Fanon Discontinuity/Western Animation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Don't worry Brain, the fans shared the same sentiment.

"You watched it. You can't unwatch it!"

—Futurama

Or can you?

Western cartoons, like other Animated Shows, have their share of things people would just rather forget.

  • A number of fans of Pinky and The Brain refuse to acknowledge the spin-off Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain (pictured), due to, basically, hatred of that annoying little brat Elmyra.
  • The Direct-to-Video Disney Sequels (and spin-off series) are unaccepted by many due to poor storylines, poor villains and the resetting any Character Development. The greatest offender would have to be Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, which has Cinderella's Wicked Stepmother and stepsisters Retcon the original movie's ending with the Fairy Godmother's wand so that Anastasia gets the prince.
    • The Nostalgia Chick made a list of the Top 10 Worst Disney Sequels, and especially hates the Beauty and the Beast midquels. She made a Top 5 Least Awful list shortly after that has more tolerable sequels to movies such as Aladdin and Brother Bear. Ironically, Cinderella III is on the latter list, and it's not even at #5 or an honorable mention.
  • A good portion of American Dad fans refuse to acknowledge the existence of Reginald the Koala.
  • Fans of Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? tend to ignore the fact that the series is a video game in series.
  • Vuk the Little Fox is the adaptation of one of the best and most successful Hungarian children books. It is a beautiful and emotional experience, which quite deserves its place in the IMDB top 10 animation. Little Vuk (aka A Fox's Tale) is its sequel, made in 2008, 20 years later from the book of the original author's son with a really dumb and unoriginal plot. The cartoon features worse animation than the gameplay of most contemporary videogames with characters in the middle of Uncanny Valley. Most people pretend it does not exist, and the rest have voted it into its quite deserved place in the IMDB bottom 10 animation.
  • Fans are now claiming that Ben 10 Alien Force doesn't exist, particularly after Gwen's magic was retconned into "alien grandma", but also because of Kevin's Heel Face Turn and how quickly the Tennysons accept him. Gwevin shippers, however...
  • For quite a few fans, the Tom and Jerry episodes directed by Gene Deitch never happened.
    • Simply put: If it didn't come from Hollywood USA, it's not a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
    • Also, most fans deny the existence of the 1993 theatrically-released Tom and Jerry movie, due to the fact that Tom and Jerry talk, sing, become best friends and, instead of doing slapstick, help some boring little girl find her missing father. Saying that's In Name Only is like saying Charles Manson was slightly unstable.
      • Not to mention the frankly terrifying scene of Tom and Jerry standing on the chimney of a burning building watching helplessly as their only apparent means of survival is unable to rescue them. And then the building collapses.
  • Most "true fans" of Total Drama Island consider Total Drama Action to never have existed at all, mainly due to its massive Character Derailment (the biggest reason: see Trent, Geoff, Courtney ...), destroying many of the couples, and generally being worse quality than Island. Thankfully, things shaped up for World Tour....for about 13 episodes! Afterward, many fans reject the Gwen/Duncan/Courtney love triangle plot, as well as the unpleasant ending of the season as a whole. (The US ending is also more accepted than the Canadian one.)
  • Transformers: Hoo boy. Some fans ignore everything after The Movie (the animated one) or Season 2, Beast Wars fans often ignore Beast Machines and/or the Beast Wars-specific comic stories, and others ignore Beast Wars itself. And fans sometimes reject that the comics retconned the origins of Unicron and Primus in every continuity. Many fans also deny The Rebirth as canon, mainly because of it's poor writing, animation, and characters. Ignoring this is made easier by the fact that the anime series Transformers Headmasters takes place after Season Three, but ignores The Rebirth. The Transformers Wiki has a good article on "Personal Canon".
