Because of the enormous differences between the various Jurassic Park media, it is essential to separate one work from another. Even though they are all in the same franchise and share many common elements, each work also has many things that make it different and unique. Our biggest rule here is that we don’t write canon. We’re fans, and we respect that line between creator and consumer. We record what we see, we don’t create it. Providing commentary is critical in seeing how each thread fits, much like Dr. Malcolm’s Dragon Curve from the original novel.

In order to make it easier for fans to understand which of the many different canons an article’s subject belongs to, we’ve tagged each one with abbreviations that will help tell them apart. This way, for example, fans who want to read about Alan Grant in the novels rather than the films can find the correct version. For topics that are present in multiple canons, but in different forms, we aim to have disambiguation links at the ends of each page so fans can jump from one to another and still know which fictional universe they’re going to end up in with each click. All of the canons we have tags for are listed here:

Crichton/Novel (C/N)

This was the original canon, the novel Jurassic Park and its sequel The Lost World, both written by Michael Crichton. At the moment, these are the only two parts to C/N canon, since Michael Crichton never published any additional works as a part of the series; he was notoriously averse to sequels and only wrote The Lost World due to fan demands. Although his books contain numerous nods to one another (for example, BioSyn is mentioned in his science-thriller Next), there is no real evidence that he intended them to be in the kind of shared universe that has since become quite popular in fiction. This may be fun for fans to think about, but since it probably wasn’t the author’s intent, we only catalogue Jurassic things here.

Spielberg/Film (S/F)

Beginning with the 1993 film adaptation of Jurassic Park directed by Steven Spielberg, the film series has since grown into perhaps the best-known and most expansive canon, including multiple tie-in websites, short films, and other media. From the very beginning, it was clear that the film’s story was to be different from the novel’s, and while many of the changes were necessary to accommodate the hour-and-a-half runtime without bogging the film down with technical details, some of the changes altered the plot and setting much more. The presence or absence of certain dinosaurs and characters, the shapes of the islands and locations of things on them, descriptions of the characters and their relations to each other, and many other details are too different from each other to lump the worlds of the book and movie together. For example, in the novel, John Hammond dies while Robert Muldoon survives, while this is the other way around in the film. Ian Malcolm also dies in the novel, but the popularity of Jeff Goldblum in this role in the film led to his character’s survival, which Crichton even adapted into his novel’s sequel! As the film series grew far beyond the two books that inspired it, even more lore regarding the setting, characters, and science has been added, further differentiating the two worlds.

Rick Carter, the Production Designer for both Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park, indicates the differences between the two mediums early in the Making of Jurassic Park book: “The park is not as finished as it is in the book,” noted Carter, “The movie is probably nine months or a year earlier than when the book takes place [in its construction phase].” (Duncan & Shay, 45). This in and of itself implies that the movie takes place in an entirely different world from the novels, and works as a confirmation of such. Rick Carter is not the only one that feels this way, either.

For the Beyond Jurassic Park DVD, Michael Crichton himself was interviewed and discussed many things, including continuity separation. Originally, in regards to making a second film, Crichton remarked to Steven Spielberg, “I’ll do a book and you can do whatever you want in the movie.” (Crichton, “The Jurassic Park Phenomenon: A Discussion with Author Michael Crichton”) This shows that the films, even at that early stage in their development, were indeed considered different from the original works. Furthermore, Crichton remarked during the interview on the differences between the books and films: “There’s a practical aspect that they really are different media.” (Crichton, “The Jurassic Park Phenomenon: A Discussion with Author Michael Crichton”)

Deleted scenes are sometimes considered canon if they were cut for pacing and do not contradict the final films. For example, two deleted scenes from The Lost World: Jurassic Park are sometimes even included in television airings of the movie, and were mainly cut because they made the exposition too lengthy. Scenes which never made it past the storyboard phase, on the other hand, are not really considered canon because they seldom fit the finalized movie. Essentially, when it comes to anything that doesn’t appear onscreen, we try to honor the storytellers’ vision as closely as possible. If a deleted scene or concept didn’t fit the vision for the story they wanted to tell, we acknowledge the concept’s existence but do not consider it truly canon. Ultimately the people telling the Jurassic story should be the ones to decide what does or doesn’t complement the tale. For example, Jurassic World: Dominion had numerous scenes cut for its theatrical version which alter the story somewhat, and director Colin Trevorrow considers the extended edition (which re-includes many of these scenes) to be the true version of the story.

