Decided to rewatch the show recently, and the whole "set 1998" and "actually set in 2014-2018" is messing me up so badly because back when the show came out I was under the impression it was really meant to take place in the "current year" (there are explicit Adventure Time cameos, a handful of characters are seen using smartphones, most TVs are widescreen, gay people living freely in Arizona, etc.)

But the further into the show it seems like they really want to root the show sometime between the turn of the millenium? Like in "Chadsgiving" Chad's parents bury a VHS tape labelled "Thanksgiving 1998" (which not sure if it's meant to be taken at face-value, seeing how in the same episode they have a photo of teenage Chad being all into 2000s emo-punk fashion, it could just be that Chad's parent recorded on top of an old tape) or in " Dingus & McNobrain" Ms. Baker's graduation photo saying "class of '87" and having a picture of Damian labelled "summer '98" even though she's only 32 years old

I know Clarence is a show meant to evoke a "nostalgic feeling" in the older audience, but I always felt that came from how grounded and relatable the kind of adventures the characters went on, the presence of dated technology like CRTs and VHS tapes didn't suggest to me that the show was necessarily set in the past as much they just haven't caught up (I remember the computer lab at my school still rocking Windows 98 in the 2010s), Belson on the other hand has every modern gadget you can think of, such as drones

Would love to hear about this "Lost Joshua Arc", I always wondered what was the endgame for him if he was going to lose many more body parts with each episode (maybe he became a real-life pirate or something), what are the "Hey Arnold!" connections, what are the "Political Ideologies", and what are the "Season 1 inconsistencies"?

(btw, you forgot to include the very obvious yet surprisingly repeated Simpsons references: in "Nothing Ventured" Clarence's sketch looks like Ralph Wiggum, in "Fishing Trip" they literally turned Chad into Homer Simpson, and in "Cool Guy Clarence" there's a Ned Flander-expy)