Retcon / Video Games

• Starsector

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• .hack:
  • .hack//Link, .hack//Quantum, and "The Thanatos Report" (an OVA included in the Blu-ray for the .hack movie beyond the world) make it so that everything that has happened in the franchise was not the result of big business abusing technologies that have advanced past the point of their understanding as the world reached the technological event horizon and true Artificial Intelligence began to develop, but a deeply-entrenched conspiracy from the 1980's concerning an ecological terrorist organizations' efforts to digitize the entirety of humanity so as to keep the world from being destroyed in a thousand years due to human abuse and destruction of the ecosystem...which they cite as being caused by technological advancement.
  • Forgetting entirely that the ecosystem is not the planet, their plan would end up killing everyone as with everyone in virtual reality there'd be no-one to maintain the servers everyone's trapped in (and the franchise had long-established that if the servers go down, everyone trapped within them dies), doing this would prevent any technological advancement which would mediate such ecological destruction (or planetary colonization efforts), and several other significant past plot points; the least of which being the nature of how Aura—who this plan all hinged upon to work—was created to be a testament of the love her programmer held for a woman he never got to be with...that those entry's retcon as being one of the inner-circle. And the belief of 'we'll destroy the world with technological progress' has been debunked since the 80's, and said damage has actually steeply declined in that time.
  • The first few .hack// games avoided this by being a direct sequel to the anime .hack//SIGN; on the other hand, Roots contradict various aspects of the G.U. games (both were released about the same time, but when Roots reenacted some of G.U.'s scenes, the first game was already available for months). The most jarring ones:
  • Shino's death scene (in this case, the retcon was caused by the games). While the scene is essentially the same in both versions, some minor details were changed to contribute to the drama of Alkaid's death scene in the games. Shino got lines when in the anime she didn't say anything, among other changes (such as Haseo not calling her on her phone). Shino's outfit coloring also suffered, as in some of the game's flashbacks it would be black (that is, post-Ovan-disappearance) when, according to the plot, it should be white.
• Ace Attorney: In case 2 of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Maya Fey very clearly states that she doesn't have any family and has only recently gotten used to being independent after Mia had left home to become a lawyer. Then, in case 2 of Justice for All, Phoenix visits Maya’s hometown of Khurain Village, where she lives alongside her aunt Morgan and her cousin Pearl at Fey Manor.
• In the first Advance Wars, Olaf was a former Orange Star CO and Nell's former superior who's "strong character and skill attracted the attention of Blue Moon", prompting him to not only betray Orange Star to join them but also go on to attack his former country. In the sequel however, it's been changed to him being a native of Blue Moon from the get-go, complete with a mission where you come across Olaf's hometown in Blue Moon, which was destroyed by Black Hole. Presumably, as the bit about him being former Orange Star is only once ever mentioned, in one of the tutorial maps, the devs were either banking on the players having forgotten that little detail. The Video Game Remake removes all mentions of Olaf being an Orange Star CO, firmly erasing it from continuity.
• Both Aliens: Colonial Marines and Alien: Isolation did this for the first two films of the Alien franchise.
  • Colonial Marines claims that chestbursters create a parasitic pseudo-womb inside their hosts whilst they gestate, ensuring that if they are surgically removed before birth, it will kill the host.
  • Colonial Marines reveals Hicks survived instead of dying of in Alien³ and that the engineer Michael Ripley meets in that film is actually CEO Michael Weyland.
  • Isolation explains that the colony on LV-426 never found the alien vessel because scavengers got there decades ago and switched off the signal so nobody else would ever find it, planning on keeping the riches for finding it to themselves.
• For the first time in the series, Animal Crossing: New Leaf introduced two new villager personality types, Smug (for males) and Sisterly (for females). While most of the villagers with these personality types were created for New Leaf, some villagers from previous games got changed, like Charlise (Peppy → Sisterly) and Kidd (Lazy → Smug). A small few island villagers from the first game also had their personalities changed when they were introduced as regular villagers in later games, such as Rowan (Cranky → Jock).
• The first Assassin's Creed game was released in 2007 but is set in 2012. Several e-mails can be read which tell of things such as Hollywood having closed and most of Africa's population having died out. But in Assassin's Creed III, the series caught up with 2012, and every subsequent game has been set in its year of release, so those e-mails have been retconned to have been propaganda to Abstergo Employees by the hacker group Erudito.
• In Backyard Skateboarding, the playable characters have allegedly never heard of several neighborhood kids. This would fit in continuity for Andy MacDonald, but not for the Backyard Kids because they played in the same league as them for a few years! In MANY different sports! (It may be that Skateboarding is supposed to be from Andy MacDonald's perspective, with the others as just playable.)
• Batman: Arkham Series:
  • The earlier games originally had several character backstories and designs that have been overwritten by the time of Batman: Arkham Knight, by both the original developers and WB Games Montreal. A notable Rocksteady example is Hush, who is said to have been defeated in Asylum, yet Batman meets him for the first time in City. Most people who aren't against their rewrites often note that Asylum wasn't originally going to have a sequel, so most of the backstories were lifted straight from the comics.
  • The Deadshot introduced in Batman: Arkham City was originally treated to be the real deal, yet when Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League introduced a new Deadshot based on the one from Suicide Squad (2016), with the explaination being the earlier Deadshot was from another universe and the "newer" Deadshot being the one who's actually native to the Arkham universe.
• Borderlands:
  • Handsome Jack being a puppeteer and behind the events of the first game were admitted by Anthony Burch to be a retcon and apparently was not intended for the series, however Handsome Jack turned out to be such a fantastic and well-made villain that Mr. Burch notes the retcon is something "fans are surprisingly forgiving of".
  • In the first game, Bloodwing is referred to as male. In the second, Bloodwing is referred to as female. The writers handwaved it away as a gender change inherent in the species.
  • The New-U stations of Borderlands 2 were eventually retconned into simply being a gameplay mechanic rather than an in-universe device after the fact that Handsome Jack would allow his greatest enemies to be resurrected as many times as possible was too much of a plot hole to ignore, with writer Anthony Burch regretting writing dialog for the stations simply by how it made things even more glaring.
• Case 02: Paranormal Evil: Although this game is supposed to continue from Ending 2 of Loser Reborn, it changes certain details. In the previous game, Marty obtains a gun from a dead cop in the hospital lobby, has no allies with him, and has to face Gla'aki and her zombies. In this game, Marty obtains a gun in one of the upper floors, enters the lobby with Sally, and has to fight living cultists in addition to Gla'aki and her zombies.
• Champions Online seems to be lampooning the trope: "Retcon" was their custom term for a respec, until some players got confused by it!
• Guile, a character that the player can recruit in Chrono Cross, was actually meant to be Magus from the previous game. The developers said that they eliminated his backstory because of time constraints and because they didn't want any of the "secondary" characters to have more importance than the others, but evidence still exists that the two were originally meant to be the same person (they both hover instead of walking, have long white hair, and use Shadow magic; Guile's Japanese name, Alfador, is the same name that the child Magus gave to his cat in Chrono Trigger). Surprisingly, in the Updated Re-release of Chrono Trigger for the Nintendo DS, they retconned the whole story by having Magus lose all of his memories in a canonical ending, thus strongly implying that Guile is an amnesiac Magus.
  • The same thing can be said about Dalton. In Chrono Trigger he was a joke villain, but in one of the bonus dungeons of the DS version you can fight him and discover that he's planning to raise a huge army in Porre and destroy Guardia (Crono, Marle and Lucca's hometown). Of course, Chrono Cross tells us that Guardia has indeed fallen against Porre's army.
• Dark Reign has an ingenious version of this: the first twelve missions are recreations of famous battles between the Freedom Guard and the Imperium. You choose which site to fight for, but the historical results of the battle will not necessarily match your victory. The final mission involves going back in time and retconning history itself by saving Togra and defeating both sides. Thus, the retcon is part of the plot.
• In Darksiders, the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse were said to be older than both angels and demons, but in the second game, its established that they belong to a race spawned from angels and demons instead. The Chosen from the first game were also thought to be demons themselves, but its explained in the second game that they are far older and they were summoned from the Abyss to serve the Destroyer, rather than being natives to Hell.
• In Dead or Alive, with Ryu, the star of Ninja Gaiden, already being an extremely popular character by the time DOA Dimensions is made, it seems Team Ninja really wanted Ryu’s role in the retelling for the first 4 DOA games to be expanded; originally Ryu’s only more prominent role was in DOA2 where he canonically killed Bankotsubo, the Tengu, Dimensions on the other hand has Ryu being very active in supporting Kasumi, Ayane and Hayate in all their ventures, even the ones in which Ryu was never mentioned to be a part of in the original games, to the point it seems the trio wouldn’t accomplish half of what they did without Ryu’s help.
• In the original version of Yuzu's ending for Devil Survivor it's made clear that choosing to break out of the lockdown has so weakened the military and angels that all of the demons and tamers escaped which has resulted in the collapse of civilization. In the remake's Eighth Day of her ending the vast majority of demons and tamers are still trapped in the lockdown and the angels are actually starting to take over.
• During the production of Devil May Cry 5, the franchise timeline was retconned so that Devil May Cry 4 is now stated to take place after Devil May Cry 2, instead of before it.
• Diablo
  • In the first game, dialogue^note Ogden: "Thank goodness you've returned! Much has changed since you lived here, my friend." implies that the Player Character used to live in Tristram. In Diablo II, the hero of the first game is established as the one who became the Dark Wanderer, but now he's a nameless wanderer no-one in town knew. Diablo III establishes the Dark Wanderer's name is Aidan, and both Deckard Cain and the people of Tristram knew his identity, again. Aidan is King Leoric's eldest son and Albrecht's brother, despite Albrecht previously being the king's only son.
