In the spirit of starwars.com's excellent endnotes for The New Essential Chronology, following is my list of the references, retcons, and "did you notice" tidbits to be found in The New Essential Guide to Droids. There's a lot of them, so I'll be splitting this up into three parts.

The New Essential Guide to Droids, released June 27 2006, divides its droids into five categories (six if you count cyborgs). The five classifications first appeared in West End Games' roleplaying manual Fantastic Technology: Droids (1997), by Drew Campbell and Eric Trautmann. I owe those two an enormous debt, since much of the information contained in The New Essential Guide to Droids (from the Droid Statues to the techy details of skillware and traitware) originated there.

I love the idea: Class Ones are scientists, Class Twos are technicians, Class Threes are aides, Class Fours are soldiers, and Class Five are drones. That being said, Fantastic Technology: Droids wasn't always consistent in its classifications. In a couple cases I made an executive decision to reclassify some of them for the NEGD. (For example, I shifted the J9 worker drone from a Class One to a Class Three, and the mouse droid from a Class Three to a Class Five.)

Here's my page-by-page breakdowns for The New Essential Guide to Droids:

p. x: "For short-term jobs, almost any class of droid can be rented from an outfit such as the Intergalactic Droid Agency." This is a reference to the Droids cartoon series that aired on ABC in 1985. At the start of the episode "The Lost Prince," Artoo and Threepio had somehow wound up in the employ of the Intergalactic Droid Agency.

p. xi: The "behavioral circuitry matrix" described here isn't from Fantastic Technology: Droids. It originally appeared in Raymond Velasco's A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, published way back in 1984 (and one of the truly rare SW books). IIn that book, Velasco illustrated the device as a flowchart diagram.

p. xiii: During the historical overview, the following line pops up in a discussion of the pre-Republic era: "These Rakatan designs later influenced the war robots of Xim the Despot, whose 'crimson condottieres' employed Force-energizing dynamos." That's new info, tying Xim the Despot (first mentioned in Brian Daley's 1980 novel Han Solo and the Lost Legacy) with the Rakata aliens from the recent game Knights of the Old Republic. The crimson condottieres haven't been seen or illustrated yet, but they'd be cool to encounter in a pre-Republic timeframe.

p. xvi: Nuna-ball is mentioned here. The sport -- in which a nuna "turkey-lizard" is volleyed between competing droid teams -- briefly appears in Attack of the Clones on one of the video screens in the Outlander Club. Nuna-ball was first mentioned in the online feature HoloNet News.

p. xvi: Continuing with droid history. "In 10 BBY, Coruscant experienced a Second Great Droid Revolution when the cyborg Archa Sabis uploaded a virus into the droid population." This refers to an adventure seed that I created for the Wizards of the Coast roleplaying guidebook Coruscant and the Core Worlds. The timeline placement is new.

p. xvii: Aratech Repulsor Company is pre-existing, but had previously not been known for manufacturing droids. While researching the droid G0-T0 (from the game Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords), I discovered that he possessed some Aratech parts. Although it's possible that G0-T0's only Aratech component was his repulsorlift engine, I decided that the tidbit was sufficient ammunition to take the company in a alternate direction.

p. xviii: Discussing the Czerka Corporation: "The notoriously corrupt Seario established Czerka's headquarters on the Sith tombworld of Korriban." This info about the location of Czerka's HQ was surprising to me, but I ran across it in Prima's Official Strategy Guide for Knights of the Old Republic.

p. 3: "Special fields that employ these droids include astronomy, cosmology, chemistry, geology, meteorology, hydrology, physics, hyperphysics, and transdimensional quantum metaphysics." Okay, I confess that I was getting silly at the end there.

p. 5: Too-Onebee's quote reads, "I'm the most efficient medical droid in the galaxy, even more capable than Effex-Seven, and certainly possessing a better bedside manner." Longtime readers of the Star Wars Insider will recognize the bitterly sarcastic tone of "Ask Too-Onebee," a mock advice column written by former editor Scott Chernoff a number of years ago. You can read the old columns on Scott's website.

p. 7: The BRT entry is a combination of two sources: West End Games' Cracken's Rebel Operatives (1991), which featured a profile of a Rebel-sympathizing BRT supercomputer nicknamed "Albert," and Mistress Mnemos, a very similar-looking computer that appeared in the Sunday editions of Russ Manning's Star Wars newspaper strips (circa 1978). The idea of linking the two was suggested by Abel Pena (in fact, you'll see Abel's name popping up a lot throughout these endnotes). Mistress Mnemos' home on the planet Fusai is a new factoid, but the planet itself was created as part of a sector-mapping exercise that Jason Fry, Craig Carey, and I underwent while writing "Galactic Gazetteer: Endor and the Moddell Sector" for the magazine Star Wars Gamer.

