Retcon

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Retroactive continuity – commonly contracted to the portmanteau word retcon – refers to adding new information to "historical" material, or deliberately changing previously established facts in a work of serial fiction. The change itself is referred to as a retcon, and the act of writing and publishing a retcon is called "retconning".

Retcons are common in comic books, especially those of large publishing houses such as Marvel Comics and DC Comics, due to the lengthy history of many series and the number of independent authors contributing to their development. Retconning also occurs in TV shows, movies sequels, video games, radio series, series of novels, and can be done in any other type of episodic fiction. It is also used in roleplaying, when the game master feels it is needed to maintain consistency in the story or to fix significant mistakes that were missed during play.

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Origins

The term "retroactive continuity" was popularized by comic book writer Roy Thomas in his 1980s series All-Star Squadron, which featured the DC Comics superheroes of the 1940s. The earliest known use of the term is from Thomas's letter column in All-Star Squadron #20 (April 1983), where Thomas wrote that he heard it at a convention. The term was shortened to "retcon" by Damian Cugley in 1988 on USENET to describe a development in the comic book Swamp Thing, in which Alan Moore reinterpreted the events of the title character's origin. (See "Examples", below.)

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Kinds

Although there is considerable ambiguity and overlap between different kinds of retcons, there are some distinctions that can be made between them, depending on whether they add to, alter, or remove material from past continuity.

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Addition

Some retcons do not directly contradict previously established facts, but "fill in" missing background details necessary for current plot points. This was the sense in which Thomas used "retroactive continuity", as a purely additive process that did not "undo" any previous work. Kurt Busiek took a similar approach with Untold Tales of Spider-Man, a series which told stories that fit between issues of the original Amazing Spider-Man series – sometimes explaining discontinuities between those earlier stories.

Related to this is the concept of shadow history or secret history, in which the events of a story occur within the bounds of already-established (especially real-world historical) events, but have been hitherto unrevealed.

Alan Moore's additional information about the Swamp Thing's origins didn't contradict or change any of the events depicted in the character's previous appearances, but changed the underlying interpretation of them. This verges on making alterations to past continuity.

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Alteration

Retcons often add information that effectively states "what you saw isn't what really happened" and then introduces a different version. This is usually interpreted by the audience as an overt change rather than a mere addition. The most common form this takes is when a character shown to have died (sometimes explicitly) is later revealed to have survived somehow. This is well known in horror films, which may end with the death of the monster, but when the film becomes successful, the studio plans a sequel, revealing that the monster survived after all. This has been done many times in superhero comics, so frequently that the term comic book death has been coined for it. The first famous example in popular culture is the return of Sherlock Holmes.

It is commonplace for characters to remain the same age, or to age out of synch with real time; this can be considered an ongoing implicit retcon of their birthdate. When historical events are involved in their biography, overt retcons may be used to accommodate this; a character who served in the army during World War 2 might have his service record retconned to place him in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, etc. This is similar to a problem faced by many works of future history: the events they describe happening in years after the initial publication do not conform to history as it actually happens. To accommodate such discrepancies, retcons may be used in later stories, altering dates or other details. (See Star Trek examples, below.)

While retconning is usually done without comment by the creators, DC Comics has on rare occasions promoted special events dedicated to revising the history of the DC Comics universe. The most important and well known such event was the mini-series Crisis on Infinite Earths; this allowed for wholesale revisions of their entire multiverse of characters. It has been argued that these were not true retcons, however, because the cause of the changes to their universe actually appeared within the story, similar to stories in which a time traveler to the past changes history from how he remembered it.

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Subtraction

Sometimes retconned alterations are so drastic as to render prior stories untenable. Many of the retcons introduced in Crisis on Infinite Earths and DC's later Zero Hour were specifically intended to wipe the slate clean, and permit an entirely new history to be written for the characters. This is commonly referred to as a reboot. This is often unpopular, upsetting fans of the material that has been removed from continuity.

Unpopular or embarrassing stories are sometimes later ignored by publishers, never referred to again, and effectively erased from a series' continuity. They may publish stories that contradict or explicitly establish that the previous story "never happened". An unpopular retcon may even be re-retconned away.

