"griffon8 pointed out that I've been writing as though Shizune and Misha shared a double room rather than the singles every other student seems to use. Call it artistic license; it doesn't interfere too much with established canon (I think) and isn't even that critical to this story anyways."
— Author's note, From Shizune's Perspective
Although it's very difficult for a story with a big audience to ever reach a consensus, occasionally a single fact or aspect of the series is modified frequently enough in Fan Fic compared to the original story that its absence or modification becomes notable within the fandom. This may escalate to the point where fanfics do not bother to note the change in any tags or clarifications and that even sticklers for continuity are generally not bothered by it. This will also happen much more quickly in a tightly-knit fan community. Conversely, it occurs much more slowly if there's a big Fan Dumb community, unless they're being actively trolled.
Note that "mechanical" changes to make things work in a text medium (reworking a gag because describing a visual isn't funny) or changing an ending because the story covers that period ("soft" AUs) don't count. The change must be common enough to get fan recognition, deliberate rather than an outright mistake or forgetful Flanderization, but not actually overshadow the original version of the story (as fanon can and does).
Common flavors include the following, and may occur separately or together:
- Canon mixing: Borrowing a characterization or concept from another version of the story because they were more popular/interesting/notable even if the rest of the universe appears "normal", or simply more elaborated upon. Frequent in series with many Alternate Continuities (and thus little sense of "true" canon), especially if those other versions aren't necessarily as well known as others. In extreme cases, writers may create Fridge Brilliance or invoke Broad Strokes outright to explain how even explicitly different versions are both valid interpretations simultaneously.
- Continuity tweak: Avoiding or reworking something that just didn't fly in the audience's mind to make more sense or be less stupid. Again, can become a Fandom Theory with enough support.
- Personality tweak: The toning down/up of a character's personality within "acceptable" bounds, said bounds usually based on... how people write the character in fanfics frequently. Popular with low-emotive characters who are otherwise difficult to write for or who have a popular line (count the usages of Big Damn Heroes in Firefly and then in Firefly Fics, for example).
- Memetic Mashing: The writer incorporates the Memetic Mutation of a character into the work under the challenge of making it mesh believably with the established characterization. Difficult and prone to become very in-jokey if done badly, excellent Fandom Nods when done right.
- Retroactive Discontinuity: A special subset of this where an aspect of a fic that started out canon becomes a break from canon by events of future seasons/books/what have you. Either someone dies, or someone new is introduced, or something new is revealed, what have you, but something happens which changes the canon in ways not reflected in the fanfic.
Compare Fix Fic, where the story tends to focus entirely on addressing problems. Also compare Woolseyism for dubs and localizations that make such changes. Contrast Canon Defilement for what's (usually) deemed unacceptable breaks from canon.
Examples
- The fangame Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Conflict of Interest takes place in the Apollo Justice era, but began development before Dual Destinies was released, resulting in many breaks from canon, such as Pearl Fey's character arc going in a radically different direction. The author eventually went with a Broad Strokes approach: taking some elements from Dual Destinies like Phoenix's new outfit and throwing in a Shout-Out here and there, but still treating itself as an Alternate Universe. (Athena doesn't exist, for example)
Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
- All over the place with fics based on the series, usually cranking up the Darker and Edgier tone, playing some of the more unsettling aspects completely straight, or offering some Deconstruction and Reconstruction behind the characters and universe.
- The series and its spinoffs don't go into a lot of detail about the Colonial Fleet's composition pre-Fall, but parts of the fandom tend to attribute Standard Sci-Fi Fleet or analogues thereof to it.
- Fics inspired by the series, especially during Season 6 and Post-Chosen, personality tweaking is loved. A common way to get rid of Kennedy in Post-"Chosen" fics is for her to be a cheating bitch, an abusive bitch or a cheating, abusive bitch. A common thing to do with Buffy is take her Season 6 angst and make her an Emotionless Girl faking emotion.
