Broad Strokes / Video Games

• In 100% Orange Juice!, Tomomo exemplifies most of the characters' personalities so that they act a bit different from their actual game counterparts.
• The Act of War games have the same general outline and setting as the Dale Brown book they are named after, but some details are off.
• History in the Assassin's Creed games is treated this way with more specific details being different to how history remembers it, but otherwise more or less the same events happened though it gets more Alternate History the farther back you go as history is more easily distorted.
• Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon got this treatment from its sequel. The best guess is that the divergence lies just after clearing Stage 8, as the events of Nightmare Mode can't happen due to Zangetsu being neither dead nor the Dark Emperor, yet Zangetsu did travel with all three allies, as all three appear after Episode 2 of Curse 2, and mention is made of Zangetsu previously preferring to go alone, and how his allies helped him grow past his need for vengeance on the demons.
• The Castlevania series has many examples, notably in linking the stories of earlier games to later events in the series.
  • In Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, there were three companions Trevor could meet during the game. Grant Dinesti, Alucard, and Sypha. You could only have one companion with you at a time, and could only rescue two at most, due to multiple paths. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night implies that Trevor fought Dracula together with all three.
  • Additionally, the English manual for Castlevania III featured a few plot changes from the Japanese manual that made it inconsistent with later games. For one thing, it claims that the Belmont family acquired their whip and other weapons from a character called the Poltergeist King, even though the Japanese manual never mentions such a character. While both manuals establish the game to be a prequel to the first Castlevania, the Japanese version never actually specifies how many years it is set before the first game (other than it is set in the 15th century), whereas the English manual claims that it is set 100 years before (Symphony establishes it at 200 years).
  • Much like the plot changes in Castlevania III, the Japanese version of Castlevania: The Adventure was established to be a prequel to the first Castlevania (in fact, Christopher was actually mentioned in the Japanese manual of the first game, where he was already established to be the last Belmont who fought Dracula prior to Simon), but the U.S. version seems to imply that the game is set after Castlevania II: Simon's Quest.
  • Similarly, you could only play as John Morris or Eric Lecarde in Castlevania: Bloodlines. Portrait of Ruin assumes that the two fought together.
  • Speaking of Bloodlines, John Morris is related to a character from Bram Stoker's Dracula, a character who dies without leaving any descendants in the actual novel.
  • Simon Belmont's original tale has been retold numerous times. Thankfully, almost all accounts are generic enough that it's easy to apply the broad stroke that Simon fought through Dracula's Castle and killed Dracula alone.
• This is how continuity works at best in the Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series. Which is also a source of many long-lasting flamewars about the games. Not helped by the whole repeated time-travel thing meaning that it is entirely possible for an event to both not have happened and have led to something in the game you are playing. Red Alert 2's expansion pack even has this happen in-universe, at least in the Allied ending, where they go back in time, beat the Soviets faster than they originally did, then go on to beat Yuri before he can enact his master plan, at which point the two timelines (the original game's and the expansion's) merge, creating some sort of mishmash where the Soviets were only just defeated, but General Carville (killed about two-thirds of the way through the original game) is still alive and Yuri is already in custody.
• Defense of the Ancients takes some elements from Warcraft 3, but otherwise does not tightly adhere to it. After it was made its own game, those elements were further filed off.
• Deus Ex:
  • Deus Ex: Invisible War does this in regards to the ending(s) of the first game. There were three possible endings to the game, and rather than pick one as canon, they instead hint throughout the game that all three occurred, to one degree or another.
  • The same thing most likely occurs in reverse in the prequel, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. No matter which ending the player chooses, all of them will lead to the events of the original game, and many aspects of the world in the original can be extrapolated to be results of any of the four prequel endings.
• The Divine Divinity series plays very fast and loose with continuity, and the developers readily admit to that. For example, a major antagonist in Divinity: Original Sin II is Bishop Alexander, the legitimate son of Lucian the Divine, the protagonist of the original game, — except that there was no mention of Lucian having any children (let alone a son who took over the leadership of his Divine Order and attempted to become the next Divine himself) in Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga, which takes place 60 years after OS2 — not nearly enough for Alexander to have been forgotten by the populace at large. This is because when Divinity II was written, Lucian had no children, but when the plot of OS2 demanded an obvious successor to Lucian, the devs just retroactively added him into the continuity, refusing to be tied down by canon minutiae.