• Certain plot developments in Dragon Age: Origins, particularly from the epilogue, were later undone or ignored to more easily meet the demands of the plots of its sequels, which were not being planned during the game's development. One notable example was the death of Harrowmont if he took the throne, since later subplots required the indirect involvement of Orzammar's king.
• Dragon Quest:
  • In the Dragon Quest NES manual, the King of Tantegel is named King Lorik XVI, but the remakes remove any mention of his name.
  • Dragon Quest IV: Torneko was called Taloon in the NES version. Both names were later Retconed as "Torneko Taloon", with Torneko as his "first" name, and Taloon as his "last" name.
  • Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2: The first Monster Joker treated the Alabast Dragon (one of the various forms of the Dragovian Lord from Dragon Quest VIII) as the Zentithian Dragon (God from DQ IV, DQ V, and DQ VI). In Joker 2, the Zenithian Dragon got its own model and entry, and the Alabast Dragon was demoted to its proper place.
• The sixth route of Duel Savior Destiny hastily claims at the end that Mia is Not Blood Related to Taiga as a saving throw to prevent 'real' incest. The final route, however, establishes firmly that they do have blood ties.
• In the original Destiny, the character only known as The Exo Stranger is an enigma. All we really know about her is that she's a time traveler, she's working with someone who apparently knows the player and needs her for protection and she hates the Vex, to the point of hunting them down throughout all of time and space. A lore card even states that she appears in all of their simulated timelines somehow. Come the sequel Destiny 2, the stranger has been revealed to be Elsie Bray, a famous scientist from the Golden Age and also another timeline. What makes this a retcon is that the character quirks seen in the stranger's first appearance are utterly incompatiable with the Elsie Bray that we are introduced too in the "Beyond Light" expansion. For one thing, she's never implied to be working with anyone from her home dimension and for another her role as the Arch-Enemy of The Vex just doesn't come up. She surely doesn't like them, but Elsie doesn't seem to be the type to chase them all over time.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • The Imperial Province (Cyrodiil) was said to originally be a Mayincatec-esque setting, with jungles, rivers, rice fields, tattoos, and stone cities. Later depictions transform it instead as a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of ancient Rome. This is justified as Tiber Septim, founder of the Third Cyrodiilic Empire, would use his powers post-apotheosis as the deity Talos to perform a Cosmic Retcon, transforming Cyrodiil into a temperate forest as a thanks to the Imperial Legions who served him so well in life. As shown in the prequel The Elder Scrolls Online, this change was retroactive, making it so Cyrodiil had always been a temperate forest, and that previous reports to the contrary were due to a "transcription error".
  • Until Morrowind, there is no mention of a race native to the Imperial Province, the province is a cosmopolitan mish-mash of all the other races, and the Imperial line is descended from the Nords. Morrowind introduces (and makes playable) the Imperial race, and retcons them as a descendant of the original Nede/Atmoran Caucasian race, from which the modern Nords, Bretons (via mix with elves) and Imperials are all descended. The retcon does maintain that the Emperor's family has more Nord blood than most Imperials.
• Epic Battle Fantasy series: Epic Battle Fantasy 1 ends with Matt and Natalie being killed in an explosion. Epic Battle Fantasy 2 retcons this so that they both survived, albeit heavily injured.
• Fallout
  • In Fallout 3, the bulky Plasma Rifle from Fallout 2 is replaced with a lighter and more traditionally rifle-shaped model. The Fallout 2 rifle returns in Fallout: New Vegas as "Plasma Caster", along with a justification in-universe.
  • Then Fallout 4 came with more truly lore-breaking changes, with... mixed reactions.
    • Many designs of various objects are updated with a more "retro" and colorful look, such as the Holotapes being partially made out of plastic, and Nuka-Cola bottles shaped like rockets. The latter is described in-universe as an actual update on the bottle design, although the lack of Nuka-Cola bottle with older design in-game make this a bit jarring.
    • The Vertibird VTOL is described as being developed and produced by the Enclave after the war. The Vertibird at least exist as a prototype pre-war. But in Fallout 4 Vertibird appears to have been in service during pre-war, you can even see them in the pre-war segment.
    • In Fallout 2, Jet is shown to be invented by Myron in New Reno out of Brahmin (a post-war mutant cow) dung, with it appearance in Fallout 3 even acknowledging its origin in New Reno. But in Fallout 4, Jet appears to have existed in pre-war America for some time, with several mentions of it being used by your pre-war neighbors. Fallout 76 doubles down on this, asserting that Jet existed pre-War and Myron simply refined it into its more potent current form.
    • In all previous Fallout games, the power armors are described to have been powered by a miniature nuclear reactor that allows it to perpetually operate for 200 years. In Fallout 4 they're powered by miniature fusion cells that last for about 30 minutes per cell, and this is not a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation. Fallout 4 takes place 10 years after Fallout 3 and New Vegas, which means it takes place 210 years after the Great War. The power sources are now expired and everyone is using the next best thing. However, power armor in Fallout 76, which takes place only 25 years after the bombs fell, also uses Fallout 4's fuel system.
  • How power armor appears throughout the series. In Fallout 1 and 2 they're depicted as bulky walking tank that towers over an average person. In Fallout 3 and New Vegas they appear no bulkier than average non-powered metal armor. Fallout 4 returns with the one-man tank look. Although this is less an example of a retcon and more Gameplay and Story Segregation due to engine limitations.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy: The tradition of adding a character named "Cid" in each Final Fantasy game began with Final Fantasy II. However, when the original game was remade for the GBA (followed by subsequent remakes), someone named Cid was inserted into its canon as the ancient creator of your party's airship. He is never seen and was only minorly mentioned by one of the townspeople of Lufenia. Surprisingly enough, he became a major character in Dissidia Final Fantasy as Cid of the Lufaine.
  • 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 before Cloud (in the original game, when Cloud asked if Zack and Aerith were "serious", Aerith replied, "No... but I liked him for a while") and received all much of her trademarks from him, Genesis orchestrated the Nibelheim incident (though it seems to have gotten far more out of hand than he intended), and Zack died fighting what looks like 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, but on a larger scale with many members here, as well as adds a different incarnation of AVALANCHE that existed before Barrett founded his group, making them behind many events that occurred prior to the original game; 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, making HIM more mopey, and added an entire army of subterranean Super Soldiers to the canon where there were none before).
    • Some of the retcons in the compilation were later 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.
    • Interestingly, the remake is a blend of the original story and some new material that also integrates some story beats from Compilation media, including a few of the retcons; meanwhile, the events of the original VII happened verbatim in the original timeline, with the games set in the Remake continuity taking place in an alternate timeline..
  • Final Fantasy XIV, thanks to being a bit of a Long Runner where thing(s) are intentionally left vague, has had some of these happen - however many of these are chalked up to Unreliable Narrator or Early-Installment Weirdness by the playerbase, and are often easily lost in the Archive Panic.
    • Parodied by Rabtoons's video on "Heavensward in A Nutshell", where Lahabrea and Igeyorhm do a Fusion Dance into Ascian Prime, and say "This is what Ascians used to look like in 1.0".
• In Five Nights at Freddy's 2, one of the lore minigames seen occasionally after death shows a child being murdered just outside the restaurant, followed by a jump scare by the Puppet. During that game, a robotic sounding voice can be heard spelling the words "Save Him". In the Good Ending of Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator, there is a flashback to this scene as Cassette Man talks to his daughter, meaning that the child that was murdered then and whose soul possesses the Puppet was a girl.
• Halo:
  • From the first game we are given: "You are the Master Chief, born for battle, bred for war, you are the last of Spartan-II project. Your brethren have died". The novel Halo: First Strike then reveals that a number of other Spartan-IIs survived. In fact, there was another Spartan alongside you on the Pillar of Autumn, though she was stuck in a cryopod due to her injuries. Even then, she was supposed to be dead, but First Strike changed that to clinically dead, and had her resuscitated through complex surgery. However, the games never referenced any of this until 343 Industries took over the franchise from Bungie.
  • 2010's Halo: Reach retconned several details of the eponymous planet's fall as depicted in 2001's Halo: The Fall of Reach. In the original novel, the Pillar of Autumn was about to leave the system when the Covenant initiate their attack on August 30, 2552. The ship then spends the entire battle duking it out with the Covies, which ends with the latter successfully wiping out almost all of Reach's defenders in less than a day. After the Autumn is forced to flee the system, Cortana uses data from a Forerunner crystal to plot a course to Halo. The first game's plot follows. Halo Reach, meanwhile, has the battle for Reach lasting much longer, with the Covenant raiding the planet as early as July 24, and forces from their main fleet arriving almost a month later on August 14. The Pillar of Autumn even manages to find time to land on the planet on August 30, just before it evacuates the system, in order to retrieve a fragment of Cortana from Noble Team. Cortana then plots a course to Halo based not just on the Forerunner crystal, but with data gathered from Reach's own Forerunner artifact. Cue massive Fan Wank that has continued to persist despite 343i making multiple subsequent efforts to reconcile the timeline discrepancies.
  • The earlier Halo novels stated that the Elites, Hunters, and Brutes were not encountered by humanity until the last year of the Human-Covenant war. This was contradicted by so many other sources that the 2010/2011 reprints of said novels retconned away any mention of them being newly encountered species, because by this point they had shifted into the opposite situation, where their lack of presence in the first game was Early-Installment Weirdness.
