It's kind of funny people are so obsessed with 666 when it's a mistranslation, the actual number was 616.
The above statement applies to a hell of a lot of things, not just the whole 666 was/wasn't a mistranslation factoid. Comments like the top level one are what platforms incentivize when they "keep score" of discourse like many/most do.
As a related aside, Don Knuth once composed a work for the pipe organ based on the book of Revelation:
It represents the creation of the physical world: The 6 directions, (cardinal directions plus up and down), and the 6 days of creation, and repeating a number represents strengthening it, i.e. it represents perfecting the physical world.
It's also the Gematria (numerical value) of a prayer requesting divine mercy.
https://ohr.edu/ask_db/ask_main.php/277/Q1/
Edit: It's also interesting that two people got so annoyed at me posting this that they downvoted every one of my comments that they still could.
This person points out that either 616 or 666 could refer to Nero and some other possible evidence that was the case: http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-number-of-beas...
From wiki:
> Papyrus 115 (which is the oldest preserved manuscript of the Revelation as of 2017), as well as other ancient sources like Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, give the number of the beast as χιϛ or χιϲ, transliterable in Arabic numerals as 616 (χιϛ), not 666.
1) There's a long history of it. Gematria was a Jewish technique, then carried over to the early Christian community. There may have been reasons to keep it up as a matter of course, but as you said, with Nero it probably didn't matter: the dude knew everyone hated him. Not just Christians.
2) The purpose of Revelations was meant to comfort the current Christian community at the time by prophesying a future calamity with many parallels to the current calamity. The end of the world brings great destruction, yes, but there is vindication at the end of it all, and hence hope for the community.
One thing to keep in mind about the nature of the "anti-Christ" is that it is the opposite of Christ in all ways. Christ was expected to come back at the end of days. So, too, then, was the anti-Christ. If the anti-Christ has never been seen before then "coming back" doesn't quite make sense, but it does make sense if the anti-Christ refers to Nero: he was a complete bastard in his first life, and he's so evil that he will come back at the end of days to persecute Christendom again.
(Trivia: what is the biggest number that is an English word when written as a Roman numeral?)