Despite the existence of posters, two of these movies were never made.
As far as Hasbro is concerned, "There never was a Dinobot combiner". While the most likely explanation for this comment is that this particular Hasbro representative is unaware of an obscure UK-only DVD pack-in comic, it's also possible Hasbro has tried to erase "The Beast Within" from canonicity entirely using special canon cannons.
When an element of canonicity is removed from the canon of its work by those who write it.
There are numerous reasons why this can happen. It can be an uncomfortable case of Creator Backlash, Misaimed Fandom, Values Dissonance, or Unfortunate Implications for the writers. It can also happen when Fanon Discontinuity is so vehement that the writers end up agreeing and rewrite the canon. Sometimes it's just a moment or piece of writing viewed as stupid, unpopular, or simply not making sense within that universe. However, this can also happen if the work was made by a person or developer other than the original creator of the franchise, and, in rare cases, can also happen when they admit Creator's Apathy about canonicity. A retcon big enough, or dueling writers that are Armed with Canon can cause elements of a work, like characters, events, or episodes to be turfed out of the canon. Sometimes, the work was never canonical to begin with, but fans weren't sure and/or hoped it was, and we get a confirmation it wasn't.
Sometimes the discontinuity is more subtle, such as a single line of dialogue or the specifics of an event. note Besides those, everything else is in the canon. When that happens, they're treating it in Broad Strokes. Note that this trope has to do with the creators putting something out of continuity. Obviously, this is one of the meta-causes of Alternate Universe.
See also Continuity Reboot, Alternative Continuity, Broad Strokes, and Disowned Adaptation. Works that are victims to Bury Your Art usually get this treatment if they're part of a series. The opposite of Ret-Canon and its descendant tropes. See Cutting Off the Branches for when all but one ending of a Multiple Endings game becomes canon discontinuity. Canon Marches On is when cheap and small spin-offs like tie-in books and comic adaptations are ignored when making the direct big-budget sequel. When fans do this, it is Fanon Discontinuity — including the ironic semi-inversion where the fans who actually like the discontinued story ignore the creator's pronouncements that it's not canonical anymore. If the writers lampshade a discontinuity, either canonical or just something the fans want to be discontinued, then that's Discontinuity Nod. See also the Orwellian Retcon, which may overlap with this.
Not to be confused with Exiled from Continuity, when it's a character or a specific element or elements of a universe that are declared off-limits for use, be it in-universe or in another version of that universe, for legal reasons or otherwise (although whether they are simply made non-canonical or technically still exist, but can't be used depends on the situation). Compare Schrödinger's Canon, where a work's status as canonical has yet to be determined, and Ret-Canon, where something that was intended as non-canonical becomes canonical. Compare Negative Continuity.
Example subpages:
- Anime & Manga
- Comic Books
- Film — Live-Action
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Music
- Tabletop Games
- Video Games
- Western Animation
Other examples:
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Advertising
- Coca-Cola's official history at its website doesn't mention New Coke at all.
- Dodge ran a series of ads highlighting their history, culminating in a 100th anniversary video
showing the evolution of the brand. It completely skips over the 1980s up til The New '10s, as for the most part the company sold nothing but cars built by idiots, rebadged Mitsubishis or Mercedes, or just plain outdated vehicles following their nigh-bankruptcy during the Oil Crisis, all the way until FIAT bought them in 2010.
Comic Strips
- Monty: After the syndicate got Jim Meddick to drop the Robotman character from his strip, the entire existence of the strip prior to that got totally expunged from existence, as in no books for it remaining in print or online archives involving the character (1st strip in the GoComics archive dates back to April 2, 2001-Robotman the strip began back in 1985).
- Reprints of the Rupert Bear serial Rupert and the Diamond Leaf completely excise a semi-controversial plot point that goes against the franchise's racial harmony themes.
- In 1934, Martha Orr created a comic strip called Apple Mary, about an apple-seller named Mary Worth. After Orr's retirement in 1938, Allen Saunders and Dale Conner (formerly Orr's assistant) took over the strip, now subtitled Mary Worth's Family. At some point, the strip title became Mary Worth, and the family were gradually phased out, as was the apple-cart. It's now the official policy of King's Features that these are unrelated strips whose main characters happened to share a name, and the "current" Mary was never an apple-seller.
Fan Works
- Since Calvin & Hobbes: The Series is noted to have been in the same verse as Swing123 and garfieldodie's other C&H fics, this places Calvin and Hobbes III: Double Trouble (by the former) and Trouble Island (by the latter) in this, as they'd resolved the long-running Cassandra Truth that's still present in The Series, though do keep in mind that they simply come after The Series. Retro Chill has this problem even more, as the status quo is massively shaken up by the end. This is finally fixed in the bonus chapter of the rewritten Can You Imagine That?.
