"Now it is a curious fact that this is not the story as Bilbo first told it to his companions."
— Prologue to The Lord of the Rings
A Rewrite is a Retcon which directly ignores, contradicts, or alters information in the work's established Canon, Backstory or Worldbuilding.
This is the kind people are usually assuming when they use the word "retcon", if nothing else because it's the easiest to confirm — just go look at the texts side-by-side and observe that the newer text is deliberately negating the older. When it's unintentional, it's a Plot Hole, though it can still become a rewrite if the author decides to keep the new version of things.
The introduction of a Cousin Oliver or Long-Lost Uncle Aesop is often a Revision whereas the use of Chuck Cunningham Syndrome and Remember the New Guy? is often a rewrite. Another Darrin may be either or both.
If the previous story is literally rewritten to match the new version of events, it's an Orwellian Retcon. If it happens In-Universe, it is Orwellian Editing. Canon Discontinuity is a type of rewrite in that it excludes certain entries from the new continuity. A Cliffhanger Copout is a short-term example, where the events that just happened last story are rewritten.
Contrast Revision, in which the retcon does not contradict existing information.
Not to be confused with Key/Visual Arts' visual novel of the same title, or the protagonist of the self-titled Friday Night Funkin' mod.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- From the Death Note franchise comes the two Death Note Rewrite movies. However, these movies are generally just recaps of events that happened in the anime through a different perspective and the name is a pun on the show's premise.
Comic Books
- Freedom Fighters: When the team was first introduced in Crisis on Earth-X, and later in their first ongoing series, their origin was simply that they lived in Earth-X, and later moved to Earth-1 when Earth-X got boring, and that was pretty much it. Roy Thomas later wrote a "prelude" to Crisis on Earth-X that altered things so that the Fighters now had all come from Earth-2, which, if you read the earlier stories, seems pretty impossible, as you'd think someone would recognize them from their adventures in the All-Star Squadron. There's also the fact that, if this is true, they should look around 20-30 years older now, which they don't, but let's not talk about that...
- Hawkman: Part of the infamous "Hawk-Snarl" was that Justice League International's Hawkman was retconned to be an imposter named Fel Andar, and that it was claimed that said imposter had been masquerading as "Carter Hall Jr.", son of the original Hawkman. If you read the JLI comics he appears in, this isn't brought up, and there are times where he's called "Katar" (as in, the Thanagarian Hawkman) by other characters. Now that he was being retconned as an imposter, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for him to reveal his alien origins to them, since it would defeat the purpose of his mission.
- Kid Colt (2009): The series revises a few things about Colt's past, with no attempt to explain the contradictions. His real surname is now Cole, not Colt. The circumstances surrounding his family's murder, and the identities of the killers, have also changed - the villains are now the McGreeley family (previous Kid Colt comics had already changed this backstory several times).
- Rocket Raccoon: The Rocket Raccoon and Groot back ups in Annihilators strongly suggests that pretty much all the events of the original Rocket Raccoon miniseries were Fake Memories based very loosely on the true events of why Rocket left Halfworld. Instead of defeating the evil toymaker Judson Jakes, curing the Loonies and setting off with Lyla and Wal Russ to explore, he left alone to stop any Loonies escaping, after the kindhearted doctor Judson Jakes succumbed to a madness plague spread by the telepathic Star Thief. As the shift in Jakes's occupation suggests, the details of exactly how and why Halfworld functions as an asylum were changed as well, with the animal inhabitants going from simply being intelligent therapy pets to qualified mental health professionals.
- In The Incredible Hulk (1968) #271, which introduced Rocket and his world, a few details of the Halfworld setting were different from how they were depicted in the later miniseries. E.G.: the Keystone Kops were the only humans, Judson Jakes controls the Spacewheel, Mayhem Mekaniks was called Inter-Stel Mechanics, and Lord Dyvyne doesn't exist.
- Strangers in Paradise: The comic book, in Vol. 3 issue #43, presents us with both an actual and a metafictional rewrite: It apparently takes place years later, when Francine and Katchoo are an elderly couple with a daughter named Ashley. Ashley has submitted a novel to a publisher, which turns out to be the story of Strangers in Paradise itself, and the publisher suggests a rewrite to make it flow better. After some minor outrage from Francine and Katchoo, they back the idea of a rewrite to make it more true to the "love story" aspect of their history, and the issue ends with the phrase, "End of Version 1." In the following issues, we see different takes of Francine revealing her first pregnancy, finally resolving in Francine going back to Katchoo, causing the rewrite to morph into a "saving throw" of removing a flash forward plot-thread from the start of volume three of the series where it's revealed that Katchoo and Francine had broken up and not seen each other in years (changed to several months and due to Katchoo being caught in bed with Casey). David's death remains intact however.
