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alt title(s): Authors Saving Throw
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An especially brave idea is set forth to turn a character on his head and change the status quo in a big way... and the fans revolt. The writer then does a retcon which seems openly apologetic. This is the saving throw. It assures the fans that the character either was not in control of his actions, or he was Actually A Doombot or events were not as they seemed.
Some "brave ideas" that have caused popular fandom backlash resulting in a saving throw have been depowering a Super Hero for dramatic purposes and turning a good character evil. Depowering super-heroines, in particular, is a brave idea that is nearly always good for causing a fan revolt.
Note, however, that not all Author's Saving Throws are necessarily a good thing; many authors try to "fix" things that didn't really need it. This can be a highly subjective thing; one fan's Jumped The Shark moment is another fan's Growing The Beard.
If the screwup stays prominently in the fandom's memory, it adds to that character's Dork Age. Contrast with Rescued From The Scrappy Heap, where an originally loathed character or idea is made serviceable.
If an Author's Saving Throw attempts to fix an episode-specific Plot Hole, Fridge Logic moment or potential Wall Banger moment (typically within the same episode) and fails, it becomes a Voodoo Shark. Generally, the best tool for making such a save is to provide for the possibility of a Schrodingers Gun, although often clumsier tools like the Cosmic Retcon or even the regular Retcon are used instead.
Compare Canon Dis Continuity, which just flat out ignores something instead of trying to Ret Con or otherwise explain it.
Examples:
Anime & Manga
- Vegeta shaving off his mustache in Dragonball GT. It might have been too little, too late for some, but it marks the point in the series where it switches from early Dragon Ball-style slapstick to DBZ-style save-the-world fights.
- In the h-anime, F3(Frantic Frustrated And Female), main character Hiroe is explicitly shown engaging in less-than-wholesome activities with her "sister," Mayaka. And the end of the episode shows their "mom" getting in on the act. Every subsequent sequel to F3 has a tongue-in-cheek note that explains that Hiroe and Mayaka are just "like sisters" and "Mom" is actually their landlady.
- Haruhi Suzumiya had the Endless Eight, which was eight episodes of the exact same events with minor variations, adapted out of a single short story, episodes some fans felt would be better spent on the Vanishment storyline. The throw here is that the Vanishment adaption is going to be a movie.
- The movie's out, and it's so good the fans are willing to forgive the whole Endeless Eight thing.
- Many City Hunter fans were angered when they learned that Ryo Saeba's partner, Kaori Makimura, was killed off in its sequel Angel Heart. Because of this, Tsukasa Hojo, the author of both titles, went on to proclaim that Angel Heart was not actually a City Hunter sequel, but a spin-off set in an Alternate Universe featuring most of the same characters. However, most fans that got over Kaori's death in Angel Heart now accept it as a genuine sequel to City Hunter.
Comic Books
- The She Hulk series has revealed that people from an alternate Earth were running around the main Marvel Earth, allowing future authors a way out to explain out-of-character moments. For instance, it was that Earth's She-Hulk who slept with Juggernaut, not the "original" She-Hulk.
- The return of Jean Grey in the '80s where it was revealed that the Phoenix (and thus Evil Planet Killing Dark Phoenix) was not Jean Grey at all. This like the Green Lantern example below (which it clearly inspired) was not done by the same author but the co-plotter of the original saga was involved.
- Despite what some Running The Asylum may think, Jean was intended to come back all along. The saving throw was just not to have her come back as a mass murderer.
- A fact Chris Claremont and John Byrne (the creative team at the time) and Jim Shooter (Marvel's EIC at the time) have confirmed multiple times.
- Marvel is also setting up numerous saving throws with the revelation that Skrulls have been secretly replacing people, as discovered by the New Avengers. The saving throw is even lampshaded when the characters, upon discovering this, discuss how this could provide an explanation of everything from Iron Man's sudden turn into a jerk, to why loner Wolverine is on so many teams, and even why Peter Parker would publicly reveal his identity. Iron Man himself (once he finds out) engages in it, wondering if it means Captain America (Steve Rogers) really isn't dead, and that Jean Grey didn't get a bridge dropped on her.
