Discontinuity / Live-Action Films

Star Trek fans need to do what us Highlander fans and a great majority of Star Wars fans do: If you don't like it, get angry over it for a very brief period of time, then go into a severe drinking fit, and then pretend the sequels you don't like don't exist! ... It's called selective amnesia, and it works wonders for nerds.

— Noah Antwiler on Trekkie reactions to Star Trek (2009)

Established movie franchises tend to have Fanon Discontinuity imposed on them, especially whenever crappy sequels rear their ugly head. This also tends to happen to theatrical cuts if a director's cut or extended cut is available, often overlapping with Canon Discontinuity if the director also disapproves of the theatrical cut.

Advertisement:

Note 1: Do not include examples based only in adaptation. A movie adaptation can not be discontinued since it is not part of the continuity of the original. You can discontinue a sequel of the adaptation but not the actual adaptation. To a lesser degree you can discontinue PARTS of a movie.

Note 2: Ignoring certain works of a person or company so they're "still good" is also forbidden as that would be ignoring real life events (which we are not doing here).

Note 3: Do not post personal examples. Examples should only be of groups of fandoms.

---

• The Alien fandom has several groups of fans who disavow various parts of the franchise.
  • There is a devoted fan base who only consider the first film canon, as they feel Aliens ruined the mystery of the xenomorph and tarnished its creditability as "the perfect organism" by turning it into cannon fodder for the marines. Also, the Queen contradicts a scene from the director's cut of Alien in which two crewmembers are shown being directly transformed into eggs.

  Advertisement:
  • Notably, Alien³ often receives this reaction from fans, due to it killing off the previous film's survivors, making the last 20 minutes of Aliens pointless and dooming Ripley. Others say the series ended with Ripley's death, ignoring Alien: Resurrection instead. Notably, Gearbox Software (while promoting Aliens: Colonial Marines) said that although 3 was still canon in their mind, their game would be the "true sequel to Aliens".
    • Ironically, most fans like to pretend that Aliens: Colonial Marines never happened and view Alien: Isolation as the only game to stay true to the franchise.
  • And others only consider Alien³ canon if watching the work print version of the film.
  • A number of fans also consider the Dark Horse Comics' Expanded Universe (which includes Earth War, the continuation of Ripley, Newt and Hicks' storyline after the second film) canon, and dismiss any movies after Aliens.

  Advertisement:
  • Alien: Resurrection also gets this for being bizarrely quirky and an amped-up copy of the original film's plot. Other fans are open-minded enough to acknowledge both 3 and Resurrection.
  • Some fans refuse to believe that the two Alien vs. Predator films were made, the first of which was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson of Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil fame. Others accept only the first AVP, which at least tried to retain the atmosphere of the respective series, while rejecting the second for being squicky without actually being scary. There are others who like Requiem, and ignore AVP for being a PG-13 movie marketed to kids.
  • Prometheus has been viewed by some fans as this, not only for being a largely-inconsequential addition to the overall mythology, but for dropping a metric load of unanswered questions and shoddily-written characters into a plot that has little-to-no purpose other than explaining the origin of the "Space Jockey" seen in the original film. Alien: Covenant, which follows on that and makes a true Origins Episode for the Alien, also splits fans.
  • Amusingly enough, Neil Blomkamp would make a sequel to Aliens and will tell its own story ignoring the existence of the third and fourth films, although he has made clear the films are not being removed from continuity. Whether this comes out is a whole different deal.
  • Alien: Covenant has also received this treatment from fans for much the same reasons as Alien 3- rendering the entire previous film moot by abruptly killing Elizabeth Shaw offscreen, exterminating the entire Engineer race and dealing with some of the potentially fascinating mysteries set up by the previous film by either providing unsatisfactory answers or none whatsoever. It didn't help that David, who was a fan-favorite in Prometheus, was largely turned from an Ambiguously Evil ally to a monologuing, god-complex evil mastermind who wins completely in the end.
• The other half of AVP, Predator, is even worse for fan consensus, not helped that the three sequels are both contested and hard to reconcile with each other. But the reveal in The Predator that the Predators hunt to get DNA to augment themselves ended up being majorly rejected and ignored.
• The Resident Evil movies were never exactly critical darlings among fans and critics. However, most can agree that the first Resident Evil film (2002) is the only one that's actually watchable while the rest (with the possible exception of Apocalypse) are way too schlocky and/or non-sensical to almost Sharknado levels. But even the fans of sequels usually agree that The Final Chapter never happened for many of reasons, including turning the epic and promising ending of Retribution into a complete Curb-Stomp Battle with human population being reduced to less than 5000 people worldwide, the nonsensic reveal of Umbrella having planned the whole global outbreak all along, some characters that lived up to this point (Jill, Leon, Ada, Chris and Becky) disappearing without a trace, Wesker being Demoted to Dragon and then suffering an extremely unfitting and ridiculous death and, most of all, an extremely bleak Esoteric Happy Ending to boot.
• Some fans prefer to pretend that the second and third films in The Matrix franchise never happened. Particularly the third installment, as it contained fewer action scenes, gives us an overabundance of philosophical concepts and then suddenly dropped them.
