Retcon / Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • In a season two episode, Ozai and Iroh's father Azulon is said to have been Fire Lord for 23 years. The Nick website also provided a brief backstory for Sozin saying that he was a young man when he became Fire Lord shortly before Roku died and was prevented from starting the war until the elder Avatar Roku's death, and that Sozin ruled for the first 70 or so years of the 100-year war. Come season three, it's revealed that Sozin and Roku are actually the same age and that he was an old man when he started the war. In response, the creators stated that Sozin ruled for only the first 20 years of the war before Azulon took over for the next 75 years before Ozai became the Fire Lord for the last 5 years, contradicting what is said in the season two episode.
  • Katara mentioned early on that the Fire navy shipwreck near her village has been around since her grandmother was a little girl. Fast forward to the end of the season where we learn that Katara's grandma isn't even from the Southern Water Tribe and didn't arrive there until she was no younger than 16. And then a season 3 flashback shows that ship being frozen roughly 60 years earlier, and by that point Gran Gran was already in her early 20s, meaning the original statement isn’t even Metaphorically True.
  • Early on it's implied that Avatar Roku lived for more than 100 years and that Kyoshi has been dead for multiple centuries. We later learn that Roku was actually only about 70 when he died and Kyoshi died (though still a long time ago) less than 200 years prior to the present at age 230.
  • Furthermore, in the third episode, Avatar Kyoshi was not shown as the Avatar before Roku, in her place there was a male Earth Avatar. There was a statue that looked similar to her in the same scene suggesting that the writers had her design, just not the proper order of Avatars. Regardless, this was quickly fixed in the next episode.
  • On the show's website it suggests that Kyoshi was born on the island later named after her, yet we later find out that it wasn't even an island until she made it one. The Rise of Kyoshi further complicates this by revealing that Kyoshi's birthplace is completely unknown, but she definitely wasn't born in the area that would one day be Kyoshi Island.
  • Early promotional material◊ for The Legend of Korra depicted Kya as the eldest of Aang and Katara's children. Once she appeared in Book Two, she was established to be the middle child, with Bumi now being the oldest.
• Castlevania: Nocturne makes some notable changes to how Night Creatures function. In Castlevania (2017), these are established as being created by calling the souls of long-dead sinners to inhabit dead bodies, which are warped into monstrous forms in the process. Isaac's conversations with FlysEyes revolve around this concept, with the latter having been a Greek philosopher who was sent to Hell for betraying his friends, and spent over a millennium there before being called back to mortal form. In Nocturne, they are instead depicted as being the same person that the body originally belonged to, with the original's soul, mind, and memories continuing through the transformation but under their forgemaster's magical control; Edouard's character arc in particular revolves centrally around this.
• Futurama:
  • "Lethal Inspection": We see the real story of Bender's birth after he told a different version. Rather than being born full-sized just a few years ago, he was born as a baby-shaped robot with a visibly-younger Hermes as his inspector.
  • Bender caused the alien apocalypse we see in the first episode.
  • One of the biggest retcons was the episode "Where No Series Has Gone Before", where it is revealed that it is illegal to even mention Star Trek. Virtually every episode before that had at least one Star Trek reference. When Fry meets Leonard Nimoy at the Head Museum he calls him "Spock". When Fry is confused by the DOOP, Hermes says it's like the Federation on Star Trek. Also, in a DVD commentary, one of the writers suggested that characters were saying "Start Wreck" rather than Star Trek.
• Kim Possible: While it was never mentioned in the show proper, the Word of God in the beginning was that Shego's plasma hands were due to some technology in her gloves, which matched with how her powers were used in first season episodes. She was eventually turned superhuman, shown using her abilities barehanded, and even given a Super Hero Origin Backstory. Note that the official website still has the original explanation.
• The Justice League cartoons get rid of most of the annoying retcons in The DCU, but they make a few new ones. Doomsday showed up in the original Justice League episode "A Better World," in which he said he was an alien invader looking to see what Earth had to offer in the way of worthy opponents. He's never heard of Superman before and doesn't seem to care one way or another about him. Later on in Justice League Unlimited he was retconned to be a creation of Project Cadmus, who reverse-engineered him from Superman's DNA and conditioned him to hate Superman above all else. Then, to explain his appearance in the older episode, Cadmus shot him into space. His voice even had modulation added to it.
• Masters of the Universe: Revelation: Orko is stated to be powerful in his dimension in earlier franchise works. Here, he's stated to have been humiliatingly bad even there and it's caused him major self-esteem issues.
• Batman Beyond threw together plot points from dozens of episodes and two movies into something they clearly weren't originally meant to be. It's cleverly pulled off, though, as any potentially created inconsistencies are rather smoothly Hand Waved by a line from the creators, stating that their choice to have Bruce Wayne revealed as Terry and Matt's biological father was partly motivated by them realizing how Terry and Matt having black hair is genetically improbable since Warren's hair was light-brown and Mary is a redhead.
• The Simpsons:
  • The series most dramatic and controversial retcon occurred in the 2008 episode, "That 90's Show." In the earlier episodes, Homer and Marge attended high school in the late 1970s and got married three or four years after graduating from high school when Marge became pregnant with Bart; Bart was born in 1980, Lisa was born in 1982, Maggie was born in 1989, and the show took place in the present day, with the characters never aging. By the 2000s, however, this timeline had become increasingly implausible, and was given a hard reset in "That 90's Show." Homer and Marge were now shown to have met in what appears to be the mid-1990s, which implies the kids were born in the early 2000s. Other changes were made as well: Marge in previous episodes had never gone to college, but was now established as having attended in the mid-'90s; Homer had a grunge band, whereas in an earlier episode he didn't understand grunge at all; and they also showed us that they dated for at least ten years before getting married and having the kids, who are now retconned to being born in the early 2000s. "That 90's Show" itself seems to have been since retconned, with "the past" now depicted far more generically, rather than tied to any specific decades. Presumably this is because in the 2020s, even the idea of Homer and Marge being college-age in '90s now seems increasingly unlikely if they're currently supposed to be in their 30s.
