Elements Exiled from Continuity for creator reasons, that is, owners exile stuff that they have no permission to use because of another creator, either out of respect or due to uncertain rights. Might overlap with licensing and legal disputes, especially in cases involving shared rights.
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Anime and Manga
- The Pokémon Company was unable to secure the rights
to the Mewtwo seen in Pokémon: The First Movie from Takeshi Shudō's estate. It was because of this that Pokémon: Genesect and the Legend Awakened infamously featured a Mewtwo similar to the one from the first movie but not the same one. This appears to no longer be in effect, as the Journeys anime managed to bring the original Mewtwo back.
Comic Books
- This is the reason for Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics)'s Continuity Reboot, combined with a helping of Screwed by the Lawyers: Archie attempted to sue former head writer Ken Penders when he copyrighted his original characters, but ended up losing and having to reach a settlement with Penders. The settlement allowed Archie to use Penders characters but only if they paid royalties and followed his guidelines. As such, they rebooted the universe by Cosmic Retcon with all affected characters (both ones created by Penders, and ones by a former writer) Ret-Gone, though they still reprint the old comics featuring them.
- The Endless from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series are blocked by a similar agreement. While Gaiman didn't have anything specific in his contract, he has enough leverage to basically have the Endless be de facto off-limits to the rest of the DCU unless he says otherwise. There is one major exception to this: Destiny, who was created before The Sandman and therefore not created by Gaiman. The fact that these characters (again, with the exception of Destiny) fall so squarely into Vertigo Comics territory also kept them from entering into the DCU much.
- However, the second Dream did appear in JLA for a story arc (with Gaiman's blessing), in Dark Nights: Metal (again with Gaiman's blessing), and also in a few one-or-two-panels guest shots in JSA between its relaunch and Infinite Crisis.
- Destiny has appeared much more often since then; for instance, a twelve-issue arc in The Brave and the Bold revolved around the Book of Destiny.
- Gaiman's version of Death did appear in an issue of Captain Atom while The Sandman was still being published. Since this involved explaining that the role was divided between herself, Nekron and the Black Racer, each representing a different aspect of death, Gaiman was not happy, and it was following this that the agreement was put in place.
- In 2010, Death appeared in Paul Cornell's "The Black Ring" story arc in Action Comics, with Gaiman's consent and cooperation this time.
- With both the Endless and Jack Knight, it's not so much that Gaiman and Robinson maintain control of the characters; they don't and if DC wanted, they could use the Endless and Jack Knight all they wanted. The "agreement" is more a gentleman's agreement of "we won't use these characters without your approval" based on respect for Gaiman and Robinson and how seminal both of those works are.
- The Spawn characters Angela, Cogliostro, and Medieval Spawn were introduced in an issue guest-written by Neil Gaiman, but were subsequently re-used by Todd McFarlane without Gaiman's permission, and so were omitted for years while the two fought a long legal battle over who owned them. As a further consequence, Angela was unceremoniously dropped from the HBO animated series, with her planned storyline becoming an Aborted Arc. It was eventually established that each owned half; McFarlane traded his half of Angela for Gaiman's half of Cogliostro and Medieval Spawn, which allowed him to keep using them but rendered Angela completely off-limits. Gaiman later sold Angela to Marvel, who made a new Asgardian character out of her with a backstory completely detached from Spawn.
- James Robinson's Starman hasn't appeared regularly since his series ended because Robinson retains control of the character until his death. Jack Knight can still appear, if Robinson gives his okay. (He did write an extra issue of the series as part of Blackest Night, but Jack was conspicuously absent.) Jack's only actual appearances since have been merely background cameos in large gatherings, such as Sue Dibny's funeral.
- During her run on Wonder Woman, Gail Simone was denied permission to use Veronica Cale, a villainess created by Greg Rucka. Rucka later allowed Keith Giffen to use Veronica as a supporting character in his Doom Patrol run. Similarly, Simone wasn't allowed to use Cassandra Cain in her Birds of Prey run because Grant Morrison had called dibs on the character for their Batman Inc. series. This led to Cass being entirely absent from the DCU for almost a year, much to the ire of her fans.
