History Main / CosmicRetcon

* JMichaelStraczynski's revamp of ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' has Diana not as the first woman to leave Themyscria and make her way in man's world, but as a survivor of a Themyscria that was sacked when she was a child and who is just now coming into her Amazon heritage. Other characters in the DCU (such as Max Lord) are stunned to find out that few people seem to remember Wonder Woman as she was. Diana's goal is to try setting things right. This revamp [[spoiler: was a XantatosPileup between the goddesses Nemesis and Clotho.]] Eventually Diana manages to set everything right, but her ordeal, likened to the ''Odyssea'', was meant to introduce new changes into the ''status quo'', like a [[http://www.geekosystem.com/new-wonder-woman-costume-600/ revised outfit]] and an harder, no-nonsense attitude for Diana, though this too seems to have be retconned by the end of ''Flashpoint'' and into her new series. Wonder Woman's pants (and lack thereof) [[http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/07/21/dc-the-new-52-panel-comic-con/ were the cause of so much drama]] that for several months they were in limbo, though by the time September 2011 rolled around [[RuleOfSexy she was again pantsless]].

* Cosmic retcon is used as a terrifying weapon in ''Bleach'' when Tsukishima is introduced. At first it looks like his Fullbring allows him to affect peoples memories but he reveals that it allows him to retcon whatever his sword touches allowing him to learn everything about Byakuya's sword and fighting style by hitting his sword once, inserting himself into Byakuya's past as a spectator to each and every one of his fights.

** Happens again in the ''[[ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogMegaManWorldsCollide Worlds Collide]]'' crossover with ''Comicbook/MegaMan'', where Eggman and Dr. Willy recreate the Genesis Wave, this time affecting ''both'' their worlds. Though rather than trying to erase Sonic and Mega Man, they alter history so Mega Man is post-''MegaMan10'' (allowing the use of Bass and Proto Man) and Sonic is in the modern video game setting rather than Archie's unique comic universe (for familiarity to non-ArchieSonic readers).
*** [[spoiler:In the final part of the story, Eggman screws up Sonic's Chaos Control, causing some major rewriting in his world that, so far, shuffles the current position of nearly everyone, integrates some game storylines into the Archie continuity and [[ExiledFromContinuity exiles]] characters created by Ken Penders, [[ScrewedByTheLawyers who are entangled in a lawsuit]].]]

* The events of the first game of the PrinceOfPersiaTheSandsOfTime trilogy are retconned ''twice''. First within the game itself, when the Prince rewinds time at the end of the game and kills the Vizier that kicked off the events of the game, and then again at the end of [[PrinceOfPersiaWarriorWithin Warrior Within]], inadvertantly retconning the Vizier's death, causing him to come back as the BigBad of [[PrinceOfPersiaTheTwoThrones Two Thrones.]] By the time Two Thrones rolls around, the only pieces left of the original game's plot are that the Prince remembers it all and he still has the Dagger of Time.

*** [[spoiler:In the final part of the story, Eggman screws up Sonic's Chaos Control, causing some as of yet unknown changes in his world.]]

[[quoteright:330:[[InfiniteCrisis http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/superboy-prime-punch-330px_BigT_9911.jpg]]]]

* In StargateSG1, a two-part episode in Season Eight involved the team time-traveling back 5,000 years into the past, screwing something up, and then their counterparts in the alternate timeline had to time travel back again to fix it. In the end, [[InSpiteOfANail the only difference]] was that [[CloseEnoughTimeline Jack's pond now had fish in it]].

* Occurs near the end of MightyMorphinPowerRangers. The villains turn back time to a period a decade or so before, and when the effect was canceled, anything that had changed during the reverse-time led to changes in the present day. Most notably, Aisha had moved to a small African village as a child, and Tanya's AdventurerArchaeologist parents had left her in America rather than the African village.

* ''Series/KaizokuSentaiGokaiger'' has [[spoiler:the power of the Greatest Treasure of the Universe, which lets its discoverer rewrite the universe to suit their own desires. The Gokaiger ask if it could eliminate [[TheEmpire Zangyack]], and are told that it would be as if Zangyack never existed -- but that they would also erase all of the SuperSentai from existence too. They end up rejecting the "wish", deciding to take on Zangyack themselves, because facing impossible odds is what Super Sentai members do, and because they don't want to lose everything that they've gained and become as a result of the hardships Zangyack inflicted upon their lives.]]

