"This is the Crazy Frog!"
— "Axel F"
Crazy Frog (also known as The Annoying Thing) is a Swedish CGI character and eurodance musician.
The project surrounding the character began in 1997 as a widely-shared audio file of Swedish teenager Daniel Malmedahl imitating the two stroke engines on his friends' motorcycles. In 2003, animation student and fellow Swede Erik Wernquist used the sound to create "The Annoying Thing", a minute-long computer animation test, pairing the sound up to the design of a grotesque frog-like creature. Wernquist credited the audio to "anonymous" at the time, but later credited Malmedahl when he saw the animation and gave Wernquist permission.
A year later, the two creators sold the character and sound to ringtone service Jamba!/Jamster, who rechristened the character "The Crazy Frog", turning the sound into a hugely successful ringtone. The character was popular enough that Jamster eventually produced a techno cover of Harold Faltermeyer's "Axel F" with samples of the sound, complete with a music video. It was popular enough to keep Coldplay's "Speed Of Sound" off the #1 spot on the UK Singles chart, reach a moderate #50 on the Billboard Hot 100, and eventually warrant two albums worth of similar covers. A cover
of the synthpop classic "Popcorn" had some success, but it was mainly limited to Europe.
The character spawned a few toys, a range of merchandise, and two video games before fading into obscurity and going on hiatus in 2009.
After a long period of inactivity, the Crazy Frog's YouTube channel (found here) suddenly became active once more in 2018, with a documentary on the character's creation being released and new activity popping up on various parts of his account. This would eventually culminate in the announcement of a new album.
The Crazy Frog contains examples of:
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Frogs aren't typically blue. On the other hand, he apparently isn't a frog.
- Animals Lack Attributes: Averted, at least at first. Then it got played straight for a few years due to censorship only to averted again when the videos on the official Youtube channel depicted The Annoying Thing with his genitals intact and uncensored.
- Artistic License – Biology: Frogs do not have external genitalia, as fertilization occurs externally. Possibly justified, as according to his creator, he isn't actually a frog.
- Big Bad: Through some of the music videos, there is an unknown individual whose arm is only seen (ala Dr Claw) who really seems to have it out for The Annoying Thing and has an army of Drones seen in multiple videos.
- Bowdlerize:
- The original animation of the character gave him a very visible penis. It remained all the way up to the "Axel F" video until Moral Guardians complained and it was digitally removed. This was later reversed years later where all of the videos on the channel have The Annoying Thing's junk restored.
- Along with the removal of the Frog's penis, the "Axel F" video was altered to remove the explosion at the end.
- Bullet Time: "Axel F" slows time down significantly as the Frog dodges the missile at the near-two-and-a-half-minute mark.
- The Bus Came Back: After 12 years of absence, The Annoying Thing returned with a track called "Tricky", which also involved him dealing with Drones and his unknown enemy.
- Captain Ersatz: Tricky features a parody of spacecraft manufacturing company SpaceX called Space-Y.
- Cartoon Creature: According to the character's creator, Wernquist, the Crazy Frog is "not a frog and it's not particularly crazy either". However, he doesn't specify what the creature is meant to be.
- Continuity Nod: During Tricky, The Annoying Thing gets knocked down by a truck, the same kind seen in Axel F. After that, there's a sequence where he takes control of the robots and has them engage in a dance sequence like in Popcorn.
- Cool Spaceship: During A Ring Ding Ding Ding, the Annoying Thing stumbles upon a battleship that is part of Space-Y. After managing to avoid capture, the ship ends up destroyed by the end of the music video.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: In Tricky, the main antagonist has created a company called Space-Y, which according to it's tagline is "Space travel for the Ultra Rich" -complete with usual skull logo-, implying he's trying make a profit from space travel. A Ring Ding Ding Ding implies that that they're intending to build a colony on Mars, which fails to pan out.
