Trivia / TOME

Listed Trivia:

Trivia for the original TTA

• Acting for Two: Happens a few times due to the limited cast, most notably with Kirbopher and Zetto (who are not the same person here like in the reboot).
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: For a very long time, the only way to see any of the episodes that went missing was to hope someone had posted the original .swf files online somewhere, or else had recorded a screencap of them. In preparation for the end of Flash, however, Niosi uploaded all of the original .swf files (with some quality-of-life changes) onto a public-access Google Drive, just in case the Newgrounds versions of the original material became unviewable as a result. In 2023, the entire series was uploaded to Niosi's YouTube channel.
• Missing Episode: Newgrounds viewers would never see The Movie (leading to confusion when the season 3 finale references it), the Anime Openings, or other supplemental material.^note These were originally uploaded to and meant to be viewed exclusively on Fireball20xl, which has long since been shut down.
• Promoted Fanboy: There was at one point a call for fans of the series to submit avatars for use as "extras". Most of the Netkings also seem to be Fanboys or Fangirls.
• What Could Have Been: There was supposed to be a season 4 of TTA, but it was unceremoniously cancelled after Niosi entered college. A good portion of the fanbase was definitely not pleased with this outcome.
• Write Who You Know: Most of the characters in TTA and TOME are originally based on members of the TVTome forums. Kirbopher15 and Zetto are both based on (different aspects of) Niosi himself, Alpha is based on his best friend Mike Luckas (Ultimate Creature II), and Ruri and Flamegirl were based on their respective girlfriends at the time.