- The cartoon has always been fairly easy to work with. The show itself has never Jossed any fanfic elements because it ended for good almost three years before work started on the first actual CDRR fanfic, and whatever came after it doesn't officially count as canon anyway.
- Especially the earlier CDRR fanfics tend to be a lot Darker and Edgier than the source material. But the latter is just too tempting to go down that route and send the Rangers into cases well beyond the show. Besides, the show is limited by Disney's house rules and the available timespan of only 20 minutes, but this doesn't mean that the Rangers never have bigger cases than what Disney shows us. So the big cases from fanfics don't necessarily contradict canon after all.
- The Rangers' hometown, often a matter of dispute, has officially been declared "a West Coast city with an East Coast flair" that nonetheless bears some resemblance to Los Angeles and particularly Burbank where the show was made. This is not generally picked up by fanfic writers, though. If they feel they absolutely have to specify a hometown for the Rangers, it's sometimes San Francisco because one scene shows a bridge not quite dissimilar to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Even more writers make the Rangers at home in New York City, some buildings from which appear in the show as well.
- Due to the show's Anachronic Order, including a pilot that opens season 2, nobody can say with certainty which one is the chronologically last episode. Many say that it's "Good Times, Bat Times", and Foxglove has stayed with the Rangers and in particular with Dale even though she doesn't appear in later episodes. The Boom! comics support this idea. However, that same episode saw the Ranger Wing being wrecked so badly that Gadget had to build a replacement aircraft out of a bagpipe which suggests that the Ranger Plane doesn't exist anymore either. Still, the Ranger Wing remains the most popular Ranger aircraft in fanfic (the Boom! comics reintroduce it as well), and some fanfics feature both the Ranger Plane and the Ranger Wing.
- Dale may be a Cloudcuckoolander, but Depending on the Writer, some episodes display him as borderline brainless. The fans find this so undeserving that fanfics that show him as actually quite smart are welcomed.
- Gadget says about her Disappeared Dad Geegaw that he "won't come back" and that she has "lost him" a good year prior to the events of "To the Rescue". With Disney's Never Say "Die" policy in mind, that's as good as officially pronouncing him dead. But while many fanfic writers speculate about the cause of his death, it isn't too uncommon to declare him actually alive in some way on the ground of Gadget's wording which may also mean that she doesn't actually know what happened to him.
- Something that's often downplayed in fanfic and even more often in fan art is the size difference between chipmunks/mice and squirrels. In the show, Tammy's mother is at least twice as tall as Chip and Dale. Tammy is somewhat smaller, but she's still considerably taller than the Rangers, and since fanfics tend to take place in the future, if they feature Tammy, she's grown up. Fanfics, however, generally don't mention this size difference, and fan art often depicts Tammy as tall as the Rangers.
- In the same vein, Zipper's Super-Strength which includes being able to push heavy steel barrels or trip grown-up men in the show is toned down to something more credible.
- Due to the classic Chip 'n Dale cartoon "Two Chips and a Miss" being so similar to CDRR in its setting, combined with the female lead Clarice's popularity in the CDRR fandom, it's tempting to include her in CDRR fanfic. This requires some modifications to the old cartoon's canon to either explain or eliminate the time shift of almost four decades — or even more if the fic in question takes place long enough after the show. The effort necessary to pull this off convincingly may be the reason why Clarice doesn't appear in many CDRR fanfics.
- Echoes of Yesterday's author Rapidfyrez
has stated that DCU canon is infamously convoluted and ever-changing, so he's cherrypicking what he thinks serves his story better.
- The world that Justice Society of Japan takes place in has a bit of the Post-Crisis DCU (in that superheroes have been around for decades, and the Justice Society of America exists) and a bit of the New 52's DCU (Justice League Dark exists, Calendar Man is a news anchor, Superman and Wonder Woman are in a relationship). There's a heck of a lot of canon tweaking in regards to the other series used in the fic, most notably Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and Code Geass.
