Mystery Solved
by Jeff
Image text: The Roanoke Lost Colonists founded Roanoke, the Franklin Expedition reached the Pacific in 2009 when the Northwest Passage opened, and Jimmy Hoffa currently heads the Teamsters Union--he just started going by 'James'.
First and foremost, thanks to Berg for covering for me while I was on vacation on Friday. Make sure you follow him on twitter and tumblr. But, only if you like to laugh.
In this comic, Amelia Earhardt's plane comes back to land after it went missing in 1937. Earhardt was presumed dead and that her plane went down sometime during her journey. But, this comic supposes what if instead it just took her from 1937-2011 to fly around the Earth without really aging a day.
The image text proposed a few more solutions to mysteries including the lost colonists of Roanoke, who were one of the first groups to come to America, but suddenly disappeared, leaving their colony untouched. The Franklin Expedition was a British voyage in 1845 to study the Northwest passage that also disappeared somewhere in northern Canada. Jimmy Hoffa was the famous Teamsters Union leader who went missing in 1975 and is presumed dead (and possibly murdered).
Missed Connections
by Jeff
Image text: The Street View van isn't going to find out anything Google won't already know from reading my email.
Missed Connections is a page on Craigslist in which people who saw each other briefly and want to reconnect attempt to find each other again. If I was to hazard a guess, I would imagine it works .0001% of the time. In the case of missed connections, one person describes themselves "Me" and describes the other person "You" in order to try to reconnect.
The first one is a goofy joke as far as I can tell.
The second one is not a reference to anything I can find, anyone know?
The third one is a reference to networking. UDP stands for User Datagram Protcol. UDP packets don't use handshaking to verify they have contacted the correct host, so they can get lost or confused. The Cisco router location is just a reference to a block of IP addresses. Cisco is a company that makes networking equipment. This is a play on a missed connection for someone who was lost and asked for directions.
The fourth one seems to be a joke as well. For those outside of the US (or those inside as well), Nancy Pelosi is a member of the US House of Representatives. The (D-CA) is a common notation for politicians which notates party (D for Democrat) and state (CA for California).
The fifth seems to be a reference to Randall's upcoming nuptials?
The sixth is a reference to how the Google Street view van was not only recording photos of the street in 360 degrees, it was also collecting data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. The comic takes this to the next level, that the Google Street View van also scans what we have in our pockets and does a retinal scan. In this case, the social security number referenced is the most used SSN of all time.
The last suggested the Babe Ruth, the American baseball slugger of 1914-1935 is actually a Time Lord. Time Lord is a reference to the popular sci-fi series "Doctor Who" in which The Doctor, who is a Time Lord, uses a TARDIS, which stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space to travel through time.
Inside Joke
by Jeff
Image text: I've looked through a few annotated versions of classic books, and it's shocking how much of what's in there is basically pop-culture references totally lost on us now.
In this comic, Randall is commenting on the fact that everyone in every age has current jokes and certainly inside jokes. The joke in this comic that the two characters are laughing at in the comic is purposely not understandable by people of our time. Does that make sense?
Basically, this joke is "unexplainable" *gasp* I know. Unless I went back in time and immersed myself in the culture of the age and then and only then would I understand the inside joke.
But, the point of the comic is that we don't understand jokes and references from ages ago and people from the future won't understand our cultural references or especially our inside jokes.
Time Machine
by Jeff
Image text: We never see any time travelers because they all discover it's a huge mistake. This is also why your friend at the lab suddenly looked about a year older recently.
So, future Rob travels back in time to kill past Rob to prevent him from inventing the time machine, which we see in the image text is a bad idea. Then future Rob assumes Rob's identity and preventing the time machine from being invented at all.
But, wouldn't future Rob cease to exist if he prevented the time machine from being invented?
Movie Narrative Charts
by Jeff
(You absolutely have to click on the image to see it larger. It is quite detailed and impressive.)
Image text: In the LotR map, up and down correspond LOOSELY to northwest and southeast respectively.
Lord of the Rings is pretty self-explanatory if you have seen the movies based on the series by JRR Tolkien. It is important to note that the chart is based on the movie, not the books. Second, is the original Star Wars trilogy. If you haven't seen those, stop what you are doing right now and go get them. Third, is the original Jurrassic Park movie.
The joke in 12 Angry men graphic is that in the movie all 12 jurors are all in the same room the entire movie. They never move and they all always interact with each other, hence their lines stay straight and close to each other.
The last box is a movie called Primer from 2004, which became a cult classic. It is about accidentally discovering time travel. The plot is so convoluted and mixed up with the time travel between the original person and the so-called time travelling "double" that it is almost impossible to figure out where each character is at one time...as the comic illustrates.
UPDATE: These charts are roughly a reference to the map by Charles Joseph Minard that details the movements and losses of Napolean's troops on his failed conquest of Russia.
Example can be found here.
October 30th
by Jeff
Image text: Not enough houses on your block? Just hit them at 30-year intervals from here to 2300 and get 10x the candy.
First of all, because Doc Brown uses the phrase "overshot", he is travelling back in time to maximize his candy intake. Which is opposite of the image text which proposes going forward in time to trick or treat as many times as possible.
Secondly, I cannot get the rhyme, "Great Scott, I must have overshot!" out of my head.
EDIT: And as kb says in the comments the character is Emmett "Doc" Brown from the Back to the Future series, who's catch phrase was "Great Scott!".
Time Travel
by Jeff
Image text: She also starts every letter with "Dear Future <your name>".
I have to say, I'm either completely lost on this one or there is no hidden meaning here. Anyone have any idea on this one?
UPDATE: Upon further reflection, the female character of this comic is pretending that she has time travelled from the past, which is technically true. The character has travelled through time just like anyone else, just as you or I have travelled through time since the day of our birth.
It appears the female character in the comic is 23 or 24 (Thanks commenter boobins, whoops! I can't count apparently) 25 or 26 years old as one would assume she uses the year of her birth as the year she has "time-travelled" from.
Am I explaining that right? Technically she has time travelled, but not in the exciting way. In the same, boring way we have all travelled through time.