• In don't take it personally babe, it just ain't your story, Akira's mothers are Hazuki (ka-san) and Ichigo Yamazaki (mom) from Christine Love's first kinetic novel, Cell Phone Love Letter; Akira even alludes to the plot of that game when he mentions that Hazuki's coming out story has "all sorts of detailed subplots". However, the timeframe of Cell Phone Love Letter makes it impossible to reconcile with either don't take it personally or Digital: A Love Story. Best guess is that this version of Ichigo and Hazuki met in 2001 through text messages rather than 2007 via email.
• Doom (2016) implies that the general events of Doom, Doom II, and Doom 64 all occurred in some fashion or another. However, sequel Doom Eternal subverts this by revealing that the Doom Slayer is literally the original Doomguy; he just somehow managed to cross dimensions and arrive at a different Earth from his own. It also comes with the implication the fandom has run with that it means, via alternate universes, every Game Mod for the classic games is also canon.
• Even though the Dragon Age novels and comics try to reference as few in-game choices as possible (most notably when it comes to the player characters), it does cut off quite a few important branches to create a so-called "BioWare Canon". But since the games put the emphasis on player choice, the events happening in these media are usually considered broad strokes in playthroughs that don't quite match it, and Dragon Age: Inquisition downright confirms that the events of The Silent Grove and its sequels still took place regardless of whether or not Alistair became king or remained a warden.
• The second game of The Elder Scrolls series, Daggerfall, has seven mutually exclusive Multiple Endings, depending on which party the Agent gives the Totem (control rod) for the Numidium. The next game in the series, Morrowind, reveals that the activation of the Numidium (a known Reality Warper) caused a Time Crash referred to as the "Warp in the West". Each of the endings of Daggerfall happened at once, though (in Broad Strokes fashion) none to the same extent that they would have individually — for example, the four regional powers in the Iliac Bay expand, but none takes over the entire area, and all are still under Imperial authority; Mannimarco, the King of Worms, does ascend to become the God of Worms, but he's in a rather minor divine station, and a mortal (or at least as "mortal" as a Lich can be) King of Worms still exists, who leads a cult worshiping the God of Worms; and the Underking still destroys the Mantella, and dies like he always wanted. The whole process also somehow retroactively elevates Tiber Septim into a god on the same level as the eight divines.
• Fable:
  • Fable II accepts the story of Fable in broad strokes, though as it is set several hundred years later most of the details are obfuscated by the ravages of time and accounts are unclear (though, to be fair, Jack dies both ways). On the other hand Therisa is still alive, which contradicts the evil ending of the original game... but this is a High Fantasy game, so resurrection isn't out of the question.
  • Ditto in Fable III, though it's not quite as justified. The protagonist's father (or mother) is explicitly said to be the hero from Fable II, though you don't get to hear much about what he/she actually did before becoming king/queen.
• Fallout:
  • Black Isle's version of Fallout 3, codenamed Fallout: Van Buren, was sadly canceled. Nevertheless, many events, characters, and plot points set to be in it were implicitly established as canon in Fallout: New Vegas. This is also how the game treats the actual Fallout 3, thanks in part to being set on the other side of the country — at the very least, it's established that the Lone Wanderer helped Moira Brown write the Wasteland Survival Guide with at least some success, since it shows up as a skill book in New Vegas.
  • Due to some lore and design inconsistencies with the previous games, Fallout Tactics is regarded as this by Bethesda. It's Broad Strokes canon in the opposite way to Van Buren though — the key events in the game's campaign happened, but the details are fuzzy. This was reinforced in Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, which both include references to the player faction in Tactics, the Midwestern Brotherhood of Steel.
  • Because of the multiple possible endings of Fallout 3, anything in Fallout 4 that relates to the Capital Wasteland are painted with broad strokes: for example, the beginning of Broken Steel did occur (a mission for the Brotherhood has you rebuild Liberty Prime), but any ending where the Brotherhood is destroyed did not, and Sarah Lyons did die at some point in the 10 years between games, but not much else is known.
