Star Wars (1977)

May the Fourth is not an event within the Star Wars universe — no battle is fought, no planet destroyed on this date in the galaxy far, far away. It is a fan holiday built on a pun: 'May the Fourth be with you,' a play on the franchise's defining phrase that first appeared in a 1979 British newspaper congratulating Margaret Thatcher. What began as a joke became tradition, then institution: Disney officially embraced the date in 2013, California declared it Star Wars Day in 2019, and the entire fandom pauses every May 4th to celebrate a story that has, for many, become mythology.

The day after Star Wars Day belongs to the dark side. 'Revenge of the Fifth' — a pun on Episode III's subtitle — is the informal Sith counterpart to May the Fourth, celebrated by fans who prefer their Star Wars morally complicated, aesthetically menacing, and dressed in black. Like May the Fourth, nothing in the Star Wars universe actually happens on May 5th; the holiday exists entirely in the real world, as a sequel to a pun.