• Star Wars
  • A few fans hate the Ewoks so much that, more than three decades later, they still disavow Return of the Jedi as a legitimate episode of the franchise - which of course is pretty much impossible, because that's the film that resolves the Original Trilogy!
  • There are still Luke/Leia shippers out there who disavow Return of the Jedi in its entirety. Well, maybe not the Jabba's Palace sequence, even if it does score Han/Leia points, but Luke/Leia had an instant Non-Standard Game Over.
  • Fans aren't the only ones who want to pretend Ewoks never existed, as you'll discover when you read just about anything Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) has to say about them.
  • Ask anyone who saw the original trilogy first what they thought of the prequels. You are likely to be punched in the face and informed that there is no such thing, but it's so worth it. This attitude seems to be dying as of The New '10s; Even many haters of the prequels are accepting them (sometimes reluctantly) as canon, and the sequel trilogy is now more likely to be ignored instead.
  • A good portion of Star Wars fans ignore the entire Expanded Universe, and have been vindicated now that Disney has declared the Expanded Universe Canon Discontinuity in preparation for the sequel trilogy. Though the group that preferred the original EU material to the more recent Clone Wars series that has remained canon are rather disappointed, causing an inversion where Disney declared the old Expanded Universe non-canon, but fans still believe it's canon. Other fans simply consider canon only what they like and not canon what they don't like from every source (new canon, old EU, prequels and so on)
  • Lucas mentioned that his work on ''Robot Chicken-Star Wars' was his way of apologizing to the fans for anything they don't like about the series. Apology accepted.
  • Star Wars has all kinds of Fanon Discontinuity groups. Some say the Prequels and the Clone Wars movie never happened In-Universe. Others only see the Clone Wars series as the only true part of the Prequel era. Still others say that only the movies ever happened, and that the Expanded Universe is non-canon. Still others say that nothing after Empire Strikes Back happened. Then we get into the groups that dis the continuity in regards to certain parts of the Expanded Universe, like the Jedi Prince series, the New Jedi Order series, the Legacy era, and so on.
  • Lucas once said that the Jedi, as seen in the prequels, were allowed to have sex, but weren't allowed to form attachments. Just about everyone has ignored this, from fans to EU creators, for obvious reasons.^note Partially because it's not as fun writing fanfic if it's just sex, and partially because most people don't like the idea of sex without love, or even a strong "like".
  • And don't even mention The Star Wars Holiday Special. Lucas has said he'd personally destroy every copy of the show if given the chance. This being axed from canon is one of the few unanimous benefits of de-canonizing the old EU.
  • The most famous example is that every proper Star Wars fan believes that Han shot first.
  • Followers of the Machete Order for watching Episodes II-VI disregard The Phantom Menace as an unimportant chapter in Anakin/Darth Vader's character arc, to the extent where without it, the other two prequels actually make a little more sense, and maintain stronger continuity with the original trilogy.
  • Even many casual fans who don't object to The Phantom Menace as canon prefer to act as if "midichlorians" never happened. From the beginning, viewer opposition to the concept was so strong and widespread that scarcely any movie since Episode I has revisited it.
  • There are a number of Expanded Universe fans who are choosing to ignore The Force Awakens in favor of their preferred version of canon. It didn't help that Disney declared the EU non-canon, either. For many, this also includes Star Wars: The Clone Wars, because of the many contradictions to the EU and the fact it was the beginning of Disney's takeover even it was ultimately brought into the new canon and referenced in several subsequent media in said canon since.
  • As of December 19th 2017, there is an actual online petition to declare The Last Jedi official non-canon, after the really massive Critical Dissonance regarding its subverting expectations, and internal deconstruction. People are voting, as of now.
  • In light of the conclusion to the Sequel Trilogy, there are many Star Wars Fans who disregard the entirely of the Disney Sequel Trilogy, preferring to believe that the series ends with the Happy Ending of Return of the Jedi.
    • It can easily be argued that The Last Jedi is the true culprit, due to it creating a massive divide in the fandom, with those liking it getting called shills and those disliking it being called toxic. While the topic is very contentious, regardless of your opinion on the Sequel Trillogy or its installments, it cannot be disputed that the film massively fractured the fanbase, likely leading to many decisions made in The Rise of Skywalker in an attempt to win back those who didn't like the last movie while keeping those that liked the previous one. As entries above and below indicate, this didn't work.
  • There's people who do like the sequels but still disown The Rise of Skywalker (which some consider the worst episode of all due to the Ass Pull of Palpatine being alive) and consider The Last Jedi as the true finale.
• While we're in George Lucas productions, fans who were frustrated with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (though like the Star Wars prequels, the expectations were really high after 19 years of waiting) try to ignore its existence. This is even alluded to in an episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
  • There is also the fact that unlike Star Wars, Indy's EU is fairly obscure, so it's no surprise many fans not only don't think of any but the movies as canon... they don't even know about the novels, comics (specially the terrible 80s Marvel comics), park rides, tabletop games and videogames. Opinion is perhaps more divided about the prequel TV series, the only non-movie installment that gets some references in fan fiction.
