Canon Discontinuity in live-action TV.
Game Shows:
- The 1985-86 Break the Bank, which aired in syndication. The first 13 weeks of the run (a quizzer where couples earned seconds to be used in silly stunts to earn Bank Cards to possibly break the Bank) were hosted by veteran game show host Gene Rayburn, who got into arguments with the producers because they thought he shouldn't be joking around during their serious and suspenseful show (no, seriously). Rather than listen to the man who'd been in television for the better part of 40 years, they fired Gene and brought in Joe Farago; a few weeks later, they dropped the stunts in favor of a $2,000 front-game goal and the Master Puzzle. Subsequent reruns, both in the Summer of 1986 and for a brief time on CBN, were only of Farago's episodes, with no mention of Rayburn or acknowledgement that he had ever hosted in any future airings. (It's unclear how much, if anything, Rayburn had with his shows not being rerun.)
- The producers of Press Your Luck wouldn't allow Michael Larson's game (split in half after taping and aired June 8 and 11, 1984) to air on USA or GSN until 2003, as he had memorized the board patterns and hit the show up for over $100,000. The only indication that he'd even been on the show was the re-randomization of the board patterns.
- The Price Is Right has several examples of omitting its history.
- Long-time host Bob Barker absolutely refuses to allow episodes where fur coats and other products made primarily from animal carcasses were offered as prizes. When Pluto TV created a 24/7 channel with classic Barker-era episodes in 2020, they honored Barker's wishes by starting with episodes from 1982, the year the show stopped giving away furs. Barker also refuses to discuss or even acknowledge longtime announcer Rod Roddy; this is likely because Roddy, who died in 2003, had a salary dispute with Barker, which in turn explains why Roddy did not appear on camera following Season 30 (barring one appearance on the first show of Season 32, by which point Rod was noticeably thinner). And while nearly all of the 1972-80 nighttime run contained furs, Barker would only really have any say on the last three seasons (which he hosted, replacing Dennis James). It seems he had some say over the James shows as well, as GSN only ever pulled out a daytime substitution from December 25, 1974 after James died in 1997. However, enough time passed since Barker retired that the show began to acknowledge its history more often; for example, the fiftieth anniversary special included clips of Rod Roddy.
- For a long time, the show did not acknowledge the original Price Is Right hosted by Bill Cullen, which ran from 1956 to 1965. The show only counts the number of years since the current version began in 1972. When Cullen made a guest appearance to promote ChildsPlay, no mention was made of his tenure as host. This has been averted shortly after Drew Carey started hosting. On the April Fool's 2009 episode, the soundstage was renamed from the Bob Barker Studio to the Bill Cullen Studio. On the Halloween 2019 episode (which was '50s-themed), footage from a 1950s episode was played, with Cullen being name-checked.
- Wheel of Fortune, despite running daily since 1975 and debuting with Chuck Woolery and Susan Stafford, seems intent on putting forth the deception that it began in 1981 (or 1983) with Pat Sajak and Vanna White. This may be due to Woolery leaving after a salary dispute with creator Merv Griffin (he wanted $500,000; Merv offered $400,000). Bizarrely, for their ceremonial 3,000th nighttime show in 1998, Wheel showed clips of Edd Byrnes' first pilot (taped August 28, 1974) and name-checked him. They then claimed that what we were seeing was the pilot, disregarding not only another pilot taped later that day but also the original 1973 pilot Shopper's Bazaar, hosted by Woolery. They also seemed intent to, in Season 28, erase any idea that they taped out of order after longtime announcer Charlie O'Donnell died on November 1, 2010 - at the time of his death, he had done another eight weeks that had yet to air, but these were dubbed over by various substitutes as Wheel claimed "it was a tough decision, but it would have been too sad to hear his voice so close to his death"...yet they left the weekend feed, consisting of Season 27 shows, alone. In Summer 2011, some of the sub-announcer shows were dubbed over by the just-hired Jim Thornton (including episodes where a sub had dubbed over Charlie), but shows from September and October 2010 retained Charlie's announcing. To say fans were displeased with and confused by these decisions would be putting it extremely mildly.
- Jeopardy! sometimes has to scrub contestants out for various reasons:
- Perhaps one of the most famous was an early undefeated champion named Barbara Lowe Vollick. She allegedly broke eligibility requirements by appearing on multiple other game shows in the past few years (there are strict limits on how many game shows a person can be a contestant on in a given amount of time). As a result, she was barred from the Tournament of Champions.
- 2014 contestant Jerry Slowik was also barred from the Tournament of Champions after legal issues stemming from alleged sexual assault of a minor.
