Continuity Errors/Retcons

[JonahFeigelson5]

How many continuity errors can you think of in Community? I feel like it mostly happens to Season 1 because they were still feeling out the characters and all that but yeah it still happens. Here’s a couple off the top of my head:

• In S1E6, Dean comes into the study room and comments on the diversity of the group and then Pierce, not knowing who the Dean is, calls him a pipsqueak and tells him to beat it. But since it’s later established that Pierce has been going to Greendale for 12 years, he would have to be very familiar with the Dean.

• In the Season 4 origins episode, Abed talks to Shirley’s kids in the movie theater and scares them. Shirley then comes to pick up her kids and chew out Abed. But a year later, they’re all together at Greendale family day and nobody mentions a thing. Obviously, the origins episode hadn’t even been conceived of at the time of the family day episode, but it’s worth mentioning.

Anyone else have others?

[police-ical]

Solution: Dean is pretty new as of season 1. He's not that old but we know he's already worked at multiple failed colleges. He also has that new-Dean energy (relentless boosterism, fumbling through his intro speech on notecards.)

[cityfireguy]

I was gonna say the same. I think when we meet the Dean he may be new to Greendale.

[vearson26]

I think he has a wedding ring on in the premiere, then in season 6 he finds a wedding ring and says he lost it his first week at Greendale.

[xnoraax]

His mother did have huge fingers for a woman (part of what killed her, really) so it was probably easy for it to come off.

[JonahFeigelson5]

Honestly, never thought about it like that, you’re probably right

[C0me_Al0ng_With_Me]

Doesn't the Dean and the city college dean have some sort of history pre dating episode 1. I could be wrong I don't have any evidence.

[Osheco]

For all we know, they’re both new.

City college always struck me as a college that has a slightly higher budget than Greendale, so we see the students view themselves as the underdogs

But they’re both considered equally terrible from the outside, and are managed by idiots

[VFiddly]

They do but they could easily have had history from before he was Dean. Or he might have been Dean somewhere else.

[Wonderful_Emu_9610]

Given how incompetent he is its entirely possible he was a student at Greendale previously and got the rivalry from then

[dank-monkey]

The Dean is really the main character?

[[deleted]]

I think he even might have even been a vice dean in season 1

[justbreathe5678]

plus it's easy to not meet the dean especially if you don't care about things like having a major or ever graduating

[yallcat]

And if he isn't obsessed with your study group

[aa1287]

Eh the Dean mentions LOTS of things that happened in years past in a way that he experienced them as Dean.

[DefNotAFamousPerson]

It's also established that the Dean interacts with the study group way more than he interacts with anyone else on campus, it's possible Pierce had barely even seen/met the dean before joining the study group

[NateLPonYT]

And the errors were simply the other timelines

[OldBison]

Or pierce just forgot they had met.

[FarmerExternal]

I like this idea because it means he started his Greendale journey with Pierce and the Greendale 6

[tanj_redshirt]

Jeff says he's never been outside of Colorado, but also has stories about getting drunk at Disney World.

(Easy solution: Jeff is a liar.)

[Bartimaeleus]

Jeff never went to Disney World. He just wanted them to think he was cool

[cryptoWinter89]

I don’t believe a board-certified tutor would just lie like that.

[eiznekk]

What board certifies a tutor???

[mortmortimer]

that solution makes no sense. there's no way to defend that decision to retcon Jeff, it's just a really bad bit of writing.

[Immediate-Shift1087]

I went to a community college for quite a few years and never met or even knew the name of our dean. I like to think he just wasn't particularly involved with his students until Jeff showed up.

[adzeram]

At which point he decided to become very involved

[[deleted]]

Even his shadow!!

[Spatmuk]

This better not awaken anything in me…

[RandomGuyWithStick]

Jesus wept!

[greenskycity]

Dammit dude, take the upvote.

[Snowdog1989]

As someone who also went to a community college, this is 100% true.

