Adaptational Consistency - TV Tropes

Fans will know when I speak of the difference between the Lestat who is in books 2 through 12, and the Lestat who is in book 1. Anne, obviously, hadn't written the Lestat that she ended up landing on... We actually have more knowledge than Anne did when she wrote Interview because we have the follow-up books... We'd go into a big hole if we were to write the Lestat from book 1 because [the Lestat in] book 2 and onward is the "Brat Prince." We wanted to quickly establish the Lestat that she settled on and put him back into the first book.

• Azumanga Daioh: The anime adaptation began one month before the manga concluded in 2002, and as such makes adjustments to the early strips to account for how much the series has changed since then. Namely, the character designs are updated to match those from the Year 3 strips (barring Tomo's hair, which grows and shrinks in the same way as in the manga), and Osaka's initial characterization as a typical (if slightly ditzy) Shrinking Violet is adjusted by giving her several additional moments that fit more with her post-Characterization Marches On portrayal as an archetypal cloudcuckoolander.
• Delicious in Dungeon: Early in the manga, Kabru shows appreciation for mermaids and wishes he could hear their song without being charmed by them, which is strange since he was the Sole Survivor of a monster attack as a child and is later shown to absolutely despise all monsters without exception. The anime excises this scene entirely.
• Doraemon:
  • The first Doraemon story published in 1969, "All the Way from the Future World" has Doraemon hungrily wolfing down a plate of mochi and declaring it as "best thing he's ever tasted" because at the time, Doraemon's undying love towards dorayaki was not yet established. Later adaptations, like the 2005 remake and the 2014 CG film Stand by Me Doraemon would recreate the above scene, but with dorayaki in place of mochi.
  • Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur, the very first Doraemon film adapted from Doraemon's Long Tales, has its animation resembling the TV series it's based on. When it received a remake in 2006, Animation Bump was applied so that it's in line with other later movies of the franchise. It's also far more action-packed than the original, making it tonally closer to later installments of the Long Tales series.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Stardust Crusaders had Iggy's character design gradually shift to a rounder appearance. The OVA instead has his initial character design remain consistent throughout its entire run.
  • The Diamond Is Unbreakable anime adaptation combines aesthetic elements from the middle and late portions of the manga it was based on rather than being based on the initial portion (which is rooted firmly in the art style of Stardust Crusaders).
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War: Kaguya's hair ribbon didn't initially have a set design, instead wearing a different pattern every day before finally settling on the red with two black stripes at the end in Chapter 10. The anime instead just has her wearing her regular one from the beginning in its adaptations of the earlier chapters, though it does include a Mythology Gag in the opening of the movie when showing a hypothetical adaptation of Chapter 3.
• In Kemono Jihen, Kabane was initially depicted as an Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette with spiky Shōnen Hair. Subsequent illustrations give him a much healthier complexion and softer hair. This is reflected in the anime adaptation, which starts with his current manga complexion and hairstyle rather than changing them partway through the story for no explained reason.
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past manga from Akira Himekawa, which was released around the time of the Game Boy Advance remake of the game of the same name, adds a few more plot elements from the later game, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, using the same backstory of the gods and depicting Ganondorf as a Gerudo. This is especially notable compared to Shotaro Ishinomori's earlier adaptation, where Ganondorf is depicted as a Hylian with gray hair.
• In the original Mobile Suit Gundam, shield-equipped Mobile Suits like the Gundam and GM are shown physically holding their shields with a handle. In later series like Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, the shields are shown to be attached to a mounting port on the Mobile Suit's forearm (with handles being optional). Nowadays, the Gundam and GM are depicted in the same manner, with model kits often giving an option of having the shield mounted on the forearm or using the provided handle to hold the shield directly in front of them.

• Earth — Fiks Travel Route, an Alice, Girl from the Future fanfic, has a rarer variation of the trope in that it makes characterization consistent with the earlier books of the canon series rather than the later ones. In canon, Rat and Jolly U are extremely cruel in their first appearances only to undergo a Heinousness Retcon and become much nicer later on. In this fanfic, the two of them and especially Rat are as vicious and merciless as they were in The Voyage of Alice where they first appeared.
• J-WITCH Series: In the original W.I.T.C.H. (2004), Raythor was initially portrayed as a one-dimensional villain, only to later display some honourable tendencies in Season 2. Here, he's honourable right from the start of the series.