  • A small but committed group of Dr. Jones' students believes that any reports of Dr. Jones' work in China and India circa 1935 are entirely fictional. And another group of equally committed students believes that it was his most important expedition to date.
• Some people also play Fanon Discontinuity on Batman & Robin. It's a different way, though. Batman & Robin gets openly razzed. Batman Forever, being neither like the first two films nor as outrageous as it, simply gets ignored.
• Speaking of, this is referenced in The Nostalgia Critic's Old Vs. New of Batman (1989) and The Dark Knight when he doesn't bother to compare the old and new Harvey Dents:
  And I guess there's really no point in comparing Harvey Dents as the first film barely mentions him and eventually turns into... (cuts to Tommy Lee Jones eating the scenery alive as it screams for mercy)... yeah that never happened.
• Plenty of The Crow fans only consider the first film in the series, starring Brandon Lee, worth watching, although to an extent The Crow: City of Angels has a fan base too.
• With The Pink Panther films, there are fans who only count the films Peter Sellers was in as canon. Trail of the Pink Panther is an interesting case here, since it was assembled from deleted scenes and flashbacks of Sellers two years after his death. If the film doesn't count on its own, then the deleted scenes can be seen as canon in their original context of material dropped from The Pink Panther Strikes Again. Even MGM/UA has encouraged the Sellers-only approach on occasion; the Pink Panther Film Collection DVD box set from 2004 only included the Sellers films they owned the rights to at the time (They only got back the rights to Return rather recently, and it is going to be included in Shout! Factory's upcoming Blu-ray set).
• Many fans declared that Rocky V never happened, even before Rocky Balboa (mostly) ratified that judgment. Bill Simmons' use of the phrase "never happened" might be the Trope Codifier, or, at the very least, one of the more popular uses.
• Many people wish they had never heard of Home Alone 3, due to the absence of Macaulay Culkin, its mediocre quality, and the lack of genuinely funny villains, or Home Alone 4 simply because it sucks. A few even wish they hadn't heard of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York because it's similar to the first one, just recycled in some other town.
  • Understandably though, Macaulay Culkin would have been gotten too old to be able to keep up the part of Kevin by the time of Home Alone 3. (This was mocked on an episode of The Critic in which Jay Sherman reviews Home Alone 5, and the McAllisters are horrified to learn that they've - once again - left Kevin home alone because "he's only 23!")
• The Terminator franchise also gets a lot of this, which is easy to do considering the Alternate Timelines that have arisen:
  • There are some fans who consider only the first film canon due to feeling like the second movie was too cheesy and light-hearted in tone with more emphasis on the action than the horror elements, and also because the ending creates a paradox (if Judgment Day is averted, then John cannot exist, as Reese would never have been sent back in time to conceive him).
  • Terminator 2: Judgment Day featured a positive ending where John Connor not only survives, but manages to prevent the global nuclear apocalypse that would nearly wipe out humanity from ever happening. (This was an alternate ending.)
  • Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, on the other hand, takes a Shoot the Shaggy Dog approach to the previous movie and flat-out states that Judgment Day is inevitable, rendering every action taken in the previous movie a waste of time, including the Heroic Sacrifice of one of the well-intentioned programmers who would have originally brought the apocalypse about. No mention was made that this inevitability renders the entire time traveling kill-your-enemy-before-the-war theme of the series equally pointless. As a result, many fans insist that the series ended after the second movie, or that the more positive Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series is the only follow-up. Never mind that it was hinted at being inevitable the entire time - John sent his own father back in time in the original The Terminator, which couldn't happen without a Stable Time Loop, and thus a more or less stable timeline.
  • The fourth movie, Terminator Salvation gets some discontinuity because it follows the events of the third movie, changing the focus of the series (future war against the machines instead of the present day). Salvation also gets some discontinuity because it contradicts Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, most notably through the absence of any reference to Derek Reese. Some fans who otherwise wouldn't have had an issue with it choose to ignore it simply because keeping it would make it tricky to keep the series in canon as well.
  • Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is also disowned by a sizable portion of fandom, since it messes with just about everything stated in the first two films, creating even more paradoxes. Oh, and it was cancelled before giving us anything close to an ending.
  • Terminator Genisys gets this due to it creating an entirely new timeline with time travel, removing all four previous films from continuity and the decision of turning John Connor into a part man/part machine hybrid who is the film's antagonist. An attempt to reboot the franchise from the ground up wound up dead in the water.
  • Terminator: Dark Fate, which tries to be a true sequel to the second movie while throwing out the previous mythology and applying the Happy Ending Override as it kills John Connor right away (raising comparisons to Alien 3, mentioned above) and has another villainous AI take Skynet's place as the Big Bad.
• Fans of Escape from New York often pretend that Escape from L.A. never happened, considering the second film to simply be a carbon-copy of the first one.
• Many Star Trek fans avoid any mention (or even thought, as much as possible) of the events in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier which almost became the Franchise Killer. The Word of God from Gene Roddenberry himself was that many elements were "apocryphal". It didn't help that even from a technical standpoint, there were numerous issues with scale alone, from the improbable turbolift shaft scene, to the fact that both the Enterprise-A and a Klingon Bird-of-Prey make a journey that would take the faster Enterprise-D or Voyager thirty years without a wormhole, transwarp conduit, or some other Applied Phlebotinum.
