.
- The two-part Star Trek Voyager episode, "Year Of Hell", plays retconning literally. the Big Bad has developed a weapon that lets him use retcons to change the timeline (while he himself is protected by Applied Phlebotinum). He first uses it to reverse a stunning defeat to his species... Only to discover he's accidentally retconned his beloved wife and daughter out of existence. He keeps trying. (Also provides a handy Reset Button: evidently, destroying his ship undoes all his Ret Cons... And Ramming Always Works.)
- The most egregious Ret Con in 20th century American entertainment is the soap Dallas which, in order to bring a character Back From The Dead, made an entire season All Just A Dream. You'd think a Soap Opera, of all things, could figure out an easier way to bring someone back.
- Several in the reimagined Battlestar Galactica:
- In the initial mini-series and first few episodes, humanoid Cylons are shown to have glowing spines during intercourse. However, this was officially retconned by producers when it was pointed out that Dr. Baltar already had a 100% accurate Cylon detector. In his pants. Though note Scifi Channel commercials for the second half of season 2, which show a spinally-luminated fetus. Also, in the commentary for the most recent webisodes, writer Jane Espenson mentions it was planned to depict Eight's spine glowing during sex with Gaeta but the scene was rewritten for them to kiss instead. The novelization of the Miniseries says the glow isn't visible to the naked eye, but that book isn't Canon.
- In early episodes we learn that human Cylons had 'evolved' from the Centurions after the First Cylon War. Later there are a few hints that human models already existed before the war. Then, in the last ten episodes, it is revealed that the ancients on Kobol first created artificial 'humans' thousands of years ago, and descendants of these same artificial humans had worked with the Centurions to create the new human models.
- Several characters are revealed to be Cylons and thus, alive after they and the audience thought for years they were human and/or dead. Stand up Anders, Tyrol, Tigh, Tory and Ellen!
- In the miniseries, the audience learns that there are only twelve Cylon models. These are gradually revealed over the series, the twelfth and final Cylon in "Sometimes A Great Notion" then, four episodes later we learn of the (former) existence of a lost thirteenth model, whom we never see.
- In My Parents Are Aliens an episode showing how the aliens met the children shows that Brian and Sophie originally had disguises resembling the presenters of Crimewatch before changing into their familiar forms. Later in the series 7 finale they said that they stole the identities from the children's real uncle and aunt, also named Brian and Sophie.
- Doctor Who: Many of the most notable features of the series, such as regeneration and the Time Lords, were retconned in, often to account for some out-of-character problem. Other changes in the continuity are quite easily explained as a consequence of time travel.
- A mildly brilliant bit of metatextual retcon: Forty-five years after the iconic Doctor Who theme song was written, it was revealed that its four-beat drum rhythm represents a Time Lord heartbeat.
- Cultural reference: Doctor Who spin off Torchwood features a memory erasure drug called "retcon" (a form of Laser Guided Amnesia), leading to characters fearing being "retconned" away.
- Speaking of Torchwood: the episode "Adam" is about a character who retcons himself into Torchwood (not using actual retcon, mind.) He's actually featured in the opening montage of that episode. He also retcons Ianto as a serial killer and alters some of the characters' personalities thanks to his ability.
- Season 2 of Heroes has a rather clumsy example. In the middle of the first season, it's revealed that Matt's wife is pregnant. This causes a few fans to wonder if the baby is really his, since she cheated on him earlier in the season. However, in an episode set five years in the future, we learn that the kid is named after Matt, sends him crayon drawings of himself and mommy from hiding, and, most tellingly in a show where almost everyone with superpowers gets them from Super Powerful Genetics, has a power. Then in an early Season 2 episode, Matt says that whoops, turns out it wasn't his kid after all. In "Fight or Flight," a later Season 2 episode, however, it is implied that he has accepted that it isn't his child without any actual proof, when he has a nightmare in which his wife chastises him for not reading her mind and learning the truth, so this may be a reversion more than rewrite.
- In S1, Mohinder was originally said to have been two years old when his sister died, but they changed it so that he was born months before she died in order to wrestle Molly into his plotline.
- Season 3 retcons Sylar's murderous ways as a side effect of his original ability. His ability to know how things work apparently gave him a "hunger" to kill people just so he can satisfy his fix for more power. This of course ignores that S1 and S2 showed him utterly reveling in murder, even when he didn't have any abilities.
