Sometimes, characters develop over the course of a show. And sometimes, shows will present new scenes from earlier time periods. And sometimes, characters in a flashback (or a prequel) will exhibit character unlike the way they acted before the time the flashback is occurring.
For example, when Bob started on the show in 1991 he was characterized as a Jerkass, but became a Jerk with a Heart of Gold in 1993, and then just became a nice guy by 1995, but is shown in a recent flashback to 1991 to have been a Nice Guy in that year, with no explanation/extenuating circumstances.
Usually, this happens unintentionally due to Flanderization and Characterization Marches On, often due to the too many flashbacks to track characterization in an Expansion Pack Past. This might be used to Retcon an existing flashback, maybe because it also had to be reshot since it was a Flashback with the Other Darrin. If you not only pick up your old characterization but also your old visual style, it's a Retraux Flashback. It's also this trope rather than Flashback with the Other Darrin when a present-day actor or character design is used to represent a character in a new scene set in the past. See also Circular Character Arc, where a character develops before returning to how they were before.
Trope name comes from "backporting," a concept in software development where features from a new codebase are imported to an older branch of development.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Ayakashi Triangle: Early on, Lu was shown as slightly interested in the occult in general, then became completely obsessed with aliens specifically when she mistook an ayakashi for one. But in a later flashback, she's shown just as focused on aliens in middle school, immediately assuming a vanished Suzu was abducted by an UFO.
- Cardfight!! Vanguard features a bunch of those due to the Merchandise-Driven nature of the anime.
- In the original anime series Booster Set names were often explicitly spelled out, implying that the in-universe card releases were the same as the ones from the real card game. This didn't stop the series to also show flashbacks to years before the start of the series showing cards that shouldn't be out yet.
- In Cardfight!! Vanguard G, there's a flashback to at least 15 years before the start of the original series. A fight in this scene includes characters using Stride Units, a mechanic that wasn't actually developed until several years later.
- Shinichi Kudo, the hero of Case Closed, began the series as a rather callous figure who only solved cases to pursue his own dream of becoming more like his idol Sherlock Holmes, and get famous along the way. He approached his investigations with little concern for other people's emotions, and even expressed his contempt for the criminals he caught no matter how sympathetic, even going so far as to tell a culprit who had previously attacked his childhood friend and crush Ran that if he was going to commit suicide, he should just get it over with already. It wasn't until the day a particularly sympathetic and kindly culprit actually succeeded in committing suicide in front of him that he realized his mistakes and adopted his creed, "A detective who corners a culprit with logic but then allows them to commit suicide is no different than a murderer." Then in the Whole Episode Flashback Shinichi Kudo's New York Case, set two years before the main series, Shinichi doesn't hesitate to save the life of a remorseless Serial Killer who had been attacking Ran only a few seconds before, even telling the killer "I don't need a logical reason to help someone, right?" with a smile on his face.
- A reversed example from the same series, involving the same character. In The Night Baron Murder Case, Ran, feeling down because her martial arts idol is emerging as the prime suspect in the case, remembers Shinichi once told her that if someone he cared about were ever a suspect, he would investigate them thoroughly. However, when Shinichi's soccer idol Ray Curtis is a suspect in The Three Ks of Osaka Case, Shinichi intentionally underperforms for fear that he might prove Curtis's guilt. This is a more ambiguous example, though, because while it might be out of character for pre-character development Shinichi to suspect someone he cares about, it would be entirely in character for him to say he would, just because it sounds like a cool line a Great Detective might say.
- In Naruto, we see this happen with, hilariously of all things, Orochimaru's clothes. Introduced with more standard ninja attire, Orochimaru's iconic purple obi design originated after he murders and disguises as a minor grass ninja during the Chunin Exams. After this event, we see him and many of his underlings sporting the outfit. It becomes this trope when we see Orochimaru wearing the clothes during various flashbacks, long before the start of the series.
- In One Piece we have Luffy, the straw-hat-wearing hero. He got the hat, which is his #1 Dime, as a seven-year-old. At the start of the series, where he is seventeen, this caused a problem for him because the hat would often fall off in battles so that he would have to make another person hold it for him. After the Alabasta arc, he gets a string strap for it so that he can have it hanging from his neck while fighting which gives him much more flexibility (probably because he was very close at losing the hat in the Alabasta arc). Some time later, we get a flashback to when he was seven years old, and suddenly, it appears that he already had the string strap back then.
- Pokémon the Series:
- Whenever Ash appears in flashbacks he is an excitable Friend to All Living Things and an all-around Nice Guy. This is ignoring his personality in the original series (Kanto and Johto) where he was a more immature and stubborn character. Even Pokémon: I Choose You! features a less cocky and hardheaded Ash. It was his Character Development that transformed him into a more tame and gentle character by Hoenn.
- Likewise, almost every flashback with Pikachu will depict him as a kind-natured and naïve Nice Guy, despite the fact that Pikachu started off a disobedient and lazy Jerkass when Ash received him in the first episode (the most notable exception being Ash recalling their initial antagonistic relationship in Pokémon: Lucario and the Mystery of Mew, and even then, the actual flashback is Ash remembering when Pikachu acted to save him from the flock of Spearow that solidified their relationship going forward). Even throughout Kanto, Pikachu had some mean elements, which were watered away as time went on. The origin episode in Pokémon Journeys: The Series does show him being a jerk to Ash during their first meeting, though.
- In the credits of Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution (a CGI remake of the first film), the mother-daughter duo who first appeared in Movie 8, can be seen in the background, most likely because they'd been in most Pokémon movies since then (only missing out on movies 9 and 17).
Audio Plays
- Downplayed in the audiobook version of Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, Chris Barrie does an impression of Robert Lewellyn doing a Fake Canadian accent as Kryten, even though the scenes are based on Krytyen's Season II introduction episode, where he was played by David Ross sounding like C3P0. However, the novels are an Alternate Continuity from the TV series, so it's not even technically a retcon in the first place.