- The author of Sonic X: Dark Chaos had started writing a prequel story at one point, but later decided to go and rewrite the original story. The changes made to Dark Chaos ended up contradicting the prequel so much that the prequel was discontinued altogether.
- The first Myth Arc of the Halloween Unspectacular series, which begins in earnest in the third edition, ignores the climaxes of the first and second editions' Story Arcs, due to seemingly permanent Character Deaths which were then ignored in the following editions. Zigzagged when the fifth edition brings in The Multiverse and explains that those endings did still happen, but in separate timelines from the main one. Also happens when the sixth edition kicks off the second Myth Arc, and makes it clear that it happens in an entirely new timeline where the events of the first Myth Arc never happened.
- The Pokémon Squad:
- The first episode is despised by both Rayquaza Master and Sailor Pikachu (PlatinumMage never read it, but he has no plans to due to what RM has told him about it), and is explicitly stated in the 100th episode to have never happened.
- Season 1 as a whole has become this as of "Cigarette Ash", if this line from RM is any indication:
RM: The target demographic hasn't really been kids since, like, season one. And that's the season we all like to forget ever existed.
Film — Animated
- The writers for the 3rd An American Tail movie, The Treasure Of Manhattan Island, caused canon discontinuity for Fievel Goes West when they had Fievel say that he had a dream where the family moved out west.
- Disney Animated Canon:
- It appears that The Little Mermaid animated series (designed as a prequel to the first movie) has been kicked out of continuity by The Little Mermaid III: Ariel's Beginning, as Ariel's Beginning is also a prequel to the first movie that would generally be consistent with the series but features a totally different version of Ariel and Flounder's first meeting than was presented in the series. Or it's just the one episode about their meeting that is touched — it has not been clarified.
- The Lion King 1 ˝ seems to declare discontinuity on the Timon & Pumbaa TV series, since it featured a completely different version of Timon and Pumbaa's youth than featured in the movie. Also, the version of Timon's mom that appears in one episode looks very different from the version seen in the movie.
- The Disney Princess roster varies significantly, tending to eliminate princesses from less popular movies. This shows up in merchandise and tie-in books. Most notably, Princess Eilonwy and Kida are never included. One book specifically mentions that Ariel is the only princess from an underwater kingdom. Sometimes, Leia is thrown in as well. Of course, there is no real continuity involved — it's just a marketing thing.
- On that note, according to the John Lasseter and Ed Catmull-run Disney Animation Studios, everything Pooh-related released after The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and before the 2011 Winnie the Pooh film is no longer canonical. That means no Welcome to Pooh Corner, no New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, no Pooh's Grand Adventure, no Book Of Pooh, no The Tigger Movie, no Piglet's Big Movie, no Pooh's Heffalump Movie, no Pooh's Heffalump Halloween Movie, and no My Friends Tigger and Pooh... so everything released during Pooh's Cash Cow Franchise days (which makes up a majority of the Pooh media) is no longer canonical.
- Incredibles 2 completely ignores and even outright contradicts the original film's sequel video game Rise of the Underminer and the comic book series that followed it.
Pro Wrestling
- The National Wrestling Alliance World Tag Team Titles go back to 1950. The problem is that because tag team wrestling wasn't popular in all of the NWA's territories at that time, the NWA board did not sanction any NWA-wide tag team title. Instead, it allowed its member territories to create their own world tag team titles and promote them within their areas. The result? Until 1982, 18 different territories at one time or another made irreconcilable claims as to just who those World Tag Team Title belt holders were, with as many as 13 different claims active at the same time. Then, from 1982 to 1991, only the Mid-Atlantic territory had an active tag team title... but that belt was no longer under NWA control once Mid-Atlantic operator Jim Crockett Promotions became WCW. Prior to the Miracle Violence Connection's 1992 title victory, the official record simply lists "vacant".
- After June Byers shot on Mildred Burke and won the National Wrestling Alliance World Women's Title in 1954, Burke refused to accept that she lost the belt since the match was called at one fall instead of the usual two out of three and she had merely conceded the first fall to get some breathing room and beat Byers in the next two. So she came up with her own belt in her own promotion, the WWWA, which broke away from the NWA and acted as if she had been holding it for the last 17 years.
- In 1955, Leo Nomellini defeated NWA World Heavyweight Champion Lou Thesz two falls to three via count out and disqualification. While the California Athletic Commission declared a title change had taken place and allowed Nomellini to call himself champion until his defeat at the hands of Thesz five months later, officially, the NWA ruled title belts don't change hands due to count out or disqualification, therefore stating Thesz had been champion the entire time.
