Dorling Kindersley released the Lost Encyclopedia on October 18, 2010. The book features a foreword by creators Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, and promotional material bills it as an official companion to the series. According to author Tara Bennett, Lost writer Gregg Nations confirmed its contents' accuracy. The book includes more than 400 pages and over 1500 images.
Content
Tara Bennett and Paul Terry
The book contains no new storyline information but clarifies previous gray areas. Bennett said many fans may be surprised by some of the clarifications enough to where they would deem them new information. The book is set up as an "in universe" book organized alphabetically and features no behind the scenes information. It does, however, feature many never-before-seen photographs, maps and other items and locations used during the filming process.[1][2]
Promotional samples
Charles Widmore
The Tempest
Danielle Rousseau
Backgammon
Jughead
Errors
According to author Tara Bennett, she and co-author Paul Terry ran all of the book's contents by Lost writer Gregg Nations. When questions remained, said Bennett, they consulted Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse themselves. Despite this, the book contains several errors.
Factual inaccuracies
| Benjamin Linus | Ben protected the island by killing Widmore before he could share information with the Man in Black. | According to the Man in Black, "He had already told me what I needed to know." He acted on this knowledge in the finale. ("What They Died For") ("The End") | 49, "Charles Widmore" |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bram | Miles asked him for $6.4 million. | Miles asked him for $3.2 million. ("Some Like It Hoth") | 60, "Winning Side" |
| Caves | States that throwing the Man in Black into the Source destroyed his mortal body. | Jacob clearly picks his body up and carries it to the caves. ("Across the Sea") | 65, "Mother's Abode" |
| States that Danielle showed up at the caves to warn the survivors of the impending Others attack. | Danielle showed up at the beach camp. ("Exodus, Part 1") | 65, "Oceanic Survivors" | |
| Charlie Pace | Charlie died after being hung by Ethan and was then miraculously resuscitated by Jack. | Charlie was unconscious and not breathing, but not necessarily dead, medically speaking. ("All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues") | 76, "Fated Future" |
| Claire Littleton | In her nightmare, Claire found a plastic baby covered in blood in the crib, one that "mirrors" the substitute baby she would later make. | There was no plastic baby in the nightmare, just blankets and a pool of blood. Whilst a photo is provided, this scene must have been cut before the episode aired. ("Raised by Another") | 88, "Dark Nightmare" |
| Jacob | Mother murdered Claudia with her own bare hands. | Mother murdered Claudia with a rock. ("Across the Sea") (Note that the entries for Claudia and Mother describe this event accurately.) | 179, "The Beginning" |
| Oceanic Flight 815 | The significance of Zack's disappearance stems from both Goodwin and Ben's explanation that he was part of "the list," a mysterious collection of names that Ben insisted came from Jacob. | As pointed out in the "Emma" article, Goodwin created the list. Ben was standing in a group of Others when he asked Goodwin to do this. ("A Tale of Two Cities") | 270, "Zack" |
Image errors
| Alcohol | In the section on Jacob's wine bottle, the book offers the image of a different bottle entirely. | 18 |
|---|---|---|
| Depicts a bottle of Cabernet when describing Kelvin's drinking red wine in "Live Together, Die Alone". Kelvin drank Merlot in that scene. | 18 | |
| Henry Gale | The picture on the driver's license is clearly different from the one seen on the show. | 144 |
| Jacob's cave | The scale pictured has both white and black rocks on both sides of the scale rather than a single rock on each side. | 182 |
Erroneous conclusions
| Aaron Littleton | Kate pretended he was her baby to protect the island from Charles Widmore. | Though the Oceanic Six's story overall sought to protect their friends from Widmore, Kate offered a separate reason for adopting Aaron. Said Kate, "After everyone we've lost -- Michael, Jin, Sawyer... I can't lose him, too." ("The Little Prince") Cassidy suggested Kate specifically sought to fill Sawyer's absence. ("Whatever Happened, Happened") | 11, "Life As Aaron Austen" |
|---|---|---|---|
| Benjamin Linus | Widmore spent 20 years searching for the island. | Alex was born in 1988. Several years passed before Widmore was banished, judging by Alex's appearance when he left. Widmore's search ended by late 2004, when he sent a freighter to the island. ("The Little Prince") ("Dead Is Dead") ("Meet Kevin Johnson") | 49, "Charles Widmore" |
| Ilana Verdansky | Ilana was the leader of the off-island Others. | Ilana and Ben did not know each other. ("Namaste") Ben led Others on and off the island. ("The Lie") So though Ilana led a group, it was not the group we call the Others. | 158, "Connection" |
| Isabella | The article states that "Alpert inexplicably saw Isabella again" and "nearly a century and a half passed before Alpert experienced another spiritual communion with Isabella", implying that Alpert was speaking with Isabella's spirit in both cases. | The first appearance was the Man in Black imitating Isabella. The Encyclopedia correctly points this out in the article on "The Man in Black", despite the implications in the "Isabella" article. | 163, "Isabella's Presence on the Island" |