- Quicksilver was a bit of a pariah what with House of M and the whole Teriggen Mist stuff he did. He recently had this pointed out, but it's ok you see because that was a Skrull duplicate all along, says Quicksilver. Of course, he was lying.
- Ultimately, the Skrull situation didn't touch any of those alleged problems, leaving them all as they were. So it's actually a huge subversion of this trope. Touting it, and it doesn't happen at all.
- It does however explain how Black Bolt got his ass kicked by Hulk in World War Hulk, or how Hank Pym allows and builds the clone of Thor in Civil War.
- The Spider-Man villain the Hobgoblin was created by writer Roger Stern as a replacement for the Green Goblin, complete with a mysterious true identity. The character was initially a success due to good writing, but then Stern departed from the title. At once, the Hobgoblin joined up in a gang war and the mystery surrounding his identity got out of hand. Finally, it was decided that Ned Leeds was the Hobgoblin...which was revealed after Leeds had already DIED (and at the hands of common snipers too, even though the Hobgoblin was supposed to have super-strength!) The Smug Snake Jason Philip Macendale took over the role of Hobgoblin and became such a poor villain that Roger Stern finally returned to write the three-part Hobgoblin Lives! miniseries that killed off Macendale, explained how Leeds was NOT the original Hobgoblin in a way that actually made sense, tied up all loose ends left by the mystery, and revealed the true Hobgoblin to be Roderick Kingsley, as Stern had always intended.
- Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern, went Ax Crazy after the destruction of his city becoming the villain Parallax. Fans were not happy, especially since this was a fairly obvious Bridge Drop in favor of the Younger And Hipper Kyle Rayner. Geoff Johns eventually retconned this into Parallax being an ancient alien fear monster who was responsible for the Lanterns' weakness to yellow and who slowly pulled Hal over to Brainwashed And Crazy. Many of the named characters Hal had killed were brought back to life, as well. This produced highly mixed reactions from fans, especially considering that they had warmed up to Kyle in the interrim.
- Johns continued to Arc Weld Parallax with other existing Green Lantern concepts and expand on them to much critical and fan acclaim, arguably being an Authors Saving Throw for the Parallax retcon. It helped that both Hal and Kyle were written with respect, instead of favoring one over the other. It doesn't hurt that both Green Lantern: Rebirth and Sinestro Corps War are both awesome and Made Of Win.
- During the Clone Saga in Spider-Man, it was stated that new character Ben Reilly was the original Spider-Man and the character that had been in comics for the past 20 years was the clone. This didn't sit well with fans and was taken out again; a hook had been added by the writer in case they needed to.
- Should be mentioned the hook was not used as originally intended (if the hook was used at all); it was kind of a mess really.
- The editorially influenced attempt in the Batman comics to recreate Batgirl III/Cassandra Cain as Robin's erudite Dark Action Girl nemesis (explained by her returning to her supposed Assassin roots) provoked rather justifiable complaints that the writer and editor involved hadn't bothered to read Batgirl's solo title. A few months later, we found out that Deathstroke was feeding her mind-control drugs, really.
- Never mind that Cassandra's entire origin involves her complete and utter hatred of killing, even more so than Batman! Oh, and the who mind-control drug thing doesn't really work when in a Batgirl/The Ghost crossover she was able to overcome the affects of a deadly poison ''by herself.'' Yeah, no antidote or anything.
- DC then gave the writer of the screw-up a new Batgirl miniseries to allow him to explain all the events that led into her Face Heel Turn, thus tearing open a wound that was already considered closed (even if badly closed). General fan consensus was that he only succeeded in messing up the character even further.
- Though parallel to this she also showed up in Batman and the Outsiders, coming out at the same time as the miniseries but taking place after showing her back to her normal awesome self. She's barely been seen since that author's run of Bat O ended, so it can be considered a partially successful save.
