All There In The Manual / Western Animation

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• The Amazing World of Gumball:
  • Darwin is Gumball's adopted brother who grew legs when he was overfed, but this was never mentioned in-show for the first season, just in promotional material. This was later retconned by "The Origins", however, where he's shown to have grown his legs trying to get back home to his owner/brother.
• Angel Wars: There are a lot of supplementary materials explaining things about the various vehicles the angels use in their fight against the demons.
  • Character descriptions from before the show in the CN website revealed some of their personalities, such as Clayton being a liar, Ocho having anger issues, Hector being a Gentle Giant, and Teri being hypochondriac. However, this wasn't shown in the first season at all, only from Season 2 onwards.
• For Atomic Puppet, the show's official website had quite a bit of useful information that explained some of the things never answered in the show, such as that the reason why Captain Atomic can only power up when on Joey's hands is because the two shaking hands when Mookie turned him into a sock puppet, or that Pauline has a Cool Uncle who is the owner of the comic shop she works at and taught her everything she knows about comic books and superheroes.
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, a large amount of supplementary information such as the history and details of locations or the names and background info of minor characters and animals comes from the Nickelodeon website and DVD Commentary. The creators have since expanded on this and additional info can also be found within the four Lost Scrolls books, based on screenplays of the show.
  • The second All-Avatar Nick Mag, in itself a collaboration of writers of the show and acclaimed comic artists, which contains comics that serve as a bridge for the time jump that occurs between the second Season Finale and the Season 3 premiere.
  • As of 2010, there's also an artbook, which shows, among other things, the evolution of the character designs, background art, storyboards, sketches, and a ton of other stuff, including a little bit more in-universe background info.
  • The sequel series The Legend of Korra features only a brief tease about the dangling plot thread of Zuko's mother. You have to read the comics to find what really happened.
    • Quite a few background details for this series are also found primarily online; for example, the web serial "Republic City Hustle", as well as in the artbooks (such as where Raava and Vaatu came from).
• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes has tie-in comics containing stories and bios that confirm such details as the Crimson Dynamo's real name, Ivan Vanko, and the identity of the "giant robot" Iron Man fought in his first episode, Ultimo. They also record the capturing of some criminals whose defeats did not receive inclusion in the show's 52 episodes.
  • The later issues handle dangling plot threads from the show, such as what exactly happened to Grey Gargoyle, Queen Karnilla, and Princess Ravonna. It also set the stage for Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, who would've appeared in the show had it been picked up for a third season.
• The tie-in comic book for The Avengers: United They Stand attempts to make sense of some of the baffling elements of the cartoon, such as providing a decent explanation as to why the Avengers are wearing gaudy, Animesque battle armor. It also provides an origin for Ultron.
• Batman: The Animated Series had several tie-in comic book series. Beyond introducing a few new villains, the comics provided an origin for Harley Quinn, which eventually made its way into the show.
  • The later comics revealed some info about the Time Skip between the original show and its ReTooling into The New Batman Adventures. Notably, they explained what happened between Catwoman and Batman that led to her cutting all ties to the Bat-Family, something that was only ever vaguely hinted at on the show.
  • The second annual details the first meeting between Batman and Jason Blood/Etrigan, explaining the case of "Remember the New Guy?" in "The Demon Within".
• The comic tie-in for The Batman, called The Batman Strikes, expands on the characterization of characters the show barely used, like Poison Ivy, Killer Croc, and Gearhead. The last one even receiving a backstory that was absent in the show. They also explored ideas like Ivy and Harley's friendship.
• Dwayne McDuffie had a Q&A on his website for Ben 10 on his site which detailed lots of info surrounding Alien Force and Ultimate Alien such as Albedo being the creator of the Ultimate forms rather than Azmuth. The showrunner for Omniverse, Derrick J. Wyatt, similarly answered questions in this manner.
