Trivia / Prehistoric Earth

• Contractual Obligation Project: Nathanoraptor, shortly after the story ended, theorized that this might have been the case for his co-author Drew Luczynski. Despite initial reservations about posting the Walking With/Prehistoric Park mashup he'd imagined, he decided to do so after demand from readers who'd heard about the story. However, in early 2017, he started to increasingly lose interest in the story due to the fact that he'd had the opportunity to start writing his personal passion project (the separate fanfic Dinosaur King Retold) and felt held back by Prehistoric Earth, which he'd never really been interested in. That being said, he has expressed happiness with how the story turned out (to an extent), is willing to respect the opinions of those who like how it turned out, and is grateful to Nathanoraptor for keeping the story going at a point where he himself was willing to outright cancel the story entirely.
  Nathanoraptor: What I think was going on - we never talked this out - was Drew was slightly miffed at being yoked to a story he might not have been particularly invested in in the first place, to the detriment of the story he really wanted to do. He'd been talking about DKR for about a year before it was posted - so I think that having the opportunity to do the story he'd always wanted to do, this other story (which he only really did because we all asked him to) was just in the way. I did notice this change - progress largely ground to a halt in 2017 and we ended up with a bunch of not-so-good stories because Drew seemed almost reluctant to do it. So, at the end of 2017, he starts the system we did from "All Great And Precious Things"-"Age of Giants" - and, eventually, we implemented the system we used from then to the end of the story. As I mentioned, we never really talked it out. Maybe things would have gone a bit differently if we had, I don't know.
• Creative Differences: Multiple examples sprouted up between Nathanoraptor and Luczynski over the course of their partnership. See Creator Backlash below or the What Could Have Been page for further details.
  • Among other reasons, this is why it took so long for them to finish Age of Giants. After they finished the chapter, Nathanoraptor admitted that this was a problem, and that from this point on, he and Drew would plan out the entire mission from the beginning before writing it. And even after that system was set up, a few more comparatively minor instances of this still ended up unfolding later.
  • Ultimately the two authors ended up on such divergent sides of where they wanted the story to go^note with Luczynski wanting it to focus more on exclusively the adventures in the past and difficulty in caring for the animals similarly to an Animal Planet style 'behind-the-scenes-at-a-zoo' show and also focusing primarily on Drew (and later Cynthia as well) then on any of the 'side characters' and Nathanoraptor wanting it to be more of a character driven drama with elements of Luczynski's vision that had more of an ensemble style focus on the cast and also simultaneously deconstructed and satirized various conventions of Prehistoric Park fanfiction stories that Drew eventually Stopped Caring and let Nathanoraptor do most of the heavy lifting.
• Creator Backlash: With two authors collaborating, both of whom had divergent views on how the story should play out, and one of whom may or may not have been suffering from major inexperience at the time in handling certain crucial elements of the story, there have been several instances of this.
  • Luczynski has spoken out how much he wasn't entirely pleased with what resulted from several incidents of creative differences in which he lost out to Nathanoraptor. In particular, he has expressed displeasure with how his adding in Will and Matt at all (let alone the moment they made their introduction) prevented him from including scenes and events that would have supposedly allowed Cynthia's character to be developed better. He also wasn't pleased with how Nathanoraptor altered Spiny the dimetrodon, as Luczynski had been hoping for this story to be an opportunity to promote a separate fic. The fact that he'd also vetoed an idea from Nathanoraptor involving Spiny that could have easily allowed for more appearances from him despite Luczynski's initial plans for the character now being obviated probably couldn't have helped his mood at the time either. On a less bleak note though, despite it being a case of his own idea getting cut, he was just as relieved as Nathanoraptor was that his original plans for Drew to unwillingly get his head shoved between Cynthia's breasts (and by Cynthia herself no less!) didn't make it in after both the beginning of the #MeToo movement and the revelation of Harvey Weinstein's history of sexual predation came about the same year in which Cynthia was introduced in the story.