  • The Simpsons Floating Timeline being what it is, there are a lot of inconsistencies:
    • The writers have made clear that some things are immune to the sliding time gimmick. Grandpa Simpson and Mr. Burns will always be WW2 veterans, even if that makes them unrealistically old. They will also have both known the Great Depression.
    • Also on the subject of Mr. Burns, he started out at 81 years old (the early episode where Homer defrauds the plant's health insurance for hair growth), but since season 6 had been mentioned to be 104. Although his age is debatable; many of his other mentioned possible ages place him as being older than 104, some place him at 118, others at 122.
    • Mr. Burns' age has also been said to be four digits in "Them Robot", and even more jarringly his place of birth has been stated to be Pangaea, a super-continent which broke apart in the Triassic period.
  • Unrelated to the sliding timeline, one glaring aspect that was essentially retconned from the show is Homer's relationship with his mother. In the fourth episode, "There's No Disgrace Like Home", Homer mentions that his mother said he was a big disappointment. However, if "Mother Simpson", "My Mother the Carjacker", and "Mona Leaves-a" are any indications, Mona Simpson has always loved Homer and it's doubtful she would've ever said anything of the sort.
  • As Jon Stewart once pointed out to Matt Groening in an interview, Homer and Marge were supposed to be in their late 30s. They got married when they found out Marge was pregnant with Bart, but since Bart is only 10, about a decade would had to have passed between high school and Bart being conceived. Lisa even lampshaded said plot hole in the episode.
  • A season 3 episode ("Bart the Murderer") establishes Fat Tony's name as William "Fat Tony" Williams. Several seasons later, he's canonically named Anthony "Fat Tony" D'Amico. It's either a case of this or the writers forgetting they already named him.
  • In early episodes, Nelson alluded to living with his (mostly unseen) father, with various odd hints of why his mother left the family (being addicted to cough drops, going crazy, etc.) In later episodes he lives with his mom and his dad never came back from the store (which was then revealed to be against his will, then retconned back into normal abandonment).
  • An explicit retcon occurred in the season 9 episode "The Principal and the Pauper", where it was revealed that Seymour Skinner is actually an impostor, originally born as Armin Tamzarian and having moved to Springfield to assume the life and identity of the real Skinner. Apparently, none of his past prior to becoming the principal of Springfield Elementary is his own. Needless to say, this contradicts a great deal of prior material, particularly the evidence that he served as a sergeant in the Vietnam War. This turn of events was particularly unpopular among fans and staff alike (Matt Groening even personally considers the episode non-canon) and the retcon is mentioned only once in later episodes.
  • The fact that Maggie shot Mr. Burns has been gradually retconned back into an unsolved mystery as part of a Mythology Gag about the controversy and implausibility of that being the answer to the famous "Who Shot Mr. Burns" mystery of Season 6-7. In the season 9 episode "The Cartridge Family" Homer says "I thought Smithers did it?" to which Lisa agrees, in a suspicious tone, "that would have made a lot more sense...", alluding to an alternate ending created to make it harder for the real one to be leaked. Then, in season 18, Homer in a passing moment outright claims that he framed Maggie. In Season 22, Homer at one point instructs the viewer to go back and look for clues as to who "really" shot Mr. Burns. Marge scolds him that it was Maggie, but Homer seems unconvinced — "Oh sure, a baby shot a guy."
  • The episode "Do Pizzabots Dream Of Electric Guitars?" depicts Homer as a teenager in the 1990s.
  • The episode "Manger Things" depicts Maude Flanders pregnant with Todd when Bart was 4 and Lisa was 2, whereas past episodes had Todd being Bart's age and "Lisa's First Word" had him being around before Lisa was born.
  • The Season 32 episode "Uncut Femmes" established that Chief Wiggum was unaware that his wife Sarah had a criminal past as a jewel thief, contradicting a throwaway bit in the Season 14 episode "A Star Is Born-Again", where they both reminisce over the day they met:
    Wiggum: Sarah, you're as lovely as the day I first arrested you.
    Sarah: Oh, Clancy. You know, I planted that crystal meth just to meet you.
    Wiggum: I was so shy.
  • "Mothers and Other Things" has Homer meeting his mother Mona again when he's 16 and later when Bart is born, whereas "Mother Simpson" established that he thought she was dead until she visited his grave after he faked his death and reconnected with him, and they act as if he never saw her again when she visited them after Bart's birth and fled from the police, despite her visiting them several times in other episodes and dying in "Mona Leaves-a".
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • The episode "Grandma's Secret Recipe" Introduces Plankton's grandmother, who has 2 eyes. She later reappears in a Season 11 episode called "Grandmum's the Word". She sports basically the same design, but with one notable change: She now has 1 eye, just like her grandson and real-life copepods.
  • In "Something Smells", when Patrick is monologuing about how ugly he is, he mentions that he doesn't have a sister. This is retconned in a later episode called "Big Sister Sam", where Patrick's long lost sister, Samantha, visits. This could, however, be interpreted as Patrick attempting to repress a traumatic memory (the loss of his sister), rather than a retcon. Furthermore, "I'm With Stupid" implies that Patrick has a hard time remembering or recognising family members.
  • A few episodes have shown Patrick's house being demolished or broken in some way, such as "The Monster who came to Bikini Bottom". These are retconned in a Season 12 episode called "Shell Games", where it's revealed Patrick's "rock" was actually the shell of an overslept sea turtle this whole time.
  • In The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run and its spin-off "Kamp Koral", it's revealed SpongeBob gave Mr. Krabs the inspiration to open his own restaurant. This retcons "Truth or Square", which showed a flashback of SpongeBob before he was born eating a Krabby Patty for the first time. Granted, it's impossible to remember events from before you were born, but at the same time, it's SpongeBob.
