Trivia / Nerdy Prudes Must Die

• Acting for Two: The first Hatchetfield story (and fourth Starkid show as a whole, after Holy Musical B@man!, Ani, and The Trail to Oregon!) in which every single cast member plays multiple roles, including the leads: Mariah Rose Faith, Angela Giarratana, and Joey Richter appear as the performers in The Barbecue Monologues in addition to Joey reprising the role of Dan Reynolds. Will Branner makes it through almost the entire show playing only Max Jägerman, but subsequently fills the crowd scene at the homecoming dance right at the end. The other six actors in the show play multiple named characters.
• Dawson Casting: Inevitable with a limited cast, a company made up of adults in their late 20s at the youngest, and a show about high schoolers. Pete's played by the 34 year old Joey Richter, for example. Actors more youthful than the founding members of StarKid such as Mariah Rose Faith, Angela Giarratana, and Robert Manion were recruited to the Hatchetfield series specifically to avoid this being too obvious with teen characters, but the three-year COVID delay and Robert getting kicked out of the group left them very nearly where they started.
• Development Hell: Originally intended as the third installment of the Hatchetfield series, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the early production of the show in 2020. Two seasons of Nightmare Time were produced, vastly expanding Hatchetfield lore before Nerdy Prudes finally made its premiere in 2023.
• God Never Said That:
  • At no point was Nerdy Prudes Must Die intended as the third installment of a trilogy; the Lang Brothers have always been clear that the Hatchetfield series was meant to be much more expansive than that.
  • The argument between Bill and Alice in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals — in which Bill suggests that Alice would be better off dating someone like Grace — led most people to assume that Grace is queer and that Hatchetfield's religious community is, in a refreshing break from reality, accepting of that sort of thing. The appearances by Grace and her community in "Abstinence Camp" and now here put it into pretty sharp relief that what Bill actually said was that Alice should date someone from her own high school in Clivesdale who is like Grace, not remotely suggesting, as most fans assumed, that Grace would date Alice. Grace states plainly that Ruth is going to hell for being bisexual — though, her crush on Max notwithstanding, since she suppresses all of her sexual desires there's no reason her religious beliefs preclude her from being on the LGBT spectrum, and, though it clashes hard with everything else about their characterization, both the counselors from "Abstinence Camp" and Grace's own mother are shown to be respectful of they/them pronouns.
• Meaningful Release Date: Fortuitously, its release year of 2023 had a Friday the 13th of October to schedule the YouTube premiere on, the perfect day for a horror story.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Peter Spankoffski was played by Robert Manion in his Early-Bird Cameo in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals and Black Friday. Following a Role-Ending Misdemeanor, Nick Lang had to hastily take over the role in Nightmare Time. This show officially casts Joey Richter in the role.
  • Curt Mega replaces Manion as the announcer who introduces Dan and Donna.
  • All of the Lords in Black except for Jon Matteson's Wiggly have new actors; since James Tolbert and Jeff Blim are not in this show, Lauren Lopez plays Blinky and Curt Mega plays Tinky. Nibbly, previously another small filler role from Nick Lang, is now Kim Whalen. And Corey Dorris becomes the first person to properly take on the role of Pokey, who in his first appearance did all his talking through Otho, played by Nick Lang.
• Real-Life Relative: Joey Richter and Lauren Lopez were engaged at the time of the live show, and were married by the time it was uploaded to Youtube, which makes Pete's revulsion of Ruth even funnier.
• What Could Have Been: In filming the various cameos that occur during "Hatchet Town", it was intended for Jaime Lyn Beatty to have a cameo as Charlotte (presumably replacing Donna), however, she remained too busy, making her the only current member of Team StarKid to be completely absent from this production. As she also doesn't appear in Workin' Boys, the 2023 season is the first one in StarKid's entire fifteen-year history not to feature Jaime.
• Word of God: Nerdy Prudes Must Die was the very first story idea for what eventually evolved into the Hatchetfield series. Being a pastiche of A Nightmare on Elm Street, the Lang brothers then conceived of a trilogy of "nerdy prudes" Horror Comedy musicals, with the second one being a Friday the 13th pastiche (becoming the Nightmare Time 2 story "Abstinence Camp") and the third a pastiche on Halloween (set to be the upcoming Nightmare Time 3 story "Devil's Night"). The brothers soon expanded this trilogy into the broader Hatchetfield mythos.