- Although it does explain why a socially suave murderer capable of killing someone, turning around and dropping back into whatever character he was playing to manipulate someone else into doing what he wanted without missing a beat would have a Room Full Of Crazy stating "Please Forgive Me" over and over, which Suresh encountered in S1.
- The writers have a go at fixing this one in the latest flashback too, with Sylar shown to have gone through a guilt ridden phase around the time the series began, presumably redecorating appropriately.
- Take it as a retcon or a further loss of his humanity, but as of season four Sylar can seemingly suppress his hunger (evidenced by a casual road trip that lasted for several episodes next to tasty brain Luke) but still revels in his murderous behavior, perhaps moreso.
- The plot that tried to explain this retcon also retconned Elle's background, as she is portrayed as relatively normal and even caring and guilt-ridden, rather than sociopathic and murderous as in season 2. This contradicts season 2, in which she states she was diagnosed as a sociopath at eight.
- The first one noted above was settled once and for all in volume 4, where it's confirmed that the baby is Matt's.
- In season 1 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Giles states that he is inexperienced with magic and has never used it before. By season 2 it has been established that while he was in college he was using magic recklessly enough to gain the nickname "Ripper" and to summon a dangerous demon that killed several other people.
- Done well in another episode of Buffy, in Spike's introduction. He expresses anger that Angel has gone good, saying, "You were my sire, my Yoda, man!" Angel doesn't elaborate on this at the time. Later we learn that it was Drusilla who actually turned Spike into a vampire while Angelus was his teacher and role model. In another episode Spike outright says, "Drusilla may have made me a vampire, but you made me a monster."
- Lampshaded to a certain extent by the existence of Dawn. She was literally retconned into all the characters' memories but never actually existed as a human before Season 5. When she found this out, it messed her up a little, to say the least...
- Smallville writers can't really figure out this whole business of Retconning. Leaving aside their complete re-write of the entire Superman mythos, the characters and plots within their own show can't even be kept straight by the writers. The biggest problem was the latter part of season 7, with the Veritas storyline "trying" to retcon most of the series, but especially Lionel's motivations. Fans cried foul and rightfully called it an Ass Pull.
- The most egregious example of this was a vital clue hidden in a stained-glass window that hadn't been there in the previous episode. The ridiculousness of retconning a window a week after it had last been seen casts a shadow on what would have been otherwise at least somewhat well-written.
- Aside from making Doomsday a human (canon retcon), the original meteor shower that brought Clark to Earth now includes Davis 'Doomsday' Bloom several feet away (canon retcon). Somehow the FBI agents completely miss the Kents, Clark, and UFO as they stumble across Davis. Plausibility completely falls apart as children Lex Luthor and Doomsday play Pirate with cardboard swords (wow canon retcon) before talking about some metal box that Lex didn't get till he was older (series retcon). Further character derailment when Lionel throws the young alien onto the streets when he realizes he's looking for a different alien.
- Back in the early seasons there was an aboriginal prophecy about 2 titans clashing, basically Clark and his enemy which has been retconned to mean Lionel, Lex, and Davis as the plot demands.
- An reliable psychic woman had a vision of a normal Lex Luthor causing nuclear apocalpyse, which seems unlikely since he's currently skinless, broke, paralyzed and possibly blowed-up.
- In Friends, Ross is shown in later episodes as having a long standing passion for dinosaurs, that stretches back to childhood. However, in the first season, he states he only picked paeleontology as his major on a dare.
- Friends did this more and more with each flashback, resulting in the internal history making little sense. In the first episode, Rachel backs out of her wedding and we find out she hasn't seen Monica or Ross in a very long time. None of the other characters recognize her, but importantly, Chandler doesn't. But in Season 3, we find out that Chandler actually met Rachel just a year before her wedding day, and actually wanted to sleep with her. We then later find out that they met even earlier than that when Rachel was still in Highschool. This means that when Rachel met Chandler briefly in the Season 3 flashback, she didn't recognize him, or she didn't want her friends to know she knew him.
- The most painful, quickest retcon ever was in The 4400. One episode revolves around re-opening the 4400 center. Notably, police try to stop it and tell Shawn he can't heal anyone, because no one can use 4400 abilities, whether they were a 4400 or got it via promicin injection. The very next episode features someone saying "Maia is a 4400, she can legally use her ability". The show then kept on like that without even acknowledging that superhuman abilities were entirely banned in the first few episodes of its last season.
- The Zat stungun in Stargate SG 1 used to be able to disintegrate people and things. They don't do that anymore, because it was getting entirely too silly.
