Trivia / Avatar: The Last Airbender

General

• Zuko's great-grandfather is Avatar Roku — therefore, via reincarnation, Aang... sorta. Technically.
  • You could also technically count Aang as Ursa's grandfather and Azula's great-grandfather, as odd as it sounds.
• Waterbending is the only bending skill that was not learned from an animal. Waterbenders are said to have learned from the moon; in contrast, earthbenders learned from the badger-moles, airbenders learned from the sky bison, and firebenders learned from the dragons. The entire concept is awfully similar to animal-based martial arts in Real Life, made famous by Hong Kong martial arts movies like Jackie Chan's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow or Tiger and Crane Styles (best known for being edited into Kung Pow! Enter the Fist).
• As mentioned on the main page, the bending styles themselves are based on actual Chinese martial arts (waterbending is tai chi, mainstream earthbending is hung gar, firebending is northern Shaolin kung fu, airbending is baguazhang). Exceptions not covered are:
  • Toph's own Earthbending style, taught directly by the badger-moles, is actually based on chow gar (southern praying mantis style, to be exact).
  • Metalbending, based on Xing Yi Quan, which was quite appropriately developed in captivity as well.
  • Bloodbending, based on Qin Na Shou, which was also quite appropriately a grapple-based technique.
  • Redirecting lightning is the only style taken from a sword technique, the obscure tai chi sword discipline, which is appropriate given that Iroh created the technique by watching waterbenders.
    • Even better is that all of the above are unique martial arts styles compared to the respective culture's norms because they are all unique to a certain character or (in the case of lightning redirection and bloodbending) a very small group.
    • Extra points for lightning redirection being explicitly based on waterbending techniques.
  • You can probably catch some differences between Katara and Pakku's waterbending styles since Southern and Northern are legitimate tai chi variants.
• "Katara" means "curse" (both as in "hex" and "swear") in Greek. Of course, this is just a weird coincidence, but it's too odd to not mention. One would suspect that the character was so named because a Katar is a type of Indian dagger, though.
  • Because of that, Katara's name is changed to Tamara in the Greek dub.
  • Word of God stated Katara's name was inspired by the French word "Cataracte," which is synonymous with "Waterfall". On a side note, there is also the Greek word "Katharos," which means "pure" and "Katarassō," which means "to spill."
• Two of the benders shown in the opening titles are actual characters from the show: Master Pakku for water, and Azula for fire.
  • The earthbender was Toph's original design, which ended up inspiring later characters such as The Boulder, Sud (Roku's earthbending teacher), and the actor playing Toph in "The Ember Island Players."
  • Some argue that the Airbender in the opening is Monk Gyatso. Others claim it's an older Aang (a theory largely debunked by older Aang's appearance in The Legend of Korra, who looks much different), and still others suggest it might be one of the unnamed monks from "The Storm."
• Toph was originally envisioned as a boy but the writing team thought it'd be funny to make the show's resident Boisterous Bruiser a cute little girl. The original characterization they had in mind for him was largely rolled into Bolin in Korra.
• Greg Baldwin, the second Iroh, is a big fan of musical theatre, and would sing along to Pacific Overtures on record as a teenager. Who was featured in that show's original cast? None other than the original Iroh himself, Mako. By singing along to the recording, Baldwin had been perfecting an imitation of Mako's voice without even realizing it, and this ultimately got him the job as the late actor's successor. See here to watch him tell the full story (timestamp: 30:20).

Specific

• The Abridged Series: "The Ember Island Players" is a sort of meta-example. And for an outside example we have GanXingba's Avatar: The Abridged Series.
• Actor Existence Limbo: After Mako's death, Iroh was relegated to only two silent appearances for the first half of season 3, before Greg Baldwin was introduced as his new voice.
• Acting for Two:
  • Mark Hamill voices both the Big Bad Ozai and the Baboon Spirit.
  • Jessie Flower voices Meng and Toph Beifong.
  • Grey Delisle voices Azula, Kya, Ta Min, Michi, Actor!Katara as well as the unnamed maid in the penultimate episode... which leads to a scene where Azula banishes herself.
  • Mae Whitman voices Katara, Lu Ten and the Painted Lady.
  • Jennifer Hale voices Avatar Kyoshi and June.
  • In the Russian dub, Aang, Toph and Ty Lee are voiced by the same voice actress. The same applies to Zuko and Jet, along with Azula and Katara.