- They were probably trying to make Batgirl into the new Jason Todd...the only problem with this is that people actually like Cassandra Cain.
- An issue of Robin managed three author's saving throws in one fell swoop: Stephanie Brown never died, Leslie Thompkins only faked her death to keep Black Mask away from her. Batman suspected this—though he wasn't certain—and to give Stephanie Brown privacy never told Robin. This is why he never added Stephanie's Robin suit to the memorial (an Authors Saving Throw for using her absence from that memorial to justify the claim that she was never an official Robin) - along with Jason Todd, who was already Back From The Dead at the time.
- Whenever a period of time goes by where Batman acts more dickish than usual, it seems to be traditional to reveal that he's been unable to shake off a dose of Scarecrow's Fear Gas.
- At the end of the first Power Pack series, one of the kids had turned into a Kymellian (a horse-headed alien), their mother was going crazy, their father had developed superpowers, and they were all headed off to live on the Kymellian homeworld, all the result of a change in authorship designed to revive the series' popularity by going Darker And Edgier. A couple of years later, the original creators did a holiday special that wrote the whole thing off as a deception by the kids' enemies.
- How about an Authors Saving Throw that was held in reserve but wasn't used? Marv Wolfman, writer of Crisis On Infinite Earths, wrote in the intro to a collected edition that he left an "out" for bringing Barry Allen back from the dead if the fans objected too strenuously to his being replaced. He eventually revealed that the out was for someone to pull Barry through one of the "time windows" he was experiencing as he ran to his death.
- A Legion Of Superheroes one-shot uses that exact plotline, leaving it open as to whether or not it actually happened or was just an inspirational story. Recent issues of Final Crisis hint at making this canon, thus explaining Allen's re-appearance.
- But Barry's death was part of a stable time loop that resulted in his own origin! If you pull him out, he never becomes the Flash in the first place!
- Marv Wolfman thought about that also, and would've set up that Barry Allen had to eventually return to fulfill his role in the Crisis and that Barry wouldn't know when that would happen, thus having the Fastest Man Alive living on borrowed time.
- Which is exactly the point of Barry Allen's return in Flash: Rebirth
- The FC resurrection doesn't use the time windows, it's an actual permanent resurrection.
- And it turns out that Barry was only revived because of a subconscious message sent by the original Professor Zoom that was sent through the window to the Speed Force that Barry opened when he, Bart, and Max Mercury opened back to stop Superboy-Prime in Infinite Crisis.
- In The Sandman by Neil Gaiman, something called the "soft places" were introduced where time itself grew thin. Gaiman put that in there as an "escape hatch" in case something happened to his characters that he couldn't fix any other way. It was never used for that purpose, however.
- A B-list Superman villain, the Toyman, was traditionally just a funny man in a striped suit who built dangerous giant toys to rob banks and give the Man of Steel a hard time, but in the Dark Age he was re-imagined as a bald child murderer in a black cloak. This didn't go over too well. Fast-forward to 2008, when it's revealed that the bald Toyman was a defective robot decoy created by the real Toyman, who is now once again a funny man in a striped suit, albeit a dangerously insane one, who will do anything (up to and including murder) to protect children.
- Magneto had long been established as a Jewish Well Intentioned Extremist, but when Marvel decided to move him back into full-out villainy in the early 90's, they were worried about accusations of Antisemitism. So they presented the Retcon that he was really a Gypsy, delivering the Family Unfriendly Aesop that Gypsies are Acceptable Targets. When people realized what a bad idea this was a few years later, Marvel established that Magneto's Gypsy identity was false, returning him to his Jewish roots.
