I always thought that the Tony Blundetto character felt a bit retconnish on “The Sopranos.” They bring him onto the show explaining that he’s Tony’s cousin and very close, almost like a brother to him, despite the fact that Tony’s never mentioned him. (He’s been in jail for many years and only gets out in season five.) Obviously, the writers can’t plan for every single character and sometimes they do have to introduce new ones (the old ones keep on dying), but this one just felt off to me. Like we’re supposed to suddenly embrace this guy as being so important to Tony when we’ve basically just met him.
[QUOTE=Lemur866]
It’s not a retcon. An example of a retcon is when someone’s long lost best friend shows up out of nowhere. He’s never been mentioned before in the whole series, but now he’s the best friend and always has been the best friend, and continues to be the best friend in future episodes.
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[QUOTE=Swallowed My Cellphone]
They did that with the series “V” (the one with the izard aliens disguised as humans, not the Vendetta stuff). There was “Martin” played by Frank Ashmore. He was a sympathetic alien, part of the 5th Column, helping to free the humans.
He got killed off. Fans were pissed. So suddenly there was “Phillip” (also played by Frank Ashmore) who was Martin’s brother from the alien homeworld. And apparenlty the aliens decided would look good if they set up his human suit to look exactly like Martin’s human suit so that he looked exactly like Martin (ehy, maybe his lizard self was so much of a twin). And like Martin, he was a bit of a softie and like the humans after all so he was really a good guy.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, didn’t they also do this with the Sub-Zero character in Mortal Kombat? Fans liked him, so they wanted to make him good, so they kill the original Sub-Zero and his noble brother who has the same powers and can wear his costume shows up to take his place.
Way I remember it, he was initially a villain who thought Donovan killed his brother and was out for revenge. Took a few episodes to come around. And I also thought that the storyline was planned from the beginning, not a reaction to fans’ anger.
Reset Button.
“All that stuff? It was just a dream/simulation/fantasy-sequence/story-written-by-a-character/alternate-universe.”
Retcon.
“Here’s some explanatory stuff that reconciles the stuff we told you earlier with the new stuff.”
You can, however, utilize the reset button as a form of retcon:
“New stuff contradicts old stuff? That old stuff never ‘really’ happened at all! It was really just a dream/etc.”
[QUOTE=garygnu]
Reset Button.
“All that stuff? It was just a dream/simulation/fantasy-sequence/story-written-by-a-character/alternate-universe.”
Retcon.
“Here’s some explanatory stuff that reconciles the stuff we told you earlier with the new stuff.”
You can, however, utilize the reset button as a form of retcon:
“New stuff contradicts old stuff? That old stuff never ‘really’ happened at all! It was really just a dream/etc.”
[/QUOTE]
So that season of “Roseanne” where it turns out it was all a story Roseanne was writing is an example of a reset/retcon?
[QUOTE=Freudian Slit]
So that season of “Roseanne” where it turns out it was all a story Roseanne was writing is an example of a reset/retcon?
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Could be. It could also be called “Trying to write yourself out of a corner.” (I could be wrong, but when they showed the desk where Roseanne was writing wasn’t it literally in a corner of her basement?)
I would have argued that Picard’s being de-borgified was a rather weak version of a reset button, if at all; after all, hero gets kidnapped, hero gets rescued. Besides, they did spend the time discussing his getting over the trauma, and it did come back from time to time (“I, Borg,” for example).
I’m also not entirely sure that the time-travel episodes were reset buttons – after all, the whole point of the story is how to fix what went wrong.
To me, a reset button episode is one in which they could have dealt with the consequences, but it would have made for some inconvenience in story telling, so they say the hell with it and pull a rabbit out of their hat. Or they forget about it entirely (e.g. we have just acquired or witnessed some amazing technology/technique, which will be used one time and never spoken of again, despite how useful it might be).
[QUOTE=Lobsang]
I just read this dilbert comic. There has been a series of about 5 comics before this involving ‘Asok’ being used to test a moon rocket, dying in the process, being cloned into a snickers/asok hybrid. And this final cartoon, in a very lame but amusing way restores things by.. well … just click the link.
[/QUOTE]
Way back in the early years Mother Nature got angry at Dilbert and had a deer shoot him in the back and kill him. Unfortunately for Dogbert all that Dilbert left was a small device that contained a recipe for chili and to top it off the recipe sucked. Dogbert threw away the device and the genius trashman after examining the device realized that the device was really a cloner but it had an bug in it that caused to give a recipe for bad chili. So they put the cloner on a can of Dilbert’s garbage (the trashman is really smart) and then cloned Dilbert from his own garbage.
Scott Adams has said some story lines get way out of hand and eventually he wont know how to proceed so he’ll just end them. His example was some strips where Dogbert invented some evil giant walking cucumbers. Then he got stuck so he killed them all.
[QUOTE=Annie-Xmas]
No, Luke didn’t really rape Laura, since they are now a super couple.
[/QUOTE]
From what I understand (didn’t watch the show), the rape was not retconned out of existence. Luke was remorseful for a long time afterwards, and went to a lot of trouble to make amends. Laura forgave him because he earned her forgiveness, and they moved on. Not the same as having it not-happen.
[QUOTE=RealityChuck]
On the weak example there’s always the “It was all a dream” ending, most notably in The Wizard of Oz (though you don’t often think of it there).
[/QUOTE]
I’m not sure you can use TWOO as an example of this, since it is sort of implied its all a dream from the beginning…right?
The Family Guy did this recently as well, with the whole stupid “Stewie kills Lois” storyline…
[QUOTE=Ro Carter]
Man, I miss ReBoot. Awesome show. I’d forgotten about the incident you mentioned until just now.
[/QUOTE]
Youtube has all the episodes of ReBoot if you wanted to relive the magic.
Man, I don’t know who ShinyHappyGoth is but I love him/her.
Myabe it’s just cause I’m a database administrator who(has a lot of computer guys for friends), but I’ve always call this phenomenona “rollback” and everybody understands.
