10 Iconic Movie Characters With INSANE Continuity

Some franchises go to amazing lengths to ensure that their continuity is perfect, leading to amazing pay-offs for fans when details are brought back for twists and surprise endings. However, many are less fastidious, especially if sequels are written or produced by different people, or if films are rebooted to serve a new Director's 'vision' of the story.

Many of the films on this list have tried to go in a creative direction, then written themselves into a corner. So have either messed with the timeline in order to fix the problems, or given up entirely and rebooted the whole series, ignoring the previous continuity.

Television spin-offs are another factor that can create problems, as they are often designed to give a fresh perspective on a story, and usually involve a different production team and actors. They are also frequently set in the modern era, so narratives from the original films (or books in some cases) need to be updated to be accessible to a modern audience and include updates in technology.

Lets try and untangle the web of continuity timelines of some of the worst-offending movie characters...

The original Transformers film showed Megatron crashed on Earth several thousand years ago and was discovered in the Arctic in 1897. Sam Witwicky goes on to meet Bumblebee in 2007 on his mission to find the AllSpark. The sequel, Revenge of the Fallen, revealed that the Transformers actually arrived on Earth in 17,000 B.C. and had been living in hiding since before human civilization.

Dark of the Moon told us that the moon landing in 1969 was to investigate a crashed Autobot spacecraft with technology the Decepticons tried to use to transport to Earth until Bumblebee destroys it. The Government in Bumblebee, however, appears to have no knowledge of this event.

In Age of Extinction, the Earth was formed around a Transformer called Unicron, which was the ancient enemy of the Transformers’ home planet Cybertron and led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The Last Knight reveals that Transformers were on Earth since the dawn of time, and in 484 A.D. they helped Merlin and King Arthur beat the Saxons. Bumblebee went on to battle alongside the allies in World War II, in a Nazi-fighting squadron.

The film Bumblebee retconned this to show Bumblebee sent to Earth in 1987 (as opposed to 2007 in the first film), with no mention of his time during the war or the moon landing. He is the first Autobot to arrive and is hunted by two Decepticons who are working with the government to catch him who claim they are the first contact with humans.

What?