Trivia / ToeJam & Earl

• Christmas Rushed: Mission to Earth wound up being this upon being prepped for an Xbox release.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: Series creator Greg Johnson composed and sang the 1991 promo rap on cassette tape, and Tonez the Prince and Greg Brown did all of ToeJam and Earl's raps in Mission to Earth as well as singing the theme for Back in the Groove.
• Executive Meddling: Panic on Funkotron was originally closer to the first game in terms of gameplay before Sega had them change it to the side-scroller seen in the finished product. Some of the differences between the first game and Mission To Earth were also made at Sega's request.
• Franchise Killer: Mission to Earth's commercial underperformance pretty much killed any chance at a revival until 2015.
• In Memoriam: Back in the Groove is dedicated to the late Gregory Savoy Brown, the voice of Earl, who passed away while the game was in development.
• The Other Darrin: Tonez the Prince provides ToeJam's voiceover work as of Back in the Groove, replacing Kirk McHenry who previously voiced ToeJam in Mission to Earth. However...
• Referenced by...:
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd:
    • In his review of the Atari 5200, "Big Earl Bump" plays as the background music as the Nerd tries unsuccessfully to play the console's games.
    • In his review of Ecco the Dolphin, the Nerd mentions Toejam and Earl as two of Sega's mascots with attitude and compares them to Ecco, a relatively mundane dolphin.
  • MAD: Toejam and Earl appear in "Diary of a Wimpy Kid Icarus" as students at Video Game School.
• Role Reprise: The late Greg Brown, the voice behind Earl in Mission to Earth (he’s not a professional voice actor but a musical artist), returned to his role again in Back in the Groove, 17 years later. He even got to sing the theme song used in Kickstarter pitch video.
• Saved from Development Hell:
  • ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth, since the mid-90s. See What Could Have Been below.
  • The fourth game's release was pushed back five times from its original planned year of 2016 until a date of March 1, 2019 was set.
• Sequel Gap: Twice. Mission to Earth was released nine years after Panic on Funkotron, and Back In The Groove seventeen years after Mission to Earth.
• Trolling Creator: Greg Johnson is fairly renowned for making stuff about the game development up that fans and journalists accept as fact.
  • He claimed ToeJam and Earl were originally named FlowJam and Whirl, but the man coding their names in misheard them and wrote in ToeJam and Earl. Greg later admitted it wasn't true on a Twitch stream.
  • He also claimed he came up with the presents' effects by writing down ideas on a bunch of post-it notes and letting his cat loose to see which ones stuck to it.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The second game's plot was going to be about Toejam and Earl going to a rap contest on Earth, but they lose their Music Disk in the process. Half of the plot was reused for the third game.
  • The third game was slated to be released on the Sega Dreamcast but the failure of that console forced Greg to redevelop the game for the Xbox. It actually dated back in development far enough that it had started for the Sega CD, then the 32X and then the Sega Saturn, each time getting moved due to the failures they all had.
    • The third game was more like the first game with random level to level gameplay and a random level generator, unlike the generic Mario 64 gameplay minus the platforming the final game had. A beta of the third game can be found online.
    • The third game's villain was going to be a KKK head mask as a symbol of an anti-racism statement; this was OBVIOUSLY rejected by Sega, so the character was changed to a generic skull design for the final game.
    • Originally Lisa Lopes was cast as Latisha's voice actor but due to contract disputes, Sherrie Jackson provided the voice instead (this was before her death in 2002 the same year the game came out).
  • Originally the fourth game was planned for the Nintendo DS.
  • This video for Back in the Groove using the original game's intro as a base has Lewanda and Peabo tagging along instead of Lewanda and Latisha, and ToeJam originally pressed a button that blew Earth up, with the goal of the game being to piece the planet back together.
• Working Title: All Funked Up was the original subtitle of the third game which was changed due to being inappropriate. The game also formally had the working title Toejam, Earl, and Latisha.

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