Trivia / The Boondocks

• Acting for Two:
  • Regina King voices both of the Freeman brothers. They also share a Quebecois voice actress, Pascale Montreuil.
  • Cedric Yarbrough voices both Tom DuBois and Colonel Stinkmeaner, which is made funnier when the former is mind-controlled by the latter in "Stinkmeaner Strikes Back".
• Banned Episode: Four episodes (five, if you count the temporary banning of "The Trial of R. Kelly") have been pulled from [adult swim] in the United States due to controversy caused by its content, although they can still be found on the uncensored Complete Series DVD set:
  • "The Hunger Strike" and "The Uncle Ruckus Reality Show", which openly and viciously lampooned BET, were removed due to legal threats from BET and its parent company Paramount Global. These two episodes finally premiered on [adult swim] on May 29, 2020, during a Boondocks marathon, while Canadian cartoon channel Teletoon aired the episodes with a warning that stated that the jokes about BET were not the views and opinions of anyone who worked at Teletoon. They are now available on Max completely uncut.
  • "The Story of Jimmy Rebel" and "Pause" have not been seen much in reruns. The former was banned because it was deemed to be too racist, while the latter was banned because Tyler Perry complained that Winston Jerome was based on him. "Pause" finally reran again on [adult swim] during the aforementioned Boondocks marathon, and is now on Max.
  • After the documentary Surviving R. Kelly came out in 2019, [adult swim] started skipping "The Trial of R. Kelly" during their regular rotation. Ironically, this happened when Huey's "The Reason You Suck" Speech towards R. Kelly and everyone dancing in court after R. Kelly is found innocent went viral online. In 2020, it returned to rotation and Max has the episode uncut and uncensored.
• Creator-Chosen Casting: Caesar, Huey's best friend and foil in the original comic strip, was Adapted Out from the animated series specifically because Aaron McGruder couldn't think of a good voice actor for the character and wasn't happy with any of the choices he was given.
• Children Voicing Children: Jazmine DuBois was voiced by Gabby Soleil, who was about 10 years old when the show began.
• Creator's Oddball: For Adelaide Productions, the animation wing of Sony Pictures Television. They normally specialized in shows based off other Sony properties (all of which were cartoon adaptations of film franchises), or alternately preschool shows. This show sticks out like a sore thumb, with the only other show like it in Sony's library being the Animated Adaptation of another newspaper comic, Dilbert.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Huey and Riley Freeman are both voiced by actress Regina King. Her normal speaking voice even sounds like Huey. The same goes in most foreign dubs, barring French and Hungarian.
• The Danza: Edward Asner as Edward "Ed" Wuncler I.
• Deleted Scene:
  • On the Season 1 DVD, there's a deleted scene from "The Garden Party", where Granddad imagines the worst-case scenario at the Wuncler party: Huey calling the host a "cracker devil", and Riley asking "Where all the white bitches at?"
  • There's another deleted scene where Robert and Ruckus have a conversation while children are trick-or-treating. Which episode this was meant for is unknown.
• Descended Creator:
  • Series creator/producer/writer Aaron McGruder voices Young Granddad.
  • The show's other executive producer, Carl Jones, voices Thugnificent.
• Died During Production:
  • John Witherspoon, Robert's voice actor, died on October 29, 2019, after having been announced to be reprising his role for the (now cancelled) reboot.
  • The same goes for his voice actor in the Japanese dub, Yuzuru Fujimoto, who also died at the same year.
• Follow the Leader: Inverted with the comic strip. McGruder has stated that what drove him to take it into a hardline left political direction was a conversation he had with Garry Trudeau over the issue of 9/11. Trudeau told McGruder that he was going to wait until around December before he would begin incorporating the terrorist attacks and the political fallout the attacks would have upon America. This led to McGruder deciding to immediately incorporate it and the political fall-out into the comics, since no one else was doing this.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • The comic strip actually started in 1996 on an old website, a music magazine, and McGruder's college newspaper. It seemingly appeared that the original strips had been lost and forgotten. However, someone would upload the strips on the Lost Media Wiki forums in 2015.
  • An unaired pilot was pitched to the Fox network. It wouldn't be until 2016 when a clip was posted online. Interestingly, this clip shows that the pilot had an art style closer to that of the comic strips. The pilot wouldn't surface online until 2024.
• Life Imitates Art:
  • In "The Trial of R. Kelly", R. Kelly wins his trial in spite of the overwhelming evidence against him. Three years after the episode aired, R. Kelly was acquitted of all charges in his trial.
