History Main / ExpansionPackPast

* In ''Manga/{{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.
** Thought it does answer the continuity error of why Sasuke's [[MagicalEye Sharingan]] was activated by fighting Haku and not [[MindRape Tsukuyomi]] (namely that it ''was'', he just didn't realize it for several years).

* The ''Anime/PokemonTheSeries'' writers like introducing new elements into Team Rocket's past in any episode centered around them. After 16 years of this, their backstory has become extremely convoluted. One of the characters lived in 4 different regions, flunked out of medical school, was trained in the art of ninjitsu, held a position as a weather forecaster, worked as a professional model, and was in a biker gang at some point. All this was BEFORE becoming an internationally wanted criminal. Oh, and she apparently doesn't know this, but her MissingMom used to be [[TheDragon second in command of Team Rocket]] before [[spoiler:presumably dying on a mission to recover Mew]]. To make matters worse they're in their late teens at earliest, mid twenties at oldest.
** Further compounded by the fact that we are repeatedly told that Musashi / Jessie was dirt-poor growing up, to the point that she had to eat snow to avoid going hungry. Not the standard background for such a dilettante.

** Jim from, as a RunningGag, often tangentially mentions being involved in all sorts of different odd jobs (space program test subject, special forces, something about submarines, something else about professional skateboarding, etc.) that he would [[NoodleIncident "rather not talk about"]].

** ComicBook/{{Nightcrawler}} bears mention. Not only do we learn new things about his background every other week, but they blatantly contradict each other. Circus performer with freakish appearance but cheerful outlook. Check. Raised by Roma witch Margoli Szardos. Check. Girlfriend turns out to be adopted sister (Margoli's biological daughter Jimaine Szardos aka Amanda Sefton) and yet [[FlirtyStepsiblings they still date]]. Um...ok. Is revealed to be a devout Catholic. Not impossible, but highly unlikely given his background. Biological mother turns out to be Mystique, who threw him over the edge of a waterfall to escape pursuers after she was revealed to be a mutant. 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 biological father is an ancient demon. [[FanonDiscontinuity But we don't like to talk about that.]]
** ComicBook/{{Storm}} got hit with this even earlier than Wolverine. When she first appeared, she was simply a young woman in rural Kenya whose tribe worshiped her as a goddess due to her power to control the weather. Then it turned out she was born in the United States and even has a Western last name (Munroe). Then when she was a baby, she and her parents moved to Cairo where her parents were killed in the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Afterwards she spent her childhood living as a petty thief, ''then'' as a teenager she traveled east to Kenya--discovering her mutant powers along the way and having a fling with [[ComicBook/BlackPanther T'Challa]]--where she was taken in by her mother's tribe and worshiped as a goddess. When she was approached by Xavier to join his new team of X-Men, it's implied that she had never left Kenya before, but given what we now know about her background and the fact that she was in her early 20's when recruited, she couldn't have possibly lived in Kenya longer than a few years.

* ''Roleplay/MSFHighForum'':
** Israfel and Seram definitely qualify, along with Rei. Less common now, but the backgrounds for a few chars were pretty light. Thus, any information came across as this.
** Jax's story is slowly unfolding, starting with a movie about a girl...
** Almost inevitable as characters, who are (ostensibly) full-fledged people enter the game with a few paragraphs describing the character and his or her past.
** In a few cases of cases (Daniel/Danielle, Zade), the character's homeworld is so heavily fleshed out that the character almost seems to be the backdrop to the homeworld, rather than the other way around.

* ''[[ComicBook/{{SpiderMan}} Spider-Man]]'' tends to have parts of his backstory added to, such as what happened to his parents, or what happened to the other students when Peter was bit by a radioactive spider, or what happened to Peter's LongLostRelative that he never knew about.
* Jessica Drew, the original Comicbook/SpiderWoman, kept getting additions to her origin that made it seem awfully complicated. Some recent attempts to streamline it have generally just made it muddier by using blatant retcons that contradict even the basic stuff most readers agreed on.

** Other Superman villains also got a dose of this trope during both the classic and the PostCrisis eras such as the Prankster who under John Byrne's revamp became a disgruntled former TV star driven to crime by Morgan Edge who fired him from his show.

* Happened to most of the main characters in ''Series/{{Lost}}'' as the show progressed. Locke's time in a hippie commune, for example, was never mentioned before or since in the series. Somewhat fixed in the fourth season by giving the main characters [[spoiler:[[FlashForward Flash Forwards]] instead of [[FlashBack Flash Backs]].]]

