Bumping this thread just to respond to this post, as I hadn't before: Burning in the Skies was most definitely NOT called "The Fog." I just re-watched Meeting of A Thousand Suns, and in the clip you're referring to, Mike clearly says "okay, let's listen to THE FIVE and see what we think," referring to the fact that the band worked on songs in batches of five when they were working on that album. The fact that BITS is the song played immediately following that is purely a coincidence, and even if Mike had said "The Fog," the fact that there's an obvious cut in the footage right after he says that means there'd likely be no correlation between that title and BITS anyway. But "The Fog" is nothing more than a really bad rumor caused by something that people misheard.
All of these working titles are from Meeting A Thousand Suns (visible on the boards in the background and other places) Alphabet Block Ammosick Argonauts Dingleberry - (WTCFM) Iridescent - (Iridescent) Kingdom - (Most likely W&K) Left Right Meadowlands - (WFTE) Metal Lens Mikespiano Monday Meeting Pacmanny - (Blackout) Primo Robot Boy - (Robot Boy) Rygar Sakura Seahorse Tinfoil Underbite Voyage And I think The Catalyst was called Lullaby or something.
Actually, the band told Kerrang! in 2007 that 'Fire In The City' was actually a very early demo name for Given Up. It went from Fire In The City to 21 Stitches then to Given Up, I'm almost positive. The title '21 Stitches' comes from the time Chester was drunk in 2006 and broke into his Dad's house and cut himself on his arm, needing 21 stitches. I read that somewhere too.
"Ammosick" is actually "Amnesick," which was also a demo title from the Minutes to Midnight sessions. I noticed it there as well when I watched Meeting of A Thousand Suns. Looks like the band liked it enough to give it a second shot. Fire in the City was actually a mostly unrelated song to Given Up that got scrapped (it was one of Mike's demos with lyrics he had written - the lyrics to Given Up were done mostly by Chester), they just took the bass riff from that song and reworked it into a new song that became 21 Stitches/Given Up. There are a couple other songs like that, where parts of them came from other songs that were never finished, Mike has said the chorus of Crawling was originally the bridge of another song, for example.
I have another theory for Blackout. I don't think its actually Pacmanny. Remember when Mike was talking about new divide and how they made demos called Megatro, Starscream, Bumblebee, etc? The first transformer you see in the first movie - it's name is Blackout. And chester could've just used the working title in the lyrics when he was doing that "freestyle". So yeah, pacmanny could've been something else entirely, Mike just said it when blackout was playing in the background in MOATS.
I think the Pacmanny/Blackout connection is a pretty safe bet, if I recall correctly, "Pacmanny" actually shows up in a couple different spots in MOATS/LPTV and it's always when clips of Blackout are playing. You can also tell that Blackout is actually playing in the studio when Mike mentions Pacmanny on MOATS, as opposed to just being background music that was dubbed in later.
It makes sense, because Pacquiao beats on his opponents so hard that they black out. Also they usually have blood in their eyes.