- Not to mention the show retconning a number of things from the original movie, despite the movie itself still being mostly canon: Ra wasn't the last of his species, the Goa'uld didn't look like Protoss with mouths, Abydos isn't "on the other side of the known universe"... Even happened with minor details like an extra "l" being added to O'Neill's name and Sha'uri inexplicably becoming Sha're.
- The most plot-significant one being the gates now all have the same symbols, so they don't have to spend half of every episode figuring out the return address like they did in the movie.
- Mid third season of Stargate Atlantis shows the first shot of the interstellar gate bridge. The first episode of season four shows its completion. Watch carefully in this scene. At one point, we see Carter moving past a computer with a wire frame of a Stargate, notably looking like it has an iris on it. Fastforward to episode seventeen where an entirely brand new line is added into the "previously on" segment, where McKay claims there is actually no need for the midway gates to have irises at all. This change is made for no reason other than to have an episode where the Wraith board the midway station and destroy it. The fallout of this episode is that the I.O.A refuses to build another because they're afraid of the same tactic. The possibility of building another and just adding irises is convieniently never brought up, so it would appear this retcon was all for the sake of justifying the permanent removal of a quick way back to Earth from the series.
- A cross-series Retcon occurred between Cheers and Frasier. In a late Cheers episode, Frasier remarks that his father is dead and was a scientist in life, two things that are clearly not true in Frasier - it was explained as being the result of Frasier and Martin's relationship being quite cold at the time.
- The series long neural-clone subplot in Farscape hadn't actually been thought of when Harvey first appears in "Crackers Don't Matter". The writers needed to think of a way to have Scorpius appear more frequently without losing his menace in the process, so decided to have him pop up as an offkilter hallucination. It worked so well, they ran with it and started dropping hints something more was going on inside Crichton's noggin, before introducing Harvey proper later in the same season.
- Car 54 Where Are You? broke continuity to suit the backstory of the episode probably more than any other sitcom.
Tabletop Games
- Magic: the Gathering has "The Revision". In the early days, the novels and comics were done by different companies than the card game itself, but when Wizards Of The Coast became a bigger company they wanted to publish their own books. Reading the 10 books and the pile of comics so far was apparently too much effort for them though, so they issued a statement that everything that had come before was still valid, unless new stories contradicted them, thus creating what fans call "prerevisionist" and "revisionist" continuity. Several books were actually published that replaced older comics.
- Warhammer 40000 has undergone quite a few of these through its four editions, including entire races being retconned out. Anyone younger than 20 remember the Squats? Didn't think so.
- The official policy on the Squats now appears to be that the entire race was murderlised by one of the Tyranid Hive Fleets. The Tyranids are God's gift to retconners. "Hey, what happened to those guys?" "Eaten by Tyranids."
- Similarily, the Fimirs of Warhammer. Originally created to be the "iconic monsters" of the Warhammer world, they are now remembered only by people who played Hero Quest early in the nineties. Their reproductive cycle revolved around capturing human slaves for brides, which probably made for some thorny conversations with the parents of younger gamers. The Tyranids probably got them too, somehow.
- In Exalted, the Sidereal Exalted (who are basically Fate Ninjas) have a panic button called Avoidance Kata. Its effect? Retcon the whole world so that they made a different choice several minutes ago and are anywhere but here.
- Unknown Armies gives us Entropomancers (chaos mages who get power from taking risks), who are based around re-writing history. Cliomancers, despite being history buffs, can only affect people's PERCEPTION of history, as well as their memories. Of course, this still counts as retcon.
- The "Luck" advantage in GURPS can have the enhancement "Wishing" added to it which allows the person using it to retcon a recent mistake into whatever result they like.
- Wizards Of The Coast wielded a +5 Rethammer in the Fourth Edition Forgotten Realms. Virtually the entire elven pantheon was retconned into one or more existing (usually human-ish) gods, along with the vast majority of the other minor gods. The previous planet of Abeir-Toril was changed to two separate worlds. Also gone is the Blood War, a massive near-eternal war between the devils of the Nine Hells and the demons for the Abyss for ultimate badassery.
- They do give a reason why there is no Blood War. Asmodeus, the lord of the Devils, became a god and took a third option, by kicking the Abyss out of the way so they don't have to fight it.
- Let's not forget the Canon Defilement quality retcon dragons got. Bahamut and Tiamat are now two halves of a dead Io. Metallic dragons got it far worse, with them now being unaligned. Metallics have been good ever since the beginning of the franchise.
