Adaptation Origin Connection

Batman: You killed my parents.
Joker: What? What are you talking about?
Batman: I made you, but you made me first.

— Batman (1989)

In an adaptation of a work, it's common to make the iconic Arch-Enemy of the source material into the adaptation's Big Bad. Due to Rule of Drama, this character will be tied into the hero's origin story, whether they were in the original work or not. A common variation is that the villain is the one who killed a loved one in their Death by Origin Story, making the villain a Composite Character with the Token Motivational Nemesis. Often revealed at the end, leading the hero to decide that It's Personal.

The reasons for this are similar to those behind Superhero Movie Villains Die. Since the movie isn't necessarily an ongoing series, writers have a limited time to make the villain have as much impact as possible. It's a simple way of adding drama and a personal connection between the villain and the hero. Often Inverted such that a villain that wasn't a Create Your Own Villain in the original is made one in an adaptation.

This goes double for instances of Token Motivational Nemesis. Who is more interesting as the one who killed the hero's beloved teacher, love interest, or parents, some nameless thug or the iconic Big Bad?

This is the inverse of Create Your Own Villain, where the hero is involved in the origin story of the villain. Also compare to Related in the Adaptation, when an adaptation makes two previously unrelated characters family, and Meta Origin, where an origin story is given a specific underpinning that ties the characters' seemingly random power to a concrete phenomenon (and thus can connect them when they wouldn't have been in the source material).

---

Example subpages:

• Fan Works
• Film — Live-Action

Other examples:

Anime and Manga

• In the original Pokémon games, Mewtwo was strongly implied to have been created by Mr. Fuji, formerly Dr. Fuji, acting alone (which Pokémon Origins is more explicit about). In the anime continuity, he was commissioned to do so by Team Rocket. Because of the anime being more well-known than the games at the time along with Fuji's unexplained reasons and seeming lack of motive for creating Mewtwo otherwise, Team Rocket being connected with Mewtwo has been a strong piece of Fanon. The games themselves gave a nod to this by having Mewtwo be Alternate Universe Giovanni's ace in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon.
• Pokémon Adventures:
  • As in the anime, Mewtwo is a Team Rocket creation. However, Blaine is also involved with its creation, with his DNA being used in the Pokémon. (A connection to Blaine in the form of him knowing the aforementioned independent researcher is introduced to the game canon in FireRed and LeafGreen, however.)
  • Giovanni, posing as a friendly traveler, is the one to give the Old Amber to Red, which would become his Aerodactyl.
  • The Arc Villain of the GSC arc, the Masked Man, kidnaps and raises six children who grow up to be Blue (named Green in the dubbed version) and Silver, Elite 4 members Will and Karen, and Carl and Sham (the two unnamed Rocket leaders in Gold and Silver, who were later given the names Archer and Ariana in HeartGold/SoulSilver).
• The Powerpuff Girls anime adaptation Powerpuff Girls Z made it so that the Powerpuff Girls and the majority of their enemies all gained their powers in the same accident, in contrast to the original cartoon, where Mojo Jojo was the only enemy of the Powerpuff Girls whose origin was connected to the girls'.
• In GoLion, an unnamed Space Goddess broke apart the titular robot into its component Lions. In Voltron, the Goddess was Haggar (Honerva) in disguise.
  • Meanwhile, in Super Robot Wars W, Golion is actually a creation of the same aliens who made GaoGaiGar.
• Besides his canon crimes, Street Fighter II: The Manga makes M. Bison responsible for the death of Ryu and Ken's mentor.
• Fairy Tail:
  • Four supporting characters—Master Bob from Blue Pegasus, Master Goldmine from Quatro Cerberus, Fairy Tail's medicinal advisor Porlyusica, and Councilor Yajima—are all established as Makarov's old teammates from Fairy Tail in the anime. While the manga implies that Porlyusica may have been a member, none of the others have any ties to Makarov besides being friends of his. This eventually becomes Ret-Canon in the manga's official sequel, Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest.
  • Ultear's backstory has always been set at the Bureau of Magical Development, where the doctors there experimented on her for little reason other than her having high amounts of magic. In the anime, it's shown that Brain—the leader of Oración Seis and head of the facility—was trying to mold her into a potential member of his guild, and ditched the place when she came back for revenge, since he found enough candidates anyway.
• Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) does this quite a lot with its source material:
  • Episodes 4 - 9 take place three years before the start of the series, and as such, several of its characters are more directly involved with the main characters' pasts.
    • Shou and Nina Tucker. In the manga, Ed and Al were already State Alchemists by the time they met the Tuckers, and they're only around for one chapter before Nina is forcibly transmuted with the family dog. In the 2003 anime, they stay at the Tuckers' residence while studying for the State Alchemist Exam, spending several more days with them before the incident. They're not the only ones, either; in the manga, Scar had been killing State Alchemists before running into Nina post-transmutation, and the subsequent Mercy Kill was done after he personally invaded the Tuckers' mansion to kill Shou. In 2003, Nina runs into him after escaping the military, and her condition is what spurs his decision to start getting revenge on State Alchemists.
    • Elicia, Maes Hughes' daughter. In the manga, she's already a toddler in her first appearance. Here, Gracia is still pregnant with her by the time the Elrics (and Nina) first meet her, and they end up helping with Elicia's delivery, giving the Hughes family more of a personal connection with the Elrics. For bonus points, this happened on Ed's birthday, and it's also when Ed discovers that he can use alchemy without a Transmutation Circle.
    • Barry the Chopper as well. In the manga, the Elrics have no idea who he is by the time they meet him in the Fifth Laboratory. In the anime, they do know of him because they encountered him on his killing spree, with Ed and Winry being his next victims.
    • The Youswell chapter is also moved here, giving this status to Yoki. In the manga, this happened very shortly after the brothers dealt with Father Cornello. In this version, Ed and Al investigating the town's situation is the former's first mission as a State Alchemist. In addition, Lyra, the character who becomes Dante's future host, starts out working for Yoki.
  • The one who killed Winry Rockbell's parents also differs, though the murders still happen during the Ishvalan Civil War. In the manga, Scar is the one who did it, though it was an Accidental Murder due to a Power Incontinence-sparked freakout. In 2003, the dishonor is instead given to Roy Mustang, who was under reluctant orders to execute them for helping the Ishvalan people.
  • In the manga, the homunculi were created by Father to carry out his plans, and have nothing to do with any of the heroes outside of Envy starting the Ishvalan War and Wrath literally running the country. In the 2003 anime, they're the results of human transmutation that Came Back Wrong. Due to this different direction for the homunculi, many of them are more personally associated with the protagonists in some way: Lust is Scar's sister-in-law, Sloth is Ed and Al's mother Trisha, Wrath is Izumi Curtis's stillborn son (with Ed's lost limbs for good measure), and Envy is Hohenheim's first son with Dante, making him Ed and Al's half-brother.
  • Inverted with King Bradley, a.k.a. Wrath (manga)/Pride (anime). Even though both differ in terms of origin and even personality, both depictions of Bradley have the same connections to Roy, in that he's the fuhrer of Amestris and helped carry out the Ishvalan War. What's different is his adopted son Selim; in the anime, he's just a kid that Bradley took in, while his manga counterpart is the first homunculus, Pride (ironically enough), making him Bradley's accomplice.
• Lupin Zero reveals that Lupin and Jigen attended school together as young teens, well before they would go on to become the partners-in-crime depicted in the rest of the Lupin III franchise.
• The Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Reflection/Detonation duology made it where Yuri worked alongside the Florian sisters' grandparents on the Eltrian Restoration Committee.
• The Nichijou manga doesn't exactly provide an explanation for where Sakamoto came from. The anime, however, makes Sakamoto the former pet of Professor Nakamura, who he ran away from because she was ill-equipped to take care of a cat.
• Digimon: The Movie: In the English dubs of Our War Game and Hurricane Touchdown, Willis is stated to be responsible for accidentally creating the virus that mutated a digiegg into Diaboromon, with that same virus returning to corrupt his partner Kokomon. The original Japanese version has no connection between Willis and Diaboromon.
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (2005) does this a couple times.
  • The Seven Sages are credited with creating the Master Sword.
  • Agahnim has a new storyline that intersects with Link's. He is the one who kills Link's uncle, as opposed to the random brainwashed soldiers in Hyrule Castle. He also is the one who banished Link's Canon Foreigner parents to the Dark World.