- Current Kara "Supergirl" Zor-El got reintroduced with a shockingly bad origin: Zor-El was evil and sent Kara to Earth to kill baby Kal-El. Fans hated it. Author after author has stepped up to try a saving throw (no, wait, she was sent back to babysit him, no, wait, Zor-El wanted her to kill him after all but she didn't want to but got brainwashed, no, wait, she was sent back to fight off ghosts from the Phantom Zone, and so on, and so forth). Supergirl #35 handwaved off all of the previous origins as dementia caused by Kryptonite poisoning and gave her the classic Silver Age origin story back, and Supergirl #34 had her finally take a Secret Identity ( Linda Lang. Cute, DC Comics, very cute), so things seem to be looking up. Finally.
- There's a bit of a Saving Throw War going on between people at Marvel who like Squirrel Girl and those who don't: Originally, Squirrel Girl beat Dr. Doom by herself. A later comic indicated it was a Doombot. Another later comic revealed that it was not a Doombot. Then, Squirrel Girl beats Thanos and the Watcher himself is there verifying that it is not a "robot, clone, or simulacrum" and is indeed the real Thanos. Later on, Thanos reveals he can make really good clones that even fool the Watcher. But according to Word Of God, that really really was the real Thanos. And to make things goofier, everything about the Thanos fight was written by Dan Slott.
- Goofy? Many fans thinks that it's a Running Gag. Come on, the Thanos defeat is off-screen and lampshaded by Squirrel Girl herself.
- An even later Deadpool comic has her borrow a time machine from Doom, and announces its own canon.
- The JLA arc featuring the Milestone characters, featuring the female Dr. Light, started off with a monologue by the character used by the writer to address recent conflicting appearances
 in other titles and attempt to fix the continuity problems that resulted from them.
- The Zoo Crew were given a horrific fate at the end of their Final Ark mini-series where the editors ordered the creators to make trapped on the main DC earth as mute ordinary animals. Fortunately, some one apparently heard the complaints and the Crew was restored to normal at the climax of Final Crisis.
- In an early appearance, The Punisher shot at a couple for littering, and a driver for running a stop sign when he was fleeing from the shots. In the first Punisher miniseries, it was explained away as Jigsaw arranging for him to be exposed to mind-altering drugs in prison.
- That was a saving throw? It's so utterly out of character for him (especially since this was well before his current soulless invincible slaughtering machine incarnation), you'd have to expect that someone was pulling his strings.
- I think it was early enough that he hadn't really been defined.
- The entire idea behind the one-shot Faces of Evil: Prometheus. The author didn't like the fact that the title character, created by Grant Morrison to be a Badass Normal so Badass that he could take on the whole JLA and only be defeated by cheating, had undergone Villain Decay to the point where he'd become little more than Elite Mook for Batman villains. So the whole plot of the story is given over to explaining that the Prometheus who'd been appearing for the past nine years wasn't the real Prometheus, but rather a Costume Copycat, and showing us the real deal's Roaring Rampage Of Revenge to get him back.
- The Life And Times Of Scrooge Mc Duck has one for the richest duck in the universe, describing the incident where he chased a bunch of African villagers out of their homes as the biggest regret of his life that made his sisters sever all ties with him until years later.
- Possible example from the ever-editorially-entroubled Sonic The Hedgehog comics; after a Time Skip, Antoine broke up with Bunnie, got an eye patch out of nowhere, and tried to force Sally into an Arranged Marriage. It turns out it was his Evil Twin from the Mirror Universe (previously established, mind) and the real Antoine came back and married Bunnie.
Literature
- An early (if arguable) example of this trope is the Palinode of Stesichorus (a Greek poet, who lived in the 7-6th centuries BCE), which recants an earlier poem. Legend says that having been struck with blindness after he wrote his original poem, in which the author bashed Helen for causing The Trojan War, he came up with a new story, and was immediately cured. The new version implausibly claims that the real Helen had spent the whole duration of the war in Egypt, and the Helen who went to Troy was just a duplicate made out of clouds. Euripides used a version of this story in his Helen. The palinode became a recognized literary form, in which a poet writes a second poem to disavow an earlier one.
