i cant help myself- i do this all the time with anything i like that has merchandise of any kind ngl-
im nowhere near done lmao
(i also am very aware i will probably never get anywhere close to half of these sets, this is genuinely just smth i like doing for fun lmao)
i also just tagged this with the figures in like half the sets lmao
i also have no idea if any of the dates are correct ngl- im just going off the website im using. but its meant to be like release date to retire date so
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
All the way back when S1 was airing (so, prehistoric times), I actually had this crack theory that Bonezai and Dr. Julien were the same character.
Now who is Bonezai you might ask? He's one of the Skulkin, he was from that era of Ninjago where each enemy was advertised in sets and canon as a unique individual with a name, but in the show itself, he's just a placeholder model meant to represent multiple nameless soldiers.
In Bonezai's case, he was one of the Skulkin of Ice, alongside Wyplash; We had two sets of Skulkin, one with the standard minifigure head, the other with a specialized skull mold. Each set had a Skulkin representing one of the four elements of the time, Bonezai was ice. Not in the actual show, but definitely in product descriptions, side lore like the guidebook, and especially in the spinner game, where his character card lists Ice as his primary element. You can see all of this reflected in the color of spike and loincloths the Skulkin had, with white being Ice, gray being Earth, red Fire, and blue Lightning.
Bonezai never really got a proper story appearance, not even in supplementary materials; His only true characterization as an individual was in online descriptions and the like. But he was described as the inventor of the Skulkin vehicles and other machinery, generally chill, but fiercely defensive of his creations; He turned a Skulkin into a tool rack for scratching his Turbo Shredder, and damaging Bonezai's work is a reliable way to distract him.
This was early Ninjago, this was years before we got the Cursed Realm, or the Departed Realm. This was back when the Underworld was apparently THE afterlife for all of Ninjago, with the website in 2011 even stating this. There was the strange implication that all of our protagonists, sans Zane, were destined to become Skulkin, and the Underworld as the arrival for all deceased is kinda played with in the pilots too.
Wu's sacrifice at the Fire Temple is clearly meant to play into the idea that he died and went to the Underworld as a result, taking the Sword of Fire with him. It's even said that no mortal can cross over into the Underworld, implying that Garmadon and Wu both died, and 'banishment' is like being banished to the Shadow Realm in Yugioh, it's just another way to say they died.
Shortly after the pilots aired however, we did get the canon mini-movie shorts, which revealed that there's a passage to the Underworld inside the Fire Temple. So I guess the writers realized the implications of Wu being technically undead, so they did a soft retcon by revealing there was just a portal there the entire time, and that's how Garmadon was able to manifest as well.
But I digress; The point is that up until S4, the canon was that the Underworld was the afterlife. Then we got the Cursed Realm, which differentiated itself as Ninjago's Hell. And finally we had Day of the Departed, which built off of the sixteen realms reveal by making a new, much tamer afterlife called the Departed Realm. During Day of the Departed's release, a lot of lore of dubious canonicity was revealed in the website, including the claim that the Underworld was where disgraced warriors go to where they die. Obviously this was an attempt to differentiate the Underworld and Cursed Realms if they're both Ninjago Hell now, and explain what the Skulkin even are if the Departed Realm is a thing.
All of this is to say: The established lore implies that Dr. Julien became a Skulkin when he died. So we have two dead inventors, affiliated with Ice in some way (in Julien's case, due to having invented Zane) and being very emotionally attached to their creations. So kid me thought it'd be a fun twist if Bonezai was Dr. Julien's undead alter-ego this entire time, because there's no fucking way his name was Bonezai when he was alive.
As for why Bonezai didn't react to his son Zane, I reasoned that the individual named Bonezai never actually encountered Zane; All those lookalikes were just other Skulkin using the same character model for animation ease. As I said earlier, Bonezai never had an actual story appearance, especially not a canon one, so it was easy to imagine that he was just in the Underworld the entire time, blissfully unaware of who his comrades were fighting.
BUT THEN we got S2, which jumpscared us with Dr. Julien's return, and in a way very odd in regards to the Bonezai theory because like. It was retconned that Julien invented the Skulkin vehicles, which at the time upset me because it just undid all of Bonezai's existence as a character. And it was kind of funny because the writers semi-confirmed my theory that Julien created the Skulkin's machines, but in a way that had him replace Bonezai, rather than make the characters the same. So I guess if I really wanted to stretch it, I could still say they're the same, that during Julien's brief stint working under Samukai he became a Skulkin, and then got his flesh back...???
But yeah, it's definitely not canon now, especially with 2016 bringing us the Departed Realm, which is where Julien actually would've gone post-mortem, both times. In 2011 we had books written by Greg Farshtey, who also characterized Bonezai, that established Zane’s amnesiac past before S1 did, and alluded to Garmadon somehow knowing where he came from. So I wonder if Greg Farshtey knew what the Hagemans had planned, if they told him, if they read his work and decided to roll with Zane having a mysterious origin. So maybe Samukai and Julien’s connection was an attempt to follow through on that, a year later.
It was a fun and interesting saga, and my thought process was insane when I saw Samukai and Julien on-screen at the same time, and then saw the blueprints. I suppose the fact that there was already blueprints for Samukai to show means that Bonezai created the initial designs, and then Julien perfected on them; We already got something like that back in 2011, when the guidebook mentioned how Chopov unwittingly improved upon the Skulkin motorcycle design, and his version got approved over Bonezai's, to Bonezai's dismay. So I suppose it was nothing new.
