Smiling Friends
Featuring The Smurfette Principle.
What Could Have Been in this series.- Zach and Michael mention a few in The Create Unknown
podcast:- A number of gags were cut for time and for not being funny enough, such as The Boss having a musical number and Charlie giving a big speech about friendship at the end.
- The scene with the guy in the wall almost wound up on the cutting room floor, as Zach and Michael also felt it dragged on too long, but everyone else found it so hilarious that it was left in.
- Sonichu creator Christine Weston Chandler (Chris-Chan) was considered for the role of Grease Puddle, but concerns about the show being leaked as a result led them to delay recording the character's lines until near the end of production, by which point their budget for "cameo" roles had run out. Harry Partridge ultimately filled in, albeit doing an impression of Chris-Chan's voice.
- Up until fairly late into the show's development, there was supposed to be a blue-skinned janitor character as part of the main cast. From the same piece of concept art, Glep was apparently originally going to carry a spear, or possibly a scepter to go with his wizard hat. A very short animation test for the janitor also exists. It was later elaborated upon during San Diego Comic Con that the reason the janitor was scrapped was because they couldn't think of any good ideas for him, and that his shtick was supposed to be a janitor who made things dirtier.
- It's very likely the blue color in the end credits and series logo is meant to signify this cut character.
- While Pim was always meant to experience his Despair Event Horizon at Daveland, he and Charlie were originally going to take Desmond to several other places in addition to the ones they go to in the finished episode. One such place was to a beach which had recently experienced a catastrophic oil spill and was littered with dead dolphins. One of these dead dolphins, as seen in the episode storyboard, actually made its way into the next episode and can be seen in Mr. Frog's animal sanctuary◊.
- The Frowning Friends episode was always supposed to end with the titular antagonists dying to a Brick Joke, but the Renaissance Men were not the original idea. Originally, the article Charlie reads on his phone at the beginning of the episode was to be about a Russian satellite falling to Earth, and at the end of the episode the satellite would have landed and crushed the Frowning Friends.
- Also from the Frowning Friends episode, Pim and Charlie were originally going to visit Mr. Man before DJ Spit. They switched the two scenes around because, as mentioned in Throw It In!, they couldn't think of another way to end Mr. Man's scene so they decided to have him morph into DJ Spit.
- Also, due to the studio not wanting DJ Spit to have his pubes exposed, required that the mentioned pubes be removed before airing; since the episode was already out of the editing phase, the animators had to go back and manually erase Spit's pubes in every frame. This trope comes into play when Zach revealed that he was going to have the (un)lucky animator who did that job acknowledged as the "Pube Eraser" in a Credits Gag, but they were already out of time and so had to send the episode out without the credit.
- The show was originally going to be called Little Helpers and featured an entirely different cast of characters◊. A character greatly resembling the unnamed redhead who appears in the Halloween Episode can be seen, likely signifying that she was to be a main character. Another character very strongly resembles Mike Stoklasa, suggesting that they may have wanted him to play a regular before settling for having him provide the guest voice of Desmond. Also featured was Gremblo, a character appearing in much of Zach and Michael's artwork. Notably, both Pim and Charlie's designs sport elements of Gremblo's. Little Helpers evidently went through several changes before becoming Smiling Friends because there exists concept art with different characters. This version features a green-skinned man who presumably later became Charlie, a red-haired yellow man carrying a staff with an eyeball atop, and a fat blue slug-like man with a broom (possibly an early incarnation of the scrapped janitor character). The characters present in both versions are Gremblo, the gigantic man in the suit (presumably the boss) and the tiny character on his head.
- Zach and Michael wanted Dan Aykroyd to appear in the live-action segments of the Halloween episode, mostly because Zach is "obsessed" with the video of him promoting his crystal head vodka. They mention that they'd also have liked to get Norm Macdonald, whom they were unaware was dying of cancer at the time.
- An animator declined working on the show due to personal commitments. Eventually, the artist made a parody video on YouTube based on the series, particularly mocking Charlie's voice.
- Pim originally had a stockier design. Charlie's design remained mostly unchanged, but he went through a couple different outfits before they settled on his iconic hoodie and cap.
- The frequently-seen break room originally looked slightly different.
- Per commentary tracks on the season one Blu-Ray by Zach and Michael, additional information has been revealed:
- In the pilot, Mr. Boss was originally meant to play Guitar Hero and fail at it instead of playing a game on his laptop.
- Pim and Charlie were going to comment on the man being murdered in the hall outside Shrimp's apartment but this was cut out.
- There was supposed to be a band on stage at the Spaghetti Disco in "Shrimp's Odyssey", but it was left empty due to time constraints.
- A ninth Salty's mascot, a chicken nugget voiced by Lyle Rath, made it as far as the storyboards but was cut for timing reasons.
- Curiously, he can still be seen on the corkboard◊ Pim has set up in Salty's office.
- Perhaps as an allusion to this, in season 2, Rath was cast as a character who eats nothing but chicken nuggets.
- Curiously, he can still be seen on the corkboard
- The design for the Princess of the Enchanted Forest was changed between production and the final product, likely changed for being too lewd.