| Sun-Hwa Kwon | Sun helped "translate" Walt's wants and needs to Michael. Sun and Walt planted her garden together. | Though the two spent a day together in "Walkabout", the show never again depicted them speaking to each other. They could not have conversed in English till "...In Translation", when Sun revealed she spoke it. After "...In Translation", Walt spent time near the raft, which Sun never approached. Walt may have helped plant Sun's garden, but the show never suggested this. | 342, "Walt Lloyd" |
| Tapestry | Jacob's tapestry depicted Egyptians coming to the island. | The people in the tapestry faced away from the island. It depicted the statue the Egyptians built as fully constructed. ("The Incident, Parts 1 & 2") | (where?) |
| The Tempest | Ben planned to unleash the Purge, Part Two, "killing everyone on the island". | Though he may have wanted to use the Tempest in some fashion, his reaction to Alex's death and his insistence on the Temple as a sanctuary suggest he did not want to kill everyone on the island. ("The Shape of Things to Come") ("Meet Kevin Johnson") | 352, "Harper's Warning" |
Copyediting errors
| Aaron Littleton | Omits the word "as", rendering a sentence ungrammatical. | 10, "Newborn Life" |
|---|---|---|
| Ana Lucia Cortez | Misspells Teresa Cortez's name as "Theresa". | 24, "To Serve and Protect" |
| Black Rock | Incorrectly names Tovard Hanso "Torvo Hanso". | 55, "The Fate of the Black Rock" |
| Caesar | "Caesar politely offered his condolence, which surprised Jack." - should be condolences. | 64, main body |
| Caves | Misspells Arzt as Artz. | 65, "Oceanic Survivors" |
| Charles Widmore | Dangling participle blames Widmore's banishing on Jacob's, rather than Widmore's selfishness. | 68, "Early Island Years" |
| A paragraph discusses planting the flight 815 wreckage, then the next discusses Ben's talk with Sun and Locke, post-Oceanic Six. After that, it goes back to assembling the Kahana team. | 70, "Attempts To Return" | |
| Charlie Pace | Fail-safe is spelled "fail-save." | 76, "Fated Future" |
| Danny Pickett | "When Sawyer struggled, Pickett kicked him the stomach." - omits in. | 100, "Pickett Undercover" |
| DHARMA Initiative | This entry abandons the "in-universe" style of the rest of the book, talking about an "episode" of the show. | 111, "Candida" |
| "Phil's discovery of the videotape that showed Sawyer and Kate taking a young Benjamin Linus, was the final straw." The comma should not be present. | 111, "Phil" | |
| Eko | Improper capitalization in "smoke Monster". | 120, "The Smoke Monster's Judgment" |
| The Hanso Foundation | The first two quotes from the Hanso website contain a closing quotation mark but no opening quotation mark. | 141, main body |
| The Incident | "Juliet regained consciousness at the bottom the shaft" omits the word "of". | 161, "That Day" |
| Isabella | "Tuberculosis" is improperly capitalized. | 163, main body |
| The Island | Tense changes within first paragraph. Describes the Man in Black's "singular" purpose in three parts. | 164, main body |
| Jack Shephard | Misspells fallibility "fallability". | Jack's Island Connections |
| Jacob | "Mother brutally murdered Claudia with her with own bare hands" has an extra "with" in the sentence. | 179, "The Beginning" |
| Jeanette Lewis | Says Charlotte left the island at age 3. Correctly stated as 6 elsewhere. | 184, main body |
| Has a period instead of a space following a comma. | 223, "Charlie" | |
| Misspells foreshadowing "foreshaddowing". | 225, "Sayid Foreshaddowing" | |
| Kate Austen | Misspells "disappeared" as "disappeard". | 204, "Jacob's Touch" |
| Magnus Hanso | Final paragraph has what appears to be the final draft of a sentence first, followed by the previous edit. Also calls the Blast Door Map the "Blast Wall Map." | 233, main body |
| The Man in Black | Says "the smoke monster than" rather than "then". | 236, "The French Science Team" |
| There is an ungrammatical comma in "calm, manifestation". | 236, "Survivors of Flight 815" | |
| These boxes are nearly identical. | 236, "Jacob's spirit" and 237, "Haunting reminders" | |
| "Especially when Jack at his lowest" - omits was. | 236, "As Christian Shephard" | |
| The word "of" omitted in "Benjamin Linus always felt he was living in the shadow Locke". | 237, "As John Locke" | |
| Compound sentence about Sayid and Sawyer working with the Man in Black repeated near verbatim as two separate sentences immediately afterward. | 237, "As John Locke" | |
| Refers to Locke as "the Locke". | 237, "Destined to Use Locke?" | |
| Miles Straume | Says "Before the plan could take off"; clearly meant "plane". | 250, "Escape Plan" |
| Mother | Appositive "under the cover of dark" has comma at the end but not at the beginning. | 253, "Duty Calls" |
| The Others | "Man's" is capitalized improperly. | 278, "The First Other" |
| Roger Linus | Claims Roger was killed on December 23 instead of December 19 as correctly stated elsewhere in the book. | 301, "By The Numbers" |
| The Sickness | Touches upon the Sickness and several unrelated sicknesses - the Purge, the pregnancy problems, the quarantine - as they though are describing a single phenomenon. Elsewhere, the book correctly distinguishes between them. | 326, main body |
| Walt Lloyd | Features an incomplete sentence: "To stop his father's initial escape attempt, he burned a raft Michael" | 366, "Family Ties" |
| Wooden shed | A first draft of a sentence, "Desmond survived the colossal amounts of electromagnetism," appears before a final draft stating that Simmons died, leaving Desmond trapped and able to survive. | 372, main body |
Transcription errors
| Ancient dagger | "Sundown" | "Put this right through his chest." - Man in Black | "Put this through his chest." - Man in Black |
|---|
Omissions
| Amy | No entry. |
|---|---|
| Cassidy | No entry. |
| Ji Yeon Kwon | No entry. |
| Amy | No entry. |
| Rupa Krishnavani | No entry. |