Retroactive continuity (often shortened to
retcon) refers to the alteration of previously established facts in a literary work. Retcons may be carried out for a variety of reasons, such as to accommodate sequels or further derivative works in the same series, to reintroduce popular characters, to resolve chronological issues, to reboot a familiar series for modern audiences, or to simplify an excessively complex
continuity structure.
Retcons are common in pulp fiction, especially comic books published by long-established houses such as DC, Marvel and leading manga publishers. The long history of popular titles and the plurality of writers who contribute stories can often create situations that demand clarification or revision of exposition. Retcons appear as well in soap operas, serial drama, movie sequels, professional wrestling, video games, radio series, and other kinds of serial fiction.
Origins of the term
The first published use of the phrase "retroactive continuity" is found in Elgin Frank Tupper's 1974 book
The theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg.
Pannenberg's conception of retroactive continuity ultimately means that history flows fundamentally from the future into the past, that the future is not basically a product of the past.
The first known printed use of "retroactive continuity" as referring to the altering of history within a fictional work 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 the Batman had died and been succeeded by his daughter, The Huntress, whereas the Superman and Batman of Earth-One, DC's primary universe, are perpetually young to early middle-age adults. All-Star Squadron in particular, was set during World War II on Earth-Two, 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 [the creators] feel at times as if you're painting yourself into a corner," and "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 similar 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 has yet to surface, though in a USENET posting on August 18, 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 and were not intended by earlier writers. In this case, the revelation is that the titular character's memories are false and he is not who he thinks he is. Alan Moore's retcons often involve false memories, for example Marvelman (aka Miracleman in America), and .
Types
Although there is 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 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. Another series with a similar structure 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 did not contradict or change any of the events depicted in the character's previous appearances, but changed the reader's interpretation of them. Such additions and reinterpretations are very common in Doctor Who,
J. R. R. Tolkien in The Hobbit described the circumstances in which Bilbo Baggins won a magic ring from Gollum. However, by the time he wrote the sequel, The Lord of the Rings, his concept of the ring's nature had changed, at odds with the previous depiction. To explain this discrepancy, Tolkien retold this incident in the new work, explaining the original version as a lie inspired by the malevolent influence of the ring. However, later editions of The Hobbit incorporated the revised version of the story.
In many of his detective novels, Rex Stout implies that his character Nero Wolfe was born in Montenegro, and gives some details of his early life in the Balkans prior to and during World War I. However, in Over My Dead Body (1939), Wolfe tells an FBI agent that he was born in the United States. Stout revealed the reason for the change in a letter obtained by his authorized biographer, John McAleer: "In the original draft of Over My Dead Body Nero was a Montenegrin by birth, and it all fitted previous hints as to his background; but violent protests from The American Magazine, supported by Farrar & Rinehart, caused his cradle to be transported five thousand miles."
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. For example, in the film , the character Boba Fett suffers a horrible death. However, the character was popular, so some fans held that he had somehow escaped "off-screen", and later books, graphic novels, and even an official action figure accepted this conjecture and depicted Boba Fett as having escaped the ordeal. In the commentary for the Special Edition Release of the film, George Lucas stated that had he known of the character's popularity, he would have made the death scene more impressive. Lucas left it ambiguous if the new interpretation was correct. However, in Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, which takes place after Episode 6, the player must fight Boba Fett in Ord Mantel. (One reason Fett might have survived is he was drawn into the Sarlaac with all his weapons, unlike Jabba's other victims. It is not inconceivable he was able to use them to escape, killing the creature instead.)
It is commonplace for fictional characters appearing over a long period of time to remain the same age, or to age out of sync with real time. This concept, called a floating timeline, may be interpreted as 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. A famous example of this type of retcon is the television show The Simpsons and Marvel Comics' characters Nick Fury and The Punisher. The James Bond movie series is another well-known example of this technique.
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. The storyline of this mini-series involved an alternate version of Lex Luthor (called Alexander Luthor) surviving the destruction of his entire universe by a malign entity known as the Anti-Monitor. Alexander would then go on to lose his sanity along with Superboy-Prime after the small group of survivors of the first Crisis of which they were a part had been trapped in a pocket universe for an unspecified amount of time. (See DC Comics' Infinite Crisis) The repercusions of the second Crisis led into the events of 52. The wave of retcons and hero killings and ressurrections didn't stop there or indeed ever. After the events of 52, DC was on the road to one of the largest single retcons in their history. (See Countdown and Final Crisis)
A storyline in
Spider-Man, named
, culminated in the magical revision of history, eliminating the marriage between
Peter Parker and
Mary Jane Watson, and subsequent developments in the character's history over the previous twenty years. 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, real-world developments may prompt alteration-type retcons. For example, in , limits in budget and technology resulted in the appearance of Klingons as metallic-skinned people with vaguely central Asian features. When the franchise was later revived in films and new series enjoying larger budgets and improved makeup techniques, the appearance of Klingons was changed drastically. Skin looked more natural and spinal bones were brought up into the foreheads for a decidedly more alien appearance. The new look was explained by the producers to be how Klingons had always appeared, but that they could not be portrayed accurately before. The difference was marked upon in dialog between characters in "Trials and Tribble-ations", an episode of when modern-era characters travel back in time to the days of Kirk and Spock (and via then-brand new CGI techniques, appear within the TOS episode "The Trouble With Tribbles", frequently coming into contact with the Enterprise crew). When (modern) Klingon Worf and his crewmates see an original-series Klingon, his crewmates ask about the stunning difference in appearance; Worf says tersely that the matter is something Klingons "do not discuss with outsiders". This retcon itself was later retconned, in , via a storyline in which it is revealed that the original, quasi-human appearance of the Klingons is due to a genetic mutation caused by an engineered virus - ironically, "genetic engineering" (Chief O'Brien) and "viral mutation" (Dr. Bashir) had been the guesses Worf refused to confirm or deny.
