Isaac Asimov Helped Define The Big Bang Theory's Timeline In A Major Way

The "Big Bang Theory" franchise has a somewhat complicated timeline, in part because the original show wasn't written with prequels in mind. The series "Young Sheldon" takes place during Sheldon Cooper's (Iain Armitage) childhood and early adolescence in the 1990s, beginning when Sheldon is 9 and ending when he's 14. "Young Sheldon" is told by the adult Sheldon (Jim Parsons) as a slightly-unreliable narrator, so some of the dates and moments in the series might be a little off because memory isn't a perfect thing (even if you're a genius). There's one date that's crystal clear in the timeline, however, and that's April 6, 1992 — the day that legendary science fiction author Isaac Asimov died. 

In the season 5 "Young Sheldon" episode "Babies, Lies and a Resplendent Cannoli," Sheldon is understandably upset when he finds out that Asimov has died, as the author is wildly important to him. In an interview with TVLine, series co-creator Steve Molaro explained the full context behind Sheldon's love of Asimov and reaction to his death, and revealed why the series timeline was otherwise kept a little fuzzy. 

Because "Young Sheldon" has a pretty malleable timeline (each season isn't a single year, for example), the exact date of Isaac Asimov's death being in an episode only gives us rough estimates for the rest of things. That's by design, as Steve Molaro explained: 

"We're in 1992 and we're always conscious of [what we reveal], but we try to keep it vague. If someone doesn't need to say it, then we don't. We don't need to say the exact month or year that we're in, but we're also not shying away from it. [...] It's not like Adult Sheldon has decided to sit down and tell us one story a week that happened exactly 30 years ago. So you can have a stretch of stories that all take place over one week. We can slow things down when we need to, but also honor some sort of realistic timeline."

Isaac Asimov was the author of numerous novels and short stories, including the "Foundation" trilogy and the short story collection "I, Robot." In season 1 of "The Big Bang Theory" Sheldon reveals his love for the author by joking about the Three Laws of Robotics while playing Jenga. In an early episode of "Young Sheldon," we see him reading "I, Robot" when most kids are still reading picture books.

While the date doesn't fully flesh out the timeline for "The Big Bang Theory" or its spin-offs, it does give us a much stronger idea of when things happened. If "Young Sheldon" had to pick one specific date to center around, the death of one of science fiction's greatest authors was probably the perfect choice.