  • For his part, Nathanoraptor himself has stated that he is not a big fan of Cynthia. However, despite what some say, he doesn't hate the character; his annoyance was with Luczynski trying to push her as the #2 main character of the story at the expense of other characters that Nathanoraptor planned to be important pieces of the ensemble but were reportedly considered 'just side characters' by Luczynski. And on the subject of Spiny the dimetrodon, he has also admitted to really disliking the version of Spiny, Lubbock, and Howler's misadventure that appeared in the final product due to Luczynski vetoing the version Nathanoraptor himself had wanted (and considered to be much better) without explanation.
  • Furthermore, Nathanoraptor has also since admitted that Cynthia's introduction was one of multiple factors that have caused him to since largely consider the final episodes of Phase 1 (starting with Cynthia's introductory episode) and the earliest episodes of phase 2 to be his least favorite chapters (with The New Rulers and Life and Death Promised in particular being tied for his absolute least favorite chapters in the entire story of all time). As he himself explains, the introduction of Cynthia was, in his eyes, merely the straw that broke the camel's back and only exacerbated problems he was already having with the chapters due to a lack of a clear underlying arc to these chapters' events due to the animals being rescued in those missions being either aquatic or largely confined to within a fairly short distance from each other, being forced by resulting necessity to rely on the character interactions and set up of some of their later important arcs in place of the missing underlying arc for the sake of transitions, and disagreements with Luczynski over how best to handle Jack (and also, to a more minor extent, Leon), among other characters.
  • For even further explanation on just why Cynthia's introduction proved so detrimental to the story in Nathanoraptor's eyes, he hadn't necessarily been opposed to the introduction of a brand new character. However, much to his regret, Luczynski ended up forcing Cynthia into the narrative at a time when the dynamic between all the other already existing and introduced prominent characters still hadn't yet been fully defined and set in stone. And as a result, with the existing dynamic between the already introduced prominent characters still in flux at the time of Cynthia's introduction, and some of the characters having very jarringly been done dirty by Luczynski long before Cynthia's introduction, the dynamic was only sent in further disarray after Cynthia was introduced and subsequently immediately forced by Luczynski into a prominent role to the point of being shoved down the readers' throats and into their faces against their wishes and trying to do even more of the planned prominent characters dirty for the sake of propping up Cynthia to the point it started to seem like Cynthia and Drew were the only characters Luczynski remotely gave a damn about.
  • To make matters worse, as described below, Luczynski also tried to pull all the stops to allow Cynthia and Drew (his personal favorites) to be made basically the sole main stars of the story. To this end, he went so far as to attempt to downplay Alice, Leon, and Jack's prominence and make them irrelevant to the story by having some of their established traits be assimilated by Cynthia (who Luczynski tried to give both the intended hot-headed and impulsive nature of Jack and Drew as well as Alice's intended role as the confident and assertive woman on the team who'd have been competent enough to even sometimes get the boys out of trouble) and PE!Drew (whom Luczynski attempted to have assimilate Leon's resident animal expert status). And furthermore, with Cynthia seemingly starting to have the reckless, abrasive, and thrill-seeking personality that Nathanoraptor had explicitly planned to be given to Drew, it soon also became clear that Luczynski was now seemingly trying to undermine Nathanoraptor by having Drew be a straight Nigel Marvin type of character when the character was originally supposed to be a deconstruction/parody of such characters (to the point of his own arc being explicitly planned to be his eventually learning that his reckless tendencies so common in most such characters are not ok).