- Euripides, for his part, also had to recant one of his works. It is known that he wrote two versions of the story of Hippolytus. Only the second version survives, but it is widely believed that in the original version outraged the audience because Phaedra (wife of the great hero Theseus) lusts without shame after her step-son Hippolytus, and brazenly attempts to seduce him. The second, surviving version bends over backwards to make Phaedra blameless (she's deeply ashamed of her feelings, and only seems to come on to her step-son because her nurse betrays her). She still comes to no good end, committing suicide and attempting to frame Hippolytus for rape.
- Another Older Than Feudalism example is the opening of The Aeneid. Vergil was in the difficult position of turning the losers of The Trojan War, the nimitzes who fell for the Trojan Horse, into the heroes of his story. His solution was to add a Greek playing a sacrificial victim. Said Greek actor was just too deceptive for the kindhearted, trusting, and heroic Trojans to disbelieve when he told them a story that made bringing the horse inside seem like a great idea.
- Ian Malcolm didn't survive the novel Jurassic Park, but he lived through the movie. When it was decided that he would be the star of the next book/movie, Michael Crichton took advantage of the fact that his death took place offstage and said he was reported dead, but had in fact just barely survived his severe injuries.
- A well-known example can be found in Sherlock Holmes stories. In The Adventure of the Final Problem Doyle had both Holmes and his nemesis Moriarty apparently die in a waterfall; after public outrage he retconned the event, allowing the detective to defeat the Big Bad and survive.
- Well, public outrage and big sacks of cash.
- His mama telling Doyle to revive Holmes doesn't hurt, either.
- Doyle claimed that he refused to do that a few times, but publishers persisted and just increased the offers.. So he tried to name an unacceptable price. He was wrong. The price was accepted.
- Another modern example is in the novels of Evelyn Waugh. In Vile Bodies, his fictionalized Britain becomes a little too fictional, with the inclusion of the King of Ruritania as a minor character, and the novel ends with a badly predicted second world war which has trench warfare and the French as the allied army with Britain. His later novel, Put Out More Flags has some of the same characters several years older, but is set in real World War Two Britain. The film of Vile Bodies, Bright Young Things showed awareness of these problems by changing the King of Ruritania to one of Romania and depicting the war at the end as it actually occured in Britain.
- The Magic The Gathering novel Scourge had the Big Bad, Karona, gather five powerful beings representing the colors of magic, namely Multani, Teferi, Fiers, Llowalyn, and Yawgmoth, "revealing" that Yawgmoth (the Big Bad of the Weatherlight Saga), who was dramatically killed, was hanging on in some form. A few years later, the Time Spiral novel had Teferi deny his meeting with Karona in Scourge and suggest that it was a dream of hers. The next book, Planar Chaos, had several characters state that they'd personally confirmed that Yawgmoth was dead.
- In Piers Anthony's Xanth series, the novel Geis of The Gargoyle was used to both lampshade and explain numerous continuity errors that had crept up into the latter books. (For instance, the Invisible Giants had shrunk to a third of the size they originally were, and The Gorgon's powers inexplicably worked on women, when they originally explicitly only worked on men.) The explanation was that the Realm of Madness was expanding throughout Xanth, altering reality in increasingly drastic ways. Ironically, such errors seem to crop up in all of Anthony's extended series (most notably, Apprentice Adept, where several Adepts' magic powers were altered or changed outright between the third book and the fourth).
- Harder to notice, but there is a minor saving throw about swearing. In the first book, the protagonist says "Hell!" out of esasperation. In following book "Hell" became a forbidden word for minors to say, and it's magically enforced. So, how it happened? It was an error by an inworld historian, that misswrote the word "Well". Saving throw passed.
