Follow TV Tropes

Following

Trivia / Dino Attack RPG

Go To

  • Accidentally-Correct Writing:
    • Dr. Rex made sure to cover Rex and Chompy's cages before transporting them through the Dino Island Laboratory. Although PeabodySam did not know anything about animal research at the time, this turned out to be standard practice for transporting laboratory animals such as mice.
    • While writing Scars, PeabodySam forgot to check whether there was really a "St. Lucy" when he named Dakota Lee's nursing home. Fortunately, St. Lucy exists. She's also the patron saint of the blind, which happens to be somewhat fitting for a nursing home.
  • Actor Leaves, Character Dies: Atton Rand attempted to do this to VM after vahkimetru left the RPG, with Zenna stumbling upon a skeleton carrying a gun marked with VM's initials. Wishing to avoid this trope just in case any former player ever returned to RPG, PeabodySam insisted upon the skeleton not being VM himself. However, while no primary characters have met this fate, the NPCs Cane and Phantom were both eventually killed years after Kotua in Space and BZP Noob #30000 left the RPG.
  • Ascended Fanon:
    • Greybeard's mysterious past was shaped by Toa Antrakha's guess at his origins.
    • In an early sketch of Cranky and Kiddy along with the then-unnamed plumber who dropped them off at Adventurers' Island, PeabodySam nicknamed the plumber "Marco". Brikman McStudz went on to use the name "Marco" for his character Marco Martinet, who was eventually revealed to be the same plumber who dropped Cranky and Kiddy off on the island.
  • Based on a Dream: The ideas for the characters of Ben Gunn and Pterisa came to PeabodySam in this manner.
  • Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Greybeard had a brief moment of Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping in order for his Shout-Out to Admiral Ackbar's famous line from Return of the Jedi to work properly. Andrewnuva199 later quoted the line as it would have normally sounded in Greybeard's Pirate Accent and cited it as his favorite variation of the meme. However, the Director's Cut averts this by changing Greybeard's line to "It be a trap!"
  • Blooper:
    • In the Director's Cut v1.0 trailer, there's a brief moment where Dr. Rex visibly doesn't have arms attached to his body.
    • In the remastered version of Dino Attack: Legacy, a Stromling Explorer's left leg abruptly vanishes in the middle of a scene (in the original version, it remains visible until the end of the scene). By the time PeabodySam noticed the animation error, it was too late to correct it.
  • The Character Died with Him:
    • If an RPG player is banned from BZPower, his or her primary character is discharged from the Dino Attack Team.
    • Kotua In Space left BZPower and most LEGO-related sites after 2007. While his character Kotua is not confirmed to be dead, it is a little suspicious that his cameo appearance during the final battle was a variation of Beware of Hitchhiking Ghosts...
  • Christmas Rushed: The Director's Cut was released on July 1, 2020 in order to celebrate the 15th anniversary. However, this initial release was "version 0.9" because it was not yet finished, due to At War's End not being included.
  • Creator Backlash:
    • "Backlash" might be putting it too strongly, but while PeabodySam considers Dino Attack RPG an overall success, he is also aware that it failed in several regards, and other LEGO TBRPGs that try too hard to emulate Dino Attack RPG end up suffering from these failures as well. One such failure was the way Story Arcs were handled; while they succeeded in bringing players together, they always suffered from Arc Fatigue. With a group of devoted Dino Attack RPG players and a host who was able to attend to the RPG, this could be overcome, but when the formula was tried by Alpha Team RPG: Ogel's Last Stand and LEGO Universe RPG, it failed miserably, with hosts too busy to attend to the RPG combined with players who quickly left the RPG following the initial Newbie Boom that all new RPGs face. As such, PeabodySam urges fellow TBRPG hosts to avoid emulating Dino Attack RPG or handling things a certain way just because Dino Attack RPG did it that way.
    • One of the reasons why PeabodySam has retconned much of the early Dino Attack RPG is because he is embarrassed by some of the early things he wrote. He is also... not proud... of some of the things he said OOC as well.
    • The main reason why Atton Rand abandoned Axle's role in the RPG after his return from hiatus was because he was a bit embarrassed and wanted to focus more on characters he actually created, rather than just using ones already made by LEGO, although most of Atton's later characters tended to be expies of famous movie or television characters.
    • Dr. Cyborg as Dr. Rex's brother? Ouch. avmatoran refers to this post being deleted by the Forum Archive hack as the only good thing to come of that incident.
    • Atton Rand has admitted to regretting certain choices he made in At War's End. In particular he has admitted to regret abandoning the idea to have Firecracker perform a Heroic Sacrifice in favor of a Karma Houdini and even talked about writing a Fix Fic giving the character some sort of dignified closure. He has also regretted the way he handled Trigger (while he did have some fun going against the primary characters he used to play in other RPGs - young idealistic action girls, some of which may have gone into Mary Sue territory - he does somewhat regret handling the character the way he did) and Snake, and isn't proud of Plastic Serpent. Also, despite having built The Reveal early on, he is somewhat embarrassed by the reveal of Jenny being Dr. Strangebrick's daughter.
