Trivia / Viva Piñata

The Video Games

• Completely Different Title: The series is called Atsumare! Piñata in Japan, with "atsumare" meaning "gather".
• Descended Creator: Leafos is voiced by Louise O'Connor (credited under her maiden name Ridgeway), a Rare employee.
• Development Gag: Miss Petula has a goldfish piñata in her hat, which was originally going to be obtainable, but had to be cut because the developers couldn't figure out how fully-aquatic pi­ñatas would work.
• Kids' Meal Toy: Burger King released some for, of all Viva Piñata games, Party Animals.
• No Export for You: Pocket Paradise was never released in Japan.
• Role Reprise: Both games have Mike Pollock and J. David Brimmer reprising Langston Lickatoad and Professor Pester from the animated series, while the first game has Dan Green reprise Hudson for the opening video that plays when a player starts their first garden.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: The Jeli is notoriously rare in Pocket Paradise and has stumped plenty of players as to how to get it to spawn. Some of the rumours around it were that it only showed up once per cartridge and you needed to plant a bunch of Fir Trees to attract it. Eventually, almost a decade later, director Paul Machacek revealed that starting each new game determined whether a Jeli would appear in it by random chance, approximately 1 in 3 to 1 in 6. He intended it as a Socialization Bonus, and originally meant for the chance to be even more evil at 1 in 10000.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The game was originally planned for the Pocket PC but it never happened.
  • Rare figured out how to connect Trouble in Paradise with Pocket Paradise despite them being on consoles made by different companies, but they had to scrap it because it was too late in their development cycles.
  • Many animals were planned but scrapped, including kangaroos, rattlesnakes, the afforementioned goldfish, giraffes, cane toads, and hamsters for the original game, and a platypus and shark for Trouble in Paradise.
  • Similarly to Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, the babies were originally planned to look different than the adults before the budgeting kicked in.
  • The Parmadillo in Trouble in Paradise has a scrapped appear cutscene, implying that it was originally meant to be a visiting species rather than an evolution.
• Working Title: According to a Rare Revealed video, the game was originally just called Piñata until they realised it was too generic to trademark. Other title ideas included Piñata Paradise, Loco Piñata, Lots o' Piñata, and Whole Lotta Piñata.

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The Animated Series

• The Cast Showoff: Dan Green got to sing in a few episodes, most notably in "Terrible Tribute", "Beauty and the Beasts" and "All Spun Out".
• International Coproduction: Between 4Kids Entertainment in America (voice acting and writing), Rare (original concept) in the UK, and YTV (co-production and Canadian broadcasting rights) and Bardel Entertainment (animation duties) in Canada.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Only 2 DVDs with the first 10 episodes between them have ever been released. It's still on Hulu, but that's not much help to those living outside the US... Thankfully, some episodes are viewable for free on the official 4Kids Entertainment YouTube page, but even then, some of the episodes aren't available. Luckily, episodes are slowly being available for purchase through Amazon.
• Only So Many Canadian Actors: Downplayed, while this is the only YTV original series not to use the Canadian version of this trope. It still applies as the cast is, of course, the usual New York anime dubbing pool. Itself a rather egregious example.
• Similarly Named Works: Not the show itself, but both it and Sushi Pack have episodes called "Mirror Schmirror".
• What Could Have Been:
  • A 3rd season was planned, but was cancelled because 4Kids went bankrupt. Not much is known about the cancelled season other than Leafos would've been a main character, giving the Piñatas a human ally. Fergy, Langston and Les would've received Love Interests, who were to be named Felicia Fudgehog, Lois Lickatoad, and Gracie Galagoogoo respectively.
  • The early scripts for 2 episodes, "High Plains Drafter" and "A Match Made in Court", can both be found at https://writtenbyrobdavid.com/credits/comedy/viva-pinata/ and have significant differences from the finished versions.
  • This was merely the start of the collaboration between Rare and 4kids, with hopes of creating more shows and merchandise based on their other IPs, including Banjo-Kazooie, Jet Force Gemini, and Perfect Dark. 4kids' bankruptcy put a stop to all this.

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