Comic Books

• Batman: Earth One volume 3 implies that the man who killed the Flying Graysons (thus causing their son to become Robin) was the Joker.
• Batman: Zero Year:
  • Implied to be the case with Batman and The Joker in the last part of "Secret City." In the third chapter of the arc, the Red Hood Gang leader tells Bruce how it was the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne, and the terror that the deaths of these prominent citizens to a random mugging sparked in the minds of most Gothamites, that inspired him to turn to a life of crime and similarly terrorize Gotham. The Red Hood Gang leader is implied to be the future Joker, resulting in this trope.
  • In a more tangential sense, circumstances resulting from Bruce Wayne's return to Gotham set Edward Nygma down the path to becoming the Riddler.
  • In the inverse, as revealed in the finale, Bruce Wayne was this to his rogues, as he also went to Arkham Asylum. The difference that makes him a Shadow Archetype is that he actually tried to change and went there to get better, and didn't treat it as a prison.
• Spider-Man: Chapter One: The series, originally written as a Retcon before being made an Alternate Continuity, made Norman Osborn the mastermind behind everything that happened in the first 20 issues of The Amazing Spider-Man (Lee & Ditko) or so and had Peter and Otto Octavius caught in a radioactive meltdown that made them respectively Spidey and both Doc Ock at the same time, among other changes.
• Ultimate Marvel:
  • Ultimate Fantastic Four: The series changes the event that gave the Four their powers from a space flight into a teleportation experiment and merges it with Doctor Doom's origin story (in which a dimensional portal experiment blew up in his face because he refused to take Reed's advice, leading to him adopting his trademark metal mask). In the Ultimate version, Doom tinkers with the settings on Reed's teleporter experiment because he believes he knows better, causing it to blow up in their faces and transform the five of them into superpowered beings.
  • The Ultimates: Black Panther got his powers from Weapon X, and it's implied that his retractable claws were patterned after Wolverine's.
  • The origins of many characters, including Nick Fury, Nuke, and the very existence of mutants, are tied to attempted recreations of the Super-Soldier serum that made Captain America.
  • Ultimate Spider-Man (2000): The Ultimate reimagining of Spider-Man does this three times over. First, Norman Osborn becomes the Green Goblin thanks to the same Applied Phlebotinum that affected the spider that empowered Peter Parker; and another recurring Big Bad candidate, The Kingpin, is connected to Spider-Man's origin in that the burglar who killed Uncle Ben is one of his lower-level thugs. Finally, Eddie Brock is Peter's childhood best friend, and the Venom symbiote is the result of an experiment their parents worked on together for Bolivar Trask. Also, the explosion caused by the Green Goblin created Doctor Octopus and turned Harry into the Hobgoblin.
    • Also, Peter's father worked with Bruce Banner and Henry Pym in the early attempts to recreate the super soldier serum. Bruce Banner tested it on himself, and almost killed Richard Parker as a result.
  • Ultimate X-Men (2001): Regular-verse Yuriko is obsessed with Wolverine and only cares about the other X-Men through their relationship with him. This Yuriko is obsessed with Storm and doesn't give two hoots about Wolverine. However, as he's her boyfriend, if she goes after her she must be ready to fight with him as well.
• Heroes Reborn:
  • In Heroes Reborn: Fantastic Four, it's the presence of Doctor Doom's minions that forces Reed to fly the ship with Ben, Johnny, and Sue to reach a cosmic anomaly before they can destroy it. Besides, the anomaly turns out to be the Silver Surfer.
  • Its version of Iron Man has Bruce Banner as a Stark Industries scientist and one of Tony's closest friends from college. When HYDRA attacks the Stark facility where the Gamma Bomb is housed, the blast mutates Bruce into The Incredible Hulk, and it's the Hulk's subsequent rampage that badly wounds Tony and forces him to don the prototype Iron Man armor to save his own life.
• A heroic example. At least one comic (of unknown canonicity), Superman/Batman #50, had Jor-El befriending a human he pulled from Earth while studying it before sending him back, cementing his decision to send Kal-El there. That human? Thomas Wayne. One gets the feeling that either the criminal population of Gotham City or the entire planet just dodged a particularly big bullet there.
• Superman:
  • Post-Infinite Crisis, General Zod leads a coup against the Science Council after he discovers Jor-El was right about Krypton's impending doom. Pre-Crisis, Zod led a coup long before Jor-El's discovery.
  • In Metallo's New 52 origin, John Corben was originally a soldier outfitted with Metal-0, a special suit of Powered Armor created by John Henry Irons. It was Corben's subsequent rampage as Metallo (spurred on by Brainiac) that caused Irons to don his own armored suit and become Steel for the first time in order to protect Metropolis.
• Mega Man (Archie Comics) connects four games together this way. Most adaptations of Mega Man (Classic) like to link Duo and the Stardroids together in some fashion. The comic takes it one further by having the Stardroids be the creation of Ra Moon, who is also the creator of Shadow Man. The Evil Robot that Duo fights from the eighth game also joins Ra Moon's side, implying that Evil Energy has a connection to it, making Ra Moon - a one-shot side villain in the games - the Greater-Scope Villain of every one of Mega Man's outer space threats.
• The Udon Street Fighter comics contain several connections not present in the games, such as Gen being Chun-Li's former childhood mentor.
• The Micronauts (IDW) version of Acroyear is a Super-Soldier created from members of Baron Karza's race; the Pharoid, meanwhile, is a member of the species that became the Time Travellers.
• X-Men: Grand Design has several examples:
  • The series posits that much of the anti-mutant racism that pops up in the X-Men books can be traced back to Namor's duel with the original Human Torch back in the early 1940s, which resulted in thousands of deaths after New York City was flooded. Professor X's parents subsequently made their fortune (the same money Xavier would later use to fund the X-Men) by devising the technique that dried out the floodwaters and made the city inhabitable again.
  • The Mutant Master is inspired by the abilities of the X-Men member Mimic to create the Super-Adaptoid.
  • In a broader sense, Mutant Master is revealed to be the mastermind behind many of the events of the early Silver Age X-Men comics. His reason for coming to Earth in the first place turns out to be an attempt to locate the future host of the Phoenix Force.
  • The Living Pharaoh's ancestors are said to have worshipped the Phoenix Force, and his kidnapping of Havok is changed to an attempt to offer the Phoenix a Human Sacrifice.
• Dark Nights: Metal provides a retcon to explain the origin of metahumans. People become metahumans because they have trace amounts of a mysterious metal in their blood. This metal is powerful enough that it's in pretty much every powerful metal artifact in the DCU in one form or another.
• Metal also connects Hawkman and Hawkgirl to the various immortals of the DCU. Instead of being an Egyptian prince and princess cursed to constantly reincarnate by Hath-Set, they are now immortals whose immortality was somehow tampered with by Hath-Set, so that they'd reincarnate. Hath-Set himself was working for the Immortal Men, an ancient conspiracy.
• Before that, Geoff Johns retconned in a connection between the Hawks, Doctor Fate, and Black Adam. In JSA, it's shown that, after Khufu and Chay-Ara discovered the Thanagarian spaceship that granted them the Nth metal they use for flight, Nabu was their magical adviser and Black Adam their close confidante (after the death of his people). The comic also positions Black Adam as a Foil to Hawkman, with Adam still using the brutality of his era while Hawkman, having witnessed the changes to society throughout his various lives, doesn't. Nabu swings either way depending on his mood.
• Marvel 1602 unified the origins of its versions of Spider-Man and the Hulk by having Peter Parquagh gain his powers from being bitten by a spider that was exposed to the same mystical energies that caused David Banner to transform into a muscular behemoth.
• Arthur Light and Kimiyo Hoshi were originally two unrelated characters who both just happened to go by the name Doctor Light, both utilizing light-based powers and wearing highly similar costumes. Arthur was an American supervillain most famous for raping Sue Dibny, while Kimiyo was a Japanese superhero loosely associated with the Justice League, and the excuse for why she had his name was that they did not know about each other when they both initially used the name. Post-Infinite Crisis, it was mentioned in an issue of Justice League of America that Kimiyo's father had worked with the scientist Jacob Finlay to develop the original Doctor Light suit, but that Arthur Light had murdered Finlay and stolen it for himself. The New 52 later retconned their history, so now Arthur was a Nice Guy who accidentally gained his powers and initially tried to act as a superhero, with no mention of any rape, while Kimiyo was his wife, Kimiyo Hoshi-Light. It's not explained how, but DC Rebirth retconned it so that she also gained powers somehow, while Arthur returned to being a villain.
• The UDON Street Fighter comics had Rose be the one to free Cammy from M. Bison's brainwashing, despite no such connection between the two existing in the games.
• A major theme in the G.I. Joe vs. the Transformers miniseries by Devil's Due was that the origins of G.I. Joe characters were now intertwined with the origins of Transformers characters or had Transformers characters involved.
  • The organization G.I. Joe is founded to do something about Cobra, who in this continuity have captured and enslaved the Autobots and Decepticons to use as weapons after the Cybertronians ended up on Earth. Only by resisting Cobra's control is Optimus Prime able to convince the Joes to help him free his fellow Autobots so that our heroes can turn the tide against Cobra and the Decepticons.
  • The Art of War has this continuity's version of Serpentor being an android constructed from the remains of Megatron.
  • Black Horizon establishes that Cobra-La are in cahoots with Unicron, having made a deal with the Chaos Bringer to spare the Earth in prehistoric times and to come back and wipe out humanity when Cobra-La decided the time was right.
• The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: In South Africa, Scrooge befriends a fellow prospector who betrays him and leaves him for dead. At the end it is revealed that he is a young Flintheart Glomgold. In the original barks comics, he never knew Scrooge until "The Second Richest Duck".
• Wonder Woman: In Wonder Woman (Rebirth) Adriana Anderson's manner of death leads directly to the creation of the AI based on a digital map of her mind that goes on to become the Prime Earth version of Dr. Cyber. These two characters had never previously even existed in the same universe with Dr. Anderson originating in Wonder Woman (1987) and Cyber being from Wonder Woman (1942).
• Pre-Flashpoint, the Justice League of America first formed fighting the Appellaxians and the accident that turned Vic Stone into Cyborg was an experiment of his dad's. In the New 52, the Origins Episode of Justice League (2011) had both be the same event — an invasion by Darkseid that caused Vic to end up as a cyborg and the forming of the League and is now Earth's first encounter with the denizens of Apokolips.
• In the Marvel Action comic line, the origins of Miles Morales and Ghost Spider are streamlined so that they were both bitten by the same spider - Miles was in his uncle Aaron's apartment when he got bit, but the spider escaped and went to bite Gwen Stacy while she was practicing downstairs in the same building.
• The 39th issue of Secret Origins featured a Post-Crisis retelling of Man-Bat's origins establishing that Kirk Langstrom was once lost in a cave as a young boy and survived by hanging with a hidden race of bat-people, his account of this experience to Bruce Wayne when they were kids subconsciously inspiring Bruce to eventually create the Batcave as his base of operations. It is also revealed that, prior to eventually turning himself into Man-Bat, Kirk conducted an experiment where he blocked a bat's ears to deprive it of its sonar and lost it when his fiancee Francine accidentally set it free, the bat in question implied to be the same bat that crashed through Bruce Wayne's window and inspired him to don the guise of Batman.

