10 Controversial TV Show Retcons That Pissed Off Fans

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, and your TV show has some serious issues when it comes to retconning deaths for shock value.

The first instance of Prison Break faking the death of a major character was the murder of Sara as she is "beheaded" at the start of season 3. Lincoln sees her severed head and decides to conceal the truth from his brother Michael. Then at the start of season 4 it's revealed that she's actually perfectly alive. So despite Lincoln physically seeing her severed head and believing it to be real, this is retconned.

Then it happened again. In The Final Break, we see the very clear death of Michael to save Sara. His family move on with their lives, and the ending is bittersweet with Sara and their newborn son being left behind.

This death is retconned purely to make the revival series work, and 8 years after audiences had come to terms with his death, the entire ending of The Final Break is retconned to again reveal that the death was fake and instead we have another season of breaking out of prisons to do.

The practice of constantly faking main character deaths only to bring them back in cheap "gotcha" ways naturally pisses off fanbases. Retconning these deaths makes fans lose faith in the integrity of the show they're watching. In a show where so many side characters are brutally murdered, the idea of there being any stakes to invest in the main characters immediately dilutes if you repeatedly retcon their deaths - especially ones as emotional as Michael's 2009 death.