  • In "Return of the King", an elderly Martin Luther King Jr. inspires a political reawakening among the African American community, which eventually results in a large crowd of protesters angrily surrounding the gates of the White House. The George Floyd protests of 2020 saw nationwide civil unrest as a reaction against police brutality and racial injustice, including a demonstration in which protesters surrounded the White House.
• No Export for You:
  • The series was never released in the United Kingdom.
  • Only seasons 1 and 2 were adapted for overseas dubs, such as those aired in Japan, Italy, and the Latin American countries. France had an even shorter run of the show, with fans only getting to see season 1 before it ceased broadcast.
    • Oddly enough, the Hungarian dub is the only non-English version to cover three seasons, but it didn't cover season 4.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Kevin Michael Richardson replaced Busta Rhymes as the voice of Flonominal in "Bitches to Rags".
  • Kiarah Pollas replaced Gabby Soleil as Jazmine in Season 4.
  • The Latin American Spanish dub offers an interesting case: The first three episodes were dubbed in Argentina, and shown there, since there weren't any plans to show this series in the rest of the region. For unexplained reasons, the Argentinian dub was canceled, and the rest of the episodes were dubbed in Mexico instead. Also, the Argentinian-dubbed episodes were never shown in the rest of Latin America.
• Out of Order: Every season had this, but Season 4 was particularly notable with its arc where Granddad tries to get out of debt. Looking at the air dates, it appears that the arc was never resolved because of the last episode ("The New Black"), but looking at the production orders, the arc makes a bit more sense. The arc is actually resolved in the fourth episode ("Early Bird Special"), where Granddad gets a girlfriend who ends up paying off his debt.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Samuel L. Jackson, who's best known for playing Scary Black Men, as Gin Rummy, a white guy.
  • Japanese version:
    • While not the first time we hear him voicing such characters before, Kazuya Nakai's (Gangstalicious) main speciality is either voicing either hot-blooded heroes, villains, or violent thugs. In this series, he is voicing a rapper who happens to be gay.
    • Kunihiko Yasui (Tom DuBois) is well known for voicing either villains or anti-heroes, like Iori Yagami and Haruki Kusakabe. Tom is basically the opposite of such roles.
• Post-Script Season: Season 4 is considered as such, since the Season 3 finale "It's Goin Down" was intended to be the final episode of the series, and is often treated as such by fans and even by [adult swim], which always go back to the very first episode after airing "It's Goin' Down". However, in 2020, Season 4 started rerunning at a 4 am graveyard slot. It is currently available on Max and was available when the series was on Hulu.
• Real Song Theme Tune: The theme song to this show is actually a shorter and faster version of "Judo Flip", an obscure hip-hop song by Asheru. Compare the original version with the four versions that were made for the show.
• The Red Stapler: You wouldn't believe how many fans want full versions of Thugnificent's songs. Yes, even "Dick Riding Obama".
• Self-Adaptation: Aaron McGruder created the original comic strip as well as the animated series based on it, and he wrote all the episodes of the series' first three seasons. However, he was absent for the fourth season.
• Short Run in Peru: "The Hunger Strike" and "The Uncle Ruckus Reality Show" made their world premieres on Teletoon in March 2008 before airing in Latin America a little bit later and finally premiering in the United States in May 2020 due to the aforementioned ban in the U.S.
• What Could Have Been:
  • At least for the early prototype comics (before The Boondocks officially debuted in national newspapers), there were characters that never got used.
  • Aaron McGruder originally wanted to pitch a series of TV specials based on the comic strip, à la Peanuts, but quickly realized that such shows weren't really en vogue anymore.
  • Had it not been for her scheduling conflicts, Alicia Keys would have been the voice actress for Huey.
  • The idea of Michael Caesar getting introduced into the show was floated around. However, it never became a reality as McGruder couldn't decide on the right voice actor to be casted for the role.
  • There were failed plans for a live-action movie about Uncle Ruckus. It fell short of its intended funding goal on Kickstarter.
  • Season 4 was originally going to have 20 episodes, but due to McGruder leaving the show, the order was cut down to only 10 episodes.
  • In 2018, McGruder proposed making a video game adaptation of the show, but this idea seems to have been quickly scrapped.
  • In 2019, it was announced that The Boondocks TV series would return with a Continuity Reboot on HBO Max. However, these plans gradually descended into Development Hell. It may have started with John Witherspoon's unexpected death just a few months after stating he intended to reprise the role of Granddad. News on the reboot series' development was suspiciously quiet during the COVID-19 Pandemic, which was an overall bad time for the entire entertainment industry, and it wasn't until 2022 that it was officially confirmed to have already been cancelled by Sony Pictures Television, leaving the franchise's fate uncertain.

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