History Trivia / Hatchetfield

* AscendedFanon: Even though both shows made it pretty clear there's no obvious visual difference between people who've been possessed/assimilated and people who haven't, it was very common for fans of ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'' to show victims of the Apotheosis with bright blue GlowingEyes, and after watching ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' to switch it up and use green GlowingEyes for victims of Wiggly's cult. Creator/TeamStarkid took note of this, and in the story "Watcher World" in ''WebVideo/NightmareTime'' Season One, people under Blinky's MindManipulation are described in-universe as having telltale ''purple'' GlowingEyes.

** ''Nerdy Prudes Must Die'', the long-delayed final show in the Hatchetfield stage trilogy, has been said by Nick Lang to be the "silliest" of the ideas for the three shows (and the first one they originally came up with), although it's had to be heavily revised over time as it's been delayed and ideas from it have been used for ''Nightmare Time'' episodes.

* QueerCharacterQueerActor: Nick Lang believes in this on principle, and therefore does not yet know who will play Alice's non-binary classmate Ziggs, as there are no non-binary actors in the Hatchetfield ProductionPosse. For this reason, it's likely that Mariah Rose Faith's personal view of her police officer character, Doug, as a non-binary person is not canon.

* CreatorsFavorite:
** Creator/NickLang has admitted that Becky Barnes is, in fact, his favorite of all the Hatchetfield characters and he thinks of her as "a true hero."
** He's revealed that among his other favorite characters is -- to some fans' surprise -- Linda Monroe (which he loves in the LoveToHate sense), a character who remains TheGhost throughout all of ''WebVideo/NightmareTime'' Season One, and that this is because the first ever ''Nightmare Time'' story he and Matt wrote is about Linda, and is one they're still saving for the possibility of filming for real after the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic is over.

** Many fans assumed that Ethan has an unpleasant home life and/or doesn't get on with his parents, partially because it gives him a CommonalityConnection with his gilfriend Lex, and partially because it would account for why he's so ready and willing to drop everything and move across the country with her. While we still haven't seen too much of his home life, ''WebVideo/NightmareTime'' introduces his father, who is a NiceGuy that obviously loves his son and there's no indication that their relationship is strained in any way. This naturally debunked a lot of headcanons and fics, but most of the fandom loved Tony immediately, and were glad that fan-favorite Ethan has at least one stable and supportive parent in his life. (Plus, it makes his plan to move to California with Lex and Hannah that much more heartwarming--he's not running away from his own family, but he loves Lex so much that he wants to be in a new one with her and her sister.)

** Many fans assumed that Ethan has an unpleasant home life and/or doesn't get on with his parents, partially because it gives him a CommonalityConnection with his gilfriend Lex, and partially because it would account for why he's so ready and willing to drop everything and move across the country with her. While we still haven't seen too much of his home life, ''WebVideo/NightmareTime'' introduces his father, who is a NiceGuy that obviously loves his son and there's no indication that their relationship is strained in any way. This naturally debunked a lot of headcanons and fics, but most of the fandom loved Tony immediately, and were glad that fan-favorite Ethan has at least one stable and supportive parent in his life. (Plus, it makes his plan to move to California with Lex and Hannah that much more heartwarming--he's not running away form his own family, but he loves Lex so much that he wants to be in a new one with her and her sister.)

* {{Jossed}}: It was a near-universal {{Fanon}} assumption, once all five Lords in Black were revealed at the climax of the ''WebVideo/NightmareTime'' Season One finale "The Witch in the Web", that the one Lord in Black we know we haven't seen in any capacity yet -- Nibblenephim or "Nibbly" -- would be the BigBad of ''Nerdy Prudes Must Die!'' Nick ended up having to shoot this down, stating that Nibblenephim has no connection to ''NPMD'' at all -- and that ''NPMD'' in its initially planned form wasn't a "MythArc" show at all -- and Nibblenephim was conceived for a different Hatchetfield project that we may or may not see recycled as a ''Nightmare Time'' episode.

