This entry is trivia, which is cool and all, but not a trope. On a work, it goes on the Trivia tab.
Word of Saint Paul aka: Word Of St Paul
Once a work has been published to general acclaim, speculation runs rampant. What did X really mean? How could Y do that? How are we supposed to interpret Z? For some reason or another, the primary creatorkeeps quiet, so when someone else with at least some authorative status to the work says something, it can be easily accepted and incorporated into the common view.
When the Word of Saint Paul contains (or is perceived to contain) mistakes or misunderstandings of the original creator, they can easily carry the germ for future debates.
The dividing lines among Word Of God, Word of Saint Paul and Word of Dante are somewhat fluid, but if it can be reasonably supposed that someone has had a role in creating the work, or a close personal relation to the primary creator, then it is probably Word of Saint Paul instead of Word of Dante.
In a film or TV series, typical sources of Word of Saint Paul are the primary actors, the cameraman, the production designer, the costume designer, or the score writer. In literature, it can be the author's spouse, the editor, or the publisher.
Named for Saint Paul the Apostle, who through diligent missionary and organisation work very much changed Christianity from a minor Jewish sect into a budding world religion, while clarifying lots of things to what Jesus said.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
There isn't a firm, canonical statement from the Lyrical Nanoha production crew that Nanoha and Fate are lovers; they instead prefer to layer on the subtext, right up to the knife-edge of making it text (the most famous statement from the director clarifies their relationship to the daughter they're raising together, but not to each other). However, the voice actresses for the girls in question have directly stated that they think the two are married.
Fan fiction
After Naruto Veangance Revelaitons ended, the author's former stepbrother took control of his Twitter Account and revealed, among other things, that "da cooger" was going to be revealed as Tsunade under another name and that Sakura aged from 13 at the start to 16 at the end.
Prior to The Last Continent, Terry Pratchett "trailed" a Discworld country with suspiciously Australia-like associations through little snippets of information and one-line throwaway jokes spread here and there over several novels. Fanfic author "A.A. Pessimal" noted this, and then collated seven or eight direct or sideways references in the published material which strongly suggest the existence of a Discworld country that has a lot in common with our South Africa. Terry has not yet written about his "African" continent in any great detail. So out of some fairly scant, but unmistakeable, Word of God, Pessimal then became the Saint Paul and created "Rimwards Howondaland". (Admittedly some of it becomes Word of Dante, but fan reviews have awarded the author the accolade of saying they can't see the gap where Pratchett ends and Pessimal begins. One of the higher tributes a fanfic author can hope to receive).
When interviewed about his role in the film, Michael Caine asserted that any scene that included him was one guaranteed to be in the real world. This either explains the film or makes the Mind Screw even more confusing.
A costume designer stated that the last scene showing Cobb's children in fact used different children from an earlier scene and they were wearing slightly different shirts, which suggests that the final scene isn't a dream.
In commentary on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Aubrey Plaza, who plays Julie, asserted that her character had (and possibly has) an unrequited crush on Scott, which is why she's so hostile to him. While Bryan Lee O'Malley, the creator of the original Scott Pilgrim comics, responded that Plaza was "making shit up", Edgar Wright, the director of the film adaptation, supported this view.
The last Harry Potter film suggests a romance (or at least a pair of reciprocal one-sided crushes) between Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood, which is a widely fanon supported couple, but not one that happens in canon. Mathew Lewis, who plays Neville, asserted the two had a brief fling, but ended up marrying their canonical partners.
Haruo Nakajima, the original actor who played Godzilla, believes that the Showa (1955-1975) incarnation of Godzilla is female. However, according to Toho Studios, all incarnations of Godzilla to date have been male (yes, even the remakeversion, which is admittedly stated in the film).
Samuel L. Jackson has stated that in Revenge of the Sith he, as Mace Windu, beat Palpatine. The novel implies that Sidious let himself lose, and the film leaves it ambiguous.
