Forever & Always
- Acting for Two: Continuing the trend of Nightmare Time doing stories that it would be impossible or very difficult to literally portray onstage or onscreen, Lauren Lopez plays the two Emmas without the use of any Split Screen, just altering her position slightly and letting her tone of voice tell you which is which (and showing off some very skillful acting chops in the process).
- Joey Richter does this at the beginning of the episode, popping into Lauren's window as the Homeless Man so he can accuse Emma of being an impostor, then immediately popping back in the window with his coat off as Ted so he can call the Homeless Man a "loser". (This is a moment deliberately designed as Foreshadowing for "Time Bastard".)
- Deleted Scene: Paul 23's confession to Emma 2 that he killed the real Paul after she'd already started dating him, which partly helps tighten the pacing for the end of the episode and partly removes some unsettling implicationsa bout their continuing relationship. YMMV if this was a 100% positive change or if you liked the moral ambiguity and Existential Horror implied by the original scene (which now only survives in the script still available for download to original livestream ticket holders).
- Reality Subtext: Lauren Lopez got engaged to Joey Richter in July 2020, in the middle of the COVID-19 Pandemic, so we can assume the question of when they'll be able to have a proper wedding was on everyone's minds when the episode was written.
- What Could Have Been: Apparently there were early plans for the song "Forever & Always" to be performed in-universe by Prof. Hidgens and Zoey — a very melodramatic song performed by two very melodramatic musical theatre lovers — at Paul and Emma's wedding, given that it would be wildly out-of-character for Paul and Emma to sing this song to each other themselves. This might have been necessary to fit the song into the universe of the show in a stage production, but with the kind of show Nightmare Time is it was decided it was easier to just it a Surreal Music Video with no direct diegetic connection to the story at all — hence Robert Manion ended up performing this role wearing Prof. Hidgens' signature black turtleneck but not his gray wig.
- Word of God: The Lang Brothers said Ep. 2 of Nightmare Time was a bit of a Creator's Oddball, using story ideas they'd written down initially as Science Fiction ideas rather than Horror Comedy, needing some tweaking to make them fit into the Hatchetfield setting.
Time Bastard
- Acting for Two: Played with. They're two different characters in the sense that they're physically separated by space and time, but the Dramatic Irony revealed by "Time Bastard" is that the Homeless Man and present-day Ted Spankoffski are the same person, including when Ted is in the same room as the Homeless Man and scoffing "What a loser".
- Blooper: While not nearly as noticeable as when a muted mic required Nick Lang to take over Jeff Blim's role as Rupert in "The Hatchetfield Ape-Man", Nick is forced here to speak the line of one of the CCRP security officers looking for Ted, who according to the credits was supposed to be played by Jaime Lyn Beatty.
- Defictionalization: Averted for the first time with one of the Eldritch Abomination dolls — the Tinky doll we see in the livestream doesn't diegetically exist in the story at all and is only used to illustrate what the life-sized Tinky kind of looks like (but who is described as being far more horrifying in-universe, with a matted, filthy suit and a life-size motionless mask with a flapping tongue and hanging jaw). The Tinky doll does appear along with its "brothers" in the later story "The Witch in the Web".
- Playing Against Type: Mildly — Dylan Saunders has mostly played The Big Guy since entering the Hatchetfield series as Tom Houston, so it's a change of pace for him to show up as Andrew Kilgore's head scientist in this story, speaking in formal, educated diction with an air of cringing cowardice about the science team's investigation of Ted's origins. (Of course, if you remember him from back when he played Ja'far in Twisted then this isn't against type at all.)
- Reality Subtext:
- The date of Ted's fateful failure to confess his love to Jenny is October 17, 2004 — exactly sixteen years prior to the date this episode first streamed live online (October 17, 2020). This is a bit of a Call-Back to The Trail to Oregon!, where the date the family's expedition started would be the date of that night's show minus 166 years (i.e. in 1848).
- Although he's pretty different from his character in almost every other respect, Prof. Hidgens finally coming out as bi and describing "Chad" as The One That Got Away came shortly after Robert Manion came out of the closet on social media in Real Life and confessed that he also had a male friend in the past who was his The One That Got Away.
- Word of God: The Lang Brothers said Ep. 2 of Nightmare Time was a bit of a Creator's Oddball, using story ideas they'd written down initially as Science Fiction ideas rather than Horror Comedy, needing some tweaking to make them fit into the Hatchetfield setting.
Peanuts!
- Blooper: An extremely talked-about surreal moment after the end of "Peanuts!" and Episode Two of Nightmare Time in the original livestream — after Nick Lang gave his final farewell and all the actors logged off one by one, Joey Richter and Lauren Lopez's camera stayed active (with audio muted) with Joey clearly sniffing his armpits asking if they stank and then offering them to Lauren to smell, with the two of them still alternately sniffing and discussing the matter when the feed finally cut. Fans hotly debated whether this was a real Is This Thing Still On? moment or was Joey and Lauren deliberately screwing with the audience (similar moments in A VHS Christmas Carol's livestreams point to it being the latter).
- Creator Couple: A lot of the impetus for "Peanuts!" came from the fact that Joey Richter and Lauren Lopez live together and were able to be physically in the same space to film this video together. (As with all the music videos in Nightmare Time, "Peanuts!" was mostly Directed by Cast Member, with the Lang Brothers only able to give general guidance for how they wanted the video to look and trusting that Joey and Lauren would do a good job with it.)
- Directed by Cast Member: As with all the music videos' live-action footage (thanks to the COVID-19 Pandemic), although this one is particularly notable because the running time of this video is almost all live-action footage of Lauren and Joey against a Green Screen, meaning the plot of this video (such as it is) was driven by their choices to a much greater degree. Nick Lang singled them out afterwards for being a major creative force behind "Peanuts!" being what it is.
