Expansion Pack Past: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|'''Adam:''' Does this remind you of when you used to count money for the mob?

 

{{quote|'''Sasako:''' I thought you told me the other day that you quit your job at the construction company to open up the café.

 

Sometimes, characters just have over-complicated origins. They may start off reasonable, but slowly and surely, different writers swoop in and reveal more and more of their past ''via'' [[Flash Back]] until it's a confusing muddle of nonsense and clutter.

 

{{examples}}

* Parodied with Ginji in ''[[Pretty Sammy|Magical Project S]]'', who is often alluded to having done tons of improbable things and has a wallet full of licenses to prove it.

* In ''[[Naruto]]'', there were no less than ''three'' separate flashbacks for Sasuke to the night Itachi massacred the Uchiha clan. The last one feels tacked on; it would have painted Itachi in a completely different light had it been included in the first place, but Sasuke claimed that he had simply tried to forget those specific memories.

* Polar Bear from ''[[Shirokuma Cafe|Polar Bear's Cafe]]'' tells a touching story about his reasons for opening the cafe, and then Sasako brings up that he had told her a completely different version of events. He then shrugs and says both versions work. [[Only Sane Man|Penguin]] thinks he's making it all up.

 

* The most famous example of this trope is Wolverine, from ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'': He's a soldier, mutant, science experiment, ninja, assassin, [[Superhero]], miner, aristocrat's son, biker with amnesia.

** Extreme example is World War II, where Wolverine starred in different battles, spanning from France, to North Africa, to Russia, to Italy... all the while spending ''months'' being tortured and killed over and over in a concentration camp just to mess with some Nazi's head. Somehow during this period, he managed to also spend the key war years in Japan being trained as a samurai, getting a Japanese wife, and having a son. And you thought that being in X-Force, X-Men and New Avengers, while also going on his solo adventures, was an incredible accomplishment...

** The second series, that is, after they canceled the writer of the first 36 shaggy-dog issues & started a new volume at #1. The blinding rate of actual revelations in the second series contrasts with the three-year tease of the first series.

* [[Deadpool]], in addition to having a legitimate Expansion Pack Past, also pokes fun at the idea. Among his time with Weapon X, Flirtations with Death (literally), and time with the X-Men, he's done all sorts of wacky oddjobs. This includes being trained as a ''Sumo Wrestler'' (a clear parody of Wolverine's samurai training).

* Also from the ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'', Nightcrawler bears mention. Not only do we learn new things about his background every other week, they blatantly contradict each other. Circus performer with freakish appearance but cheerful outlook. Check. Raised by a Roma witch Margoli Szardos. Check. Girlfriend turns out to be adopted sister and yet they still date. Um...ok. Is revealed to be a devout Catholic. Not impossible, but highly unlikely. Real mother turns out to be Mystique, who threw him over the edge of a waterfall to escape persuers. Not only does that not vibe with the earlier story of Margoli finding him with his dead mother, but she had no way of knowing his father's surname was Wagner. Oh, and his father's an ancient demon. [[Fanon Discontinuity|But we don't like to talk about that.]]

* When you see this in the X-Men, consider a sign of authorial affection for the character. Ororo/Storm's backstory was pretty trippy as well, even before they inserted [[Token Minority Couple|T'Challa]] in it.

* [[Batman]] in all of his versions (but mainly the comics) has this for the time between the death of his parents (and sometimes even before) and the first time he put on the cape and cowl.

** Especially concerning the events leading up the fateful day they went out to see Zorro. Grant Morrison has it so Bruce's dad decided to have a family day to cheer Bruce up because the kid escaped being decapitated by an immortal, Satan-worshipping school teacher. No, really.

** Bucky has this even more, since he ended up as a brainwashed Soviet assassin that was kept on ice when not on assignment.

* ''[[Elf Quest]]'' did this for Bearclaw, Mantricker and Kahvi. Although most of Bearclaw's stories are pretty solid, Mantricker's timeline is broken beyond all help - and for the family trees to still make sense, some of the later writers literally had to have Kahvi ''fall into a magical plot hole'' for a few thousand years.

 

== Film ==

* Lampshaded in ''[[MacGruber]]''. When MacGruber is introduced, we are told of his many tours of duty in pretty much every branch of the military. Many would be impossible, because they occur at the same time or the war was simply too short to accommodate all of them. MacGruber would have to be a hundred-year-old man with a time machine to squeeze them all in.