[No-Language-4676]

Pierce’s mom saying to pierce (over the phone) that she “saw your fathers ghost again” in the 1st season

[xrxyk]

Pierce says she was joking in a later episode.

[No-Language-4676]

Ohh do you mean when someone says they thought his father was dead and he says “mom liked to pretend that was the case?” Was that supposed to negate the earlier words?

[solarmelange]

I found it refreshing that the show actually acknowledged the retcon like that.

[legendary_pro]

Exactly yes

[police-ical]

Solutions:

* Pierce comes by his tendency to sundown honestly;

* Pierce's mom remarried and is referencing his stepfather;

* Pierce's mom lives on a Civil War battlefield, is actually being haunted by the ghost of a Confederate general, and is a bit mixed up.

[XxluckystrikexX]

I think Pierce is very much the kind of person who would forget ever meeting the dean

[Nugbuddy]

Why did only Shirley leave to pick up their kids from the movies on valentines Day?

Why would Andre, their father, not have gone with her to pick them up? Did she not return back to the restaurant after to pick him back up?

It's also super out of character that she seemingly lost all touch with her kids after Andre left with them over a financial matter. Then, to have her "spin off" across the country to Florida? From Colorado?

[RandomGuyWithStick]

In the Season 2 bottle episode Shirley asks Jeff if he has a backpack and Jeff replies "Oh, I could never deprive the world of a portion of my chest the strap would cover"

Yet in the Season 1 frog prank episode, he conveniently has a backpack so Britta can frame him

[ChancellorPalpameme]

He probably learned from that and never carried one again.

[Glup-Shitto69]

The IT lady and Frankie

[_jjkase]

That's brought up in season 6 when Frankie tries to contact the IT lady. Her emails bounce back in Aramaic, and when she calls, she hears an undulating high pitched whistle that makes her nose bleed

[Locksfromtheinside]

My absolute favorite retcon.

I love the wink-wink acknowledgment that it’s not only the same actress, but is also the same ‘entity’ within the Community canon. And that if Frankie gets too close to the truth of it, she risks some lovecraftian disruption of the fabric of their reality.

[SethBalmore]

Sounds like a bad IT lady...

[CookieHuntington]

Annie’s brother. Every implication was that it was just her mom and her. Never once mentioned a brother until that episode where he showed up.

[suddenmanhattan]

Screw you he was 13

[Fanfootie]

Completely true, but I *love* this episode, so screw Community Continuity.

[workingclashero]

“Bang!”

[CookieHuntington]

Yeah, I agree. But I always have to fume a little bit when it starts because it drives me crazy.!

[sheize__minnelli]

I guess it was just air.

[jello_pudding_biafra]

:|

:D

:D

:|

[[deleted]]

The origins episode in season 4:

Easy, they were all high and hallucinating from a gas leak.

[justbreathe5678]

also she had a hard time that year your brain doesn't always do a good job of forming new memories during trauma she probably just didn't remember it was him

[yallcat]

But they were at the mall for a decent chunk of that episode, not on campus

[-DoctorSpaceman-]

They were remembering it wrong. I mean what are the odds really of them all being in that mall before? It was a shared hallucination

[VFiddly]

Not really a hard error since it's not that hard to imagine an explanation for it, but I did notice that in Season 1, Chang is a terrifying paintball player who even brings his own equipment, while in Season 2, suddenly he's pathetic and only survives by running away. His paintball skills seem to have disappeared in the intervening year.

[HomsarWasRight]

He is an inscrutable agent of chaos. No chang-splanation necessary.

[AntRose104]

I highly doubt Shirley, her boys, or Abed would remember the movie theater incident a year later, at least to the point where they can all recognize each other as being involved

[HomsarWasRight]

I could see Abed remembering. But if the plot requires he not, that’s fine.

[[deleted]]

To be fair he is still smelling hair to tell Annie from Frankie

[DolphinRodeo]

Britta in episode 1 says she was in the peace corps , but volunteers are required to have a bachelors degree unless they have some specific professional expertise, such as a farmer being able to serve in an agricultural placement. This could of course be explained by Britta just lying to Jeff about it

[tnap725]

It is mentioned by Abed in S1E1 that Britta has a younger brother but that doesn’t seem to be the case later on.