• Adventures in the Emerald City, an adaptation of the first two Land of Oz books:
  • In a rare case of the trope, the movie intended to be consistent with Early Installment Character-Design Difference. Ozma's look is based on her description in The Marvelous Land of Oz, with her being a strawberry blonde rather than a brunette as in later books. Downplayed, however, since no books beyond The Marvelous Land ended up adapted.
  • Money is treated negatively, and Dolly needs to explain to the Oz inhabitants what it is. This is consistent with the later books, where Oz is a post-scarcity utopia, but in the books adapted, the locals knew perfectly well what money is and used it.
• Asterix the Gaul: Getafix and Obelix look very much like their later, more classic depictions here when compared to the namesake comic-book album.
• Ladybug & Cat Noir: The Movie condenses most of the plot of the first five seasons of Miraculous Ladybug into a single movie, and consequently, a lot of the characterization is streamlined. Most notably, Marinette and Adrien (and their alter-egos Ladybug and Cat Noir) are paired off from the beginning, whereas the show rather famously had Marinette be a Stalker with a Crush towards Adrien but not Cat Noir, while Adrien was in love with Ladybug but was oblivious to the fact that Marinette had a crush on him. The film also makes Sabrina Raincomprix a Nice Girl who just has the misfortune of being attached to Chloe Bourgeois from the start, whereas the show vacillated on whether she was a nice girl with terrible taste in friends or a Beta Bitch.
• The Mystery of the Third Planet: In The Voyage of Alice, of the two pirates, Jolly U is the smarter leader and Rat the dumber second-in-command. By the time the animated adaptation appeared, more books of Alice, Girl from the Future series have been published with the dynamic reversed; so in The Mystery of the Third Planet too, Rat was made the smarter one in charge and Jolly U the dumber one.

• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: In the book version, Hagrid acts like it's a big mystery why Voldemort would even want to kill Harry's parents, suggesting that he may have been trying to recruit them. As early as the third book, it's firmly established that Harry's parents had been well-known active opponents of Voldemort for some time, making it not much of a mystery at all why he would want to kill them. The film version corrects for this, taking out the questioning and instead having Hagrid say, "your parents fought against him, but nobody lived once he decided to kill them."
• The Hobbit
  • The films incorporated Gollum's split personality and the corrupting effects of the ring, which were absent from the book yet prominent in The Lord of the Rings and its film adaptation.
  • Legolas does not appear in the book, since he was introduced in The Lord of the Rings. Since he is the son of the Elvenking Thranduil, his absence from the film would be notable and therefore he was included.
  • The book called the Orcs "goblins" instead of "orc"; Azog himself was referred to as "Azog the Goblin". The films use the word "orc" consistently and the "goblins" are a separate race.
  • In the book, Gandalf referred to the wizard Radagast as his cousin. Later on, it became clear that the wizards are angels sent to Middle-earth and do not have family relations the same way people do. The line for the film adaptation was changed to "colleague".
  • Thranduil's name was not introduced until The Lord of the Rings, and it was also mentioned in its film adaptation. The Hobbit films refer to him by name.
  • The trolls' talking wallet is completely out of place in the setting. Unsurprisingly, it was not included here.
  • In the book, Dwalin was said to have a blue beard. It is possible that Tolkien was using an older definition of "blue" as meaning gray or black, but it's still out of place since no other character in his legendarium was said to have blue hair. In the films, he has a brown beard.
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: The movie omits some of the anachronisms of the first book's setting like the Beavers' sewing machine, and adds roots to the lamppost to hint at its true origin from The Magician's Nephew — that it is not man-made but a living "tree" grown out of a lamppost bar.
• Warcraft adapts the plot of the original WarCraft: Orcs & Humans fairly closely but makes a number of alterations to more closely match what the canon had morphed into by the time of WarCraft III and World of Warcraft. The orcs' honor culture from the later games is much more prominent and their Card-Carrying Villain aspects in the first game are downplayed, and the main human kingdom is referred to by its later name of Stormwind rather than Azeroth (which became the name of the planet it was on). It also includes a Moses in the Bullrushes ending for Warchief Durotan's infant son, as a Sequel Hook to him becoming Thrall, himself a Warchief by the time of Warcraft III.

