List of retcons

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The following are examples of retcons (retroactive continuities). To avoid speculation, they don't attempt to justify alteration-type retcons in the context of their respective continuities (a popular activity among some fans known as fanwanking), nor to explain the real-world reasons for them.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Contents

[edit] Comics

  • When Alan Moore took over writing Swamp Thing, he wrote a story revealing that the title character was not Alec Holland transformed into a monster, but - to the surprise of both the readers and the character - was instead a monster that had grown from plant material infected with the memories and personality of the deceased Alec Holland.
  • In the original Spider-Man story, Peter Parker only wore glasses at the insistence of his Aunt May, to protect his eyes from his constant reading, and he stopped wearing them because they had been broken. In retellings of his origin, Peter's eyesight really was poor, but improved after he gained his superhuman powers. Before the 1980s, Spider-Man writers stated that his love interest Mary Jane Watson did not know he was Spider-Man. It was later retconned that she had known of his dual life since it began. J. Michael Straczynski's run on Amazing Spider-Man has included several retcons, ranging from the mild - the possibility of a mystical/totemic origin for Spider-Man's powers, for instance - to the drastic: Gwen Stacy having given birth to Norman Osborn's children.
  • The symbiote Venom was originally said to have merged with Eddie Brock because he was suicidally despondent and resentful of Spider-Man. However, it was later presented that Eddie had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and the symbiote had chosen him as a host because the cancer caused him to produce more of the adrenaline that it "feeds" on.
  • The Batman origin story Batman: Year One stated that Police Commissioner James Gordon was the father of a boy named James, contradicting stories set in the present involving his daughter Barbara (Batgirl). It was then retconned that Gordon was the uncle and adoptive father of Barbara. It was further retconned in Gotham Knights #6 by Devin Grayson that James Gordon had an affair with his brother's wife, i.e. Barbara's mother and is in fact her biological father.
  • Frank Miller also ret-conned Daredevil (his first major comics feature). Previously Matt Murdock had been hit by radioactive waste, losing his sight and gaining special powers. Miller added an Asian teacher who helped Daredevil develop his powers and skills. More importantly in the long run, Miller created Elektra, neatly slipping her into Murdock's college years as the first and greatest love of his life who was, in fact, fully aware of his special abilities. Odd that he had never mentioned her once in twenty years, but the retcon was so wildly popular that no one ever complained.
  • In the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, it is explained by Shadi in the beginning that the Millennium Items were created by the magicians of the pharaohs to prevent thieves from robbing the tombs of the pharaohs. In the later chapters of the manga, it is explained that the Millennium Items were created to repel an invading army from Egypt.
  • In the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, it is explained by Sugoroku Mutou in the first chapter that a team of British archaeologists took the Millennium Puzzle out of a pharaoh's crypt in the Valley of the Kings, and that they all died afterwards. In a later chapter, it is revealed that Mutou himself discovered the puzzle in a tomb that had not been successfully breached by anyone else. Instead the British archaeologists tried and failed to bring the puzzle out of the tomb.
  • In the original manga version of Oh My Goddess!, Belldandy had blueish hair for the first two chapters before magically turning it brown. However, in the anime versions, she always had brown hair, a fact which has now been retconned into the manga where flashbacks have shown her as having brown hair as a child.
  • In the final issue of X-O Manowar, it was revealed that the entire series up to that point (and perhaps the entire Valiant Universe as a whole) was a prophetic vision of a possible future. The final panel of X-O Manowar #68 features a slightly modified version of the first panel of X-O Manowar #1.
  • The first issue of Marvel's original Transformers comic begins by explaining the history of sentient mechanical life on Cybertron as a natural evolution process. This was later retconned in issues #60-#61 with the introduction of Primus, a god-like being dating back to the creation of the universe itself, who created the Transformers as a "last line of defense" against Unicron. The first issue also portrayed Cybertron as pushed out of its orbit and hurtling through space as a result of the violence of the Autobot-Decepticon War, an idea that was last mentioned in issue #17, then ignored.
  • In 2005, the webcomic Melonpool was rebooted. Creator Steve Troop also temporarily removed the original material from the strip's online archives, including the storyline in which the reboot took place.
  • In 1987, writer Peter David retold Green Lantern Hal Jordan's origin, stating that instead of being born without fear, his power ring had altered his mind to make him so. Later stories ignored this unpopular explanation. In a controversial 1994 story Emerald Twilight, Jordan went insane and either killed or depowered the rest of the Green Lantern Corps. A 2005 story retconned many of these deaths, and revealed that his mind had been controlled by an alien parasite throughout the duration of his time as a villain.
  • The manga and anime Dragon Ball series had several major retcons. The foremost example is the revelation that Son Goku was in fact an alien, rather than his tail and Oozaru transformation being due to Dragon Ball's origins in Journey to the West. The Saiyans were first said that they were mercenaries who sold off depopulated planets to the highest bidder, yet it was later revealed that they were in fact in the exclusive employ of Freeza.
  • In a lighthearted jab against retcons, She-Hulk #3, volume 2 depicted the titular heroine on trial for attempting to prevent the death of Hawkeye by manipulating the timeline. If convicted, her punishment was to be erased from history through the use of the "Retroactive Cannon", or "Ret-Can."
  • In the June 6, 1959 "Peanuts" comic strip, Snoopy, following the birth of Charlie Brown's sister Sally, remarks that he has no brothers or sisters, and is an "only dog." This was later retconned with him frequently mentioned as having seven siblings, five of whom appeared at various times in the strip. Two more appear in the TV special, Snoopy's Reunion. Additionally, Snoopy appears to switch owners throughout the strip's early years.
  • In the mini-series Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do, penned by movie director Kevin Smith, Black Cat is changed from an adventuress inspired by her father's exploits to become a cat burglar, to a victim of date rape, who donned her superheroine (originally cat burgling) persona as an escape of sorts.
  • In the 2006 Limited Series Deadly Genesis a new story is told about what happened in Krakoa. The sentient island did not let go of Scott Summers instead he was freed by his lost third brother and his team. They died however and Xavier erased the memories of this team from Cyclops.
  • The Illuminati series can also be a retcon as they happened in past events. The same can apply to the Earth Mightiest heroes I & II.
  • The true identity of the Disney comics villain The Phantom Blot was originally given as just a normal man, who had created a "super villain" alter ego by wearing a black cape covering his entire body. Later European comics partly retconned this with a more mystical origin, hinting at The Phantom Blot being a living, blot-shaped concentration of evil.

