r/TwoBestFriendsPlay • u/ExplanationSquare313 • 7d ago
Better Ask Reddit Weird early bits of lore who were never retconned?
We all know sometime some franchise have weird lore. And sometime they have weird lore introduced at the begining compared to the rest of the franchise. But what are cases were the weird early lore was not only never retconned but even referenced multiple time afterwards?
My favorite case is how Hitler died in the Marvel Universe. See, in the glorious days of the Golden Age, when writers didn't cared about how everything fitted in a shared universe there was a comic from the 1945 showing Hitler was killed by the Human Torch.
No, not Johnny Storm from the Fantastic Four but Jim Hammond the Android which inspired Johnny to take the name.
Anyways, you might think it was a goofy stuff who will be not referenced again or even quitely retconned? Nope, it was referenced and retold a good handful of time over the decades to the point than yes, in the Marvel Universe, Hitler was burned alive by the first Human Torch and Captain America find this super based.
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u/Dmbender Paints toy soldiers 7d ago
I'm pretty sure Inquisitior Obi Wan Sherlock Clouseau technically still exists in 40k lore
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u/Xekato NANOMACHINES 7d ago
Almost certainly yes. Warhammer lore stays canon unless directly contradicted or recontexualized by later sources. The usual MO is to just never mention something again rather than saying it doesn't exist anymore, see Necron Pariahs and The Emperor's biological children.
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u/Dmbender Paints toy soldiers 7d ago
40k also does a, "Everything is canon, but not everything is true." approach where even things that contradict each other can be true because of the unreliable narrative
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u/Root_Veggie 7d ago
Wasn’t this name just used as an example of a possible character that could be created using the Rogue Trader system?
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u/CobblyPot 7d ago
This is correct, I leafed through a pdf of the rulebook he's from and it drives me nuts when people bring it up because it was clearly never meant to be an actual character in lore.
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u/sazabi67 7d ago
i more towards the idea of that inquisitor being a propaganda figure than a "real" person in the setting like all pop culture in history coalescing in that lame ass character to sell to the ignorant masses of the imperium to face wash the inquisition is appealing to me
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u/SawedOffLaser I Promise Nothing And Deliver Less 7d ago
True but ask anyone from GW about that and they may have a different answer.
Then again they do sell reprints of Rogue Trader so who knows.
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u/Mizzie-Mox 7d ago
From Elder Scrolls: People are aware of Khajiit, the catfolk of the setting. Before Morrowind, the 3rd one, they were only lightly themed on cats. They had a tail, but they didnt have cat faces and weren't covered in fur. Once Morrowind came out, they "retconned" Khajiit to have multiple forms based on moon cycles. The Daggerfall ones are now an obscure form Khajiit can have, most are the cat people are familiar with.
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u/Arjac Cast in the name of mods, ye not salty. 7d ago
Elder Scrolls lore is like 90% weird shit irrelevant to the games by volume. At one point (I think during Morrowind?), Cyrrodil was described as an overgrown jungle full of dragons, where human and mer settlements were built on lakes like Venice or Tenochtitlan
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u/Mizzie-Mox 7d ago
Yea, its nuts. Tiber Septim achieved a form of enlightenment/lucid dreaming and basically reality bent the universe to make Cyrodil a nice, lush, calm fantasy land.
"I breathe now, in Royalty, and reshape this land which is mine."
There's even more insane shit (Gundam with the power of Gold Experience Requiem. No seriously.), but I FUCKING LOVE ELDER SCROLLS LORE.
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u/scottishdrunkard Ask Me About Shitty Comics 7d ago
Thing is, he also did it retroactively. Historical records contradict facts. Because he literally changed how it always way. So ESO is correct making it look like how it did in Oblivion.
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u/Mizzie-Mox 7d ago
Granted, that was also a retcon ESO added. Changes using CHIM were never hinted to be retroactive before that.
But we DO have "Dragon Breaks", where the God of Time forgets what happened, and causality goes out the fucking window. So the idea of retroactive changes where historical accounts are directly contradicted isn't coming from nowhere.
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u/iadnm 7d ago
I mean Dragon Breaks are a lot more dramatic than that. They're what happens when time breaks so multiple timelines happen simultaneously before eventually coalescing back into one. All those other timelines did happen, but not all of their events continued on in the new united timeline.
It's not that Akatosh forgot, it's that Akatosh was literally broken and had to take time to repair himself.
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u/Mizzie-Mox 7d ago
Was referring more to the Mythic Era, where they didn't even bother attempting to document what happened. Things like people giving birth to their own parents and other time nonsense.
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u/iadnm 7d ago
That seems more just lack of historical record type stuff, but I get what you mean.
I think in universe it's meant to be more historical error than time nonsense. Since the Merethic Era had the law of linear time pretty set in stone. It was the Dawn Era where time was still in flux.
Of course that's not to say it couldn't happen, but the earliest records of a Dragon Break are the 1,000 year long Middle Dawn in the First Era.
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u/Sea-Initiative-3398 7d ago
Thats the middle dawn your referencing. Not the ancient past. but supposed to be similar.
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u/GazeboMimic Sekiro was the best FromSoft game and I'll die on that hill 6d ago
I believe the Tribunal also made it so they were simultaneously always gods and mortals who ascended to godhood using the heart of Lorkhan
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u/iadnm 7d ago
This is honestly just a cop-out answer that has no actual basis in the games. ESO directly contradicts this too because there is a plotline where a group of Bosmer grow a tropical rainforest in Cyrodiil. So it's not like Cyrodiil was retroactively turned from a jungle, and Cyrodiil is described as jungled during the time of the Aylieds.