- A relatively minor, but still noticeable one was made to the war between the Gods and the Primordials. Originally, the Gods defeated the Primordials and banished them to the Elemental Chaos. Recently, however, it was "revealed" that a third party, the Primal Spirits, intervened and ordered a truce. Granted, it's not as bad as some of the other rectons 4th Edition has brought, but still...
- And of course. Mystra dies. Again. This is what, the third or fourth time? What makes this time so special?
- In the early days of the storyline collectible card game Legend Of The Five Rings, a number of card typos brought about story retcons. The most consequential of these was an oni card misprinted with the name of the hero Hida Yakamo. This led to a story point about Yakamo selling the oni his name, heavily influencing his character development and in the end being explained as the general model for oni-human interaction in Rokugan.
Video Games
- In the original Kingdom Hearts game, Ansem, the leader of Hollow Bastion, was said to be a once-benevolent king who became obsessed with the study of darkness and was eventually consumed by it. In the second game, however, we discover that the person everyone thought was Ansem was actually his apprentice, Xehanort, who had deposed Ansem and stolen his name, and that the real Ansem remained a good guy (for the most part).
- Halo series. From the first game we are given: "You are the Master Chief, born for battle, bred for war, you are the last of Spartan-II project. Your brethren have died". First novel clearly shows they were just missing in action in the fog of war, novel three brings them back entirely. The games never reference any of this.
- When the first Resident Evil proved to be a major sucess in 1996, Capcom's writers quickly came to realize that they had killed off Albert "Magnificent Bastard" Wesker in the very first game. Kinda like Revolver Ocelot biting the dust after his first fight with Snake. Not only he was an interesting villain, but he died in a stupid way, unfit for The Chessmaster. However, being a series where The Virus can do pretty much anything the plot wants, they managed to reintroduce him in RE Code: Veronica, with superpowers to boot. Then, they create a bunch of fictional documents, the Wesker's Report 1 & 2, where they explain that Al was apparently behind everything. This didn't come without further problems, though. For instance: with Resident Evil 5 on the shelves, most RE boards have become a blazing inferno over the issue of whether or not Wesker really did die this time. Even if Capcom felt it necessary for Wesker to have a very anvilicious "death" -getting headshot by two rocket launchers simultaneously while swimming in a pool of magma-, fans will probably argue over this for quite some time.
- The entirety of Resident Evil 0. A shining example of a bad Ret Con, as it answers a lot of questions no one had to begin with, while raising several more that will likely never be addressed.
- The 2008 "revival" of the Turok series was not only a poor Halo clone and general faliure of a game, but a complete retcon of the original series. This angered and alienated long-time fans, but apparently the producers thought they could get away with it by appealing to a completely different audience. They were, of course, wrong.
- Star Craft Brood War: In the original game, the Terrans are portrayed as a near-offshoot of humanity long isolated from Earth, with a separate historical and technological development. The swift arrival of a United Earth Directorate with similar technology and language in the Expansion Pack manages to contradict the spirit of this several times over. The manual tries to handwave it away with references to bugs built into Terran equipment (and the U E D is the in-game explanation for several new units and technologies) but even a rather lenient interpretation of events has trouble making it all fit together.
- Rivaling the Klingons are the orcs from Blizzard's Warcraft franchise. In the first two games the orcs were simply Always Chaotic Evil, but in the third game they were now led by Thrall, a young Shaman, who wants to return his people back to the way they were before the Burning Legion came to Draenor. It turns out that, instead of being bloodthirsty idiots for 100 years as originally stated, they were a peaceful race of warriors who had been corrupted by the Burning Legion only about 5 years before they came to Azeroth. This meant that several orcs remember the time before the corruption. To help with the retcon Blizzard has made a book explaining the corruption and has planned two new books that will show what really happened during the Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal video games.
- Even when one allows for fanon, it's often argued that the draenei are an even bigger retcon than the orcs. In the first two games, they were presumed to be an extinct race. But some survivors (ugly raptor-footed mooks) appeared in the third game. Then, when the Alliance needed a new race in World of Warcraft, the draenei were picked...and their appearance was changed to make them look like smaller, bluer eredar (big demons who had been heavily involved in the corruption of a titan and were the main villains of the third game). The explanation was that the eredar from the third game are actually the man'ari eredar, a corrupted form of the original Eredar, who were actually the draenei. No one's quite sure what corrupted the titan in the first place (dreadlords were definitely involved, but it seems unlikely that it was them alone), but he was the one who corrupted the eredar, rather than the other way around. The draenei in the third game were revealed to have been mutated by demonic magic. In other words, the draenei the players play are the original unmutated draenei, who are in fact the original uncorrupted eredar. Does your head hurt yet?
