Trivia / Fireman Sam

• Acting for Two:
  • The original series had only one voice actor, John Alderton, playing every single character.
  • In Series 5, there were three voice actors. All of them played multiple characters.
    • John Sparkes played Dilys and all the male characters except James.
    • Sarah Hadland played Penny, Mandy, and Bella.
    • Joanna Ruiz played Sarah, James, and Helen.
  • In the CGI series, there are many examples of this.
    • Steven Kynman plays Sam, Elvis, Norman, Derek, Charlie, James (Series 6-7), Jerry Lee and the Mapscreen 700 (Series 14-present).
    • David Carling plays Steele, Trevor (Series 6-12), Tom, Mike and Boyce.
    • Tegwen Tucker plays Penny, Sarah, Bronwyn, Mrs. Chen (Series 6-12) and the Mapscreen 700 (Series 10-13).
    • Su Douglas plays Dilys, Helen, Mandy and Lily. She currently averts this trope after Helen, Mandy and Lily were recast for Series 13.
    • John Hasler formerly averted this trope when he joined in Series 8 to take over James, but has played this trope straight since Heroes of the Storm when he became the voice of Arnold. He also voiced a Cameraman and one-off character The Prince.
    • Alex Lowe plays Joe, Ben and Professor Pickles.
    • Jo Wyatt plays Lizzie and Hannah.
    • Harriet Kershaw plays Ellie and Bella. She currently averts this trope after Ellie was recast.
    • Colin McFarlane plays Malcolm and the Police Station's Mapscreen system.
    • Ayesha Antoine voices Helen (Series 13-present), Mandy (Series 13-present) and Jodie.
    • Ifan Huw Dafydd (Garath from Series 8-11), Nigel Whitmey (Moose), David Tennant (Buck Douglas), John Barrowman (Flex), Alexandra Mardell (Ellie from Series 13 onwards), Gary Wilmot (Trevor from Series 13 onwards), Sasha Behar (Rose), Denise Van Outen (Professor Polonium), Krystyna O'Brien (Krystyna), Arthur Smith Galiano (Peter) and Helen Skelton (Annie) all avert this trope.
• Adored by the Network: The show airs for about eleven hours a day on Cartoonito in the UK as of November 2017. As of 2020, this is taken up to eleven, as there have been days where this is the only show in the daytime slot.
  • In October 2020, Cartoonito had a Fireman Sam Month, where over 95% of the schedule that month was nothing but Fireman Sam reruns. Since then, the channel has had many dedicated months to nothing but this show, similar to Nick Jr. Too airing nothing but Peppa Pig or PAW Patrol.
• Banned Episode: The Season 9 episode "Troubled Waters" was temporarily withdrawn from circulation by HiT Entertainment in July 2016 after it was noticed that in a scene where Elvis slips over a piece of paper while carrying a tray of tea and Station Officer Steele's documents are sent flying, one of the pieces of paper had a page from◊ "The Qur'an'' on it.
  • For context, willfully or negligently damaging any physical copy of the Qur'an is considered an act of sacrilege in Islam, so having a page from it just lying around to be trodden on like that would be taken as a major insult, which is what Elvis did.
  • Following this, mass complaints were sent to The BBC, who forwarded them to Channel 5 because the former hadn't broadcast the series since 2007. HIT had said that the page was intended to show illegible text, and then announced that they would also terminate Xing Xing Digital Corporation's contract to animate the show. Miao Chun and Bruce Cho, two employees at the studio, stated that since they were Chinese and didn't know about Muslim culture, the studio inserted the image unknowingly and was not aware of the whole controversy.
  • The episode was also briefly pulled from broadcast and on-demand services, but soon returned with the paper being edited to be left blank.
  • The show's official YouTube channel once used this version of the episode on two compilation videos, but these have since been deleted. This was after a Muslim fan of the show named Faraz Qureshi (Who runs the "Fireman Sam Fan Hub" fan channel) took notice of this and asked his fans to report both uploads. Following that, both videos were deleted. However, it is unknown if they were manually taken down by the site or if it was done by WildBrain Spark.
• Channel Hop: During the stop-motion era, episodes were aired on BBC. Since the beginning of 2008 and the CGI era, the series moved over to Milkshake!.
• Creator's Favorite: Steven Kynman revealed on a Twitter Q and A that Elvis was his favourite character to voice.
• Crossdressing Voices:
  • In the first four seasons, due to only having one voice actor, all the female characters are played by a male.
  • In Series 5, James (male) is voiced by Joanna Ruiz (female), while Dilys (female) is voiced by John Sparkes (male).
• The Danza: In the US dub, Lily is voiced by Lily Cassano.
• Fake Nationality: The English actor John Alderton narrates the original series in a Welsh accent.
