Trivia / Skylanders

• Acclaimed Flop:
  • Despite Superchargers receiving a generally positive response from both critics and fans, the game did not sell as well as Activision had hoped.
  • Similarly, Imaginators performed well with the critics but sold below expectations ^note an early NPD report stated the game had only sold 66,000 retail units in the US, a 41% decline from ‘’Superchargers’’, which led to Activision putting the franchise on hiatus in 2016.
• Actor Allusion: Kaos creating a guacamole monster in Imaginators brings to mind Richard Steven Horvitz's role as Dr. Chipotle Jr. and Sr. from El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera.
  • Horvitz’s role as Kaos is quite reminiscent of his performance as a certain antagonistic, green alien.
• Descended Creator:
  • Alex Ness was one of the writers for the Toys For Bob-developed games, and he voiced Drobot, Lightning Rod, Double Trouble, Chompy Mage, Tae Kwon Crow, Blaster-Tron, Brawlrus, Broccoli Guy, Chill Bill, Noodles and Drill-X.
  • Dan Neil, who worked in the audio department, voiced Thumpback.
• Dueling Games: To Disney Infinity, amiibo, and LEGO Dimensions, though Skylanders came first. Paradoxically, Bowser and Donkey Kong Skylanders figures are designed to double as amiibo. Disney eventually dropped out of the duel despite leading at one point, leading to the demise of the rest of the genre- first Skylanders, then Dimensions.
• Dummied Out: Battlecast has unreleased but finished cards and characters which could be discovered with exploits, but never went as far as having more than a few bug fix updates.
• Fake Scot: Duff the Frost Elf from Swap Force speaks with a Scottish accent like the other Frost Elves, but is voiced by American Carlos Alazraqui.
• Follow the Leader:
  • Disney Infinity, featuring characters from Disney and its Pixar and Marvel Comics subsidiaries, follows a Skylanders-like format of physical figurines linked to in-game characters as well as character-buffing or item-unlocking "Power Discs", though with more of a focus on user-generated Wide-Open Sandbox creation.
  • Nintendo's line of amiibo figurines and cards also intends to find similar success, though instead of having the products all tied to a single game, they have effects only on specific Wii U and Nintendo 3DS games (primarily consisting of unlocking new optional features for those games), determined on a per-product basis.
  • Bandai Namco Entertainment's Japan-only Kamen Rider SummonRide, allowing players to use figurines of Kamen Riders from 2000's Kamen Rider Kuuga to 2014's Kamen Rider Drive as playable characters and Ride Chips (similar to Infinity's Power Discs) for form changes and NPC ally summoning. Unlike the above two and like Skylanders itself, it has an explicit focus on dungeon crawling.
  • Warner Bros.'s LEGO Dimensions combines the concept with a pre-existing toy brand: LEGO. The game's physical figurines are actual LEGO sets.
  • This genre of games is now officially known as "Toys To Life", named after Skylanders' initial description of its gameplay.
• He Also Did: Toys for Bob... Where do we know these guys from?
• Make-A-Wish Contribution: This interview reveals the Gecko Chorus in Tree Rex's Heroic Challenge in Giants were voiced by a girl from the Make-a-Wish Foundation who wanted to learn about game creation. Octavius from The Oracle was also co-designed by her.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": Since most of Spyro games don't have releases in Japan due to the franchise's unpopularity there, Dark Spyro and Cynder debuted in Japan thought this series.
• The Merch: In full force through all the first six games. Excluding the toys themselves, tie-ins include children's books, comics, costumes and a Mega Bloks line of sets.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Jet-Vac has a different voice actor in Europe.
  • Italian commercials and trailer often have different voices for some characters: as an example, Claudio Moneta did Terrafin and Trigger Happy in commercials for the first game and Pop Fizz in the Giants trailer, but never voiced anyone in the games until Trap Team, where he voiced Brawl & Chain and Wolfgang. At the same time, Marco Balzarotti (Pop Fizz's actual voice) did Tree Rex and Wash Buckler in commercials, but the latter is voiced ingame by Pietro Ubaldi, who also took the role of Eruptor in commercials but not in games, and both him and Dario Oppido voiced Snap Shot respectively in the trailer and commercials for Trap Team... a role Marco Balzarotti took in the actual game.
    • Also in the Italian dub, Flynn and Slam Bam were voiced respectively by Riccardo Lombardo and Luigi Rosa in Spyro's Adventure but were replaced respectively by Stefano Albertini and Marco Balzarotti from Giants onwards.
• The Other Marty: Tree Rex is voiced by Tom Kenny in the initial Giants trailer and the "Obey" commercial and is voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson in the games and the "Easter Surprise" commercial.
• Refitted for Sequel: Prototypes of Krypt King and Chopper were designed for Giants, but were scrapped. Those ideas were later reused for an Undead Trap Master and a Tech Core respectively in Trap Team.
• Uncredited Role: The credits don't tell who voices who, but it is revealed later via social media by either the developers or the voice actors. But the one Skylander who has never had a confirmation on who voices him is Chain Reaction. Many rumors say that it's Charlie Adler, but there's no official source from the developers or even Adler himself.
• Vaporware: Half of Battlegrounds was this for a while. It had a level select for four worlds - but only two could be played, and nearly a year after its release an update to add the other two had not yet materialized. It's been updated and has been completed now, though.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Before the concept of Skylanders, and before its predecessor Spyro's Kingdom, Toys For Bob looked into different early concepts for the Spyro series after The Legend of Spyro trilogy ended. These ideas included a "realistic, gritty" Spyro, a tiny Spyro that ran around the real world on book selves, and an origami Spyro that can take shape. Eventually the idea of Spyro's Kingdom was came into light, with Spyro being the full-grown king of said kingdom and a non-playable character who you would go to for quests, and he'd tell you where to go and help you on your adventures. More info is here.
