Holy shit. During tonight’s episode, this was slipped in during Troy and Abed’s Christmas Invasion under the lyric ”If years were seasons, this December would be the December of our December.”
This is the entire series’ master story circle. The whole thing. If you don’t know what that is, read this article. Basically this is the master arc of the entire series.
You’ll notice something else: as per Dan Harmon’s story structure, it’s broken into quadrants. These quadrants correspond to story and emotional landmarks that stories should hit at certain points. They also correspond to seasons of the show. Each of the pictures in quadrant 1 (upper right) are from season 1, quadrant 2 from season 2, and so on. There’s only 4 quadrants. So I guess if we make it to season 4, that might be all we get.
Also: each of the small circles after the highlighted one (tonight’s episode) is grayed out with static, representing the uncertainty of the show’s future. Also remember the lyric this came up under: ”If years were seasons, this December would be the December of our December.”
Dan Harmon, you’re a genius. And I seriously hope you get to fill in those static circles.