- When Grant Morrison departed Doom Patrol, they extracted a promise from incoming writer Rachel Pollack to not use Crazy Jane, who was one of the most popular characters from Morrison's run. This precedent remained in place for subsequent runs (barring the odd brief cameo here and there) until Gerard Way rebooted the franchise in the late 2010's; Morrison gave Way their blessing to bring Jane back to the team.
- Back in 2013, then-Batman And Red Robin writer Peter Tomasi had once attempted to bring over Carrie Kelley from Batman: The Dark Knight Returns into the New 52 rebrand, with plans to make her the next Robin. However, this reportedly enraged her creator Frank Miller, to the point that he called DC and told them that if they wanted to do more with Carrie Kelley, he was up to doing books with her on the condition they exile her from the mainline comics. DC agreed to Frank's deal, causing her to be banned from comics outside of Frank Miller's work, which in turn, caused her to suddenly disappear from the main DCU and never get acknowledged again after appearing in three issues of the aforementioned Batman and Robin run.note That said, she is still allowed to appear in adaptations if her appearances in Teen Titans Go! and Gotham Knights (2023) are anything to go by.
Franchises
- Doctor Who and the Whoniverse:
- This happens quite a lot with Doctor Who, because the way writer contracts worked for the BBC in the 60s and 70s meant that the writers who weren't direct BBC employees retained the rights to their creations, and to this day the BBC can't use them without explicit permission. This includes such fan favourites as K9 and the Cybermen, but the most infamous example is the Daleks, which are still co-owned by the Estate of their creator Terry Nation. The Nation Estate and the BBC have failed to reach an agreement for their use on multiple occasions, and so the Daleks, despite being arguably the most famous element of Doctor Who after the TARDIS and the Doctor himself, have been conspicuous by their absence. Most notably they didn't appear at all in the New Adventures novels from the 90s, and negotiations to be able to use them at all in the relaunched series in 2005 went right down to the wire, with the BBC going so far as to prepare alternate scripts for "Dalek", "Bad Wolf", and "The Parting of the Ways" that didn't feature the Daleks at all.
- This was the point behind the epic 1967 serial "The Evil of the Daleks". The serial was supposed to depict the true and genuine final end of the Daleks. It was going to stick — because Terry Nation, the creator of the Daleks, wanted to sell a Dalek show in America. The pilot fell through, and by 1972, the Daleks were back from their long exile from continuity. (This was parodied in a special feature on the DVD of "The War Games" in which two Cloudcuckoolander Time Lords dubbed into the trial sequence cut off the Doctor from showing images of the Daleks "for copyright reasons".)
- The Yeti. Despite being one of the most popular monsters of Troughton's era at the time, the showrunner at the time fell out with the creators of the Yeti (both of whom fell out with each other at the same time as well — over who should have ownership of legendary shit monster the Quarks) and banned the monster from ever being in the series again to avoid giving them any money. Some have speculated that the Cybermen in "The Invasion" were supposed to be Yeti, as they come up from the sewers in a Yeti-like manner and the story features characters from Yeti serial "The Web of Fear". Note that Professor Travers and Miss Travers from "The Web of Fear" are absent from "The Invasion", replaced by Captain Ersatz versions, so as not to pay for rights — and that Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart has received a promotion to the rank of Brigadier. The Yeti does show up in "The Five Doctors" as Troughton's monster to fight, in the mid-1980s. The Great Intelligence (the Hive Queen controlling the Yeti) made a reappearance in the new series, but the Yeti still didn't — the GI instead started using literal snowmen instead of the Abominable kind.
- Some have speculated that the Master, an evil Time Lord created to provide the Third Doctor with an archnemesis, was created to avoid paying royalties to the creators of the virtually identical evil Time Lord the War Chief from Troughton's last serial, "The War Games" — a character with a similar appearance, personality, special power and relationship with the Doctor. (This is probably not the case, since the War Chief was created by Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke, the former of which was the script editor when the Master was created. So unless some arcane BBC regulations were involved, it seems unlikely.) Some fans and Expanded Universe material (including novelisations by Dicks and Hulke) even Fan Wanks that the War Chief and the Master are the same person, and War Chief was just the Master's job title. Of course, other Expanded Universe material goes into detail about how they are separate people and fleshes out the War Chief's personality along different lines.