    • that guy from that show does not look back fondly upon the romance of Hertz and Naomi.
    • PeabodySam doesn't look back too fondly upon the jokes about "black people who weren't black" in Dino Attack in a Nutshell. While they were intended as tongue-in-cheek commentary on the fact that Dino Attack RPG had very few confirmednote  black characters (combined with a Shout-Out to "the amazing dark people" from The Team Fortress 2 Two-Word Story), PeabodySam fears that some viewers may misinterpret these out-of-context jokes as racism.
  • Creator's Apathy: The reason that Maria's Texas drawl tends to slip in PeabodySam's posts is because he didn't even bother trying to replicate as well as Atton Rand.
  • Creator's Pest:
    • Regarding the character Libo, PeabodySam regrets the way he handled his character. He now refers to Libo as "a neat idea for a cool character who was stuck in the wrong story". When he first came up with the idea for Libo, he was so excited that he just had to put it in Dino Attack RPG... only to realize later on that he had no use for Libo in Dino Attack RPG and was stuck with a character with little relevance to the plot. This is why Libo was Put on a Bus following the discovery of the Dino Island Laboratory and ultimately got a bridge dropped on him.
    • Andrewnuva199 feels the "dark consciousness" character in Andrew's head was an awkward and mismanaged idea. It's slightly cringeworthy for him in regards to how he was written into the final encounter with Maelstrom!Zach and Ahua, but is at least grateful he was able to wrap it up more or less smoothly there and be done with it.
    • PeabodySam is not especially fond of how Talia Kaahs and Shannon Grimton were handled in the RPG and considers them some of the weakest elements of his writing, largely due to being underdeveloped flat characters who only existed for the purpose of being love interests of other more-developed characters. Grimton in particular suffers from being a last-minute addition to the story, giving her very little time to develop and resulting in a very rushed Romantic Plot Tumor. Kaahs, on the other hand, was introduced much earlier but was rarely given any screentime; her Fish out of Temporal Water status was barely even touched upon, even though it could have been Played for Drama (much like Steve Rogers in Captain America: The Winter Soldier) for some much-needed character development. This ended up becoming PeabodySam's entire motivation for writing Scars: to flesh out Talia, play her Ascended Fridge Horror for all that it was worth, and redeem her character in his eyes.
    • Although he is proud of the overall result, that guy from that show does regret the execution of Pharisee's character, arguing that his "impartial judge" and "religious zealot" characteristics clashed with one another (causing too many out-of-character moments that constantly needed to be justified) and would have been better split between two separate characters.
  • The Danza:
    • The given names of Andrew, Andrew Olin (before being retconned into Leonidas Spartana), Zachary Virchaus, David Norman, David O'Neal, Carl Lutsky, Matthew Cyrista, Sam Throramebi, Samuel Race, and Samuel "Lay" Go are all derived from their respective writers.
    • Kara Wise's surname is derived from avmatoran's surname.
  • Dear Negative Reader: An odd example, where it isn't directed at negative readers of the RPG, but rather negative readers of this TV Tropes page. PeabodySam has expressed disappointment on numerous occasions that people criticize Dino Attack RPG for its presence on this website, rather than offering any constructive criticism about the RPG itself. In response, Brikman McStudz and that guy from that show have stated that there is No Such Thing as Bad Publicity.
  • Distanced from Current Events: The RPG players decided to leave the real-world events of 2020 out of the RPG's version of 2020 in "Fifteeniversary".
  • Executive Meddling:
    • Snake and Firecracker were originally supposed to get away with their actions before everyone forced Atton Rand to change it because they felt it was unfitting for someone to get away with a crime at the end of Dino Attack RPG, especially when those characters were not especially popular among players.
    • Duke was intended by Toa Ling to escape the high-security prison and continue to be on rampage. Outcries from his fellow RPG players forced Toa Ling to reconsider, ultimately leaving Duke to his fate behind bars and creating a new fresh character, Joe Harry, who was essentially the complete opposite of Duke.
    • Similarly, Cam O'Cozy was originally intended to be locked up in a high-security prison. When imperial officer attempted to let O'Cozy break out of prison and return as a villain during the Adventurers' Island arc, disapproval from his fellow RPG players led to Dropping a Bridge on O'Cozy and subsequently revealing that he was actually a XERRD android.
    • avmatoran originally intended for Dr. Cyborg to be Dr. Rex's long-lost brother, but did not ask PeabodySam for approval first. As a result, PeabodySam and other RPG players disapproved of this plot twist, ultimately forcing avmatoran to retcon it into Canon Discontinuity.
