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alt title(s): 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."
Ret Con = Retroactive Continuity.
Reframing past events to serve a current plot need. When the inserted events work with what was previously stated, it's a Re Vision; when they outright replace it, it's a Re Write. The ideal Ret Con clarifies a question alluded to without adding excessive new questions.
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 Ret Con 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 Ret Con 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.
(In other words, No Prize it into plausibility and away from the dizzying realm of the Ass Pull)
The Ret Con 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 Ret Con does not actually violate canon, but rather violates fanon, the set of unstated interpretations usually made by the audience. Most competent writers achieve a Ret Con 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 Ret Con (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 Ret Con 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 Ret Con 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 Ret Con 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?
Compare Flip Flop Of God.
Specific variants: Cerebus Retcon, Re Vision, Re Write and Remember The New Guy.
Notable retcons:
Live Action TV
- Perhaps the most egregious Ret Con in 20th century American entertainment was Star Trek's unexplained transformation of the Klingons from underhanded sneaks (based on the Cold War image of the Russians) who resembled swarthy humans, into Rubber Forehead Aliens who are all Proud Warrior Race Guys.
- The change got deep enough under the collective fandom skin that twenty years later, a Lamp Shade Hanging was done about it in the Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations". After the time-travelling crew of DS 9 notice the differences, Worf mentions that it's "something they don't talk about with outsiders".
- It would have been vastly cooler to just put Michael Dorn (who played Worf) in the old-fashioned makeup and have no one even mention it. That's just how Klingons look, didn't you know...?
- Star Trek Fan Fic had suggested, among other theories, that there were two races of Klingons and that there had been a genocidal civil war in which the race seen in TOS were wiped out. Another theory was that the TOS Klingons were genetically engineered to look similar to humans for purposes of making contact.(These theories were both exploded in the DS 9 episode where we see Kang, Koloth, and Kor, all characters from the Original Series, with the ridges, long hair, and bad teeth of "modern" Klingons).
- 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.
- On that note, the early seasons of Star Trek Voyager contained numerous mentions of "The Phage". In one episode it was specifically stated that Klingons had a resistance to it, as though they had suffered some incarnation of it in the past.
- Half the characterization on Voyager was retroactive, too. Characters would suddenly have had a hobby, quirk, relationship or obsession all along, without it ever having come up before. It'd usually be gone by next episode, though.
- 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. And then again between TNG and Voyager, with the Borg changing from assimilating only technology to being essentially techno-vampires.
- The other contender for the title of 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.
- Battlestar Galactica (2004 series) - 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.)
- Given that humans in general and folks on TV in particular usually have sex face-to-face, it's entirely possible Baltar, Helo, and Chief Tyrol don't know about the glowing spines.
- It's still rather stupid to base your plan for infiltration on the hope that nobody thinks to try anything other than the missionary position in a well lit room.
- Word Of God says that this was not a Ret Con and the spine wasn't actually glowing; rather, that was intended as a visual cue for the audience in order to indicate that her skeletal structure was (A) not human and (B) heating up. Therefore, while the audience sees the spine glow, the characters can't due to their lack of Infrared Vision.
- Star Trek The Next Generation: the 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 a fixed version was created. 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.
- This Troper accepts this "speed limit" as the only reason why spaceships don't go faster in the first place, I don't mean in general because that could be due to fuel consumption and overheating issues but when people's lives are in serious danger . Seems they always reserve Warp 8-9 for dramatic purposes.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 revelling in murder.
- 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.
- 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.
- In fairness, he's shown as pretty shamed and regretful of his earlier dabbling in magic, so it's possible he's lying.
- Giles, lying about his past? That's like a Jedi Master lying to a boy about his father!
- 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.
- 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.
- To this troper, this sounds a bit like daring someone to ask out a girl knowing they never will unless pushed. After all, it's goddamn paeleontology.
- 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.
- This Troper has always thought that the most painful, quickest retcon he's ever seen was in The4400. 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.
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 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.
Comic Books
- The one that brought the term to the masses: Jean Grey of the X-Men 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 ten years later... A Wizard Did It?
- Well, since the Phoenix is described even in the original Dark Phoenix arc as being to second most powerful being in existence (after God, naturally), and she has since been demonstrated to have the ability to erase and rewrite time itself, one could make a compelling argument that A Phoenix Did It.
- 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,
Kryptonians 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.
- The fact that they now practically lived in a police state and dressed like Doctor Strange is part of the reason this troper wants to ban Joe Kelly from ever using the word Krypton, ever again.
- 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.
- 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, or gradually gained them in his teens.
- 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). In his first few appearances, he not only carried heat but killed and maimed with gleeful abandon.
- 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.
- Marvel Comics seems to be headed in the direction that all the Character Derailment from Civil War was set up by the Skrulls.