Comic Books
- Ant-Man: A very odd case of this with Hank Pym. Infamously, the character was kind of a tool in the 60s, being verbally abusive and insulting towards his partner, The Wasp, which eventually led to physical abuse on his endnote most famously when he slapped her in Avengers #213, but he actually got violent with her initially back in #59, when he first became Yellowjacket; in that issue, he knocked Janet unconscious, kidnapped her, and forcefully kissed her as she tried to fight him off while unaware of who he was, all of which would easily class as sexual assault, but is rarely brought up when discussing his pattern of abuse. After this, Hank went through heavy Character Development and became incredibly repentant for his behaviour and treatment of Janet, leading to him becoming an Endearingly Dorky Nice Guy who struggles with self-esteem and mental health issues, and him and Janet were both even able to reconcile and have a relationship for some time. Nowadays, its not uncommon for flashbacks to the Silver Age era or retellings on Hank's early days to paint him under this brush and portray him and Janet as having a loving relationship, but what makes this odd is that him slapping her is very firmly a defining moment in his history that's never ignored, leading to a huge characterisation conflict.
- Batman:
- Up until the 80s, Batman and Robin were not very different as characters—Batman was a well-adjusted swashbuckling adventurer and hero, and Robin was more or less the same, but younger and a bit less skilled and mature. In the 80s, though, Batman's personality took its more iconic form as a grim and troubled crimefighter. To contrast this, the third Robin, Tim Drake, was explicitly introduced with the intent of being a more lighthearted and affable sort. Nearly every future Batman story since has run with this interpretation of Batman and Robin as a Cynic–Idealist Duo—not just for Tim Drake, but backporting the relationship to Dick Grayson as well, playing him up as a laughing young daredevil to contrast Batman's straightlacedness.
- Jason Todd was mostly written as a Suspiciously Similar Substitute to Dick Grayson, developing a hint of an edge in the late 80s. After A Death in the Family, though, it became increasingly common to portray Jason as erratic and maladjusted—something that was only furthered by his resurrection as the Red Hood.
- This explains the controversy about Damian Wayne's conception. His mother, Talia al Ghul, spent her early years conflicted between loyalty to her villainous father and her love for Batman; ultimately, she chooses villainy. When Damian was introduced, he was explained as a result of Talia drugging Bruce, essentially retconning away her moral ambiguity and any actual romance between the two. It's since been retconned back to a consensual relationship.
- An extremely gross version of this happened in Real Fact Comics #5, which depicted Batman's conception by Bob Kane (and solely Bob Kane, no mention of Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson's contributions to the Bat-mythos). According to this Very Loosely Based on a True Story, Kane asked a friend to model Batman for him, complete with costume, as he is drawing him for the first time... only the costume looks like Batman's then-current design (the blue cape and grey bodysuit), rather than either a) the original design Kane made for him or b) the design made by Finger that was the one to actually see print. One can still claim Artistic License and that DC just wanted to make Batman's origin simpler for kids by not mentioning the design changes, but the comic is literally titled "Real Fact Comics".
- The Bat-Man: First Knight, despite being inspired by Batman's earliest appearances, features Batman with his long-standing aversion of guns instead of keeping the fact that Bruce did use guns early on.
- Chaos War: Chaos War: Ares shows Amatsu-Mikaboshi wearing his present-day duds in a flashback to the original Ares miniseries.
- Fantastic Four: The Thing used to speak fairly eloquently (while simultaneously being far more irascible), and his skin was muddy rather than rocky. However, this quickly changed, and by the time of Doctor Doom's first appearance, his crustier look (and speaking style) had already asserted themselves. In many flashbacks, he's portrayed as being like this from the start, save for in Marvel Two-in-One #50, in which the Thing travels back in time and meets himself.
Present Thing: Wait! Hold it! Lissen ta me, willya? I can't fight you! I AM you!
Past Thing: Don't mock me, monster! I would give my soul to look as human as you! - The Incredible Hulk: A very brief example happened in the Origins of Marvel Comics compilation — the Hulk was recolored to be green, as he is in the present, seemingly making it so he was green from the very beginning, when in the original publication, he was grey (or meant to be, but coloring errors often messed that up). Once the Grey Hulk was made into an important part of the canon, this sort of thing stopped happening. Now, the Hulk is always shown as being grey in his earliest days.
- Iron Man: During the Brian Bendis run, Mary Jane Watson details a flashback at one point to when she and Iron Man first met, which has this on two fronts.
- Firstly, Mary Jane is presented as being aware that Tony Stark is Iron Man, and treats it as if this was an Open Secret. Tony's identity is public now and has been since the mid 2000s, but before that it was a closely guarded secret that only a handful of his closest confidants were aware of - notably, he didn't even tell The Wasp, one of his closest friends, until Captain America told him to because he'd started dating her as Tony Stark and it wasn't fair to her for him to be keeping her in the dark. While the flashback does portray Tony as having a secret identity, its presented as if he was so bad at keeping it a secret that a complete stranger like Mary Jane would know it before even meeting him.
- Mary Jane herself, is presented both as being dismissive and uninterested in him flirting with her, and also working as a professional runway supermodel attending the kind of events that would allow her to meet Tony. This was something she never did prior to the 2000s; Mary Jane was a model and actress, but the biggest she ever achieved to fame was a short stint on a soap opera, and briefly travelled for some shoots, but between the two Peter was the most famous in the couple due to his photographs of Spider-Man. It wasn't until the 00s and 2010s that she began being depicted as a world-famous supermodel who people were baffled at dating a nobody like Peter Parker (usually to suggest that this made them incompatible). Likewise, MJ was always portrayed as an eager flirt who enjoyed casual hookups and wouldn't have had any issue with a hookup with a guy like Tony Stark, and even if she was aware he was Iron Man, this would only turn her off of a serious relationship.
