Trivia / ThunderCats (2011)

• Actor Allusion:
  • Viragor is a monstrous bird who's violently over-protective of his home. This may seem familiar to Avatar: The Last Airbender fans.
  • The Soul Server is a mad scientist obsessed with bringing the dead back to life? Played by Jeffrey Combs? Why does that sound so familiar?
    • It's also not the first time Mr. Combs has played a robot skilled with science.
    • Nor his first time dealing with other people's trash.
• Channel Hop: Well, more like Production Company Hop: This series is produced by Warner Bros. as they had acquired the post-1974 ^note all material before that was first acquired by Lorne Michaels through his company, Broadway Video (he had bought it from GE, who had owned R-B for a period in the mid-70s); in the mid 90s, he sold that off to Golden Books, and the library became part of Golden Books Family Entertainment; in 2002 that was spun off as Classic Media, and in 2012, DreamWorks Animation acquired Classic Media Rankin/Bass library when they acquired Lorimar-Telepictures in 1989 (Telepictures had bought R-B in 1978, then merged with Lorimar in 1986).
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Snarf is male but is voiced by Satomi Koorogi, a Japanese voice actress.
  • Tara Strong voices a young Lion-O in flashbacks.
• Executive Meddling: Cartoon Network decided to chop the show's first and only season in half into two thirteen-episode seasons.
• Fandom Nod: In "Between Brothers", Panthro shouts "I don't need a stinkin' nursemaid!" at Snarf, which is the role he played in the 1985 series.
• Network to the Rescue: The show's ratings were okay, but the toys didn't sell as well as hoped so Warner Bros. talked Cartoon Network into moving the show from Friday nights to Saturday mornings as a lead-in to the popular DC Nation programing block. The show's ratings doubled overnight. Unfortunately...
  • Screwed by the Network: The first sign of trouble was Bandai discontinuing the toyline. The next was when CN decided to end the show at episode 26 shortly before the toyline was announced to be dead.
  • Toonami has decided to pick up the series as part of its new expanded block, alongside fellow CN favorite Sym-Bionic Titan, giving them the support and reruns they needed which Cartoon Network itself never provided, though now at a very late time slot. Unfortunately, were taken off in favor of Sword Art Online and Season 2 of The Big O. Though Sym-Bionic Titan returned, ThunderCats suffered the worst of it, as Toonami lost the rights to the show.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Leo is voiced by Will Friedle in his first appearance because of Lion-O reliving events of the past through Leo. "Birth of the Blades" has Jason Marsden voicing him, and this is likely what Leo's actual voice sounds like. This is something of a Casting Gag, since Will and Jason are good friends.
  • The Ancient Spirits of Evil are voiced by Jim Cummings when they debut in "Native Son", but their appearance in "Birth of the Blades" has them voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson instead.
  • For reasons unknown, the Latin American Spanish dub of this iteration of the ThunderCats franchise was done in Venezuela instead of Mexico.
• Predecessor Casting Gag: Claudus, voiced by the original Lion-O himself Larry Kenney, tells Lion-O to let him show off what the Sword of Omens can do "in the proper hands." Jaga mentions that Claudus was much like Lion-O himself in his youth and Claudus gets to do the rallying cry one last time.
• Playing Against Type: Pamela Adlon is usually known for playing energetic boys in shows like King of the Hill and Time Squad, as well as spunky and snarky characters on Recess , Here, she plays Pumyra, a young woman with a major temper problem.
• Referenced by...:
  • Hark! A Vagrant: An old woman in 2063 regrets marrying a manchild who didn't take much stock in their child's wedding, but is still going on about how ThunderCats was a good show.
• Role Reprise: In the Brazilian Portuguese dub, Élcio Romar (the voice of Snarf in the classic series) recorded a few new loops for his character, making Snarf sound like a cross between Ollie the opossum and Togepi.
• Teasing Creator: The crew just loves messing with their fellow fans, especially at the Crew of Omens blog, and occasionally DeviantArt, where a crew member teased the Whole Episode Flashback of "Old Friends" in an early review comment. Almost every question of "Will (X) from the old show appear in a future episode?" has been answered with a sly "Maybe" and a wink. They're also very fond of the Mathematician's Answer.
• What Could Have Been: So large that it now has its own page.
• Word of God: Art director Dan Norton set up a ThunderCats crew blog to answer fan questions and also uses DeviantArt, frequently posting fan art on the blog.
  • In the 2017 interview, Norton revealed that the reason why several characters were killed off in the first season and Pumyra and Tygra were planned to be killed off in the second planned season isn't because the crew hated them but because it was their intention was to present a sharp edged show where Anyone Can Die (good or bad, cute or ugly, etc.) to highlight the danger of the conflict, which explains why some fans felt that it could've been aimed at older audiences than younger audiences, given the tone.
• Written by Cast Member: "The Trials of Lion-O: Part 2" and "Birth of the Blades" were written by Will Friedle.

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