  • In the Brazilian dub, Ettore Zuim voices Ozai in Season 3, Sozin in a flashback, Player!Zuko in the play "The Boy in the Iceberg" and Piandao in his first appearance. Also, Luís Manuel voices Jet, Hahn, Kid Zuko and Jeong-Jeong in his first appearance.
• Adored by the Network: On the Nicktoons Network, the show was frequently shown every day, had lots of marathons, and even got its own Avatar Extras event (which would feature pop-up facts and comments written by writers of the series). Justified, since reruns on the network have brought in some of the highest viewership numbers in the network's history.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Famed tennis star Serena Williams accepted a bit part on the series as a female prison guard because she was such a big fan of it.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!:
  • "The Avatar always gets the girl" is a quote often attributed to Avatar Roku, when Aang observes that he married the "girl who didn't even know [he was] alive." What Roku actually says is "When love is real, it finds a way. And being the Avatar doesn't hurt your chances with the ladies, either." He's gotten flak in some fandom circles for the sexist implications of the incorrect quote, even though the correct quote is a gentle joke and he's attempting to encourage Aang, who's both fretting over his crush on Katara and his decision not to give up his attachment to her in order to master the Avatar State. In other fandom circles, it's used as a joke because Korra and Kyoshi also got the girls.
  • "There's no war in Ba Sing Se" is almost always quoted as "There is no war in Ba Sing Se," without the contraction. The original line is "There's no war in Ba Sing Se. There is no war within the walls." Additionally, the line is primarily affiliated with Joo Dee, when in actuality, the only one who says something close to that line is a nameless Dai Li agent.
• Cast Incest: Grey DeLisle has alluded to this during conventions when she jokingly entertains the idea of her and Dante Basco dating.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: Besides Mark Hamill as Fire Lord Ozai and (initially) Mako as General Iroh, we have:
  • Ron Perlman as Fire Lord Sozin
  • Jason Isaacs as Admiral Zhao
  • Clancy Brown as Lon Feng
  • Mick Foley as The Boulder
  • Brian George as Guru Pahtik
  • Robert Patrick as Piandao
  • René Auberjonois as The Mechanist and Gan Jin Leader
  • George Takei as the Prison Ship Warden
  • Héctor Elizondo as Wan Shi Tong
• Completely Different Title: In Latin America the show is named as "Avatar: La Leyenda De Aang" (Avatar: The Legend Of Aang).
• Conclusion in Another Medium: While the series finale wraps up most plot threads, the ultimate fate of Ursa remains a mystery. The finale even includes a Sequel Hook with the angry Zuko demanding Ozai to explain what happened to her, but the scene ends before we hear what his answer is. Several years later, this subplot is finally resolved in the comic book sequel Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Search.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer:
  • Commander Zhao's e-trading card released during the first season premiere◊ claimed he was the one who gave Zuko his scar. This was later corrected◊, but the card still says that "Zhao was too wily for the young Zuko then, but will he come to regret sparing the Prince's life?" In reality, Zuko won the Agni Kai (Firebender duel) and spared Zhao, and Zuko's scar was inflicted by his own father years before.
  • Iroh's character bio on Nick.com shows the actor who plays him in "The Ember Island Players".
• Creator Backlash: In late June 2021, the creators of the show admitted that "The Great Divide" was the weakest episode of the franchise.
• Creator's Favorite:
  • The Avatar artbook states that Aang is this to the creators, Mike DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, with Zuko being a runner-up.
  • Mai is this to head writer Aaron Ehasz.
• Creator's Oddball: A network-related example - Nickelodeon is best known for zany, weird, and hyperactive cartoons that focus more on humor than story. This show relies heavily on continuity and is too down to earth for a network that has aired shows like SpongeBob SquarePants, Invader Zim, and The Fairly Oddparents.
• Cross-Dressing Voices:
  • While this was averted in the original version as Aang was voiced by a boy, it was played straight in Russia, the Philippines, Japan, Korea, Portugal, and Taiwan.
  • Not used in the show itself (12-year-old Aang is voiced by Zach Tyler Eisen), but Lampshaded in the play in "The Ember Island Players", where Aang is played by a (visibly adult) woman (voiced by Rachel Dratch). This doubles as a reference to Peter Pan, where the eponymous eternal child is traditionally played by a petite woman rather than a prepubescent boy.
• Dawson Casting: Aversion: Aang and Toph are voiced by actors of about the correct age. The actors who play Katara and Sokka aren't much older than their characters, either.
