Cobra Kai Timeline Error | ART OF ONE DOJO

okay so the karate kid is my absolute favorite movie and the tv show i think is a fantastic continuation and those of you who love this channel know how much i love to analyze it possibly obsessively i have to give some serious credit to the writers of the show and the show runners for finding all the great narrative threads and reconnect them in new fresh way with new characters a new generation while tying up all the old loose ends and keeping the show fresh and fun however there seems to be a tiny discrepancy within the timeline of the tournaments and that's what we're going to talk about today and fair warning we're going to get nerdy on this one so consider this your okay once again spoiler alert if you have not watched the movies or the shows specifically season three go do that before watching this episode we're going to be talking about some story elements so if you don't want anything spoiled for you pause go watch come back and resume yes it's just a movie yes it's just a tv show for those of you who're saying it doesn't really matter you're not wrong but i don't care i enjoy it and i love doing these deep dives and it seems like some of you seem to appreciate them as well with all that being said let's take a look at the tournament timeline now we're going to look at the timeline they said it is then we're going to talk about the timeline that should be and then we're going to talk about what it really should be before we get to all that first let's understand the timeline we're working in in general and once again so the original correctness film takes place in 1984. and as they established the beginning of the school year we're assuming it's probably right around the beginning of august timeline roughly and it goes until wednesday december 19th which was the date of the tournament yes i looked that up the karate kid 2 picks up right where the first one left off and then we time jump to summer of 85 which is their trip to okinawa so the whole film takes place roughly during that summer karate kid 3 takes place at the end of summer in 1985 because they're talking about daniel going back to college and it goes up against the next tournament which is also december so overall the movie series takes place in the time frame of approximately a year and a half so cobra kai season one starts off roughly around september october in 2017 and it goes all the way through may 19 2018 which is the date of the tournament which is about eight months which is a lot more believable for miguel to have eight months of training and perform well at a tournament compared to the annuals approximately a month and a half so cobra kai season two follows suit with karateka two in that it picks up right where the first one left off and takes place over the following summer which in this case is the summer of 2018. and cobra kai season three takes place roughly about two weeks into the school season and goes up into around christmas time so again roughly around the same time frame as karate kid iii so it's interesting that the cobra kai first three seasons fall within a very similar time frame as the movies again roughly about a year and a half and based on where they left off we can assume that cobra kai season four will take place roughly from that point on up into the tournament in in may again so what discrepancy are we talking about with the tournament timeline well in season three when rob robbie's doing research on john crease he comes across two articles and if you pause it you can actually read those articles and get some interesting information out of it so the article is basically covering johnny's win of the 1983 all valley tournament in which he beat tommy for first place now we knew this in cobra kai season 2 when they're talking about it and then the article goes on to say that bobby beat daryl vidal for third place okay the first problem i have with this island is daryl vadal winded up in fourth place no way he was much better than that the other thing though is the article mentions that vidal was the 1981 all valley champion okay so now we have some dates to work with vidal 1 1981 johnny 1 1983 and we know daniel 184 and 85. so the question is what about 1982 that's pretty easy to figure out the article says that johnny's 1983 win was the second straight title which means he won 82. and this falls in line with what johnny's telling miguel in season one that he won a couple of tournaments okay so there we go vidal 81 johnny 82 johnny 83 daniel 84 and 85. so what's the problem with this timeline well specifically the part where in karate kid 3 when daniel wins and beats mike barnes the announcer says winner and the first ever to win two years in a row so if that's true johnny couldn't be the victor of 82 and 83 he couldn't have won two years in a row they even make the point in the show to constantly refer to daniel as the two-time champ the two-time champ he shows up at the tournament committee and they're all fawning over him now it's possible that they give him the attention because he's probably been involved all this time and johnny obviously went off and fell you know fell into his rut but something's not lining up here and honestly i'm actually believe it or not not the only one who's drummed this up uh when i started doing a little research on this i found other people bringing up the same comments and the actual writers of the show addressed this and they said that it's apparent that the journalist in 1983 didn't fact check when they wrote the article so that's actually kind of a fun way to kind of acknowledge the mistake and write it off in an acceptable manner the only problem with that though is john crease reinforces timeline when he's talking to robbie in the jail he tells robbie that johnny lost his first match in 81 to with all so according to cobra kai the show they're telling us vidal 81 johnny 8283 daniel 8485 what it probably should have been is that johnny 1 and 81 daryl vidal in 82 johnny again in 83 and daniel 84 85. that retains the whole statement of daniel being the first two time in a row winner but johnny's still being a two-time champion just not consecutively and just as a side note that the 1984 tournament was johnny's last year of eligibility it is the under 18 all valley tournament so he competed in 81 82 83 84. so he was at that point after the tournament when he graduated he was 18 years old so how is daniel eligible to compete in 1985 tournament and johnny's not basically by little clues that we see in the movie they pretty much came right out and told us that daniel's birthday was the day before the tournament in the first movie and you can either assume he's turning 16 or 17 he just got his driver's license but you know some people get that in a later age his birthday is right before the tournament which was december 19th if he had just turned 17 for the following year for the 1985 tournament it's possible the tournament was held a week or two earlier could have been a certain weekend or a certain date in december that daniel turned 17 after that it still fits within the timeline so daniel was still eligible johnny was not at that point and for some reason now in the cobra kite tv series the tournament is now being held in may instead of december so at some point things shifted so what happened did the journalists in the story make a mistake writing an article uh did john crease lie or is he remembering it wrong is there a continuity error did the announcer at the end of credit k3 have wrong information or am i just reading too much into this nah so for being truly honest the real timeline should be 81 vidal 82 of it all 83 of it all 84 of it all in 85 whoever this dude was that mike barnes beat because daniel wasn't going to compete and barnes wouldn't have been there without daniel so uh yeah mr radal i'm sorry dude if you're watching you got robbed so we'd like to present you with this award i know it's not much but you earned it so here's the fun question the article also said that cobra kai studio had won four overall tournaments which was a lot for such a young dojo so my question is well how old is zojo and what year did they win was it 78 at 78.79 we do see a 1979 trophy in the cobra kai dojo and see in the first movie but then again there's other trophies in the mix such as johnny's 1981 receded semi-final second place trophy and a second-class first place trophy whatever tournaments those happen to be so here's my question to the writers if anyone from the show is watching we're curious let us know when did cobra kai open we know had to be at least as early as 1978 in order to accommodate a minimum of four wins but we also see a picture on the wall where john cruz competed in the army from 1917 to 1972 so we have to assume it's somewhere between 72 to 78 so i'm actually appealing to the writers and showrunners of the show if any of you happen to be watching whatsoever i know season 4 is about to start filming but if there's any way you guys can slip in any information as to when the dojo opened or what other tournaments to cobra kai won you would make me one of the happiest karate kid nerds on the planet so thank you so much for watching i hope you got to geek out on this as much as i did i know we kind of got really a bit of some deep cuts in here but this is honestly what happens when you lock me inside for a year you