10 Controversial TV Show Retcons That Pissed Off Fans

10. Roseanne - It Was All A... Book?

This one has three retcons for the price of one; two that were extremely controversial and almost came across as trolling, and one that fixed it decades later.

This one gets a little hard to follow, but the general gist is that season 9 of the classic sitcom Roseanne revealed that almost all of the events seen in the show up until that point were fictional versions of the truth, as the character of Roseanne is seen as an aspiring author writing half-truths about her own life.

So the first retcon was the spin on "it was all a dream", which never goes down well, as it just leads audiences into thinking that they've wasted their time. The second retcon was that Roseanne's husband - Dan - had actually died at the end of season 8, and all of his involvement in the semi-fictional season 9 was Roseanne dealing with her grief. This essentially made the entirety of season 9 - if not the whole show - worthless, as it all turned out to be false by the final episode.

The third retcon is a positive one that accounts for the sheer laziness of the "it was all a dream/book" retcon from the original show, with the Roseanne revival airing in 2019 - 22 years after season 9 finished. The revival reveals that the heartbreaking, but still lazy, retcon of Dan's actual death was - you guessed it - the fictional ending of Roseanne's book. He's still alive, and the retcon that angered every Roseanne watcher in the 90s was all a ruse. It just took 20 years and three retcons to get to it.

For what it's worth, the revival's rewriting is just as lazy. But at least it fixes something that pissed everyone off.