Concluding my page-by-page breakdown of behind-the-scenes trivia from The New Essential Guide to Droids (click here for Part 1 and Part 2):

p. 119: The JK bio-droid first appeared in The Cestus Deception, a Clone Wars novel by Steven Barnes. As a symbiosis of droids and living things, they are very similar to the Iron Knights (which were classified separately, as cyborgs).

p. 121: The Juggernaut war droid backstory is almost entirely new, and the droid hasn't appeared anywhere before...not really. But Arden Lyn, an elite Emperor's Hand (who originated as a video game character in Masters of Teras Kasi), sports a metallic arm that was supposedly taken from a Juggernaut war droid. Note, however, that the Juggernaut arms in this book do not resemble Arden's. I noticed this too late to change the art, so instead I labeled the arms as "Mark I removable limbs." Arden, perhaps, has a Mark IV limb.

p. 123: The L8-L9 first appeared in the Clone Wars animated series, fighting Asajj Ventress in a gladiator arena on Rattatak. The sw.com databank established the droid as a product of Marvel Comics' House of Tagge. I positioned the L8-L9 as a prototype, that led to Marvel's Z-X3 and eventually, the Dark Trooper.

p. 125: The Mandalorian Battle Legionnaire comes from Abel Pena's article "The History of the Mandalorians" in Star Wars Insider, though Abel was in fact riffing on an episode of the 1985 Droids television cartoon in which Boba Fett owned a droid named BL-17. It was Abel who retconned BL into "Battle Legionnaire."

p. 127: The Manta droid subfighter appears in the Clone Wars cartoon. I rather liked the new info in the closing paragraph, namely that the surviving subfighters allied with the Quarren and hunted ocean predators in exchange for repairs and ammunition.

p. 129: The Octuptarra droid is briefly visible in Revenge of the Sith, and is shown more prominently in the second season of the Clone Wars animated series. The involvement of the Ubese is new, as is the Battle of Uba IV.

p. 131: The Pollux assassin droid first appeared in the "Battle of Jabiim" storyarc in the comic Star Wars Republic (issues #55-58, collected in volume 3 of the Clone Wars trade paperback series), and also in the novel Yoda: Dark Rendezvous. But the name "Pollux" and almost all of the accompanying backstory is new to this volume. Due to their head shape, I gave the droids an Anx designer. Also, note the implication that they have Rakatan technology.
ERROR ALERT: It was pointed out to me by Rogue_Follower that most Gree dislike droids according to Star Wars Adventure Journal #8, meaning that the Gree here (and the Gree mentioned in the section "A Short History of Droids") must have been atypical for their species.

p. 133: The entry for Darth Maul's probe droids has been sitting on my hard drive since the Essential Guide to Episode I. The line, "The probe droid uses this data to assemble a picture of an individual's Force aura, which appears in playback as a radiant blue nimbus," is a tie-in to the Force paddles seen the Jedi Academy trilogy.

p. 135: Xim's war-robots first appeared in Brian Daley's novel Han Solo and the Lost Legacy (1980). As noted earlier, the "crimson condottieres" are new to this volume, as is the revelation that war robots in Hutt Space battled the Yuuzhan Vong.

p. 137: The YVH Yuuzhan Vong Hunter was introduced in Troy Denning's New Jedi Order novel Star by Star (2001). They are coated with a self-healing metal called laminanium, revealed here (thanks Abel) to be related to the alien material of the Teljkon vagabond ghost ship from the Black Fleet Crisis novels (1996).

p. 139: The Z-X3 Droid Trooper first appeared in the Marvel comic "Droid World" (issue #47 of the original series, reprinted in volume 3 of Classic Star Wars: A Long Time Ago, and also released as a read-along record). There's some retconning in this entry, which ties Z-X3 to the (chronologically earlier) L8-L9 from the Clone Wars cartoon and the (chronologically later) Dark Trooper from Dark Forces. Note also that Z-X3 wears a "Briletto AAP-IV blaster box," while the Mandalorian Battle Legionnaires only wear AAP-II blaster boxes. Wimps.

p. 143: The 8D8 smelting operator has been retconned to resemble a Muun instead of -- as the original guide had it -- "a thin-faced human." Both accounts are still acknowledged.

p. 147: The entry for the binary load lifter characterizes See-Threepio's "first job" programming binary load lifters as "less than truthful." This was my interpretation of Threepio's statement in light of The Phantom Menace -- Threepio was in used-car-salesman mode and feeding Uncle Owen a line of bull. However, reader DarthSeti5 uncovered a specific line from the post-ROTS novel Dark Lord that casts doubt on this:

"... I think I recall acting as an interface with a group of binary loadlifters."
"Loadlifters?" Archyr said. "But you're programmed for protocol, aren't you?"
C-3PO looked as distressed as a droid could look. "That's true! However, I can't imagine that I'm mistaken! I know I have been programmed for--"

Therefore -- ERROR ALERT -- it doesn't matter if Threepio programmed binary load lifters or not. According to Dark Lord, Threepio believes that he did, and therefore his line can't be characterized as "less than truthful."

p. 149: The droid Bollux first appeared in Brian Daley's novel Han Solo at Star's End (1979). In the U.K. printings, however, he was renamed "Zollux," a fact that receives an in-universe tip of the hat. (Thanks again to Abel Pena.)

