Trivia / Chowder

• Celebrity Voice Actor: Rapper Tone Lōc voiced Chestnut in his first few appearances.
• Children Voicing Children: Nicky Jones was 9 when he first voiced Chowder, and Panini, Gorgonzola, and Ceviche are all voiced by children. By the final season, Chowder's voice was several times deeper than it originally had been due to his voice actor hitting puberty.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: C.H. Greenblatt considers "Schnitzel Makes A Deposit" as the episode he's proudest of, as he was able to make something not boring about something as boring as standing in line.
• Descended Creator:
  • C.H Greenblatt voices Kiwi, Kimchi, the creator of Chowder and Chowder as an adult in the finale.
  • Creative director William Reiss also voices a large fraction of supporting characters.
• The Danza: Paul Reubens as Reuben.
• Died During Production: In the Latin Spanish dub, Gazpacho was voiced by Maynardo Zavala in the first 13 episodes, then he died from pulmonary emphysema. He was replaced by his son, Ulises Maynardo.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Shnitzel was played by Kevin Michael Richardson in the pilot episode before John DiMaggio replaced him.
  • Chestnut was originally voiced by Tone Lōc (a 1990s rapper who, coincidentally, did voice work on the obscure Fox Kids cartoon C-Bear and Jamal) in his first three appearances. His replacement was also John DiMaggio.
• Playing Against Type: No one would expect Tara Strong to voice a cranky old woman (though the voice she uses sounds like Toot Braunstein [the hedonistic, self-harming, washed-up Betty Boop knock-off] from Drawn Together or Spot from 101 Dalmatians: The Series if she was more cranky).
• Referenced by...:
  • In the Square Root of Minus Garfield, the “Garfield Ate Jon's Donut” comic was turned into this version featuring Chowder and Shnitzel.
  • Panini is the namesake of Lil Nas X's song "Panini," about a Loony Fan who's obsessed with him and won't let go.
• Screwed by the Network: During the third season, the airing of new episodes were frequently delayed, Cartoon Network would often hype up new episodes in block promos when there really weren't, and later new half-hour "episodes" would be just a new episode paired with a rerun (Strangely enough, this is how CN now airs new episodes of every show).
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally Panini, who was named Borlotti, had pointed ears and an outfit in which only her face was visible. Her original character concept had her bully Chowder in a manner described by Greenblatt as similar to Angelica Pickles from Rugrats. Greenblatt removed the pointy ears since he felt this did not fit in with the rounded shapes in Chowder. Greenblatt did not like characters similar to Angelica and believed that he needed to make Panini "cuter and sweeter." Greenblatt said that the details of Panini formed when the creator decided that Panini had a crush on Chowder; since Chowder is not old enough to fall in love with females, according to Greenblatt this aspect would frustrate Chowder "in a more fun way."
  • Mung was going to have an Indian accent since he was named after an Indian delicacy, but this idea was cut on account of potential racism.
  • Greenblatt's blog includes a couple of episode outlines that were canned for one reason or another. One, "Messy James", was a western parody where Chowder and the other kids fight against bath time which couldn't get to air before the end of the show. Another, "The Mushroom Ball", was the story of how Truffles got her mushroom hat as a young girl, including some insight into her species, but was rejected for being "too girly".
  • One idea floating around was to have Mung falsely accused of a crime, then get together with some old friends voiced by Dirk Benedict and Mister T to prove his innocence.
  • There were plans to do a Made-for-TV Movie about the gang going on a treasure hunt with Endive and Panini tagging along. The main villains were going to be PIE-rats, with their leader being Picana-hey (who was not only based on Matthew McConaughey, but Greenblatt wanted Matthew himself to do his voice). It ended up scrapped due to not coming along the way Greenblatt wanted and was rushed to get it done on a TV schedule.
• Write Who You Know: Truffles is based on Greenblatt's mother.
• Word of Gay: While not specifying what he was exactly, C.H. Greenblatt stated in 2016 that Pâté was LGBT.
• Word of God:
  • Schnitzel's line in the theme song is "You share a big piece with everyone", according to Greenblatt.
  • Ceviché's fate was never explained in the series finale. Greenblatt revealed that he succeeded Pâté as master of the dance school. He married Marmalade, but he still has a torch for Panini. Ceviché even got an apprentice named Tartar, who is mute and can communicate by dance.

---