‘The Office’ Time Machine, Every Real-Life Cultural Reference From Every Episode of ‘The Office’ Viewable by Year

1999

The Office Time Machine is a copyright reform project created by Joe Sabia and programmed by Aaron Rasmussen that uses the cultural references from all nine seasons of the television show The Office to showcase the importance of them to other content. The project allows users to choose a year, AD or BC, and it then plays a video featuring all the cultural references in the show from that time period.

Sabia gathered the non-fictional references together over a year and a half by ripping them from DVDs provided by Netflix through his subscription. All 1,300 references were then divided into years and given informational blurbs, though there remains a small number of references that Sabia couldn’t pinpoint.

My name is Joe Sabia and I created this project to advocate for copyright reform and highlight the importance of fair use in protecting creators and their art. To prove culture is not only everywhere, but that certain references to films, songs, and works of art are critical for our collective understanding of comedy and to the importance of relating to content, I found every cultural, real-life reference from every episode of The Office.

2004

2007

2011

via Joe Sabia