- Let's not forget their Horde counterpart, the Blood Elves. Supposedly they all followed Kael'Thas into the Outlands, but in World Of Warcraft, there are a lot of them left in Azeroth, and not only that, they also managed to rebuild half of their capital city in a mere four years. And seeing as there are two banks and auction houses in it, business is obviously going great.
- Also see Not Quite Dead and Staying Alive for mind-boggling character revivals in the game universe. Blizzard heavily retcons everything to make new quests (the Black and Blue Dragons were originally stated to have only the aspects left), and make some playable units (see blood elves and draenei). The fans have just learned to accept it.
- Not all fans...
- Worgen are ravening, barely sentient extradimensional hellhounds, right? And nothing's gotten into or out of Gilneas by land since the Second War, right? Who cares; the Alliance needs another new race! Let's have the Gilneans fall under a curse...and become sleeker, friendlier, prettier worgen who are druidic for some reason.
- The Balrons in the Ultima series were originally the barely disguised expy of Balrogs from The Lord Of The Rings, very powerful and very evil demon lords. Ultima 6 later explains that no, they were actually a misunderstood race of Gargoyles. Interestingly, the existence of demonic Balrons seems to have returned in Ultima Online.
- In The Elder Scrolls RPG series the Imperial Province (Cyrodiil) was always described as being covered in a thick jungle. In the only game that takes place there the jungle has turned into generic fantasy forests and meadows. The explanation for this: A god made the land colder for some soldiers who were too hot and the jungle vanished.
- The first 2 games, as well as the spinoff Battlespire, mention that there is no race native from the Imperial Province, that the province is a cosmopolitan mish-mash of all the other races. The Imperial line is supposed to be Nords. Then comes Morrowind, introducing the Imperial race, and retconning them as a decendant of the original Nord caucasian race, from which the modern Nords, Bretons (via mix with elves) and imperials are all descended from. The retcon does maintain that the Emperor's family has more Nord blood then most Imperials.
- One could say that most of the convoluted lore concerning the Elder Scrolls universe is the result of a massive retcon to make all of the possible endings of Daggerfall canon. At the same time.
- Final Fantasy VII has the "Compilation" cheerfully retconning quite a good deal of the original game's backstory, to the consternation of many fans and the relief of others. For a sample of the changes, take a deeeeeep breath: Crisis Core retcons bit-part Zack into a lovable hero, Aeris was likely in love with him before Cloud (in the original game, when Cloud asked if Zack and Aeris were "serious", Aeris replied, "No... but I liked him for a while") and received all much of her trademarks from him, Genesis orchestrated the Nibelheim incident (though it seems to have gotten far more out of hand than he intended), and Zack died fighting the entire Shinra army before passing on his memories to Cloud (a heroic passing-of-the-torch instead of an epic Mind Screw). Before Crisis forever cements the Turks as wisecracking antiheroes instead of villains, portrayed similarly in CC and AC, as well as adds a different incarnation of AVALANCHE that existed before Barrett founded his group; Advent Children itself changes the personalities of many characters, but especially Cloud (considerably more mopey) and Vincent (considerably less mopey); and Dirge of Cerberus retconned considerable amounts of Vincent's backstory and added an entire army of subterranean SuperSoldiers to the canon where there were none before).
- Cloud being considerably more mopey in Advent Children is explained in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it-moment: The Geostigma that infects people doesn't just hurt them, it also fills them with doubt and angst and other bad emotions. Naturally, Cloud is able to resist it long enough to maintain his Bad Ass-edness, but it isn't until his stigma is cured that he actually stops being mopey and truly becomes his Bad Ass Super Soldier self.
- The Advent Children Complete release RetCons it even further, as it reveals that the reason Cloud is so mopey is that he has worn himself thin looking for a cure for Denzel's Geostigma, and can't bear to stick around and watch him die without being able to do something about it.
- Interestingly, some of the Ret Con in the compilation has already been hit by the Reset Button, as aspects of the Nibelheim Incident changed in the anime short Last Order were retconned in Crisis Core to be more similar to the original game's events.
- Word Of God has stepped in to say that all depictions of the Nibelheim incident represent a different character's perspective and memory of it; bits and pieces of each recollection collectively form what truly happened.