- The NWA World Heavyweight Title runs of Killer Kowalski, Freddie Blassie and Verne Gagne were all ignored since they defeated "disputed" champion Édouard Carpentier, whom NWA President Sam Muchnick later declared had no legitimate claim to the title after Montreal promoter Eddie Quinn left the NWA. AAC recognized Kowalski as World Champion, World Wrestling Associates broke away from the NWA for seven years, during which time it recognized Blassie as its first World Champion and the Gagne case is part of what led to the formation of the American Wrestling Association.
- The members of the NWA refused to acknowledge The Fabulous Moolah's first reign as the World Women's Champion. In defiance of this, the World Wrestling Federation decided Moolah's first title reign had not ended, not for 28 years anyway. The reigns of Penny Banner, whom Moolah beat for the belt and Betty Boucher, who then beat Moolah, are ignored by both the NWA and WWF/E. During these 12 years, June Byers was the only champion on the NWA record and she doesn't exist in the WWF's.
- After a Buddy Rogers match with Killer Kowalski in Quebec ended due to Rogers breaking his ankle in the first fall, some states south of the border decided to promote Killer Kowalski as the new NWA World Champion, even though NWA didn't recognize Kowalski. Rogers would actually defeat Kowalski in New York, where Kowalski was recognized as champion, but he continued to claim to be champion even after this.
- Bobo Brazil never beat Buddy Rogers for the NWA World Heavyweight Title, so says the NWA.note Carib wrestlers Jack Venenonote and Carlos Colónnote never held the belt either! This would actually become a plot point in TNA, back when it hosted NWA title defenses, with Ron Killings correctly pointing out the NWA refused to acknowledge any black men as World Heavyweight Champion.
- Victor Jovica's victory over NWA World Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair in Trinidad was struck from the record books after review of the tape revealed Jovica had his feet on the ropes.
- According to the "official" WWE title history, Bob Backlund defeated "Superstar" Billy Graham for the WWWF Title in February 1978, and lost it to The Iron Sheik in December 1983. However, in November 1979, at a cross-promotional show in Japan, Antonio Inoki defeated Backlund cleanly for the title, and was announced and promoted at NWF (National Wrestling Federation, a subsidiary of the NWA) shows as being the WWWF Champion. Since the WWWF never authorized this title change, they never acknowledged Inoki as being their first (and, discounting the Pacific Islander Yokozuna and Canadian-born Jinder Mahal, who has Indian heritage only) Asian world champion.
- The WWF Light Heavyweight Title was created in 1981 when Perro Aguayo defeated Gran Hamada and defended almost exclusively in Japan (primarily New Japan Pro-Wrestling) and in Mexico (primarily Lucha Libre Internacional). In 1997, the WWF took the belt back and decided to ignore sixteen years of historynote , proclaiming TAKA Michinoku to be the first champion.
- The Rockers won the WWF Tag Team Championship from the Hart Foundation on the November 23, 1990 edition of The Main Event. However, due to a ring rope malfunction during the match in the second fall, the title change was stricken. The Rockers never won the titles again.
- Kazushi Sakuraba's first fight in 1996 against Rene Rooze is not recognized by most mixed martial arts organizations because even though it was not a cooperated match, many feel the rules were too much like pro wrestling to count.
- After ECW betrayed the National Wrestling Alliance, the NWA stripped Shane Douglas of their World Heavyweight Championship belt and leaned on SMW, who put the belt on Chris Candido. After the NWA got back on its feet though, it disregarded Candido's reign in favor of Dan "The Beast" Severn.
- New Japan Pro-Wrestling really didn't like how WCW had Jushin Thunder Liger drop their junior heavyweight title to Juventud Guerrera with a tequila bottle and maintained that Liger held the belt his entire time in WCW.
- Naturally, all victories Tommy Dreamer may have scored over Raven had to be ignored for their feud in ECW to work. Dreamer was finally able to get an acknowledged win over Raven when Raven went back to WCW.
- Kayfabe example: on the April 17, 2000 edition of Raw, Chris Jericho upset Triple H and won the WWF Championship, but Triple H - then running the show alongside his wife Stephanie McMahon - promised referee Earl Hebner that he would never touch him again while he was under contract if he reversed the decision. Hebner did just that, turning the WWF Championship back over to Trips and striking the match from the records; Trips rewarded Hebner by firing him and nailing the Pedigree. To this day, the official WWE records don't acknowledge Jericho's victory on that night.
- The general rule for WWE is that if it didn't happen on TV, it didn't happen. They've started using this as a selling point over time, advertising their house shows as wacky, non-canonical special events outside existing storylines where "anything can happen".
