Continuity Snarl: Difference between revisions

Unfortunate, if you have a fan-base which likes everything arranged in a neat, tidy little pattern and isn't shy about voicing their opinion when this isn't the case.

A Continuity Snarl can result in [[Continuity Lock Out]] for readers, especially newcomers, as it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of what's happening in the 'verse without a Masters Degree in Continuity Studies. Creators often resort to the [[Crisis Crossover]] to try and untangle the snarl they've made for themselves -- unfortunately, this can just as easily become [[Continuity Porn]], which more often than not just makes things ''worse''. Can lead to a plain ol' [[Plot Hole]].

== Anime and Manga ==

* Despite mostly having only one writer, the classic ''[[Astro Boy (Manga)|Astro Boy]]'' series turned into a first class continuity snarl towards the end. See, what happened was that in the final episode of the original anime, Astro died performing a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] to deliver a device into the center of the sun to stop it from dying. Shortly after the anime ended, [[Osamu Tezuka]] began a new Astro Boy story as a newspaper strip in the Sankei Newspaper, which featured Astro's melted carcass being recovered by time-traveling aliens and brought back to life before winding up trapped in the distant past (the readers' present). Because Astro had never died in the manga, however, when the collected edition came out Tezuka redid the first chapter that involved Astro, alive and well getting thrown back in time when the alien timeship crashes on Earth instead. Tezuka then produced three more different, contradictory stories of Astro's future in various publications: a pilot for a second Astro Boy series that never got off the ground which also takes place after the end of the anime where Astro is found by a completely different race of time traveling aliens, upgraded into a new body with time travel capabilities and sent back to Earth to find the era he came from; A one-shot nostalgia piece in a men's magazine, yet another followup to the anime where Astro is resurrected by [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]] and taken to a planet millions of light years from Earth from which he may never return, so Ochanomizu and the rest of the Ministry Of Science staff create a replacement, who turns out to be a lazy sex maniac because he was designed to be more "Human"; and finally, "The End Of Astroboy", which doesn't mention his death and simply has him in a display case in a robot museum due to being supplanted by more advanced robots and then freed by some human rebels to help them fight against said robots who have taken over the world.

* ''[[Pokémon (Anime)|Pokémon]]'' has some of these, particularly concerning Jessie, James, and Meowth. This can overlap with [[Multiple Choice Past]].

** The remaining seven novels remove Zelgadis and Amelia and replace them with Luke and Millina, and from there comes its own story.

** Before he appears again in the fifth book, Zelgadis actually meets Xellos before the others do, hence why he knows of him when he appears. This is accounted in a side story.

** Finally, there are cases of the dreaded [[Multiple Choice Past]], especially in regards to Zelgadis. It's never mentioned in the anime, but in the novels it's stated that he was a criminal during his time with Rezo after he was initially turned into a chimera, and it gave him a bad reputation. Also, the applications of magic vary heavily to the point of convolution.

* The various works of [[Leiji Matsumoto]], which often share characters and have at tendency to re-tell stories from different points of view, could be the trope namer for this. Examples include:

** However, as you can see, a lot of this comes from [[Fan Wank]] regarding merchandise. It is not always possible to fit everything you see on a trading card or virtual pet into the show, but the show does not contradict itself on many things... however, ''Ryo'' has it as bad as any comic book character. The Ryo-related aspects of ''[[Digimon Adventure 02 (Anime)|Digimon Adventure 02]]'' that seem random and nonsensical are explained in the games... but once you take them into account, some of the events of ''[[Digimon Tamers (Anime)|Digimon Tamers]]'' are thrown off.

* ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' is starting to run into this with two series of manga, ''Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha ViVid'' and ''Mahou Senki Lyrical Nanoha Force'', running at the same time. They mostly manage to stay separate, but occasionally they contradict one another.

* The ''[[Kinnikuman]]'' manga has a rather bad example: when Geronimo attacks [[Big Bad|Akuma Shogun]], we see a group of choujin watching Geronimo's [[Curb Stomp Battle|beat-down]], with ''Geronimo being in the group.'' In other words, Geronimo's watching himself get beaten.

** The problems began when novelist [[Brad Meltzer]] wrote a [[Green Arrow]] story called ''The Archer's Quest'' centering upon Oliver Queen going on a road trip with former sidekick Roy Harper to retrieve items that could be used to discover his secret identity. The problem with that is that Oliver Queen hadn't had a secret identity in years! In fact, in the ''Quiver'' storyline written by [[Kevin Smith (Creator)|Kevin Smith]] (which came out less than a year before Meltzer's story) the main piece of evidence Batman used to convince a resurrected and amnesiac Oliver Queen that he HAD been dead was newspaper articles which used his real name while discussing his death.

