Discontinuity / Live-Action TV

You've already watched the show, but there are just some things you wish you could have unwatched. Live Action TV Fanon Discontinuity lies ahead. Proceed with caution.

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

---

Live Action Shows with their own pages:

• Doctor Who
• Supernatural

---

Advertisement:

#-H

• Many, but not all, fans of The 100 generally take a disliking to Season 6 and especially 7, particularly because of Bellamy's death, and like to pretend they never happened.. What helps is that Season 5 ends on a positive Series Fauxnale, which generally wraps up most of the major character arcs and looks forward to the future. Season 7 meanwhile concludes with an Esoteric Happy Ending, with many fan favorite characters dead and the survivors facing a very final ending.
• Some people wish anything after Series 3 of Absolutely Fabulous didn't happen. Partially because of a dip in quality of the later episodes, partially because there's some discontinuity of their own. (Nothing that happened in the "Gay" special was acknowledged AT ALL in Series 5. And only bits and pieces of previous series carried over to others.)
• Airwolf is generally treated as ending with Season 3, a decision made much easier by the budget getting slashed to the point where the titular Black Helicopter appeared only as a set, Stock Footage from previous series and a badly-Chroma Keyed model. Most of the main cast being McLeaned in the season pilot was the final nail in the coffin.
• Some All in the Family fans disregard the After Show Archie Bunker's Place. Family had already ended with a Grand Finale (where Mike and Gloria move out of the house and have a long, tearful goodbye with the rest of the Bunkers, while Archie and Edith decide to adopt Stephanie), but Carroll O'Connor's creative clout and the show's still-high ratings led to four more seasons in a retooled format, which resulted in Edith dying of a stroke between seasons, and Mike and Gloria splitting offscreen.
• Andromeda fans, in ascending order of radicalism, dismiss the final season, the final two seasons, everything after season 2's "Ouroboros" (the last episode before the show's creator was fired), everything after Season 2's "Into the Labyrinth", or everything except the pilot and "An Affirming Flame". Most will tell you there was a demarcation line somewhere in Season 2 or 3, even if they can't decide where. Definitely before the lackluster Season 4 and putrescent Season 5.
  • Even the zaniest of fans is willing to admit that "The Unconquerable Man" — a Season 3 episode showing what would have transpired with Gaheris Rhade at the helm instead of Dylan Hunt — happened. Then again, the two-episode group in that sliding scale is probably dead serious.
  • Thank Holy Hosannah that the original creator's vision has been published as "Coda". The awesome of Andromeda, it clings to life.
• While Angel has had its share of divisive storylines, there is none that is more hated than the entirety of Season 4, owing to the Character Derailment of fan-favorite Cordelia (including throwing away her three seasons of development with Angel for a disgusting Romantic Plot Tumor with the local Base-Breaking Character), many characters suddenly having Skewed Priorities and/or Wangst, huge amounts of Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy, and the entire plot requiring everyone to juggle the Idiot Ball to even work in the first place. Cue many fans pretending the whole thing never happened or writing Fix Fic.
  • In a related instance, after Angel was revealed to be Twilight, many fans concluded that any of IDW's Angel comics after After The Fall (which was outlined, but not written, by Whedon) were non-canon. IDW says it considers them canon cause they are approved by Mutant Enemy and Fox, despite being inconsistent even blatantly contradictory with the Buffy series.
• Ask an Arrow fan about Sara Lance's death at the beginning of the third season and many will respond that it never happened, due to being viewed as a poor case of Bury Your Bis and Dropped a Bridge on Him. The fact that Sara was brought back to life one season later and then moved to one of the show's spinoffs helped when it comes to ignoring this.
  • Many fans of the series are starting to ignore everything after the show's second season, where the character of Felicity Smoak went from being a fan favorite to a widely-hated Creator's Pet, with Felicity taking a level in Jerkass yet always being treated as if she was in the right, while taking over the show as a Spotlight-Stealing Squad; eating up screentime from other characters and taking up subplots that could be used elsewhere. This has caused many viewers to only want to watch the first two seasons and then switch exclusively to spinoff series The Flash (2014). For those who did continue to watch the show, most pretend that Oliver and Felicity broke up permanently in Season Four (some even pretend that they never even got together to begin with) and Oliver ended up with Laurel or Sara or just about anyone else instead. Or stayed celibate.
  • Some fans also ignore everything after Season 5 (or at least ignore Season 6), widely considered to be the best season of Arrow, due to the infighting among Team Arrow for avoidable reasons, as well as Felicity hijacking Barry and Iris's already delayed wedding to get her and Oliver married along with them.
• Some fans of the British show The Avengers (1960s) will tell you that the series ended when Emma Peel found out that her long-lost husband was still alive. Most of that number, and a few others, also deny the existence of The New Avengers. Oh, and whatever you do, don't mention the movie.
• Babylon 5:
  • A few fans have the mantra, "We do not talk about season five." Generally, the 5th season finale "Sleeping In Light" is exempted from this, as it was filmed alongside the 4th season but shown later. Also, any mention of units of distance, because Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale.
  • Also, don't ask about the TNT TV movies, or worse The Legend of the Rangers: To Live and Die in Starlight.
  • Much smaller in scope than an entire season or even an episode, but about half the fanbase doesn't accept notorious Base-Breaking Character Marcus Cole being frozen after the end of season 4, insisting he died, in spite of Word of God stating otherwise.
• Many fans of the original Battlestar Galactica (1978) don't like to talk about Galactica 1980, to the extent that they willfully forget that many of the proposed continuation (as opposed to reboot) ideas would have included 1980 in the backstory.
  • Some do include the final episode of Galactica 1980, where it explains what happened to Starbuck, in canon. But they immediately toss out any and all window dressing that comes from the rest of the 1980 series.
• Many fans of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica Do Not Talk about "Black Market". (Because you know that Apollo would totally abandon his pregnant girlfriend and never mention her again just to go to a hooker to placate his guilt over said incident.) Or "The Woman King". Ever.
  • The consensus among some fans is that the show ended with "Revelations", the last episode of the first half of Season 4. This means no mutiny, no revelation of who the fifth Cylon is, what Starbuck is, what the Head characters are, the backstory of the Final Five and the humanoid Cylons, that the Earth they find is not "our" Earth, the defeat of the Cylons, the resolution of Cally's murder, and the finding of Earth. That is a lot to toss out.
  • The latter half of the BSG finale is this for many. Not only does it end with a Time Skip that appears to imply that Hera was used as breeding stock for the human race, but it has the surviving Colonials throw their ships into the sun for no other reason than "technology is bad", deliberately crippling themselves in the process. And then there's the "God did it all" final scene...
  • Check out the 2009 Paley Center post-finale video, in which Ron Moore admits that he used up all of his initial ideas by the Season 2 finale, and everything after that was just written on the fly. And that he decided to kill and resurrect Starbuck mostly as a ratings gimmick, and he'd figure out why this happened later. And that he picked the Final Five Cylons based on shock value instead of plot logic. And that the entire reason they give up their technology is to explain making Hera mitochondrial Eve... and that the only reason they did that was in a desperate attempt to justify the amount of hype they'd been pouring into Hera since Season 2, without really knowing why she was important. And that he simply forgot what to do with President Roslin after Season 2 ended, and Mary McDonnell herself complained. And the point where he flat out likens his writing approach to freestyle jazz, making it up as he goes along, but his brilliance was in retroactively explaining how it all fit together - a textbook definition of The Chris Carter Effect... yeah... why isn't this on the front page for this trope again? The entire second half of the series met with widespread criticism.
• At least 90% of the fanfiction spawned by Beauty and the Beast either ignores Catherine's death at the top of Season 3 or explains it away as quickly as possible, preferably as a nightmare. There's even a acronym for this: SND = She's Not Dead.
• Bewitched might just as well have ended at the end of Season 5, so fans wouldn't complain about The Other Darrin anyway.
• Most Bill & Ted fans would prefer if you didn't mention the short lived FOX series (Which, thanks to the show's obscurity, is pretty easy), mostly due to the bad writing and handling of the characters.
• Fans of Bonanza usually ignore the last season, which doesn't feature Hoss due to Dan Blocker's death.
• Bones:
  • The Halloween crossover with Sleepy Hollow is ignored by a part of the fan base because of the two shows being so different and all the supernatural stuff that it brings into “Bones” world. It had a lot of Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane but nothing that blatant until the crossover.
  • There are lots of fics that pretend Sweets didn’t die in season 10.
• Fans of Boy Meets World tend to Hand Wave the later seasons. Or the earlier ones, depending on whether they like Topanga as a wild hippie or a sensible career gal.
  • Or Eric being a normal (sane and down-to-earth) person or the comic relief (batty and completely out of his mind).
• Quite a few The Brady Bunch fans ignore anything other than the original series.
• Many fans choose to ignore the last two seasons of The Brittas Empire, made at the behest of an (obviously desperate) BBC despite the departure of the original writers, Richard Fegen and Andrew Norriss. Criminally, the painstaking care that had gone into the 5th series and subsequent Christmas special 'finale' - in which every character was given a happy future life - had to be dismissed in one fell swoop. For series 6, the new team of hacks retconned the whole of Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre straight back to its original existence. (And just to rub it in, when the show did eventually wrap up after two years as a fairly shoddy pantomime of its former self, they dared to play the All Just a Dream card.)
• Breaking Bad:
  • While not as bad as most of the other examples here, there are a few fans who were disappointed with the final two episodes of the series after the critically acclaimed third-to-last episode "Ozymandias", and some prefer to think of that as the real final episode.
  • As far as many fans are concerned, "Fly", where Walt spent the whole episode trying to kill a fly that had gotten into the meth lab, never existed.
