Follow TV Tropes

Following

Discussion Main / AlternateContinuity

Go To

You will be notified by PM when someone responds to your discussion
Type the word in the image. This goes away if you get known.
If you can't read this one, hit reload for the page.
The next one might be easier to see.
SeptimusHeap MOD (Edited uphill both ways)
Mar 20th 2021 at 9:34:57 AM •••

Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Misused, started by Merseyuser1 on Feb 6th 2017 at 1:56:06 PM

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Birberino EL Birberino, man Since: Sep, 2019
EL Birberino, man
May 19th 2020 at 7:08:56 AM •••

Should Fan Works even count, here? Isn't that the entire point of Fan Works, making it rather redundant?

Edited by Birberino "I'm the birb. His Birbness. El Birberino if you're not into that whole brevity thing, man.."
Primis Since: Nov, 2010
Apr 30th 2018 at 10:49:53 AM •••

Cut this:

  • There are at least four different continuities in the Rayman games. The first game takes place in a surreal, cartoony world where everyone has Floating Limbs. Then there is the Rayman 2 universe that serves as the setting for all subsequent games (Rayman M, Rayman 3 and including Raving Rabbids; this is important later in this paragraph), a slightly more realistic fantasy realm. There are no ties to the universe or storyline from the first game and Rayman is now the only limbless character.note  Then there is the TV series which has yet another different cast and universe. The presence of Admiral Razorbeard, the antagonist of Rayman 2, suggests that it might have tied into the main universe had it been allowed to run for more than four episodes. And then there is the fact that Rabbids was spun off into its own universe with Rabbids Go Home, set on a contemporary Earth.

This just sounds like Art Evolution / Early-Installment Weirdness to me, Continuity Drift at best. Maybe the bit about the Rabbids games is valid, but I'm not familiar enough with the series to say.

Edited by Primis Hide / Show Replies
Albertosaurus Since: Jan, 2001
Apr 18th 2020 at 4:52:08 AM •••

I would like to argue for reinstating this one, with a couple of tweaks. Until Rayman Origins came along, the universe of Rayman 1 and its sequel games were entirely seperate: except for Rayman himself, no characters crossed over, and the backstory of Rayman 2 explicitly states that the other inhabitants of the consider Rayman to be strange because he's limbless, while in the first game every character is limbless. Rayman Origins mixes elements of the first two games together, but in a way that can't be reconciled with either of the two universes, for example by bringing the Magician back but changing him into a Teensie, while he had previously been of the same species as Rayman. And the tv series is still entirely unconnected (yes, Razorbeard shows up, but pretty much In Name Only).

Merseyuser1 Since: Sep, 2011
Aug 2nd 2017 at 12:20:38 PM •••

I added this, but is this correct:

This is different from an Alternate Universe in that outside of crossovers and What If? scenarios, they generally don't interact with the "main" universe. However, in some circumstances an Alternate Continuity can become an Alternate Universe if the characters crossover.

DaibhidC Wizzard Since: Jan, 2001
Wizzard
Feb 20th 2017 at 3:01:54 PM •••

Pulled this:

That's not what "Alternate Continuity" means. If the Netflix shows and AOS happen in a world where the Marvel movies happen (and they do, because they're referred to), and nothing happens that explicitly contradicts them (and they work really hard to ensure it doesn't) then they're in the same continuity, just as Torchwood is in the same continuity as Doctor Who even though it was the official policy of the writers that the Doctor never appeared in it.

Edited by DaibhidC Hide / Show Replies
Merseyuser1 Since: Sep, 2011
Feb 25th 2017 at 9:05:52 AM •••

My mistake; sorry for that. I think I got Greys Anatomy correct as an Alternate Continuity.

Merseyuser1 Since: Sep, 2011
Feb 5th 2017 at 4:07:12 AM •••

Should we include a bit more on the differences between it and Alternate Universe to avoid people asking the question frequently [I did this once on the forums, and there's been two questions from a new .user about it recently, one on Trope Talk and another on Trope Finder].

OldManHoOh It's super effective. Since: Jul, 2010
It's super effective.
May 14th 2014 at 1:34:01 PM •••

Is the thing about St Elsewhere anything other than Fan Wank and hypothesising?