- Raisin' Some Hell (Hellblazer/The Owl House) operates under multiple Fandom Specific Plots such as Lilith being Amity's Parental Substitute and other differences such as Eda being the older sister, but this is justified by the story being written and reaching those points before either the canon plot or Dana Terrance's Reddit AMA showed and informed otherwise.
- Since the name of the series is Death Battle, it's generally accepted for the characters to fight to the death, regardless of their status on killing in their original series, as well as a few tweaks in strength and defense to avoid a completely one-sided fight.
- Dante's Night at Freddy's: The writer freely admitted he altered Chica's appearance, changing her arms into wings, to make it impossible (or at least extremely difficult) for her to grab ahold of Dante for the sake of a joke. Mixes with Rule of Funny.
- Most fanfic tends to be set in a continuity that's a varying mix of the classic anime and Adam Warren's "amerimanga" version, usually with the most memorable characters from both (Goulet, Nammo, Shasti or Cory Emerson, for instance). The psychic powers from the novels may also appear. Flash is either retconned as a Generation Xerox in the future, or alternately as just Outdated Outfits they wore when they were younger.
- Retroactive discontinuity affects most romantic fic concerning the first game's heroes, as Golden Sun: Dark Dawn featured their offspring by unknowns (with the exception of Isaac, who married Jenna but seems to have since split). Whether these pairings were completely debunked or have ended up as Dry Docked Ships is a matter for academic debate.
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi / The Untamed
- In canon, it is heavily implied that Nie Huaisang forced or otherwise manipulated Mo Xuanyu into using the soul-sacrificing ritual to bring back Wei Wuxian. A common fanon tweak is that Mo Xuanyu was planning to bring Wei Wuxian back on his own, with Nie Huaisang either accepting it or even trying to convince him not to.
- Twelve Moons and a Fortnight uses the former example.
- That Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao are going to be wrestling in a coffin for a hundred years is often altered or even ignored in post-canon fics.
- In Marauders-era fanfics, it isn't uncommon for writers to ignore a character's canon age in order to put them closer to the ages of Severus Snape, Lily Evans, or the Marauders or vice versa. The most popular targets of this are Bellatrix Lestrange (and her sisters, to a lesser extent), and Alice Longbottom (usually to make her one of Lily's friends). Fans also usually ignore JK Rowling's statement that Professor McGonagall is no longer headmistress by the time Harry's children attend Hogwarts. After all, Dumbledore was far older than her and he had no intention of retiring!
- Fans of the movie and the musical tend to favor the "canon mixing" variety, basing their fics on whichever version they like better, but borrowing elements from the other as well. A nearly-surefire way to tell which one the author prefers? If Veronica's stated to be (or to have been) a junior during the events of the film in the fic, they're probably going off the movie for the most part. If she is (or was) a senior, it's probably the musical.
- Owl's Hell That Ends Well was first published shortly after C.H.E.R.U.B, and while the general episodes are still relatively adapted, Loo Loo Land and Spring Broken have swapped in terms of order of events. Justified as Loona being Stolas' daughter this time around, means the circumstances that he invited her to the amusement park are deistically different. One big, major change however is Stolas' origin. Now he was no longer born in Hell, but was exiled there being a Fallen Angel and a part of Lucifer's army. Instead, Stella fills his void as Blitzo's childhood royal friend, after the young imp was hired to entertain her brother Andrealphus, the two bonding over their shared abuse at the hands of Stella's mother.
- When Saving Blitzo was published, the show was still on its first episode so understandably, quite a few things are different from canon. For one, Loona was adopted by Blitzo when she was still a young child, rather than an adult. Blitzo's family has also been drastically changed, as his father was much more of a loving parent than Cash Buckzo and all of them, including his canonically alive sister Barbie, are dead in here. Stella was originally called Selena, until this was changed after her official name was revealed. Speaking of Stella, she is much more sympathetic, kind and loving towards her family than her canon counterpart, who is a selfish, violent, and cruel woman who puts a hit on Stolas' life.