Films — Animation

• Beowulf: In the original poem, the dragon was a separate threat from Grendel and his mother. Here, the dragon is reworked into the plot by being the offspring of Beowulf and Grendel's mother.
• Batman: Soul of the Dragon has Batman, Lady Shiva, Richard Dragon, Bronze Tiger, Cheshire, and Judomaster all be fellow martial arts students of O-Sensei in Nanda Parbat, far before any of them became famous.
• Batman vs. Two-Face: In the original comics, Harvey Dent becomes Two-Face after being splashed with acid by a mobster he's prosecuting. Here, he is disfigured when an "Evil Extractor" built by Hugo Strange overloads and explodes when used on five villains at once.
• Legend Of The Guardians The Owls Of Ga Hoole had The Pure Ones being the ones who kidnapped Soren and performed Brainwashing on owlets rather than the St. Aggie's owls, who aren't even mentioned.
• In the original The Long Halloween, there's no sign that Alberto and Gilda even knew of each other, much less knew each other in person. In Batman: The Long Halloween, they dated in college and even got intimate, which resulted in a child that'd been born out of wedlock had Alberto's father, Carmine Falcone, not forced Gilda to get an abortion, hence why she became Holiday.
• In the folktales Son of the White Horse draws from, the three dragons have no backstory. They just exist and rescuing the princesses they have kidnapped is the goal the Son and his three unrelated companions, Treeshaker, Stonecrumbler and Irontemperer set out to achieve (though in some versions Treeshaker is the Son himself). The Son's mother is a mare for no particular in-story reason. Also, there is no previous calamity mentioned apart from the princesses' kidnapping. In the film, the dragons are an ancient force that have ruined the world and stole the power from the ruler deities, one of whom turned herself into a White Mare to flee. The Mare gives birth to her three brothers, Treeshaker, Stonecrumbler, and Irontemperer specifically so they would defeat the dragons and reclaim their empire as adults.
• In Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Kingpin is the Big Bad of Miles Morales' origin story, being the one who murdered their world's Peter Parker, as well as the criminal employer (and later killer) of Miles' uncle Aaron. In the original Ultimate Spider-Man comics, the two never even met, as Mysterio had killed off the Kingpin before Miles was even created.

Literature

• The Prometheus myth as repeated in The Faerie Queene identifies the Titan not as the creator of humanity, but the creator of elvenkind. This was likely done to make the story consistent with Christian anthropology while also bolstering the seriousness of the elven characters by associating them with well-respected Classical Mythology.
• In a 100-page short story in the collection The Ultimate Spider-Man, one written by Stan Lee no less, both Spidey and Doc Ock are created during the same experiment, similar to Chapter One and predating it by a few years. Unlike that comic, however, Peter doesn't get caught in the same explosion that Ock is, instead wandering out of the exhibit after the spider bites him moments before Doc Ock's experiment goes wrong.

