Trivia / Dirty Laundry: An Alternate 1980s

• Author Appeal: Andrew's encyclopedic knowledge of Hair Metal clues that he would save the genre. Two catalysts for the downfall (the PMRC and the Rockumentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years) are eliminated, and Nirvana never comes to be (that one shows extra author interest).
• Line to God: The forum thread itself. When not adding timeline posts, he responds to the reader's queries and remarks.
• Milestone Celebration: Ironically, the 700th post on the thread was just Andrew answering to the criticisms that sprung up over the reveal that Chris Claremont wrote the 1986 reboot of "The Punisher" ITTL.
  • Even more ironic is that the 1000th post on the thread is of a reader asking if Sean Penn pulled the prop gun/real gun swap on Christopher Walken on the set of "At Close Range" ITTL and, if so, with deadly consequences.
    Clorox23: EDIT: Annnnnnnnd I just realized that this is the 1000th post on this thread. ...oops...
• Schedule Slip: While the timeline doesn't actually have a set schedule, this still applies due to Andrew's real life job^note being a lawyer forcing him to be absent from the forum for periods of time.
  • In fact, his latest update reveals that the most recent disappearance was due to starting a law-related podcast.
• Trolling Creator: A minor example: In response to some responses clamoring for a Grand Theft Auto: Vice City post (including box art), this is what Andrew responded with.^note Alternatively: go back to the main page.
• What Could Have Been: Yeah, Andrew originally was going to have Matthew Broderick replace Michael J. Fox for Back to the Future.^note Last response.
  • Andrew had set out to try and prevent the Challenger disaster and, sadly, came to the following conclusion:
  Andrew: I really wanted to do something to butterfly away the disaster, but the more I researched it, the more I was convinced that although some of the contributing causes were idiosyncratic (particularly the degree of icing the night before), the underlying causes were something that had already been set in stone for nearly a decade.^note 7th footnote.
• Word of Dante: Andrew admits that he fudged the details concerning "Dirty Laundry"'s creation (specificly that it was the last song written for I Can't Stand Still). "The only person who knows for sure is Henley, and he's not likely to tell us."
  • A similar example was the decision to have Coca-Cola's codename for "Coke Classic" to be "Merchandise '7X-23'"; he couldn't find out what the actual codename was.^note For reference sake, "New Coke"'s name in both OTL and TTL was "Merchandise '7X-100'".
  • One user speculated the #1s other than the ones listed by Andrew, who gave his blessing to such a list.