  • And as if Nathanoraptor hadn't already been given plenty of reason to dislike Cynthia, he also really hated how her pairing up with Drew turned out. As mentioned above, he had initially been willing to give the character a chance, and had even gone so far as to plan to have her dynamic with Drew be something of a Belligerent Sexual Tension style pairing. Unfortunately, when the writing for her character ended up out of his hands and entirely Luczynski's responsibility, the end result proved in Nathanoraptor's eyes to be a very stale and cringeworthy sham of a romance with no proper buildup or development occurring prior to the hookup (which he himself wanted to have occur much later in the story than it did, only to be overruled by Luczynski), and only the most stereotypical and cringeworthy 'flirty banter' present to serve as the most flimsy of foundations, that he ended up hating to the point that he was thinking 'Oh my god, she's supposed to be Drew's love interest!? They have ZERO chemistry!' even while only reading the versions of The New Rulers that Luczynski had sent to him for editing, refining, and final approval.
  • Nathanoraptor has made it clear that he largely considers Devils of the Deep, despite a couple of decent moments, to be largely underwhelming and not hold up that well in the time that has followed its creation and posting. And while he was initially quite proud of how Life in Transition turned out, he has since come to feel that Jack and Leon's antagonism against each other in that mission is now too blatant, that Adrian and Alice's scenes meandered and plodded along too much, and that the quasi-romantic nature of their scenes in Life in Transition (and also in Alien Empire) now come across as rather awkward in hindsight as a result of the planned arc these scenes were supposed to set up ending up scrapped and replaced with Alice's 'will they or won't they' arc with Will.
  • Nathanoraptor has also admitted that he really didn't like how Luczynski handled Alice, Linda, and Colette in the chapters that unfolded before Cynthia's introduction. Alice's characterization in New Beginnings as an incredibly nervous young woman during her earliest significant scenes in the story made him cringe due to how she was supposed to have already had plenty of prior experience with various dangerous modern-day animals, not to mention the fact that this characterization jarringly clashed with his planned characterization of her as an unflappable and levelheaded figure that she ended up thankfully having throughout the entire remainder of the story. In regards to Linda, Nathanoraptor took umbrage to how Luczynski left her blatantly Locked Out of the Loop on crucial information ^note  specifically, just what sort of animals were supposed to be coming back to the park over the course of the missions during Devils of the Deep and unwittingly made her seem incompetent at her own job as chief veterinarian ^note  specifically, she ended up needing Drew's assistance to figure out a solution to a problem that she logically should have been smart enough to figure out how to take care of herself. And if it hadn't been for Nathanoraptor managing to notice in time to intervene, Luczynski also very nearly had Khatin do a routine checkup on Squishy the anomalocaris despite such an activity being Linda's own job to do as chief veterinarian (though in all fairness, this particular element has since been admitted to have been an honest mistake on Luczynski's part due to him having had trouble remembering all the characters and their positions at the time and had legitimately ended up accidentally thinking that Khatin was one of the vets) . And as for Colette, Nathanoraptor was understandably not amused when, in what appeared to be blatant disregard for Colette's planned characterization he'd explicitly told Luczynski about, Luczynski chose to try to write her in ways that would frame her as a stereotypical one dimensional Alpha Bitch instead of the Action Girl Jerk with a Heart of Gold she was intended to be. Likewise, Nathanoraptor has expressed regret that Colette ended up also being criminally underutilized as a result of the additional problems that arose after Cynthia's introduction.
  • In relation to the above mentioned instances where Luczynski himself engaged in this trope, Nathanoraptor was both just as relieved as his cowriter that the originally planned sexual assault laden first meeting between Cynthia and Drew never made it into the final product, and has also come to thoroughly regret including Kyle's sarcastic "I've just had to round up a herd of giant reptiles. Black rage doesn't even begin to describe how I'm feeling at the moment," line in light of recent Black Lives Matter related events. Not even his changing the line to being sarcastic when it was initially planned to be shouted was enough to prevent Nathanoraptor from regretting ever including the line at all. It is for similar reasons that he now also regrets having the neanderthals be fair skinned and relatively good natured and honorable while the cro-magnons were much darker skinned and seemingly antagonistic (especially when, in regards to the latter, he was trying to have them be more True Neutral figures rather than outright antagonists).