- On a broader scope, the show makes no acknowledgement that Super Jeopardy! ever existed. This was a one-time championship series of games from 1990 which aired on ABC (Jeopardy!, like sister show Wheel, normally airs in first-run syndication) and, uniquely to the Trebek era, invited back a contestant from the original 1964-74 Art Fleming-hosted version. Although this incarnation produced some rather steep winnings, none of them are considered Jeopardy! canonicity (possibly in part due to the one-time nature of the event, its radically inflated clue values, or both).
Other TV:
- America's Funniest Home Videos seems to take the stance that the era hosted by John Fugelsang and Daisy Fuentes (1998-99) never happened: their episodes are almost never rerun, and neither host has ever been mentioned in retrospectives.
- The Arrowverse has several examples:
- Barry Allen is first introduced in an Arrow Backdoor Pilot. The end of the episode shows Barry being struck by lightning as the result of a particle accelerator explosion. When the spin-off The Flash actually appeared, the circumstances of Barry being struck by lightning were changed.
- The crossover Crisis on Earth-X has plenty of discontinuity with the prequel animated series Freedom Fighters: The Ray, such as Ray meeting Barry and Oliver before departing for Earth-X. In the crossover, they've never met him until their encounter in the concentration camp on Earth-X, and they're surprised when he tells them he's from their Earth. La Résistance in the animated show also looks completely different from the one in the crossover, although it's possible it was a different cell. There are other things, such as the animated series showing Black Arrow saluting Overgirl and following her orders (in the crossover, they're married, and Oliver-X is the Fuhrer), or the New Reichsmen operating without masks. The animated show also has a mysterious Chancellor, who is stated to lead the Reich, while the crossover had Black Arrow be the Fuhrer.
- The failed TV pilot Bates Motel (1987) ignored Psycho II and Psycho III, and set itself up as an alternate sequel to the original 1960 Psycho. Which also had the side-effect of making it quite easy for the subsequent Psycho IV: The Beginning to ignore Bates Motel after it didn't get picked up for the series (short of some alterations to the motel buildings made in Bates Motel still being present in Psycho IV, as that film didn't have the budget to restore the motel to its original configuration).
- In the Charmed episode "All Hell Breaks Loose", the supernatural is exposed to the general public when the Charmed Ones fight a demon before a news crew, causing a chain of events that ends up in Prue's death. However, the episode "Forget Me... Not", introduces the Cleaners, magical beings tasked with "cleaning" such exposures. However, thanks to time travel, that exposure no longer happened. Maybe that's what the Cleaners intended all along, and the Charmed Ones just didn't see them.
- Cobra Kai is a series that is heavily dependent on the lore of the films and constantly references the events of the first three via flashbacks, by reintroducing old characters, and by giving new depth to heroes and villains alike. However it seems to go out of its way to pretend the critically panned The Next Karate Kid never happened as the events of that film are never so much as even alluded to, Julie Pierce is never seen or mentioned, and even Mr. Miyagi's actions in that movie are never referenced. However, Ralph Maccio did mention the movie does fit into canon of the show, but the remake starring Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan does not.
- A weird example occurs in Community. Due to Executive Meddling, creator and showrunner Dan Harmon was unceremoniously given the boot in season four, only to be rehired for season five. Although the series technically follows on directly from series four, with the characters having graduated from Greendale only to be drawn back to form the so-called Save Greendale Committee as a group of both faculty and students, many of the events of season four are stricken from canon, and the group's senior year at Greendale is referred to as Gas Leak Year, blaming all of the inconsistent characterisation or sub-par adventures on a gas leak which caused everyone to act strange, even by their usual standards. This works both ways; when Abed reconnects with Rachel, a girl he formed a genuine connection with in season four who goes on to be his love interest in season five, they both blame the fact that they fell out of touch on Gas Leak Year.
- CSI:
- Official info on the CBS character bios was changed and/or ignored. The bios had Catherine being born in Bozeman, Montana (probably recycled and given to NY's Lindsay) and having a sister, and Grissom's father being involved in smuggling. Making it worse was this information being included in the first episode guidebook that was released.
- The famous "Danny was from a family of cops" stuff. The producers retconned this by saying "extended family", but many still don't buy it.
- Dallas:
- The show made an entire season discontinuity, as the entirety of the ninth season was rendered All Just a Dream in order to bring Bobby Ewing Back from the Dead. According to reports at the time, the writer behind it wanted to undo everything that happened while he was away from the show.
