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Famous Retcons

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Patryn

Member
Stet said:
How many times was that even retconned? I feel like I got screwed around on Samantha Mulder so many times that I began to doubt if she had ever existed.

They lost me when she was somehow simultaneously abducted by a pedophile, aliens AND the conspiracy.
 
the chris said:
4QLt1.jpg

Worst ever, the reasoning behind it was so awful too.
 

Ri'Orius

Member
Dead said:
Probably referring to
Turns out Veronica wasn't raped at that party. One season later, oh shit, turns out she was!

Well, hang on:
I thought she was always raped at the party? It's just in S1 she was raped by a drunk Duncan, which wasn't so bad?
 

Patryn

Member
Mike M said:
Is that the one where it turns out Swamp Thing isn't Alex (I think that was his name), but an organism that thinks it is because it incorporated his remains as his corpse decomposed and some hand waving involving teaching flatworms to run a maze?

Yes. But I believe that retcon has now been retconned, so it actually WAS Alec the whole time, or something.

Ri'Orius said:
Well, hang on:
I thought she was always raped at the party? It's just in S1 she was raped by a drunk Duncan, which wasn't so bad?

It was consensual with Duncan.
 
Granger Danger said:
Dawn Summers prior to season 5.

eXvei.jpg


Yes, this cover (Season 8 issue 20) is canon, meaning that Dawn was now officially around from the very beginning. The monks' manufactured memories have become the real ones.
I stopped reading Season 8 years ago so I never saw this. Fuck that shit.
 
Bregor said:
Lots of bad retcons so far, any more good ones?
The Buffy one I posted (a major character that is basically a collective figment of the imagination of everybody else) is actually a good one. When I think of bad retcons, nothing beats Cally on BSG being retconned as a total slut just so Hera could stay the only hybrid baby.
 
Solo said:
Its not famous because people didn't watch the show (fuck you, America!), but Veronica Mars features my most hated retcon in all of fiction.

I've only watched the first season. What was the retcon?

Granger Danger said:
Dawn Summers prior to season 5.

eXvei.jpg


Yes, this cover (Season 8 issue 20) is canon, meaning that Dawn was now officially around from the very beginning. The monks' manufactured memories have become the real ones.

I don't mind this. Makes sense within the continuity of the show.
 

marrec

Banned
Granger Danger said:
Dawn Summers prior to season 5.

Yes, this cover (Season 8 issue 20) is canon, meaning that Dawn was now officially around from the very beginning. The monks' manufactured memories have become the real ones.

Season 8 is complete shit to begin with. Its essentially Joss Whedon writing his own horrible fan-fiction. If I don't acknowledge its existence then it doesn't have to be real and I can watch Season 4 with the full knowledge that Dawn is just a riddle in the final episode.
 
In Star Trek II Wrath of Khan, Khan Noonien Singh knowing Pavel Chekov. Walter Koenig wasn't even a cast member when the Space Seed episode aired.
 

LuchaShaq

Banned
The giant ball of rage these threads have for star wars makes me glad I haven't seen any of the originals since I was 10-12 (and barely remember anything beyond YAY CHEWBACCA'S COOL), and only have seen the prequels have drunk on cable at 2 am.
 
Doesn't Fringe do a ton of retcons? I haven't watched the first season in a long time, but I remember something about Walter building a time machine/teleporter to find the cure for Peter when he was a kid.

Eureka did a pretty big retcon with this season where they went back in time and changed their present a little bit. Alison's son isn't autistic anymore, Zane and Joe never hooked up, Joe works for GD, Fargo is the head of GD, and Henry got married. Nothing too major, and I thought it worked out pretty well for the show.

Right when that season started they did a minor retcon (maybe it's not the right words) in the "previously on Eureka" intro. The last season ended with Jack and this scientist chick running off together, but because they probably didn't have time to put it into the episode they had the characters break up in the "Previously on Eureka."
 

Patryn

Member
Rodney McKay said:
Doesn't Fringe do a ton of retcons? I haven't watched the first season in a long time, but I remember something about Walter building a time machine/teleporter to find the cure for Peter when he was a kid.

Eureka did a pretty big retcon with this season where they went back in time and changed their present a little bit. Alison's son isn't autistic anymore, Zane and Joe never hooked up, Joe works for GD, Fargo is the head of GD, and Henry got married. Nothing too major, and I thought it worked out pretty well for the show.

Right when that season started they did a minor retcon (maybe it's not the right words) in the "previously on Eureka" intro. The last season ended with Jack and this scientist chick running off together, but because they probably didn't have time to put it into the episode they had the characters break up in the "Previously on Eureka."

Given what we know about Peter and Walter, I don't think this has been retconned. He did have to "travel" to cure him, after all.
 
