"In that broad brush vague Marvel Universe sense there's always 'the war' whatever it was. If that put him in the Middle East rather than South East Asia I think that matters less for the purposes of the Marvel Universe."
— Greg Rucka discussing The Punisher
When Comic-Book Time is in effect for long enough, the origins of a character can start to become dated. Maybe their origin is tied to some real-life event, but the current "present" is far enough from said event that, considering the character's age, it doesn't make sense for them to be involved, unless they are a Refugee from Time. Maybe enough retcons and changes to that character make the origins feel out of place. Or perhaps there's some Values Dissonance in the old origin that is out of place for the character today.
This is where they get an Updated Origin Story. A character is shaped by a real war? Just try to find a more recent war or have them be younger back then. They were changed to have powers and personalities different from when they started. Retcon the origin to show they are or will eventually become a thing. Want to avoid a Remember the New Guy? situation with a new character who's known the character since their origins by retconning them to be part of it. Or maybe you just want the origins to no longer be out of date.
Because Comic-Book Time is primarily a comic book issue, superheroes and supervillains have this happen the most. Of course, any Long Runner that uses Comic-Book Time is susceptible to this. Note that this is for the original work and not adaptations. Those would usually go under tropes like Adaptational Backstory Change and Adaptational Origin Connection. Or Alternate Universe retellings, for that matter. Often a part of a Setting Update and subtrope of Retcon. May overlap with Reimagining the Artifact if this is done in cases where the original origin story contained Values Dissonance. If the update was because of Science Marches On, it probably involves Phlebotinum du Jour.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- Batman: What movie was Batman watching on the night his parents were shot? Since Zorro was a big inspiration for the character, it's usually said to be a Zorro movie, but exactly which version of Zorro has changed over time. Of course, with the advent of retro movie theaters and films getting rereleased to celebrate an anniversary milestone, some writers just suggest it was the original after all, with no weird timeline disruption.
- Captain America: Subverted for Captain America. He's always a WWII vet, and the story of him being cryogenically frozen until modern times has forever stopped this from becoming outdated. But exactly when did he come out of stasis? It's usually "fifteen years ago" from whatever modern times are.
- This is the idea behind Marvel Comics' "Chapter One" graphic novels.
- The 1999 miniseries Spider-Man: Chapter One was an attempt to explicitly give Spider-Man an updated origin. In this version, Spidey's origin is tied to the same accident that created Doctor Octopus as the same demonstration Peter went to here was a test that was conducted by Octavius that went very awry.
- Hulk Chapter One removed all mention of the Cold War from the Hulk's backstory. Instead of a gamma bomb, it was an experimental gamma laser. Instead of being sabotaged by Dirty Commies, it was a Skrull.
- Fantastic Four:
- In the original story, they gained their powers during a failed space flight and were originally said to be trying to beat the Dirty Commies to the moon. Later retellings of the origin, which became dated as of the real Moon landing in 1969, have said that the ship was intended to test an experimental warp drive instead. Presumably that one won't become dated anytime soon...
- In Heroes Reborn: Fantastic Four, version, the space flight was instead a mission to investigate a strange anomaly, which turned out to be the Silver Surfer. The '90s cartoon followed suit.
- On another note, Reed Richards was originally imagined as a WWII vet, and he looks the same age he did way back in his introduction. This hasn't been updated in modern times so much as quietly ignored.
- History Of The Marvel Universe: The mini-series, among other tidy-ups, created a conveniently long-running war in the Fictional Country of Siankong in Southeast Asia, retconning this as the war fought in by several characters mentioned above as military veterans or with war-related origin stories, including Frank Castle, Reed Richards, Tony Stark, and Charles Xavier.
- Iron Man: Iron Man had his origins in Vietnam. Warren Ellis bumped it up to Afghanistan (which the very first MCU film helped solidify), only for it to be changed again to Siancong. Since it's a fictional country, its state is much less dependent on the real-life events, so it'll probably stick.