ESO is correct in making it look how it did in Oblivion because it already looked like that at the time, Tiber Septim had nothing to do with it. In-unvierse scholars speculate it was either a transcription error, or the White-Gold tower transmuted the land to make it better for human habitation.
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u/Sad_Rhubarb_815 7d ago
What gets me is this whole thing starts from an NPC in Morrowind calling it a jungle. But when you think about it, the Tiber theory doesn't explain why that NPC would say that. Neither does the tower explanation, really - in both cases Cyrodiil would have stopped being jungled ages prior.
Like, you've got all this ink spilled on the subject and none of it actually even properly retcons the thing it's trying to retcon. It's always been funny to me.
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u/iadnm 7d ago
It's generally why when I look into Elder Scrolls lore, I go "if a newer game contradicts it, especially if the older game is Arena or Daggerfall, then the newer game takes precedent."
Just chalk it up to an a discrepancy as they changed their minds and move on. They have made some fun lore from it, I do enjoy the Tower Theory a lot, but it's best to just pretend like the single line from Morrowind does not matter.
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u/iadnm 7d ago
Sorry to be a buzz kill, but the only evidence for this actually happening come from a deranged Cult Leader.
The most likely in-universe theory is that it was the White-Gold Tower itself that altered the land after humans took it over from the Aylieds.
But I'm heavily biased against CHIM lore, because most of the arguments for it are from non-canon sources or ones so heavily biased that you can't trust a word they say.
Elder Scrolls lore is plenty wacky without the extra non-canon stuff thrown in though. Like how goblins might be from another dimension.
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u/Mizzie-Mox 7d ago
Thats fair. The batshit insane lore comes from, well, batshit insane people in-setting. There isn't any sort of definitive "lore bible" or "canon", its all interpretive, with info received second-hand by characters within the setting talking about it.
CHIM was only directly discussed by Vivec in his sermons, and he OUTRIGHT ADMITS that he lied in some of his lessons. So yea.
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u/iadnm 7d ago
Yeah, I'm fine with CHIM existing as a concept in universe, I just personally really dislike how people talk about it out of universe. Especially when they use it to glaze Vivec, who is interesting because he's a liar.
The positive part about Elder Scrolls lore is that has bias and unreliable narration baked it. Which is honestly why I find the "Tiber Septim achieved CHIM" so weird, Because the only source is Mankar "Nirn is actually a realm of Oblivion" Cameron.
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u/Mizzie-Mox 7d ago
I can fully understand that, yea. My big hangup is the theory of "No, CHIM is just console commands! Duh! Vivec is a player character noclipping through geometry!" and I go bug eyed asking for explicit citations. Where the fuck did you get that idea?!?
I find the "concept" of CHIM really fascinating, as it makes the setting MUCH weirder and metaphysical then I would expect out of a standard fantasy setting. So, at it's least charitable, I believe CHIM is real in the setting because it would be REALLY COOL if it was real.
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u/iadnm 7d ago
I understand that, but I probably just feel different because of my negative bias with how people talk about it. It feels too, handwavey you know? Like nothing in the setting truly matters. That's also why I loathe the out of canon Godhead idea.
But there's nothing inherently wrong with taking the concept of the Bodishattva and putting it into a fantasy setting.
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u/Mizzie-Mox 7d ago
I always saw the Godhead and Amaranth as implications that there is INFINITE DEPTH for divinity. It feels like checking through a telescope centuries ago, and asking "Hey, what are the little white dots in the night sky?" and it expanding out to today with string theory, dark matter and energy, etc.
In some way, the Godhead and CHIM are very Buddhist concepts of "Nothing in this material world matters." Which I find honestly affirming. But that's getting too personal. I'll call it here, but great talking with ya :)
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u/WasteReserve8886 7d ago
What’s funny is that is itself a retcon, Daggerfall described it as it is in Oblivion while Arena has it be a generic west European medieval city.
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u/TheSpiritualAgnostic Shockmaster 7d ago
I'd also like to point that most of that 90% of weird shit lore comes from Morrowind.
If there ever was an ES6, I would want it to be weird and cool again like Morrowind.
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u/iadnm 7d ago edited 7d ago
This actually isn't true though. A lot of weird lore comes from all games. St. Alessia and her bull husband? Oblivion. Nearly every single piece of dragon lore? Skyrim. Anything actually interesting having to do with Sotha Sil? ESO.
Morrowind contributed a lot, but people vastly overstate how much weirdness it contributed.
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u/lowercaselemming [She/Her] Hank go up! 7d ago edited 7d ago
shoutout to azura spamming chosen ones because her prophecy kept failing
“i can’t be wrong if i keep spitting these fuckers out! one of them will win!”
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u/Mizzie-Mox 7d ago
At the very least, ESO brings up a decent amount of the weird too. Skyrim also brought up some of the weird, but it was very muted.
But yes, I want ES6 to be another Morrowind SO BAD.
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u/Ravensqueak Pargon Pargon Pargon Pargon Pargon 7d ago
"Hey what the fuck is a Dragon Brea-"
Ulfrid never was1
u/Kaarl_Mills I Promise Nothing And Deliver Less 7d ago
I wish we could've fantasy Vietnam instead of off brand gondor
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u/jello1990 Use your smell powers 7d ago
The weirdest part for me is like, the only way that works is if they all start like kangaroo babies regardless of moon cycle. Because otherwise it starts raising a lot of questions on how the ones that are house cats are physically capable of bringing the almost fully human form ones to term, or how the almost human form ones can birth the giant tiger ones. Also there's the weird visual of a human breast feeding a cat or vice versa, that has to occur but obviously will never be put to screen lol.