- Less overt but still a bit of a major sting, was the issue of Katchoo's step-father's death. Terry Moore had stated in the book's letter page that the step-father, who sexually assaulted Katchoo, was long dead when asked about the character's family. But he later opted to have him die during the middle of the series' third volume, with an issue dedicated to Katchoo (who didn't know about it until after he was dead and buried) racing to his grave in order to vandalize it with the word's "Child Molester" burnt into the tombstone.
Comic Strips
- Calvin and Hobbes: The first two strips shows Calvin and Hobbes's first meeting, and the third, fourth, and fifth strips suggest that Calvin's dad and Mrs. Wormwood were getting used to acknowledging Hobbes's presence. At the time, creator Bill Watterson felt it was important to establish how the titular duo became friends, but he later notes in The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book that he now finds it unnecessary. In a later strip
, Hobbes comments that he knew Calvin before the latter turned three years old, refuting the earlier strips' origin story where Calvin was six years old during their "first meeting".
- Garfield: In the original strips, Odie is seen as moving in with, and being owned by, Jon's roommate, Lyman. When Lyman was written out, flashbacks tended to show Jon buying Odie at a pet store.
Fan Works
- In a strange in-universe example, the Lemony Narrator of Equestria: A History Revealed unashamedly rewrites history and facts to suit her goals and interests. At one point she even admits to it, but it's not as though she sees anything wrong with it.
- Family Guy Fanon and The Cleveland Show Fanon rewrite the history of Family Guy and The Cleveland Show, adding new scenes and episodes, taking minor characters and giving them more depth (majority of them were Creator's Favorite of Boyariffic and The Super Blackwing) and changing the timeline out of universe.
- Earlier chapters of Pokémon Crossing were rewritten, with character dynamics being changed, Pokémon battles rewritten, more pop culture references, and changes to foreshadowing future events. The original version is found on Fanfiction.net, while Wattpad and Webnovel host the rewritten version.
- The Star Wars/Mass Effect crossover Fractured (SovereignGFC): The "Epilogue" got pretty much thrown out the airlock to enable the sequel Origins to be written. Other aspects of the sequel are less-contradictory of previous material and fall under Retcons instead.
- Early chapters of My Family and Other Equestrians were rewritten in order to fit more closely into canon (things such as the Tree of Harmony were added to this rewrite when they were not in the original) and setting the story as taking place before "Equestria Games". This rewrite was also an attempt to make Blade Star not as OP, something that the author was worried that would happen in the course of the fic.
- A.A. Pessimal expanded a couple of Assassin characters who only existed in Discworld canon - apparently - as bit-part players and cameos who were no more than a one-line name and job description. The character expansions were done based on shrewd guesses and extrapolation. Later information not available to him at the time (the canonical Assassins' Guild Yearbook) carries sparse information that Terry Pratchett's interpretation of the characters was somewhat different. The 'personality'' of Madame Deux-Epées is broadly correct but the portrait of her is of a woman of different physical appearance to Pessimal's description, for instance. And far from being young and "South African", as intelligent extrapolation suggested, Miss Smith-Rhodes turned out to be a dour middle-aged spinster in a mob-cap who teaches Domestic Science. Word of God is that pessimal prefers his own interpretations and that it's too late to change, although aspects of Madame Deux-Epées' canonical back-story have been Retconned into the Pessimal Discworld.
Film — Animation
- Monsters University: As an Origins Episode, this prequel shows how the protagonists, Mike and Sully, first met each other in university, going from rivals to close friends as they learned how to work together to become the talented Scare Duo seen in Monsters, Inc.. However, University's origin story contradicts the first movie's own backstory as the latter implies that Mike and Sully were friends since elementary school with Mike telling Sully at one point, "You've been jealous of my good looks since the fourth grade." While this could be written off as a joke, a teaser trailer also has Sully and Mike talk about their fifth grade class. Monsters University director Dan Scanlon admits that the story team had to ignore Mike's and Sully's remarks about elementary school because it would have been too awkward of a Time Skip to jump from Mike and Sully's elementary school days to their lives at university, especially when the movie would have had to skip the development of Mike and Sully's friendship in the interim years.