  • Sponge on the Run also features a flashback of Sandy meeting SpongeBob for the first time at Kamp Koral, which retcons season 1 episode "Tea at the Treedome" (explainable, in that there was likely a huge time gap between those two events.)
  • Another retcon with Sponge on the Run features scenes where SpongeBob met Patrick and Squidward, which retcon both "The Secret Box" where SpongeBob has known Patrick since they were babies, and "Truth or Square" when SpongeBob first met Squidward as an adult.
  • Another retcon with Sponge on the Run occurs when SpongeBob has a flashback of adopting Gary at Kamp Koral. In the Season 8 episode "Treats!", SpongeBob looks at a photo of himself adopting Gary at the pound.
  • SpongeBob can speak snail, yet he doesn't believe Gary's thoughts against Puffy Fluffy in "A Pal For Gary".
  • In the Season 3 episode "Krab Borg", Squidward mentions that his father loved him in the past tense, implying that he's dead. However, the Season 14 episode "Momageddon" has him visit the Krusty Krab.
• King of the Hill:
  • In "Death Picks Cotton", when Cotton tracks down Hank and company in a Japanese restaurant, it triggers his flashback, and he calls the Chef (who only speaks Spanish) a Tojo. However, part II of "Returning Japanese" had basically been about him forgiving the Japanese, and he was talked out of his scheme to spit in the Emperor of Japan's face by his illegitimate son Junichiro, resulting in apparent Aesop Amnesia. For that matter, that episode Flanderizes him back into the Jerkass, verbally Abusive Parent he was at the beginning of the series, throwing out his Character Development into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
  • Peggy's background was rewritten so that she spent most of her early life in Montana, rather than spending her high school years in Arlen. This complicates the episodes where Hank and Peggy are shown as High-School Sweethearts. Meanwhile, Peggy's mother changed from an older-looking version of Peggy who was just hyper-critical into a totally different looking woman who was a downright bitch.
  • Luanne's father/Peggy's brother didn't appear until near the end of the series, though was mentioned several times. Originally, he had fled to an oil rig in fear of his abusive ex-wife, refusing to come back on land until Hank faxed him her death certificate. Bill mentions him looking like a male version of Peggy while Hank mentions getting along with him. When he shows up, however, he is revealed to have actually been in jail for years for being a con artist and thief, a fact which Peggy hid from everyone with the oil rig story. He also looks nothing like Peggy and it seems that Hank had never met him before. This change calls forth several bits of Fridge Logic: one, Luanne is supposed to have seen the event that caused him to flee to the oil rig; how does his incarceration fit into that event, especially since we know her mom was put in jail herself for that abuse? And if she was already in jail, why did Peggy (and later Hank) think it would be so traumatizing for Luanne to also know that her father was as well? Also, they established several times that Luanne witnessed the fight between her parents that led to her mom stabbing her dad with the fork which occured in the very first episode where she was about 16 or 17, but in this episode her dad claims the last time he seen her she was a little girl about 5 years old and she has no memory of the event.
  • Hank and his old Arlen High School football team challenged the team that they lost against during the championships to a rematch that they eventually win. This one is made more annoying by the fact that Hank had come to terms with losing the game in an earlier episode. It left a bad taste considering it was one of the last episodes.
  • Another would be the origin of Dale's Rusty Shackleford identity, in a couple of early episodes he mentions he got the name from a boy who died from smallpox back in the 1950s, however it was later retconned in the season 11 episode "Peggy's Gone To Pots" where he supposedly got it from a boy who went to his school and moved away and Dale thought he died, and the "real" Rusty Shackleford arrives to tell him to stop using his name.
• Thomas & Friends: Reverend Awdry stated that the North Western Railway was built in 1914, mainly by Edward. In the 2009 movie Hero of The Rails, it is stated that the new character Hiro was responsible for building it. Of note is that Hiro was built in 1931. The Adventure Begins re-retcons this, with Edward becoming the first standard gauge engine on Sodor.
• Dexter's Laboratory:
  • In the fifth episode we are introduced to Dexter's rival, Mandark, who had just moved into the neighborhood as an exchange student. He introduces himself as Astrononminov (possibly his last name, but prefers to be called Mandark). He was a fairly competent villain, at least when Dee Dee wasn't around, and he had a sister named Olga Astrononminov that prefers to be called "Lalavava". In the last two seasons (made after a production gap of a couple years), Mandark is now named Susan and has a pair of hippie parents. He and Dexter supposedly first met when they were little, and he became an incompetent villain because Dexter made fun of his name.
  • Olga seems to have been forgotten by the writers entirely aside from her one appearance. Season 3 and 4 episodes went out of their way to exclude her.
• Dora the Explorer: The events of "Dora's First Trip" were retconned in Season 5's "Dora's Christmas Carol Adventure". In one big instance, Dora was shown with Boots, Benny, Isa, Tico, and Swiper as toddlers, when she was not supposed to know them until her current age at 7 (as seen in the former aforementioned episode). As for the animals, they were all seen together as toddlers and babies, while "Dora's First Trip" shows they did not know each other at the time (aside from Boots knowing Tico).
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • In one Oh Yeah! Cartoons episode Vicky mentions having a little brother. Said brother was never mentioned again but instead she has a little sister named Tootie.
  • In the original pilot, Vicky was apparently babysitting Timmy for the first time, and Timmy was 10. The first movie retconned both points: Vicky had been Timmy's babysitter for a year, and Timmy was 9 when he first got Cosmo and Wanda.
  • The live-action Series Fauxnale, A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner!, retcons the Distant Finale ending of season four's Channel Chasers.
    • A New Wish retcons Timmy's future yet again, with him ending up looking like his fat and balding self from the original series episode "The Big Problem!".