- Thanks to the ruling regarding the World Wide Fund for Nature, the WWE had to retcon everything from before the WWF-to-WWE change to say "WWE". Except in Europe, oddly.note And they still do this when writing or talking about said era(s), but on the footage itself, all WWF logos and utterances are legal again.
- Do you remember the time Rey Mysterio Jr. was unmasked in WCW? WWE doesn't. This is probably for the best, though, as most feel he should have never been unmasked to begin with. Normally, Mexico's lucha libre commission wouldn't have allowed this and would have demanded that Rey stay unmasked, but considering the disrespectful manner of his unmasking and the fact that they hated what Eric Bischoff did, they allowed him to stay masked. The loophole used to justify this is to claim that because Rey no longer includes "Jr" in his ring name, he's actually now using his uncle's gimmick, despite being smaller and having a different wrestling style than his uncle.
- Keiji Sakoda and Samoa Joe were the first NWA Intercontinental Tag Team Champions, well that's what everyone except for Pro Wrestling ZERO1 says anyway. As far as Zero 1 is concerned, they never held the belts.
- WWE decided to ignore the fact Shelton Benjamin had trained Brock Lesnar in college and served as his tag team partner in the Minnesota Stretching Crew, instead saying Benjamin had been Lesnar's roommate before doing away with any personal connection between them altogether. Though they eventually started acknowledging reality again on their website.
- Kane's (kayfabe) marriage to Lita had to be retconned due to the Matt Hardy/Lita/Edge debacle. They moved it back into continuity later, and the latter was retconned (mostly) due to Matt's release and subsequent blackballing from the company.
- During October of 2004, Ray González, who had already been exposed as a mole for WWC against IWA Puerto Rico, announced that "Capitol" (WWC's old name, which he was trying to force on IWA) had formed an alliance with NWA-TNA to decisively end the resistance from IWA. By the time 2005 had rolled around though, González had a falling out with TNA founder Jeff Jarrett, which resulted in a match where Ray González defeated Jarrett for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship belt on April 3rd, only to be immediately stripped by NWA-TNA, who didn't acknowledge the victory. However, when NWA took the World Heavyweight Title out of TNA, it did put González's short reign in its record books.
- NWA Midwest disputed the result of the three-way dance MsChif and Daizee Haze lost to Mickie Knuckles at an IWA Mid-South event and declared MsChif was women's champion up until she and Diabolic Khaos partner Delirious lost a winner takes all match to Daizee Haze and Matt Sydal. After MsChif beat Josie to regain the belt, NWA Midwest renamed it the Zero1-Midwest Women's Title, declaring MsChif had been the only person to hold it up till that point.
- If there was anything involving the WSU name prior to 2006, it was ignored at that time. Then in 2007 the previous year was ignored when it became an all women company.
- Lexi Lane first wrestled Jessicka Havok in Newark, Ohio during June 2006, won, and afterwards was hounded by Havok to the end of the year and into the next because of it. Despite this, Battle Angels hyped its CyberStorm 2007 i pay per view with a "first time ever" match between the two.
- Could a wrestler's entire career be removed from the canon? If so, then that's what happened to Chris Benoit. He never wrestled, so all accomplishments are disregarded including his 2004 Royal Rumble win and title victory at WrestleMania XX, and no mention of him is made on the WWE's official website. Read up on why here. Hulk Hogan got the same fate in 2015 after it was found out he made racist and homophobic comments, but was allowed to return to WWE programming in 2018.
- Stacy Keibler regards her time in the wrestling business as this. When she left WWE to go to Hollywood in 2006, she erased all references to her time in WWE and WCW from her bio on her website, and reportedly will not sign any pictures of her from that time period. However, given that she accepted a 2023 induction into the WWE Hall of Fame, this may be starting to change.
- For WWE's burying of wrestlers like Bryan Danielson and Low Ki on commentary to make any sense, the fact that they did wrestle before joining the company on various independent circuits has to be acknowledged but their matches for national promotions like NOAH, New Japan and Triple A have to be completely be ignored, even though the crowds on the shows make it plainly obvious even most casual fans know better. To a lesser extent, Brock Lesnar's dismissal of CM Punk for having gained his reputation in high school gyms requires one to overlook that when Lesnar became a pro wrestler he initially wrestled in front of crowds too small to fill up any high school's gym.
- Subverted by LLF when it replaced the Juvenil belt with a Junior in 2008, then changed the Junior to El Campeonato LLF after Princesa Maya won it in 2014 due to it being the last singles belt they had. All the Junior title holders remained on record while no original Juvenil or Internacional Campeonato LLF winners were listed on the website, the City Of Monterrey and Extremo titles completely absent. It was admitted the new belt was being used to represent the same championship status of the originals as most convenient but added the original champions weren't being axed from the record. LLF just wasn't listing them until it regained the physical belts they held. Supporting this was the Extremo title history becoming visible after its belt was recovered by LuFisto in 2015.