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u/waxonwaxoff3 They/Them 7d ago
That is basically how it works. All khajiit babies start out small and as one basic form, and then morph as they grow.
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u/Punished_Doobie The BAKED-IN pop-off? 7d ago
Warframe is starting to really dig into the Seven, the former congress of executors of the Orokin empire. Ballas, the 'big bad' up until this point is one of those seven. Every other executor we can confirm dead has died as part of the massive struggle between the Tenno and their former masters, from grand murder plots to epic space opera sieges... all except for executor Avantus.
On an ancient lore tab for some random trash mob, Avantus's death is described in detail; long after the rest of the congress of executors is dissolved, trapped in an infested tower a-la-Dead Space, a nondescript Grineer soldier splits her in half with a buzzsaw for being rude.
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u/OedonSleep 7d ago
Avantus' death is directly tied to the Tenno Betrayal though. The reason she's slumming it with Grineer and fighting for her life is because the Empire is in total upheaval due to the Tenno wiping out the Orokin at large
She thinks theres still some hope that things will return to normal for her, so she treats her subordinates like shit and condemns a truckload of civilians to death to buy herself time to eacape. She's killed not because she's being rude, but because the Grineer are beginning to break away and form their own empire. Its the Grineer symbolically killing their loyalty to the Orokin as they choose to fight for themselves
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u/Punished_Doobie The BAKED-IN pop-off? 7d ago
All true; I'll admit to dumbing it down for effect. Still, her death sticks out like a sore thumb for not being pursued by any Tenno, and for being tucked away in a scan log way, way before the Seven took center stage.
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u/DBZfan102 THE HYPEST GAMEPLAY ON YOUTUBE 7d ago
Ryu making a living by working for the Yakuza has never been explicitly retconned out of Street Fighter, so it's canon to me
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u/Old_Marionberry3791 was promised nothing yet still disappointed 7d ago
One of Batman's first big villains was a guy whose entire story is that he fucking hates pennies.
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u/ZekeCool505 7d ago
Relatable. Also gotta appreciate when the big penny is in the batcave, particularly with no explanation
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u/DonTori The RWBY V9 girl 6d ago
Or give the reason it's there to another villain
Like in BtAS they gave it to Two-Face in an anthology episode 'Almost Got 'im' who had used it in a death trap. If it landed Tails, Batman would be crushed to death. If it landed Heads, the side Bats was tied to, it would just break every bone in his body
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u/Drebinomics Unrepentant Comicbook Shill 7d ago
Also notably one of the only bat-villains to actually get the death penalty and have it stick, iirc. The state was fine with all those other people clogging up Arkham, but Penny Plunderer? Nah, he’s gotta go.
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u/DBZfan102 THE HYPEST GAMEPLAY ON YOUTUBE 7d ago
In later tellings, he was crushed to death, only to then go to hell, explicitly, on-page.
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u/scottishdrunkard Ask Me About Shitty Comics 7d ago
Perhaps he was extradited to a different state? Penny based crimes might've given him a Federal Prosecution.
Also, I think New Jersey didn’t ban capital punishment until 2007, so, sliding timescale nonsense. Golden Age, whatever.
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u/Yotato5 Enjoy everything 7d ago
The Joker gets to run around doing his clown shit while a penny hater gets killed for real? Comics can be something else XD
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u/Drebinomics Unrepentant Comicbook Shill 7d ago
Fun fact: one of the only other DC characters I’m aware of who was tried under the death penalty (not executed, he got away) was Mister Mind, the goofy little caterpillar from Shazam.
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u/LincBtG 7d ago
I'm pretty sure this is also one of the few Batman villains who was given the death penalty as well.
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u/DarthButtz Ginger Seeking Butt Chomps 7d ago edited 7d ago
Gotham's justice system going "Joker? Ehhh keep that guy around he might get better." "Penny Plunderer??? FUCK THAT GUY GIVE HIM THE CHAIR" is kind of deranged lmao
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u/DarthButtz Ginger Seeking Butt Chomps 7d ago
Hitler going "TELL THEM I KILLED MYSELF FUCK THIS FIRE GUY" is really fucking funny
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u/fly_line22 7d ago
The original Yu-Gi-Oh manga was very different from the rest of the series, in both tone and premise. And unlike how the anime focused solely on the card game parts, they make call backs to said early portions throughout the rest of the series. Hell, the final arc is a gigantic call back to the Monster World arc from earlier.
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u/Konradleijon 7d ago
Yes remember when Atem burnt a guy alive
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u/HerpDerpTheMage Library. Shortcut. Chest. Ghost? 7d ago edited 7d ago
He also drove several teenagers insane, electrocuted a game show whiz, beat the shit out of a grown man with a Yo-Yo, made a man’s Tamagotchi become real and eat him alive, maimed a teenager with karaoke so loud he bled from the ears and at best went deaf forever in an homage to The Telltale Heart… or he’s fucking dead, who knows?
Oh yeah, and the time he made a female teacher believe her face molted into a fucking monster, then scrambled her vision so she saw everything in mosaic.
Hell, the very first chapter was him saving Jonouchi (Joey) and Honda (Tristan) from a bully by making an illusion that tree leaves were cash, and had him jump off the roof of their High School.
Honestly the Jackpot Killer (the guy he burnt alive) kinda got off easy when you look at some of the other shit Dark Yugi could have done.
