Blog:15 Years Later: NBC's Heroes and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

(This blog post isn't complete yet but it's been collecting dust in my sandbox for over a year now so might as well post the info dump somewhere. Completely forgot that I wrote this months ago until I browsed my old laptop drive. Since the clone dump of the Heroes wiki suddenly stopped working properly, I'm putting this here in hopes that I can rewrite it into a less casual format and publish it somewhere someday.)

I opted to name this blog post as "I Rewatched Heroes to Check For JoJo References So Nobody Else Has To", but then I realized it doesn't sound as flashy as I thought.

I once swore that I will never finish the  saga after my disappointment with the second season and the following ones. However, after realizing that there have been JoJo's Bizarre Adventure references that flew over my head while watching it, I decided to painfully rewatch the series all over again just to see if I missed anything.

There is already a dedicated section for this in the List of References page, so if you want an abridged explanation, you may head there (and maybe even check out the other references). However, if you want a more detailed explanation with context and you're willing to read a Heroes fan explain how the show works, then continue reading. :D

About Heroes
In Heroes, the character Hiro Nakamura is a comic book geek who happens to be an "evo", which is an evolved human with powers in the Heroes universe. Hiro has the ability to warp time, teleport, and time travel. He (surprisingly) makes very few references to JoJo in the TV show but more in his immersive weblog posts that used to be directly hosted in NBC's website. Clearly someone in the writing room was a big fan. This is also one of, if not the earliest JoJo reference in Western TV media - the show's first broadcast and Hiro Nakamura's first blog publication were both released in September of 2006, predating both the 2007 Phantom Blood film and the 2012 JoJo anime.

As a sidenote, all of the links to the weblog are now dead. This is either due to the writing staff's efforts to extensive immersion after the show ended (they previously took down Hiro's blogs since, around the same time in the show, Hiro went back in time and causes a series of events in the past that prevented his future self from writing the blogs) or NBC must have taken them down due to the inevitable downfall of Heroes around early 2013. I had to look through the Wayback Machine just to find them on my own. All links are from the latest and working retrieved snapshots.

For better archiving and for anyone who will be interested enough to check out the show themselves and look back on this post later on, I decided to paste the full entries here instead of just the specific JoJo lines. There will be major spoilers from both JoJo and Heroes in explaining each reference, so PROCEED WITH CAUTION!

Hiro's Blog Entries
It is never explicitly seen in the show but Hiro Nakamura writes on a weblog in order to track down everything he does while time traveling. Most of the posts are "auto-translated by Yamagato Software" - Yamagato Industries is a fictional company that Hiro works for as an office clerk in the first season. However, since he writes them while he resides in different time periods, the posts are instead sorted by "stardates" (the fictional system of time measurement in , true to Hiro's geekiness) and were originally published in random order instead of chronologically, depending on where Hiro was in the show's continuity. (To explain this better: there is a point in the show where Hiro accidentally teleports himself to Texas. The post he wrote at that time is the first to appear in the weblog, when in reality it is the eighteenth entry he has written.)

Because Hiro's entries are "auto-translated", there are a lot of the Japanese words that are not properly translated as well as misspelled words. Thanks to the now-defunct Heroes Wiki, the stardates have been listed corresponding to the in-universe dates.

September 25, 2006: Late Again
JoJo's influence on Hiro Nakamura is evident as he mentions JoJo's Bizarre Adventures as his favorite manga.

October 11, 2006: Let It Ride
Note: The "comic" Hiro references is not JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, but the comic book he sees early in the show called "9th Wonders!" written by an evo clairvoyant author. Hiro later uses it to fix things during his time travels, and also to save the protagonists such as when he witnesses the cheerleader Claire getting killed in the future panels.

Hiro writes as "Jotaro Kujo"
This is around the same time that an "anonymous" poster writes a post and takes over Hiro's blog, deleting all content from the ground up (they were later uploaded again, but the links don't work anymore these days). None of the cryptic messages include any JoJo reference other than Jotaro Kujo's name and in the third post.

