Everything about Retroactive Continuity totally explained
Retroactive continuity (or informally
retcon) is the deliberate changing of previously established facts in a work of serial fiction. The change itself is informally 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, long-established publishing houses such as
Marvel Comics and
DC Comics, because of 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
soap operas,
movie sequels,
professional wrestling,
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's needed to maintain consistency in the story or to fix significant mistakes that occurred during play, often under the synonymous (in this context) term "
reality shift".
Origins of the term
The first printed instance of the phrase "retroactive continuity" is in
All-Star Squadron #18 (cover-dated February 1983) from
DC Comics. The series was set on DC's
Earth-Two, an alternative universe in which Golden-Age comic characters proceed and age subsequent to their first appearances in real time. Thus by the early 1980s
Superman was in his 60s and
Batman had died and been replaced by his daughter, The
Huntress, whereas on
Earth-1, DC's primary universe, these characters are always perpetually young to early middle-age adults.
All-Star Squadron in particular, was set during
World War II on Earth-2, so it was in the past of an alternate universe, thus all its events had repercussions on the contemporary continuity of the DC multiverse. Each issue literally changed the history of the fictional world in which it was set.
In the letters column, a reader remarked that the comic "must make you [thecreators] feel at times as if you're painting yourself into a corner," and that "Your matching of Golden-Age comics history with new plotlines has been an artistic (and I hope financial!) success." Writer
Roy Thomas responded, "we like to think that an enthusiastic ALL-STAR booster at one of Adam Malin's
Creation Conventions in San Diego came up with the best name for it a few months back:
'Retroactive Continuity.' Has kind of a ring to it, don't you think?" The term, possibly in limited use before
All-Star Squadron #18, then took firm root in the consciousness of fans of American superhero comics.
"Retroactive continuity" was shortened to "retcon", reportedly by Damian Cugley in 1988 on
USENET. Hard evidence of Cugley's abbreviation have yet to surface, though in a USENET posting on August 18th, 1990, Cugley posted a reply in which he identified himself as '... the originator of the word "retcon"'. Cugley used the newly-shortened word to describe a development in the comic book
Saga of the Swamp Thing, which reinterprets the events of the title character's origin by revealing facts that, up to that point, are not part of the narrative. In this case, the revelation is that the titular character's memories are false and he isn't who he thinks he is.
Alan Moore's retcons often involve
false memories, for example
Marvelman (aka
Miracleman in America), and .
The term eventually crossed over into other science-fiction and fantasy sub-cultures and even into the fictional worlds themselves. In the BBC's
Doctor Who spin-off series
Torchwood, "retcon" is the name of a drug used to erase people's memories, thus changing how they perceive the history of their own lives, which is much like one of
Alan Moore's memory retcons. In
Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, the
Hobgoblin of the year 2211 carries a weapon known as a 'Retcon Bomb'; upon impact, it erases its target, and all memories of the target, from existence, though not erasing the consequences of their existence. This weapon hasn't been used since, because its inventor fell victim to one.
Types
Although there's considerable ambiguity and overlap between different kinds of retcon, there are some distinctions that fans have made between them, depending on whether the retcon in question adds to, alters, or removes material from the narrative's continuity. These distinctions often evoke different reactions from fans of the material.
Addition
Some retcons don't 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 didn't "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. Yet another retroactive continuity book was .
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. Such additions and reinterpretations are very common in
Doctor Who, though they're not usually referred to as retcons by fans. The
Star Trek books,
The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh (Volumes 1 & 2), by
Greg Cox, detail the fictional
Eugenics Wars, giving alternate explanations for real world events such as the
Indian nuclear test of 1974.
Additions are among the better-received types of retcons, because nothing is actually undone, and because people generally appreciate the explanation of [previously] ambiguous and/or mysterious events, although the changes to interpretation can still upset fans.
Alteration
This kind of retcon often adds 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. The technique has been used so frequently in
superhero comics 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.
Hideo Kojima, creator of the
Metal Gear Solid video game series, has likewise indicated his willingness to sacrifice continuity to a previous storyline--as with the date of Big Boss' loss of an eye (now in 1964 rather than the 80s) and his now-discarded transformation into a
Snatcher-style cyborg--for the sake of a good story, which is effectively a retcon. On the other hand, many of these situations offer plausible explanations for how the character survived, by building on what we thought we saw, in which case they can be considered additions.
