/ret' kon/ retroactive continuity. The COMmon situation in fiction where a new story "reveals" things about events in previous stories, usually leaving the "facts" the same (thus preserving continuity) while COMpletely changing their interpretation. For example, revealing that a whole season of "Dallas" was a dream was a retcon. This term was once thought to have originated on the Usenet newsgroup news:rec.arts.COMics but is now believed to have been used earlier in COMic fandom. [Jargon File] (1994-12-08)