* JMichaelStraczynski's revamp of ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' has Diana not as the first woman to leave Themyscria and make her way in man's world, but as a survivor of a Themyscria that was sacked when she was a child and who is just now coming into her Amazon heritage. This revamp has been stated to be caused by someone meddling with fate, and other characters in the DCU (such as Max Lord) are stunned to find out that few people seem to remember Wonder Woman as she was. Diana's goal is to try setting things right.
** Eventually Diana manages to set everything right, but her ordeal, likened to the ''Odyssea'', was meant to introduce new changes into the ''status quo'', like a [[http://www.geekosystem.com/new-wonder-woman-costume-600/ revised outfit]] and an harder, no-nonsense attitude for Diana, though this too seems to have be retconned by the end of ''Flashpoint'' and into her new series. Wonder Woman's pants (and lack thereof) [[http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/07/21/dc-the-new-52-panel-comic-con/ were the cause of so much drama]] that for several months they were in limbo, though by the time September 2011 rolled around she was again pantsless.
* In the ''[[Comicbook/ArchieComicsSonicTheHedgehog Sonic The Hedgehog]]'' comics, this happens in the ''Mobius: X Years Later'' reality (which is separate from the main canon universe). Damage to the fabric of reality from previous adventures threatens to [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt completely destroy the timeline]], so Sonic goes back in time to fix it, which results in reality changing - before, Mobius was a {{Utopia}} ruled by King Sonic, where all the villains were either dead or at peace with the heroes. But after the changes, it becomes a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by [[KnightTemplar King Shadow]] and enforced by his SecretPolice. Fortunately, the heroes who [[RippleEffectProofMemory remember the way things are supposed to be]] come together and defeat him, returning things to the way they're supposed to be (albeit still with the alternate history).

* In ''ComicBook/TheSandman'', Delirium threatened at one point to turn Mazikeen into a demon with only half a face, and "make it so you've been that from the beginning of time". Given that Mazikeen ''already was'' a demon with only half a face, it's unclear if Delirium actually did make a Cosmic Retcon (with the original state never being seen by the reader), or if she was just being her usual CloudCuckoolander self.

* In ''TheWheelOfTime'' this a ''feature'' of its strongest magical attack, "balefire." Anything hit by balefire is DeaderThanDead, its "thread" burned out of the "Pattern" for all eternity ([[DontExplainTheJoke the Wheel of Time is a loom]]); if it's a living thing, anything it did for the past [amount of time] is undone. This not only stops [[BigBad the Dark One]] from bringing QuirkyMinibossSquad members BackFromTheDead, it can be used to un-die {{main character}}s those villains had killed... but historically the spell was [[DangerousForbiddenTechnique outlawed]], after flagrant misuse and {{Continuity Snarl}}s resulting threatened to [[ApocalypseHow/ClassZ unravel creation itself]].

** ExpandedUniverse has a far more insidious form of this with FactionParadox's Paradox [[TheVirus Biodata Virus]]. It latches into the part of your biology linked to the Time Vortex... and makes it so you have ''always'' have worked for them and ''always'' will. [[spoiler: The Eighth Doctor was infected, and his timeline nearly destroyed.]]

* ''{{Transformers}}'', of course, has one of its own: the [[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Unicron_Singularity the Unicron Singularity]], which ripped and tore at the fabric of time and space in a way that essentially opens up a planet-sized plot hole just to make room for itself to fill it.

*** [[spoiler:In the final part of the story, Eggman screws up Sonic's Chaos Control, breaking the old world and creating a new one.]]

*** [[spoiler:Solicitations seem to hint that the events of this storyline (along with a good dose of ScrewedByTheLawyers) will cause the Sonic-verse to be majorly altered]]

*** [[spoiler:Solicitations seem to hint that the events of this storyline (along with a good dose of ScrewedByTheLaywers) will cause the Sonic-verse to be majorly altered]]

** Happens again in the ''Worlds Collide'' crossover with ''Comicbook/MegaMan'', where Eggman and Dr. Willy recreate the Genesis Wave, this time affecting ''both'' their worlds. Though rather than trying to erase Sonic and Mega Man, they alter history so Mega Man is post-''MegaMan10'' (allowing the use of Bass and Proto Man) and Sonic is in the modern video game setting rather than Archie's unique comic universe (for familiarity to non-ArchieSonic readers).

* JMichaelStraczynski's revamp of ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' has Diana not as the first woman to leave Themyscria and make her way in man's world, but as a survivor of a Themyscria that was sacked when she was a child and who is just now coming into her Amazon heritage. This revamp has been stated to be caused by someone meddling with fate, and other characters in the DCU (such as Max Lord) are stunned to find out that few people seem to remember Wonder Woman as she was. Diana's goal is to try and set things right.