• Final Fantasy:
  • When Final Fantasy is referenced in spin-offs, it's pretty certain the Fighter was a party member. Maybe the only party member. (Dissidia Final Fantasy chose to have the representative from this game be a pseudo-Composite Character called "The Warrior of Light" whose armor most closely resembles the Knight, Fighter's upgraded Prestige Class;)
  • Final Fantasy VII Remake incorporates multiple references to the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, but Adaptation Personality Change, resetting some Continuity Drift, Revisiting the Roots in terms of the game's designs and certain characters being Exiled from Continuity result in it taking place in a very different world than the one of Before Crisis and Crisis Core. Visually, this can be seen in the character designs — Cloud's SOLDIER uniform is now purple like in the original instead of black like in the revised colours in Crisis Core, Aerith is shown wearing her bow as a child (the same as in the PSX Final Fantasy VII) ignoring the alteration in Crisis Core which meant that she was given the bow by Zack, and the combat is more "grounded in reality" for the most part, making the much more outrageous stunts from the Compilation seem a little out of place. This is all heavily muddied by the lategame twist that Remake actually takes place in an Alternate Timeline set to go heavily Off the Rails once Cloud and the gang go against what are effectively the setting's Time Police — implied to be the machinations of the Sephiroth from the original/Compilation timeline at that — and key events from FFVII are witnessed by the cast as visions.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon has several side-chapters that only take place if most of the playable cast is dead. These chapters introduce new characters to Marth's army. In the remake of the sequel, New Mystery of the Emblem, Marth is familiar with the sidequest characters even though every playable character from the first game canonically survived.
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening, is mainly based around the Archanea games AKA Shadow Dragon and Mystery of the Emblem, which are mentioned above, but also takes many liberties including changing the rules of the setting and function of many things including the titular macguffin. Awakening also acts like things like the Taguel, a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for the Laguz from the Tellius universe AKA Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, were in Archanea all along.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses has Cindered Shadows. The house members present for it not mentioning its events in the main game makes sense, as it's a DLC sidestory. But the Ashen Wolves members, who are only available to players who bought and completed Cindered Shadows, also don't reference its events if they're recruited to the main story. The sidestory's Arc Villain also makes a cameo during monastery exploration with no indication that his Face–Heel Turn happened. Word of God says that the events of Cindered Shadows still loosely happened in the main game, but without Byleth and the Lords present to witness them.
• Occurs in Grand Theft Auto during its transition from Grand Theft Auto III canon to Grand Theft Auto IV canon. While none of the former's main characters, storyline elements and location designs were carried over to GTA IV, fictional brandnames, vehicle designs, radio station personalities and minors backstories accumulated over the course of Grand Theft Auto III canon have been retained. This allowed the Rockstar North to easily write in entirely new storylines without the need for complete worldbuilding.
• Guilty Gear: The Accent Core sub-series of Guilty Gear XX's console ports introduced dedicated story modes for each playable character (the concept of which would later be reused for the Arcade Modes from Xrd onward) that elaborated on what they went on to do after the main story concluded. These stories were not written by series head Daisuke Ishiwatari or anyone else involved with the original releases' input and thus have some bizarre endings, such as Baiken becoming a mad Serial Killer, I-No being frozen in time forever by That Man, or Bridget taking up a job as a waiter at Jam's restaurant. As a result, the broad consensus regarding these stories is that (unless stated otherwise by Ishiwatari or the writers) they are merely alternate timelines witnessed by I-No, situations that could have happened but ultimately never came to pass.
• When Bungie Studios was still in charge of Halo, they outright said that any new information overrides previously given information, with the occasional lapse for artistic license. The reprints of the the first three EU novels (Halo: The Fall of Reach, Halo: The Flood, Halo: First Strike) actually altered some of their stories' details in later printings to make them fit better with later canon, like removing mention in First Strike of its events being humanity's first contact with the Jiralhanae (Brutes) and Yanme'e (Drones), after just about everything set before the original Halo: Combat Evolved featured them despite supposedly having never been encountered before. More generally, this trope often happens in works or montage sequences set in the "past", which often depict equipment that didn't even exist by that point. While the core Worldbuilding and the Spartan program is vital canon in The Fall of Reach, Halo: Reach depicts the battle of Reach in a vastly different manner than the novel. While 343 Industries, the current studio in charge, has generally adopted Bungie's stance, they've put a little more effort into being more consistent and providing in-universe explanations for apparent discrepancies.
