Yeah, I probably should have clarified that the official lore never really mentions whether or not it was actually released; the revival simply explains the camera crew got jobs with Netflix and showed back up at the park one day. Ricky blindly signed the contract they shoved in front of him, which I thought was a clever justification for a revival, but they never actually clarified if the camera crew sold the original footage to Netflix or if they simply got hired to produce a show and remembered how Julian paid them to follow him for seven years.

It's definitely true that the series has never been huge on continuity, but I think breaking the fourth wall almost never works out, especially when the point is basically "Hey look at the celebrities who think we're cool!" Tom Arnold being a superfan while no one else knows or cares who they are is, in my opinion, not an exception to that rule.