At the end of Dinner for One the two characters go upstairs and, it's implied, have sex and the actors said it was entirely innocent.
Blade Runner: Harrison Ford has stated that he believed Decker to not be a replicant, as being one would undercut the theme of his character rediscovering his own humanity, and turns the man vs. machine climactic battle into a robot vs. robot fight. Ridley Scott on the other hand, claims that Deckard was always meant to be a replicant.
"I was in a rubber suit and I had rubber nipples. I could have played Batman straight, but I made him gay."
Literature
In Heirs Of Alexandria, Christianity gained another early high-powered missionary and organiser in Hypatia, and thus split into two groups, based on different Words of Saint Paul: the Pauline branch and the Petrine branch.
Virginia Heinlein shaped a lot of how Robert A. Heinlein was viewed by regulating which of his book were published, and how, according to Frederik Pohl.
August Derleth shaped much of the popular understanding of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, and codified a lot of it. This is hotly contested, as Derleth split the mythos between what was basically good or bad (Elder Gods vs. The Great Old Ones) with the Elder Gods having been added after Lovecraft died. The main conflict is that the Elder Gods tend be fairly benign, while The Great Old Ones try to destroy humanity, often going away from the Blue and Orange Morality that makes up the mythos. Derleth's concept of good and evil eventually became less common, with Call Of Cthulhu removing it from the 6th edition.
To a similar degree, that is true of Lin Carter with the work of Robert E. Howard.
In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Relaunch books, Andrew Robinson, who played the character Elim Garak, has filled in much of Garak's mysterious and covert past.
Christopher Tolkien is often this to J. R. R. Tolkien when it comes to posthumous works. In particular, the published version of The Silmarillion is often assumed to be canon, when it is simply the most well-known interpretation of a number of unfinished and contradictory sources. On the whole, Christopher is pretty careful to separate actual Word Of God from his own thoughts on paper.
Televangelist Wendy Alec provides a literal version of this in her Chronicles of Brothers novels. These are a very specialised sort of fantasy fiction in which ms Alec represents the Bible story as a sort of sibling rivalry between five brothers, the Sons of God. She sticks very carefully and cautiously to what is "known" of Heaven, Hell and their denizens from the Bible and related religious works - but she cannot help re-interpreting the Fall of Lucifer (the black sheep of the family) with the aid of some serious Word of Saint Paul, maybe even a little Word of Dante creeping in round the edges. (Other televangelists have denounced her as Ungodly and Satanic for this reason.)
Jonathan Franzen plays this role with regard to David Foster Wallace, although much of what Franzen says is automatically rejected by Wallace's fans. However, the two authors were undeniably close friends, and they did discuss their writing (both content and methods) with each other, so it's difficult to disown certain statements by Franzen (e.g., whether or not Wallace embellished some of his non-fiction).
Live action TV
In Smallville, several actors have spoken about their own interpretation into the character on stuff the Powers That Be are quiet about. Tom Welling (Clark Kent) has talked about the psychological effects of red kryptonite, Allison Mack (Chloe Sullivan) said Chloe is too weak for the character in season two, John Glover (Lionel Luthor) said his character is supposed to be attracted to Chloe, and so on.
The finale of Stargate SG-1 contains a long Time Passes Montage with little to no dialogue throughout. Several of the actors involved have given their take on what happened—such as Amanda Tapping and Chris Judge saying they played their parts as if Sam and Teal'c had developed a relationship, and Michael Shanks saying the reason that Vala is crying and being consoled by Daniel in one scene is because she miscarried.
The Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual, in its entry on the Captain's Yacht, includes an out-of-universe sidebar that says "Patrick Stewart informs us the yacht is named Calypso after Jacques Cousteau's vessel", in a way that suggests that, as far as the writers of the Manual are concerned, he should know. This was never confirmed on screen, since the Enterprise-D yacht was never used (or even confirmed to exist), but was nodded to in Star Trek Insurrection, where the yacht on the Enterprise-E is called the Cousteau.