Fans may use Krypto-revisionism to ignore a particular retcon, itself a form of meta-retcon stating that "it was never published". Similarly, fans may invent unofficial explanations for inconsistencies, the challenge itself becoming a source of entertainment. (See Fanon (fiction), Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome.)

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Related

Retroactive continuity is similar to, but not the same as, plot inconsistencies introduced accidentally or through lack of concern for continuity; retconning is done deliberately. However, retcons are sometimes created after the fact to explain such mistakes. It is also generally distinct from replacing the actor who plays a part in an ongoing series, which is more properly an example of loose continuity (i.e. the different appearance of the character is ignored), rather than retroactively changing past continuity.

Retconning is also distinct from direct revision; when George Lucas re-edited the original Star Wars trilogy, he made changes directly to the source material, rather than introducing new source material that contradicted the contents of previous material. However, the later series of Star Wars prequels did qualify as "new source material", and many fans have pointed out instances that apparently retcon elements of the original trilogy. (See below.)

The "clean slate" reinterpretation of characters - as in movie and television adaptations of books, or the reintroduction of many superheroes in the Silver Age of Comics - is similar to a reboot retcon, except that the previous versions are not explicitly or implicitly eliminated in the process. They are merely alternate or parallel reinterpretations.

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Notable examples

The following examples are not comprehensive. For the sake of brevity, neutrality, and factuality, they don't attempt to explain or justify alteration-type retcons in the context of their respective continuities (a popular activity among some fans), nor do they address the real-world reasons for them.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
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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.
  • Prior to Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC Comics featured characters who lived on a variety of alternate versions of Earth; afterward, these characters were said to have always lived together on the same Earth. Many characters' origins or back-stories were altered, and Superman, Wonder Woman, Hawkman, and other characters were fully rebooted. A second major set of retcons in DC Comics was in a similar event called Zero Hour, which rebooted the Legion of Super-Heroes.
  • 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 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 (raising the possibility of a mystical/totemic origin for Spider-Man's powers) to the drastic (revealing that Gwen Stacy had 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.
  • 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.
  • In 2005, the webcomic Melonpool was rebooted. Creator Steve Troop also removes the original material from the strip's online archives, including the storyline in which the reboot took place.
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Radio

  • In the 1940s radio serial The Green Hornet, the crime-fighting hero's faithful manservant Kato was originally described as Japanese. In 1941, in anticipation of hostilities between the United States and Japan, his ethnicity was changed to Filipino.
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Television

  • 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.
  • An entire season of the soap opera Dallas was later dismissed as Pam Ewing's dream, including the death of her ex-husband Bobby, who famously emerges from a shower as if it nothing had happened. The spin-off series, Knots Landing continued as though the events of this season had 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 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 his fictional wife Emily. 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 had been a book she was writing.
  • At the beginning of Happy Days the Howard and Marion Cunningham have an oldest son Chuck who is never seen after the first season, and Richie and Joanie are frequently referred to as the couple's only children. (See Chuck Cunningham Syndrome.)
  • 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 nor 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.
  • In the soap opera 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.
  • In the soap opera Days of our Lives, an amnesiac newcomer named John Black was revealed in 1986 to be the believed-dead policeman/ex-secret agent Roman Brady, who had been given plastic surgery and brainwashed to believe he was an assassin in 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 DiMera and the man known as John Black was in fact a DiMera mercenary with no memory of his true past.
  • In the soap opera 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.
  • In the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer the character of Angel was not originally penned as a vampire with a soul, though this retconning later in the series did not actively contradict previous episodes.
  • 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.
  • Near the end of the Frieza Saga in Dragon Ball Z, it is revealed that Goku is the Super Saiyan, fulfulling a legend that there would be one born every thousand years. However, as the story continues, every other Saiyan character in the story eventually attains the state of Super Saiyan.
  • In South Park, Kenny dies in almost every episode, yet is alive to die in the next, as a running gag. This phenomenon was itself satirically retconned in an episode that "revealed" that after every time Kenny died, his parents had a new baby and named him "Kenny".
  • In WWE, the biography of the character Kane has been repeatedly revised.
  • 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, Ernie 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.
  • The Simpsons is known for having very casual continuity, with events in any given episode routinely contradicted in later episodes.
  • In the television series Futurama, there are numerous facts which are retconned. Among them are the revelation that Turanga Leela is a mutant and not an alien in "Leela's Homeworld," the revelation that Fry was forced into the cryogenic chamber by a time-traveling alien (Nibbler) in "The Why of Fry," and the revelation that Fry is his own grandfather in "Roswell That Ends Well." These mostly serve to clarify or expand upon the initially stated histories of these characters and not to supercede them.
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Film

