Trivia / The Cleveland Show

• Acting for Two:
  • Mike Henry voices Cleveland and Rallo, and this occurs whenever they interact with each other.
  • Seth MacFarlane voiced Tim the Bear and Dr. Fist until Jess Harnell replaced him in the former, and Tom Kenny and Bryan Cranston replaced his role as the latter.
• The Cast Showoff: Cleveland Jr. is an amazingly gifted singer for his age, and the show occasionally stops just to give Kevin Michael Richardson a chance to demonstrate his higher vocal range. His falsetto cover of "This Woman's Work" by Kate Bush is particularly impressive.
• Channel Hop: While the show aired on Fox its entire run, the reruns for the show have bounced all over the place.
  • Reruns originally aired on Turner networks Adult Swim (2012–18) and TBS (2013–18)
  • Viacom picked up the rights to the series in 2018 and aired the series on Comedy Central (2018–22), BET (2020–21) and VH1 (2020)
  • Disney picked up the rights to the series in 2021 and began airing the series on FXX in September 2021.
• Creator's Pest: Seth MacFarlane stopped voicing Tim the Bear halfway into season three because he found the character annoying and unfunny.
• The Danza: Arianna Huffington as Arianna the Bear.
• Descended Creator:
  • Co-creator Mike Henry voices Cleveland, just like on Family Guy .
  • For most of the series, Seth MacFarlane voiced Tim the Bear and Dr. Fist in addition to his regular Family Guy characters.
• Edited for Syndication: The show’s airings on Comedy Central, VH1, and BET air the broadcast syndication version of the series (the one shown on TV stations) which has the series' intro shortnened down to 14 seconds, with the theme song cutting straight to the final line (“This is The Cleveland Show!”) after the verse “Right back in my hometown, with my new family”, along with many lines being cut for time and content. The full theme song still occasionally plays on those networks, but only if a movie shown right before it runs short and the network airing the show needs something to fill up the empty gap in its scheduling.
• The Other Darrin:
  • During the first 13 episodes, Roberta was played by Nia Long. Then, from episode 14, "The Curious Case of Jr. Working at The Stool" to the last episode ("Wheel! Of! Family!"), Roberta is played by Reagan Gomez-Preston (who played the teenage daughter, Zaria, on the WB sitcom The Parent 'Hood).
  • Jess Harnell replaced Seth MacFarlane as Tim The Bear late in the third season. Tim had been alternating between both actors until then (Harnell for cameos, MacFarlane for major appearances), since MacFarlane continually had difficulty in making Tim funny. This was lampshaded in the Family Guy episode "He's Bla-ack!" when Quagmire (also voiced by MacFarlane) comments on this.
  Quagmire: The talking bear was so bad, Seth MacFarlane stopped voicing him after season two!
  Cleveland: It's hard to make a talking bear funny.
  Cleveland: (laughs) But it sure worked out great in movie form!
  • Dr. Fist was voiced by three people: Seth MacFarlane, Tom Kenny, and Bryan Cranston. Tom Kenny stepped in for one episode when MacFarlane was busy with the movie, Ted before Bryan Cranston took over starting with "Flush of Genius".
• Out of Order: Every single season premiere, (with the exception for Season 1) had their intended season openers, pushed up an episode, and squandered at the season's second episode.
  • "Cleveland Live!" was clearly meant to be the Season 2 opener, but for whatever reason, "Harder, Better, Faster, Browner" came before it. ^note According to the DVD commentary on the episode, they "kicked the episode back because 'the Kanye episode' came in so strong."
  • "The Hurricane!" was the intended Season 3 premiere, as part of the Seth MacFarlane's Night of the Hurricane, but because of real life events, involving a massive tornado outbreak, that affected 27 different states, all three hurricane episodes from their shows were pulled from the schedule, and pushed up to their respective seasons' second episodes.
  • "Menace II: Secret Society" was the intended first episode of Season 4, but because FOX was doing their Halloween programming early that year, the season's second episode, "Escape From Goochland" became the first episode to air, and the real premier was pushed ahead.
  • "A General Thanksgiving Episode" was originally supposed to air in season 3(and the episode originally was called "Holt: Father Figure, George Michael: Gay")but it inexplicably got pushed back to season 4 shortly before it was supposed to air for unknown reasons, resulting in season 4 having two Thanksgiving-themed episodes.
• Renewed Before Premiere: The show was renewed for another season before it's premiere and then it was renewed for a third season before the first was even done airing.
• Schedule Slip: The series was set to premiere in spring 2009, but was pushed to fall 2009 due to Fox's already packed spring schedule with The Simpsons, Family Guy and American Dad!, the premiere of Sit Down, Shut Up and the final episodes of King of the Hill.
• What Could Have Been:
  • A promo released prior to the show airing had different designs for the family◊. Donna's hair was smaller, Rallo had a buzzcut instead of an afro, and Roberta's clothes were more revealing (she had a short skirt and a midriff-baring top).
  • The theme song originally ended with, "And so, I found a place/Where everyone will know/My happy black guy face/This is The Cleveland Show," but for whatever reason, "My happy black guy face" was changed to "My happy mustached face." The closed captions had the original line when the show first came on, but have since used the new version.
  • Originally, Cleveland was supposed to live next door to a British family, but the writers couldn't come up with any good jokes (except for the usual British stereotypes), so they scrapped the British family and created Holt.
• Working Title: While in development, the series was originally simply titled "Cleveland".

---