  • Numerous fans of Thomas the Tank Engine wish the series ended after Season 4, after which a number of characters including Edward, Henry, Duck and Toby suffered from Character Derailment (no pun intended) or were Demoted to Extra, unrealistic incidents (such as Thomas being shoved down a railway by a jet engine) happened, Thomas was shunted into nearly every episode (even when he didn't play any role whatsoever), and the Reverend Awdry's work was contradicted (such as Thomas pushing away snow without a snowplough). Some fans go further and wish Season 2 was where everything ended, as the writing quality arguably started to go downhill after then.
  • The Critic: Most fans of the TV series were disappointed with the webisodes that followed a few years after the show's cancellation. This fan review should provide further explanation.
  • A majority of South Park fans wish to acknowledge that the episodes "You're Getting Old" and "Ass Burgers" NEVER happened.
    • Which is especially ironic considering the latter was in and of itself a Canon Discontinuity of the former.
    • Some fans believe that the show ended with season 4, due to the following season 5 having Kenny killed off for an entire season.
    • Stendy fans refuse to acknowledge the existence of "Raisins", "Follow That Egg", and to a lesser extent, "The List".
    • And then there's the unnecessary sex change of Mr. Garrison...
  • Most Daria fans hate the episode "Depth Takes a Holiday" so much to the point that fanfics have been written just to explain how it never happened and isn't canon. Granted, despite no All Just a Dream disclaimer at any point, the episode was probably never intended to be taken too seriously or intended to be canon.
  • Many fans like to pretend Season 10 and onwards of King of the Hill don't exist for a few reasons. Luanne gets into a relationship with "Lucky", an ugly, middle-aged, stereotypical hillbilly and gets pregnant. This is jarring because Luanne beforehand had gone through a lot of Character Development: she realized that she had a lot of unused potential; she went to college; she had a vow to never have sex again until her wedding day; she never wanted to be a hillbilly ever again: and she had declared that she never wanted to marry a much older man. All of this was just ignored and wasted.
    • Plus, the insult to the fans is that the Character Development went to the wrong character. Lucky, the show's least popular character, got good development and became a responsible husband, father, and homeowner, whereas Luanne—who has been on the show since Day 1—degenerated to an even bigger dummy than she was when the show first started.
    • Another reason was that Luanne's father in earlier episodes was said to be a small, timid, nerdy man who looked like a male version of Peggy. He was a good man who made a bad decision in marrying Leanne, who was abusive to him and caused him to flee to an oil rig in Montana whereupon he said he would not come back to Texas until he received news of Leanne's death. When he does show up many seasons later, this is all contradicted; he's a big fat guy that looks nothing like Peggy, and is a total Jerkass who fled to Montana because of his drug addiction and was in jail the whole time.
    • The fact that the whole "new mother" storyline became a massive Tear Jerker/Funny Aneurysm Moment with the death of Brittany Murphy also doesn't help.
    • Some fans wish not to consider "What Makes Bobby Run" canon either. It's that to this show as "The Boys Of Bummer" is to The Simpsons".
  • There are a number of Phineas and Ferb fans who pretend that the Laser-Guided Amnesia ending to Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension never happened at all.
  • Some fans of Postman Pat disavow the existence of the newer episodes made by Entertainment Rights. The reasons include political correctness that has seeped into the show and the loss of some classic characters in the recent series.
  • Some fans pretend that Season 4 of ReBoot never happened due to Hexadecimal's Heroic Sacrifice.
    • And some do count the first half of Season 4, but ignore everything after Megabyte-Bob appears.
  • More than a few fans of Regular Show are treating the episode "The Best Burger in The World" as this, due to undoing Benson's recent Character Development and for having a huge Kick the Dog ending.
    • "Do Me a Solid" gets this too, due to the fact that Rigby Took a Level in Jerkass for no reason at all and that the supernatural event was a total Ass Pull (even for a show which runs on out-of-nowhere weirdness).
  • Ask just about any Ren and Stimpy fan if they consider Adult Party Cartoon canon. 99.9% percent sure the answer will be "No".
  • A lot of fans of Rugrats tend to think that Preschool Daze and All Grown Up! are non-canon, or just try to forget their existence at all.
