Trivia / To Boldly Flee

• Acting for Two
  • Doug: Critic, Zodd, Bum, Ask that Guy and Doug Walker;
  • Lewis: Linkara and Mechakara;
  • Noah: Spoony, Insano, and Turrell.
• Approval of God: Turrell's name was changed due to copyright reasons, but his iconic line "when you were learning how to spell your name, I... was being trained, to conquer galaxies" was interpreted by the fans to mean he was learning how to conquer galaxies instead of how to spell his name. In the cast commentary by Linkara, The Last Angry Geek, Jew Wario, Holly Christine Brown, and Oancitizen, Oancitizen mentions it and they got a laugh out of it.
• Artist Disillusionment: Spoony's commentary reveals that the desire to retire the Nostalgia Critic and move on to new shows with more original content was in part motivated on the TGWTG crew's trip to Washington DC to lobby against various internet censorship bills. The team became convinced that nobody really cared what they had to say and that some sort of internet censorship bill was inevitable prompting several producers to reassess the work they were basing their livelihoods around. Rob described the meeting as "talking to a brick wall.
• Author's Saving Throw: The Plot Hole spawning in space is used as a catch-all fix for every fan-enraging inconsistency on the site, most prominently Spoony and Dr. Insano being the same character in Kickassia when they're separate characters otherwise. Well, that and the Aesop that there will always be inconsistencies in any art, just go with it. According to a few producers, they got irritated enough with Doug and Rob explaining anything that didn't make sense with "Plot Hole!" that they made fun of it in their videos for a while.
• Creator's Apathy:
  • Rob Walker apparently refused to fix minor continuity errors in, specifically responding to MarzGurl with, "Oh well, plot hole!" and laughing it off.
  • Allison Pregler had zero passion for the project, attributing this to her hatred of the script.
  • This also appears to be the case for Doug Walker himself. For if one visits the Channel Awesome website and searches for any of the Anniversary specials, all they will find are the former DVD extra Nostalgic Critic Reviews of them with almost no effort to restore them in years. With the shutting down of the store page and later the website as a whole, this has left no way to watch any of the anniversary specials through official channels.
• Creator Backlash:
  • In their DVD commentary, Doug said that he wrote/improvised most of the emotional Critic scenes, confirmed that Suburban Knights was the kickstarting point for the Character Development, and was overjoyed that Critic got his happy ending. Rob had been pleased with it too, but later at "Con Alt Delete" Rob retconned the writing process a bit, saying that hardest part of his job was to write the movie because "the worst part is giving [the Critic] humanity. Like, now we have to make him likable? Good luck."
  • After leaving Channel Awesome, Phelous described To Boldly Flee as "The worst movie in the universe", claiming that the film's attempts at being "serious" while also balancing the comedy didn't work well and criticizing its lifting of scenes wholesale from other movies. Phelous also claimed that some people on the site were gossiping about him "half assing" the effects that he was contracted to do for the film, and attempted to get Welshy to spy on him to ensure that he was doing a good job (which Welshy ended up not doing). His earlier commentary of the film consisted of himself, Obscurus Lupa and Brad Jones making fun of it. Making occasional backhanded jokes about To Boldly Flee has also gone on to become a Running Gag in Phelous' reviews. Allison also hates it.
  • Lindsay discussed that considering how badly they were treated and didn't even get paid, it and the other movies weren't worth it at all.
  • On Tumblr and twitter, Allison and Lewis revealed a lot of the behind the scenes issues. The main ones were the script being hard to read due to its length, too much work expected in such a short amount of time, Doug’s lack of desire to study the reviewers' characters, an over reliance on reference humour and Doug ignoring any advice attempts. Which even Doug talked about on his commentary, admitting he was so wrapped up in his own problems that he shut everyone out.
• Creator Breakdown:
  • Doug lost it again after Suburban Knights. To put it simply: you know those many many shots where it looked like Critic had been crying? That wasn't acting, Doug was having a meltdown while filming, as he related to Critic's misery too much. He had to reshoot several Critic-angst scenes because he was getting actually upset and not acting, and Rob talked about writing the Critic/Film Brain goodbye based on issues he had with Critic, and having to explain to a hurt Doug that he was calling Critic a bad reviewer, not Doug himself.