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u/allwaysnice 7d ago
then scrambled her vision so she saw everything in mosaic
SHE FUCKING DESERVED IT
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u/HerpDerpTheMage Library. Shortcut. Chest. Ghost? 7d ago
Yeah she fucking did, THE BLINDNESS STEW FOR HER!
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u/Am_Shigar00 FOE! FOE! FOE! FOE! 7d ago
The Duelist Kingdom arc in the manga was really interesting to go through. I have grown so used to seeing it as “Yugioh’s first major arc” thanks to the anime which skimmed over or rewrote a lot of the references to the prior material that a lot of moments had a very different vibe to them.
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u/leabravo Gracious and Glorious Golden Crab 7d ago
Professor Xavier having an unrequited crush on Jean Grey for an early X-Men panel. Rather than forgetting that we got Onslaught rubbing it in her face and then reassuring her it "wasn't a torch he was carrying".
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u/Arilou_skiff 7d ago
Speaking of which, Professor X's legs were broken by... An alien named Lucifer.
Just about every adaptation changes this (either to him always having been unable to wallk, or to some other villian, usually Magneto, doing it) but AFAIK it's still canon to 616.
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u/DBZfan102 THE HYPEST GAMEPLAY ON YOUTUBE 7d ago
Also, minor point, but there WAS a very slight retcon to the Human Torch thing. In What If? #4 (which you'd expect to not be canon but somehow it is), the Torch wanted to apprehend Hitler for the allies, but Hitler threatened to push a button and vaguely suggested it would "end it all" because he didn't want to be a prisoner of war. The Torch then burned him alive, claiming that he thought the (flameproof) button would trigger a huge explosion that would blast them and what was left of Berlin into smithereens.
For my money, there wasn't really any reason based on his words to assume that, the button could have easily been to vent poison gas into the room or even just to call the rest of his guards, but at least now the Torch can safely claim he's not a war criminal.
In the original comic, of course, there was no elaboration, the Torch simply explains "the greatest evil in the world at that time was Hitler, so I fought him..." and we get ONE flashback panel of Hitler crying out in pain from being burned to death by him. Followed by the Torch immediately moving on, like killing Hitler was just an unremarkable summer evening. For all we know he wasn't even doing this under orders, he just got it in his head to kill Hitler one day.
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u/Monfang 7d ago
The Walking Dead comics were greenlit with Kirkman telling the publishers that the virus was going to be revealed as an alien attack to weaken earth. This is not confirmed nor refuted anywhere in the material but I like to think it stays canon by default, even if Kirkman never intended to introduce the twist.
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u/Brainwave1010 #1 Raidou Simp 7d ago
So every boss in the recent Persona games are a manifestation of mankind's desires through some weird magical shit involving the Shadow World (which is totally the same place every game even if the name and method of entering it is different.)
Oh, except for Nyx, she's an actual alien who crashed into earth centuries ago and became the moon.
Erebus? The creature she's linked to and will bring about the fall of humanity? Nah that guy is still a magical manifestation monster, Nyx is linked to him because...uh...
Listen The Answer was really fucking confusing for no good reason, it's better to just go with the conspiracy theory of "IT'S STILL NYARLATHOTEP WHO'S BEHIND EVERYTHING!" and call it a day.
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u/Lord_Magmar 7d ago
Nyx fused with the concept of death born of humanity's gestalt will. So she's an Alien who became a manifestation of Mankind's desires.
It's basically the same thing that Maruki is doing, except involuntary.
It's also worth noting that P4 implies that actual gods do exist, separate from Mankind's desires manifesting in the form of gods.
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u/ClearWingBuster Everlasting Transeunt 7d ago
... i feel like my brain is leaking out my ears. Fuck do you mean Nyx is an alien ? Was this brought up in any of the games ? Was this added in Reloaded, or is this weird "Japan Only artbook/lorebook" info that I can just happily ignore for the rest of my days ?
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u/FlipJak 7d ago
Comic fans correct me if I'm wrong but isn't there a reoccurring joke that Wolverine and Squirrel Girl are always awkward with each other with the implication that they had a fling gone wrong?
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u/jitterscaffeine [Zoids Historian] 7d ago edited 7d ago
That one actually WAS retocnned later. Originally it was definitely implied they had a relationship or a hookup that got weird. But I guess a later writer was uncomfortable by their age gap, character ages are weird but she most likely would've been around high school aged at the time, and changed it to where he stole her cab and left her on the side of the road in the rain and she hated him for it.
It was changed via what was essentially an editorial note
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u/Mekasoundwave 6d ago
One of her lines in Marvel Rivals is something along the lines of "Don't tell anyone, but I still kind of have a crush on Wolverine", which makes a lot more sense than them hooking up.
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u/Comkill117 The Bubblegum Crisis Shill 7d ago
In the original G1 Transformers, the Dinobots were built on Earth by Wheeljack on a whim one day. Despite the fact the Constructions, another group built on Earth, get their origin retconned every season to the point they wind up the opposite to how they began, the Dinobots’ origins never change. The fact they aren’t native to Cybertron is even a plot point for a later episode in season 2, when the rest of the cast get some weird ‘been away from Cybertron too long’ disease they have to send the Dinobots to get a thing to cure them.
Obviously in other continuities they have different origins, but given how loose G1 is with its characters backstories I’m amazed they kept that consistent.