  • Nathanoraptor has also expressed regret for his reasons behind choosing not to go through with (or even tell Luczynski about) an idea he had regarding a potential past history between Drew and Cynthia. Nathanoraptor had originally considered having the two be ex-boyfriend and ex-girlfriend from a relationship they'd both had together prior to their working at Prehistoric Earth that had ended when one of them broke the other's heart. Nathanoraptor eventually chose at the time not to go through with the idea because he felt it would be too much of a coincidence. However, he has since realized that he was nitpicking too much, noting in particular that the readers would have gone with it perfectly fine without questioning it too much, and that sometimes the story has to come first (regardless of how overly convenient some elements might be in context).
  • As stated above, Nathanoraptor considers The New Rulers and Life and Death Promised to be his least favorite chapters of all time. In the case of the former, it's because of how Cynthia's introduction caused too many subsequent problems as well as exacerbated problems that were already present prior to her introduction. And in the case of the latter, it's a mixture of the 'episode's' structure not quite working all that well in his eyes, some of the jokes (one of which he himself wrote) being rather embarrassing attempts at comedy, the meta subplot about the park staff 'discussing future plotlines' feeling more irritating than humorous, the entire thing proving a rather unsatisfactory resolution to Leon and Jack's arc together involving their past antagonism and later ending up working to get out of suspension from active rescue mission work, and the staff meeting (despite including a few funny lines) not really adding anything to the story apart from a few details that readers would have potentially already guessed and a single plot point that ended up getting anticlimactically resolved at the very end of the 'episode'. He was also not a big fan of the plot point of Leon sneaking through the portal to accompany Drew and Jack on unauthorized leave.
  • Nathanoraptor initially didn't like ''Degrees of Greatness' and viewed it as one of his least favorite chapters, but has since grown to like it a lot more than he initially did. Regardless, he still isn't a big fan of the 'recap' paragraphs included within part 1 of this episode, as he feels this insults the readers' intelligence.
  • In contrast, a lot of the stuff that Nathanoraptor and the readers consider the best and worst parts of the story appear to have their positions reversed in the eyes of Luczynski. While Nathanoraptor dislikes the majority of Phase 1 and feels very pleased with Phases 2 and 3 for the reasons described above, Luczynski considers Phase 1 to be the only good season of the entire story due to Phase 1 adhering the closest to his own personal vision for the story and feels that Phases 2 and 3 (the latter of which he himself had very limited, if any, direct involvement with) were where the story only got worse and worse due to it becoming (in his eyes) more of a generic drama set in a zoo rather than the Animal Planet style 'behind-the-scenes-at-a-zoo' documentary he initially planned for it to be. Luczynski also came to seemingly be rather annoyed with all the planned prominent characters that weren't Drew and Cynthia due to how he allegedly viewed them as 'just side characters to Drew's story' instead of the ensemble of equal importance that Nathanoraptor had explicitly planned for them to be, and didn't like how they (in his eyes) seemed to be getting all the focus given to them by Nathanoraptor and leaving Drew reduced to being a background player in what was technically supposed to be his own story. Leon and Jack in particular were two of the 'side characters' that he became especially annoyed by due to their popularity amongst the readers unexpectedly managing to thoroughly eclipse that of Drew (to the point that it was theorized, and later blatantly admitted, that his introducing Cynthia was a deliberate attempt at forcing the spotlight back on Drew). He also claimed to utterly despise how, in his eyes, the story ended up seemingly prioritizing 'pointless romances, [and] a dumbass mole plot' over actual development of the park, making the rescue and care of the animals look too easy, becoming too derivative of Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and completely wasting the potential of the original ideas behind the plot of the villains related to the Novum Board. And finally, he came to also grow immensely disappointed in how Cynthia turned out to be in the final product once the story was over and blame Nathanoraptor for everything wrong with the story due to how Nathanoraptor had, in his own words, kept forcing focus away from Cynthia and Drew in favor of the 'side characters' and denying the two 'main stars' the chance at proper Character Development (among other problems) despite Nathanoraptor arguably having managed to save the story and make it truly enjoyable to the readers. He's even recently claimed that he's considering maybe someday attempting his own personal rewrite of the story so that he can attempt to 'do this concept the justice it deserved' and allow a version of it to exist the way he himself had wanted it to be.