  • Rob let his anger over the Washington SOPA trip seep into the SUCKA storyline, and the Snob-calling-out-Clodd scene had direct lines taken from the officials they spoke to.
• The Danza: Kinley Mochrie (going by the name Luke at the time) dresses up as Luke Skywalker this time around.
• Fandom Nod
  • Female fans have been asking for a Critic/Chick crossover with Doug dressed as Tim Curry ever since FernGully: The Last Rainforest. Part 1 gives them a winking smile, even though it'll remain to be seen if the review comes to pass.
  • The most popular argument against "character = actor" was that Critic would have died long ago if he'd had to manage in the real world. And while still serving as the final nail in the coffin for "character = actor", Part 8 provides a counterpoint: instead of being the main feature in a Crapsack World, reality would let him become just another face in the crowd. This option is tempting for him, but he ultimately decides to stay and make things right.
• Flip-Flop of God: Doug reassured people in the "is Critic over?" video that the character wasn't completely gone, just retired/ascended and only coming back for rare occasions, but outright calls him dead in the next week's "The Top Eleven Best NC Episodes". This later turned out to be Exact Words; Demo Reel was his purgatory while retaining his actual identity in the Hole. Even so, Critic could descend for other jobs.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: The script for Phelous' introductory scene was just the short description that he was developing a cure for cancer.
• Lying Creator: Everyone involved said that Ma-Ti would not be addressed, nor would Bhargav appear as Ma-Ti, as he left the site in early 2012. In fact, Ma-Ti, his death, and the existence of his mind within Spoony's are all central plot points, even including footage of Bhargav that, while recorded during Suburban Knights, was never aired before. Ma-ti's voice was done by Rob Walker otherwise.
• The Other Darrin
  • Shown to be a mystical ability in the Awesomeverse, where a "character" transfers from one actor to another in the hopes of being brought back. In this case, Ma-Ti did this to Spoony. Several examples of this are given including the Trope Namer.
  • More directly, Bhargav doesn't return to do Ma-Ti's voice. It's done by Rob, doing his best impression of him.
• Playing Against Type: Orlando here is playing a nervous geeky guy, when he usually plays evil and badass characters.
• Reality Subtext
  • At the end of Part 8, Spoony appears, suffering an extreme case of amnesia due to his ordeal. In reality, he and Channel Awesome had a falling out and he was fired/left after this special was filmed. His "amnesia" is (probably unintentionally as the script was written before that incident) a convenient plot device to explain his now real-world absence.
  • Lupa and Todd wonder what possible kind of alternate universe would allow the Nostalgia Chick to get together with Todd.
  • At the end, as Todd says that this could be the start of something beautiful, Lupa is making eyes at Phelous behind her.
  • Part 8 has Doug telling the Critic that he evolved as a character so much that he has no idea what else he can do with him, and is also the only one around to see his Heroic Sacrifice. It turns out this film was made specifically for the Critic to be retired.
  • The SUCKA Act deal and the whole thing with the critics' jobs being in jeopardy is something Channel Awesome was (and still is) actively trying to control. The online reviewer community is just as much in trouble as it is in real life.
  • After the shoot was done, Doug posted that a great way to lose weight was to run around filming, acting and directing for nine days. As he's pretty skinny in the first place, it shows up onscreen, making the Critic look as worn out and vulnerable as he's feeling.
  • And while Critic spends most of the movie depressed and wanting to atone for his mistakes, Doug was beating himself up over assuming he was putting the others through work that was too hard for them. He even had to reshoot a few scenes because it was him getting upset and not the Critic.
  • The scene where Clodd tempts Snob, calling out the critics for having a noose around their necks and wanting him to continue to "real" film-making, was Doug and Rob's real feelings on Critic (even in very early cons, Doug openly said he wanted to chop Critic's head off) and wanting to do original work.