** Another problem was the revelation that the whole ''Archer's Quest'' was a ruse and that Ollie had really been trying to recover a photograph which proved that he had been present on the day his illegitimate son Connor Hawke was born and that Ollie, ipso facto, was a dead beat dad. The problem is that this scenario is completely implausible given the circumstances under which Ollie originally found out that Connor (who he had been traveling with for a while before his death) was his son - he had been told by the truth by his best buddy Hal Jordan, who was (at the time) nigh-omnipotent with the power of all The Guardians Of The Univers Minus One. For Meltzer's scenario to make sense, we have to believe that Hal Jordan is capable of being able to see the DNA of a person by looking at them but is unable to tell when his best friend is lying about having no idea he had an illegitimate son.

*** What makes this truly awful is this scene was meant to bookend the excellent ''Green Arrow: Year One'' mini-series by Andy Diggle. Suffice it to say that [[Green Arrow]] fans who have read that book find it hard to believe that the man Oliver is at the end of the story would ever abandon a child in need, much less his own son.

*** The flashback also changes Sandra Hawke, who had always been portrayed as a half-African/half-Korean woman who favored her Korean mother into a pouty-lipped African woman with dreadlocks.

*** This one happens because of a change in plans. Originally, the Fantastic Four we were seeing in Ultimate Spider-Man and the such were going to be adults, while Ultimate Fantastic Four would take place a decade or so in the rest of the line's past, establishing the FF as the first super heroes and cornerstones of heroic society in the Ultimate U. The plan got muddled and changed, but it's very apparent when Sue Storm, 16-ish in UFF, shows up during Ultimate Spider-Man's "Clone Saga" and is clearly in her late 20s/early 30s.

* ''The Crossing'', a [[Crisis Crossover]] featuring [[The Avengers]], is such a snarl that even [[Atop the Fourth Wall (Web Video)|Linkara]] refuses to review it, partly because it's nearly impossible to tell when it begins or ends. Basically, Iron Man turns evil and helps Kang try to take over the world, but who is on who's side changes from issue to issue. Eventually, Kurt Busiek rendered the whole thing moot in ''Avengers Forever'' by stating that the entire thing was Immortus trolling the superhero community so that they'd leave other planets alone, and that almost everyone involved was a Space Phantom. [[Let Us Never Speak of This Again|After the Heroes Reborn/Heroes Return debacle, the Crossing was pretty much never brought up again.]]

* The Uncle Scrooge comics briefly endured this after Boom Studios acquired the license. The first eight issues under this publisher seemed to follow the comics' standard continuity -- and then the next eight tried to tie the series into the ''[[Duck Tales]]'' TV show, which was only a loose adaptation with noticeable differences (in the comics, there was never a Launchpad, Donald didn't join the navy and Glomgold was an Afrikaner). As of issue #400, the comics seem to have returned to their original continuity, and a completely separate [[Duck Tales]] title has since been released. So naturally this new series would feature a brief appearance by John Rockerduck, a Scrooge antagonist from the comics who never appeared in ''[[Duck Tales]]''!

* The symbiotes from [[Spider Man]]. First, the Venom suit was just an alien costume. Then it was retconned into being alive. Then, when the writers wanted to turn it into a villain, it was retconned that the suit made Spider-Man go insane and he had to get rid of it (originally, he was trying to destroy just because it was attatching itself to him, which is a bit harsh for a guy like Spidey). It was later shown the the suits fed off strong hosts as a sort of [[Social Darwinist]]. Then it was revealed to feed off negative emotions such as hate and anger. Then they were shown to live in the Negative Zone... no wait, there was a separate planet of them. Oh, and Toxin proved that not all of them are born evil after all. Oh, and Carnage has had about three symbiotes get destroyed but no one ever remembers those stories.

*** The [[Expanded Universe]] had, prior to the prequel trilogy, assumed that Obi-Wan had met and trained an adult Anakin, as nothing in the original trilogy even hinted at Jedi being brought in for training as young children. Thus, the EU soruces listed him as being only 5 years younger than Obi-Wan.

* [[Highlander (Franchise)|Highlander]] is one of the kings of this trope. Each of the original films screwed up the continuity more and more, and then the series was added in and then there are things like Search For Vengeance, and the Animated Series. This is another universe that will give you a headache if you try to figure it out.