- And, if Joe Quesada is to be believed, just about every single event since Avengers: Dissassembled and onward were set up by the same group as well. Yes, even House of M where only three people could have been remotely responsible for the happenings, one has been essentially proven to not be a skrull, one is currently dead-ish and the third was vindicated in the storyline itself! Go figure, eh?
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.
- Rather frequent in the Star Wars series. The basis for Vader's revelation as Luke's father is present (possibly) in the very early drafts of Episode 4. The others? Not so much.
- From an X Men film: "No, that was actually Xorn's twin brother, pretending to be me, pretending to be Xorn."
- Highlander. There is no basis for any sort of sequel, and yet [[strike:not only is there a sequel]], there's
also a TV series.
Literature
- 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. It's not a huge issue but it's there, probably because this troper did read the books in order and so only found out she had genetic enhancements when it was first revealed.
- Also in the Honor Harrington series, David Weber apparently (according to The Other Wiki) had to Ret Con the length of ships versus their weight, as to do otherwise would've created ships impossibly light for their massive sizes and payloads.
- 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?
- 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.
- The Bible. Especially the Old Testament. See the discussion page.
- 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.
- 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 novel.
- 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
Western Animation
- Exception: 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.
- 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.
- This echoes the reaction of the X Men the first time they saw Wolverine pop his claws bare-handed: they thought that the claws were in the gloves, and, rumor has it, they were originally intended to be.
- In fact, the first time Wolvie pops the claws, the first time he does so bare-handed, and the first time after his adamantium is removed all feature nearly-identical reaction shots from Jean Grey.
- The original Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe shows that Wolverine's claws are in his gloves, not his arms, so this was truly a big retcon.
- 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 the characters were stuck in the 90's and never aged.
- So, that's when the series adopted Negative Continuity?
Video Games
- 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. Compare with more blatant ret-conning in Blizzard's WarCraft franchise.
- 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 where before the Burning Legion came to Draenor. It turns out that instead of them being bloodthirsty idiots 100 years before like first stated they where 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 such remember the time before the corruption. To help with the retcon Blizzard has made a book explaining about the corruption and have planned two new books that will show what really happened during the Tides of War and Beyond the Dark Portal video games.
- Even when one allows for fanon, it can be 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 bad guys—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 corrupted a
god 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, which were actually the draenei. No one's quite sure what corrupted the titan in the first place...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 demon 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?
- Lets not forget their horde counterpart, the Blood Elves. Supposedly they all followed Kael'Thas into 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 it obviously going great.
- Also see Not Quite Dead and Staying Alive for mind-boggling character revivals in the game universe. It should be noted that Blizzard heavily retcons everything to make new quests (the Black and Blue Dragons where originally stated to have only the aspects left), and make some playable units (see Blood Elves and Draenei) The fans have just learned to except it with gnashing of teeth.
- Blizzard has had justification for Ret Con, though. Warcraft One hinted that the humans were Christian ("Bearing the cross of another.") Warcraft Three changes that to the universe's much more interesting and original Crystal Dragon Jesus religion.
- "Peaceful race of warriors"?
- Yes.
- Perhaps "race of more-or-less honorable warriors" is more accurate. Or "basically peaceful race of Noble Savages."
- 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 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.
- 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, Aerith was likely in love with him and not Cloud all along 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; 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).
- To be fair, 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.
- 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.
- Er, from what little we saw of him in the flashback in the original game, Zack already came across as a loveable hero.
- One can only hope that an eventual Final Fantasy VII Remake will finally correct the continuity.
- 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.
- 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.
- To be fair, it can be argued that since she is the Grower, she can do that, but still...
- And it's implied that many of the 'rules' for writing ages were self-imposed by the D'Ni. Atrus and Co. didn't know which rules were law in the "thou shalt not" sense, and which were law in the "thermodynamics" sense. Atrus's wife Catherine did a lot of things that were against the 'rules', but still possible. Of course, Yeesha goes even further than that... and that it's possible go further than that is in itself a retcon.
- 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.
- The Mega Man Zero series has one of the worst video game retcons out there. Mega Man Zero 3 was SUPPOSED to be the final chapter of the series (resolved every last plot hole). Executive Meddling occurs, resulting in an Asspull quality retcon. Weil is now unchallenged in his rule of Neo Arcadia (despite the guardians saying he was powerless without Omega). The guardians are dead, despite being in better shape than Zero was, having plenty of time to react to the explosion, having transservers to teleport away, and being further away from the blast. The reason for this retcon you ask? A cheap way to kill Zero off for ZX.
- ZX Advent retcons the events of the previous game. Weil didn't make Model W (Model V in Japanese version), Albert did. Yet another Ass Pull.
- How is this an ass pull? Model W is supposed to be fashioned from the remains of Ragnarok. It's called Model W because Weil fused WITH Ragnarok. The guy created something from his own CORPSE? That's one active dead man.
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 case of the Squats has recently been alluded to as the official policy on them now appears to be that the entire race was murderlised by one of the Tyranid Hive Fleets.
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.
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 Yaoi 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.
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