    • There are several points during Rugrats' run after which some fans don't consider canon. Some fans feel it ended with the birth of Dil, some fans think it ended with the introduction of Kimi, and some fans think it ended when it was Uncancelled in 1997.
  • Kim Possible fanfic writers generally ignore the Season 4 hookup between Junior Senior and Bonnie.
  • Good luck finding a Bionicle fan who pays attention to the Retcons about how Matoran and every other living thing in the "Matoran Universe" are supposed to be mindless automatons and how being individuals with personality was just a glitch in their AI. Similarly, paying attention to the retcon inducing universal Asexuality and No Hugging, No Kissing is a rarity, all the more so since the Mata Nui Online Game and the Adobe Flash animations, the early material establishing the Matoran's capability to love, is widely considered some of the fandom's favourite parts of the story.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door: The revelation that Heinrich is a girl is considered untrue by a number of fans, mainly due to the utter lack of build-up to this twist just for the sake of wrapping up Heinrich's plotline before the series ended.
    • Actually, there were quite a few things fans of the show considered non-canon, from Chad's being a double agent all along during his time with the Teen Ninjas for reasons similar to Heinrich's twist, to the very final episode where Nigel Uno ends up having to leave Earth to help the Galactic KND.
    • Some 1x5 shippers want to ignore the fact that Numbuhs 2 and 5 get married in the future, depsite the fact that it had some foreshadowing.
  • Most fans of Danny Phantom refuse to acknowledge the third (and final) season of the show, due to head writer Steve Marmel leaving the series, ignoring past character development, and plot threads left hanging (despite the creator knowing it would be the last season).
    • Granted, Nickelodeon has a bit of a policy about letting on that a show's ending within the show itself; fans should probably count themselves lucky they got as much closure as they did.
    • Even those who acknowledge the last season often ignore the finale episode, due to its revealing Danny's secret to Valerie and his parents, and possibly the world. They prefer to play around with the plot ideas that were nullified by this episode.
  • Many fans of Don Bluth films disregard the DTV sequels of his movies (which Bluth had nothing to do with). This is especially true of the series of sequels to The Land Before Time because any subtext is now gone and they are now musicals, when the original was not.
    • The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy To The Rescue is considered especially excremental because it turns the dark and gritty world of NIMH into a Lighter and Softer musical. It's also pretty clear that the filmmakers did not watch the same movie we did. Among other things, they failed to understand that the rats saved Timothy because of the debt they owed his father for helping them break out of NIMH. In the second film, the reason has suddenly changed to the rats believing that Timothy is PROPHESIED to save the rats! (That this prophecy turns out to be a Self-fulfilling one doesn't help.)
  • Most An American Tail fans will tell you there was only two movies, not four, just An American Tail and Fievel Goes West. Mostly because of Bridget being written out in the last two.
    • There are other fans that believe that there were no sequels at all.
  • Many fans prefer to mentally erase the second season finale of the Legion Of Super-Heroes due to Brainiac 5 inexplicably becoming human, getting a different face design, and leaving the team. Plus there was a lot of Brainy/Superman Ho Yay that irritated Shrinking Violet/Brainy shippers. But mostly they keep to Triplicate Girl's white-hued self returning from the future that also happened in the finale.
    • Some fans go as far as ignoring the second season for its darker tone, somewhat declining writing and characher redesigns. This troper remembers having read someone's journal post wherein they complained about Braniac 5 not being as cute in the second season and that Lightning Lad's goatee made him look like Shaggy.
  • Fans of the Lilo and Stitch franchise like to think of the anime as taking place in a What If Alternate Universe continuity or just ignore it altogether due to its replacing Lilo with another girl [1] and RetConning much of the original, including bringing back Gantu as a villain, despite his redemption at the end of Leroy and Stitch.
    • There are also fans of the original movie that dislike the sequels and the TV series, which have Nani being somewhat of a bitch at times (i.e. "Bonnie & Clyde", "Bugby", "Checkers", "Phantasmo").
  • All sides of the My Little Pony fandom prefer to act like G3.5 never existed. Likewise, My Little Pony Tales is often discounted, though to other fans it's a Cult Classic.