  • The season nine episode Let Sleeper Dogs Lie retcons Denzel Crocker's childhood as shown in season three's The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker! The episode shows him to have always been a complete jerk, and that he lost his fairies due to turning 11, rather than being a nice kid who only lost Cosmo and Wanda due to Timmy interfering with his life and causing him to reveal the existence of his fairies, thus turning him bitter. This also retcons the idea previously established in Channel Chasers, where beyond revealing the existence of your fairies, the only reason you would lose them is if you either became an adult (which was Timmy's case) or your life has improved to the point where you no longer need them.
  • Remy was Put on a Bus for 4 seasons until season 9's Country Clubbed. Despite being a reoccuring antagonist of Timmy's, the episode acts as if the two have never met. The episode also depicts Remy as not having a fairy and even gave him a redesign.
  • Originally when the fairies were shown as babies they looked like miniature diaper clad versions of themselves, but when Poof was introduced it was retconned that all baby fairies look like little round balls with faces, short stubby limbs, tiny wings, and hair.
• Jonny Quest:
  • In the made for TV movie Jonny's Golden Quest, Jessie was revealed to be the daughter of Race Bannon and his mysterious lover Jezebel Jade, during a brief affair the two had. In the second season of the next series The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, the new writing staff created the character of archeologist Estelle Vasquez to be Jessie's mom (and Race ex-wife) since they believed Jade wasn't the kind of woman who would settle down.
  • Jesse Bannon herself was a retconned version of Jesse Bradshaw, a character who appeared in an episode from the '80s series The New Adventures of Jonny Quest. The original Jesse was not related to Race Bannon.
• Ben 10:
  • In the Ben 10: Alien Force episode "Be-Knighted" the evil group the Forever Knights has their Villain Decay cemented when it's revealed that their ultimate goal was no more than to slay some poor alien dragon they had captured as opposed to conquering the world, as they had attempted in the original series (they even had a different leader than was seen in the older series as well) because they're knights and, well, slaying dragons is what knights do. When Ben and company helped that dragon escape, they decided to eventually travel to that dragon's planet to try and wipe them out. Series writer/producer Dwayne McDuffie later revealed this was, in fact, their goal from the beginning and the Forever Knights Ben fought in the original series (led by former Plumber Driscoll as the "Forever King"), was actually a rogue splinter faction of the original group and that the king Patrick, seen in "Be-Knighted", was the true Forever King and Driscoll was an imposter, or something. Ben 10: Ultimate Alien changes it again. There are in fact many factions. Driscoll's was one, the ones literally Bullying a Dragon were another, but all were considered as having lost their way by the true founder, who returns and brings them all together (in an episode in which we see every Forever Knight leader from the past, all of whom are willing to follow the First Knight once he proves he's who he says he is). Their original goal was to get rid of an Eldritch Abomination called Diagon, but they seek to remove all "alien scum" from the Earth. This results in a Darker and Edgier arc beginning, where Diagon is the ultimate evil in the series and the Forever Knights are a very competent foe (and help in episodes related to their common enemy).
  • There's also changing the nature of Gwen's magic due to being part alien and turning the Plumbers from a defunct federal Men In Black-esque agency into a still-active intergalactic police force.
  • Kevin has his past added onto to make the complete overhaul of his powers and personality between the original series and AF/UA make at least more sense than it did originally. Also part alien; has the earlier energy powers and the new matter powers, but using energy makes him go nuts, making for the Kevin of the original series. However this was retconned yet again in Ben 10: Omniverse, with the revelation that Kevin was not part alien at all, but the Ben 10-verse equivalent of a mutant. Essentially, the series went and retconned a retcon. His father Devin Levin who was allegedly an Osmosian never existed and was part of several Fake Memories implanted by Servantis. Furthermore, not only was Kevin's alien origins retconned but almost every alien-human hybrids that made up the Plumbers Helpers (Alan, Manny, Helen, Pierce), introduced during Ben 10: Alien Force, partook in the retcon and their alien heritage was the result of using Kevin's mutant powers as a conduit to splice their human bases with alien DNA. Also, all of them and Kevin were part of a secret anti-Ben 10 team called "The Rooters" and had tried to stop Ben before in previously unseen encounters during the past.
  • Blukic and Driba were only introduced in Ben 10: Omniverse, but they had allegedly been around the whole time even though we had never seen them. Flashbacks in-between the original series and Ben 10: Alien Force inject them into the continuity even though there was never any mention of them. The explanation for this is that they had been on Earth since Max was young, and were actually the first aliens to officially make contact with humans, being the alien captured during the Roswell Incident.
• South Park:
  • The Season 14 episode "201" retcons the twist ending of "Cartman's Mom Is Still a Dirty Slut", from way back at the beginning of Season 2 (twelve seasons before) by revealing that Liane was Cartman's mother all along and her claim of being a hermaphrodite was simply a cover-up to protect the identity of Cartman's real father, a former right tackle for the Denver Broncos. Said Denver Bronco turns out to be none other than Jack Tenorman, the man Cartman murdered and fed to his son Scott in the Season 5 episode "Scott Tenorman Must Die". Cartman seems more upset at the fact that he is Scott Tenorman's half-brother, thus making him half-ginger, than with the revelation that he killed his own father and then fed his remains to Scott. He feels better when Mitch Connor reminds him of the fact that he's also half-Denver Bronco.
  • South Park also gives us what is possibly the most epic retcon ever. In the second episode of the "Coon and Friends" trilogy, Kenny reveals that he can't die. He explains to another superhero that he's died many times in the past, and just ends up waking up in his bed like nothing happened, the only one who remembers his gruesome demise.
  • In the episode "City Sushi", Tuong Lu Kim the Chinese restaurant owner is revealed to be another personality of Dr. Janus, a doctor who suffers from multiple personality disorder. In his past appearances, he was portrayed as an authentic Chinese man.
