Early Installment Weirdness/Literature


 * The first two Discworld books are parodies of Sword and Sorcery fantasy. They featured a lot of elements that were quietly dropped in the later books, which are parodies of just about everything.
 * The shift in human naming conventions is particularly marked, with fantasy-parodic names like Zlorf and Gorphal giving way to conventional names like Fred or Sybil. Equal Rites saw the first ordinary surnames (the Smiths), and Mort (for Mortimer) was the series' first protagonist with a real-world given name.
 * And there's some severe Characterization Marches On hitting them too; the Patrician who appears in the first book is unnamed and bears absolutely no resemblance to our favorite Magnificent Bastard Lord Vetinari, to the point where Pterry had to confirm that it was him, and the first few appearances of make him appear to be a bad guy.
 * Pterry is also more likely to Call a Rabbit A Smeerp in the early novels; Mort's father apparently farms "tharga beasts", and since (unlike vermine or republican bees in later books) nothing amusing is said about them to differ them from Roundworld animals, they might as well be oxen.
 * The first Redwall novel, Redwall, features a number of references indicating that the animals live in a world where humans also exist, such as a horse cart, a church, taverns, and ports. Also, one of the characters was a beaver. In later books, author Brian Jacques made it clear that only animals existed in the Redwall universe, and only animals native to the British Isles, so there were no future appearances of any more beavers (though beavers WERE native to Britain at one time, but they were killed off due to overhunting).
 * In the first book of Piers Anthony's Xanth series, there are mundane animals like chipmunks and hawks in Xanth, and the animals have a Magic Talent just like most people do. The infamous puns are almost completely absent. Later on, Anthony decided that everything in Xanth either "had magic" or "was magic", and all animals and plants became of the "was magic" type.
 * Also, the first few books were dark in tone, and a genuine fantasy trilogy. Xanth started an exploration of a fantasy world where everyone has one specific talent. Then it got more parodic, more comedic, even cartoonish, and is now a full-blown Running the Asylum cash cow.
 * Sherlock Holmes displayed some mannerisms in the first story that were then dropped -- most infamously, his claim that he deliberately forgot all facts that were irrelevant to his work, such as that the Earth goes round the Sun! (That particular fact doesn't turn up again, but he displays much more well-rounded knowledge in the rest of the series.)
 * Holmes’s cocaine habit is directly observed (canonically) only in The Sign of Four (1890) and A Scandal in Bohemia (1891), two of the very earliest works in the series.
 * It is mentioned in one much later story... where Watson states he made him quit.
 * Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent was written by an angrier, less mature Bryson and it shows. Readers who begin with later works might be surprised at how acidic, anti-American (and arguably elitist) Bryson was before he mellowed. Certainly he seems much less fond of his home town, Des Moines, and his father, and much more of a wannabe Brit.
 * The same could be said for Neither Here Nor There, published two years after The Lost Continent. It's certainly rougher and more acidic in tone than his later books.
 * Older works in the Star Wars Expanded Universe show this to varying degrees. Splinter Of The Mind's Eye, written after A New Hope came out but before The Empire Strikes Back, probably to the greatest extent. The Unresolved Sexual Tension between Luke and Leia is very clear, R2-D2 is frequently referred to as a "detoo" unit, Luke frequently stops to recharge his lightsaber, and Vader knows Luke's full name and planet of origin but doesn't seem to know that they're related.
 * To avoid these sorts of situations, LucasFilm had forbidden any EU works dealing with the pre-movie lives of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, Obi-wan Kenobi or Yoda, even unto not allowing writers to identify the race or home planet of Yoda.
 * The novelization of A New Hope has the same Early Installment Weirdness problems. The story is told from the point of view of a old chronicle, numerous scenes are added that were cut from the movie ultimately (including the Jabba meets Han scene added in special editions), and Luke's squadron is identified as Blue Squadron (which was originally intended in the film, but due to SFX limitations was changed to Red), among other things. Fittingly enough, both books were written by Alan Dean Foster.
 * Both David Eddings' Belgariad and Elenium series start off this way; eg. Belgarath's comment about "well then we'd have to wait another century for the circumstances to be right again" which is totally at odds with all the prophecy stuff from later books. Elenium begins with Sparhawk planning to quietly garrotte someone, which seems quite out-of-character later on; in general the first few chapters seem a lot darker than the rest of it.
 * The first Animorphs book contains several elements that are never mentioned again, such as the ability to broadcast your thoughts to a person in morph when you weren't in morph yourself, or the psychic Info Dump laid on Tobias by Elfangor.
 * The first one of those was addressed by the author as a mistake. She was unsure of how thought speech should work, and by the time she decided it was too late to change the first book.