  • The original trilogy of Halo games contain many hints that the Forerunners and humanity are one and the same, with humanity having "re-evolved" after the firing of the Halos. This culminates in 343 Guilty Spark directly saying "You are a child of my makers, inheritor of all they left behind. You are Forerunner." near the end of Halo 3. When 343i took over the franchise, they released a trilogy of novels detailing the Forerunners as explicitly a separate species from humanity, and indeed having initially been enemies of ancient humanity. The explanation for Guilty Spark's statements seems to simply be that Spark was insane.
  • In general, Bungie and 343i's official policy on canon, beyond the hierarchy of what takes precedence (e.g. statements directly from the developers have higher priority on canon than supplementary material like the manual for a game), is that in the case of discrepancies, newer content takes precedence over older, meaning retcons are standard when it comes to revisiting events.
• The G-Man is called "Administrator" in Half-Life's script, implying he was the one overseeing experiments at Black Mesa and a literal government agent. Half-Life 2 establishes that Wallace Breen was the administrator of Black Mesa, and while little is known about the G-Man, he appears to be of extraterrestrial origin.
• Jak and Daxter: Some minor (and easily Handwaved) details from the first game (The Precursor Legacy) don't exactly mesh with revelations made in the later games.
• Appears to have happened to Jurassic Park: The Game for several reasons. The plot to nuke the island is mentioned, but Jurassic World shows it didn’t happen. Also, the Visitor’s Center damage doesn’t match up in the two. More importantly, Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous shows the embryo canister being found by Dodgson and taken off the island even though it was either crushed by the T .Rex or left lying on the dock in the game endings. Producer Colin Trevarro said after Jurassic World that “a version” of the story happened, but it’s becoming increasingly unlikely after the new material got released.
• The King of Fighters: Initially, K9999's attempt on his own teammate Foxy's life in 2001 was said to have succeeded. Then it was rather quickly altered to not actually being fatal. To make matters even more complicated, SNK's efforts to suppress all information regarding K9999 led to mass speculation that the character himself was retconned out of continuity, which XV (released 20 years after his last appearance!) Jossed.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • The first Kingdom Hearts defines the Heartless as "those without hearts": when a person succumbed to the darkness in their heart, the darkness consumed it entirely, leaving them with no heart, thus, a Heartless. However, starting in Final Mix, the explanation is reversed: the Heartless is the heart, and the empty shell of the body becomes a Nobody. Additional information introduced in subsequent games only serves to make the whole thing even more confusing.
  • The adventure Sora and friends had at Disney Castle in Kingdom Hearts II. Donald and Goofy wonder what Heartless are doing in the castle. Queen Minnie escorts Sora to a hidden chamber below the throne and talks about the Cornerstone of Light. Maleficent sort of appears to them. Due to her meddling with the past, she can barely be in the castle until Pete destroys it. Sora and friends go through a magic doorway to the world of Timeless River and prevent Present Pete from breaking it with the help of Past Pete. So now Maleficent and her forces can't enter the castle in the Present, right? WRONG!!! By Kingdom Hearts coded and Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], this was COMPLETELY forgotten. We see her and Pete holding the queen hostage, threatening to harm her unless they give her Jiminy Cricket's Journal.
  • In the original game, Ansem, the leader of Hollow Bastion, was said to be a once-benevolent king who became obsessed with the study of darkness and was eventually consumed by it. In the second game, however, we discover that the person everyone thought was Ansem was actually the Heartless of his apprentice, Xehanort, who had deposed Ansem and stolen his name, and that the real Ansem remained a good guy (for the most part). Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] makes it even MORE screwey! The first Xehanort we ever saw, "Ansem", went back in time and made his past self evil to start with, and the entire nature of Xehanort's past plans have changed as to be more interconnected, with his big plan involving creating thirteen versions of himself, through both time travel and infusing his heart into other peoples' hearts.
  • In the first game, Riku states that Kairi coming to Destiny Islands is the reason he knows there are other worlds. However, we find out in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep that Terra meets Riku, who seems to know he's not from around there. This was apparently before Kairi ended up on the island, but Riku still appears to know that there are other worlds. About the only way this might make sense is that while Riku suspected there were other worlds when Terra arrived, it was only when Kairi arrived that he was completely sure of it.
• Left 4 Dead went through this a few times. During the development of the game, each campaign was supposed to continue in sequence in the storyline, but play testers complained that they felt it was too much of a downer to see the survivors get rescued and wind up having it fail, starting the next campaign. Valve then made it where each campaign is a separate story. Fans then started to complain that the campaigns felt too out of place, so Valve made the Crash Course campaign that tied in between No Mercy and Death Toll. Possibly due to Fan Wank, Valve made the sequel have the campaigns be all connected in sequence and it was met with positive reaction. In response to this, The Sacrifice comic goes to state that the survivors from the first game have, in fact, gone through several rescues in each campaign one by one (No Mercy, Death Toll, Dead Air, and then Blood Harvest).
• The Legacy of Kain series pulls an interesting in-game example: at the end of Soul Reaver 2, when Kain changes the timeline by pulling the Reaver out of Raziel, the timeline itself retcons Blood Omen 2 and parts of Defiance into existence to prevent time from being destroyed.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • In The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past there was mention of Seven Wise Men who sealed Ganon in the Sacred Realm. After the release of the prequel game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the Game Boy Advance Polished Port of ALttP retcons them as just "The Seven Sages" due to five of them being female. And then later still the Hyrule Historia was released and retconned Ocarina of Time and the "Sealing War" in the backstory of Link to the Past as separate events.
  • The Master Sword's origin was subjected to numerous retcons prior to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. In A Link to the Past, the Master Sword was created by the people of Hyrule as a failsafe weapon in case evil claimed the Triforce, but it was never used at all until ALttP Link pulled it out to stop Ganon from breaking out of the Dark World. Ocarina of Time retconned it by revealing that OoT Link had actually wielded the Master Sword to seal Ganon away in Dark World in the first place. All of this got retconned away when Skyward Sword revealed that the Master Sword was once the Goddess Sword wielded by SS Link who also reforged the blade into the Master Sword to destroy Demon King Demise, Ganon's predecessor. Even this official backstory could be subjected to future retcons given that Skyward Sword teased at the idea of a predecessor Link before SS Link.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games were originally unrelated to previous games. It features a Link that looks a lot like the A Link to the Past Link, but he looks decidedly younger than the ALTTP Link. Even more noticeable, Zelda has a completely different design and hair colour. Still, Hyrule Historia confirms that they're the same characters.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, it's stated that the Golden Goddesses created only Hyrule. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess expands this by showing that they created the world itself.
• In Mass Effect, Saren's hatred for humans was said to be the result of his brother Desolus getting killed during the First Contact War. This was contradicted by the later comic miniseries Evolution, in which it's revealed that Saren himself killed Desolus, because his brother was a General Ripper who intended to turn the entire turian population into monsters in order to re-fight the war. It's worth noting that the comic book miniseries was written by Mac Walters, whereas the original game was written by Drew Karpyshyn, though Mac Walters was also a part of the writing team.
• Mega Man Powered Up retconned two robot masters, Time Man and Oil Man, into the original batch of robots created by Dr. Light, in order to bring the total amount of first-generation bosses to 8, much like the other games in the series.
• In Mega Man X6, Capcom retconned Zero's death in X5, shoehorning him into the plot (if you found and defeated a Nightmare Zero).
• The Metal Gear series tends to have each new installment retcon at least one more-or-less significant plot detail from the previous game to a degree where it is also as big a stable of the series as the cardboard box.
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater made a few changes to Big Boss' initially established back-story from previous games. Originally, Big Boss was stated to be born around the 1920's, meaning that he was in his 50's when Solid Snake was born during the 1970's and over 70 when Solid Snake (supposedly) killed him in Metal Gear 2, which was set in 1999. However, he's only 29 in Metal Gear Solid 3, which is set in 1964, meaning that he was de-aged by roughly ten years. Likewise, Big Boss' bio in the Metal Gear 2 manual stated Big Boss lost his eye during the 1980's, a few decades later from the events of Metal Gear Solid 3 (where Big Boss loses said eye during an interrogation session).
  • A line of dialogue in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker places Big Boss's age at 39 years old in 1974, which is jarring when you consider that Les Enfants Terribles occurred only two years earlier according to Liquid's dialogue in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty:
    Liquid: The price of physical prodigy... Few more years and you’ll be another dead clone of the old man. Our raw materials are vintage, brother. Big Boss was in his late fifties when they created his copies.
  • The eponymous walking nuclear tank itself has had its history changed as well. The TX-55 Metal Gear from the first MSX game was originally the first of its kind, until later prequels revealed that there were at least three models before it (the ICBMG from Portable Ops, Metal Gear Zeke from Peace Walker and Sahelanthropus from The Phantom Pain).
  • Gray Fox's back-story was also heavily retconned in MPO. In MG2, Gray Fox reveals during his death scene that he was a half-white war orphan from Vietnam who was adopted by Big Boss after the war was over (which would have been after 1975) and later served Renamo (the Mozambican National Resistance) during the Mozambican Civil War. In MPO, we find out he was a German-speaking child soldier from Mozambique who fought for the Frelimo (who were the enemies of the real life Renamo) in 1966 (four years before MPO and nine years before the Vietnam War ended). The Metal Gear Solid 4 Database doesn't even mention Gray Fox's time in Vietnam, nor his time serving Renamo.
