Trivia / Free!

• The Abridged Series: Watch here. There's also 50% Off, which has its own page. It was quite popular in the fandom's heyday, but only covered most of Iwatobi Swim Club before fading interest in the series led the creators to cancel it.
• All-Star Cast: Who knew that the 5 main characters are voiced by five of the most popular English dub voice actors at the time of the dub's release? The supporting cast isn't that different either.
  • This was only the case of the first 2 seasons of the English dub as this was averted in the later seasons with characters like Asahi and Ikuya being voiced by lesser known actors in contrast to the earlier seasons.
• Career Resurrection: Rei was one of two roles, the other being Noriaki Kakyoin, that helped Daisuke Hirakawa become more popular with anime fans after he got a lot of heat for voicing the infamous Makoto Itou.
• Channel Hop: The first season's license is held by Crunchyroll, but they outsourced the production of the home video releases to two companies; Discotek Media made a set that was subtitled-only, while Funimation, who themselves holds the second season's license outright, did a rerelease with the first season's dub included. Funimation some years later then went into merging with Crunchyroll, anyway.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer:
  • A common misconception is that Free! became an anime series because of the fan response to the original commercial, including a petition from Crunchyroll. However, the series had been planned since 2011 and was already in the works before the commercial with no fan input. Still, even to this day, you have Western media outlets claiming that it was because of the petition and fan response, with even big names like Anime News Network making the mistake.
  • Ah, yes. The recap movies, "Timeless Melody" and "Take Your Marks," the latter of which explores the backstories of the characters Kizuna and Yakusoku. It's almost impressive how many errors this article packs into a few sentences.
  • This video about Rin's sandwich claims that the scene in question happened in Eternal Summer, not Dive to the Future.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Female voice actors portray the main characters' younger selves in both Japanese and English.
• Creator's Favorite: Director Hiroko Utsumi is not the least bit ashamed to state that Rin is her favorite character.
• Dawson Casting: In the Latin American Spanish dub, all of the male voice actors playing the main characters also provide the voices of their younger selves.
• Directed by Cast Member:
  • The English dub has Jerry Jewell (Momo's VA) as the director for the first 2 seasons, while Caitlin Glass (Miho's VA) takes over the directing duties for season 3 and the movies.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, Enrique Cervantes is the ADR Director as well as Goro Sasabe's voice actor.
• Fandom Life Cycle: At the series' peak (2013-2014), the fandom was at stage 4. After Eternal Summer ended, a great portion of the fandom seemed to move on, believing the series ended for good, which caused the fandom to enter a cooldown phase at stage 6a. This isn't particularly helped by the movies released afterwards, since they were spread apart from each other (the second being a recap of season two) and at the time released in Japan only which made it difficult for Westerners to keep up with the hype. However, with the movies now dubbed, Dive to the Future airing in 2018, and the announcement of a 2021 film, the fandom has entered stage X.
• Genre Relaunch: Free!, along with Haikyuu!! has been sited to help revived the interest of sports anime in North American fanbase, especially with FUNimation.
• God Never Said That: Unsourced claims that "the creator" has stated that Rei and Nagisa are canon periodically pop up in the fandom. An instance even appeared on the wiki for some time before being deleted.
• I Am Not Spock: Tatsuhisa Suzuki often received messages on Free!'s radio show, FrFr!, some of which contained marriage proposals. While he had no trouble finding roles, he complained about how uncomfortable he was with those messages, especially since he isn't Makoto Tachibana.
• Irony as He Is Cast:
  • Mamoru Miyano, who voices Rin, has admitted that he can not actually swim in real life.
  • Free! is known to have strong yaoi overtones, yet the English dub had Vic Mignogna in the cast, who is known for his Christian beliefs and his dislike in working in yaoi anime because of his beliefs. ^note That being said, he is known to be good friends with J. Michael Tatum, who is openly gay.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": Asahi, Ikuya, Natsuya, and Nao first appeared in High Speed! 2 and Starting Days, but since Take Your Marks and Dive to the Future were legally available to Western consumers first, most of them are loss at who these characters were.
• The Merch: This franchise is extremely Egregious when it comes to merchandises ranging from figurines to life-size standees. This franchise also loves to produce limited edition one-offs that usually costs triple in auctions. Recently taken up to eleven with the release of many merchandises related to the theatrical film right after the film's announcement.
• The Other Darrin: Austin Tindle took over as Rin beginning with the Dive to the Future OAV due to Funimation firing Vic Mignogna.
• Promoted Fanboy: The creators of 50% Off voice minor characters Toru Iwashimizu and Shota Nakagawa in the dub of Eternal Summer.
• Recursive Adaptation: In 2017, more than four years after the animated series ended, Free! itself got a novelization. Keep in mind that the series was a sequel to a couple of novels.
• Same Voice Their Entire Life: In the Latin American Spanish dub, the main characters' younger selves are played by their main voice actors.
• What Could Have Been:
  • This image◊ shows the Iwatobi Swim Club without Rei, but instead with another character named Kaede. Apparently this character would have been more easygoing than Rei, as well as retaining the "inexperienced newcomer" role Rei eventually got according to this interview.
  • Remember how the hotel Rin and Haru stayed at is a real place, depicted accurately in the anime? Well, Word of God says that they wanted to have a scene involving the glass shower the room has, but could not find the time.
• Written by Cast Member: In the Latin Spanish dub, Alejandra Delint is Gou Matsuoka's voice actress as well as the ADR writer.

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