 

== Literature ==

* In the ''[[Sword of Truth]]'' series, Sister Nicci originally had little background besides being one of the Sisters of the Light and {{spoiler|secretly being aligned with the Keeper of the Underworld.}} However, starting in ''Faith of the Fallen'', her complex past is delved into during chapters from her point of view.

* Faolan from Juliet Marillier's Bridei Chronicles. In the first book, he's a spy and bodyguard with a [[Mysterious Past]]. In the second and third books, we find out that he {{spoiler|started out as a bard in Ireland, then became an assassin, then was in prison for awhile, then somehow made his way to Scotland and made a career there.}} Despite all that, he's still in his 20s. There doesn't seem to have been time for him to actually do everything he's supposed to have done, particularly given the time it must have taken for a member of an enemy tribe to win the trust of the Priteni king.

 

== Live Action TV ==

* Phoebe from ''[[Friends]]'' often makes passing allusions to unusual jobs or situations she was involved in before the series started, although she does have an ordinary backstory as well.

** And as she's a firm believer in reincarnation, there was at least one flashback scene to Phoebe in a previous life. Whether this is supposed to be purely imaginary is, one supposes, left to the viewer.

** And he 'never thought it would come in handy, then he moved next to Tim'

* ''[[Power Rangers]]'' really gropes when it tries to come up with what Rangers returning for team-up episodes have been doing since they were last seen. Being a member of the original team, after fifteen years on and off of the screen, Tommy Oliver has been a martial artist, a football player, a race car driver, a paleontologist, a [[Mad Scientist]] (seriously!), a high school science teacher, and highly involved in Ranger-ness behind the scenes while between power sources, having made contact with ''every'' team even if they were based in space, just visiting from a lot more than [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]], etc. If there's anything "Dr. O" has not been, he ''will'' have by the next anniversary teamup to bring him back.

* Larry, Darryl, and Darryl from ''[[Newhart]]'' had an extremely packed past.

* Despite being an utter failure at almost 40, Johnny Drama on ''[[Entourage]]'' has a story about anyone and everyone in show business, just because he's been around so long. Oddly, his own brother and best friends have never heard most of these stories before.

* ''[[Criminal Minds]]'': In order for all of the things in Aaron Hotchner's past to be true, he had to have gone to college at 13. Seriously, the guy was an established prosecutor before joining the BAU and then working his way up to Lead Profiler, which he's been for about five years... yet he's barely 45.

* Elim Garak from ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' fits this trope. Played with in that you can never know for sure if ANY of his supposed backstory is true, since [[That Liar Lies]]. His backstory was finally revealed in a ''thick'' book, ''[[A Stitch In Time]]'', written by the actor who portrayed him.

* ''[[CSI]]'' likes this trope in all its versions. Enough past is revealed to flesh out a character, and them more and more is revealed as things progress. Listing all the stuff associated with the main characters could be a page in itself.

* Many an episode of ''[[Remington Steele]]'' revolved around someone from the main character's past coming around to reveal another piece. He's known to have been a thief, con man, and boxer. Along the way, he picked up numerous skills and bits of information.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* Pretty much every game-product or novel author who wrote about [[Ravenloft]]'s Strahd von Zarovich in the 2E era has added something to his past. Partially justified, in that he's been a vampire for centuries; however, the number of subplots that got crammed into the last year or so of his ''mortal'' life is a bit over-the-top.

 

== Video Games ==

* ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' was originally released in Japan with Cloud's actual identity left ambiguous, with no explanation as to how Cloud, the boy from Nibelheim killed by Sephiroth in the Reactor, ended up becoming the same person as Cloud, a clone of Sephiroth with Zack's memories (or even whether he was the same person at all, leaving it up to the player and Cloud's deliberately ambiguous explanation to explain). The English version and the Japanese 'International' version added a hidden [[Easter Egg]] scene which explains how Cloud was taken from the Reactor, revived (in a coma), and experimented on by Hojo for five years, eventually saved by Zack.

* The Boss in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 3'' reveals her past, claiming she's never talked this much about herself before. But in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]: Peace Walker'', both Strangelove and EVA reveal all kinds of juicy details about top-secret missions she'd been on in between (and in one case, instead of) the missions she'd told Snake about.

 

== Web Original ==

* Etzel von Gerhart of ''[[Shadowhunter Peril]]'' isn't too great at keeping his former life as a mercenary and assassin under wraps.

 

== Western Animation ==

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Continuity Tropes]]

[[Category:Backstory Tropes]]