  • In relation to what Luczynski stated in the retrospective, Nathanoraptor has gone on to address what his former co-writer has said. And while he defends his decision to have Sharptooth become an antihero instead of remain an antagonist as well as be more like a confused and antisocial Grumpy Old Man animal (since he felt that Luczynski's plans would have made Sharptooth seem too anthropomorphic and out of place compared to all the other more realistic animals), the smuggling operation's existence in the story (since it was intended to represent the 'bad side' of a symbolic clash between the good and bad aspects of human nature in general rather than a straight Shout-Out to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), and the way Nightmare Labyrinthine ended up unfolding (since his intention was for it to be a homage to Godzilla and Ray Harryhausen style kaiju movies, not a straight up ripoff of Jurassic World), and also admits that Luczynski may have been a bit harsher than necessary, there are a few things that he's admitted that his former co-writer made good points on and that he himself would have done differently if he were to rewrite the entire story all over again:
    • While he does defend his removing Thanatos from Drew's animal partner roster due to still believing that letting him remain there would have made Drew seem too much like The Ace, he does admit that the concept of animal partners for the staff wasn't utilized and explored to its full potential and that he hopes to do this idea better when its revisited in Prehistoric Park Reimagined.
    • While he reiterates that a planned scene that Luczynski himself vetoed would have allowed for the progression of the idea of Lightning the argentinosaurus becoming the leader of all the herbivores living in Mesozoic Safaris, Nathanoraptor also admits that, in hindsight, there was a lot of potential story fodder in the 'compatibility issues suffered by all the herbivores living together in the park despite not doing so in their home timelines' plotline that was left criminally unexplored, should have had more done with it, and that he himself miscalculated just how much of a portion of the story the conspiracy plot line would end up taking at the time.
    • He admits that it probably would have worked out better if he'd told Luczynski about the idea of Cynthia being Drew's ex girlfriend from before they both started working for Prehistoric Earth instead of just dismissing it, as this would have potentially allowed for more interesting story opportunities involving her and a better dynamic between her and the other characters. And in the process, he reiterates that he never hated the character.
    • He admits that Luczynski's idea of Martha suffering from PTSD did seem like a good idea, but felt that there was nothing he could really do with the idea due to how close to the finale Martha's rescue occurred within the story itself. He nonetheless hopes to maybe incorporate this idea in some fashion in Prehistoric Park Reimagined. He also very much wishes that he could have at least been told by Luczysnki at some point (before the story was already finished) about the idea Luczynski had of a smilodon named Simba being amongst the roster and ending up gruesomely killing another rescued smilodon.
    • If he were to redo the story, Nathanoraptor says he would have allowed Drogon, Viserion, and Rhaegal to each have more distinct personalities instead of being seemingly interchangeable the way they were in the current final product.
    • Nathanoraptor also agrees that the romance aspects of the story did take up a lot more focus of the story than they probably should have been allowed; particularly since they did admittedly somewhat end up coming at the expense of developing both the conspiracy as well as some of the character arcs that didn't involve romance (such as Drew's PTSD from his brief marooning in the post KT-event Cretaceous landscape). However, he also makes it clear that, if he were to do the entire story all over again, he wouldn't remove them. Rather, he would try to balance them out more evenly with the other aspects of the story.
    • He also says that, if he were to do the story all over again, he would have allowed a considerably larger number of other animals to get a decent amount of focus in Phase 3 alongside Raksha and Sharptooth.