[edit] Radio

[edit] Television

  • Among fans of the science fiction anime series Robotech, a subject of debate was how many ships of the Expeditionary Force main fleet were destroyed in the Invid Regis's departure in the final episode. The animation itself only showed a handful being destroyed, but the novels by Jack McKinney stated that nearly the entire fleet was lost (in fact, being swept up in her departure and turned into energy). Until recent years, most of the other works of that universe (the comics and roleplaying game) reflected the novel's claim. The recent movie Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles refutes both claims with new animation depicting the scene in question: in it, the Invid depart, passing right by the Expeditionary Force fleet without affecting it in the slightest.
  • In the sitcom Cheers, Frasier Crane said that his father was a deceased research scientist. However, the spin-off Frasier featured Frasier's father Martin as an ex-cop living in Seattle. Frasier later explained that he had lied to his friends in Boston after having a bitter argument with his father.
  • On the primetime soap opera Dallas, the eighth season finale and the entire ninth season were dismissed at the start of Season 10 as nothing more than a dream of Pamela Ewing. As a result, the death of Bobby Ewing at the end of Season 8 (and its aftermath in Season 9) was erased, a move punctuated by a widely-remembered scene in the final episode of Season 9 where Bobby emerges from the shower as if nothing had happened. The spinoff series Knots Landing, which had incorporated Bobby's death into its storylines, continued as though the death had indeed occurred, and the two series never crossed paths again.
  • The final episode of Newhart revealed that the entire series had been a dream of Bob Newhart's character Bob Hartley from the earlier series The Bob Newhart Show, by showing him wake up in bed with his former co-star Suzanne Pleshette, briefly reprising her role as Emily Hartley. Unlike most other examples, this was done for comedic effect.
  • A similar plot device was used in the final season of Roseanne, stating that Roseanne's husband had died of a heart attack at the end of the previous season, and the entire series (or at least the final season) had been a book she was writing.
  • At the beginning of Happy Days, Howard and Marion Cunningham have an oldest son Chuck who is never seen after the first season, and Richie and Joanie are later referred to as the couple's only children. This is the origin of the term "Chuck Cunningham Syndrome" as a name sometimes used for this particular form of retcon when a character just disappears.
  • At the beginning of The Greatest American Hero, William Katt's lead character is named Ralph Hinkley. Shortly after the show premiered, on March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was nearly assassinated by John Hinckley. Over the next few episodes, Ralph's character, a teacher, was either addressed as "Mr. H" or did not have his last name mentioned at all. Toward the end of the show's first season, his name was shown on a nameplate as "Ralph Hanley." But in the second season, his name is once again established as Ralph Hinkley.
  • In the pilot episode of The Cosby Show, an exasperated Clair Huxtable says to her husband, Cliff, "Why do we have four children?" He replies, "Because we do not want to have five." However, later that season, the Huxtables refer to having five children, with an oldest daughter away at Princeton.
  • In the sci-fi series Lexx, the key to the Lexx spacecraft is stored in the hand of the captain (episode 1.02, "Supernova") and is released as the captain dies (episode 1.01, "I Worship His Shadow"). In later seasons, the key is stored in the captain's brain (episode 3.08, "The Key") and can be released even when the captain's life is merely threatened (episode 4.01, "Little Blue Planet").
  • In the 1970s TV series Wonder Woman, the character's backstory was altered during the second season. During the first year, it was established that Wonder Woman had never left Paradise Island or encountered men prior to travelling to the US to help fight World War II. In the second season, the character dropped numerous hints that not only did she encounter various men previously (e.g. a Chinese acupressure specialist she had met "centuries ago", and references to historical figures she had met) but that she may have been active as either Wonder Woman or in some other crime-fighting guise as early as the 19th century.
  • Retcons abound in the British TV series Red Dwarf - such matters as what century the characters originated from, how many people were on the ship and many others have been changed. Series co-creator Doug Naylor has gone on record saying that they have always had a very relaxed attitude to continuity, and if something could be changed for the better then they would change it.
  • The Odd Couple had three episodes presenting different versions of how Oscar Madison and Felix Unger first met: in the Army, on jury duty, or as children.
  • On Columbo, the title detective (Peter Falk) frequently mentions his wife, who is never seen. In 1979, NBC's Fred Silverman produced Mrs. Columbo, a television series starring Kate Mulgrew, initially as Lt. Columbo's wife Kate. The character's last name was changed to Callahan after an off-screen divorce, the series was renamed Kate Loves a Mystery, and the character was established as not the woman to whom the lieutenant frequently referred.
  • On the 35th anniversary special of Sesame Street in 2005, Super Grover took Elmo on a trip through time, showing him scenes he would not remember, since they were (supposedly) before he was born (the character often said to be about three and a half years old). These included many events that the character (who debuted in 1979 and has been a featured character since 1985) was in fact present for, and was even visible in some of the scenes depicted.
  • In the first three seasons of Quantum Leap, Sam and Al always referred to the computer Ziggy as a male. However, when Ziggy is shown for the first time, in the fourth season premiere "The Leap Back", the computer has a female voice, and from that point on would be referred to as a female. Although it's possible that Ziggy was simply reprogrammed with a female identity, the issue is never addressed on the show.