- Personality tweaking, in most cases. One example is how many fics take Japan's occasionally hinted-at Otaku and Covert Pervert traits in canon and play them up until he becomes a full-blown Yaoi Fanboy and/or conniving matchmaker for the main couple featured in the fic, most likely because he's one of those low-emotive characters difficult to write for.
- In fanfics that deal with the Darker and Edgier implications of a series set in World War II, Germany will nearly always be shown as either being lied to by his boss about everything that's going on, or else fully aware but powerless to stop it. Italy and Japan may have this happen to them as well (depending on how the author is going about things), but Germany is pretty much consistently shown that way.
- In the game proper, few of the ship girls demonstrate grudges or hangups over the Pacific War. Some of the spinoffs and many fanfic writers give them such issues anyway, perhaps out of Rule of Drama.
- The game also provides no details about the Abyssal command structure, but some fanfic writers give them their own admirals.
- In "From Shizune's Perspective," which was written prior to the full game's release, Shizune and Misha, as well as Rin and Emi share rooms. In the full game, all the rooms appear to be single ones, although Hisao never goes to Shizune or Misha's rooms. Shizune and Misha sharing a room becomes relevant when Shizune, looking for Misha and Hisao, enters her room and finds them having sex.
- The game uses a lot of Acceptable Breaks from Reality (heavy Space Compression and life-support and consumables being glossed over being just two) that the writers of most serious fanfics, who tend to be major space geeks, gloss over or flat-out ignore.
- Tons of fanfic set in the MCU cherrypick various bits of canon from the comics, largely because that's what the MCU has done with its own attempts at reconciling over seventy years of comics canon (and all of the messy continuity issues that very long-running shared comics universes tend to entail) in 23 two-ish-hour Summer Blockbusters designed for mass appeal and a handful of TV series in varying states of cancellation. Any fan who also keeps up with the comics is bound to have something that they feel the MCU snubbed. Some of the most common tropes have even made it into the standard vernacular for MCU fanfic, and see use even by writers who otherwise don't really interact with the comics.
- A frequent target of this is Hawkeye, Clint Barton. Clint's a lot more sensible in the MCU, and his dark, storied background and his many relationships from the comics make no appearance, leaving him feeling a bit bland. Many fics make him act a bit silly without diminishing his competence as a marksman and intelligence operative and re-add his deafnessnote , and it's not uncommon for fics to omit the marriage to Laura Barton and his status as a father, as depicted in the MCU, and not always for shipping reasons, even. Laura Barton and her and Clint's kids do exist in the comics, but their introduction in the MCU struck many as coming out of left field, and many fans didn't feel their role or presence made sense for the MCU's portrayal of Clint.
- When Steve Rogers's father Joseph is mentioned at all in fic, there's about a fifty-fifty chance of him either being the decent guy that he is in MCU canon, or the abusive drunkard that he is the comics. A lot of fics also place more emphasis on the fact that Steve in the comics is Irish and first-generation American, both of which would have made him a Twofer Token Minority back in his time and would have worsened his already impoverished upbringing, and which were implicitly airbrushed away both in MCU canon and by the USO in-universe in the interests of portraying him as a more traditional all-American boy. Many fan portrayals also make him Catholic, and note that his many ailments as listed in his Smithsonian exhibit in Captain America: The Winter Soldier would have realistically made life way more difficult for him than the movies suggest, made what little amount of Basic training he goes through damn near impossible, and gotten him targeted by the eugenics movement back in the day. As many fanfic writers have noticed, this is a rich source of drama.
- As of the end of Phase Three, a lot of Bucky Barnes' time as the Winter Soldier in the comics has either been excised or has yet to be explored. A frequent comics import is his relationship with Natasha, whether the romance he had with her in the comics, his time with the Red Room as either an instructor of sorts or even as Natasha's occasional partner in the field, or the two simply sharing a rapport as people with red in their ledgers who have been unwillingly unmade and want to make up for it.