• Every video game of The Idolmaster is in its own continuity, and though most aspects of the characters will usually be carried over, it's not uncommon to see various background details being changed between games.
• Very minor details of Kingdom Hearts were retconned as the series' lore expanded and early ideas clashed with where the creators eventually decided to go. Other issues were caused by limitations to what was allowed or feasible in the original (unproven) game, with later, less restricted entries desiring to go back and do what it couldn't.
  • In the first game, Donald and Goofy didn't know what a keyblade is until they met Sora, as King Mickey gave them vague directions to look for someone with a "key". This doesn't make sense because it's highly unlikely that Mickey would have kept his own keyblade a secret from his best friends. Years later, the writers cleaned up the situation in the prequel Birth by Sleep, showing that Donald and Goofy were fully aware of Mickey's keyblade.
  • Very similar case in Kingdom Hearts II; Donald is, oddly, surprised to find out where Yen Sid lives. Birth by Sleep shows that Donald has been to the same tower before.
  • The Olympus Colosseum world in the first game implied the events of Hercules had already occurred. Later, Kingdom Hearts III would adapt the ending of the original film, with Hades unsealing the Titans and attempting to take over Olympus, including taking some lines directly from the movie.
  • The visits to Halloween Town and Christmas Town in II show Santa and Jack Skellington are already familiar with each other, implying that some version of the events of The Nightmare Before Christmas had occurred prior. However, Oogie Boogie's resurrection only mentions his defeat in the first game, so however the original movie's events played out likely did so without his involvement.
  • The original game has Sora seemingly arriving in Agrabah halfway through the events of Aladdin — specifically, just after Aladdin has entered the Cave of Wonders. However, a lot of aspects of the story don't line up with how it would be in the movie at that point: Jasmine is already familiar with Aladdin on a first name basis, Aladdin is first met when attempting to escape from the Cave of Wonders just as the entrance is closing, he's already aware of the Genie being in the lamp, Jafar doesn't appear to be involved in Aladdin's retrieval of the lamp, and so on.
  • The dreams being had by the sleeping worlds in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] are said to be of events that had already happened in said worlds before being swallowed by the darkness. This would imply that the events of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, TRON: Legacy, Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers, and Fantasia have already happened offscreen. The events of Pinocchio may also have happened up to the point where Pinocchio is swallowed by Monstro (with the world falling to darkness and diverging from the film shortly after).
  • The original game features a heavily condensed/strictly thematic retelling of the events of The Little Mermaid (1989). Kingdom Hearts II would try again, featuring a (relatively) more direct adaptation, but did not Retcon the first game's version (one scene in particular is flashed back to near the start of II), resulting in Ariel inexplicably making a deal with Ursula a second time. Additionally, unlike Oogie Boogie, whose resurrection is explained, Ursula's return is not even given a Hand Wave. When put together, this could carry the implication that the first game's events, while not fully retconned, did not canonically play out as originally depicted.
• Every mainline Kirby game operates on this basis. While there is a canon that the series follows and continuity nods in later entries, it's clarified by Word of God that what happens in each game may not be exactly how it happened to keep them from restricting ideas for later stories (supplementary game modes like the True Arena, Kirby Fighters, and Meta Knightmare are considered extra-canonical however). Hence details involving the characters' personalities and geographical details of the setting will frequently change from game to game, new and old characters will frequently pop in and out of existence at random, and Planet Popstar is besieged by a never-ending barrage of similar Generic Doomsday Villains that may or may not be related to each other.
• The storyline of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is very similar to the backstory of A Link to the Past (And the GBA rerelease of A Link to the Past changed "Wise Men" to "Sages", further supporting this), the Adult Link ending in particular. However, it has since been established that the adult ending leads into Wind Waker. The official timeline in the 2011 encyclopedia book Hyrule Historia reveals that the imprisoning actually continues a version of the "adult timeline" where Ganondorf defeats Link (as opposed to Link defeating Ganon) and unites the Triforce (as with the child timeline, the full extent of these events is not depicted in the game), leading into A Link to the Past. The creators admitted that a lot of details were overlooked in creating this official timeline, also admitting that the timeline presented in the book is replaceable as necessary.