- Judge Dredd: Judge Anderson, a psychic Judge in the Dreddverse, was a very flippant and easy-going character when she first appeared, though would get serious when the situation mandated it. As time went on, she became a rather serious character most of the time, and her dominant mood was vague despair at the shape of the world. In late 2010, possibly as part of the buildup to the new Dredd movie, Alan Grant started writing a prequel series, Cadet Anderson, set during Anderson's days as a cadet. In the prequel series, she is a very serious character who wishes the world could be better, in seeming contrast to the fun and light-hearted lady who first fought Judge Death.
- Sonic the Comic: The 1998 story "Amy's Secret Past" depicts a tomboyish Action Girl Amy even prior to her becoming a Freedom Fighter. In early comics, Amy had a more chipper and girly personality. It also depicts Robotnik with his "evolved" design despite that not appearing until several issues into the series.
- Superman: General Sam Lane, originally Lois's gruff father who didn't like Clark much and wasn't entirely impressed with Superman, but had a good heart beneath it all, died during the alien invasion of Our Worlds at War. When he came Back from the Dead, his experiences in that war had left him with a new anti-alien attitude that turned him into a General Ripper declaring war on New Krypton. In the Superman: Secret Origin miniseries, Sam was gunning for Superman from the first moment he learned Metropolis's new hero was an alien, and is responsible for creating Metallo as his anti-Kryptonian weapon.
- Thorgal: In The Betrayed Sorceress, the titular hero Thorgal is a hot blooded viking who's also nicknamed "Son of storms" because of his short temper. In the story, he prioritizes his revenge on his father-in-law Gandalf the Mad who sentenced him to death over getting back with his beloved Aaricia. It's only when he's facing a grievously injured Gandalf that Thorgal renounces his revenge and comes to the realization that he's sick of hatred and violence and now only seeks love and peace. For the rest of the series, Thorgal is a Reluctant Warrior who only wants to live in peace with his familly but always gets drawn in misadventures. However in the prequel books Child of The Stars and Aaricia as well as the entirety of the spin-off Thorgal: The Early Years, Thorgal is portrayed as the same Nice Guy who dislikes the Viking's violent culture even as a kid and the nickname "Son of storms" never comes up. As a result, his original characterization and Character Development are quite puzzling.
- Wolverine: Wolverine's personality has remained pretty consistent throughout his decades of publication, but his speaking style hasn't. Modern incarnations of Wolvie have him speak in a very coarse, almost Texan drawl-like Funetik Aksent, and in his worse days, he'll refer to everyone as 'bub', no matter the situation. It can be very jarring to go back to early issues and find he had a pretty normal way of speaking during the seventies. Being over 200 years old, he occasionally guest-stars in flashback issues, such as his appearance in Agents of Atlas, in which he inevitably talks in the familiarly rough dialect he uses in the present day.
- X-Men: Magneto's helmet. Originally, Magneto was resistant to telepathy either by his magnetic powers scrambling psychic signals, or being a mild telepath himself, depending on who was writing at the time. After the release of X-Men 1, where Magneto's helmet is what gives him psychic immunity, this idea slowly started folding back into the comics, where nowadays his helmet is the ultimate psi-blocker. Funnily enough, the idea of a character with a psychic proof helmet was the chief Achilles' Heel of the Juggernaut.
Films — Animated
- Bo Peep from Toy Story 1 is depicted as "gentle, ladylike, and kindhearted". When she re-appears in Toy Story 4 after being Put on a Bus in Toy Story 3, she is shown to be a free-spirited and tomboyish Action Girl. A flashback in the 4th film to the time before she was given away shows her organizing RC's rescue together with Woody, even though her role in the first film was more of The Heart than Woody's Number Two.
- The first 15 minutes of Wonder Woman: Bloodlines shows how Diana Prince left Themyscira prior to becoming a superhero, yet she acts more like the Nice Girl she is in the later DC Animated Movie Universe films than the excitable and immature woman she was when introduced in Justice League: War.
Films — Live-Action
- As Dad's Army progressed, Warden Hodges became the Chief ARP Warden, Private Frazer went from running a philatelists shop to being an undertaker, and The Vicar and the Verger were gradually established as characters. In Dad's Army (1971), all of these elements are present from the start.
- As the Harry Potter films went along, the architecture of Hogwarts kept getting altered. Despite being prequels, the Fantastic Beasts films use the Deathly Hallows version of the castle.
- Justice League (2017) rewrites Superman's characterization to be closer to his comic self after both Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice made him a Classical Anti-Hero with lots of Adaptational Angst Upgrade. The film opens with a flashback showing Superman enthusiastically answering to children as part of an interview and being much more upbeat and friendlier than he actually was prior his death.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe: Initially, Thor is depicted with the sort of personality you'd expect the prince of a Proud Warrior Race Guy like Asgard to have. Thor: Ragnarok changes him to having a much more casual way of speaking and acting, though not fully without his godlike demeanors. Avengers: Endgame depicts his The Avengers self acting in much the same way.
- Anything related to the original Star Trek treats Chekov as having been there from the beginning (he only debuted in the second season), and ignores details about the clothing and technology that were different in the first two pilots. Most notably, Wrath of Khan has Khan explicitly remembering Chekov from the events of "Space Seed", an episode Chekov did not appear in. Walter Koenig has joked that the two met offscreen when Chekov was hogging the bathroom.
- In Star Trek: Nemesis, they show a picture of Jean-Luc Picard when he was young, and for some reason, he was bald, despite the fact that his balding had everything to do with his age, as previously shown in the show. This also makes the villain's baldness quite baffling. However, Patrick Stewart himself really had lost his hair by this age, really muddling things. One handwave that swims dangerously close to being a Voodoo Shark is the fact that both the picture and Shinzon have stubble, indicating both the young Picard and his clone both shaved their heads on purpose. Other flashback Picards with hair had just let it grow back.
Literature
- The BIONICLE novel series began in 2003 but the first two books very loosely adapted the 2001 and 2002 stories as well.
- The concept of the Three Virtues, Unity, Duty and Destiny, which became the core pillars of the lore in 2003, were retroactively written into the previous stories and were constantly referred to in the dialogue.