• Refitted for Sequel: When Suburban Knights was still Pirates vs. Ninjas, Doug had the idea that Mechakara was going to replace Linkara in that movie, with his own plans to get the Power Glove, but Lewis argued that Mechakara is a serious character and would rip the others' throats at the first moment instead of cosplaying. It was rewritten with regular Linkara dressed as King Arthur instead. Mechakara still appears (faceless) at the stinger taking the discarded Glove as a segue into To Boldly Flee, and that idea of him going undercover was used for this film instead once Lewis warmed up to the idea.
• Schedule Slip: The day after the first episode aired, Rob Walker announced that instead of an episode every day, the schedule had been amended to one every three days, citing "catastrophic technical difficulties" in exporting the videos. This incidentally made a few jokes referring to the day the episode came out ("all in all, a successful Tuesday") fall flat.
• The Producer Thinks of Everything: On the last day of the location shoot for Suburban Knights, Doug already knew the anniversary special after this would be a sci-fi parody, and that it would be like The Search For Spock. Noah had suggested that if Ma-Ti was going to perform the katra on somebody, it would have to be a reviewer they all knew would appear in To Boldly Flee, so they shot the scene where Ma-Ti transfers his character into Spoony that Spring 2011 for a movie that would be online 16 months later! Given that Noah himself left the site soon after shooting, the choice could have gone very badly though.
• Throw It In!:
  • According to Linkara, one of his lines as Mechakara from episode 6 — as well as the snarl — were adlibs.
    Mechakara: You stupid, disgusting meatbags!
  • The "Rent Due" post it was added because Lewis realized that he needed a reason for why Linkara wouldn't just use the peephole to see who it was.
  • JesuOtaku and Paw often found themselves standing next to each other in crowd scenes, which led to the Running Gag of JO always picking Paw to test his inventions on.
  • Most of Ed!JO's lines were embellished by Hope himself, as he was more familiar with Cowboy Bebop characters than Doug and Rob were when they wrote his lines.
  • According to his commentary, Noah ad-libbed various things (such as the line quoted below) at the end of Dr. Insano's scripted lines. Most of the ad-libs were used, but in a case of What Could Have Been, one of Spoony's favorite ad-libs wasn't used and was a crack about the Mass Effect 3 ending not making any sense.
    Dr. Insano: They even took the novelty slot machine! WHO DOES THAT?!
  • Doug and Rob's direction for Noah's performance as Turrell was to ham it up as much as possible. Having watched Battlefield Earth to prepare for the role, Noah had noted that John Travolta's Terl had two settings — Large Ham and (as Noah describes it) "speaking through clenched teeth" — and learnt the second voice so that he could provide alternate takes in the second voice.
  • In nearly every scene where he's in the background, Phelous is frozen and looking directly at the camera with a silly face (part 8), pretending to be asleep (part 4), or pressing buttons in an overly sarcastic manner (also part 4). This was revealed during his commentary and few people noticed.
  • In part 3, Cinema Snob is talking to Luke about his proposed film while Paw records him for his vlog. Brad Jones (Snob) thought he was off-camera so he stopped talking to Kinley^note Luke's name after coming out as transgender and simply stood around while Paw spoke to Mechakara. He then looks at the camera, realizes he is still in the scene, and continues to act. Doug Walker actually knew about this but they kept the take anyway.
  • Doug admits on his commentary that he improvised quite a bit of the Critic/Film Brain goodbye scene — lengthening it to make it harsher on both characters — making it the second time he's done this for a self-loathing rant.
  • According to Allison, Rob had envisioned the Lupa/Todd stuff being Played for Laughs (and literally like she was the one meant to be a bitch, which she was confused about), but they played it for sad and like she had every right to reject someone who was stalking her.
  • According to Mister X of Geek Juice Media, Jillian ad-libbed the bit where she puts a chocolate in Rob's mouth.
• Troubled Production:
  • Again. Doug's commentary goes into uncomfortable detail about his Sanity Slippage (and after filming, was shown to have lost an unhealthy amount of weight), they had only a week to shoot an involved three hour film which didn't help anyone, Phelan's farewell post revealed that management thought he was half-assing special effects and so attempted to send Welshy to spy on him (which Welshy refused to do), and Lindsay has more than once mentioned a ton of frustration with the lack of professionalism.
