Trivia / Sgt. Frog Abridged

Trope Trivia

• Acting for Two:
  • ThornBrain voices approximately a third of the cast, including major, minor, and bit characters. Most obvious in Episode 7, where the credits list Yoshi and BigTUnit1, followed by:
  Literally everyone else is voiced by ThornBrain

  Even the trees
  • JigglyJacob voices both Dokuku and his brother Giruru in Episodes 21 and 25. Giruru's voice is filtered through a chorus to further differentiate it.
  • Tiana voices Natsumi and Gyororo together in Episode 24.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Keroro often speaks Spanish or embodies various Latin American stereotypes due to his voice actor Yoshi being Dominican.
  • In Episode 2, Aki mentions that the guy who removed the ghost from the basement was "some guy from Florida", a reference to Kululu's voice actor, InfamousGentleman, a then-resident of Florida.
  • In Episode 21, Keroro says he failed Biology, which happened to Yoshi in real life.
• Actor Existence Limbo: Saburo was originally voiced by DragonFatman, who was kicked from the team after the original pilot. He'd planned to voice Saburo as a drunk Irishman, an idea Thorn and Yoshi never liked, so from thereon-out they made him a Cute Mute, including in the remade Episode 1. MrFailGame voiced him for a very quick line in Episode 18, but he passed away before Saburo returned in Episode 20, so the writers left the character a Cute Mute once again.
• Actor Leaves, Character Dies: Momoka following her death in Episode 13. The writers would have happily brought her back after explosively decapitating her, but her voice actor moved to Japan shortly after the episode went up, so she stayed dead. Eventually reversed in 2013, when her VA moved back to the US, allowing her to be resurrected in Episode 22.
• Ascended Fanon: Of the premeditative variety. When the counter debuted in Episode 13, viewers calculated that, if it counted down in real-time, it would reach 0 on April 23, 2012. The writers made it so that Episode 16, wherein the counter activates, would correlate with that date, though because Keroro makes the counter activate a week early, the episode was uploaded a week earlier on the 16th as well.
• The Cast Showoff:
  • Tiana sang as Natsumi for the 2010 Christmas Special, as the gender-ambiguous Sumomo in Episode 8, and at the end of their 2013 April Fool's redub of Episode 1. And she can sing.
  • Most of the cast sang in-character for the cover of The Outfield's "Your Love" in the SFA Movie credits. Those who didn't do it intentionally badly were this, including Tiana and Yoshi.
• Contest Winner Cameo: In place of album covers, Episode 18 hides pictures of the winners of TheMidnightFrogs' 2011 Sgt. Frog abridging contest.
• Creator Backlash:
  • The creators openly disowned the original Episodes 1 and 2. They remade them to make them funnier, more in-line with their current writing style, and in-canon with the current continuity.^note The exception is Episode 3, which was only remade due to the plotholes and dead references that resulted from the first two remakes, as otherwise Thorn and Yoshi don't consider it a bad episode.
  • Thorn is openly unhappy with Episode 8, and she, Yoshi and Travis consider Episode 13 to be their worst, feeling that the writing was lazy and surface-level. By the time of the team's 10th anniversary in 2020, Thorn found that Season 1 and some of Season 2 doesn't hold up very well on the whole, but she still especially dislikes those two episodes and leaves an Episode 13 remake on the table.
  • The writers feel that the writing of the first two seasons in general is often "collar-tuggy", including Black Comedy Rape and casual slurs slung about from people without N-Word Privileges, all of which were largely acceptable and commonplace in YouTube comedy videos at the time. Thorn also notes that, if she had been remotely educated about transgender lives, issues, and dysphoria early in the series, Giroro and Tamama's (and even Joriri's) characters and arcs would not have turned out how they did, but she and much of the internet were not so well-informed until well into the 2010s.
• Creator's Favorite:
  • On the podcast celebrating SFA's then-completion after Season 2 (before it was revived for Season 3), Dororo was voted Travis, Yoshi and Thorn's favourite character.
  • Jacob noted in the SFA Season 3 finale podcast that Pururu was his favorite character to write.
• Creator's Favorite Episode:
  • On the same podcast where the team said Dororo was their favorite character, they also voted Episodes 7, 11, and 17 as their favorite episodes. They confirmed these to still be among their favorites on their 10th anniversary hangout stream.