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", like one season of Dallas, which became Pam's dream so that her husband Bobby could return from the dead. 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 has 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.
This concept was parodied in She-Hulk (vol. 2) #3, in which the title character is threatened with erasure from continuity via a device that does such a thing. Eventually, she is pardoned, but not before two characters never seen before or since, Knight Man and Dr. Rocket, are erased from continuity, leaving those who didn't see it to respond, "Who?"
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 Simpsons (in which the timeline of the family's history must be continually shifted forward to explain them not getting any older. For instance, when the series started, Bart would have to have been born in about 1980, but that would make him 30 years old as of 2010) reflects intentionally 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 commonly an example of loose continuity rather than retroactively changing past continuity. The different appearance of the character is either ignored, as was done with the character of Darrin Stephens on the television show Bewitched, or explained within the series, such as with "regeneration" in Doctor Who, or the Oracle in .
It also differs from direct revision. For example, 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.
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.
Literature involving retconning
When
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off his most-beloved character
Sherlock Holmes by plunging him to his death over the
Reichenbach Falls with his arch nemesis
Professor Moriarty, the public's demand for Holmes was so great that Doyle was compelled to bring him back to life in a subsequent story, where he details that Holmes had merely faked his death.
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. The second attempt to bring Misery Chastain back to life (which Annie Wilkes likes) is almost an example of a comic book death.
Another example of retcon used in literature is that found in Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider series. This technique is used several times througout the series, the most notable found in Scorpia, where the reader is led to believe the main protagonist was killed by a sniper bullet to the heart. It is later revealed in Ark Angel that this is not the case, and that the bullet missed his heart by a matter of centimeters.
Though the term "retcon" did not yet exist when George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four, the totalitarian regime depicted in that book is involved in a constant, large-scale retconning of past records. For example, when it is suddenly announced that "Oceania was not after all in war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia and Eurasia was an ally" (Part Two, Ch. 9), there is an immediate intensive effort to change "all reports and records, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound-tracks and photographs" and make them all record a war with Eastasia rather than one with Eurasia. "Often it was enough to merely substitute one name for another, but any detailed report of events demanded care and imagination. Even the geographical knowledge needed in transferring the war from one part of the world to another was considerable." See historical revisionism (negationism).
References in popular culture
In the British science fiction television program
Torchwood, a drug used to erase the memory of characters is called "Retcon". Additionally, the use of the drug is often referred to by characters as "retconning". The nod to retroactive continuity is a joke meant to be shared between the writers and the viewers as a way of pointing out that anything done throughout the course of the series can easily be undone with a simple plot device, with a note to the fact that
Torchwood's parent program,
Doctor Who, has made frequent use of retroactive continuity during its several-decade run. For example,
Russell T Davies introduced the
Time War in the 2005 revival to account for discrepancies between the classic series and the revamp. When
Steven Moffat took over in 2010, he introduced "
cracks in the universe" which erase events and individuals from history; using this device, he 'undid' the events of "
Journey's End" and "
The Next Doctor" so that in the series' narrative, the people of Earth would be (once again) unaware of alien life.
The Daleks are another example of retconning in the Doctor Who series. Several times throughout the history of the show the Daleks have become extinct only to be 'reborn' at a later time due to their huge fan base and iconic placement as the Doctor's greatest foes.
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 (which is how the cracks in the skin of the universe work as well). This weapon has not been used since, because its inventor fell victim to one.
In Champions Online, a MMORPG for the PC, a character may use a "retcon" item to reset the statistics and powers of their superhero character.
One will also find frequent use of the term retcon in Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the three shows spawned by it The Film Crew, Cinematic Titanic and Rifftrax, all shows which mock films (usually incredibly bad ones).
The term retcon is used several times in the 2010 novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by American writer Charles Yu.
See also
Back-story
Canon (fiction)
Continuity (fiction)
Floating timeline
Jumping the shark
List of retcons
Plot hole
Prequel
Reboot (fiction)
Retcon (Torchwood)
Retronym
Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome
Spin-off (media)
Footnotes
External links
Retconning: Just Another Day Like All The Others at websnark.com An essay on the advantages and disadvantages of the various types of retcons.
Category:Continuity (fiction)
Category:Narrative techniques
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