Trivia / Nightmare Time

• Acting for Two: With the series expanding Hatchetfield well beyond anything the stage shows could do, every actor takes on heaps of new characters. Even Dylan Saunders, the only actor who played only one character in Black Friday, still only had that one notable character to his name by the end of Nightmare Time 1 but still got in a few bit parts, and took on some named characters in Nightmare Time 2.
• Blooper: There were several in the original livestreams, often caused by the typical problem with Zoom of actors not realizing their mic was muted when they began to speak. It was slightly controversial that the YouTube release of Episodes 2 and 3 edited all of these out, since in the process they edited out several funny reaction moments (along with a few actual Deleted Scenes).
• Corpsing: Inevitable, thanks to the cast having significantly less rehearsal time than usual. If you look at the "offstage" cast members during some particuarly funny scenes, you can see quite a few of them breaking down in giggles. Mariah Rose Faith even said in a Q&A session that it is a very good thing she turns her mic off when she's not speaking, because she was losing it throughout "The Hatchetfield Ape-Man."
• Creator Couple: Joey Richter and Lauren Lopez, along with Kim Whalen and Curt Mega, are the only pairs of actors who appear together in the same window, thanks to both being couples who live together (Joey and Lauren are engaged, Kim and Curt are married).
  • Although Dylan Saunders' fiancée Shashona Brooks has never appeared in a Starkid production, the video for "Jane's a Car" is the only one that's entirely shot in real locations without the use of Green Screen, which was only possible because Shashona directed and shot it.
• Deleted Scenes: The YouTube release of Eps 2 and 3 had a few legitimate deleted scenes along with just cutting bloopers and dead air for time, which was mildly controversial with the audience (since one of these scenes does in fact affect the canonical backstory of the setting). Nick Lang said that, as is usually the case with deleted scenes, these snippets were cut mostly for the flow of the story to make a more satisfying artistic experience, and he's mostly-agnostic on their "canonicity", but the YouTube episodes should be viewed as the actual finished product. (See Re-Cut.)
• Descended Creator: Nick Lang, writer and director of Nightmare Time, is also the narrator who reads the stage directions. In the second season, he has a number of uncredited roles as assorted monstrous characters... and, due to Robert Manion's Role-Ending Misdemeanor coming to light only a month before the season aired, he also had to hastily Other Marty all of Robert's parts, becoming a legitimate Hatchetfield cast member against his will.
• Dyeing for Your Art: In Episode 1, Joey Richter appears with the wild hair and beard he grew during quarantine in order to play Konk the Ape-Man. In Episode 2, filmed only a week later, that's all gone, trimmed down to just a Porn Stache so he can appear as Ted Spankoffski. In Episode 3, Joey quietly vanished to shave sometime after Dan's appearance in "The Witch in the Web" so that he could appear, clean-shaven and slick-haired, as Uncle Wiley later in the same story, less than an hour later.
  • It's less extreme, but Episode 3 also has Kim Whalen vanishing in between stories to brush out and re-style her hair to switch from playing Becky Barnes to the very '80s Hair-ed Miss Holloway.
• No Budget: And this time we mean NO budget, compared to even the A Very Potter Musical years in college. No sets, no props, no real costumes, and not even a dedicated streaming setup for the actors (as opposed to everyone working with what they had at home for personal videoconferencing). It's very impressive this show got made at all given the COVID-19 Pandemic circumstances it was made in, much less being as good as it is.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Due to Robert Manion's Role-Ending Misdemeanor only a few weeks before Season 2's release, Nick Lang fills in as all of his characters until the season finale, in which Joey Richter takes over the role of Ethan. Also an example of The Other Marty, as Manion's parts had already been filmed.
  • Also in the Season 2 finale, Lauren Lopez fills in as Hannah due to Kendall Nicole having decided to not participate in Season 2 to focus on her schooling.