    • During the final celebration, Atton Rand attempted to perform a Deconstruction on LEGO Island, primarily focusing on the fact that the Brickolinis make pizzas hot enough to burn peoples' mouths and to open jail cell doors and what would happen if the LEGO Island Police Department actually did something about this. However, this did not roll over so well with other players for a number of reasons. It was very out-of-character for Nick Brick to arrest Papa Brickolini; it was a Player Punch to players who loved LEGO Island; it presented a completely unnecessary Conflict Ball in what was supposed to be the final celebration; and, most of all, the Deconstruction simply did not work since it tried to present the Brickolinis as completely oblivious to the Brickster using their pizzas to escape, but the Brickster only canonically escaped with super-hot pizza twice (the first time, the Brickolinis were tricked; the second time, they were wary and tried to subvert it, only for the Brickster to double-subvert it), and the super-spicy-tongue-melting-jail-cell-door-opening-hot pizza was never actually made by the Brickolinis (it was a gag intended to Lampshade how hot the Brickolini's pizzas were, but it was never actually supposed to depict the Brickolinis as incompetent and oblivious), so the Brickolinis repeatedly sending super-spicy-tongue-melting-jail-cell-door-opening-hot pizzas to the jail and obliviously setting the Brickster free had no canon backing, causing the whole Deconstruction to fall apart. For these reasons, this entire scenario was quickly retconned into Canon Discontinuity.
  • Flip-Flop of God: In Alpha Team: Mission Deep Freeze RPG, PeabodySam made an explicit point stating that PBB would never be killed off. A year later, PBB was killed off in Dino Attack RPG.
  • Foiler Footage: On Discord, PeabodySam posted a screenshot of Pirates of the Tropical Sea Chapter 3 while it was still in the process of being written. Everything in the screenshot after Greybeard's last line of dialogue was written as a joke in order to hide spoilers, including a Censored for Comedy rant by Vile Villano (note that Villano was killed off in Chapter 2, which wasn't published until after this screenshot was shown; Villano was included here specifically to hide that fact).
    Mary Rose: But what about spoilers?
    One-Eyed Pete: Don't worry! My friends in Alpha Team will censor this document!
  • Follow the Leader: Dino Attack RPG itself is an example, following the footsteps of Alpha Team: Mission Deep Freeze RPG. Rather interestingly, most later LEGO RPGs ended up following Dino Attack RPG's example. This makes Dino Attack RPG a follower that eventually became a leader.
  • Gay Panic: When Andrea Jackson Orange became the first explicitly LGBTQ+ character in the RPG, there was some minor backlash from avmatoran. This forced PeabodySam to enforce Hide Your Lesbians, with Andrea's wife being replaced with a spouse of unspecified gender, until the matter was privately resolved between Atton Rand and avmatoran.
  • God Never Said That:
    • PeabodySam was careful to never confirm OOC which temple was actually the Maelstrom Temple, deliberately invoking this trope to keep his fellow players from guessing his true intentions until The Reveal.
    • Some may argue that the Quadrant 14 trap was a case of Lying Creator, but actually this is a case of God Never Said That, seeing as the lie to go find Dr. Inferno's weapon was written IC by Dr. Rex, not OOC by PeabodySam.
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes: Due to the original topics on BZPower either being lost or broken, the best way to read the original RPG is through the downloadable archives compiled by PeabodySam and Andrewnuva199.
  • Loads and Loads of Writers: Being a Play By Post Game that ran for nearly eight years on a popular website, it shouldn't be surprising that there are many, many writers who contributed to Dino Attack RPG. To be more specific, there are a total of 87 known BZPower members who participated in the RPG, 64 of which contributed writings that were successfully archived (plus an additional 6 writers whose lost material is covered by wiki summaries in the archive).
  • Lying Creator:
    • Jackson Lake stated OOC, at the beginning of one post, that Helmie was going to reunite with his son. At the end of said post, in IC, Helmie does not reunite with his son... instead, he discovers that his son died on Adventurers' Island.
    • Although not explicitly lying, per se, PeabodySam did a bit of... undercover work on the RPG's (since cut) Wild Mass Guessing page in order to fuel the fires of paranoia in the mole hunt.
    • Related to the example with Helmie and Tracer, PeabodySam prefaced a post with an OOC message referring to the post as another episode of "Plot Armor Heroes Who Somehow Survive Everything!", stating that this installment would chronicle Rex and Amanda's thrilling escape from certain death. What happened in the following IC? Amanda dies.
  • Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": During the Mindstorms, Inc. flashback, Silencia Venomosa encountered four men exiting an elevator. This was a Shout-Out to a short story that PeabodySam had written titled The Elevator, which (despite being published in a local magazine several months prior) was not yet publicized on the internet, meaning that no other player of the internationally-available RPG caught the reference. The story was eventually made available on DeviantArt several months later.
  • Meaningful Release Date:
    • The RPG ended on December 21, 2012. Coincidentally, Alpha Team: Mission Deep Freeze RPG (the direct inspiration for Dino Attack RPG) started on December 21, 2004, turning this into a case of Book Ends as well.
    • Dear Sister was published on January 14, 2020. January 14 is Roger Remous's birthday, with the story opening on January 14, 2008 and Roger meeting Silencia Venomosa on January 14, 2010.