  • For the beginning of the sixth season of Married with Children, both Peggy Bundy and Marcy D'Arcy announce they're pregnant. This was done to incorporate Katey Sagal's real life pregnancy into the show. When Sagal suffered a miscarriage halfway through filming the season, rather than continue the storyline, it was revealed all those previous episodes had been a dream of Al Bundy's.
  • In 1994, UK Sitcom The Brittas Empire appeared to be winding up. Some characters, notably Gordon, Laura, Linda and Carole left to take up new challenges in the last regular episode of the season, and a Christmas Special called "In The Beginning" was produced. This showed the main characters having a reunion many years in the future, having had happy and successful lives. The flashback scenes in this episode related to the opening of the Leisure Centre. The following season was written by different authors, and while the character of Laura did not return, the rest of the cast inexplicably found themselves back at the centre. The special featured some retcons of its own: it was stated that the centre opened at Christmas time in 1989; in the original scripts, it opened at an unspecified date in 1990. The character of Julie was also seen working at the centre from the time it opened. Julie was not an original character; she arrived at the start of Series 2 to replace Angie. The final episode retconned every episode as just Brittas' dream whilst on a train.
  • In the very first episode of The Six Million Dollar Man, actors Martin Balsam and Darren McGavin played Dr. Rudy Wells and Oliver Spencer, respectively, and together were shown discussing the rebuilding of Steve Austin. In the second episode of the series, the two actors had been changed and the character once called Oliver Spencer was changed to Oscar Goldman; the episode recreated the scene from the first episode in which Wells and Oliver Spencer discussed Austin's condition, only now Oscar Goldman is there and not Spencer. Another retcon occurred involving Austin's character: in the first couple of episodes he was said to be a civilian and the first non-military man to set foot on the moon. In later episodes he was given a military background and the rank of colonel.
  • South Park frequently retcons various facts, such as how Saddam Hussein died (he is shown being killed by Canadians in "Terrance and Phillip in Not Without My Anus," but is later said to have been killed by wild boars or secretly assassinated by the American government). Characters names also change fairly often---Token Williams became Token Black and Jimmy Swanson became Jimmy Valmer, for example. Other issues related to South Park's loose continuity---such as how Kenny returns to life, whether or not his friends realize he does, etc.---could also be considered retcons.
  • Buffy The Vampire Slayer retcons a number of elements from the film (for example, in the series Buffy had burned down her old school's gym, which didn't happen in the film). The character of Anyanka was also retconned both in powers and personality. In her initial appearance in The Wish, dialog from Giles indicates that destroying her "power center" will reverse all of the wishes she's granted. When she re-appeared in Doppelgangland new, previously unspoken, dialog in the "previously" section substantially narrowed the effect. Personality-wise, when Anyanka first spoke with Cordelia Chase she was fairly worldly and sophisticated, having knowledge of such pop cultural artifacts as Prada bags and W Magazine. In later appearances she is much more naive, knowing little to nothing of human customs, conventions or manners.
  • In Alias it's established that Sydney Bristow did not meet Arvin and Emily Sloane until after she had been recruited to work for SD-6. In the series finale this is retconned so that the Sloanes had been Sydney's legal guardians for a time when she was a child. Additionally, in the final episode of season 3 Sydney discovered papers which seemed to relate to her being a subject of Project Christmas. With the premiere of season 4 this was apparently retconned into her discovering the assassination of her mother by her father (which itself was later retconned by having the assassination victim be a genetic duplicate of her mother).
  • A later episode of British sitcom Men Behaving Badly centres around the inability of Gary Strang to drive a motor vehicle. However, in the earlier series, Gary is shown driving competently.
  • In the Australian soap opera Home and Away Duncan Stewart, the son of Ailsa and Alf Stewart was originally born in 1989. As a child, Duncan was rarely seen in the show. In later years Duncan became a major character. To achieve this, however, the age of his character was increased by several years, ignoring the earlier storylines of the series.
  • On the television series Dead Like Me, it's explained that reapers physical appearance is different from the one they had when alive, and only fellow reapers (and the viewing audience) see their original appearances. However George Lass is often commented on her beauty, but the way she appears to the living was described as someone familiar "with crack cocaine, ten-dollar blowjobs, and maybe even a trick baby or two." In the episode "Death Defying", Rube Sofer is shown in a 1920s wanted poster and a living person says Rube looks exactly like the man in the poster.
  • In the sixth season of The Sopranos, Vito Spatafore is revealed to be the husband of Phil Leotardo's cousin Marie. Phil himself refers to Vito as cousin, and the two seem to be very close. However, no mention of it was made in the previous season, with Phil running into Vito at least on one occasion and not only not calling Vito his cousin, but introducing his brother Billy to Vito. Moreover, when Billy is killed, Vito refers to the event several times, but never mentions his relation to Leotardo brothers. It would also be very unlikely that Vito wouldn't be more involved in the peace talks between Lupertazzi family and Soprano family, when murder of Billy by Tony Soprano's cousin Tony Blundetto brought two families to the brink of war. The only explanation for that could be that Phil just got out of the prison after serving a twenty year sentence (Vito and Marie have been married less than fifteen years), so it is possible that he only became close with Vito in two years in between season five and season six.