Trivia for the Continuity Reboot, TOME

• Acting for Two: A spoiler-heavy and plot relevant example. Kirbopher and Zetto are both played by Chris Niosi, where the two are actually two game avatars being played by the same person. Zetto was credited under an alias (Tony A. Campbell) in episodes 05, 08, and 09 to mask the twist.
• Actor-Shared Background: The characters in TTA and TOME are all based on users from, the now defunct, TV Tome forums to an extent. Some elements of the actors who played the characters in TOME incorporate their real-life background into them as well.
  • Martin Billany was born in Knutsford, which is where Nylocke's player resides.
  • Asterob's hat, glasses, and his tendency to use mannerisms portraying him as an apologetic brit have been said by Niosi to be a reference to the actor who plays him, MasakoX.
  • Ravenfreak's voice actor is... well, a voice actor (Lucien Dodge to be precise).
  • Apparently Michele Knotz is just as goofy and lighthearted as Kindarspirit when she's out of character.
• The Cast Showoff: Ravenfreak is a voice actor in-show, which provides an in-story reason for Lucien Dodge to perform a very impressive imitation of Swift's "Alpha" voice.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: Unlike most of the rest of the cast, Jafari is not a voice actor by trade, though he was chosen because of the fake New York accent he sometimes puts on in JonTron videos.
• Contest Winner Cameo: Auctioned on Ebay. These are sold to fans to promote the show in some of the episodes, The winners send Niosi their own character designs which he TOME-ifies into something that fits the show. They then get inserted into certain scenes to appear near some of the recurring characters. A couple cameos even have brief speaking lines.
• Cross-Regional Voice Acting: Not surprising given how it's a web series. With most of the voices recorded in America, and others in Canada (both Mack and Andrew Francis) and Britain (Swift and Billany).
• The Danza: Like his creator, the character Kirbopher's username is Kirbopher, and his real name was speculated to be Christopher. This was later deconfirmed in the A2Z movie, where the player's real name was Zeke.
• DVD Commentary: All of the Episodes have creator commentaries, which were originally posted to Soundcloud before being synched with the Episodes themselves and uploaded separately to Blip and YouTube. They all feature Chris Niosi himself, and often feature other members of the cast and crew.
• Fake American: Blake Swift is from Lancashire, England, but plays the American Alpha. However, his accent is very convincing.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: Mack gets to write his own dialogue for Rockoon. He even got to write a whole short starring Rockoon, titled Rockoon's Modern Strife.
• Non-Singing Voice: Anna Kingsley, Flamegirl's voice actress, wasn't confident that her singing was strong enough to do the end credits song "Starlight Speedway" justice, and referred Niosi to her friend Leila Judeh who could match her Flamegirl voice for the song. Kingsley herself described Judeh as sounding "just like me but with a better singing voice".
• The Other Darrin: In Hard Reset, Archy is voiced by Jan Aponte instead of Micah Solusod.
• Real-Life Relative: Chris Niosi and Alison Fanelli (who voices Splat) are brother and sister.
• Role Reprise: Years after the original series ended and they were replaced with different actors for the game adaptation, Anna Kingsley, Kyle Hebert, and Imogen Fox returned to voice Flamegirl, Webmaster, and Kizuna in newly recorded dialogue sequences for the three Compilation Movies released in 2023. Deven Mack similarly reprised for a brand-new short, Hard Reset, that was released in 2023.
• Throw It In!: Nylocke interrupting his monologue about the Gemini Tournament in "Awaken the Beast" to confirm with GC that it involves pairs was actually Billany checking his line with Niosi as he was running through it, staying in character - Niosi enjoyed his reading so much that he put it into the finished episode.
• What Could Have Been:
  • A good amount of the casting was switched around before the project actually began. Although Nylocke was always going to be English in the remake^note He was an American in the original, though an Occidental Otaku, both Blake Swift and Casey Mongillo were considered for the part (presumably, Swift would have used his natural English accent rather than the Fake American one he ultimately used for Alpha). Martin Billany was actually considered for the role of Thorment, but Niosi decided to give him the role of Nylocke due to fitting the character so well (the role of Thorment eventually went to Harry Partridge). Jessi Nowack, who played Hyprelynx, was the first runner-up for the role of Flamegirl, and apparently only narrowly lost the part to Anna Kingsley. Other contenders for Flamegirl were Apphia Yu and Kira Buckland, both of whom got supporting parts later in the series as Whyti and Foreva. Finally, Neomutant was going to be played by Hans van Harken, but had to be replaced by Chris Guerrero at the last second because Harken became unavailable for the role.
  • TOME Season 2 was going to be a movie at some point, which would have began with the events of Episode 00 and led into the major events of season 2, included a mysterious new character who apparantly would have taken up Neomutant's role, and cut out the challenge of the Netkings. Chris Niosi decided not to go with the movie idea because it would have been too much of a balence between wrapping up TOME's story for viewers of season 1 and trying to appeal to new viewers who hadn't seen TOME and were only watching the movie, in addition to the fact that he wanted to have time to include the Challenge of the Netkings so as to go with the story idea he had in mind since the beginning. There was also a period of time in which the entire series was envisioned as a video game, an idea which came to pass in another continuity reboot after the project was over.
  • Concept Art reveals that Anidoug and Torben (who would have been renamed Torchure) were supposed to get updated counterparts in TOME like most important TTA characters, but were cut out because the episode they were going to appear in was scrapped. This concept art also reveals that Thorment would have had a more important role in this episode as Tormentros, and that Motherboard would have returned instead of SOFDTI (though still apparently in the dual identity of Gamecrazed). Rubirules also would have had a different final form called Graphix, which was cut because Rubirules's overall design had been overhauled and the form wouldn't work with his new appearance. Finally, some aspects of the world of TOME itself were reworked (the Sun and Moon concept replaced an earlier idea where Zetto's Netking room was the entrance to the hacker base, similarly to TTA).
  • Chris Niosi has revealed that Ruri was replaced by Kizuna late in development, after episodes 1 through 7 had already been completed. This was done because her entire disposition and personality were altered, and having Ruri as a cold and calculating hacker leader with a grudge against SOFDTI didn't seem to fit her.
• Write What You Know: According to Chris Niosi, the influence on using a pseudonym "Tony A. Campbell" for Zetto's credit was not only to confuse the audience on the characters' actor, but also based on an true experience from when he was a teenager watching MegaMan NT Warrior (2002) when it aired on Kids' WB! at the time. Due to Kids' WB's split-screen template causing the footage of the anime's credit sequence to be scrunched, Niosi misinterpreted the name of actor Tony Alcanter (who voiced Beast/Savage Man in the dub) as "Tony A. Campbell". Years later, after explaining the story to Scott McNeil (who voiced Gutsman in the dub), he suggested to use the name as a pseudonym for himself. This not only led to Niosi use the pseudonym for his early anime works but also played perfect for crediting Zetto in his first few appearances to fool viewers into thinking he's voiced by a separate actor.

Trivia for the TOME RPG

• Creator Backlash: Martin Billany admitted on August 9, 2023 that he refused to reprise his role as Nylocke for the final game due to wishing to disassociate himself from projects where Blake Swift also voiced in for personal reasons between them (which soon turned out to involve a vicious long-running smear campaign by Blake in an attempt to destroy Martin's reputation over the latter privately cutting ties with the former, by attempting to falsely associate Martin with multiple abusive figures) and because he was uncomfortable working with Niosi again (partly due to Niosi being exposed as an abuser). This resulted not only led the entire main cast getting recasted but it led Billany to retiring from professional voice acting. He only agreed to voice Sir Maximore in hopes of the original cast returning in some capacity of the game, which did not happen.
• The Other Darrin: Although the five main characters (and Rockoon) reprised their roles from the 2011 webseries for the demo, it was announced on June 15th, 2021 that they will be recast for the final release of the game due to both expressing the game being a separate continuity from the series and because of the aforementioned events above.

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