• Creator's Apathy: As Luczynski himself stated in the following comments he made in the review section once the epilogue was posted and the story was complete:
  Drew Luczynski: At long last the story is finished. I will say it was a long time coming. Honestly, I feel more relieved then triumphant about this ending. I guess it’s because my interest in this story started to really fade over time to the point I didn’t really care what happened. Let me be 100% clear that I don’t blame Nathan for what I’m about to say, if it weren’t for him, this story would’ve been cancelled long ago. The story just wasn’t going in the way I originally envisioned it. I wanted more of an adventure in the past type story, more to do with caring for the animals. I’ve been watching a lot of BTS shows on Animal Planet. And honestly, I think it shows when the writing for the story started to change. Me and Nathan seemed to be on opposites on how we wanted the story to go, and honestly at the end I just decided I didn’t care anymore. Dinosaur King Retold is my passion project, and I will continue to work on that till I reach my planned conclusion. But I will remember this story, for better and for worse. Apologizes to anyone who enjoyed this story to the end. If you did, all the credit to you. Thank you Nathan for keeping the story alive.
• Creator's Pest:
  • For a good long while, Nathanoraptor didn't have an entirely high opinion of Cynthia as a result of Drew initially trying to push her into being a secondary main character alongside Drew at Jack's (and possibly Leon's) expense. Quite notably, despite her later getting Rescued from the Scrappy Heap, she had to wait several years before being confirmed to successfully make the jump to Prehistoric Park Reimagined alongside the rest of the park's 'main cast' (who, in contrast, were all automatically accepted for this status right out of the gate).
  • Luczynski had this opinion about Leon, admitting to uncertainty as to why; though he also later clarified that he didn't actually hate Leon - he was merely angry at how the readership became obsessed with the character. Some have speculated that Luczynski's disgruntlement with Leon was why Cynthia was introduced; a speculation that later ended up confirmed to be true. While he enjoyed writing for Jack, Luczynski was also uneasy in the character's ability to carry a story on his own (and also Leon's) and had to be convinced by Nathanoraptor to give him a bigger role in Phase Two. He also later admitted that he really didn't appreciate how Jack and Leon both became an Ensemble Dark Horse in the eyes of the readers at the expense of Drew.
  • Furthermore, Luczynski also had great difficulty at the time in figuring out how to adequately balance out an ensemble cast as well as in figuring out to properly write female characters, eventually drastically improving on both fronts over the course of writing his later work Dinosaur King Retold. Nathanoraptor has revealed that Luczynski would often have difficulty keeping track of the characters - for example, on two separate occasions, he had Khatin doing a check-up on an injured animal because he had legitimately thought that Khatin was one of the vets. The fact that Luczynski has also since been revealed to have reportedly largely viewed the intended ensemble cast as 'merely side characters to Cynthia and Drew's story' doesn't help.
• Dear Negative Reader: When one guest reviewer complained one time too many about the artistic license used involving the gorgonopsids featured being referred to as gorgonops instead of the more scientifically accurate inostrancevia, Nathanoraptor provided a more calm example of this trope by deleting every review from the guest in question in response to another reviewer's complaints, and left a warning review of his own afterwards.
• He Also Did: Nathanoraptor is one of the writers for the Prehistoric Park: Extinction World mythos, and was working on writing The Ultimate Wildlife Sanctuary concurrently with this story for a while.