 * And apparently she went too far the other direction when she had Ax declare, in an early book, that humans couldn't use thought speech at all (even if said human was actually an Andalite in morph), which admittedly doesn't make much sense. That, too, gets retconned away when Ax uses thought speech in human form in a later book.
 * In the first book, Elfangor seems like a psychic. He appears to be able to feel the kids' fear as they hide, and let them borrow some of his courage. Andalites are never portrayed with such abilities again. Also, Visser Three acts as if he's meeting Elfangor for the first time. ("Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul if I am not mistaken. An honor to meet you..."). Now that we know better, from the Andalite Chronicles, we'll just have to assume he was being sarcastic. Also, a big part of the first book involves the heroes finding out who is a Controller because said person suddenly acted out-of-character. In later parts of the series, Yeerks make a point of acting very in-character, and it's even shown that, by accessing a person's memory, they are brilliant at acting the part.
 * This actually became an important plot point in the pilot episode of the show, as the Animorphs identify as a Controller because he maintains his habits even when no one is around, in this case,
 * Several from Harry Potter:
 * The rules of magic seem to have not been quite worked out in the first book. Several spells are performed nonverbally and without wands, both of which are established to be extremely difficult in later books. Hagrid, despite being expelled in his third year, is able to nonverbal spells, something which the main characters don't learn until their sixth year. He also successfully performs magic with a broken wand, something that the second book establishes is nearly impossible. Apart from the levitation spell, specific spells, their incantations, and their specific effects are not really brought up in the first book.
 * It's possible that Dumbledore secretly used the elder wand to fix Hagrid's broken wand.
 * None of the characters, not even those who were raised wizards, seem to know how Sorting works in the first book. In addition, Ron is fooled by his brothers into thinking a doggerel couplet is a spell, despite the fact that all real spells seen in the books are Dog Latin.
 * The school song, performed at the beginning of the main characters' first year, never appears in any other books. JK Rowling said that the school song is only done whenever Dumbledore is in a good mood and feels like it. It's likely that with all the dark things that go on in the ensuing years, he just never feels up to it. A deleted scene in the Goblet of Fire film shows the Hogwarts student body singing it to the students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang.
 * Other early books show a bit of this too, especially in terminology; Book 3 refers to "Hit Wizards", whose role is replaced by Aurors. At one point in book one, Harry refers to "going over to the Dark Side"
 * Terminology is confused several times in early books. In the first book, Neville mentions that his family was worried he'd turn out to be a "muggle", i.e. not have any magic, but from the second book on non-magical individuals born to magic parents are called "squibs". It's not until the fourth book that we learn that Voldemort's supporters are called Death Eaters and Ministry of Magic employees who hunt dangerous wizards are called Aurors.
 * A minor example: Harry is dismayed to have lost "two points for Gryffindor in his very first week." He will lose many, many more throughout his tenure at Hogwarts. Points in general seem to undergo inflation as the series goes on; where teachers took one or two points away for infractions in the first book, they commonly take five or ten for similar offenses in later books.
 * Let's not forget the Deluminator which is referred to in early books as Dumbledore's "Put-Outer".
 * In a non-continuity-related example, JK Rowling's writing style becomes less Beige Prose-ish, and replaces more and more of its Roald Dahl bounce with sturm-und-drang, as the series goes along.
 * Early in the first book Petunia claims Lily came home in vacations turning teacups into animals. Later in the same book we find out Hogwarts students aren't allowed to use magic outside of school, book 7 confirms the rules haven't changed since Lily went to school.
 * Chamber of Secrets mentions Hagrid was raising werewolf cubs under his bed. In the very next book, it becomes clear that werewolves are humans afflicted with a disease that makes them become wolves during a full moon. JKR later said that the character in question was lying, which would be in-character but is not made clear at the time. Perhaps as a callback to this, in the seventh book this same character refers to the hypothetical offspring of a werewolf as "cubs", in a context that makes it clear that he's making a rather offensive joke.
 * In The Philosopher's Stone, the famous Quidditch scene is written from Ron and Hermione's perspective. Later books are completely written from Harry's point of view, except the first chapter of each book and the moments Harry sees in Voldemort's mind.
 * In Prisoner of Azkaban, Ron states that "maybe" Sirius can Apparate. The way Apparition is pictured in later books, the "maybe" part sounds strange.
 * Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series shows marked differences between the first book, Gardens of the Moon, and the later books. (Examples include Tool's hundred-mile-diameter magic-deadening Tellann aura and the interaction of munitions with magic use, among many others.) To Malazan fans, this is known as a GotMism.
 * A bit understandable, because the first book was written around a decade before any of the other ones.
 * Most people who've read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz these days know little of the numerous sequels that followed. They'd be shocked at how many of the rules were rewritten even between the first and second books. Issues such as the existence of money, the actual number of witches (and related magic users) in the land, whether or not the Emerald City is actually green, and if people can actually die were altered drastically over the first few sequels. No doubt this is because while the rules found in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz can work within the plot of that particular story, they proved too confining when others had to be written.