    • G4 fans prefer to ignore anything and everything that came before My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic.
    • Many G4 fans feel this way about Feelin' Pinkie Keen due to the clumsy handling of its Aesop that took the episode straight into Unfortunate Implications territory.
      • It was, at the time, also disliked for introducing Pinkie Sense, a strange ability to predict the future that was never seen again. As such, many fans preferred not to acknowledge the ability's existence. However, nineteen episodes later it resurfaced in the equally controversial episode listed below. It finally showed up a third time in It's About Time, thus solidifying its place in the series.
    • To say that the S2 episode The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well got this treatment would be a massive understatement. It got to the point where the show staff actively avoided fan discussions of the episode, and the fansite Equestria Daily had to put up a "keep your discussions civil" disclaimer the following week for the next episode.
    • And then we have The Last Roundup where the fans simply avoid menctioning the existence of the infamous iTunes version. For the non-familiar with this cartoon, the fandom considers that episode as FIM's Holy Grial, because Derpy Hooves, a character created by the collective fandom, was officialy introduced and made canon as a massive fandom nod, but after some people complained (by calling the clumsy pegasus "offensive") the episode was hastly edited, replacing Derpy's silly voice with a generic one, and editing Rainbow Dash's lines so she wouldn't refer to Derpy her by her name. To put it simply, the fandom raged like you wouldn't believe.
      • After this Derpy spent many episodes absent, then reduced to a funny background sight gag for seasons more—until the season 5 episode "Slice of Life" brought her back as a voiced character, made her the framing device for the episode's plot, gave redid her voice and personality to almost exactly conform to the most popular fan portrayals and completely ignored everything shown or implied in the iTunes episode. So its pretty much Canon Discontinuity now.
  • G.I. Joe fans often do not count the DIC series as canon because of its inferior writing.
  • Invader Zim fans who like Dib generally refuse to acknowledge the episode "Gaz: Taster of Pork". Not only does Dib, by far the most intelligent member of the cast, firmly latch onto the Idiot Ball, but Gaz also inexplicably changes from someone who merely ignores and insults Dib to someone who regularly beats the living shit out of him. And then there's the execrable plot.
  • Though liked as an episode of Jem, "The Day The Music Died" is not counted when most Jem fans write fan-fiction.
  • Quite a few fans of the DC Animated Universe like to think of Batman Beyond (specifically, Return of the Joker)and its Spin-Off The Zeta Project as an alternate future rather than the canon one. This isn't because they don't like it (plenty think it was better than most of the series), but because nobody wants to live with the knowledge that Tim Drake will be so brutally tortured and Mind Raped that it takes him the next fifty years to fully recover, essentially making the entire history of the DCAU Bat-family a case of Shoot the Shaggy Dog.
  • The Genndy Tartakovsky-less seasons 3 and 4 of Dexter's Laboratory are often both reviled or/and ignored by fans. It helps that the last episode of the 2nd season makes a good Grand Finale.
    • Season 5 and 6 of The Powerpuff Girls, which were made without Craig McCracken, are just as reviled. Ironically, the most hated episode--"West In Pieces"—won an Emmy.
  • If you want to keep fans of Family Guy happy do not mention the episode "Not All Dogs Go To Heaven". This particular episode was so Anvilicious and aggressively stupid that it was apologized for in "Jerome Is the New Black".
    • It was so bad, it drove a significant portion of fans away.
    • Many people don't either consider anything from seasons 4-onwards canon, or anything after season 7 canon.
    • There's also in In-Universe example where apparently the Germans ignored World War II.
  • While perhaps not as hated as most things in this category, there are many fans who prefer to forget the painfully average Beast With a Billion Backs movie from Futurama history.
    • And many others who prefer to think it ended after Bender's Big Score.
      • More specifically, fans in this group prefer to think it ended before the last few minutes of Bender's Big Score, as those minutes were the first time that the series used the Timey-Wimey Ball.