  • Numerous fans also throw out Nemesis, due to (among other things) the appearance of a sister race of the Romulans that had never been featured or mentioned before, the crew acting like they had never met another Soong-type android before, and Data dying even though it could have been easily avoided using other pieces of Treknology. On a lesser scale, fanfic writers Retcon the ending to allow Data to survive through various means (from swapping his mind with B4 to being blown into an Alternate Universe). In fact, the comic book series "Countdown", a lead-in to Star Trek (2009) suggests EXACTLY that Data's neural patterns were downloaded into B4 (the film itself makes the same suggestion, although perhaps not to the same degree).
    • Star Trek: Insurrection is sometimes ignored simply for generally being considered bad, although this is easier as no canon-changing events occurred.
  • And a good number of fans throw out Star Trek: Generations, because they don't think Kirk should have been killed off so ingloriously. Even some TNG fans would rather forget it.
  • Then of course, many fans ignore J. J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot films for taking the "science" of Star Trek from 'vaguely plausible' to 'no idea how physics works in any way' and for a supposed overall "dumbing down" of the franchise.
  • Many fans who disliked Khan's Race Lift and colder characterization in Star Trek Into Darkness have come up with elaborate theories on how "John Harrison" was an impersonator and the real Khan is still floating around as a popsicle somewhere. It helps that the movie only uses "Khan Noonien Singh" to refer to the Prime universe's Khan, and in the real world, "Khan" is a title, not a name, making entirely possible for the same word to refer to different people.
• A number of Spy Kids fans agree that the less said about the third film, with its poor writing (including an ending which made no sense whatsoever by failing to explain how the virtual reality creations ended up in the real world) and a stupid "3D" gimmick, the better! It doesn't help that it was a Dolled-Up Installment made from a totally unrelated script.
  • Some would also say there wasn't a second film either.
    • And the fourth is possibly the least well-received of the bunch.
• Some in the Highlander fandom disregards all sequels. It helps that each installment, besides quality problems, ignores events outside the first movie. (The only exceptions: Highlander: Endgame is a cross between the first movie's and the TV series' continuity, and the Direct-to-Video Highlander: The Source follows the events of Endgame). Those who enjoy most of the movies will still adamantly ignore Highlander II: The Quickening, which has little more than a few names in common with the Highlander universe. Highlander II may be the most hated sequel ever made.
  • Other Highlander fans decide to ignore all the films for the sake of a protagonist who KNOWS how to handle a sword - that is, for Highlander the series.
  • In short, there should've been only one.
• All the sequels to Jaws are disregarded by much of the fandom, in part because of the sharp drop in quality with each entry: the mediocre Jaws 2, the cheap but counterproductive "3D" gimmick in Jaws 3D, and the ridiculous Voodoo Shark concept and horrific execution in Jaws: The Revenge. Additionally, some plot points in Jaws 3D are inconsistent with the remainder of the series.
• As far as many fans of the Mission: Impossible TV series are concerned, whatever those movies were, they certainly did not depict the real IM Force, and that definitely wasn't Jim Phelps. Besides, the films completely ignored the elaborate scams aimed at fooling the bad guys which were the entire raison d'etre for the original series.
  • This is especially the case for Mission: Impossible II, which was basically a generic action flick. The first movie was more cerebral, and thus closer to the tone of the TV show (even if they did derail individual characters quite a bit).
• The Godfather Part III is widely perceived to be inferior to the first two movies made during the classic New Hollywood era. With a convoluted plot, a love story featuring Kissing Cousins (Mary Corleone and Vincent Mancini), a former main character getting McLeaned (Tom Hagen), and arguably some Badass Decay (Michael Corleone), this sequel alienated a great deal of fans, many of whom prefer to pretend this never happened. Some viewers point out that it's still a decent movie, just not on par with The Godfather I and II. Others use Brain Bleach to forget its existence. In any case, when people refer to the great The Godfather movies, they more often than not mean the first two.
  • Word of God says that the movie was never intended to be on the epic scale of the first two, and in fact the original title was the spoilerific The Death of Michael Corleone before Executive Meddling took over.
    • An ironic reversal of what happened with Part II. The studio were dead set against simply calling it The Godfather Part II — "Boring! More of the same!" — but Coppola dug in, insisting that it was a continuation of the original movie and not a separate story. Fifteen years later he wants to make The Death of Michael Corleone, and — "You want to call it what? You're insane! The Godfather is the most acclaimed franchise in cinema, and this is part three!" Cue the crushing disappointment when it turns out to be utterly unlike parts I and II. (Of course, as the original entry points out, there were other problems.)
• Most people throw out the very end of Dario Argento's Opera, especially because it's a Diabolus ex Machina.
• The ending of Pretty in Pink outraged many, and it is generally ignored in favor of the original ending, which was thrown out because Molly Ringwald, the star of the movie, suggested the new ending. John Hughes was notably displeased with the revised ending.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • Some fans chose to ignore Jean's and Scott's deaths or Rogue taking the Cure in the third movie. Other fans tend to disregard the movie as a whole. The writers of X-Men: Days of Future Past seem to agree, considering that the movie was one long Author's Saving Throw to remove X-Men: The Last Stand from the movie continuity.