Live-Action TV

• Altered Carbon: The Netflix series turns Quelcrist Falconer into Takeshi Kovacs’ mentor and lover, while in the books they lived centuries apart and he just had an interest in her philosophy. While Reileen went from a Yakuza boss Tak had unspecified dealings with in the past to his sister.
• Arrowverse
  • Arrow:
    • Malcolm Merlyn (based on the comic book character Merlyn) had the Queen family yacht sabotaged, shipwrecking Oliver and his girlfriend Sara Lance, inadvertently causing the events that would shape them into the Arrow and the Canary vigilantes. Also, Deathstroke trained Oliver and helped him survive on the island.
    • Oliver was the one who influenced Helena Bertinelli into crime-fighting, eventually leading her to become the Huntress.
    • Taken further in Season 3, with the revelation that Amanda Waller and ARGUS were involved in Arrow's origin.
    • Anatoli Knyazev (known as KGBeast in the comics) is also revealed to be a part of Oliver's backstory.
    • Finally, we also learn that Emiko Queen (Red Arrow) could have prevented the sabotage of the Queen yacht but chose not to.
  • The Flash (2014)
    • Girder is reimagined as Barry Allen's former childhood bully. This is in sharp contrast to the comics, where the two not only have no connection but where Girder was instead an enemy of Wally West, Barry's successor (Barry having been dead at the time Girder was created).
    • And almost all of the Flash's super-powered enemies got their powers in the same freak accident that created the Flash, when in the comics they got their powers all over the place. Three of his non-metahuman enemies — Captain Cold, Heat Wave, and the Golden Glider — all got their high-tech weaponry from the Flash's teammates at S.T.A.R. Labs.
    • Eobard Thawne is responsible for empowering Barry with the Speed Force. In the comics, Eobard not only had nothing to do with Barry getting powers but actually got his powers from a suit of Barry's. Slightly subverted, in that it's revealed that Barry would've gotten his powers anyway from Harrison Wells had Eobard not messed with the timeline.
    • Doctor Alchemy had no connection to the speedster Savitar in the comics. In the show, he is possessed by him due to Savitar being a Composite Character of himself and Doctor Alchemy's split personality Alvin Desmond.
    • Savitar himself originally not only had nothing to do with Barry Allen but was an enemy of Wally West as well. In the show, he's Barry's future time remnant.
    • Jesse Quick gets her powers from being caught in a blast when Barry attempts to recreate his incident. In the comics, she used a formula to get superspeed before just possessing it, likely through her father.
    • Doctor Alchemy is the one responsible for giving Wally West his superspeed after he was caught in the above-mentioned blast. In the comics, Wally got his powers through a freak accident in Barry's lab, it later being revealed that Barry himself may have subconsciously caused the accident.
  • Supergirl (2015):
    • Martian Manhunter's Story Arc is closely connected to the title character's adoptive father and Hank Henshaw. He's been impersonating the latter after the former saved his life from the real Henshaw.
    • Non is reimagined as the title character's uncle by marriage (to her mother's twin sister). He and his wife hold a grudge against the title character's mother for imprisoning them to Fort Rozz.
    • Brainiac 8 a.k.a. "Indigo" was the one who freed (under her own agenda, of course) the title character from the Phantom Zone and was also the one who programmed her escape pod to go to Earth along with Fort Rozz.
    • Leslie Willis becomes the supervillain Livewire after she was struck by lightning with the title character. This happened because Cat Grant demoted her from being her radio's premiere jock to "helicopter news duties". Her original origin story is actually closer to the show's version, except the accident happened with Superman.
    • Siobhan Smythe was also the title character's co-worker under Cat Grant before becoming the supervillain Silver Banshee.
    • Maxwell Lord is the one who creates Bizarro.
    • Red Tornado was created under General Sam Lane's project.
  • Black Lightning (2018): Khalil Payne appeared to be a Canon Foreigner to the Black Lightning mythos, but when he became a paraplegic and is enticed by Big Bad Tobias Whale to walk again, he accepts, receiving reconstructive spinal surgery that grants him his legs back, but also Super-Strength. Khalil's new Dreadlock Warrior look, alongside forearm bracers firing anesthetic syringes, due to the surgery also giving him a paralytic poison, he turns into Black Lightning Rogues Gallery member Painkiller.
  • In Batwoman (2019), the Joker was responsible for the car accident that caused the death of Kate Kane's mother and the disappearance of her sister Beth. The incident proved to be a major turning point in both Kate and Beth's lives, leading them to become the vigilante Batwoman and the supervillain Alice, respectively, as adults.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender (2024):
  • The Mechanist serves under King Bumi as opposed to being a completely independant character.
  • Zuko's crew didn't really have an explanation for why they were travelling with him in the original series. Here, they're actually the same battalion that Zuko was exiled for defending (whose fates in the cartoon are unknown). This adds extra weight to Iroh's conversation with Jee, as unlike in the cartoon Zuko has already made personal sacrifices for his crew.
• Doom Patrol (2019): Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man comes to be from the same technology Heinrich Von Fuchs used to turn Eric Morden into Mr. Nobody, when in the comics Sven Larsen became Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man in a lab accident that involved neither Mr. Nobody nor Von Fuchs' comics counterpart Dr. Bruckner.
• Gotham tells the origin stories of iconic Batman villains like The Penguin, The Riddler, Catwoman, and Poison Ivy. These stories are all connected to the story of how Bruce Wayne's parents were murdered and how he subsequently grew up to become Batman.
• The Hexer:
  • In the TV series, Falwick's role was greatly expanded. He was introduced in the first episode called "Dzieciństwo" ("Childhood") as Gwidon the witcher who, unconvinced of little Geralt's mutation, demanded a Trial of Mountains, where a child is to be left in the wilderness to fend for himself for 30 days to truly test that he is no longer human. Gwidon later formed a party out to fetch food and supplies for the fort. On the road to Tes, they attacked a travelling caravan with all the adults being killed and the caravan with children and supplies taken away to Kaer Morhen. Unbeknownst to Gwidon, Geralt witnessed the assault. When the test time was up, Old Witcher came back for Geralt. He took him and a little girl survivor back to Kaer Morhen, where they went to Vesemir with the evidence of the attack. As a result, Gwidon was hailed as a renegade, forced to relinquish his witcher artifacts, and banished from the fort. Before leaving, he vowed revenge on Geralt for bringing the evidence, and Geralt in return vowed to kill him.
  • The series ties Order of the White Rose with Nilfgaard, by making Falwick a spy working for Nilfgaard whose assignment after Queen Calanthe's death was to locate Ciri and bring her to Emhyr var Emreis, the Emperor of Nilfgaard. The Order also hired Renfri to kill the priestesses and burn the temple of Melitele in Ellander.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: In the novels, Galadriel met Sauron for the first time in Eregion, under the secret identity of Annatar. In the show they meet in the Sundering Seas on a raft, from where they end up in Numenor, and from Numenor, to the Southlands, and only after they make it to Eregion.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Robbie Reyes was transformed into a Ghost Rider by Johnny Blaze.
  • Daredevil (2015):
    • In the comics, Daredevil created his first two costumes (the yellow suit and its more familiar red successor) by himself. In the Netflix series, the red suit is created for Matt by Melvin Potter (Gladiator in the comics), while the yellow suit is made for him by designer Luke Jacobson in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
