List of retroactive continuities

The following are examples of retroactive continuities (or retcons).

Film

• In Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Obi Wan Kenobi tells Luke Skywalker that Luke's father, Anakin, was betrayed and killed by Darth Vader. In the sequel The Empire Strikes Back, Vader reveals that he is Anakin. This was not in Lucas' original outline, and is therefore a retcon. George Lucas decided to merge both characters while writing The Empire Strikes Back, with Obi-Wan later justifying his original description by explaining that he regards Anakin becoming Vader as having 'murdered' Anakin by destroying everything that was good about his former friend and apprentice. Similarly Princess Leia had been previously set as an upper-class romantic interest for the farm boy Luke; Return of the Jedi reveals Leia is his twin sister, which was a separate character that Lucas also decided to accommodate in the ones already established.^[1]
• The 2014 film X-Men: Days of Future Past erased the events of X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) from the X-Men film series through the use of time travel in order to create a more streamlined chronology.^[2]
• In the Heisei and Millennium eras of the Godzilla film series, the events of the Showa era after the original film never happened. In particular, each film in the Millennium series – except for Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S., which serves as the direct sequel to Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla – serves as a direct sequel to the original 1954 film.^[3]

Literature

• When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off his character Sherlock Holmes by plunging him to his death over the Reichenbach Falls with his nemesis Professor Moriarty, the public's demand for Holmes was so great that Doyle was compelled to bring him back to life in a subsequent story, where he details that Holmes had merely faked his death.
• Though the term "retcon" did not yet exist when George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four, the totalitarian regime depicted in that book is involved in a constant, large-scale retconning of past records. For example, when it is suddenly announced that "Oceania was not after all in war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia and Eurasia was an ally" (Part Two, Ch. 9), there is an immediate intensive effort to change "all reports and records, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound-tracks and photographs" and make them all record a war with Eastasia rather than one with Eurasia. "Often it was enough to merely substitute one name for another, but any detailed report of events demanded care and imagination. Even the geographical knowledge needed in transferring the war from one part of the world to another was considerable." See historical revisionism (negationism).
• When J. R. R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, the character of The Necromancer was not originally intended to be more than an abstract "bad guy" concept because The Lord of the Rings had not yet been conceived. However, as Tolkien developed The Lord of the Rings, the abstract Necromancer came to be "discovered" to be Sauron.

Television

• In 2004, Coronation Street retconned the Baldwin family after Mike Baldwin's nephew Danny and wife Frankie moved to the area from Essex, with their two sons Jamie and Warren. Mike had been portrayed as an only child prior to this moment, with his father appearing in the program between 1980 and 1982 to confirm the notion.
• First of the Summer Wine, the prequel to the long-running British sitcom Last of the Summer Wine, retconned the character Seymour Utterthwaite as a pre-World War II friend of the other central characters. Seymour had been introduced into later series of Last of the Summer Wine and was previously unknown to the stalwart characters, Compo and Clegg.^[4]
• The revived series of British science fiction television program Doctor Who and its television spin-offs use retroactive continuity as a plot device.
  • Show runner Steven Moffat's fifth series finale depicted the Doctor rebooting the universe. In answer to a fan's question, Moffat tweeted: "The whole universe came exactly as it was. Except for any continuity errors I need to explain away."^[5]
  • In the sixth series, Moffat introduces new aliens the Silence, who erase your memory of them the moment you look away. Commenting on this device, writer MaryAnn Johanson writes, "That could be happening throughout this story... indeed, through the entire history of Doctor Who. Moffat has just created a pretty much unassailable narratively sound reason for inserting retcons anywhere throughout the half-century history of the show."
  • In 2013, the 50th anniversary of the series, the existence of a previously unknown incarnation of the Doctor was revealed.
  • In Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood, created by Russell T Davies, a drug used to erase the memory of characters is called "retcon"; the use of the drug is often referred to by characters as "retconning".

Star Trek in various media

• 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 did not have the budget for it in the 1960s. In the 1990s, an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine featured three Klingon characters from the original series, made 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, saying it was "a long story" and, after receiving incredulous looks, added with a scowl "we do not speak of it with outsiders."
• A 2005, two-episode arc of Star Trek: Enterprise, "Affliction"/"Divergence", revealed that the Klingons that appeared in the 1960s episodes were the product of genetic engineering using augmented human genes. This explanation was 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 infiltrate the Federation. 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."^[6] 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.

Video games

• The chronology of The Legend of Zelda series was subject to much debate among fans until an official timeline was printed in the collector's book Hyrule Historia, released in Japan on December 21, 2011.^[7][8] Hyrule Historia contains a timeline that explains how each game fits within the storyline. This includes introducing a three-way split after Ocarina of Time. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword helps explain the appearance of multiple Zelda, Link and Ganondorf characters across hundreds of years.
• The original Ninja Gaiden trilogy for the NES was followed years later by a new series of sequels produced by Team Ninja beginning with Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox in 2004. However, the second generation of Ninja Gaiden video games, being prequels to original series^[9][10][11] has many differences from the NES trilogy. The character design of Ryu Hayabusa in the new games is now based on the Dead or Alive incarnation of the character with long hair and green eyes, the character design of Ryu's father, Ken Hayabusa, has been updated as well, the character now being addressed in the English versions by his original name in the Japanese versions (Jo Hayabusa), and producer Tomonobu Itagaki hints at the possibility that Sonia, a character from the new games, might be Irene Lew from the original series.^[11] With the release of Dead or Alive: Dimensions in 2011, it has been revealed that Sonia is indeed Irene Lew.^[12][13]
• In Metal Gear, the character Big Boss serves as Solid Snake's commanding officer and is apparently revealed near the end of the game to also be the main antagonist. However, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain establishes the antagonist character to actually be a body double of the real Big Boss, called Venom Snake, who is killed by Solid Snake during this encounter. The original Big Boss later becomes the antagonist in the series' second entry, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.^[14]
• In the ending of 2006's Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic and Elise blow out the flame of Solaris, undoing all changes made by Iblis and causing the entire story to never happen; thus undoing all the inconsistencies the game's plot caused.

Ignored sequels in various media

• The film Superman Returns loosely continues the storylines of Superman and Superman II, and disregards the events of Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest For Peace.^[15]
• The film Halloween H20: 20 Years Later is a direct sequel to Halloween and Halloween II, dismissing the events that take place in the sequels Halloween 4, Halloween 5, and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Halloween III was an unrelated story unaffected by the retcon; it was a movie within a movie). The subsequent film Halloween: Resurrection follows the new continuity of Halloween H20, however, it retcons that film's ending in order to do so.^[16]
• The film The Exorcist III is a sequel to The Exorcist, and ignores the events of Exorcist II: The Heretic.^[17]
• Highlander II: The Quickening is a sequel to the first film, but its events are ignored by later films in the series.^[18] Similarly, Highlander: Endgame ignores the events of both Highlander II and Highlander III: The Sorcerer and only follows the events of the TV series and the first film.

References