- Terry Pratchett's Discworld series had something similar in Thief of Time, addressing such problems as to why a rickety Elizabethan era theater is a startlingly new and risky development in Wyrd Sisters, while the later book Maskerade, set less than a decade after this (and part of the same character set, being a "Witches" book), features a huge and rather old Victorian-style opera house in the same city; or the fact that in Small Gods, a general from the country of Djelibeybi is part of an invasion fleet and is said to be "the sort of person who always considered himself to always be in charge of everything", whereas in Pyramids (which takes place at least a century later in "modern times"), Djelibeybi has been isolated and stagnant for thousands of years (and is revealed to be two miles wide, 150 miles long, and almost entirely underwater during the flooding season).
- Specifically, this explanation is that Time got shattered and couldn't be perfectly rebuilt, so there are some visible seams where two bits got stitched together.
- Word Of God here is that "There are no continuity errors, only alternate pasts."
- The Vampire Lestat begins with the title character reading the previous novel, Interview With A Vampire and dismissing much of it as either lies or misinterpretations by Louis. Anne Rice decided she liked Lestat better than the somewhat whiny Louis, and did this to somewhat redeem him so that he could become the protagonist of the series.
- Similar to Holmes, Ian Fleming killed James Bond off in From Russia With Love the novel at the hands - or shoes - of Rosa Klebb. He had to bring him back for Dr No.
- Thanks to the magic of serial publication, not to mention possible litigation, Charles Dickens changed Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield from villain to hero in mid-plot.
- Dickens also made a belated saving throw in Our Mutual Friend, where he intended Jewish good guy Mr. Riah to make up for stereotypical Jewish bad guy Fagin in Oliver Twist.
- One happens in the Anita Blake Series, as Richard's rather... erratic behavior is finally explained as ANITA'S fault... he was possessed by her anger. When the possession is cured, he reverts to a more stable psyche.
- In the Inheritance Cycle, Eragon goes vegan partway through the second book, in a rather Anvilicious way. The next book abruptly backpedals this, having Eragon rationalize eating meat again and not bringing it up anymore. At the very least we won't have to suffer him crying over animals he eats while he slaughters scores of fellow humans in battle.
- Brsingr actually had a number of almost literal Screw You Elves moments from Eragon and what may be a god of Alagaesia directed at the elves' snootiness, morality, and atheism. This is likely Paolini realizing that he turned the elves into an entire race of Mary Sues in Eldest.
- The Star Wars Expanded Universe has been up to its elbows in these recently. First the controversial New Jedi Order books introduced Vergere, and her philosophy that the Force was too complex to be summed up as simple light vs. dark. This ticked off a lot of fans, so the writers did the Dark Nest Trilogy and Legacy Of The Force in response, which had Jacen Solo (Vergere's main pupil) become a Knight Templar and fall to the Dark Side as a result of her teachings. Problem was, many fans felt that Jacen's fall was poorly executed Character Derailment, so the current Fate Of The Jedi series is retconning it to have been not because of Vergere's teachings, but because he encountered something during a journey through the galaxy that made him go crazy. The jury is still out as to whether Fate Of The Jedi will need an Authors Saving Throw too.
Live Action TV
- In Buffy the Vampire Slayer's sixth season, magic was portrayed as akin to a drug, which was highly dangerous and addictive, and could even lead to users becoming "junkies" willing to do anything for a "fix," as happened to Willow slowly over the course of the season. Joss Whedon himself didn't like this development, and the fans agreed; season seven's first episode featured a scene where Giles explicitly states that magic is not addictive, and it's explained that Willow's actions were actually due to her not using magic. This, of course, made hash of most of the storyline of season six.
- "Not using magic"? It's explicitly stated that Willow's actions were from using magic the wrong way. Considering how Willow had been throwing black magic around as if instant flayings were going out of style, there's really no way to convince people that she didn't use enough of it.
- If she'd used magic in the episode where the Trio made Buffy invisible they'd have been in jail long before Warren could have shot Tara.
- Anything can become addictive if you have an irresponsible attitude towards it. Magic, sex, food... The problem wasn't the magic per se, it was Willow.
- Tara, by contrast, knew how to use magic responsibly, and continued to do so during Willow's addiction storyline.
