

- The third and fourth digits of an X5 barcode represent their birth order

In AJBAC (#1x20), Max (X5-452) and Zack (X5-599) entered the DNA Lab at Manticore's Gillette, Wyoming facility. The room was eight-sided; one of the walls was the door. On each of the other seven walls there were 48 vials of genetic material (4 rows of 12). This means that in this room there were 336 transgenics catalogued.
In Designate This a breeding program was begun at Manticore for the X-series soldiers because of the destruction of the DNA Lab, which suggests that there was no more genetic material available than what was contained in those 336 vials; however, all the vials in the destroyed DNA Lab were labelled 1 of 2. It is possible that though there is another DNA Lab somewhere with the other vial belonging to the set, Manticore Director Renfro did not have access to it and so was forced to begin the breeding.
I've made a composite image of the X5 wall in the DNA Lab. The reason for the order of the vials is currently unknown as there is not enough complete information to discern any pattern. Some barcodes were only partially visible; question marks represent the unreadable numbers. The image can be viewed by clicking here.
The picture on the right was sent to me by Sarah Wong, whose brother Jon played an X7 in ...And Jesus Brought a Casserole. The pictures on the left are the back of one of the extra X5s in the Pilot episode (the image has been flipped for display purposes). As can be seen, the flipped image of the left barcode is the same as the right. Thus, we can conclude that the same barcode is used for extra characters without names or designations, and is sometimes reversed to make it appear to be a completely different barcode. It would be interesting to see if any of the many X-Series or non X-Series transgenics seen in Season 2 have the same barcode. Sarah tells me that there were about 50 of these barcode stencils at the AJBAC shoot (as seen on Jon's neck- that's what the faint outline is) and that they were all the same. The stencil is placed on the neck, painted over to produce the lines, and then removed.