- Justice Society of America: The JSA, when originally conceived in 1940, had fought in WWII. But as time marched further and further away, writers tended to ditch the JSA's WWII ties to write them as simply "The Superhero Team before the Justice League" with many of its older members like Jay Garrick, Alan Scott and Ted Grant still partaking in the fight against evil despite their advanced age.
- Martian Manhunter: In a subtler example, the Martian Manhunter's origin as one member of a present-day, populous Martian race was quietly changed once it became evident in Real Life that no large lifeforms exist on Mars. Later retellings of his origin claim that the Martian Manhunter had been teleported to Earth through time as well as space, and that the other Martians had died off prior to modern times.
- The Punisher: As of the in-continuity series The Punisher (2011), Frank Castle fought in one of the Iraq Wars rather than in the Vietnam War. His MAX counterpart remains an (aged) Vietnam veteran, however.
- Superman:
- Many retcons' origin tend to try and explain several things that wouldn't hold up today, such as how his rocket made it to Earth and landed in Smallville without the government noticing. Sometimes, it's because there was atmospheric interference. Sometimes, it's because government bureaucracy made them too slow to respond before the Kents came and left. Other minor updates include explaining how the Kents were able to justify Clark without any legal adoption papers or birth certificates, and despite Martha's infertility. One story stated that a horrible snowstorm (which may or may not have been a phenomenon created by the rocket itself) had kept the Kent farm isolated for the better part of a year, and that Martha just claimed she'd gotten pregnant and given birth in that time.
- The origin of his powers has also gradually changed over time. Originally, back when his powers were limited to him simply being stronger, faster, and able to leap higher than regular humans, Superman's powers were said to be the result of Earth having lower gravity than Krypton (and in very early materials, it was stated that Kryptonians were also millions of years more evolved than Earth humans; as late as Superman (1939) #53 they were said to naturally have X-Ray Vision). Since Superman's body was adapted for Kryptonian gravity, it enabled him to perform superhuman feats here on Earth. However, over time, he gained a wide variety of new powers for which this explanation held no ground, like Super-Breath, Super-Senses, and Eye Beams, so in Superman (1939) #146 it was stated that his powers also came from absorbing energy from the Earth's yellow sun. Subsequent retellings of Superman's origin have reiterated that the Earth's sun is the source of his powers, though Krypton's higher gravity is still brought up from time to time.
- The original The Supergirl From Krypton (1959) story attempted to explain away how Superman, who left Krypton when he was a baby, could have a teenager cousin by coming up with the idea of Kara being born in a chunk of Krypton which survived the explosion and drifted around space for decades, with their inhabitatns being kept alive by an air bubble. Since the idea of a neighborhood surviving a planetary explosion and keeping its own air bubble was too supension of disbelief-breaking, the next retellings refined the concept into a city called Argo City, which had been protected by a force-field built by Kara's father Zor-El. Post-Silver Age retellings tried to do away with Argo City entirely, though, explaining Kara's age away as Kara being born at the same time as her cousin (When the Symbioship Strikes!) or fifteen years older (The Supergirl from Krypton (2004), Last Daughter of Krypton) and leaving Krypton at the same time as Kal, but taking longer to arrive. Eventually, DC decided that Argo City worked just fine, so that Kara was a teenager when Krypton exploded, survived thanks to Argo City's force-field, and was sent to Earth when her hometown began dying.
- Supergirl's origin story has Superman to dump his cousin in an orphanage in order to protect her secret identity. Since this has not aged well, modern retellings have Supergirl willingly choosing to live on her own or be taken care of by someone whom Superman can trust (Lana Lang, the Danvers...). However, Batman/Superman: World's Finest reinstated the orphanage origin and has it be a Never Live It Down moment for Superman.
- Originally, the first Bloodsport was a Phony Veteran who went off the rails when his brother became a quadruple amputee in the Vietnam War after going in his place, but more modern takes of the character have him actually serving in more recent wars.