  • The first series had a marathon with "Omnifacts", which gave an extensive, off-screen backstory for Ghostfreak, explaining how Vilgax survived the first season finale, as well as hinting at characters in future series such as Seven-Seven, the Live-Action Adaptation also had Omnifacts, which showed early hints about Paradox.
• The Platypus family was introduced in Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood in the television movie Won't You Be My Neighbor? The family includes the mother Dr. Platypus and the twin boys Teddy and Leo. The "Dr." part refers to her being a dentist, as there is already a town doctor character on the show. This, however, isn't mentioned in the movie or in the two episodes featuring the characters following; it is instead revealed in a character profile issued by PBS. Also, Teddy and Leo are an example of Always Identical Twins in terms of appearance, but the same profile states that they aren't very much alike in personality, Leo being shy and meticulous, whereas Teddy is loud and fast. However, we don't really get much indication of this in the introductory movie/episodes either.
• The supplementary Doc McStuffins book Doc McStuffins: My World states that Doc's father is a chef. This is never mentioned in the series itself.
• The Fairly Oddparents had a special "77 Secrets of the Fairly Oddparents" revealed Timmy's middle name (Tiberius) and Wanda's full name (Wanda Venus Fairywinkle). Also, a TurboNick special revealed Cosmo and Wanda's family tree.
• The Nick.com e-cards for ChalkZone revealed that Rudy's full name is Rudolph Bartholomew Tabootie.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: It took fans roughly 20 years to eventually learn the real names of all five members of The Delightful Children from Down the Lane:
  • Lenny is the one with the football helmet. His name revealed in the season 2 episode Operation: U.N.D.E.R.C.O.V.E.R., in which he plays a major role;
  • David is the tallest of the group. His name was confirmed in Concept Art for Operation: Z.E.R.O.;
  • Bruce is the short blond boy. His name was slowly spelled out on a set of KND comics in the Cartoon Network Action Pack, though for some reason the last letter was never officially printed;
  • Constance is the shortest and the chubby one. Her name was revealed in the rainbowmonkeys.com, if you type in Numbuh 0.5, her codename as a Sector Z operative;
  • And finally there's Alessandra, the tall blond girl. Similar to David, her name was shown in leaeked concept art for Operation: Z.E.R.O.
• On The Flintstones, when the Rubbles first find baby Bamm-Bamm in a tortoise-shell basket on their doorstep, they quickly learn that he has near-superhuman strength. No explanation was ever given for this strength on the show. Some 30 years after the series aired, a trading card finally gave an answer: Bamm-Bamm was raised by dinosaurs in the wild.
• The real-life Journal 3 that was released following the finale of Gravity Falls ties up some of the remaining loose ends like what happened to Blendin Blandin during the events of the finale, gives insight to the Author's life while living in Gravity Falls (as well as on the other side of the portal), and divulges other bits of information that the show never mentioned like Dipper's real name, Bill Cipher's backstory, and adventures that occurred between episodes. The video game and choose-your-own-adventure book also reveal extra information that give additional context to events in the show proper, including the meaning behind Bill Cipher's final words.
• Book six of the series Hey Arnold!: Arnold's E-Files confirms that Brainy is in love with Helga and that he has Hidden Depths, though that was already heavily implied.
• A lot of information about Invader Zim comes from interviews and commentary given by the creators, partially because the show ended before a lot of stuff could be used and partially because a lot of the interesting stuff probably never would have been used anyway. Also, it turns out every minor character has a name.
• When Lilo & Stitch: The Series was still in production, Jess Winfield kept in touch with the fanbase at TV Tome (which became TV.com, its web address) under the username "jesstifer" and helped confirm numbers, names, and functions of each experiment featured on the show. With Leroy & Stitch, all we need to find out are the remaining functions. Oh, and among other things, he confirmed that the 628 pod seen at the end of Experiment 627's episode was just a throwaway joke. Sadly, almost all of this information got lost when TV Tome rebranded as TV.com and ditched the old forums, making their old threads, including Winfield's Q&A thread, inaccessible. Neither the Wayback Machine nor archive.today have any archives of Winfield's thread or posts; the only known extant archive on the web comes from a fan from New Zealand—a former troper here—who claimed to have archived the first 27 pages of Winfield's thread but only uploaded the first four.^note The rest of his archive was on a hard drive that got corrupted, and it was too cost-prohibitive for him to get it repaired.
