Originally, the Word of God was that Assemble was a sequel to The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Since there are already some inconsistencies (such as The Falcon being way younger than he was in EMH), it seems the previous series would only be considered canon in Broad Strokes. Since the show starts In Medias Res with a new team of Avengers forming after the previous one disbanded, it seems like the creators intentionally left it as vague as possible.
This is more or less confirmed in the episode "Molecule Kid", where a flashback has the team in their original EMH costumes and even art style. Presumably, the Broad Strokes of that show happened, just not the contradictory bits involving Falcon.
Although, Heimdall is portrayed as black in Avengers Assemble as opposed to the white Heimdall from EMH.
The creators later confirmed the reason for the discrepancy. The show was originally going to be a sequel to Earth's Mightiest Heroes featuring a new team of Avengers, but while it was in production, the suits changed their minds and decided they wanted the show to be more like the movie and focus exclusively on heroes being featured in the MCU (along with Doctor Doom and Spider-Man, who each appeared years before the 20th Century Fox buy-out and shared-rights deal with Sony came to fruition). This is why there are so many references to the original series (such as Black Widow claiming Hawkeye went AWOL from SHIELD and the Red Skull being responsible for the creation of the Winter Soldier) despite all the continuity problems. Secret Wars: Official Guide to the Marvel Multiverse later confirmed that the current shared Marvel animated universe does not include Earth's Mightiest Heroes.
The BattleTech animated series has three of its main characters (and the child of a fourth) among the notable people of the game's universe, and a sourcebook showing how the story fits within canon, even though the series itself is not (in short, the animated series exists in canon as an animated series and in-universe was Very Loosely Based on a True Story).
Done in Ben 10: Omniverse, where details such as the existence of Primus (and subsequently, the Omnitrix's function as a signal receiver) were retconned out of continuity. Invoked in-universe, where Ben uses Alien X to create a not-quite-exact copy of the universe and its inhabitants after being destroyed. A later episode dealing with the results of this action has another character point out that Alien X's race does this constantly, using another character's changing voice as an example.
Charmcaster's entire arc in the previous series has this applied to it, particularly to "Enemy of My Frenemy" which is never mentioned and even contradicted several times. According to both Matt Wayne and Derrick Wyatt, this was because it was both so dark and so controversial among fans that it was making it difficult to even incorporate Charmcaster into Omniverse.
Creature Commandos was originally written as part of the DC Extended Universe, acting as an animated Spin-Off of The Suicide Squad and the first season of Peacemaker. However, shortly after finishing the scripts for the first season, James Gunn was hired to take over as the head of the new reorganized DC Studios, which led to a sweeping Continuity Reboot and the franchise being renamed DC Universe. Despite now being set in this new continuity, Creature Commandos still references some events from The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker, even though how exactly those projects fit into the new universe hasn't yet been established. Notably, when Superman makes a cameo appearance in Episode 4, it's clearly the David Corenswet incarnation of the character from the 2025 Superman film, even though the prior Henry Cavill version of the character had already shown up (albeit as a Fake Shemp) in Peacemaker's season finale.
Daria is a Spin-Off of Beavis and Butt-Head, but Daria herself is pretty different; in the parent show she wasn't as deadpan or anti-social (she even sought out these idiots for conversation), and because of the less grounded tone, she sometimes did things like point out people for Earl to shoot. The only mention of Daria's parent show is in the pilot, where Daria opines that Lawndale cannot be a second Highland "unless there's uranium in the drinking water here too."
DC Animated Universe is this in relation to the comic book universe, and vice versa. Unless otherwise revealed, a character's origin is meant to be the same as the comics.
When Justice League first started, the creators said to not take everything of the past three installments (Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond) as cemented canon, because they didn't want to worry about detailed continuity that fans would complain about. At one point, Bruce Timm even mentioned that they planned on ignoring Kyle Rayner's guest appearance in Superman: The Animated Series because they didn't want to confuse people who would wonder why a completely different Green Lantern was being used in the new series. But by the second season, they turned back on that stance and told some stories that continued past events, and by Unlimited they had a couple of Batman Beyond appearances, as well as a guest appearance from Kyle.
Batman: The Animated Series is split into two sections, marked by a massive storytelling difference and design change. While the first section is the most loved, continuity for later shows streams mostly from the second section. A case in point, Zatanna showed up as a past love interest for Bruce and she was just a normal stage magician whose father taught Bruce how to be an Escape Artist. She later shows up in Justice Leaguewith actual magical powers.