• Many fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are notorious for this, seeing as how many fan theories of future events were thrown out the window by the premiere of a new season, hence the term Jossed, there are a few moments that just about everybody likes to forget.
  • Most fanfic (particularly the slash) will ignore that Spike said (and was later confirmed) to have been sired by Drusilla and NOT Angelus. To be fair this theory seemed canon for several seasons until clarified and, as many point out, Drusilla was hardly in a fit state of mind to raise a child herself so Angelus probably did a lot of it.
  • Most fans say that Willow's romantic relationships ended after Tara was murdered by Warren, so that Willow seeing Kennedy, the series Scrappy, never happened. Kennedy was widely hated for her unlikeable personality, which was made up entirely of trying to get Willow into bed, her shallow character, and terrible acting.
    • On a related note, many fans of Willow prefer to ignore Tara's murder all together. Others ignore the fact that Oz and Willow ever broke up.
  • A segment of fans also prefer to ignore the majority of the events of Season 4. Which featured the highly loathed Initiative, a new boyfriend for Buffy, ill received by fans and the equally loathed Frankenstein Monster, Adam, even though it means losing out on "Hush", one of the series' best episodes. Even those who don't ignore the events of Season 4 tend to ignore the episode "Beer Bad", which is easy, since it has no bearing on the overarching plot, and is generaly regarded as the worst episode in the series.
  • Some viewers dismiss all of seasons 6 and 7, except for a few outstanding episodes. Debate rages as to whether it's worth junking stuff like the "Smashed"/"Wrecked"/"Gone" trilogy, "Hell's Bells", "Empty Places", "Doublemeat Palace", and the ridiculously polarizing "Lies My Parents Told Me" if it means losing "Tabula Rasa", "Conversations With Dead People", and the legendary "Once More, With Feeling". This particular break in continuity is particularly easy to rationalize because the show switched networks between the fifth and sixth seasons and, in-universe, Buffy died in the season 5 finale.
  • Some fans will tolerate a bit of the sixth season and stop at Once More With Feeling due to it ending with Buffy and Spike getting together, even if it leaves behind a lot of loose ends.
  • Others ignore anything past Season 3, where Buffy's time in high school ended.
  • Some fans, especially since the beginning of the penultimate arc, consider the Season 8 comic-book as non canon. Officially, even if it is a comic, it is canon because it is outlined, and in some parts written, by Joss Whedon himself.
• A lot of fans of Castle are considering the Season 7 finale the last episode, especially since it's the first in quite a few seasons that ends with no cliffhanger and the first ever to end with no open plot arcs, and Season 8 contains events such as half a season of Beckett breaking Castle's heart to "protect him," the forced reopening of two arcs that had been satisfactorily closed, and a final cliffhanger that required clumsy patching when it was learned that Season 9 wasn't happening..
• Many game-show fans ignore the infamous 2001 revival of Card Sharks, because it wasn't good at all— altered gameplay, No Budget was clearly a factor, and Pat Bullard's hosting sucked. What's worse is that the format had been changed from the 2000 pilot (which was far superior, from the scattered info on it) to add elements of an even worse pilot from 1996, and they had taped at least five episodes (with the 2000 pilot format and a different set) that production company Pearson Television found to be "un-airable" (the reasons are unknown, but either the director did a really crappy job, or the contestants won too much money for Pearson's comfort).
• Community: The most notable case for this is several fans only go up to the first three seasons and ignore the fourth one, due to the dramatic shift in tone resulting from the firing of its creator, Dan Harmon, from his showrunner position. But it's not like this is anything new; even before that several fans went so far as to only acknowledge everything up to the end of season 2 or even 1 and pretend everything after never existed.
  • In an unusual development, Harmon was reinstated as showrunner for seasons 5 and 6 (season 6 being released exclusively online), leading some fans to consider every season *except* season 4 as canon. There is even an in-universe explanation inserted into season 5, in which the characters casually acknowledge that their behavior the previous year had been strange due to a campus-wide gas leak, which could lead some to reinstate season 4 as canon while still recognizing that it was a departure for the series.
• Quite a few Charmed fans want to either forget season eight and like to think the show ended with the Series Fauxnale that closed season seven, or anything after the season four finale, because season five is when the show had a huge tonal shift and two out of the three sisters became Author Avatar Mary Sue characters due to their actresses becoming producers, most noticeably Phoebe, who the fandom called PhoeME.
• Most Criminal Minds fans ignore most of season six and pretend that Ashley Seaver never existed.
• CSI fans generally have four break-off points with continuity.
  • Season 6 is usually the last season many fans consider canon. Season 7 introduced the concept of season-long story arcs - generally revolving around a serial killer - and brought more attention to the interpersonal relationships of the characters.
  • Others will accept season 7 and the first half of season 8 up though Sara's departure. Many refuse to accept Warrick's out-of-character downward spiral and eventual death.
  • Some fans will watch the show up to Grissom's departure in season 9 and then stop. To some, anything after is almost like a completely different show.
  • Another group stuck around until season 12, but cut themselves off after Catherine's departure.
• There is a large portion of CSI: NY fans who pretend that the season 5 finale never happened and Angell is alive and well, Flack didn't murder anyone and Danny didn't get shot in the back. Earlier than that in season 5, there are fans who deny that former coroner Marty Pino was murdering drug users and making heroin from their internal organs, citing Character Derailment in that case. Season 6 disillusioned a lot of fans who were disappointed in the season 5 finale but decided to stick with the show.
  • There's also a group that likes to pretend the Danny/Lindsay ship never happened. It's a combo of not liking Lindsay, feeling Danny underwent too much Character Derailment after they got together, and not liking what they saw as a sudden storyline shift after the writers wrote Anna Belknap's pregnancy into the story.
• Most fans of Dallas would rather ignore the two reunion movies. Both Larry Hagman and Patrick Duffy have considered them to be an Old Shame to the series.
• Almost all of the original Dark Angel fandom ignores season 2 (Jessica Alba also does this, incidentally.) or rewrites that season's first episode to remove its most offensive plot device - the virus that makes Max deadly to Logan. New fans watching the show for the actor Jensen Ackles usually do the exact opposite, not bothering with the first season except for Jensen's episode "Pollo Loco". They get a very different interpretation of the show and its characters.
• As far as fans are concerned, on Degrassi: The Next Generation, Ellie and Sean had sex. On the other hand, many fans will contest that Ellie and Sean never got together, and Sean and Emma never broke up. For that matter, Emma and Spinner never got married.
• Dexter is notorious for this, as the show is widely considered to have peaked at Season Four, which was in no way helped by the show's especially controversial ending. While the fandom is mixed on whether or not Season Seven was great or just as disappointing, it's widely agreed among the fandom that everyone should just forget about Seasons Five, Six, and Eight — even if it means leaving it on Season Four's cliffhanger.
• A lot of fans of Dollhouse close their eyes tight and ignoring the last three episodes of season two. Because if they never happened then Boyd is still out there. Boyd is still the great guy he is and one day, one day he will return to Whiskey, who's still alive and still waiting for him.
• Downton Abbey Season 3 is this in varying degrees. Many draw the line before Sybil dies in 3x05. Following Matthew's death in the Christmas special, the last few minutes of that episode are very vocally ignored, even moments after it aired.
  • Some go so far as to end with the S2 Christmas special's gloriously happy ending.
• Some Due South fans pretend that the show ended with the season 2 finale (which was the final episode of the CBS primetime run), and refuse to believe that Fraser's apartment burned down and Ray Vecchio was Put on a Bus in the third-season premiere. Others think the series ended with the third season, which ended with a reasonable resolution for the main characters (both Fraser and Kowalski reaffirm their commitment to their respective jobs). Others disavow certain elements like all of the fourth season except the two-part finale "Call of the Wild", as many episodes are nothing but filler.
  • And some Fraser/Kowalski shippers ignore much of what happened in seasons 1-2, to prove their argument that Kowalski was a better friend to Fraser than Vecchio.
  • Others also pretend the two-part finale doesn't exist, especially since much of it wasn't in the original scripted ending. And others accept the finale until Fraser's voiceover at the end, and say the events in the voiceover were just stories Fraser told Kowalski, and not real events.
• There are a large number of fans of The Dukes of Hazzard who ignore season 4, where Coy and Vance replaced Luke and Bo.
• Fans of Family Feud will ignore anything not hosted by Richard Dawson (1976-85, 1994-95) and/or Ray Combs (1988-94), but even the most accepting fans ignore the first three years of the revival begun in 1999. This is due to the original host of the revived version, comedian Louie Anderson, being seen as by far the worst person to helm that show.
• Many fans of Family Ties will disregard the last three seasons, after Andy was aged a few years - which, quite naturally, contradicts the continuity of the earlier four seasons. Furthermore, much of the fandom had mixed feelings of Season Four. That season introduces Mallory's new boyfriend, Nick - who many find to be annoying. However, that season also introduces Ellen - Alex's girlfriend, who is played by the actress who would later become Michael J. Fox's real life wife.
• Almost every fan of Fantasy Island ignores Season 7 of the original series. Some people would deny the existence of the short-lived reboot, but that at least has its defenders.
• Many Forever Knight fans refuse to accept season 3 (the final season). The opening episode of the season eliminates two of the fanbase's favorite characters (Schanke is killed in a plane crash and Janette is Put on a Bus) and replaces them with two characters who are not as well-liked. Add in some Plot Derailment and Character Derailment over the season and a Downer Ending...
  • Others accept some of season 3, but ignore things like the above series finale and the episode "The Human Factor", believing that the way Janette became human didn't gel with the rest of the series' established canon.
• With its high cast turnover and meandering plot, Earth: Final Conflict has many potential points of discontinuity. The strongest are Boone's apparent death at the end of the first season and season five (the second off-screen), which some felt was a different show altogether.
