Trivia / Scootertrix the Abridged

• Accidental Downer Ending: Scootertrix itself thankfully avoids this fate, but the characters lampshade the phenomenon when they cross over with another abridged series that did end this way. In "Trixie the Abridged" the cast wind up in a barren wasteland, which is said to be all that's left of My Little Pony: Camaraderie is Supernatural—since that series had an ongoing story arc about Pinkie and Doctor Whooves stopping an alien invasion, then the creators drifted away before that arc was resolved. Then this gets retconned into a somewhat happier ending in Scootertrix: The Movie: the Mane Six from that cancelled series turn up alive and well, with the explanation that Pinkie and Whooves did eventually save Equestria after many failed attempts, and the barren wasteland from "Trixie the Abridged" was just one of the failed timelines.
• Acting for Two: And how! Every member of the Mane Six, and Spike, and Celestia, are voiced by the same guy — which is really impressive given the complexity of the dialogue when several characters are talking. In fact, Getschman is the sole voice credit for the first episode. After that, a few more voice actors are brought on board, including an actual female voice for Luna. The majority of characters are still Getschman's, though.
• Development Gag: One of the airships in episode 25 is named Korra's Matriarch— referencing how Getschman tried to make an abridged series about The Legend of Korra, then repurposed his version of Korra's mom (particularly her odd voice and obsession with spaghetti noodles) as Rarity in this series.
• DVD Commentary: Team Scootertrix also uploaded a series of commentary videos to the YouTube channel: one for every normal episode, most of the special episodes, and The Movie. Jack Getschman appears in all of them; sometimes he's joined by other voice actors, animators, or writers.
• Fandom Nod:
  • After the season 2 finale, it was a common joke in the MLPFIM fandom that copy-and-pasted background ponies in crowd scenes were really changeling infiltrators. Episode 20 confirms this actually happened in Scootertrix continuity.
  • Starlight Glimmer, in the original show, was a cult leader who blamed society's ills on cutie marks and tried to enforce a Harrison Bergeron style of Equality. In response, a lot fans called her a communist as well—some seriously, some in jest. So in Scootertrix, Starlight actually is a communist, with a beef against the institution of monarchy rather than against cutie marks.
  • As a nod to the fanon that Bon Bon is a changeling, Episode 26 has one Ponyville crowd shot with five changelings visible—all of them disguised as Bon Bon.
  • "The Bird in the Hospital" takes the fandom meme of referring to one's favorite pony as "best pony" sans definite article (for example: "Applejack is best pony") and inverts it.
  Applejack: That is worst pony! The worst pony on the planet! That was him! We met him! We met worst pony!
• Old Shame:
  • One of AtomicCatacomb's first contributions to the show was animating Rarity's transformation in episode 14. Several times since, AC has said that he's really embarrassed at how the effect came out, and wishes he could redo it now that he knows more about animation.
  • Getschman and Zimbauer's first attempt at an MLP abridged series was "Bean Quest", which abridged "Swarm of the Century" and copied from Friendship is Witchcraft quite a bit. They took it down a few months later, "for obvious reasons", and only reuploaded it in 2017 as an April Fools' Day joke.
• Orphaned Reference:
  • In Episode 6, Trixie attacks the Ursa Minor with a lightning bolt, then overreacts as if it were far more effective than it actually was. This was actually the final punchline to a much longer sequence in the earlier script, in which Trixie keeps casting that lightning bolt spell, over and over and over—wildly overstating its effectiveness all the while.
  • In Episode 10, Applejack referring to the biological weapon (parasprites) as "gosh-darned tribblets!" is a leftover from Bean Quest, of all things (see Old Shame, above). Bean Quest sets up the joke with the other ponies referring to parasprites as "tribbles" multiple times beforehand. While in Scootertrix, AJ's pun is the first and only reference to tribbles in the whole episode—leaving the joke impenetrable if you aren't already aware of the relevant episode from Star Trek.
• Playing Against Type: Episode 21 features Josh Scorcher as the guest voice for Harper—a changeling who spouts a lot of anti-Celestia rhetoric. In the comments below, a few fans noted how strange it was to hear Josh bashing Celestia, and Josh himself confirmed:
  joshscorcher: Let the records show that it was physically painful for me to hate on best Princess... Still fun to record tho.
• Role Reprise: In Scootertrix the Epilogue: Two Weeks Later, Pinkie Pie is voiced by Andrea Libman, her voice actress from the original series.
• Schedule Slip: Episodes used to be released once a month, and on some occasions once per week. That changed when the series went on hiatus for nearly half a year after episode 18. For the return (in October 2017), the plan was another month with four episodes—but Getschman got sick partway through, and the show had to go on another hiatus. After his recovery, episodes came out once every few months.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: Some of The Editor's mistakes (misspelling "party" as "pary" in the copyright disclaimer, and the initial misspelling of DeviantArt in the end credits) were legitimate, unintentional errors on Team Scootertrix's part. Getschman noticed them after the fact and worked them into later episodes as plot points or punchlines.
• Shrug of God: Getschman employs this a lot during livestreams and commentary on episodes. Aside from keeping tight-lipped about future plot points, he seems to genuinely not know any more than we do about various Noodle Incidents. He doesn't have any idea what Berry Punch was doing. He doesn't remember why he decided to rename Rainbow Dash as The Bird. And if asked to describe the plot of The Snack, he'll just repeat "The snack!" until people stop asking.