      • And then there are those who ignore Bender's Big Score altogether, to say nothing of the other OVA's (the only thing in them that these fans might acknowledge is the Lighter and Softer Retcon of Season 4's infamous Tear Jerker episode).
      • Attack of the Killer App tends to be looked at this way. As the wiki put it: Due to it's more topical nature compared to other episodes and the arguable out-of-character moments of some of the characters, several fans have an extremely low opinion of the episode, with some ranking it among the worst in the history of the series.
        • Yo Leela Leela gets this too, due to the fact that it barely feels like a Futurama episode. Nothing even remotely futuristic happens until the end.
  • Galaxy Rangers fans tend to ignore Buzzwang, the Kiwi kids, and most of the episodes they even appeared in.
  • Anything after the "Channel Chasers" movie of The Fairly OddParents, which wraps things up with a bittersweet flash forward to Timmy as an adult, or anything after Poof's birth, depending on whom is asked.
    • Some fans even claim discontinuity on post-"Abra-catastrophe" episodes.
    • When asking fans when the series ended, they'll likely list one of the movies or TV specials. But again, it depends on whom is asked.
      • The Live Action Adaptation is being dismissed by some fans. Not surprising Shipping plays a role in this.
      • "Timmy's Secret Wish" is the most polarizing and nonsensical of the TV specials, due to the truth about Timmy actually being a 60 year old man rather than a 10 year old boy. It is just as confusing as it sounds.
  • Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy has its own movie generally being ignored quite a bit throughout the fandom. Not so much that the movie's bad (in fact fans say it's generally the best work of the entire show), but that the characters changed quite a bit at the end of the movie. Eddy is suddenly no longer a Jerkass and is now a compassionate and caring character. Edd has became far more of a courageous character rather than timid. The cul-de-sac kids (minus Jonny) no longer hate the Ed boys and are now heavily implied to be good friends with them now (that includes Sarah & Kevin). Even the Kanker sisters are shown to give the Ed boys some respect now and generally seem more mature about handling their crushes on them.
    • Fans absolutely loathe "If It Smells Like An Ed" for being the biggest Kick the Dog moment to ever be inflicted on the Eds. They also can't accept that in "A Town Called Ed", The Kanker family owns Peach Creek rather than Eddy's ancestors.
  • Some ignore the Ben 10 Grand Finale, "Ben 10 vs. The Negative 10", and position "Goodbye and Good Riddance" as the real finale, which is helped by Cartoon Network airing it as such and the other as a short movie later on. Others disregard "Goodbye And Good Riddance" because of the comic book thing, last used in the Alternate Universe ep "Gwen 10". That, and Word of God does not consider it canon either.
  • The fifth season of Teen Titans introduced a host of new characters, spent several episodes focusing on them entirely, and concluded with a Downer Ending finale. This incensed some, and made them clamor for a sixth season (so far unsuccessfully). This is less universal than some examples; the Downer Ending, especially, is praised as often as it is railed against. At least they were nice enough to give us Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo afterwards, which alleviated some people's frustrations, even if it didn't have an impact on the series as a whole.
    • Most of this hostility is because Starfire never got a season arc like the other Titans. (One could say that Beast Boy unfairly got two of them: The Terra Plot in Season 2 and Doom Patrol in Season 5.)
    • Teen Titans also inverts this trope as you will find people insisting it's part of the DCAU, Continuity Snarls be damned.
  • Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue!, one giant misstep for Warner Bros. By cutting out half the original cast and derailing the two star characters, one is left with a cartoon that barely counts as a Scooby Doo entry.
    • This goes for any Scooby Doo series that doesn't star all the original characters. Without the cast dynamics, the series just doesn't work that well. Where would scaredy-cat Scooby and Shaggy be without brave Fred and smart Velma to lead the way?
    • Some people desperately pray for the day when they can finally convince themselves that Scrappy-Doo doesn't exist. The visceral hatred is just too great to ignore.
      • Heck, even Warner Home Video is making an attempt at this. The DVD cover art for The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo: The Complete Series makes mention of just about every main character except for Scrappy.