- Lewa originally spoke normally but for his appearance in the 2003 movie BIONICLE: Mask of Light, he adopted the Le-Matoran tribe's characteristic "treespeak" dialect. In the first two books he speaks treespeak to begin with even before he meets his tribe and learns their special language. This created a continuity gaffe when a 2008 book flashed back to Lewa's earlier self, where he also talked completely normally.
- In The Hobbit, Thorin Oakenshield is initially depicted as a pompous and reckless but basically good-natured sort, but upon obtaining Smaug's Dragon Hoard, he falls under the spell of "dragon sickness" and becomes consumed by greed, paranoia, and selfishness, to the point that he almost starts a war over not wanting to give up any treasure. At the time, this is treated as something sudden and shocking. Tolkien's later writings, such as "The Quest for Erebor" and an abortive attempt to rewrite The Hobbit, tend to depict Thorin as having been possessive and vengeful long before obtaining the hoard. Unfinished Tales has Gandalf claim outright that Bilbo (the in-universe writer of The Hobbit) didn't catch on to the truth of what Thorin was thinking at the time.
- In the early, Warrior Cats, the character, Ashfur was a minor character with a perfectly personable, if generic personality. In later books, Ashfur became an Ascended Extra and got involved in a Love Triangle with two major characters, during which he Took a Level in Jerkass; becoming jealous, obsessed and nasty to basically everyone. In the much later prequel, Graystripe's Vow, Ashfur was retroactively depicted with his nasty and Obviously Evil personality from later books rather than his original "everyman" persona, despite this being a prequel, even implying that he was The Friend Nobody Likes to his own family.
Live-Action TV
- Angel: it was initially established that Angel spent decades being depressed after recovering his soul until he first saw Buffy Summers, not to mentionned that his characterization evolved over the course of his tenure in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and this show. However flashbacks in "Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been" and "Why We Fight" feature a non-depressed Angel who pretty much acts like his present self.
- The Big Bang Theory: In the flashback episode "The Staircase Implementation," Sheldon acts like his current socially inept self instead of his more socially conscious earlier persona, despite the fact that the episode takes place four years before the series begins.
- In Boy Meets World, Topanga is originally a Hopeless Suitor for Cory and a Cloud Cuckoo Lander whom Cory has no romantic interest in, and is rather disgusted at the idea of them being together. The high school era made her a totally different character with none of the weirdness that had defined her in the first couple of seasons, and gave her and Cory a Relationship Upgrade. All flashbacks and references to the past from then on pretended that Topanga had always been exactly as she is now, and that she and Cory had been in love with each other since preschool. This was given a Hand Wave as Cory having been going through a Girls Have Cooties phase in the first season.
- Charmed (1998): In the flasback of the episode Pre-Witched, despite the episode taking place six months before Something Wicca This Way Comes, Prue and Piper behave more like their Season 3 selves, than their Season 1 selves. Prue is more cheerful and warm than in Season 1 (not to mention her interest in photography, which was only established in Season 2), and Piper is slightly more sarcastic and assertive.
- Community: In the flashback episode "Heroic Origins", several characters have their Season 4 characterization in flashbacks and act differently from their Season 1 selves. Notably, Britta is already a Dumb Blonde, Chang is already mentally unstable and the episode also gives an origin story for the Dean's fondness for crossdressing despite that he didn't started this trend until Season 2.
- Every time the Doctor's days on Gallifrey are referenced in Doctor Who, it sounds like they're talking about a younger version of the current Doctor, not First. For instance in the Fourth Doctor story "The Deadly Assassin", we're told that the young Doctor had a "propensity for vulgar facetiousness".
- Frasier: Martin was supposedly insufferably crabby and unpleasant before Frasier moved back to Seattle, which is used to explain why Frasier rarely visited when he lived in Boston. Flashbacks in some later seasons definitely show family tension, but Martin's personality isn't noticeably different (he's even apologetic for what little crabbiness he displays), making a lot of the pre-series family drama a mostly Informed Flaw.
- Highlander: The Series: In the pilot, it is stated that Duncan has remained "out of the Game" for over a century. Later, throughout the series he is depicted in flashbacks defending himself from other Immortals and taking heads throughout said century. Of course, given the nature of immortals in Highlander, it's impossible to survive if you aren't good at defending yourself and willing to end an opponent before he does the same to you, even if you're not after the ultimate power the last immortal standing is supposed to receive. Yes, they can't attack you on holy ground, but that means you'd have to hole up in a church somewhere and never set foot off its property for one moment ever. Nope, you'd better be good enough with the sword to at least survive a trip to the store for more toilet paper.
- In Loki, the title character is shown in a 1971 flashback acting much like he does in in the first Avengers movie and onwards, being confident, snarky and enjoying himself as he's playing deadly pranks (in this case, pretending to be D.B. Cooper). This is a sharp contrast to how his younger self in the first Thor movie was an insecure Shrinking Violet who shows opposition to getting into trouble with Thor. Furtherrmore, the variant of Loki the audience is following appears to go through much of the character development that his Sacred Timeline self went through over the course of the movies in a matter of hours, simply through Mobius telling him what happened to his counterpart following The Avengers (and watching it play out in the Time Theater).
- Lost: Averted. The series cuts around with its flashbacks, but keeps characterization as established when the scene takes place (noticeably when Shannon and Boone are shown shortly around the time of the crash, Shannon is still doing nothing but complaining.) This is made particularly evident in the Season 1 finale, where flashbacks showing the characters at their lowest points just before the plane crash, such as Walt deliberately disrespecting Michael and telling him he's not his father or Charlie getting into a pathetic fight with a fellow drug addict over a measly bag of heroin, are contrasted with present scenes demonstrating how much the characters have developed since the crash, such as Walt sleeping peacefully in Michael's arms or Charlie heroically volunteering to help Sayid rescue Aaron from Rousseau.