- The Unforgiven 2008 pay-per-view featured a match called "Scrambled Championship Match", created by Vince McMahon himself. In those time limit matches, the superstar became a champion if he pinned the current champion, but the win didn't become official until the time limit expired. The match was between Triple H (current champion), Jeff Hardy, The Brian Kendrick, MVP and Shelton Benjamin. At one point of that match, Brian Kendrick pinned Triple H and became WWE Champion, but due to the rules, he is not recognized as Champion. At the end Triple H won and remained Champion. But that brief championship reign of Brian Kendrick? Never happened.
- As far as WWE is concerned, for the longest time, Impact did not exist. This can get silly at times: for example, when Kurt Angle returned to the company and Sting made his debut, WWE insisted that both men were making comebacks after years-long hiatuses; and when AJ Styles was finally brought into the fold, they hyped up his achievements in New Japan Pro-Wrestling but never once mentioned the company he made his name in and was widely considered the face of. Relations between the promotions eventually improved after Impact's near-collapse in the mid-2010s stopped them being in direct competition, and by 2022, were cordial enough that WWE even let Impact's then-Knockouts Champion Mickie James look decently strong at the Royal Rumble that year.
- Ric Flair has stated that his stint at TNA never happened. Notably, his page on WWE.com considers his retirement match against Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania XXIV to be his final match; he had wrestled a few matches at TNA before he went back to WWE to join their ambassador program. That page also doesn't mention the "Last Match" he worked as part of an indy event in 2022.
- Mixed martial arts companies will mention that Allysin Kay is a professional wrestler, but collectively ignore the two 'fights' she had in LFC. Kay herself never mentions LFC when talking about her MMA fights in professional wrestling promos. LFC in turn ignores anything Kay has done anywhere else, including the fights she won and received injuries in at other MMA events.
Radio
- Season one of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978) was adapted into the first two novels. Elements of the second season were used in the second novel, but it ended with season one's cliffhanger. The third novel was an original story. When it was adapted for radio, it started where season 1 ended with Arthur and Ford stranded on a prehistoric Earth. The second season was explained as having taken place entirely in an artificial universe (which was mentioned in that season, but only in two episodes).
Roleplay
- Serris says that the rebooted Furtopia RP is not part of the Darwin's Soldiers canon and never will be. His next role-play franchise, Into the Black, retconned the existence of Racing the Storm and everything from it, with the exception of Flora the folf.
- Sometimes occurs, oddly enough, in Survival of the Fittest. Sometimes a mod or handler declares a scene (mostly in pre-game or a character's backstory) as non-canonical, for whatever reason. Two examples of scenes declared non-canonical by a mod include a thread in v1 where a rejected character actually showed up on the island and randomly killed someone, and a scene in v4 pre-game where a character was prostituting herself out for drugs, with the other character having an implausible amount of drugs on him.
- On r/DanganRoleplay, participants play out their own Danganronpa Class Trials in which a mix of characters from the games participate to try to figure out who among them committed a murder. The Class Trials are typically treated as taking place in their own strange continuity where the events of the games happened and characters who should be dead are able to allude to their canonical deaths throughout the games. The sole exception is with the Final Chapter of Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, which is treated as non-canon by the site's mods in order to allow the game's Big Bad Tsumugi Shirogane to be a regular participant without the baggage of having been Evil All Along.
Sports
- When former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was arrested note on charges of sexually molesting teenage boys, students at Penn State painted him out of a mural showing all the present and past coaches of the football team. His image was replaced with a blue ribbon, the awareness ribbon for child abuse. Even more so, the NCAA erased every Penn State football victory from 1998-2011 as part of the punishment for covering up the scandal for so long. The wins were eventually reinstated in January of 2015 as part of a settlement between the school and the NCAA. The NCAA has also erased wins for other colleges for other reasons. One such example was vacating all of the wins of the University of Louisville men's basketball team from 2010-2014, including a semi-finals appearance and a championship, for providing strippers and prostitutes as benefits to recruits and players.note
- From 1912 to 1948 the Olympic Games used to feature art competitions which was considered official and with their own medals. The IOC now considers those events unofficial and the medals won aren't included in the IOC official database.
- After Melky Cabrera was suspended for performance-enhancing drugs, the San Francisco Giants acted like he didn't exist, excluding him from the postseason roster and even not giving him a World Series ring.
- Similarly, Lance Armstrong's 7 Tour de France titles were stripped after he was found to have used PEDs.