Film — Live-Action
- Dawn of the Dead (1978): In the first movie Night of the Living Dead (1968), some scientists report that space radiation was reanimating the dead. Director George A. Romero later regretted providing a definite cause of the zombie phenomenon, so this sequel ignores the first movie's radiation explanation. Dawn of the Dead does have the characters come up with different theories on what exactly is causing the dead to rise, ranging from pathogens to the supernatural, but it's unclear which, if any, of the aforementioned theories is the correct one.note
- Friday the 13th:
- Friday the 13th Part 2: In the previous installment, Pamela Voorhees goes on a Motive Rant about how her son Jason drowned in Camp Crystal Lake's eponymic lake, but this movie reveals that Jason secretly survived and and was living in Camp Crystal Lake this entire time. There's no further explanation, and it's unclear why Jason never reached out to his mother and inform her that he was still alive.
- Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday: Creighton Duke claims that Jason can only get a true death if he is killed by his blood relatives. This contradicts the earlier entry Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter since Tommy Jarvis managed to put Jason down for good even though he isn't related to Jason in any way. Likewise, the sequels after Final Friday, which not only includes the movies but also the comics and novels, ignore this bloodline rule because (1) Jason needs to resurrect for the plot to happen and (2) it requires at least one of the new characters to be Jason's relative to actually kill him again, which can get contrived.
- Return of the Jedi:
- In this film, Luke realizes that he and Leia are actually long-lost siblings, with Leia claiming to have "always known" of their familial link. This was obviously not the original intent in prior Star Wars material as both A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back show Leia romantically kissing Luke, with the retcon now giving those moments an unintentional subtext. In fact, before the release of The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars creator George Lucas approved of the 1978 sequel novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye, which features Luke and Leia undergoing a huge amount of Unresolved Sexual Tension. Likewise, in Leigh Brackett's early draft for The Empire Strikes Back (read: page 83), Luke's sister was named Nellith, confirming that Leia initially wasn't supposed to be Luke's long-lost sibling. Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz claims that even Return of the Jedi initially didn't have Leia be Luke's sister since Luke's sister was going to make her debut in the sequels.
- The revelation that Leia is Luke's sister also means that she is retroactively a Force-sensitive, but prior films generally treated her as a Badass Normal rather than a Force-sensitive. For example, in A New Hope, Darth Vader comments on sensing the Force in Jedi like Obi-Wan and Luke, but he never acknowledges Leia as a fellow Force-sensitive despite meeting her face to face in the opening. Similarly, in The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda and Obi-Wan prioritize training only Luke to be a Jedi and don't put a high value on Leia's life as they later try to discourage Luke from rescuing her. After Luke leaves for Cloud City to save Leia, Yoda reminds Obi-Wan that "There Is Another" if Luke doesn't return, suggesting that their backup Jedi (a.k.a. Luke's sister) is someone hidden in a safe location and not captured by the Empire at Cloud City. As noted by Leigh Brackett's original draft for The Empire Strikes Back, Luke's sibling was supposed to be a new unseen character named Nellith, so Yoda's "another hope" was indeed not at Cloud City. In Return of the Jedi, Obi-Wan confirms Leia is Luke's sister and retroactively Yoda's "another hope", but in that case, it's never explained why he and Yoda were fine with letting Luke go to Cloud City to rescue Leia as it could have ended with both siblings dead or captured.
- In this film, Luke realizes that he and Leia are actually long-lost siblings, with Leia claiming to have "always known" of their familial link. This was obviously not the original intent in prior Star Wars material as both A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back show Leia romantically kissing Luke, with the retcon now giving those moments an unintentional subtext. In fact, before the release of The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars creator George Lucas approved of the 1978 sequel novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye, which features Luke and Leia undergoing a huge amount of Unresolved Sexual Tension. Likewise, in Leigh Brackett's early draft
- Terminator:
- Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines:
- John says he was 13 years old during the events of 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day, contradicting the latter film's backstory that he was 10 at the time.
- Similarly, Sarah Connor was stated to be in 29 years old in T2. However, as noted by her gravestone in T3, she was at least 37 years old in 1997. Given that T2 took place in 1994–1995, this would mean she was in her mid-thirties during that movie.
- Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: The series is set in 1999, and the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day are said to have happened two years prior in 1997. As noted above, this conflicts with T2's own date of 1994–1995.
- Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines:
- Many cinematic serials, such as Undersea Kingdom were notorious for rewriting Cliffhangers. "Oh no, Crash Corrigan collapsed in the certain death room! Oh, wait, they introduced a floor-hole between episodes and had Crash jump through it, and thus he's no longer being showered in sparks."
- The Little Shop of Horrors: At the beginning, Seymour claims that he doesn't know what Audrey Jr. is, and that he bought the seeds from an old Japanese man on Central Ave, who got the seeds in an order from a plantation next to a cranberry farm. However, around the half-hour mark, Seymour claims that it's a cross between a butterwort and a Venus flytrap. Fans tend to subscribe to the latter, though the former was used as the basis for the plant's origin in the musical.
- Burnt by the Sun states unequivocally at the end that Kotov was executed in 1936 and his wife Marusya died in a gulag in 1940. And Mitya, the antagonist, is seen committing Bath Suicide in the last scene. When sequel Burnt by the Sun 2 was released some years later, all three characters are somehow still alive in 1941. And the character of Nadya, aged six years old in 1936, has somehow grown to adulthood by 1941 (in Real Life the actress who played Nadya had aged into adulthood during the Sequel Gap).
- The Waltons made-for-TV movies of the 1980s-1990s are notorious for these, contradicting details given in the series, and sometimes contradicting each other. To give one example: In the last movie, A Walton Easter, John and Olivia celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary during the same year as the moon landing (1969). That would put them as being married in 1929. However, the TV series was set from approximately 1933 to 1945. When the series begins, John-Boy is in his last few years of high school, making him around 16 at the very least. That would mean he was born around 1916-1917 in the series timeline, with John & Olivia getting married some time before that. These errors may have been because the writers in the movies didn't do their research, or they figured that nobody would notice.
- Timeline consistency would have been tough given the nature of the story-arcs in the last movie, if they still wanted to keep the movie in the late 1960s. For example, John Boy is a newlywed with his first child on the way. This would have been an unlikely scenario for a man of 52 or 53 years old. Also, Elizabeth in the film is obviously younger than middle-aged, but keeping to the original timeline would have made her around 41 years old in 1969 (Kami Cotler was actually 31 or 32 when the movie was made).
Literature
- Alien: River of Pain (the final part of the book trilogy in the revamped Alien continuity, produced in 2017) changes the nature of the xenomorph siege on Hadley's Hope significantly from the way it was portrayed in the films. As shown in both this book and Prometheus: Fire and Stone, Rebecca 'Newt' Jordan was not the only survivor — at least four others (including Captain Brackett, a Marine guard, a small girl named Luisa and a doctor stationed at the Colony) escape on a colony ship that was heretofore unknown or unreferenced by other characters until the end of the book, while a separate group of survivors fled earlier in the siege on a different ship, the Onager, that eventually crash-landed on a different planet. This is at odds with both Aliens: Newt's Tale and the marketing for River of Pain, which both unequivocally state that Newt is the Sole Survivor of the infestation and that no one else escaped.
- Perhaps the most famous (and best handled) example is Tolkien's rewriting of The Hobbit, where Bilbo obtains a ring that confers invisibility in the Misty Mountains. As The Lord of the Rings reveals this to be the One Ring, Gollum's Backstory could no longer have him offering an Artifact of Attraction as a prize to Bilbo for winning the riddle contest; instead, Gollum would never forgive "Baggins" for stealing his ring. A revised edition of The Hobbit was published, and the prologue to The Lord of the Rings explained the inconsistency: the original version was the story Bilbo maintained (building on the idea that The Hobbit was actually an autobiographical novel by Bilbo himself), but Gandalf eventually learned the true story by persistent questioning, and the revision is a re-write by Frodo, telling the true story. In-story, Bilbo finally tells the true story publicly (and to Glóin,) for the first time at the Council of Elrond, more than 70 years after the event.
- The second Jurassic Park book The Lost World (1995) had Ian Malcolm very still alive, despite his apparent death in the first one. (There's even a line in the epilogue about the Costa Rican authorities not permitting his burial).
- The author hangs a lampshade by explaining that rumors of Ian Malcolm's death were exaggerated, and he still suffers ill effects.
- In Gary Brandner's The Howling, the character of Marcia is specifically shot through the eye by a silver bullet and drops dead. In the sequel, Marcia is revealed to be alive after the bullet just grazed her. Her eyes are fine and in human form the only sign of injury is a streak of grey hair. Unfortunately, the silver made it so she could no longer transform properly.