Megadragon15 said:
In Star Trek II Wrath of Khan, Khan Noonien Singh knowing Pavel Chekov. Walter Koenig wasn't even a cast member when the Space Seed episode aired.

Of course he met Chekov, he passed him on the way to the bathroom.
 

Mike M

Nick N
What's the current official line on Superman's status immediately after Death of Superman? I know during Return of Superman, Eradicator explicitly said that Superman was "categorically deceased" when Superman raised the possibility that he was only in a coma. But I vaguely recall in the subsequent years that it WAS referred to as a coma. Not that the answer one way or the other changes anything.
 
Patryn said:
Given what we know about Peter and Walter, I don't think this has been retconned. He did have to "travel" to cure him, after all.
Yeah, but I clearly remember him saying it was a time machine teleporter combo. The thing that got the one guy out of prison. I don't know, maybe that device still fits in if he built it BEFORE
his Peter died
.
 
Rodney McKay said:
Eureka did a pretty big retcon with this season where they went back in time and changed their present a little bit. Alison's son isn't autistic anymore, Zane and Joe never hooked up, Joe works for GD, Fargo is the head of GD, and Henry got married. Nothing too major, and I thought it worked out pretty well for the show.

Right when that season started they did a minor retcon (maybe it's not the right words) in the "previously on Eureka" intro. The last season ended with Jack and this scientist chick running off together, but because they probably didn't have time to put it into the episode they had the characters break up in the "Previously on Eureka."

Eureka's new timeline is infuriating in so many ways. Especially since everything is basically the same now. Also I was SO confused when Jack wasn't with Allison's friend anymore. The worst part was they retconned the ENTIRE universe and still didn't bring back Nathan. W. T. F.
 

Patryn

Member
Rodney McKay said:
Yeah, but I clearly remember him saying it was a time machine teleporter combo. The thing that got the one guy out of prison. I don't know, maybe that device still fits in if he built it BEFORE
his Peter died
.

But didn't he get out of prison by traveling into the other world?
 
brucewaynegretzky said:
Eureka's new timeline is infuriating in so many ways. Especially since everything is basically the same now. Also I was SO confused when Jack wasn't with Allison's friend anymore. The worst part was they retconned the ENTIRE universe and still didn't bring back Nathan. W. T. F.
Yeah, I thought that would have been the obvious choice. Maybe he IS back, but nobody bothered to find out with everything else that's been going on. haha

Oh, and I thought of a new Retcon:

In Stargate SG:1 they originally came out of the stargate covered with frost (blah blah science blah blah), but they stopped doing that pretty quickly.

And other Fringe one but very spoilery if you aren't caught up:
Peter never existed
, but I assume they'll find a way to fix that in the next season, there's no way they couldn't.
 

border

Member
Granger Danger said:
Dawn Summers prior to season 5.

eXvei.jpg


Yes, this cover (Season 8 issue 20) is canon, meaning that Dawn was now officially around from the very beginning. The monks' manufactured memories have become the real ones.

http://www.seanpaune.com/2008/12/17/buffy-season-8-issue-20/

Reading the synopsis, it sounds like nothing in there is canon -- it was all a dream meant to envision what the Buffy animated series would have been like. I don't see how you can consider a one-off fantasy like that to be actually changing the Buffy continuity.
 

Mike M

Nick N
Rodney McKay said:
Doesn't Fringe do a ton of retcons? I haven't watched the first season in a long time, but I remember something about Walter building a time machine/teleporter to find the cure for Peter when he was a kid.

Eureka did a pretty big retcon with this season where they went back in time and changed their present a little bit. Alison's son isn't autistic anymore, Zane and Joe never hooked up, Joe works for GD, Fargo is the head of GD, and Henry got married. Nothing too major, and I thought it worked out pretty well for the show.

Right when that season started they did a minor retcon (maybe it's not the right words) in the "previously on Eureka" intro. The last season ended with Jack and this scientist chick running off together, but because they probably didn't have time to put it into the episode they had the characters break up in the "Previously on Eureka."
Eureka's continuity is something of a mess. You have the initial timeline, which was altered when Henry went back in time to save his girlfriend's life, which was altered again when Carter went back to stop him, which was altered again after they went back to the 40's.

And you know the show is never going to address that the whole reason Carter and Zoe wound up in Eureka in the first place was because he wrecked his car when he got distracted by another Carter and Zoe in a car heading in the opposite direction with Zoe waving. More time travel!
 
Patryn said:
But didn't he get out of prison by traveling into the other world?
What I remember is that Peter built a time machine but it had the unforeseen effect of also teleporting people. It also fucks you up pretty bad, but they never go into details other than the main bad guy blowing through a wall and getting all nasty later on.