- The Rani has not made an appearance in the new series despite her character being one of the only well-liked and fondly-remembered creations from a generally forgettable Audience-Alienating Era. This is in part due to the fact that her creators said they would only allow her to be used if they could write it, which is not likely to happen due to the fact that their writing was a major factor responsible for said generally forgettable Audience-Alienating Era.
- Doctor Who Legacy has characters added very slowly depending on which actors are granting their likenesses, leading to some odd situations:
- The Fourth Doctor, despite being the most beloved Classic Doctor, was the last Doctor missing from Doctor Who Legacy due to difficulty obtaining his likeness. Some sources say that this was because Tom Baker was reticent, while others say that Tom was excited to be in the game but the BBC didn't want to grant the rights to the "star" Classic Doctor until they knew the game would be a success. Whatever the reason, he was eventually added when "In the Forest of the Night" aired, along with a small amount of content based on his story "The Deadly Assassin", with his Season 18 outfit and a more detailed quest storyline for him added later.
- Several characters do not resemble their on-screen counterparts due to rights issues. Brian Williams is modelled after Arthur Darvill as Rory Williams rather than the actor who played the character, and Stormageddon is drawn as a generic baby (since the baby who played him onscreen obviously cannot grant rights). Vincent van Gogh was originally added in a form that resembled the historical Vincent rather than his portrayal in "Vincent and the Doctor", but his art was replaced once the actor granted the rights — his original artwork was eventually released as a paid download.
- For a very small and localised example, K-9 was excised from "Destiny of the Daleks" because Terry Nation hated the character and only granted the BBC the rights to use the Daleks if they promised never to pit him against the Daleks. As it is there is a small Surreal Humour sequence at the beginning of the story explaining his absence, written by Douglas Adams, and he does not appear in the main story at all.
- "Destiny of the Daleks" was intended by Douglas Adams to feature the Emperor Dalek. Terry Nation insisted on replacing him with Davros, as Davros was one of his own creations, and the Emperor Dalek was created by his former co-writer David Whitaker, meaning he'd get more royalties.
- The "Whomobile", a super-cool retro-futuristic Flying Car that shows up in a couple of late Third Doctor stories, couldn't make an appearance again due to ownership issues — the car was owned and paid for by Jon Pertwee himself. It remained in his possession all of his life, so appeared with him in the More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS documentary and the occasional public appearance, but as soon as Tom Baker shows up the Doctor is restricted to Bessie and the Whomobile is never mentioned again. Even though you'd think a flying car would be a lot more useful when fighting a giant robot.
- Star Trek: The Animated Series was struck from continuity by Gene Roddenberry sometime around the later films or when Star Trek: The Next Generation was getting started, probably because of its more cartoonish elements and a couple of continuity issues. However, there has been a fan backlash (particularly over "Yesteryear", TAS' best episode and one which reveals a lot more of Spock's backstory), and a couple of references in Star Trek: Enterprise's Continuity Porn-laden fourth season tried to reverse this.
- Paramount pretty much considers the series to be canon now after a fan poll overwhelmingly favored its inclusion.
- Yet they haven't adopted anything from TAS without a Live-Action Canon background (outside of a few random shout-outs).
- It is very doubtful, however, that the Kzinti will ever be appearing in Star Trek again. Especially since Niven has stated that he never intends to license them to anyone ever again.
- Enterprise did apparently manage to get a provisional okay to use them for an episode. It fell through because Kilkenny Cats was planned to be a fifth season episode — and Enterprise only got four seasons.
- And the Kzinti got namedropped in an episode of Star Trek: Picard, so who even knows anymore? (Showrunner Michael Chabon did reach out to Larry Niven to okay the name drop, but whether this will lead to a more significant presence of the Kzinti in the Star Trek universe is unknown.)
- Plus, it was actually the animated series that first gave Kirk's middle name as Tiberius, nearly two decades before Roddenberry entered it into "official" canon in the sixth film.
- Elements from "Yesteryear" ended up being used in the flashback sequences in the reboot Star Trek film. For instance, the scene with Spock being bullied by his classmates has dialogue that is almost taken word for word from a similar exchange in the original episode.
- The bullying by other Vulcan children was already canon in dialogue from "Journey to Babel".