* {{Fanon}}: There's a lot of it floating around, some of it more serious, some of it less. On the less-serious side are goofy memes about various {{Unexpected Character}}s being the "real latte hotté", i.e. someone unexpected Ted has a crush on (because Ted is headcanoned as an AnythingThatMoves pansexual), which as MemeticMutation has ended up encompassing every Hatchetfield character that exists and every actor in the Creator/TeamStarkid orbit. There's similar jokes that have really harshly been {{Jossed}} by later canon, like the Homeless Man never actually being possessed by the evil force and "just vibin'" [[spoiler: {with any Homeless Man jokes becoming a FunnyAneurysmMoment after "Time Bastard")]]. Also, there's been a ton of lore that's spun out from the Lords in Black reveal, like trying to associate the five Lords in Black with the five senses (Pokotho = Hearing, Blinky = Sight, Tinky = Smell, Nibbly = Taste, Wiggly = Touch) or with Entities from ''Podcast/TheMagnusArchives''.
** There's some bits of {{Fanon}} that have been more-or-less confirmed by WordOfGod to be true at this point -- one of which is the GrandfatherParadox of [[spoiler: the Homeless Man continuing to exist in timelines where "Time Bastard" doesn't happen]] being explained by the timelines not splitting until Hannah Foster is born in 2005, another of which being that Pokotho, the blue Lord in Black, is the HiveMind from ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'' who sent the Meteor. Also, the fandom has pretty much figured out from copious hints on social media that the "Hot Chocolate Boy" from ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'', rumored to play a major character in ''Nerdy Prudes Must Die!'', must be Ted Spankoffski's "nerdy younger brother" mentioned in "Watcher World".
** One bit of {{Fanon}} that's stuck due to the various paradoxes of ColorblindCasting: We know it's unlikely that someone who looks like Creator/CoreyDorris (who is black) would have a biological daughter who looks like Mariah Rose Faith (who is white, and very fair-skinned) in RealLife, and since they've only appeared in a stage show or staged readings we're free to imagine them any way we want -- but fans doing FanArt have pretty quickly come to a consensus that the "real" Bill looks just like Corey while the "real" Alice is mixed-race or black (possibly with bleached blonde hair).
** Similarly, when it comes to FanArt, fans have had brief interactions with Creator/NickLang on social media talking about how they imagine Creator/LaurenLopez's characters -- the consensus between both {{Fanon}} and WordOfGod is that Emma Perkins looks pretty much exactly like Lauren, while her other characters diverge from her in various ways. Fans, for instance, are pretty likely to imagine Linda Monroe as having blue eyes as opposed to Lauren's brown, in keeping with Linda's [[ThoseWackyNazis weird implied Aryan-supremacist]] gloating over her "four beautiful blond boys".
** Re: disability/mental illness representation, it's nearly a universal consensus among fans that Hannah Foster's AmbiguousDisorder is autism, and that Paul Matthews shares it.

** There's some bits of {{Fanon}} that have been more-or-less confirmed by WordOfGod to be true at this point -- one of which is the GrandfatherParadox of [[spoiler: the Homeless Man continuing to exist in timelines where "Time Bastard" doesn't happen]] being explained by the timelines not splitting until Hannah Foster is born in 2005, another of which being that Pokotho, the blue Lord in Black, is the HiveMind from ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'' who sent the Meteor. Also, the common Hatchetfield FanArt meme of depicting being mind-controlled using ColorCodedForYourConvenience GlowingEyes became AscendedFanon with "Watcher World".

* DevelopmentHell: ''Nerdy Prudes Must Die!'', which was conceived as the first ever Hatchetfield show -- the first script idea, anyway, to actually name "Hatchetfield, Michigan" as its setting -- has now been shelved for several years. Originally it was put on the back burner in favor of the later idea ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'', which the Creator/LangBrothers felt was their strongest standalone concept for a musical, and then delayed again for in favor of ''Theatre/BlackFriday'', which had undergone a lot of CerebusSyndrome and felt like a better option for opening up Hatchetfield into a series. ''NPMD'' was meant to round out the "trilogy" of Hatchetfield stage shows but its pre-production was cut short by the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic, and as the pandemic wore on through 2020 with no signs of stopping, the Creator/LangBrothers started work on ''WebVideo/NightmareTime'' instead and began cannibalizing ''NPMD'' plot points for ''Nightmare Time'' episodes. Unfortunately, Creator/NickLang has admitted that if too much time passes before ''NPMD'' can be mounted as a stage show, the whole concept may have to be scrapped, because too many of the ideas intended for it will have been used elsewhere, actors will have aged (it's a high-school-themed show) and the Hatchetfield timeline will no longer have a place for it. (See RealLifeWritesThePlot on the main page.)

* FanNickname: [[spoiler:Two of the Lords in Black, Pokotho and Nibblenephim haven't been given official cutesy nicknames yet, but fans have pretty quickly decided (or, perhaps more accurately, deduced) they're called Pokey (or possibly Po, in imitation of the Series/{{Teletubbies}}) and Nibbly]].

** Nick has said that he and Matt's most ambitious project is to make a Hatchetfield feature film if they get the time and budget (and the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic allows for it), possibly as the GrandFinale for the series.

* Jonathan Brisby shares his name with the late husband of the heroine of ''WesternAnimation/TheSecretOfNIMH'', which is confirmed a coincidence; indeed, Nick Lang claimed to be more familiar with the book, in which the family name is Frisby.

