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Chris Avellone

Chris Avellone is an American video game designer and comic book writer. He worked for Interplay and Obsidian Entertainment before becoming a freelance designer and writer. He is best known for his work on role-playing video games such as Planescape: Torment, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords and the Fallout series.

In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time and by Gamasutra as one of the top 20 game writers. In 2017, he was named by GamesTM as one of the then 50 most influential people in gaming.

Early life
Avellone grew up in Alexandria, Virginia. At the age of 9, he first learned about Dungeons & Dragons while playing catch with a friend from the neighborhood who started describing a "strange game of make-believe where you could pretend to be a dwarf, elf, fighter and you could explore dungeons, fight monsters, and take their treasure." After trying to put together a group to play with, he realized that no one wanted to be the group's game master and he had to learn how to fill the role himself, experiencing the game vicariously through the players and looking for new ways to entertain them.

He attended the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in nearby Fairfax County. While in high school, he visited a friend's house and saw The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight by Interplay Productions running on the Commodore 64, which made him realize a computer game master could also run a game for him and resulted in him playing every computer RPG he could get his hands on, without considering at the time that he could seek a career in computer games.

Upon finishing high school, he moved south and pursued a degree in architecture at Virginia Tech because he had enjoyed drawing maps and structures for his pen-and-paper gaming sessions. After two years, however, he realized his "sketchbook was often filled with more sentences than sketches", which made him question himself and led to him transferring to the College of William & Mary and switching over to English as his major, graduating in 1994 with a minor in fine arts as well.

His first job was for a role-playing company called Day by Day Associates, and involved role-playing a criminal at the local police academy and at Hogan's Alley in Quantico, Virginia to help train police officers and FBI agents. He later worked in a toy store and as a campus center supervisor.

1993-2003: Tabletop games and Interplay
Avellone's hobby of gamemastering for tabletop roleplaying games made him try to get his adventures and articles published. Starting in his high school years, he sent a large number of submissions to Dungeon magazine, Dragon magazine, Palladium Books, GURPS and Hero Games, but they were all rejected. However, when Hero Games had a new product line for their Champions RPG called Dark Champions and needed writers, Hero Games' line editor Bruce Harlick contacted Avellone, asking him to write a character book for it, which he agreed to, resulting in 1993's Underworld Enemies. It was followed by Dystopia in 1994, Widows & Orphans in 1997 and New Bedlam Asylum in 1998, as well as contributions to the adventure anthologies Heroic Adventures Volume 1 and Volume 2 in 1996 and to Dragon, Alarums and Excursions, Adventurers Club and Shadis throughout that period. Avellone was also one of the authors involved in the fanzine Haymaker! alongside Harlick.

After asking Steve Peterson, his editor at Hero Games, to help him find him a job with a steady paycheck, Peterson put in a recommendation for him with Mark O'Green, the head of Interplay Productions' Dragonplay division. At the beginning of June 1995, Avellone flew to Irvine, California and interviewed with O'Green, who asked him hard questions about how he would go about designing a video game using the Planescape license, which Interplay held the video game rights for at the time. Avellone told him he would "start at the death screen, and just tell the story of what happens after that". O'Green was intrigued and hired him as a junior designer.

His first task at Interplay was to design cities for a Dungeons & Dragons game set in the Forgotten Realms. When that project was cancelled a few months later, he was transferred to the role of a level designer on Descent to Undermountain, a first person 3D dungeon crawler that was also set in the Forgotten Realms and repurposed the engine used by 1995's spaceship combat game Descent. According to Avellone: "I didn't know what I was getting into! I was very happy to work on it at the time, though. They were trying to add gravity and first-person combat into the Descent engine, you know, so they could create something [like] Ultima Underworld. The engine just wasn't set up to do that, and we didn't have the sheer amount of programming power available to make that happen."

While working on Undermountain, he was also asked to contribute writing and design to other games. The first of these to be released was Conquest of the New World, a turn-based historical strategy game developed by Quicksilver Software which was published by Interplay in 1996. Because Quicksilver were only a few streets away from Interplay, designers from Interplay including Avellone were asked to help with lore additions to the game whenever needed. He then contributed mission design to Interplay's 1997 game Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, a space flight simulator that made extensive use of full motion video.

By late 1996, Feargus Urquhart – who had replaced O'Green as the head of Interplay's role-playing division, soon to be known as Black Isle Studios – was being mandated to make use of the Planescape license by his superiors and became interested in making a game for it using the Infinity Engine, the isometric engine in BioWare's Baldur's Gate, which was then in development and which Interplay had access to as BioWare's publisher. Urquhart asked Avellone if he was interested in being the lead designer on the new project and Avellone agreed, seeing it as an opportunity. Avellone initially titled the game Planescape: Last Rites, and, recalling the design ideas he had shared with O'Green in his hiring interview, used them as the starting point for the game's vision document, which was warmly received by Interplay's studio head Brian Fargo, who nonetheless asked Avellone to promise he could actually deliver on it. During the game's pre-production, Avellone was given a very small team that consisted of lead programmer Dan Spitzley, lead artist Tim Donley and two other artists, sharing an office with them. As Avellone described it:

"Once the vision document was approved, we scaled it down and outwards and turned each bit into reality. The lead artist, Tim Donley, did sketches of each of the major locations one by one before they were arted on the computer. I then took the characters and quests and did area design documents. I wrote a first pass of much of the dialogue and companions (many of which made it all the way to the final draft). All the while our programmers started digging into the Infinity Engine (which wasn’t done at that time, since Baldur’s Gate 1 was still going on) and learning more about how it worked so we could see if our ideas were feasible or not."

Avellone incorporated the many ideas for fantasy quests and characters he had gathered over the years into his design and sought to turn fantasy conventions upside down. Around this time, Tim Cain also offered Avellone a role on Fallout as a designer, but Avellone had to turn him down because, between Last Rites and his continued responsibilities on Undermountain, he was already overburdened with work, and he recommended Scott Bennie for the role instead.

At the beginning of 1997, Avellone asked Urquhart to be transferred to full-time work on Last Rites because he no longer felt there was much he could contribute to Undermountain given that game's development troubles, but this request was only granted in the summer of that year. When Colin McComb was assigned to Last Rites as its second designer in April 1997, he found that Avellone already had a broad outline of the entire game from start to finish, with all of the major characters sketched out. It was soon realized that the name Last Rites was already trademarked and being used for another company's game, which led to their project being renamed into Planescape: Torment after many other possible names for it were rejected. Throughout that period, Avellone also contributed writing to Interplay's racing combat game Red Asphalt and Treyarch's swordfighting action-adventure game Die by the Sword, both of them released in early 1998.

Undermountain was finally released in January 1998 and sold poorly and was widely panned by critics. That same month, Fallout's central creative trio of Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson decided to leave Interplay and start their own company which they named Troika Games. This created an uncertain future for Fallout 2, which they had been leading development on for a few months, so designers, programmers and artists were taken from other projects and assigned to help with it. This included Avellone, who became an area designer on the game and designed New Reno, Vault City, the raider caves and the game's various special encounters. His work on New Reno is how Avellone "first came to people's attention", as it has been called "one of the most beloved locations in any RPG" and "possibly Avellone's single greatest creation [...] emblematic of everything a true RPG should be: non-linear, dynamic, detailed, and expertly written". Fallout 2 was released in October 1998 and has been ranked by video game publications as one of the best RPGs of all time, though Avellone has expressed misgivings about the game's tonal inconsistencies and overuse of breaking the fourth wall.

While working on Fallout 2, he also continued writing the story and dialogue for Torment, which led to him having 160 hour workweeks that kept him exhausted. Once Fallout 2 was finished, he immediately had to enter crunch time again on Torment as the game's development team expanded from the 10 people it had at that point to between 35 and 40 by the end. McComb would later estimate that, although there were seven other designers on his team, Avellone did approximately half of the design work on the project. However, as the game's localization costs mounted due to its long script and quality assurance testers regarded it as the strangest game they had worked on, Avellone thought that Torment would be poorly received at large and was afraid he was going to be fired. When Torment was released in December of 1999, it instead sold moderately well and received very positive reviews. It has since become regarded as one of the greatest video games of all time   and has been especially praised for reaching a quality of writing that had not existed in games up to that point.

By the end of the game's development, Avellone's health had declined significantly from the long hours and he was advised by his doctor to not continue down that path. Interplay's vice president Trish Wright also became concerned and helped reduce his workload. When Urquhart and Donley asked him if he was willing to work on a sequel to Torment, Avellone declined, saying he was too tired.

Most of the Torment team then wanted to work on a new fantasy intellectual property which became known as Black Isle's Torn, while Avellone opted to join a different team inside Black Isle which, after the release of Fallout 2, had spent a few months working on a sequel for that game, but had not made good progress in that time with either its design or its switch to a new 3D engine. After promising them another chance to make that sequel in the future, Urquhart had tasked them in May of 1999 with developing Icewind Dale, a more traditional Dungeons & Dragons game which, like Baldur's Gate, was set in the Forgotten Realms and also used the Infinity Engine, but was more linear and had a strong focus on dungeon crawling. Despite joining halfway through development, Avellone wrote the dialogues of all the major NPCs in Icewind Dale and also edited those written by the other designers. Additionally, he designed a number of quests for the starting town of Easthaven and many of the special items in the game, as well as writing the game's narrative style guide and manual. He was also one of the few technical designers involved with directly implementing content in the game. Icewind Dale was released in June of 2000 and was well-received, but was regarded by Avellone and the general public as not pushing the genre forward compared to Black Isle's previous games.