  • In "Mr. Hankey The Christmas Poo", it's established that Kyle's family are the only Jews in South Park. Later in "The Passion Of The Jew", we see a Jewish community large enough to have a synagogue (though the synagogue first appeared in "Cartmanland").
  • Kyle's background possibly got retconned. It's been mentioned a few times throughout the series that he moved to South Park when he was 4; however, "It's a Jersey Thing" has him specifically saying that he was born "here," despite his parents moving from New Jersey while pregnant with him. Maybe he meant "here in Colorado," but not South Park specifically?
  • Early episodes refer to the Terrance and Phillip show as a cartoon, and indeed a parody of South Park itself, which is why it's "drawn" in such a blocky way. It was later established that Terrance and Phillip are actually real people who look like that, as they live in Canada where everything is blocky-looking. Similarly, the weird way baby Ike is drawn was originally just how all babies in South Park were going to look (in "Starvin' Marvin" you can even see an Ike-looking Ethiopian baby in a crowd shot at one point). This premise was later abandoned in favor of making Ike a Canadian baby.
  • Jimbo Kern, Stan's uncle, has been inconsistently portrayed as being both Sharon's and Randy's brother over the course of the series, but an interview with series co-creator Matt Stone established him as being Randy's half-brother; as they were birthed by the same mother but share different fathers, explaining the discrepancy between their surnames. However, despite this confirmation, Sharon referred to Jimbo as her brother in The Pandemic Special, which directly contradicts what fraternity has previously been established. This may possibly be an error, as South Park has never been consistent with these topics. A similar situation exists with Marvin Marsh, a wheelchair-bound 102-year-old who previously lived with Randy and Sharon. Earlier episodes were ambiguous about the Marsh family tree, with both Sharon and Randy referring to Marvin as their father. As the series progressed, though, he was more heavily implied to be Randy's father, sharing his surname as well. It was first hinted by implying a genetic link between Marvin's addictions, Randy's drinking problem, and Stan's own addiction issues in notably "Freemium isn't Free", and later by Marvin describing his son's conception in "Nobody Got Cereal?".
  • The Season 25 episode "The Big Fix" has a particularly hilarious one. When Randy gets Stan to invite Token's family over to dinner so that he can have a black best friend to improve the image of his weed business, Randy asks what the deal is with Token's name. Only for him and Stan to learn to learn that Token's name is actually Tolkien, as in the influential fantasy writer, not Token Minority. Stan is additionally shocked to learn that everybody knew already, with all past instances of Tolkien's name being written as "Token" getting handwaved as misspellings. When he directly states what he thought Tolkien's name was to his doctor, the man calls him a terrible person for ever believing such a thing, before turning to address the audience to insult us for ever thinking the same as well. This one sort of borders on Orwellian Retcon since this episode as Subtitles for previous seasons where Tolkien's name is uttered (still pronounced Token, obviously) have been updated to say Tolkien (except when Stan is speaking!).
• Family Guy:
  • Lampshaded in the 9th season episode "Excellence in Broadcasting": When the Griffins hear that Rush Limbaugh is coming to town to promote his latest book, Chris recalls that, during Lois' brief stint at Fox News (in the "Foxy Lady" episode), she reported that both Limbaugh and Michael Moore were characters played by Fred Savage. Lois dismisses this, explaining that even if something is true to begin with it becomes a lie when said on Fox News.
  • The episode "Brian: Portrait of a Dog" shows Peter adopted Brian as a stray when he was washing people's cars to earn money, however "The Man With Two Brians" shows the Griffins got him as a puppy.
  • Joe's first appearance in "A Hero Sits Next Door" has the cause of his paralysis be falling from a rooftop after a fight with The Grinch. In season 11, it's revealed this story was something Joe made up and he's actually crippled from being shot.
  • In "The Griffin Winter Games", Meg reveals that she is a pro biathlete. The family asks how is it possible they are only hearing know about this and Meg replies that she's been training for years. A montage shows several well-known scenes of Family Guy with now Meg appearing roughly shoehorned in the scene and claiming that she's going to practice for the olympics.
• Twice in the first season of Fanboy and Chum Chum, they mention the Christmas holiday as if they celebrate it (Fanboy says the word "Christmas" in "Eyes on the Prize" while Yo mentions Santa Claus in "Night Morning"). Come the second, it is shown they celebrate Icemas, a holiday that's like Christmas but with ice, and Man-Arctica is their equivalent of Santa Claus.
• American Dad!:
  • In the fourth episode, it is stated that Roger has been living with the Smiths for four years since Stan rescued him from the C.I.A.. This is backed up (sort of) in "A.T., the Abusive Terrestrial" which features a flashback of Stan giving him to Steve as a little boy for his 10th birthday (Steve's 14). However, in "Hayley Smith, SEAL Team Six", Roger remembers Hayley when she was 6, even though Hayley would have been either 14 or 15 when Steve was 10.
  • In a flashback from "White Rice", it was shown that Hayley once has a twin brother named Bailey who is implied to have died because Stan didn't allow them to get vaccinated. This goes against an earlier episode that showed Hayley as being a single birth (though that could have been a throwaway gag to make Stan look bad).
  • Played for Laughs in "Stan's Best Friend", wherein Stan refuses to let Steve get a puppy:
  Francine: Stan, we had a dog already.
  Stan: I don't think so.
  Francine: We did! Five years ago, you got Steve a dog that peed dust and you killed him. We also had another dog named Fussy that you didn't like or something.
  Stan: Francine, those were obviously dreams, and I refuse to discuss your dreams in the daytime.
