Trivia / Haruhi Suzumiya

• Adaptation First: The anime and manga adaptations were licensed and began release in English before the first novel was translated (about two years before and about half a year before, respectively). As a result, many casual American fans of the anime were surprised to learn that it was based on a series of books rather than the manga.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: The slider is frequently omitted from quotations of Haruhi's famous first line, presumably because (so far) the cast hasn't actually met one.
• Bury Your Art: The 2004 manga was only released in Japan, and only saw a limited print run, to where a physical copy is hard to find even with the help of the internet. The artist of this particular iteration got fired, either due to the artist drawing and selling unauthorized Hentai for the series he was drawing for, or the artwork seen in this series being less than stellar (most likely the latter). Either way, the publisher would rather forget it ever existed, going as far as to commission a completely new manga series to another artist rather than reprinting this one once the Anime got popular.
• Cash-Cow Franchise: In its heyday, the franchise had radio dramas, an impressive amount of Image Songs (even for relatively minor characters), and video games for the PSP, the PS2, the DS, and two games to choose from on the Wii (though these were all Japan-only).
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer:
  • The official description to the English version of novel 4 labeled Yuki as a time-traveling robot...which is technically true...very technically: She doesn't physically travel through time, but can control it locally and can sync with past and future versions of herself, and while she is a construct, she's still biologically human.
  • The description on the back of the English version of Melancholy says that Kyon sits behind Haruhi in class, which has never been true.
  • The blurbs of the English releases seem to have a penchant for this trope, as the summary on the back of novel 7, Intrigues, is almost 100% wrong. It says "When Kyon discovers that something's not right with the universe, it's up to him, ...Mikuru, and... Nagato to head back to the past in order to save the future." This is NOT at ALL what happens in the book, instead it's about a version of Mikuru from 8 days in the future coming back to what would be the present for Kyon. Hell, Kyon even flat-out says near the beginning "This time, it wasn't me who traveled through time. I didn't take a single step outside of my own present moment." The only thing it could be referring to was the prologue, in which he briefly goes over the events that happened between it and and the short story "Where Did The Cat Go?" from Wavering, specifically when he goes back to save the version of himself in the past from the end of Disappearance. But the prologue is only 22 pages out of a nearly 300-page long book.
• Creator Backlash: Several cast members, and even producers, spoke about how poorly handled the Endless Eight arc was done in the anime adaptation. The English cast members were frustrated with having to record the same lines over and over and not being really free to change it up, and some of the staff that produced the show outright apologized for the handling of it.
• Dawson Casting: Haruhi's English dubber Wendee Lee, one of the Streamline Pictures generation, is 51 as of Disappearance (which was released on DVD and Blu-ray on September 20, 2011). In fact, she's the only SOS Brigade member to be voiced by a Streamline veteran.
• Defictionalization:
  • A few versions of ''The Day of Sagittarius III'' have been developed based on its appearance in the anime.
  • There's an App for that.
  • In-universe example: Haruhi's movie starts to become real in the beginning of the second book, and Itsuki and Mikuru try to get Kyon to stop it.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Series 1 of the anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimiya seems to be heading towards this in the UK- it's maybe possible to pick up copies second-hand but not new. Oddly enough, Series 2 is easy to find as is The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya and The Melancholy of Haruhi-chan Suzumiya.
  • The anime was struck with this in the United States when Bandai Entertainment decided to cease DVD productions entirely. Thankfully, efforts have been made to rescue Bandai's library, with Haruhi Suzumiya falling into the hands of Funimation. This had the side-effect of user-posted full episodes of the series being pulled from YouTube for copyright reasons. The Haruhi-chan and Nyoron Churuya-san spin-offs were unaffected, and all shorts can still be found on YouTube, and several episodes can still be found, as well.
• Late Export for You: The original novels began publication in 2003, but they wouldn't be made available in English until 2009.
• No Export for You:
  • The various Licensed Games were never released outside of Japan. The 2004 manga was also never officially translated.
  • The Italian dub only covered the original 2006 run of the series, the additional 14 episodes from the 2009 rebroadcast as well as the spinoffs and the movie were never dubbed in Italian.
• The Other Darrin: Shamisen's dub VA switched from Steve Kramer in season one to Michael McConnohie in season two.
• Promoted Fanboy: Apparently, the owner of the English license hired at least some of the a.f.k. anime sub team to do the official English translation of the light novels.