- J.T. Edson wrote several novels that were 'expansions' of earlier short stories. These novels usually change substantial details of the earlier stories. Perhaps the most significant of the changes is revealing that Dusty Fog had married much earlier than Edson had previously established.
- In the Warrior Cats series, the authors came out with a guide book, Secrets of the Clans, when only the first two series were out. It explained how the Clans formed and said that the warrior code was created by the four founding leaders. In the following years, they came out with more story arcs and special editions and heavily expanded on the world, leading the authors to declare parts of it Canon Discontinuity. Code of the Clans shows that the warrior code formed over time in response to difficult situations rather than being established by the Clan founders. Dawn of the Clans, the fifth series, is about how the Clans formed, and the authors have said to consider the Secrets of the Clans story as an elders' tale.
- In BIONICLE: Tale of the Toa, the climax involves the titular Toa heroes defeating their evil shadow clones through Opponent Switch. Later material changed this to them absorbing their doubles into themselves upon realizing that shadow is a part of their being — which was allegedly the original plan for how the scene should play out. The book was also wildly inconsistent with other media (for example, the actual climax in which the Toa face the Big Bad is ignored entirely), so rewrites were necessary to tie the story into the overall mythos.
- In the Apprentice Adept series, Robot Adept has Bane (a human from the fantasy world in the body of his robot counterpart in the sci-fi world) and Agape (an amorphous shapeshifting alien) decide to have a child together. This child is clearly described as being a cyborg, with Agape undergoing asexual reproduction and the part that's split off becoming the "brain" in a robot body. In Unicorn Point, where the child actually appears, she's a shapeshifter who can turn into a robot. This doesn't get explained on any level.
- The whole point of the Harper Hall Trilogy of Dragonriders of Pern novels is that woman can't be Harpers, and while Masterharper Robinton might disagree with this, it requires something truly remarkable for him to go against centuries of tradition and the deeply-held beliefs of his fellow Harpers. In Masterharper of Pern, we learn that Robinton's late wife was a Harper, and after her death the Harper Hall vaguely discouraged women from joining in case they reminded him of her.
Live-Action TV
- Our Miss Brooks: There are two versions of Miss Brooks' arrival in Madison. The first episode (First Day) and the later episode Spare That Rod! have Miss Brooks already teaching at Madison when Mr. Conklin is appointed principal. The later episode, Borrow Money To Fly, features a major rewrite. Miss Brooks arrives to teach at Madison High School, and is greeted by longtime principal Mr. Conklin. The cinematic series finale follows the new continuity, albeit having Miss Brooks meet Mr. Conklin and Mr. Boynton in a slightly different manner.
- Red Dwarf underwent continuous rewrites; or to be more precise showed a cavalier disregard to its own backstory when there was a gag to be made. Most notably, the idea in the early seasons that Lister had barely spoken to Kochanski was contradicted in the novels, where they had a brief relationship before she dumped him. Later episodes would follow the novels' version. Another major one is Rimmer's light bee; it went from being Rimmer's remote projection unit to actually being Rimmer.
- Not to mention that the light bee originally didn't exist. The only way for Rimmer to leave Red Dwarf was within the confinement of a "Hologrammic Projection Cage."
- There were originally 169 crewmembers aboard the titular ship. Given the ship was meant to be five miles long, three miles wide and have hundreds of floors, this was later decided to be a bit small and was revised to 1,169.
- At one point, a TV series was in production that would focus on the nephew of MacGyver, who was an only child in the series.
- On Full House, Uncle Jesse goes from being Jesse Cochran to Jesse Katsopolis.
- In Game of Thrones's first season, Tyrion Lannister and Theon Greyjoy meet while Tyrion is departing Winterfell, and Theon is pretty cordial, even offering tips of which brothel to visit, while Tyrion has a few barbs about the Ironborn and the Greyjoy failed rebellion. Come season 6, Tyrion remembers the meeting as Theon mocking him with dwarf jokes, which Theon doesn't dispute.
- Gilmore Girls has a ton of these:
- In series 1, the grandparents tell Rory and Lorelai at one of the Friday-night-dinners about Richard's departed mother, Rory's great-grandmother. They clearly talk about her in the past tense, she was a wonderful woman, wish you could have met her, etc. Later on, she appears and causes much entertaining havoc. Clearly the writers were embarrassed at having so thoughtlessly thrown away a great opportunity for family dramatics, and just introduced her (Lorelai the first) without even the grace to lampshade-hang the fact that she was supposed to be dead. There is another trope here whose name I don't know, where an actor re-appears in a different role: When Lorelai the first eventually dies, the actress appears at her funeral in the role of her niece /Richard's cousin Marilyn, continuing the legacy by telling adventurous tales about the demised matriarch. Marilyn appears again in the episode when Richard and Emily renew their vows; the writers must have loved her acting, but wanted to switch roles as matriarch Lorelai probably began to wear everyone out (and her death and ensuing funeral shenanigans complete with Emily's breakdown were just too much writer's gold to pass up).