  • Rob on the other hand apparently (50 minutes in) has no sympathy for anyone (other than Brad who was in the mask and has asthma) complaining about having a hard time, because he was the only one in a heavy costume, filming in a claustrophobic attic with no air conditioning.
  • To Boldly Flee was later viewed as a point-of-no-return by Channel Awesome contributors who later left the company. A good chunk of the issues raised in the now-notorious "Not So Awesome" document have to do with incidents taking place leading up to and during production:
    • The contributors appearing in the movie were expected to construct their own costumes before coming to Chicago. Two weeks before the shoot, Kaylyn Saucedo was asked by Doug to make a costume of Major Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which required her to make expensive and fast purchases and build the fairly complicated outfit within a short span of time. After being told that she would have to hand over her costume to TGWTG to get compensation for making it, Kaylyn kept the costume and took a financial loss.
    • According to Allison, the camaraderie that was present during the earlier anniversary specials was gone by To Boldly Flee, and the Walkers humor had become derivative, self-indulgent, sexist, and mean-spirited. Lindsay and Lewis confronted Doug over a scene in the script (of Mechakara assimilating the Nostalgia Chick) that, as originally written, was a prolonged rape joke. Lindsay claimed that Doug couldn't understand how the humor was offensive and only marginally improved the scene before it was filmed. Doug and Rob's commentaries on the DVD back her up, with Doug beating himself up for being so naive, and Rob's account turning it into almost farcical, with Doug putting in more glass breaking sounds to make it sounding like more consensual, before just giving up in frustration and handing it to Rob.
    • Speaking of the script, it wasn't given to most of the cast until right before filming began, barely giving them enough time to read it. The contributors didn't know that Doug was planning to kill off The Nostalgia Critic until then, which threw them for a loop because the Critic's absence from TGWTG would negatively affect their viewership. Doug and Rob constantly bickered throughout the writing process...
    • ...which spilled over into filming as they repeatedly stopped the shoot to scream at each other over how they wanted to block their scenes. They also fought with Ed Glaser (a much more experienced professional filmmaker than either of them) when he brought up the 180-degree rule, causing Ed to vow to never work with them again. Ed was later credited as To Boldly Flee's Director of Photography despite his protests.
    • Inevitably, such incompetent camera work led to several continuity errors that are seen in the finished movie. When cast and crew members pointed out these errors to Rob, he would dismiss them by stating, "Oh well, plot hole!"
    • The cast and crew were given a week to film the four-hour movie, with Doug — assuming that simply having the equipment and crew would make things go faster — overworking everyone by scheduling two days' worth of work for each day of shooting. Because of the arguments between Doug and Rob, the shoot quickly fell behind schedule. The contributors quickly became exhausted, with Jillian Zurawski getting too tired to shoot a lightsaber duel that was subsequently struck from the script. After a particularly grueling eighteen-hour shoot, the cast were only given three hours of sleep before being asked to shoot the closing party scene.
    • On one occasion, Doug failed to inform the cast that his camera crew were leaving early for the day for personal reasons, meaning there were not enough cars to drive them back to their hotel. Allison, Phelous, and Sad Panda were left behind at the shooting location while the rest of the cast went to Applebee's. Allison later clarified that Doug took them to Subway once he realised his mistake, and apologized for adding the claim to the document as a bad joke which distracted from the more serious allegations.
    • TGWTG pressured its contributors to shoot crossover reviews to recoup costs for the special effects, but they were so overscheduled that the contributors refused to do them. They eventually reached a compromise where they shot two crossover videos and kept one.
    • Phelous, who handled some of the special effects, was asked to do a green screen scene, but pointed out that he could simply shoot the scene himself at home and save the production time. Despite the Walkers seemingly agreeing to this arrangement, Phelous was told immediately upon reaching his hotel room to come back and shoot the green screen scene. Phelous and Allison had to convince Rob to turn around and drive them back to the hotel. The scene was then cut from the film.