• The canon of Love Live! School Idol Festival ALL STARS establishes that at least Season 1 of both Love Live! and Love Live! Sunshine!! have occurred in this continuity, but conveniently leaves out elements that would be contradictory to the premise (such as the Saving the Orphanage plot).
• Mad Max (2015) tells a unique story that borrows elements from across the entire Mad Max film series: the War Boys from Fury Road feature as recurring mooks for the game's Big Bad, Gastown is featured as a key locations, Chumbucket is an eccentric sidekick to Max in a similar vein to the Gyro Captain from 2, Dinky-Di dog food is featured as a healing item, and Max gets a Canine Companion in a similar vein to his dog from 2.
• Mass Effect has most of its books written to allow virtually any set of choices from the games to be considered "canon". Fortunately, given its Canon Discontinuity setting, the third game did the same to the near-universally reviled Mass Effect: Deception, factoring in some of the events but avoiding any reference to growing out of autism or the many, many lore issues.
• The Mega Man X series was supposed to end with the fifth installment, and would lead up to the Mega Man Zero series. However, a sixth game was made without the (initial) approval of the series' creator, creating a lot of problems in the two series' continuity. In order not to confuse the fans, Keiji Inafune rewrote the beginning of Zero to make the two series more compatible with each other: At the beginning, instead of the title character being resurrected (the original ending of X5 was his Plotline Death), he was found sealed in an underground laboratory. The (many) reasons for his sealing gave new and interesting plot concepts that would be explored in the series. X6 had the aforementioned character's (secret, and supported as canon by Inafune) ending support this. Further contradictions regarding what happens after that (like the reveal that Zero was reawakened once before to help fight in the Elf Wars) can be explained away in that whatever happened is a century past by the time of the Zero series, and Zero himself doesn't remember much.
• Metal Gear:
  • While the MSX games in the series, Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, did happen, the characters' recollections of the events in Metal Gear Solid and its sequels suggest that it happened rather differently to how it was actually presented — most notably, Big Boss' defeat. Metal Gear 2 has Big Boss simply rant about how much he loves war and can't adjust to normal life while claiming Snake is there because he's exactly the same, and after the fight his burning body staggers around the room screaming "It's not over yet!"; but in Metal Gear Solid, Snake says that Big Boss told Snake that he was his estranged father, and Snake was forced to deliver the killing blow knowing that. And yet there's still a Call-Back to the "It's not over yet" scene...
  • Many plot details from the original MSX games have been retconned since the original MGS, most notably Big Boss' bio from the manual of Metal Gear 2, which said that Big Boss lost his eye during the 1980s, was contradicted when he loses it in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, which is set in 1964.
    • Although that particular point may be explained by Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. If you assume that Metal Gear 2 bio was written based on the Big Boss from the original Metal Gear, and that the medic's injuries didn't cost them their eye until part way through their coma...
  • Many plot elements from Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops were contradicted in the succeeding PSP entry in the series, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker as a result of Hideo Kojima's minimal involvement in the former. The general plot of Naked Snake forming FOXHOUND to take down the FOX unit and Zero gaining the missing half of the Philosophers' Legacy to form the Patriots is still considered canon, but the ICBMG built by Sokolov is no longer considered the first Metal Gear tank ever built, the funds for Army's Heaven that Snake obtained from Gene are never brought up at any point, and the sub-plot of Snake trying to overcome his grief for The Boss' death and accept his title as Big Boss is repeated in Peace Walker. About the only concrete reference to the events of Portable Ops is a line from Miller at the beginning celebrating that they can "finally leave all that crap in San Hieronymo behind."
• Metroid has the 2002 manga as the only piece of Metroid media that ever goes in-depth concerning series protagonist Samus Aran's past. Games released after the manga's release would canonize the more significant plot details; namely her short stint in the military before defecting, being raised by the Chozo, and her birth parents being murdered by the Space Pirates (specifically due to Ridley). Other M even had child Samus wearing similar clothing◊ as she did in the manga◊.
• Nasuverse:
• Fate/hollow ataraxia takes a bunch of details from Fate/stay night, chucks them all in together and weeds out a few events that cannot possibly occur in the same story, then calls it good.
  • Kagetsu Tohya does something similar for Tsukihime. In fact, it's a plot point that the events don't make any logical sense in terms of continuity, and it's a hint that it's all taking place in a dream.