  • The identities of the Patriots have been changed multiple times since the first mention of the organization. In MGS2 they were suggested to be both an Illuminati-like secret council composed mainly of twelve members known as the Wisemen's Committee. The timeline in the ending of MGS3 stated that the Patriots were actually the US branch of the Philosophers, which was the real Illuminati-like organization. But then MGS4 established that was really a cover for their true origins (MPO having previously revealed that the US Philosophers were murdered by Ocelot under orders from Zero) as a different group founded by Big Boss and his team from MGS3 as a sort of continuation of the Philosophers, which Big Boss left over a dispute with Zero, and which Zero passed on to a group of AIs; and that furthermore, Donald Anderson from MGS1 was really Sigint, and Dr. Clark (who revived Gray Fox as a cyborg) was Para-Medic, and that their "accidental" deaths (Anderson's from being tortured by Ocelot, Clark's from Fox's rampage) had been orchestrated by Eva and Ocelot from the get-go as part of their plan to destroy the Patriots and rescue Big Boss. And the really weird thing is, after playing all the games all of the above will make perfect sense.
  • A lot of the plotpoints from Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake were retconned as early as Metal Gear Solid. For instance, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake heavily implies in both its intro and the instruction manual that the entire world was actually disarming its nukes and the only intact nukes were procured by Zanzibar Land by raiding nuclear outposts. However, Metal Gear Solid retcons this by exposing that more than 20,000 nukes still exist in the world either by 1998 or 2003, despite their goal being to get rid of them by 2001 or 2007, as well as the fact that they were creating nukes, and that START II, which was stated to have not only been ratified, but also implemented long before the events of Metal Gear 2, was mentioned to have not even been ratified yet by the time of Metal Gear Solid.
    • There's also a moment that went down in infamamy where the Colonel and Snake seemingly suggest Big Boss revealed he is Snake's father in Zanzibar Land, despite no such thing was mentioned during Snake and Big Boss' confrontation in Metal Gear 2. However, this is a common misinterpretion. In reality, the Colonel was talking about his death in Zanzibar Land, while Snake was discussing his relation to Big Boss, with the implication supposed to be that he told Snake of his heritage at some point prior to Metal Gear.
  • Venom Snake's existence is one big retcon. It is revealed in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain that Venom Snake is the Big Boss that Solid Snake kills in Metal Gear and the Big Boss in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is the original one (Naked Snake). This contradicts the explanation given for Big Boss's survival in Metal Gear 2, which suggests that the same Big Boss did fought Snake in the first game and only survived his injuries with cyborg implants (which was accepted as canon in the Metal Gear Solid 4 Database).
  • You might even consider Zero as a huge retcon. It was heavily implied in the fourth game by EVA that Zero became bitter towards Big Boss for leaving the Patriots to fight against them and their system with his idea for Outer Heaven, considering it a betrayal, and he went even more crazy and tyrannical after the seeming death of Big Boss, giving up on humanity, still being conscious enough to retrieve Big Boss's body deliberately to make use of, before eventually ending up in his comatose state as a result of old age. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain reveals the exact opposite. Zero was not only not bitter, but he desperately wanted Big Boss back and seemed regretful for driving Big Boss away and what he had done to the world, and was reduced to his comatose state much earlier than he had been said to be before, after being betrayed by his subordinate Skull Face, who infected him with parasites. One of his last moments before becoming vegetative was visiting Big Boss while he's in his coma and expressing his regrets. Also while he did go overboard with the whole control thing he was certainly not crazy and malevolent as previously depicted.
  • Otacon's bio in Metal Gear Solid said he was in his 30s, and his physical appearance in all his games is consistent with this, meaning he looks to be in his 40s in his final appearance in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. In Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker a timeline states he was born in 1980, making him only in his mid-20s in his first appearance, and only in his early 30s in his final one. Especially amusing when Raiden in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is pointing out that Otacon got "a lot more attractive" when he reached his 30s, when he looked stylish, but, for that age, pretty rough.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, the briefing section of the main menu gives you a series of recaps of the original Metal Gear Solid framed as in-universe reports on the Shadow Moses Incident. One of them (referred to several times in-game proper by Raiden) is 'In The Darkness of Shadow Moses' a whistleblowing expose written by the first game's support team member Nastasha Romanenko to tell the real story of the incident from the perspective of that support team. This retelling is also used to establish how The Patriots were directly involved in the first game (as well as the character Richard Ames, who is an important side character in Solid 2, being The Patriots' eyes and ears during the Shadow Moses Incident) and that Liquid was fully aware of their existence and his greater goal was taking them down.
• Metroid:
  • Metroid: Zero Mission, the remake of the first Metroid, 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.
  • Metroid Prime:
    • There was a Chozo barrier around the Impact Crater, which stopped the Space Pirates from getting inside, where Metroid Prime (the creature) was. However, in the first US version of the game, Pirate logs indicate that they captured and studies the creature before it escaped. This was very quickly retconned when they realised it was impossible - in the normal English version and the Player's Choice versions of the games, the Pirate logs only say that they know there is a creature there, but they don't know what it is. But even in the non-US versions, the scan data of Metroid Prime says it has mechanical weapons, which (in the US version) it assimilated when the Space Pirates were experimenting on it. Either way, it's still a Plot Hole.
    • Another big retcon in that game concerns the Chozo Lore. In the original North American release, the lore scans indicate that the Chozo on Tallon IV had already ascended their physical bodies long ago but were pulled back to the mortal plane into an incorporeal state when the Phazon meteor hit. This means that the barrier temple and the Chozo Artifacts were constructed by them when they were ghosts. All subsequent releases of Metroid Prime quietly deleted the lore entry "Exodus" that talked about them ascending, and the other entries were rewritten from the viewpoint of a flesh-and-blood Chozo as the temple and artifacts were constructed.
  • Metroid: Other M:
    • A minor one, but still interesting to note. Samus describes Adam as "the only father-figure I ever had". This completely ignores Samus' backstory with Old Bird, Gray Voice, and the Chozo in general as her foster family.
    • The game shows us that Samus's past combat service with the Federation was in their Army. This changes a detail the Metroid (Manga) from 2002 told us she had been with the Federation Police, and her commanding officer in the manga was a man named Chief Hardy; she was never under Adam's command.
    • In this game, Samus' armor is something she spawns from a badge on her Zero Suit and maintains through concentration. While games in the series also have the suit activated and powered by some level of mental and/or spiritual energy, this is the only instance where constant concentration is needed to keep the suit activated. One game even has Samus' suit remaining active while she's unconscious serve as a major plot point.
• The Might and Magic series of games had a rather large one: At the end of game three, Isles of Terra, the player character team leaves Terra in a spaceship, chasing Sheltem alongside Corak. In the fifth game, Darkside of Xeen, the fate of the party was stated in Corak's data-log: They followed to Xeen, but their ship had a bad trajectory upon entering Xeen's atmosphere. Corak instructed them to use the transport to beam down to the surface while the ship itself burned in re-entry^note This could allow the party to be the playable characters for Clouds of Xeen, the fourth game, as well as for Darkside, since the party for those games are the same. This wasn't unprecedented in the series: The first and second games were the same party as well.. However, the seventh game, For Blood and Honor changed this: The team was actually driven off-course during spaceflight and ended up on Enroth, where they became major NPCs in that game.
• Herman Toothrot is a loony eccentric in the first two Monkey Island games. In subsequent games he is inexplicably identified as the grandfather of Guybrush's love interest Elaine Marley. This contradicts a large chunk of the established story, and much shoehorning has to be made. Then, Return to Monkey Island appears to retcon this retcon, with Herman behaving as before. Elaine even refers to him by his name instead of "grandpa" or the like.
• Monster Hunter:
  • Monster Hunter 2 (dos): Bullfango are reclassified from Herbivores to the newly introduced Fanged Beasts.
  • Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate: Some parts of the Low Rank's Story Arc (which corresponds to the entirety of the story of the original Monster Hunter Tri) are changed in order to incorporate new elements onto it and greatly expand it overall: Great Jaggi's first appearance taking place in Sandy Plains instead of Deserted Island, Kayamba joining the quest during Cha-Cha's temporary absence, and the addition of Arzuros, Great Wroggi, Lagombi, Volvidon, Duramboros and Nibelsnarf (all of them courtesy of Portable 3rd). Also, the original sixth quest chapter from Tri, which offered seven urgent quests available after the defeat of Ceadeus to serve as a Playable Epilogue, is eliminated so the game provides the immediate start of the High Rank quests right after the Ceadeus quest.
  • Monster Hunter 4: Remobras are reclassified from Flying Wyverns to Snake Wyverns. This change is acknowledged in-universe.
• Mortal Kombat
  • Raiden's story in the first Mortal Kombat (1992) was much more self-serving, as he had been invited by Shang Tsung to compete and does so in order to prove mortals are puny when matched with a god. His ending from that game has him overthrow the tournament and turn it into a showcase of the gods (that eventually destroy the world). Later games throw this characterization out the window and instead portray him as a concerned protector who feels he must participate in order to avert disaster (as this happens after the first movie also changed the entire story of the first game).
  • Likewise, Scorpion was described in the first game as donning a yellow version of the Lin Kuei uniform as a Take That!, essentially calling Sub-Zero a coward. Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero shows the still-living Hanzo Hasashi (Scorpion's former identity) wearing the same costume, which is now depicted as the uniform of the Shirai-Ryu clan, rivals to the Lin-Kuei.
  • Kabal from Mortal Kombat 3 was given the same treatment. The third game presented him as a reformed gangster seeking revenge for the deaths of his comrades and his ending states that he devotes himself to fighting injustice. Fast-forward to Mortal Kombat: Deception, and not only has Kabal returned to his criminal lifestyle, but he's one of the antagonists in the game.