    • The final chapter of Pirates of the Tropical Sea was released on June 10, 2021, exactly one year after the chapter itself takes place (June 10, 2020).
  • Milestone Celebration:
    • The epilogue to Dino Attack in a Nutshell was uploaded on July 1, 2015, the 10-year anniversary of Dino Attack RPG.
    • The first pages of DINO ATTACK: Saga of a Conflict were released on July 1, 2011, the 11-year anniversary of Dino Attack RPG.
    • The Director's Cut was released on July 1, 2020, the 15-year anniversary of Dino Attack RPG.
  • Missing Episode:
    • The beginning of the Goo Caverns Story Arc, which was lost in the BZPower Time Slip. Most of the missing content was recovered by means of Google Cache, but the last week or so of content was never recovered.
    • And now that the BZPower Forum Archive has been taken down following a hacking incident in February 2013, the entire original Dino Attack RPG has become an extreme case of this trope.note  Fortunately, over a third of the RPG was able to be recovered by players and compiled into a downloadable archive, but that leaves about two thirds of the RPG lost. The LEGO Island and Adventurers' Island story arcs were particularly hit hard by this, since very little of the RPG from June 2009 through April 2011 was able to be recovered.
  • Newbie Boom: About the time that the Goo Caverns Story Arc began, Dino Attack RPG met a flood of new players, which helped to bring it out of the dark ages.
  • Official Fan-Submitted Content:
    • In most cases, the "fans" in question are actually fellow members of the RPG, offering ideas (such as names or MOCs) to be approved by a fellow RPG player:
      • Chronicler of Ko-Koro wanted a name for his stealthy female agent. He went with the first suggestion by another member: Stealth.
      • The Torn World's name was decided in a poll held in Dino Attack RPG, and the name was coined by Zephyria.
      • Rex's physical appearance was based upon Alpha Team Special Agent Zed, who was PeabodySam's BZPower avatar when Dino Attack RPG was created. This was suggested by other members of the RPG during that time, who mentally linked PeabodySam's avatar to Rex's appearance. Similarly, Frozeen's appearance was created by Alpha Team: Mission Deep Freeze RPG host Victor Draven, who imagined Frozeen with Pepper Roni's head.
      • Aside from Rex, several other character depictions, such as Rockford and Ben Gunn, were created by other RPG members and approved by the characters' respective creators.
      • The appearance of the Iron Hammer was submitted by that guy from that show and approved by TakunuvaC01.
    • Not exactly "fan submitted", but Kareem Nazareno's character design was created several years prior to Brikman McStudz joining the RPG by a friend of his.
    • The design of the Ogel Drilling Vehicle was created by Mustache Maniacs Film Co. and approved as canon by PeabodySam. Similarly, the minifigure designs of Astrid Dunham and Eius Draco were originally created by Mustache Maniacs Film Co., although Draco's design was later modified for the Dino Attack RPG Wiki. Sydney Kaahs was originally created as a character in their short film True Identity before she (or rather, her Alternate Self) was featured in Because Of You.
    • An interesting case with the Mutant Spinosaurus. In 2013, a drawing was uploaded onto the wiki by a user (known simply as "Mutant Spinosaurus") who is not believed to have been part of the RPG. At the time, PeabodySam simply deleted the art, but he did not remember that a Mutant Spinosaurus (created independently by cooldynamyteproductions) actually did briefly appear in At War's End. In 2020, the artwork was "canonized" as a placeholder visual representation for the canonical Mutant Spinosaurus from At War's End. When PeabodySam made the finalized artwork in 2021, he did so while keeping the fanart in mind and retained several of its features, most notably its blue coloration and the small spikes along its elongated head.
  • Orphaned Reference:
    • Frank Einstein was originally going to have a much weaker version of Zachary's power to control the Maelstrom. There was a small reference to this in Merciful Escape, where Einstein was "concentrating incredibly hard" when he and Rex encountered a darkness-breed Mutant Lizard; it was intended that Einstein was using the Maelstrom to influence the Mutant Lizard into ignoring them. However, while this was meant to be foreshadowing a later scene in the RPG, that scene was ultimately cut, so this went nowhere.
    • The short story The Huntsman has Ata speculating how long it will take before Chupacabra starts attacking his own teammates, as a Call-Forward to later events in the RPG. In the Director's Cut, Chupa was Demoted to Extra and his scenes as a mutant monster were given to L-Leviathan and T-Fefnir instead, but Ata still speculates about Chupa going berserk. This turns the Foreshadowing into a Mythology Gag at best, or a Fauxshadow at worst.
  • Out of Holiday Episode: The "Fifteeniversary" post featuring Erik Paulson on Halloween was posted on December 30. It was lampshaded by PeabodySam when he posted it:
    PeabodySam: Happy Halloween! ... two months later. Uh, it's the GHOST OF HALLOWEEN PAST! OOOOOOOH!