== Live-Action TV ==

** These are by no means the only fraught areas of Doctor Who continuity. In what order did the original series' Dalek stories happen? (In particular, when does ''The Daleks'' take place and why are the Daleks in that story so different from all others seen later?) How many Doctors have there been (watch ''The Brain of Morbius'', although the novelisation clears it up a bit)? What was Atlantis like, and how did it sink? And how many ''times'' did it sink (And yes, this question ''is'' more complicated than it first appears)? How do Time Lord family relationships - in particular, the Doctor's - work? What are the Laws of Time and for that matter, are they laws in the scientific or legal sense? And most of that list arises just from the TV series.

**** It's probable that everything is canon, but with all the time travel that goes on, the Doctor's past adventures and even massive things like the fabric of Time Lord society get changed by all of this all the time. The problem is then understanding what's canon right NOW.

***** And now that {{spoiler|the entire universe was erased and reassembled in the finale of series 5 it's not clear what has ever happened or not, particularly in series 4 and 5.}}

***** The Time War that occured sometime between the Eighth and Ninth incarnations is sometimes used by the writers to explain continuity errors.

** In the immortal words of a leading who-fan: "Continuity? What continuity?"

* As mentioned above, [[Star Trek (Franchise)|Star Trek]] also suffers from this, despite efforts from the writers to avoid this.

*** That solution is then torn apart by the [[Victorious]] episode ''Who Did It To Trina'', where they explicitly state that [[Drake and Josh]] is a TV show. Even though the episode before it had Helen, one of the main characters ''from'' [[Drake and Josh]] appear and reference characters from [[Drake and Josh]].

* In ''[[The Office]]'', toward the end of the fifth season, in a rare instance where two people are talking to the camera, Pam and Jim are talking about how Andy and Angela had been engaged for a couple of years, but then said that the timeline was complicated.

** And Giru ''existing.'' In the series, Giru is {{spoiler|never active. A complete set of ten Core Medals for a dinosaur Greeed exists, and five wind up in Eiji and five wind up in Maki.}} Also, there were [[Out-of-Character Moment|Out Of Character Moments]] with the OOO crew, as all the details of the series hadn't been finalized when the movie was produced. This results in a movie that is clearly a direct continuation of Double but just as clearly ''can't'' be in continuity for OOO.

* There have been three seasons of ''[[Power Rangers]]'' that have shown variations on the future: ''[[Power Rangers SPD]]'' (2025), ''[[Power Rangers Time Force]]'' (3000), and ''[[Power Rangers RPM]]'' (late 21st century at the earliest). Trying to fit them together can be problematic, especially since the various showrunners are unclear on whether or not RPM is an [[Alternate Continuity]] (although Venjix's apocalypse would explain the wastelands outside the Time-Force-governed utopia). However, there will be an inevitable [[Canon Welding]], since everything is going to be forced together if they adapt ''[[Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger (TV)|Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger]]''. (Of course, it's not too hard to weld together the three seasons even without ''Gokaiger.'' The biggest bone of contention about ''SPD'' revolves around the amount of aliens living on Earth which had disappeared before the chronologically later seasons. It's not a huge stretch to assume that by the time of ''RPM'' and ''Time Force,'' the aliens have become [[Human Aliens]] by either adapting to Earth's atmosphere or integrating with humans.)

== Tabletop Games ==

** Fortunately, trying to keep up with the plot isn't really the point.

*** Considering that Yogg-Saron, god of death, very loudly screams about how the Lich King is trying to usurp his throne, this seems like the most likely explanation. Note that Yoggy was still sealed when the Forsaken were freed, which explains why they kept their minds instead of being re-enslaved by him.

** Blizzard lampshaded their tendency to do this with the Well of Eternity dungeon, which revisits a previously established moment in Warcraft lore using time travel. Defeating the [[Dual Boss]] at the end in the wrong order grants the achievement "That's Not Canon!"

** There isn't really that much inconsistency; the only artifical shadows are the Full Moon bosses and Strega's Personae. While it is true that the bulk of the shadows in 3 are tiny fractions of Nyx's essence while in 4 they are reflections of human emotions and thoughts, Nyx (Mankind's subconscious wish for death or an escape from pain) herself, along with {{spoiler|Metis (Aigis' loneliness) and the Embodiment of Despair (The despair felt by SEES on the protagonist's death)}} have their ultimate origins as reflections of emotions just like in 4. Of course, 4 also has {{spoiler|Izanami}}; who doesn't appear to have either of them as her origin.

* The Halo universe can't make up its mind on whether there was a single "[[Child Soldiers|class]]" of [[Super Soldier|Spartan-IIs]] or more. Summed up at [http://xbox.answers.wikia.com/wiki/Was_there_a_second_class_of_Spartan-IIs this Wikia Wikianswers page]. This relates to the question of [[Writers Cannot Do Math|how many Spartans there were]].

[[Category:Consistency]]

[[Category:Continuity Snarl]]