• Production Posse: As a Spin-Off of the Hatchetfield series, Nightmare Time is produced entirely by veterans from The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals and Black Friday, with the script written by the Lang Brothers and songs by Jeff Blim just like the stage shows, and the cast the entire combined cast of both shows. The Zoom livestreams have live Improv accompaniment by Matt Dahan, who was the bandleader and musical director for the stage shows, and the technical director for the stream is longtime Starkid set designer/producer Corey Lubowich.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Jae Hughes, a nonbinary actor, portrays the nonbinary character Ziggy.
• Real-Life Relative: Now that they've decided to be public about their romantic relationship upon getting engaged, Joey Richter and Lauren Lopez spend a lot of time openly sitting leaning against each other or arm-in-arm on Zoom, much to the excitement of many fans.
  • The same is true of Curt Mega and Kim Whalen, who, unlike Joey and Lauren, show up in Episode 3 playing an in-universe couple (ambiguously), Duke and Miss Holloway, and get a heartwarming moment closing out the episode with their arms around each other's shoulders in the same window.
• Riddle for the Ages: Jeff Blim gave a joking answer during the post-Season 1 Q&A saying that the one secret of Hatchetfield whose answer will never be revealed is why, exactly, the Man in a Hurry is in such a hurry.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: In 2021, Robert Manion made a public confession to having pursued a band member on a previous StarKid show to the point of sexual harassment. Though the issue had been forgiven and resolved, StarKid consulted with human resources and decided to remove him from the team, including reshooting all of his scenes in the upcoming Nightmare Time 2, with the understanding that he could return if he rebuilt some trust with them. Though put forth as a peaceful and temporary development, Manion's subsequent badmouthing of StarKid in his own public life and their refusal to even mention his name would indicate that his return is off the table.
• Schedule Slip: Season 2 of Nightmare Time was originally "tentatively" announced for Spring 2021. After spring came and went with no word, it was finally announced to be streaming, like the previous season, in October. In an ambiguous example, while Season 1 hit YouTube in the following February after its release, Season 2 wasn't released to the public until the following June.
• Shrug of God: Nick Lang has been happy to answer questions about the production in the Q&A period after the show but has been very firm about giving no spoilers or answers about the lore of the show itself to satisfy people's Epileptic Trees speculation.
• Throw It In!: Given the limited time they had to make the pre-recorded musical montage sequences, Nick Lang did very little directing to the actors, and mostly just trusted them to shoot a scene that roughly matched his specifications while singing in sync with the soundtrack. A lot of memorable moments from the montages weren't written in and are Serendipity Writes the Plot.
• Uncredited Role: In addition to never being credited for his narrator role, Nick Lang is also uncredited for the various monsters he portrays in Season 2. The roles he Other Marty'd from Robert Manion are credited normally — except, oddly, for Professor Hidgens.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In a recent YouTube interview Nick Lang was pressed to give spoilers and hints about Hatchetfield lore, and mostly resisted the pressure to do so — but decided to throw fans a bone by describing, at length, a Nightmare Time script idea that was scrapped for fear of pissing off the fans. The story was called "Ethan Doesn't Die", and was meant to troll fans who were earnestly pleading to stop killing off Robert Manion's characters and allow a happy resolution for Lex and Ethan's relationship in an episode for once. It was intended to be a massive Trauma Conga Line for Ethan's fans, where Ethan is, in fact, horribly killed and then resurrected as a soulless undead monster in constant agony a la Pet Sematary, with the ironic meaning of this title being that Ethan is now cursed so that he cannot die. (The real irony is that a lot of fans really liked Nick's plot summary, including Ethan's fans — possibly because they can no longer be taken by cruel surprise by the twist — and some are now asking to see "Ethan Doesn't Die" produced in some form, or at least released in script/storyboard format.)
  • In the same interview series Nick generally revealed that Nightmare Time was slightly different in its original planning stages — originally the idea was for each episode to be a triple feature, aiming for each individual story to be a half-hour in length, but it turned out that episodes had a tendency to run long because of the need to narrate the action rather than being able to portray anything visually.