- Sonic the Hedgehog's retcons are confusing at best. Shadow's dead, no he's not, he's alive, except he's a robot (revealed in the same game where's he found to be alive), except he's not a robot, he's a clone, except he's not, he's really the original Shadow. A retcon so bad it took two games to sort it out.
- Then there's the entire re-imagining that everything post-Sonic Adventure has brought, with some characters gaining a year, some characters becoming four years older, and one losing ten years, and Robotnik becoming Eggman. One only has to look at the Archie Comics version of Sonic to see how much of an effect this has had on the early stories.
- Except in Japan, Robotnik was always Eggman. (Goo goo goo-chu!)
- Incidentally continuing this name game listed in the above, the Street Fighter series is RIFE with retcon, from changing the storylines in the Alpha games then deciding they aren't canon to the classic issue of the American edition having Balrog, M. Bison, and Vega switch names!! In Japan, Vega was the dictator, Balrog the Spanish Ninja, and M. Bison was the brutal boxer. Your mileage may vary, but that ear bite later on indicates the clear retcon to avoid legal issues from a real life boxer named Tyson wasn't all that necesary in the end..
- Do we even need to get started on the Myst series? First, Revelation changed the entire concept of trap books by turning them into prison ages instead and having Sirrus and Achenar return. It also introduced Yeesha, who later on in Uru and even End of Ages bent so many of the rules of Writing Ages that she practically threw both canon and fanon out the window.
- Uru at least acknowledged that what Yeesha could do was out of the ordinary ("I could write things they never thought possible"). Myst IV on the other hand seemed to act as if the prison books had always been that way which just doesn't make sense.
- The Metroid remake, Zero Mission, contains a great many retcons to the original story, most along the lines of what happens to Samus after she defeats Mother Brain. However, things such as Kraid and Ridley getting massive growth spurts (to match their portrayals in later games) are clearly Re Write territory.
- In Summoner, Laharah is an evil goddess, and her followers, the Nuvasarim, feed on agony. This is thoroughly - and convincingly - retconned in the sequel, in which Laharah is the protagonist. except that neither Laharah, nor Urath, nor any other gods exist. They are all merely parts of Aosi. What's that you say? Vadagar's giant three-headed corpse? We didn't walk through any giant three-headed corpse!
- Dark Reign has an ingenious version of this: the first twelve missions are recreations of famous battles between the Freedom Guard and the Imperium. The final mission invloves going back in time and retconning history itself by saving Togra and defeating both sides. Thus, the ret con is part of the plot.
- In Backyard Skateboarding, the playable characters have allegedly never heard of several neighborhood kids. This would fit in continuity for Andy MacDonald, but not for the Backyard Kids because they played in the same league as them for a few years! In MANY different sports! (It may be that Skateboarding is supposed to be from Andy MacDonald's perspective, with the others as just playable.)
- The Metal Gear Solid series had a series of retcons, particularly when it comes to much of the backstory that was previously established in the original Metal Gear games for the MSX2. First of all, we have Big Boss, who had a few. The character art in the original Metal Gear had Big Boss wearing his eye-patch over his left eye, but his in-game sprite clearly has over his right and every game afterward does the same. According to the Metal Gear 2 manual, Big Boss originally lost his right eye during or after the 80s, but in MGS3 he loses it during the events in that game, which is set in 1964. MGS3 also de-aged by roughly ten years, since the first two MGS games established that Big Boss was in his 50s when his clones were created during the early 1970's, whereas in MGS3 he's only in his 30's. And he supposedly became the leader of FOXHOUND during the early 1990's, before they alluded to him starting FOXHOUND in 1971 (after Portable Ops). The explanation is that Major Zero put all those rumors out there to make Big Boss seem cooler, but this is pure fanwankery.
- The titular super tank itself has had its history changed as well. The TX-55 Metal Gear from the first MSX game in the series was originally the first of its kind, until RAXA and the ICBMG (both from MPO) , as the titular Peace Walker from the upcoming MGS: Peace Walker, proves that there were at least three models before it.
- Gray Fox's back-story was also heavily retconned in MPO. In MG2, Gray Fox reveals during his dying speech (the first of two as it would turn out) that he was a half-white war orphan from Vietnam who was adopted by Big Boss and later served Renamo (the Mozambican National Resistance) during the Mozambican Civil War. In MPO, we find out he was a German-speaking child soldier from Mozambique who fought for the Frelimo (who were the enemies of the real life Renamo) during the late 60's. Oh yeah, he was a ninja working for FOX too, just like his future self from MGS1. Fans are split on whether this made Gray Fox even more badass than he already was or simply made his back-story more convoluted than it needed to be.