  • And then there are some that prefer to ignore X-Men Origins: Wolverine, because it was poorly executed and has a lot of continuity errors with the main series. The two movies that followed even ignored it (although The Wolverine and X-Men: Days of Future Past each briefly includes a scene of Origins in a flashback).
  • While Logan is well-liked, many fans prefer to think of it as a separate universe, as the ultimate fate of the X-Men and mutantkind in general turns the entire franchise into a massive Shoot the Shaggy Dog story. In addition:
    • Some feel that dropping bridges on most of the cast did them a disservice by denying them proper closure for their arcs and ultimately makes the film series about Wolverine even more than it already was.
    • Others, however, feel that the Broad Strokes approach actually works in favor of the movie and works in a similar vein to Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? as a mythic take on superhero films.
  • Once Dark Phoenix turned out to be quite the underwhelming movie, many decided to discard it to make Logan the Grand Finale. Alternatively, for those who invoke this trope for even that movie for the all reasons listed above, X-Men: Days of Future Past is the true ending to the franchise.
• The Muppets:
  • Many Muppet fans like to pretend Muppets from Space never happened, not from quality reasons, but for resolving what Gonzo is.
  • Many pretend that every Muppet movie after that (at least until The Muppets) never happened for quality reasons.
  • Some regret that the series ended with The Muppet Christmas Carol, for the same reason.
  • The 2011 film flat-out says everything after 1981 never happened, although there are references.
• Invoked in The Nostalgia Critic review of The Neverending Story 2 in which he says it's a good thing there was never another sequel, even though there actually was, before turning on the theme from the movies to drown out the complaints to that effect. He ended up reviewing the third anyway. The Neverending Story 3 is so awful that fans of the original like to pretend that it doesn't exist. It's often placed on Worst Movies of All Time lists.
• Fans of The Mask almost unanimously loathe its sequel mostly because of its overwhelmingly horrible quality and lack of Jim Carrey. They feel insulted having a long-awaited follow up to a beloved 90s quirky superhero crime thriller comedy be a mind-numbingly atrocious Lighter and Softer kids film chock full of Nightmare and Nausea Fuel and thus only see the first film worthy of canon.
  • The same could be said for the animated series as well, although, unlike Son of the Mask, the animated series has fans who will defend the show from detractors.
• Many who watched A.I.: Artificial Intelligence feel that the movie should have ended with David at the bottom of the sea in front of the statue of the Blue Fairy and wishing he was a real boy, rather than the overly-sugary last 10 minutes of the movie, which feels awkwardly tacked on in any case.
• Most fans of Dragonheart agree that there is no sequel.
• Though technically a sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, being that it takes place after the prior film and even subtly references it a number of times, most fans would rather consider Shock Treatment to be a separate entity entirely. Even creator Richard O'Brien has claimed that the Brad and Janet of that film are not the same characters previously seen in RHPS - which is more or less universally accepted, due to their vastly different physical appearances (Jessica Harper bears absolutely no resemblance to Susan Sarandon) and failure to recognize characters that look *exactly* like the castle inhabitants.
• Quite a few fans like to pretend that Airplane II: The Sequel never happened. Not so much for quality reasons as they just prefer to remember Airplane! as a standalone classic and aren't big on the absence of the ZAZ team. Those who do admit its inevitably not on par with the original but is very funny on its own.
• Fans of the American Pie series refuse to acknowledge the straight-to-DVD installments and skip to the eighth entry, American Reunion, even though Reunion already effectively rendered the Direct-to-DVD sequels Canon Discontinuity anyway, particularly regarding the age of Jim and Michelle's child.
  • Some also opt to discount the third film due to the absence of several main characters.
• Many fans of The Three Stooges will tell you that the boys called it quits after Shemp's death in 1955. A substantial number will go further, insisting that the Stooges broke up after Curly's stroke in 1946. And don't even mention Joe Besser to a die-hard fan of the Stooges.
• Some Planet of the Apes fans choose to ignore the final original film, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, due to the bad quality of the plot and the writers' insistence on reinforcing the circular timeline theory that not all fans agree with.
• Members of The Blues Brothers original fan base often wish a sequel had been made before John Belushi died and "Buster" was born.
• Donnie Darko fans will be very quick to inform you that there is no such movie as S. Darko.
• Many fans of the franchise tend to accept only the first two Superman films as worthy of canon, furiously denying the validity of further sequels. In fact, Superman Returns attempted to play into the fans little game by also ignoring films beyond Superman II but it also fell prey to the ostracism.
• Some fans of the Fast And The Furious consider 2 Fast 2 Furious to be this, due to the entry's Genre Shift to heist movie to urban action movie and most of the franchise's fans not liking the new characters.
• Many The X-Files fans will inform you that I Want to Believe never happened.
  Moviebob: I Want to... I want my money back!
• For Dumb and Dumber fans, the 2003 prequel Dumb and Dumberer is simply NOT how Harry met Lloyd.