• There's a lot of info/backstory in Motorcity that wasn't revealed in the show, but revealed by the creator, crew, and the series bible, such as Julie and Claire being Childhood Friends, Mike's Cool Big Sis Capri, and Julie's mother having died when Julie was little. Since some of the info in the bible (particularly regarding how Dutch and Texas interact with each other) contradicts what we saw in the series, some of this info might not be canon.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Many of the background ponies/minor characters are never named in-show, their names only being found on toy packaging or trading cards. This even extends to supporting characters' surnames/middle names; Trixie's surname is "Lulamoon" and Diamond Tiara's middle name is "Dazzle". The greatest example of this is probably the Changeling Queen: was never referred to by name in the show proper until the fifth season, and her name, "Chrysalis", was relegated to the script until the comics came out and made it official.
  • The chapter books such as Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell contain a lot of worldbuilding that never showed up in the show. It also expounds a fair bit on Princess Cadance's backstory, something the show barely even mentions.
  • Likewise, in the show, Twilight basically states that Cadance was the best foalsitter ever, but we don't get to see how well they got along until the comics covered it.
  • King Sombra's aftereffects on the Crystal Empire are indeed Nightmare Fuel-worthy, but we never know anything of his direct rule — until My Little Pony: Friends Forever shows flashbacks of him enslaving a Crystal Bard for its Compelling Voice and siccing his guards on its trail when it finally escapes.
  • The My Little Pony: FIENDship Is Magic comics, unlike most of the other comics that are based on spin off stories, are crucial to learning about the origins and backgrounds of several villains including Sombra and Lord Tirek.
• Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker, being a short film, has worldbuilding and character details that are left out due to time. Details such as a full blown conflict between Dream Walkers, the nature of their souls, and the main character being an orphan with a brother are only available in the prequel comics, interviews with Angels & Airwaves, and Tom DeLonge's Instagram.
• A lot of information in RollBots on the various tribes and special information regarding characters can only be found on the RollBots webpage on the Ytv website, which can now no longer be accessed. Even when it was available, many aspects of it could not be viewed from outside Canada.
• The real name of the tuskfish aliens in Rick and Morty are revealed to be "Smumpians", by the official character guide.
• Rocky Kwaterner: The show starts with Rocky already living in the 21th century with the Tikka family. The full backstory of how he ended up frozen in ice 35000 years ago, was found in the present day by Mary Tikka, and adopted into her family is mainly provided by promotional material for the show (though an abbreviated version is shown in the opening sequence).
• SpacePOP's website and tie-in books reveal a lot of information about the setting and characters that the episodes don't go into.
• The Scooby-Doo gang's ages are never stated within the series, but such information is often stated within outside material. For example, an official calendar for the original series pinned Velma at 14, Shaggy and Freddy at 17, and Daphne at 16. Sources also have their sizes as: Fred is 5′11″ and 185 pounds, Shaggy is 6 feet tall and 160 pounds, Velma is 4′9″ and 95 pounds, and Dapnhe is 5′7″ and 115 pounds.
  • Issue #21 of the Gold Key comic (story "Charmed Strife") posits that the gang have the following zodiac signs: Scooby, Aries; Fred, Pisces; Shaggy, Leo; Velma, Virgo; Daphne, Gemini.
• Snowball II, the replacement cat for Snowball on The Simpsons was revealed in 1994 to not be a cat at all, but a member of a race of catlike aliens sent to spy on Earthlings. Problem was, this was only mentioned on a Bongo Comics trading card about Snowball II and never brought up in the show itself. And it probably never will be, now that Snowball II herself has been killed and replaced by various other cats (though the current cat is called Snowball II even in-universe simply for tradition's sake).