- Lucifer (2016):
- We're repeatedly told in the first season that Lucifer used to be ruthless (like in the comics) and that his time on Earth recently changed him. In general, in the first season, Lucifer is less social and more willing to kill his enemies but mellows out thanks to his partnership with Chloe Decker and his therapy sessions with Linda Martin. This is seemingly ignored in later seasons as the flashback episodes "City of Angels?" and "It Never Ends Well for the Chicken" both feature Lucifer with his more heroic characterization (althought he does summon Maze to torture a suspect in the former episode).
- There's a drastic change set for the precinct between season 1 and 2 which is carried over in pre-series flashbacks.
- My Name Is Earl had this twice, both with heavy lampshades. Two flashbacks saw Earl being the good guy despite the show's entire premise being he was an awful person until he "discovered" Karma. One featured Earl saving Joy from a killer bee while his cousin cowered in a tent, and the other was his reasoning for raising two kids who were not his own. Both were described as the only good thing he did before he made the list.
- Red Dwarf:
- In flashbacks to shortly after the revival of Rimmer (Series I), the style of the 'H' on his head and his uniform were the ones from Series VII.
- Kryten's changed appearance is handwaved by the explanation that Lister rebuilt him after a spacebike crash, yet a few episodes later we see a moving photograph of Kryten pre-crash and he looks and speaks) the same as post-crash. Additionally, the other Series 4000 mechanoid we meet, Able, looks like the "rebuilt" Kryten as do his spare heads in "DNA" and "Beyond a Joke".
- The flashback in series 2's "Stasis Leak" to before the accident maintains the set design and props that were added to the bunk room in series 2.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation had this in the series finale.
- The captain's chair shown in the past is the same one as the then-current chair, with little lights under the arm-rests instead of the folding panels the first season chair had.
- Past Worf's makeup design was slightly modified from the current version rather than being the version from the beginning of the series (which took much longer to apply and was more uncomfortable for the actor). His forehead ridges were TOTALLY different in Season 1, not just created by different makeup techniques.
- Also, O'Brien was treated as a major character, though originally, it wasn't clear that Colm Meaney's background redshirt in the premiere was intended to be O'Brien, who didn't become a major character until well into Season 2. Assuming that it is him lets them bring a major character Back for the Finale, and it's easy to say that the time-travelling Picard gave him more attention because he now knows his true potential.
- Finally, there's no avoiding the fact that the actors don't look exactly the same. Tasha's a little chubbier than she was before because Denise Crosby hadn't had to keep herself in playing-a-starship-security-chief shape in a long time.
- It's all especially noticeable because, to their credit, they otherwise totally nailed the differences between Season 1 and the rest of the series.
- In Season 4 of Stranger Things, we get to see flashbacks to Eleven's time living in Hawkins Laboratory while under Dr. Brenner's care. In Season 1, Eleven was shown to be very unfamiliar with social cues and had a stilted vocabulary due to her sheltered life, yet she's shown speaking full sentences and understanding things quite well during the flashback sequences. Possibly justified, as we're seeing these through Eleven's own reconstructed recollection of them (for instance, she imagines herself as she looks now, as a teenager, rather than as a young child), and she's shown capable of "going off-script" during these, so her more socially aware and talkative actions might simply be how she'd imagine she talked and acted rather than actually true to fact.
- Ultraman Regulos is a prequel set before Ultraman Leo, but acts like Leo was as skilled in martial arts back then as in his most recent appearance in Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Destined Crossroad, which aired nearly 50 years later. In Regulos, Leo is an expert whom Regulos has never defeated, but in his own series Leo was such an awful combatant that he routinely lost against his foes, and only grew into the fighter he is today thanks to Training from Hell courtesy of Dan.
Toys
- BIONICLE:
- There is an Enforced Element. Originally, the race of diminutive villagers was called "the Tohunga" until Maori activists threatened to sue the LEGO Group for trying to trademark culturally sensitive words from their language via the Game Boy Advance game Tales of the Tohunga. The Story team wrote a scene to change around a few names, with the Tohunga becoming "the Matoran" in celebration of their newfound unity. That was until the story expanded beyond the island of Mata Nui with a prequel arc. Since they certainly couldn't reuse the old names, the word "Tohunga" was retconned out, and later story pretended Matoran had always been their name. This also happened to other characters and terms that had to be renamed for legal reasons (Jala - Jaller, Huki - Hewkii, Koli - Kolhii, etc.), as prequel scenes had to stick to their altered names.
- Tahu received a new toy design in 2010. Thus, in the online narrated blog Mata Nui Saga, a flashback to his ancient self being put into stasis showed that version, rather than his original 2001 look. Some fans tried to justify the change, as Tahu had rebuilt himself after his muscles had decayed during his stasis, arguing the 2010 design was his more muscular pre-rebuilt form. But in reality, it was simply done for the sake of marketing the new set.
- When NECA decided to do a collector-aimed throwback to the Aliens and Predator toylines Kenner did, it incorporated elements of the movies that came since those days, including tying the Nightstorm and Scavage Predators to the Black Predators first seen in Predators (with the former even being the Eviller Counterpart to the Clan Leader Predator). Additionally, they made two figures in the scale and style of the Kenner toyline for the Berserker Predator/Mr. Black from Predators and the Neomorph from Alien: Covenant.
- Similarly, McFarlane Toys’ revival of Kenner’s DC Super Powers Collection utilizes the same packaging and articulation style of the original toys from The '80s, but features a number of characters and designs from the Post-Crisis era and beyond. For instance, the John Stewart version of Green Lantern sports his costume from the 2001 Justice League TV show, Wonder Woman and The Flash wear their DC Rebirth outfits, and Darkseid uses his New 52 redesign, rather than the classic looks those characters actually sported back in the 80s. Characters like The Batman Who Laughs and the Tim Drake version of Robin, meanwhile, flat out didn’t exist yet back when Kenner was handling the line.
- Similarly, Hasbro's Marvel Legends homage to the Secret Wars (1984) action figures from Mattel includes a few characters who weren't in the original toy line or comic, most notably Magik and the Beyondernote While the Beyonder was the Big Bad of the original Secret Wars, he wouldn't actually get a physical form until the sequel., whose designs are actually taken from Secret Wars II.