- X-Men:
- In the original 1963 run on Uncanny X-Men (1963), mutants were the result of radiation; the parents of all the cast members had jobs or were involved in incidents that forced them to come in direct contact with radioactive materials (hence the reason why Professor X is bald). Therefore, they were occasionally called "the children of atom''. When the dangers of radiation became more widely known, their origin story was retconned to being a genetic mutation, and that mutants have existed since ancient times.
- Magneto's first given backstory requires him to be a Holocaust survivor. This has never been updated, and writers have had to invent wildly to explain how he's not a decrepit post-centennial. One idea is that mutants simply have a prolonged lifespan. It's helped that he's actually been de-aged several times in continuity. Ironically, this backstory itself is a case of Origins March On, since while Magneto debuted in 1963, it was introduced by Chris Claremont in The '80s.
- Professor X's backstory involves him as a Korean War vet, and, in another aversion, this has never been updated. Technically, he dies in a 2012 story (he does come back, but not to his original body), meaning he could have been as young as his 70s; arguably he was never too implausibly old. Bear in mind he was played by an actor who is famously Older Than They Look.
- Storm originally lost her parents at a plane crash over Egypt, implied to be the result of aircraft strikes in the Suez Canal Incident. Fifty to sixty years later, Storm is clearly not in her sixties or seventies, so this usually gets updated to whatever Egyptian unrest happened most recently.
Films — Live-Action
- Godzilla:
- When he first rampaged onto movie screens around the world in the 1950s, Godzilla was meant to embody the destruction wrought by American-made atomic bombs (inspired heavily by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and by the then-recent Lucky Dragon No. 5 incident). As such, Godzilla's origins were closely tied to the atomic bomb tests conducted by the USA in the South Pacific around that time; specifically, he was stated to have been some kind of previously undiscovered aquatic dinosaur disturbed and mutated by nuclear radiation from the bomb tests and taking his anger out on Tokyo. However, subsequent releases have played with his origins.
- In Godzilla (1998), where he attacks the US instead of Japan, his origins were changed from American to French nuclear bomb testing in the South Pacific. Also, because paleontology had marched on by the 1990s, his species was changed from an aquatic dinosaur to a mutated marine iguana (that somehow still behaves like a dinosaur anyway).
- Inverted in Godzilla (2014): Godzilla now actually predates the atomic bomb tests in the 1950s — which are stated not to have been tests at all, but in fact were prior attempts to kill him. They failed.
- In Shin Godzilla: Godzilla's origin is updated once again, this time as a tadpole-like Metamorphosis Monster exposed to radioactive waste dumped at sea. This is in keeping with the film's updated themes and setting, drawing inspiration more from the then-recent 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and subsequent Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster (with much of the drama focused on the heroes dealing with the Japanese government's incompetence and bureaucratic red tape).
- The original Sinatra-helmed Ocean's 11 had the Rat Pack as a World War II unit that pulled together to pull off a heist. The Clooney remake, Ocean's Eleven, discarded the war buddies angle altogether, as there has been no comparable war since.
Literature
- Kim Newman's short story "Coastal City" is about a comic book character almost, but not quite, realising that his backstory keeps changing on him. For instance, he's always been a war veteran, but which war has changed with the times.
- In the original 1978 version of The Stand, Frannie's father had been awarded a Bronze Star at Anzio (in WWII), while in the uncut and expanded 1990 edition, he had been awarded one in Korea.
Live-Action TV
- Batwoman (2019) has done this a few times:
- In the comics, Kate Kane was a military trainee who was kicked out under Don't Ask, Don't Tell when she was caught kissing Sophie Moore, who chose to stay in the closet, whereas Kate owned up to being a lesbian and got discharged. By the time the TV show came out, DADT had long since been repealed, and so Kate's origins were changed so that instead of being kicked out of the army for being a lesbian, she got caught making out with Sophie on campus at a private military school and chose to drop out in protest.