Static Shock was originally in a universe with Superman as a fictional character (making reference to his alter-ego of Clark Kent). He later had several in-continuity DCAU crossovers and eventually an appearance in Justice League. Static also had another example when he first meets Batman and wonders where Robin is. Batman answers that he's with the Teen Titans, a Shout-Out to a show that was airing at the same time but otherwise had no other reference in the DCAU proper. Series creator Dwayne McDuffie advised fans not to think too hard about it, and consider it less like the two shows definitively sharing a universe and more like typical TV crossovers (and, in the process, coined the Tommy Westphall Theory).
The Emperor's New School a Spin-Off of The Emperor's New Groove takes this approach regarding the film and its Direct-to-Video sequel Kronk's New Groove. Certain things from the first movie are referenced in the series note Kuzco used to be emperor, is friends with Pacha and his family, and Chicha gave birth to baby Upi. and others ignored. note Yzma is no longer a kitten, Kronk is working for her again, despite his Heel–Face Turn, the secret lab is now located underneath the school rather than the palace. As for the sequel, about the only things it acknowledges is the design of Kronk's dad and the names Rudy and Matta for the nameless old man and waitress from the original.
Felix the Cat (Joe Oriolo) has light continuity going on in it, with some episodes bridging directly between each other (i.e. "Do It Yourself Monster Book" ends with Felix on a raft in the ocean, which is where we find him next in the following episode, "Blubberino the Whale"). Poindexter's UFO, made in "The Flying Saucer" (one of his first appearances), pops up several times throughout the early episodes. But no episodes directly reference a past event, and some episodes fall into outright Negative Continuity (for example, there is no reason Professor should have trusted Master Cylinder with Poindexter in "Venus and the Master Cylinder", when his first appearance "Master Cylinder, King of the Moon" showed him being outright hostile to both of them. The reason for this is because the episodes were very quickly written (the shows grueling schedule forced to put out three new episodes per week, and they were given mere hours to write the scripts) and also because the episodes were designed so that stations could either air them as standalone episodes, or air them as chapters that would form a complete "story" when aired in proper order.
G.I. Joe: Sigma 6 supposedly took place after the direct-to-video CGI G.I. Joe (Reel FX) film series, particularly since certain circumstances hinted toward the events of Valor vs. Venom (e.g.: Cobra Commander being imprisoned and requiring the other members of Cobra to bust him out and General Hawk recovering in the hospital from an incident that had his DNA altered). However, many of the characters have noticeably different appearances and characterizations from how they were depicted in the Reel FX films.
G.I. Joe: Resolute also does this. The continuity is ambiguous enough that it could conceivably be a sequel to any of the prior series, but the Mythology Gags and finer details don't always match up with said series. For instance, Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow are archenemies due to Storm Shadow murdering their teacher like he did in the Real American Hero continuity, but Resolute Storm Shadow has a completely different motive for it and isn't a Noble Demon like in RAH.
Hazbin Hotel has the YouTube pilot. Despite the final show having several notable changes from "That's Entertainment", the pilot is outright stated to have taken place a week before the first episode of the series, and many of its events are referenced throughout the first season, such as Alastor's commercial showing Charlie's meeting with Katie.
The Kim Possible Movie: So the Drama rolls back a lot of the series' Continuity Creep to the base of Kim being a Teen Superspy but prone to peer pressure, Ron being her loyal friend and sidekick but a loser to the rest of Middleton, and Bonnie losing her sympathetic Character Development from season three to return to being Kim's bitchy school rival. This is at least partly because it's based on the script for an aborted live action adaptation, and because it was written almost entirely during Season 1 and few changes were made afterwards.
The '90s Marvel shows — X-Men: The Animated Series, Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Iron Man: The Animated Series, Fantastic Four: The Animated Series and The Incredible Hulk — were part of a loosely-defined universe. Emphasis on loosely — due to legal issues, the shows not being produced by all the same people and airing on different networks (or in the case of IM and FF, syndication), characters would appear, talk and act differently from show to show (and various cameos, mostly in X-Men and FF as provided by artist Larry Houston, would often muddy the waters further), but the general gist of them would be the same; ie. the version of the Hulk seen in guest appearances on IM and FF looked and sounded different in both shows compared to his own, but the events of those episodes were referred to in his own show, and the characters of those shows appeared mostly like they did on their previous ones. X-Men and Spider-Man had a direct crossover, but their versions of Iron Man and the FF both varied from their own shows (IM had the same voice, though); FF had a cameo of the civilian X-Men as well as The Avengers, who otherwise didn't seem to be active. Captain America was part of the Avengers in FF, but was trapped in a time warp on Spider-Man (and looked different, too). Marvel later classified X-Men and Spider-Man as being one universe, while IM, FF and Hulk occupied another.
Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm took this attitude towards the first live-action movie, which it was ostensibly intended to be a sequel to. There are references to the events of the film, such as Shang Tsung, Kano and the original Sub-Zero having been killed during the tournament, but the Flashbacks showing those deaths differ from how they were actually depicted in the movie (likely to tone down the violence). Another big difference is that Johnny Cage, who was one of the main characters in the movie, was never seen or even referenced in the cartoon. This was due to the show also drawing inspiration from Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, where Cage had been killed off.
My Little Pony: The various My Little Pony (Generation 4) media have been described as having this, as the books, comics and cartoons don't necessary share strict canon. The show trumps everything else, and the show's writing staff may personally veto any comic plotline that IDW's writers want to put out, but otherwise there's no real collaboration. Pretty much necessary for a franchise with multiple writers and a general aversion to Executive Meddling.
Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow can be seen as a Broad Strokes sequel to the Ultimate Avengers movie, as Black Widow is stated to have been a founding member of the team and Captain America's wife (the two dated in the Ultimate movies, but not the comics) and The Wasp's son appears to be Asian (the Ultimate Marvel version of Wasp is Asian as opposed to white). However, other than that, there are some inconsistencies, such as the Avengers being seen wearing their classic costumes in flashbacks rather than their Ultimate outfits, as well as the fact that Giant-Man (the father of Wasp's son) died in the second Ultimate Avengers movie.
Rankin/Bass Productions is famous for its adaptations of Christmas stories, and eventually welded many of them together in a movie called Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July. Naturally there were a lot of elements that did not quite fit together — Santa Claus, for example, had a subtly different appearance and personality in each previous special — so decisions and adjustments were made. Likewise some scenes from Rudolph and Frosty's lives were shown that differed from their own specials, but kept the basic facts the same.
Sealab 2021 aims at being a more of a reboot of Sealab 2020, even though most of what they borrowed from the first (not much) was in broad strokes. (Including that most characters don't even have the same names in both.)
In the animated MonsterVerse TV series Skull Island (2023), while the events of Kong: Skull Island are mentioned and referenced, the titular island in this appearance is visibly and markedly missing the auroral night sky and the surrounding perpetual storm from its other appearances altogether, although the island being hidden from the outside world is still pinned on offscreen atmospheric and magnetic anomalies. Furthermore, Skull Island now has a neighboring secondIsle of Giant Horrors no more than twenty miles away, which was never hinted at anywhere else in the MonsterVerse despite full satellite maps of Skull Island and its surrounding storm existing. Additionally, with the exception of Kong, none of the Skull Island creatures from other instalments turn up in this series, except for in one-scene cameos at the very most, but some of them do have similar substitutes turning up in more prominent roles (like the Aloe Turtle for the Skull Island: The Birth of Kong Magma Turtle).
Star Wars: Clone Wars and Star Wars: The Clone Wars have elements that don't align with each other (while the former also has elements that contradicts the theatrical films). Since George Lucas is a consultant on Clone Wars and the creator of The Clone Wars (along with the fact that he decided that TCW would not be connected to Clone Wars), most of the inconsistencies can be shuffled aside with this trope.
Anakin Skywalker was originally implied to have reached Knighthood later in the Clone Wars, with Clone Wars not specifying the point of time. The Clone Wars inverted this, with Anakin ascending to rank of Jedi Knight fairly early on and having an apprentice of his own for most of the war.
Tales of the Wizard of Oz: The Return to Oz special is indicated to take place after some form of the original story's events happened, as made apparent by Dorothy being back in Kansas and Socrates Strawman, Rusty Tinman and Dandy Lion established as respectively obtaining the brain, heart and courage they wanted. The clearest indications that the events of the original book didn't happen exactly the same way are that the Wicked Witch of the West survives being melted (as she's able to re-solidify after winter comes) and the Wizard is not only still in Oz, but apparently hasn't yet been exposed as a fraud who can't do real magic. The special also has a few discrepancies with the Tales of the Wizard of Oz television series itself, as the TV show depicted the Wizard as a genuine sorcerer (albeit an incompetent one) rather than a humbug.
When Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) was retooled into Tales of the TMNT for its fifth and final season, many of the three-part episodes were continuations of prior ones, but didn't always match up with previously established information. When asked about this, one of the writers of the season essentially stated that this trope was in effect, having not designed every episode with the series' continuity in mind.
Total Drama World Tour seems to ignore a lot of events in the unpopular second season, including Leshawna's Odd Friendship with Heather, Beth's relationship with Brady and Courtney having alienated everyone with her Jerk Sue behavior. Furthermore they never even mentioned who won TDA, probably because the voting caused the results to split between different countries. The only event that seems to be firmly established is that Gwen and Trent broke up and that she and Duncan became friendly with each other.
Beast Wars took this approach to G1 continuity: it took elements of the cartoon and comic continuities as canon for its backstory. The events are not referenced in detail; that allowed a sense of history while it continued with its own story. Then along came Beast Machines, which at its core plot thread disagreed with both comic AND cartoon G1 continuities in irreconcilable ways (and Beast Wars for that matter).
Transformers: Car Robots was technically set in the same far-future continuity as Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo with the Autobots and Predacons time traveling to modern day Japan. References to this fact was kept light on the actual show though as to not confuse new viewers and the show instead consisted of elements and references from all over the Transformers franchise. Averted when the show was dubbed into English as ''Robots In Disguise'', as Hasbro always treated it as a complete reboot of the franchise and nothing more.
This became somewhat muddled with Transformers: Cybertron originally being conceived and intended as a continuation of Transformers: Armada and Transformers: Energon, but not produced as such. Most fans tend to dismiss it with a Hand Wave involving the Unicron Singularity. Others ignore the Hand Wave and treat it as a separate show. Nonetheless, Takara later adopted the Hand Wave officially, recognizing the same Unicron Singularity and definitively placing the Japanese version, Galaxy Force back as a sequel to Micron Legend and Superlink, Armada and Energon's Japanese counterparts (respectively) as was originally conceived.
Transformers: War for Cybertron and Transformers: Prime were both made under the idea of a single, ultimate universe for the Transformers franchise to work off the next 5 years. They were not meant to be a hard-and-fast canon working together but are taking specific sections of the classic Transformers lore (the war on Cybertron and the arrival on Earth, respectively) while going off a core backstory. There is a good deal of similar elements that connects them together but the fact remains that they were developed by two completely different production teams who gave the mythos their own flavor. Character designs, characterizations and the exact events that unfold (given that WFC should be in the distant past of Prime) vary to some degree.
In the first season finale of Transformers: Prime they give some crucial backstory elements regarding Megatron and Optimus' history, how Megatron ended up turning Cybertron into a dead world and how Optimus received the Matrix of Leadership. Exactly as this trope works, there are timeline issues and details that are different but there was no mistaking the major events that were exactly the same as WFC.
Taken further with the later additions of Rescue Bots and Robots in Disguise, vastly Lighter and Softer than the video games and Prime series, and the Transformers: Go! anime. note Although the Japanese-made Go has yet to gain official recognition by Hasbro, and was made completely by the Takara end of the franchise.
Razer's A-plot in Episode 19 of Season 4 confirms that some version of the events of Green Lantern: The Animated Series took place in this universe. Razer is translated from his home series with his character development entirely intact (unsurprisingly, considering that both his original voice actor and creators worked on the episode) and his arc brought to a satisfying resolution. Given that YJ has never delved into the Lantern mythos (beyond a few expository cameos) before this episode, it's hard to say what might be different, other than Hal Jordan being noticeably older in Young Justice and having started his career earlier.
Aya similarly appeared a few years before that in an episode of Justice League Action, where she vaguely recognizes Hal Jordan and leaves in search of Razer.
in the current timeline than the original one when he has his Cynicism Catalyst, and future!Kevin has a habit of going through the
Jerk Sue behavior. Furthermore they never even mentioned who won TDA, probably because the voting caused the results to split between different countries. The only event that seems to be firmly established is that Gwen and Trent broke up and that she and Duncan became friendly with each other.