Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5448995-20160114192145/@comment-3406131-20160118150948

That's true. Did they ever explained the meaning of them, the way they are given (in-universe) ?

(Out-of-universe, I know 616 and 616 are different possibilities for the numbers of the beast (well, I don't know if Earth-616 was named this way for this reason), Earth-1984 is an Orwell-related joke, there was some also based on the dates of publication or something like that...)

But I have to say: Given we have never been told precisely of any pre-7th Multiverse reality (apart from "Earth-0", who isn't considered an official designation by the Appendix, who created it), it is possible the designation distribution is different from a Multiverse to another. That doesn't change Brevoort's answer is a very poor excuse.