Retcon

The term retcon is a contracted form of the phrase "retroactive continuity". It originated decades ago from comic-book collectors, having first been applied to the field of superhero comics by DC Comics writer Roy Thomas in 1983, though its usefulness has proven itself far beyond that medium. It refers to any plot development or revelation that introduces new information about previously established events, especially if the new information had not been an intended element of the original history.^[1]

Being slang, there is no strict definition of what constitutes a retcon; the most liberal usage applies the term to any new backstory introduced with sufficient distance from the original material, be it in terms of time or authorship or both. However, a stricter usage would confine it to developments that change or contradict past events. Thus, for some, "retcon" carries a negative overtone, no doubt due in part to the fact that the term is naturally brought up when people are talking about continuity problems.

Generally speaking, the longer a series or ongoing continuity lasts, the more likely it is for retcons to occur, especially when a new writer wants to go into a different direction than originally intended by a previous writer. Sometimes this even includes adding to or altering existing scenes that are repeated partially or in their entirety, to reinterpret the context of those scenes in order to accommodate a different interpretation of events or certain characters.

Contents 1 Examples 2 Retcons and this wiki 3 References

Examples

Using the broadly benign sense of the word, one notable retcon occurs at the end of the Beast Wars cartoon's second season, when Tarantulas is revealed to be a Predacon Secret Police lieutenant who had allied with Megatron to keep an eye on him. This changes the viewer's perception of Tarantulas: Previously, he had been merely a strange loner amongst the Predacons with schemes all his own, but suddenly his independence and agendas could be interpreted with a motive beyond self-interest. This development does not contradict previous stories, and can be seen as adding a layer of depth.

The introduction of the Matrix of Leadership in The Transformers: The Movie is a clunkier retcon. Viewers are asked to accept that Optimus Prime had been carrying the Matrix around with him for the last two years' worth of cartoon episodes. Despite being a cosmically powerful artifact with monumental importance to Autobot history and culture, it had never been relevant to the plot or even mentioned in passing. Still, the closest thing to a contradiction involved is the handful of views or scans of Prime's interior which had shown no sign of the Matrix. But fans have concocted a number of explanations for this discrepancy, so it is generally viewed as a merely awkward retcon and not an offense to continuity.

An example that involved a major reinterpretation of a previous story is Megatron's backstory in the 2005 IDW continuity. Initially, the four-issue limited series Megatron Origin (written by Eric Holmes) established that he was originally working as an Energon miner, and it was the automation of his mining outpost that caused a riot by the miners which ultimately led Megatron on the path that resulted in him starting the Decepticon movement. However, four years later, "Chaos Theory Part 1" (written by James Roberts) established that Megatron—who was already working as an Energon miner—was already dissatisfied with Cybertronian society long before that, having written a treatise that called for non-violent direct action to bring about a revolution, and after finding himself the victim of police brutality, and a subsequent chance encounter with a well-intended police officer named Orion Pax, he decided to take on a more radical approach. Another year later, "Shadowplay, Part 1" (also written by Roberts) would connect "Chaos Theory" to Megatron Origin by having Megatron shipped off-planet to an Energon mining facility, but also introduced an even greater retcon by establishing that the Decepticon movement already existed before the events of Megatron Origin, having been inspired by Megatron's writings.

Technically speaking, any revised editions of previously published stories count as retcons. Though for the most part, such retroactive changes were applied to fix various errors in the single release for the trade paperback collection, there are also examples where a deliberate decision was made to alter an aspect of a story that did represent the author's intent: The original version of issue #31 of IDW's More than Meets the Eye established that Nautica's sparktype is "estriol-positive". Eventually realizing the potentially offensive connotations of defining a female Transformer in this way, writer James Roberts had Nautica's sparktype changed to "ferrum-positive" for the trade.

The Generation 1 cartoon also contains one of the more famously contradictory Transformers retcons, this one involving a redaction of previous events. Specifically, the episode "Dark Awakening" ended with a severely-damaged yet still clearly alive Optimus Prime piloting the Autobots' flagship through a massive space battle into a Quintesson booby-trap that triggered a supernova, apparently destroying him. However, "The Return of Optimus Prime" features two humans encountering a different ship drifting through space with a pristine-yet-lifeless Optimus Prime aboard and no space battle anywhere to be seen. They salvage Prime before the ship once again hits an asteroid that triggers a supernova, the explosion looking identical to the one in "Dark Awakening" because it's the same animation. This drastic revision of Prime's fiery suicide run, the circumstances changed to the point of nonsensicality, certainly counts as a retcon (and an infamous one, at that). In this case, though, it can be attributed to the fact that "Dark Awakening" was animated by AKOM, and "Return of Optimus Prime, Part 1" by Toei, and there was likely zero communication between them.

For sheer scale across continuities, modern revelations about Unicron constitute possibly the biggest retcon in Transformers history. Beginning with the Universe comic and continuing in the Dreamwave Armada comic's "Worlds Collide" storyline and the Fun Publications Cybertron comic, Unicron is established with increasing firmness as a single being who does not have different incarnations in different continuities like other characters. Rather, all of his various appearances are, it seems, one Unicron migrating from universe to universe. With this retcon claiming relevance to and priority over every Transformers story ever told, it has naturally encountered some opposition among fans who object to its perceived absurdity and the irreconcilability of Unicron's varied portrayals. Perhaps fittingly, in 2015 Fun Publications' Another Light comic story arc did away with Unicron's singular nature, thus freeing future creators from any technical restraints.

The most drastic form of retcon, wherein an entire past storyline is invalidated by new events in the same continuity, has technically never occurred in Transformers. However, this is due in some part to the fluid view of "continuity" held by both fans and creators. For example, the Fun Publications Classics comic and IDW's Regeneration One both take place in the future of the Marvel Generation 1 comic, but they actively disregard the Generation 2 comic (as well as each other) despite the fact that the latter exists in the post-Marvel-G1 universe as well. In a more tightly managed franchise, this could be taken to mean that Generation 2 is officially nullified via retcon. But in the fractured multiverse of Transformers, the Classics comic and Regeneration One are simply accepted as "splinter timelines" that leave contradictory branches of continuity like Generation 2 untouched and intact.^[2]

Retcons and this wiki

Some fan wikis and reference books are written from a (mostly) in-universe perspective, making few (if any) references to real-world events that influence the fictional stories they cover, and thus treat current retcons with priority, while trying to ignore, deny or reconcile conflicting information from previous stories. (For an official Transformers example of this, see Transformers: The Ultimate Guide.) TFWiki.net uses a hybrid approach: While fiction-related sections are indeed written from an in-universe perspective, we also have (often lengthy) sections covering real-world details that relate to, and occasionally influenced the fiction. Retcons are typically explained as such in the trivia notes at the very least. In some cases where a retcon significantly alters the perception of fictional events and characters, additional notes at the top of the relevant section might also be required to inform the otherwise unsuspecting reader.

For example, the (originally unnamed) "U-Haul Robot" who was seen in a flashback in "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 4" was declared to be the cartoon version of Sentinel Prime, previously a comic-only character, by the Allspark Almanac II, a book that was released over 20 years after the episode in question had originally been aired. While TFWiki.net treats the retcon (which was established by an officially licensed publication) as canon, and thus has merged the "U-Haul Robot" article into the "Sentinel Prime (G1)" article, the merged article goes out of its way to identify the retcon as such in all its relevant sections.

References