    • While Benjamin Poindexter is already violent and mentally unstable when introduced in the show, his actual transformation into a costumed supervillain occurs due to the manipulation of the Kingpin.
  • It's left ambiguous, but there are hints in the season finale of Jessica Jones (2015) that the car accident that granted Jessica her powers may have somehow been connected to the Super-Soldier program that Will Simpson ("Nuke" in the comics) is involved with. This is confirmed in Season 2, where it is revealed that a secret genetic research clinic called IGH was responsible for both Jessica's powers and the Psycho Serum Simpson derives his strength. Trish Walker later gets powers from former IGH scientist Karl Malus after becoming jealous of Jessica's abilities. The Whizzer is another character whose powers came from IGH in the series.
  • In Iron Fist (2017) and The Defenders (2017), the Hand are revealed to have been founded by a group of warriors from K'un-L'un who were exiled for seeking immortality, with the various Iron Fists from throughout history having been trained to oppose them. Additionally, Colleen Wing turns out to be a member of the Hand who leaves the organization following a love-induced Heel Realization.
  • In The Punisher (2017), Billy Russo (a.k.a. Jigsaw) is Frank Castle's former friend who served alongside him in the military.
  • In Cloak & Dagger (2018), D'Spayre gained his abilities from the same accident at the Roxxon oil rig that empowered the titular heroes.
  • The Falcon and the Winter Soldier:
    • The various Flag Smashers are empowered by a serum they got from the Power Broker (revealed in the first season finale to be Sharon Carter).
    • While John Walker did get his abilities from the Power Broker in the comics, the TV show adds in the reveal that the serum he uses was made from the blood of Isaiah Bradley, a black super soldier from the 1950s. In the finale, his black costume and U.S. Agent codename from the comics are bestowed on him by Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, another connection created for the show.
  • In WandaVision, Monica Rambeau winds up getting superpowers as an inadvertent result of being exposed to the Scarlet Witch's Chaos Magic. In the comics, Monica's powers came from an accident involving a device harnessing extra-dimensional energy.
  • Hawkeye (2021):
    • The events that lead to Kate Bishop being drawn into the plot and eventually becoming a superhero ultimately lead back to the Kingpin, who is her mother's criminal associate and implicitly the one who had the Tracksuits crash the auction and steal Clint's watch in the first episode.
    • Maya Lopez, a.k.a. Echo, is introduced as the vengeful daughter of a gangster that Clint killed back during his time as Ronin.
  • In Moon Knight (2022), Arthur Harrow is a former avatar of Khonshu who wore the mantle of Moon Knight before Marc Spector.
  • In Ms. Marvel (2022), Kamala is connected to the MCU's version of the Destine family of ClanDestine by making her the great-granddaughter of one member of the group.
• Poirot frequently gives the titular detective a more personal connection to the cases by establishing a relationship with the victim or suspects.
  • In Cat Among the Pigeons, Poirot did not even appear until the final third of the book, when one of the students found a secret related to the murders and decided to consult the great detective. In the adaptation, he stayed as a guest from the very start, being an old friend of headmistress Bulstrode.
  • Poirot was shown to be good friends with the titular victim in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which gives him a more personal reason to quit retirement and return to his detective work.
  • In Sad Cypress, Poirot was hired by Dr Peter Lord to clear Elinor's name, but he only agrees to his request to humour him because the doctor was so damn persistent about it (Poirot himself initially believed Elinor to be guilty of the crime she was accused of). Dr Lord is Poirot's good friend in the TV show, and the former had told Poirot about the anonymous letter sent to Elinor and Roddy at the beginning of the story, making his involvement in the case more believable.
• In Spartacus, the title character and his wife were sold into slavery by Gaius Claudius Glaber after a falling out in a campaign. In Real Life, Spartacus and Glaber were merely enemies. The plot was based on rumors that Spartacus was a conscripted soldier before being Made a Slave. And while details regarding his captivity under Batiatus are unclear, the latter's manipulations and schemes are what also ultimately pushes Spartacus and his slave brothers to revolt against Rome.
• Stargirl (2020)
  • In the Infinity, Inc. comics, most of the various second-generation members of the JSA lived in different cities and had no connection to one another before becoming superheroes. In the TV show, the teenagers who become Stargirl, Wildcat, Doctor Mid-Nite and Hourman all live in Blue Valley and attend high school together before they get their powers.
  • Jakeem Williams also lives in Blue Valley and is the friend and coworker of Courtney's younger brother Mike before he gets the Thunderbolt and becomes Jakeem Thunder.
  • Paul Deisinger is turned into Paintball by Cindy Burman and Eclipso, while in the comics he worked for Dragon King.
• Swamp Thing (2019):
  • The entity responsible for Daniel Cassidy's transformation into the Blue Devil is revealed to be the Phantom Stranger.
  • Jason Woodrue's transformation into the Floronic Man occurs after he eats Swamp Thing's heart.
• Titans:
  • Starfire's whole reason for coming to Earth in Season 1 is to kill the offspring of Trigon, who turns out to be Raven.
  • Dick Grayson's eventual transformation into Nightwing is done courtesy of Deathstroke the Terminator, who tries to murder the Titans after they are reformed. It turns out that, many years ago, Deathstroke killed Garth when trying to assassinate Donna Troy's mentor, and the Titans tried to recruit his son Jericho to help them find his father. When Jericho learns the truth by meeting with his father, a scuffle between him and Robin leads to Deathstroke accidentally killing Jericho, causing the Titans to disband when Dick reveals most of what happened. Deathstroke subsequently causes the Titans to split again by guilting Dick into revealing the whole story, and a guilty Grayson gets himself arrested to prevent the disbanded team from being targeted. However, this, combined with the dealings of Project Cadmus, spurns Dick to make up for his mistake by becoming Nightwing and taking down Deathstroke for good.
  • In the third season, Jason Todd's transformation into the Red Hood comes about due to the youth falling under the sway of the Scarecrow. Additionally, it's that duo's subsequent reign of terror that brings Tim Drake into contact with the Titans, which eventually leads to him becoming the new Robin.
• Done multiple times over in the live-action Yu Yu Hakusho (2023) series due it to being a Compressed Adaptation:
  • In the original manga, the speeding car that killed Yusuke was merely driven by a pair of careless humans. The TV show instead has the driver be possessed by a Yokai that escaped into the human world via the same tunnel that the Big Bad Sakyo is trying to open.
  • Likewise, the fire that burns down Yusuke's house and nearly destroys his dormant body is caused by the same yokai, now in possession of one of his classmates, whereas the manga had it be the work of a random human arsonist. Yusuke eventually winds up having to defeat the yokai as his first Spirit Detective case.
  • Hiei's first appearance in the manga had him steal a legendary sword from the Spirit World in order to make himself more powerful, while a later arc established that he had a sister named Yukina who was being held prisoner by a wealthy criminal named Tarukane. The series combines both of these plot points by having Hiei's entire motivation for stealing the sword in the first place be so that he can use it to locate Yukina after she is kidnapped by Tarukane. Also, while Tarukane and Sakyo were already associates in the manga, the series takes it a step further by having Tarukane be the one who sold Sakyo the hole that contains the aforementioned tunnel to the demon realm.