• Friday Night Lights infamous second season falls to this trope. The show went from an examination of a small Texas town obsessed with their high school football team reaching the state championship, to a conventional teen soap drama, some of whom played football. Among the more outlandish twists introduced: Saracen's affair with his mother's nurse (who then disappeared, never to be mentioned again), Buddy Garrity adopting a juvenile delinquent (who quickly disappeared, never to be heard of again) and most famously, Landry killing a rapist (three guesses as to what came of this plot point). Many fans prefer just skip straight from season 1 to season 3.
• Friends fans would pretend that the spin-off sequel Joey never existed. Even co-creator Kevin S. Bright agrees with them.
  • ''Friends' itself has fans who would rather forget the last few years of the show, picking either the end of season two, four, or five (the show's golden years) as when they should have called it a day.
• Some Emergency! fans choose to ignore the "Season 7" series of made-for-TV movies. Reasons include lack of the supporting cast, the fact that promoting John and Roy to captains made little sense considering they liked being paramedics so much (plus, it meant no more partnership), and to a small degree, the possibility of Chet Kelly dying between series and films. Also, many were attempts at pilots and tried showcasing potential new settings and characters with only Roy and John stuck in.
• Game of Thrones grew increasingly independent from the beloved book series, and made numerous alterations to character development and the storyline which the viewers who have read the books largely pretend did not happen. The prime example is Jaime raping Cersei during the third episode of the fourth season. Granted, it's not really referenced within the series either, making it easy to pretend didn't happen.
  • Season 5, which marked a huge break from the books for major characters like Sansa, Jon, Jaime and Stannis, and cut out a huge number of characters and storylines from the books, is especially considered as a breaking point for many book fans, especially due to controversial developments, such as Sansa's marriage to and rape by Ramsay, and Stannis burning his own daughter alive as a sacrifice.
  • The direction of Season 8^spoilers The Night King being defeated halfway through the season (in only one episode at that), Arya defeating the Night King rather than Jon or Daenerys, Rhaegal's death for pure shock value, Jaime returning to Cersei in The Last of the Starks because he still has feelings for her, Jaime declaring that he never cared about the civilians, going against the very reason he became the Kingslayer, the rather-abrupt Face–Heel Turn of Daenerys in The Bells, Daenerys becoming a ruthless tyrant hellbent on conquering the world, Bran becoming king, and Jon's exile. has been an unwelcome one for numerous fans, believing that characterization was thrown out the window for the sake of forced drama and plot twists. This feeling is common enough that over 1.8 million fans signed a petition to have it remade by different writers.
    • Some fans like to pretend that the series ended after the second or third episode of Season 8. The fact that the former (A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms) is the last episode of the show to receive unanimous critical acclaim, ends on a note of uncertain yet hopeful solemnity, has almost all of the surviving (heroic) major characters still alive and gathered together for a final farewell, brought some character arcs to a satifying conclusion (Jaime (before it was undone in later episodes), Brienne, Theon, Jorah Mormont, and Tormund) and the Night King still being a credible threat (and ignoring his and the entire Army of the Dead's anticlimactic deaths at the hands of Arya). Similarly, The Long Night ended with the victory of the living, makes it for a more satisfying finale than the way things were resolved afterwards. The character assassinations of later episodes are considered non-canon in their eyes, and the show simply left some arcs unfinished.
• To several fans of Get Smart the series ended in 1970 and The Nude Bomb, Get Smart Again and the 1995 reboot never existed — but the 2008 movie does.
• Gilmore Girls is generally treated as ending with Season 6, as the creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino, left at the end of that season.
  • Several fans rejected the 2016 revival, A Year In Life, due to Rory's attitude, her Romantic Plot Tumor with Logan and the ending where she told her mom that she's pregnant. Ironically, that spoilered bit is, per Word of God, the way she had intended to end the show from the beginning.
• Glee
  • Many fans have rejected season 4, and like to pretend Glee died with just a little bit of dignity after the original cast graduated.
  • Some fans think that season 3 was the worst season and tend to ignore everything after the second season finale.
  • More radical fans like to make-believe that things were where they left off in the first season finale, and ignore any content from after the second-season premiere.
  • A few gleeks claim they like to cut off all events after "Sectionals", the originally planned Season 1 finale.
• The Golden Girls ended for most people with Dorothy's wedding, and the final scene of the three remaining girls crying and hugging each other, and the Bea Arthur-less eighth season of The Golden Palace did not happen.
• Ask a Gossip Girl fan about the "Eyes Wide Shut" storyline for Chuck in late season two, and they will most likely pretend not to know what you're talking about. The storyline is universally loathed for being outright stupid, and for having Chuck apparently fall for a hooker named Elle. Since nearly every single fan of the show is a Chuck and Blair shipper, that last part did not sit well.
  • A lot of fans feel the show ended in mid-season four and that the second half of season four and the entirety of season five never happened. The shortened sixth and final season however seems to have potential of getting fandom interest back.
• Grey's Anatomy fans are divided all over this. The most common camps are the following:
  • Those who only accept the first three seasons, the third being the last with the entirety of the original cast.
  • Those who'll accept everything all the way up until right before the ending of Season 8 and start of Season 9, where Lexie and Mark respectively die.
  • Those who accept everything up until the ending of season of Season 10, where Cristina leaves.
  • Those who accept everything until the last five-six episodes of Season 11, where Derek dies.
• Some Heroes fans like to pretend Volume 2 never happened, and a lot like to ignore Volume 3 completely. They can get a bit irritated when developments from these volumes (like Sylar having Peter's empathy power, or the existence of Claire's flying boyfriend) get brought up in the less controversial Volumes 4 & 5. For folks who pretend Heroes ended after the first season, however, this isn't a problem.
  • Others like to think Elle (one of the only good characters introduced in Volume 2) was never killed in Volume 3 and Daphne was never killed in Volume 4, so Matt never got back together with Janet.
• Highlander: The Series:
  • The death of Richie Ryan at the end of season 5 was so poorly handled that many fans decided to exclude that arc. A season or so before, Duncan's reaming Richie out for coming back to Paris after publicly "dying" in a fiery motorcycle accident. Now, Mac's cheerfully hoisting his former student on the barge like it's no problem. It didn't help that Richie's death was a result of not just Character Derailment and an Idiot Plot, but also a completely new creature, a demon, added to the Highlander universe despite there being no hints at its existence in any prior episodes. It's no wonder a great many fans instantly chose to deny the whole thing ever happened.
  • A group of Highlander fans took on the name Clan Denial because they deny Richie's death and the sixth season. Richie's actor Stan Kirsch even gave a shout-out to the group at one of the fan conventions (which can be seen as an extra on the DVDs). That said both Kirsch and the show's head writer have defended the killing-off of Richie (who was actually killed off TWICE in the series with his second death occurring during the bad future of the It's a Wonderful Life-series finale).
  • Some fans ignore not only Richie's death in the Ahriman Arc, but the three episodes comprising the arc ("Archangel," "Avatar" and "Armageddon"). Fans also tend to dismiss most of Season Six as "Season Sux". Not only was the last season rather light on fan favorites like Jim Byrnes and Peter Wingfield, most of the episodes were perceived as auditions for Highlander: The Raven. To be fair, the showrunners admitted that at least two episodes—"Deadly Exposure" and "Two of Hearts"—were effectively test runs to see if there was a market for a spin-off about a female Immortal.
• Some fans will tell you that Peter Marshall was the only host The Hollywood Squares ever had, and that Paul Lynde was the only occupant of the middle square. You might be able to get away with saying the series continued after Charley Weaver's death in 1974, with George Gobel taking Weaver's seat in the lower left square.
  • Some people don't like the 1986-89 John Davidson run for various reasons, including its self-contained gameplay format, among others; even Squares creator Merrill Heatter was quoted as saying, "It's a circus."
• Aside from the people who only consider the Horatio Hornblower books canon, there are people who reject anything after the episode Retribution... namely, the part where Archie Kennedy dies. Fanfiction even tends to be labeled 'LKU' and 'DKU', short for 'Live Kennedy Universe' and 'Dead Kennedy Universe'.
• There's some disagreement as to where the discontinuity begins on House, with fans divided between the departure of House's original team in season 3, Kutner's suicide in season 5, House and Cuddy getting together in season 6, and House driving his car through Cuddy's dining room in season 7. Many fans also refuse to acknowledge the episode Teamwork, in which Cameron professes her love to House and then leaves the show. Which of these factors is the reason for the discontinuity varies from fan to fan.
• The series finale of How I Met Your Mother left a terrible taste for many fans. They have completely disregarded the final five minutes and instead prefer to end it at the scene where Ted meets Tracy (the Mother) at the train station. Some fans have even gone so far as to disregard both finales so that Barney and Robin never get divorced, and Ted lives happily ever after with Tracy rather than her dying, and now that there's an alternate ending on the season 9 DVD where Ted and Tracy do in fact live happily ever after and it's also hinted that Barney and Robin will be getting back together, most fans consider that to be the "true" ending to the series.

I-R

• In general very few fans of I Dream of Jeannie recall either of the two reunion movies, mainly because of the absence of Larry Hagman.
• iCarly: iMeet Fred and iStart A Fan War, among others, are often disavowed for shipping reasons.
• Whatever you say to any fan of I Spy, it's best not to mention the movie.
• Most fans of Jericho agree that the show ended after the first season. The show was originally cancelled after the first season, but demand from viewers brought it back. Sadly, the second season was considerably shorter and was heavily rushed and underfunded, with most fans deciding it never should have been made.
• Many fans choose to completely ignore the third season of the original Land of the Lost where Rick Marshall was Put on a Bus, Uncle Jack was substituted and the series essentially dropped in quality. The serious, thought-provoking sci-fi was replaced by Gilligan's Island antics. Some fans prefer to consider the end of season one to be the real ending, while others pretend that the final season one episode occurred at the end of season two.