The viral websites introduced with each Jurassic World film are considered canon. This became contentious with the Dinosaur Protection Group website, which contradicted the headcanons of many fans and, therefore, was claimed by these fans to be non-canon. However, we at Jurassic-Pedia maintain that the people actually in charge of the story are the ultimate arbiters of what is or isn’t canonical to that story, and simply because you would have told a different story if you were the authority on it doesn’t mean the real one doesn’t exist.

S/F canon currently incorporates the films and most of the tie-in material, including several books, and for the sake of brevity we also include the Jurassic World Live Tour, though it should be noted not all of the franchise storytellers consider this particular tale to be canon. Other stories were intended to be canon at the time they were released, but have been ignored or dismissed by later storytellers after the fact; in most cases, these have not been discarded wholesale, but rather labeled “soft-canon.” This means, essentially, that something along the lines of this story did happen in canon, but that the exact details may not quite match what is depicted. For example, Jurassic Park: The Game was meant to be canon when it was released publicly, but when Jurassic World was released several years later, the Jurassic Park Visitors’ Centre was depicted without damage sustained during the game’s story. However, the generalized events of the game and much of the lore it introduced are still considered a part of the overall S/F continuity.

Interview Question: What steps did Telltale take to ensure an authentic Jurassic Park experience? Was there any collaboration or discussion with the filmmakers or film studios?

Kevin Boyle: Delivering an authentic Jurassic Park experience has always been a top priority for the team. We worked closely with Universal, and found we had very similar ideas about what’s best for the license. The story of our game is new, but it’s woven into the events and canon of Jurassic Park. We worked hard at getting the look and sounds of the dinosaurs exactly right. The dinosaur sounds are so iconic, I was dreading the thought of recreating them. Thankfully, Universal delivered an amazing volume of the original dinosaur sound effects. Another big step towards an authentic experience was stocking the team with fanatics. We’ve got more than enough super-fans here at Telltale to stand up for what’s right for an authentic Jurassic Park experience. (source)

Some of the more recent soft-canon stories have genuine contradictions of preexisting film lore, though they loosely fit within the overall S/F storyline otherwise. Other stories are mostly non-canon but include lore which is considered canon, such as the Jurassic World: Evolution games, whose campaigns take place in alternate universes to the films. Fans largely consider the soft-canon additions to be canon or not based on headcanons and whether they enjoyed these stories, but since we are dedicated to cataloguing all things Jurassic, they are all included in the Encyclopedia with subcategory tags:

Additionally, the Universal Studios rides are given their own canon subcategory (S/F-Ride), though the lore of the rides is surprisingly expansive and deserves special mention. The events of the rides take place in an offshoot of the films’ timeline, and depending on the iteration of the rides and their tie-in website, the timeline branches either shortly before or during the events of The Lost World: Jurassic Park or concurrent with and instead of the events of Jurassic World. Since each parkgoer’s experience on the ride will be a little different, and since there are multiple versions of the ride in existence, there is no one single “true canon” here, with instead only a general sequence of events; everyone who goes on the ride lives through a completely unique iteration of these events.

The website’s content was much more comprehensive prior to its 1997 update, which shaved down most of the content, though it can still be looked at using internet archive technology. The current version of the website is not applicable to the current version of the ride, which has been retrofitted to fit the more recent films. However, much of the lore given in the website (as well as its original, larger version) can be thought of as add-on canon to the movies without much trouble, as most of it consists of different InGen employees, dinosaur behavior, and company policy, with a lot of this information being potentially applicable to the films as well as this particular canon offshoot in which InGen built and opened a second park within the United States. The more recent VelociCoaster ride can be considered an element of Ride canon, also taking place during the later Jurassic World era (implied to take place around 2015).

Junior Novelizations (JN)
Official standpoint regarding Jurassic Park Adventures: Survivor and the additional two stories.

Many films are accompanied by junior novelizations and Jurassic is no different, with each film getting a book adaptation aimed at younger audiences. The franchise also has a trilogy of short books, the Jurassic Park Adventures trilogy, which was inspired by and takes place after Jurassic Park ///. However, just because the junior novelizations follow the films faithfully doesn’t mean they are completely the same. Because the junior novelizations are meant to be released at around the same time as the films, they are not written based on finalized scripts but rather slightly earlier ones. This means that they often include deleted scenes, alternate takes, cut or altered dialogue, and other aspects that make them different from the movies. The authors may also explain plot points that are only implied by the films, such as discussing a character’s motivation or inner thoughts. Since movies are a visual medium and books rely on the reader’s imagination to conjure images, information is given very differently in each version. The Jurassic Park junior novelizations and Adventures trilogy are all loosely canon to one another, though only the Adventures trilogy forms a cohesive self-referential unit of stories.