  • Apparently Dumb and Dumber To "never happened" either.
• A large amount of Bourne fans conclude that The Bourne Legacy doesn't exist and that the franchise ended after The Bourne Ultimatum. Ditto Jason Bourne.
• Quite common among the Jurassic Park film fans to say "what sequels?" All 3 sequels are frequently regarded being inferior to the original, though Jurassic World is more often seen as a Surprisingly Improved Sequel when compared to The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III. The latter 2 in particular have fanbases who wish to either ignore The Lost World, JP III or both. For Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, it's easier: those who liked the predecessor count it, the others throw it away as well.
• Hannibal Rising is frequently ignored due to its absolute ridiculousness (Hannibal Lecter creator Thomas Harris didn't even want to write it to begin with.). Some fans also disavow Hannibal for similar reasons.
• The Mummy Trilogy is an interesting case in that the first two films (The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns) are well-liked, but part of the fandom rejects the third (The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor) due to a number of reasons including The Other Darrin.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe: The movies are rather well-received... except for The Incredible Hulk. The least-known film, one of the first (only preceded by Iron Man), and the one that fans most often 'forget.' Some justify this due to The Other Darrin setting in for Bruce once The Avengers rolled around. It's not as extreme of a case as so many others on this list, as some fans still include references or base fics off of it, but many prefer to forget that it's part of the series. If not for the fact that Tony Stark appears in the movie's Stinger (which is itself related to the one shot "The Consultant), and that Thunderbolt Ross appears in Captain America: Civil War and briefly in Avengers: Infinity War, most fans would assume that Marvel themselves considered it non-canon, or at least Broad Strokes Canon.
• I Know What You Did Last Summer fans ignore the third movie for a number of reasons. Firstly there is the writing and acting but that's beside the point. The film doesn't continue the storyline of Julie and Ray, which was left in a cliff hanger in the second film, in favor for a new cast of characters and of course there's The Reveal that the killer in that film is the ghost of the killer in the first two movies.
• The Pirates of the Caribbean film series tends to get its share of fans that believe either only the first film (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl) or the first three films (which includes Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End) as canon. The critically-panned fourth movie often gets passed over as not being a real entry into the series, just on account of lacking the quality of the prior ones, or for being based off a pre-existing novel. And frankly, even people who did enjoy the movie (some think it was an improvement over the previous two sequels) admit that the movie is more of a spin-off than a true sequel, even if it is marketed as the latter. The fifth movie is even worse in that regard, although some give it a pass for bringing Will and Elizabeth back.
• Some tend to pretend that Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation never happened because it is an Alien rip-off and has none of the original characters, yet they are okay with Starship Troopers 3: Marauder happening just because Rico from the first Starship Troopers movie is in it and it has the Marauder Power Armor in it from the books.
• More than a few fans (including Wes Craven himself) prefer to think of the first A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) as ending with the original, more upbeat finale where Freddy is defeated for good and everyone lives
  • Quite a few fans completely ignore that A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge ever existed. Seeing as it doesn't fit in very well with the rest of the series.
• Where to begin with Halloween?
  • Only the first and second films are accepted by all fans as canon, and after that, there are three continuities: the Jamie Lloyd story a.k.a the "Thorn trilogy" (4, 5, and The Curse), the second half of the Laurie Strode story (H20 and Resurrection) which ignores the Thorn/Jamie films and follows on directly from the second film, and the third one that only canonizes the first movie ignoring every previous sequel (see below). Some follow the Word of God and treat the pre-2018 Laurie Strode films as the only canonical ones, viewing the first two films and H20 as a "trilogy" of sorts and the films in between as having thrown the series into a Dork Age, while fans of the Jamie Lloyd story reject H20, feeling that its soft reboot of the series cheapened the prior films. The two sides can agree, however, that Resurrection never happened, because the alternative is to accept as canon a film in which Michael Myers got his ass kicked by Busta Rhymes (after successfully killing the Final Girl/heroine, Laurie Strode. Laurie should be the one to destroy Myers, not Busta Rhymes! It's like having Luke Skywalker killed by Palpatine only for Village People to show up and save the galaxy.). There's also another camp that tries to merge both the Thorn and Laurie continuities into one with some Wild Mass Guessinginvoked and fan retconning/revising, though they too also prefer to end with H20.
    
    The third continuity, created by the 2018 Unreboot, is also pretty divisive despite mostly positive reception. Some see it as the franchise's return to form, while others found it pretty clunky and doesn't live up to the hype. Others found the reboot completely unnecessary and also preferred the to have Michael and Laurie as siblings. The only things that seemingly bring all sides together were seeing Jamie Lee Curtis back as Laurie along with Nick Castle coming back as Michael and knowing that John Carpenter worked behind the scenes.
    • Additionally, fans of the Thorn/Jamie Lloyd continuity tend to prefer the Producer's Cut of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers which they deem far superior in overall quality than the theatrical version.
  • Almost everyone ignores Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Not that it matters, since it was never in continuity with the rest of the series to begin with.