- The first few .hack// games avoided this by being a direct sequel to the anime .hack//Sign; on the other hand, Roots contradict various aspects of the G.U. games (both were released about the same time, but when Roots reenacted some of G.U.'s scenes, the first game was already available for months). The most jarring ones:
- Shino's death scene (in this case, the Ret Con was caused by the games). While the scene is essentially the same in both versions, some minor details were changed to contribute to the drama of Alkaid's death scene in the games. Shino got lines when in the anime she didn't say anything, among other changes (such as Haseo not calling her on her phone). Shino's outfit coloring also suffered, as in some of the game's flashbacks it would be black (that is, post-Ovan-disappearance) when, according to the plot, it should be white.
- Champions Online seems to be lampooning the trope: "Ret Con" was their custom term for a respec, until some Muggles^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hplayers got confused by it!
- Some (minor and easily handwaved) details from the first Jak And Daxter game don't exactly mesh with revelations made in the later games, but so far, nothing truly wall-bangingly stupid has happened yet.
Web Comics
- Parodied in an oddly confusing fashion by Evil Incorporated. See the strip here.
- Nikki in The KAMics was told by the author that she was a fictional character without a name, was later named by a reader, then it was retconned that she was a sister to the ex-Valkyries Gertrude & Brunhilda & her name had always been Nikki & she didn't realize this because of amnesia.
- I dare you to bring up the Infamous Pedal Question in Misfile. I frickin' DARE you!
- Erfworld recently needed to retcon a special ability given to one of the characters in its series. Funnily enough, it actually managed to successfully lampshade this through the ironically-recursive introduction of a school of magic known as retconjuration. (In an even more delicious twist of irony, this school retroactively replaced a school called Deletionism, which was, well... deleted.)
- Drowtales went through this once. Now the first episode has been redone the second time. While the new pages are much better quality-wise, and some of the plot make a lot more sense, many elements were removed, characters have been derailed, and episodes were cut down to mere sketches of their former selves. Not to mention the mysteries the reader was left in the dark about for most of the original stories were also revealed retroactively, taking away the suspense that provided most of the enjoyment. The series also became Lighter And Softer, and considering the world setting, that's not necessarily a good thing.
Web Original
- Not altogether uncommon in Survival Of The Fittest for example, from the V3 Pregame to the start of the game itself, Sean O'Cann went from a narcissistic, arrogant Jerk Jock with hints of homosexuality to a friendly, compassionate, fairly sensitive guy. This change seems to rely on the assumption that a couple of pregame topics (which featured Sean acting like a Jerkass) never happened.
- Also, Bobby Jacks' full name. It transpires on the 7th day of the game that his name is actually Robert, with Bobby being a nickname. No reference of this being the case had been made before this point, although some people assumed that his name was Robert prior to that, but it's never mentioned, and his profile doesn't even note it.
- Finally, the setting itself was Retconned, changed from being set in the Battle Royale universe to its own original continuity and setting.
- LG15: the resistance applied a couple of these to lonelygirl15, such as the revelation that Sarah was evil all along or that Jonas is a trait positive male.
- Lampshaded in Unforgotten Realms where in one episode, Garry got his original body back (in a way that doesn't make sense), and jumps off a cliff. Two episodes later, Roamin talks about how the show does not make sence, and Garry reappears in his new body.
Western Animation
- Futurama, "The Why Of Fry". This fourth-season episode posits that the original accident causing Fry to be frozen and sent forward into the year 3000 was actually intentionally caused by Nibbler and the Nibblonians so that he could save the universe from the giant space brains. At first glance, this seems like a Ret Con; however, careful viewing of the original first episode shows the shadow of Nibbler underneath the desk as the accident happens and in a revisited scene his eye stalk poking out, proving that the producers of the show set this up from the very beginning.
- Also confirmed, that very episode has Fry time traveling back in time to stop Nibbler before he is frozen. After he decides to help Nibbler freeze himself, Fry's own shadow could be seen in all following retellings of the incident. Especially in the movie where there's clearly his own shadow. Oh and speaking of the movies, the abuse of the cryo chambers and retcons where all the destructions in the pilot by aliens were now clearly shown to be Bender.
- Perhaps the most jarring Ret Con of the movie was the fate of Fry's dog in the 2000's.
