Just trash

Why is everything in London?

TFS? Sadie? Gaten? Now Noah?

The bulk of their S5 promo? London.

Vecna projection in the sky, opening a portal to our world? London. The exclusive early pre-screenings of the Crawl? London.

The final fan meet the day after November 6th (or was final before they added more to the tour)? London.

My delusional ass thinks it may be something to do with Big Ben, but it is VERY illegal to project anything onto Big Ben without authorisation, which they're very unlikely to get. They only project onto Big Ben for Remembrance Day.

Hm.

The official S4 announcement had bell chimes that sounded SO much like Big Ben's! These chimes are NOT the typical Vecna chimes from in-show!

I did some digging, and there was a Complete Series box set released for Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt about three months before they aired the surprise, interactive special. The interactive special wasn't announced until two months after the box set released, so folks didn't know of its existence when buying the Complete Series box set.

It seems that traditional TV episodes and interactive episodes don't seem to be considered "the same" with respect to false/misleading advertising laws.

Just some reassurance I guess? It's not likely that we'll get any "normal" TV episodes, but the box set release doesn't negate possible interactive episodes in the future.

Did anyone notice how weirdly clean Castle Byers was in the S5 flashback?

It bugged me how, almost perfect, Castle Byers looked, compared to S1?

Like the metal cage with the yellow lamp and yellow tin looks almost spotless - no sign of UD goo anywhere. In season 1, that metal cage is barely visible underneath all the goo.

The blanket Will is sleeping on also has the wrong print.

I mean - just look at how spotless that metal cage looks!

The weird thing is - the "clean look" is only there when we look at Will from an outsiders POV.

Once we see the events through Will's POV, the weird UD "goo" we see in S1 returns:

This also seems to be accurate to the season 1 scenes, as the microscope covered in goo is also facing towards the entrance of Castle Byers when El goes to search for Will telepathically:

It might mean nothing, or it might be an interesting piece of storytelling, indicating that the events we see at the beginning at S5 may already be tampered with.

Something REALLY neat that I just realised - Nancy is preparing a lay-out for the "Tigers Win!!!" headline, and is rearranging various different newspaper clippings for her layout.

Remember how I said it's weird that Nancy somehow managed to predict the events of that night's game before they happened?

Somehow Nancy rearranged the newspaper clippings to predict the future?

What makes this SO neat, is that it literally is Burroughs cut-up method! @gritstartar you will love this haha!

As a reminder - William Burroughs popularised the "cut-up" technique, where he'd take different snippets from a newspaper article, cut these up, and rearrange them to create new sentences.

One of my favourite quotes by Burroughs is:

“Now these experiments started not on tape-recorders but on paper. In 1959 Brion Gysin said that writing is fifty years behind painting and applied the montage technique to words on a page and this technique had already been used at that time in painting for fifty years, it was, in fact, kind of old hat in painting. Brion copied out phrases from newspapers and magazines, then took his scissors and cut these selections into pieces and rearranged the fragments at random and these cut-up experiments appeared in Minutes To Go in 1959. When you experiment with cut-ups over a period of time, you  find that some of the cut-ups and rearranged texts seem to refer to future events. I cut up an article on.. written by John Paul Getty and got “it’s a bad thing to sue your own father”, (this was a rearrangement and wasn’t in the original text), and a year later one of his sons did sue him. We had no explanation for this at the time, (perhaps, suggesting that when you cut into the present the future leaks out), but we simply accepted it and continued the experiments…"

I love this! I LOVE that they literally had Nancy cut up a newspaper, rearrange the text, and have the future leak out! It's so great!

This further circles back and reaffirms my initial assumption that the infamous @strangerwriters tweet was an exemplary cut-up, while they were experimenting with non-linear narratives:

It's such a great hint! Like so great! I'm nerding out about it! As a final reminder, even Bowie heavily experimented with the cut-up method to generate the lyrics to several of his songs, and the visual similarities to the Bowie's cut-up and the @strangerwriters tweet is just *chef's kiss*.

