Another comic book retcon. When Alan Moore took over *Swamp Thing * in issue #21 he changed the creature from a man who’d been transformed into a monster, by the usual chemical accident combined with swamp water, to a plant that mistakenly believed he was a man. it was a brilliant revision and Moore took the creature in many different directions than were not possible with the original conception.
The picture on that page still doesn’t capture his original appwearance. I haven’t been able to find any examples on-line, but it’s published in Mort walker’s book Backstage at the Strips. You wouldn’t believe Hi’s appearance. as i say – he looks like Mark Trail or something – stylistically different from Loi and the kids, as if he married outside his species.
I know we’ve moved on to comic book characters in particular but I have an example of a character change within a single book.
Jane the computer in Speaker for the Dead started out as your run of the mill computer helper. You ask a question, it answers that question. About a third of the way through the book Jane is an all powerful AI who not only responds to requests but can do things of her own initiative to solve a given task. She’s the core link between all computer networks everywhere.
Orson Scott Card decided that her character worked best as the latter and so he wrote her with that in mind. For whatever reason, he did not go back to the begining of the book to change her early scenes to keep up what he now considered to be Jane’s true self. He’ll freely point out this discrepency, however.
No truly evil character is permitted to exist indefinitely. The choices are:
- dies, or otherwise gets their just desserts.
- is made ineffectual
- is turned into a clownish parody of a real villian
- is reformed or otherwise shown to be not completely evil
This accounts for odles of revisionism. The only exception to the above rules that I can think of is the Joker. For a while he was turned into a clownish parody, before they returned him to his roots as an inhumanly psychotic killer. And even then DC feels compelled to remind us occasionally that he is really truly too insane to be held responsible for his actions.
How about Lou Grant, started off in a sitcom where he even told jokes, and ended up as a gruff character in a drama?
Or Darren on Bewitched? He didn’t look look quite the same after awhile. But that’s probably not what you mean…
I’m convinced that Chuckie, from Rugrats, was originally supposed to be a brainy kid. They gave him that “baby Einstein” hairstyle, and he always wears that Saturn shirt (even on All Grown Up), and in the pilot episode he.s the one who figures out how to run the Blimp and control it.
That’s kind of an overdone caricature, and, if that was what they had in mind, 'm glad they changed it. Chuckiie’s a more interesting and complex character (and more believable) as he is.
Actually, it is what I am looking for. I even specified films in my new OP, such as how Bela Lugosi died in mid filming of Plan 9 from outer space, and his part was plaid by someone who looked nothinh like him.
Herman Munster went from pale green Fred Gwynne to dayglo green John Schuck. Herman Munster should not look like The Hulk!
Rosanne’s daughter was played by 2 different actresses. I wasn’t a fan of the show but I know they replaced the original actress with a new one and then brought her back. Becky Mitchell was the original. I could google the other but I’m not really all that interested in who she was.
The civilian woman commanding the Stargate project changed from one year to the next I should state rather that the actress playing her changed even though the name didn’t. Again, not particularly interested in looking up the names.
The actress playing Lois Lane on the original Superman series changed. One was Noel Neill. The other did fewer shows and I forget her name.
I know there are other cases of this happening with TV shows but none come immediately to mind.
Another Seinfeld change was George Costanza. Went from being a humerous neurotic to a self-absorbed, paranoid nutjob.
Deb, on Everybody Loves Raymond started off as sort of the straight-man but, as the series went on, she became as scheming and manipulative as Marie. That’s why I can’t stand the later seasons but like the first couple of seasons.
What about the Klingons?
In only 75 (Star Trek) years they went from smarmy bad guys with dark skin but clearly human features to Spartan warriors with lobsters stuck to their faces. TOS Klingons lacked any sense of “honor” that Worf and his ilk were always prattling about. In fact, it was the Romulans who were originally presented as an enemy with honor.
Won’t somebody think of the Klingons?
The “pretty” daughter Marilyn on the Munsters was played by two different women on TV, and by a third for the movie Munsters, go Home
Cornelius in the sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes wasn’t played by Roddy MacDowell, although he ame back after that
Inspector Clouseau was played by Alan Arkin in the movie Inspector Clouseau, not by Peter Sellers
George McFly was played by someone other than Crispin Glover after the first film
Tina Louise didn’t play Ginger on abny of the Gilligan’s Island TV movies after the series ended.
That whatcher lookin’ for?
And Baldric, in the first series, was smarter than Blackadder. They swapped the trope “smart servant who looks after idiot master” for the trope “idiot servant who provides comic relief”.
Yup, that and the original OP, as well. Thanks.
However, I need to say:
We have not moved on at to anything. Just to be clear, I welcome ANY posts from any medium, with in the loose guidelines of the OP, just to be clear. Books, movies, tv shows, it’s all good.
Not as much an issue of character development as the evolution of an artstyle, but Kenshin (of Rurouni Kenshin fame) went from extremely girly to heroic to a kind of funky amalgam.
IIRC the OVA design was done by a totally different team, but I think they did have Watsuki as a consultant, at least. (I, personally, don’t like it much.)
(On the other hand, Akira Toriyama has managed to keep Goku more or less the same, exept some obvious aging, after 42 volumes.)
John Rambo (created by a novelist horrified at the Vietnam War) was originally a totally unsympathetic psychopath (not unlike Hannibal Lector). Script doctors made him into a Misunderstood Victim of the Military Industrial Complex, and movie execs subsequently turned him into a buff Reaganite recruiting poster. The original author sold the script for a pittance, but really owes his agent, who insisted on retaining rights to product licensing. The author expressed bewilderment at anyone buying an action figure of this nutcase, but the agent exhorted him to bear with it: “Hey, you never know – they could turn this into a musical if they want to.”
(All this from memory – correct if necessary).
Rocky Balboa started out as a mediocre boxer who honored himself with a respectable one-time performance against the champ, but morphed into basically a superhero by his 4th incarnation.
I don’t think that’s quite true. In every serious film adaptation as well as the original novel, the name Frankenstein is always applied only to the Doctor, and never the monster. That misappellation was no doubt due to confusion among children seeing the films. Interestingly however, the original Frankenstein was a French-speaking Swiss who was frequently addressed as M.(onsieur) Frankenstein. He didn’t become a German nobleman until the advent of the films.
Also on Seinfeld, Kramer at first seemed like a hopeless slob and loser, not unlike his Fridays character of the lonely apartment dweller who would invite his neighbors in to see his “plays”. Later, he still seemed odd, but also seemed to have developed a degree of sanssouciance and self-contentment that you couldn’t but admire.
Since he revised the characters in every book deliberately…