• Law & Order:
  • A sizable portion of the fanbase likes to pretend that Law & Order: LA never happened, because once it became clear that the show was failing, the show's writers took desperate measures to try to keep it on the air, including moving Connie Rubirosa out to Los Angeles. Even though the original Law & Order had already ended, some fans (namely the ones whose headcanons stated that she and Mike Cutter were living happily ever after) believed that this screwed up canon badly enough to disown LOLA altogether.
    • A less serious disorder involves the belief that the last episode of Law & Order ended with Anita's phone ringing, making the episode a cliffhanger in the traditional style of the series.
  • Law & Order: SVU fans have splintered into so many groups based on where the show truly ends, it's difficult to count, but prime candidates include when the ADA job position began to have a higher turnover rate than Warner's morgue, somewhere around seasons 7-8 when the Ripped from the Headlines plots started getting ridiculous and melodramatic to the point that it was called "the darkest comedy on television", or Stabler's departure.
  • Similarly, most Law & Order: UK fans disavow anything after the episode "Deal", in which series regular Matt Devlin was shot and killed and insist that he recovered from his wounds and that he and Alesha Philips are living happily ever after as well.
• Let's Make a Deal has had multiple revivals over the years. The original ran from 1963-77, with revivals in 1980-81, 1984-86 (titled The All-New Let's Make a Deal), 1990-91, 1996 (titled Big Deal), 2003, and an ongoing one begun in 2009. Opinions vary on most versions other than All-New and to a lesser extent the contemporary version, but two specific ones are usually given the Discontinuity treatment:
  • The 1990-91 revival was the first incarnation not hosted by longtime host Monty Hall. Taking his place was Bob Hilton, who was far more experienced as an announcer than a host. Reception to his hosting (which, admittedly, was still passable) was so poor that Monty was brought back out of retirement to helm the last few weeks until a replacement was found, but the show got the axe instead.
  • Big Deal was produced for Fox, in their first attempt at having a game show on their schedule, so naturally, the focus was changed from dealing, boxes and curtains to Truth or Consequences-style stunts that were obviously after the Lowest Common Denominator. It also suffered from pre-emptions and halfway broadcasts due to Fox's NFL coverage, so it's no surprise that it expired quickly.
  • The 2003 revival went to Billy Bush, and was so poorly received that it was canned after only three episodes. It was quickly dropped for being Totally Radical and tasteless (one stunt had a contestant peeking under the skirts of three different men).
• Lost has many points of departure for fans, who refuse to believe certain episodes (or even seasons) happened:
  • A lot of fans (even Jack fans) disown the episode Stranger in a Strange Land, which mixes borderline incoherent flashbacks involving possibly psychic tattoo artists in Thailand with a plot on the island where Jack must be examined by Isabel, an apparently powerful Other who gets to decide if he stays or not—apparently above even Ben himself—who was never mentioned before or since. Only one line of that episode is worth remembering for the later seasons. Fire + Water (where Charlie kidnaps Aaron to baptize him) and The Other Woman (where flashbacks show that Ben is in love with Juliet and in the present Daniel and Charlotte go on a quest to a DHARMA station to vent poison gas) are also frequently ignored.
  • A number of fans seem to have completely forgotten about The Long Con, the one right after Fire + Water, in which Charlie, deciding he needs vengeance on Locke for beating him up (for kidnapping a baby), joins Sawyer in a convoluted scheme that involves Charlie brutalizing the completely innocent Sun. His reason for all this was just to make Locke look bad. Sawyer did it just to be bad basically, and was annoyed people took his stuff, which doesn't fit so well with his usual Jerk With A Heart Of Gold personality and has him as a wangsty git using his past as an excuse to be shitty to people beyond the point of tolerance. Charlie was also stunned that Locke was suspicious of the reasons that Charlie, who had just given up heroin, would have for possessing heroin.
  • The flashbacks of "Whatever the Case May Be", featuring Kate orchestrating an armed bank robbery and then betraying and nonfatally shooting all three robbers just to get a toy airplane, are almost universally disregarded.
  • "Across The Sea" for dropping a metric ton of unanswered questions and goofy mythology (and some goofy acting by child actors) on the audience, long after said audience accepted that there weren't enough episodes left to explain it.
  • There are also some fans who watched faithfully to the end, but consider the finale "The End" (and consequently most of the sixth season) discontinuity for making most of the flash-sideways subplots (Sawyer dating Charlotte, the school principal, Jack's son, etc.) absolutely pointless, and ending the series with a group of goofy coincidences designed to get all the main characters in a church.
• Many fans of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., especially but definitely not exclusively slashers, do not acknowledge the 1983 reunion TV movie.
• M*A*S*H fans tend to mainly consist of three groups: "First Three Seasons 'Funny M*A*S*H'" (which may or may not include The Movie that started it all), "Anything from Season 4 Onward" and "Accept The Whole Thing". Then there are those who prefer omitting the last minute or so of the Season 3 Finale so it just ends happily with Col. Blake safely returning home.
• Match Game: The 1998-99 revival hosted by Michael Burger never happened, what with its overly lewd writing (one contestant pulled off a Dark Horse Victory with an answer that had to be censored), unnecessary rule changes (picking from one of two punny categories instead of the traditional "A or B"), Totally Radical feel (overly amped-up announcer, stock cartoon sound effects in the intro), or reduction of the celebrity panel from six to five.
  • Then there's the trainwreck that was The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour— it was an awesome idea on paper, but thanks to bungling on the part of Orion and Mark Goodson, MG-HS became something everybody wants to forget. The only thing that lasted past its 39 weeks was its Edd Kalehoff theme, which would be reused for years after on The Price Is Right.
• Quite a large number of fans of Maverick refuse to acknowledge the existence of Beau or Brent, but especially the latter.
• Merlin: Common deviances include Morgana's Character Derailment/ Heel–Face Turn, the continuing anti-magic stance of Arthur's reign, Lancelot's death, and (of course) Arthur's.
• Depending on who you ask, Millennium ran for one, two or three seasons before getting run into the ground and getting an inconclusive send-off in an episode of The X-Files.
• Many fans of the E4 series Misfits disavow the later seasons. How many seasons there really were depends on who you ask. Some fans maintain that the series ended with the departure of series regular Nathan Young, the death of recurring character Nikki, and the remaining cast members trading in their original powers for new ones at the end of series 2, while others will claim that the series ended halfway through series 4, when Curtis Donovan’s committing suicide in order to avoid spreading the "zombie infection" marked the departure of the last original cast member from the series. Either way, most agree that Series 5, the last series of the show, never happened—between the fact that all of the original Misfits had been either killed off or Put On The Bus and the general deterioration of the plot and the cohesiveness and consistency of the storyline and characters, most would rather not acknowledge that Series 5 ever happened.
  • Among those who do acknowledge Series 5, there’s a wide portion of the fanbase that feels the series finale had 2 endings. The first ending follows the original series of events after Jess is forcibly dragged a year into the future by Luke. In this series of events, Rudy, Jess, Finn, Abbey and Alex all have to band together to stop Helen, Sam and Karen—also known as the Jumper team—who have lost sight of their original goal of becoming actual superheroes, and have killed dozens of people. The battle between the two groups of superpowered youths leaves Abbey, Alex, and Finn injured and Helen, Sam, Karen and both of Rudy’s personas dead. The second ending takes place when, after the battle of the two squads has ended and Rudy has been buried by his friends, Jess goes back to her apartment and sends herself a message before committing suicide, in order to force Luke to take her back in time and save her. In the altered timeline, Jess stabs Luke to death in order to stop him from messing with her timeline, Rudy 2 preemptively disbands Jumper after finding out what they would have become before he and Helen leave England in order to pursue their relationship away from Rudy 1, and the whole squad, presumably, lives happily ever after. Many fans choose to pretend that the altered timeline in the second ending never happened, as it was anticlimactic and completely negated the emotional impact of the first ending, not to mention that the very nature of the second ending went against a lot of what “Misfits” as a series stood for.
• The existence of seasons of Mission: Impossible after Barbara Bain and Martin Landau left is in serious question. Some fans state that the series ended after Leonard Nimoy left, and none care about the execrable 1980s revival.
• The majority of Mr. Bean fans reject the animated series, due to half the episodes being utterly, utterly ridiculous (far more than the beloved live action version, which has Rowan Atkinson and his excellent physical comedy to make it work), as well as the reveal that Bean himself is in fact a member of a species of aliens who are all identical to him.
  • This was a gag in the opening credits of the live action version as well, so it probably only became explicitly canon in the animated adaptation.
• Many My Name Is Earl fans hated season three, which saw Earl go straight from jail to a hospital bed in a coma. In either case, he's unable to cross items off his list, which is the basic premise of the show and the element that really makes the comedy work by grounding its silliness with some heartwarming moments. Since the entire season was basically Handwaved in the third season finale, which turned Earl's new wife, whose introduction was the upshot of the whole season, into a nun and sent her away, the show runners themselves made it easy for fans to ignore this season altogether and acknowledge only the first, second and fourth.
• NewsRadio: The death of Phil Hartman, whose character Bill McNeal was an integral part of the show, and the perceived deficiencies of the Suspiciously Similar Substitute character played by Jon Lovitz (and the eventual Downer Ending of the 5th season) causes a great number of fans of the show to acknowledge only the first four seasons, ending with the wacky Titanic parody (or, if they prefer a Bittersweet Ending, the first episode of the 5th season, which serves as a tribute to Hartman.)
