Trivia / Autodale

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• Acting for Two: David voices all the male characters: the Handymen, Mr. Robinson, the Loner and the Friendly Shadow.
• Development Gag: In "The Friendly Shadow," Shadow's coat is a symbol of the distinction between his care for humans and his subservience to Hive, with Hive's propaganda depicting him with the coat and the human mother thinking he looks friendlier without it. In the behind the scenes video, David mentions that he wasn't happy with Shadow's design until he ditched the coat.
• Write What You Know: "Don't Feed the Freaks" is inspired by the isolation Dead Sound felt from being homeschooled as a teenager.
• Word of God: After each short, Dead Sound gives behind-the-scenes trivia about the shorts:
  • The Handyman who executes the Robinson couple in "Model Citizen" is not Joe, the Handyman they have been familiar with. Joe has scratch marks on his breastplate, whereas the Handyman who executes the couple does not.
  • First names do not exist in Autodale, as the citizens are virtually robots in an endless cycle. For example, Mr. Robinson's son, Robinson Junior, becomes Mr. Robinson once his father is declared Ugly.
  • Everybody will be declared an Ugly, eventually.
  • Ugliness has nothing to do with physical appearance. Ugly people are simply those who can no longer contribute meaningfully to society.
  • There are many towns similar to Autodale, with the motif that they must conform. For example, whereas Autodale says one must be Pretty, another town says one must be Fabulous. Unlike Autodale, they have all failed for one reason or another.
  • The Friendly Shadow used to be part of Hive, before being given a robotic body and sent out onto the streets.
  • The timeskip between "No Monsters" and "Friendly Shadow" is a couple thousand years.
  • The Exceptional Girl was the first to rebel and run away, after becoming disillusioned with Autodale's system. After being caught, the Mayor offered her the choice of becoming part of the city, which she accepted. As Hive, she turned her own story into a folk tale and began hunting Exceptional people to expand her mind, and after a few thousand years, she became a Hive Mind consisting of hundreds of Exceptional people.
  • The young boy in "No Monsters" will grow up to be branded Exceptional and added to Hive.
  • Autodale does indeed take place in the same universe as "Merry Madness" and "Scary and Strange", as was hinted in "Immortal Machine". Figures like Mother Nature are also known as "Monarchs".
• What Could Have Been: The Friendly Shadow was originally supposed to be an efficient, emotionless killing machine. However, this seemed too mean-spirited and so was changed. This had a couple of knock-on effects:
  • The short would've ended with Shadow killing the larger Freak and taking its child in for dissection.
  • Hive would've been more of a Foil to Shadow, being a Plucky Comic Relief character who offers brevity to him. But as Shadow changed, so did Hive.

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