  • Nasuverse productions are explicitly set in a multiverse, and despite most of their games having many mutually exclusive routes, actual sequels to the games usually mix and match details from each of these routes, so none of the routes are actually in-continuity. The fun part is that due to the multiverse nature, multiple continuities can exist side by side with actual potential for crossovers; the best way to do so being to call in Zelretch.
• Whenever a character references one of their past adventures in Rakenzarn Tales, it's usually done in this manner, as the characters in this setting have lived in Rakenzarn all their life instead of the fictional worlds Kyuu knows them from. For example, Sonic did fight the Deadly Six at one point, but it took place in the Cyril Region of the Phantasma Continent instead of the Lost Hex.
• Resident Evil:
  • In Resident Evil, the player can choose from two main characters, Chris or Jill. Each character has their own partner who will help them out in escaping from the mansion (Barry assists Jill, while Rebecca helps Chris). Although the player runs into the other main character during the course of their mission, neither will encounter the other character's partner. In other words, Chris and Jill can escape from the mansion with Barry or Rebecca, but not with both, implying that one of them doesn't survive. However, the sequels establish that all four of them escaped from the mansion, which is impossible to achieve in the game.
  • Resident Evil 2 is structured in such a way that it had to be resolved in a similar fashion; to "beat" the game you have to play as both characters, and the two playthroughs will contradict each other no matter what. And you can choose the order of the playthroughs, and the order determines the plot (so you can have Claire A + Leon B, or Leon A + Claire B, and both are inconsistent). The "official" story is a mix of elements from all four scenarios, something that Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles tries to depict through a single scenario. The 2019 remake also tries to streamline things by not having as many alternate scenes and having canon events referenced in later games, such as Sherry getting implanted with the G-Virus then getting injected with a vaccine, always take place. Even then, the two scenarios in the remake can't both be completely canon since the characters fight the same bosses and Annette has two different death scenes, making the canon events of the game still a bit murky.
  • The Chronicles games in general treat the other games as this, featuring scenarios that depict condensed versions of the first five games in the main series. The main series, in turn, depicts the two original scenarios from these games as Loose Canon.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Many of the games in the series (outside of the Story Arc-driven Adventure era games) tend to have light continuity between each other at best. Kevin Eva, who was the community manager of Sega Europe in the mid-2000s, claimed the reason for this is because Sega and Sonic Team like to play fast and loose with what's considered canon or not in the series, and that what's considered canon or non-canon can and has frequently changed over time, hence why Sega and Sonic Team are so vague and indecisive over the series timeline.
    "One of the things I also went on to say in that thread was that the canon was and is somewhat in flux all the time. As since it is, for want of better phrasing, whatever SEGA want or need it to be at the time. So it could easily change."
  • Sonic Adventure 2. The game has one story, which you can play from the good side or dark side. Whichever side you're on, that team has to succeed in everything they do. So the outcome of a fight between, say, Sonic and Shadow, differs depending on whose side you're on. Although, besides the fights between good and dark characters, the story of both sides happens in parallel ways and fits perfectly, which is why both can lead to a "Final Story" without much problem.
    
    Most of them make sense on both sides. Tails and Eggman's first fight ends with Eggman retreating. Even on the evil campaign, it's implied Eggman had to retreat because of him (due to a little trouble). Sonic and Shadow never finish their first fight (they are interrupted by Eggman saying the island's gonna explode), and Knuckles and Rouge's fight ends with Knuckles saving Rouge from lava, no matter whose story you play. It's the last two that change the story (though even in the second battle between Tails and Eggman on the hero's side, Eggman successfully gets away with the Chaos Emerald that Tails had, and we never see what happens with Sonic and Shadow's final fight other than Sonic placing the fake emerald into the core, which may or may not have happened).
  • Sticks the Badger is a Canon Foreigner introduced in Sonic Boom. However, various media such as Sonic Runners and the official Japanese website profiles imply that she, or at least an Alternate Self of her, exists in the main videogame continuity as well. She would later be name-dropped in Sonic Frontiers, confirming this.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Knights of the Old Republic has numerous references to the Tales of the Jedi era. Not only do Tales and Knights have totally different aesthetics^note Tales looks distinctly low-tech, while Knights resembles the prequel films that it was contemporary with but one of your party members spent his youth in the Tales era and talks about having a forbidden romance, despite Tales having not one but three Jedi romances^note Nomi and Andur, Nomi and Ulic, Sylvar and Crado that were perfectly above board.
