Trivia / Songs of War

• Acting for Two:
  • Carl G. Brooks voices Thalleous and his brother Galleous.
  • Joe Goffeney voices both Hawken and the Tidesinger.
  • In Episode 5, both Lucan and the Necromancer are voiced by Stephen J. Pena.
• Creator's Favorite:
  • The scene of Sendaria burning at the end of Episode 5 is among David's favourites.
  • David's favourite episode thumbnail is Episode 6, due to the contrasts of colours presented.
  • The rivalry between the Netherans and the Enderknights is this one of David's favourite aspects of the series.
  • Ataraxia is David's favourite location in Ardonia, partly because it's a floating city.
  • Among Song sounds, the one for Aggro-blast, the one used by the Deathsinger, is a favourite of both David and Dan (who runs AfterInfinity who design the sounds for the series).
  • Kiyoshi is one of David's favorite characters.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Season 1 Episode 4 is one to David, one of the lead writers, the director and animator of the series.
• Deleted Scene: There was originally going to be a scene in Episode 1 of Hawken throwing a snowball at Tygren before bragging that Thalleous can take on all of the Voltaris in the area, followed by a worried look from Thalleous and an angry response from Tygren, before he engaged in battle with Thalleous.
• Developer's Foresight: The staff for the series have confirmed that anyone cast for the first season, has voiced all of their lines for future seasons.
• Development Gag:
  • David had created several thumbnails for Episode 1, one of which replaced a previous thumbnail for the trailer (with that thumbnail being used for the Season 1 full movie), another used for the post-hiatus mid-season recap, and others used for music videos with scenes from the series.
  • Xaria was named after one of the volunteer builders who helped build Felora, the kingdom where Xaria and the Necromancers are based.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Since the series was being planned for years, Black Plasma Studios tested material that they would use for the series on other animations first.
  • Many of the custom weapons designed for the series were trialled in Animation Life
  • The Necromancers were first seen in Skywars.
  • An Enderknight was first seen in The Book of Enchantment. An Ender Dragon was also featured in that animation, before its wings were redesigned for Songs of War.
  • Prototype designs for the Songs were first cameoed in the aforementioned Animation Life.
• Fandom Life Cycle: Stage 2. The series has a small yet very dedicated fanbase with several hundreds of thousands of fans, and a fairly sizable amount of discussion and fanart circulating around, including this very wiki's main page for it.
• Inspiration for the Work: Various works were a huge inspiration on the early development of the series
  • Some early inspiration came from an Ecco the Dolphin fanfiction, such the name Tidesinger. The ideas simply kept on coming from there.
  • Many of the world-building elements for the series, as well as Niika's fighting style, were directly inspired by Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which the directors are huge fans of.
  • Some of the castle builds, such as Etherea and Hyperia, were inspired by that of the Fallen Kingdom series shown by CaptainSparklez.
• New Work, Recycled Graphics: The scythe-spinning and throwing animations from the aforementioned Animation Life, are used for Grim's Enchanted Scythe during his fight scenes.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: Many custom weapons for the series were suggested and submitted by the community, since David was beginning to run out of ideas of what to create. These included the swords used by both Thalleous, and the Deathsinger (Ingressus Voltaris).
• Playing Against Type: Jackson Trent, who voices Igneous, previously voiced the antagonist Firelight in one of David's old Halo Machinimas. It was stated in the Behind-the-scenes for Episode 7 that they did initially try to get him to voice one of the Voltaris clan, but his voice for Igneous worked much better.
• Rule of Cool: David said that there wasn't any real reason to have enchantments in the series other than that they looked cool.
• Shoutout: There are numerous to Black Plasma Studios' own work: The Necromancer Group are from Skywars (as is Abbigail's prototype design at 5:17), characters Derp and Yee from other animations are briefly shown in the background, the Unyielding Legion (who were a group they founded back in their Creator/Machinima days), being a group of mercenaries, and in Episode 4, there's a brief moment where Skyfall's Minecraft avatar is shown with a pet bat, just like Valley of Darkness.
  • Jalkar's full name, Jalkar Bowmani, is a direct reference to Jackar Bowmani from the Star Wars universe.
  • Possibly by coincidence, but Sulliman shares an almost identical name with Suleiman from the Jack Ryan series.
  • Tabora Crags, one of the main settings for Episodes 6 and 7, is stated to get its name from the planet from Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando.
  • The name Ataraxia comes from the mission of the same name in Halo 3.
  • Prote-clone takes inspiration from Blake's shadow semblance.
  • Mobili-burst is similar to the Bionic Charge Ability from Mass Effect.
  • Aggro-blast was directly inspired by the Scatter Shot from Jak and Daxter.
• Stillborn Franchise: The 3-season script was not animated beyond the first season after the creator cancelled the series in June 2020 for financial and personal reasons. The script was, however, released to the public.
• Throw It In!: Many of Igneous' quieter lines were improvised by his voice actor Jackson Trent.
• Troubled Production: The series had to go through several drafts before it could be finished. Most of the real work that we see in the series was done in early 2019.
  • The sets for the series were hand built in Minecraft and many sets, including Oakendale, were completely taken down and rebuilt to improve them. The results speak for themselves.
  • The script for the series took around a year and a half to write, mostly to make sure that the story arcs and character archetypes wouldn't seem too similar to each other.
• What Could Have Been: You can find out what might have been planned in the behind the scenes videos.
  • Hawken’s design was initially going to look similar to The Doctor.
  • Grim’s species was originally meant to be human, however, they decided to leave that aspect ambiguous because of the dialogue that they had in mind for him.
  • Many of Lucan's and Abbigail's scenes in Episode 3, were originally meant to be in Episode 2. They ended up in Episode 3 so Episode 2 wouldn't feel bloated.
  • Thalleous' Mobili-flash ability was originally going to show trails of where he teleported from, looking like the particle effects in Minecraft.
  • The end of Episode 8 with the Guardians was initially meant to be at the start of Episode 9. Putting it in Episode 8 served as a better Cliffhanger.
  • Jalkar was originally going to have his head cut off by Abbigail. However, the scene was too comical and the only way it was going to be taken seriously was if there was actual gore. It was changed to Abbigail shooting Jalkar instead.
  • The city of Ataraxia was originally meant to be above the clouds of Ardonia, however, this made it very hard for rendering to take place, so it was situated in an enormous valley instead.
  • The staff of Achillean Nestoris, the Tidesinger, was going to be much more different than the one we see in the series. The prototype staff was instead given to Zulius Kaltaris, and many of the Ardoni guards.
  • Originally, some of the lines for Galadar/Hadion were to be given to a member of the Sendaris clan, so that each clan in Episode 9 would be given an opportunity to voice their opinion, though this was due to the lack of lines for Galadar/Hadion.
• Word of God:
  • The creators have stated that the Voltaris weren't completely gone by the end of the Great War, and that there were many skirmishes and raids by the scattered members of the Voltaris. Only Thalleous had decided to pursue them until the start of the series.
  • It's confirmed that Hawken did indeed try to dodge Tygren's attack, however he was obviously outmatched by Tygren and killed.
  • David says that the Nestoris clan have a bit more prestige than the other clans, and are seen as the de facto leaders of the Ardoni. This was the reason why they were tasked with guarding the Aggressium Prime Song, the most powerful of them all.
  • Thalleous is confirmed to be right-handed, and is stated to only use his left hand out of necessity.
• Write What You Know: Sam, Abbigail's canine companion, has mannerisms similar to David's (one of the lead writers of the series) own dog Jill used to do.