• The short-lived Animorphs reprints in The New '10s fixed some minor continuity errors. For example, in the original version of The Invasion, Jake uses thought-speak when he's out of morph; the reprint changes this so it doesn't work. These changes carried over to the graphic novels.
• Attempted with the first BIONICLE novel, Tale of the Toa from 2003, which adapted the 2001 storyline that was only partially told. It aimed to get readers up to speed on the lore before the release of the BIONICLE: Mask of Light animated film. However, the book came out shortly before the previously non-canon Mata Nui Online Game was retroactively made semi-canon via a Continuity Nod in Mask of Light. Thus, despite the novel's efforts to tidy up the franchise's messy early continuity, it effectively ended up missing over half of the story, including the Toa's climactic fight with Makuta. Because of this and other writing conflicts, the book was also heavily retconned and declared semi-canon later.
  • Fusions like the Toa Kaita could originally only be formed in specific chambers using the Makoki stone artifacts, which would have been shown in the cancelled The Legend of Mata Nui video game. But with the game's cancellation, the Makoki stones lost their significance and were left out of the novel. Fusing also became a willful power by the time of the 2002-03 plots that could be performed anywhere without extra tools, so the novel depicts the Toa fusing and separating at will.
  • Lewa originally talked like normal, while all other air-element characters talked in "treespeak". He adopted treespeak for the film Mask of Light, so his novel dialogue was written like that too. This however caused a continuity error, as Lewa would not have been familiar with the dialect in his first appearance.
  • Interestingly, one bit of consistency was removed. Beginning with Mask of Light, fist bumps became a standard gesture among Toa and were written into Tale of the Toa as well. However, all instances of Toa bumping fists were specifically erased for the novel's English publication. They are only preserved in the Hungarian edition, which was based on an older manuscript.

• In The Colour of Magic, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork bears very little resemblance to the Lord Havelock Vetinari whose personality was fully developed and established several books later; Terry Pratchett had to confirm it was the same character (and many fans still don't agree). In the miniseries based on the book, the Patrician clearly has the looks and character of Vetinari as depicted in the books from Guards! Guards! onwards.
• In The Vampire Chronicles books, Lestat is subject to Characterization Marches On. Lestat in the first novel, Interview with the Vampire, is markedly different from Lestat in the rest of the series. The TV show Interview with the Vampire (2022) deals with this discrepancy by rewriting the events of that book in a way that's more in line with Lestat's later characterization.
• Doom Patrol greatly streamlines the original comic's Multiple-Choice Past, giving all of its characters more or less consistent origins, whereas the comics were notorious for having the origins and characterizations change Depending on the Writer (particularly after John Byrne attempted a complete reboot that was subsequently reversed by the events of Infinite Crisis causing a Cosmic Retcon that reinstated the events of the Doom Patrol comics prior to Byrne's run to continuity, albeit implying that some version of the events of John Byrne's run still happened by the continued presence of Nudge and Grunt, two of the new team members introduced in the Byrne series.) This is most noticeable with Dorothy; in the original comics, she was raised in an abusive family that was later retconned into being an adopted family, with the implication that her unrevealed biological parents had something to do with her powers. On the show, she is the daughter of Niles Caulder and his late wife, with her powers (and ape-like appearance) being inherited from her mother.
• The predecessor to Saved by the Bell, Good Morning Miss Bliss, had several differences from the more successful sequel. So when GMMB episodes were packaged with the SBTB episodes for the syndication run, a few edits as well as framing narration from Zack were added to bring it more in line with the SBTB continuity.