* ActingForTwo: Per the norm for Creator/TeamStarkid, nearly every single actor plays more than one character. The only exception to this is Creator/DylanSaunders, who so far has only played Tom.

* DawsonCasting: Obviously usually unavoidable when you have child/teen characters in a stage show, but the "Hatchetfield era" of Starkid had them take big steps to minimize this for the first time -- hiring Mariah Rose Faith and Angela Giarratana (who are both in their early 20s) to play teen girl characters Alice Woodward and Lex Foster, now that the original Starkid members are all in their 30s. Casting Kendall Nicole as Hannah Foster was the first example in their history of ''fully'' averting DawsonCasting for an underage character and casting a child actress, because the Creator/LangBrothers had such a strong mental image of the character as a "tiny child with a backpack".

* CreatorsFavoriteEpisode: The Creator/LangBrothers are on record that the Hatchetfield series is the work they're proudest of out of everything they've done -- including the ''Theatre/AVeryPotterMusical'' series that made them famous, which they've always felt slightly uneasy about since it's a parody piggybacking on Creator/JKRowling's popularity (and was never originally intended for as wide an audience as they got).

* ProductionPosse: The Hatchetfield series has settled into a stable creative roster since the success of ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'', with the Creator/LangBrothers as writers, Nick Lang as director (after Matt Lang relocated with his girlfriend to Wichita, KS), Creator/JeffBlim as songwriter, Matt Dahan as arranger, musical director and bandleader, James Tolbert as choreographer, and a cast composed of the half of the original Creator/TeamStarkid who followed the Langs when they left Chicago for LA. They've also officially integrated longtime friends of Team Starkid Curt Mega and Kim Whalen into the troupe, as well as adding some brand new faces, Mariah Rose Faith, Angela Giarratana and Kendall Nicole Yakshe (all of whom are younger women, to balance out Starkid being a [[ChromosomeCasting male-dominated]] clique of actors who were in college together in 2009).

** Founding Starkid members Creator/JoeyRichter and Creator/LaurenLopez agreed with this assessment and singled out the Hatchetfield shows and ''Theatre/TheTrailToOregon'' (the two projects with Creator/JeffBlim as songwriter) as the Starkid shows they're proudest of working on. (It's especially notable that they picked those shows over ''Theatre/MeAndMyDick'' and ''Theatre/{{Starship}}, which Joey starred in, and ''Theatre/{{Firebringer}}, which Lauren starred in.)

* ProductionPosse: The Hatchetfield series has settled into a stable creative roster since the success of ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'', with the Creator/LangBrothers as writers, Nick Lang as director (after Matt Lang relocated with his girlfriend to Wichita, KS), Creator/JeffBlim as songwriter, Matt Dahan as arranger, musical director and bandleader, James Tolbert as choreographer, and a cast composed of the half of the original Creator/TeamStarkid who followed the Langs when they left Chicago for LA. They've also officially integrated longtime friends of Team Starkid Curt Mega and Kim Whalen into the troupe, as well as adding some brand new faces, Mariah Rose Faith, Angela Giarratana and Kendall Nicole Yakshe (all of whom are younger women, to balance out Starkid being a [[ChromosomeCasting male-dominated]] clique of actors who were in college together in 2009).

* NewbieBump: Creator/TeamStarkid got a ''huge'' one with the SleeperHit success of ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'', and with a ton of Gen Z fans therefore being more of a fan of the Hatchetfield series than any of their other works (including the ''Theatre/AVeryPotterMusical'' trilogy that put them on the map). Several have commented on the irony that Starkid is now 11 years old -- an eternity in Internet years -- and yet their fanbase is now ''younger'' on average than it's ever been before, which has led to some inevitable conflict with fans who've been there since the beginning and are now, like the Starkid founding members themselves, well into their 30s.
* ProductionPosse: The Hatchetfield series has settled into a stable creative roster since the success of ''Creator/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'', with the Creator/LangBrothers as writers, Nick Lang as director (after Matt Lang relocated with his girlfriend to Wichita, KS), Creator/JeffBlim as songwriter, Matt Dahan as arranger, musical director and bandleader, James Tolbert as choreographer, and a cast composed of the half of the original Creator/TeamStarkid who followed the Langs when they left Chicago for LA. They've also officially integrated longtime friends of Team Starkid Curt Mega and Kim Whalen into the troupe, as well as adding some brand new faces, Mariah Rose Faith, Angela Giarratana and Kendall Nicole Yakshe (all of whom are younger women, to balance out Starkid being a [[ChromosomeCasting male-dominated]] clique of actors who were in college together in 2009).