- The removal of the ninth season from continuity also did this to an entire spinoff series, Knots Landing, as the Continuity Snarl that resulted in the show treating Bobby's death as canon (up through the parent show's reveal that Bobby was alive) led to the Knots creative team divorcing themselves from the latter show and going their own way. The 2012-2014 reboot presumes that Knots happened in this continuity, but keeps many details of the show's activities (as seen when both Val and Gary Ewing return to Dallas to settle affairs during the second season) vague.
- The 2012 reboot rendered two made-for-TV movies, JR Returns and War of the Ewings, non-canon, as they deal with several story developments that are incompatible with the reboot's presentation of the same timeframe.
- Doctor Who:
- Missing Episode reconstructions occasionally use this to "fix" things the BBC would rather didn't happen. For example, the interview with Anneke Wills at the end of the official audio reconstruction for "The Underwater Menace" reveals that she and the director had agreed to alter a part where Jamie slaps Polly in the face to get her to stop freaking out because, in addition to being unnecessarily chauvinistic, it was really out-of-character for Jamie (who had just recently been introduced). In the reconstruction, he merely roughly pulls her to her feet, which is enough of a shock to shake her out of her panic. Another example is how the reconstructions deal with the random racial slur in "The Celestial Toymaker" — the BBC's official reconstruction buries it by having the narrator talk over the top of it, and Loose Cannon's reconstruction edits the line out entirely.
- Between the nonsensical plot and the perceived bad quality, "Dimensions in Time" has been officially stated by then-produced John Nathan-Turner to "not be part of the Doctor Who canon, if there is such a thing". A complex rights situation forbidding the BBC from ever releasing it again has made it all the easier to sweep it under the rug (although fans Keep Circulating the Tapes). At least one Expanded Universe source later depicted it as All Just a Dream.
- Death Comes to Time ignores the events of the TV Movie (the Doctor is still the Seventh Doctor), having been intended as a different way forward for the show after the McCoy Era, with the Doctor (seemingly) dying and other characters, like Ace and the Minister of Chance, taking up his mantle. The trope is Downplayed because the BBC website contained a potential explanation for how Death Comes to Time might constitute a Cosmic Retcon on the TV Movie, rather than simply ignoring it. At any rate, since the actual revival of the show in 2005 treated the Doctor as, well, alive, and having indeed been Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor, Death Comes to Time ironically ended up itself an example of this trope.
- Scream of the Shalka was to be the pilot of an animated continuation of Doctor Who and introduced a Ninth Doctor (played by Richard E. Grant) to great fanfare. Before the second episode could be produced, Russell T Davies swept in with a live-action continuation, greenlit by a different department of the BBC than the one which had signed off on advertising Grant as the Official Ninth Doctor. Naturally, Grant was hastily stripped of his official status and "the Ninth Doctor" became, uncontestedly, Christopher Eccleston. (Scream of the Shalka writer Paul Cornell thinks of the story as canon in some sense, having suggested in interviews that it constituted an Alternate Timeline, and later given the "Shalka Doctor" a cameo in a story featuring the official, Eccleston-descended Thirteenth Doctor.)
- Galactica 1980, the Contested Sequel of the original Battlestar Galactica, was long considered mostly non-canonical by fans. When the franchise had its Continuity Reboot in the 2000s, several novels and comics set in the original continuity were released. Those works made it official that the events of Galactica 1980 never happened — even though Galactica 1980 was actually added to the original series in its syndication run. Series creator, Glen Larson wanted to do a new season of the original series, starting with Starbuck waking up from a dream where Galactica found Earth.
- This existed between the Highlander movies and series to the point of Continuity Snarls at times (see the Live-Action Film page).
- The official 20th anniversary DVD for Inai Inai Baa! seems to do this to the 1996-97 era of the program, as all of the clips of Kana-chan shown are from 1997 and later. In addition, the puppet character Penta is not mentioned on the disc unlike Kuu and Dada.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- The situation was very bad with the TV shows before Marvel Television was dissolved. After the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., there was almost no communication between Marvel Television and Marvel Studios, in part due to a very difficult working relationship between Studios head Kevin Feige and Marvel president Ike Perlmutter, and partly due to the very different production timelines for film and television. The result is some excellent television (and some crappy television) with almost no references in the film productions.
- Word of God has explicitly confirmed that the official events of the MCU aren't canon for the shows that aired on Netflix between 2015 and 2019. Despite this, the actors will be reprising their roles for future MCU projects, most specifically for the Disney+ platform, such as Charlie Cox reprising Daredevil for Spider-Man: No Way Home and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
- MonsterVerse TV series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: The series' account of Lee Shaw's history in The '50s, and of the attempt to kill Godzilla with a nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in 1954, ignores and contradicts the account that was originally provided in the Godzilla (2014) tie-in graphic novel Godzilla: Awakening (which was published before the 2014 film's wider MonsterVerse was established by Kong: Skull Island), although Lee is a character who originated in Awakening before being adapted by this series to the MonsterVerse's live-action continuity for the first time.
- Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation was one of the inspirations for a whole retcon of the franchise. The producers even reassured fans that Venus de Milo, outside of history books of the series, would never, ever, ever be mentioned again. The disowning is further pronounced in Turtles Forever, where The Next Mutation (as well as other TMNT oddities best left in the depths of obscurity such as Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue and the musical) is missing from 2003 Shredder's slideshow of The Multiverse (and just for kicks, even the ridiculously absurd anime OVA is acknowledged in that same scene). Production-wise, this can be explained away by rights issues, but everyone knows no one wanted to dredge up those continuities again.
- Thanks to Frozen II the Frozen arc of Once Upon a Time is now officially considered non-canon.
- Only Fools and Horses's writer John Sullivan usually liked to pretend that the 1986 Christmas Special, "A Royal Flush", never happened, due to Del being extremely cruel to Rodney by ruining his chances with the daughter of an aristocrat. Sullivan only allowed the episode to be released on video and DVD due to demand from the fans, and even then it was in the form of a severely edited version in which Del is a lot less mean.
- Due to Executive Meddling, the final season of the TV series Our Miss Brooks had Madison High torn down for a freeway, and Miss Brooks sent off to teach at a L.A. private elementary school. The concurrent radio series ignored this development, and continued at Madison High as per usual. When the cinematic grand finale was released the following winter, it also ignored the final TV season.
- In regards to the Perry Mason franchise, both the estate of Erle Stanley Gardner and CBS say The New Perry Mason never happened. It was attempt at a Continuity Reboot that ended up getting massively panned and bombed in the ratings, to the point where the network canceled it in the middle of its only season. Nowadays, both have done everything they can to bury the series, not referencing it in future Perry Mason media (not even HBO's incarnation references it). It's not at all helped by the fact that CBS doesn't even own the series (Disney owns it; it was produced by 20th Century Fox Television).
- Power Rangers:
- After Saban re-acquired the franchise, executive producer Johnathan Tzachor made a post on the official message boards saying that he considered every season made by Disney (from Ninja Storm through RPM) non-canonical. That is until the news came that Toei was filming a Legend War sequence for the 20th Anniversary, and all the teams (both from Saban and Disney) are a part of it (then again, Tzachor also claims that every incarnation of the franchise is its own continuity, even when all onscreen evidence claims otherwise, so fans are generally content to ignore him).
- Conversely, Paul Schrier mentioned at Comic-Con 2011 that, while the current Saban Brands production regime does not like the Disney seasons and wishes they did not exist, they are in-continuity and have not been disowned.
- The 2018 revival of Roseanne retconned away the more bizarre aspects of the original show's ninth and final season, such as the family winning the lottery and Dan's death after Darlene's wedding, although the death itself had only been established as part of retconning away the lottery win in the series finale. One of the establishing moments of the reboot was showing a very much still-living Dan and saying that Dan's death was itself part of the in-universe book Roseanne had written. Also written out were Dan and Roseanne's youngest child Jerrynote , and Jackie's son Andrewnote . The only babies to remain canon were Ed Jrnote and Darlene's daughter Harris note .
- Sam & Cat, which is a Spin-Off that takes one character from iCarly (Sam) and one from Victorious (Cat), appears to retcon the "iParty With Victorious" crossover episode from those two prior franchises. Instead of the pair recognizing each other from the events of that episode with them meeting each other in person and spent much of the episode together, Cat only recognizes Sam by way of Cat knowing about the iCarly webshow.