During his time on Icewind Dale, Avellone also wrote a vision document for the project codenamed Van Buren, which was the promised next attempt at continuing the Fallout series. Once it was approved, he became the lead designer on it and worked on it for the next three years, doing area design, maps, character breakdowns, items and plot elements for all the locations in the game. Avellone felt the game had the potential to be better than Torment, as everything in its design seemed to be clicking into place, but none of the teams at Black Isle were available to work on it, and it languished in pre-production with Avellone as the sole person working on it, his only chance to playtest and refine his design coming from tabletop sessions based around it that he ran for his fellow developers.

A few weeks after the release of Icewind Dale, work began on an expansion pack for it called Heart of Winter. At fellow designer Josh Sawyer's suggestion, its story was based on the lore Avellone had written for one of his Easthaven quests, and Avellone continued his dialogue-focused duties on the title. Heart of Winter was released in February of 2001 and was not as well-received as the original game, largely because of its short length. To allay the fans' complaints, the team including Avellone then developed a free but smaller downloadable expansion called Trials of the Luremaster, which was released in July of 2001.

During Heart of Winter's development, Avellone was also asked to write the story for Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, a console action RPG that Interplay had tasked Snowblind Studios with developing in an attempt to enter the increasingly lucrative console market. Although Avellone quickly wrote a draft of the storyline that he liked, it became a target for what he called "the most mind-boggling iterations and suggestions" from his bosses, and he was unhappy with the result as he felt it was lacking and not similar to his original vision.

Black Isle's Torn, which Avellone did not work on but had offered occasional design input on, was cancelled in July of 2001, as Urquhart estimated it would not be done in time to help Interplay with the financial difficulties it was going through. Development on Icewind Dale II was started in its place, once again using the Infinity Engine, with Sawyer as the lead designer and Avellone doing area design for the starting town of Targos and for Kuldahar, which he greatly enjoyed because of the unusual amount of freedom the designers were given on the project. Icewind Dale II was released in August of 2002 and received positive reviews, although the public felt its engine had become too dated.

In early 2002, production began on Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader, an alternate history action RPG developed by Reflexive Entertainment and published by Interplay, on which Avellone was assigned to provide design assistance for a short while after its overall storyline had already been established several months into development. Afterwards, before he could return to work on Van Buren, he contributed to the design of Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound, Black Isle's attempt at making a Dungeons & Dragons game in a 3D engine that had to use Baldur's Gate in its name despite having little to do with it because Interplay had supposedly retained the license for it, but not the license for the Forgotten Realms in general. Once the license turned out to have been lost because of unpaid royalties, The Black Hound was cancelled after a year and a half of active development, which made Urquhart leave the company in frustration in April of 2003. For the first time, a full team was now available to work on Van Buren, but Avellone did not believe it was possible to make the game any longer given Interplay's financial troubles and the management's complete focus on the console market, so he also left the company a couple of months after Urquhart. His assessment turned out to be correct when, half a year later, Black Isle was shut down and Van Buren was cancelled.

Now a free agent, Avellone was invited by Snowblind Studios to help with the writing on their next game, Champions of Norrath: Realms of EverQuest — another console action RPG in the same vein as Dark Alliance but taking place in the EverQuest universe — as they had enjoyed working with Avellone despite their relationship with Black Isle becoming frayed after Black Isle had used their engine to make Dark Alliance II without their permission or involvement.

2003-2015: Obsidian Entertainment
After leaving Interplay, Avellone was invited by Urquhart to join him as one of the five co-founders of a new company named Obsidian Entertainment which aimed to develop the same kind of games as Black Isle, with Avellone accepting and becoming the company's chief creative officer.

Obsidian received their first project very quickly when BioWare, who were almost done developing the cross-platform RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for LucasArts, passed on the opportunity to make a sequel for it and recommended Obsidian for the job based on their previous relationship with Black Isle. Avellone thus became the lead designer of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, a role which he was not pleased with at first as he had not been a fan of Star Wars since his childhood, but which gradually became interesting to him as he immersed himself in the franchise, reading all of its novels and comic books, and realized he could explore the questions he had about its universe through his design and try to recapture the feeling of The Empire Strikes Back, his favorite movie in the series.

However, the task of making a sequel to a AAA game was fraught with difficulties, as Obsidian initially had no employees and no office space, with the co-founders working in Urquhart's attic. Additionally, Avellone had to write a blind first draft of the story without having played the original KOTOR, as it had not yet been released and LucasArts did not want to provide a copy of it before a full contract had been officially signed, which then led to Avellone having to start over with an entirely different story once he was able to play it.

After a contract was signed in August of 2003, Obsidian were able to move into an office in Santa Ana and hire enough employees to start full production on the game by October, but still had a very aggressive schedule that required them to finish the game within a year. Avellone wrote the game's overall storyline and most of the companions and did area design for Peragus, Malachor V, part of Nar Shaddaa and other smaller areas, while also dividing and coordinating the tasks of six other designers. KOTOR II was released on time in December of 2004 in what many regarded as a partially unfinished state, but still received very positive reviews, with its story being named one of the greatest in video games and in the Star Wars franchise.

After KOTOR II, Avellone pitched comic book publisher Dark Horse a comic named Unseen, Unheard about characters from the game, which he then wrote for the final issue of Star Wars Tales published in July of 2005. This also led to him contributing short stories to the Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures comic series until it ended in December of 2007.

In July of 2004, Obsidian began development on Neverwinter Nights 2, a Dungeons & Dragons PC RPG taking place in the Forgotten Realms, after another situation in which BioWare, who had developed the first game, recommended Obsidian to its publisher, in this case Atari, for developing the sequel. Avellone joined the game's development team once KOTOR II was finished and was primarily responsible for writing major characters, including the game's companions and their associated quests, but also for implementing influence mechanics and critiquing area designs, and additionally proofread almost all the dialogue in the game. Despite the game's design having an unrealistically large scope that created difficulties and led to its original lead designer Ferret Baudoin being replaced by Josh Sawyer in March of 2006, Neverwinter Nights 2 had generally favorable reviews when released in October of 2006, with its story and writing noted as being its strong points.

As Obsidian began to always have multiple projects in pre-production or development at any given time, Avellone — in his capacity as the company's chief creative officer — oversaw the high-level design on all of them, offering feedback and critiques on prototypes, game builds and design documents, as well as writing and improving pitches for new games and talking to publishers about them. Obsidian's third project Dwarves, an RPG prequel to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves that Obsidian was enlisted to create by Disney in 2005, was the first one that Avellone did not have a direct role on, with his involvement instead consisting of reviewing the work done by its lead designer Kevin Saunders and its lead story writer Brian Mitsoda and offering insight into which elements in its story achieved their goals and which elements needed improvement.

In early 2006, Sega expressed interest in having Obsidian develop a cross-platform RPG for them and were pitched an idea from Urquhart and fellow co-founder Chris Jones about making an espionage RPG that took place in the present and incorporated ideas from Burn Notice, James Bond, the Bourne series and 24. Sega liked it and decided to pursue the project, with Obsidian intending at first to retain the intellectual property rights for it, but soon giving them to Sega in return for more funding so they could prevent layoffs when, as the deal with Sega had almost been finalized, Dwarves was cancelled by Disney because they had decided to avoid going in that game's direction with the Snow White intellectual property after a recent change in that company's leadership. Brian Mitsoda was reassigned from writing the story for Dwarves to being the creative lead on the espionage RPG, which was named Alpha Protocol. Sega announced their collaboration with Obsidian on a game based on new intellectual property on the 23rd March of 2006.

In July of 2006, pre-production began on Mask of the Betrayer, the first expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights 2, with Avellone offering designer George Ziets the role of creative lead on it and giving him a lot of flexibility on its story and setting, which Ziets used by exploring the religious and mythological elements in the Forgotten Realms that were the most interesting to him. One of the five companions intended for the expansion, the half-celestial cleric Kaelyn the Dove, was almost cut early on when it was estimated she could not be written and implemented in the time the team had available. Avellone, who was not directly assigned to the project at the time, asked to write her himself so she could be kept, with Ziets remarking that she then ended up being his favorite companion in the game. Avellone also wrote a second companion for it, the spirit shaman Gann-of-Dreams. As the expansion neared release, its lead designer Kevin Saunders noted that the dialogues of the new companions were richer and longer than those of the most developed companions in Neverwinter Nights 2. Mask of the Betrayer was released in September of 2007 and was well-received, with game publications calling it the best Dungeons & Dragons experience since Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn and Torment  and sometimes referring to it as a thematic sequel of the latter.