[edit] Soap Operas

  • Guiding Light moved its setting, the town of Springfield, from California to the mid-west without explanation.
  • On One Life to Live, Dorian Lord originally tried to pass off her adopted grandson's girlfriend Adriana as her long-lost daughter. Later it was stated that Adriana is in fact her daughter.
  • On Days of our Lives, an amnesiac mystery man named John Black was revealed in 1986 to be a supposedly-dead policeman/ex-secret agent named Roman Brady, who had been given a new face via plastic surgery and was brainwashed to believe he was a mercenary working for arch-villain Stefano DiMera's criminal organization. This explanation was further verified in 1988 with a story arc that involved flashbacks to his brainwashing and "training" by Stefano. However, in 1991 it was revealed that the real Roman Brady was still being held captive by Stefano and the man known as John Black was in fact a DiMera mercenary with no memory of his true past.
  • On Passions, Sheridan Crane originally believed she had killed her lover Luis' father Martin when she was a child. In 2004, it was revealed that Martin (and Sheridan's supposedly dead mother) were alive. Then it was revealed that Sheridan had stabbed Martin in the back. In 2005, the story was changed to say that Sheridan killed her aunt Rachel. Later, the story was again changed to say that Sheridan's father Alistair had actually been holding Rachel captive until she was presumed dead from falling off of a cliff. Sheridan had barely wounded Rachel the night of the alleged killing. Rachel was, in fact, alive.
  • On All My Children, Erica Kane had an abortion without the knowledge of her husband Jeff Martin in 1973. Coming mere weeks after the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, it was the first time that a character on an American television series had a legal abortion. In 2006, it was revealed that the obstetrician who performed the procedure -- Greg Madden -- had actually performed an experimental fetal transplant. The doctor placed the fetus into his own wife, who gave birth to Erica's biological son, Josh Madden. This retcon has been highly controversial because the procedure in question was all but impossible in 1973, and because this change unravels one of the most significant storylines in soap opera history.