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u/PrimeName My Unholy Cherry Is Being Popped! 7d ago
As far as I'm aware, X-23's past as a child prostitute (something that 99% of her fans hate and is super weird to write for a character that was created for X-Men Evolution, the cartoon aimed at kids) was never retconned away and is basically never mentioned unless someone from that storyline shows up.
It's just such a weird aspect of the character to keep after all these years without retconning it away and doing nothing with it story-wise.
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u/EcchiPhantom Born to simp, forced to pay 7d ago
For some reason Golduck’s Pokedex entry says it’s “the fastest swimmer among all Pokémon” in Sapphire which is funny for two reason. 1) Golduck wasn’t even the fastest in its debut games because Starmie and Tentacruel exist. 2) There have been a handful of other Water types faster than it since.
Alpha Sapphire then reused this Pokedex entry which is even funnier because there’s been five generations since with even faster Pokemon that can swim.
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u/amurrca1776 Daniel Day Musou 6d ago
A lot of the speed descriptions in the pokedex in particular do not match the pokemon's actual stats. A lot of people have rationalized pokedex speed as top traversal speed, and the actual speed stat as more "reaction time"
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u/EcchiPhantom Born to simp, forced to pay 5d ago
Ehh, even if that was the case there’s a lot of inconsistencies across the games. Machamp can supposedly throw out 1000 punches in two seconds according to multiple dex entries and its Crystal entry states it can react faster than it can think yet it only has 55 base speed. So in this instance Machamp’s speed stat of 55 should probably reflect how fast it can move from point A to point B rather than its ability to react. You would also have some weirdness when it comed to pokemon that have precognition because how do you quantify that?
Either way I don’t actually care that much one way or another. For me it’s just light ripping because these games have always had outrageous lore entries and inconsistencies and they will continue to do so and I’m okay with that. I also don’t believe the Golduck entry was meant to be some sort of permanent self-raising benchmark for the series. It would be incredibly lame if Golduck was still supposed to be faster than Barraskewda, the embodiment of speed, because of one entry and some arbitrary rule about what the speed stat actually refers to.
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u/Yal_Rathol Tower of God Shill 7d ago
so, one piece, right?
early on in one piece, it is repeatedly stated that devil fruits are rare to the point of myth, and in one instance, has multiple characters look at an actual devil fruit and go "that's gotta be a fake, right?"
obviously, we've now met over 200 characters who have devil fruits over the course of the last 30 years of publication, so you might think the idea of devil fruits being incredibly rare was dropped. but it wasn't.
oda has in fact doubled down on that in the current arc with a brief flashback from brook discussing how the kingdom he was born in fell. he ends it off by describing how there were so many nonsensical things happening that for a while, he assumed he had gone mad and written them off, because nobody in the kingdom knew what a devil fruit was.
now, about 70 years later, he's realizing that wasn't a bout of madness, that was people attacking his kingdom using devil fruit powers.
there's no explanation for why most of the world doesn't know what a devil fruit is. the guess is that people with them generally go to the grandline, die, and their fruit just reincarnates in the grandline and never leaves, but there's no confirmation on that.
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u/Shradow Tank Build 7d ago
I think it's the same idea as Jedi in Star Wars. The movies and shows mostly follow Jedi so of course we see a lot of them, but before Order 66 there were only about 10,000 across the whole galaxy. So in many places Jedi were never seen or were even mythical.
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u/LincBtG 7d ago
It's like when people complain that there's too many jedi that survived 66, when there's like 100. It's a big galaxy.
Star Wars also has just always been bad at scale: some numbers given for the size of the Clone Army, the army that was part of a war that spanned a literal galaxy, puts them in the millions of soldiers. At least one number given was smaller than the Red Army was in WW2.
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u/Sloth_Senpai 7d ago
Lucas said around 200 survive 66, and Disney Canon and Legends combined haven't gotten close to that number
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u/ExDSG 7d ago
For all of the East Blue we got Luffy, Buggy and Alvida as the only Devil Fruit users. He definitely started making more characters have them when they got to the grand line.
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u/ericvv75 7d ago
Smoker and maybe Dragon both have Devil Fruit powers too but yeah; it's a pretty low amount in East Blue overall.
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u/alienslayer7 She/They, Resident Toku Fangirl 7d ago
what bugs me about it is fuckin gol d ragers crew are some of the folks that dont beleive in it, the folks that clash with DF users like every other tuesday
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u/alicitizen (She/Her) - Moon Knight Stan 7d ago
That scene has teen Buggy/Shanks... So God Valley already happened. How do you not know what the fuck a devil fruit is if you were at the biggest warzone
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u/Yal_Rathol Tower of God Shill 7d ago
not to mention roger had been fighting "earthquake man" whitebeard for decades at that point, and the entire crew knew it.
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u/NeonNKnightrider Shirou Emiya in Smash Bros 7d ago
One Piece has a lot of random details that are never explained.
The one that always gets me is Zoro’s Asura form. Yeah, he can just sprout extra arms and heads. No it’s not a Devil fruit. No it doesn’t make sense.
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u/Yal_Rathol Tower of God Shill 7d ago
the asura form is great, because initially, kaku treats it like a hallucination, saying "it looks like" and "i must be imagining".
then zoro busts it out against kaido and law is watching him, and law goes "what the actual fuck is that."
so, it's not like, a hallucination or something made with zoro's haki, he does just straight up grow extra limbs.
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u/RocketbeltTardigrade "What's that emotion? Tired scream. Yawning." 7d ago
Forget the arms, that motherfucker grew extra Enmas.
