Canon Discontinuity/Western Animation

Examples of in  include:


 * According to Word of God the Ben 10 episodes set in the future are not canon, as they portray Kevin as an unrepentant villain, but in Alien Force, he is a redeemed good guy. Also, the pop-up edition of the episode "Goodbye And Good Riddance" states that the episode is not canon and that the real story of Ben's return to Bellwood is the live action film "Race Against Time". However Ultimate Alien episode "Ben 10,000 Returns" made all canon inconsistent events alternate universe... including "Race Against Time" and the villian Kevin future.
 * The Heavy Gear animated series is considered by Word of God to be an entertainment broadcast similar to professional wrestling within the Heavy Gear universe, and thus not representative of how things work in the "real" Heavy Gear universe.
 * It seems everything Disney made before Steamboat Willie is considered discontinuity as Pete, Mickey, and Minnie Mouse are all labeled as having debuted in it. Pete actually first appeared three years earlier in an Alice Comedy cartoon called Alice Solves the Puzzle, while the other two mice debuted earlier in 1928 in Plane Crazy. Of course considering that their first cartoon featured Attempted Rape by the world’s biggest and most kid-friendly icon, it makes sense Disney does not talk about it.
 * Technically, though Plane Crazy was made before Steamboat Willie, the latter cartoon was released first, with the originally silent Plane Crazy being released after (with an added soundtrack).
 * The Disney Princess roster varies significantly, tending to eliminate princesses from less popular movies. This shows up in merchandise and tie-in books. Most notably, Princess Eilonwy and Kida are never included. One book specifically mentions that Arial is the only princess from an underwater kingdom. IMDB calls Tangled the first PG-rated Disney princess movie, despite both The Black Cauldron and Atlantis: The Lost Empire being rated PG.
 * And do you want to know which characters from those respective movies ended up in the merchandise instead? The villains!
 * Also, Roark's death at the end of Atlantis is often considered by fans of that film as a Take That to Disney's definition of "princess": Near the end of the film, the King of Atlantis, while on his deathbed, actually states that the Atlantean Crystal (which was stolen by Roark, shortly after he kills the King) can and will only accept those of Royal Blood. Since Roark is not only the film's Big Bad but is also not royalty, the Crystal ultimately kills him by first turning him into a nightmarish crystal ice monster, then vaporizing him with his own blimp's propellers. Ironic, given the fact that Disney still sees him (and to a much lesser extent, Helga) as an official Disney Villain...
 * They seem to be giving their older TV cartoons this treatment too. The book Disney Dossiers fails to mention most of the details about the feature characters established in their TV spin-offs or sequels (examples being Aladdin having a father, Kuzco having a significant other, Timon's surname, and Scar's birth name). But then again, maybe the writer just Did Not Do the Research...
 * A Disney Princess coloring book about Aladdin and Jasmine's wedding also for some reason ignored the events of the film's sequels. One, is that Iago the parrot isn't attending the wedding at all (at the end of The Return of Jafar, Iago actually converted to the side of good), and two, Jasmine's wedding dress for some reason, looks absolutely nothing like the one she wore in King of Thieves at all!
 * On that note, according to the John Lasseter and Ed Catmull-run Disney Animation Studios, everything Pooh-related released after The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and before the 2011 Winnie the Pooh film isn't canon. That means no Pooh's Grand Adventure, no Book Of Pooh, no The Tigger Movie, no Piglet's Big Movie, no Pooh's Heffalump Movie, no Pooh's Heffalump Halloween Movie, and no My Friends Tigger and Pooh... so pretty much everything released during Pooh's Cash Cow Franchise days (which makes up a majority of the Pooh media) is no longer canon. It's a pretty gutsy move on Lasseter and Catmull's part, but then again these were the guys who stopped production on Disney's direct-to video sequels so it's pretty clear that they believe Disney should be Doing It for the Art rather than going after easy money.
 * It's likely that the writers for the 3rd An American Tail movie, The Treasure of Manhattan Island, were trying to cause canon discontinuity for Fievel Goes West when they had Fievel say that he had a dream where the family moved out west. The difference here is that the discontinuity had nothing to do with fan opinion, and it in fact angered a lot of fans.
 * The much-reviled The Simpsons episode "The Principal and The Pauper", where it's revealed that Principal Skinner is in fact a former street punk pulling a Dead Person Impersonation of the real Seymour Skinner, has been marked as non-canon by the writers. A later episode blatantly contradicts it by showing the familiar Seymour as a baby in Agnes Skinner's womb. Essentially, Principal Skinner is definitely the genuine article - except on the very few occasions when the episode is referred to for the sake of a joke.