  • Played straight with Suki and Zuko, whose voice actors Jennie Kwan and Dante Basco were in their 30s.
  • Played straight in Chile with Aang, whose male voice actor (René Pinochet) was almost 30! Justified that he was born prematurely and his voice hadn't changed much since childhood. Dante Basco, the actor for Zuko, also had a young voice in his late 20s when he did voice work for the show.
• Development Gag:
  • In "The Waterbending Scroll", Momo gets into a scrape with the pirate's pet Iguana Parrot. This is a possible reference to the unaired pilot episode, where Zuko had a pet hawk that attacked Momo.
  • In The Return to Omashu, Aang fights Azula and her gang at a construction scaffold, much like where he fought Zuko in the pilot.
• Development Hell: The Netflix Live-Action Adaptation series will go over three years between its announcement and production. It was green-lit in September 2018 and was steadily worked on for a year. Right around the planned February 2020 start of production in Hawaii, the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic stopped it in its tracks since they had planned to film extensively on location, causing their travel to be severely limited. That summer Mike and Bryan left the project because of Creative Differences. A new showrunner was hired later that year. The cast was announced in the summer of 2021. Instead of delaying the show further to film on location, the decision was made to shoot on a sound stage in Vancouver and make use of the same technology made famous by The Mandalorian to create the backgrounds with a video game engine.
• Directed by Cast Member:
  • Véronique Augereau directed the French dub while also voicing Lo, Li, and Hama.
  • The Brazilian dub of Season 1 and 2 was directed by Luís Manuel, who also voiced Jet, Hahn, Kid Zuko and the first voice of Jeong-Jeong. Also Season 3 was directed by Ettore Zuim, who voiced Ozai, Sozin, Player!Zuko and Piandao (first appearance only).
• Fan Community Nicknames: Due primarily to one certain "megafan"'s infamous, long-running satire comic of the Avatar fandom, fans at one point almost unanimously accepted the term "Avatards". However, some people felt that in referring to the term "retard", fans' use of this label was demeaning to the mentally disabled. The creator of the comics also admitted to regretting the choice of the word in retrospect, and it's fallen out of use since.
• Flip-Flop of God:
  • Originally, Sozin was implied to have been relatively young when he started the war and ruled for the first 70 years of it before dying, his son Azulon was said to have ruled the next 23 years before dying and passing the title to Ozai for the past 6-7 years before the present. Things got strange during the third season when it revealed that Sozin was actually Avatar Roku's age and began the war at 82. Word of God Hand Waved this by stating that Sozin ruled for 20 years after he started the war, Azulon was born the year the war started and ruled the next 75 years of the war, and Ozai, in turn, ruled for the last 5 years of the war.
  • On whether or not there were plans for a fourth season with head writer Aaron Ehasz stating on his Twitter account in early 2019 that he and Bryke did in fact have plans to do such (though there were rumors in the fandom since 2010 that Ehasz had wanted a Book Four), while co-creator Bryan Konietzko stated on his Instagram account in April 2020 and both he and Michael DiMartino reiterated in an interview in August that they had always envisioned it to be a three-season series with a beginning, a middle and an ending and had never even seriously considered a fourth season.
• Hypothetical Casting: The creators wanted somebody who sounded like Jason Isaacs to play Zhao, as they got the idea for the character from Isaac's character in The Patriot (2000) — but the real Jason Isaacs wound up taking the job instead.
• In Memoriam: Iroh's original voice actor Mako was given a dedication to his memory both in the episode "The Tales of Ba Sing Se" (which originally aired about two months after Mako passed away) and the Avatar: The Last Airbender PC game (which came out less than three months after Mako's passing).
• Missing Trailer Scene: The 2004 Promo Trailer completely consisted of footage from the unaired pilot episode.
• Newbie Boom: Experienced a huge fandom boost after it was added to Netflix in May 2020. It was #1 on trending for weeks on end.
• No Export for You: The series, despite being heavily influenced by Eastern mythology, done in an Animesque visual style, and possessing a more anime-like Myth Arc instead of the typical episodic nature of most Western Animation, was never successfully released in Japan in the time of its airing. The first two seasons of the original series were dubbed and advertised, but never released. A proper dub for season three and legal sales in Japan wouldn't appear until nearly a decade later when the show was made available on Amazon Prime Video Japan.