I mentioned this in a comment, but this is something I spotted a while ago, when going through the Official Book.

Every single newspaper (and I mean every single one, even the ones from the Official Book), that I've checked so far have ALL been sourced from real newspapers, that are period accurate (to the exact date). It's actually crazy.

In the book, there's a page for Chrissy Cunningham, and there are several different articles. Every single article actually was period accurate and sourced from several, separate newspapers all dated 23rd March 1986. The main difference is that the names were tweaked from the real life people, and changed to names of members of the production design team on the show (Chris Trujillo, Chris Forster, Addie Babcock etc). They also include a headline from Ferris Bueller's Day off - "Community Rallies Around Sick Youth", which to me, is more than a fun Easter Egg, considering Ferris Bueller's Day Off:

A) Came out after 23rd March 1986 (but somehow all of the other clippings are all 100% accurate?) and

B) Ferris Bueller's Day Off is all about a teen faking an illness and that making headlines.

Say what you want about the Duffers, the writing whatever.

I just am telling you - the production design crew is really fucking methodical and pays so much attention to details. This is Chris Trujllo's team - the same people who created the dial, all of the in-show newspapers, the Rainbow Room, the Creel House, the Soviet lab under the mall.

Soooo, this is the newspaper reporting the Creel murders from 15th March 1959...

They modelled this layout from a real newspaper actually from 15th March 1959, but just tweaked the headlines slightly, probs for copyright reasons, and changed names to make them "more Hawkins".

The "2 Dead As Tornadoes Strike in Arkansas" headline is replaced with "3 Dead As Police Probe Grisly Scene".

"UAR Reports Iraq Jets Attack Town" is replaced with "UAR Leaders On Notice in Syria"

"Auto Mishap Breaks Pole" is replaced with "Auto Blunder To Blame For Outage"

"Russians May Choose War: Fulbright" is replaced with "Moscow May Choose War: Dulles"

"Allies Appalled At Move: Withdrawal Of French Fleet Blow to NATO" is replaced with "French Pulls Out Of NATO Amid Rising..."

BASICALLY, the point I'm trying to get across - every single newspaper heading is more or less describing the same type of event, with some tweaks to the word for copyright reasons.

BUT! The ST newspaper has a headline: "President Packs Shotgun, Putter" - but the article in the real 1959 newspaper doesn't actually have an article about president Eisenhower at all.

The real article that's in the place of the Eisenhower piece is all about forgotten birthdays:

I can not help but think that they must have intended to include this one in the original newspaper we see in-show, but removed it because it would've been too obvious of an Easter Egg.

Like. Way. Too. Obvious.

OK so - reading the newspapers in the book made me decide to rewatch and pay close attention to the newspapers that we see in-show.

At one point, both Fred and Nancy show their newspaper layouts in anticipation of the basketball game later that night - 21st March 1986. Newspapers usually create "layouts" in advance of the game for either outcome (winning or losing), and populate it with text later on, once the game actually plays out.

The two headlines are shown about 41 minutes into S4E1.

Nancy's layout includes a win for the tigers:

Weirdly, Fred is rooting "for his alt", because his layout is about the Tigers getting devoured:

Weird right? There are a few very big red flags, aside from Fred supposedly rooting against his own home team.

Firstly - Jason Carver is listed as graduating in '87. The entire episode is hung full of posters for "the class of 86", however.

Even weirder, less than 5 minutes before we see Nancy's newspaper, we see a huge photo of Jason with "Class of 86" written on his jacket:

The contrast couldn't be clearer - so is this a simple mistake?

Second, very odd thing - newspapers pre-emptively create layouts for either outcome of the match. The goal is then to populate it with the events of the match, as it happens after the layout is created.