- Cover Version: Virtually all of the Crazy Frog's songs are covers, and were merely techno versions of popular songs with samples of the original "Annoying Thing" sound peppered rhythmically throughout.
- The Faceless: The bounty hunter the Drones work for is never shown beyond his arms.
- Greater-Scope Villain: It's easy to miss, but in the first video the controller of the drones is trying to claim a bounty posted on the Crazy Frog by another mysterious entity.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: The Crazy Frog... Or, whatever his creator intended him to be.
- The Heavy: The Drone seen in Axel F serves as this due to them being the one that chases The Annoying Thing throughout the video. Later videos revealed that it is only one of many Drones.
- Hoist by His Own Petard:
- In Axel F, the Big Bad and his Drone get blown up by their own missile.
- The Big Bad is so determined to kill Crazy Frog in A Ring Ding Ding Ding, that he has the ship's cannons open fire on The Annoying Thing. It's implied that doing so is overloading the ship's power core, and the song ends up with the ship destroyed after trying to capture the frog with the tractor beam.
- "Funny Song" has the Drones intend to destroy Crazy Frog with a Macross Missile Massacre. Unfortunately for them, it ends with the large drone being destroyed, all which their nemesis is tripping out on mushrooms.
- Humongous Mecha: Druing Popcorn, a giant robot is seen being constructed, supervised by a Boss Drone and his henchmen and activates at the end of the music video, seemingly crushing it's master at the end. It appears again several years later in Everybody where it tries and fails to find and kill it's target and occassionally appears in other videos as an Elite Mook.
- Killer Robot: The robots that are sent to hunt the Crazy Frog in "Axel F", also appearing in various other music videos.
- Mascot: For Jamba!/Jamster at its height before they tried to replace them with Schnuffel. Despite this, the blue frog managed to strike out on their own and is now an independent music mascot.
- Mecha-Mooks: The Drones that chase after the Annoying Thing are red and black robots, seen in most of the videos. A Boss Drone is seen in Popcorn and a giant version of the Drone appears in Popcorn and Everybody. The Annoying Drone also exists but so far has only appeared in Crazy Frog Racing 2 as a clone character.
- Mushroom Samba: During "Funny Song", the Annoying Thing runs past a warning sign that says not to eat the mushrooms. After consuming them, Crazy Frog starts changing colours before settling on green and tripping out, viewing the Drones trying to kill him as happy and dancing. Despite being attacked with missiles, the Crazy Frog manages to defeat the Drones by sending one of the missiles back while being tripped out of his mind with the trip ending afterwards.
- Nebulous Evil Organisation: The organization sending out the drones, represented by a skull and which seemingly has no goals other than to kill the Crazy Frog.
- Skeleton Motif: The logo seen on all of the Drone types is a skull.
- Space Episode: The entirety of "A Ring Ding Ding Ding" takes place in space after the end of "Tricky", in which The Annoying Thing stumbles across a Space-Y battleship and ends up avoiding an army of Drones, ending with him being flung to Mars only for the Annoying to fall past it and land on an alien planet, kickstarting the events of "Funny Song".
- Story Arc: Unlike the early music videos which were standalone, "Tricky" starts a overarching story note where the Crazy Frog finds out about Space-Y which is a project spearheaded by his old enemies, causing him to try and avoid being killed while also causing the villains to destroy themselves in their overzealous attempts to kill Crazy Frog.
- Team Power Walk: After sending out all their henchmen to kill The Annoying Thing, there are several shots in A Ring Ding Ding Ding of the Drones doing this.
- Unknown Rival: The Annoying Thing is blissfully unaware that someone is out there trying to kill him, only knowing that a bunch of robots are after him and that he can occasionally take control of them. "Funny Song" takes it to an absurd degree in which the Annoying Thing manages to foil the Drones and their plan to attack while being tripping out on alien mushrooms.
- Your Mime Makes It Real: Crazy Frog has been shown to be able to conjure a pretty fast invisible "imaginary" car when he needs to, most notable in Axel F.
