Prequels That Created Massive Plot Holes For The Original

"Young Sheldon" reveals the secret origin of Sheldon Cooper, the lead character played by Jim Parsons on "The Big Bang Theory," and in younger form by Iain Armitage. The problem for diehard fans was that it introduced a few gaping plot holes to Sheldon's previously established backstory.

Some fans have pointed to George Sr. (Lance Barber) as very different from what Sheldon describes when he is older, but that could be explained away by personal bias — perhaps the older Sheldon remembers his childhood dissimilarly to reality. Another instance of the older Sheldon giving a faulty account of his childhood is that he often said he had no friends when he was young. Again, on "Young Sheldon," we see otherwise, and characters such as Tam (Ryan Phuong), Billy (Wyatt McClure), and even Paige (Mckenna Grace) to an extent, could be considered Sheldon's friends.

One of the more specific but nonetheless significant oversights is that Sheldon claims on an episode of "The Big Bang Theory" that he is meeting Stephen Hawking for the first time, however, an episode of "Young Sheldon" reveals he'd actually attended one of his lectures as a kid. Perhaps Sheldon just has a really poor memory — that might be the only explanation for all of these plot holes.

It should have been one of the most celebrated prequels ever, but Ridley Scott's "Prometheus" proved divisive, with critics and audiences feeling it didn't measure up to the 1979 classic "Alien." Scott tried course-correcting for the sequel, "Alien: Covenant," giving fans more of what he thought they really wanted, but in the end, all he served up was a disappointing movie that created continuity problems for the franchise.

While "Prometheus" tried answering long-standing questions, it was "Covenant" that finally revealed the origins of the deadly Xenomorph. In doing so it tries to connect more closely to both the original "Alien," and "Prometheus" by explaining that the Xenomorphs were created by the android David (Michael Fassbender). The problem there is that "Alien" had established that the crashed ship on LV-426 had been there for hundreds if not thousands of years and that Xenomorphs had likely existed for that length of time. However, the amount of time between "Prometheus" and "Alien" is around 30 years, so something doesn't add up. 

Some have suggested that Scott was attempting to retcon the events of "Alien," something that could have been cleared up definitively in a proposed "Covenant" sequel. Unfortunately, the film underperformed and is unlikely to get a follow-up, though a long-gestating "Alien" TV series spin-off — or the upcoming movie from Fede Alvarez — could answer some of these questions.

One of the most acclaimed dramas of all time, "The Sopranos," perhaps surprisingly, never received a sequel or spin-off. However, in 2021 it did get a prequel, starring the son of its star James Gandolfini as a younger version of mob boss Tony Soprano. Set in the 1970s, it follows Tony's (Michael Gandolfini) days as a street-hustling teen and how he became involved in organized crime, but it creates a few problems for the story.

Whether one thinks of them as plot holes or retcons, several characters and events in "The Many Saints of Newark" are very different than what we know from "The Sopranos." Some characters are the wrong ages, while other events alter the timeline in ways that don't make sense. One example is that we see Johnny Boy (Jon Bernthal) get arrested in "The Many Saints of Newark — consistent with a previous "Sopranos" flashback — however, in the prequel series he spends four years behind bars. That creates a continuity issue because in "The Sopranos," Johnny was out and about during that time, even shown getting his pinky finger lopped off in 1969.

More notable, however, is the age of Tony Soprano. Firmly established as being born in 1959 on "The Sopranos," his appearance as an older teen in 1967 — when he should have been 8 years old — is a befuddling portrayal.

The sixth film in the "Transformers" series opted for a prequel in the form of Travis Knight's "Bumblebee." Telling the origin story of the titular Autobot, the film was set in the 1980s and showed how the alien robots were adventuring on Earth decades before the first movie. In doing so, it radically rewrote the timeline of the series in more ways than one.

Perhaps most importantly, the film all but erases the events of the previous entry, "Transformers: The Last Knight," which had established that Autobots and Decepticons had been on Earth for thousands of years, if not longer. Not only that, but it also revealed that the planet itself was Unicron, the Cybertronian god of chaos. None of this is mentioned or even hinted at in "Bumblebee." In fact, Optimus Prime himself says implicitly that Earth was a new discovery for the Autobots. 

Since its release, many have suggested that "Bumblee" and even its follow-up, "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts," could be set in a separate continuity, given all of the discrepancies. The film's director says otherwise, insisting that the changes were simply made for creative reasons and that the films are all still connected in the same universe.

The initial "X-Men" trilogy wasn't perfect, but at the time it was still one of the best in the genre. That made it all the more disappointing when its first spin-off, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," landed with a thud. Not only was it roundly roasted by critics, but it also made almost no sense in the larger tapestry of the "X-Men" timeline. 

Set more than two decades before the first "X-Men" movie, the film finally reveals the details of how Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) got his metal claws and lost his memory. The problem was, it had been previously established that Logan lost his memories 15 years before the first movie, which doesn't add up with the timeline of "Origins." Similarly, while Cyclops is clearly in his 30s in the first movie, he's a teenager 20 years earlier in "Origins," while Professor X himself (Patrick Stewart) — even with some modest de-aging — hardly looks 20 years younger.

You would think that they would have learned their lessons by the time later prequels, "X-Men: First Class" and "X-Men: Days of Future Past," rolled around but these were still full of inconsistencies. This included characters like Emma Frost (January Jones) and Storm (Halle Berry) showing up in the '60s and '70s, when they wouldn't have been born then based on the timeline of the previous films.

Having apparently learned their lesson from fan backlash to all the retcons and plot holes created by "Star Trek: Discovery," producers of spin-off series "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" attempted to more closely align with canon. Plenty of visual retcons were made, and new character backstories were invented, but the series also found clever ways to craft new adventures in an unseen period in "Star Trek" history without having to step on what we'd seen before. Except, that is, for one major change to one of the franchise's most famous foes: xthe Gorn.

In the classic "Star Trek" episode "Arena," Kirk and his crew encounter the Gorn, apparently for the first time. Kirk (William Shatner) himself says they've never even heard of them, while Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), specifically, don't seem to have any familiarity with the Gorn. Yet, in "Strange New Worlds," both Spock (Ethan Peck) and Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), under the command of Captain Pike (Anson Mount), encounter the Gorn on several occasions. Beyond the mere fact that they'd known about the Gorn and seen them face to face, Season 2 of the series sees the Federation at war with the Gorn in a highly visible interstellar conflict. Though it's possible a future episode will attempt to make sense of this major plot hole, for now it seems hard to reconcile.

The purpose of most prequels is to shed new light on an existing character, often telling their previously unseen origin. That's the case with "Orphan: First Kill," a movie that exists to show audiences the history of Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), the title character in the 2009 horror movie "The Orphan." But "First Kill" creates so many inexplicable plot holes that in some ways it almost feels like an entirely different cinematic universe.

For starters, Esther was very firmly established in the 2009 film to have been raised in a Russian orphanage, and then later poses as an American child. In "First Kill," however, her ancestry is entirely reversed: She's now an American who went missing, was kidnapped, and brought to Russia where she somehow adopted their native accent. It's an odd retcon, mostly because it doesn't seem entirely necessary, and only serves to open up plot holes that need papering over. 

Separately, it's said in the original movie that Ester had killed her previous adopted family, which isn't what happens in "First Kill." While it's certainly possible that a second prequel — or interquel as it were — could help smooth these plot holes over, they are left wide open for now.