    • The unplanned and unofficial wrap party left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths, as the script's implication that the rest of the TGWTG contributors were ending their shows along with Doug's — seemingly reinforced by Doug's personalized farewell letters to everyone present — naturally made them miffed, and they felt that Doug didn't care about what they would have to do to get by in his absence.
    • During post-production, after Noah left TGWTG, Phelous was forced to take his workload in handling the special effects. The Walkers gave Phelous the job of handling the movie's 3D animation, unaware that he wasn't a 3D animator. At one point, Phelous finished an effect and received enthusiastic feedback from Doug ("LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT"), only to later hear from Welshy that the Walkers were gossiping that Phelous had been "half-assing it" because there wasn't enough debris in the shot.
    • The To Boldly Flee DVDs were put on TGWTG's online store with a release date before Ed even got started making them. Allison contacted CEO Mike Michaud, who told her that it would take two weeks to make them and meet the date. When Allison pointed out that it was possible to make them sooner, Michaud shouted "TWO WEEKS" at her nonsensically over the phone. In the end, Allison and many TGWTG fans never received their DVDs due to an order mix-up that was never fixed.
    • In the end, it was this hellish production which caused the Walkers to make the next anniversary crossover an anthology, and to swear off anniversary specials entirely until the tenth anniversary in 2018 (which was cancelled after the "Not So Awesome" document sparked a contributor exodus from Channel Awesome and all but destroyed the site). After To Boldly Flee's release, Channel Awesome put out a newsletter pointing to weather as the deciding factor to stop the troubled anniversary productions, while not owning up into their own gross mismanagement.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd was supposed to have a larger role than just being Gort. He had appeared as early as Part I, supporting the Critic in Turrell's government speech mirroring Sarek's role at the beginning of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (complete with the "Nerds are the intellectual puppets of critics" line), and then he was the one to give Critic the "Nerd meld" instead of the Last Angry Geek.
  • Holly's and Barney Walker's roles were originally switched.
  • The movie was originally intended to be a straight comedy, but then everyone as a whole played their lines straight. With the realization that they could actually carry some very good drama, it was shifted into the dramedy that we know and cried over.
  • An early draft used to have a new character spoofing the Bumbling Sidekick, like Jar Jar Binks, but would instead talk very well and be wise, sophisticated, and helpful. The character was cut.
  • For Act 1, Spoony wasn't going to be in "cardboard freeze", but be contained in "Area 52" causing the USS Exit Strategy to go in a huge action rescue sequence. But that sounded way too out-of-scope for their budget.
  • The "break out of assimilation" scene originally had Mechakara ordering 7of9!Chick to shoot Critic but her refusing because she cared too much about him. This was changed for three reasons: 1) Doug felt like he had to hammer home how selfish Chick and Todd were for the people who still didn't get it. 2) Chick needed a Big Damn Heroes moment that wasn't so directly tied to a romantic interest. 3) Fridge Logic — in the state he was in, Critic probably would have accepted getting killed by her. Plus it's out of character for Mechakara to even realize the two have a thing.
  • The Writer (i.e Doug) was originally written as much more in control, but Doug wrote it to how he saw himself: just a dorky awkward guy who could be anyone and wasn't anything special.
  • Lindsay and her New York team (including JO) apparently did a drunk feelsy gossipy commentary of the movie, but by the time exporting issues had been sorted, Critic had come back and there wasn't a whole lot of point in joining the praise for Doug ending his character on a high note.
  • Lindsay's character was originally called Sixty of Nine which she fought to change. It wasn't even self-aware on Doug's part, she said he didn't understand why the outfit/name/character was sexualized.
  • That◊ drill scene could have been so worse. Like the above, everyone (even Doug and Rob on their commentaries, the latter adding that Doug beat himself up when he realized) has said that Doug was too naive to get how that would come across.
• Word of Gay: Rob's not a fan, but Doug's commentary confirms Zod and Turrell were together in all senses of the word. He actually seems to regret this in later videos, not because of the "gay" aspect, but because he couldn't go far enough on-screen.
• Working Title: Star Space: The Search for Plot. No, really.

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