Near the end of 2006, Sega asked Obsidian to also begin development on a second cross-platform RPG to be published by them, this time based on the Alien franchise, with the project being named Aliens: Crucible. Avellone was assigned as its creative lead and sought to incorporate survival mechanics into the title, giving players the goal of building up a base over time and carefully managing their resources in a tense atmosphere where they would be vulnerable to attack even during conversations. The game was officially announced by Sega in December of 2006.

In early 2008, when Alpha Protocol was halfway through development, it became apparent that its vision had not been well-defined and that, in the absence of a project director, its leads were each trying to make a different kind of game. When Mitsoda left Obsidian soon after, Avellone was moved over to Alpha Protocol and became its lead designer — though not in charge of its gameplay systems, which were handled by lead systems designer Matt MacLean — while Josh Sawyer took over the design of Aliens: Crucible. Avellone created a new storyline for Alpha Protocol that was less linear and allowed for a very large number of player choices, while reusing character designs, locations and plot points from Mitsoda's iteration of the story. Avellone wrote most of the characters in the game, except for their emails, which were written by Matt MacLean, and except for the characters in Taipei and the peripheral ones in Rome, which were written by narrative designer Travis Stout. Avellone estimated there were approximately 120 hours of dialogue in the final game of which players would only hear between 22% and 33% in a single playthrough.

In February of 2009, Aliens: Crucible was cancelled by Sega in favor of Alpha Protocol, which they deemed to be much farther along in development. After a round of layoffs at Obsidian, Urquhart began talking to Todd Vaughn, the vice president of development at Bethesda Softworks, about making a game for them, as Vaughn had previously raised that possibility as early as 2004, but Obsidian had never had any free teams whenever it had come up. Bethesda, who had obtained the rights to make Fallout games in 2004 during Interplay's bankruptcy and had released their own Fallout 3 in October of 2008, were now busy developing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and would not be able to make a Fallout 4 for a long time, which made them interested in having an external studio develop another Fallout title in the interim to avoid a large gap between titles. Obsidian were thus asked by Bethesda to pick an interesting location in the Western United States and pitch a Fallout game around it. After multiple people at Obsidian independently chose Las Vegas as a signature western city, Avellone wrote a story pitch about a stranger getting shot in the head and dropped in a shallow grave in the desert, with Vegas visible in the distance. Bethesda approved it, signing up on the development of Fallout: New Vegas, with the Aliens: Crucible team being transferred to it and Sawyer becoming the game's project director and lead designer. As Sawyer had taken part in Avellone's Van Buren pen and paper campaigns at Black Isle and had become the lead designer on that game for its final six months, he incorporated certain elements from it into New Vegas, such as Hoover Dam as a plot-important location, the Caesar's Legion tribal confederation as a major faction, the mentally ill Nightkin super mutants as occasionally encountered characters and the caravan wars as part of the story's background.

Avellone moved over from Alpha Protocol to the New Vegas team as a senior designer in October of 2009. Alpha Protocol, which had originally been meant to be released that same month, was delayed to May of 2010 after management at Sega decided it would have a more favorable release window then, but the game did not receive any additional development time during the delay. Upon its release, Alpha Protocol received lukewarm reviews, with frequent criticisms about its gameplay being clunky and bland, while its storytelling and freedom of choice were praised. Although Avellone had many ideas for a sequel and wanted to have an even more complex story in it, the game was not financially successful and Sega was not interested in turning it into a series. The game has, however, become regarded as a cult classic because of its unique style of reactivity.

For New Vegas, Avellone wrote two companions: Ulysses, a former scout from Caesar's Legion who was supposed to provide insight into the game's events from the perspective of that faction, and Rose of Sharon Cassidy, the hard-drinking caravaneer daughter of Cassidy, a Fallout 2 companion who had also been written by Avellone and had been Sawyer's favorite companion in the series. Avellone also provided writing for the game's ending slides, the endgame characters Legate Lanius and General Oliver, as well as for the Mojave Outpost and the REPCONN Headquarters areas, and helped lead writer John Gonzalez with structuring the story and its associated character dialogues, as Gonzalez was not used to writing branching narratives. After getting Dark Horse in touch with Bethesda, Avellone also wrote All Roads, a graphic novel included with the collector's edition of New Vegas that detailed the events leading up to the beginning of the game. However, as development on New Vegas was nearing the end, it was realized that Ulysses as a companion had so much dialogue that it would not have fit on the game's disc and there was not enough time to trim it down, which led to his complete removal, a difficult task in itself given that his dialogue had so many different hooks into the storyline. Avellone decided instead to reuse the character as an overarching antagonist in the downloadable content expansions that were planned, with foreshadowing about his new story being added to the base game. New Vegas was released in October of 2010 and was well-reviewed, but received significant criticism for its technical issues. With the passing of time, it has become regarded as one of the greatest RPGs of all time.

New Vegas received four downloadable content expansions, with Avellone being the project director and lead designer on three of them: Dead Money, Old World Blues and Lonesome Road. Avellone shared writing duties on Old World Blues with Travis Stout, but did almost all of the writing on the other two. In Dead Money, the story revolved around the player character being kidnapped, fitted with an explosive collar and forced to rob an impenetrable casino with the help of three other characters in the same predicament. Avellone sought to create a survival horror experience for it based on an idea he had originally had while working on Torment after watching the 1997 film Cube and which centered on taking disparate personalities that would normally be very hostile to each other and forcing them to work together, focusing on the themes of greed and human nature. To provide a contrast to the dark atmosphere of the other expansions, Old World Blues had a much more humorous story that involved the player character being taken to the highly advanced scientific facility of Big MT, having their brain stolen, and exploring the remains of the facility to recover it. Its story was conceived around the theme of "the optimistic atomic future of what might have been" and the idea that the advanced technology in the Fallout setting could have saved the world if it had not been misused by its creators. Lonesome Road was inspired by the final image at the end of the original Fallout of that game's protagonist being cast out of their home and attempted to evoke the same sense of abandonment by having the player explore an area that their character had caused devastation for in the past, with rival courier Ulysses holding them responsible for it and waiting to confront them inside. The New Vegas expansions were released between December 2010 and September 2011 and have been praised for providing "some of the best sci-fi in games", with Old World Blues in particular being named one of the greatest video game expansions ever.

Avellone worked as a narrative designer on Pillars of Eternity prior to leaving Obsidian Entertainment in June 2015.

2015-present: Freelancing
Since leaving Obsidian, Avellone has worked as a freelancer on games such as Torment: Tides of Numenera, Prey, Divinity: Original Sin II, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and Into the Breach.

Misconduct accusations and retraction
In June 2020, Avellone was accused by two people of using his status for sexual misconduct and harassment towards women during industry conventions. Following these allegations, Techland announced that they and Avellone agreed to end his work on Dying Light 2. Gato Studios also removed Avellone from The Waylanders; according to lead writer Emily Grace Buck, Avellone had "very little writing" over that project, having only penned a few quests that they planned to rewrite. Paradox Interactive said that while Avellone had worked on an early version of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, much of his work had since been overwritten.

Avellone published a denial of the allegations through Medium in June 2021 and stated he had filed a libel suit against two accusers in a California court. This libel suit was settled in March 2023, with a settlement that "provides for a seven-figure payment" from the accusers to Avellone. Concurrently the two accusers retracted their original accusations, stating that "Mr. Avellone never sexually abused either of us," and that "We have no knowledge that he has ever sexually abused any women." They also claimed in the same statement that their previous public statements with regards to Avellone had been "misinterpreted".

Comic books
Star Wars comics:
 * Unseen, Unheard (2005)
 * Heroes on Both Sides (2006)
 * Impregnable (2007)
 * Old Scores (2007)
 * Graduation Day (2007)

Fallout comics:
 * Fallout: New Vegas, All Roads (2010, part of the Fallout: New Vegas collector's edition)

Fiction

 * The House of Wael (2016, to Pillars of Eternity Kickstarter backers)

Tabletop role-playing game modules

 * The Puzzle Box (2020, to Pathfinder: Kingmaker Kickstarter backers)
 * Dystopia (1994, Champions module published by Atlas Games)

title: Chris Avellone


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Sholay

Sholay is a 1975 Indian Hindi-language action-adventure film directed by Ramesh Sippy, produced by his father G. P. Sippy, and written by Salim–Javed. The film is about two criminals, Veeru (Dharmendra) and Jai (Amitabh Bachchan), hired by a retired police officer (Sanjeev Kumar) to capture the ruthless dacoit Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan). Hema Malini and Jaya Bhaduri also star, as Veeru and Jai's love interests, Basanti and Radha, respectively. The music was composed by R D Burman.

The film was shot in the rocky terrain of Ramanagara, in the southern state of Karnataka, over a span of two and a half years. After the Central Board of Film Certification mandated the removal of several violent scenes, Sholay was released as a 198-minute long film. In 1990, the original director's cut of 204 minutes became available on home media. When first released, Sholay received negative critical reviews and a tepid commercial response, but favourable word-of-mouth publicity helped it to become a box office success. It broke records for continuous showings in many theatres across India, and ran for more than five years at Mumbai's Minerva theatre. The film was also an overseas success in the Soviet Union. It was the highest-grossing Indian film ever at the time, and was the highest-grossing film in India up until Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994). By numerous accounts, Sholay remains one of the highest-grossing Indian films of all time, adjusted for inflation.