  • The series was also not available in China legally until the first season was released and even dubbed on Bilibili in April 2023.
• Orphaned Reference: In "The King of Omashu", Bumi tells Aang that Momo will be important to his journey. This was possibly meant to be a foreshadowing of a planned plot point of Momo being the reincarnation of Monk Gyatso.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Iroh was voiced by Mako Iwamatsu in the first two seasons, but his death caused Greg Baldwin to voice him in season 3.
  • Mayuko Gomi voiced Azula in the Japanese dub of Book 2. In Book 3, Mayumi Shintani replaces her.
  • In the Italian dub, Sokka is voiced by Corrado Conforti in Book 1 and by Marco Baroni for the remainder of the series.
  • Too many examples to count in the Brazilian dub. The most noticeable:
    • Suki had one different voice per season: Mariana Torres in Season 1 (who later became the voice of Azula), Teline Carvalho in Season 2 and Iara Riça in Season 3.
    • Ozai was voiced by Isaac Bardavid in the first two seasons when his face was out of sight. When he appears in Season 3 and his face is shown, he was voiced by Ettore Zuim.^note It's possible that Bardavid's aging, guttural voice was seen as unfit for Ozai when his face was shown to be fairly young-looking compared to what was expected when he was in the shadows and implied to be closer to Iroh's age.
    • Avatar Roku was first voiced by Isaac Schneider, then Reinaldo Pimenta in Season 3.
    • Master Pakku was voiced by Pietro Mário in Season 1, and later by Ayrton Cardoso when he returns in Season 3. Pietro Mário was also the first voice of King Bumi in Season 1, before being replaced by Miguel Rosenberg.
• The Other Marty: Aang himself was a victim of this trope. In the unaired pilot, he was voiced by Mitchel Musso.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: It's frequently said that Japan hated the series because the Fire Nation's imperialism rang too close to home. It's complicated why the series wasn't received much in Japan, but that's not one of the reasons. The series was canceled after Book 2 because Japan's Nickelodeon channel failed, not because of the series' popularity. Book 3 was later dubbed years later by Amazon Video.
• Posthumous Credit: Mako's final performances as Uncle Iroh occurred in the last nine episodes of Book Two and in the Avatar: The Last Airbender PC game, both of which were released after he died.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • At one point in the German dub, Sokka and Katara are voiced by real-life brother and sister David and Magdalena Turba.
  • Haru's mother in the episode "Imprisoned" is voiced by Pat Musick, who's the real-life mother of Katara's voice actress Mae Whitman.
  • Dante Basco voices Prince Zuko. His brother, Derek, voiced Moku in The Cave of Two Lovers and the actor playing Zuko in The Ember Island Players.
  • In the Brazilian dub, Mariana Torres voices Azula and her sister Adriana Torres voices Princess Yue in Season 1 (ironically, Mariana also voiced Sokka's other love interest, Suki, in Season 1).
• Recast as a Regular:
  • Toph is voiced by Jessie Flower, who first voiced Meng in "The Fortune Teller".
  • In the Brazilian dub, Mariana Torres voiced Suki in her first appearance, by which time the character only appeared once. By next season, she became the official voice of Azula, and Suki was voiced by other dubbers.
• Reclusive Artist: Zach Tyler Eisen, Aang's voice actor, is one of the only major living voice actors from the show to not attend any fan events since the end of the show. All his verified social media accounts are either closed or private. It is known that he attended Syracuse University and currently works as a photographer for the Conde Nast group (indeed, his name can be seen in the credits for several Vogue interviews) but very little is known aside from that, due to zero fan interactions. Ultimately, he finally resurfaced in a 2020 interview, where he revealed that he mainly stayed out of the spotlight because he just wanted to live a normal life, but still maintains a huge amount of respect for the show.
• Release Date Change: As seen in this promo, the show was supposed to premiere in November of 2004. It ended up airing in February of 2005.
• Renamed to Avoid Association: The show gained its subtitle a ways into production after the creators learned of the film Avatar.
• Same Voice Their Entire Life: The only one in the main cast to be voiced by a different voice actor in flashbacks is Zuko, likely to avoid causing Vocal Dissonance. This gets subverted in The Legend of Korra, however, where these same characters have aged considerably and are voiced by older actors.