- The University of Nebraska-Lincoln football program holds the NCAA record for most consecutive home-game sellouts (the streak started in 1962, and is still running as of 2023note ). When the university celebrated the 300th consecutive sellout game in September 2009, they very carefully did not invite former athletic director Steve Pederson or former head coach Bill Callahan, the two men "credited" with almost ruining the football program and bringing the streak to an end.
- In another college football example, CAA Football, the legally separate football arm of the Coastal Athletic Association,note was formally established in 2007, but claims the football history of two other leagues—the Atlantic 10 Conference, whose football league it took over in 2007, and the Yankee Conference, which was formed in 1947 as an all-sports conference, became a football-only league in 1976, and was absorbed by the A-10 in 1996. However, CAA Football doesn't consider the New England Conference, which existed from 1938 to 1947, as part of its history, even though four of the six charter Yankee members were the final members of the NEC.
- A more notable college sports example (not just football) revolves around the Big 12 Conference. It was founded in 1994, with competition starting in 1996, when the Big Eight Conference took four members from the collapsing Southwest Conference. Despite two-thirds of the original Big 12 membership consisting of the former Big Eight, the Big 12 does not claim any of the Big Eight's history.
- At the beginning of the 1997–98 NHL season, the Buffalo Sabres showed a video of highlights from their previous season ... completely devoid of any acknowledgement of coach Ted Nolan, who all the players agreed had been a big part of their division title win that year (he had even taken home the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year), but was fired afterwards due to conflicts with goalie Dominik Hašek. Nolan wouldn't get another NHL job for nine years, and wouldn't return to the Sabres until 2013.
- For years after his lifetime suspension for what he later admitted were truthful allegations that he had bet on games he managed, Major League Baseball officials acted as if Pete Rose did not exist despite his many records in the game.
- In 1906, a special Olympic Games were held in Athens. After the haphazard nature of the 1900 and 1904 Games - and being overshadowed by expositions, of which the Games were considered part - it was considered that the failure of these as well would have brought about the end of the Olympics. They were originally considered an official Games (although the president of the IOC disagreed with the idea) and were meant to be held roughly halfway between Olympic Games - the second one was meant to be held in 1910, but the Greeks were unable to keep to the schedule and, as a result, there was even less support for an edition in 1914 before the First World War effectively put paid to any further editions by the time 1922 came around. The Games were later downgraded to a tenth anniversary celebration and the IOC no longer considers it an official Games at all—there is no mention of either these Games or of any medalists on the IOC's website, even though several major traditions of the current Games were introduced in 1906.
Toys
- BIONICLE:
- The climax of the 2001 storyline is a major Continuity Snarl which the authors solved by applying this trope. The first book, a web game and a scrapped video game all depict the event - involving a Fusion Dance, a battle with Manas, then a confrontation with The Makuta and Shadow Toa - in irreconcilable ways. According to Word of God, the events went as follows: The Kaita are formed inside two devices before the fight with the Manas. There are only two Manas, and are defeated by demolishing energy-towers. Makuta's presence separates the Toa, who then fight their Shadow counterparts. These are defeated by the six Toa each absorbing their own clones into themselves. Then Makuta is fought and defeated, and the Toa are teleported to the surface, which has been kept clear of Makuta's Rahi forces by the villagers' army.
- Most of the beginning of the novel Makuta's Revenge has been scrapped in favor of the way the scenes played out in the on-line animations.
- The introduction of the movie The Legend Reborn. It has so many things that clash with the storyline's continuity, whether established previously or afterwards, they simply chose to ignore it. That is not to say the events themselves didn't happen. They just happened in a way that contradicts the movie's visuals (like Mata Nui's island is shown being covered with lush jungles when according to the canon, it was a barren wasteland).
- A couple of things from the on-line clips and the first movie trilogy get ignored, most infamously the shipping scenes, as there came to be a No Hugging, No Kissing rule.
- Taxi crabs were considered de-canonized for years because the writer didn't like the joke. They slowly drifted back into canonical territory, though.
- The part about the tribes on Mata Nui renaming themselves from "Tohunga" to "Matoran", due to legal reasons in real life, was dropped. They later made a Retcon so that they've always been called Matoran.
- The Kahu and Kewa birds were considered non-canonical for some years because of legal issues surrounding their names. They were replaced in-story by Gukko birds who were retconned into their places. Later, they accepted them back into the canon, with the explanation that they're a subspecies within the Gukko. Thus, technically, it still can be said that the Gukko have been there all along.