Edited by 151.230.143.55
OldManHoOh It's super effective. Since: Jul, 2010
It's super effective.
Aug 18th 2013 at 1:39:01 AM •••

Removed. If there's bits that DO apply, a lot of it seems to be guesswork. Doctor Who doesn't have a canon, after all.

  • When the original Doctor Who series was taken off the air, the Doctor Who Expanded Universe continued in the form of comics, and slightly later novels, then audio dramas and Web Original stories, which variously referenced, featured characters from, and often contradicted, the continuities of the other media.

    The most notorious victim of this was the Doctor's last TV companion in 1989, Ace, who in the Doctor Who New Adventures novels aged, changed, parted from the Doctor, met him again after a period spent as a Dalek-fighting Space Marine, and finally ended up as a self-styled "temporal vigilante" on a time-travelling motorbike. The Doctor Who Magazine comic strip also followed this continuity for a period until a new editor was appointed who didn't like the New Adventures. As a result, after a few stories featuring earlier Doctor-Companion teams, a new Seventh Doctor-Ace story was published, "Ground Zero", in which Ace died as a teenager on the moon. Then a semi-official BBC web-based story called Death Comes to Time, totally ignored the 1996 TV Movie introducing the Eighth Doctor, and killed off the Seventh Doctor and let Ace take over for the Time Lords. And in the meantime to make things even more complicated, Mike Tucker and Robert Perry had produced a sub-series of Past Doctor Adventures featuring the Doctor and Ace, which were sometimes claimed to take place between the end of the TV show and the beginning of the New Adventures, but didn't show much sign of it. And of the Big Finish Doctor Who stories featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace, some explicitly share a continuity with the New Adventures and others explicitly don't. And to confuse things even further, individual writers who had contributed to multiple parts of the franchise would often refer to their own stories regardless of what medium or sub-continuity they were in. Exactly which, if any, of these the new series takes as canon is unknown. And then "Death of the Doctor" implied a final fate for Ace that doesn't fit any of these different continuities.

    The Eighth Doctor has at least three and possibly four different continuities: the prose Eighth Doctor Adventures, the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip, and two separate series of Big Finish Doctor Who adventures. It's anyone's guess if any of these actually share a continuity. The final novel in the Eighth Doctor Adventures series, The Gallifrey Chronicles, suggested that the ambiguous events of the Eighth Doctor's lifespan led to the creation of three different potential Ninth Doctors, implied to be the Ninth Doctors from the parody Doctor Who: The Curse of Fatal Death (Rowan Atkinson), the web animation Scream of the Shalka (Richard E. Grant) and the revived TV series (Christopher Eccleston).

    The 1989-2005 period isn't the only era where Doctor Who has multiple canons in different media. The two 1960s movies Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., while Compressed Adaptions explicitly take place in what comes across as a Pound Store knockoff version of the main Whoniverse. As an example, these films feature a human version of the Doctor ''literally'' named Dr. Who. There were also the TV Comics comic strips of the 1960s and 1970s, which officially feature the First to Fourth Doctors but are very difficult to fit into their TV continuities (in particular depicting a very different version of the transition from the Second to the Third Doctor).

The bit about Ace seems to be inconsistent writing and speculation. To a degree, this applies to the Eighth Doctor media as well. There are episodes and facts in the TV series that make things difficult to reconcile with other parts of the TV series. "It's anyone's guess" means it's either speculation, or the people running the show have conflicting takes.

I've always assumed that TV Comic is simply set in an interregnum between The War Games and Spearhead, just like some media have retroactively done to The Five Doctors and The Two Doctors. Season 6B is obviously a theory and retcon, but it still stands that we never actually SEE Troughton's face change into someone else's at the end of The War Games.

Hide / Show Replies
OldManHoOh Since: Jul, 2010
May 14th 2014 at 1:33:01 PM •••

To clarify, I mean the transition between Two and Three, not all of TV Comic's 60s and 70s output.

