Retcon

From Free net encyclopedia

(Redirected from Retconned)

Retroactive continuity – commonly contracted to the blend retcon – is the adding of 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; this is the context in which the term was coined. 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.

Contents

[edit]

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.)

[edit]

Types of Retcons

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

[edit]

Addition

Some retcons do not directly contradict previously established facts, but "fill in" missing background details, usually to support 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, a common theme in his work on All-Star Squadron. Kurt Busiek took a similar approach with Untold Tales of Spider-Man, a series which told stories that specifically 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 events (especially real-world historical events), revealing a different interpretation of (or motivation for) the events. Some of Tim Powers novels are examples of this, such as Last Call, which suggests that Bugsy Siegel's actions were due to his being a modern-day Fisher King.

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.

[edit]

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: writer Arthur Conan Doyle killed off the popular character in an encounter with his foe Professor Moriarty, only to bring Holmes back, due in large part to audience response.

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.

[edit]

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 very 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 the previous story or explicitly establish that it "never happened". Likewise, 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.)

[edit]

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. For example, the ongoing continuity contradictions on episodic TV series such as The Golden Girls reflects very loose continuity, not genuine retcons. However, in series with generally tight continuity, retcons are sometimes created after the fact to explain continuity errors. Retconning 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. These are merely alternate or parallel reinterpretations.

[edit]

Notable examples

Template:Main

A comprehensive list of retcons is impossible, but the following are better-known examples. 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), nor to explain the real-world reasons for them.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
[edit]

Comics

  • Prior to Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC Comics featured characters who lived on a variety of alternative 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 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 extremely controversial retcons, such as "revealing" that Spider-Man's powers are mystical/totemic instead of science-based, and "revealing" that Gwen Stacy retroactively 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.
  • 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 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."
[edit]

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 nothing had happened. The spin-off series, Knots Landing continued as though the events of this season had in fact occurred, and the two series never crossed paths again.
  • The animated series Family Guy had an episode in 1999 in which Peter managed to save his family from the Y2K apocalypse by secreting them in a bomb shelter. The episode ends with a live action sequence, in which the actors from Dallas re-enact Bobby's emergence from a shower while Pam explains amazedly what she now realizes was merely a dream about the events of that Family Guy episode. Bobby looks puzzled and replies "What's Family Guy?"
  • 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 year's episodes 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. (See Chuck Cunningham syndrome.)
  • 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.
  • 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 the 1996 revival of Carla Lane's sitcom The Liver Birds, Beryl refers to rabbit-loving Lucien as her brother, but in the original 1970s version he was the brother of Carol (who had succeeded Beryl as Sandra's flatmate).
  • In the pilot film for The Six Million Dollar Man, Steve Austin's superior is identified as Oliver Spencer. In the novels upon which the series was based, his boss was Oscar Goldman. When a sequel to the pilot film was produced, Wine, Women and War, Spencer was replaced by the Goldman character and the opening credits - which retold part of the story of the first film - performed retconning by placing Goldman, not Spencer, in charge of Austin's conversion into a bionic man. Also, during the series a two-part episode had Austin's fiance, Jaime Sommers, dying from complications related to her bionic surgery – the television audience protested the death of a new, but popular, character, so the next season the plot was retconned to have Jaime not die, but be placed in suspended animation during surgery.
  • In one episode of the sitcom That '70s Show, Donna Pinciotti is seen babysitting her 14 year old sister Tina. Tina is never seen again and mentioned in a soap opera parody ending to the episode "Vanstock", in which a narrator asks "What ever happened to Midge's (Donna's Mother) other daughter, Tina?"
[edit]

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 Attack of the Clones 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. There is an argument to be made for the idea that the revelation in the original trilogy of Darth Vader as Luke's father and Princess Leia as Luke's sister are retcons, (especially the matter of Luke and Leia, since they have a fledgling romantic relationship in A New Hope and the following novels).
  • 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 television 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 has promised a happier ending.
[edit]

Literature

  • 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 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).
  • The original three books of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy depicted a strongly male-dominated world, with women marginlised in or completely excluded in the practice of magic, which in this world is a major source of political and soaicl power. After being strongly critised by Feminists, in later parts of the series Leguin made considerable efforts to redress the balance. For example, it is disclosed that the mage Ogion, the hero's beloved tutor and mentor, had himself learned his magic from a woman, and that the Magicians' Scool at Roke was itself originally founded by women.
[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. 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 prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise was considered a retcon by some, as it contradicted fanon that had been established over the years by fans.
  • An early episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced the Borg, apparently for the first time, and suggested Starfleet was unaware of their existence. A later episode of Star Trek: Voyager, "The Raven", contradicted this by establishing that Starfleet had been aware of the Borg for at least 20 years (other productions, including Star Trek: Generations and Enterprise, would suggest Starfleet would have had some knowledge of the Borg decades or even centuries earlier).
[edit]

Video games

  • In Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, Snake confronts and kills Big Boss before finding out that he is his father. However, in the sequel Metal Gear Solid, it is revealed that he is 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.
  • 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.
  • In online text-based roleplaying games, such as MUSHes, actions by players which are grossly against in-character facts, or established character personalities, may be retconned by administrators in order to maintain the flow of the game's continuity.
  • Metroid Zero Mission for Game Boy Advance essentially retcons the original Metroid for NES, explaining why Samus has a different Power Suit in the sequels as well as the origin of the Wrecked Ship zone in Super Metroid. Likewise in order to make the series less dependent on the titular aliens, the word 'metroid' was retconned to mean 'ultimate warrior' in the Chozo language in the manual of Metroid Fusion for Game Boy Advance, which could thus signify Samus Aran herself instead of the lifeform.
[edit]

Ignored sequels in various media

  • 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." A press briefing for the TV series referred to this, stating, "The origin of Immortals is not known and probably never will be (aliens from the planet Zeist? What aliens from the planet Zeist?)." 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 financer bullying forced the Immortals' origin to be as they are in the normal version.
  • 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 declared Legends (and several other games) non-canonical, essentially removing Sonia Belmont from the "Castlevania Timeline." This is still a topic of controversy within the Castlevania fanbase, especially since Igarashi later produced Lament of Innocence, which became the official start of the timeline.
  • 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.
[edit]

See also

sv:Retcon

Retrieved from "http://www.netipedia.com/index.php/Retcon"