Multiple Media

• The Shea Fontana iteration of DC Super Hero Girls establishes in the tie-in graphic novel Date with Disaster that this continuity's Rampage is responsible for giving Plastique, Killer Croc, Jimmy Olsen's Giant Turtle Boy persona and Poison Ivy their powers, when in the comics none of the characters' origins had anything to do with one another.

Podcasts

• Several examples in Wolverine:
  • Jason Wyngarde, a.k.a. Mastermind, is another former (unwilling) Weapon X operative like Logan.
  • The Sentinels were developed as part of Weapon X.

Theatre

• Swarm, Electro, Carnage, the Lizard, and Kraven the Hunter were all independent villains with their own backstories in the comics, but the musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark made it so that they were five of six ex-employees of OsCorp that the Green Goblin mutated into superhuman freaks to form the Sinister Six.
• The unproduced Batman: The Musical was to follow the 1989 film's twist of the Joker being the one to have orphaned Bruce Wayne before the chemical accident that turned him into the Clown Prince of Crime and also would have established that Catwoman was an orphan who witnessed Thomas and Martha Wayne getting shot.

Video Games

• According to the interview tapes for both the Joker and Two-Face in Batman: Arkham City, the Batman: Arkham Series version of Carmine Falcone has ties to both of them as he took Sal Maroni's role in Two-Face's origin and was the power behind the Red Hood Gang, meaning he's tied to the Joker's origin.
• Batman: The Telltale Series Episode 2 has the player-determinant event of Oswald "Penguin" Cobblepot being responsible for scarring Harvey Dent for his transformation into Two-Face.
  • In Season 2, depending on Bruce's actions, once John finally takes up the Joker mantle, he will either become the usual unrepentant villainous variety, or tries to become a heroic vigilante like his good buddy Batman, but ultimately fails since he's unable to fully reign in his Ax-Crazy tendencies.
• Final Fantasy VII: An odd example happens with minor recurring NPC Johnny. In the Japanese release, Johnny recounts Cloud's past from what he's heard from various people; a Childhood friend of Tifa, a member of SOLDIER, a playboy, and a Murderer. In the overseas release, Johnny says that he and Cloud were childhood friends with Tifa and members of SOLDIER, saying that Cloud was always a playboy. This is probably a translation error.
• The opening scene of Injustice 2 reveals that Brainiac was responsible for the destruction of Superman's home planet of Krypton, and that Supergirl witnessed his drones kill her mother.
• Midnight Suns reveals that Mephisto was the one who kidnapped Illyana Rasputin and took her to Limbo when she was a little girl.
• The Punisher (THQ): While Jigsaw was already connected to the mob family that killed Frank Castle's wife and children in the comics, the 2004 video game based on the movie from the same year takes it a step further by having him be John Saint, one of the assassins who actually took part in the massacre.
• Happens in Red Dead Redemption 2, although with a prequel instead of an adaptation:
  • Uncle is established to be a former member of Dutch's gang, while the first game never revealed anything about him and implied he's just a random farmhand with whom John was drinking buddies with. This raises some awkwardness as Jack in RDR1 asks how John knows him despite growing with the gang, although it doesn't quite go into retcon territory.
  • The 1899 Blackwater massacre was a mere background detail and had no ties to Heidi MacCourt or Dutch's gang, and existed mostly to give a reason why Landon Ricketts was in Mexico. This game establishes that Dutch's Boys were behind it and Heidi's murder triggered it.
  • An inversion also happens: The heist during which John Marston got shot and left for dead was not the ferry job as was implied in I, but the robbery does happen at the beginning of the game and Marston gets wounded during it. Instead he is left behind after being shot off a train.
  • Edgar Ross was a Pinkerton Agent who pursued the Van Der Linde Gang during their active years. It's also shown that it gets personal with the Marstons since Abigail ends up being the one to kill his partner Milton.
• Metal Slug Code J, a 3D-remake of Metal Slug which compresses together various games of the franchise into one, implies that the Black Hound is created by General Morden's Rebel Army, showing up defending Morden's bases, as it's original creators, the Ptolemaic Army, is nowhere present at the time.
• Spider-Man (Insomniac):
  • Spider-Man (PS4):
    • Otto Octavius is introduced as Peter Parker's boss and mentor, and it's the prosthetics project the two of them are working on that eventually leads to Otto becoming Doctor Octopus.
    • Octavius is also tied to Norman Osborn in this universe, the two having been former colleagues and business partners until it went south and turned Octavius bitter against Osborn. His transformation into a villain is driven almost entirely by desire to get revenge against Osborn, twisted by the effect the tentacles are having on his mind.
    • In this continuity, Martin Li developed his Mr. Negative powers and personality due to a botched experiment performed by Norman Osborn, using a procedure that Octavius invented (though Octavius himself was unaware of the experiment). The same experiment also killed Martin's parents, causing him to become a supervillain so that he could one day get his revenge on Osborn.
    • In the comics, Mary Jane's abusive father Phillip quit his high-paying job as a college professor of his volition. In this continuity, MJ states that Kingpin caused her father to lose his job, with it being implied that his father's bitterness over the event being what led him to become abusive in the first place.
    • In the game's "The City That Never Sleeps" DLC, Hammerhead is directly responsible for the events that lead Yuri Watanabe to become Wraith. It the comics, it is instead Mr. Negative who was responsible for those events.
  • In Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the Tinkerer turns out to be Miles' childhood friend Phin Mason. In the comics, the two have no connection whatsoever.
  • Marvel's Spider-Man 2:
    • Dr. Kurt Connors is the one who led the expedition to find the Venom symbiote in this continuity, with the symbiote's attempt to bond with him leading to him losing his arm, therefore tying Venom to the origins of the Lizard.
    • In the grand scope of the series, the Venom symbiote being used by Norman as a cure for Harry's genetic illness ties Venom to the origins of Doctor Octopus and Mr. Negative.
• Marvel's Avengers: In this continuity, Kamala Khan's origin is more directly tied to the Avengers than in the comics. She was present at the A-Day celebration for the team due to having been a finalist in a Fan Fiction writing contest and gained superpowers after being exposed to gas from the Terrigen crystal that Tony Stark and Bruce Banner had been using as an experimental energy source.
• In X-Men: The Official Game (the prequel to X-Men: The Last Stand), the Silver Samurai, Hydra, and William Stryker are all revealed to have been involved in the creation of Master Mold and the Sentinels.

Webcomics

• Cinema Snob Reviews Frozen (a fan comic where The Cinema Snob reviews Frozen) discusses this when Snob noted this film didn't give a reason for Elsa's powers, which missed an opportunity for a shared origin with the villain... and a chance to hear fans bitch about how the shared origin isn't in the source material.
• In Jenny and the Multiverse, the Man in Grey is the Corrupt Corporate Executive of the Altern Corporation, and Jenny Nowhere is his top enforcer. None of these concepts are usually depicted as related to each other in the default form of the Jenny Everywhere mythos, with Nowhere usually being independent, the Altern Corporation employing (or being run by) Laura Drake, and the Man in Grey running the benign Multidimensional Finders Service.

Western Animation

• Avengers Assemble:
  • Justin Hammer is the creator of the Super-Adaptoid, despite the two having zero connection in the comics.
  • The Fixer is a former Stark Industries employee who turned to crime after being fired by Tony.
  • Baron Zemo's strength and athletic prowess come from a recreation of the same Super Serum that was used on Captain America during World War 2.
  • Prior to becoming Ant-Man, Scott Lang used to sell technology to supervillains, with one of his inventions being Whirlwind's armor. It's also mentioned in passing that some of his other clients included Egghead, Madame X, Blizzard and Unicorn.
• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes:
  • The scientific accident that transformed Franklin Hall into Graviton occurred while he was trying to recreate the Super Serum that turned Steve Rogers into Captain America.
  • Tony Stark helped Hank Pym design Ultron, intending to sell it to the military as a weapon. Tony is also the reason why Ultron has built-in offensive weaponry in the first place, as this version of Pym is a pacifist who only intended for Ultron to be a nonlethal peacekeeping robot.

// DC Animated Universe:

• Harley Quinn (2019) - in Batman: The Animated Series (the first medium in which Harley Quinn appears) she runs into Ivy on a random heist and they are both already villainesses; Harley thinks the other woman is named "Poison Oakey." But in this as in other later adaptations that focus on Harley and Ivy's relationship, Harleen Quinzell was Ivy's therapist at Arkham and they became close there before their escape.
• In The New Batman Adventures, reporter Jack Ryder is transformed into the Creeper after the Joker exposes him to Joker Venom and then pushes him into a vat of chemicals.
• Superman: The Animated Series:
  • The show blames the failure to evacuate Krypton on Brainiac's deliberate suppression of Jor-El's theories, making the comic-book Coluan robot into a Kryptonian example of A.I. Is a Crapshoot. As such, Brainiac is responsible for Superman's status as (initially) the Last of His Kind. Brainiac goes on to be one of the series' Big Bads alongside Lex Luthor and Darkseid.
  • In "Monkey Fun," Titano the Super-Ape is made Lois Lane's former pet from when she was a child.
  • The episode "In Brightest Day" makes it so that Kyle Rayner is a co-worker of Clark Kent to explain his presence in Metropolis and also has him become a Green Lantern from inheriting Abin Sur's ring due to being a Composite Character with Hal Jordan in addition to Sinestro being responsible for Abin Sur's death in the first place. In the comics, Kyle Rayner was given a ring by Ganthet during a time when the Green Lantern Corps was disbanded and Sinestro had no involvement whatsoever in Abin Sur's death (even established later on to consider Abin Sur a friend).
• Justice League:
  • Prior to becoming Metamorpho, Rex Mason was the Green Lantern John Stewart's close friend from back during their time as Marines. In the comics, the two have no real connection.
  • Gorilla Grodd was inadvertently given his trademark psychic powers when Wally West foiled his first attempt to brainwash the human race. Grodd was subsequently responsible for granting Giganta a human body and Sizeshifter abilities.
  • Doomsday was cloned from Superman’s DNA by Project Cadmus as a contingency plan in case the former ever went rogue again.
• The Batman:
  • Poison Ivy is Batgirl's former best friend.
  • In "Vertigo", Count Vertigo was an ex-employee of Queen industries and the cause of Oliver being stranded on an island, leading him to become the Green Arrow, was rather than an accident like the comics.
  • "Attack of the Terrible Trio" sees the titular trio use versions of the serum Kirk Langstrom used to make himself Man-Bat, as opposed to being normal people in the costumes as in the comics. They also happen to be classmates of Batgirl.
• The spider that bites Peter in the The Spectacular Spider-Man series was from a laboratory run by Curt Conners AKA The Lizard and funded by Oscorp. Also, Uncle Ben was killed by Black Cat's father. The series also incorporates the Ultimate Universe's idea that prior to becoming Venom, Eddie Brock was Peter's childhood best friend.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series:
  • Similar to The Amazing Spider-Man and The Spectacular Spider-Man, the spider that bit Peter in the show was tied into the research of Curt Connors, the Lizard. The same neogenetics research later resulted in the creation of the Scorpion and Morbius, and both Vulture and Silvermane showed interest in Connors's work.
  • The crooked businessman responsible for the toxic waste accident that blinded Matt Murdock and gave him his Super-Senses was The Kingpin. Additionally, Matt's dad was murdered while trying to expose the Kingpin's illegal activities to the police, which led to Matt becoming the vigilante Daredevil as an adult.
  • Felicia Hardy's transformation into the Black Cat is tied to Captain America in this show. As a boy, her father John Hardesky saw and memorized the formula for the Super Serum that would transforms Steve Rogers into Captain America. After nearly being tricked into giving the formula to the Nazis, John Hardeski spent years on the run until he fell into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s protective custody. The Chameleon breaks him out of prison under Kingpin's orders and forces him to tell him the formula, allowing Herbert Landon to transform Felicia into the Black Cat as a prototype for what was supposed to be an army of super soldiers under Kingpin's command.
  • The accident that turned Otto Octavius into Doctor Octopus occurred because Felicia Hardy's mother cut off his funding. As a result, he hates the Hardy family and kidnaps Felicia in his very first appearance. Octavius was also Peter Parker's childhood mentor in this continuity, whereas the comic versions of Peter and Octavius did not know one another until later in life.
  • Cletus Kasaday was given the Carnage symbiote by the Doctor Strange villains Dormammu and Baron Mordo as part of a plot to bring the former into the human realm.
• Ultimate Spider-Man:
  • Like the comic the series shares a name with, "The Iron Octopus" reveals that the spider bite that gave Peter his powers happened at Oscorp.
  • The Lizard, the Rhino, and the Vulture get their powers from animal serums created by Doc Ock. Ock is also responsible for creating the Venom symbiote from a sample of Peter’s blood.
  • Deadpool is Nick Fury's rogue former protege.
  • Scorpion is Iron Fist's bitter former rival from K'un-Lun.
  • Kraven the Hunter is the man who killed White Tiger's father.
• Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes:
  • Before becoming Doctor Doom, Victor Von Doom was part of the fateful space mission with Reed, Sue, Ben, and Johnny. It was his interference that caused the space station's shields to fail during the cosmic storm, which ended up disfiguring his face and giving Reed and the others superpowers.
  • Kl'rt the Super-Skrull got his powers from Ronan the Accuser's Kree genetic engineering. This also explains why the Skrulls never simply repeated this procedure to create an army of Super-Skrulls, as their hatred of all things Kree meant that Kl'rt had to keep the true origin of his abilities a secret.
• Iron Man: The Animated Series:
  • The Mandarin is the one who captures Tony Stark and Yinsen in this continuity, which results in the creation of the Iron Man armor.
  • Unlike in the comics (where he was created by A.I.M.), M.O.D.O.K.'s mutation was caused by the Red Ghost, an old Fantastic Four villain. It's also mentioned in passing that Red Ghost was responsible for the creation of Titanium Man, another unrelated villain from the comics.
  • Samuel Sterns is Bruce Banner's former lab assistant, and the nuclear waste accident that mutated him into the Leader occurred while he was performing cleanup duties at the site of the G-Bomb test that transformed Banner into The Incredible Hulk.
• In X-Men: The Animated Series, Lady Deathstrike is Wolverine's former lover, and her father was one of the Weapon X scientists responsible for Logan's adamantium skeleton. Additionally, her cyborg enhancements came from the Reavers in this continuity.
• X-Men: Evolution:
  • Kitty Pryde and Avalanche attended the same high school before being recruited by the X-Men and the Brotherhood, respectively.
  • As a child, Magneto was rescued from a Nazi concentration camp by Captain America. He would later use the Super Serum that empowered Cap to periodically rejuvenate his own body, thus explaining why he looks several decades younger than his actual age.
• In Iron Man: Armored Adventures, it is implied that the designs for Doctor Doom's armor were based on the same alien technology that created the Mandarin's ten rings. Also, Howard Stark was researching the rings when he died, and the Mandarin becomes a False Friend to Tony so Tony will help find them. In the comics, the Mandarin randomly came into conflict with Tony. Also, Howard's not dead. The Mandarin forces Howard to help find the rings, or the Mandarin will hurt Tony.
• The Incredible Hulk (1996):
  • In a non-villainous example, the series established that Tony Stark provided Bruce Banner with the materials to build the gamma reactor that eventually transformed him into the Hulk. Because of this, he feels some measure of responsibility for the accident and tries to help cure Bruce.
  • In the comics, Jennifer Walters was transformed into She-Hulk when Bruce gave her an emergency blood transfusion to save her life after she was shot by some criminals. In the cartoon, Bruce gives Jennifer the life-saving transfusion after she's severely wounded by Doctor Doom, who kidnapped her as part of a plan to force the Hulk to work for him.
• In Silver Surfer: The Animated Series, Frankie Raye has latent genetic abilities that are fully unlocked after the Silver Surfer uses some of his power cosmic to save her life. This in turn leads to Galactus deciding to make Frankie his new herald after realizing that her powers can be used to find suitable planets for him to devour. In the comics, Frankie's origin story had nothing to do with the Silver Surfer, and she instead volunteered to become the new herald of Galactus because she wanted to explore the universe.
• In Spider-Man Unlimited, the High Evolutionary is shown using drones in addition to the Knights of Wundagore, one of whom becomes the series' incarnation of X-51/Machine Man. In part, this might be due to rights issues, as the original Machine Man's origin was tied to the comic adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Additionally, the High Evolutionary experimented on John Jameson when he arrived on Counter-Earth, resulting in John's Man-Wolf form in this series.
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold:
  • Most of Plastic Man's origins in the comics follow the same basic setup, with Eel O'Brien depicted as a criminal who became a superhero after being exposed to mutagenic chemicals during a botched heist. The Brave and the Bold changes things up so that O'Brien was actually a costumed henchman working for the Batman villain Kite Man, and the accident that gave him his powers occurred when Batman knocked him into a chemical vat. Feeling immense guilt over the incident, Batman subsequently got O'Brien released from prison on parole and oversaw his rehabilitation and eventual transformation into a superhero.
  • "Return of the Fearsome Fangs!" has flashbacks that depict Bruce Wayne training alongside Bronze Tiger and the Terrible Trio prior Bruce to becoming Batman. While Bronze Tiger is himself a martial artist, there's no sign that Ben Turner ever trained with Bruce and the Terrible Trio aren't martial artists in the comics.
• Spider-Man: The New Animated Series:
  • The origin of the Lizard is tied into the Green Goblin as Curt Connors lost his arm thanks to Oscorp testing an explosive that's implied to be the prototype of the Green Goblin's pumpkin bomb.
  • Max Dillon is introduced as Peter's friend and classmate before an accident turns him into Electro.
• Marvel's Spider-Man:
  • The Jackal is the one who created the spider that gave Peter Parker his powers, as well as the ones that later empower Miles Morales, Gwen Stacy and Anya Corazón.
  • The young man who becomes the Rhino is one of Peter's classmates at Horizon High, and his transformation is also the work of the Jackal.
  • Doctor Octopus is initially introduced as one of Peter's teachers at Horizon High.
  • The crossover with Guardians of the Galaxy (2015) reveals that the one who weaponized the Klyntar symbiotes (including Venom and Carnage) many years ago was Thanos.
  • The Shocker and Clash are best friends who developed their respective technology together.
  • Cloak and Dagger were experimented on by Tiberius Stone and the Alchemax Corporation.
• Beware the Batman:
  • Ra's al Ghul is involved in Alfred and Katana's past, being the one responsible for the latter's father's death and for the entire Soultaker Sword subplot to take place.
  • Professor Pyg and Mister Toad are the ones that modify Kirk Langstrom's serum and force him to become Man-Bat, instead of Langstrom's own recklessness turning him into a monster.
• Justice League Action: In "Harley Goes Ape", it's revealed that Dr. Harleen Quinzell tended to Titano before she worked at Arkham Asylum and became Harley Quinn.