- According to Aaron Sparrow, the Toy Story franchise isn't allowed to so much as acknowledge the existence of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command because of John Lasseter's distaste for the series. In spite of this, the "Return of Buzz Lightyear" arc of Boom Studios' Toy Story comic did feature a Booster toy and had Andy mention XR. Not even Lasseter's departure from Disney at the end of 2018 changed anything, with Pixar developing a new spin-off film called Lightyear that redoes not-the-toy Buzz's origin story, though the film's director (who also directed the show's CG openings) personally considers the show to be the movie's spinoff.
- Despite Disney buying the rights of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from Universal in 2006, Oswald is not considered to be a part of the Mickey and Friends brand and outside of the Epic Mickey games and related media, he is effectively forbidden from appearing in any other Mickey Mouse related media outside of minor cameos.
- He is also apparently prohibited from appearing in Kingdom Hearts, as Tetsuya Nomura wanted to include him in Kingdom Hearts III, but was shot down by Disney.
Literature
- The Land of Oz books are a Long-Running Book Series consisting of forty books written over the span of 63 years. After L. Frank Baum's death, the publishers commissioned Ruth Plumly Thompson to continue the series. She eventually left the series due to disagreements with the publisher, after writing 19 books and ballooning the cast with dozens more characters and locations. John R. Neill, who'd been illustrating the series since the second book, took over the series and wrote three books before his death, which introduced still more characters while also using some of Thompson's. The series already had a large cast before Baum's death, but Thompson and Neill exacerbated the problem. When author Jack Snow took over the series, he did a Continuity Reboot and picked up where Baum left off, disregarding the previous 22 books. Thompson and Neill's original characters would never appear in the series again after this point. Although, since many of Thompson's books are now Public Domain, characters from them have appeared in unofficial books since.
Music
- Nas's Stillmatic album has the song "Braveheart Party", which was removed from the album at the request of Mary J. Blige, who sings the chorus. Most fans have never heard the song unless they happened to buy the album immediately after its 2001 release. It's considered a bit out-of-place, both thematically and in-terms of quality, on Stillmatic (which is a very highly regarded album) so everyone is generally happy to forget this one.
- David Bowie had the song "Too Dizzy" removed from the track list of Never Let Me Down after its original 1987 release, and it has not appeared in any form since, including the 2018 Never Let Me Down remix and the otherwise comprehensive Loving the Alien (1983–1988) box set. Reportedly, Bowie had the song removed because he personally disliked it.
Video Games
- The Final Fantasy characters that appear in Kingdom Hearts are heavily focused on characters created by Tetsuya Nomura, as he felt uncomfortable redesigning and assigning new roles to characters designed by other artists. Setzer, one of the two characters created by Nomura from the Amano-designed Final Fantasy VI, appears in Kingdom Hearts II, along with a small cameo from Final Fantasy IX's Vivi (a variation on the common "Black Mage" template that appears throughout the series). It seems he got over his issues by the time Dissidia Final Fantasy happened, which required him to redesign the protagonist and villain of every entry in the series, and variations of Nomura's Dissidia redesigns designs have appeared in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance].
- Appears to have been done to Persona and Persona 2 in regards to the Persona franchise. Ever since the directors of these installments left Atlus, the concepts and characters introduced (including Philemon and Nyarlathotep) have not appeared or been referenced in later games. The characters do not appear in spin-offs like Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth or the Persona Dancing series, which feature characters from Persona 3 onwards throughout their installments. This does not seem to apply to minor nods; the Featherman series (a show introduced in Persona 2) is referenced with different series throughout multiple games, and the St. Hermerlin and Seven Sisters uniforms are available to wear in Persona 5. The games' main themes also appear as DLC in Dancing in Moonlight and Dancing in Starlight as part of a pack of franchise opening themes.
- The Queen's Gate Spiral Chaos game excluded Kasumi because Tomonobu Itagaki, Dead or Alive's creator and former director, has an intense hatred of Namco's Tekken.
- While there's a lot of series the licensed installments of Super Robot Wars can't use for many reasons, there are two developer then-Banpresto/B.B. Studio and publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment cannot touch by any means: Giant Robo (due to the death of creator Mitsuteru Yokoyama, and its expensive licensing feesnote ) and any series created by Ouji Hiroi, even series that belong to Bandai Namco and its subsidiary Sunrise like Madö King Granzört and the Mashin Hero Wataru Series (Hiroi despises Super Robot Wars and swore to never allow Banpresto to include Sakura Wars in a gamenote ).
