This article: The film, set over the course of four consecutive New Year's Eves from 1964 to 1967, depicts scenes from each of these years, intertwined with one another as though events happen simultaneously. The audience is protected from confusion by the use of a distinct cinematic style for each section. For example, the 1966 sequences echo the movie of Woodstock using split screens and multiple angles of the same event simultaneously on screen, the 1965 sequences (set in Vietnam) shot hand-held on grainy  super 16 mm film designed to resemble war reporters' footage.  The film attempts to memorialize the 1960s with sequences that recreate the sense and style of those days with references to Haight-Ashbury, the campus peace movement, the beginnings of the modern woman's liberation movement and the accompanying social revolt. One character burns his draft card, showing a younger audience what so many Americans had done on the television news ten years before the movie's release. Other characters are shown frantically disposing of their marijuana before a traffic stop as a police officer pulls them over, and another scene shows the police brutality with billy clubs during an anti-Vietnam protest.
The fates of the main characters listed at the end of American Graffiti are updated at the end of this sequel.  

John Milner is shown driving his trademark yellow deuce coupe toward another vehicle's headlights on New Year's Eve 1964. After disappearing over a small hill, neither his taillights nor the approaching car's headlights are seen again, hinting that this was the crash in which Milner was killed. The anniversary of John's death is mentioned in both the 1965 and 1966 sequences.
Terry "The Toad" Fields fakes his own death in Vietnam. Disillusioned with the war, he decides to desert, saying he plans to go to Europe. Terry's superiors believe him to be dead in 1965, as do Debbie in 1966 and Steve and Laurie in 1967. contains an answer for the question: What is the full name of the person who decides to desert the war in Vietnam?, what is it ?


Terry "The Toad" Fields