  • Yoshi also included Episodes 4 and 6 as favorites on the podcast: 4 primarily for when Dororo shows up, and 6 because he had wanted to parody the radio episode(s) since the early planning of the series, and it ultimately came out even better than he had hoped. Thorn largely agreed with him, though as of 2020 this is no longer the case as they find the writing in episode 6 to be very "collar-tuggy".
  • After Season 3, the team added Episode 25 to their list of favorites.
  • Thorn also counts Episode 23 as a favorite, considering it one of the tightest episodes without any dud jokes.
  • All three writers were very happy with the SFA Movie, agreeing that it was one of their best scripts, the best voice acting in the series, and Thorn's best editing. Yoshi added in the movie commentary that he felt all of the characters were at their best, especially ones they had underutilized in the episodic series like Mois and Momoka.
• Crossdressing Voices: Young male characters Private Taruru and Gyororo are voiced by female VA Tiana.
• Directed by Cast Member: The series' voice actors are directed by Thorn, who also voices a large chunk of the cast. She stepped into this role after Episode 2R was delayed due to multiple voice acting issues.
• In Memoriam: Episode 20 is dedicated to MrFailGame, a friend of the team who was referenced throughout Season 2 and who briefly voiced Saburo in Episode 18. He had passed away in the year since from alcohol-related illness.
• Inspiration for the Work: Mugiwara Yoshi was inspired to begin SFA after becoming a fan of both the original and of abridged series in general, and thus he wanted to see an abridged series of Sgt Frog. However there was no good abridging of it yet, so he took the opportunity to start one himself.
• Lying Creator:
  • For a time, Thorn kept forgetting that Tamama was male and not female. She randomly came up with a joke that would reveal that Tamama really was a girl, and she and Yoshi decided to make it canon. After deciding this, they would occasionally make unintentional Freudian slips revealing this secret, but they simply pretended that they were still confused about Tamama's gender. Then Episode 10 rolls around...
  • The team told everyone that the SFA1 remake would be in July 2011. They made it in June.
  • They also said that SFA2 would be remade in July 2012. They remade it in July 2011.
  • They also said that SFA3 is where the series' proper continuity begins. They remade it in July 2011.
  • Not the case in regards to ending the series after Episode 18. Thorn had every intention of ending the series for good; she just simply changed his mind and brought SFA back later.
• Meaningful Release Date: Episode 16 was released on April 16, 2012. When the Kiruru counter appeared in Episode 13, viewers calculated that, if it counted down in real-time, it would activate on April 23. Because Episode 16 starts with Keroro activating it seven days early, the episode was uploaded a week earlier as well.
• Milestone Celebration: The Sgt Frog Abridged Movie was released on February 16, 2020, SFA's 10th anniversary.
• Production Nickname: Before Todd Sirkowski of Todd's Toilets was made Fuyuki and Natsumi's father, the Episode 2 script named their father trapped in the basement "Haru", after the Fan Nickname given to their absent father in the original series.
• The Other Darrin:
  • There were several voice actor change-ups during the original first five episodes. These were all retconned out of the series with the Episodes 1-3 remakes, and the cast change was one of the reasons why they were remade. There were also numerous voice actors brought in to voice Dororo, Momoka, Omiyo, Natsumi, and Paul but were replaced before they ever appeared in an episode.
    • Thorn voiced HQ in Episode 1R, but when HQ returned in Episode 10, she gave the voice to team friend JigglyJacob, who would later join the team and become co-writer.
    • Giroro was voiced by DFatman at the end of Episode 1R. Thorn stepped in as backup should Fatman be unable to record, but Yoshi preferred Thorn's voice anyway, so she became the permanent voice shortly before Fatman was kicked from the team.
    • Kululu was voiced in Episodes 2R and 3R by GhostTC, who dropped out of the series before Episode 4. InfamousGentleman voiced Kululu from Episode 5 on. Thorn also voiced Kululu for a brief line in the SFA2(R) trailer.
    • Mois was voiced in Episode 2R by RenegadeFaith, but she was replaced with codeblackhayate in Episode 5.
    • Momoka is the team's resident "cursed" character as she went through multiple voice actors: she was voiced in Episode 2R by LillyLivers as backup after four months of failing to find a stable voice actor and delaying of Episode 2R (Thorn also filled in as Momoka for the episode trailer). The team were so frustrated with Momoka that she was left out of Season 1 until Episode 10 out of spite. From then-on she was voiced by Dobuchu... until they lost contact with her after 2016. Momoka was then voiced by xbubblemunkyx for The Sgt Frog Abridged Movie.