• Reclusive Artist: After the release of The Surprise, Nagaru Tanigawa went silent for seven years until he finally released an original short story for The Sneaker Legend anniversary issue in 2018. Afterwards, he disappeared again, later announcing that the twelfth novel would be released in November 2020.
• Referenced by...:
  • And Shine Heaven Now: Haruhi is among the magical girls that confront Incognito. While she doesn't attack herself, Haruhi is the one to tell Incognito he made a huge mistake.
    "Didn't anybody ever warn you? The dumbest place in the world to attack is a girls' school in Japan."
  • Lucky Star's anime adaptation makes a lot of references to Haruhi Suzumiya, which is Konata's favourite series. Many of these double as Actor Allusions and Company Cross References, since Konata and Haruhi are both voiced by Aya Hirano and both series were animated by Kyoto Animation.
  • In episode 8 of My Stepmom's Daughter is My Ex, Isana is seen reading the first volume of the original Haruhi Suzumiya light novels.
  • Haruhi made a cameo on Peppa Pig, of all shows.
• Saved from Development Hell: It took 4 years to publish Surprise^note For comparison, each previous volume took from three to six months and Dissociation took roughly a year. According to Word of God, there was no particular reason for it, mostly due to laziness on the author's behalf. And after that, Intuition then took nine and a half years to release.
• Schedule Slip: The tenth light novel was delayed for three years, and the twelfth novel was delayed for nine and a half years since the previous one. The second season also counts as it was delayed for almost three years. Unfortunately, the constant delays between book releases were part of what killed the series as an anime property.
• Sequel Gap: The above mentioned twelfth novel? It was finally released on November 25, 2020, making this nine and a half years since the previous installment.^note This is going by Japanese release dates.
• Star-Making Role: Voicing Haruhi put Aya Hirano on people's radar as a talent to watch; a reputation that was later fully set in stone by Konata of Lucky Star.
• Throw It In!: The infamous "Supersize me!" line was in one of the fansubs before Crispin Freeman made it official. Hmm...
• Viral Marketing:
  • Perhaps most infamously, a twenty-ish minute-long live-action security tape appeared on July 7, 2007 that occasionally shows events from the John Smith Incident of "Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody."
  • There was a time when the official Japanese website (currently modeled after the SOS Brigade's site as it was shown in the anime) contained a fake 404 and an obscure reference to Disappearance.
  • On July 7, 2009, the Tanabata plant was layered over the site in a Flash animation. Visitors could enter their wishes that day.
  • In December 2010, an upside down Firefox error message replaced the site during the days that Disappearance is set in.
  • From December 18-21, 2011 (Japan time), the site had a Firefox error message that was not upside down, but clicking the "Try Again" button opened a subpage, or hovering just beneath the error message may or may not cause a picture from the movie to appear, depending on the time of day in Japan time. There was some hidden text that changed periodically, and one hidden link led to the Literature Club entry form. Yuki's "Ready?" program was also emulated at one point. This was repeated in 2015.
  • On December 18, 2013 (Japan time), a Firefox error message containing hidden text including "The Disappearance of Yuki-chan, docomo android" replaced the front page. If one were to visit the site on an Android device...
  • On December 18, 2014 (Japan time), another Firefox error message appeared. If one were to wait 10 seconds or click the "..." link, a teaser logo for The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan shows up. Clicking that takes the viewer to a form where he/she must fill in the correct number of light years of Vega and Altair from Earth, rounded down to the nearest number. Finally, the viewer is taken to an announcement page for said series.
  • For many years since 2009, the site featured the list of activities from "Endless Eight" from August 16 to mid-September. Before August 31, the list's length varies each time the page is refreshed, due to some events being left out in-universe in certain iterations. A recording on Aug. 30, 2012 (applies to any given year) is demonstrated here.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally, Kyon was going to be an esper, but Tanigawa felt that Melancholy worked better with him as an ordinary student.
  • The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (the fourth volume in the novel series) was originally going to be adapted as part of the anime's second season and there were scripts for it planned out, but during production it was shifted to a feature-length film instead. The Endless Eight arc ended up being as long as it was so it could fill in for the time the anime would have spent on Disappearance.
  • When it came to dubbing the second season's Endless Eight arc, Bandai considered turning it into a Gag Dub, with the voice actors switching characters, or doing each episode with a different accent; Johnny Yong Bosch and Michelle Ruff had gone on record at various conventions mentioning that the cast had supported it in part just to avoid recording the same dialogue over and over again. In the end, they decided to do a straight dub instead, though Crispin Freeman did get to improvise some lines.

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