- Jess's parents: when Jess first appears, Luke tells Lorelai that "the prize" that is Jess's father left them 2 years ago, i.e. when Jess was 15. Later on, it is stated that Jess never really knew his father as he left just after Jess was born.
- The way that Jess's mother Liz is talked about also changes quite a bit; again, I guess as the writers realised that here was an opportunity to introduce another promising character, they couldn't quite keep portraying her as the horrible screw-up, unreliable and not really caring about her son enough, as no viewers would have taken to her. They managed quite well by twisting her story into that of a hippy-chick who has finally found her way, given up drugs and promiscuity, and getting her life together, but from the way they talk about her when Jess first appears, you'd never know she was such a likeable person. They do well though, by having both Luke and herself mentioning, a lot, how she used to be a screw-up. It's a better integration into the story than just having a supposedly dead character suddenly appear without comment...
- Kirk veers between personalities, getting quirkier and quirkier as the series goes on. He seems quite reliable and organised in the first season, when he manages Doosey's market, or checks Lorelai's house for termites. He goes more and more nuts, to create more writing (writer's) fun. He also "can't drink coffee" in one episode, but is seen drinking coffee at Luke's diner all the time, both before and after this. Although that could just have been a temporary non-coffee-drinking quirk, like his one-time juice diet.
- In season 2, Emily tells a horrified Lorelai that once on holiday in Thailand with Richard, they spent the entire holiday eating incredibly spicy food and skinny-dipping. However in a much later season, when they are "separated" and Richard lives in the pool house and comes into the main house unannounced, and Emily protests "What if I had been sitting here stark naked?!" Richard replies: "you've never been stark naked! We went skinny-dipping once, and you wore an overcoat!"
- Paris's friends Louise and Madeleine are always into boys, but in series 1 they are portrayed as also being studious and A- and B- students respectively, whereas later they get bad grades and are portrayed as always having had bad grades and no interest in studying. Bad girls are more fun to write in that respect, but it makes it weirder that they would be friends with Paris.
- And let's not forget, of course, the retroactive modification of poor Dean's character! When he first appears Lane Kim tells Rory how Dean is into very cool, hip, of-the-moment bands and literature, and then when love-rival Jess comes on, they have to dumb poor Dean down and have Rory tell Jess how she basically has to educate Dean on cool music (Jess: "Does he know Bjork?" Rory: "I've played him some stuff"). Even much later, when he and Rory are back together and she then meets Logan, Dean gets the bum end of the stick AGAIN, when Logan can discuss journalism and politics and give Rory detailed and superior opinions on her writing, and the have Dean sit in Doosey's market with her, eating day-old sandwiches for a discount, and comment on her article with "I can't comment on this stuff, I just know that I read it and I liked it!"
- Rory changes a lot in later seasons, which can be attributed to being influenced by a wealthy life, snobbish friends and boyfriend and being more engaged in other social and intellectual circles with all the positive and negative consequences that stem from that. It doesn't explain, though, how her 'past' changed as well: early seasons described her childhood as a relatively 'normal' one, and that she was a disciplined kid who liked to read and who'd been largely influenced by her mother's street-smart approach and pop culture. Later seasons described pre-teen Rory as a virtual prodigy with eidetic memory (on one episode, she claimed she'd only need to read an obituary once and she'd remember the person's relatives' names a decade later). Partly plot-justified: early seasons depicted a struggle to work her way up at Chilton and eventually get accepted in the Ivy League, so it was more believable if she was a good student but not an actual genius; later seasons led her to be ridiculously successful at Yale (e.g., editing the daily news despite spending a lot of time partying and dropping out and what not), which could only be remotely possible if she was, in fact, a female Einstein.
- Lorelai's general cleverness was also rewritten to contrast with Rory's: in early seasons, Lorelai was quite well-read and street-smart and quite an academic match for Rory despite her lack of Ivy League background, etc., which perfectly depicted her as a role model for Rory who wanted to give her the opportunities she missed out on. Later sessions keep Lorelai as street-smart, but dumb her down academically to contrast with Rory's increasing (and, as mentioned above, unrealistic) portrayal as a genius. Compare Rory's high-school graduation valedictorian speech with her graduation from Yale later on.