• Night Gallery
  • Fans like to disregard the short, humorous segments that NBC forced upon the series to broaden its appeal. This lead to loads of Mood Whiplash, especially in one of the second season episodes where "The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes", an incredibly sad and horrifying story about a boy who can see into the future lying that world peace is on the horizon because he doesn't want to tell the listening public that the sun is going to explode, is followed by "Miss Lovecraft Sent Me", a silly one-note about Dracula hiring a babysitter. Fans feel the joke sketches cheapen the power and horror of the main fare, in addition to going against Rod Serling's vision for the series. Exceptions may be made for "The Funeral" and "Satisfaction Guaranteed", the former because it was written by Richard Matheson and the latter because of a very charismatic lead performance by Victor Buono.
  • Also up for debate is whether to include the Sixth Sense episodes. Sixth Sense was a paranormal thriller show that aired around the same time as Night Gallery that featured a private investigator traveling around the country and investigating supernatural crimes. When it was put into syndication, it was incorporated into Night Gallery by heavily editing the episodes down to half-an-hour (original episodes ran for over an hour) and filming new intros featuring Serling to make it appear as if it was part of Gallery all along. Whether or not these count as true segments is a touchy topic for fans, but even defenders of their inclusion admit the butchering of the runtimes and cutting of crucial plot points (requiring an Infodump by Serling in the intros to explain the parts that were cut) render most of the episodes difficult to follow and almost incomprehensible.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • Season 4 and onwards, with the increased tendency to throw in big-name Disney characters, suddenly drop story arcs, ignore or undo previous character development, and a continuing theme of villains being unable to achieve a 'happy ending'. Needless to say, fans are growing increasingly vocal in the idea that season 3 was the last great season of Once Upon A Time and that there’s no need to watch further.
  • Some fans refuse to acknowledge the second half of Season 3 after the Series Fauxnale for how controversial Zelena is.
  • Fans of the spin-off Once Upon a Time in Wonderland ignore the Happy Ending Override to Will Scarlet and the fact he's out of nowhere paired with Belle just to make a Love Triangle with Rumple.
  • Some fans are more forgiving of seasons 4-6 but choose to ignore the divisive seventh season, arguing season 6 already provided a great Grand Finale and the show didn’t need to continue.
• One Foot in the Grave: Some fans discount the first season as the show hadn't quite found its feet, but it's far more common to dismiss the final season. Writer David Renwick would probably sympathise with the latter as he only gave in to The BBC's demands for another series on condition that he could Torch the Franchise and Run.
• Only Fools and Horses:
  • Although the standard of humor has held up quite well, many fans ignore the 2001-03 Christmas trilogy because it completely ruined the perfect ending of the original finale; the 1996 Christmas trilogy, where the Trotters at last achieve their dream of becoming millionaires... apparently only for Del to lose it all on the Far East stock market. (Though they did gain a sizeable portion of it back through Uncle Albert's will in the final, final episode.)
  • One particular detail that needs highlighting is that the end line of the first 'last episode' was, "This time next year, we could be billionaires," a very nice twist on Del's defining catchphrase. And was spoken as he, Rodney and Albert walked into a gleaming sunset. After 2003, the end line would always be, "D'you know Rodney? That's a bloody good idea." Which doesn't quite have that same ring to it.
• Nearly every fan of Parks and Recreation will tell newcomers to the series to just skip season 1 entirely. The humor is comparatively bland and uninspired and the characters act nothing like they do in later seasons. Not to mention the presence of the bland and boring Mark ruining the dynamic. Season 2 sees the show develop its own identity and the cast's personalities settle down. Even the creators seem to agree; the German dub just edits out season 1 and declares season 2 to be the start of the show, pushing this almost to Canon Discontinuity.
• As with the book it's based on, some people ignore the series finale (Curtain) of Poirot due to the title character's death and being forced to take the law into his own hands, and the episode's overall very dark and depressing tone.
• Police, Camera, Action! has some quarters of its fandom considering Season 15 with Gethin Jones in 2010 as being In Name Only and where Seasonal Rot really began to the point that it lacks the pacing and feel of the older shows; other quarters consider it an Alternate Continuity with the same name, but, it's not well-liked in this show's small fandom.
• Power Rangers has garnered this reaction by groups of fans at many points:
  • Fans of the show have declared the franchise ending at points ranging from:
    • Dino Thunder (final season before Bruce Kalish took over, bringing with him a slew of mediocre, if not poor seasons with poor characterization.) Alternatively the Kalish series are ignored but the much praised Power Rangers RPM that followed the Kalish era is kept in.
    • Time Force (the final season before Disney's takeover. Disney has a firm ideology, and so it changed the people who write the plots, which numerous fans view as being lower in quality than the Saban era.)
    • Lost Galaxy (the season that followed on directly from "in Space", although it wasn't a part of the same arc.)
    • in Space (the final season that was part of an ongoing story.)
    • Zeo (arguably, the last season before Power Rangers introduced a kid blue ranger).
    • Samurai (starting a trend of stretching a Power Rangers to two seasons, 20 episodes per year with a huge summer hiatus; making character and plot development impossible while Power Rangers keep falling further from Sentai). Though that's more Nickelodeon, since they have a strict "20 episodes per season" limit.
    • Wild Force (last season to be shot in America).
  • There's a specific episode in Zeo a lot of fans try to forget. The Christmas Episode is set in the future and shown as flashbacks. The scenes in between show an elderly Tommy telling the story to a little boy. The very end shows that Tommy and Katherine are married and he's been telling the story to his grandson. Since a lot of people still engage in Die for Our Ship for Kimberly and Tommy, and since he didn't mention Katherine in "Forever Red" or Dino Thunder, fans tend to forget that scene ever happened. (This became harder after Kat returned in "Dimensions in Danger", which implied she and Tommy were married with a son.) The other Christmas Episode in season 3 likes to be ignored by many fans too for simply being silly. The Zeo Christmas Episode was also hilarious for "You see, you don't understand holidays, Mondo blasts you, and this is how the Holocaust happens" Fantastic Aesop.
  • It's probably best that you don't mention the Power Rangers in Space crossover episode with Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation, either. As far as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles goes, The Next Mutation is itself an example of Canon Discontinuity. Power Rangers fans and people that don't care for the Ninja Turtles aren't particularly keen on it either, with it considered the worst episode of In Space.
  • Do not mention the Power Rangers Wild Force episode "Forever Red" on a Rangers board. Seriously, don't; enough blood's been shed over that turf war already. It may be ignored by the writers as well: Tommy never mentioned those events during Power Rangers Dino Thunder, and didn't still have his Zeo Ranger Five powers.
    • It's notable that the reason "Forever Red" is such a taboo subject is not due to a lack of quality (some consider it to be a fan's wet-dream come true), but due to numerous continuity issues raised. How did Jason and T.J. get their powers back? How was the Wild Force Rider able to destroy the previously invincible Serpentera all by itself? Why in the ten levels of Hell would the Ascended Fanboy writer throw the episode to the wolves by directly acknowledging the events of his old fanfiction? Does that mean the fanfiction is canon now, despite not being an official product? Quite simply, "Forever Red" raised way so many questions and caused so many debates that it's best just not to think about it.
    • To be fair, Amit Bhaumik has made clear in interviews that the reference he made to "Scorpion's Rain" was intended as an in-joke to the prank, and not an actual attempt to insert it into continuity. Plus, the way the statement that references it is phrased ("But I thought the Zeo Rangers defeated the Machine Empire") is technically true within the franchise's canon, as the Rangers don't know that the final blow came from Rita and Zedd.
  • That episode in Turbo with the giant pizzas? Never. Happened. Okay? Okay.
  • Amusingly, there's actually an instance of Actor Discontinuity for Power Rangers. In an interview with JesuOtaku and Linkara, Johnny Yong Bosch said that he figured his character, Adam Park, continued to do good even after losing his Ranger powers, as something of a heroic ninja type. Then the 15th anniversary episode "Once a Ranger" had him make an off-hand reference to running a dojo in Angel Grove, which kind of wrecked the idea. Johnny said he personally prefers to ignore the dojo line and stick with his original idea.
  • Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the longest running series, has its own various fanon discontinuity points:
    • Only season 1 counts
    • Fans ignore everything after the first thirteen episodes of season 2, the later episodes being plagued by fake shemps and Stock Footage Failure
    • When Jason, Zack, and Trini's actors left the show (after the first 80 episodes) followed by fake shemping and Replacement Scrappies
    • After Kimberly left the show.
• Some fans of The Price Is Right refuse to acknowledge Drew Carey as host after Bob Barker retired in 2007. Then there are fans who gave up on the series after longtime producer Roger Dobkowitz was dismissed the following year.
• Many fans of Profiler prefer to believe that the series concluded with "Reunion," the first episode of season 4, in which the Jack of All Trades storyline (the show's narrative backbone) was finally resolved and lead character Sam Waters (Ally Walker) retired from the VCTF. She was replaced for the remainder of S4 by Rachel Burke (Jamie Luner), who was widely disliked by fans, and the show died a quick death shortly thereafter, though not quick enough.
• Many game show fans like to pretend that the 2002-04 revival of the Pyramid franchise, hosted by Donny Osmond, never happened. This incarnation was derided for a bevy of unnecessary rule changes, loud techno music, an overly-dark set, and Fake Difficulty (usually in the form of overly contrived writing and inconsistent judging).
• The feelings most of the Quantum Leap fandom towards the finale can be summed up in six words: Sam. Beckett. Made. It. Home. Dammit! (in other words, they accept everything except the last 5 seconds).
  • There's also the opinion that Sam Beckett made it home, but some poor guy named "Sam Becket" (sic) did not. The reason why the show mentioned him at all is still unclear.