All that device did was take the guy from his prison to the United States. That's how I remember it anyways. It was a different device from the dimension opener, I know that much. The bad guy spends of the rest of the season trying to get INTO the other world to find Bell.
 
Count of Monte Sawed-Off said:
This pissed me off. He's such a bad fucking shot.

He's supposedly a bounty hunter, right? And he misses across a booth? Yeah.

Never mind softening Han's character arc.

Dammit.


the chris said:
4QLt1.jpg

The one that I bring up the most is the 'One More Day' storyline in Spider-Man. It erased his marriage, brought back Harry Osborne who had died years before, got rid of his organic webshooters, and erased the public knowledge of his secret identity. Spider-Man's marriage was undone due to then Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada thought that readers could not relate to a married Peter Parker. The retcon took place when Peter's Aunt May was shot and the only way to save her was by essentially selling his marriage to Mephisto.
ITwmC.jpg


This angers me to no end. I'm a big Peter/MJ fan and loved the aspect of Peter being married. There are tons of heroes who aren't married, why change this one? I thought it added a great element to the whole thing - works during the day to pay the bills, goes out at night to help people, has a wife to worry about making a widow if he isn't careful, has an aunt to take care of, etc.

Such an awesome character. I refuse to recognize anything post-Mary Jane. I decided to go back and start at the beginning with the Masterworks series and forget the new stuff entirely.

I used to love Queseda as an artist, but in his new post I'm not a fan at all.
 
Mike M said:
Eureka's continuity is something of a mess. You have the initial timeline, which was altered when Henry went back in time to save his girlfriend's life, which was altered again when Carter went back to stop him, which was altered again after they went back to the 40's.

And you know the show is never going to address that the whole reason Carter and Zoe wound up in Eureka in the first place was because he wrecked his car when he got distracted by another Carter and Zoe in a car heading in the opposite direction with Zoe waving. More time travel!
Ugh, I hated the first time travel retcon just because it extended the Carter/Alison relationship out another 3 seasons or so.
 

Solo

Member
DoctorWho said:
I've only watched the first season. What was the retcon?

Remember how in S1
Veronica had this big chip on her shoulder because she was an outcast and thought she had been raped? And how cathartic it was for her to find out she actually had consentual sex with Duncan at the end of the season? Well, S2's finale retcons that so that she actually was raped by Cassidy Casablancas BEFORE having consentual sex with Duncan. And then Cassidy kills a bunch of kids by crashing a bus, does some moustache-twirling, and leaps to his death. So awful.
How terrible the show got in S2 is made all the more painful by how much I love Veronica Mars S1.
 

Raydeen

Member
Davros & The Daleks in Doctor Who.

In the original series in 1963 (infact the 2nd ever Doctor Who story) the Daleks are clearly introduced as being the survivors of a great war, so mutated by radiation they can only exist inside a special casing (The Dalek machine), confined and never ever being able to leave their city.

genesis8.jpg


Jump forward 14 years to Tom Baker and the Genesis of the Daleks, the Timelord's take the Doctor back in time to the creation of the Daleks, so he may prevent their construction. Where we meet Davros, who is purposefully mutating the Kaled people to place inside the Dalek machines to create his dream master race. A cool episode, but totally at odds with the early canon. In particular the orginal Daleks can only travel inside their city using static electricity as an energy source, but in Genesis, they are clearly shown moving around outside in the wastelands exterminating people.
 

WanderingWind

Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
border said:
http://www.seanpaune.com/2008/12/17/buffy-season-8-issue-20/

Reading the synopsis, it sounds like nothing in there is canon -- it was all a dream meant to envision what the Buffy animated series would have been like. I don't see how you can consider a one-off fantasy like that to be actually changing the Buffy continuity.

Yeah, that's one thing. The other thing is
Xander and Dawn.
Which is just as bad as
Anya and Spike - which ruined the entire show for me.
 
Rodney McKay said:
Ugh, I hated the first time travel retcon just because it extended the Carter/Alison relationship out another 3 seasons or so.

Also did anyone else notice how head of GD was this crazy position at first for Nathan and gradually just kind of became more of a nickname than anything else? Ever since Nathan's been gone the show has gone downhill. Carter/Nathan banter was the best thing about the show. Its still fun to watch but I just can't muster up the same kind of love for it anymore.
 

Davedough

Member
Star Trek's Klingons.

They looked completely different in the 60s and when Roddenberry brought out the motion pictures, he radically changed the Klingon race. This wasn't brought up in the movie, but later in Deep Space Nine, they flashed back to something and used old footage from the show which showed the Klingons of the past and Worf was asked WTF. His simple reply.... "It's a long story and we dont talk about it with outsiders"... or something to that effect.
 

