This page is just the last SBaHJ, which isn’t even really funny. It was just the last hint for the ARG, which ended up being useless filler as the ARG had been already solved. The reason Owen was gone is that he was after Stiller. I intended for him to reach Stiller right before the heroic sacrifice to witness it, but I decided that didn’t really fit the story.

Instead of cutting the commentary on this page short, I’ll go over the order in which the elements of this story were put together, as promised.

After I decided to make more updates, the general outline was that this was to be a series of interviews escalating into some kind of a conflict at the end. Nick obviously had to be a force of good in the story, so I needed a villain. After I made the Buscemi interview his story formed pretty quickly, as he already had some Caliborn-ish qualities to his character from some of the ARG materials (Which is the “Why don’t I have an Oscar”-stuff I mentioned earlier). Stiller’s story I didn’t put together until after his first interview, as I was writing Emma Watson’s one. I wanted Vriska to appear later to prove Watson right, and realized that Stiller could be a similar case. He doesn’t need to just be thinking he’s Hella Jeff, but that he’s more or less literally becoming him.

Around the same time I realized the golden opportunity I had with Oscar Isaac and the escalation of the plot began to revolve around his murder. In a three-act structure his interview would be the beginning of the second act. Malkovich’s backstory and future death was clear by the time I wrote the interview, but originally he was meant to fight against Buscemi and fail. That seemed too much of a bummer, so I grabbed the Dark Cage from the concept art image of the first page and made him a real antagonist.

By Ben & Owen #3 I knew how Vriska and English had arrived to this timeline and began to hint at it. And from that point on everything was pretty much figured out, except why exactly Stiller was the way he was. I considered Glover-like connection to the Ultimate Hella Jeff, but that changed as I realized that Glover could bring the SBaHJifier to do the job. However, Terezi and Vriska were still kind of a loose gag, so I made it so that Vriska was the one to bring the SBaHJifier and Glover would grab the Oscar (which existence took way too long for me to remember, to my shame).

The general events of [S] Ollywood Showdown were known since the beginning, but the details were hazy until I finished Cyborg Malkovich: Strife. Originally it was a short fight on a nondescript tall Hollywood building where Nick gets punched around by Buscemi, and just before the final blow Hella Ben appears and tackles Buscemi off the roof, and they both fall. Believe or not, this was before I knew Stiller was actually Jeff and had superpowers. He was just crazy. It wasn’t even imagined as a flash at this point, just a series of panels and dialogue. After I realized people were actually expecting a flash, I changed those plans for a short animation. Like, 1-3 minutes depending on a song. Stiller had his powers in that version. Malkovich v Dark became the fight in the comic format instead, and as I was making my final music decision for the finale, I decided I wanted to make a big, flashy fight instead of my original minimalist plan.

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