  • Outdated by Canon:
    • Back when BIONICLE was still allowed in the RPG, the island of Mata Nui was located on LEGO Planet, with Metru Nui existing in an underground dome beneath the island, since this was all that was known at the time. It was not yet known that the Mata Nui island was canonically located on the ocean moon Aqua Magna, with the entire Matoran Universe actually the body of Mata Nui himself existing just beneath the surface of the ocean.
    • Being a popular character, Johnny Thunder made numerous appearances throughout the RPG. When he made an appearance in LEGO Universe, which is considered concurrent with the Dino Attack in the RPG's timeline, all of Johnny Thunder's prior appearances had to be replaced with Charles Kilroy and/or Josh Thunder in order to be consistent with canon.
    • With very little canon to work with, Dino Attack RPG came up with an origin for the Mutant Dinos: they were ordinary Living Dinosaurs captured and mutated by the secret organization XERRD to restore the LEGO Planet to its prehistoric state and force "survival of the fittest" upon mankind, which was all actually a ruse by the Darkitect to destroy the planet and spread the Maelstrom's influence. In 2014, two years after the RPG ended, LEGO designer Michael Stafford revealed the intended origins of the Mutant Dinos: they're actually just malfunctioning animatronics from an amusement park, in a "Westworld Meets Jurassic Park" style plot.
  • Permanent Placeholder:
    • The Expanded Universe short story starring Roger Remous originally only used "Dear Sister" as a Working Title. Since PeabodySam couldn't find a more satisfactory alternative, he ended up keeping it as the final title.
    • The Director's Cut trailer replays the Dino Attack in a Nutshell: Epilogue footage of Pyro and Medic stabilizing the burning storybook. This was originally just put in as temporary visuals, but PeabodySam liked how it synced up with the music and decided to keep it in the final trailer.
  • Playing Against Type:
    • In many of Atton Rand's older RPG roles, he often had the tendency to play idealistic women (though they did sometimes become action girls, a handful ended up being simply distressed damsels). In At War's End, he deliberately went against this pattern with the introduction of Trigger, who he intentionally made the complete opposite of what he was known for doing.
    • During the LEGO Island arc, Atton Rand (who at the time was still playing as the idealistic Zenna) misinterpreted the Idealist vs. Realist conflict, and the result was a black and white "realists are evil" scenario. During the Adventurers' Island arc, he tried to go against this by introducing a series of good realists such as Rotor, Cabin, Garry, Snake, and Trigger, all of whom are somewhat more complex and actually have a reason for acting the way they do. Even the infamous Cam O'Cozy, who up that point was basically just a card carrying villain, was revealed to have been an android deliberately programmed to act a certain way, making him far more believable. In addition, Garry and Cabin are both shown to have a mix of idealist and realist characteristics, showing that there is no clear division between the two sides.
  • Post-Release Retitle: The Expanded Universe short story featuring Rex and Frank Einstein escaping Mercy Hospital was originally published as Merciful Escape in 2014. Its title was changed to Rex's Awakening in 2020.
  • Production Nickname:
    • Most people refer to the BIONICLE/Exo-Force crossover as the BIONICLE Meets Exo-Force RPG, as a reference to the fact that it had very little to do with the rest of Dino Attack RPG.note 
    • Before its name was revealed, most players referred to the Torn World as the "LEGO Island Netherworld".
    • The unnamed XERRD scientist who switched bodies with a Hybrid has been jokingly nicknamed "Gene Rick" by PeabodySam as a reference to his rather generic physical appearance in XERRD: For Science! comics. Andrewnuva199 picked up on this nickname and, in a Steam chat, referred to the scientist as such, meaning that "Gene Rick" might be on its way to Ascended Fanon...
    • Before Cranky and Kiddy's names were revealed, PeabodySam nicknamed them "Tyrant Kong" and "Deadly Kong", respectively. While neither became canon, his nickname for the plumber who dropped them off on Adventurers' Island, Marco, did become Ascended Fanon.
  • Reality Subtext:
    • After the 2009 BZPower Time Slip (also known as the Great Dataclysm), which erased six months of Dino Attack RPG content (including the entire Goo Caverns Story Arc up to that point), the Dino Attack RPG players agreed to start up again at a time and place shortly before the Time Slip occurred. Since this led to rewriting several scenes that were erased by the Time Slip, Sauro-Hunter remarked that he was experiencing deja vu.
    • During his time as a Stromling, Zachary aged at an accelerated rate. The amount of time he physically aged is equal to the time between the end of Dino Attack RPG and the start of Dino Attack: At War's End.
    • According to Dino Attack RPG's timeline, LEGO Themes take place during their year of release unless otherwise noted. Some Dino Attack RPG players were confused on whether or not Pharaoh's Quest is one of those exceptions, since it was released in 2011 but some sources say that it takes place in 1924; however, 1924 was confirmed as the canon date by Word of God. As a result of this confusion, Lord Sam Sinister announced that he was going on an expedition to Egypt in 2011 to recover the golden treasures of Pharaoh Amset-Ra, unaware that Professor Archibald Hale's team had already uncovered those treasures in 1924.