  • By their very nature, the Star Wars prequels are loaded with retcons in the broader sense of the term, such as a previously unmentioned relationship between Yoda and Chewbacca introduced in Revenge of the Sith. The prequels also contain some overt revisions of history, as in The Phantom Menace, where it is revealed that Anakin Skywalker built C-3PO, and in Episode III, 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 (partially explained by C-3PO's memory wipe at the end of Revenge of the Sith, coupled with the ambiguity of R2-D2's unintelligible dialogue, though this does not explain why Owen and Beru do not recognize their former droid).
  • In the film Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a machine is sent from the future to kill John Connor, who is established as being ten years old during the film's events. The opening narration of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines changes this, stating that the machine tried to strike when John was thirteen.
  • 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.
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Literature

  • In art based on mythology, the opening of a poem or play is often based on an assumption which explicitly changes the source material. A famous example from Greek drama is the premise of Euripides play Helen, which explains its premise early in the work. The play recounts that Helen of Troy did not run off with Paris (thereby inciting the Trojan War), but was whisked away to Egypt by Hera.
  • 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. Narratively this was explained by depicting the original version as a misrepresentation perpetuated 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 to the Jupiter system, to conform with the movie version of 2001 by Stanley Kubrick. Clarke has stated that each sequel to 2001 exists in its own continuity and follows 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).
  • So Long and Thanks for All the Fish from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series is set in a parallel universe where the destruction of planet earth never took place, and Arthur Dent returns home, telling his friends he had "a marvellous time in California" and has had a "face-drop" to look substantially older than he should be.
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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. A 1998 episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ("Dr. Bashir I Presume?") contained a statement that suggested the wars took place in the 22nd Century (later said to be an error). 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. 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.
  • 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.
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Video games

  • In Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, Snake confronts and kills Big Boss, but nothing is mentioned about the two being related. However, in the sequel Metal Gear Solid, it is revealed that not only did Snake learned that he was Big Boss' son during the events of Metal Gear 2, but that he is also a clone of him.
  • 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. A few minor details from the previous games were retconned, such as the loss of Big Boss' right eye (originally established to have been lost during the 1980s) and Ocelot's age during the events of Metal Gear Solid (originally established to be in his fifties).
  • 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.
  • In the original English-language version of Street Fighter II, Guile seeks revenge against M. Bison for killing his best friend, Charlie in the Vietnam War, over 20 years before. However, this is revised in each game that Charlie has appeared in. The final canon version, as depicted in Guile's ending in Street Fighter Alpha 3, has Charlie dying while working with Guile and Chun-Li to destroy Bison's Psycho Drive.
  • Squaresoft re-released the Super Nintendo video game 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.
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Ignored sequels in various media

  • The 88MPH Studios 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 television series, which also retcon Connor's triumph in the original Highlander as merely a major victory, rather than the final battle of "The Game."
  • After developing Twisted Metal and Twisted Metal 2, SingleTrac left Sony. Twisted Metal 3 and Twisted Metal 4 were developed by Sony's 989 Studios. The original developer later returned and created Twisted Metal: Head-On, a direct sequel to Twisted Metal 2 which disgarded the events of Twisted Metal 3 and Twisted Metal 4.
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See also

Retrieved from "http://tvwiki.tv/wiki/Retcon"
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