The first book in the trilogy, Survivor, is an interesting case because it is also soft-canon to the films. Only the very beginning and end of the book overlap with the story of Jurassic Park ///, with everything else being left mostly undescribed in the film. Canon consultant Jack Ewins, who personally enjoyed this book, opted to consider it soft-canon, but with regards to the other two has only confirmed that they are “not hard canon.” With the precise softness of their canon left unconfirmed by anyone from Universal Studios, the other two are considered simply a part of the junior novel canon and are not currently incorporated into the S/F storyline.

Ludia/Mobile (L/M)

Beginning with Jurassic Park: Builder well before Jurassic World was even conceptualized, a series of mobile games produced by Ludia, Inc. has grown into a surprisingly expansive canon of their own. Builder takes place in what appears to be a branch of the S/F timeline in which Hammond does not pass away after The Lost World, but instead survives a few more years and rebuilds Jurassic Park into a successful theme park and zoo with the help of the player. Its sequel, Jurassic World: The Game, was released shortly before Jurassic World and despite having little to do with the original game does have numerous hints demonstrating they share a universe. The third game released by Ludia, Jurassic World: Alive, is an augmented reality game with only a tangential connection to its predecessors and fairly little story compared to them, but is included here nonetheless for the sake of streamlining the Encyclopedia rather than creating a whole new category just for it.

Known mainly for their gargantuan bestiary, the Ludia games also tell an astonishingly in-depth story, including a lot of lore which could be applicable to S/F canon but has not yet been confirmed. Some of it is more or less accepted as canon, such as Owen Grady’s backstory given in Jurassic World: The Game, but this is technically unofficial; no one from Universal has outright called it film-canon. The plots of the games themselves contradict the film canon as they describe alternate series of events, including a functional Jurassic Park with two locations off Isla Nublar, and allow the player to create a vast number of prehistoric animals and genetically-engineered hybrids not currently canon to the films.

Comic Books (CB)

There are numerous comic book adaptations of the Park trilogy, the most popular series being the Topps and IDW comics, which have their own canon subcategories (CB-Topps and CB-IDW) on Jurassic-Pedia. However, the comic book canon is not a single, cohesive canon, but rather a catch-all category.

The Topps Jurassic Park comics coincided with 1993’s Jurassic Park and were based off a close-to-final draft of the script. This means the comics have some differences from their film counterpart, and attempt to overlap the film’s events with their own. The artistry behind the comics also counters the visuals of the film due to the difference in art medium. The comics had several spin-offs that featured the return of Robert Muldoon, BioSyn stealing Velociraptors off which end up in the hands of a Colombian drug dealer, and the mysterious Green Flame which allegedly is a nod to the Green Lantern. Although some of the comics, such as “Return to Jurassic Park,” do not completely contradict the films, they are not considered canon in general because no one from Universal Studios has said they are.

Were the comics canon, we would probably have seen their events acknowledged in later films. Returning characters, such as John Hammond, Ellie Sattler, Alan Grant, and Ian Malcolm, would probably have mentioned their other escapades with dinosaurs had they actually happened, but the films treat their on-screen appearances as their only major adventures relevant to the overall plot. Much like the films and novels, the exact species of dinosaurs present on Isla Nublar is also quite different between the films and their comic adaptations.

“Next, Schreck revealed that “Jurassic Park: Redemption” has no relation to the Topps “Jurassic Park” comics released in the nineties.”

Redemption, and likely the other IDW comics, are considered as their own canon apart from all the other Jurassic Park comics that had been released before by Topps. It acknowledges the main events of each of the films, but has various contradictions, such as changing the relationship between Peter Ludlow and John Hammond, and renaming Lex as “Alexa” (her name in other canons is Alexis). There are also faults in the story itself, and plot holes that were never filled by the end of the story. Source for this information comes from here. Like the other comic books, the events of the IDW comics have not been acknowledged in the films at all, and their contradictions mean they cannot take place in the same universe.

