Was the death of Hunta's brother Ray based on a true story?
No.

But the story of Ronald Ray Howard and the officer he killed–
–is completely true.

You cram a lot of Tupac history into this chapter. What are your sources?
Virtually all of my research was culled from old news articles and Tupac biographies.

What's up with Scott and his X-Men fixation?
Since Scott lives in such a complex and morally ambiguous world, I imagine he'd find some ironic comfort in superhero comics, where good guys in spandex beat up bad guys in spandex and everything turns out okay in the end.

Plus, the X-Men were often misunderstood and vilified by the population at large. Kind of like publicists.

Do you think Ayanna Jackson was really raped by Tupac?
I have no idea, and I refuse to speculate. I just presented the story as I researched it.

But as the all-knowing creator of the SLICK universe, I can declare with 100% certainty that Hunta never raped Lisa Glassman. The story Doug gives Scott at the beginning of the chapter is pretty much what happened, although Hunta adds some new perspective in Chapter 22 (pp. 440-441).

Why didn't Jean just use her Visor Handspring to communicate with Scott on the night of the accident?
Because it was really dark, and because Madison was sitting right there in the passenger seat.

Jean seems to be really good at lipreading. How accurate is it really?
As Jean reveals later, even veteran lipreaders still routinely miss or misread roughly a quarter of everything said. But through practice and logic, they can usually fill in the gaps.

Scott mentions that the XFL was debuting right at the moment. Didn't that happen eight or nine years ago?
Nope. The Xtreme Football League came and went in early 2001, although in the world of SLICK, the league's spokesmen blame the Melrose High School shooting for the XFL's abject failure.

Did the infamous Jackass copycat injury really happen on that very day?
There were two Jackass-inspired incidents that took place within a week of each other. The first one happened in late January. The second one occurred on February 3rd, the day Scott came up with his big plan to save Hunta, and the day the XFL premiered. That was quite a Saturday.