[edit] Film

  • By their very nature, the Star Wars prequels are loaded with retcons in the broader sense of the term. The prequels also contain some overt revisions of history, where we find that C-3PO and R2-D2 knew Owen Lars and his wife Beru, despite their apparent unfamiliarity with Luke's family and Tatooine itself at the beginning of A New Hope. This apparent discrepancy was "fixed" with another retcon in one of the final scenes of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, in which Bail Organa orders the memory of C-3PO to be wiped. The official novelization of Return of the Jedi stated that Luke Skywalker's "Uncle" Owen Lars was the brother of Obi-Wan Kenobi, but Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones establishes that Owen is actually the stepbrother of Anakin Skywalker, and no relation to Obi-Wan.
  • The film Clue was originally shown in theatres with one randomly chosen ending from a pool of three; the VHS release and subsequent television airings included all three endings. Each ending had at least one discontinuity that was retconned within the context of the film's story itself.
  • The classic anime series Mobile Suit Gundam received a retcon courtesy of a trio of anthology movies. Through these movies, Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino changed several elements of the show by changing the order of some events, removing others, and eliminating the "goofier" elements of the TV series in favor of more realistic ones. The movies are typically accepted as the canon version of these events.
  • Similarly, the series Zeta Gundam received an anthology trilogy. Though some events are changed, Tomino has said that all the characters who died in the series will still die in the movies, though some may (and indeed have) died in different ways. At the same time, however, he promised a happier ending. The ending of the trilogy actually resulted in the original sequel to Zeta Gundam, Double Zeta, being retconned out of existence.
  • The movie Endless Waltz gives the five heroes' Gundams much more stylish appearances, often removing weaponry. The official line is that the movie versions of the Gundams are the "true" versions, and that the Gundams depicted in the television series Gundam Wing never existed. Many fans disagree with this statement; some envision the Endless Waltz versions as upgrades to the TV versions, while others view them as customizations made by the young pilots.