Video Games
- The original Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn gave the Brotherhood of Nod an overall aesthetic befitting a third-world terrorist organization (albeit one that can stand toe-to-toe with the equivalent to the United Nations), for the most part using whatever weapons they could get their hands on from the black market because it was outdated and had been abandoned by proper militaries; although some of their designs did match what the faction as a whole would become in later games, these tended to be very advanced, late-game tech, like the stealth tank and Obelisk of Light, heavily contrasting earlier weapons which consisted of things like an IFV with a larger cannon bolted on the turret to sort-of function as a tank. Tiberian Sun, set noticeably later in the future, had them evolve to the form we know them in now, where even their basic infantry have equipment on par with GDI's while also happening to make them look like COBRA. Command & Conquer: Renegade, a First-Person Shooter spinoff set concurrently with Tiberian Dawn, would then backport the new design philosophy to the first war-era Nod, with all of their infantry being red-and-black-clad Faceless Goons and their vehicles looking sleeker and more advanced than GDI's mostly-real-world tech.
- Averted in Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, where despite having undergone Flanderization in sequels and spin-offs, Cloud acts really close to his original characterisation (or at least as close as you'd reasonably expect considering how much younger he is). Aerith also returns to being bossy and intelligent rather than being incorruptible and Yuffie goes back to being sneaky, sarcastic, and manipulative rather than a goofy Genki Girl.
- Super Smash Bros. Brawl portrays Ike as a slow One-Handed Zweihänder-wielding powerhouse in line with Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, but uses his younger, less muscular design from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, where he was more of a Jack of All Stats. Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U rectified this by switching him to his Radiant Dawn design, but Super Smash Bros. Ultimate brought back his Path of Radiance skin and had both play the same.
- Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions updates the standard Mario characters and species to resemble their equivalents in later RPGs, leading to things like the Toads being made into mere palette swaps and quite a few monsters being given designs based on the main series rather than the original game. It also brings over the Elite Trio and Dr Toadley from Bowser's Inside Story too, opening up a few plot holes in the process (the former are wearing outfits that mark their promotion in Dream Team, the latter apparently never met the Mario Bros before Bowser's Inside Story).
- Marvel Cosmic Invasion is an intentional Genre Throwback to 90s Beat 'em Up games, with the characters and costumes intentionally chosen to reflect that decade. The exception is the Phyla-Vell version of Quasar, who wasn't created until 2003 and didn't actually take up the Quasar mantle until the Annihilation crossover a few years later.
- The 2024 Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection contains a special promotional comic adapting the events of Marvel vs. Capcom 2, a game originally released back in 2000. Despite otherwise keeping the characters and designs mostly accurate to the time period, the comic has The Avengers operating out of Stark Tower instead of Avengers Mansion, even though the Mansion already appeared as a stage in Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes. Stark Tower, by contrast, was created in 2005 for Brian Bendis' New Avengers run, and wouldn't be introduced into the MVC series until 2017's Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite.
- Solid Snake in the original Metal Gear Solid was extremely buff, but relatively compact, suiting someone who did have to crawl through air vents as part of his job description (his body was modeled on Jean-Claude Van Damme). In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty he has a thicker physique, which was intended to indicate him aging from early 30s to middle-age and putting on weight. In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, his father Big Boss is buffer still, compared in the casting sheet to an Arnold Schwarzenegger type. Several later appearances of the character outside of the core series buff up Solid to his father's level, such as his appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and his frighteningly muscular render for The Legacy Collection where his biceps are significantly thicker than his entire head.
- Mortal Kombat: The story of Mortal Kombat 9 picks up right after the previous game, but none of the characters look as they did in Armageddon when we rewind and go back to the first tournament (Johnny has short brown hair rather than the longer blondish hair he had at the time, Sonya wears her black leather outfit and has her hair in a long ponytail instead of wearing a bomber jacket and having her hair shorter, etc). And Mortal Kombat X flashes back to the Mortal Kombat II part of MK9, and the characters look as they do in MKX rather than MK9!
- Portal 2 changes the design on many items such as the elevators and the Material Emancipation Grills, yet when you return to destroyed areas from the first game they are fitted with the new design. Visiting "Old Aperture" later on reveals that these new designs were apparently in use in test chambers from decades before the first game took place. The devs specifically avoided this with the original, burn-marked but intact Companion Cube, though.
- Applied across the board in Ratchet & Clank (2016). The characterization of Ratchet, Clank and Qwark are much more similar to that of the PS3 titles, with Clank being more street-smart, Qwark being bumbling but not outright evil, and Ratchet having dreams of becoming a hero, a desire not introduced until All 4 One where he already became a hero. This also applies to the overall lore and worldbuilding that incorporates many developments that occurred since the original game: races like Fongoids and Tharpods from the later games appear, and companies like GrummelNet and Megacorp also have a presence far earlier than in the video games. Even the Protopet from the second game gets a tease far earlier than before. This is arguably justified by the game being Qwark's recollections of the original game's story.
- Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution serves as an interquel taking place between Shantae (2002) and Risky's Revenge, but has several instances of the cast being written to be more reflective of their characterizations from later entries, such as Shantae being far more humble about her abilities compared to the aggressive confidence displayed in her early adventures.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- In the first Sonic Adventure game, Tails and Amy have flashbacks dating back to the times of the classic Mega Drive games. In them, Sonic, Tails and Amy are depicted in their modern designs. The devs likely didn't consider making alternate models for a few seconds worth of footage a priority at the time. This wasn't really a problem until games like Sonic Generations, Origins and Superstars established that the characters used to look like their classic designs in their younger years, though.
- Sonic Superstars has Amy as its 4th playable character. She's not only portrayed as an Action Girl on equal footing with Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, but a trusted friend and member of their group, with Sonic never showing discomfort in her presence. This is more in-line with her portrayals in The New '20s, which have come to treat her as a well-liked fourth member after several games throughout the prior two decades portrayed her as a virtual outsider to the main trio and a Stalker with a Crush that Sonic is constantly running from.