  • The Rob Zombie remakes are base breaking at best with opinions typically running the gamut from "absolutely loathsome and shouldn't exist" to "meh, it was cool I guess". The seemingly bottomless hate towards them usually bring up their "gratuitous exploitation in lieu of atmospheric subtlety", "making almost every single character an unbearable Jerkass (even the 'heroic' Final Girl)", "humanizing Michael Myers" and "completely ruining the mystery of his character with a pointless Start of Darkness let alone one that boils down to a generic broken home Freudian Excuse". Some fans, however, thought Zombie's spin on the horror legend was actually somewhat creative and original as well as viewing Michael's humanization as making him more complex and less one-note. While the general consensus of the 2007 reboot is more-or-less 50/50, most fans just flat-out despise it's 2009 follow-up for just being an overall incoherent mess and completely ruining both Laurie's and Dr. Loomis' characters.
    • Also not helping is that John Carpenter himself apparently doesn't think much Zombie's take despite initially giving him his blessing to make it his own.
• Now for the Friday the 13th franchise.
  • Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday is hated for featuring Jason as a body-snatching demon thing.
  • Most Friday the 13th fans hate Jason X with a passion and pretend that it never happened.
  • Some choose to believe that only the first four films are canon. The writers of the reboot even only used the first four films as inspiration.
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a really weird case since the continuity is very inconsistent.
  • A number of fans say that only the first film is canon, ignoring the second film for being too comedic, the third film for not being a continuation, the fourth film for being a cheap knock-off of the first film, and Texas Chainsaw 3D for not making much sense.
  • Some fans believe that only the first two films are canon, claiming that the second film is the true sequel since it features the same Sawyer family members from the first movie. Some even accept that Leatherface dies at the end of the second movie.
  • Other fans believe that the third film is the only canon sequel since it has no direct mention of the events of the second film, despite the fact that an actress from the second film has a cameo. Also, Leatherface is somehow alive even after the explosion at the end of the second film.
  • A lot of people hate the fourth film so much that they are willing to accept that the previous sequels are both true sequels and that the fourth film is non-canon.
  • Controversially, some, including Kim Henkel himself, believe that the fourth film is the only true sequel since it has a similar tone.
  • Others, including the writers themselves, choose to believe that Texas Chainsaw is the only true sequel since it does not mention the previous sequels and also because it opens with a scene that takes place right after the first movie that contradicts the second movie.
• Now for the Evil Dead series.
  • Some believe that Evil Dead 2 is a remake of the first film, despite Sam Raimi's insistence that it is not.
  • Some consider Army of Darkness to be non-canon because of how ridiculously over-the-top the film is.
    • Still others acknowledge only Army of Darkness ... because of how ridiculously over-the-top the film is.
    • A handful of fans replace Army of Darkness with the video game Evil Dead: Regeneration.
  • Some consider the first film to be the only canon film since it is the only full-on horror film, and they believe that Ash dies at the end.
• Many fans of Firefly refuse to accept the film Serenity as canon. This way Book and especially Wash are both still alive.
• The fandom of Red Eye tends to completely ignore Word of God saying that Jackson Rippner isn't even the character's real name, but one he made up. Partially because then no one would be able to agree on what to call him in fan-fiction, and partially because that throws his entire Villains Never Lie status, which is one of his few (canonical) good qualities, into question. A minor example, since it isn't technically part of the movie, revealed in a commentary, and thus could be considered non-canon.
• Most fans of the Charlie Chan movie series only accept the 20th Century Fox films with Warner Oland and (later) Sidney Toler. The cheaply made Monogram continuation of the series (which featured Ethnic Scrappy Birmingham Brown) is largely written off.
• Fans of the horror film The Descent are divided over whether the monsters in the film are real or they only exist in the main character's head to mask the fact that she murdered her friends. Since the sequel follows the first option, a good chunk of the fanbase simply ignores it so they can still believe in their interpretation of the first film.
• The British Carry On film series suffered from this a lot.
  • Carry On at Your Convenience (1971) made many fans at the time abandon the series after 1970. Instead of the film being relateable, like many of the films were, it portrayed the working class as lazy people who went on strike whenever they felt like it. Unfortunately, many of their audience were the "lazy" working class, who immediately stopped watching the film series after that one.
  • Many fans don't count the TV adaptation of the film series Carry On Laughing! as part of the franchise, mostly because series regular Charles Hawtrey didn't appear in it ^note He'd been fired after Carry On Abroad due to his severe alcoholism worsening ever since the mid-'60s. This resorted to the script being rewritten in his favor so that his characters could be allowed to drink whiskey on camera, turning him into a nuisance to other actors in his drunken state during filming. The series itself doesn't acknowledge it much, having the TV series being quietly released on DVD with no announcements. The DVDs themselves are hard to find too.
  • You can guarantee that at least 80% of the fanbase disowned the series after Carry On Dick, which was notably the last Carry On for Sid James, who went on hiatus to continue other projects, later dying in 1976. He was one of the popular actors that appeared in the series and had the ability to carry most of the comedy. Many people, even the critics who despised most of his character types, admitted that he was one of the best actors that graced the series.