• Red Dwarf has this in spades. In general, most fans choose to ignore Series VII and VIII, which were prime examples of Seasonal Rot (albeit for different, almost opposite reasons - namely, Series VII losing Chris Barrie and a jarring shift into a fairly dull Dramedy, and Series VIII taking an equally jarring shift into a bad prison sitcom). This seems to pass down to series co-creator Doug Naylor to an extent, as while the revival series does treat them as canon, it also went back to more-or-less the Series III-V status quo (Lister, Hologram Rimmer, Cat, and Kryten alone aboard Red Dwarf, albeit with no Holly) with no real explanation as to why or how.
  • Dwarfers are a variable lot. Some die-hards make the Series V finale "Back To Reality" the line of demarcation, as Series VI, while still generally well regarded, suffered from losing the titular ship and some shakier writing around the edges. More casual fans and a small portion of die-hards are willing to bear the weaker elements of the post-Grant-Naylor-split episodes for moments like "Blue" and "Cassandra".
  • Barely any die-hard fans (and not that many casual fans) accept Back to Earth.
  • An extreme minority even consider that the show finished after Series II, despite Series III generally seen as a Growing the Beard moment, due to the show became more adventurous and moving to more of a Monster of the Week format, as opposed to the more melancholy, dry, and lonely tone of the previous two seasons.
  • On the other hand, quite a few fans, while rejecting several previous seasons, are quite willing to accept Series X onwards.
• Most fans of Guy of Gisbourne on the BBC's Robin Hood would prefer to forget about the early episode that has him abandon his infant son in the woods, lie to the mother about the boy's whereabouts, and then beat the shit out of her when she confronts him with the truth.
  • Most fans disowned the show after the Season 2 finale in which Marian was murdered by Gisbourne, and never even bothered to watch Season 3, which introduced new love interest Kate, had Robin begin a relationship with Gisbourne's (married) sister, revealed that Robin and Guy share a half-brother called Archer and turned Allan-a-Dale's character arc into a Shoot the Shaggy Dog story.
• Most fans of Roseanne prefer not to discuss or remember the whole final season — reasonably so, as the entire thing was revealed in the series finale to be All Just a Dream.
• Fans of Roswell were so distressed that Max slept with Tess that they often pretend it didn't happen or say he was mind warped into having sex with her as a form of rape. This is due to character derailment brought on by plot-driven writing to continue a third season of the show.

S-Z

• It's really hard to describe when Saturday Night Live ended, if it actually did (generally Season 5, the last with the original cast, or the last with a favorite cast member, such as Season 27 for Will Ferrell). However, there is one common consensus — Season 6 is universally and unanimously abhorred.
• Scrubs: Some fans disregard everything after "My Lunch" near the end of season 5, as the next episode introduces Kim and takes the series in a different direction. (Occasionally, the Musical Episode is exempted from this, as is the tone of season 8.)
  • Most common these days are fans pretending the series ended with the season eight finale, the originally intended series finale. Therefore, season 9, with its mostly new cast, never happened.
• Most fans of seaQuest DSV can only stand the first season. It's curious that the last episode of the first season also acts as a fairly good finale, with the original SeaQuest vessel being destroyed and its crew waiting for a new one to be built – this was actually intentional on behalf of the writers as it wasn't certain at that point whether the show would return for a second season. For those who choose to carry on, the second season is retooled to focus on teen hearthrob Lucas Wolenczak. The spin-off/third season SeaQuest 2032 realizes its mistake and banks hard in the opposite direction.
  • Each season of seaQuest DSV was so different in premise and feel it could effectively be a different show. As such fans can have a preference for any of the three seasons and try to ignore the other two...
• Some Seinfeld fans discredit the Season 2 episode "The Jacket", in which Elaine's father appears. This is because the actor playing him was abusive to the cast members and stole a butcher's knife from the set which they took as a threat, especially as he returned to the set late at night a week after the episode had been finished. Thanks to the lack of story arcs in the series, avoiding this episode has no impact on continuity.
  • Also some discredit the original version of "The Handicap Spot", as Frank Costanza is played by John Randolph, not Jerry Stiller. Stiller plays him in the syndicated version of the episode and the rest of the show's run, so watching the syndicated version avoids the continuity error. The DVD features both versions.
• For some, Sesame Street ceased to exist in 2002, when the show went through a revamping to make it more suitable for younger audiences. For others, it was 1998, when Elmo's World debuted.
• There are two things most fans of The Shield would like to forget: the second-season flashback episode "Co-Pilot" (which was made solely to pad the season while the makeup crew figured out how to do facial scarring for one of the characters) and a scene where Dutch Wagenbach strangles a cat to death after being told by a serial killer that he didn't know what it was like to see the life drain out of a living creature. The latter example was later officially disregarded in season three when Dutch adopts a stray cat, remarking that it's nice to have an animal companion for a change.
• Skins makes this easy because every two seasons they start with a brand-new cast and storyline anyway, and a lot of fans did stop watching after the first generation ended (and even more stopped after the second). But some draw other lines too, like the fans who refuse to acknowledge the last two episodes of Season 4 because of Freddie's death, or those who completely disregard Season 6 because of all the Character Derailment and Aborted Arcs. The one thing that the majority of the fanbase can agree on, though, is the US remake; most fans of the original don't consider it part of the show's canon.
  • The most widely agreed-upon example from the UK show is Skins Fire, one of the season 7 Distant Finale specials. It alienated one of the show's strongest Periphery Demographics, its LGBT Fanbase, by having Naomi get cancer and die. It killed off one half of one of its most popular ships, and indulged in an overused offensive trope to boot.
• Sliders: Some fans ignore everything after season two because there was a new head writer in Season 3, and he dumbed things (including Quinn Mallory) down. Some ignore the Sci Fi Channel episodes: the last FOX episode does have the feel of a reasonable ending (two of the party get home, and those still sliding chose to and are planning to have fun); the first Sci Fi episode, if included, lends Shoot the Shaggy Dog to the proceedings. Some discontinue starting from the beginning of the Kromag arc, because that is when the focus of the series started to shift from Alternate History to horror; without that arc, the writer change at the third season wouldn't be as serious, and Sci Fi wouldn't have been able to shift the mood of the show so drastically.
  • Then there is the sizable fan base that regards everything up to the last episode of the fourth season as canon. This is because the original plot of the fourth season was end with the group finding out that Quinn really was from their original starting world and that the entirety of Quinn and co.'s quest "Our world is fucked! Let's get to my real homeworld to make it better," was an elaborate plot by the Kromaggs to get the door to that world open (complete with Colin being a sleeper evil clone of Quinn). This was planned out rather well, but Word of God states not everyone in production was keen on the idea. David Peckinpah led the charge in dropping this storyline - leading to an episode that had nothing to do with anything and loose ends.
• A number of Smallville fans hold that the series ended with season five, since afterwards the show became more like "Metropolis" than "Smallville" and increasingly featured a different cast as well. Note that this is not really considered a bad thing, but more a quibble about geography: fans enjoyed the more Supermanly tone and Metropolis-based plots of the later seasons, it's just that the more Daily Planet/Metropolis-based missions meant that the show wasn't really set in the eponymous town of Smallville much anymore by the end.
  • And some fans ignore Season Four and "Lana's family tree is tied in with a hunt for Kryptonian artifacts" never happens. Good episodes with ties to later seasons like "Run"^note introducing The Flash, "Pariah"^note a pivotal episode with Chloe learning Clark's secret and Alicia dying, and "Transference" ^note where Clark and Lionel switch bodies and actors Tom Welling and John Glover give what are considered to be two of the best acting performances of the series are usually still recognized, though.
• The third and final season of So Weird. With Disney turning down the plan to make the final season darker (opting for making it significantly lighter and more suitable for younger audiences), all previous threads of the show mythology being dropped, and Fiona being replaced by a new blonde main protagonist and never shown again, it makes for quite an easy task for the fans to see third and previous seasons as two completely different series.
• In Spooks, a few fans of Lucas North like to ignore the existence of John Bateman, Vaughn and Maya.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • Some people ignore the last two seasons altogether. Some accept the original movie Stargate and ignore both TV series, like Devlin and Emmerich; the majority of Stargate fans find this absurd, since the movie was clearly the franchise's weakest installment. Some accept the series and ignore the movie, and some accept the series and the movie but ignore all spin-off materials, including the RPG, even though it justifies a lot of Fridge Logic in both the movie and the series.
  • The movie has enough inconsistencies with the rest of the franchise that some fans view considering it to canonical as not worth it because all the relevant bits were reinforced as canonical by other series, and all the other bits suffered retcons or were just ignored.
  • There's also the group of fans (albeit a smaller group now that some of the years-long fan feuding has faded) who acknowledge everything but season 6, except three episodes: "Abyss," "The Changeling," and "Full Circle," which were when Daniel Jackson popped in from his stint as a higher being. Unfortunately for them, there was also some weird guy running around and pretending he was on the team for these, but he was put in a wormhole and Daniel got over it, so when fans count the show at all, they count season 7.
  • There was an infamous-almost-to-the-point-of-unspeakable animated series called Stargate: Infinity. Even fans with SG-1 and Atlantis action figures have ignored its existence. It was that bad.
• There is a group of Fans who argue that there was only one season of Stargate Atlantis. So Ford didn't turn evil and vanish. More fans generously admit there were three seasons, but no more. Meaning Elizabeth wasn't killed off twice. (The second happened despite being able to bring her back.) Doctor Beckett was never killed off once holding the Idiot Ball and wasn't replaced by a borderline Mary Sue. Sheppard didn't become dark and angsty. And Teyla actually had something to do.
• Star Trek:
  • Some particularly cranky fans disown the later shows, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Enterprise, because of general silliness, inconsistency with more fundamental parts of the franchise, or sheer improbability. More fans like to discard large parts of TOS season 3 and TNG Season 1, often as well as the final episode of ENT, and the odd VOY or DS9 episode (see below).