  • An MMORPG version of Spyro's Kingdom based on The Legend of Spyro was proposed by Helios Interactive, but was rejected.
  • Krypt King was originally conceived as the first Giant design, and was supposed to be a humongous version of Chop Chop, complete with shield. His name was even, during concepting, "Chop Chop Daddy". While he was eventually replaced with Eye Brawl, everyone at Toys For Bob liked him so much he was brought back, with a few aesthetic tweaks, as a Trap Master. Behold, his original◊ concept art◊.
  • Similar to Krypt King, Chopper was first created as a concept for a Giant, and would've been a huge T-Rex with guns and armor strapped to him (very much in the vein◊ of Wexter from Axe Cop). Unfortunately, they ran into problems both packaging him and fitting him on a portal with another Skylander, since T-Rexes are horizontal rather than vertical creatures, and he got replaced with Bouncer. Once again, I-Wei loved the idea so much that he revived it for Trap Team.
  • Do you remember that wizard from the Kingdom of Ice Adventure Pack in Spyro's Adventure and Giants? Believe it or not, he's actually the original concept for Double Trouble.
  • Arbo, the absent minded ent, was originally a full-fledged Skylander. He got as far as the toy stage◊ before being relegated to his current supporting role.
  • Splat was originally planned as a Dark Skylander who used her staff to create blobs of oil. She was changed into an Art Attacker when play-testers noticed that her staff resembled a paintbrush.
  • Smash Hit was originally a koala-like Life Skylander whose different weapons in development included a brush cutter, a chainsaw, a giant spiked wheel, and an ad-hoc flail made of a vine and two smaller wheels. He was also at one point going to be a female ceratopsian of the Earth element.
  • Stormblade was originally a Magic element peacock. She was changed because one of the playtesters, a little girl, told Vicarious Visions that "girl peacocks aren't colorful, they are actually brown."
  • Golden Queen's origins lie as far back as Spyro's Adventure, as a concept for the Weapons Master being a Living Statue. The team was quite fond of the concept and tried to revive it for Giants, with some of their proposed designs serving as the basis for what would become the Arkeyan Duelists, albeit as a much more svelte, female golem.
  • Related to the above, the Sentinel Sensei Barbella is actually based on yet more early concepts for the Golden Queen from Giants.
  • In the original concept for the Spell Punk Library from Superchargers, the Skylanders were originally supposed to be able to shift between Present and Past versions of the library, as well as interact with friendly Spell Punks who ran the facility. In fact, the original idea was that the Library as it exists now is the last remaining piece of a sprawling city, which the player could explore by shifting into the past, perhaps hinting that the Spell Punks as we know them now are the desperate survivors of the Darkness ravaging their society or were twisted by it to serve it.
  • Activision planned to update Battlecast by releasing more content and cards later on but nothing ever came of this. The fact that the dev team behind the game was fired later on suggests that the remaining content would never be released.
  • The health bar in the first game was originally blue instead of green.
  • Early trailers for Spyro's Adventure show several unused areas. One resembles Tech Gate from Giants.
  • The Necropolis was originally just named "Battle Island". It's also implied that it was unlocked by using characters as it's also referred to with "Cynder's Expansion".
  • Treetop Terrace was originally "Tree Adventure".
  • Camo was originally a cuter looking design with a long snout. He was known as "Sun Dragon" in that state. You can actually see him in the Beginnings Director’s Cut trailer, though oddly enough the final Camo also appears in it.
  • Spyro's opening animation in a 2011 trailer is simpler. It shows him being activated, looking around, then running off.
  • Prism Break originally had red and purple crystals.
  • Prototype figures seen in a 2011 trailer bare differences from the finalized versions. Most are colour differences such as Spyro's wings and horns being golden, not bronze.
  • Bowser was originally intended to turn into Giga Bowser for his special in Superchargers, but Nintendo insisted on the developers to do something different.
  • Fox McCloud was proposed as a Nintendo exclusive character for Superchargers, but Nintendo shot the idea down out of fear of it conflicting with the release of Star Fox Zero. Kirby and Princess Peach (who would have become a full on Warrior Princess had she been picked) were also in consideration, but HAL Labs didn't sign on the dotted line for Kirby and Nintendo didn't like the proposed idea of Peach using a sword, saying it went against her personality.
  • According to software engineer Robert Leyland, a second year of Imaginators Content was planned that would’ve included adding the ability to create quadruped characters.
  • During the Spyro's Kingdom phase of the first game's development, placing a character on the portal for the very first time would play a "mini-story" about that character.
  • There exists a figure of Cynder that was meant to be the re-pose undead Skylander in Trap Team, being a series 4 Skylander alongside Gill Grunt. This was scrapped alongside the tech and earth reposes for unknown reasons.
  • The Player Versus Player arena Slime Pipe in Giants was originally named "Slippery Tunnel". The arena's theme is still named that in the official soundtrack..
  • Ember was supposed to get a Power Blue variant in ''Imaginators'' like Power Blue Splat and Power Blue Double Dare Trigger Happy and their vehicles in Superchargers but it got cancelled.
  • The infamous Heartbreaker Buckshot was intended for a Valentine’s Day release. He even had a page on the now-defunct website. A trailer was even made for him, but the day came and went without him. According to a QA manager, he went unreleased because he looked “too evil” and to this day the only remnants of him that have surfaced are prototype figures and his mostly unusable files.
  • Hunter from the Spyro series was considered to be a Skylander around the time development of Giants, but after mixed reception of Spyro's design, Toys for Bob didn't want to risk more backlash and the idea was dropped.

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