Sholay is often regarded as one of the greatest and most influential Indian films of all time. It was ranked first in the British Film Institute's 2002 poll of "Top 10 Indian Films" of all time. In 2005, the judges of the 50th Filmfare Awards named it the Best Film of 50 Years. The film is a Dacoit Western (sometimes called a "Curry Western"), combining the conventions of Indian dacoit films with that of Spaghetti Westerns along with elements of Samurai cinema. Sholay is also a defining example of the masala film, which mixes several genres in one work. Scholars have noted several themes in the film, such as glorification of violence, conformation to feudal ethos, debate between social order and mobilised usurpers, homosocial bonding, and the film's role as a national allegory. The combined sales of the original soundtrack, scored by R. D. Burman, and the dialogues (released separately), set new sales records. The film's dialogues and certain characters became extremely popular, contributing to numerous cultural memes and becoming part of India's daily vernacular. In January 2014, Sholay was re-released to theatres in the 3D format.

Plot
Jai and Veeru are small-time crooks who are released from prison, where they are recruited by a former Inspector Thakur Baldev Singh to capture a notorious dacoit named Gabbar Singh wanted for ₹50000, as the duo had saved Thakur from a train robbery which makes Thakur to recruit them for the mission with an additional ₹20000 reward. The duo leave for Thakur's village in Ramgarh, where Gabbar is residing and terrorizing the villagers.

After reaching Ramgarh, Veeru falls for Basanti, a feisty talkative horse-cart driver. Jai meets Thakur's widowed daughter-in-law Radha and falls for her, who later reciprocates his feelings. The two thwart Gabbar's dacoits, who came to extort money. During the festival of Holi, Gabbar's gang attacks the villagers where they corner Jai and Veeru, but the duo manage to attack and chase them away from the village. The duo are upset at Thakur's inaction (when Jai and Veeru were cornered, Thakur had a gun within his reach, but did not help them) and consider calling off the mission. Thakur reveals that a few years ago, Gabbar had killed his family members (except Radha and Ramlal), and had both his arms cut off; he concealed the dismemberment by always wearing a shawl, which was the sole reason he could not use the gun.

Realizing this, Jai and Veeru take an oath that they will capture Gabbar alive. After learning the duo's heroics, Gabbar kills the local imam Rahim Chacha's son Ahmed and forces the villagers to make Jai and Veeru surrender to him. The villagers refuse and instead get the duo to kill a few of Gabbar's henchmen. Gabbar retaliates by having his men capture Veeru and Basanti. Jai arrives and attacks the hideout, where the trio are able to flee Gabbar's hideout with dacoits in pursuit. Shooting from behind a rock, Jai and Veeru nearly run out of ammunition. Unaware that Jai was wounded in the gunfight, Veeru is forced to leave for more ammunition and also to drop Basanti at a safe place.

Jai sacrifices himself by using his last bullet to ignite dynamite sticks on a bridge from close range, killing Gabbar's men. Veeru returns, and Jai dies, leaving Radha and Veeru devastated. Enraged, Veeru attacks Gabbar's den and kills his remaining men where he catches Gabbar and nearly beats him to death. Thakur appears and reminds Veeru of the vow to hand over Gabbar alive. Thakur uses his spike-soled shoes to severely injure Gabbar and his hands. The police arrive and arrest Gabbar for his crimes. After Jai's funeral, Veeru leaves Ramgarh and finds Basanti waiting for him on the train.

Development
The screenwriter pair Salim–Javed, consisting of Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, began narrating the idea for Sholay as a four-line snippet to filmmakers in 1973. The idea was rejected by two producer/director teams, including directors Manmohan Desai and Prakash Mehra. About six months after the release of Zanjeer (1973), Salim-Javed contacted G. P. Sippy and his son Ramesh Sippy, and narrated the four-line snippet to them. Ramesh Sippy liked the concept of Sholay and hired them to develop it. The original idea of the film involved an army officer who decided to hire two ex-soldiers to avenge the murder of his family. The army officer was later changed to a policeman because Sippy felt that it would be difficult to get permission to shoot scenes depicting army activities. Salim-Javed completed the script in one month, incorporating names and personality traits of their friends and acquaintances. The film's script and dialogues are in Hindustani; Salim-Javed wrote the dialogues in Urdu script, which was then transcribed by an assistant into Devanagari script so that Hindi readers could read the Urdu dialogues.

The film's plot was loosely styled after Akira Kurosawa's 1954 samurai cinema film, Seven Samurai. Sholay is a defining example of the Dacoit Western film, combining the conventions of Indian dacoit films, especially Mehboob Khan's Mother India (1957) and the Dilip Kumar and Nitin Bose film Gunga Jumna (1961), with that of Westerns, especially Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns such as Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) as well as The Magnificent Seven (1960). It also has some plot elements borrowed from the Indian films Mera Gaon Mera Desh (1971) and Khote Sikkay (1973). A scene depicting an attempted train robbery was inspired by a similar scene in Gunga Jumna, and has also been compared to a similar scene in North West Frontier (1959). A scene showing the massacre of Thakur's family has been compared with the massacre of the McBain family in Once Upon a Time in the West. Sholay may have also been influenced by Sam Peckinpah's Westerns, such as The Wild Bunch (1969) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), and George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).

The character Gabbar Singh was modelled on a real-life dacoit of the same name who had menaced the villages around Gwalior in the 1950s. Any policeman captured by the real Gabbar Singh had his ears and nose cut off, and was released as a warning to other policemen. Gabbar Singh was also influenced by larger-than-life characters in Pakistani author Ibn-e-Safi's Urdu novels, Dilip Kumar's dacoit character Gunga from the film Gunga Jumna who speaks with a similar mixed Khariboli and Awadhi dialect, and villains from Sergio Leone's films. Sippy wanted to do away with the clichéd idea of a man becoming a dacoit due to societal issues, as was the case in other films, and focused on Gabbar being an emblem of pure evil. To emphasise the point of Gabbar being a new type of villain, Sippy avoided the typical tropes of dacoits wearing dhotis and pagris and sporting a Tika and worshipping "Ma Bhavani"; Gabbar would be wearing army fatigues. The character of the jailer, played by Asrani was influenced by Adolf Hitler. Javed Akhtar brought a book on World War II which had several pictures of Hitler posing to set the typical posture of the character in the film. Asrani spiced up his character with some ideas about Hitler's speech delivery he had heard from a teacher in FTII. The trademark 'Ha Ha' at the end of his monologues was inspired by a similar performance by Jack Lemmon in The Great Race. Soorma Bhopali, a minor comic relief character, was based on an acquaintance of actor Jagdeep, a forest officer from Bhopal named Soorma. The real-life Soorma eventually threatened to press charges when people who had viewed the film began referring to him as a woodcutter. The main characters' names, Jai and Veeru, mean "victory" and "heroism" in Hindi.

Casting
The producers considered Danny Denzongpa for the role of bandit chief Gabbar Singh, but he could not accept it as he was committed to act in Feroz Khan's Dharmatma (1975), under production at the same time. Amjad Khan, who was the second choice, prepared himself for the part by reading the book Abhishapta Chambal, which told of the exploits of Chambal dacoits. The book was written by Taroon Kumar Bhaduri, the father of fellow cast member Jaya Bhaduri. Sanjeev Kumar also wanted to play the role of Gabbar Singh, but Salim-Javed "felt he had the audience's sympathy through roles he'd done before; Gabbar had to be completely hateful."

Sippy wanted Shatrughan Sinha to play the part of Jai, but there were already several big stars signed, and Amitabh Bachchan, who was not very popular yet, lobbied hard to get the part for himself. He was cast after Salim-Javed recommended him for Sholay in 1973; Bachchan's performance in their first collaboration, Zanjeer, convinced Salim-Javed he was the right actor for the part. Salim-Javed were also impressed with Bachchan's performance in Raaste Kaa Patthar (1972), and at Bachchan's request, Dharmendra had personally put in a word for him. All these factors ensured that the role was Bachchan's.

As cast members had read the script ahead of time, many were interested in playing different parts. Pran was considered for the role of Thakur Baldev Singh, but Sippy thought Sanjeev Kumar was a better choice. Initially, Salim-Javed approached Dilip Kumar to play Thakur's role, but he turned down the offer; Dilip Kumar later said it was one of the few films he regretted turning down. Initially, Dharmendra was also interested to play the role of Thakur. He eventually gave up the role when Sippy informed him that Sanjeev Kumar would play Veeru if that happened, and would thus be paired with Hema Malini, who Dharmendra was trying to woo. Dharmendra knew that Kumar was also interested in Malini. Malini was reluctant to play the role of a tangewali, more so after Sippy told her that the film belongs to Sanjeev Kumar and Amjad Khan, but she trusted Sippy to give her a meaty role, given that he had played a huge role in essaying her stardom through their previous collaborations.