- Christopher's role in Rory's life changed according to what the plot dictated. Sometimes he was described as an almost-permanently absent sperm-donor who knew next to nothing about Rory's life, sometimes it was mentioned he talked to her once a week, depending on how sympathetic the writers wanted to portray him, and depending on how much they wanted to contrast him with Luke, or contrast old-Christopher with new-Christopher (especially after his father died and he wanted to be much more involved in Rory's life).
- Scream: The TV Series: Season 1 ended with the reveal that Audrey was the second Ghostface and thus Piper's accomplice, a fact that was reaffirmed by showrunner Jill Blotevogel when discussing her plans for Season 2. However, Blotevogel and Jaime Paglia later stepped down from their showrunner positions for Season 2, so the new showrunners, Michael Gans and Richard Register, decided to make Kieran the second Ghostface instead. This change retroactively created plot holes because Season 1 firmly established Kieran as an innocent person and Audrey as the killer. For example, in Season 1, Kieran gave his gun to the protagonists out of goodwill, allowing them to take down the other Ghostface, Piper. However, Season 2 doesn't bother answering why Kieran picked up the Retroactive Idiot Ball to help the protagonists kill his partner; ironically, in the Season 2 finale, Kieran reveals that he wants to avenge Piper's death by murdering the protagonists. Likewise, Season 1 implicitly depicts Audrey and Piper working together: both of them try to convince the protagonist Emma that her boyfriend Kieran is the killer, and later, when Piper (as Ghostface) corners Audrey, she just knocks the latter out in a single hit and conveniently doesn't kill her.
Video Games
- The Final Fantasy VII OVA did this, and then Crisis Core did this with both the OVA and the original game.
- The creators have said that the OVA has been replaced by Crisis Core in canon, however, how much of Crisis Core is Revision or Re-Write is arguable. In the original Final Fantasy VII game, we only saw part of the Nibelheim incident, and only from the perspective of Cloud and what he remembered following the experimentation, mako poisoning, mental breakdown/denial, etc., so much of the changes in Crisis Core can be considered Revisions (for example, the fact that Genesis was involved in Nibelheim would seem like a Re-Write, except that Cloud never saw him and Zack never mentioned his appearance to Cloud, so that is likely a Revision).
- God of War II does this to the first game's continuity. At the end of the first game, the narrator expounds upon Kratos's retaining the throne of the God of War for all time, explicitly showing flash-forwards to WWII and modern counter-terrorist forces as she talks of his presiding over all armed conflict. At the beginning of the second game, Zeus strips Kratos of his mantle of godhood and boots him from Olympus, and Kratos does not regain his godhood by the ending. By the end of the third game, Olympus is completely ruined, so there's no throne for Kratos to reclaim...although the The End... Or Is It? ending of the third game still leaves room for him to possibly return.
- Harvest Moon 64 and "Harvest Moon: Back to Nature" have the same characters but are completely different in other respects. Almost everything is rewritten, from the personalities and backstories to jobs and who's related to who.
- This more comes with the territory of the Harvest Moon series blatantly recycling character designs and personalities on a mass level. It's just so blatant in Back to Nature because of the fact that that marked a direct case of copying the entire cast of 64, rather than picking and choosing from the series as a whole as is usually done.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- The Master Sword's origin has gone through three primary incarnations throughout the series' history. In the Japanese manual of A Link to the Past, the ancient Hyruleans were instructed by the gods to forge the sword to destroy any evil that would desire the Triforce.note Twilight Princess rewrites this origin to state the sword was "crafted by the wisdom of the ancient sages". Skyward Sword, which directly shows (part of) the sword's creation, states that the Goddess Hylia created the Goddess Sword, which would evolve into the Master Sword as part of the Link of said game executing Hylia's further plans. That said, because the Goddess Sword's creation isn't directly shown, some fans (example) believe that all three origins are true, concluding that Hylia instructed the people of Hyrule to forge the Goddess Sword, and that its forging was jointly presided by both Hylia and the Sages of that time.
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past ends with a screen showing that "The Master Sword sleeps again... forever!" The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds indicates that "forever" was a couple hundred years tops.