- It's also relatively common for fanfics to follow in the tradition of the comics and cherrypick bits of canon from across the MCU, such as altering or completely handwaving the canon circumstances behind certain characters' presences, omitting entire movies or plotlines, or just plain slapping a "Not [movie] Compliant" tag on the fic and writing the fic as though all events after a certain point just don't happen. Most "Winter Soldier Recovery" fanfic is not canon compliant after Captain America: The Winter Soldier because in canon, the titular Soldier goes into the wind and doesn't reenter the story until a point that would either significantly alter the backdrop to most stories of that plot, or render them impossible altogether. A lot of "teamfic" in general either ignores all events after Phase One or cherrypicks other heroes and has them join the Avengers much earlier and for vastly different reasons than in canon in the interests of depicting those characters interacting, especially characters like the Winter Soldier, the Maximoff twins, Doctor Strange, Ant-Man, and others that otherwise only show up in canon as a result of Captain America: Civil War, a movie that broke up the Avengers and, several movies later, ultimately led to a bunch of heroes dying for real.
- The bitter aftertaste of the game's ending not only launched dozens of Fix Fics suggesting different alternate endings, it also became common or even expected to ignore the official endings in sequel fics, which typically follow a Shepard who defeated the Reapers, survived, and left a less thoroughly ruined galaxy in their wake.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- Several fan works dwell into this, given that several story set-ups can retroactively became invalid in canon as the series went on. For example:
- Turnabout Storm: The basic storyline was completed before anything beyond the first season was broadcasted, which inevitably created contradictions with the Equestrian side of things as the series was madenote ; thus anything from season 2 onwards is assumed as non-canon for the crossover. Curiously enough, this problem isn't as serious for the Ace Attorney side of things, since the events neatly fit between the second and third games.
- Hoofstuck: This page clearly states that it was added prior to the airing of "Putting Your Hoof Down", in which Fluttershy dumps a cartload of garbage on Bon-Bon's head.
- The Nuptialverse was started shortly after the season 2 finale, and was planned out long before season 3 started. With that in mind, the author announced his intent to cherry pick aspects from that season that work with his plans, and ignore everything else (he even posted a list of what he planned on doing).
- Romance and the Fate of Equestria has much the exact same status as The Nuptialverse. The story's uncanny parallels with certain bits of canon — some of which are posted before they happen on the show, some after — tend to remain untouched. Chapter 81 is particularly notable for how several of its lines resemble (or defy) aspects of "Keep Calm and Flutter On", but are kept because, according to the author, it was the first chapter of the story ever to be written, when Season 2 was still in progress.
- Mostly personality tweaking, like openly emotive Rei and more extroverted Shinji are the biggies; while never as popular as the show, some fans automatically assume the writer is using their manga counterparts instead.
- In fanfics that deal with the Phinabella pairing, it is very common for Phineas and Isabella to get together sooner than in canon, with some going as far as to have them get together during the first of two 104 day summer vacations. These fics also tend to ignore Ferb's crush on Vanessa.
- It is not uncommon for fanfic writers to combine the Pokémon Adventures manga and the anime into the same universe. Considering the extreme Alternative Character Interpretation some characters have received between the two continuities, this can become quite the Mind Screw. Similarly, stories in the video game Verse will often have the characters be indistinguishable from their manga counterparts, to the point where the only evidence that these are not manga fics consists of very subtle clues.
- In stories that feature the anime only, expect the Continuity Tweak variety. Often the writers will ignore Comic-Book Time and have Ash be a teenager by the time of the setting.
- The 4-move limit from canon is also often ignored by writers, in line with the early anime seasons.
- In the fanfic Ancienverse, the Alola Trilogy is completely different from the Sun and Moon anime, not just in tone and characters, but also in how the trials are set up.
- Author MF217 has outright admitted to giving certain Pokémon illegal moves under the pretenses that not only have virtually all other adaptations in the franchise having been guilty of such, only for some of these errors to turn out to be entirely intentional as a tie-in with the games wind up giving some of these exact same Pokémon available via event distribution knowing some of these very same moves.
- Huge amounts of canon mixing, depending on what area of the world you lived in had in the way of Small Reference Pools and access to whatever source material was handy.