- Irony ensues when it didn't stop Project × Zone from including Sakura Wars AND Super Robot Wars characters in the same game (though not in the Mecha Game capacity). This was eventually Subverted when Sakura Wars made its debut in Super Robot Wars X-Ω; similarly, Mashin Hero Wataru made its debut in Super Robot Wars X.
- Further averted when the rest of the Sakura Wars cast, Kouran and Iris included, appears in X-Ω; Hilarity Ensues when their debut episode includes a plot where they face Embryonote . Ultimately, all this can be explained by both Red Entertaiment selling the rights of the franchise to Sega and Hiroi having left the company years ago, thus they cannot enforce this rule anymore.note
- This was entirely averted with the debut of Sakura Wars (2019) and for many reasons: Not only that the game debuted in X-Ω a month after the game was released in Japan, this is one of the few franchises that appeared either very earlier or in the midst of the show's run (the other two were Last Hope (2018) and Mobile Suit Gundam Wing) and not only that, possibly in order to break with many established rules from previous games, one of the enemies they have to face is Gates, a human with no powers other than being a mass-murdering Sociopathic Soldier.
- The debut of the franchise in a mainstream game, starting with Super Robot Wars 30, destroys basically each and every conception most fans of the Sakura Wars franchise had about it regarding their standing on fighting humans: Not only the main characters had no problems whatsoever on fighting against human soldiers, even those fighting on more powerful machines than their steam-powered Koubus, like the ones from more darker and violent franchises starting with Gundam, they are even able to fight in the outer space, something which is never used in the main continuity. Hell, they even made one of the characters, the very devout Erica Fontaine, going full apeshit against the Zanscare Empire, due to the latter's use of the guillotine as a execution method, since Erica, being a Frenchwoman, had many cultural reasons for being royally pissed especially against them.
- When Banpresto mistakenly used a Mortar Headd LED Mirage in place of a similar-looking unit from Heavy Metal L-Gaim in Super Robot Wars 4, it pissed off The Five Star Stories creator Mamoru Nagano, and will never consent to the series being included in Super Robot Wars, disliking the idea of a Mortar Headd he designed being damaged and destroyed by Humongous Mecha from anyone other than himself. Later interviews revealed that it wasn't truly the case about said idea, but Nagano was pissed because the arts of said L-Gaim unit accidentally looked too similar to his Mortar Headd to the point of looking like plagiarism, and he wasn't informed of it or receiving the payment for his property's usage beforehand.
- It's rumored Neon Genesis Evangelion Averted this trope due to series director Hideaki Anno insisting on the series appearing in Super Robot Wars, vetoing the higher-ups at Studio Gainax.
- Sometimes this trope is applied by Bandai Namco/B.B. Studio themselves when they simply don't want to include a series (or are rumored not to), partly because of its premise and/or setting. Examples include Lime-iro Senkitannote , Daimidaler the Sound Robotnote and Vandreadnote . On the other hand, they got around this with Demonbane by using its tamer TV adaptation as its basis (though elements from the Visual Novel are referenced). They were ultimately able to include Daimidaler and Vandread in X-Ω without incorporating their respective settings - an easy task as X-Ω is a Tower Defense game rather than the traditional story-driven Turn-Based Strategy.
- While there are plenty of series containing elements of the mecha genre, they don't necessarily fit the definition of the word "robot" (with the exception of series centered around Powered Armor), such as space operas (Space Battleship Yamato, Cowboy Bebop, Legend of the Galactic Heroes), Sentai, Tokusatsu or Kaiju; inevitably, any non-Japanese series are excluded (sorry, Megas XLR fans). However, this point is moot since Super Robot Wars V included Space Battleship Yamato 2199, while X-Ω paved the way for Godzilla and Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger.
- Zyuranger in X-Ω actually plays with this: while the titular Rangers and their Humongous Mecha "Daizyujin" appear, the former only appear in their morphed forms, with none of their enemies from Zyuranger in X-Ω. As is standard with modern video games for Super Sentai and its brother franchise Kamen Rider, Bandai Namco only had the rights for the characters in their suits and robots, but not the likenesses of their actors. This turns egregious when Zyuranger villain Bandora is mentioned at the end of the Zyuranger special stage - she doesn't appear on-screen, yet her "voice" is heard via textnote .