  • As a result of the above shift from each episode being three half-hour episodes to two one-hour episodes, the original plan for Episode Two was changed — there were supposed to be three separate stories taking place at Paul and Emma's wedding that all came together for the ending. When the middle story of the episode had to be cut for time, all three had to be rewritten so that this middle story was no longer part of the overarching wedding plot. The middle story, according to Nick, will be reworked as a future Nightmare Time story that takes place in a different setting and no longer has any connection to the wedding.
  • In response to people asking why Linda Monroe hasn't had a story yet, Nick Lang revealed Linda is actually one of his favorite characters and the Nightmare Time story he wrote for her is actually the first story he wrote for this series, but he's holding it back because it's one of the stories he hopes to be able to actually fully produce and film after the COVID-19 Pandemic is over; whether that story was ultimately the Season 2 premiere "Honey Queen" or is still upcoming is unclear.
• Word of God:
  • Nick Lang claims that the first two written stories that gave him and Matt the idea for Nightmare Time were in fact intended to be actually filmed, and are still being held back in case they get the opportunity to film after the COVID-19 Pandemic ends, with the intention of putting out a feature-length Anthology movie of Nightmare Time short films. (And all of the current Nightmare Time stories are the ones they came up with that they would've under normal circumstances discarded as unfilmable.)
  • To build up hype for Season Two of Nightmare Time, Nick made several announcements in an interview: he promised the return of Emma (who starred in "Perky's Buds") and Linda (who starred in "Honey Queen"), and the debut of Ziggs, who would as promised be played by a non-binary actor; Jae Hughes portrayed the role in "Perky's Buds". The season premiere and finale, "Honey Queen" and "Yellow Jacket" respectively, started out as ordinary Nightmare Time scripts, but grew in scope to be double-length episodes.
    • He also gave hints about Season Two upon which he did not deliver: that Charlotte would be the protagonist of an episode that explores her strongly hinted Hidden Depths, and that Becky would be brought back into the spotlight and her much-referenced Noodle Incident of having spent two days stuck in a tree would be explained. The latter, as mentioned below, is set for a Season Three episode.
  • On the day Nerdy Prudes Must Die was released, Nick Lang unveiled the current plan for Nightmare Time 3, cautioning that the plans are tentative. It will be the final season of Nightmare Time, Hatchetfield's first explicit Halloween Episode, and all take place in the same timeline as Nightmare Time 2. The stories will be:
    • Bottle Imps: The story originally intended to take place between Forever & Always and Time Bastard, now retooled to no longer involve the wedding. Bill and Charlotte are chosen to test CCRP's newest Magitek product, Bottle Imps, mysterious bottled spirits which can help you find true love.
    • Frankenruth: Ruth and Richie volunteer at the morgue in the hopes of seeing naked people, but are experimented on by the evil Dr. Lazlo^note whose name was first mentioned in "Yellow Jacket", having reattached Hannah's severed finger.
    • Becky Barnes Climbed A Tree: Becky and Tom are engaged and expecting a child, but Becky's mysterious past, involving the infamous Noodle Incident in which she climbed a tree, comes back to haunt her.
    • Devil's Night: Tim attempts to protect Grace from a psycho killer on Halloween night; this is the third installment of the "Nerdy Prudes" trilogy that eventually evolved into the Hatchetfield series, being the Halloween to Abstinence Camp's Friday the 13th and NPMD's A Nightmare on Elm Street.
    • Miss Holloween: A double-length episode. When Duke becomes engaged, a heartbroken Miss Holloway seeks out her mysterious benefactors to make her mortal again, which would leave her unable to defend Hatchetfield from dark forces.
    • Orbweaver: The double-length season finale and direct sequel to Yellow Jacket. Lex and Hannah, on the run after having abandoned Hatchetfield, attract the attention of General MacNamara.