    • There was supposed to be a running joke involving Thorn and Yoshi trading off each episode as the voice of Tamama, as evidenced by early team podcasts, but Yoshi only voiced the character in Episode 3R before losing the voice and retiring as the character. It was one of the reasons that Episode 3 was remade despite being a mostly competent episode.
  • ShazMyBot from Gutted Wren Studios voiced Dokuku for Episode 20, but by Episode 21 he had stopped voice acting, so JigglyJacob took over as Dokuku.
  • Revy Moonshine, also from Gutted Wren, voiced Koyuki from Episode 4 to Episode 18 before stepping down prior to Episode 22. Spacerkid filled the role from then-on.
  • Spacerkid also filled in for Teddy as the voice of Nuii from Episode 22-24.
  • Paul Moriyama was voiced by Travis until the SFA Movie, when he was replaced by Azure Crow.
• The Other Marty:
  • ThePS2God^note now TheOneManBoxOffice, the original voice of Momoka, Omiyo and Dororo, had recorded lines for Episode 2R before being kicked from the project. However the then-script ended up not fitting with the source video, so his recordings were scrapped.
  • Al Vee, one of the voice actors for Momoka during the character's SFA2R fiasco, was the only VA before LillyLivers to record lines with the finalized script. Al's health and living situation prevented her from finishing recording, and after a failed attempt to find an understudy for Al, Lilly was asked to voice Momoka as backup.
• Popularity Redo: The first three episodes were remade between Seasons 1 and 2. While Episodes 1 and 2 are redone completely from the ground-up, Episode 3 is more this, being mostly the same script minus some references to the originals and taking advantage of Yoshi and Thorn's improved voice acting.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • JigglyJacob, a self-professed fanboy of TheMidnightFrogs and the creator of his own (now defunct) Sgt. Frog Abridged Series (read Sincerest Form of Flattery), was made the voice of HQ and later Dokuku and Giruru. He became an honorary team member after SFA: Reset and a co-writer from Episode 22 on.
  • Teddy, a young friend and fanboy of the team, was made official team artist in December 2011 and drew the artwork that made up Giroro & Dororo's wedding in Episode 15, the official SFA logo from Season 3 onward, and various other contributions, as well as being the team mascot.
• Prop Recycling: Still frames and footage from older episodes were reused for the Episode 10 Dollar Store scene, the season finale cast roll calls, and for SFA: Reset, either for the character models or the settings.
• Reality Subtext: Writer Thorn originally came out during production of Episode 11 as a bisexual transvestite^note later pansexual transwoman, though she states that she has always been an LGBT activist, so the series' examinations of sexuality were likely to happen anyway.
• Schedule Slip: Episodes 4 through 15 were released one-to-two months after each other. After Episode 15, there were often several months between new episodes, due on two occasions to the canceling and uncanceling of the series, with Episodes 20 and 21 being a whole year apart from each other. Thorn intended to do an episode a month again following SFA21 through to the season finale, but that too slipped when SFA22 took longer to figure out than she'd hoped. Taken to an extreme with the movie, which took a whole year to write, followed by the team going into indefinite hiatus before production resumed in April 2019 and lasted until February 2020.
• Shipper on Deck: The reason Giroro and Dororo were made a couple is because Thorn ships them.
• Throw It In!:
  • Lil' Keroro's over-the-top la-la-laing in Episode 4 was just Yoshi goofing off during recording. Thorn wanted to keep it, and it was even brought back in Episode 7.
  • Lil' Keroro's shocked expression in Episode 4 is simply a smear frame of him turning his head that Yoshi discovered by accident.
  • Keroro brushing his toothbrush in the Episode 2 Post-Credits was a result of Yoshi mistyping "I'm going to brush my teeth" as "I'm going to brush brush my toothbrush" during scriptwriting for SFA2R. Thorn liked the idea of Keroro brushing his toothbrush, so it stayed. It was shortened for 2R, but the entire line was later put into the remake.
  • Keroro's comments to Dororo at the end of Episode 14 - about remembering his name and giving a high-five - were ad libs by Yoshi.