- The history of Crayola crayons as set forth on the official Crayola web site is an extreme oversimplification, notably the description of the first set of Crayolas and the assertion of when the first Crayola colors were retired, and ignores much of the brand's complex and interesting history. A much more complete history used to be available at crayoncollecting.com until Ed Welter, the owner of that site, sold his vast historical collection to Crayola and retained only the landing page. Some of the detailed information, notably the history of Crayola colors, has been preserved by The Other Wiki.
Webcomics
- Lampshaded in Narbonic here and here, where the "two foremost experts in comic-book continuity" explain away all plot discrepancies.
- In Erfworld, the magic school of Deletionism (a Take That! to The Other Wiki) was replaced by "Retconjuration" in order to explain how a change was retroactively made to a character's special ability. Therefore, Deletionism has never existed.
- In an early episode of The Order of the Stick, Roy's ghostly father mentions that Xykon killed his master Fyron and his master's son. When these events are depicted in Start of Darkness, no mention of the son is made.
- 8-Bit Theater: Thief's ninja costume was almost never red. In context, the outfit was red for the greater majority of one strip. Black Mage lampshaded the color change the following strip while he was descending into his standard state of being pissed off.
Black Mage: (to Red Mage) You suck. (to Fighter) You suck. (to Thief) And you were wearing red a second ago!
Thief: No I wasn't. Besides, what kind of ninja wears bright red?
Black Mage: Ha! I never said it was bright red!
Thief: Neither did I.
Black Mage: Ghk! - Impjak Adventure: Several posts are considered non-canon due to their (sus)picious Eastern-European content and the author considering it to be Russian hackers.
- A Loonatic's Tale "Job Hunting" never happened; what we see is a version which was severely neutered to make it acceptable for use in a school assignment. The artist redrew it as "Rehired", the canonical version of the story. Rick and Becky use it as a barometer for what does and doesn't constitute valid criticism; anyone who says they thought the original "Job Hunting" was good, isn't going to be any good to them if they need an editor.
- The Second Eaton arc in Shortpacked! never happened. You just imagined it. Now let's never speak about your crazy, drug-fueled hallucination again.
- There's an in-universe example in Our Little Adventure with The Lady of Fate and Fortune. The creation of the Magicant caused so much turmoil and greed that the other gods decided to revoke the Fortune Lady's god status and banish her.
Web Original
- In perhaps the only example of this happening in-universe, the characters of P*R*I*M*A*R*C*H*S delete 80 chapters of their own story in order to defeat the Plot Hole.
- A small group of administrators at Wikipedia have "oversight" abilities, allowing them to restrict the contents of a past edit so that only other administrators, or other oversighters, can see what was removed (usually for libel or privacy reasons). In extreme cases, oversighters can remove the edit from the history, so that only they can tell it was even made in the first place.
- The first two installments of Chaos Fighters, Route of Land and Route of Sea are no longer canonical and set for rewrite.
- The Arknverse contains some odd examples of this (due to behind-the-scenes drama and various creators leaving and returning to the franchise over time):
- The conclusion to Ellpagg's story, as revealed in the text overlay in the final episode of The Knight Shift,note is now entirely non-canonical, due to the Arknthology being retooled and the TKS follow-ups (including the vlog series The Guarded Ones and The Knight Shift: End Times) being scrapped.
- The Steampunk city of Maphridome, which was created by Type0Negative, was stricken from canonicity after one of his departures. Because of this, the material taking place in that setting is now non-canonical, including the blog The Court of the Traveling Crown (which featured Uriel's adventures after he escapes from prison) and Chapters 10 and 11 of the original Arknthology Stories. The one exception is the blog Sarah Kestler Isn't Dead, in which the setting of the single chapter that takes place in Maphridome can be safely "ignored".
- Several additional chapters of the original Arknthology Stories are non-canonical due to being tie-ins to material that was never produced. These include Chapter 4 (which was intended to help set up the "Evil Ellpagg" character arc that would have been explored in The Knight Shift: End Times and The Guarded Ones), Chapter 8 (which includes Redgrave's son Virgil, whose story arc was cancelled), and Chapter 11 (which was supposed to take place during the Arkn Civil War arc).
- Nearly all of the material related to The Timeless Narrative was decanonized when its primary creator left. Said creator intended for all of his contributions to be decanonized; the remaining creators refused, as the "rules" established by the storyline were in play throughout the verse and removing them would have created more plot holes.
- While "The Quest" chapter of No More Truths is still canonical, much of what Az'uh'ra'el says to Cedric about the Storn can be ignored — including his claim to be Xerex Storn and his claims about the Storn being "Arkn gods" and "counterparts" to the Arknangels (all of which are based on discarded plot elements).
Web Videos
- A weird example is raocow, who in many of his old videos would always say "That was a demo" whenever he made a mistake and immediately fix it using rewinds or savestates. He has since stopped using savestates as much, to the point that he sometimes subverts it by saying "That totally happened" when he screws up.
