Canon

Canon is the terminology that defines the primary source material as official, it's the original place where Script Writers and Directors of a film make events canonical to the franchises Continuity, Canon helps educate the community on what IS and what ISN'T official in the Friday the 13th franchise its simple.
as stated majority on the Continuity page the films are all canon, and the official novelizations from the usage of the Original Scripts are all canon to the franchise, some things like the Pamela Tapes and Tommy Tapes are all canon but not the events in the game, as the Pamela and Tommy Tapes were officially produced as a continuity continuation to the main-timeline where such characters like Adam, A.J.,Brandon and etc aren't canonical to the main timeline.
In specific circumstances and specific events a character or event in the franchise can be Canonized but as of right now only the Pamela Tapes and Tommy Tapes has been has been canonized by either Paramount Pictures or New Line Cinema, characters from the game, black flames novels, and etc have not been made official in the franchise. 
==Non-Canon==
Non-Canon is the terminology and the opposite of Canon, meaning sources arent at all apart of the primary Continuity and is determined as an alternative "what if" or an entire seperated timeline these are examples in the Black Flame Novels,Friday the 13th Comic Books, and Friday the 13th: The Game such productions are used to keep the franchise going, they aren't apart of the film/official novelization continuities but their own this is why Jason's in comics or videos games look different and have different events because they arent the primary canonical Jason.
==Retcons==
Retcon or Retroactive continuity is when a a scriptwriter or director gives a new narration on established events retcons can be used to adjust, revert, ignore, supplement, or even contradict events these can either reconstruct/recorrect events or breaks a continuity depending on the severity which replaces an old canon event with a new canon event, this can be seen as a Revision or a Rewrite which the primarily use of retcons in fictional works is to correct or expand upon more than ignoring or breaking the continuity, and there is MANY different types or "tropes" of Retcons such as...
*Orwellian Retcon: is where a scriptwriter, director, or the company themselves performs by going back and changing the original source material so that later editions of the same works are different than the previous. (Example: Nudity or Gore is censored in later re-releases)
*Canon Discontinuity: Where the scriptwriter, director, or the company themselves outright "ignores" events to avoid conflict be it in-universe or due to real life events, giving a Alternating Retcon for future storytelling or going back. (Example: Halloween Franchise many seperate timelines being ignored.)
Such fans will be heated and mad at others for the Official Novelizations because to them its "contradicting" events and ignoring them despite that this is a Trope known as the Early Draft Tie-In this is what happens when a novel writer is given a early draft or early script that they help extend upon for specific events not explained or mentioned when being paid by the merchandising license companies, this has lead to fans dogging on the author: Simon Hawke for this despite these circumstances not being his fault but the fault of the license holders for not either giving Simon an up to date revision of the scripts or not simply calling him to tell him to rewrite the scenes for his novels.
Example: Martin the Gravekeeper in the Official Part VI: Jason Lives Novel is very much alive, but in the film Jason stabs Martin and he is seemingly killed by Jason, but at the end of the novel it's revealed that Jason's Father was paying and keeping their graves maintained and watched over by Martin, and Martin is punished by Mr.Voorhees for not keeping his end of the bargain. 
This can be seen as a specific canon discontinuity and up to the community's own perspective of events, as either can be canon to the continuity because A.) Martin could have survived his ill-fated encounter with Jason and was simply never brought back to for any scenes or B.) Martin could be deceased and was never mentioned again because either is a ever "alternate" canon/retcon as both the writer/directorof Jason Lives himself, Tom McLoughlin views his original ending due to the official storyboards as canon.
Category:Information