101 Facts about Monster:

A Thread

1. Naoki Urasawa was 34 years old when he started writing Monster.
2. Apparently, he pitched the idea in 1986.
3. His editors didn't think it would sell.
4. It would take 8 years before it gets serialized.
5. Urasawa was inspired by a 1960s TV show, The Fugitive.

6. The Fugitive is a story of a surgeon wrongly accused of murdering his wife.
7. It ran from 1963 to 1967.
8. It had a remake in 2000, and a reboot just this year.
9. Monster was Urasawa's 5th manga.
10. Before Monster, Urasawa collaborated, or illustrated other manga.

11. BKA, the department Lunge works for, stands for Bundeskriminalamt.
12. It literally translates to Federal Criminal Police Office.
13. The Czechoslovakia Secret Police, featured in Monster, is also known as StB (Czech: Státní bezpečnost, Slovak: Štátna bezpečnosť)

14. Kinderheim literal translation is "Children's Home"
15. There's a light novel named "Another Monster"
16. The main character is Werner Weber.

17. The story is about a copycat killer, years after the events in Monster.
18. It's presented as an interview of Monster's previous characters.
19. The light novel was written by Naoki Urasawa, Takashi Nagasaki, and Werner Weber.
20. It's unclear if Werner is an actual person.

21. There's also a book, The Nameless Monster, whose author also used the name Emil Sherbet.
22. This book was unauthorized by Urasawa.
23. It mainly discussed topics on philosophy.
24. It has 130 pages total.
25. Takeshi Nagasaki also co-authored Billy Bat with Urasawa.

26. Emil Sherbet (Franz Bonaparta) is half brother of the husband of Vera Černá's (Johan and Nina's mother)
27. This makes Bonaparta an uncle of Johan and Nina.
28. It was revealed at the end of the series Tenma is currently a member of Doctors Without Borders.

29. Quilapayún is a Chilean folk music group that did Monster's OST
30. Quilapayún means "Three Bearded Men" in an indigenous Chilean dialect.
31. Monster's ending song: David Sylvian - For the Love of Life.

32. Between 1999 to 2001, Urasawa was working on both Monster AND 20th Century Boys.
33. This took a toll on Urasawa, which got hospitalized a couple times.
34. Tři Žáby (Three Frogs) was the Inn that Johan, Nina and their mother stayed in before they got separated.

35. Three Frogs alludes to the Bible verse, Revelations 16.
36. It talks about the Seven Bowls of wrath God will pour upon followers of the Antichrist.

37. On the Sixth Bowl, as the river Euphrates dries up, three frog-like evil spirits came out of the mouths of the Beast, the Dragon, and the False Prophet.

38. On the penultimate episode, the drunkard father who shot Johan explained that what he saw was "monster with seven heads and many horns".

39. This is a reference to Revelation 13 verse 1.

40. Obluda means "Monster" in Czech.

41. The series started in 1986.
42. Tenma was 28 when he first operated on Johan.
43. Johan was 10 when he first met Tenma.
44. Coincidentally, when the Nameless Monster was being narrated, it was 5 minutes, 11 seconds long.
45. That may allude to 511 Kinderheim.

46. The opening music of Monster is titled "Grain"
47. It was composed by Kuniaki Haishima.
48. It only has one sentence, once in the beginning, repeated in the end: "The monster in his lair."

49. Johan surviving gunshots to the head, TWICE, is pretty much a statistical miracle, since according to 2000 US National Statistics, gunshot wounds to the head only has 5% survival rate. And that's with the technological advances a decade after the series ended.

50. It all depends on trajectory, type of gun used, what part of the brain was damaged, and age of the victim.

51. It may seem counterintuitive, but doctor sometimes opt to keep the bullet/fragments in the brain, as extracting them might further damage the blood vessels.

52. Over the course of the story, starting from their escape at 10 years old in 1985, both Johan and Nina were taken in by many adults, both legally through adoption, and otherwise. Nina was taken in 4 times, and Johan 10 times.

53. In 2013, Guillermo del Toro and HBO planned a live-action adaptation of Monster.

54. Sadly it went into production limbo.

55. Del Toro still has rights to it though, so there's still hope ;)

56. Johan is a Germanized name of Hebrew origin, יוחנן (Yohanan) "God is merciful"