exitzero said:
The episode numbers were on the OT. They began doing it when Star Wars was re-released right before The Empire Strikes Back came out. I was there, I still remember all the WTFs rumbling throughout the theater when Episode 4 came up.

I was born after the OT was theatrically released and I remember I believed the Episode IV thing was a nod of how when you watch a Soap Opera or a TV Serial you start watching it whenever you do, not at the begining.

To me it was just as if it started with "Episode 148".

Which amazes me is that this means when I was a kid I already understood this movies were ment to be a reference to old TV Serials.

It felt like how when someone extracts a tale from the Bible it starts with mentioning which chapter it is. It gave it that Epic sense of you are just reading a chapter of something grander.

I never thought there were meant to be another three chapters before it or that it was incomplete. When they announced they were doing Episodes I II and III I thought "Thats smart, they are using the fact that they wrote Episode IV at the begining to write the stories that happened before".