  • Sindel has a surprisingly egregious one in Mortal Kombat 11. The original timeline featured her as a combo between Anti-Villain and Tragic Villain who had ruled the realm of Edenia until Shao Kahn invaded; killing her husband Jerrod, enslaving her subjects, and forcing Sindel into Unholy Matrimony. Sindel had taken her life thereafter until her revival in a Brainwashed and Crazy state. It was thanks to her daughter, Kitana, that Sindel went through a Heel–Face Turn by the time of Mortal Kombat: Deception. 11 introduces a major twist in Sindel's arcade ending: in that it was all lies. In the rebooted timeline, Sindel betrayed Jerrod to keep her position as queen, immediately relishing in the wealth and power she received through Shao Kahn's rule - until Quan Chi killed her and framed it as a suicide. This led to a major backlash from fans, finding the retcon to be outright disrespectful to the original Dark Is Not Evil portrayal of the character.
• Myst series: In the first two games, prison books trapped people in "the dark void of the Link" between Ages. Myst IV: Revelation changed the entire concept of trap books by turning them into prison ages instead and having Sirrus and Achenar return. It also re-introduced Yeesha, who later on in Uru: Ages Beyond Myst and even Myst V: End of Ages bent many of the rules of writing Ages, though at least Uru acknowledges that what Yeesha could do was out of the ordinary ("I could write things they never thought possible"). Uru (and later Myst V) attempt to explain away all the "inconsistencies" of the first four games by claiming that they were in-universe video games which simplified certain details.
• Pac-Man: Due to copyright issues, Namco had to pay a different company every time they depicted Ms. Pacman in a game. This lead to variants such as "Pac-Mom" and "Pac-Marie" Finally, Pac-Man Museum+ just retconed all instances of Ms. Pac-man as being Pac-Mom instead.
• Peacemaker Series: In Dice and the Tower of the Reanimator: Glorious Princess, non-human dark ones were meant to speak an entirely different language to make negotiation with them impossible for Bambooblade. However, there's no such Language Barrier in Hero King Quest: Peacemaker Prologue.
• Pokémon:
  • In Pokémon Red and Blue and Yellow (but not FireRed and LeafGreen), Giovanni vowed to make amends for his actions, feeling he betrayed his followers and renouncing Team Rocket for good. However, an event in HeartGold and SoulSilver reveals that Giovanni had in fact planned for Team Rocket to be revived, that he wasn't truly remorseful for betraying them, and the only reason he left was to get stronger. Possibly subverted, if Gold and Silver (following Red and Blue) and HeartGold and SoulSilver (following FireRed and LeafGreen) are actually in separate universes.
  • In Gold and Silver, Steel- and Dark-types were stated to be new types. This was omitted in the remakes, owing to the fact that the previous games, even FireRed and LeafGreen, also had Steel- and Dark-types. Subverted later as the originals and remakes are in separate universes.
  • Also, Steel was retroactively added to Magnemite and Magneton, which were pure Electric-types in the first generation, completely changing their type matchups. Similarly, Pokémon X and Y added the Fairy type, which was also retconned onto a number of older Pokémon, with a few (specifically, the Clefairy, Togepi, and Snubbull families) actually losing their former Normal types entirely.
  • Rotom's alternate forms also had type retcons. In Platinum, all of its forms shared the original's Electric/Ghost typing, but learned moves of other types relating to the appliance it was possessing. Starting in Black and White, the Ghost type for the alternate forms was replaced with the same type of the move that form learns.
  • Both times new types were added, other types gained and lost weaknesses unrelated to the new types as well, such as Steel losing its resistances to Dark and Ghost in the sixth gen when Fairy was introduced.
  • Some of the breeding mechanics amounted to retcons as well. Several species that once only bred more of their own kind were explained to not have been able to produce their pre-evolutions earlier due to not having the proper held incense. The families of Wobbuffet, Mr. Mime, Azumarill, Chingling, Snorlax, Mantine, Sudowoodo, Roserade, and Blissey are all part of this. They'll produce the middle or highest member of their line, depending on the species, when bred without the proper incense, and the baby member of the line only when bred while holding said incense.
  • Keldeo knowing its signature move Secret Sword causes it to automatically change into its Resolute Form until the move is forgotten. However, as this form was only introduced in B2W2, it can know Secret Sword in the original BW while remaining in its Ordinary Form.
  • They also retconned in some evolution methods; while most evolutions of older Pokémon use either a game mechanic or an item that wasn't available in previous games, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl gave Lickitung the ability to evolve if it's leveled up with Rollout in its moveset, and Yanma and Piloswine gained similar evolutions with AncientPower. However, Lickitung could learn the move via TM in the second generation or tutor in the third, and you can breed AncientPower onto a Piloswine in any generation.
  • Pokémon X and Y establishes the Mega Evolution mechanic, which is explained in the story that Korinna's ancestors found the original Key Stone and trained a Lucario who became the first known Pokémon to ever mega evolve. Key Stones themselves were so rare that only a handful of characters ever obtain one. Come Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire, and Key Stones are fairly common in the Hoenn region. Sootopolis City is no longer an extinct volcano, but the crash site of an ancient meteor. The postgame content "Delta Episode" focuses entirely around the ancient legends of Rayquaza and said ancient meteor being the true origins of Mega Evolution. This works out because X & Y mostly treats the origins of Mega Evolution as a local regional legend, while Alpha/Omega introduces a character who's lifelong purpose is to pass down the true history.
  • The Delta Episode of the Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire remake has the new character Zinnia reveal the Many Worlds Interpretation to be a real part of the Pokémon universe, serving to explain all of the previously unexplained retcons that have occurred in the game series. Pokémon Sun and Moon and especially Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon followed up on this significantly.
  • Originally in Pokémon Gold and Silver, no one had ever seen a Pokémon egg before until the protagonist is given one, which seems remarkably odd given how widespread they are in future games. In the remakes, Professor Elm doesn't react with surprise to being given the egg because Pokémon eggs are commonplace and well-known. This was later shown to have be subverted following the reveal of alternate universes.
• Portal 2 changes much of the backstory of Cave Johnson and Aperture Science from the history on ApertureScience.com released at the time of the original Portal. Instead of dying as a result of mercury poisoning, he now became sick from inhaling moon dust. In the old story, he proposed the idea for the portal gun while he was on his death bed. However, in Portal 2, all of the test chambers in the original levels of the facility require the use of a portal gun, even the ones that were constructed when Johnson was still young. The location of the Enrichment Center is also changed from Cleveland, Ohio to Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
• The Paradise Lost DLC for Postal 2 retcons the events of Postal III as being All Just a Dream the Postal Dude was having during a coma.
• Punch-Out!!: According to material that is All There in the Manual, Super Punch-Out!! Bear Hugger was originally from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. In the Wii version, this is changed. He's from Salmon Arm, British Columbia instead.^note This is presumably an inside joke referencing the fact that Punch-Out!! Wii was developed by Canadian studio Next Level Games, who are located in British Columbia.
• Resident Evil:
  • Albert Wesker in the original Resident Evil was a stock horror film character, the obligatory traitor who gets killed at the end. Realizing that the series was in need of a main villain, they brought back Wesker from the dead in Resident Evil – Code: Veronica and released a fictional documentary called Wesker's Report which explained that Wesker was behind the events of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis as well.
  • In the original PlayStation version of Resident Evil, the severed hand founded by Joseph Frost at the beginning of the game was originally established to be that of Edward Dewey, Bravo Team's originally unseen pilot. When both the remake and Zero came out, Edward Dewey was established to have died earlier during the events of Zero and the corpse found by Joseph now belongs to Kevin Dooley, a helicopter pilot who accompanied Bravo Team on their mission.
  • Originally, the team wielded generic Beretta handguns in the PlayStation version of the first game. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis then introduced the Samurai Edge, a customized Beretta that was planned to be adopted as the standard-issue sidearm by S.T.A.R.S. before they disbanded. In the GameCube remake onward, the S.T.A.R.S. members now all use the Samurai Edge.
  • Resident Evil 2 has Annette Birkin, a paranoid wife of the now mutated monster, William Birkin. She is continuing her husband's legacy of the G-Virus research and is angry at Claire for "killing" her husband. Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles rewrites Annette's character to be more sympathetic and is willing to stop her husband after he mutates. The Resident Evil 2 (Remake) combines these two portrayals, turning her into a more morally grey character who wants to prevent the virus from spreading while still being willing to let her daughter die to do so.
  • Lisa Trevor was added to the rewritten canon of Resident Evil 1. A child savagely experimented on but instead of dying from the viruses, she absorbed them becoming almost invincible, eventually turning into a mindless hulking monster that stalks the Arklay Mansion.
  • Resident Evil 3: Nemesis has a file named "Business Fax" that introduces a virus called the "NE-T type", which is a translation mistake (the NE-T Type is actually the name of the Nemesis). Said virus didn't exist up until years later with the release of Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, in which they have decided to make it official with the "NE-α type parasite".
  • Ada Wong has two different Disney Deaths in the original Resident Evil 2: falling off a catwalk or being thrown into an electrical console. Which of the two is canon has gone back and forth over the years. Wesker’s Report implies that the former happened, which was later changed when Darkside Chronicles establishes that the latter did. Then the Resident Evil 2 (Remake) goes back on that and uses the scene on the catwalk, cementing it as what really happened.
• In Saints Row 2 onward. The game (and its successors) lets you be a female, unlike in the first, where the Boss can only be male. The devs have stated that, canonically, if the Boss is female in the last three games, then she was female in the first one too.
