Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5218928-20140305213023/@comment-1904799-20140309035310

In response to the initial question, Ruri'iro Kujaku and Zabimaru both had releases that were inaccurate in regards to their actual abilities. The key difference between them, as far as I can tell, is that Yumichika was always aware of the existence of Ruri'iro Kujaku, and he only relied on Fuji Kujaku in order to not reveal that his zanpakuto was Kido-based. Renji, on the other hand, was never aware that Hihio Zabimaru's true name was Souou Zabimaru until Ichibei told him.

So in a sense, it kind of follows that Kubo could, at any point, reveal that someone else's zanpakuto has always been activated "incorrectly" like Renji's was. But the big difference and the reason I think the two cases aren't that similar is that the reveal of Souou Zabimaru was a surprise to Renji, whereas Yumichika probably knew from the day he first released his zanpakuto that Ruri'iro Kujaku was his weapon's true name.

The question has also come up here as to how far in advance Kubo's planned the various stages of the story. In response to that, I think there's often a very blurry line between "retcon" and "planned all along," and in Bleach it's particularly hard to find. Was Kubo always intending to have Renji's Bankai change its name? Probably not, but there's no real way to tell for sure. Maybe this was something he had written down way back at the series' beginning. Was Masaki always intended to be a Quincy? Was the Hogyoku always supposed to function the way it did? Who can say? No matter how badly you might want to say "aha, Kubo just threw this in there to drum up excitement and it's just a random retcon!", you can never really know for sure.