- Zoicite: The harpy-like, melodramatic female incarnation from The '90s DiC English dub is widely more popular than the original, and tends to show up if the Dark Kingdom is featured.
- Rei: Types A & B — Writers are much more likely to use her depiction in the original manga (stoic, borderline Tsundere, "kinda gay") than the one in the show, even though the backstory for the favored depiction was not used there. In addition, due to the lines in the dub sounding very odd to those not familiar with Shinto mysticism, Rei was popularly depicted as having outright supernatural powers, something the original anime only played with.
- Makoto: Fanfic authors, especially male ones, downplay her whole obsession with her former ''senpai''. Ironically, some fans disliked the Canadian dub for putting back references to a similar obsession with her femininity which had previously been avoided, because it made her "less cool" (incidentally making the official live action series invoke canon mixing).
- Haruka: She might have whiter hair than expected, or be less combative or snobby (as seen in the manga) if the author is intending to make the Sailor Team more inclusive. Writers who use her "Amara" incarnation often rationalize her as simply a sort of "younger" prototype who is still in an ambiguous (but inevitable) relationship with her partner, discovering herself, play down her fashion choice, and compensate by making her a lot more sexually open.
- Michiru: Usually hit pretty hard with the Cast Speciation hammer in regards to any traits she shares with Ami. She's also a musician OR a painter, but not both, under the idea it'd make her too idealized.
- Fan fics commonly ignore the season eight finale, Doomsday, and season nine, unless the work in question thrives solely on angst.
- For Chloe/Oliver shippers, the fact that they got together sexually in two episodes is usually ignored in favor of a long road to build their relationship...despite the fact that Chloe was married to Jimmy not long before that.
- Speaking of Jimmy Olsen, he is flat-out ignored by other shippers in general.
- In The Gungan Council, continuity is tweaked all around, yet not always to get rid of disliked events in Star Wars canon. Alderaan still exists, former Vongformed planets show little to no signs of ever being in such a state, and the Star Forge is still lurking in space.
- The Star Wars Rebels fanfiction Ezra Lost has a couple of these, but nothing too major. For example, the appearances of a few named Original Characters who quickly die anyway, and the alteration of how the crew meets Darth Vader.
- Knights of the Old Republic: The "canonical" version of Revan, as shown in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the Revan novel was not well-received for a variety of reasons and is ignored as much as possible.
- Although Dark Mark fanfics like The Vampire of Steel or Hellsister Trilogy are mostly canon-compliant, he tends to ignore two facts: Supergirl's death at the Anti-Monitor's hands; and her relationship with Brainiac 5 in favor of hooking her up with someone else. He also ignores Laurel Kent being retconned into a Manhunter android, and his story Superman of 2499: The Great Confrontation also ignores 1998 Superman storyline "The Dominus Effect" where Klar Kent had a little sister instead of a brother... which is understandable because that story arc's canonicalness is debatable at best.
- The Winchester brothers' nickname for Castiel is near-universally spelled as "Cas" by fans instead of the canon spelling of "Cass".
- Due to the show's love of killing off characters left and right, many fics ignore the canon deaths of certain popular characters. This happens the most often with Charlie who frequently shows up as alive in fics set during seasons she was dead in, due to widespread fan dislike about the way she died.
- Since later seasons had the characters dealing with some major life- or world-threatening event for most of their episodes, fics that want to focus more on fluff or humor usually take a Broad Strokes approach to the seasons they're set in and/or tell readers to assume that the life/world-threatening events hanging over the characters' heads in these seasons were resolved earlier or more successfully than in canon.
- Fics do this in terms of which Robin is in the series. Some have Tim Drake and others have Dick Grayson, which may lead to a change in personality (depending on how familiar the writer is with the comics) and sometimes even a change in name. (Nobody wants to have a character named Dick.) It is hinted in the show, and confirmed in the tie-in comic, to actually be Dick Grayson.