  • Played straight with Francine's adopted sister Gwen. In the early episode "Big Trouble in Little Langley" she was established (via dialogue) as being a Brainless Beauty who needed all the help she could get to survive, which was why her parents were leaving everything to Gwen in their will, trusting their 'smart daughter' Francine to be okay without their money. Years later in "Now and Gwen", when Gwen finally shows up on screen she does turn out to be beautiful, but of average or better intelligence and a hardened criminal. Dialogue prior to "Now and Gwen" also said that she was younger than Francine by three years until the aforementioned episode made her the oldest by the same number of years.
• In "Shallow Vows", Francine let herself go in the two weeks leading up to her and Stan's vow renewal, and she is shown with dark roots, meaning she's not a natural blonde. All subsequent episodes showing flashbacks of Francine's childhood depicts her with blond hair. There are also the occasional situations where she's remained blond despite being trapped for long periods of time and wouldn't have had access to hair dye.
• Lampshaded in Frisky Dingo. In one episode, Grace Ryan is seen taking "Ret-Con" brand ant poison to cure herself of her Superpowered Evil Side Antagone. In another episode, it's explained that the Annihilatrix has been completely rebuilt, despite previously having been stripped down for scrap. A quick cut shows that the rebuilding was done by "Ret-Con" Construction Company.
• In the Rocky and Bullwinkle story "Missouri Mish Mash", this occurs within the same story. At first it's said that the Kirwood Derby has been around since the Stone Age. Later on however, it's said that the derby was created for an otherwise idiotic moon prince.
• The Arthur episode "Arthur and the True Francine" showed that Muffy first came to Elwood City when the others were in second grade. However, the first season episodes are filled with Early-Installment Weirdness which was later ignored. Brain's Shocking Secret showed that Muffy has been in Elwood City since kindergarten.
• When Morph is revealed to be alive in season 2 of X-Men: The Animated Series, the flashbacks of his survival don't match the events of "Night of the Sentinels". In the original pilot, Jean telepathically senses Morph getting shot by the Sentinels and, only seconds later, Xavier tries to reach him, only to find no trace of his mind, implying he's dead. Meanwhile, it's shown that the X-Men were under siege by the Sentinels for at least several minutes before deciding they couldn't help him (or an also injured Beast) and reluctantly retreating. In the season 2 flashbacks however, Morph is shown to be still alive until after the X-Men leave. It's even worse in the X-Men Adventures spin-off comic. The second issue gives Morph an on screen death (something the cartoon never did), with Beast by his side, and even subtly explains what happened to his body (it was seemingly never found in the show). When season two rolls around, they just flashback to Sinister carrying him to safety, without ever explaining the inconsistencies with issue two.
• Fillmore! episode 3 has Ingrid learn about Fillmore's delinquent past. Episode 8 establishes in flashback that he told her about it before even recruiting her to the Safety Patrol. It's unlikely Ingrid forgot, given that she literally has an eidetic memory.
• A minor one with the Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer franchise and its crossovers with Frosty the Snowman and Santa Claus Is Coming To Town: in every film made after the original special, Rudolph's antlers are always much smaller than the other reindeers' … more in fitting with the original story, which had him with small antlers. He's also physically smaller than the rest. Even the direct sequel to the original, Rudolph And The Island Of Misfit Toys does this.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • The series has a noticeable case of Remember the New Guy?. In Pinkie Pie's backstory there's no sign of a fourth Pie child, but a later episode shows a picture of the day where she has a random new sister and Maude appears later as Pinkie's favorite sibling.
  • One of the comic arcs, Siege of the Crystal Empire, involved King Sombra's return to the Crystal Empire and subsequent Heel–Face Turn. The season 9 premiere proves this not to be the case, as Sombra is revived for real and never repents before being made Deader than Dead.
  • Coinciding with Early-Installment Weirdness, in a season one episode Twilight is turned to stone by looking a cockatrice in the eye. When she's later unfrozen, she appears to have no knowledge that any time has passed. In later seasons, however, it is said explicitly by Discord that a person remains fully aware and conscious while petrified. This is further confirmed in season nine when Maud's boyfriend, Mudbriar, is petrified by a cockatrice and remembers the experience.
• A Pup Named Scooby-Doo has a jarring one involving Daphne's parents. In the episode involving Daphne's room being stolen, her parents are shown to look fairly different from her (in a sense that they don't look exactly like her) with an example of her mother having blonde hair. In the second-to-last episode of the cartoon, Daphne's parents are seen again, except this time they're adult carbon copies of her appearance wise and even have her "There's no such things as ghosts!'' verbal tic.
• The title character of Sofia the First was hyped up as Disney's "first latina princess" however there was a backlash because she is a fair-skinned, brunette girl. A few years later Disney seems to have gone back on this statement as Elena of Avalor is being referred to as their first latina princess while Sofia seems to be from a Spain inspired country.
• Care Bears & Cousins does a retcon of the rewrite type and carefully works around the established lore to explain why we didn't hear or see the cousins throughout Care Bears: Welcome to Care-a-Lot.
• Shimmer and Shine:
  • In Season 3, the magical incantations genies use for wish granting are changed to include the expression "wish granted" instead of the wishes' descriptions.
  • Season 3 episodes "Underground Bound" and "Wishy Washy Genie" establish that genies can't avoid granting wishes mentioned by whoever is holding their bottle or lamp until the daily wish quota is met. Kaz explains as much when Zac makes a bad wish and no reason is given for Shimmer and Shine having never done the same back in Season 1 whenever Leah made wish-shaped comments not meant to be actual wishes. It also contradicts Season 2 episode "Bling, Bling", where Shimmer and Shine questioned the reasoning behind one of the wishes Leah made and only granted it after she confirmed she had a plan.
• ReBoot has many introduced in Season 4:
  • Bob and finally kissed at the end of season 3, only to have them becoming Just Friends in the next season. All this so the My Two Bobs story arc could work.
  • Bob always having a No virus deletion policy and wanting to reprogram them instead.