March 12, 2007: Bound by Death and Luck
Captain's Log: Stardate 3000.0

Bound by Death and Luck How would one find a flower? A ray of hope, a light that will illuminate nature's undisturbed process for looming survival. Mankind has a choice. A pathway, a destiny. Care to remind me of those simple times. Kids could be kids. Adults live caring for the world. Harmony lies in equality. I, an outcast, never belonged. Longed to bleach a dark world. Demons that live within the monolithic souls of cruelty. Yet, the hunter turns to the hunted. We hide in the shadows of factual inaccuracies. The light not to be seen. Branded with blindness. A matter of perception, such visions speak greater than words. Pleasantly resolved, convenient for humanity. When will I be free? When will we be free? Fates timed to precision. We follow a path. It crosses with each other. Realize the moment. Awaken. Unite. Ambivalence is not a solution. Blackness is resolved with truth. Love. Beyond walls of hatred, lies purity. Prisoners of silence. Lacking a leader, we have common goals at the core. Trust no one. Fight to avenge and open the eyes of the beast. Prejudice spawns like spores. Find me. Reach me. Email time@primatechpaper.com. My search continues for petals. The flower that drops no trace. A flower. Open your eyes so we can talk. Communication is conductor of truth. At the end there are ultimately many futures. At the beginning primarily, there is only one departure. History is delicate. It begins with one. Many butterflies cause too much chaos. One flap, precise catalyst. To see light again, a rift will be chanced. I grow weary of hiding on the 15. In simple times, we used a courier to tell truth. Analogous to death, invisibility to many familiar people. The irony. Once drowned within homogeneity, yearned to be special. Found air to drown myself bearing a mark. To a flower I speak. May I reach you to end this insanity. Preach the truth. Open the minds. There are no monsters. Only visions that are placed within minds.

March 29, 2007: To Flower
Captain's Log: Stardate 12288.0 To Flower Flower, I shall bring you a game.

Use one part-time worker at a time and for every dollar, add 3000.

0100010001110101010001000100011001001111100001000100111101001000010101110111 0101010101110100011001100001100001000110000101001000010011010111010101001101 0100011001001111010010000100110101000110010011110111010101001111010000100100 1101010001100100111101000010010011110110110001001111010000100101001110000100 0101001101001000010100110110110001011101010000100101110110000100010111010100 1000010101110100011001010111010010000100010010000100010001000100101001010111 0100100001000100010010100110111110000110010101110100101001001111010000100100 1111100001100101011110000110010011010100100001011101010000100101011101001000 0100010010000110010101111000011001101111011011000100010001110101010011010100 1000010111010110110001000100010010100110111110000100010111010110110001011101 0111010101000100011011000110111101101100010111010111010101010011011101010101 0111011011000100010001101100010100110111010101100001011011000101011101001000 0100010001000010010101111000011001011101100001000110111101110101011011110100 0110011000010110110001100001011101010100111110000110010011011000011001100001 0111010101101111100001000100110110000110010011011000010001010111010010100110 1111010001100100110110000100010011111000010001101111100001000100010001001010 0110111101101100010011010111010101000100010010100110000101001010010011111000 0100010011110100011001101111010001100101011101001010010011010111010101101111 0110110001011101100001000101001110000100010011110100011001001111011011000101 0011100001000110000110000100

The key is on the key. A picture is 5.

Auto-Translated by: Yamagato Software

The now-defunct Heroes Wiki has an extensive explanation in decrypting this post. (Should probably copypaste it here before the clone dump stops working again.)

April 19, 2007: For Fun
The JoJo references in this crossword are "17. Germanic relationship, Susie Q and Jojo" in ACROSS and "4. The world" in DOWN. The answers are OMA and DIO respectively.

April 23, 2007: Final Message
Captain's Log: Stardate 27288.0 Final Message A mask bound by fortune on death row.