- Donatello is often written as an insomniac and addicted to coffee, and as always falling asleep at his work bench or computer as he tries to solve some problem or challenge.
- Fanfics based on the 1987 cartoon tend to downplay or outright ignore Raphael's characterization as the Motor Mouth Deadpan Snarker in that show and make him more like the violent hothead he is in all other continuities.
- The author's favorite characters or plot points from the many alternate Tenchi continuities get brought into the OVA universe. (This most frequently means Kiyone Makibi — and no, Noike doesn't count.)
- Very common and also expected, since the series runs on Alternate Character Interpretation and Memetic Mutation. One of the most common things done is taking away Resurrective Immortality from fairy characters in order to make the situation suspenseful when they're in danger, to the point that it's usually a minor plot point when it isn't the case.
- Many fanfics involve Patchwork Fic due to the huge amount of Continuity Snarl - people use their favorite personality, even if that wasn't how they were defined in this continuity. Hasbro seemed to catch on with this with Transformers Prime, mixing the most popular parts of continuities, which is how Starscream became birdlike and competent, but nonetheless a whiny and treacherous Alpha Bitch who's nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is.
- Fanfics will often work with mixed canons (in the form of porting in aspects of the discredited sequel, TRON 2.0 (it helps that both timelines say Flynn and Tron vanished under mysterious circumstances) and continuity tweaks (often in the form of a "Flynn and/or Clu lives" scenario).
- Horde Champion: Because characterizing twenty Champions would be a daunting task for anybody, the canonical "raid groups" are brought down to Anevay and Silysa for their respective factions.
- Wildbow has never officially confirmed that Eidolon is responsible for the Endbringers. Due to the strong circumstantial evidence for it (and lack of literally any other explanation), many fanfic authors have ran with this assumption nevertheless.
- A lot of fics also file off some of Amy's more Jerkass edges.
- Canonically, Uber & Leet aren't shown in a good light, either morally or power-wise. But the idea of video game-themed underdog supervillains is easy to empathise with, leading to various fics dealing them a better hand than they got in canon.
- Coil's Endbringer shelter front company is never named in canon, but after Cenotaph gave it the Adaptation Naming of Fortress Construction, the moniker stuck.
- A Prize for Three Empires ignores the numerous and confusing post-The Dark Phoenix Saga retcons, and has Jean Grey go by Phoenix and keep her cosmic powers after returning.
- X-Men: The Early Years takes several liberties with the X-Men canon when the author believes it'll make for a better story. So, the team has already fought Sentinels before Marvel Girl joins, the boys know about Jean before her arrival, and Jean Grey uses her telepathy openly before it was unlocked in canon.
- Fate/VRAINS:
- Early in the story, when Yusaku duels Run Ru, she uses Xyz Summoning. Yusaku is caught by surprise and states that he doesn't know anything about that summoning. In the anime, Yusaku is the first character to show off Xyz Summoning in one of his duels against Go Onizuka. This was before the other unique summoning methods were confirmed to exist in VRAINS.
- In the story, Yusaku seeks out Shoichi, who was once a hacker called Kolter and has information relating to the Lost Incident. The chapter was published a few months before the episode in which Shoichi reveals his and Yusaku's first meeting, though the author has stated that the story was an Alternate Universe to begin with.
- The fanfic has Hakuno and HAKUNO both possess a Link 5 monster: "Yellow King: Cosmic Clown" and "Servant Berserker — Lu Bu" respectively. Near the end of Season 2 of the anime, it was revealed that, up until Bohman and Yusaku's final duel, Link 5 monsters did not exist up until that point.
- Don't be surprised if a Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfic has all those ancient spirits have their own body, and don't expect it to be explained. That said, not everybody considers this an acceptable break from canon.
- Lampshaded in "Not the Usual Kaiba":
- "Other than Yugi's long-lost cousin, Yami, mysteriously showing up a few months ago…"
- Also, in Decks Fall Everyone Dies, Yami has a separate body. There are hints that this will be explained, though.
- Lampshaded in "Not the Usual Kaiba"