• Fandom Nod: In "Set For Action", Sam and Charlie discuss alternate career choices for the former following him being fired from the Fire Service which leads to Sam reminiscing about why he became a fireman in the first place due to his love for a show about firefighters he used to watch in his childhood, a likely reference to the actual viewers who wanted to become firefighters themselves due to watching this show.
• First Appearance:
  • Sam, Elvis, Station Officer Steele, Trevor, Dilys, Bella, Sarah, James, Norman: Series 1, Episode 1, "The Kite"
  • Penny: Series 3, Episode 1, "Dilys' Forgetful Day"
  • Mandy, Tom, Woolly: Series 5, Episode 1, "Danger Falling Sheep"
  • Helen: Series 5, Episode 2, "Twist of Fate"
  • Mike: Series 5, Episode 3, "A Real Live Wire"
  • Radar, Bronwyn: Series 6, Episode 2, "Hot and Cold Running Sniffer Dog",
  • Charlie: Series 6, Episode 4, "Perilous Path"
  • Derek: Series 7, Episode 17, "Double Trouble"
  • Boyce: Movie 1, "The Great Fire of Pontypandy"
  • Moose: Series 8, Episode 1, "Bronwyn's Millionth Customer"
  • Gareth, Mrs. Chen, Lily: Series 8, Episode 2, "Runaway Train"
  • Ben, Lizzie, Joe, Hannah: Series 9, Episode 9, "All at Sea"
  • Ellie, Arnold: Movie 2, "Heroes of the Storm"
  • Professor Pickles: Series 10, Episode 21, "The Treasure of Pontypandy Pete"
  • Malcolm: Series 12, Episode 4, "Red Hot Chilli Nibbles"
  • Rose: Movie 5, "Norman Price and the Mystery of the Sky"
  • Jodie: Series 13, Episode 14, "Norman and the Sea"
  • Krystyna: Series 14, Episode 4, "Snap and Spot"
  • Annie: Series 15, Episode 2, "Boar Breakout"
• Late Export for You: In the US, the show's run on Sprout used the original UK version. It wasn't until 2014 that Prime Video released a US dub of the series.
• Market-Based Title: Heroes of the Storm is called Ultimate Heroes in the US.
• The Other Darrin:
  • In Seasons 6 and 7, James was voiced by Steven Kynman. Starting in Season 8, John Hasler took over the role due to Kynman making James sound too similar to Norman and too old compared to Sarah.
  • In 2021, all characters of colour who were previously voiced by white actors (ex. Mandy, Helen, the Chens) were recast with actors who matched their ethnicities; Ayesha Antoine and Siu-see Hung replaced Su Douglas as the voice for Helen (Antoine), Mrs. Chen, and Lily (both Hung).
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends:
  • There was once a rumored episode on the show's Wikipedia page titled Derek's Grotto, but such an episode doesn’t exist.
  • There was once a rumor written on the Italian Wikipedia page that lists a character named "Hecir Price", who was Norman's father who only appeared in the last episode of the third season of the CGI era with a speaking role (due to his Italian voice actor being listed). This rumor has since been debunked.
  • There was a rumor floating around the show's wiki that the Canadian dub will have its then-current cast replaced with a new cast. Only time will tell if it ends up being true or debunked, since the US dubs of seasons 12-13 and the fifth special are not released yet.
• Referenced by...:
  • In the opening cutscene of Skylanders: Giants, there's a toy firetruck at the Toy Planet that bears a strong resemblance to Jupiter.
  • In The Amazing World of Gumball episode "The Egg", Billy claims his favourite cartoon is "Fireman Pete".
  • In the Episode Choose Your Story story "12 Dates of Christmas", one potential date is a firefighter named Sam, who acknowledges the coincidence of their name and profession.
  • "Fireman Sam" is a possible recipe in Infinite Craft.
  • PhantomStrider reviewed the Series 13 episode "The Last Straw" in "Modern Kids Cartoons' Worst Episodes". While he criticizes the episode for being boring, he still mentions that the series was his favourite when he was young, and he's happy that modern generations are growing up with it.
• Sequel Gap: The first major hiatus for the series was between the third and fourth seasons from 1990 to 1994. After that, the series was dormant (aside from annuals) until a fifth season premiered in 2003. The sixth season followed five years later in 2008, with the seventh season coming out the next year. Season 8 came out after a three-year hiatus in 2012, with a two-year hiatus before the ninth season aired in 2014, and then another two-year hiatus before the tenth and eleventh seasons aired in back-to-back years. After the eleventh season, there was much doubt over the series continuing until a twelfth season was announced for a 2020 premiere, the longest hiatus since Season 8.
• Technology Marches On: "Norman's Tricky Day" has Norman make a prank call. Even back then, this was not exactly seen as funny, but he would not have gotten away with it so easily today with the advent of Caller ID.

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