p. 9: Ubrikkian Steamworks is a new company, and I came up with that name because I'm somewhat fascinated by steampunk. (Steam-powered tech in the SW universe was briefly touched on in Dark Empire II).

p. 11: The FX entry features the following quote: "We need more Effex droids. I've put in this requisition three times. Every day you delay, clone troopers die." The speaker is Dr. Jos Vondar, star of the novels Medstar: Battle Surgeons and Medstar: Jedi Healer (2004). I've always imagined him as the Star Wars equivalent of Hawkeye Pierce.

p. 15: Master-Com originates in the classic "Wheel" storyarc from the old Marvel Star Wars comic book series. The Wheel saga ran from issues #18-22, and is reprinted in volumes 1 and 2 of Classic Star Wars: A Long Time Ago from Dark Horse. Conceptually, Master-Com ties in nicely with both G0-T0 and Mistress Mnemos, so the three were linked into a development timeline that goes: G0-T0 --> BRT Supercomputer --> Master-Com.

p. 17: The last line in the Polis Massan Midwife droid entry reads, "Although their suspicions were perhaps raised when Malorum's Inquisitors arrived later to investigate the death of Amidala," which is a reference to Jude Watson's young-adult series The Last of the Jedi.

p. 23: The Arakyd probot entry here (see also the Arakyd Prowler 100 entry later in the book) covers three different models. The Viper probot is the familiar one from The Empire Strikes Back. The Infiltrator probot comes from Marvel Star Wars issue #45, reprinted in volume 3 of Classic Star Wars: A Long Time Ago. The Hunter-Killer probot comes from Dark Empire. The rough timeline of probot development goes: Prowler 100 --> Vanguard probot --> Viper probot --> Infiltrator probot --> Hunter-Killer probot.

p. 25: G0-T0 is a character from the game Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. Most of the backstory here is new, including the G0-T0 rebellion and the "independent territory of 400100500260026." My original idea for that name was to write something that looked numerical, but which actually spelled out a hidden message in leet-speak. I abandoned this for two reasons:
1) I couldn't come up with anything that didn't look painfully obvious
2) It was stupid

p. 27: In the real world, G2 "goose" droids are a fixture on the Walt Disney theme park ride Star Tours. The droids are actually the stripped skeletons of animatronic geese, which had been removed from another Disney attraction, America Sings. The quote, "Have any of you humanoids ever flown on a Starspeeder before?" is verbatim from the looped recording you hear while waiting in line. My favorite retcon here was the revelation that G2-9T was "formerly the property of a Troig diplomat." Because, of course, one of the things that G2-9T says to you is, "You look awfully familiar. Wasn't I in your service? A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away? Oh, I guess not; you only have one head." C'mon, that's worth 1,000 fanboy points, easy!

p. 31: R8 and R9 astromech droids are depicted here for the first time. The R8 was mentioned in Timothy Zahn's novel Specter of the Past (1997), while the R9 first appeared in Troy Denning's Dark Nest trilogy.

p. 37: The T3 utility droid first appeared in the game Knights of the Old Republic.

p. 39: Vuffi Raa is a character from the Lando Calrissian trilogy by L. Neil Smith (1983). In what is perhaps The New Essential Guide to Droids' biggest retcon, Vuffi has been given a backstory as a member of a droid species known as the Silentium. (The other half of this retcon occurs in the entry for the Great Heep.) It is strongly implied that the Silentium are partially responsible for the war that devastated the Yuuzhan Vong home galaxy and triggered the Vong's hatred of machinery. (As a side note, embryo versions of Vuffi's species -- labeled "nano-stars" -- appeared briefly in the roleplaying guidebook Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds.)

p. 41: Wee Gee first appeared in the game Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight.

p. 43: This entry has a discussion of the uncanny valley effect -- namely, the more a robot resembles a human, the more we like it -- until it looks too much like a human, at which point it evokes revulsion. This principle has also been applied to the visual effects industry, where the realistic but cartoony stars of The Incredibles land safely on one side of the uncanny valley but the creepy, dead-eyed, doll people of The Polar Express tumble into its depths. Note that I simply stole the term uncanny valley, rather than renaming it something Star Warsy like "eerie black hole."

p. 45: The 2JTJ personal navigation droid first appeared in Jude Watson's Jedi Apprentice young-adult series, acting as a "seeing-eye dog" for the blinded Jedi Master Tahl. In this entry, two species are mentioned as potential customers of 2JTJ droids: the Sljee and the Miraluka. The Sljee are slab-like bizarros from Han Solo's Revenge (1979). The Miraluka are near-humans born without eyes, first appearing in Tales of the Jedi (1994). Note that my use here is only half-correct, since both species can compensate for their blindness via other means, and most of them would not require a personal navigation droid.

Advance to Part 2...