    • Much of The Madness of Agent Zero is based upon the concept of one writer's work being taken out of his hands and rewritten by others, which is what happened when Zero's story was subjected to retcons by PeabodySam and Andrewnuva199 after his original writer, BZP Noob #30000, left the RPG. This short story shows what this is like from the perspective of in-universe characters.
    • Pirates of the Tropical Sea reveals that Mary Rose's birthday is June 9. In reality, she made her debut in the RPG on June 9, 2012.
  • Reclusive Artist:
    • Over time in the RPG, many of the players got to know each other on a surprisingly personal level, up to and including revealing their real names (or at least their first name) and a general idea of where they live (so far as nationality and hometown anyway, precise addresses were obviously not given). The one exception is PeabodySam, who, while fairly personal with other players, seems to make a point of stating as little about himself as possible. He has dropped hints, but how reliable any of them are is debatable. The most he has ever said is that he claims to be a 101-year-old man who lives somewhere in the United States.
    • Most players who left the RPG also tended to disappear from BZPower around the same time, and as a result they are all difficult to track down and can be considered reclusive artists, especially due to the anonymous nature of BZPower usernames. There are exceptions, such as Chronicler of Ko-Koro and Canama, who are still active in the online LEGO community. However, by far the most infamous example of this in Dino Attack RPG would be Kotua in Space, who not only disappeared from BZPower but also Brickshelf, MOCpages, and many other websites all at the same time in late 2007 so he could focus on schoolwork.
  • Recycled Script:
    • While nothing official has been put forward, Atton Rand has expressed interest in the possibility of adapting the Trigger/Silencia flashback into an original screenplay or short story.
    • Atton Rand has occasionally borrowed ideas from the RPG for use in short stories he has written, though most of them have yet to be published.
    • PeabodySam and Atton Rand have both expressed interest in writing adaptations of the RPG's basic plot which would cut off all ties to LEGO. Nothing official has been put forward, but the former is interested in adapting the basic plot into a standalone novel (focusing primarily on his characters and occasionally combining their roles with those of other players), while the latter has wondered about it having potential as a television series along the lines of The Walking Dead written in collaboration with his fellow writers. note 
  • Refitted for Sequel:
    • The idea that Mutant Dinos had traveled to LEGO City via the underground subway tunnels was actually based on ideas PeabodySam had for a Brickfilm he never created.
    • Rex's unused alter-ego Dr. Rex, first conceived in 2005, was adapted into the RPG's new main antagonist in 2008.
    • An interesting example is the mention of Tribe Ugalego, a group of Islanders intended to appear in LEGO Island 2: The Brickster's Revenge but were ultimately scrapped.
    • Some of PeabodySam's original ideas for the end of the Final Battle, namely the main characters fighting their way through a Mutant Dino-infested Mercy Hospital to reach evacuation on the rooftop, was adapted into Rex's Awakening when the idea was left on the cutting room floor.
    • PeabodySam planned a scene after the final battle where George Ogel formally announces his retirement as General Evil, but then George and Talia Kaahs are nearly killed when Evil Ogel rigs their car to explode; since General ended up dying during the final battle, this concept went unused. Instead, it was reworked into Timeline 1958-D of Because Of You, where that Alternate Timeline's George and Talia were mysteriously killed in a car explosion after denouncing the Evil OGEL Empire.
  • Rule 34 – Creator Reactions: PeabodySam was squicked and utterly flabbergasted when a reader reached out to him asking to do a NSFW roleplay involving Finister's Truth Receiver, leading to this comic instead.
  • Saved from Development Hell:
    • Dino Attack: At War's End was saved from Development Hell by Sisen.
    • Additionally, many ideas that were originally unused, and thus arguably stuck in Development Hell, eventually became used over the course of the RPG's existence.
      • For example, ideas for Amanda Claw's backstory date back to when she was first introduced in 2005. They remained unused until mid-2010.
    • When Merciful Escape was written in early 2011, a second part was promised. It took over three and a half years, but First Assignment was finally finished in late 2014.
    • It took about four years, but The Madness of Agent Zero was finally finished in mid-2016.
  • Self-Remake:
    • PeabodySam wrote Love and War, which is a rewrite of posts from the RPG that, for the most part, were originally written by him (although parts of it were also written by Kotua In Space, Chronicler of Ko-Koro, and BZP Noob #30000). The same also applies to the majority of PeabodySam's rewritten scenes from the Director's Cut, with only a few exceptions (e.g. Landro's defeat, Anti-Kotua's introduction, and Chaos's defeat) being based on posts written by other writers.
    • Brikman McStudz wrote Corruption, which is a rewrite of posts from the RPG that were originally written by him. The Storm is also intended to become a rewrite of Blaire Darkling's final battle, which was largely written by Brikman McStudz.
  • Shrug of God:
    • Not even Andrewnuva199 knows what Ata put in Zero's coffee.