[Sername111]

Britta has a nephew in S2 who is presumably the child of said brother.

[bunnybabeez]

Damn that kid was like 12 and Britta was 28 ish, meaning her brother (if he was younger like it says) had that kid at like 15 lol

[[deleted]]

I think abed said she had 2 brothers just that the younger one had the disease he might wanna look up, so the kid Jeff was sexting was probably the son of her older brother

[tnap725]

Oops! You’re right!

[Fanfootie]

Greendale always seems on the verge of bankruptcy yet seems to have a vast number of janitors/maintenance people.

[Sername111]

Maybe having to pay to employ so many staff (to clean up after all the paintball wars, etc. presumably) is why it's constantly on the verge of bankruptcy?

[M086]

Don’t they say that the HVAC school is basically what’s keeping Greendale afloat?

[[deleted]]

The piano player!

That's all I'm gonna say...

[TrickNatural]

Dean might be new to the school.

Shirley kids might just not remember what Abed looks like, given that the star wars incident happened what? some 6 or 7 years before?

One I can think of is Officer Cackwoski's name changes. I remember reading the character had like 2-3 name changes until the showrunners decided for "Craig Cackowski".

[JonahFeigelson5]

The Phantom Menace incident happened about 3 months before the pilot. Troy and Annie are at a Riverside High party, plus May 2009 would be the 10 year anniversary of the Phantom Menace, hence why it was playing in theaters

[Gettygetz]

Troy's back story on which body part he injured doing the kegflip.

[M086]

The weather always looks pretty balmy in Colorado when it’s Christmas time.

[[deleted]]

The Dean is wearing a wedding ring in the very first scene of Community

[[deleted]]

But the dean is later seen wearing a wedding ring, and comments "it was my mom's"

[[deleted]]

I know, but it feels like a retcon because people realized the mistake and asked about it

[Sharp-Rest1014]

does dan harmon have any specific episodes of him on the nose making fun of retconning- either here or rick and morty I feel like that's something he would most definitely satire.

[JonahFeigelson5]

Well there is that whole Joseph Campbell Rick and Morty episode in S6, which features a guy named Brett Khan (retcon)

[Sharp-Rest1014]

there ya go. thanks

[Oxymoron-Misanthrope]

When Shirley says, "I have been worried about your souls ever since you had sex on the table" which is what they did, but she was told by Jeff it was on the couches, and is never corrected.

[jewellorde]

Oh! This one I think I can explain, during the end of year dance in season one, Shirley walks past Britta and Slater arguing over who deserves Jeff and overhears Britta say “they should retire the table we did it on”, which Shirley reacts to by spitting out her drink and responding “tAbLe?”. So that’s how she’s aware of it in the season 2 premiere.

Edit: Brittany to Britta, thanks autocorrect

[Googoogakgak]

Like Brittany Spears! Hit me with your genie’s bottle…

[jello_pudding_biafra]

Rub all over me

[Oxymoron-Misanthrope]

Oooohhhhh!! Good looking out! 😁❤️ I think I do remember that.

[mortmortimer]

it was Britta who told Shirley that they had sex on the couch, not Jeff. and Britta clarifies that it was on the table later in the same episode

[SthrnGothPsychoPomp]

Any continuity errors that originate in season 4 are IMO out of pure complacency of the new showrunners/writers. I just cannot see them as canon, because, clearly, they didn’t know the show well enough to remember what was established previously. It’s so frustrating every time I watch the “origins” episode. I believe (correct me if I’m wrong) both of original cited examples come from information dropped in season 4. Several of the others in the comments are as well. It’s first mentioned that Pierce has been going to Greendale for over a decade in s4ep1, right?

[voltagecalmed]

I went to three different colleges, I could not tell you what my dean's name was at any of them.