• Silent Hill:
  • The exact nature of Silent Hill changes dramatically between games, comics and the film. Silent Hill implies that the Fog World and the Otherworld are manifested from Alessa's subconscious, because of her psychic powers as well as her many fears and traumas. This changes in Silent Hill 2, and is featured in some the comics, which suggests that the town was always a dark place, and that Alessa just caused the evil to break through into our world. It switches again in Silent Hill 3 and Homecoming, both featuring the Fog World being caused by the Order, who are able to control it to some degree (note that some manifestations in SH3 are relatable to Heather, "God," and the memories of Alessa as well). Origins and the first film restate Alessa's mind as the main source of the manifestations, though these installments imply or outright explain that they were actively created by Alessa in retribution for the crimes committed against her. Other comics say it was caused by the impregnation of a woman by Whately, who does not appear or is mentioned in any of the games. Finally, Silent Hill: Downpour suggests that the town itself is sentient.
  • The Hope House Orphanage, mentioned in an article in SH3, is a playable location in Silent Hill 4: The Room, though now dubbed the "Wish House Orphanage." The original article reappears in The Room, though this iteration of the article also reads "Wish House."
• In The Sims series, Bella Goth's brother, Michael Bachelor, was implied to be her younger brother in The Sims (him being fresh out of college while she's already married and has a school-aged kid) but he became her older brother in sequels.
• Sniper Elite 4 establishes series protagonist Karl Fairburne as a British SOE operative, when the three previous games depicted him as an American OSS agent.
• Sonic the Hedgehog's retcons are confusing at best:
  • There's the entire re-imagining that everything post-Sonic Adventure has brought when it comes to ages. Amy went from eight years old to twelve and Knuckles went from fifteen to sixteen. This is easier to digest for some people, but it brought problems to adaptations such as the Archie adaptation.
  • Shadow the Hedgehog reveals new information that affects how one can read Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Heroes.
    • The existence of the Black Arms is never implied in Adventure 2, as nothing indicated Gerald Robotnik made deals with beings from other planets. What's more, Maria knowing about them as revealed in Gerald's message to Shadow in The Last Way changes the reasons for Maria to send Shadow to the Earth.
    • Maria's existence. Maria has always existed, but her true relationship with Shadow is vague due to the latter's messy memories. Shadow's resolution in his debut game is that even if his memories aren't real, he would still fulfill Maria's wish. Shadow's titular game reveal Maria knew Shadow personally in the Final Story, and asked him to protect the world from the Black Arms.
    • The G.U.N. Commander's existence, and him knowing who Shadow is. While G.U.N. has a role in capturing Sonic and fighting Doctor Eggman, Adventure 2 never implied G.U.N. had a specific grudge against Shadow beyond hiding it as one of Gerald's weapons. If anything, they confused Sonic for him, which doesn't add up with the timeline.
    • The purpose of the Eclipse Cannon. In the original game, Gerald Robotnik created the weapon of mass destruction in order to fulfill his revenge on the world for the death of Maria. Shadow reveals he actually created the cannon for a good cause, as it was necessary to destroy the Black Comet. This one, however, doesn't contradict the events of Adventure 2, and instead fixes a plot hole from the original game (How did Gerald create such a weapon after being arrested? And if he created it before Maria's death, why did he do so?)
  • The first appearance of the Master Emerald in Sonic 3 & Knuckles had the Master Emerald being treated as functionally equal to all the 7 Chaos Emeralds put together. It had the ability to be used as a massive power source as well as turn Mecha Sonic into Super Mode like the 7 emeralds did to others. However, in it's next appearance the Master Emerald's only significant power was the ability to control the power of the Chaos emeralds which is usually used to deactivate them while not being able to do much else on it's own.
  • Sonic Generations had an interesting one concerning Sonic himself. Early on Sonic was 18, then 16, and finally 15 come Adventure. When the decision was made to put in Modern Sonic and Classic Sonic, it was decided that Classic Sonic was a preteen Sonic. And since he was with Classic Tails, Classic Eggman and Classic Metal Sonic, it retroactively made Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog CD, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles all adventures with the heroes as kids. Not only that, Sonic Mania and Sonic Superstars were added as adventures that Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles had in the past, with Amy joining them in the latter game. TailsTube would further confirm these adventures as memories that they reminisce over in the fifth Episode.
  • Sonic Adventure may have retconned the Master Emerald's location. It was originally the underground Hidden Palace Zone, but it now rests in a much smaller, outdoor temple.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2006): The entire game was Cosmic Retconned from the timeline in the ending by blowing out The Flames Of Disaster, which has lead to some confusion on how Silver still exists since the events that lead to his future were erased. Also, the level Crisis City appears in Sonic Generations, even though 06 erased itself from canon, and there's no reason given for as to why its there. There was actually going to be a cutscene that would play upon completing both acts of the stage that might have shed some light on why the Stage was there, but it was cut during development. Also, Blaze the Cat is from the future now. Just after she was introduced as a princess from another dimension. And then that was retconned back into her being an interdimensional princess later on.
  • Sonic has always lived amongst humans and this became concrete in-game with Sonic Adventure. That is, until sometime between Sonic Colors and Sonic Forces^note Generations references the human games but Colors is considered the game where humans began being phased out. As it turns out there are now two different Sonic continuities: one World of Funny Animals and one where humans exist. Word of God states that this has been in place since Adventure, but flies in the face of even the classic games, which had a few humans (namely Dr. Eggman/Robotnik and Witchcart) and urban environments, as well as much of the official art from that time, which depicted crowds of humans next to Sonic characters. TailsTube would eventually streamline everything (including dispelling the "Two Worlds" idea) stating that the humans and animal-people live on the same planet, with humans inhabiting the larger continents and animals living on isolated islands.
  • One possible reason for such retcons may be that according to Ken Eva of Sega Europe, Sega's stance on the Sonic canon is that it's loose and in flux and what's canon and what isn't canon has changed at a moment's notice, with the canon being whatever they need it to be at the time.
• In the Soul Calibur games, it is revealed that Sophitia Alexandria died at some point during the Time Skip between IV and V. Expanded universe material further elaborates that she removed the Soul Edge shard which was embedded near her heart in the canon ending of the very first game, which freed her daughter Pyrrha from the evil sword's influences but cost her own life. As of Lost Swords, however, this character is back and fully playable, and her website profile states that she's just "missing" instead of strictly deceased. And now Soul Calibur VI completely retcons it away (and by extension, V) as part of a Continuity Reboot, making the whole thing moot.
• Cheekily parodied (while played straight in its own way) in South Park: The Fractured but Whole. The game allows you to choose The New Kid's gender despite only being able to play as a boy in the previous game. If you choose to play as a girl or gender-neutral, Mr. Mackey will call up your parents to confirm that you were in-fact not a boy during the previous game.
• Splatoon:
  • In the North American version of Splatoon, Marie originally liked marshmallows. However, ever since the third Splatfest (hot dogs vs marshmallows) she's been retconned into disliking marshmallows.
  • Some of Marina's translation-only snappier comments in Splatoon 2 were retconned in updates. One example is her saying that the music reverb makes it "easier to ignore how off-key [Pearl] is" being changed to "easier to ignore how off-key we are". This was done to make Marina less mean-seeming and closer to her Japanese personality.
• StarCraft:
  • StarCraft: 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 first UED mission is partially about stealing Terran technology, a mention is made of the configuration of the UED flagship being unlike any Terran ship yet encountered (despite looking identical), and the manual tries to Handwave it away with references to bugs built into Terran equipment (and the UED 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.
  • StarCraft II had a pretty big one involving the Zerg Overmind. In the original game, the instruction manual states that the Overmind was created with an imperative to absorb creatures into the Swarm and thereby improve the Zerg. This is what caused it to rebel and overrun the Xel'Naga. SC 2 states that another force interfered with the creation of the Overmind, enslaving it to that imperative. It also says that the creation of Infested Kerrigan and the death of the Overmind was all part of a Thanatos Gambit to free the Zerg from this control. Kerrigan wouldn't have his imperative. So after creating her, he then went to the most powerful species in the sector, set up camp on the homeworld, and gave them both a reason and the opportunity to kill him. This also conveniently explains why in SC1, the Overmind decided to leave the all-important Kerrigan behind when he went to Auir.
  • Before Starcraft II even began, you had the retcon of Blizzard deciding to make the Brood War Praetor, Artanis, the Player Character from the Protoss campaign of the original Starcraft. It doesn't seem to have affected much, but it does make a lot of Brood War's dialogue with anything containing Artanis odd. Most characters, especially Aldaris, treat Artanis like the new guy that knows nothing, even though he's now supposed to be the war-experienced Executor from the original game's Episode 3.
  • At the beginning of Brood War, Artanis states that he has been recently promoted to praetor, a rank which is treated as inferior to that of executor during the whole first game: the player, as an executor, directly commands praetors Fenix during SC 1 and Artanis during BW (Artanis also talks with humility about his recent promotion). Blizzard retconned this, stating that praetors are of a higher rank than executors.
  • Kerrigan now has split-personalities in Starcraft II instead of being the lone queen-bitch-of-the-universe from the original games. It's clear Blizzard wanted to return Kerrigan to the good side, and wanted the whole Raynor x Kerrigan romance to happen, but to do it, they would have had to have Kerrigan accomplish something extremely redeeming for her. Only Blizzard didn't decide to go that route. They copped out and made it so that her BAD side was what caused all the destruction while the GOOD side is inside the Queen of Blades somewhere struggling to get out. Not once in either of the original Starcraft games is there ever a hint of Kerrigan possibly having split personalities. This plotline was only added in Starcraft II to get Kerrigan back on the good side in the least amount of believable work as possible.