CarrieVS Since: Aug, 2012
Oct 31st 2012 at 1:35:33 PM •••

What about when the author (or an author) writes a sequel where it turns out that everything before it was fiction in-universe, based on real events but inaccurate?

The main example I'm thinking of here is Dracula The Undead. It's a sequel to Dracula, written much later by Bram Stoker's great-grand-nephew. More than a few things are different, and it's explained by the fact that an in-universe version of Bram Stoker heard the story and wrote it as a novel, with many inaccuracies.

Possibly also applies to The Vampire Chronicles, where we get a somewhat different picture of events when told by Lestat in the second book to the one that Louis gives in the first.

Does anything think this is worthy of a mention or even a subtrope? Or is it Too Rare To Trope?

MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer (Before Recorded History)
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Apr 24th 2011 at 2:10:00 AM •••

I'm not sure about the exact difference between this trope and Alternate Universe; and unfortunately, Trope Distinctions lacks an entry comparing them - though there is one comparing Alternate Continuity with a few other tropes. Can someone enlighten me where one stops and the other begins?

Edited by MarqFJA Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus. Hide / Show Replies
DaibhidC Since: Jan, 2001
Jun 12th 2012 at 3:54:32 PM •••

There's a definite grey area, but essentially, as I understand it, if an alternate version of a setting is created to interact with the "main" one in some way (eg the Mirror Universe in Star Trek) it's an Alternate Universe. If it stands alone, and exists simply to retell the stories in a different medium (eg The Dark Knight Trilogy) or style (eg Ultimate Marvel) then it's an Alternate Continuity. (The grey area is stuff like Marvel's What If...?, which doesn't usually directly interact with the main Marvel Universe, but is nonetheless defined by a For Want Of A Nail relationship with it, rather than standing on its own.)

Edited by DaibhidC
DaibhidC Wizzard Since: Jan, 2001
Wizzard
Jun 12th 2012 at 3:48:39 PM •••

"The newspaper Peter Parker is also much more handsome than the comic book one, although why that should be so is a good question."

I think that's just Depending on the Artist. It looks to me like the newspaper artist is basing his Peter on how Todd Mc Farlane used to draw him, while the current comics are aiming more at an adult version of Steve Ditko's awkward teenager.

Edited by DaibhidC
DonaldthePotholer Since: Dec, 2009
Jan 14th 2011 at 8:33:48 PM •••

Regarding the Pokemon entry, here is a perfect puzzle for you: Are Kris and Lyra the same person? Pokemon Special says yes. The Anime says no. And the Slapstick magna doesn't have to deal with this question since it never had a Kris analogue in the first place!

Edited by DonaldthePotholer Ketchum's corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced tactic is indistinguishable from blind luck.
MagBas MagBas Since: Jun, 2009
MagBas
Jun 7th 2010 at 7:11:53 PM •••

  • And of course, the Queen of the Continuities - Sailor Moon! With a manga series (that isn't compatible with it's prequel Sailor V in some ways but the two are still considered to exist in the same canon) a 200-episode anime series (a five-season epic that isn't fully compatible with itself), a live-action series, three animated movies (which aren't fully compatible with either anime or manga), and twenty-five stage productions, all of which are different! That makes thirty-one separate continuities! And that's not counting the video-games! So if someone wants to debate Sailor Moon "canon" with you, laugh at them.
    • Well 3 of the musical are in the same continuity. And a forth that's in continuity with one of those but not the other two....

Please, someone what knows the different Sailor Moon canons, put this in the main page after rewrite.

Hide / Show Replies
zodiacrain Since: Mar, 2010
Jun 20th 2010 at 4:37:45 PM •••

I didn't really see what was wrong with it originally, but I cleaned it up a little bit and added it back in:

"And of course, the Queen of the Continuities - Sailor Moon! With a manga series, a 200-episode anime series, a live-action series, and twenty-five stage productions, with only 3 occurring in the same continuity! That makes twenty-five separate continuities! And that's not counting the video-games or the possible splits within the same continuities. So if someone wants to debate Sailor Moon "canon" with you, laugh at them."

I didn't mention the fourth musical because, technically, if it's part of a continuity with one but not another, that's a separate continuity.

Top