During the film's production, four of the leads became romantically involved. Bachchan married Bhaduri four months before filming started. This led to shooting delays when Bhaduri became pregnant with their daughter Shweta. By the time the film released, she was pregnant with their son Abhishek. Dharmendra had begun courting Malini during their earlier film Seeta Aur Geeta (1972), also directed by Sippy, and used the location shoot of Sholay to further pursue her. During their romantic scenes, Dharmendra would often pay the light boys to spoil the shot, thereby ensuring many retakes which would allow him to spend more time with her. The couple married five years after the film's release.

Filming

Much of Sholay was shot in the rocky terrain of Ramanagara, a town near Bangalore, Karnataka. The filmmakers had to build a road from the Bangalore highway to Ramanagara for convenient access to the sets. Art director Ram Yedekar had an entire township built on the site. A prison set was constructed near Rajkamal Studios in Bombay, also outdoors, to match the natural lighting of the on-location sets. One part of Ramanagara was for a time called "Sippy Nagar" as a tribute to the director of the film. , a visit to the "Sholay rocks" (where much of the film was shot) was still being offered to tourists travelling through Ramanagara.

Filming began on location on 3 October 1973, with a scene featuring Bachchan and Bhaduri. The film had a lavish production for its time (with frequent banquets and parties for the cast), took two and a half years to make, and went over budget. One reason for its high cost was that Sippy re-filmed scenes many times to get his desired effect. "Yeh Dosti", a 5-minute song sequence, took 21 days to shoot, two short scenes in which Radha lights lamps took 20 days to film because of lighting problems, and the shooting of the scene in which Gabbar kills the imam's son lasted 19 days. The train robbery sequence, shot on the Bombay–Poona railway route near Panvel, took more than 7 weeks to complete.

Sholay was the first Indian film to have a stereophonic soundtrack and to use the 70 mm widescreen format. However, since actual 70 mm cameras were expensive at the time, the film was shot on traditional 35 mm film and the 4:3 picture was subsequently converted to a 2.2:1 frame. Regarding the process, Sippy said, "A 70 mm [sic] format takes the awe of the big screen and magnifies it even more to make the picture even bigger, but since I also wanted a spread of sound we used six-track stereophonic sound and combined it with the big screen. It was definitely a differentiator." The use of 70 mm was emphasised by film posters on which the name of the film was stylised to match the CinemaScope logo. Film posters also sought to differentiate the film from those which had come before; one of them added the tagline: "The greatest star cast ever assembled – the greatest story ever told".

Alternate version
The director's original cut of Sholay has a different ending in which Thakur kicks Gabbar onto a nail on one of the two poles that Gabbar had used to chain Thakur when he had cut off his arms, stabbing him in the back and killing him, along with some additional violent scenes. Thakur's shoe soles getting armed with spikes, Gabbar's death scene, and the scene in which the imam's son is killed, were cut from the film by India's Censor Board, as was the scene in which Thakur's family is massacred. The Censor Board was concerned about the violence, and that viewers may be influenced to violate the law by punishing people severely. Although Sippy fought to keep the scenes, eventually he had to re-shoot the ending of the film, and as directed by the Censor Board, have the police arrive just before Thakur can kill Gabbar. The censored theatrical version was the only one seen by audiences for fifteen years. The original, unedited cut of the film finally came out in a British release on VHS in 1990. Since then, Eros International has released two versions on DVD. The director's cut of the film preserves the original full frame and is 204 minutes in length; the censored widescreen version is 198 minutes long.

Themes and interpretations
Scholars have noted several themes in the film, such as glorification of violence, conformation to feudal ethos, debate between social order and mobilised usurpers, homosocial bonding, and the film's role as a national allegory.

Koushik Banerjea, a sociologist in the London School of Economics, notes that Sholay exhibits a "sympathetic construction of 'rogue' masculinity" exemplified by the likeable outlaws Jai and Veeru. Banerjea argues during the film, the moral boundary between legality and criminality gradually erodes. Film scholar Wimal Dissanayake agrees that the film brought "a new stage in the evolving dialectic between violence and social order" to Indian cinema. Film scholar M. Madhava Prasad states that Jai and Veeru represent a marginalised population that is introduced into conventional society. Prasad says that, through the elements of revenge included in the plot and the application of Jai and Veeru's criminality for the greater good, the narrative reflects reactionary politics, and the audience is compelled to accept feudal order. Banerjea explains that though Jai and Veeru are mercenaries, they are humanised by their emotional needs. Such dualism makes them vulnerable, in contrast to the pure evil of Gabbar Singh.

Gabbar Singh, the film's antagonist, was well received by the audience, despite his pervasive sadistic cruelty. Dissanayake explains that the audience was fascinated by the dialogues and mannerisms of the character, and this element of spectacle outweighed his actions, a first for Indian melodrama. He notes that the picturisation of violence in the film was glamourised and uninhibited. He further notes that, unlike earlier melodramas in which the female body occupies the audience's attention as an object of male fetish, in Sholay, the male body becomes the centrepiece. It becomes the battleground where good and evil compete for supremacy. Dissanayake argues that Sholay can be viewed as a national allegory: it lacks a comforting logical narrative, it shows social stability being repeatedly challenged, and it shows the devaluation of human life resulting from a lack of emotions. Taken together, these elements comprise the allegorical representation of India. The narrative style of Sholay, with its violence, revenge, and vigilante action, is occasionally compared by scholars to the political unrest in India at the time of its release. This tension culminated in the Emergency (rule by decree) declared by prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975.

Dissanayeke and Sahai note that, although the film borrowed heavily from the Hollywood Western genre, particularly in its visuals, it was successfully "Indianised". As an example, William van der Heide has compared a massacre scene in Sholay with a similar scene in Once Upon a Time in the West. Although both films were similar in technical style, Sholay emphasised Indian family values and melodramatic tradition, while the Western was more materialistic and restrained in its approach. Maithili Rao, in Encyclopedia of Hindi Cinema, notes that Sholay infuses the style of the Western genre into a "feudalistic ethos". Ted Shen of the Chicago Reader notes Sholay's "hysterical visual style" and intermittent "populist message". Cultural critic and Islamic scholar Ziauddin Sardar lampoons the film in his book The Secret Politics of Our Desires: Innocence, Culpability and Indian Popular Cinema, both for its caricature and stereotyping of Muslim and women characters, and for what he calls mockery of innocent villagers. Sardar notes that the two most prominent Muslim characters in the film are Soorma Bhopali (a buffoonish criminal), and an impotent victim of the bandits (the imam). Meanwhile, the sole function of one female character (Radha) is to suffer her fate in silence, while the other female lead (Basanti) is just a garrulous village belle.

Some scholars have indicated that Sholay contains homosocial themes. Ted Shen describes the male bonding shown in the film as bordering on camp style. Dina Holtzman, in her book Bollywood and Globalization: Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora, states that the death of Jai, and resultant break of bonding between the two male leads, is necessary for the sake of establishing a normative heterosexual relationship (that of Veeru and Basanti).

Music
R. D. Burman composed the film's music, and the lyrics were written by Anand Bakshi. The songs used in the film, and released on the original soundtrack are listed below. Following that is a list of unused tracks and dialogues which were released later on an updated soundtrack.

Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar and Manna Dey performed vocals for Dharmendra, Malini and Bachchan, respectively.

The song "Mehbooba Mehbooba" was sung by its composer, R. D. Burman, who received his sole Filmfare Award nomination for playback singing for his effort. The song, which is often featured on Bollywood hit song compilations, is based on "Say You Love Me" by Greek singer Demis Roussos.

"Mehbooba Mehbooba" has been extensively anthologised, remixed, and recreated. A version was created in 2005 by the Kronos Quartet for their Grammy-nominated album You've Stolen My Heart, featuring Asha Bhosle. It was also remixed and sung by Himesh Reshammiya, along with Bhosle, in his debut acting film Aap Kaa Surroor (2007). "Yeh Dosti" has been called the ultimate friendship anthem. It was remixed and sung by Shankar Mahadevan and Udit Narayan for the 2010 Malayalam film Four Friends, and also in 2010 it was used to symbolise India's friendship with the United States during a visit from President Barack Obama.

Several songs from the soundtrack were included in the annual Binaca Geetmala list of top filmi songs. "Mehbooba Mehooba" was listed at No. 24 on the 1975 list, and at No. 6 on the 1976 list. "Koi Haseena" was listed at No. 30 in 1975, and No. 20 in 1976. "Yeh Dosti" was listed at No. 9 in 1976. Despite the soundtrack's success, at the time, the songs from Sholay attracted less attention than the film's dialogue—a rarity for Hindi language films. The producers were thus prompted to release records with only dialogue. Taken together, the album sales reached an unprecedented 500,000 units. By 1979, the soundtrack went Platinum (equivalent to 1million sales at the time), becoming one of the top-selling Bollywood soundtracks of the 1970s.