- In Sonic Adventure 2, there are numerous cutscenes which show Shadow fifty years ago. Throughout the game, he acquires numerous bits of equipment, and the items you've got are visible on his character model even in the flashback cutscenes.
- In the Sonic Generations remaster:
- Both Sonics now have the Drop Dash ability from Sonic Mania, which itself remains consistent with Sega re-arranging Classic Sonic's skills in Updated Rereleases to make sure he has it from the start and Modern Sonic having it in Sonic Frontiers.
- Knuckles and Amy have been rewritten to match their characterization as of Frontiers, with Knuckles being more serious and single-minded, and Amy being less obsessive about Sonic. Cream's dialogue also has her properly address Sonic as "Mr. Sonic", as she does in most media.
- In the original Generations, Sonic and Tails comment on how Green Hill Zone and Chemical Plant Zone seem familiar but don't recognize them, indicating how long it'd been since they visited those zones. Later, however, Sonic Forces would establish Green Hill and the Chemical Plant as locations the heroes are still familiar with, so the dialogue is changed to comments about how strange it is to find said zones so devoid of color while the rest of the islands they're on is missing. This also makes more sense considering how, even in Generations' time, Green Hill Zone was a common thing to reference.
- Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny's version of Yoshimitsu strongly resembles his Tekken 6 appearance, where he looks like an alien rather than a samurai which is what he's supposed to be in the Soul series (it takes place centuries earlier). In the first Tekken 1, Yoshimitsu looks more like a knight, which is more consistent with how he would have looked when the Soul series is set. Justified by the fact that the Yoshimitsu in both series are separate individuals bearing the same name. As theorized for years and finally confirmed in Soulcalibur V (which included a "Yoshimitsu the Second," the successor to the Yoshimitsu in the preceding four games), the leader of the Manji clan is whomever has ownership of a particular sword, also named Yoshimitsu, which is earned by defeating the previous Yoshimitsu in a Duel to the Death and assuming their name, allowing the cursed katana to accept them as their rightful wielder. The new Yoshimitsu then adopts the mannerisms, fighting style, and identity of their predecessor, thus continuing on the folk legend of Yoshimitsu. Beyond this, Yoshimitsu's design almost always changes between games (Tekken Tag Tournament is the only exception to date, reusing his Tekken 3 attire), and quite drastically. Even in his Soulcalibur appearances, where he conforms to a samurai-influenced aesthetic, does Yoshimitsu look wildly different between games.
- In Yakuza, Goro Majima is an Ax-Crazy Psycho Knife Nut who has an unhealthy obsession with Kazuma Kiryu, and is at most a minor supporting character. Later games in the Like a Dragon series, especially Yakuza 4 and the prequel Yakuza 0, give some depth to Majima, showing his softer side and goofball sense of humour, and revealing that his reputation as the "Mad Dog of Shimano" is a persona he plays up to cope with personal trauma. Yakuza Kiwami, a remake of the first game, introduces a chain of Side Quests called "Majima Everywhere", which turns Majima into a Recurring Boss who the player will need to fight to unlock most of Kiryu's secret moves and special upgrades. Majima's personality in these sidequests is much closer to how he is portrayed in later games, but the main storyline of Kiwami is almost identical to the first gamenote while some alterations were made to the story, none of Majima's scenes were changed or cut, leading to some jarring whiplash between the old and new versions of the character.
Visual Novels
- The fourth case of Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth is a flashback to when Edgeworth was a disciple of Manfred Von Karma, with an earlier flashback case in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations showing he was mostly a ruthless Persecuting Prosecutor back then. The Investigations flashback instead has him act much like his Jerk with a Heart of Gold post-development self, even expressing reservations with Von Karma's methods at times.
Web Animation
- Zig-zagged in Red vs. Blue. Caboose is implied to have gotten to his current stupidity after he got possessed by an evil AI at the end of Season 1. Yet two episodes with flashbacks before that (in Seasons 3 and 14) he's already depicted with his Simpleton Voice and mannerisms. The flashbacks also have Sarge speaking in his Southern drawl instead of the R. Lee Ermey-esque ruff talk from Season 1. On the other hand, the Origins Episode in Season 14 displays an inconsistent dynamic from the first episode, where Sarge seemingly likes Grif better than Simmons (when later Sarge would display a borderline homicidal hatred for Grif, while respecting Simmons for being a sycophantic Number Two).
Webcomics
- This happens in MS Paint Masterpieces, where Ferretvision and current strips contradict each other. In this case, though, it's a conscious retcon.
- In El Goonish Shive, a ''very'' early comic👁 Image
featuring Grace was edited many years later to change her expression to something more innocent, matching how her character developed over time.
Western Animation
- Adventure Time: Marceline the Vampire Queen is introduced in "Evicted" as a villainess who kicks Finn and Jake out of their house twice and later downright attempts to kill Jake by sucking the blood out of his body. Eventually, Marceline mellows out over her next appearances and develops a genuine friendship with Finn and Jake. However, in later pre-series flashbacks, Marceline is portrated as unambiguously heroic. That said, she has a line in her first appearance that suggests she only became a villain because "I'm a thousand years old, and I just lost track of my moral code", which does leave room for her having been good in the past.
- Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: Throughout the Story Arc of the Chaos Emeralds, Sonic is shown using different Time Machines including shoes, a boogie board and a skateboard, but in the final episode of the arc, "Prehistoric Sonic", Sonic enlists help from his past selves to stop Robotnik, yet they all use the time traveling skateboard even though in the two previous episodes, the other Sonic's used different devices to travel through time.
- When Mr. Freeze was cloned in Batman Beyond, he was depicted as still being bald despite having hair when we see a pre-Freeze Victor Fries in Batman: The Animated Series — though considering the clone later redeveloped Freeze's inability to tolerate warm temperatures, maybe it was a sign of Clone Degeneration.
- Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders, a tie-in movie to the '60s Batman show, has a mention of Alfred as having worked for the Waynes since Bruce was a child. However, this was an idea introduced post-Crisis on Infinite Earths with Batman: Year One, which was around 20 years after the show ended. Pre-Crisis, Alfred only joined Bruce's employ after Dick Grayson became Robin.
- Miraculous Ladybug:
- In early seasons, Chloé Bourgeois was depicted as being snobbish, rude and stuck-up, but her time as the superheroine Queen Bee proved that she possessed a genuine desire to do good. But after her Face–Heel Turn in Season 3, she becomes far more cruel and self-centered, to the point of being an outright villain. This villainous behavior carries over into a pre-series flashback in "Derision", where she takes joy in tormenting Marinette with ridiculously cruel pranks that ultimately shape her into the worrisome person she is in the present day.
- This also happens to Gabriel Agreste. Early on, his motives for stealing the Miraculouses for their wish-granting power were quite sympathetic, rooted in a desire to revive his deceased wife. But as Motive Decay starts to set in, Gabriel's goals become far more self-centered, focused more on claiming the power of the Miraculouses than bringing Emilie back. The audience is led to believe that he was always more obsessed with the Miraculouses than reviving Emile by her own Video Wills; in which she claims to have come to terms with her condition, and begs Nathalie not to let Gabriel become consumed by his quest to claim the Miraculous. The fact that Gabriel tried to have the last requests of his beloved wife destroyed because they contradicted his goals certainly supports this.
- My Little Pony (G3): The Clip Show "Rainbow Dash's Special Day" was the first entry made after Rainbow Dash changed to a new Era-Specific Personality, so the flashbacks, already being redubbed due to a new voice actor, had some lines rewritten to match the change in characterisation.
Original Rainbow Dash voice: Rainbows, darling, rainbows.
Redubbed Rainbow Dash voice: Rainbows are so dashing. - Ninjago: In a few of the Tales from the Monastery of Spinjitzu shorts, flashbacks to new Season 1 and 2 era adventures show the ninja in their current forms. Lampshaded and justified in "Elemental Rider" where the memory is shown via "enhanced visual augmentation" (see the quote below). It's also explained👁 Image
by one of the creators that "the stories are memories, fantasies, dreams, visual augmentations which means they are saturated by the ninja's current state of mind and self image."Kai: Hey, we didn't look like that back then.
Zane: I told you, it was an enhanced visual augmentation.
Kai: Whatever. - The Simpsons:
- Originally, Patty was meant to be a willingly celibate woman who Does Not Like Men, but still bore a crush on Richard Dean Anderson. Then the writers began sticking in jokes suggesting that she was attracted to women and bore no interest in men (apart from Anderson), but this wasn't common knowledge. Then in "There's Something About Marrying'", Patty not only comes out of the closet, but we see a succession of flashbacks that show that Patty has always been attracted to women, is exclusively attracted to women, has known it her whole life, and only Marge was unaware of it despite the fact that, as Patty puts it ,"You could see it from space".
- "The Seemingly Never-Ending Story" flashes back to the summer before the "year" in which the show takes place. Nelson is already Bart's Bully Turned Buddy, although their Defeat Means Friendship moment in Season 1's "Bart the General" hasn't happened yet.
- Homer initially worked on the floor of the Nuclear Power Plant, but got promoted to Safety Inspector early in the series. However, flashbacks to him at work in the past already show him working at his safety console.
- The SpongeBob SquarePants special "SpongeBob and Patrick's Timeline Twist Up" has the characters travel through time, and live out the events of season 1. Despite this, the past versions of SpongeBob and Patrick immediately recognize the Star family even though they were introduced in the later seasons of the main show as well as The Patrick Star Show.
- The Star Wars: The Clone Wars revival in 2019 was slightly rewritten to reflect changes made in canon since its cancellation in 2013/2014, such as adding references to Star Wars Rebels (the inclusion of Ursa, cameos from Depa Billaba and Caleb/Kanan), Solo (cameo from Dryden Vos), and The Mandalorian (Maul commenting that Mandalorians aren't meant to live in the sewers).
- Garnet from Steven Universe is introduced as completely stoic and emotionally closed off, but becomes more friendly, snarky and open with her emotions as the show goes on. Later on, flashbacks from before Steven was born continue portraying her as friendly and laid back. Many fans took this to imply that she was hardened after the death of Rose Quartz. But then the episode "Three Gems and a Baby" (which takes place shortly after Rose's death) was released and Garnet is once again warm and maternal, seemingly retconning her original cold persona into a case of Characterization Marches On.
- Much like Batman in Justice League vs. the Fatal Five, the 2003 version of Robin is seen using a similar The Dark Knight Trilogy and Arkham-inspired glider cape in Teen Titans Go! vs. Teen Titans.
- While still set in the same universe (and the same time) as the original X-Men: The Animated Series, Sequel Series X-Men '97 does see elements introduced in the comics since the original show's end:
- The Hellfire Gala from X-Men: The Krakoan Age was mentioned on the cover of the Daily Bugle in the first episode.
- The idea that Magneto's helmet protected him from telepathy from the X-Men Film Series — and something that definitely was not in play during the original series, given the X-Men's second battle with Magneto ended with Xavier using his telepathy on Magneto — while the helmet was still on.
- Characters such as Glob Herman, Pixie, Darwin, Sammie the Squid-Boy, Nature Girl, and Vulcan makes cameos.
- Additionally, combined with Canon Character All Along, the nameless waitress from the original series's "One Man's Worth, Part 1", aired in 1995, was retconned in "Tolerance in Extinction, Part 1" to be Bastion's mother, Rose Gilberti, introduced in the comics in 1997's Operation: Zero Tolerance.
- "Tolerance in Extinction, Part 3" sees the the double whammy of the Dora Milaje, which wouldn't be introduced until Christopher Priest's run of Black Panther, and Bishop introducing himself to young Forge as "Lucas Bishop", as the 2000s would reveal his first name is "Lucas" and that "Bishop" was actually his and Shard's surname.