- The Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back run by gamepro011 at Summer Games Done Quick 2015 has become this less than 1 week after it was made due to its suicide and domestic abuse jokes. All official sources refer to the subsequent Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped run by Kollin7 and Wheelio as Part 10.
- Subverted in The Church of Blow, where the protagonist of the second series is an actor trying to make a viral YouTube video. Then he starred in the Real Life viral video "Youtube is my Life", which the character is certain does not exist.
- Every Let's Play by TheStrawhatNO! from before Bomberman Hero has been removed from their YouTube channel or set to private/unlisted. Solidified when ThornBrain updated all of the LP playlists, and Bomberman Hero is listed as LP #1.
- The first episode of Pop Quiz Hotshot was widely derided, even by people working on it (Brad Jones calling it like Battlefield Earth, and even Doug talking about the crap Michaud made them do for it). The second episode starts again with Brad gone, Critic hosting and outright calling it the first episode.
- The Nostalgia Critic:
- In a commercials episode, he spouted that men are too stupid to know they're being harassed and had an episode-long running joke about him. This caused a lot of controversy, plus didn't even make sense for Doug or Critic to say (as they've both complained about getting harassed), and when the Hyper Fangirl Story Arc came around, Critic was very aware of her, ignoring the above completely.
- With Hyper, while her arc is Continuity Porn, the fact that she had a Split Personality and was Hearing Voices originally is ignored by both the show and the DVD recap of her storyline, probably because she has enough issues already.
- Dan, the creator of Confused Matthew, has invoked this on his videos released between 2011 and most of 2015, considering them mean spirited and him playing a character rather than giving his actual opinions.
- Lindsay Ellis, having severed her ties with Channel Awesome over their sexual harassment scandal, no longer shares videos from her years as the Nostalgia Chick, which she only speaks of as the "Dark Times." There was a time when she shared the videos on a second Youtube channel so that her fans could still enjoy them, but she eventually took that down to distance herself from the brand once and for all. Ellis would later allow viewing access to her older videos as a Patreon perk.
Real Life
- This is essentially what a marriage annulment amounts to. In a divorce, a marriage is officially declared to be over; when a marriage is annulled, however, it is considered never to have been a valid marriage in the first place. In times when divorces were significantly harder to get, many people would find a reason for an annulment. The annulment/divorce distinction is a specific manifestation of a greater issue in contract law: some contracts can be declared void, i.e., considered to have never been formed, for reasons such as misrepresentation, one party being a minor who did not get adult consent, among other things, while other contracts are "voidable"—they were valid contracts up to a point where one party's behavior rendered them void.
- Neither Benedict Arnold's name nor face appear on memorials to him at the site of the Battle of Saratoga or on the formal roll of past commandants of West Point at the U.S. Military Academy (only the date, 1780, appears where his name would be), since despite real military accomplishments that twice saved the Continental Army's bacon during the Revolutionary War, he's remembered today primarily for selling out to the British (and specifically, was going to hand over West Point to the enemy, until George Washington found out about the plot).
- An amendment to the U.S. Constitution can become this in the legal system if and only if another amendment passes that repeals it. So far this has happened with the 18th Amendment (which banned alcoholic beverages), which was repealed by the 21st Amendment. Congress has attempted this to the Eleventh Amendment, on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment (Part V, giving Congress the power to enforce the amendment with appropriate legislation), but the US Supreme Court struck this down in copyright law.
- Any part of the Constitution can become this, not just amendments. In fact the whole point of amendments, really, is to have this option to rewrite part of the Constitution if need be. For example, U.S. senators were originally elected by the state legislatures (as specified in Article 1), but that was changed in 1913 to direct popular vote by the 17th Amendment.
- The Articles of Confederation are this to the American government as a whole. Early Americans' fear of centralized government were borne true in the Articles, and the interstate squabbling that entailed caused it to fail. The Constitution replaced it, with a stronger central government. By extension, this is why George Washington is nigh-universally acknowledged as the first President of the United States, rather than any of the Presidents of Congress under the Articles. (It takes a real history buff to know that there were presidents before Washington, let alone be able to name any of them.)
- Whenever a nation or dictatorship dissolves, it's common for the successors to go through a reformation process that removes most or all of the influences from the preceding government. Some notable examples in history include:
- Denazification: Germany after World War II removing influences from the Nazi Party.
- De-Stalinization: The Soviet Union removed most of Josef Stalin's legacy after his death.
- Decommunization: Former Communist/Soviet states removing Communist policies, monuments, names, etc. after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe.
- De-Ba'athification: Iraq removing influences from the Ba'ath Party after the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
- Denazification