    • This couldn't be the exact case because Sid James had been on hiatuses during the films before and the films still managed to be popular. It's probably down to the frequent screenwriter Talbot Rothwell leaving the series after his health made him become unfit for work, leading onto an array of replacement screenwriters that divided the fans over whether they were "terrible" because they didn't understand the nature of the films, whether it was because The '70s were becoming obsessed with the Awful British Sex Comedy, or whether they were trying too hard to copy Rothwell's style.
  • When the series came back at least 15 years after the last film with Carry On Columbus, with only series regulars that were barely in the series to begin with (most notably Jim Dale and Jack Douglas), many fans disowned it before it was even released, considering that many of the regular actors were either too old or dead at the time. The ones that watched it did eventually disown it, mostly convinced that the replacement actors seemed to be imitating the how the regulars would've performed the characters if they were available. The film has since been, like the forgotten TV series, quietly released on DVD and was (surprisingly) removed from the movie series boxset.
• The Arrival was a decent sci-fi romp - it didn't do well at the box office but was enjoyed by sci-fi fans. Those same fans tend to ignore the Direct-to-Video sequel The Arrival II, which includes none of the original characters and a very low budget.
• Most fans of Monty Python can't stand Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. Some can only take Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
• Most people who have seen In the Heat of the Night are unaware of its two sequels, They Call Me Mr. Tibbs and The Organization.
• Many James Bond fans would agree that Casino Royale (1967) (along with the 1954 Climax! TV Movie adaptation) and Never Say Never Again do not exist. Since neither one was made by Eon Productions, they're not in the main movie canon anyway.
  • As for the Eon series, there are a few contested entries, like Die Another Day and Moonraker for example, that some fans feel are too campy or just flat-out ridiculous to take seriously as "real" 007 adventures. Many Brosnan-era fans prefer to think his turn ended with The World Is Not Enough even if Denise Richards playing a Hot Scientist was pushing it. Moonraker, for a good portion of the base, is (at best) a memorable and highly entertaining Guilty Pleasure with some incredible set pieces while it's detractors often cite the over-the-top gondola chase, Jaws' Villain Decay and that it was more-or-less a clone of Roger Moore's previous outing The Spy Who Loved Me. Not helping is that TSWLM ended stating "James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only." as Moonraker was an unintentional, blatant cash-in on the massive success of Star Wars.
  • For the Daniel Craig-era, fans aren't really too crazy about Quantum of Solace with many preferring to go directly to Skyfall after Casino Royale (2006) both of which are considered Craig's 2 best films.
• Fans generally only treat the first two Hellraiser films as canon. The series creator Clive Barker apparently agrees. The Boom Studios comic series he co-wrote was basically a sequel to those films, but ignored continuity from the rest of the series.
• Most Kickboxer fans ignore everything after the first movie.
  • Many fans of another Jean-Claude Van Damme film, Bloodsport, claim there are no sequels to the original movie.
• Many people who saw The Mouse That Roared want to ignore the existence of The Mouse on the Moon.
• Most Grease fans agree that there was never a movie titled Grease 2.
• An unusual inversion of the trope with TRON — Disney declared the game TRON 2.0 and its related materials (Killer App, Ghost in the Machine) as non-canonical when TRON: Legacy was green-lit, much like their declaration they were throwing out the entire Star Wars Expanded Universe when green-lighting The Force Awakens. But the fanbase tends to ignore the Disney mandate as much as possible, and find ways to patch the two sequels.
• Some who have watched The Hobbit film trilogy like to ignore the love triangle between Kili, Tauriel and Legolas. The entire cast and crew of the said films seem to agree.
• The Child's Play series. Most fans accept the first three films as canon, some are willing to accept Bride of Chucky, Curse of Chucky and/or Cult of Chucky, but virtually everyone wants to ignore Seed of Chucky.
• Fans of Harry Potter have differing opinions on the Fantastic Beasts series. While some accept the series wholesale, others accept only the first and ignore the second for a number of reasons, including a jarring tonal change, unnecessary love triangle and relationship drama, inclusion of accused domestic abuser Johnny Depp (then since disproven), wildly different characterizations of Queenie Goldstein, among others compared to the first film, changing facts of the book series after the fact (most infamously, changing Voldemort's pet snake Nagini into a human wizard who was permanently transformed into a snake) and most importantly, the fact that the movie has very little to do with fantastic beasts and where to find them, and has seemingly been taken over by the same plot of good vs. evil that the book series had.
• Fans of Blade Runner insist that only the director's cut or the "Final Cut" are the real versions of the movie, not the theatrical version.
• The B Team Sequels to David Cronenberg's Scanners and The Fly (1986) are generally not acknowledged by the director's fans. Little beyond the concept of scanners themselves was carried over to the former's follow-ups. The Fly II does have defenders who find it a fun monster movie on its own terms; co-writer Mick Garris told Emma Westwood in her Devil's Advocates book on the original that "lots of people like it, though it is certainly not in the same league with the Cronenberg film. I have learned to just say 'Thank you' when people say so."
• A consensus seems to say there was only Independence Day,...no Resurgence. For real, though, almost no one seems to remember that was a thing.
• The vast majority of Step Up fans prefer not to acknowledge the sixth movie Year of the Dance, as it's essentially divorced from the first five in its setting and cast.

---