LEGO Universe (L/F)

The Jurassic franchise has gotten the LEGO treatment, beginning with a handful of The Lost World and Jurassic Park ///-inspired sets in the “Studios” toyline of the early 2000s. With the release of Jurassic World, the number of LEGO sets for this franchise exploded, and the first four films of the series were even adapted into a LEGO video game. In the newer sets, the scenes are meant to depict stylized versions of things in the movie universe, in contrast to the Studios line which depicted movie studios filming iconic scenes. In the later 2010s, several Jurassic World animated series were produced by LEGO as well, and in the 2020s a comic book series was produced mainly in Eastern Europe. These were aimed at young audiences and were mostly slapstick adventure-comedy, the hallmark of LEGO animation, but some such as the Legend of Isla Nublar series did actually develop a storyline and lore of their own. Each series and short film, the game, and the toys themselves are different enough from one another to indicate they aren’t a single cohesive tale, although they overlap and reference each other. Their plots are distinct from the films too, and while some of the lore elements could probably be adapted into future film-canon stories, the comedic and toy-oriented nature of LEGO means that a one-to-one adaptation isn’t going to happen. The LEGO canon is firmly set in its own multiverse made of little plastic bricks.

The tag abbreviation L/F acknowledges that the LEGO canon is independent of the films but still heavily based on them, with most of its stories being essentially adaptations of the film events, prequels, sequels, midquels, or interquels. None are canon to the films, and film events do not have any bearing on preexisting LEGO materials. Instead, the LEGO canons are more or less an extended nod to the film canon.

Trespasser (T/C)
tressorna
Isla Sorna in Trespasser is loosely based on Cocos Island

Released in late 1998 after a troubled production and billed as a sequel to The Lost World, the classic yet over-ambitious DreamWorks game Trespasser is best known in the fan community for its highly detailed worldbuilding which, sadly, doesn’t reflect in gameplay very much. Despite the game’s incomplete nature and poor reception, it maintains a substantial fandom for what it could have been, and for being (to date) the only semi-open-world Jurassic exploration game. To create its world, the creators of Trespasser referenced both the films and novels, creating a kind of hybrid continuity that contradicts both its progenitors and largely resembles neither. Because of this, it belongs in its own universe in which some version of the first two films occurred, the dates of events and layout of Isla Sorna being greatly different. While many of elements of the backstory and lore could be adapted into future installments of the film franchise, Trespasser canon as a whole is a separate entity.

No one knows what the C in “T/C canon” stands for.

Miscellaneous Toys and Games

Over the years, plenty of toys and video games for the franchise have been produced, mostly based on the films. Since none of them are referenced by the films (though interestingly, some of the toys canonically exist in the film universe) and nearly all exist within their own little continuities, it would be painstaking to create canon categories for each of them, especially as some of these mini-canons would consist of just a few toys! From time to time, certain toylines do appear to build up stories and build worlds to exist in, such as the original Jurassic Park Series 1 and 2, or the famous Chaos Effect line, but rather than have complex and detailed canons, these tidbits of storytelling and worldbuilding are mainly meant to inspire creative play. The various video games may have more detailed stories, generally referencing at least one of the films that existed at the time of release and working like an alternate universe or branch in the timeline, but only a few video games have truly expansive lore (and those are already given their own canon categories on the Encyclopedia).


Summary

Each iteration of the Jurassic story acts as world unto itself, and while there is a lot of overlap, it was the original decision of Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg to allow the novels, movies, and other adaptations to be functionally independent of each other. This allows each version of the story to exercise creativity without having to conform to the rules and facts set forth in a different version, while also permitting them to take inspiration from each other and re-interpret story beats or ideas. Jurassic-Pedia is an attempt to catalogue each of these stories, showing how they’re different from each other and what they have in common. To make it easier to tell what story you’re reading about, reference these tags:

C/N: Crichton/Novel canon, the original two novels by Michael Crichton upon which the rest of the franchise is founded.

S/F: Spielberg/Film canon, the movies and supplementary materials such as sourcebooks, newsletters, interviews, and lore books. Most subsequent parts of the Jurassic franchise are based on the films at least loosely, but only a few of these are considered canon or soft-canon to the movies. If there is an addendum to the S/F tag, that means the article includes soft-canon information, and if there is a contradiction between the soft and hard canons that will be pointed out in the text.

JN: Junior Novelization canon, which are mostly based on the films but with non-finalized scripts used as reference. They often have minor deviations from the story as portrayed in the movie. This also includes the Jurassic Park Adventures trilogy, which is also partly canon to the films.

L/M: Ludia/Mobile canon, the series of mobile games produced by Ludia, Inc.

CB: Comic Book canon, mainly the Topps and IDW series. Pages specifically relating to each of these two comic brands will be denoted as such in the tag. Separate comic series are not canon to each other; this is a catch-all category.

L/F: The LEGO toy sets, animated series and films, comics, and video games. These are not strictly canon to one another, although they may reference each other. They form a loosely interconnected series of continuities.

T/C: Trespasser canon, a video game which was advertised as a “digital sequel” to The Lost World but essentially invented a brand-new continuity to take place in, very different from the films.