* The "somewhat eponymous" main character of ''Series/NewAmsterdam'', as a consequence of his immortality. In the last 400 years he's been a cop, a lawyer, a soldier, a sailor, a hobo, a conman, a carriage rider, etc.

* In ''Series/TheOffice'', Creed's personal history is never laid out, but frequently alluded to, each time suggesting a different [[DarkAndMysteriousPast dark chapter]] which is never fully explained, and they're rarely mentioned again.

* WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb plays this for laughs with Doofenshmirtz's [[SerialEscalation increasingly surreal]] and traumatic childhood, which somehow involves [[BeyondTheImpossible his parents being absent from his own birth]], repeatedly causing his family to lose prestige, and being ignored in favor of a dog, forced to pose as a lawn gnome, losing a science fair and poetry contest to a baking soda volcano, inexplicably being banned from Albania, and being disowned and raised by ocelots while smelling like pork and also being used as the ball in a dunk tank. [[NoodleIncident These last four are never explained]].

* ComicBook/CaptainAmerica'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 [[UsefulNotes/WW2 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.

* Jamie and Adam from ''Series/MythBusters'' love playing with this. For an example, see the above quote. A lot of it is for humor, but much is also true - for instance, Jamie once ran a pet shop, used to give diving lessons, and turns out to be qualified for many odd tasks that crop up in the course of mythbusting work.

** Dayna Mellanby was raised in isolation with only her father and step-sister for company. In "Animals", she's required to have a NewOldFlame, a private tutor called in to educate her. Unfortunately this StudentTeacherRomance has distinctly creepy overtones once you do the math (it's been over six years since they met, and Dayna is still quite young when she joins the crew). As with Tarrant, this came about because the script was originally written for an older crewmember (Cally, who left the series).

[[folder: Comics]]

* ''ComicBook/{{SpiderMan}}'' tends to have parts of his backstory added to, such as what happened to his parents, or what happened to the other students when Peter was bit by a radioactive spider, or what happened to Peter's LongLostRelative that he never knew about.

* ''Series/MacGyver1985'' has a college degree in physics, comprehensive knowledge of mechanics, 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 TragicAccident that kept him out of the Olympics, worked as an apprentice and assistant to a noted archaeologist (played by Creator/BrianBlessed), 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:[[LastEpisodeNewCharacter the final episode]] reveals he has a long-lost son.]] Oh, and a seemingly infinite number of ex-girlfriends, every one of whom still considers him a [[AmicableExes good friend.]]

* ''Series/MacGyver1985'' has a college degree in physics, comprehensive knowledge of mechanics, 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 TragicAccident that kept him out of the Olympics, worked as an apprentice and assistant to a noted archaeologist (played by Creator/BrianBlessed), 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:[[LastEpisodeNewCharacter the final episode]] reveals he has a long-lost son.]]

* ''Manga/MahouSenseiNegima'' seems to do this with Asuna after the GenreShift made the story much more dramatic, although there are a few hints in the earlier chapters that imply it was planned all along. To wit: [[spoiler:Negi was ''not'' an IneptMage when he accidentally erased Asuna's clothes. Her AntiMagic aura screwed up the spell.]]

* The ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' writers like introducing new elements into Team Rocket's past in any episode centered around them. After 16 years of this, their backstory has become extremely convoluted. One of the characters lived in 4 different regions, flunked out of medical school, was trained in the art of ninjitsu, held a position as a weather forecaster, worked as a professional model, and was in a biker gang at some point. All this was BEFORE becoming an internationally wanted criminal. Oh, and she apparently doesn't know this, but her MissingMom used to be [[TheDragon second in command of Team Rocket]] before [[spoiler:presumably dying on a mission to recover Mew]]. To make matters worse they're in their late teens at earliest, mid twenties at oldest.