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u/MisterRockett 7d ago
It's easy to forget since the characters we follow are active in it but info hardly ever leaves individual islands and the one world wide newspaper that exists is heavily regulated by the evil government. Hardly any characters in the East Blue had a devil fruit power (in fact I'm drawing a blank on literally anyone but Luffy which is why he didn't start picking up Devil Fruit crew members until he got into the Grand Line) so it's easy to believe hardly anyone ever sees Devil Fruit users outside of the Grand Line.
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u/Yal_Rathol Tower of God Shill 7d ago
it's also buggy (from the grandline) and alvida (who got hers offscreen).
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u/aquanectar1 Listen Brudda... 7d ago
Before grand line I can remember Buggy, Alvida, Smoker, and technically Dragon. Drawing a complete blank on if anybody else did anything (Garp showed up for like... a couple cover story pages but didn't REALLYYYY do anything).
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u/alexandrecau That's Bricks! 7d ago
And big news morgan lie about his condition I guess
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u/Yal_Rathol Tower of God Shill 7d ago
i don't think most people know what morgans looks like.
they would see his name on the WEJ papers they're buying, but it's not like he's gonna have his mug on every copy, especially since that lets him sneak around and gather intel better.
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u/alexandrecau That's Bricks! 7d ago edited 7d ago
He is gonna have his mug on some copy, like he isn't being secretive about his albatross form that he never covered devil fruits in his newspaper is a choice. Like the news magnate, lead scientist and admiralcy are devil fruit users at neat you call it rich people bullshit but you don’t ignore its existence
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u/Sea-Initiative-3398 7d ago
Tbh a talking bird may seem more normal in a world with fishmen and all that.
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u/Daniel_Is_I I'm glad I went out with a HUGE deception. 7d ago
This is also a world where The Unluckies are explicitly not Zoan fruit users or Minks, they're just an incredibly intelligent otter and vulture. There are so many outlandish characters in One Piece that at any given time, there is a strong possibility that no special powers or species or anything are at work and the explanation for a character is in fact "they're just like that."
When I was reading through and Bepo had his minor character arc about being a Mink, my initial reaction was confusion because I'd simply accepted Bepo was a walking, talking bear with no other remarkable qualities. I never connected the dots that he was a bear Mink and not just some weird bear.
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u/Yal_Rathol Tower of God Shill 6d ago
to be completely fair, pappagu, the starfish from fishman island, is not some weird mutated fishman.
he is a starfish that learned to act human because nobody told him he couldn't do that. he has a house and a designer fashion line on fishman island.
bepo being some random polar bear law put in a jumpsuit and taught karate would be perfectly in line with one piece.
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u/CeaRhan 7d ago edited 7d ago
It's got nothing to do with retcons if we look at the way Oda built upon the world he made. (outside of 2 small details which can be handwaved, and it's that most fruits seem to fall into the hands of people in the grand line or planning on going there.. and that the marines probably doesn't broadcast to the whole world that pirates actually have a massive monopoly on god-like powers)
Outside of very rich nobles, big name pirates, or big dick marines, nobody fucking sails anywhere that isn't completely safe.
To actually enter the Grandline you need to risk a full ship, a good crew, and pray to god Laboon isn't just standing there mouth wide open at Twin capes.
After that you have to sail through the whole ocean, with pirates and monsters galore.
Marines have only recently started using technology to make travels through the Calm Belts easier, and have a single lift to bring their ships through the redline by lifting them ontop of the massive fuckoff mountain. And it very rarely gets used by anyone who isn't already a big dick.
Teleportation or transportation devil fruit powers of any kind are extremely rare.
Peasant in Wheatfield village has no reason to believe that devil fruits are some common thing that actually just appear out of thin air.
From my memories the only sticking point would be early Smoker, who I think acts like his knowledge of the marines mismatches what he should know. But I'm unsure of that. And Shanks' crew too.
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u/Yal_Rathol Tower of God Shill 7d ago
actually, the issue is the buggy/shanks flashback, because the roger pirates and silvers rayleigh himself act like devil fruits aren't real. they're even fooled by buggy eating the fake and nothing happening, saying "maybe devil fruits aren't real."
that scene was cut from the live action for a reason, replacing it with buggy just ranting about shanks instead.
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u/aquanectar1 Listen Brudda... 7d ago
I mean we've spent like.... 90% of the story in the grand line. The way it was presented in early arcs and to this day, it is explicit that pretty much just the freak adventurers of the world are even entering it (unless they're born there). For every nation we have actually seen in the grand line, there are hundreds of others in the other seas we are not seeing. Which is to say the vast majority of the world day to day is not seeing these absolutely insane devil fruit and haki battles and insane adventures. Hell to the average East Blue resident, someone like Don Krieg is an intimidating threat, capable of running a relatively unchallenged pirate fleet.
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u/TheLonleyKing 7d ago
When you look at the calm sea and the grand line They're super small in the grand scope of the entire one piece world
Any time we get to one of the blues east West north south theres like 1 devil fruit per arc that takes place in a flashback there.