  • In the minds of some, Season 4 (or mid-Season 3) and above of SpongeBob SquarePants tend to be dismissed as this, with The Movie taking place directly after the third season and serving as the Grand Finale to the series. Flanderization and Idiot Plots are abound (not so bad in the fourth season, but after that...)
    • However, Word of God says that the feature film is in fact the finale, but it takes place after all the other episodes—even the ones that hadn't been made/aired yet.
      • Alternatively, some may see Season 4 and above as being an Alternate Continuity where the events of the movie never happened. This isn't a very difficult position to take, since Plankton is still trying to steal the Krabby Patty secret formula (and not in jail), despite already having done so in the movie, and there is no Krusty Krab 2.
        • Strangely enough, one new episode starts out with Plankton escaping from jail; having been there for "trying to steal the Krabby Patty formula". Since no other incident in which he has attempted this ever landed him in jail, it can be assumed that this takes place after the movie. And yet there isn't a Krusty Krab 2 and...GAAH! It's so confusing...
          • Plankton actually does steal the formula in the movie and makes his own Krabby Patties, and then takes over all of Bikini Bottom. His success doesn't last for long though, since he's defeated and locked away at the end (presumably forever, since it is the finale). The new episode in question cannot possibly take place after this, and it's not unlikely that Plankton hasn't been in jail several times before for his theft attempts. He was probably put away at the end of the movie mainly for what he did to the town and King Neptune (enslaving them, and stealing the latter's crown).
    • Humanized versions of the characters always has Spongebob with blond hair and Patrick with pink hair. Whenever the two are shown with hair Spongebob is a brunette and Patrick has black hair.
  • Thundercats 2019, aka "CalArt version". The fans' opinion is, to paraphrase a Roman saying, "You have appealed to Tumblr; to Tumblr you will go!" Objections to that, curiously, use several variations of "gamers don't have to be your audience".

@ThunderCatGuide: We are opting out of covering the 2019 series.

  • The Simpsons - Fanon Discontinuity examples:
    • Perhaps the only episode more reviled for its blatant abuse of canon than "The Principal and the Pauper" is "That 90s Show" which depicts the lives of The Simpsons throughout the 90s, completely ignoring that the events of episodes which aired during the show's earlier seasons took place in the 90s, and completely rewriting canon as a result. This may have been upgraded to Canon Discontinuity in later seasons, since they continue to depict Homer and Marge as having gotten together in the 70s.
    • Another in-universe example: Comic Book Guy refuses to admit that Superman moved to Gotham City, even though someone wrote a comic about it; he says instead it was dreamed up by the author and never really happened.
    • "The Boys Of Bummer" for containing one of the nastiest cases of Disproportionate Retribution in all of fiction. Many fans have called one of the worst (of not, the worst) ever made.
      • A similar mention goes to "Million Dollar Abie".
    • "Saddlesore Galactica" and " Kill the Alligator and Run" get this treatment too. The former for its downright bizzare plot, the latter for being completely made out of "Florida sucks!" jokes.
    • And "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" and "Bart-Mangled Banner" for the same reasons as "Saddlesore". The latter especially for being Anvilicious as all hell.
    • Some fans treat "Lisa The Vegetarian" as this, not for being bad (it's considered genuinely funny), but the fact that they feel this episode started Lisa's eventual Flanderization into a Soapbox Sadie Canon Sue.
    • Fans usually ignore the presence of Sideshow Bob's Italian wife and son. Possibly Canon Discontinuity as they're never seen or mentioned again after "Funeral for a Fiend".
    • Maude either died a more honourable death (or never died in the first place) according to a few fans.
    • And let me make on thing perfectly clear. Barney never went sober.
    • The now Official Couple of Ned and Edna is getting this.
    • "Homer The Heretic" for pretty much being a bizzaro version of "Not All Dogs Go To Heaven"
  1. ↑ making "Ohana, means family, and family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten" into a Broken Aesop,
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