- Possibly justified, in that the original episode with Fry's dog made grown men cry.
- Speaking of Seymore, his entire episode (along with any other flashbacks of Fry c. 2000) were technically ret cons.
- Kim Possible: While it was never mentioned in the show proper, the Word Of God in the beginning was that Shego's plasma hands were due to some technology in her gloves. She was eventually turned superhuman, shown using her abilities barehanded, and even given a Super Hero Origin Back Story. Note that the official website still has the original explanation.
- In one first season episode the original explanation seems to be shown when Shego doesn't have a gloves on, but doesn't bother to attack Kim when she could.
- The Justice League cartoons get rid of most of the annoying retcons in The DCU, but they make a few new ones. Doomsday showed up in the original Justice League episode "A Better World," in which he said he was an alien invader looking to see what Earth had to offer in the way of worthy opponents. He's never heard of Superman before and doesn't seem to care one way or another about him. Later on in Justice League Unlimited he was retconned to be a creation of Project Cadmus, who reverse-engineered him from Superman's DNA and conditioned him to hate Superman above all else. Then, to explain his appearance in the older episode, Cadmus shot him into space for no good reason. He even got a completely different voice.
- It happened again in the Fully Absorbed Finale for Batman Beyond, which threw together plot points from dozens of episodes and two movies into something they clearly weren't originally meant to be.
- In The Simpsons, the series has gone through a retcon as of the episode "That 90's Show." In the earlier episodes, Homer and Marge attended high school in the late 1970's got married three or four years after graduating from high school after Marge became pregnant with Bart, Bart was born in 1980, Lisa was born in 1983, and Maggie was born in 1990, but the series was retconned in the aforementioned episode. Marge in previous episodes had never gone to college, but was suddenly attending in the mid 90's; it led us to believe Homer had a Grunge band, whereas in an earlier episode he didn't understand grunge at all; and they also showed us that they dated for at least ten years before getting married and having the kids, who are now retconned into being born in the early 2000's.
- Prior to this the characters were stuck in the 90's and never aged.
- The Simpsons time line being what it is, this retcon actually makes sense. The Simpsons' time exists on a sliding line, so even though every episode happens in "the present", the past keeps moving forward. Also note that while the kids' age never change, Marge and Homer have been, albeit very slowly, getting older; being in their mid-thirties in early episodes and now nearing forty (presumably to reflect the aging American population), which does leave a gap for the events of "that 90's show" to take place.
- The writers have made clear that some things are immune to the sliding time gimmick. Grandpa Simpson and Mr. Burns will always be WW 2 veterans, even if that makes them unrealistically old. They will also have both known the Great Depression.
- Also on the subject of Mr. Burns, he started out at 81 years old (the early episode where Homer defrauds the plant's health insurance for hair growth), but is now canonically 104 years old.
- Thomas the Tank Engine: Reverend Awdry stated that the North Western Railway was built in 1914, mainly by Edward. In the 2009 movie Hero of The Rails, it is stated that the new character Hiro was responsible for building it. This may sound like a standard Ret Con, but keep in mind that Hiro is a JNR class D51, which wasn't built until 1936. And it doesn't help that Hiro is Japanese and thus runs on a completely different gauge than traditional British engines... argh.
- In Dexters Laboratory in the 5th episode we are introduced to Dexter's rival Mandark who had just moved into the neighborhood as an exchange student who introduces him himself as Ivan Astrononminov but prefers to be called Mandark and he was a fairly competent villain when Deedee wasn't around, in the last two seasons which were made a few years after the series had ended Mandark is now named Susan and has a pair of hippie parents and had met Dexter early on and made fun of his name forcing him to change it and he's not nearly as competent as he was in the earlier episodes.
- In the original Fairly Oddparents pilot, Vicky was apparently babysitting Timmy for the first time, and Timmy was ten. The first movie reconned both points: Vicky had been Timmy's babysitter for a year, and Timmy was nine when he first got Cosmo and Wanda.
Real Life
- Stalin was constantly re-writing the early history of the Communist revolution and the USSR to remove opponents from history or take credit for their accomplishments, even when the resulting version made no sense. A few of his successors continued the practice. Stephen Jay Gould once reported reading a version of the Soviet Encyclopaedia that completely removed Stalin from history, which is kind of like trying to tell the Star Wars original trilogy as "The Jabba The Hutt Show!"
- The 2006 reclassification of Pluto as a dwarf planet.
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