    • PeabodySam can't remember all the details about his early writing, leading to instances where even he is unsure about something he wrote. For example, was the original Maw (the alpha Mutant T-Rex overheard by Rex) intended as the same character as Maw (the Mutant T-Rex later tamed by Rex), or was it just PeabodySam being lazy and recycling names? Not even he knows for sure.note  As another example, was Rex's minifigure disguise inspired by Men in Black? It's very likely, but he can't remember.
    • avmatoran has no clue who saved Matthew Cyrista and rebuilt him as Dr. Cyborg.
    • What is LEGOLAND? Is it a Fictional Province, a Fictional Country, or a group of united nations? Don't ask PeabodySam, because he has no clue.
  • Sleeper Hit: Considering how BZPower dismissed the LEGO Dino Attack line, plus the fact that LEGO General Discussion (and the later LEGO RPG subforum) doesn't get as much attention as the rest of the website, it is quite surprising that the Dino Attack RPG lasted as long as it did.
  • Spared by the Cut:
    • PeabodySam originally planned on Frozeen learning that his adoptive mother, Faith Abody, had passed away while in the refugee facilities. Since B's mother was revealed to have died in the same manner, this was cut to avoid feeling repetitive, leaving it ambiguous whether Faith is still alive.
    • The Ice Snake King was going to be Killed Offscreen by Dr. Rex, and his decapitated head would have been presented to Dino Attack Team as a show of intimidation. Since this scene was cut to avoid potential plot holes, the Ice Snake King remains alive in the final version of the story.
    • Greybeard's fate in Pirates of the Tropical Sea was originally intended to be an Uncertain Doom. After talking things over with fellow RPG players who preferred Barracuda Bay being featured at the end of the story instead of the beginning, the story's ending was reworked so that the character's survival is made explicitly clear.
  • Stage Name: Every player in the Dino Attack RPG signs onto BZPower under a Pen Name.
  • Throw It In!:
    • When Atton Rand initially told PeabodySam that he was thinking of a love interest for Barry Jackson and was thinking of calling her Teri but couldn't think of a good last name, PeabodySam jokingly suggested the punny last name "Dactyl". Atton was initially unsure but eventually decided to run with it.
    • When Zenna suffered heavy injury, Atton Rand originally wanted to keep the subsequent treatment semi-realistic and not just have her miraculously recover (he'd done that far too many times already, and Kate had only just recently gotten lucky after a mutant lizard bite). He was still trying to decide when that guy from that show suddenly brought her back in a post, in which he quickly threw in a bit about her being paralyzed (this idea was retconned when Zenna came Back for the Finale, though she is mentioned to have felt some degree of pain).
    • PeabodySam intended Kate to stay in the Maelstrom Temple's main chamber so that she could confront Wallace Bishop. When Atton Rand tried to help Kate escape the Maelstrom Temple, PeabodySam decided to incorporate his idea of Stromling illusions by revealing that the Kate found by Atton Rand's characters was actually a Stromling in disguise. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Atton Rand had toyed with a few ideas, most either pointing toward Kate being taken outside whilst her teammates were trapped or being trapped with them, the mentions of suspicion that she was a Stromling was meant to be a cruel trick on Palmer's part (throwing them off the real Stromling), and ironically, when PeabodySam sudden revealed her to be a projection, Atton implied in his next post she was created by Palmer himself. It's also interesting because Atton Rand had already hinted at the idea of the Maelstrom within the temple messing with people's minds, reshaping the interior so that people could not find their way out.
    • When sketching what Dr. Rex might look like without a helmet (since the only image of Dr. Rex at the time, for some reason, showed the scientist wearing a Dino Attack helmet), PeabodySam had trouble drawing hair. In irritation, he just left Dr. Rex bald, and found that he took a liking to it, and so made it canon. This is a Throw It In! situation in itself, but it led to some Fridge Logic: why would Dr. Rex be bald if he has been taking the Jugend Serum? Thus led to the idea that Dr. Rex's Minifig body (which was since passed on to Rex) was slowly dying.
    • One of PeabodySam's posts seemed to imply Clint and Angel Eyes were trying to keep the Second Headquarters Squad from blowing up Fort Legoredo because they did not want it destroyed. The actual intended idea was that Clint was realistically looking at the many flaws associated with the plan to push a mine cart down a track to the fort and wanted to deal with the lizards himself because he didn't want the second headquarters squad to mess everything up. Atton Rand just decided to run with this as a secondary motivation.
    • Zelda Frodongan was intended to be killed by Nazareno in Outpost 4 after the first attempt to cure her Maelstrom corruption failed. Before Brikman McStudz could write this post, Atton Rand had the medics strap down Zelda and technically kill her. Brikman decided to roll with this and slowly began to develop Zelda into one of the main characters of his cast.
      • Interestingly, on the flip side of things, Atton Rand originally considered a sub-plot in which the character of Norris (the guy who had the heart attack and turned out to be a Stromling) would be cured, and then he would help provide information on the Maelstrom. However, once the cure was applied to Zelda, she ended up filling this role, so Norris ended up disappearing (he was last seen in an exploding vehicle, but it was left ambiguous whether he actually died in the blast).