• In Ben 10 (2016): Gwen's arch-enemy Charmcaster has a new origin that Gwen is in part responsible for, as she gains magic powers from Hex's spellbook, which was put on the market when Gwen helped defeat him in a previous episode.
• In Teen Titans (2003), the Fearsome Five are students at the H.I.V.E. Academy. In the comics, the Fearsome Five and H.I.V.E. are two separate criminal factions.
• Young Justice (2010):
  • Miss Martian/M'gann M'orzz bases her personality on the main character of "Hello, Megan!", who is played by Marie Logan, the mother of Garfield Logan. Later when Garfield is injured, he receives a blood transfusion from M'gann, which turns him into Beast Boy. As a consequence, when Marie Logan does die, it's not from a boating accident like in the comics, but the Bialyan Queen Bee (an enemy of Justice League International) murdering her to get revenge on Miss Martian. Also, an Easter Egg reveals that Rita Farr, the civilian identity of Elastgirl (a teammate of Beast Boy in the Doom Patrol), is a co-actress on "Hello, Megan!"
  • The origins of the Golden Age Flash and the Silver Age Flash are for the most part independent, with Jay Garrick obtaining his speed from breathing heavy water while Barry Allen gained his when a lightning bolt struck the chemicals in his lab, and the latter later taking the name from the older Flash who he read about in a comic ^note  Flash Rebirth later retcons this by revealing all speedsters throughout time connected to the Speed Force after it originated from Barry. In the show’s tie-in comic, Wally West explains that Jay obtained his powers from a lab accident, and recounted the incident to Barry decades later. Barry recreated the same incident to grant himself super speed and become the next Flash (with improvements to the experiment making him faster than Jay), and Wally deliberately recreated that in turn with school equipment (which has the side effect of his Silver Age-era slower speed being the result of the inferior equipment instead of a psychological block).
  • Karen Beecher studied under Dr. Ray Palmer (a.k.a. The Atom), and Word of God confirms that her Bumblebee suit uses the same shrinking tech as Palmer's belt.
  • Static is a member of a group of runaway kids who were experimented on by the Reach, this group being based on the Canon Foreigner characters from Super Friends. Once he officially becomes a costumed superhero, Static is mentored by Black Lightning.
  • In the comics, Halo was the result of a fusion between the energy being known as an Aurakle and the body of a sociopathic human named Violet Harper in America. In the third season of Young Justice, it was revealed that Quraci refuge Gabrielle Daou was experimented on for the metagene by Baron DeLamb and Doctor Jace (who is responsible for both Geo-Force's and Terra's powers in both materials). When it turned out she didn't have a meta-gene, Jace euthanized her, leaving her body to be taken over by the soul of a destroyed Mother Box.
  • As mentioned above, the third season revolves around a metahuman trafficking ring organized by the Light (The Secret Society of Supervillains in the comics). In addition to the aforementioned Geo-Force and Terra, the Light's trafficking network is responsible for Dolphin, Holocaust, Windfall, Plasmus, Plasma, Livewire, Mist, and Looker all getting superpowers.
  • Similar to the Bumblebee and Static examples, the show makes Traci 13 the teenage protege of Zatanna. In the fourth season, she’s joined by Khalid Nassour and Mary Bromfield as a member of the Sentinels of Magic.
  • Cissie King-Jones was inspired to become the vigilante Arrowette after she watched Artemis save her father from Black Spider back when the former was still a little girl.
  • In the comics, Barbara Gordon and Cassandra Cain had separate origins that brought them into the Batfamily. Barbara was also paralyzed in the comics by the Joker, leading her to retire as Batgirl and become Oracle. The fourth season reveals that Cassandra was originally a League of Shadows operative under her mother Lady Shiva, and was sent to assassinate the Joker when he threatened the United Nations. Batgirl intervened, causing Cassandra to accidentally cripple her with a sword strike intended for the Joker. A badly wounded Barbara admitted that she took the blow to save Cassandra and keep her from becoming a killer. This led Cassandra to defect from the League of Shadows and join the heroes as Orphan, while Barbara became Oracle.
  • Season 4 reveals that Atlantis was originally founded by Vandal Savage in the distant past before being sunk by Klarion the Witch Boy. The metagene had also adapted further as it originated from Vandal, creating the Homo magi, and evolving several of them into Atlanteans. Vandal also was the father of Nabu, the Lord of Order empowering Doctor Fate, and the grandfather of the ancient Atlantean sorcerer Arion.
  • The Legion of Super-Heroes' origin is changed so that Conner Kent was the Superboy that inspired them rather than a teenage Superman. Additionally, the reason they travel back in time to the 21st century is to stop Lor-Zod from assassinating Superboy. Longtime Superman adversary General Zod attempted to conquer the universe in the 31st century, and when the Legion stopped him, Lor-Zod aimed to prevent the Legion from existing so his father could win, though his plan evolves to include the subsequent escape of General Zod and his forces from the Phantom Zone in the present (plus Ursa Zod becoming Legion of Super-Heroes adversary Emerald Empress).
  • The season 4 finale sees Darkseid gift Ma'alefa'ak with a new planet for the White Martians as payment for his services. The planet is revealed to be called Durla, the same name as Chameleon Boy's homeworld from the Legion of Superheroes comics, implying that the Durlans are descended from White Martians in this continuity.
  • While not mentioned in the show itself, the tie-in comic reveals that this version of Clayface was once a member of the League of Assassins who was mutated into a shapeshifting monster after being locked inside the Lazarus Pit by Talia al Ghul.
• The ThunderCats remake has the population of Third Earth descend from Mumm-Ra's interstellar conqueror army, with Lion-O himself a descendant of Mumm-Ra's second in command and The Mole.
• DuckTales (2017):
  • In the original Darkwing Duck, Darkwing was spurned into action on his own, with Negaduck simply being his evil counterpart from another universe. In this universe, which treats Darkwing as a Show Within a Show, it was the actions of the original actor, Jim Starling, that led Drake Mallard into taking on the identity of the character for real after Starling goes mad with jealousy and tries to destroy an entire movie studio when they reboot the series without his involvement. Drake, though devastated by his hero's demise, becomes the real Darkwing in his honor (with Launchpad's encouragement), unaware that Starling survived, but has been Driven To Insanity and becomes Negaduck.
  • Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera personally built Darkwing's equipment and lair himself (with Darkwing unaware that Fenton is Gizmoduck), in contrast to the original show, where Darkwing built his equipment himself.
  • It's played with in regards to Taurus Bulba. The original series showed him as a member of F.O.W.L. only after he had been rebuilt as a cyborg under their instruction, and rebelled against them. Here, he is already a proud F.O.W.L. member who betrays the group after their leader, Bradford Buzzard, explicitly tries to shut down his grand scheme.
    • This also showcases Bulba having a connection to the Fearsome Four as their leader and primary recruiter, where the original never interacted with them.
    • There was absolutely no connection between Taurus Bulba and Solego on the original show, as Solego was originally a Canon Foreigner who only appeared in the Disney Adventures comic The Legend of the Chaos God (which Bulba wasn't included in). Here, Solego is a "mad thinker" who invented a circuit that Bulba copies and uses in the Ramrod.
  • F.O.W.L. scientist Black Heron was responsible for the creation of a certain group of tiny heroes, whereas they simply existed beforehand.
  • Magica de Spell was responsible for creating The Phantom Blot, having destroyed his village simply For the Evulz, leading him to eliminate all forms of magic he could out of revenge. The Blot and de Spell had no connection prior to this.
  • F.O.W.L. was originally shown as a rival organization to S.H.U.S.H., with no connection beyond the villains trying to outwit the heroes. Here, it was revealed that S.H.U.S.H. inadvertently created F.O.W.L. when their leader, Ludwig Von Drake, rejected accountant Bradford Buzzard's suggestion of using the organization to conquer the world and reign in the chaos outside, suggesting that Buzzard not focus on such supervillainous antics. This only spurs Bradford to ally himself with Black Heron.

---