Fans may invent unofficial explanations for inconsistencies, the challenge itself becoming a source of entertainment. Sometimes these fan-made explanations become so popular and widespread that they slip into accepted canon, and the original creators of the characters accept them. An example of a fan-created retcon is in
Star Wars. In the film,
Return of the Jedi, it appears that the character
Boba Fett suffers a horrible death in the belly of the
Sarlacc along with many insignificant aliens. However, the Fett character was extremely popular and few fans were pleased with his inglorious death. Popular casual speculation held that he'd somehow escaped "off-screen" and later Star Wars books, graphic novels and even a Star Wars Unleashed
action figure accepted this conjecture and depicted Boba Fett as having escaped the ordeal. How exactly Fett survived isn't specified. In certain novels involving Boba Fett, he says that he detonated a bomb inside the belly of the Sarlacc, blowing him out of the stomach. It is important to note, however, that though George Lucas acknowledged that "some people think he survived anyway" when talking about the character in the commentary for the DVD version of the movie, he didn't confirm or deny Fett's fate. However, in the commentary for the Special Edition Release, Lucas admitted that the beak was added to the
Sarlacc and shown to devour Fett to make his death incontrovertible.
One of the most jarring retcons was in the TV series
Dallas, where the character Bobby Ewing returned from the dead, after an absence of a complete season. This was explained by having his wife 'wake up' and see him in the shower, and realise she'd dreamt the whole previous season. This left a mess of conflicting storylines and continuity issues within "Dallas," as well as conflict within the sister series "Knots Landing," which had a third Ewing brother, Gary, mourning Bobby prior to his brother's return, and the plot point was widely celebrated as the moment
Dallas "
jumped the shark".
A lesser known example of an alteration retcon is in the film
The Return of the Musketeers, based on Alexandre Dumas's
Twenty Years After (
Vingt ans après), his sequel to
The Three Musketeers. In the film
The Four Musketeers,
Michael York, as D'Artagnan, presumably kills De Rochefort, played by
Christopher Lee. However, in
The Return of the Musketeers, both York and Lee turn up again, playing the same roles they'd in the previous film, and it's explained that De Rochefort was seriously wounded, but not killed.
It is commonplace for fictional characters to remain the same age, or to age out of sync 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 II 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 don't conform to history as it actually happens. To accommodate such discrepancies, retcons may be used in later stories, altering dates or other details. An example of this can be found in the films
Escape from New York and
Escape from L.A. As well, a number of members of the
G.I. Joe team are said to have served in an unnamed "Southeast Asian conflict" instead of in Vietnam, allowing the franchise to keep up to date.
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 goes to the past and changes history from how he remembered it.
In live-action television series, events in reality may force the creators to make changes. For example, in, limits in budget and technology resulted in the appearance of
Klingons as bronze-skinned, vaguely Oriental people. When the franchise was revived, the appearance of Klingons was changed drastically. The new appearance was explained by the producers to be how they always looked, but that they couldn't be portrayed as such before. The difference was noted in "
Trials and Tribble-ations", an episode of, when modern-era characters travel back in time to the previous era, but dismissed by (modern) Klingon
Worf as something Klingons "do not discuss with outsiders." This retcon itself was later retconned, in, via a storyline in which it's revealed that the original, quasi-human appearance of the Klingons is due to a genetic mutation caused by an engineered virus.
Additionally, since the
Space Shuttle Enterprise was named after the starship in the Star Trek universe, creators of the show have retconned actual history to claim that it was named after
other historical ships of the same name.
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", for example by claiming that events in a previous installation were "just a dream". Likewise, an unpopular retcon may even be re-retconned away, as happened with
John Byrne's .
An example of subtraction can be found in Disney's
The Lion King series. After the success of the first movie, Disney released a group of books titled
The Lion King: Six New Adventures in which
Simba is said to have a son named
Kopa. It is also mentioned in the storybook version of the film that he's a son. However, in the film sequel, Simba only has a daughter named
Kiara. Kopa is non-existent and no mention is made of him. Kiara also has a different coloring and more feminine features than the cub shown at the end of the first movie.
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 (for example the different appearance of the character is ignored), rather than retroactively changing past continuity. An exception to this can be when the difference in appearance is explained, such as the case with "
regeneration" in
Doctor Who.
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. However given the six films single primary creator these may not be 'retcons' but long planned developments that fans had misinterpreted prior.
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 such as the character re-interpretations of the
DC animated universe or the
Ultimate Marvel line of comics.
The animated series
Frisky Dingo often gives previously unseen
exposition in the "Previously on..." portion of the episode. (Not exactly Retroactive continuity because it only gives new information instead of changing already established events.) In addition to this, a brand-name "Ret-con" usually appears with products in these segments.
Literature involving retconning
In Stephen King's novel,
Misery, the protagonist, Paul Sheldon, is forced to write a sequel to his book
Misery's Child, in which the main character, Misery Chastain, dies. He at first attempts to retcon the events in that book, but his captor, Annie Wilkes, regards this as cheating and makes him create a sequel that doesn't actively deny what the reader already knows.
Further Information
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