 * The first book of the Dragons/Last Dragon Chronicles, The Fire Within, is massively strange in comparison with the rest of the books in the series. Although the book is set in Massachusetts, the characters talk in a very British manner (probably due to the author being a Brit), the main antagonist is Henry Bacon (who is a grumpy good guy in every other book), and book has a very simple and lighthearted plot about trying to save a one-eyed squirrel from a crow--with some Reality Warping thrown in. The rest of the series, however, is dark and heady as all get-out.
 * JRR Tolkien's Middle-Earth shows this in two ways. Firstly, The Hobbit seems like a somewhat fanciful children's tale compared to The Lord of the Rings; Tolkien hadn't even decided it was going to take place in the context of his wider mythology when he originally wrote it. Though modern editions have removed some of the weirdness, earlier versions had oddities like a railroad in the Shire, and Bilbo musing about taking a trip to China. Secondly, many of his earlier drafts for said mythology have been published, and if anything they seem more fanciful still. By the way of an example, in one version Sauron's role in the story of Beren and Lúthien is played by an evil cat.
 * In the first Star Trek New Frontier book, written in 1997, prior to the trend towards consistency in the Trek novels (which started around 2001)), Danter is said to be a member of the United Federation of Planets. This seems rather odd, seeing as they're most definitely not what we'd expect from the Federation. Indeed, they're openly imperialistic. Later books seem to have retconned this, making Danter definitely an independent nation.
 * Over Sea, Under Stone, the first book of The Dark Is Rising, is a rather standard, almost Enid Blyton-esque children's adventure story, with less of the fantasy elements and references to Celtic mythology that defined the later books (they only show up in the second half of the book, and even then they're relatively subtle).
 * The first Fablehaven book is a mostly cheerful, good-natured, and lighthearted fantasy story about a pair of bickering siblings who discover that their grandparents run a nature preserve for magical creatures. The entire concept is treated with wonder. The later books in the series, however, are extremely dark, changing their tone entirely about what it's like to work in a magical preserve, and don't shy away from violence and death. The entire thing becomes a serious Crap Saccharine World.
 * The first book of the Dragons series is a silly bit of kid-friendly fluff about magical clay dragons, the joy of writing stories, and squirrels. Lots of squirrels. The series gradually grows darker until the second trilogy begins, where the series adopted the moniker of The Last Dragon Chronicles and becomes a dark, heady series about mankind's destiny, human nature and the nature of God, quantum physics, and what can only be described as the dissolution of reality at the hands of a group of superbeings. On the side, it also addresses issues like the nature of adultery and the ways in which we cope with grief. The author eventually started a spin-off series that was much closer to the original book, presumably to avoid warping the innocence of children further.
 * In the Nick Velvet stories by Edward D Hoch, Nick was originally billed as a 'Thief of the Unusual' rather than a 'Thief of the Worthless'. Several early stories feature him stealing items that definitely have a monetary value. The first story has him stealing a rare tiger from a zoo. It was several stories into the series before Hoch settled on the only stealing items with no value aspect that made the character unique.
 * Storm Front, the first book of the Dresden Files, matches the tone of the later installments fairly well, but refers to some world-building concepts that were changed in later entries of the series. For instance, there's a reference to vampires being unable to enter homes uninvited because they're creatures of the Nevernever, and need to expend constant effort to maintain corporeal form, and crossing a threshold uninvited blocks power. The threshold-blocking-power bit is maintained in later books, but vampires are later established to not be from the Nevernever, and only some breeds really have to worry about invitations. Also, there's a reference to a singular Queen of the Fae, while late installments establish two separate Fae courts, with three Queens each.
 * "Extricating Young Gussie", the first of PG Wodehouse's short stories containing Jeeves and Wooster. Bertie's personality and his relationship with Aunt Agatha are all in place, but their family name appears to be "Mannering-Phipps" instead of "Wooster". More noticeably, Jeeves appears for all intents and purposes to be an ordinary valet, and when Bertie gets in trouble and needs help, he has no idea who to ask. The surname "Wooster" and the personality of Jeeves as we know him today don't appear until the second story, aptly titled "Leave It to Jeeves".
 * In Asimov's Lucky Starr series, the first was essentially Lone Ranger In Space, with the protagonist receiving a force field mask from Sufficiently Advanced Aliens and calling himself "Space Ranger". Later, it shifted to detective series with a Cold War tone. The mask was used exactly once after the first book, in the second one, and for radiation shielding rather than disguise.
 * Mercedes Lackey's Joust series begins with a slave-boy raising a dragon. It ends with kings and the resurrection of a dead city and evil wizards. The first and the last book don't even seem like their in the same series.
 * The early Goosebumps books could get surprisingly dark.