- The writers of the Disney Adventure Power Rangers SPD comic conveniently retconned the reasons behind A-Squad's defection, turning it into Mind Control instead of a voluntary Face Heel Turn. Apparently, they don't like the idea of Not Brainwashed Rangers (up until then, most evil Rangers were either created that way as monsters, or were Brainwashed And Crazy if they were to join the team). As well, the turn itself was considered fairly random, and the Big Bad had already-established Mind Control powers.
- A month after the Prison Break Season 3 finale, it was announced that, in part due to fan reaction, it wasn't Sara Tancredi's head in the box, and she'll be back next season.
- The other big part of the decision was the fact that Sara had only been killed in the first place because of behind-the-scenes drama between the then-pregnant actress and the executive producers. By the fourth season, everyone was friends again so the character returned.
- And ironically got pregnant.
- The third season finale of Bones: Zack is an apprentice cannibalistic serial killer who admits he murdered a man! First couple of episodes of the new season: Oh, he really didn't kill him, he just pointed him out to the serial killer. Yeesh.
- This was a result of the writers' strike and the sudden need to compress the entire third act of the seasonal story arc into literally a few minutes.
- Actually Zack admitted what he did so that he'd end up in the psychiatric hospital instead of prison. He says as much to Sweets when he's brought back at the end of that episode in season 4.
- Everyone is right, but the general consensus is the later in-story explanation is part of the saving throw.
- No, this is an awful retcon. I paused when he jumped out of the closet. It was his face. He had a knife. It was his face, his hair. What, does he have a twin who ACTUALLY did it?
- In The Sopranos, Tony entertained a number of gangster cronies while wearing shorts. On the DVD commentary, the Voice of God admitted that a mobster of his position would never wear shorts in such a situation. A few seasons later, one of Tony's respected business associates commented to him that "A Don doesn't wear shorts," making it no longer a mistake of the show, but just another of Tony's quirks.
- Heroes has had multiple saving throws: reducing a character's powers (Peter, Sylar) and granting powers to others (Mohinder, Ando). A full list of all the throw attempts over the life of the show would take a while... And in addition to these throws, people involved in the show have publicly apologized to fans.
- Reportedly, creator Tim Kring actually went into several interviews personally apologizing for Volume 2 "Generations" suckiness. He also promised Volume 3 "Villains" would be much better, promoting it heavily and claiming it would completely change the formula. Ironically, it turned out to be a hundred times worse.
- There's a reason they decided to call Volume 5 "Redemption".
- During Elisabeth Rohm's time on Law And Order, her character (Serena Southerlyn) was often used as a Liberal counterpoint to Arthur Branch's staunch Conservative. Problem was, when she wasn't basically arguing the defense's case for them, she came across as a Fox News Liberal so frequently whiny and petulant, it was a wonder how she kept her job. So when Rohm left the show, the writers used Serena's frequent petulance as the reason for her firing (She was acting more like a defense attorney than a prosecutor). But then they had to crap on things with those six infamous last words.
- The Doctor Who 1996 TV movie included a scene in which the Doctor says that he is half-human; this was widely disliked and subject to Fanon Discontinuity. However, in the Doctor Who Expanded Universe comic Doctor Who: The Forgotten, the Doctor notes that he said that just to screw with his enemy's head.
- Steven Moffat has stated, when asked about the canonicity of this, that the Doctor did indeed utter those words, very carefully not specifying whether they were true.
- He has gone further, arguing that "a television series which embraces both the ideas of parallel universes and the concept of changing time can't have a continuity error—it's impossible for Doctor Who to get it wrong, because we can just say 'he changed time—it's a time ripple from the Time War'."