WanderingWind

Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
Davedough said:
Star Trek's Klingons.

They looked completely different in the 60s and when Roddenberry brought out the motion pictures, he radically changed the Klingon race. This wasn't brought up in the movie, but later in Deep Space Nine, they flashed back to something and used old footage from the show which showed the Klingons of the past and Worf was asked WTF. His simple reply.... "It's a long story and we dont talk about it with outsiders"... or something to that effect.

Pretty sure that Enterprise "explained" what happened. I haven't started that series though, so I may be mistaken.
 

goldenpp72

Member
Raydeen said:
Davros & The Daleks in Doctor Who.

In the original series in 1963 (infact the 2nd ever Doctor Who story) the Daleks are clearly introduced as being the survivors of a great war, so mutated by radiation they can only exist inside a special casing (The Dalek machine), confined and never ever being able to leave their city.

genesis8.jpg


Jump forward 14 years to Tom Baker and the Genesis of the Daleks, the Timelord's take the Doctor back in time to the creation of the Daleks, so he may prevent their construction. Where we meet Davros, who is purposefully mutating the Kaled people to place inside the Dalek machines to create his dream master race. A cool episode, but totally at odds with the early canon. In particular the orginal Daleks can only travel inside their city using static electricity as an energy source, but in Genesis, they are clearly shown moving around outside in the wastelands exterminating people.

This is actually one of the rare instances I really enjoyed a redoing of a plot point, one of my fav episodes :)
 

Davedough

Member
WanderingWind said:
Pretty sure that Enterprise "explained" what happened. I haven't started that series though, so I may be mistaken.

From what I remember you're right, but it was some convoluted explanation about human/klingon gene experimentation that was done on the federation border or some shit and they were put there in an attempt to infiltrate the federation, but the current look of them were actually what was known as Imperial Klingons.

I feel far too geeky to know this shit.
 

Funky Papa

FUNK-Y-PPA-4
the chris said:
4QLt1.jpg

The one that I bring up the most is the 'One More Day' storyline in Spider-Man. It erased his marriage, brought back Harry Osborne who had died years before, got rid of his organic webshooters, and erased the public knowledge of his secret identity. Spider-Man's marriage was undone due to then Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada thought that readers could not relate to a married Peter Parker. The retcon took place when Peter's Aunt May was shot and the only way to save her was by essentially selling his marriage to Mephisto.
ITwmC.jpg
Wasn't this reversed in some bizarre way? Or maybe they fell in love again? I can't remember right now.
 
Davedough said:
From what I remember you're right, but it was some convoluted explanation about human/klingon gene experimentation that was done on the federation border or some shit and they were put there in an attempt to infiltrate the federation, but the current look of them were actually what was known as Imperial Klingons.

I feel far too geeky to know this shit.
Man, I loved the last season of Enterprise. Why couldn't the whole series have been like this instead of time travel crap for most of it?
 

Slayven

Member
Funky Papa said:
Wasn't this reversed in some bizarre way? Or maybe they fell in love again? I can't remember right now.
No, there was a whole issue where they hugged it out and did the whole "I love you, but I am not in love with you".
 

evilwart

Member
Is it a retcon if the change happens within the actual universe? Like with Spiderman and Eureka, the original events/timelines happened, but were changed by events within the actual comics/tv show universe. From a narrative sense, the original events/timelines still happened but were overwritten. In the grand scheme of things the original events are still part of the story.

The changes in Star Wars on the other hand happen outside the Star Wars universe, i.e. Lucas changes stuff for the sake of changing stuff, and there is no explanation or acknowledgement of the changes within the Star Wars universe. From a narrative sense, Han shooting first no longer happened within the Star Wars universe. Greedo always shot first.
 
Funky Papa said:
Wasn't this reversed in some bizarre way? Or maybe they fell in love again? I can't remember right now.

They tried to put some logic into how it happened behind the scenes, but it just made the whole thing even dumber
 
evilwart said:
Is it a retcon if the change happens within the actual universe? Like with Spiderman and Eureka, the original events/timelines happened, but were changed by events within the actual comics/tv show universe. From a narrative sense, the original events/timelines still happened but were overwritten. In the grand scheme of things the original events are still part of the story.

The changes in Star Wars on the other hand happen outside the Star Wars universe, i.e. Lucas changes stuff for the sake of changing stuff, and there is no explanation or acknowledgement of the changes within the Star Wars universe. From a narrative sense, Han shooting first no longer happened within the Star Wars universe. Greedo always shot first.

This is the "retcons aren't retcons" argument. In the end when writers throw out everything and start all over people consider it a retcon.
 
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