[edit] Literature

  • In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Toto, although brought to Oz, never speaks like the animals there, and continued not to speak through appearances in several books. Other animals brought to Oz did speak on their arrival. In Tik-Tok of Oz, L. Frank Baum introduces an explanation for the inconsistency: he had had the ability all along, but had chosen to never speak.[1]
  • In Ozma of Oz and The Emerald City of Oz, the Nome King is called Roquat. In a stage adaptation, he was called Ruggedo. Baum explained that since at the end of The Emerald City of Oz, the king had drunk of the Waters of Oblivion, he had forgotten his old name and taken a new one.[2]
  • J.R.R. Tolkien rewrote the way Bilbo Baggins acquired his Ring in The Hobbit, to better suit the story he wanted to tell in The Lord of the Rings; originally Tolkien merely used the ring Bilbo found as a plot device for him to escape unnoticed, which he retconned to be 'The One Ring' later on. Narratively this was explained by depicting the original version as a misrepresentation perpetrated by Bilbo – already under the Ring's influence – and only later corrected.
  • In his sequels to the novel version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke made slight alterations to background history in order to keep each novel consistent with progressing developments in the real world. He also changed the location of the third monolith from Iapetus (orbiting Saturn) to Io (orbiting Jupiter), to conform with the film version of 2001 by Stanley Kubrick. Clarke has stated that each sequel to 2001 exists in its own continuity, though each borrows from its predecessors and all follow the film rather than the book.
  • In the book Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm is said to have died at the end. However, in its sequel, The Lost World, Ian Malcolm's death turns out to be a misreporting of the incident, bringing the books into line with the movies, in which he did not die. Additionally, characters who survived in the book but were killed in the film (such as the lawyer Gennaro and the gamekeeper Muldoon), are mentioned in The Lost World novel as having died shortly after the park incident (e.g. from illness or a plane crash).
  • In the late Isaac Asimov's Galactic history based on the Foundation Series, many retcons appear as long as the saga continues. For example, in the last books "Foundations's Edge" and "Foundation and Earth" readers are informed that R. Daneel Olivaw was involved in the events related to Asimov's early novel "Pebble in the sky" and maybe to be identified with Bel Arvardan's character. The story of the interstellar drive is told differently in the robot stories related with Powell and Donovan, and in the late novel "Nemesis", the latter vaguely cited in Hari Seldon's life story. Asimov's Lucky Starr novels could benefit from retconning, the habitability of Venus (depicted as a watery planet) and Mars (an arid desert) being consistent with contemporary knowledge but since proved inaccurate. Asimov inserted disclaimers to this effect, but in fact the theoretical concept of terraforming could, if applied to Venus, allegedly result in a watery planet of the type depicted.
  • E.E. "Doc" Smith retconned his serialized "Lensman" stories for publication as paperbacks, adding an entire book (First Lensman) of back-story and additionally making the existence, purpose and means of defeat of the ultimate enemy, the Eddorians, known to the reader in the earlier installments. In the original magazine serialization, the reader had been as blind to the big picture as the heroes until the very end; in the novelized version of Triplanetary, the first in the sequence, the whole series is presented as past history, with the Eddorians described in the opening pages as having been vanquished. This spoiler probably did not matter to the intended readership, who would (at the time of publication) probably have been well aware of the ending through the serialization, but could be held to detract from the novelized sequence.
  • Isabel Allende revised the history of Don Diego de la Vegas in her 2005 novel Zorro. Originally, he was a Spaniard born in 1782 to a mother named Chiquita de la Cruz. Sometime after her death, the young man left California and was educated in Madrid, before returning to don the Zorro mask. Allende made him a mestizo born in the 1790s, the son of Toypurnia, a Indian woman warrior. Both versions show his father as a Spaniard named Don Alejandro de la Vega.

[edit] Star Trek in various media

  • The 1967 Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Space Seed" referred to the Eugenics Wars as a conflict taking place in the 1990s. A 1996 episode of Star Trek: Voyager ("Future's End") was set in a year when the wars should have been a current or recent event, yet no mention of them was made except for a model of the Botany Bay (the sleeper ship Khan and his crew were imprisoned on) in the background of one scene. A 1998 episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ("Doctor Bashir, I Presume?") contained a statement that suggested the wars took place in the 22nd Century. (This was later said to be an error; in "Trials and Tribble-ations," Bashir admits, "I'm a doctor, not a historian.") Greg Cox's series of The Eugenics Wars novels, published in the early 2000s, retconned the wars into shadow affairs hidden by real-life major conflicts, but the producers of the TV series don't consider the novels to be canon. A 2004 episode of Star Trek: Enterprise stated that the Eugenics Wars were a wide conflict in which 30 million people died, but without identifying the timeframe; the producer of the series, however, stated that the Eugenics Wars as referenced in the episode still occurred in the 1990s.
  • When Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released in 1979, Gene Roddenberry claimed that the radically different appearance of the Klingons in the film was how they were always supposed to have looked, but they didn't have the budget for it in the 1960s. Books of Pioneer Press claimed their true form was revealed by the cloud they passed through at the beginning of the film. In the 1990s, an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine featured three Klingon characters from the original series, made up to fit the new look. However, the later episode "Trials and Tribble-ations", used footage from the original series with old-look Klingons; Commander Worf acknowledged their different appearance, adding that it was "a long story" that Klingons "do not discuss with outsiders." A two episode arc of Star Trek: Enterprise ("Affliction"/"Divergence") in 2005 indicated that Klingons resembling the 1960s portrayal were the product of genetic engineering using augmented human genes, essentially retconning the retcon. This explanation is also used in Shane Johnson's 1989 The Worlds of the Federation: "The 'Klingons' encountered along the Federation border with the Empire were a Klingon-human fusion, genetically created to make infiltration into the Federation easier. The interception of the Amar transmission during the V'Ger incident revealed the true nature of the Imperial Klingon race and stunned Federation science. Before that time, no one had suspected the Klingons were capable of such advanced genetic engineering, and a great deal of rethinking was done concerning the level of Klingon technology."[3] John M. Ford, in THE FINAL REFLECTION, suggests that Human-Klingon fusions are similar to the Human-Vulcan fusion that resulted in Spock's birth.
  • In Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, Khan Noonien Singh recognises Pavel Chekov when he captures Chekov and Captain Terrell on Ceti Alpha V. However, Khan's only previous appearance in The Original Series episode "Space Seed" occurs before Chekov was introduced. The implication is that Chekov was already onboard in this episode, even if he did not appear on screen. Walter Koenig, who played Chekov, has joked at conventions that his character met Khan in an Enterprise bathroom.
  • The character of Zefram Cochrane was presented in the original Star Trek episode "Metamorphosis" as a dignified humanoid research scientist from Alpha Centauri. When he appeared in Star Trek: First Contact, the character's place of origin had been retconned to Montana (implying that he would later become a resident of Alpha Centauri), and he was an eccentric alcoholic who invented warp drive working independently with equipment salvaged from an abandoned missile launching facility.