• Hypothetical Casting: Nathanoraptor has commented that he sees Scarlett Johansson as Linda Eberhart, Idris Elba as Kyle Taymor and Daisy Ridley as Alice Denham. He's also quite partial to the idea of Ivana Baquero as Collete and Nicola Peltz as Yolanda. He has also found appeal in the idea of casting Tom Holland as Leon Gilbertson and Tim Roth as Nikolai. He even managed to later agree to casting Charlie Heaton as Drew, Harry Shum Jr. as Adrian, Thomas Brodie-Sangster as Jack, Alex Pettyfer as Will, and Wil Traval as Khatin.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Luczynski considers Phase 1 to be the only good arc of the entire story due to how much it adheres to his personal vision for the story and believes Phases 2 and 3 to be an Open-and-Shut Case of Seasonal Rot. Nathanoraptor and the readers, on the other hand, view Phase 1 as a weak start to the story and consider Phases 2 and 3 to be the point where the story really managed to take off and reach its full potential.
• Meaningful Release Date: As Nathanoraptor puts it, the events of Nightmare Labyrinthine were explicitly intended from a narrative perspective to be Prehistoric Earth's equivalent of The Avengers (2012). Appropriately, the chapters for that mission were released in the days leading up to the release of Avengers: Endgame.
  • In 2020, Nathanoraptor (with occasional input from Luczynski) started releasing a 'retrospective' on the story in the days leading up to the day in which the very first chapter of the story was posted; all for the sake of the fic's 4th anniversary.
• Old Shame: Due to just how much the story derailed from his original vision, plus how much the fans/readers seemed to have a much higher preference for Nathanoraptor's plans for the story instead of his own, Luczynski has since expressed a desire to get his own part in the 4th anniversary retrospective finished and his feelings on what happened behind the scenes vented as swiftly as possible so that he can move on, get immediately back to work on Dinosaur King Retold, and forget ever being involved with this story at all. He's even mentioned plans to perhaps someday do a complete rewrite of the story in the way he himself originally wanted it to be due to just how much he's come to hate the version that ended up coming into existence (and liked by seemingly everyone but him) instead.
• Schedule Slip:
  • As previously mentioned, there was a three-month hiatus between Alien Empire and The New Rulers.
  • As also previously mentioned, there was a rather long hiatus between some of the chapters of Age of Giants due to rampant creative differences ensuing between Luczynski and Nathanoraptor behind the scenes.
  • Another three-month and counting hiatus occurred between The Wavering Gulfs and Continent Of Blight. Both authors stated this was due to a desire to post all of the chapters for that arc at once. Eventually, the chapter was posted on February 22nd.
  • Yet another hiatus occurred between "The New Giants" and "The Anthropomorphous Apes", due to the fact that the chapter was difficult to write.
• Shrug of God: Nathanoraptor initially full heartedly accepted A-LionGleek's suggestion of Charlie Heaton as the Hypothetical Casting for Drew. However, when Nathanoraptor later decided that fellow Stranger Things cast member Joe Keery would make a better choice of casting for Drew in Prehistoric Park Reimagined, he notably stated that he didn't really care whether or not anyone chose to allow this same casting choice to apply for the character in Prehistoric Earth. He similarly took at least a full year after the story's completion before making a proper decision on whether or not Cynthia would ulimately make the jump to PPR alongside the other 12 'main cast' members.
• Special Thanks: In his author's notes in the review section after the story was finally finished, Nathanoraptor gave this to fellow fanfic writer/consistent reviewer A-LionGleek (who was one of two people especially enthusiastic about the idea who'd helped convince Drew into allowing the story to start becoming a reality in the first place, and had even been responsible for creating some of the characters...and later ended up getting chosen to take Luczynski's place as Nathanoraptor's cowriter for subsequent reboot Prehistoric Park Reimagined after Luczynski chose to respectfully decline the offer to reprise the position), then avid Prehistoric Park fanfic reader/reviewer Avian (for being the second of the readers alongside A-LionGleek who'd helped convince Luczynski into allowing the story to come into existence in the first place), fanfic authors DaDog and MortalKombat247 (the two main authors of the Prehistoric Park: Extinction World mythos, which had proven a key source of inspiration for the story), and to Luczynski himself for both being his co-writer and for coming up with the idea that would provide the basis for the story in the first place. And of course, he also made sure to thank all who'd read and reviewed the story over the course of its creation.