So how the hell does Nancy's newspaper snippet include every single detail of the game that only happens later that night? Down to Lucas being benched until 2 minutes before the end, and scoring in the last few seconds? You wouldn't be able to know this, unless you've somehow seen into the future.

How does Nancy know this? How could she have known this in advance?

Again - this isn't about a previous game, because the game against the Falcons is happening on 21st March 1986. Against, a reminder, the whole point of creating two layouts to begin with (both Fred and Nancy's), is because the newspaper does not yet know the outcome of the game.

The timelines are off - again... There is a time loop playing out, and our characters aren't realising it.

Also - I've been half successful in populating my time loop timeline, and one of the most frustrating things is that 22nd March 1986 doesn't fit into it at all. But ... 22nd March 1987 does!

I wonder if the events we think take place in 1986 are actually set in 1987, and that cycle has already played out, which is why we think we've won at this stage...

Oh, and another thing I spotted! Operation beanstalk is written so weirdly - almost as if it's a script for a play, rather than an actual action plan? Everything on there, up to Kali's death, plays out perfectly, beat by beat. A bit too unrealistic. And there is some really weird sections that read more as cues for a play, rather than an action plan?

Firstly - gunner hole in freezer unit? I guess the gunner hole is where Nancy shoots up from in the big buy truck, but what is freezer unit? I can only think of El's freezer tank in S4, nothing else.

Secondly - Will is not supposed to be part of the Abyss mission at all. His name is not mentioned anywhere on the operation beanstalk action plan. He wasn't supposed to be in the truck from the very start. He says as much to Max in episode 7:

The thing is - 2 rules of storytelling are broken here. Most people have spotted that Will wasn't supposed to physically be in the Abyss. But he also explicitly says that he also won't be in Henry's mind. In episode 8, he breaks both of these rules!

Thirdly - the weirdest thing about Operation Beanstalk is that "hold hands in the back of truck" is listed as part of their "mission prep"? What? Holding hands in the back of truck is the mission prep?

I thought, it could be just a throwaway Easter Egg at first, but when you watch the start of Operation Beanstalk at the end of episode 7, it actually becomes clear what holding hands in the back of truck means. It's a cue. It's part of the play.

I also considered whether "hand holds" could be a type of weapon (perhaps a handheld weapon), but it wouldn't make sense, since weapons are listed as a separate bullet point in the mission prep? There are also no weapons called "hand holds" either.

As the gang is entering the gate into the Upside Down, we see one final shot of them in the back of the truck.

The very next thing we see is the sequence of Henry and the children gathered around the table, and then they all ritualistically start holding hands.

These two sequences take place at the same time - holding hands in the back of the truck.

Then, after the events are done in the Abyss, but before El kills herself, we have another sequence of everyone holding hands in the back of the truck.

It's almost ironic, how everyone in that truck seems to be holding hands. Like they make sure to show three separate shots of three different sets of people holding hands.

Most of the zodiacs are told about that they have "clever thoughts", "fantastic ideas", "ingenious plans", "originality", and "success", but caution that one should "keep the clever thoughts to themselves" as someone could "snatch them away".

But the Aries horoscope section, with the birthday starting at 21st March, meaning both Will and Henry, is extremely negative compared to all the other horoscope sections.

It literally says that an Aries may think their ideas are good, but that they've deceived themselves that their ideas are grander than they are. Aries are told to "be realistic".

Which is so interesting, if you consider that all the other zodiac sections are about how great someone's ideas are, how ingenious, how they should keep these to themselves.

But the Aries is being tricked into thinking their ideas are grander than they think and to stay in touch with reality. Hm. Sounds like somebody's speech to Will in season 5... His "Tammy"... His delusions and grand ideas... Him being told to be realistic...

It SO fascinating! Watching Dark has also inspired me to rewind these scenes with written text and slow down and read what's shown on screen, and I've found so much foreshadowing that I don't think has been flagged before? Or if it has - please send it my way!