TheMidnightFrogs are a YouTube abridging team, best known for their Sgt. Frog Abridged series. They were most active from 2010-2016 before going into hiatus, but they are sporadically active again as of 2019. The team is currently headed by ThornBrain with JigglyJacob and Mugiwara Yoshi.
The team was founded New Year's Day 2010 by Yoshi, Thorn, and DragonFatman. The members fluctuated rapidly during the first year, and in 2011 the core trio stabilized into Yoshi, Thorn and BigTUnit1/Travis for the next few years. JigglyJacob became the fourth lead in 2015 through writing on SFA, and Travis formally left the team in 2017 after a long period of being too busy to take part in projects. Other honorary team members have also included voice actors Tiana, Revy Moonshine, codeblackhayate, InfamousGentleman, Sawtooth, Dobuchu, Spacerkid, and team artist/mascot Teddy.
Yoshi retired from writing for SFA in 2012, and the team underwent an extended hiatus in 2014 that ended in April 2015 for the purposes of finishing SFA Season 3. They made a parody of Pokémon Origins called How I Caught Your Mother, after being spurned on by Team Four Star's TIBA abridging contest; despite the desire to continue the series, they quietly went into hiatus by the end of the year. As of 2017, the team had informally dissolved, but they made a surprise return for SFA's 10th anniversary in 2020 with The Sgt Frog Abridged Movie, and the door is open for more abridging projects if they find the time.
Along with the above, the team created four Pokémon one-shot abridged videos,note a short-lived Digimon Tamers abridged series, six April Fools' Day videos, a long-running podcast, and many supplemental videos for SFA.
Other projects by TheMidnightFrogs include their Lets Play channel TheStrawhatNO!,note side Abridged Series Jetters Abridged,note Thorn's Fan Webcomic The Legend of Zelda: Book of the Traitor; and her music on BandCamp
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The team's voice actors are also involved in many other projects: former voice actor Revy Moonshine is a founding member of Gutted Wren Studios and wrote their Patlabor abridged movie, InfamousGentleman writes film reviews under Infamous Films, and Sawtooth is a New England musician and DJ. Tiana, codeblackhayate and Travis all voice act professionally, and their resumes are much too big to list.
The team's website is here. Tropes related to the Sgt. Frog Abridged series should go on its page.
Major works by this team:
- Sgt. Frog Abridged - (February 16, 2010 - December 31, 2015) - Finished
- The Sgt Frog Abridged Movie - (February 16, 2020)
- The Sgt Frog Abridged Movie
- Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Abridged - (June 14, 2010) - One-shot
- Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Abridged: Fire Red Version - (June 14, 2014; The Remake) - One-shot
- Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Abridged: Fire Red Version
- Best Wishes Abridged - (November 25, 2010) - One-shot
- Other People's Wedding Videos Abridged - (April Fools' Day, 2011) - One-shot
- Tamers Abridged - (January 9, 2014 - August 31, 2014) - Canceled but may be revived
- SAHNIK - (April Fools' Day, 2014)
- KAYAK - (April Fools' Day, 2021)
- KAYAK
- How I Caught Your Mother - (June 30, 2016) - One-shot but may continue
Solo and sister works:
- Jetters Abridged - (Team Bulge Bomb; April 2, 2011 - February 14, 2014)
- The Audio Logs Of Dr Squid - (Laserbucks Productions; April 13, 2012 - September 29, 2013)
- Ask Deep Dash and Crazy Twilight - (Mugiwara Yoshi solo; April 21, 2012 - 2018)
- Ask GiroDoro SFA - (ThornBrain solo; June 25, 2012 - January 5, 2020)
This team provides examples of:
- The Abridged Series: Of Sgt. Frog, Digimon Tamers, and Pokémon Origins on the main channel, Bomberman Jetters on the Team Bulge Bomb side account, and one-shots of Pokémon and Sonic X.
- Absurdism: While SFA has a plot, most of the team's videos and writing are based around abstract silliness. SAHNIK and PMDA/PMDA: Fire Red in particular are utterly meaningless, written more to have fun with nonsense and misdirecting viewers than to have a point. SAHNIK's sequel, KAYAK, jumps the line into Surreal Humor.
- A Day in the Limelight: Meet the Frogs was an interview series made to do this for the then-voice actors on the team.
- April Fools' Day: The team made a joke video to celebrate this day every year from 2010 to 2014: Paper Abridged, Other People's Wedding Videos Abridged, Crash Abridged, Sgt Frog Abridged - Episode 1 Remasterednote , and SAHNIKnote . 2015's April Fool's video was on TheStrawhatNO!. After the team came out of hiatus in 2020, SAHNIK got a surprise sequel on April Fool's 2021 called KAYAK.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Sawtooth starts listing off things they should do before Thorn goes back home in Bosto- er... Lowell 2013:"We'll have a slumber party! We can... roast marshmallows, and... paint nails, and play vidjya games, and do each other's taxes, and eat pancakes, start a family, go to church on Sunday, go to college, eat family...!"