• Screwed by the Network: This show was consistently bringing Nickelodeon some of their highest ratings in spite of the fact that its premiere slot frequently changed, had a hit-or-miss amount of advertising, and went on hiatus constantly, most infamously having a seven-month gap in the middle of the third season. If you missed an episode and didn't have Nicktoons Network or have the show on DVD, you were basically out of luck, since the show rarely (if ever) got reruns, as Nickelodeon considered the continuity-heavy plot as being very unsuited for reruns on the main network. Ironically, the series is still treated much better when compared to other Nicktoons that were screwed over before and since, such as its notoriously mistreated sequel series The Legend of Korra. The show also never had its final episodes dumped to the Nicktoons channel, something happening to several fellow Nicktoons at the time.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: Katara's "hair loopies" were opted over overly-long hair because they were easier to animate.
• Shipper on Set: Fan-Preferred Couple Zuko/Katara (Zutara) has the support of Zuko's voice actor Dante Basco, to the point that fans call him the captain of the ship. The man has even sold Zutara merch online.
• Technical Advisor: Martial artist Sifu Kisu served as the show's martial arts consultant in order to relate the four bending arts to real-life martial arts, such as Tai chi for waterbending and Hung gar for earthbending, giving them a sense of authenticity.
• Throw It In!:
  • Originally, Sokka was conceived of as being far more stern and grumpy, but Jack DeSena's improvising and riffing on his lines were so funny that they began to adjust how they wrote him.
  • Additionally, in the episode "The Ember Island Players", the entire show was parodied hilariously by a play. The actor parodying Sokka wasn't funny enough and so Sokka tried to fix it by substituting his own jokes with even more hilarious results.
• Trolling Creator: Bryke, from time to time, took quite a few potshots at the Zutara shippers. "The Ember Island Players" episode openly mocked the clichés typically associated with Zutara fanfics. Then there was Book 4: Air, a video openly mocking how incompatible the two would be as a couple.
• Unisex Series, Gendered Merchandise: The toy line excluded the female characters, particularly Katara. This is often credited as one of the reasons it never caught on and was discontinued before the second season.
• Useful Notes on China:
  • "Laogai" is actually a phrase referring to a system of penal labor facilities in Communist China.
  • The background music in Earth Kingdom dinner scenes ('The Blind Bandit' and 'City of Walls and Secrets') is an actual traditional Chinese tune called 'Mo Li Hua' or Jasmine Flower.
  • From the end of "Avatar Day": fried dough sticks to represent hated historical figures do exist.^note You can see the Landlord bumming some off of Donut early in Kung Fu Hustle. Long story short, Evil Chancellor Qin Hui set up the Emperor's most loyal general Yue Fei as a traitor, leading to his execution before the truth was out. The fried dough sticks are always made in pairs to represent Qin and his wife.
  • Energybending in the Grand Finale becomes less of an Ass Pull if you're familiar with Chinese martial arts fiction, which commonly used "the removal of his martial arts" (via crippling nonfatal injury) as a Fate Worse than Death for villains. Another common trope from this genre is having your villain driven insane with his own growing abilities... which might explain Azula (or Bumi, but he was always a little odd).
  • In a similar vein, Metalbending. Toph is shown using two different martial arts styles for standard (Hung Gar) and her self-developed (Mantis) Earthbending; Metalbending comes from a third style, Xing Yi Quan, developed in captivity just like Toph's metalbending was.
  • And blood-bending is based on Qin Na Shou, an appropriately grapple-based technique.
• What Could Have Been: Enough for its own page.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: Creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko make very few con appearances because their fans were stalking them and harassing the voice actors about fan shipping. They reject any invitation to a convention other than the San Diego Comic-Con due to its high security.
• Word of God:
  • According to a DVD commentary, The Hippo is an Expy of real-life wrestler André the Giant, and King Hippo from Punch-Out!!.
  • The DVD commentary states that Fire Nation Man immigrated from the Si Wong Desert and is a sandbender.
• Word of Saint Paul:
  • Dante Basco has said that Zuko and Katara are soulmates. He believes that Zuko fell for Katara and will always love her, even if they didn't end up together.
  • Mae Whitman thinks Katara developed feelings for Zuko but chose not to pursue them because she was afraid of hurting Aang's feelings.
    • She also believes that Katara's first kiss was Jet, not Aang.
  • According to Grey DeLisle, Azula has a crush on Ty Lee.
  • Olivia Hack has said that Ty Lee's feelings towards Mai are not strictly platonic.
• Write Who You Know: Piandao is largely based on Sifu Kisu, the series' martial arts consultant.

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