* ''The Comicbook/XMen'':
** Arguably the most famous example of this trope is Comicbook/{{Wolverine}}: He's a soldier, mutant, science experiment, ninja, assassin, SuperHero, miner, aristocrat's son, biker with amnesia, and so on. His time in World War II alone is an example of this trope, where Wolvie has fought 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, taking a Japanese wife, and having a son. And you thought being in multiple squads of the X-Men and the Avengers, while also going on his solo adventures, was an incredible accomplishment.
** Comicbook/{{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).
** Comicbook/{{Nightcrawler}} bears mention. Not only do we learn new things about his background every other week, but they blatantly contradict each other. Circus performer with freakish appearance but cheerful outlook. Check. Raised by Roma witch Margoli Szardos. Check. Girlfriend turns out to be adopted sister (Margoli's biological daughter Jimaine Szardos aka Amanda Sefton) and yet [[FlirtyStepsiblings they still date]]. Um...ok. Is revealed to be a devout Catholic. Not impossible, but highly unlikely given his background. Biological mother turns out to be Mystique, who threw him over the edge of a waterfall to escape pursuers after she was revealed to be a mutant. 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 biological father is an ancient demon. [[FanonDiscontinuity But we don't like to talk about that.]]
** Comicbook/{{Storm}} got hit with this even earlier than Wolverine. When she first appeared, she was simply a young woman in rural Kenya whose tribe worshiped her as a goddess due to her power to control the weather. Then it turned out she was born in the United States and even has a Western last name (Munroe). Then when she was a baby, she and her parents moved to Cairo where her parents were killed in the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Afterwards she spent her childhood living as a petty thief, ''then'' as a teenager she traveled east to Kenya--discovering her mutant powers along the way and having a fling with [[Comicbook/BlackPanther T'Challa]]--where she was taken in by her mother's tribe and worshiped as a goddess. When she was approached by Xavier to join his new team of X-Men, it's implied that she had never left Kenya before, but given what we now know about her background and the fact that she was in her early 20's when recruited, she couldn't have possibly lived in Kenya longer than a few years.

* ''Franchise/{{Superman}}''

*** For example, he was made an honorary member of the ''Comicbook/LegionOfSuperHeroes'' as a teenager.

* Nessa from the British comedy ''Series/{{Gavin and Stacey}}'' has a ridiculously impressive and convoluted past, revealed in brief reminiscences and anecdotes, although how much of this history is true is debatable - she could be making it all up for all we know, though the other Barry characters will often back her up and are sometimes even involved. Many of the stories she recounts are of bizarre sexual liaisons with high-profile celebrities, made all the more hilarious by her dead-pan delivery of these lewd stories. Hilariously, politician John Prescott showed up at her wedding as one of her exes, meaning at least one of her stories is true.

* ''Series/BlakesSeven''

[[folder:Web Comics]]

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'' FlashBack until it's a confusing muddle of nonsense and clutter.

** Arguably the most famous example of this trope is Comicbook/{{Wolverine}}: He's a soldier, mutant, science experiment, ninja, assassin, SuperHero, miner, aristocrat's son, biker with amnesia, and so on. His time World War II alone is an example of this trope, where Wolvie has fought 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, taking a Japanese wife, and having a son. And you thought being in multiple squads of the X-Men and the Avengers, while also going on his solo adventures, was an incredible accomplishment.

* Kenneth from ''Series/ThirtyRock'' has been [[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld alive forever]]. We think.

* ComicBook/WonderGirl Donna Troy was essentially created by accident, with a writer taking stories involving a teenage Franchise/WonderWoman to be stories of Wonder Woman's little sister. Neal Adams then gave Donna a backstory, where she was rescued from a fire by Wonder Woman and taken back to Paradise Island where Hippolyta adopted her, to make her a proper character. This backstory was further expanded in ''ComicBook/WhoIsDonnaTroy'' which named her birth mother and explored how the toddler came to be in that fire at all.

** Comicbook/{{Storm}} got hit with this even earlier than Wolverine. When she first appeared, she was simply a young woman in rural Kenya whose tribe worshiped her as a goddess due to her power to control the weather. Then it turns out she was born in the United States and even has a Western last name (Munroe). Then when she was a baby, she and her parents moved to Cairo where her parents were killed in the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Then she spent her childhood living as a petty thief. ''Then'' she traveled east to Kenya--discovering her mutant powers along the way and having a fling with [[Comicbook/BlackPanther T'Challa]]--where she was taken in by her mother's tribe and worshiped as a goddess. When she was approached by Xavier to join his new team of X-Men, it's implied that she had never left Kenya before, but given what we now know about her background and the fact that she was in her early 20's when recruited, she couldn't have possibly lived in Kenya longer than a few years.

* Arguably the most famous example of this trope is Comicbook/{{Wolverine}}: He's a soldier, mutant, science experiment, ninja, assassin, SuperHero, miner, aristocrat's son, biker with amnesia, and so on. His time World War II alone is an example of this trope, where Wolvie has fought 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, taking a Japanese wife, and having a son. And you thought being in multiple squads of the X-Men and the Avengers, while also going on his solo adventures, was an incredible accomplishment.

* The most famous example of this trope is Comicbook/{{Wolverine}}, from ''Comicbook/XMen'': 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...

* ComicBook/{{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 ''Comicbook/XMen'', 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. [[FanonDiscontinuity 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. [[ComicBook/{{Storm}} Ororo/Storm's]] backstory was pretty trippy as well, even before they inserted [[TokenMinorityCouple T'Challa]] in it.