Trivia / Arby 'n' the Chief

• Acting for Two: Todd and Travis, as well as the voices of all characters that are not figurines (except Agent Smirnoff in The Movie, portrayed by Daniel Laszlo) are all voiced by Graham himself.
• Approval of God: The series' previous life, Master Chief Sucks At Halo, was loved by Bungie enough to gift Jon the esteemed Recon armor ^note  This was before 2009 when the Vidmaster challenges were announced .
• Corpsing: Clyde's mook cracks up mid-sentence before quickly reading his line again correctly.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Everything before Season 4, which briefly retooled the series into a more grounded, light-hearted comedy as opposed to absurdist crude humor of the earlier seasons.
  • Jon's original pseudonym, DigitalPh33r.
• Creator Breakdown:
  • Jon suffered from burnout after completing the first three seasons and basically begged for a break from Machinima. They didn't help matters by producing In LA and continuing to stress him out with its less than stellar quality.
  • Commentary and some Bytes revealed that working on the show's seventh season had affected Jon's sleep schedule. Machinima was also being difficult to work with, which soon led to Jon leaving the company as well as announcing an extra eighth season that would give the toys a happier ending.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Jon has said his two favorite episodes are "Digital Fruitcakes" and "Cradle To Grave".
• Creator Recovery: Season 8 ends with so much Reality Subtext that it stops being text and becomes Breaking the Fourth Wall. And there's no exaggeration there. Arbiter and Chief die again in an explosion in the season finale and directly confront Jon, who earnestly admits that the series' Cerebus Syndrome was a result of him going through a heavily difficult time in his life and filtering his pain and misery through Arbiter. By the time the eighth season was being created however, Jon became aware of just how influential Arby 'n' the Chief was to many people and how the show ended up being a bright spot in many of his viewers' lives. Finding meaning in his work, Jon admits that the newfound hope inspired him to override Season 7's Bittersweet Ending and give the toys a proper happier send-off. And any continuation is now made with being Lighter and Softer in mind.
• Executive Meddling: Jon's See Me After Class podcast confirmed that past episodes of Arby 'N' the Chief have been heavily edited without his knowledge, even before Warner Bros.' acquisition of Machinima.
• Franchise Zombie: "King" (episode 25/S3E13) was intended to be possibly the last episode of the whole series. Then an additional finale - "Endgame" followed. Then there was the LA spinoff... then season five... and season six... and seven...
  • Tropes Are Not Bad. Seasons 5 to 7 have been widely acclaimed.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The show was originally posted on Machinima from 2008-2013, but with random episodes being set to private in early 2018, it became almost impossible for people to rewatch the series from start to finish without finding YouTube channels that "borrowed" the episodes. Fortunately, beginning on September of that same year, Jon started reposting the older seasons on his own channel one episode per day (although he had to start with Season 3 due to needing to create new music for Seasons 1 and 2 as those Seasons used copyrighted music). However, by early February 2019, Jon decided to release the original episodes as they were with the original copyrighted music after Machinima shut down.
• The Other Darrin: Apparently due to taking issue with some lines he'd have to say, Khail Anonymous is replaced by Eric Watkin as Adam in Season 8.
• Screwed by the Network: As of May 9, 2018, multiple and seemingly random episodes of the series were made private on Machinima's YouTube channel. Considering Jon's bitter split from the company but continuing to feature old episodes (which are still hosted on Machinima) on his independent website, many are wondering if Machinima is attempting to bar Jon from showing off his work. Even before this, there was a general lack of consistency on episode naming, resulting in a difficult time for viewers to navigate through each season without playlists. It was later suggested that Machinima's concerns over the copyrighted content in their videos that led to the mercy killing of the episodes, but Jon noted that the copyright stuff wasn't the initial reason given for the videos turning private.
  • This trope was lessened in season 5 when Jon actually got a whole voice cast to play some of the characters other than himself due to the sheer number of different characters in that season. Though there are still one or two characters where this still applies, such as with Timothy and Nathan in the episode "Cheaters".
• Technology Marches On: In "Martyrdom", it is mentioned that the Chief's 714GB porn download wouldn't be able to fit on Jon's hard drive. While still a large amount of data, it's no longer an improbably big file size now that hard drives storing terabytes are becoming more common. Still, torrenting such a massive file will no doubt attract the attention of your local ISP, and it is still a massive amount of porn.
• Throw It In!: The scene where Chief has flashbacks while playing Oddball, once Jon realized the game included a flaming skull.
• Torch the Franchise and Run: If Jon's opinions on L.A. and Machinima is to be trusted, the Season 7 finale ends up being a literal example of this.
• What Could Have Been:
  • For "Girls," Jon considered revealing that the pink-armored player Chief had been hitting on was a guy all along. Besides being a joke that one could see coming from a mile away, Jon opted to play Chief's Character Development in the episode straight to build up to the joke where Chief reverts to his normal self while flirting with Cortana.
  • Behind the scenes videos revealed that at one point, Clyde was meant to be Adam's older brother.
  • Todd and Travis were supposed to appear in an after-credits scene at the end of Season 8, but Jon decided against including it prior to release.