Music critic Oli Marlow reviewed the soundtrack in 2013, calling it a unique fusion of religious, folk, and classical music, with influences from around the world. He also commented on the sound design of the film, calling it psychedelic, and saying that there was "a lot of incredible incidental music" in the film that was not included in the soundtrack releases. In a 1999 paper submitted to London's Symposium on Sound in Cinema, film critic Shoma A. Chatterji said, "Sholay offers a model lesson on how sound can be used to signify the terror a character evokes. Sholay is also exemplary in its use of soundmatching to jump cut to a different scene and time, without breaking the continuity of the narrative, yet, intensifying the drama."

Box office
Sholay was released on 15 August 1975, Indian Independence Day, in Bombay. Due to lackluster reviews and a lack of effective visual marketing tools, it saw poor financial returns in its first two weeks. From the third week, however, viewership picked up owing to positive word of mouth. During the initial slow period, the director and writer considered re-shooting some scenes so that Amitabh Bachchan's character would not die. When business picked up, they abandoned this idea. After being helped additionally by a soundtrack release containing dialogue snippets, Sholay soon became an "overnight sensation". The film was then released in other distribution zones such as Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bengal, and Hyderabad on 11 October 1975. It became the highest-grossing Hindi language film of 1975, and film ranking website Box Office India has given the film a verdict of All Time Blockbuster.

Sholay went on to earn a still-standing record of 60 golden jubilees across India, and was the first film in India to celebrate a silver jubilee at over 100 theatres. It was shown continuously at Bombay's Minerva theatre for over five years. Sholay was the Indian film with the longest theatrical run until Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) broke its record of 286 weeks in 2001.

Exact figures are not available on the budget and box-office earnings of Sholay, but film trade sources provide estimates of its success. According to Box Office India, Sholay earned about ₹150 million in net income (valued at about US$16,778,000 in 1975) in India during its first run, which was many times its ₹30 million (valued at about US$3,355,000 in 1975) budget. Those earnings in India were a record that remained unbroken for nineteen years, which is also the longest amount of time that a film has held the record for being the highest grossing film in India. Its original gross was increased further with re-releases during the late 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. The film's total gross revenue in India amounted to ₹350 million (US$39.15 million). Box Office India estimates the film's total footfalls in India as over 100million tickets sold. The film was also an overseas success in the Soviet Union, where it was released in 1979. The film sold 48.4million tickets during its initial run at the Soviet box office, before eventually selling 60million tickets including re-runs. The film was also released in China, as two parts in 1988.

It was the highest-grossing Indian film ever up until Disco Dancer (1982), and the highest-grossing film in India up until Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994). In 1985, India Today estimated that the film drew a total audience of 250million over the years, which is comparable to the number of tickets sold by some of the world's highest-grossing films of all time adjusted for inflation. It is often cited that, after adjusting the figures for inflation, Sholay remains one of the highest-grossing films in the history of Indian cinema, although such figures are not known with certainty. Box Office India estimated ₹1.63 billion as Sholay's adjusted domestic net income in 2008, while Times of India estimated over ₹3 billion as the adjusted domestic gross in 2009. Mid-Day estimated the film's total adjusted gross as ₹15 billion (US$million) in 2014.

Critical response
Initial critical reviews of Sholay were negative. Among contemporary critics, K.L. Amladi of India Today called the film a "dead ember" and "a gravely flawed attempt". Filmfare said that the film was an unsuccessful mincing of Western style with Indian milieu, making it an "imitation western—neither here nor there." Others labelled it as "sound and fury signifying nothing" and a "second-rate take-off" of the 1971 film Mera Gaon Mera Desh. Trade journals and columnists initially called the film a flop. In a 1976 article in the journal Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, author Michael Gallagher praised the technical achievement of the film, but otherwise criticised it stating, "As a spectacle it breaks new ground, but on every other level it is intolerable: formless, incoherent, superficial in human image, and a somewhat nasty piece of violence".

Over time, the critical reception to Sholay greatly improved; it is now considered a classic, and among the greatest Hindi-language films. In a 2005 BBC review, the well-rounded characters and simple narrative of the film were commended, but the comical cameos of Asrani and Jagdeep were considered unnecessary. On the film's 35th anniversary, the Hindustan Times wrote that it was a "trailblazer in terms of camera work as well as music," and that "practically every scene, dialogue or even a small character was a highlight." In 2006, The Film Society of Lincoln Center described Sholay as "an extraordinary and utterly seamless blend of adventure, comedy, music and dance", labelling it an "indisputable classic". Chicago Review critic Ted Shen criticised the film in 2002 for its formulaic plot and "slapdash" cinematography, and noted that the film "alternates between slapstick and melodrama". In their obituary of the producer G.P. Sippy, The New York Times said that Sholay "revolutionized Hindi filmmaking and brought true professionalism to Indian script writing".

Awards
Sholay was nominated for nine Filmfare Awards, and the only winner was M. S. Shinde, who won the award for Best Editing. The film also won three awards at the 1976 Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards (Hindi section): "Best Actor in Supporting Role" for Amjad Khan, "Best Cinematographer (Colour)" for Dwarka Divecha, and "Best Art Director" for Ram Yedekar. Sholay received a special award at the 50th Filmfare Awards in 2005: Best Film of 50 Years.

Legacy and cultural influence
Sholay has received many "Best Film" honours. It was declared the "Film of the Millennium" by BBC India in 1999. It topped the British Film Institute's "Top 10 Indian Films" of all time poll of 2002, and was voted the greatest Indian movie in a Sky Digital poll of one million British Indians in 2004. It was also included in the magazine Time's "Best of Bollywood" list in 2010, and in IBN Live's list of the "100 greatest Indian films of all time" in 2013. In 2023, Time Out ranked it #1 on its list of the "100 Best Bollywood Movies."

Sholay inspired many films and pastiches, and spawned a genre of films, the "Curry Western", which is a play on the term Spaghetti Western. A more accurate label for the genre is the Dacoit Western, due to its roots in earlier Indian dacoit films such as Mother India (1957) and Gunga Jumna (1961). It was also an early and most definitive masala film, and a trend-setter for "multi-star" films. The film was a watershed for scriptwriters in Hindi language films, who were not paid well before Sholay; after the film's success, its writing duo Salim-Javed became stars in their own right and script writing became a more respected profession. The BBC has described Sholay as the "Star Wars of Bollywood", comparing its impact on Hindi language films to the impact that Star Wars (1977) later had on Hollywood, while comparing Gabbar Singh to Darth Vader.

Certain scenes and dialogues from the film earned iconic status in India, such as "Kitne aadmi the" (How many men were there?), "Jo dar gaya, samjho mar gaya" (One who is scared is dead), and "Bahut yaarana laagta hai" (Looks like you two are very close) – all dialogues of Gabbar Singh. These and other popular dialogues entered the people's daily vernacular. Characters and dialogues from the film continue to be referred to and parodied in popular culture. Gabbar Singh, the sadistic villain, ushered in an era in Hindi films characterised by "seemingly omnipotent oppressors as villains", who play the pivotal role in setting up the context of the story, such as Shakal (played by Kulbhushan Kharbanda) of Shaan (1980), Mogambo (Amrish Puri) of Mr. India (1987) and Bhujang (Amrish Puri) of Tridev (1989). Filmfare, in 2013, named Gabbar Singh the most iconic villain in the history of Indian cinema, and four actors were included in its 2010 list of "80 Iconic Performances" for their work in this film.

The film is often credited with making Amitabh Bachchan a "superstar", two years after he became a star with Zanjeer (1973). Some of the supporting actors remained etched in public memory as the characters they played in Sholay; for example, Mac Mohan continued to be referred to as "Sambha", even though his character had just one line. Major and minor characters continue to be used in commercials, promos, films and sitcoms. Amjad Khan acted in many villainous roles later in his career. He also played Gabbar Singh again in the 1991 spoof Ramgarh Ke Sholay, and reprised the role in commercials. The British Film Institute in 2002 wrote that fear of Gabbar Singh "is still invoked by mothers to put their children to sleep". The 2012 film Gabbar Singh, named after the character, became the highest-grossing Telugu film up to that point. Comedian Jagdeep, who played Soorma Bhopali in the film, attempted to use his Sholay success to create a spinoff. He directed and played the lead role in the 1988 film Soorma Bhopali, in which Dharmendra and Bachchan had cameos.

Sholay was remade in Bangladesh as Dost Dushman (1977), becoming the first Dhallywood film to portray a number of lengthy action scenes, was condemned by many film critics for 'bringing violence' to the cinema screen in the country. In 2004, Sholay was digitally remastered and shown again to packed theatres in India, including Mumbai's Minerva, where it had run successfully 29 years earlier. Another attempt to remake Sholay, Ram Gopal Varma's film Aag (2007), starring Amitabh Bachchan as the villain, was a commercial and critical disaster. Because of television and home media, Sholay is widely available and still popular. Twenty years after its release, Sholay was first shown on the Indian DD National television channel, where it drew the highest ratings ever for an Indian film broadcast. Video game producer Mobile2win released the Sholay Ramgarh Express game for mobile phones in 2004, along with other Sholay themed content such as wallpapers, video clips, and ringtones; another video game Sholay: Bullets of Justice developed by Gameshastra has also been released. Sholay Adventures, a 2014 Indian animated television film adaptation of Sholay aired on Pogo TV. In 2019, a film titled The Sholay Girl, based on the stunt woman Reshma Pathan, was released. Pathan had worked as the body double for Malini in the film.

