this project is an utter waste of time for a forgotten television show.

I seriously doubt the validity of this map. While The Jeffersons is sitting right next to All In The Family, there is no link shown. Right there it shows that the mapmaker did not know what they were doing.

Wow, nice manners, Internet. The link between All in the Family and the Jeffersons is now there, it was accidentally hidden before being saved for web. Hardly proof that someone “did not know what they were doing” but thanks for playing.

Doesn’t then our entire world exist in the mind of Tommy Westphall’s creators? If so we better wish them a long life.

Seinfeld is spelt wrong ;)

James. Thanks… I seem to always spell that wrong. :)

Raybird,

I think trolling the internet is an “utter waste of time”

The worst part is, that map is already out of date, isn’t it? Oog.

Just looking at all those bubbles makes me go out of my head. Or out of his head, maybe. Oog, I say. Oog and oog again.

I haven’t forgotten St. Elsewhere–I watch it via Netflix and Hulu and wish more than the first season was available. The episode where Luther dreams with a ZZ Topp soundtrack was a masterpiece!

@KChasm.

Oh, I don’t doubt it. I don’t think it was entirely complete when they put out that PDF. I noticed a few things that should have been added while I was laying it out.

Oh, hi. Posted to the front page of Metafilter. Watch out for site crash soon.

[...] Tommy Westphall’s Mind: A Multiverse Explored: "'Tommy Westphall was an austistic child on the TV series St Elsewhere who, it was revealed in the closing moments of the final episode of that series, had dreamt the entire run of the show.' According to These Guys, many of the shows we love only exist in Tommy's mind. They have compiled a list of the intertwining series, but the resulting excel spreadsheet just didn't do it justice, so I designed a brain map to illustrate the theory." [...]

[...] * Mapping the mind of Tommy Westphall. [...]

I saw the original chart a while back and I think your redesign is excellent. The darkening color as the connection becomes more distant adds another dimension to the information that was hard to see before.

The direct link connecting Lost with Veronica Mars isn,t shown. Was that a design choice or just an oversight? Ed. Note: oversight.

I expected this comment section to be 15 people asking where we can purchase a poster with this image, because that is what I want to know.

Trust me, I’m looking into it. Right now, it’s about 6.5ft wide x 4.5ft high which won’t be easy to print. I’ll have to experiment with how small I can make it before the type becomes illegible.

[...] theory and cognitive fluency make the same basic argument about where these skills come from. The human mind is wired up to rapidly identify what matters most in our surrounding environment. And we prefer things that are [...]

[...] of the Week: Tommy Westphal’s Mind: A Multiverse Explored. If you remember, Tommy Westphall was an austistic character on the show “St. [...]

[...] Rollover and Zoom 2010 March 3 tags: Rollover and Zoom by Comberg Nicholas Skyles [...]

Great job on this. I have my own version in Excel, but it’s a bit more colorful than their version. On mine, the shows are color coded for the network(s) they are/were on, and the lines connecting them have arrows and are color coded for what kind of connection it is. I also have the relevant episodes listed on another worksheet. I have a little different criteria for inclusion, so my version has fewer shows than theirs.

If you don’t mind, I compared your chart with theirs and found a few things off:

Civil Wars connects to L.A. Law, not Cop Rock
The Bill Dana Show connects to Make Room for Daddy, not Granddaddy

Need line between:
Everybody Loves Raymond and Becker
Happy Days and Mork & Mindy
The Practice and Ally McBeal
The Danny Thomas Show and Make Room for Granddaddy
Gomer Pyle USMC to Honey, I’m Home

Left out:
The Game connects to Girlfriends
Mission: Impossible (1988) to Mission: Impossible (1966). They labeled both as 1966 on theirs.

Also, X-Files to Fringe, which has direct connects to LOST and Alias. LOST has tangential links to The US version of the Office too (Dwight eats an Apollo bar a couple times).

Baywatch, Roseanne and Alf all have connections to Gilligan’s Island.

Haha, badass. Also very beautifully designed!

A beautiful way to illustrate a crazy idea. Great work!

One thing though- the connection between Angel > BSG > Firefly should be Angel > Firefly > BSG. Angel featured a company mentioned on Firefly, then the Firefly ship Serenity was seen in BSG.

Are you keeping this updated? On episode 5 of Luther on BBC last week, Luther says “Call Det. Munsch in New York. He’s with Special Victims Unit”

This puts that show in Tommy Westphall’s mind as well.

+1 for buying the poster.

I just noticed that by dint of the A.L.F. connection and the anti-drug propaganda special “Cartoon All Stars” that the entire Bush administration is also part of the Tommyverse. Sounds about right…

[...] Nicholas W Skyles has created some incredible images to accompany the Tommy Westphall’s Mind theory. [...]

Here’s a couple more linkages:

Cold Case’s Det. Valens crossed over with CSI:NY

Fringe crossed Lost via Agent Dunham flying Oceanic Airlines (J.J. Abrams producer both, so reference intentional)

And as to earlier post, Jimmy Smits and Michelle Greene appeared in background on Cop Rock, clearly portraying Victor and Abby from L.A. Law. So link between two is indeed valid.

So, what you do is note down all the references made by Tommy ? Or how they’re connected ? *is very confused*
Anyway, I’m surprised “Supernatural” wasn’t mentioned alongside Buffy and Angel ; ah, well, maybe I just don’t understand how the system works.
Life on Mars (UK) looks like something that should have totally made the list. A cop who either goes back in time, is in a coma, or is crazy ; it’s never made clear. And just imagine that the protagonist himself dreamt his whole trip through time via a coma while being in Tommy’s mind… now my brain just hurts.

I mean, especially since Mitch Pileggi from the X-Files along with Kim Manners who produced some of the show participated on Supernatural. “Jacob” (Mark Pellegrino) and Frederic Lehne from Lost also starred in it. Notwithstanding many shout-outs on the show itself. How does this system work ?

Yeah, I have to second that bit about the connection between Angel, Firefly, and BSG being messed up–though the original chart made that same mistake.

In regards to many of these posters, there was a rule in there regarding cartoons and puppets–namely, due to the tenuous nature of cartoon crossovers, it would open up Pandora’s box, and therefore they are outright banned. I DO think there should be some measure of judgment to be made, rather than an outright ban–namely, if the non-live characters are the ones appearing on the live-action show, and are treated as real therein, it should count. (Yes, this means that Family Guy is in because of Stewie’s guest spot on Bones–and while shows that are merely being parodied by Family Guy are still out of bounds, direct spinoff The Cleveland Show and the closely related American Dad probably would be.) Reality Television, of course, is completely out, because those ARE real people and real people are off-limits.

And of course, there’s one obvious missing piece that wasn’t around when the original chart was created–NCIS: Los Angeles, spun off of NCIS by way of backdoor pilot (and characters from the original have since appeared on the spinoff).