What Does the Slang Term "Canon Event" Mean?

The word canon has a long and involved history. Derived at length from a Greek word for a rule, the word fell into religious use in medieval times to refer specifically to the rules and laws of the church (as well as the name of a clergyman who follows those rules).

From there, over time, canon gradually became a more general term for the basic, authoritative rules or texts of any subject, whether religious or secular. And finally, by the early 20th century, it became a byword for the entire back catalog of a specific character or author—or else the intricate network of plot points, storylines, characters, family ties, and so on that govern an entire series or universe of books, movies, or some similar franchise. (Although this is a meaning associated with comic books and superhero movies today, the first character to have his fans talk of his entire “canon” was Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes back in 1933.)

A Phrase Born in Fiction

In more recent parlance, though, this latter meaning has come to be attached to individual people, not just literary characters and fictional universes. And it’s that meaning that crops up in a canon event.

That term was popularized by the 2023 animated movie Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which features multiple different versions of the same title character scattered across a fictional multiverse. Every Spider-Man, the film explains, has to endure the same agonizing events and experiences in order to become who they are, and form the identity that they share across multiple universes. In the context of the film, these painful yet formative occurrences are referred to as "canon events," and the popularity of the film led to the expression falling into wider use.

From Multiverse to Meme

In the aftermath of Across the Spider-Verse’s release, a trend emerged on TikTok and other social media platforms in which people (somewhat jokingly) related embarrassing yet similarly unforgettable events from their past, and described them as "canon events" that proved formative in their upbringing or development. Likewise, the term became a jokey caption or reply to videos of embarrassing moments, in particular in the form, "Can’t interfere—it’s a canon event."

​The event described or shared might be unpleasant and embarrassing, but the point of a canon event is acceptance. We all have our fair share of embarrassments in our own personal back catalog, but they all go into making a person who they are.

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