10 Movies That Made Subtle Retcons They Hoped You Wouldn't Notice

One of the more common complaints about Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan is that Jason manages to swim his way to Manhattan despite being "afraid of water."

But in actual fact, none of the prior Friday the 13th films explicitly clarified that Jason was pathologically fearful of water, simply that he drowned and therefore had an understandable discomfort around water. Like most of us, he was scared of drowning.

But because the idea that Jason was deathly afraid of water had already penetrated the public consciousness, Friday vs. Jason decided to basically retcon this into Jason's character, where during one of his nightmares Freddy (Robert Englund) uses water to keep the big guy at bay.

Though you can certainly argue that the heightened dream world of this encounter isn't entirely commensurate to reality, it's clear that the scene was leaning into the belief of many fans that Jason was unstoppably scared of H2O, even if Jason Takes Manhattan proved that simply wasn't true.

It's a retcon any way you cut it - most likely a result of the writers not doing their homework - albeit one justified by both the scene's own loose dreamy logic and the fanbase's general willingness to roll with it.