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Expansion Pack Past: Difference between revisions
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** 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.
** Speaking of Bats, The Joker enjoys the fact his past is, to him contradictory and muddled.
* [[Captain America]]'s war service between 1940 (yes, his [[Nazi]]-punching days predate the formal entry of the USA in the war) and 1945. He's probably had more adventures in [[WW 2|World War II]] than there were days in the war; there's a tendency for stories involving him to feature a one or two-page flashback to some World War II event to contrast with whatever's happening in the present. Famous World War II events (D-Day, for example), have been retold frequently with conflicting information about what he was doing then.
** 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.
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* Shawn Spencer of ''[[Psych]]'' travelled a lot and had 57 jobs prior to opening the titular private detective agency.
* Slowly revealing the history of the Doctor and his people from ''[[Doctor Who]]'' in bits and pieces over multiple decades and production teams has led to a less than clear vision of his past. It gets even worse when you bring the [[Expanded Universe]] into it. Of course, this sort of thing is pretty much an occupational hazard once you make it past 500. Which he ''has''. And of course there's rule number 1: the Doctor lies.
* Jack Harkness from ''[[Torchwood]]'' started that series with his backstory from ''Doctor Who'' as a Time Agency agent who became a time-traveling con man after two years' worth of memories were swiped, and then was made immortal, and then travelled back in time, overshot his destination, and got stuck on [[The Slow Path]], which forced him to live through WWII twice - which became three times by the end of the first series of ''Torchwood''. It also doesn't help that there was a [[Flash Back]] to Jack's time as a teenager in which we learn valuable things, but [[The Un-Reveal|not his real name.]]
* [[MacGyver]] has a college degree (in what isn't specified), comprehensive knowledge of mechanics, physics, chemistry, and any other specialty required by a given plot, worked as a deck hand on a tramp steamer, was a bomb disposal expert for the Special Forces in Vietnam, was a professional racing car driver, played Olympic-calibre ice hockey but had a [[Tragic Accident]] that kept him out of the Olympics, worked as an apprentice and assistant to a noted archaeologist (played by [[Brian Blessed]]), trained as a pilot, worked as a backwoodsman in the Rockies, a lumberjack and a taxi driver, all before becoming a secret agent. Adding to the confusion, the first and second seasons gave two incompatible versions of his initial meeting with Pete Thornton. Furthermore, {{spoiler|[[Last-Episode New Character|the final episode]] reveals he has a long-lost son. It sort of nullifies his credibility when they reveal him to have had insufficiently-protected premarital sex in college, although given the number of ex-girlfriends in the show and the time period, possibly he got off easy by only having one illegitimate child. Evidently, a condom made out of a drinking straw, six paper clips and a Twinkie ''wasn't'' the best idea after all.}}
* This gets really excessive for the title character in the second season of ''[[Angel]]''. While some of the things are understandable in that he has been a vampire for 200 years, and has had a soul for a hundred years, sometimes you wonder exactly what is consistent with his character. The best example is the fourth season, ''Orpheus'', which had a type of [[It's a Wonderful Life]] that actually explained some of what was going through his mind.
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* ''[[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.
** Whenever the writers wanted Dax to have an unusual skill or know something unexpected, they just attributed it to one of her past hosts.
** O'Brien ran into this twice. On TNG, where we was simply the most prominent recurring crewman, he was used a few times when they wanted a known character to add a personal touch to the plot, but didn't want to invest the main characters in it. His past fighting Cardassians with Captain Maxwell being the best example. Then when he moved to Deep Space 9 as a main character, expanding his past became a matter of necessity.
* [[Just Shoot Me|Nina van Horn]] is a former supermodel, who back in [[The Seventies]] ventured into acting and singing careers. She has also apparently slept with every male celebrity she's ever met, has converted back and forth to various religions, and has even been brainwashed several times into joining cults.
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* ''[[Batman: The Animated Series|Batman the Animated Series]]'' was a pretty good example of this trope, what with the extensive and varied training that Bruce had undergone in the past -- everything from samurai training to magic lessons.
** Exactly how Bruce planned it. Besides, you can do card tricks in Japan.
* Roger the Alien from ''[[American Dad]]'' originally had a two-sentence origin: He was an alien being held at Area 51 who saved Stan's life. To repay him, Stan lets him live in his house. Over time, though Roger's past has been much more colorful -- in one episode it was revealed that he's actually been on Earth for over sixty years (he was the alien who crashed in Roswell) and stories of his past exploits keep popping up.
** Like how during the 70's, he was a millionaire music producer who "invented" disco by exploiting a [[Stable Time Loop]], then lost everything when disco died.
** Or that he's inexplicably an Olympic-class figure skater.
*** Supported by his time as a member of the Miracle on Ice 1980 Olympic hockey team.
** Or that he's inadvertently responsible for the death of Biggie Smalls.
** Or that he fought in the Vietnam War, against the Americans.
* In ''[[Gargoyles]]'', almost every episode featuring [[Big Bad|Demona]] delved further into her complex backstory. Justified because Demona, as a thousand-year-old immortal, has a ''ton'' of backstory to delve in to.
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[[Category:Continuity Tropes]]
[[Category:Expansion Pack Past]]
[[Category:Backstory Tropes]]
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