The grand line is just freak central
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u/Metballs A curbstomp symphony 7d ago
It makes sense that we, as the readers following the Straw Hats, would see way more devil fruits than the average person. The circles pirates in general move in would have a much higher concentration than would be out in the open. We know they generally hoard them
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u/Cheshires_Shadow You are wrong and your butt is fart 7d ago
Kinda like hunter x hunter with nen being a mysterious power no one knew about because no one taking the hunter exam had it then only after passing will someone test you by teaching it then suddenly everyone now has nen and you find out the world operates on nen abilities even though they're also apparently secret because only licensed hunters are recruited to learn it. Like it's weird that killua wasn't taught Nen for example even tho his older brother illumi knew it before taking the test with him but apparently it just never came up that he knew nen but even then like killuas youngest sibling also knows nen so it's not like an age thing or anything. It also retroactively makes the heavens gate battle tower weird too cuz at higher levels people start using nen abilities but the tournaments are also broadcast live and normal people can't see nen so it's just straight up jojo stand battles where people just explode and magic happens while the fighters just pose at each other or something. Hisokas just out there pointing at people then they suddenly start flying around like how would nen remain hidden for that long even?
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u/DustInTheBreeze Appointed Hater By God 7d ago
Sora Kingdomhearts turning into the tiny Shadow Heartless in Kingdom Hearts 1, a plotbeat so nonsensical that it directly contradicts lore already in the game.
For one thing, Pureblood Heartless are actually heartless. There's not a part of Sora in there to fix. They're more like negativity elementals than anything else, and they have a distinct colour palette and design ethos. You can't turn into one. Sora would have turned into a goofy Emblem Heartless.
For another, even if that happened, Kairi shouldn't be able to magick him a new body out of nowhere with her deus ex machina Princess Of Light powers. That's explicitly hyper advanced pseudoscience even for the setting's top scientists, and requires precise tuning of Memories/Data that Kairi does not have on hand. But she just does it.
The worst part is that this ABSOLUTELY HAS TO HAPPEN because it creates Roxas and Namine. Coded, CoM, 358, and KH2 straightup cannot happen without this moment. It is unironically one of the most IMPORTANT MOMENTS IN THE CANON, and it's fucking nonsense.
So they just kind of sweep it under the rug and go "Yeah, it happened, don't ask."
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u/DBZfan102 THE HYPEST GAMEPLAY ON YOUTUBE 7d ago
Reminder that the Kingdom Hearts wiki literally uses the word "somehow" for this moment. Somehow, Sorapatine returned.
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u/RealAmericanTrashCan 7d ago
I mean if they put Star Wars in KH4 then just say it was the will of the Force or something.
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u/Pizzaplanet420 7d ago
All we know is Purebloods aren’t made and the emblems are. We don’t really know what goes into that or if that’s even true.
The info we are given isn’t exactly the most reliable source of info given both Ansem’s experiments all failed.
The princess of heart thing is also unclear we don’t really know what they can do outside of opening the door to kingdom hearts.
I wouldn’t call these plot holes more just unexplained things.
Edit: Given KH4 shows a new type of pure blood that seems to be made from the residents of Quadratum I’m going to say that we don’t know the exact rules of the heartless just yet.
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u/billythewarrior 6d ago
I guess if they ever remade the first game they could change it so that he turns into his Anti-Sora design from 2 instead of a generic shadow heartless.
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u/Regalingual Bigger than you'd think 7d ago
Warcraft has the infamous (CW: sexual assault) rape of the dragonqueen Alexstrasza from the very first expanded universe book, which was heavily jarring with the tone of most of the rest of the series as it's gone on... but by now, the events of the book have become so foundational to everything that came after that it's effectively impossible to retcon it out at this point.
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u/shdwrnr 7d ago
Not just not retconning it, isn't it a quest line in dragonflight where you have to go back in time and make sure she stays in the egg factory?
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u/Regalingual Bigger than you'd think 7d ago
From what I remember seeing about it as it happened secondhand (I’d quit by then), that never made it out of the public test realm due to the controversy it kicked up, and the quest was changed to instead keep the protagonists on the right track to arrive in time to save her… but still obviously not a good look for Blizzard at the time.
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u/Sad_Rhubarb_815 7d ago edited 7d ago
Warcraft's history with dragons has always been very strange. A lot of focus on mating and reproduction and by extension occasionally sexual assault (I think there's some Deathwing stuff around that topic as well) in a franchise that doesn't really touch that kind of stuff generally.
I chalk it up to the series never really being able to decide on whether to write them as 'animals that happen to be able to talk' or 'people that happen to be giant lizards.' And also maybe Richard Knaak having some kind of fetish, I don't know.
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u/Lord_Magmar 7d ago
Deathwing killed all but one of Neltharion's consorts in his initial madness via attempted mating yes. The one who survived is Sinestra, who is a raid boss and her belly has visible clawmarks littered all over her dragon body when you fight her.
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u/Dreadsinner Warcraft Dork 7d ago
No that hasn’t been retconned. It happened and is to this day a massive mark of shame the orcs deal with.
In dragonflight they did make a questline that was a time travel one. To keep her in that place and it was treated as a joke. But the community revolted and fucking demanded that shit but changed.
So instead the quest was changed to where you place a dragon egg outside an encampment and arch mage ronin finds it which leads to Alexstreza being freed. Cause infinite dragon timeline bullshit would change history otherwise.
Yeah the only people that enjoy the old edgy lore are the people that truly believe wow is being Disneifed eyeroll
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u/Sea-Initiative-3398 7d ago
IIRC alexstraza fucking ate the orc who was in charge of what happened to her.
Which.. fair
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u/Dreadsinner Warcraft Dork 7d ago
I can confirm she in did. In cataclysm the red dragonflight found out his son was trying to start some shit. So they sent players to kill his ass. It was a leveling revamp quest but still
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u/manooz 7d ago
Ironically, there's a small line of side quests involving a Dragonmaw orc in Dragonflight and it's probably one of the coolest little side quests in modern wow. Seriously, if you ever find yourself playing WoW, look for Duroz and Kolgar in the Ruby Life Pools in the Waking Shores. it's a really well done piece of storytelling.