p. 151: "The Cammy is exceptionally bright and exudes a warm, motherly personality." This is the book's only nod to the game Droidworks (1998), an award-winning educational game from Lucas Learning designed to teach physics to school-age kids. Cammy the camera droid is your guide throughout Droidworks, and she speaks with a caring, cheery accent cooked up in the American South. I can still hear my sweet Southern belle-bot now: "One lahge battahry is now in your inventoray." Also, the reference to the 3DVO cam droid comes from the comic Vader's Quest (1999).

p. 153: Here you'll see the first of two references to Reginald Barkbone, legendary pirate of the Seven Sectors. No tie-ins here. I just like pirates.

p. 155: The FA-4/FA-5 entry mentions the book Travels with Gormaanda. This is a reference to the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, in which Harvey Korman played Gormaanda as a six-armed parody of Julia Childs.

p. 157: This is the homing droid, star of the Droids series from Marvel's Star Comics imprint. Abel suggested this one, and even supplied the reference material. As you can see, the original droid was very cartoony, and Ian Fullwood did a great job at redesigning it so it looks SW-real. Incorporated into the overall design was the only other depiction of the Falcon's homing beacon, from "Darklighter" in Star Wars Empire. (The Star Comics homing droid, therefore, carried and planted the Darklighter homing beacon.)

p. 161: The entry on window-washer droids contains the line, "most windows on Coruscant are not made of transparisteel...striking a window can shatter the entire pane into thousands of fragments." This helps explain the breakaway windows in Padmé's apartment in AOTC and Palpatine's office in ROTS. It does not explain why the viewport on the Invisible Hand shatters when it's struck by an electrostaff. (If that thing isn't transparisteel, what is?)
Also, musician Fitz Roi is an old character who used to pop up in Galaxywide NewsNets, the precursor to HoloNet News that once ran in West End Games' Star Wars Adventure Journal. In my original manuscript I described him as a jatz musician, but it was changed during editing to ###z.

p. 165: Here's the Monster droid. Seen it before? You have if you ever owned Kenner's old-school Droid Factory Playset (thanks again to Abel for the reference material). The playset came with an array of droid pieces that you could combine to assemble your own droids. It also gave you directions for building four preset designs: the mechano-droid, the tracto-droid, the quad-pod droid, and the rollarc droid.

p. 175: The pit droid is another entry (see also Sith probe droid and baron droid) that was started for The Essential Guide to Episode I and is just now seeing the light of day.

p. 177: More Essential Guide to Episode I info surfaces in the PK droid entry. Back in the late '90s, I had corresponded with Aaron Allston regarding his character Vyn Narcassan, suggesting that his Republic intelligence agent would be a good tie-in to the espionage backstory I had envisioned for the PK. Aaron agreed, but it wound up sitting on the shelf for forever.

p. 179: Reginald Barkbone makes his triumphant return!

p. 183: The quote in the Rickshaw droid entry reads, "RIC-9 passes to RIC-11. He passes to RIC-8. It's RIC-8 up the middle...He shoots -- Nuuuuuunaaaaa!" This is my tribute to football (i.e. soccer) announcer Andres Cantor, famous for his shouts of Gooooooaaaaaal!

p. 187: Yes, I created a droid named "Glambot." Send hate mail to danwall88@gmail.com.

p. 193: Lots of retconning at play in the B'omarr Brain Walker entry! The droid in question, originally glimpsed in Jabba's doorway in ROTJ, was first identified as a "BT-16 perimeter droid" in West End Games' Galaxy Guide 7: Mos Eisley (1993). A few years later, the anthology Tales from Jabba's Palace went in a completely different direction, stating that the droid was actually a walking armature for a preserved brain. So when West End Games later published Fantastic Technology: Droids, how would they depict the BT-16? They wound up taking the art for the TS-Arach pest-control droid elsewhere in the book, copied it, and dropped the same art into the BT-16 entry. (I suspect that WEG was told at the last minute that they couldn't use "brain walker" art to depict the BT-16, and therefore had to throw something --anything -- in before the book went to press.) So my entry here tries to acknowledge that the BT-16 perimeter droid does exist, and was in fact the baseline model used in the construction of most brain walkers. Then, I tried to incorporate Fantastic Technology's "wrong art" into continuity, explaining that the manufacturer introduced a new, completely redesigned model that incorporated elements from the TS-Arach pest-control droid. Finally, this whole loopy retcon references throwaway dialogue from A New Hope! As one stormtrooper said to the other: "You seen that new BT-16?" (I hear it's quite the thing to see.)

p. 195: Abel Pena suggested the inclusion of the Dark-Side Technobeasts. These creatures first appeared in WEG's Tales of the Jedi Companion, and Sith Lord Belia Darzu appears in Vader: The Ultimate Guide. The quote, "Maggot of metal, rust, and rot, Sith life draws breath, old life does not," is my really, really lame attempt to write a Jack Kirby Etrigan the Demon rhyme.

p. 199: The Iron Knights were written up extensively in Abel's online article "Droids and the Force," but first appeared in the kids' book Star Wars Missions: Monsters of Dweem.

That's all! Please post any comments, and thanks for reading!