 * Lampshaded in the episode "Behind the Laughter", where it turns out that "The Principal and the Pauper" was written during a period of the show where the Simpsons had a massive falling out and couldn't stand to be around each other. As a result, they were forced to resort to "increasingly nonsensical plots and storylines" to keep the show going. Cue Skinner announcing he's an imposter.
 * Notably, the episode itself "justifies" its own Canon Discontinuity—right before the end credits, the judge explicitly declares that no one must ever mention the episode's events again, and act as if it had never happened, "on penalty of torture!" (Cue cheers from the crowd). On the DVD commentary, Ken Keeler, writer of the episode, complains that a couple of sequences that made this point even more obvious - that this was a non-canon episode about how preciously some people can take their relationships with TV characters - were cut for time, though he claims to no longer remember how they went. (Keeler also believes this episode is his best work out of everything he has ever written for TV, which does include the much more popular Simpsons episodes "Two Bad Neighbors" & "Brother From Another Series", plus "Time Keeps on Slippin'" & "Godfellas" for Futurama.)
 * On the other hand, a later episode had Skinner accuse Lisa of dishonesty, to which Lisa responded by calling him "Mr. Tanzarian" to point out his hypocrisy—Tanzarian being Skinner's real name according to "The Principal and the Pauper."
 * In Transformers Generation 1, the Big Bad Unicron was revealed in season three to have been a Gone Horribly Right experiment by an alien Mad Scientist named "Primacron"—his intent was that Unicron would devour all life in the universe, and then Primacron could repopulate the universe with lifeforms of his own creation and design. All subsequent itinerations of Transformers have stuck with the idea of Unicron as a Satanic Eldritch Abomination, a concept from the Marvel Transformers comics.
 * Of course, considering Unicron's universe-jumping ability, Primacron could have built a giant Transformer body that Unicron's essence took over as his own, then blasted the monkey when he got lippy about it.
 * Jonny Quest: Lance Falk, a writer on The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, has argued fervently against the canonicity of the 1980s series and movies.
 * It was official policy for the writers of the second season of TRA that everything that came between them and the original series was not canon.
 * It seems that The Flintstones have discontinued, or tried to discontinue, their "Older Pebbles and Bam-Bam" related media.
 * At the end of all of the Cars Toons series of Pixar Shorts, it's heavily implied that all of Mater's stories are indeed canon, as a character or a plot element shows up in person instead, much to Lightning McQueen's dismay. However, one short in the series isn't canon at all. Guess which one is it!
 * Avatar: The Last Airbender deliberately set this up in "The Cave of Two Lovers", with the cut-away from Aang's and Katara's First Kiss/Almost Kiss. If you think it was too soon or too predictable, you can decide they didn't kiss. If not, they did kiss.
 * "The Great Divide" — the writers themselves even joke about this in "The Ember Island Players".
 * "Avatar Day" as well, but it usually gets a pass because it provides some interesting back story for Avatar Kiyoshi that even gets referenced in the series finale at one point.
 * Some diehard Zuko/Katara shippers (or fans of other ships) declare the last few episodes (or at least the parts regarding Aang and Katara) to be discontinuity as well. How exactly this all has to work out is complicated, but basically, Mai either doesn't turn good or turns good but doesn't end back up with Zuko, leaving him free for Katara.
 * Disney's Quack Pack, due to incompatibility with DuckTales. Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas uses the nephews in their younger forms as if nothing happened. Some take this further, and only acknowledge the Donald and Scrooge McDuck comics by Carl Barks (and his spiritual successor, Don Rosa). Of course, DuckTales had several episodes involving reality warps and time travel, so everybody wins.
 * Poor Ludwig Von Drake got the shaft from Carl Barks and some of his fans for first appearing on a television show a couple of decades after the Donald comics hit it big (and after Gyro Gearloose was established as the resident genius). Don Rosa proposed the (shot down) theory that Ludwig von Drake married Scrooge's sister Matilda to explain why he is sometimes called Donald's uncle.
 * And on the subject of Don Rosa, in his Duck universe, Mickey Mouse is just a fictional comic character. The Ducks are the only ones who are "real".
 * The entire canon with the classic characters is usually put together differently depending on who you talk to, especially when you factor in the comics, the fact that the characters pop up in different time periods, and the preschool shows.
 * Sometimes they're treated as Animated Actors, which helps explain a lot.


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