There are a ton of references in the timeline mainly because with the inclusion of dates, I could slip a lot of fun stuff in there. Right off the bat, any time September 17th is mentioned, that’s a reference to the first movie because that’s the 날짜 it came out.

First off, we have two fictional character birthdays, August 1st, and December 9th, which are the birthdays of The Joker and Oliver 퀸 (a.k.a The Green Arrow) respectively. 다음 is March 15th, 1975 which is the 일 that Terror of Mechagodzilla came out in Japan.

The 다음 날짜 is another movie release date. Arnold’s birthday, May 25th, 1977, is when 별, 스타 Wars first opened in theaters. While the 년 isn’t right on this 다음 one, the 날짜 of November 23rd is when the very first episode of Doctor Who premiered. Adam’s birthday, January 25th is the officially designated 날짜 of Opposite Day.

This one’s pretty straightforward. August 12th is my birthday and September 12th is my sister’s birthday. 2003 is the 년 I was born so there is an August 12th, 2003 in there as well. I also had the opening scene of the first movie take place on the exact 일 it was released, September 17th, 2010.

This is a fun one because it was a complete accident. Kate and Humphrey get married on March 26th, which is the 일 the first How to Train Your Dragon movie came out. I just picked a 랜덤 날짜 in early spring for the first movie to start and the amount of time that passes in the movie landed their wedding on March 26th. June 28th is when the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out. March 29th, 2020 is a real-life application because in the story, COVID hits the zoo that Humphrey is at and in real life, that’s when quarantine started.

July 16th of the same 년 is another real-life application because it was around that time that things were starting to settle down with COVID and that’s exactly what happens in the story. While it’s not on the calendar, this 다음 one ended up being true 의해 pure coincidence. In the story, I state that a 년 after the zoo reopens in the summer of 2020, everything went back to the way it used to be, making it July of 2021 when things go back to normal at the zoo. And now, as of May 13th, 2021 as I’m 글쓰기 this, we’re expected to be completely done masking and social distancing 의해 July 1st, about a 년 after things started settling down.

May 4th is of course 별, 스타 Wars day. June 12th is another fun one because that’s the 일 when I came up with the idea to write these stories in the first place. Right at the end, there’s November 23rd, 2063 which will be the 100th anniversary of Doctor Who.

And while this reference showed up earlier on, I had to save it for last because it is my absolute 가장 좋아하는 thing in the entire collection. The entry reads this:
“November 15th, 2019: Oscar’s sons, Mark and Ethan, are born.”

Now let me break this down. Mark and Ethan refers to Mark Fischbach and Ethan Nestor, two 인기 YouTubers better known as Markiplier and CrankGamePlays. On November 15th of 2019, they started a collaboration channel called Unus Annus, which is Latin for “one year”. The idea was to 업로드 one video every single 일 for one 년 and at the end of that one year, they would (and did) 삭제 the entire channel and every video on it. The point of all this was to teach people about the inevitability of death and to cherish the time that 당신 have while 당신 still have it, because 당신 can never go back, and 당신 can never stop the clock from reaching zero.

But these weren’t just any old videos, no, they were far from it. Because the channel was getting deleted in one year, Mark and Ethan threw all of YouTube’s rules out the window and literally made 비디오 on whatever they wanted. For one entire year, they successfully put up one video every single 일 and not one of them got taken down. And it was surprisingly sad when the 일 came for the channel to get deleted. In some way, these characters of Unus and Annus that they had created had become real and now they were dying.

On November 14th, 2020, over 1.6 million people (myself included) stayed up for twelve hours straight and watched the final livestream that Mark and Ethan did. For twelve hours, they sat and reflected about the past year, watching different parts of their 가장 좋아하는 비디오 among other things. And once the clock hit zero, they hit the 삭제 button. So this one 날짜 is a reference to one huge 년 of crazy that happened at the perfect time because of everything that was going on in the world. People had something positive to look 앞으로 to every single 일 during the worst 년 of our lives. We had no idea what ridiculousness the 다음 일 would bring, but we knew it was going to be good.

Looking back at all this, I realize it was a bit of a feat that I managed to make these stories as good as they turned out to be. I had to take this pretty silly kids’ movie and turn it into something dark and aged up with a cohesive story, and yet keep the spirit of the characters that the 팬 사랑 intact. Doing that really boiled down to the idea of making it darker. Here’s a character we all love. In what way can I cause them to get hurt? And that clearly happens a lot throughout these stories, mainly with Humphrey since he was my 가장 좋아하는 character, although 독사 같은 사람, 바이퍼 may have taken that 제목 now. But either way, I’m very proud and happy with how everything turned out.