[edit] Video games

  • In the end of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, Solid Snake confronts Big Boss. Before they fight they talk about battles and nightmares. However, in the sequel Metal Gear Solid, it was retconned that Big Boss said that he was Solid Snake's father before he died. Later in Metal Gear Solid it was revealed that Solid Snake actually was a clone of Big Boss. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, which is set in 1964, follows the exploits of Big Boss and Ocelot, adding many details about their past and motivations, and details about the story in general.
  • The game Metal Gear Solid 3 also made some retcons to the Metal Gear saga. The biggest retcon was that Big Boss was made 10 years younger. It also changed the origins of the FOXHOUND. In the manual of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, FOXHOUND was created in around 1990 as an international anti terrorist force. Horewer, it was changed in Metal Gear Solid 3 to have been started in 1970 as an American anti terrorist force. Another retcon was that the Patriots had changed, from all members having died before 1910 in Metal Gear Solid 2 to all members being alive at 1930. The origin of Big Boss's missing eye is retconned to it being accidentally shot during a torture sequence, canonizing which eye was the one with the eyepatch.
  • Also in Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat Trilogy had Johnny Cage murdered at the beginning of Shao Kahn's invasion by his Extermination squad, only to return to fight after Kahn's merger of Earth with Outworld blocked his way to Heaven. He eventually ascends to the Heavens afterwards, but is permanently revived by Raiden during the events of Mortal Kombat 4. In Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, however, Cage's bio retcons these events as the story idea for another Mortal Kombat movie in the works by his studio (ironically named The Death of Johnny Cage), and he has only officially died and been revived once, at the hands of the Deadly Alliance and Onaga immediately prior to Mortal Kombat: Deception.
  • In Myst, the brothers Sirrus and Achenar were trapped in Trap Books, in the void between the Ages. If the player frees them, he is trapped himself. Originally, Atrus presumably burned the books, thus trapping or killing his sons forever. This was revised to say that the brothers were not trapped in the void, but in desolate Ages.
  • The storyline of the Street Fighter series of video games has gone through a few retcons, many of them being established in the game Street Fighter Alpha 3; in this game, it is shown that Charlie sacrificed his life to destroy M. Bison and the Psycho Drive (in Street Fighter II, Bison actually killed Charlie), and Sagat's vicious rivalry with Ryu ends (whereas it is shown to be ongoing in Street Fighter II).
  • The King of Fighters character, Foxy, was killed by her teammate K9999 in The King of Fighters 2001. However, she appears alive and well in The King of Fighters XI. The likeliest explanation is that because her murderer was an Eolith-created character, her death, as well as K9999's existence, was erased from continuity when SNK took back the control of KOF.
  • In the instruction manual for the original Resident Evil (and other published materials), there is a twelfth member of S.T.A.R.S. listed who does not appear in the game; Bravo Team's pilot Edward Dewey, leaving players to assume that a disembodied hand found by another character belonged to him. However, the GameCube remake of the first game and Resident Evil 0 reveals that Edward actually died in a nearby train and that the pilot found by Alpha Team is actually an RPD pilot named Kevin Dooley.
  • Squaresoft re-released the RPG Chrono Trigger for the PlayStation prior to the release of its sequel, Chrono Cross. The updated version featured a brand new ending which tied the two games together, most notably a scene where Lucca finds a young infant wearing a pendant. The infant would later turn out to be Kid from Chrono Cross.
  • The ending of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge showed Guybrush traveling through a portal and leaving the game's universe and entering into "our" world as a small child. The game has an uncertain ending. The next part of the saga, The Curse of Monkey Island, opens with an adult Guybrush, back in the game's world, who explains he had been imprisoned by LeChuck in a magical amusement park. Later on in the game it is explained that the entire sequence with the child Guybrush was simply the result of a "spell" cast by LeChuck.
  • Retcon in GTA: Liberty City Stories has also served to explain the origins of several features in GTA III's Liberty City, including a large construction site in the city (originally the site of an entire district of low rises devastated by underground bombs), gang activities, and the absence of motorcycles (which is evidenced in GTA: Liberty City Stories's official website to be the result of a citywide ban on the vehicle).
  • In TimeSplitters Future Perfect, the Harry Tipper levels were retconned to taking place in the 60's instead of the 70's, unfortunately, the designers neglected to explain this ingame, which caused confusion among fans. The Timesplitters themselves were retconned from being aliens to being genetic projects.
  • In World of Warcraft, Eredar were retconned to make them not the ones who corrupted Sargeras, but were instead corrupted by him. The old sources were not removed, and the whole thing has annoyed a terrible amount of fans. Also, though not technically a retcon as no actual history had been given, the Draenei from previous warcraft games appeared to have been humanlike natives of draenor, but were changed to be a group of Eredar from another world.
  • In Sonic Rush the characters Blaze the Cat and Eggman Nega come from an alternate universe, but in Sonic the Hedgehog they instead come from the future, with Eggman Nega being the current of Eggman's descendants. A few fans have attempted to rectify this discrepancy, mainly by rearranging the order of the games (with Sonic Rush coming after Sonic the Hedgehog, despite being released before), but contradictory evidence in the latter game still makes it awkward.