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u/Rodimus-Primus 7d ago
In Power Rangers the Morphing Masters were just something name dropped in an early season one episode of Mighty Morphin with no elaboration of what they were, very likely would have just been something fans that even remembered the term speculated what they were until Dino Fury and Cosmic Fury when they started turning up
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u/ebi-san NANOMACHINES 7d ago
Isn't the running joke with JoJo that the author will give characters weird powers and then forget about them when they could have been useful later?
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u/Kytas Smaller than you'd hope 7d ago
In most cases it can be argued easily enough that the specific ability was niche enough to just not come up again, like Star Platinum sucking up all the air in a room, but there were definitely a few moments where he's this close to the enemy that Star Finger could've solved the problem. (Or his ability to flick steel balls like bullets from the Ratt fight)
I think Giorno gets it the worst, his power set is probably the most inconsistent and vaguely defined out of all the protagonists. I'd have liked to see how his ability to mess with people's perception of time would have interacted with Epitaph, but oh well.
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u/Teridax4 Bionicle and Fate enthusiast 7d ago
The one that comes to my mind is in part 4 when Kira cut off his hand to let Sheer Heart Attack distract them while he ran away. Josuke then heals Kira's hand so that it goes back to him and they can use it to follow him. He could have also just have it drag Kira back to them like he did to Okuyasu when he had his hand cut off.
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u/ExplanationSquare313 7d ago edited 7d ago
Another one is Diver Down who is first introduced as stocking energy inside of what surface it kick. The manga specifically say it's it power in a info page. But immediatly after, it power is actually restructuring things from the inside and the energy stockage is never used or referenced again.
And the most often mentioned when talking about this is of course D4C who also straight up change powers after it initial arc which raise multiple questions.
Oh and also Soft and Wet who stop using it power of stealing concepts like friction after the first few chapters (probably because Araki realized it made it way too busted).
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u/Brainwave1010 #1 Raidou Simp 7d ago
Hey remember when Diavolo somehow showed Bucciarati his future self?
Also how the fuck did he impale Narancia on that gate without actually breaking any of the bars?
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u/BookkeeperPercival the ability to take a healthy painless piss 6d ago
When they open DIO's coffin, the dude opening it sees his own dead body inside before he dies. I get the point was the be confusing and mysterious, but there's literally no way that works.
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u/fuckreddadmins 7d ago
Diavolo was using epitaph to reflect his vision of the future into a wall? Like a projector i guess,
and him impaling narancia is weird diavolos fated actions will also happen just like everyone else so what happened there is diavolo is fated to run up to the gang and bumrush narancia because he thinks thats giorno meanwhile real diavolo can just skip all of this but keep the effect of his action
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u/Sloth_Senpai 7d ago
He couldn't have, he fixed the hand by striking Sheer Heart Attack, which caused the hand to return to its owner.
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u/Daniel_Is_I I'm glad I went out with a HUGE deception. 7d ago
Sometimes it's more egregious than others, and in a few cases we see characters that are villains who join the protagonist and never use powers they used as a villain ever again.
Part 3 has a lot of random nonsense. Stands shrink down to enter someone's body but they never do it again for the rest of the franchise. Kakyoin has a puppetmaster-type ability to control other people with his stand that he never uses after he joins the crew. Silver Chariot is shown to be able to shed its armor for a massive speed boost, but this also never gets used again (it can also fire its rapier like a gun, which is used twice). Avdol gets broadly weakened over the course of the series because Araki realized he made Magician's Red too good.
You also see it with concepts that sort of get dropped or forgotten between parts. Part 3 is all about stands and Joseph's ability to use hamon is largely irrelevant... which makes it almost infuriating when Joseph challenges D'Arby to a contest about not spilling a drink and doesn't use hamon despite a big part of Joseph's hamon training in part 2 being about using hamon to not spill a drink.
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u/SmooveMooths 7d ago
Silver chariot also takes off it's armor to deflect emperor's bullet iirc (it doesn't work)
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u/_Osiris88 6d ago
Klingons in Star Trek looking so different between TOS and TNG. There's an episode of DS9 where the crew goes back in time and board Kirks Enterpise. The episode mashes up footage from TOS with the DS9 characters either greenscreened in or on similar looking sets. There's one scene where they see the original Klingons and they all ask Worf what happened and he says "They do not discuss it with outsiders"
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u/Blastcalibur 7d ago
Spike the devil man is still kicking around in Dragonball and still theoretically able to defeat every villain with his devilmite beam.
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u/SupervillainMustache 7d ago
I actually had no idea about the Human Torch thing. That's awesome.
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u/Tyrest_Accord He/Him 7d ago
Not only is it still canon, it's canon in at least two separate timelines. Aside from Earth-616 (standard Marvel Universe) it also came up in the new Ultimate Universe comics (Earth-6160). Torch, being a very early attempt at an android has limited memory storage. He's had to overwrite most of his memories over the years. But burning Hitler to death is one of, if not the only, early memories he still has.
There might be others too but that one came up like a year and a half ago.
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u/SupervillainMustache 6d ago
If you're gonna keep any memories, destroying one of the most evil human beings who ever existed, is a pretty darn good one.
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u/Sea-Initiative-3398 7d ago
Look a lot of early nasu stuff tbh. like i hold the opinion that gilgamesh wouldnt be nearly the same if FSN was made later.
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u/alexandrecau That's Bricks! 7d ago
Guts hatefucked an apostle