• Throw It In!: Drew's 'gatecrasher' remark in Passport to Hell was a random line that just happened to pop up in Nathanoraptor's head while he was doing writing for the chapters, at which point he chose to add it in simply because he felt it was too good of a line from Drew to pass up for inclusion. Cynthia's Sitcom Arch-Nemesis dynamic with Jack was likewise unplanned, but still left in the story when Nathanoraptor realized how well it could work.
• What Could Have Been: Has its own page.
• Word of God: Both Nathanoraptor and Luczysnki leave trivia segments in the reviews, which both clarify why they wrote certain things the way they did and What Could Have Been:
  • For example, the reason the resident mother Dimetrodon died was because of someone reviewing Walking With Monsters said it would have made the story better if she died. Additionally, they are also go to avert some of the more tragic deaths from the original Walking With series, so they needed a source of drama.
  • The Utahraptor in Age of Giants are meant to be an undiscovered European species, and were always intended as such.
  • The villains' plan unfolded as follows: After the incident with the brontoscorpio swarm caused the Novum board to increase their involvement with the project, von Grimm decided to attempt to make a move on acquiring the portal for himself due to believing that he could put it to much better use compared to what Theodore was currently having it be used for, and then sent Duncan in to work at the park as The Mole while also having the jury rigged inferior version of the portal created and given to Frank and the smuggling operation so that they could get started in advance, while also having Frank and the smuggling operation set up their lair in a hidden area on the northern most section of the Prehistoric Earth island. From there, the subsequent animal escapes and containment failures were engineered into occurring by Duncan for the sake of testing for what was planned to be the plot that would have allowed for the obtaining of the prime portal. These same incidents started increasing in frequency after word came about that Leon was training the allosaurs as a security force. And when von Grimm realized how much of a problem this development could be for his plans, he told Duncan to get to work on causing a mass breakout big enough to keep the allosaurs as well as all the human staff occupied long enough for him to sneak into where the prime portal was being kept and make off with it over the course of the chaos. Unfortunately, when they told Frank about this plan, he ended up going overboard to the point that the resulting mass breakout was big enough to lead to the veterinary facility being put on lockdown. And as a result, Frank ended up causing Duncan to be unable to access the prime portal's location due to being either unable to get into the veterinary facility in the event the portal was there, or trapped inside the veterinary facility in the event that it wasn't. After the mass breakout failed to achieve the desired results, and Steve Woodward started to search for potential leads on all the mysterious events going on at the park, von Grimm ordered for Frank to continue using the inferior version of the portal to continue getting more 'goods' to smuggle and not make any more attempts at obtaining the prime portal for a while in order to allow them the chance of avoiding drawing too much further attention to themselves. Only after they finally figured out a proper new plan did von Grimm allow for one last attempt at acquiring the prime portal. And in said plan, six months after the mass breakout, Duncan and the black-ops team that ended up getting hired and sent in to help ended up failing and getting eaten, causing von Grimm to decide to cut his losses and try to have all the stuff that had already been collected by the smuggling operation to be shipped off the island to potential buyers before the park staff could catch up to them and stop them.
  • Both writers agreed from the very beginning that prehistoric humans (with the exception of outright apes like australopithecus and paranthropus) would not be brought back from the past to the future, as they felt that all Prehistoric Park fanfiction stories in which such beings were brought back to the park from the past (such as those in the Extinction World mythos) never do enough to fully explore the idea.
  • As far as Nathanoraptor is concerned (and A-LionGleek agrees), Will and Alice did become an Official Couple at the end of the story.
  • Despite never telling Luczysnki about it or likewise allowing it to be made explicit in the story, Nathanoraptor still at times considers his original idea of Cynthia and Drew having dated (and undergone a particularly unpleasant breakup) prior to the both of them working at Prehistoric Earth to be canon to some degree or other.

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