  • Keroro trips over himself trying to say a tongue twister in Episode 16. Yoshi was supposed to play the line like this, but the take used was him tripping over his tongue for real.
  • Keroro asking "Is it off?" at the end of Episode 17 was an ad lib by Yoshi.
  • Travis jokingly did a parody of the THX crescendo while doing the monster powering-up yell in Episode 18. This ended up being the take Thorn used in the episode.
  • The middle third of Revolver Ocelot's closing lines in Episode 24 was a flub by Jacob. Thorn decided to put it into the episode rather than save it for the gag reel.
• Trolling Creator:
  • While the series does away with nearly all of the tropes and iconic elements of the original anime within the first several episodes, Thorn and Yoshi still slipped in a tongue-in-cheek conversation in Episode 5 about Gundam models and SFA-Keroro's apathy towards them. This was an intentional laugh at the expense of their audience, since a large portion of their fans were also fans of the original series, and a key part of the original Keroro's character is his love of Gundam models.
  • Thorn, Yoshi and Jacob held a livestream for TheMidnightFrogs' 10th anniversary where they watched all of SFA Seasons 1 and 2. Throughout the stream, viewers lamented in the chat that the SFA movie would never happen, and the three agreed and went into detail on why the movie was canned and why TMF quietly disbanded. They then aired the trailer for the SFA movie at the end to the chat's baffled surprise.
  Thorn (after the trailer finishes): "Uh, early April Fools?"
• Un-Canceled:
  • Originally ended after Season 2 in November 2012, with the creators seeming prepared to never look back. Three months and a failed attempt to start another Abridged Series later, Thorn was more than happy to bring it back and do it again for one more season.
  • The episodic series ended with Episode 25, and though there were plans to do a movie, the team quietly retired after 2016. The movie came back into production throughout 2019, with the team keeping it well under wraps until it was announced as a surprise in January 2020.
• What Could Have Been:
  • There was talk briefly during the series' early days of it becoming part of WingerDinger Productions, due to LillyLivers' involvement in the project. This was shortly before WingerDinger was hacked and subsequently abandoned, so nothing became of it.
  • Momoka's death in Episode 13 was simply a joke, and they would have brought her back the next time she appeared in an episode. However her voice actress Dobuchu moved to Japan around the time of Episode 14. As a result, they simply left her dead. Dobuchu returned to the US in 2013, allowing Momoka to return, but she wasn't revived until Episode 22 in August 2015, and she did not appear in either of the series' remaining three episodes except for the series finale cast roll call. The team also lost all contact with Dobuchu when they wrote the script for The Sgt Frog Abridged Movie, one of the reasons the movie was shelved for three years; when production resumed in 2019, Dobuchu was replaced with xbubblemunkyx.
  • Thorn wanted a joke for the end of Episode 18 where, after Keroro realizes that they've taken over the world, the characters all kill themselves, a'la Blackadder. That way, the series would conclusively be over. Yoshi and Travis vetoed the idea.
• Word of Saint Paul: HQ's name is never given in the series or by Word of God. His voice actor JigglyJacob mentioned on the team's podcast that, since it would follow the Keronian naming convention, he thinks HQ's name could be "Hakoko", playing off the codename of "HQ". Jacob demands this be made canon because then HQ's name would sound like "Hot Cocoa", and that amuses him.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Character aspects or events are sometimes discovered or developed through hindsight by the writers.
  • Both the Poodlejumper story in Episode 6 and Zeroro's mental flashback in Episode 7 were just ThornBrain being left to write strange stories off-the-cuff.
  • The climax to Episode 10 with Future Kululu is what happens when Thorn takes numerous disparate elements from the first season and tries to tie them together. She and Yoshi barely planned for the climax prior to scriptwriting, despite Episode 10 having the most planning of any episode up to that point.
  • Viper only became Dororo's father when Yoshi joked about Viper's eyepatch being similar to Lil' Zeroro's mask, and that Zeroro's mask was a hand-me-down eyepatch. They ran with the fatherhood joke, and by Season 2 Viper's Big, Screwed-Up Family was a recurring plot point and a key theme of the series.
  • The intention for Keroro's monologue in Episode 18 was for him to blame his parents for all the troubles in his life. After two minutes of the writers thinking about what could apply to that, it turned into a reveal that Keroro is Dororo's little brother.

---