- A smaller-scale saving throw took place after "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit", in which the Happiness In Slavery depiction of the Ood as a happy servitor race and the Doctor's acceptance of it as unproblematic were seen by many fans as gross breaches of the series's and the character's usual moral positions. Two years later the "Planet of the Ood" story returned to the same setting and revealed that the slave Ood were only happy because the evil humans had been lobotomising them, and that the Doctor only accepted their servitude because he was a bit pre-occupied with a planet orbiting a black hole and Satan trying to kill them all.
- On Lost, a season two episode derailed Charlie into a baby-napping maniac who may or may not have been using heroin again. And then Locke beat the crap out of him while everyone else watched. The season two finale basically rebooted his relationship with Claire, and in the third season, when Locke asked for Charlie's help, Charlie asked why he should after Locke falsely accused him of using heroin, beat him up, and exiled him from the camp.
- The producers originally intended for Paolo and Nikki to be major characters. After a Fan Revolt, they changed their plans by not only killing off the characters, but doing so in an incredibly sadistic way.
- Numb3rs: Colby is a double agent for the Chinese. No, wait, he's a triple agent working to bring them down.
Music
Video Games
- Fallout 3's ending caused some rather... negative reactions, in no small part thanks to its Diabolus Ex Machina. The DLC / Expansion pack Broken Steel changes the ending, allowing the game to remain playable after this. Word Of God says the game's default endings (without the expansion) are non-canon.
- After many players called out Metal Gear Solid for its extremely loose understanding of basic genetics (as relayed by the main antagonist, Liquid Snake), Hideo Kojima stepped up and established that Liquid himself has an extremely flimsy grasp on the subject and didn't actually know a word of what he was saying. It doesn't explain how a man with a supposed I.Q. of 180 and a fluency in seven languages could get such simple scientific facts wrong.
- Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within was written with a mandate from marketing to turn the series away from the Arabian Nights feel and make it Darker And Edgier, complete with emo Anti Hero Prince and heavy metal music. The fans bashed the change mercilessly, and the writers answered rather innovatively by working the Dork Age into the plot of the third, making the Warrior Within Prince into a manifestation of the hero's irresponsibility and not the real thing. It also acknowledges the selfishness inherent in trying to fix the timeline in order to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, and when the Dark Prince taunts him with this near the end, he finally realizes that he needs to stop trying to change the past and solve his problems in the present. This qualifies as some pretty damn good Character Development, which is why it was so well received.
- Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days pulls this to Ret Con Axel and Roxas' previously ambiguous Ho Yay relationship into one of big brother/little brother. Turns out that when Roxas was formed without memories, Axel basically took it upon himself to raise him.
- The King Of Fighters had this in the 2002 edition. After 98, the gameplay was changed as there would be four characters being selectable for the fight, with one (or more, in 2001) being a Striker, a supportive character that would be called to perform a move in order to stop an opponent or open his guard for your attacks. This, of course, didn't work well, with several bugs and infinite combos as result. In 2002 the game went back to 3-on-3 fights with no strikers, like 98.
Web Original
- In Survival Of The Fittest, Madison Conner's Face Heel Turn and subsequent Ax Crazy rampage was explained to have been because she suffers from bipolar disorder, which had been hinted at but never elaborated on. It didn't work too well.
Western Animation
- "Janine, You've Changed" from The Real Ghostbusters is generally considered to be one of the most tragically hilarious attempts at this ever made; the show's former writer, J Michael Straczynski, is asked to come back and try to explain all the design changes made to a member of the secondary cast over the years. The end result... was actually fairly funny, had a pretty era-relevant Aesop for female viewers and had a bit of payoff for long-time watchers. That it needed to be done at all is where the tragedy lies.
- In Teen Titans Cyborg was always shown firing his sonic Arm Cannon from his right arm, until one day he used his left. Fans pointed out this apparent plot hole, and some time later, during a crucial fight, simply he converts both arms to cannons. It's hard to tell whether it was planned or this trope, since it makes perfect sense that he can convert both arms, and is simply right-dominant.
Webcomics
- Collar 6. After the drugging incident, Wolfe took two months real-time having the characters discuss how disfunctional their relationship had become.
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