The very first spark of an idea for this bizarre project was my envisioning staunchly upright Deputy District Attorney Sampson encountering his double, sadistic Little Pinto, and each being repulsed by the other's career choice. I imagined Pinto lassoing Sampson and Sampson's outraged yells. I found it very giggle-worthy. Poor Sampson.
The idea would not go away. So I gradually started crafting other elements to go with it, including the necessary time-travel.
It was Sherlock Holmes and Reichenbach Falls that inspired the idea of Jim's faked death in the first story. Originally Jim was supposed to outright fake his own death, as did Sherlock. But in the end I found that too depressing and arrived at a compromise: Dr. Faustina fakes Jim's death, but Jim finds himself forced to play dead for a while, to protect Arte.
Then the strangest puzzle piece of all: a oneshot character from The Wild Wild West and a oneshot character from Cannon meeting and gradually becoming friends. And the explanation for why that happened is really quite simple and bizarre. I couldn't decide which character I wanted to write about one day, and I wanted to write about them equally much, so I solved the dilemma by putting them in the same blurb. Of course, it was the only logical solution. I developed a backstory for it to work and experimented with their interaction. And I decided I quite liked it.
Oddly enough, Sampson and Pinto never have a meeting in the stories, despite the fact that the idea of such a meeting was the original inspiration. I decided it would be too much like making fun of Sampson, and I'm far too fond of him for that. So instead, when Sampson finally appears, he clashes with Coley over various differences of opinion. Coley, having already met near-doubles Pinto and Lucius, is extremely weirded out by Sampson's existence.