- Related with the above point, the Transformers is even less likely to appear, due to the way the whole franchise is owned: In a nutshell, the franchise is owned by both Hasbro in the U.S. and western territories and Takara Tomy in Japan and East Asia, so any decision regarding licensing normally requires the clearance from either the Japanese and American sides, regardless if the product would be released in their respective territory or not.
- Super Robot Wars began receiving English localization for its Southeast Asia releases beginning with Super Robot Wars V, rendering the internationally legally-FUBARed Macross franchise getting the boot out of the Massively Multiplayer Crossover, so long as the Macross license is in Harmony Gold's possession. While X-Ω did get Macross Delta, the game is distributed exclusively through Japanese smartphone app stores with no plans for international translations.
- Series whose rights are tied to a specific platform (such as Gunparade March for Sony consoles, and Star Fox for Nintendo consoles) are unlikely to appear. It's suggested Bandai Namco prefers series that can be used on whatever platform they desire, especially if these properties could potentially reappear in an Updated Re-release or Video Game Remake.
- Dairugger XV (aka Voltron Vehicle Force outside Japan) is very unlikely to appear as well due to two reasons relating to gameplay:
- The titular robot is controled by fifteen smaller units and their respective pilots, while other similar Combining Mecha in the franchise only has units with a maximum of either three or five pilots, and having a robot piloted by 15 different characters would be a potential Game-Breaker since invariably all the pilots will had all the available Spirit/Seishin Commands that can be used.note
- The franchise ditched the ability of "separating" any Combining Mecha unit into smaller units since the PS2 era, since it was barely used. The problem here is the fact Dairugger XV has many plotlines that requires the units being separated into smaller units and only combining when the need arises.
- In a bizarre twist on this trope, Linebarrels of Iron suffered from this unexpectedly: while the series was used in previous games without any problems, the character designs in X-Ω were changed from the Animated Adaptation to the ones used in the original Manga. This was, for many reasons, including the fact the Anime was divisive among audiences, but also because X-Ω uses plotlines and characters who didn't appear in the Anime at allnote .
- Prior to the Second Super Robot Wars Z: Hakai-hen, CLAMP properties such as Magic Knight Rayearth being included into the franchise was a pipe dream, given the former's defensiveness about their titles. However, Code Geass appearing in Hakai-hen was unexpected, but since the latter was co-produced by CLAMP and Sunrise, fans believed the same reasoning couldn't be applied to Rayearth as it's a 100% CLAMP production. Once Rayearth made its debut in Super Robot Wars T did it prove this wasn't the case - rather, the series didn't pass the criteria of being included in the franchise when it was much stricter in the past. Thanks to the initiative of X-Ω including as many series from different genres as much as possible, the entry for Rayearth became much easier.note
- Starting with Sticker Star, Nintendo made mandates that forbid the creation of unique characters in the Paper Mario series (developed by Intelligent Systems) that are heavily visually-distinct members of pre-established Super Mario Bros. species such as Toads, Goombas, Koopas, etc. (slight modifications such as clothing are fine though)- in other words, Non-Standard Character Design is an Enforced Trope for new characters. Most characters that were created in Paper Mario 64, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Super Paper Mario are no longer allowed to appear in the series itselfnote . However, games in the Super Smash Bros. series released after Sticker Star still feature trophies and other collectibles of theoretically blacklisted characters. The mandates would see some further weakening when a remake of Thousand-Year Door was announced for the Switch, complete with all its original characters like Goombella, Koops, and so on.
- The Original Generation human characters in Mario Golf and Mario Tennis (both developed by 'Camelot Software Planning') have stopped appearing, so it's likely these mandates also apply to Mario's other spinoffs. One of the most notable cases being Koopa Kid, a staple character in the Mario Party series that stopped appearing starting with Mario Party 8, with his role as Bowser's lackey being fullfilled by Bowser Jr. in later installments. Most tellingly, Mario Party: The Top 100 and Mario Party Superstars' minigames that originally featured Koopa Kid were reworked to replace him with Bowser Jr. That said, Woody's return in Superstars suggests it is possible to bring back rule-abiding original spin-off characters created prior to the mandates.