* Creator/TerryPratchett did this in ''[[Literature/{{Discworld}} Thief of Time]]''. History was literally shattered by a "glass clock" that trapped the AnthropomorphicPersonification of Time, and then patched back together (albeit with some weird gaps and miscellaneous changes) by the History Monks; the plot of the book revolves around the History Monks stopping someone else from making a second clock. It's implied that this [[AWizardDidIt explains]] the prevalence of SchizoTech on the Discworld and some of the continuity gaps from earlier books.
** More prosaic options were included for every error mentioned, then immediately discarded by Susan as unrealistic. ''Maybe'' the philosophers passed on names, which would be why characters with the same names and personalities appear a century apart, but ''come on''...

* In the WebComic ThogInfinitron, a [[http://www.drunkduck.com/Thog_Infinitron/index.php?p=461280 movie producer interested in optioning the comic for a live-action movie]] says his offer hinges on the creators making a change to [[http://www.drunkduck.com/Thog_Infinitron/index.php?p=244962 Thog's origin]]. The resulting retcon [[http://www.drunkduck.com/Thog_Infinitron/index.php?p=466495 sets off an alarm in a time travel watchdog agency]].

* ''Film/InTheMouthOfMadness'' has some particularely mind-bending ones. The crux of the story is that horror writer Sutter Cane has become so powerful that his creations have become reality, and the protagonist John Trent finds himself in the fictional setting of his stories. By the time he gets back to the "real world" [[spoiler:his partner Linda Styles has been written out by the writer (not even her boss, who sent them on their mission, can remember her), and Cane's reality-destroying novel was already delivered by Trent to the publishers and has been on the shelves for weeks]], even though Trent just emerged from Hobb's End. The Cane that Trent encountered might also be an AuthorAvatar of the real Cane, who is writing the entire story of the movie ([[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou yes, the one you are watching]]), Cane might have been influenced by a monolith of {{Eldritch Abomination}}s to change reality so they can transform it into something wholly alien, or [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness Trent may be particularely insane]].

* ''Film/InTheMouthOfMadness'' has some particularely mind-bending ones. The crux of the story is that horror writer Sutter Cane has become so powerful that his creations have become reality, and the protagonist John Trent finds himself in the fictional setting of his stories. By the time he gets back to the "real world" his partner Linda Styles has been written out by the writer (not even her boss, who sent them on their mission, can remember her), and Cane's reality-destroying novel was already delivered by Trent to the publishers and has been on the shelves for weeks, even though Trent just emerged from Hobb's End. The Cane that Trent encountered might also be an AuthorAvatar of the real Cane, who is writing the entire story of the movie ([[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou yes, the one you are watching]]), Cane might have been influenced by a monolith of {{Eldritch Abomination}}s to change reality so they can transform it into something wholly alien, or [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness Trent may be particularely insane]].

!!Examples:

* Subverted in the StarWarsExpandedUniverse. Jacen Solo's brother, Anakin, died. Jacen now has the power to use the Force to time travel. Jacen's new Sith apprentice is Anakin's girlfriend. Jacen's time travel, however, can only alter the events in his memory, not in reality.

** Happens again in the ''Worlds Collide'' crossover with ''Comicbook/MegaMan'', where Eggman and Dr. Willy recreate the Genesis Wave, this time affecting ''both'' their worlds. Though rather than trying to erase Sonic and Mega Man, it seems history's just been altered to weaken them.

* In ''VideoGame/FableII'', Lord Lucien originally intended to rebuild the Tattered Spire in order to bring back his deceased wife and daughter, but by the time the Hero of Bowerstone gets to him to rescue the other three Heroes who are trapped by him, Lucien decided that the world itself needed a Cosmic Retcon. [[spoiler:However, the Hero of Bowerstone prevents Lucien from accomplishing this and either kills him or lets Reaver shoot him after explaining himself. After this, Theresa gives the Hero the choice of one of three wishes, two of which are in themselves retcons of history.
* In "VideoGame/MegaManX 6 Capcom Retconed Zero's Death in X5 shoehorning him into the plot (if you found and defeated a nightmare zero.]]

* Jake's death, and the subsequently epic time-and-space-altering events that bring him back from the dead in ''TheDarkTower''.

* In one of the prequel shorts for ''WesternAnimation/AvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes'', CaptainAmerica's sidekick [[BuckyBarnes Bucky]] is violently killed during WorldWar2. Then near the end of the first season, Cap accidentally touches the Cosmic Cube, which grants his greatest desire by [[spoiler: retroactively changing history so that Bucky survived the explosion]].