    • When Firecracker detonated a large number of explosives throughout Dino Attack Headquarters while a number of PeabodySam's characters were still inside, PeabodySam chose to just roll with it and explain that, due to the fate of the first Dino Attack Headquarters, Brick League United constructed the current headquarters to withstand such explosive power.
    • During the Maelstrom Temple battle, sometime after Adventure's cavalry arrived, Andrewnuva199 wrote about one random Dino Attack agent in the temple who had a phobia of butterflies. While making his "In the Maelstrom Temple" video, PeabodySam used the character model of Adventure to represent this butterfly-fearing agent. Andrewnuva199 decided to Throw It In! and make it canon that Adventure was, indeed, the Dino Attack agent that was afraid of butterflies.
    • avmatoran originally imagined Dr. Cyborg as only having his visor down occasionally, but when multiple players mentioned or showed his visor down all the time, he just rolled with it and accepted it as canon.
    • Elite Agent Bacon only appeared once as a voice on a radio during Atton Rand's only attempt at carrying the Running Gag of comm chatter during the Final Battle and was never named. He was never intended to be a major character but Atton Rand added the name to the wiki after coming up with it because he thought it was fitting.
    • The idea that there is a relationship between Kate and Wallace Bishop only came about after Atton Rand noticed they both had the same last name.
    • A Dino Attack agent codenamed Pilot appears in The Madness of Agent Zero as a throwaway reference to Star Wars: Battlefront. There is nothing in the story that explicitly makes him Letagi's primary character of the same name. When asked about it, Andrewnuva199's response was basically "Sure, why not?"
  • Tribute to Fido: Sereve's dog Bailey is named after Sand Hawk 1's dog.
  • Trolling Creator: PeabodySam when he teleported Ben Gunn to Antarctica without meeting Frozeen. In fact, PeabodySam regarding Ben Gunn in general. Brikman McStudz and Jackson Lake were not amused.
  • What Could Have Been: Each writer of the RPG has had a number of ideas and concepts that were ultimately unused or scrapped. So many, in fact, they have their own page.
  • Word of Gay: One of PeabodySam's "Random Useless Made-Up Facts of the Day" on Discord revealed that Ujun (who was only referred to as male in the RPG) is actually genderfluid, able to subtly change their voice, mannerisms, and appearance to be perceived as male or female if they so choose.
  • Word of God:
    • Used rather frequently on TV Tropes and other websites, such as the wiki. It certainly helps that a number of Dino Attack RPG's writers have contributed to writing these TV Tropes pages for Dino Attack RPG, allowing them to shed insight on their characters and stories that might not necessarily be mentioned in the RPG itself.
    • On Discord, PeabodySam occasionally posts "Random Useless Made-Up Facts of the Day", which reveal minor details about his characters. This includes Sam Throramebi incorrectly pronouncing his own surname, Rex and Amanda being Book Dumb, Libo having No Biological Sex, etc.
  • Word of Saint Paul: This occasionally comes into play, especially regarding Retcons made to stories written by players who have long since left the RPG, such as Kotua in Space or The Castle Gear. For example, the suggestion that Landro was a XERRD scientist who went mad and was babbling nonsense was made by Andrewnuva199, not The Castle Gear.
  • Working Title:
    • Rex's Awakening and First Assignment were written under the title "HTTYML", which stood for "How To Train Your Mutant Lizard".
    • Dino Attack: Legacy previews were released under the name "Project LEGACY".
    • Because Of You was titled Time Shock in its initial outline.
  • Write What You Know: The Disasters & Dinosaurs session combined PeabodySam's personal experiences with Dino Attack RPG and Dungeons & Dragons. Furthermore, Trish's memories of the Dino Attack were based on PeabodySam's own memories of 9/11.
  • Write Who You Know: This was the primary reasoning behind PeabodySam's decision to write Frozeen as having difficulties with social interactions due to Asperger's syndrome, rather than trying to out Frozeen as homosexual, to explain why Frozeen never had a girlfriend in Alpha Team: Mission Deep Freeze RPG. Since PeabodySam is heterosexual, he feared that he would not be able to effectively write a homosexual character without potentially falling into stereotypes, and therefore stuck with writing something (Asperger's) he could more personally relate to.
  • Writing by the Seat of Your Pants:
    • Before the Goo Caverns Story Arc, most writers did this. Even after the arc formula was introduced, elements are still added spontaneously (for example, Ben Gunn) and the story was always susceptible to deviating from previous plans.
    • The character of Clint Wayne literally came out of nowhere. There was no explanation for his arrival and it's been explicitly stated that he was never present at any point during the mission prior to that. Of course, in a case of Fridge Brilliance this is actually not too far off from Clint Eastwood's character in the Dollars trilogy (whom Clint is based on), who is mysterious enough that people still debate on whether he was the same person in all three movies.

Top