  • Many (if not all) fans of Voyager throw out the episode "Threshold". Even the writer admits it was bad. More important, the ship could have returned to Earth right after the credits with the technology introduced. (Sure, it turns you into a newt, but you'll get better!)^note  Since the Doctor figured out how to reverse the change.
  • Most Star Trek: Enterprise fans, particularly those fond of Trip, dismiss the events of the last episode, a decision made easier by the fact it was presented as a holodeck reconstruction many centuries later. The novel The Good That Men Do is devoted to doing just that by claiming the events we saw were a revisionist history. It's not just the fans, however. Even actors (primarily Connor "Trip" Trinneer) from the series prefer to pretend that episode never happened. But then, it was their own hard work over the last four years that was being insulted by such a terrible finale, so it's no wonder they'd hate it. Even many of those who didn't particularly like Trip consider the two-parter "Terra Prime" (arguably the series' best episodes) the series' true final episodes. (Except possibly for Archer's speech and the narration that combines Archer's, Kirk's, and Picard's versions of the famous "Space... the final frontier" opening. Maybe. If they are feeling particularly generous.)
  • Even the original series had several episodes (mostly in the third season) that fans consider non-canon. "Spock's Brain" specifically is almost universally condemned to non-existence. However Vulcan biology works, it shouldn't work that way.
  • For a subset of fans Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is this, which is problematic given the issue of the lead character's race. However, the perfectly legitimate reason many fans dislike it is the change from a spaceship to a space station. This resulted in a switch from a episodic plot to Story Arc which sometimes went on too long. Also, some plots were just a bit Anvilicious. Some also didn't like Worf's arc for undermining previous portrayal. Most however thought that the DS9 arc made Worf, and Klingons in general, a lot more relatable. A lot of Trekkies also appreciated the look into a new galactic sector. Those who didn't like Next Generation tend to dislike DS9 even more because it doubles down on the portrayal of the Federation as not all it's cracked up to be.
    • Deep Space Nine fans sometimes throw out Season Seven, as so much of what happens (magic books? Dukat posing as a Bajoran to get in Winn's robes?) is considered significantly lower in quality than the previous six seasons. Other fans might be okay with most of season 7, but would like to pretend that pretty much every Ferengi episode in the series besides "The Magnificent Ferengi" never happened. "Let He Who Is Without Sin..." is another episode that many would rather forget.
  • There are those who dismiss anything after the third season of TNG, since Gene Roddenberry's 1989 stroke and 1991 death meant that he was not involved in the creative process for the show anymore, and therefore it wasn't true canon without him. These fans are presumably not aware that Roddenberry was rarely directly involved with his creation, with most of the creative input for the original series being the work of Gene L. Coon or Fred Frieberger, the movies mostly being shepherded by Harve Bennett, and Rick Berman, Michael Piller and other writers mostly handling the creative input on TNG from pretty much the second season onward.
  • Another subclass of fans are those who will insist that nothing past the original series (and maybe the first six movies, if they're being generous) actually happened.
  • The popularity of Star Trek novels has caused many flame wars thanks to the massive amounts of fanon they create. Many fans will object to episodes of Deep Space Nine, Voyager or Enterprise that contradict info from novels of the past (especially novels based on the classic series) despite Paramount stating repeatedly that no novels are canon, regardless of who writes them or which series they are based on. Only live-action TV series or movies are considered canon. Still more people will shout "canon violation!" if the series violates something from the Star Trek Chronology, Star Trek Technical Manual or Star Trek Encyclopedia despite the fact that all those books state in their introductions that while they were compiled using canon data, there is a lot of extrapolation or conjecture that might be Jossed later, and that they cannot be considered canon in themselves.
    • It usually isn't that Trekkies believe the novels and resource books to be canon; it's just that they often forget where they learned a particular "fact" from. A novel might have Spock declared the first Vulcan in Star Fleet, but even though the series never did, it sticks in readers' heads. Same thing with the insistence that humans didn't encounter Klingons until the early 23rd century.
    • The latter in particular is egregious because it was a canon violation itself: Before the Star Trek Chronology was even published, TNG had dated first contact with the Klingons to the mid 22nd century. It's hard to shake the feelings the writers simply didn't want to do another rewrite so just added a Hand Wave.
    • The fact that certain elements have become Ascended Fanon — such as Sulu and Uhura's first names — also complicates matters. "Hikaru" came from Vonda N. McIntyre's tie-in novel The Entropy Effect, while "Nyota" was advocated for by Uhura's actress Nichelle Nichols. So while something from outside primary canon might not be official right now, it could possibly be tomorrow.
  • Many fans who otherwise consider all the shows canon consider Star Trek: Voyager to be entirely non-canon a la Star Wars fans with the Prequels, due to perceived massive dips in writing quality and deviations from established canon even within the show on several occasions. Interestingly, these same people tend to accept the later made Star Trek: Enterprise despite its also muddling with the canon and timeline (in more ways than one), for at least being watchable.
  • The Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes "Lonely Among Us" (which showed that you could resurrect people from transporter buffers) and "The Chase" (which explained away all humanoid life in the galaxy as deliberately seeded by an alien race) are widely disregarded by fans. The former doesn't fit the rest of the show and the latter is a silly idea which makes no biological sense.
  • Large portions of the Fandom exiled Star Trek: Discovery from canon before it was even aired, and more jumped ship afterwards. Reasons include the introduction of Spock's never-before-mentioned foster-sister, holographic communications technology debuting nearly two centuries before it was introduced as a work-in-progress in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, radical alterations to both the appearance and the culture of the Klingons, and the Mirror Universe having been visited by characters from the prime universe a decade before Kirk and his crew did so. While the Season 2 finale actually provides excuses for some of these continuity snarls, the damage had already been done.
  • Some have disregarded Star Trek: Picard, despite the hype surrounding it, because of its darker atmosphere and characters (which some may say creates Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy), seemingly-unnecessary graphic violence and gore, unnecessary profanity (like Star Trek Discovery), and departures-of-personality from/disrespect to previously-beloved characters and developments.
• In Teen Wolf, some fans like to forget that Season 3 and everything after it ever happened, since that means that Jackson, Erica, and Boyd, all of whom were an Ensemble Dark Horse to some degree, are either dead or forever in London. Add that to the general divisiveness that is Season 3 and some of its characters (the twins Aiden and Ethan, Deucalion, Jennifer, Malia) or some plot conclusions for Cora in general, Derek (and Cora) leaving, Allissac, among other minor ones, and you get a popular point of Fanon Discontinuity.
  • The death of Allison and departure of Isaac at the end of Season 3 and the total exclusion of Danny from Season 4 certainly hasn't helped matters, either. Well over half of the original, core cast was eliminated in a single season and a large chunk of fans have found the introduction of so many new, Suspiciously Similar Substitute characters hard to swallow as a result.
  • The departure of Derek Hale from Season 5 has further cemented this. As one of the few original characters left, many fans and viewers feel that the show has gotten to the point where it doesn't even look or feel like Teen Wolf anymore, simply due to the cast now being even further reduced to only three main characters from both Seasons 1 and 2.
• Most fans of That '70s Show will testify that the 8th season didn't happen. Eric never went to Africa, Hyde never married a stripper or grew a porn 'stache, Randy never joined the gang in Point Place, and Jackie definitely never dated Fez.
• Top Gear:
  • Within the fandom, some fans only consider the 1977-2002 series as good and reject the Continuity Reboot 2002 series due to its massively divergent style and tone, especially with the Lighter and Softer feel.
  • Then there's another group who find the new team of Paddy Mc Guinness and co. as a case of They Changed It, Now It Sucks!.
• Torchwood:
  • A fair number of fans refuse to accept the last episode of series 2, "Exit Wounds", which ended with Tosh and Owen dead; others reject the series 3 miniseries Torchwood: Children of Earth, or at least the two episodes in which Ianto dies and Jack Harkness kills his own grandson to save the children who would otherwise be given to the 456.
  • Some fans just refuse to accept the end of "Day Five" because it seemed so out of character for Jack to do what he did.^note These fans may not be remembering the Season 1 episode "Small Worlds" amongst others which show Jack has always been willing to make the hard calls. A recurring theme of Torchwood is that victories come at a much higher price when the Doctor isn't around to save the day.
  • Torchwood: Miracle Day is widely disregarded for a variety of reasons, such as the American characters or the Americanization of the series in general and the plot concerning Jack's immortality and the resolution to the series (specifically, the revelation that Rex has gained a form of Jack's immortality). Let alone the fact that trying to place the series in the Doctor Who timeline without contradictions is a nightmare. Other fans believe that the decidedly omnisexual Jack is now "too gay." On the other hand, some fans like to think of Miracle Day as an Alternate Universe.
• 24 fans usually try to forget about Season 6. Although the first four episodes were awesome, the entire plot with Jack Bauer's father Phillip and being chased by the Chinese was a mistake. Fans were also extremely disappointed with Graem, the shadowy, seemingly untouchable villain of the fifth season, who is anticlimactically killed by Phillip near the beginning of Season 6, more so as making him Jack's brother (which was not established in Season 5, in which he refers to Jack by his last name) opened up more possibilities but ultimately they barely did anything with him. Some take it even farther, and state 24 season one was the only canon season.
  • Even the writers seemed to want to forget Season 6, as Seasons 7 and 8 often act as if Season 6 never happened (aside from Jack being out of the situation he was left in at the end of Season 5, and mention of Noah Daniels). In Season 7, despite Logan's boss in the conspiracy, Graem, having appeared in Season 5, Season 7 establishes the mastermind of the conspiracy to be Alan Wilson, who is said to have done everything Graem confessed to in Season 6, which established both Graem and Phillip as the masterminds with no mention of Wilson, and Graem and Phillip aren't mentioned when Wilson's involvement is discussed in Season 7 so it's murky on whether they were co-masterminds or whether one was superior to the other. And Season 8 disregards Charles Logan's redemption and apparent death in Season 6. Although, Live Another Day lists Phillip and Graem on Jack's profile as his father and brother with their status as "Deceased", as well as listing all of Jack's Season 6 kills except Abu Fayed.