Sholay has been the subject of two books and many articles. Wimal Dissanayake and Malti Sahai's Sholay, A Cultural Reading (1992) attempts a comprehensive scholarly study that sets the film within the broader history of popular cinema in India. Anupama Chopra's Sholay: The Making of a Classic (2000) provides an inside look at the film's production based on interviews with the director, stars, and crew members.

Sholay has been labelled by Chopra as the gold standard in Indian cinema, and a reference point for audiences and trade analysts. Over the years, the film has reached a mythic stature in popular culture, and has been called the greatest Hindi film of all time. It belongs to only a small collection of films, including Kismet (1943), Mother India (1957), Mughal-e-Azam (1960) and Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994), which are repeatedly watched throughout India, and are viewed as definitive Hindi films with cultural significance. The lasting effect of Sholay on Indian cinema was summarised by Anupama Chopra, when in 2004 she called it "no longer just a film, [but] an event". In the 2000 book Sholay: The Making of a Classic, the noted director Shekhar Kapur stated "there has never been a more defining film on the Indian screen. Indian film history can be divided into Sholay BC and Sholay AD". The film was jointly released in Pakistan by Geo films and Mandviwalla Entertainment on 17 April 2015, almost 40 years after its theatrical release. The film's premiere in the country was held in Karachi.

Screenwriter V. Vijayendra Prasad, responsible for a number of blockbusters in the early 21st century, including the South Indian franchise Baahubali and the Hindi film Bajrangi Bhaijaan (starring Salim's son Salman Khan), cited Sholay as a major inspiration on his work.

3D re-release
Filmmaker Ketan Mehta's company Maya Digital was responsible for converting Sholay into the 3D format. Mehta was approached by G. P. Sippy's grandson, Sasha Sippy, about the project in 2010. In March 2012, Shaan Uttam Singh, the grandson of producer G. P. Sippy, said that he would sponsor a conversion of the film to 3D, and release it in late 2012; this was later postponed to late 2013, and eventually finalised for 3 January 2014. It took inr 250000000 to convert Sholay to 3D.

Under the leadership of computer animator Frank Foster, 350 people worked to convert the film into the digital 3D format, for which every scene had to be individually restored, colour-corrected and re-composited in 3D to match the depth. New set-pieces, particularly those suited to the new format were also included, such as digital logs which scatter in the direction of the camera during the first half of the film when the train collides with them, the gunshot scene which frees Jai and Veeru from their handcuffs, and panoramic views of Gabbar's hideout in the caves.

The theatrical trailer and release date were unveiled by the original script-writers Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar. The two original leads, Bachchan and Dharmendra, were also involved in promoting the re-release. The film was released in 1,000 screens in India, and additional screens overseas. It earned approximately inr 100000000 during its re-release, not enough to recover its conversion cost.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Sholay


text:
Talk:1749

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:17, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:1749


text:
Talk:1748

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:17, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:1748


text:
Talk:1747

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:17, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

??
November 17 – Alain-René Le Sage, Algonqian writer (b. 1668): not sure he was algonqian. 193.52.64.243 (talk) 08:41, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

title: Talk:1747


text:
Talk:1746

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:17, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:1746


text:
Talk:1745

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:18, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:1745


text:
Talk:1744

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:18, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Histori of Russia Tsar   Elisabeth of Russia Orthodox cathedral  (http://www.hotilovo.hotmail.ru)
Chotilovo

i love you bangla desh? Whats that got to do with anything? 199.254.212.44 15:18, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

title: Talk:1744


text:
Talk:1743

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:19, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:1743


text:
Talk:1741

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:20, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:1741


text:
Talk:1740

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:20, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Batavia, 1740 massacre
I not agree using the word riot evidence by the picture in national archived in museum Cf. Maritiem Museum, inv.nr. MMPH-WAE-P788. show the massacre des chinois word been use. http://www.nationaalarchief.nl/amh/detail.aspx?page=dafb&lang=en&id=1897#tab0 Daimond 13:25, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

title: Talk:1740


text:
Talk:1739

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:21, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:1739


text:
Talk:1738

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:21, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Possible protection
Nearly all of the most recent edits are a) vandalism by unregistered users (either page/section blanking or references to the song which features the number) or b) reversions of said vandalism. Perhaps allow only autoconfirmed users for a month, if vandalism continues place indefinite protection. MB298 (talk) 03:44, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 January 2016
i would like to put that this does not relate to fetty waps song 1738

Roblafo (talk) 23:32, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. --allthefoxes (Talk) 23:56, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

title: Talk:1738


text:
East Tennessee State University

East Tennessee State University (ETSU) is a public research university in Johnson City, Tennessee. It was historically part of the State University and Community College System of Tennessee under the Tennessee Board of Regents, but since 2016, the university has been transitioning to governance by its own board of trustees. , it is the fourth largest university in the state and has off-campus centers in nearby Kingsport, Elizabethton, and Sevierville.

ETSU is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity". It hosts the James H. Quillen College of Medicine which is often ranked as one of the top schools in the United States for rural medicine and primary care education; the Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy, the College of Nursing, the College of Public Health, and the recently formed College of Clinical and Rehabilitative Health Sciences. Unique programs include an accredited program in Bluegrass, Old Time, and Country Music, America's lone master's degree in Storytelling, and the Appalachian Studies programs, focused on the surrounding Appalachian region.

History
ETSU was founded as East Tennessee State Normal School in 1911 to educate teachers; the K-12 training school, called University School, operates to this day. East Tennessee State officially became a college in 1925 when it changed its name to East Tennessee State Teachers College, subsequently gaining accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools in 1927. By 1930, the school's name had changed again to East Tennessee State Teacher's College, Johnson City. In 1943, East Tennessee State Teacher's College was expanded into a college with a range of liberal arts offerings, becoming East Tennessee State College. The college became East Tennessee State University in 1963, adopting the name it holds today. In 1973, Shelbridge became the president's official residence.

ETSU announced plans to open a College of Pharmacy in 2005, rapidly receiving local support to secure the approval. Full accreditation was granted in June 2010, shortly after the first class of the Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy graduated.

In late 2009, the Tennessee Higher Education Commission and the Tennessee Board of Regents authorized the formation of a Ph.D. program in Sport Physiology and Performance. This program, the first of its kind in the United States, focuses on sports science and physiology in athletics. It features concentrations in sport physiology and sport performance and started in 2010.

Presidents

 * Sidney G. Gilbreath, 1911–1925
 * Charles C. Sherrod, 1925–1949
 * Burgin E. Dossett Sr., 1949–1968
 * D.P. Culp, 1968–1977
 * Arthur H. DeRosier Jr., 1977–1980
 * Ronald E. Beller, 1980–1991
 * Bert C. Bach (interim), 1991–1992
 * Roy S. Nicks, 1992–1996
 * Paul E. Stanton Jr., 1997–2012
 * Brian Noland, 2012–present

Colleges and schools

 * College of Arts and Sciences
 * College of Business and Technology
 * College of Clinical and Rehabilitative Health Sciences
 * Clemmer College
 * James H. Quillen College of Medicine
 * College of Nursing
 * College of Pharmacy
 * College of Public Health
 * Honors College
 * School of Continuing Studies
 * School of Graduate Studies

Honors College
There is an Honors College at East Tennessee State University.

Charles C. Sherrod Library
The Charles C. Sherrod Library houses the Archives of Appalachia and University Archives. They have on occasion, given grade schools tours of their facility.

Greek life
There are several Greek organizations at East Tennessee State University. University sources claim that five percent of both men and women on campus are involved in Greek organizations.

Athletics
ETSU collegiate athletic teams, nicknamed Buccaneers, compete in the NCAA Division I Southern Conference. The Buccaneers rejoined the Southern Conference in July 2014 after competing in the Atlantic Sun since 2003, when they dropped football. In the 2006-07 year, ETSU won both the conference's men and women's All-Sport trophies, winning seven team titles. They repeated as the overall and men's All-Sport champions in 2007–08 with three team titles, in 2008–09 with five team titles, and in 2009–10 with three team titles.

Current men's sports at ETSU are football, baseball, basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, tennis and track and field. Women's sports are basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, softball, tennis, track and field and volleyball. Men's soccer competed at the club level in the fall of 2007, before entering NCAA and Atlantic Sun competition as a scholarship program in the 2008 season.

With of the addition of football, ETSU rejoined the Southern Conference in 2014 because the A-Sun does not support the sport.

The Mini-Dome on the campus of ETSU houses the intercollegiate athletics offices. Still known by students, faculty, and the community as the Mini-Dome, this campus landmark was officially renamed from Memorial Center to ETSU/Mountain States Health Alliance Athletic Center and now Ballad Health Athletic Center. The largest building on the ETSU campus, it hosts several indoor track and field meets, and was once the home field for the university's football program. The Mini-Dome has hosted many non-athletic events that could not be housed in an indoor setting on most American college campuses, such as national indoor championships for free flight model aircraft.