    • Revan was released to bridge the gap not only between Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel, but to the spinoff MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic also seem to forbid Jedi romances, as Revan and Bastila are more or less forced to leave the order because of their marriage.
    • While we're at it, this is the official approach to continuity in both Knights of the Old Republic games — reference books paint them almost entirely in broad strokes, being vague about almost everything related to player choice except the protagonists' genders, which are selectable in the games but set in stone in canon. The canon version of the second game is actually impossible to reproduce in-game, since the canon Exile is female, but also recruited a companion only available to male characters.
  • The Force Unleashed has been praised for its involving storyline, but some people are uncertain about Galen being a God-Mode Sue able to pull down a Star Destroyer from orbit and almost defeat both Darth Vader and Palpatine in a one-on-one fight. Broad strokes can be used to accept the storyline but consider the more outrageous things Refuge in Audacity or Rule of Cool.
  • Sega's 1993 Star Wars Arcade blends elements of A New Hope and Return of the Jedi, focusing entirely on space battles that culminates in a Death Star assault using what appears to be the first Death Star from A New Hope that is destroyed by directly attacking its reactor ala Return of the Jedi, along with Admiral Ackbar appearing throughout the game while he only appears in Return of the Jedi. The Sega 32X port features a mode that reinacts both Death Star assaults, with the first consisting of an attack on the station's exhaust port, but continues to paint broad strokes besides.
• Street Fighter:
  • It doesn't really matter how Charlie Nash actually died prior to the events of Street Fighter II or whether he is actually dead or just hiding; the fact of the matter is that Charlie was supposedly killed before the events of II, leading to Guile's pursuit of vengeance on M. Bison. Which works as well, considering the number of times Charlie is killed off in the Street Fighter Alpha series, only to be brought back by the next game.
  • In Street Fighter V, the game where Charlie comes back, it's revealed his canon death was the one presented in Street Fighter Alpha 2, making all his appearances in Alpha 3 endings not canon. Despite this, many of the events in these endings are still considered canon, including Guile's ending where he recovers Charlie's dogtags.
• The Super Robot Wars Z series plays fast and loose with the canon events of previous games. For example, it's stated that Shinn fought for Durandal to the very end, which occurs in the ZAFT route. However, Shinn also recalls the promise he made to Char to stop him should he ever try to enact the Axis Drop, which only happened in the ZEUTH route.
• This is the standard for Touhou Project danmaku games. In each game you can only play as one character who investigates and solves the incident at hand. It's never made clear which heroine canonically solved each incident, and the side materials often treat the situation as if all heroines solved the incidents together.
• Transformers: Devastation seems to take place in the same universe as the original cartoon, between Season 2 and The Transformers: The Movie—yet a number of details are drawn from elements that are outside the cartoon and would even contradict it, such as Megatron and Motormaster's alt-modes being based on their Combiner Wars toys, hence the former being a tank as opposed to a gun and the latter just the cab of a tractor-trailer, not the whole thing; the characters of Nova Prime and Jhiaxus being part of the backstory for the game; and Unicron having his now-traditional origin (starting with The Transformers (Marvel)) of being a God of Evil and his hatred for Primus, as opposed to his original origin in the cartoon of being built by Primacron.
• Twisted Metal 1, 2 and Head-On share a loose continuity that has multiple characters somehow reappear throughout installments even though it's a Deadly Game and there can only be one winner. In addition, some characters change radically between games, so it's a stretch to believe the Sweet Tooth from 1 is the same as in 2.
• Ultima:
  • The events of Ultima 1-3 happened; "the Stranger/Avatar was in a band of heroes that defeated Mondain, Minax, and Exodus"; but any element past that (like the rocket ships and laser blasters) is ignored. Possibly justified due to all the Time Travel.
  • The Ultima Online intro has the Stranger dressed as the Avatar, similar to his appearance in Ultima IX. This ignores the Stranger not becoming the Avatar until Ultima IV, and also ignores the Avatar's customized appearance in some games.
• World of Warcraft:
  • The stuff that happens in WoW tends to be applied to the background this way ("Some stuff is more canon than other stuff..."). For example, in the background Illidan got defeated by the forces of the Sha'tar and their allies (i.e. the players), not by 25 people from Epic Raid Guild 2000.