  • Tassadar isn't completely dead anymore. He's now an all-knowing ghost that hangs out around the rotting carcass of the Overmind. Though that actually turns out to be a surviving xel'naga using his form.
  • Zeratul is bewildered and questions who could've created such an abomination when he comes across a living Hybrid... this comes many years after meeting Duran in Dark Origins and learning of his Hybrid experiments.
• Street Fighter:
  • The series had its fair share of retcons, but some of them are not actual legitimate changes to the story so much as they are actually the result of inconsistent translations between the Japanese and English versions of the game (such as the revelation in Super SF II that Cammy was M. Bison's lover in the past, which never actually occurred in the Japanese ending). One legitimate retcon concerns the many ways Guile's combat buddy Charlie has been killed off throughout Alpha series (stabbed in the back in the first Alpha, gunned down in Alpha 2, and died in an explosion in Guile's ending in Alpha 3). The early anime trailers for the console version of Street Fighter IV implied that Charlie may not be dead after all, but Guile's prologue and ending in Super Street Fighter IV seems to suggest that Charlie is dead again. Street Fighter V came along and confirmed his death (as well as establishing the Alpha 2 ending as being what really happened), but then had the Illuminati bring him back as Frankenstein's monster-like living weapon to use against Bison.
  • When SF II originally debuted, Ryu had become famous after defeating Sagat. Capcom changed it years later, by making Sagat the actual winner of the match, who was offering to help Ryu back to his feet when the latter succumbed to the Satsui no Hado^note which was also a retcon, as the Satsui no Hado didn't become part of the original canon until the SF: Alpha series and cheapshot him with a surprise Gou Shoryu. This created another retcon in itself. Originally, Sagat was consumed by hatred for Ryu and wanted vengeance, as seen in Ryu's ending for SF: Alpha. Whereas the newer version makes it so Sagat never hated him, and was only trying to set the record straight about who really won the match.
  • The biggest retcon, however, is saved for Gouken, the original master who trained Ryu and Ken. While Gouken's origins, identity, and even existence remained ambiguous for much of the franchise's early years, slowly the character began to emerge and was portrayed as the long-dead (and inherently mystical and mysterious) master killed by his brother, Akuma. Then suddenly in Street Fighter IV, the character's back story was blatantly Retconned to add in the convenient fact that Gouken was never killed, just rendered in a coma and everyone (Ryu, Ken, Akuma, etc.) thought he'd been dead all this time. Admittedly, Gouken was included in the game almost solely as a nod toward the infamous Sheng Long "secret" but nonexistent character in the Street Fighter series, as well as rumors throughout several games that Gouken was somehow playable. Still, this massive Retcon removed most all of Gouken's mysterious, mystical nature and turned him into a standard, more generic fighter.
  • Bison was officially considered dead following Super Street Fighter II: Turbo and remained that way until Street Fighter IV. Now he apparently has multiple bodies stored somewhere in case his soul needs to inhabit a new one. Also muddying the waters was another "inconsistent translation" that claimed Akuma's Shun Goku Satsu was some kind of karmic punishment that dragged the victim's soul to hell where it gets attacked by demons, which became popular Fanon (officially, it's just a nigh-instantaneous barrage of attacks, as seen with in SFV). Once again, Street Fighter V stepped in and cleared things up by having Bison die once and for all, with Charlie performing a Heroic Sacrifice to siphon away most of Bison's Psycho Power, leaving him weak enough to be destroyed — soul and all — by Ryu's Power of Nothingness-imbued Hadouken.
  • Street Fighter Alpha 3 introduced the Dolls, twelve young women kidnapped from all over the world and brainwashed into becoming Bison's Amazon Brigade of bodyguards. The console port brought back T. Hawk from SF II Turbo, then explained his presence in this Prequel by saying that one of the Dolls was kidnapped from his tribe and he was out to rescue her. However, this ran head-first into Gameplay and Story Segregation: the only Dolls who are playable in the game are Juni and Juli, who are both German; one of the Dolls (Noembleu) is an Amerindian, but she only appears in a pre-battle intro. As such, Hawk's story revolves around him trying to rescue Juli, and over the years Capcom has tried to explain this by changing her backstory, variously saying that she's Hawk's Childhood Friend, his little sister, or his girlfriend/lover, all while calling her German heritage into question. UDON's comics keep it simpler, having Noembleu as the kidnapped tribe member, but saying that Hawk is also trying to save Juli since her father was a friend of the tribe's.
• In Summoner, Laharah is an evil goddess, and her followers, the Nuvasarim, feed on agony. This is thoroughly - and convincingly - retconned in the sequel, in which Laharah is the protagonist. except that neither Laharah, nor Urath, nor any other gods exist. They are all merely parts of Aosi. What's that you say? Vadagar's giant three-headed corpse? We didn't walk through any giant three-headed corpse!
• The Koopalings from Super Mario Bros. 3 were originally introduced as Bowser's children. However, after this game this was not mentioned again, and the Koopalings got called Bowser's "minions" in later games, but the "Bowser's children" wasn't disproved either, leading fans to still believe they were his kids. It was not until a 2012 interview that Miyamoto officially said that "in the current story, the Koopalings are not Bowser's children."
• Team Fortress 2 has had a few retcons since the developers have tried to add more back story to an otherwise plotless game as well as shift the tone from lighthearted mid-20th-century pulp to full-on wacky comedy.
  • The back story of the Demoman originally told of him killing his biological parents while trying to blow Nessie out of the water, then growing up in a foster home afterward. However, when a comic from the WAR! update in December 2009 depicted the Demoman talking to his real mother (who, in turn, talked about his real father), Valve retconned this by saying that he had only killed his adoptive parents, and his biological parents later heard of his great skills at explosives and took him out of the foster home for proper training. The Demoman's eye story later got changed yet again, this time his eye was possessed by MONOCULUS! in the Bombinomicon (Halloween 2011) comic. It isn't known if it's the same Demoman, or if the RED and BLU ones have different back stories with the same result.
  • RED and BLU were originally described as "two holding companies that secretly control every government on earth." Since then, it has been revealed that they're actually the end product of a petty squabble between two rich but dimwitted brothers who inherited half of their father's useless real estate each and are in the process of squandering their liquid assets fighting to gain control over the rest of it, with the delusion that it will help them corner the market on gravel. All the businesses they supposedly own were merely fronts for more fighting, and nobody has ever been fooled by them.
  • Australia was originally portrayed as fairly similar to its real-world counterpart. Sniper's parents appear to be an ordinary rural couple who strongly disapprove of their son's chosen occupation, with his father even describing him as a "crazed gunman". When Australium was introduced into the lore, the country was retconned to be a technologically advanced nation where all its inhabitants (men and women alike) have Testosterone Poisoning.
• The Big Bad of Terraria the Moon Lord was stated to be the brother of Cthulhu by the devs. Later at the game's 8th anniversary though, the relation of Cthulhu was dropped in favor of just making him Cthulhu himself.
• In Twilight Heroes, the heroes can retcon to kick off New Game+ after your actions destroy an entire neighborhood.
• Ultima:
  • The Balrons were originally the barely disguised expy of Balrogs from The Lord of the Rings, very powerful and very evil demon lords. Ultima VI 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.
  • Near the end of Ultima VI, you are told how you defeated the bosses of the three first games. These retellings remove many of the sillier elements, such as flying an X-Wing in Ultima I.
  • The Avatar is established to be the same as the Stranger, the hero of the first three games, and in later depictions, is a blonde male human, despite being able to choose a difference gender, race, and portrait in prior games.
  • Ultima IX establishes the Time Lord, who appeared in Ultima III and Ultima VII, is the same person as the Seer Hawkwind who appeared in Ultima IV.
• Unreal: maybe because in an arena shooter, story is optional; Malcolm becomes Grand Champion by beating Xan during the 2341 competition during the events of Unreal Tournament. Immediately retconned to 2293 in Unreal Championship and Unreal Tournament 2003, which take place a century later, after the Earth and humanity were conquered by an alien empire. In UT2004, events are completely rewritten as Unreal Championship enters full canon discontinuity and UT2003 becomes a normal tournament taking place in 2302, where Gorge beat Malcolm. Unreal Tournament 2004 happens in 2303. The winner is unknown but supposedly either Malcolm, Xan, the Skaarj leader or the player. In Unreal Championship 2, in 2315, Lauren and Brock are Necris after being killed by Gorge just after Malcolm's defeat, so in the off-season between 2302 and 2303. However, they competed as humans in 2303. In Unreal Tournament III, which happens between UT2004 and UC2 despite taking place in the 2340s, Lauren appears as a human despite being necrified for years and is listed as a former champion, even though at that point, she is supposedly either dead or didn't reach the finals of the 2303 tournament. A whole bloody mess of a timeline.
• Rivaling the Klingons are the orcs from Blizzard's Warcraft franchise. In the first two games the orcs were simply Always Chaotic Evil, but in the third game they were now led by Thrall, a young Shaman, who wants to return his people back to the way they were before the Burning Legion came to Draenor. It turns out that, instead of being bloodthirsty idiots for 100 years as originally stated, they were a peaceful race of warriors who had been corrupted by the Burning Legion only about 5 years before they came to Azeroth. This meant that several orcs remember the time before the corruption. To help with the retcon Blizzard has made a book explaining the corruption and has planned two new books that will show what really happened during the Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal video games.
  • To Blizzard's credit, though, they have admitted that gameplay and balance far supersede continuity in the context of how important they are, and that if they can't make a game element fit within the confines of the established lore, they will alter it to suit their needs. Adding in a dash of Unreliable Narrator (given that all of the tie-in-books and game-based-lore are, in some form, intended to have been documented by those present for those given events) also helps explain inconsistencies, using a Watsonian explanation for certain elements.