[edit] Ignored sequels in various media

  • The 88MPH Studios comic book series Ghostbusters takes place in the same continuity as the first film, but retconned out the sequel, Ghostbusters II. Rather than facing massive debt and going out of business like in the second movie, the Ghostbusters became a global organization.
  • In the second Highlander film it is revealed that the Immortals are aliens from the Planet Zeist, although no mention of this is made in the first film, and exposition as to the nature of "The Game" is inconsistent with the implications of the first film. These developments are largely ignored in the subsequent films, as well as the TV series, which also retcon Connor's triumph in the original Highlander as merely a major victory, rather than the final battle of "The Game." Incidentally, the Renegade version of Highlander II further retcons the original out of existence, by having the Immortals come from Earth's past, not from another planet; reportedly, this is what the director originally wanted for the film, but financier bullying forced the Immortals' origin to be as they are in the normal version.[citation needed]
  • In the Mortal Kombat movie series, the upcoming third film, Mortal Kombat: Devastation is reportedly going to retcon the second movie Annihilation out of existence, making it the official sequel to the first movie.[citation needed]
  • The Game Boy game Castlevania Legends featured the story of Sonia Belmont, and was originally set as the official beginning of the series timeline. However, when Koji Igarashi took over development of the series he completely erased Sonia Belmont from the Castlevania Timeline, declaring in a magazine interview that "a woman could never be a Belmont Hero."[citation needed] He later retconned the entire history of the series, so that all games to not feature a Belmont as its protagonist or as an important secondary character are no longer considered by him to be part of the official timeline. This includes games with Belmont relations with different surnames (such as Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness' Reinhardt Schneider) except for Castlevania Bloodlines and Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (as the main characters are descended from the hero of Bram Stoker's Dracula, from which the series is based on); curiously, this is explained by Mr. Igarashi that only a direct blood descendant of the Belmont clan (with the Belmont surname) can naturally serve as their generation's Vampire Killer, all deviating lines having been 'diluted' enough to not be able to naturally wield the whip and magical sub-weapons of the clan (and being adversely affected by the whip when they use it, as described by Portrait of Ruin as what happened to Bloodlines hero John Morris). Circle of the Moon and the two Castlevania 64 titles will be re-introduced into the timeline for Castlevania's 20th anniversary [1]. As only the bottom half of the new timeline has been seen thos far, it is unknown whether Legends will receive the same treatment.
  • The film Godzilla 1985 was made as a direct sequel to the first film in the series, retconning each of the fourteen films in between and paving the way for the quasi-returns of such characters as Mechagodzilla and King Ghidorah in the films following it. This was repeated with Godzilla 2000, which was also a direct sequel to the first film, and ignored all previous films. Following films, with one exception, were also direct sequels of the first film, and not G2000, or any others.
  • The game Chrono Cross is a sequel to Chrono Trigger and ignores the events of Radical Dreamers leaving only one Easter Egg inside the game towards the original sequel, placing those events as just an occurrence in another parallel universe.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Michael O. Riley, Oz and Beyond: The Fantasy World of L. Frank Baum, p 182, ISBN 0-7006-0832-X
  2. ^ Michael O. Riley, Oz and Beyond: The Fantasy World of L. Frank Baum, p 184, ISBN 0-7006-0832-X
  3. ^ p. 114
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