Any time a comic has on its cover the following phrase: "EVERYTHING YOU KNEW ABOUT [X] IS WRONG!", look out, Retcon incoming, full force.
Other
- Star Wars: Jedi vs. Sith is basically an official Fix Fic that fits together disparate elements from the Prequel trilogy that conflict with the original trilogy (1,000 years vs. 1,000 generations for the Republic), elements from the Prequel trilogy that conflict with each other, the Valley of the Jedi from Dark Forces: Jedi Knight, some novellas that were in part themselves retcons for the Dark Forces saga, among other things.
- In the Disney Comics, The Phantom Blot's identity was retconned to be a complete mystery. In the first issue he appeared in, not only was his face seen, but his face resembled Walt Disney. In the 2010s, though, the Blot often appears unmasked in Italian Disney comics, sometimes even being unmasked for the entire duration of a story.
- When the 3.75" G.I. Joe figures first sold, G.I. Joe was envisaged as an American anti-terrorist task force. When they were made available in the UK, they were sold under the name Action Force. They were accompanied by a comic of the same name which established that Action Force was an international anti-terrorist organisation, of which G.I. Joe was the name of the American branch (and to which Action Force would also change its name later on).
- In the Flemish "De Rode Ridder" series, based on a series of books of the same name, album 131 provided a retcon of the meaning of the title: for about 64 books and 130 comic albums, it had been thought that the title referred to the nickname of Johan the protagonist "The Red Knight", based on his red tunic, 130 revealed that actually Johan was the "Rode" Knight because he belonged to the family of the historical(!) Lords of Rode.
- The French comic series Dungeon: The Early Years provides one of the best Retcons ever so far. In the very first issue of this Funny Animal gritty comic, the Dungeon Keeper has a look at a picture of his lost love who looks human. Then, in a prequel album, we see her alive under the traits of a snake. Then the authors showed a portrait painter picturing a bird lady as a human and explaining "it's a style that people like these days".
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW). Originally, Nightmare Moon was portrayed to be a Superpowered Evil Side of Princess Luna, then the comic changes it so that Nightmare Moon was the product of the Nightmare forces possessing Luna, though this retcon is based on a Word of God from Lauren Faust saying that Nightmare Moon was brought about via a force separate from Luna.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
- Geoffrey St. John was retconned from the son of the king's guard who hated Overlanders for killing his father to the son of the king's guard who partnered himself up with Ixis Naugus in an attempt to free him and overthrow King Acorn for allowing this to happen. It also retconned his choice of people for King Acorn's Secret Service from "the best people for the job" to "people with questionable pasts that he could pin the blame on should he get caught". It's said that he genuinely loved Hershey the Cat, married her and abandoned the plan, but when she was killed off-screen, it pushed him into the Despair Event Horizon and back into the plan.
- Sally's various hair/fur coloring was retconned to her falling into a vat of chemicals and subsequent washings changing the colors.
- Following a Time Skip, Antoine seemingly Took a Level in Jerkass as he was shown to be massively cold towards his then-former Love Interest Bunnie Rabbot. It was later revealed that he was actually his Alternate Universe Evil Twin Patch and that the real Antoine was in his universe.
- Issue #40 of The Powerpuff Girls (DC run) bore the title "Everything You Know About The Powerpuff Girls Is Wrong," but this is subverted as it is merely a class assignment to invent origin stories about the girls, using the origins of Superman, Spiderman and the Fantastic Four as parallels.
- Both Moose's given name and surname have changed various times in Archie Comics.
- Asterix: In Obelix and Co., Obelix celebrates his birthday but Asterix does not. 20 years later, the short story "The Birth of Asterix" changed this to Asterix and Obelix having the same birthday. This idea was maintained in "Asterix And The Actress" and "Asterix and Obelix's Birthday: The Golden Book". The first live-action movie however went back to the original idea.
- The Transformers (IDW):
- Optimus Prime and Megatron establish at one point that they briefly met at Rodion police station when the future Prime, then known as Orion Pax, saved Megatron from being beaten to death by Whirl, and then their next encounter was the Battle for Sherma Bridge during the War. Autocracy would later show Orion and Megatron forming an Enemy Mine against Zeta Prime's rampage, before Megatron betrayed Orion and left him for dead - leading to him finding the Matrix of Leadership and becoming Optimus Prime. Officially, Sherma Bridge happened before Autocracy, but that doesn't fit with the Decepticons not forming a dedicated military until Zeta's attack.
- Arcee was initially characterised as the victim of a forced sex change that left her homicidally unstable and generally No Fun To Be Around. Because the implications of having the one female Transformer in the main comics be both violently insane and unwillingly transgender were somewhere between "troubling" and "
yikes", subsequent authors nudged this until Arcee was always trans, had genuinely sought out the Mad Scientist in question in order to have the procedure done, and the lengthy period of murderous instability afterwards had been due to Jhiaxus providing nothing in the way of aftercare once he'd finished. For a lesser change, she also started out being emphatically an Autobot, before subsequent comics got rid of her Autobrand and left her as a neutral party. - Also in female Transformer retcons, the cis-female character Nautica was established to have an "estriol-positive" spark type. James Roberts then thought better of implying that Cybertronian gender was down to spark type rather than personal identity and altered Nautica's spark type to being "ferrum-positive", then had a couple of scientist characters mention estriol-positive as a spark type whose existence had been discredited.
- Impactor was initially stated to be forged (the Cybertronian equivalent of natural birth) and a Point One Percenter (unusually strong and durable; Optimus Prime is a Point One Percenter, and Megatron is a POP spark inserted into a manufactured body through time travel), but a later comic established that every defendant at the Aequitas trials, which included Impactor, was constructed cold (a form of artificial birth). Subsequent reprints of the panel in question substituted Grimlock instead.
- Zigzagged with the Hearts of Steel continuity being revealed to take place in the main IDW universe starring brainwashed Eukarians. However, Ask Vector Prime had already given the Hearts of Steel continuity its own timeline designation and Wrath of Karza had the main Optimus Prime take on his steampunk look from Hearts of Steel briefly due to time shenanigans.
- Garfield: His 9 Lives retcons the origin of Odie in Garfield's life. Whereas originally in the comic strips Odie was the pet of Jon Arbuckle's friend Lyman, who appeared for a certain number of strips and then vanished altogether without explanation, the origin told in His 9 Lives is that Jon saw that Garfield was lonely and so bought Odie from the pet store — the same pet store that Garfield was in — and brought him home to keep Garfield company.
- Mike had an anthropormorphic light bulb from Hongkong named Birne who couldn't pronounce the letter "R", saying "L" instead. This was deemed unfit for the young readers, so Birne learned it. This, in turn, met harsh criticism from long-time Mike fans, so Birne forgot it again.
