Trivia / Pugad Baboy

• Accent Depundent: Some jokes hinge on this, for instance:
  • Tomas is trying to distract and calm down Paltik as he's going to be circumcised, so he brings a copy of Anastasia for him to watch. When Paltik asks what "Anastasya" means, Doc Sebo says it's what he'll inject into him before the operation (i.e. anesthesia), causing Paltik to flee.
  • Dagul is backing up and trying to park his car while a man keeps saying "kasya" ("there's room"). But Dagul hits a tree, and the man scolds him because he kept telling him about the acacia while unknowingly dropping his As, as he also says "atras" (Spanish/Filipino for "go back/reverse" as "'tras".
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: One strip referenced a common (mis)quote from Julius Caesar: "Et tu, Brutus?" The actual line is: "Et tu, Bruté"?
• Creator Backlash: As found in Pugad Baboy X, the tenth anniversary compilation from 1998:
  • Medina reflected upon the 1995 graphic novel spinoff Pirata being a bit too dark due to channeling his Creator Breakdown angst at the time. He also admitted that the original plan of it being just the first of several original graphic novels called Polgas: Ang Asong Hindi (Pirata was technically a subtitle at first) was also too ambitious for him and his company at the time on top of his Creator Breakdown, so it became an Orphaned Series. In fact, it had already undergone Schedule Slip by the time it was published, as it and the Asong Hindi line were originally announced for a 1994 debut in one of the compilation books.
  • Related to this, he also admitted that his first attempt at a company to handle the strip and its associated stuff called Pugad Baboy Inc. did not prosper for various reasons, and ruefully noted that their lofty Latin motto "Ad astra per aspera", "To the stars from the mud", cycled back "to the mud". He's since had better luck with a later company, Pol Medina Jr. Novelties, through which he self-publishes them.
  • He reprinted a series of early strips revolving around beerhouse humor with bar girl "table escorts" etc. while apologetically noting that it got him flak from women's advocacy groups. In comparison with later strips, while he still continued to mine such situations for humor, he made sure that Tomas, Bab etc. were the butt of the jokes, getting in hot water for it later etc.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • If tapes even exist — the 1990s live-action Pugad Baboy show has never been released on home video. Not even Medina himself has tapes of the episodes.
  • The compilation books and Pirata are still fairly easy to acquire, being reprinted multiple times or at least once for Pirata. First printings and the original compilation from its earliest years, The Very Best of Pugad Baboy (later re-edited and expanded as Pugad Baboy One akin to the then-recent Special Editions of the original Star Wars trilogy, as Medina lampshades) are harder to find. Sometimes reprints have slightly different sizes or cover art or even paper type from the original printings.
  • There's also some more obscure spin-off books like coloring books(?) from the 80s, and later others partially or fully handled by other artists, some due to Medina partnering with a local indie comics company in the 90s (Alamat Comics, later better known for The Mythology Class and Trese) or later published by himself. These have never been reprinted.
    • The Asong Hindi title was used for two of these spin-offs by other artists and writers with Medina contributing cover art and supervision at most. They were in standard book format compared to Pirata being larger on glossy paper. The first was Baboyani, from "Baboy + Bayani (Hero)", an Alternate Universe tale where the setting is the late 1890s during the Philippine Revolution against Spanish colonial rule. The second was a modern-day thriller called Conspigracy.
    • Polgas Comics was by Medina and others, with new strips and art and humorous articles, magazine-style but in standard book format.
• What Could Have Been: Initially, Manila Bulletin was Medina's choice of submitting his early work back in 1987. However, he got lost in Manila and asked a bystander for directions. The bystander gave him the wrong one and Medina ended up in the office of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, which was still new at that time. Apparently, the Inquirer chief artist liked the strips, and the rest is history.
• Word of God: In a post on Pugad Baboy's official Facebook group, Pol Medina Jr. explains that Dagul's fear of frogs came from his teenaged experience with his friend, where the two would feed lit firecrackers to frogs they've caught. As a result, their shirts drowned in frog guts after some gory explosions. As penance for his actions, Pol made Dagul a ranidaphobiac.
• Write What You Know: The story of Kules, Dagul's eldest son, is based on Medina's experience as an overseas contract worker in the Middle East.
• Write Who You Know: Besides using himself as inspirations for Dagul, Utoy, and Polgas, most of the cast are based off Medina's family and friends, and are often exaggerations of their respective quirks.