• "Take That!" Tit-for-Tat: Episode 9 featured an argument over who the worst MLP Abridged Series director is. When Ultra Fast Pony creator Wacarb comes up in the argument, Celestia responds, "Who the hell is Wacarb?" UFP shot back in "On Your Mark", where the topic of performing tricks on a scooter comes up: "But there are no good scooter tricks!" "Yeah, Scootertrix sucks!" Then Scootertrix episode 24 featured a Lame Comeback: "Ultra Fast? More like Ultra... not Fast." (It's all for laughs, because both of them are fans of the other's work in Real Life.)
• Troubled Production:
  • Episode 23 (the parody of "The Cutie Mark Chronicles") in Getschman's words, "took about 1 year and 2 months to make, cost around $230, and has been by far the most difficult episode to work on." They went through three wildly different drafts of the script, and it took two-and-a-half months to find the guest voice actor for Granny Smith. In the commentary track, Getschman calls the episode "the bane of my existence."
  • Episode 26, the series finale, wasn't as bad as 23, but from Getschman's commentary it still sounds like it was rough going. Team Scootertrix decided to premiere the episode at their panel at Bronycon 2019 (the last Bronycon ever). In spite of having this release date set in stone, the script went through several drastic changes—and the final draft was only finished about a month before the scheduled premiere. They had to begin editing and animating before the script was finished, just to get everything done in time.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Getschman initially planned on a crazy reveal near the end of the series: that Pinkie Pie was a villain from the very beginning. He changed his mind after realizing that Pinkie was acting too nice for a supposedly evil character—specifically noting that her compassion for Rarity in Episode 14 was the last straw. Foreshadowing for that twist (namely the implications that Fourth Wall awareness is exclusively a villainous superpower) appears in earlier episodes and winds up as an Aborted Arc.
  • Queen Chrysalis went through a lot of changes before actually appearing:
    • Episode 20 was originally supposed to have Chrysalis make her on-screen debut in the final scene. The Chrysalis from the early draft was also more of a serious, straightforward villain than the one we eventually got.
    • The next idea was to write Chrysalis like a character from Totally Legit Recap and bring in DWK to voice her. This was shelved when DWK declined the invitation.
    • They considered making her a Legacy Character: every time Queen Chrysalis dies, her second-in-command assumes the Queen Chrysalis identity. Of course, the new Chrysalis always makes it her first goal to avenge her predecessor, so it's impossible to defeat Chrysalis by killing her.
    • The last idea was making Chrysalis overtly a Yandere in love with Celestia. Bits of this concept made it into the final version of the episode, but there it's ambiguous whether she's actually in love with Celestia, or just feigning it to throw her off-balance.
  • The "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis" script had a few scenes with Twilight and Flash Sentry that had to be cut for time. Twilight and (pony) Flash would have met in the human world, gone to lunch together, and bonded over their shared experience with unwanted rivals.
  • Team Scootertrix considered giving Kevin Bacon a significantly bigger role in The Movie. At one point, they planned for him to show up for Trixie and the Wonderbolts while they're trapped beyond the Fourth—he would have given a Rousing Speech and actually appeared on-screen for the first time. At another point, they briefly entertained the idea of Kevin Bacon defeating Discord all by himself.
  • The early plan for the final episode was for Princess Celestia to die fighting Chrysalis in the opening act. To save her, Pinkie Pie would exploit a flashback to time travel back to the fight, then Rarity would use her shapeshifting to take Celestia's place and fake her death.
• Write Who You Know: Gilda was based on Erich Zimbauer's dad, who once walked in on Zimbauer and Getschman watching the season 2 premier, and had a lot of questions about how the heck a world of talking horses even worked.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: In the commentary tracks, Getschman says that for the first two episodes, he didn't think Scootertrix would become a full series, so at the time he didn't plan anything beyond the specific episode he was working on. It wasn't until episode 3 or 4 that he started planning long-term.

• Had a real-life case of Strange Minds Think Alike with Ultra Fast Pony.
  • "UFP 80: On Your Mark" (published 28 April, 2016):
  Apple Bloom: I don't know. You're always riding a scooter around. Show her some of your tricks!
  Scootaloo: <But there aren't any good scooter tricks!>
  Sweetie Belle: Yeah, Apple Bloom, scooter tricks sucks!
  • Scootertrix "Episode 18" (published 30 April, 2016):
  [Scootaloo performs a cool stunt on her scooter.]
  Apple Bloom: Whoa! Those are some insane... scooter tricks!

• Other works: Jack Getschman created other videos before working with Erich Zimbauer on Scootertrix:
  • In 2008 he teamed up with Alex Shelton and won the "Month of the Military Child" contest with a stop motion animation piece entitled "Let's Talk".
  • He received a film award from the "We Are The Frontier" film competition in 2015. The theme was "rewind" and Jack was awarded top film from Santa Fe University of Art and Design for his work, "The Smallest Thing".
  • He has also created other characters including "Bart Jones" (a highschool student who externalizes his inner monologue and seems surprised others can hear him), and has written and directed other stop motion animation pieces (12 Days of Christmas) as well as live action (Cassie's Choice).