  • Hexadecimal being infatuated with Bob and wanting to start a relationship with him. While she always had a flirty relation with the Guardian, she never went was far as kissing him.
  • Game cubes having purple borders at the edge, while past seasons never shown such thing.
• In Gargoyles, the Mutates have a different look from the first episode they were introduced to their next appearance. They looked more like cougarmen, while later they have a more varied look: a pantherman, a tigerman and a liongirl. Only Fang remained a cougarman. They also no longer have tails. Greg Weisman admitted he didn't like their initial appearances and have it changed, although the in-universe explanation is that they were still mutating between the two episodes.
• In Milo Murphy's Law, the crossover with Phineas and Ferb reveals that Phineas and Ferb generally have things go right for them because they have positive probability ions to contrast with Milo's negative probability ions, which is used to make a Murphy's Law weapon powered by their ions. This makes one wonder how Phineas and Ferb even had anything bad happen to them in the first place and if everything they did was purely down to being born lucky with positive probability ions.
• In the pilot of Sheep in the Big City, it was established that Farmer John's first name was Farmer because he loved farming that much. This was contradicted in a sketch about his parents naming him in the episode "Belle of the Baah", where it was instead established that his first name was Far because his parents wanted him to go far and that his middle name was Mer because his dad wanted to name him after his aunt Mer.
• Transformers:quite a few across the franchise:
  • The Japanese version of Generation 1 timeline is possibly the most infamous example. It's hard to note every single retcon without a wall of text that triples the page's size, but whats easier to note is the most drastic ones that difers from the western G1 timeline:
    • First off, a significant retcon brings Primus to the continuity by linking him to Vector Sigma, the oracle and the Matrix of leadership, among other things.
    • Transformers: Robots in Disguise (or more specifically, its Japanese version "Car Robots") was retroactively implemented to the Japanese G1 timeline, despite the fact the show is self-contained and doesn't references existing G1 timeline or material(among several incompatible facts, like how the public seems unaware of Transformers at first despite the fact they were well-known in the G1 cartoon continuity since the early 80s, while the show takes place in the 2000s or why none of the G1 cast ever appears). It even shoehorn a early 2000s unfinished manga/self contained G1 story in to explain why the G1 cast was absent during the timeframe of the show. Meanwhile, in the West it remains a self-contained continuity unrelated to the G1.
    • The Japan-only Beast Wars shows were initially set concurrently with the American ones, with Lio Convoy and the likes hailing from same time period as Primal. However, the anime staff completely contradicted this(whenever on purpose or accident is unclear) and had the cast as descendants from thousands of years after the Beast Wars cast. Several retcons were needed in order to accommodate this, the biggest one being the discrepacy of Vector Sigma's portrayal and appearance between Beast Machines and Beast Wars Neo of Cybertron(it becomes technorganic on the finale of the former, and in the latter, supposedly thousands of years later its back to a fully mechanical world with no explanation), which was explained in a Japanese comic.
  • The Unicron Trilogy's third entry, Transformers: Cybertron was originally developed as such but turned into a stand-alone fairly late in production and was originally treated as such in Japan. This didn't stop Hasbro from dubbing and treating it as a sequel in defiance of the large amount of continuity errors, and used several retcons(mainly the ones shown in the Fun Publications comic) to explain the inconsistencies. To make things more confusing, Takara eventually canonized those same retcons to the japanese version and treated it as a sequel taking place a single year after Superlink, while "also" adding its own share of retcons as well that are not completely compatible with the west with the biggest one being Planet X's origin:
    • In the show, the origin was not completely clear.
    • In the western version(According to Ask Vector Prime) its a terraformed planet of the Cybertronian Empire from a G1/G2 timeline that eventually shifted into the Unicron Trilogy universe.
    • In the Japanese fiction, it was the reformatted corpse of Unicron from an alternate future timeline from The Transformers (Marvel) and landed in this universe. Apparently, Megatron/Galvatron's absorption of Unicron's power and transformation into Master Megatron had caused this body to go into a frenzied repair mode, attempting to sustain itself.
    • Not only do the retcons only makes things more confusing, but they are also contradictory, as Megatron/Galvatron's imprison and subsequent absorption of Unicron's power took place in year 2013/2014 timeline-wise, but Planet X existed and was destroyed in a war that took place in the 6th century.
• Ready Jet Go!: Due to the episodes airing out of production order, there are some. For example, the kids mention having a treehouse in "Jet 2", but they build said treehouse in "Treehouse Observatory".
• A minor one in Wakfu: in Season One, Rubilax and his fellow Shushu Shadowfang are described by the former as a "four-element and five-element Shushu". In season 2, she's instead described as a "Level-5 Shushu" without explanation.
• Winx Club
  • Daphne, Bloom's older sister, was killed by the Ancestral Witches and was referred to as having been dead/killed/deceased, even by the ones who killed her, until season 5 where they said she was cursed into becoming a disembodied spirit instead.
  • An incredibly infamous example in season 8. The Trix were sisters (confirmed to be triplets by Word of God and repeatedly stated to be so within the series) who desired to rule the entire Magic Dimension, but in the last few episodes of Season 8, Icy is changed to have only one mutual sister: Sapphire, who was turned into a fox cub by a shaman witch when her home planet Dyamond got cursed, causing Icy to vow to become the most powerful witch ever to save her sister and home world. This is an especially egregious example of a retcon since:
    • (1) In the season 8 flashback, Icy is shown to be a young adult, possibly 16 at the youngest, but in season 1, she was an 18-year-old senior witch. Bloom was 1-year-old when Domino fell and it only faded from the minds of the people because it had been destroyed for 15 years by the time the show starts. For Icy's retconned backstory to be true, it would have to mean that Dyamond was conquered not too long before the start of the show, so there's no way people could forget about Dyamond it if was conquered recently and there's no way Icy wouldn't have been recognized as the Princess of Dyamond. If not as herself, then people would mistake her for Sapphire. There's also the fact that Faragonda and Griselda remembered the Earth Fairies when most other people didn't and they disappeared at around the same time Domino fell, so they would definitely be aware of some planet called Dyamond if some witch took it over recently.
