I came in to say The Golden Girls which I see is already mentioned - I’m halfway through the DVDs at the moment and the continuity is all over the place, it’s really obvious watching them all in a row. Everything from the number of children they all have to how Blanche and Rose’s husbands died to the ages of the children (Dorothy & Stan were married for 38 years and they constantly mention that Dorothy was pregnant at the wedding - so why is their oldest child in his twenties?).
George’s brother in Seinfeld has been mentioned but Jerry also has a phantom sister who gets a shout-out in The Chinese Restaurant, never to be spoken of again.
Speaking of Law & Order character switches, Diane Neal played a rapist on Law & Order: SVU before she came back as regular DA Casey Novak.
He was a musician, and it was explained that he was using Cochran as his stage name.
All My Children sent Bobby Martin up to the attic to polish his skies and he was never heard from again. However, years later, the attic was shown, complete with skeleton.
On Spin City they got rid of Michael J. Fox’s girlfriend, rumor has it that he did not like to kiss on camera. Then they went back and edited her out of former episodes.
Greatest American Hero’s lead character was originally Hinkley but was changed after Hinckley shot Reagan. Then later it was changed back, according to IMDb, but I must’ve quit watching by then.
I remember one episode where Klinger self-identified as Italian (in response to Winchester’s bigoted fear that his sister was about to marry one), but in other episodes he described himself as Lebanese.
I don’t think it was blatantly explained, but more fanwanked after the fact.
I don’t think they did it to the syndicated eps, but ABC did do it for episodes they reran later that season after she left. I remember TV Guide mentioning it (maybe even Jeering it)
On Roseanne he wasn’t a different character, though. He went from being Mark’s little brother Kevin to Mark’s little brother David.
What about the episode where they Bundys got turned into some other species (was it dogs? I don’t remember) at the end of the show, and then for the next episode they were people again, with no explanation given about how they changed back? What’s up with that?
There’s also an episode before he goes into hiding in which Rose meets his daughter when she visits him. Apparently he’s the one person in Witness Protection whose family still comes around.
One of the Golden Girl’s worst faults was they apparently never sat down and figured out “How many children does each one of these women have, how old are they, and how many grandchildren?” because they’re always bringing on kids they’ve never mentioned before and who are odd ages.
Example: Dorothy got pregnant when she was a teenager and had a shotgun wedding; this was referred to many times. This means that if she was 55 when the show started (a conservative estimate) then her oldest child would be in his or her late 30s, but the only child you ever see is a 20-something slacker son and he’s played by two different actors. Apparently she and Stan are completely estranged from the oldest child, and later from the son as well since he doesn’t even show up for her wedding. Likewise Sophia’s second husband, played by Jack Gilford, is never referred to again, and they’re inconsistent on exactly when everybody moved to Miami.
At the same time Blanche is young enough to worry that she’s pregnant- and she really is worried, it’s not just Blanche being a drama queen. It turns out to be menopause. In an earlier episode than this, Blanche’s ill-behaved teenaged grandson had been a character. Unless Blanche became a grandmother when she was about 35- possible but not at all likely since she said she met her husband in college- there’s no way this is feasible.
Rose mentioned her children- plural- several times, yet when she’s estate planning she apparently disinherited all but one, because only one daughter came to discuss the inheritance.
On Alice the character of Flo was from Alabama (home state of the actress who played her, Polly Holliday), and she even mentioned in one episode walking to the Talladega 500 race track from the house where she grew up. When she had her own spinoff it centered on her returning to Texas to the house she was born and grew up in.
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There was an episode of The Jeffersons in which George recalled his childhood picking cotton in Alabama, which must have really pissed him off since he was born and grew up in Harlem (apparently his parents just sent him there as punishment). His brother Henry who was a character on All in the Family is never mentioned again on The Jeffersons, though Gary Coleman did play his nephew who comes from somewhere for one episode. In some episodes he was married to Louise during WW2 and other times he met her afterwards.
One of the weirdest errors they had was when Sammy Davis Jr. took the apartment across the hall from them. Louise freaks out and tells him she can’t believe it’s him, she’s his biggest fan, she’s always wanted to meet him, etc., evidently having forgotten she met him when he visited Archie Bunker (a meeting he’d have remembered because when he made his second visit to Archie’s he very definitely recalled his first visit [though he’d forgotten Archie’s name]).
On all in the family it was mentioned by Mike that Archie’s parents, David and Sarah, David, had visited the year before. (This was the episode in which Lionel pretended to mistakenly think Archie was Jewish and his parents’ old testament names were one piece of ‘evidence’.) Later his parents were referred to as dead, and when Archie was taking a life expectancy poll he mentioned his father died in his early 50s, which would make it unlikely he’d visit 49 or so year old Archie.
One of the few sweet and pure things about Fred Sanford was that he had truly loved his late wife Elizabeth and had been true to her and was furious when he thought she’d been unfaithful to him (the episode when an old friend claims to be Lamont’s real father). In another episode however Fred’s former girlfriend (played by Ja’net Dubois from Good Times) shows up with a daughter who is approximately the same age as Lamont that she convinces Fred is his daughter, and since Elizabeth didn’t die in childbirth but lived long enough that Lamont remembered her very well this would mean Fred would have to have been unfaithful to her even to consider it possible he was the father of the ex-girlfriend’s daughter.
Dallas changed the house in which the Ewings lived. One was a monster of a place with ugly dear antler chandeliers and rooms you could land a plane in and with the grown sons living in guest houses that were actually important to the plot in a couple of episodes. The next was a still stately but much more ‘homey’ place. It was very clear the first was an actual rented ‘over the top’ mansion while the other was mostly a sound stage with some exterior shots cut in. They constantly changed the back story on how the Ewings and the Barnes families were connected (they were always consistent on Jock Ewing and Digger Barnes having been partners but details varied on when and why they broke apart).
They also committed incest due to changing the backstory: in an early episode Ray Krebs is shagging the Ewings teenaged granddaughter Lucy, and it’s mentioned that Ray grew up with the Ewing boys after his parents who worked for Jock died. In a later season it’s revealed that Ray’s father isn’t dead but a ne’er do well grifter who was really his stepfather- his biological father is actually Jock Ewing, which means he was shagging his half-niece.
There were all kinds of continuity errors when Patrick Duffy rose from the dead: some of the previous seasons plots were continued, some were scrapped completely, and it was never explained how Pam had dreamed cliffhangers for characters she didn’t even know. The continuity extended over to KNOTS LANDING on which Bobby’s brother Gary and on-again/off-again sister in law Val (Lucy’s parents) attended Bobby’s funeral and had a bequest from him that became a plot point, which wasn’t redone when it turned out the last year hadn’t happened. (I love what Patrick Duffy said at the time when asked didn’t he find this unbelievable: “No, I found it unrealistic. My new contract was unbelievable.”)
Daytime soap operas don’t even try for continuities. Frances Reid and McDonald Carey played the matriarch and patriarch on Days of Our Lives, both of whom lived to be great-great-great-great-grandparents.
Thanks. Though it clarifies that Klinger was not identifying as an Italian, he does imply that he’s never been married, which contradicts other episodes in which he refers to (and divorces from) his wife Laverne.