- In the comics, the Cluemaster was a low-grade Riddler wannabe who kept getting out of jail because of overly lenient judges, an origin which was intended to criticize sentencing reform efforts in the '90s. Batwoman happened to premiere the same year that the US experienced widespread protests over police brutality and the prison-industrial complex, so the show's version of Cluemaster was successfully incarcerated for years, but escaped because prison overcrowding caused officials to lose track of him.
- Interview with the Vampire (2022): The original Interview with the Vampire was published in 1976, and set in San Francisco, 1973. This series, on the other hand, is set in 2022 and takes place in Dubai. In a twist, there was still an interview in San Francisco in 1973, but neither Louis nor Daniel can remember how it ended because their memories of that night were erased by Louis' jealous lover Armand so that they wouldn't remember how he tortured Daniel and drove Louis into a suicide attempt.
- Sherlock: In the original Sherlock Holmes series, Dr. Watson had served in the Royal Army Medical Corps in the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880). The TV series updates him to having served in Afghanistan as part of the post-9/11 NATO coalition, though it anachronistically keeps him saying he was attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, which was merged into the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in 1968.
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Space Seed", we find out about the Eugenics Wars that ravaged Earth in the 1990s. Since such a war never happened in real life, it was left vague if such events actually happened until the SNW episode "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" which revealed that yes, the Eugenics Wars still happened, but the war kept getting bumped up in the timeline because of time travelers trying to stop Khan's rise to power.
Video Games
- In GoldenEye (2010), Alec Trevelyan's original (stated) motivations of wanting revenge on the UK for having betrayed his Lienz Cossack parents would make Alec in his 70s. Thus, this was changed to Alec having been disillusioned by the War on Terror and the 2008 Financial Crisis into realizing that instead of fighting for "Queen and country", he was really fighting for "rich bankers".
- Invoked by The Secret World in regards to Dracula; in the lore of the game, Dracula, aka Vlad the Impaler, was a vampire hunter who fell in love with a woman named Mara that ended up becoming queen of the vampires. It's not made clear how Vlad made the leap from "Vampire Hunter" to "Vampire" in the game, however.
Western Animation
- Monkie Kid: In Journey to the West, the Six-Eared Macaque was an evil monkey possessing Sun Wukong's powers who was killed by him for attempting to Kill and Replace the pilgrims, with the two having no prior history. In the show, he is given a more complex backstory to act as a foil to Monkey King, with them having been friends who grew divided over Wukong's pursuit of power, causing Macaque to become disillusioned with heroes and descend into villainy.
- In Rugrats (2021), Lou is no longer a WWII veteran like he was in the original cartoon, since by the New Twenties, most WWII veterans are no longer alive.
- The Simpsons attempted this in the episode "That '90s Show", which first aired in 2008 and tried to change the backstory of the series by updating the time frame when Homer and Marge were dating from the 1970s to the 1990s. It wasn't well-received, and the old backstory is still depicted in later episodes despite becoming increasingly outdated.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: In the Mirage comics, Splinter and the Turtles mutated due to being exposed to radioactive waste (the same stuff that blinded Matt Murdock). Each new adaptation changes the origins of the Turtles, usually either to better fit the show's overall story. While they're almost always mutated by ooze, exactly what the ooze is (as well as how Splinter and the Turtles were exposed to it) changes with each incarnation. The biggest change from the source material is easily Rise, where Baron Draxum used the ooze and the DNA of kidnapped movie star Lou Jitsu (real name Hamato Yoshi) to mutate the Turtles. Lou Jitsu managed to escape with the Turtles in tow, but was accidentally doused with ooze as he ran, turning him into Splinter.
- Transformers: Animated: This series deviates from the original eighties cartoon far more than later installments, as it changes the past of both Optimus Prime and Cybertron as a whole. Instead of being the leader of the Autobots, Optimus (while high-ranking) is an officer in charge of an insignificant bridge-repair crew. The war against the Decepticons has been over for generations (with many Autobots never seeing a Decepticon in their lives), and numerous Cybertronians have a dislike, disgust, or outright fear of organic life.