• The now-standard lettered weapon rank system for Fire Emblem wasn't fully codified until Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, with earlier games restricting weapon use via each character having a "Weapon Level" stat that grew alongside more normal stats like Strength and Speed. Remakes Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and New Mystery of the Emblem drop the Weapon Level stat in favor of the modern system of lettered ranks.
• Final Fantasy Legend III for the Game Boy was the Oddball in the Series in the SaGa (RPG) franchise due to the fact it actually used a Character Level experience points system for stat increases, while the franchise in general always use Stat Grinding. This is attributed to SaGa series creator Akitoshi Kawazu not working on III with a new dev team working on it instead. The remake of III for the Nintendo DS was overseen by Kawazu and changed the leveling mechanics to use Stat Grinding.
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: In the book version of Chamber of Secrets, Dementors are mentioned but referred to exclusively as "Azkaban guards." The term "Dementor" isn't used until after their first appearance in the next book, Prisoner of Azkaban. In the PS2 version of Chamber, Lucius Malfoy mentions "Dementors" by name during the scene in which Hagrid is being sent to Azkaban.
• The Hobbit (2003): The book did not mention the name of the Elvenking, which was revealed in The Lord of the Rings to be Thranduil. The game mentions his name. His son Legolas is also seen in his halls, to bring it in line with The Lord of the Rings.
• LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean: Late on in the level focusing on the scene in the first film where Jack and Elizabeth are marooned on a rum smugglers' island, as soon as the night falls, you can see a green flash in the background, a concept connected to someone who was dead returning to the world of the living introduced in the third film, but not mentioned before then. Additionally, in the final cutscene of the first film, you can see Tia Dalma carrying Barbossa's body away to resurrect him, something that was implied but not outright confirmed until the third film.
• The original Metal Slug lacks the trademark wackiness of its sequels, having the war portrayed far more seriously, and doesn't have a winning pose at the end of each level. Metal Slug: Awakening on the other hand, being a Compressed Adaptation of the series, includes comedic, over-the-top elements in stages based on the first game and recreates the sequels' victory poses for the player characters.
• Mortal Kombat 9 rewrites the events of Mortal Kombat (1992) in order to align them with everything else in the franchise (Raiden being the Big Good, Sub-Zero being an assassin instead of a mercenary, Kano being an Aussie and the Black Dragon leader, etc.).
• Persona: The PSP port completely changed (for better or for worse) the entire soundtrack of the original version, to make it sound like something you would hear in Persona 3 onwards. This is because Shoji Meguro, the main composer of the series (starting from Persona 3), was the director of said port.
• The Nightdive Studios remasters of Quake and Quake II feature each a new episode developed by MachineGames (Dimension of the Machine for Q1 and Call of the Machine for Q2). These episodes are meant to tie their respective games' stories (previously taking place in separate dimensions) with each other, as well as acting as Canon Welding in the case of the latter and its Mission Pack Sequels.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Most re-releases of Sonic the Hedgehog, including Sonic Origins, the mobile remake, and the infamous GBA port, add the Spin Dash technique, which wasn't originally introduced until Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
  • Similarly, after the release of Sonic Mania in 2017, Sonic games afterward almost always include the Drop Dash ability it introduced, including Origins and Sonic x Shadow Generations, a remaster of 2011's Sonic Generations (where it's available for both Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic, who was only given the ability in Sonic Frontiers).
  • Also in Sonic x Shadow Generations:
    • Modern Sonic takes cues from his Frontiers control scheme, with his Homing Attack remapped to the left face button and Boosting now on the right trigger. That said, you can switch back to the original game's control scheme (referred to as "legacy controls") in the options, and the Homing Attack still works by pressing the bottom face button twice with the standard control scheme, averting Damn You, Muscle Memory!.
    • When describing his previous adventures, Sonic refers to the events of Sonic and the Secret Rings as "fighting evil genies" (rather than "rescuing a genie in a magic book"), which more accurately describes that game's plot. Sonic is also no longer completely confused by the concept of time travel, having done it before in Sonic the Hedgehog CD, even explicitly bringing up the Time Stones from that game.
    • In the story's rewrite, Eggman explicitly mentions Sonic ruining his interstellar amusement park from Sonic Colors by name (rather than vaguely alluding to it as his "most recent setback"), and the Time Eater's powers are mentioned as something Eggman has "long desired to harness" rather than being something he has "never been able to master" (as he had previously attempted to control time in Sonic the Hedgehog CD and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) — despite the latter being cosmic retconned, that desire obviously still exists within him). In a similar vein, Classic Eggman no longer is concerned about his future self's sanity, and the teamwork between the two of them is more beneficial, at least until the scheme falls apart.
• Super Mario RPG: The original English Super NES version referred to Princess Peach by her localized name at the time, Princess Toadstool. The 2023 remake for the Nintendo Switch, released long after the decision to have the princess' English name match her Japanese one, calls her Peach.

• Lucky Luke (1983): The comic underwent a notable Art Evolution over the years, resulting in Luke looking notably different in the earlier comics. In the 1980's Hanna-Barbera adaptation, all episodes have Luke and the other characters drawn in their current, most well-known style. Another specific example; the story Lucky Luke versus Joss Jamon features the first comic appearance of Billy the Kid, Jesse James, the Daltons, and Calamity Jane, all of whom look nothing like how they would be depicted in later stories, and Calamity Jane is a villain here while later stories have her become an ally of Luke. The animated adaptation redraws all the characters as how they appeared in the later comics, and Calamity Jane is Adapted Out with her role being given to Ma Dalton instead.
• Phineas and Ferb: The pilot episode "Rollercoaster" was remade into the double-length S2 finale "Rollercoaster: The Musical", which corrects several things from the pilot that had become cases of Early-Installment Weirdness, including the lack of music, Phineas' snarky and irritable attitude, and the absence of Doofenshmirtz's evil jingle. The plot even hangs a lampshade on it at times; for instance, Doofenshirmirtz believes his plan failed because his Giant magnet wasn't called an "-inator" like most of his other inventions.
• What If...?: Episode 3 revisits a scene from The Incredible Hulk. In addition to being a Flashback with the Other Darrin, the Hulk's design matches with his look in the MCU post-The Avengers with a broader body and a vibrant green color, as opposed to the sinewy and muted green Hulk of the original movie.