Adaptation Correction

Any author, no matter how famous, can make a mistake, and many are the cases of works that contain mistakes of one kind or another. And adaptations can change a work in a way which enrages purists. But sometimes, if the work gets a chance to be adapted to another medium, the adapters might notice, and the adaptation can be used to fix the mistake, at least in the adapted version.

A fix that causes another problem can lead to a Voodoo Shark.

See also Translation Correction.

Please list entries under the original medium, not the adapted medium, for consistency.

Examples of Adaptation Correction include:

Anime and Manga

• In Jojo's Bizarre Adventure part 3, the original manga had a menu that included the Chinese characters for "fried duck" with the reading for "fried frog". This was fixed when this was adapted into episode 4 of the second season of the TV series.

Comic Books

• The introduction of Mon-El in the 1960's in the Legion of Super-Heroes had him sickened by the presence of lead, rather than kryptonite, which proved that he was not from Krypton. However, the kryptonite he was exposed to was in a lead box and therefore he should have been affected anyway. The reintroduction of Mon-El into history in 2007 included a version of the same story, but altered so that he was affected by the lead box.

Film

• The movie Fantastic Voyage contained a plot hole: the shrunken submarine was destroyed, and therefore didn't return to normal size inside the patient (which would kill him)--but destroying isn't disintegration; enlarging debris would be as bad a problem as an enlarging submarine. When Isaac Asimov novelized it, he had a blood cell engulf the debris so that it could be taken out of the patient safely.
• In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, Harry actually snaps the Elder Wand in two instead of placing it back into Dumbledore's tomb. In the book, both Harry and Dumbledore somehow come to the conclusion that if Harry dies a natural death, the Elder Wand will no longer have a master, when according to the universe's internal consistency, the next person to defeat Harry in battle (a not-unlikely event) would in fact become the Wand's next master.
• The Trope Namer for Voodoo Shark is, at least, an attempted example. The novelization for Jaws: The Revenge tried to justify the shark's unrealistic actions in the movie by adding a voodoo curse into the story.

Literature

• In the book of Goldfinger, there is a plot to physically steal the gold of Fort Knox (which the movie Bond points out is impossible) which includes poisoning the soldiers through the water system before they can react to such a slow method and using a nuclear bomb to open a door with everyone dangerously close. The movie changes the scheme into a genuinely ingenious plan to have the poison as a gas sprayed from a quick aerial pass over the fort and then Goldfinger's troops raid the fort just long enough to use a high power laser to open the vault building's door to place a nuclear bomb in the main vault. Then the villains get away for the bomb to detonate and whatever gold survives the blast would be radioactive, and thus worthless, for decades while Auric Goldfinger's own gold's value jumps at least tenfold.
• In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow becomes King of the Emerald City after the Wizard departs. The sequel, The Marvelous Land of Oz, introduces the idea that there was a royal family who ruled the Emerald City before the Wizard took over, and when the Scarecrow is deposed by General Jinjur's army, Glinda refuses to help restore him to the throne because he has no more right to it than Jinjur has—even though she approved of him taking the throne at the end of the previous book.
  • In the animated series The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (anime), which adapts both books, Glinda explains that when she approved of the Scarecrow becoming King she thought the royal family had died out, and only since then had learned that the rightful heir had been hidden away but was still alive.
• The film adaptations of The Hobbit have had numerous plot changes, many for the sake of padding, others to seal plot holes within the book. Most notably, in the book the dwarves' plan to have one burglar sneak into Erebor and steal Smaug's entire horde of gold was implausible, so in the film they were specifically after the Arkenstone, which would have given Thorin the authority to rally the Dwarves to take back the kingdom.
  • On the other hand, stealing a sleeping dragon's treasure bit by bit is safer than trying to poke the dragon with a sword. Also, in the book Thorin, despite his royal blood, isn't portrayed as such a great planner. The problem with the movie's take is that a system of government based on possession of a single gem is implausible, especially when said gem isn't even that old, all things considered. Why would all the other Dwarves change their loyalties and risk their lives against a legendary dragon because of one successful theft?
• The original Sherlock Holmes story The Speckled Band had a plot hole: snakes are deaf and can't hear a whistle. The 1980's Russian adaptation specifically added a line saying that Roylott knocked on the wall to fix this.

Live Action TV

• The original Star Trek, when it introduced tribbles, had Spock say that the number of tribbles in a bin, assuming each one has ten offspring and taking into consideration other factors, was 1,771,561. This number is equal to 11⁶, which is to say, it assumes each one has ten offspring without taking other factors into consideration or these other factors cancel each other out and make their mention pointless. The novelization by James Blish changes it to a different number that could plausibly be considering unknown other factors.

Video Games

• In the third Fire Emblem game Jeigan tells Marth the story of Anri over several chapters and Marth acts like he's hearing it for the first time, despite being the events of how the country he rules was founded. The remake instead has him tell the story to the customizable player avatar.

Multiple

• In this post, Peter David describes how he made corrections to the novelization for Return of Swamp Thing and the comic book adaptations of Star Trek V and Star Trek VI.