Well I originally suspected that it might be an alternate telling... but then why go to the trouble of having... err... uh... spoiler... don't read any further...






















Why go to the trouble of having Kusanagi come back to Section 9? In the SAC series, she never left... however in the GitS movie she did leave. Furthermore, in GitS:Innocence, she demonstrates that she can download parts of herself into dolls, which she does a ton of in Solid State Society. This leads me to believe that Masamune Shiro was attempting to incorporate the Oshii movies into what he considers to be his telling of the GitS timeline.