  • Several fans usually ignore one of two plot points involving Tony Almeida depending on which one they hated worse (if they don't outright pretend both never happened): Either the deaths of both Tony and his wife in season 5, due to being seen as the show's absolute worst case of dropping a bridge, or the subsequent revelation that he was still alive and now a villain in season 7 which involved more than a few Shocking Swerves in order to justify it.
  • Nearly every fan tries to pretend 24: Legacy never existed for attempting to continue the series without Jack. It doesn't help that many people found the new lead Eric Carter to be a boring replacement for him.
• Due to Seasonal Rot and Executive Meddling, the second half of Season Two of Twin Peaks (or the Wyndham Earle plot) is considered Discontinuity by fans. The network pushed for the show's main storyline to be resolved early leaving the writers grabbing at reasons to keep Cooper in Twin Peaks. After we learn that a possessed Leland Palmer was the murderer the rest is filler up until the awesome Lynch-directed finale. Where the series ends is up for argument.
  • In the name of the Fan-Preferred Couple, Annie and Wheeler never happened. And as of season three, Cooper and Diane never had any out of nowhere romantic feelings for each other.
  • Alternately, some fans will argue that the movie prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me never happened and prefer to keep Laura's last days ambiguous. The Movie also allows the personality of BOB and that of Leland to bleed in and out much more freely and quickly than in the show, and muddies the question of Leland's level of awareness of his actions and whether he can be said to bear culpability for them. He is certainly a far more consciously tormented character in the film, suggesting a greater awareness of the terrible things that are transpiring. That said, the film does not back away entirely from Leland as BOB's unwilling conduit, though the original script is biased more towards that idea than what made it into the final cut. But it does obscure the matter and raises disturbing questions. Overall, the film can be taken less as a prequel than as a variation on certain themes of the show, and some fans prefer to view it that way.
  • After the finale and other controversies of season three, some have applied discontinuity to the whole season. A milder variation is to simply disregard the last episode, preferring to end the story at episode 17. On the other hand episode 18 raises Gainax ending to a new artform, providing plenty of opportunity for each and every fan to be happy with their own theory of what the heck happened - just try to find two reviews or fans who subscribe to the same interpretation.
• Two and a Half Men:
  • Many fans of ignore everything after Season 8 after Charlie Sheen left the show. Even Angus T. Jones (who plays Jake) called out the show. It should not be a surprise that his character was written out at the end of the season.
  • Some fans acknowledge that Seasons 10-13 are okay, but still consider them to be worse than Seasons 1-8. Most regard Season 9 (the first post-Sheen season) as the worst by a country mile.
  • There are others who deride the series finale for being abstract and confusing. It ends with an animated sketch where Charlie is saved from his previously-stated death by a goat, only to have a piano dropped on him, followed by series creator Chuck Lorre getting the same treatment. After the credits, a vanity plate is briefly seen where Lorre takes one last shot at Sheen for wanting to make a cameo on the show only in exchange for setting up a Spin-Off called "The Harpers".
• As far as some fans are concerned The Vampire Diaries ended in season 3 and season 4 beyond never happened, Elena was never sired to Damon, there was no cure plot, no Original Original, no Stefan doppelganger, etc, etc. Some fans also don't consider the spin off The Originals to be canon to the main show's story, which is helped by the fact that the events in Mystic Falls are almost never mentioned in New Orleans and vice-versa, so it's easy to pretend that Klaus never got Hayley pregnant.
• Some people disregard Veronica Mars's second, and especially the third, seasons.
• The Walking Dead: Depending on how you ask, some or even most of the series is seen as this by them.
  • There is a subset of fans that refuses to watch anything that isn't written/directed by Frank Darabont, largely due to a perceived drop in quality and the Executive Meddling that resulted in his departure from the show. That generally means throwing out everything after "Pretty Much Dead Already", the second-season mid-finale.
  • A situation that can be backed up by real-world ratings figures is the group of viewers who stopped watching after the seventh-season premiere. The reasons are numerous — anger over a Cliffhanger that forced fans to wait and see who would be killed by Negan during their first encounter (and chopping one of the most iconic scenes from the comics in half as a ratings stunt), a Shocking Swerve where Abraham and Glenn are killed, comments from the showrunners that bordered on Viewers Are Morons (attempting to explain the concept of a Wham Episode, and failing to convey any point), and underlying anger from cliffhangers that took place in the previous season (including "East", which ends with Dwight shooting Daryl off-screen with dodgy blood CGI and dubbing pasted in to explain that the latter is still alive). To say the show was Overshadowed by Controversy sells it short — the ratings following the premiere went on a precipitous slide.
  • Season eight has received this reception, largely due in part to Carl's death and the underwhelming resolution of the "All Out War" arc. The sideplots involving Oceanside and the Scavengers contribute little to the resolution, while the aforementioned character death was marred with controversy after it was revealed that showrunner Scott Gimple did it as a Shocking Swerve to prop up the show's flagging ratings. Couple that with several out-of-character arcs (Jesus' determination to spare the Saviors eventually results in them escaping, even though it has fatal consequences, and Rick's decision to spare Negan despite fighting him for two-and-a-half seasons) also came off as repetitive and unneeded to the story.
• War of the Worlds (1988): The fandom of this series almost universally disacknowledges the second season. New producers were brought in due to low ratings and proceeded to kill off two out of four main characters, change the villains from body-snatching aliens from Mor-Tax to human cloning aliens from Morthrai, and changed the setting from contemporary to cyberpunk with minimal in-continuity explanation.
• Fans of Warehouse 13 tend to ignore the fifth season and pretend the series end with the fourth.
• The West Wing's fandom is picky about what is and isn't canon:
  • Fans will frequently ignore anything that happened after the season four finale, when Aaron Sorkin, the show's creator and the man who wrote most of the episodes, left. This means "ending" the show on a cliffhanger, but it's either that or a major shift in the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism. The West Wing's discontinuity break between seasons 4 and 5 has such broad consensus that fanfics taking place after season 4 are much more likely to be AU than canon, and frequently written in the same style as fanfics set in the future of uncompleted shows, suggesting that in the minds of many fans, the post-Sorkin era was no more authoritative than fanfic.
  • Out of those who do acknowledge post-Sorkinism, a large portion refuse to acknowledge Toby's wildly OOC leaking of classified military information, or his subsequent firing. Richard Schiff himself said that Toby would never do something like that. The ignoring rate for this event is very high even compared to widely reviled events in other shows. Very few post-Administration fanfictions are entirely compatible with canon because of this event.
  • The majority of the fandom is perfectly happy to ignore Sam's return for the final episodes, as no matter which of the many theories you subscribe to explain his disappearance, his subsequent ''reappearance' and willingness to take on a White House job is a massive Out-of-Character Moment.
  • There are also Sorkin-era episodes that get this treatment: the post-9/11 Very Special Episode "Isaac and Ishmael" (which is very easy to ignore because we're told at the outset that it's a one-shot and doesn't fit into the series's timeline), and "The Long Goodbye," which is about C.J. going home for a class reunion and confronting the fact that her father's dying of Alzheimer's, wasn't written by Sorkin, has nothing to do with anything and was blatantly conceived as Emmy Bait for Allison Janney (who, while she delivered her usual spectacular performance, certainly didn't need a sappy, teary family episode to display her awesome talent any more than the male cast members did, especially since she was doing just fine cleaning up at the Emmys on her own).
  • Several throwaway comments, such as Leo's claim that he has known Bartlet for 32 years but was only friends with him for 11, are blatantly and unanimously ignored, especially if they contradict earlier information.
  • The winner of the California 47th congressional race is still unknown. Sorkin gave strong hints as to the outcome, but left just as many questions unanswered, which left fans with the option of hoping Sam would return (or, alternatively, that his absence would be explained at some point) or patching together a theory from hints in earlier episodes. Sam's Back for the Finale appearance did little to put the issue to rest, as it was largely a callback to a second-season episode.
  • Will Bailey had broken free of his Replacement Scrappy hatedom when Sorkin left, allowing the writers to turn him into a completely different character ... and so Will acquired a whole new hatedom from those who continued watching the show. If he shows up in fan fiction, it's almost always as Sorkin wrote him.
• Almost every fan of Wheel of Fortune agrees that ever since 1983, both the daytime and evening versions of the show have always been hosted by Pat Sajak, completely ignoring both Rolf Benirschke and Bob Goen as host.
• A good number of fans of The Wild Wild West would like to forget each Replacement Scrappy in season four, paticularly Jeremy Pike, while Ross Martin (Gordon) was recovering from a heart attack. For die-hard fans, you'd best avoid mentioning the 1999 film.
• Fans of Xena: Warrior Princess vary on this. Some choose to ignore the whole 'Rift' arc of Season Three. Others will accept this... but the fifth and/or sixth seasons never happened. Some will acknowledge the whole series, but will disown the two part finale, "Friend in Need", and its Redemption Equals Death ending.
• The later seasons of The X-Files, after it became clear that the show was collapsing under the weight of its own mythology. Depending on who you talk to, the Fanon Discontinuity ranges from "ignore the 2008 movie and 2016 miniseries" to "ignore anything after season 2."
  • Likewise, many a fan of The Lone Gunmen will say the aptly named "Jump The Shark" never happened. Fletcher was lying through his teeth, or the guys faked their deaths.
• Z Nation: "Die Zombie Die... Again". An episode fans pretty universally hate. It's a Bizarro Episode that turns out be be All Just a Dream. It features only two of the main characters, and develops only one, and both of the featured characters are written out of the show two episodes later anyway.

---