  • In general, Lore is the preferred term to "canon" among more mellow WoW fans. There's simply no way to make the early concepts fit neatly with the later ones. So it's enough to say that, like real history, it's interpreted with different points of view by different sides and cultures.
  • The very point of the novels Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal was to rewrite the stories of the broad strokes Warcraft II and its expansion in a way that would fit with later games. The trend with ascribing player achievements to lore characters is there, though: Darion Mograine replaced the PC in the Ashbringer comic (along with some Argent Dawn red shirts for the attack on Naxxramas), and Varian Wrynn exposed and killed Onyxia in lore.
  • This is also the philosophy Blizzard used when re-making Draenor for the Warlords of Draenor expansion. The layout deviated from Outland rather significantly in a lot of places. Some of it can be explained by Outland being formed from an Earth-Shattering Kaboom of the prime timeline Draenor. But there are other areas that don't match up even taking that into account.
  • Comic character Med'an became such a hated character that Blizzard has all but erased him from canon, though events he was involved with still happened.
• The Xeno games (Xenogears, Xenosaga, and Xenoblade Chronicles) are three subseries split across three different companies (Square Enix, Bandai Namco, and Nintendo respectively), but many elements of Xenogears make it into the other two subseries:
  • Xenosaga is an unconventional example because it features Broad Strokes of the backstory for Xenogears, rather than the game itself; Xenogears was originally conceptualized as Episode V of a six episode saga tentatively called "Perfect Works" (Sound familiar? It should.), with a theoretical prequel that was Episode I becoming Xenosaga. Objects and characters like the Zohar and Abel appearing are the strongest indication of this, as they also appeared previously in Xenogears.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles, on the other hand, leans much more into being a reimagining of "Perfect Works" than a legally distinct prequel or sequel:
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 1 was originally not intended to be a Xeno game at all, and was originally known as Monado: The Beginning of the World. Despite this, it still features many tropes found in Xenogears, such as Star-Crossed Lovers, a Demiurge Archetype, many a Humongous Mecha, being set against the backdrop of a devastating war, etc.
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and its expansion Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country also feature tropes from Xenogears, namely a Boy Meets Girl plot, a character with a Literal Split Personality, a silver-haired antagonist driven to despair by losing his love, and a Doomed Hometown destroyed by way of Power Incontinence.
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 3 then takes all the aforementioned tropes listed above that were reimagined in the first two Xenoblade Chronicles games and reinterprets them again, to the point where 3 is more or less an outright reimagining of Xenogears. Not only that, but male lead Noah wears a Samurai Ponytail like Fei Fong Wong of Xenogears, female lead Mio wears silver clothes + black leggings and gains waist-length hair that makes her resemble Elly Van Houten of Xenogears, and the two of them are caught in a Reincarnation Romance much like Fei and Elly of Xenogears, with The Dragon N even being an Expy of Lacan/Grahf, due to both of them being previous incarnations of Noah and Fei respectively driven to madness by the loss of their lovers. Not to mention that the class system in 3 even allows you to equip Noah with the Martial Artist class, so he can even become a Bare-Fisted Monk like how Fei was.
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed, despite being an expansion of 3 similar to Torna, manages to take this even further than all the previous Xenoblade games. Not only does the protagonist, Matthew, look even more like Fei Fong Wong then Noah does, he is a Bare-Fisted Monk like Fei by default (instead of being a class that Noah gets later after meeting Matthew's descendant, Ghondor, named after his grandfather, who's basically a dead ringer for Fei's father and Martial Arts instructor, Kahn). Additionally, Future Redeemed is chronologically the fifth entry in the series, just like how Xenogears was Episode V of the planned Perfect Works saga. A Wham Episode that is the final chapter of the game reveals that, in a potential form of Canon Welding, all of the Xeno games are connected in some way, making references to Project Exodus, the Earthlife Colony Project, Philadelphia Class mother ships (that were only referenced in the Perfect Works to explain the name of the spaceship in Xenogears' animated intro FMV, of all things), and even namedropping Dimitri Yuriev himself as the leader of the Savorites (an accidental English dub mistranslation of the Salvator faction who were referenced in Xenoblade 2, also from Xenosaga).

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