Trivia / The Familiar of Zero

• Amateur Cast: The English dub of Season 1 produced by Bang Zoom! Entertainment, and outsourced to Geneon Entertainment, was non-union and produced around the time of the 2008 recession.^note Coincidentally coinciding with Geneon's last days The string shoe budget guaranteed that they couldn't afford to hire any big names or even some lesser big names (at the time) to play the characters, even with the veteran Tony Oliver directing and playing some bit parts here and there. To put it in perspective, the most experienced in the cast with dubbing, leading lady Cristina Vee herself, had only played bit parts since 2004; going on three years at the time. Some of the cast didn't even have acting, let alone voiceover or dubbing, as their main profession. Indeed, it was later clarified that most of the actors were students in Bang Zoom's voiceover workshops at the time, and were not paid or credited for their work. It was considered so shady and desperate, that the crew would hide their white-boards with the recording schedules on them whenever professional voice actors came in to record other projects, and they haven't attempted this since.
• Colbert Bump: The series saw a huge upswing in popularity on the SpaceBattles.com Creative Writing board after The Hill of Swords showed up on the Fanfiction Recommendations thread. Prior to that, it had been an almost complete unknown in the community; now SB is effectively the epicenter of the ZnT fanfiction community.
• Died During Production: The series' author Noboru Yamaguchi died on April 4, 2013, after losing a two-year battle with cancer. Thankfully, MF Bunko J (the publisher of the novels) announced two years later, on June 25th of 2015, that the novels would be completed posthumously, as Yamaguchi dictated the finale to his editors from his sickbed. The last two volumes concern the true nature of the Void, Brimir, and the origin of the conflict between humans and elves. Unfortunately, the Karin spinoff novels weren't so lucky.
• No Dub for You: Seasons 2-4 were released sub only.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: Just like in the Spanish-language dub of The Sacred Blacksmith, Louise and Saito's voice actors in both the Mexican and European Spanish dubs were selected by the fans. In both versions, rather than using well-known voice actors, both dubs used newcomers for both characters.
• The Other Darrin: Charles Rengel served as Wardes' main English voice, but his cameo at the end of the seventh episode was done by Kaiji Tang, who primarily played Derflinger.
• Outlived Its Creator: Noboru Yamaguchi died of cancer in 2013, though he left behind rough notes and manuscripts of how the series would end, and in 2015 Media Factory announced that the novels would continue under a different author. In February 2016 the 21st volume was finally published, though the author who took over after Yamaguchi's death was kept secret, with Yamaguchi being credited as the sole writer as tribute. The new author has since been revealed as Yū Shimizu, author of Bladedance of Elementalers.
• Posthumous Collaboration: After author Noboru Yamaguchi's death in 2013, the final two novels of the series were written by Yū Shimizu, thanks to Yamaguchi already planning out how the series would end.
• Series Hiatus: The release gap between volumes 20 and 21 is about five years. Justified though, given that Yamaguchi got sick with cancer and died.
• Star-Making Role:
  • In the Mexican Spanish dub, for Louise and Saito's voice actors (Annie Rojas and José Ángel Torres respectively).
  • The English dub was also one of the first roles for Cristina Valenzuela, who went on to greater success after this show.
• Studio Hop:
  • The first 20 light novel volumes were originally published by Media Factory from June 2004 to February 2011. In October 2013, nearly six months after Noboru Yamaguchi's death, Media Factory merged with Kadokawa to become Kadokawa Media Factory and the novels stayed there until the final volume was published in February 2017.
  • The Japanese home media rights to the franchise are currently owned by Kadokawa due to their merger with Media Factory in 2013.
  • After Geneon Entertainment's USA division went out of business, Sentai Filmworks picked up the North American home media rights to the franchise.
• What Could Have Been: At an event, some information about the original concepts for the series was revealed. Among other things, Saito was originally a scientific genius, Louise's hair was blonde, Siesta was a knight in the academy's employ, and Louise's chest was bigger.

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