- The Master Sword's origin has gone through three primary incarnations throughout the series' history. In the Japanese manual
- While most of the changes between Metroid: Zero Mission and the original game it's a remake of can be explained away as simple retcons, there's no ignoring the fact that Kraid and Ridley have gone from human-sized to a two-story Godzilla clone and a giant flying dragon respectively.
- Word of God states that they were always intended to be the size they were in Metroid Zero Mission.
- Metal Gear is (in)famous for this.
- Metal Gear Solid alone contradicts a number of things in Metal Gear 1 and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, and reveals things that never happened. Things like Big Boss revealing himself to be Snake's father (which didn't happen in Metal Gear 2, though Snake did say after killing Big Boss that he felt like he murdered his father), Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater retconning Big Boss's age and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker retconning Big Boss's age again. Metal Gear Solid 3 and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots did this with a number of things from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, so that it made at least some sense. Finally, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain does this to more of Big Boss's story.
- The Piggyback official strategy guide for Phantom Pain outright indulges in this, via referencing it in the official timeline for the series. The guide refers to both Metal Gear 1 and 2 as both having happened, but that they're considered somewhat apocryphal beyond Broad Strokes, and tells the reader that events in later games are the "correct" version of events.
- Originally, the Pokémon series' remakes could be seen as rewrites of the originals. For example, most of the returning characters from Kanto and Johto in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 used their updated designs from Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver. However, Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire imply that the originals are an alternate universe from the remake, and Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon confirm this by pulling alternate-reality versions of characters using designs from their original games.
- The third release games may count for this as well. In Generation II, it seems like Pokémon Yellow was canon. Pokémon Platinum is usually regarded as canon, though Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon again show that Diamond or Pearl happened instead in other universes.
- The Resident Evil games and tie-in media made after Resident Evil 3: Nemesis have continually rewritten the details of Raccoon City's destruction. While 3 definitively showed the city being destroyed at dawn by a single nuclear missile, the current canon is that it was done just before daybreak by multiple non-nuclear high explosive missiles.
- The ending of Star Wars: Rebel Assault deliberately rewrites the ending of A New Hope so that player character Rookie One and his wingman Ru Murleen are the ones who destroy the Death Star, instead of Luke Skywalker. Rookie One fires the missile that travels down the exhaust shaft, and many more fighters are seen to survive the attack (at least seven fighters in Rebel Assault compared to the three fighters from the film).
- Something similar happens on X-Wing, in which the player character, Keyan Farlander, is the one who destroys the Death Star, ironically, Luke Skywalker does make an appearance in a cutscene of one of the expansions.
- Tomb Raider:
- This happens whenever a new developer takes over the series. Lara's whole background is changed to make her more developed. Tomb Raider: Legend also implies that all but the first Tomb Raider game never happened.
- In Tomb Raider: Underworld, it's implied that parts of it happened or at least Lara mentions encountering a Doppelgänger before. Also, she is closer to Crystal Dynamics Lara than the original. Go figure.
- Originally, the world of Xenoblade Chronicles 1 was created by the Mad Scientist Klaus when his unfettered curiosity of his experiment destroyed the Earth and elevated him and his assistant into the gods Zanza and Mayneth respectively. Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which initially seemed to be a completely new continuity, revealed that Klaus performed his experiment as a last-ditch effort to win a Hopeless War and that the world in the first game is in a dimension parallel to Earth. Klaus' malice was split off into Zanza, while his moral half remained in the old world, becoming the Architect who created the world of Alrest on top of the ruins of Earth. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and its DLC further implies that the entire series is in the same universe/multiverse as Xenosaga, albeit with some differences.
Western Animation
- How the Brain Freezer became the Brain Freezer in Johnny Test. It is, however, possible that when we first saw him, he recombined the machines to make the suit again.
- Or the origin of Repto-Slicer. Originally a creation of Bling-Bling Boy's, Repto-Slicer's origin is completely changed later on: apparently, he is actually an alien lizard from the planet "Razoria". In the episode in which this was shown, it is only quickly touched upon, and then he is left on the planet and never returns.
- To elaborate on the abruptness of the revelation, here is the dialogue that leads up to the arrival to Razoria
Darth Vegan: "... And I didn't even know that creatures from Razoria lived on Earth!"Johnny and Dukey: "Razoria?"cut to their arrival - Or the origin of Repto-Slicer. Originally a creation of Bling-Bling Boy's, Repto-Slicer's origin is completely changed later on: apparently, he is actually an alien lizard from the planet "Razoria". In the episode in which this was shown, it is only quickly touched upon, and then he is left on the planet and never returns.