- Canon Discontinuity: In their formative December 2009 days, they recorded their first song parody: "Tamama's Titties", based on The Beatles' "Yellow Submarine". It was never released, and over time they decided it was too bad to be made public. To emphasize how much of an Old Shame it is, Thorn considered uploading it to her archive channel, and Yoshi outright told her not to. Eventually subverted in May 2014: Thorn uploaded it to her archive channel after deciding to dissolve TheMidnightFrogs. She reversed the dissolution two days later but kept the song publicly available.
- Fun with Acronyms: Starting with Tamers Abridged, the team sometimes use a fictional TV station, WTMF-49, as a framing device for their parodies. The TMF means TheMidnightFrogs, and the W is used as a station code in the eastern United States where most of TheMidnightFrogs are located. Thorn also likes to think that the name stands for "What the motherfuck?".
- Gag Dub: Other People's Wedding Videos Abridged, of a random wedding video from YouTube.
- Hilarious Outtakes: Gag Reels were released at various points during each SFA season, and they sometimes also contained outtakes from their side projects or spinoffs: Reel 1, Reel 2, Reel 3, Reel 4, Reel 5, Reel 6, and Reel 7.
- I Have Many Names: Some of the team members have used multiple usernames during the team's life:
- Mugiwara Yoshi was originally known as SMSYoshi in the team's early days, and he was credited as simply "Yoshi" in the original SFA pilot due to wanting to change the username but not knowing to what. He also started going by "MugiStraw" in the mid-2010s.
- Sawtooth also went by Vorhias and MrVorhias before coming out as trans.
- InfamousGentleman was formerly credited as Jpace92, but the credit was switched when he began making new content under the former.
- Jiggly Jacob originally went by TheSmashBro and thesupersmashbro before permanently changing aliases. His YouTube account is still permalinked as TheSmashBro.
- Dobuchu was originally credited as her YouTube username Narusasu, but the credit was switched at her approval when Thorn realized she was probably better known for voice acting under the former.
- In-Joke:
- Thorn made several pages on the website dedicated to these. Most of them are from the formative December 2009 - February 2010 period.
- SAHNIK is based mostly on Thorn and Yoshi's Sonic-related inside jokes, plus some other in-jokes from TheStrawhatNO!. KAYAK is the same but for their Let's Play of Sonic Heroes.
- Thorn made several pages on the website
- Makes Just as Much Sense in Context: The warning on the site article for Kemama, an In-Joke between Thorn and Yoshi that found its way to SFA five years later, says exactly this. For good reason.
- Man of a Thousand Voices: Thorn and Travis play the most characters with the most different voices.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Paper Abridged, which starts with an excited intro before showing Thorn simply folding a piece of paper.
- One-Steve Limit: On the "Got Married, Didn't Want To" podcast, Jacob tells a story of this being averted several times at once in school:"My name is James Jacob Russell. In this class there was another kid named James, a kid named Jacob, and a kid named Russell."
- Podcast: TheMidnightFrogs Podcast, which is used to discuss recent releases from the team and goof off. The podcast was originally an offshoot of the team's first podcast, Fatty Time, which covered a broad range of topics while having very little structure. They also argued a lot.
- The Remake:
- The first three episodes of SFA were remade in the interim between Seasons 1 and 2. The originals were renamed 1R, 2R and 3R, and later they were set to unlisted so that they wouldn't be treated as canonical by new viewers.
- Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Abridged was remade for its fourth birthday as a Fire Red Version, rewritten and revoiced entirely from the ground up.
- Road Trip Plot: Bosto- er... Lowell 2013, which is Thorn, Sawtooth and their friends driving to an arcade a state over and goofing off. It's technically the blog for Thorn's trip to Boston that year, but as she puts it in the video:"I haven't recorded anything for the last two days, because I couldn't be assed."
- Shout-Out: KAYAK was originally titled Other People's Wedding Videos Abridged - Episode 3: Crocodile Rock.
- Spin-Off:
- TheStrawhatNO!: Thorn, Yoshi and Travis's Let's Play channel.
- Team Bulge Bomb, the creators of Jetters Abridged, are TheMidnightFrogs condensed to Thorn, Travis, and codeblackhayate. Tiana also appeared in an episode.
- Surreal Humor: Most of their videos contain some elements of surrealism alongside the above-mentioned absurdism. KAYAK is especially surreal: the Chaotix get increasingly detached from reality as it goes on, Chris's line is just his one line from SAHNIK chopped and rearranged into the style of Banjo-Kazooie, Charmy and Vector sing about how Charmy was a fungus on one of Vector's testicles "and now I'm your son", and it has a surprisingly creepy ending.
- Take That!: Their old and obscure video "Really Shit Drawings of a Japanese Pokemon Thing by MYTB ROCK ON HOMIES" was this to Sgt Frog parody video maker BMNC and her fans. Thorn later apologized publicly for it.
- Their First Time: During the "Sadly Making Out in Boston" podcast, Thorn and her then-girlfriend Olivia mention how their first time having sex included Olivia kicking Thorn in the head and Thorn knocking Olivia's head repeatedly against the wall.
- Visual Pun: Paper Abridged has Thorn folding a piece of paper, literally abridging it.