• Spongebob Squarepants: Do you want to know what anti–sea-rhinoceros undergarments look like? Just play the game based on "The Camping Episode".
  • In "A Pal For Gary", Puffy Fluffy is a nudibranch, which isn't referred to throughout the episode but confirmed by sources.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil has "Star and Marco's Guide to Mastering Every Dimension", which contains all manner of information that was never mentioned in the show. This ranges from minor details like the full names of nearly every character, to major backstory for a variety of both major and minor characters, to miscellaneous details about the history and geography of Mewni. Perhaps the most important revelation is the origin story of Glossaryck and the Magic High Commission, some of the most mysterious characters in the show. A defictionalized version of "The Magic Book of Spells" further expands on the history of Mewni, with the emphasis being the various queens that have ruled over the kingdom up to the present day, and even details that fill in the blanks about the show's mysterious former Big Bad Toffee (though only slightly) while setting up a Greater-Scope Villain that only appeared in the book.
• Each episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars is accompanied by a comic (Season 1 only), episode guide, and creator commentary on the official site. While these normally just contain trivial info, they were all but necessary to watch the "Dooku Captured"/"The Gungan General" two-parter. The comics explained Anakin's voluntary capture and showed how Anakin and Obi-Wan got drugged, the episode guide explained how Dooku lost his sabers (the monkey-lizard pickpocketed him!) and the commentary video was Filoni explaining that he believed even Dooku can be captured by pirates if he's sufficiently outnumbered. These were also necessary for determining the chronological order of some of the earlier episodes. Later episodes in the series would normally take measures to avert this by keeping the timeline moving forward. Ultimately, however, almost all of this supplementary material was declared part of the continuity of Star Wars Legends following the Disney takeover, and only the episodes themselves can be considered canon.
  • However, the episodes now have new, canonical episode guides on the Star Wars website.
• Star Wars Rebels and Star Wars Resistance both have episode guides on the Star Wars website, complete with supplementary videos and information not included in the episodes themselves.
• Much information about the titular characters of Teen Titans (2003) could be learned from the Teen Titans Go! comic book, such as Terra's origins and much of Starfire's family.
• Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters has a three-issue comic that canonically takes place between early Season 1 episodes. It delves deeper into the backstory of each of the Flex Fighters and reveals Jake's mom's name as Kim. It was even supposed to introduce a villain before the show did, but it was cut short before it got there.
• Superfriends never really explained what became of Wendy, Marvin and Wonder Dog after their disappearance following the original 1973 series, nor did they explain how their replacements the Wonder Twins and Gleek entered the picture, but had explanations provided in the tie-in comic. Wendy, Marvin and Wonder Dog's absence was explained as being the result of them choosing to leave the Justice League to attend college after they graduated high school around the time Zan, Jayna and Gleek arrived on Earth to help thwart a plan by Superman's enemy Grax that they intercepted. Much later, the details given on Zan and Jayna's origins were that they were born with their respective abilities of becoming ice or water-based constructs and animals because they were descended from shape-shifters whose powers weakened throughout the generations from interbreeding with non-powered Exorians, they were orphaned by a plague and forced to work in a circus sideshow by entertaining people with their shape-changing powers, Gleek was a performer at the circus they befriended and the three stumbled upon Earth and Grax's plan after they decided to leave the circus.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): Demonicus, the mutant ram member of H.A.V.O.C., has his name given only in a model sheet and did not seem family friendly at the time.
• Thunder Cats 2011 has the Crew of Omens Blog where they take questions and hold chats, and the Sound Designers' Blog, where they detail the sound art created for the show.