  • Blizzard stated in 2013 that the Warcraft movie is intended to tell the "true" events of the early games, indicating yet another retcon.
  • Even when one allows for fanon, it's often argued that the draenei are an even bigger retcon than the orcs. In the first two games, they were presumed to be an extinct race. But some survivors (ugly raptor-footed mooks) appeared in the third game. Then, when the Alliance needed a new race in World of Warcraft, the draenei were picked... and their appearance was changed to make them look like smaller, bluer eredar (big demons who had been heavily involved in the corruption of a titan and were the main villains of the third game). The explanation was that the eredar from the third game are actually the man'ari eredar, a corrupted form of the original Eredar, who were actually the draenei. No one's quite sure what corrupted the titan in the first place (dreadlords were definitely involved, but it seems unlikely that it was them alone), but he was the one who corrupted the eredar, rather than the other way around. The draenei in the third game were revealed to have been mutated by demonic magic. In other words, the draenei the players play are the original unmutated draenei, who are in fact the original uncorrupted eredar.
  • The Blood Elves. Supposedly they all followed Kael'Thas into the Outlands, but in World of Warcraft, there are a lot of them left in Azeroth, and not only that, they also managed to rebuild half of their capital city in a mere four years. And seeing as there are two banks and auction houses in it, business is obviously going great.
  • Also see Not Quite Dead and Staying Alive for mind-boggling character revivals in the game universe. Blizzard heavily retcons everything to make new quests (the Black and Blue Dragons were originally stated to have only the aspects left), and make some playable units (see blood elves and draenei). The fans have just learned to accept it.
  • A rather nasty example comes from the plotline regarding Arthas in Wrath of the Lich King. A plot twist occurs in the Icecrown Citadel instances stating that killing Arthas would only enrage the undead and make them more destructive because it's actually only Arthas' will that are holding them back. However, this seemingly contradicts earlier quest chains which establish that Arthas has no humanity left due to ripping out his own heart and having it manifest as Matthias Lehner. It also causes even more problems when you consider the fact that there's no real reason given why the undead would become more mindless and destructive given that we've already re-killed most of them and we have seen how the Forsaken have free will and aren't mindless at all. They might be bitter and angry, but not mindlessly destructive. It all seems like a thinly veiled excuse to give a reason why the undead and the Lich King are still around after Arthas dies.
  • Worgen: Barely sentient ravening extradimensional hellhounds, or just druidic devotees of the wolf god who lost control?
  • A main one, and one everyone seems to forget is that Deathwing, the Big Bad in Cataclysm was killed in the canon campaign of Beyond the Dark Portal in Warcraft 2. Handwaved by Blizzard that he faked his death by crashing into the ocean.
  • Gul'dan's original story stated he was a member of the Shadowmoon Clan and apprentice to Ner'zhul who made a bargain with the Legion from his desire for power. The Harbingers mini-series retcons this to Gul'dan being the crippled exile of a nameless clan he later destroyed who, denied the blessing of the elements, made a bargain with the Legion.
  • Blizzard later announced the massive Chronicle projects which will provide a clear and bullet-proof canon... by retconing everything.
    • The Big Bad of the Burning Legion Sargeras was originally a Titan who, after witnessing the depravity of the demonic races, went insane. His crusade was meant to undo the work of the Titans as he believed it had given rise to the demons. Chronicle changed this by adding the Void Lords as an Outside-Context Villain. Sargeras was driven insane when he saw how they had corrupted an infant Titan and he launched his Crusade in order to kill all nascent Titans rather than potentially allow such a thing to exist.
    • The Well of Eternity was originally stated to be a font of magic the Titans deliberately created at the center of Kalimdor before departing as a kind of art. Chronicle instead states that when the Old God Y'shaarj was forcibly ripped from Azeroth's surface it injured the nascent Titan at the planet's core. The arcane-infused Titan blood formed the lake which became the Well of Eternity.
    • Related to both of the above, Sargeras was originally fixated on Azeroth due to the Well of Eternity and general hatred for the planet having previously repelled his assault. Chronicles instead states that the world-soul of Azeroth will be the strongest Titan in existence once it awakens. Sargeras wishes to destroy Azeroth to prevent her falling to the Void Lords.
  • Several events of Azeroth's past were subject to retcons, sometimes borderline on Adaptational Villainy/ Adaptational Heroism/ Adaptational Self-Defense:
    • The orcs were uncaring of the Draenei in general (They rarely if ever interacted and both sides aimed to stay ouf of the way of the other) until the Burning Legion (and Kil'jaeden, more specifically) manipulated them to commit many of the atrocities and aggresions against the Draenei, including enslaving the female Draenei and raping them. In the new canon, many of the orc aggresions against the draenei (including the enslave and rape of females) were done BEFORE the orcs got manipulated by the Burning Legion.
    • The Bladewind clan in particular. In the novels, it was one of the clans opposing Ner'zhul's orders for the most part and stayed out of most of the conflicts until the Warcraft 2/Beyond the dark portal events. Chronicles has the Bladewind as one of the orc clans that used Draenei females as breeding slaves.
    • The whole conflict with the Defias Brotherhood. In the original World of Warcraft lore, the Stonemasons Guild were a bunch of corrupt nobles who refused to pay Van Cleef and the workers who restored Stormwind for their work, as a result creating the Defias Brotherhood to destroy stormwind. In Chronicles, the actions and conflict of both sides were caused as a result of Lady Katrana Prestor/Onyxia's manipulations.
    • Originally, Varian started the faction war during Cataclysm's events. Now it was Garrosh's doing according to Chronicle.
    • Originally, the conception of Medivh happeend because Aegwynn manipulated Nielas into thinking she was in love with him in order to get pregnant, after which she cruelly rejected his advances. In the new canon, she and Nielas legitimately fell in love with each other and Nielas was aware of her plan to empower their son from the start.
  • Another pretty big one is with the nature of undead. Warcraft 3 implied that turning undead automatically makes you evil (something the pen and paper game stated outright), as Arthas becomes evil as soon as he becomes a death knight, and Sylvanas starts become evil shortly after becoming undead. World of Warcraft gradually started to change this, likely because one of the player races is undead and they probably figured having an Always Chaotic Evil player race would be a bad thing, and eventually added an undead paladin character (admittedly, he didn't choose to be undead, but was still good after he became such.) Additionally, they explained Arthas immediately turning evil as being due to Frostmourne stealing his soul, as well as Sylvanas Slowly Slipping Into Evil as being more due to the insane amount of misery she's been through as well as her feeling like she has nothing to hope for.
  • During the Shadowlands expansion announcement several elements appeared which contradicted both previous canon and Chronicle canon. The explanation given is that Chronicle is written from the Titan perspective and so certain elements may be skewed due to their perceptions or biases. The retcon-to-end-all-retcons is now open to retcons.
    • The Shadowlands as written in Chronicle were a dismal realm that closely mirrors reality but was teeming with the ghosts of the departed. Shadowlands revises this to a series of carefully organized afterlives that lacks the existential horror.
    • Frostmourne and the Helm of Domination were established as being crafted by the Nathrezim in the Arthas novel. Shadowlands reveals they were in fact created in the Maw by a mysterious figure.
    • In the Warcraft 3 manual it was established that Scourge architecture was inspired by that of Nerubians. During a Q&A it was further established that the Nerubians had derived their architecture from the Tol'vir. Shadowlands upended this by indicating Scourge architecture was derived from Maldraxxus instead.
  • Demons in Warcraft 3 were indicated to be very powerful and near infinite in number, but still killable. At great cost, two great demon generals were killed and finally one of the top figures of the Legion were wiped out with much fanfare and glory, though with an element of sacrifice in each case. At some point in World of Warcraft, however, demons were said to have Resurrective Immortality, a trait that would have badly undermined the deaths of Mannoroth and Archimonde. "Good job sacrificing yourself to save our race from corruption, Grom, too bad Mannoroth will be back in a week or two." Doesn't have the same impact, does it?
    • Legion further confused this by establishing that the souls of demons return to the Twisting Nether to be reborn, and thus the only way to kill them is by doing so in the Nether. However the end of the expansion upended this by stating that demons could only be reborn due to the Legion using the world-soul of Argus, a nascent Titan, as a power source.
• It's a huge plot point in the second Yo-kai Watch game that the protagonist's grandfather created the first Yo-kai Watch as a child. This also appears in the first anime film. Come Yo-kai Watch 4 (and Yo-kai Watch: Shadowside - The Return of the Oni King) and suddenly Yo-kai Watches have existed since ancient times. Note that these Yo-kai Watches were created by an ancient tribe known as the Genyou, and there were originally purposed as mirrors (i.e. The Yo-kai Watch Elder was originally called the Elder Black Magic Mirror, and the Yo-kai Watch Ogre's original name was the Ogre Seal Orb Mirror). This means the previous protagonist's grandfather created a Yo-kai Watch to harness the power of Yo-kai in its most basic level, as it do the subsequent models. Cue 30 years after their adventures, Yo-kai have developed Lightside and Shadowside forms, and the enemies this time are far more dangerous and stronger, thus needing a greater power (which Shadowside Yo-kai happen to have) to hope to stand up to them. Add to the fact that the original era's Yo-kai Watches were destroyed by Jaou Kaira upon his ascension to the thorne of the Yo-kai World, the Genyou-made Yo-kai Watches are the only way to fight back as they can harness the higher power of Shadowside Yo-kai, the Kenbumajin, and the Genma.

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