    • (2) In the same flashback in season 8, Icy is shown to have had natural curly blonde hair before changing it to straight and silver-blue, but in the season 3 episode The Black Willow's Tears when Icy, Darcy, and Stormy are regressed to children, Icy is shown with natural straight silver-blue hair.^note  It is of note that some fans use this episode as so-called "proof" that the Trix aren't actual sisters (the dubbing errors of the 4kids and Cinélume dubs of the episode where Stormy comments that they're friends don't help. It's worth pointing out that the 4kids dub was infamous for creating numerous Dub-Induced Plot Holes and the Cinélume dub was not without its own errors, such as claiming Tecna was a cyborg. The Nick dub, however, corrects this by having Stormy accurately say they're sisters) due to the fact that after the Trix are turned back into children, Icy comments on Darcy's hair, "Your hair used to look like that?", leaving some fans wondering why she wouldn't remember how she used to look if they were really sisters. However, the reason is simply that they forgot how they used to look when they were kids, which isn’t all that shocking since there are a lot of people who forget how they and their siblings/relatives used to look when they were younger, especially if they look vastly different than how they used to when they were young.
    • (3) Her actions (knowingly endangering the lives of/attempting to murder people for fun, which started as early as episode 3; stating she liked being evil and was actually annoyed at being referred to as anything less; freezing a fairy's wings off for trying to escape her; assaulting children, Flora's sister Miele and Mitzi's sister Macy, who happen to be little sisters like Sapphire) and motivations (wanting to become powerful for the repeated explicit purpose of conquering the Magic Dimension) ever since the beginning of season 1 do not align whatsoever with what season 8 is trying to establish her goals to be.
    • (4) Icy claims to not be powerful enough to undo the spell the shaman witch placed on Sapphire... except she has been shown to be skilled at transmutation, having transformed Mirta into a pumpkin in season 1 and (along with Darcy and Stormy) turned Griffin into a crow in season 6. There's also the fact that Icy, Darcy, and Stormy have been receiving powerful upgrades throughout the series and in seasons 6 and 7, have been shown to be stronger than the Winx on several occasions, becoming their strongest in season 7 when they achieved Shape-Shifting Witch forms derived from the power of magical animals, so the excuse of Icy not being powerful enough falls flat.
    • (5) Near the end of season 8, Icy decides to help the Winx because she "can't stand to see another world crumble" even though when she revealed Bloom's heritage to her in season 1, she smugly told her how the Ancestral Witches, her ancestors, destroyed her home world Domino and throughout the series had been (along with Darcy and Stormy) allying with villains whose plans involved destroying worlds (Ex. Tritannus) with no objections and was attracted to Valtor, someone who destroyed Domino alongside her ancestors, because of how evil he was.
    • (6) And most importantly, the creator of the show, Iginio Straffi, actually had the story all planned out and was going to end the series after season 3 (with the first movie being the "grand finale" of the series), but since Winx became such a cash cow franchise, it got renewed for a fourth season and continued after that, so it cannot be said that this was planned from the start. Hell, Straffi himself and much of the production crew that worked on the previous seasons weren't even part of the production for season 8.
• Gravity Falls:
  • In both "The Legend Of The Gobblewonker" and "Fight Fighters", Stan mentions "The guys at the lodge", implying that he’s in a secret society with fezzes like his own. However by "Gideon Rises", it’s shown that Stan has almost no friends in Gravity Falls and the possibility of him in a club is never mentioned again. Gravity Falls: Journal 3 officially retcons the origin of the fez as taken from his father Filbrick Pines, who was in an group called The Royal Order Of The Holy Mackerel.
  • In "Society Of The Blind Eye", a young Fiddleford mentions that he’s helping a "visiting researcher" as if he’s a native of Gravity Falls. But flashbacks in "A Tale Of Two Stans" and Gravity Falls: Journal 3 show that Fiddleford grew up in rural Tennessee before attending Backupsmore. By the time The Author calls him about his project, he’s living in Palo Alto, California.
• BIONICLE: The Journey to One starts with a recap of the previous year's online animations, in which the six heroes, the Toa find golden masks to gain Elemental Powers. It is also shown that Makuta was defeated by knocking the Mask of Ultimate Power off his face in an empty field, with the ensuing explosion of energy trapping him in the "Shadow Realm" and flinging the mask far away. Journey to One rewrote Makuta's defeat, showing it took place in a city, the mask had been smashed to pieces rather than flying off intact, and the explosion took the entire city and its people with Makuta into the Shadow Realm. At the end, the Toa also learn the elemental powers were within them the whole time. These retcons are due to the show being Cut Short — in place of the originally planned multi-season plot, the writers quickly had to make something up to end the series under two episodes.
• Adventure Time:
  • In "Holly Jolly Secrets: Part 2", Simon recalls that after he took off the crown, his fiancée Betty was so shocked and disgusted with whatever happened when he put it on that she left him. When we get to see that exact event play out in "Betty", it's revealed that Betty ran around a corner (and into a time portal to the future) before Simon took the crown off.
  • "The Witch's Garden" implies that Jake's shapeshifting powers were the result of him playing in a puddle of nuclear waste. "Joshua and Margaret Investigations" retcons this and reveals the true origin of his shapeshifting powers: An alien shapeshifter impregnated Joshua, and their DNA combined to birth Jake.
  • In "What Have You Done", Ice King alleges that he made his crown with stolen magic. Subsequent episodes such as "Holly Jolly Secrets" and "Evergreen" reveal that he didn't make the crown, he just happened to come across it long ago. (Though Ice King is correct about it being made with stolen magic.)

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