• In the Nelvana Animated Adaptation of Timothy Goes to School which is based on the works of Rosemary Wells. Yoko's mother would sometimes bring up the other family members who still living in Japan along with mentioning her daughters early memories of living in Japan as a toddler. While we do see a glimpse of Yoko's grandfather in the episode "The Takatombo". We never actually see the other family members of Yoko in the show or even see the rest of Japan in general. In 2001, Wells made a book called "Yoko's Paper Cranes" where you can actually see Yoko as a very young kitten still living with her grandma and grandpa along with seeing cranes. We also see Yoko and her grandmother Obaasan feeding cranes, having tea, and Ojisaan showing her how to make paper cranes. This is also the only time Yoko's grandmother is actually seen.
  • In the episode "Fritz And The Mess Fairy" Fritz would usually bring up that the mess fairy is responsible for causing messes where ever he goes. After The Franks heard about the fairy they start making mess and even ruining Timothy and Nora's art project and blaming it on the mess fairy. When Fritz tells them to quiet it, The Franks tell him that he started it. He later tells Timothy and the other students that the mess fairy never existed and washes Timothy's project to make up his mistake. In the original book◊ the episode was based on, The Mess Fairy is seen and depicted as a pig.
• The Total Drama Island Interactive flash site on Cartoon Network had bios for all the 22 contestants. It had very useful information for campers that got voted off early and received little screentime like Ezekiel, Eva, and Noah, but it also revealed a lot about the major characters. For example, Cody and Lindsay are both pampered and sweet — something the series itself never mentioned.
• A lot of character and setting details for Transformers are only found with the back-of-the-box toy descriptions for the characters and profiles released as supplementary material, occasionally with characters who never even made it into the show itself.
  • G.I. Joe also had a bit of this as well, one example would be the Dreadlok Buzzer whom was a disgruntled former Sociology professor in Cambridge England. Before he joined the Dreadnoks Richard "Buzzer" Blinken was a sociology college professor in England whom got in trouble because the college he worked at did not like his "extremist left-wing political beliefs". Buzzer wanted to do some research on Australian Biker gangs in which he ended up being a part of the very thing he was researching when he joined the Dreadnoks.
  • It should be noted that the box bios often have their own canon and storyline that might match the show's events, but for the most part writes it's own story. This is especially obvious in the Beast Wars toys. Since only 20 characters or so were introduced in the series, and dozens were created for the toyline, the differences are expected. Also, in the beginning the Beast Wars were set to take place after the Autobot-Decepticon war, among the humans. The early toys reference this, and the characters who appear in the show often have an entirely different characterization in their initial bios.
  • The writer's bible for The Transformers states that Sparkplug Witwicky is a widower.
  • The Transformers: Animated writing and art staff actually sat down and wrote a pair of manuals. The Allspark Almanac I and II are a pair of incredibly detailed books about the characters, setting, and plot devices in the show, including a lot of things that most cartoon writers would never think about in the first place. It's also ridiculously geeky.
• In Trollz, the Trollz' pets, aside from Amethyst's dog, Wa-Wa, are only seen on the website. Some of the backstory involving Simon is only found there, too.
• The VBirds had a (now defunct) website and an interview with SM:tv Live that revealed a lot more information about the characters than the shorts themselves, like insights into their personalities and the VBirds being sisters.
• Work It Out Wombats!: The show's official social media pages often post infographics about the characters, and include information that isn't really mentioned in the show itself, like that Sammy's parents are divorced.
• Young Justice (2010) had a tie-in comic, like most DC animated adaptations, but theirs was co-written by writers and producers from the series and went into details like why the Justice League abandoned their headquarters at Mt. Justice, how Artemis found the battle with A.M.A.Z.O., and just why Superboy hates monkeys so much. It also provided an origin for Clayface, and at least one issue contained a scene that was scripted but ultimately cut from an actual episode of the show.
  • Young Justice: Legacy shed some light on what happened during the five year Time Skip between Seasons 1 and 2, as well as introduced a new villain who would've appeared in Season 3, had it not been cancelled.

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