- NBC has repeatedly ignored the existence of the 1980-81 season of Saturday Night Live. In the season-by-season Best Of series, this was the only one skipped, with "The Best of 1980" containing material from the last episodes featuring the original cast. The 15th and 25th Anniversary specials ignored it, save for clips of its musical guests, and the 25th special's opening titles contained a cast photo from every season EXCEPT that one. (Each photo on the film strip is even labeled with the year - 1979 and 1981 have nothing between them.) Additionally, episodes from the 1980-1981 season are rarely shown in syndication. The only season six episodes that have aired in syndication are: a one-hour version of the last episode produced by Jean Doumaniannote that aired on Comedy Central as part of a weekend marathon called "The Eddie Murphy Experience" and again on Comedy Central's "50 Greatest SNL Episodes" marathon that came on around the time the syndicated reruns were being retired, a one-hour version of the infamous episode hosted by Charlene Tilton where Charles Rocket ends the show with, "Oh, man. This is the first time I've ever been shot. I'd like to know who the fuck did it" as part of VH-1 Classic's SNL Rewind marathon, a one-hour version of Eddie Murphy's first episode as a repertory player note also part of the SNL Rewind Marathon, and a full 90-minute version of an episode hosted by Jamie Lee Curtis that aired on NBC (and didn't air on many affiliates due to Pope John Paul II's assassination attempt making the news). It seems as though the ban on 1980-1981 season episodes has loosened a bit due to the Internet and news of Charles Rocket's suicide in 2005. Netflix once had season six as part of the show's 1980s collectionnote , some season six clips are available for viewing on NBC's Saturday Night Live page, there was a documentary on the show's rocky history in the 1980s that included a piece on Jean Doumanian's tenure with episode clips, stills, and commentary from former cast members Denny Dillon, Gilbert Gottfried, and Joe Piscopo), many books centered on the show's history (including Live From New York: The Uncensored History of SNL) do touch on this dark age, the Catherine Zeta-Jones episode from season 31 (which premiered two weeks after Rocket's death) had an In Memoriam still of Rocket at his Weekend Update desk, and the 40th anniversary special included Charles Rocket in the montage of cast and crew members who died during the years.
- Smallville episode "Eternal" is bad enough the wiki page has a section dedicated to it
. - Stargate SG-1:
- Early on, it was said about the Zat gun that "one shot stuns, two shots kill, and three shots disintegrate." They used the third shot a few times until they realized how much energy that would actually require, and this element was quietly dropped. This was later self-parodied in "Wormhole X-treme!" with one of the writers saying: "That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
- "Hathor" was effectively struck from canonicity due to the writers considering it the worst episode they ever wrote. Hathor reappeared later at the head of a Jaffa army she'd brainwashed away from several other Goa'uld, but how Goa'uld queens work was retconned due to the squickiness of the original explanation, and characters would refuse to talk about the events of the episode when asked.
- Star Trek:
- There is an urban legend among fans that Star Trek: Voyager's "Threshold" was so badly regarded that it was explicitly stated to be non-canonical by the producers while the show was still in production and later directly contradicted on-screen. In fact, the on-screen contradiction (where character Tom Paris states that he has never navigated a "transwarp conduit") is phrased to avoid contradicting the episode (in which the same character makes a transwarp *flight*, with no "conduit" in sight), and producers don't generally dabble in declaring things canonical or non-canonical, except by altering what is seen on the screen. Years later, the Star Trek: Lower Decks episode "We'll Always Have Tom Paris" explicitly mentioned both Paris breaking the transwarp barrier and his subsequent mutation, fully confirming the canonicity of "Threshold".
- It's an element rather than a whole episode, but Turnabout Intruder, the final episode of the original series, stated that women can't be starship captains note .
For obvious reasons, the entire rest of the franchise has thrown this rule out the window, including Enterprise (which was set before the original series), with the original statement being treated as the ramblings of an insane person. - Pike's comment in "The Cage" (later seen in "The Menagerie"), that expresses unease about women (aside from Number One) being on the bridge of a starship. Needless to say, when Pike appears on Star Trek: Discovery he displays no such attitude.
- In a similar way, another element that has been disregarded by the rest of the series is that Balance of Terror stated that the Romulans did not have warp drive at the time note . Like the above example, the rest of the series, including Enterprise, ignores this.
- Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles explicitly decanonises Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in its first episode, by having Sarah and John jump forward ten years in time from 1999 to 2009, T3 being set close to its 2003 release date. They do, however, acknowledge Sara's death from cancer in T3, causing this Sara to get a check up.
- The Big Finish version of The Tomorrow People includes a list of homo superiors who died when their powers first manifested. This turns out to include the characters from the 1990s Revival.
- Many Xena: Warrior Princess fans do not officially consider the two-part "Friend In Need" arc to be the finale, and neither do the writers of the Xena comics. The Dark Xena arc is basically a Fix Fic — constructing a story to undo the finale and other events (such as the death of the Olympian gods). Not only do the comics state that the finale cannot be canonical, the show itself makes the events of the final episode dubious at best, since it finished with Xena's soul trapped on Earth as an intangible, invisible ghost. Meanwhile, several episodes throughout the show's run state that Xena and Gabrielle return, reincarnate and generally stick around one way or another forever.
- In Young Sheldon S4 E14 "A Virus, Heartbreak and a World of Possibilities", one of the main plot points revolved around Sheldon inadvertently reminding Billy that his dad was gone forever, and that there was nothing that Billy could do about it. In the Season 5 premiere, Brenda casually mentions that she and Herschel share custody of their children.