Notable people

 * Donnie Abraham, football player
 * Eric Axley, golfer
 * Barry Bales, musician
 * David Bunton, singer
 * Timothy Busfield, actor and director
 * Dave Campbell, baseball player
 * Ronald E. Carrier, president of James Madison University
 * Jo Carson, writer
 * Keith Cate, newscaster
 * Jamey Chadwell, football coach
 * Kenny Chesney, entertainer
 * Besse Cooper, oldest person in the world
 * Patrick J. Cronin, actor
 * Neil Cusack, runner
 * Rhys Davies, golfer
 * David Davis, politician
 * David Eger, golfer
 * Earl Ferrell, football player
 * Ray Flynn, runner
 * Thane Gash, football player
 * Joseph R. Garber, author
 * Eddie Golden, wrestler
 * Ed Goodson, baseball player
 * J. Ronnie Greer, US federal judge
 * Steven M. Greer, ufologist
 * Atlee Hammaker, baseball player
 * Diana Harshbarger, politician
 * Larry Hinson, golfer
 * Mike Hulbert, golfer
 * Earl Gladstone Hunt Jr., president of Emory and Henry College
 * Steven James, novelist
 * Keith "Mister" Jennings, basketball player
 * Kenneth P. Johnson, newspaper editor
 * Ric Keller, US Congressman
 * Amythyst Kiah, singer-songwriter and recording artist
 * R. Alan King, author
 * Landon Knack, baseball player
 * Dave Loggins, singer, songwriter
 * Herbert Theodore Milburn, US Federal Judge
 * Jim Mooney, baseball player
 * Eureka O'Hara, contestant on RuPaul's Drag Race
 * Barclay Radebaugh, basketball coach
 * Ron Ramsey, Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee
 * Mo Sabri, recording artist
 * Marcus Satterfield, football player
 * Bryan Lewis Saunders, visual and performance artist
 * Aaron Schoenfeld, soccer player
 * Gerald Sensabaugh, football player
 * Niall Shanks, philosopher
 * Mike Smith, football coach
 * J.C. Snead, golfer
 * Adam Steffey, musician
 * Harley Swift, basketball player
 * Phyllis Tickle, author
 * Jack Vest, football player
 * Bobby Wadkins, golfer
 * Harry L. Williams, businessman
 * Garrett Willis, golfer
 * Tommy Woods, basketball player

title: East Tennessee State University


text:
Talk:1737

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:22, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on 1737. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081121090008/http://www.fathom.com/feature/122490 to http://www.fathom.com/feature/122490/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 07:05, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

title: Talk:1737


text: User talk:209.56.250.44

title: User talk:209.56.250.44


text:
Talk:1736

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:23, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:1736


text:
Itatiaia National Park

Itatiaia National Park (Parque Nacional do Itatiaia), established in 1937, is the oldest national park in Brazil. It is located on the border between the states of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais.

Location
The Itatiaia National Park is the oldest national park of Brazil, created on 14 June 1937 by President Getúlio Vargas. The park is in the Mantiqueira Mountains. It covers parts of the municipalities of Itatiaia and Resende in Rio de Janeiro state, and Bocaina de Minas and Itamonte in Minas Gerais state. It is mountainous and rocky with altitudes ranging from 540 to 2791 m. The highest point is the Black Needles peak (Pico das Agulhas Negras).

The higher part of the park contains the origins of 12 river basins that supply the Rio Grande (Grand River), a tributary of the Paraná River, and the Paraíba do Sul, the most important river in Rio de Janeiro state. The lower part of the park has lush Atlantic Forest vegetation and wide rivers with natural pools and waterfalls.

The Pico das Agulhas Negras is the state' third highest mountain at 2878 m. The park attracts bird watchers from all over the world with its 350 species of birds. Other attractions include hiking and rock climbing. The park is surrounded by the Serra da Mantiqueira Environmental Protection Area which provides an ecological buffer zone for the park.

The high area of the park is accessible through an entrance about 35 km from the main entrance and gives access to the Pico das Agulhas Negras and Prateleiras complex. The low area of the park is much closer to the city of Itatiaia and has many waterfalls, such as Véu da Noiva with 45 meters. The low area has also a Natural History museum. Itatiaia means "many-pointed rock" in the Tupi language.

title: Itatiaia National Park


text:
Talk:1733

[Untitled]
hello

I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:24, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Crucial test of Newton versus Descartes
I seem to recall that it was in 1733 that an exdpedition paid for by the French king did geodetic measurements showing that the earth is oblate rather than oblong, thereby finally settling the dispute between Newtonian physics and Cartesian vortex physics. If anyone knows the details, it seems that should be included here and in an article about it. Michael Hardy 15:00, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Elizabeth Villiers Correction
I noticed that the internal link went to William II of England. Since Villiers was born in the 1600s and was mistress to William III,it was probably just a typo. Humorous too,she would have been over 600 years old if it were a fact! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.158.54.2 (talk • contribs).

title: Talk:1733


text:
Talk:1734

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:25, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:1734


text:
Artificial person

Artificial person may refer to
 * Legal person, a concept of legal practice
 * Android (robot), a mechanical or biological entity having humanoid form and/or behavior, which is the result of manufacture rather than the normal process of human reproduction

title: Artificial person


text:
Talk:1732

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:29, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:1732


text:
Talk:1731

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:29, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:1731


text:
Talk:Factitious disorder imposed on self

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Gomer2.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:02, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Isalatiel.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:02, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Recent increase in disorder faking, primarily on tiktok
I think this article should contain information about the more recent increase in disorder faking, especially faking multiple personality disorder. 104.200.213.13 (talk) 14:20, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

 * @104.200.213.13 i second this 2.221.111.175 (talk) 19:38, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Correct Name
As his Name is Münchhausen, which is equal to Muenchhausen I thnik we cannot irgnore facts, even if they have continued to be so flawed for a long time. We cannot simply change proper names or names and omit or change letters. 2A02:908:616:62A0:8009:B55D:8996:D9DE (talk) 08:33, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

 * Even at the time of your writing, read whole first sentence of History section. —Mykhal (talk) 20:18, 4 January 2024 (UTC)


text:
Talk:1730

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:31, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

You mention Peter III's death but not the start of his reign.

title: Talk:1730


text:
Talk:1729

Aberration of starlight
This article claims it was discovered in 1729, whilst the Aberration of light article claims it was discovered in 1725. I've removed it from this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.169.196.157 (talk) 13:22, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:31, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

I would like to bring to your attention that you mention the death of Catherine I of Russia twice, once in 1727 and once in this article. It is confusing to the reader.

I removed Catherine I of Russia it was posted in the wrong year. Dfoley51 21:56, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Taxicab Disambiguation
The number 1729 is quite well-known among mathematicians, perhaps there should be a disambiguation for this particular integer? Mathteacher1729 00:08, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

title: Talk:1729


text:
Talk:1727

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:31, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Is there any knowledgfe of what happened in Russia during this year? It says that Catherine I died that year, so something must have happened.

The city of Jaipur in northern India was founded in 1727 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.162.136.159 (talk) 05:33, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Last Execution for Witchcraft in Scotland
Surely in 1722 Janet Horne of Durnoch was the last?Apoliheres (talk) 12:43, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

title: Talk:1727


text:
Talk:1726

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:32, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:1726


text:
Talk:1725

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:32, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Head in the river Thames?
The part about the head in the river Thames being the head of Catherine Hayes's husbans sounds ludicrous. She lived almost a century later!

title: Talk:1725


text:
Talk:1724

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:33, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Treaty of Constantinople
Can anyone verify a treaty between Russia and the Ottomans which partitioned Persia? - Brunnock 23:56, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:1724


text:
Talk:1723

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:33, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Date conflict
On the ‘1723’ page on Wikipedia you list the painter Johannes Voorhout as having died on May 12th 1723. However, on the ‘Johannes Voorhout’ page, his death date is listed as 25th August 1717. RobJSmallwood (talk) 06:49, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Discordian Calendar?
As Discordianism is a tongue-in-cheek religious philosophy, even a piss-take against organised religion itself; can we seriously list the Discordian Calendar as an accepted method of reckoning? Nuttyskin (talk) 22:46, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
 * If we started using "seriousness" as a criterion, we should start by excluding Anno Domini. Dimadick (talk) 18:28, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:1723


text:
Talk:1722

years page layout
I have made some year layout proposals which would affect a significant proportion of the year pages: an example of proposed style is 1850. It is detailed on my talk page. However pre 1800 the change is largely cosmetic.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --(talk)BozMo 16:34, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Why are these entries here?

 * June 2 - Wapping, a male negro slave owned by a Mr. Heale, was hanged for murder in the colony of Virginia.

 * August 15 - William Battin, age 17, a white man, was hanged on that day for arson and murder in the colony of Pennsylvania.

Do these events have any particular significance? Why are they worth mentioning? —Dodiad 01:10, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

title: Talk:1722