Darren Criss, who plays Blaine on Glee, said in an interview that Blaine's last name is Anderson quite some time before it was ever mentioned on the actual show.
In a Firefly commentary, Alan Tudyk gives a semi-serious speculation on what Wash was up to during the Unification War: he got a job ferrying supplies (for which side isn't clear), but was shot down on his first mission and spent the rest of the war in prison, where he survived Scherazade-like with his puppet shows. Many fans added this to their Fanon.
Music
When Michael Tilson Thomas arranged and recorded some long neglected versions of compositions by George Gershwin, he recurred to Gershwin's brother and lyricist Ira Gershwin to understand George's original intentions in writing the music.
John Lennon's song-writing has often been explained and/or interpreted to the eager public by his ex-bandmates (one of them named Paul!), ex-wives, recording crew, childhood friends, etc...
Theatre
The actress who originated Patrice in 13 has said that her characters last name is Parker, though the script lists only first names for all the characters.
Video games
A developer for Infinity Ward has stated that Captain Price from Modern Warfare is the grandson of the original Captain Price. And when Price's voice actor was asked about what happened to Price and what his motivations were, he stated that Price was put in a gulag for two years at some point after Call of Duty 4 (instead of 5 as most players assumed, meaning he was captured in 2014 rather than 2011) and that the experience left him rather unhinged and he is willing to do anything to win the war at this point.
The infamous retcon of the prison books in Myst also qualify. In the first two games, they were established as one-man prisons in an endless void. By the time Myst IV comes along, Sirrus and Achenar's books are transformed into fully developed Ages and their original function is vaguely explained away by Dr. Watson.
Western animation
Long before Candace and Jeremy were an established couple in Phineas And Ferb, Jeremy's voice actor commented that Jeremy liked Candace back. Of course, it really wasn't all that hard to figure out, but still.
Lauren Faust, among other things, said that she considers Spike to have been raised by Celestia after Twilight hatched him, but is quick to clarify that anything she says after leaving the show's staff is only her personal interpretations and not to be taken as Word Of God.
Not that that stops most fans from taking said interpretations as Word Of God anyway...
Speaking of Celestia, her VA Nicole Oliver stated Celestia's favorite music is 80's metal.
Eric Trueheart, who worked on Invader Zim, says that one story they might have used would involve Dib finding out that he was an Artificial Human created by his father, Professor Membrane. Many fans regard this as canon, and, since Dib and Membrane look alike, add a Fanon spin where he's a clone.
The show was Left Hanging with several episodes unfinished, whether left as a voice recording, script or just a creator idea. Most fans consider them canon.
Mae Whitman has done this twice with Katara from Avatar The Last Airbender. According to her, Katara got her First Kiss from Jet, and Aang and Katara did kiss in the "Cave of Two Lovers" episode when the lights went down.
Real life
St. Paul is the Trope Namer, and there's a lot of debate about whether his opinions, particularly those about women, reflect those of Jesus, considering that St. Paul never met Jesus (aside from a vision) and did not meet any of the original apostles until quite far into his career, and in fact started his career as a persecutor of Christians.
While we are on Christianity, there are also St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, who codified many of the basic tenets of the faith such as the trinity.
Then there are the founders and significant figures of all the other of the numerous sects and offshoots of the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox groups, as well as the sects and offshoots that don't identify with the three larger classifications.
The most famous real-world example (apart from St. Paul) is probably Friedrich Engels. He worked closely with Karl Marx, and did a lot to popularise and explain Marx's theories. However, he didn't have Marx's philosophical schooling, and thus misunderstood several elements, and made those misunderstandings stick around. To Engels' credit, there was probably no one else around who could do even remotely such a good job.
Izo Iburi was this for Tenrikyo after the foundress Nakayama Miki’s death.
Psychoanalyst Anna Freud was this for the ideas and writings of her father Sigmund.
