History Theatre / TheRockAfireExplosion

* AuthorAppeal: Fatz' obsession with Creator/LawrenceWelk and love of Cajun culture were inherited from his performer, Burt Wilson.

* {{Crossover}}: One 1987 showtape produced by corporate replaces Rolfe and Looney Bird with [[WesternAnimation/YogiBear Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo]].

* {{Crossover}}: One 1987 showtape produced by corporate replaces Billy Bob and Looney Bird with [[WesternAnimation/YogiBear Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo]].

** Excluding the birthday segments, the first showtape didn't have any interaction among the three stages, nor did the Rock-afire Explosion members themselves have any spoken skits (though an unused version of the "School Days" skit had the center stage characters interact with each other, with the plot being the Sun trying to convince Fatz to go to school, leading to the aforementioned song).

The Rock-afire Explosion is an animatronic show created by Aaron Fechter and his company Creative Engineering out of UsefulNotes/{{Florida}}, often considered to be one of the greatest animatronic bands of all time. First featured in [=ShowBiz=] Pizza Place family entertainment centers between 1980-1992, they are now found in very few locations.

* ContinuityNod: In the band's cover of "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" in the September 1990 show, Earl changes "cigarettes" to "Crayolas", a reference to an early Uncle Klunk showtape in which Klunk instructed the kids watching [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseAsInContext to not smoke Crayolas]].

** Beach Bear's cross-eye movement was a leftover from his DumbJock persona.
** Despite Beach Bear and Mitzi being recast with Rick Bailey and Shalisa Sloan in 1982, Aaron Fechter's vocals for the characters remained on the Happy Birthday Medley throughout the 1980s and even in an updated version in the mid-1990s.
* AwesomeButImpractical: In the "Gee, Our First Album!" cover photo shown above, Beach Bear has a Gibson Les Paul, but in the actual shows a fake guitar resembling a combination of a Fender Swinger and other obscure '50s-'60s electric guitars was used instead, likely because the Les Paul would damage his arms.

* EarlyInstallmentCharacterDesignDifference: All of the characters' early masks (apart from Beach Bear, whose mask has remained the same) were very different, with more grotesque, exaggerated features. Likewise, Beach Bear originally had gray fur and a wig (which was removed in 1984 to improve the character's appearance, until it was reinstated in the early 2000s), and at one point (as seen in the "Gee, Our First Album!" cover photo) Dook had gray fur as well.

** Dook had a completely different outfit.

** When Shalisa Sloan began voicing Mitzi, her voice was more childlike (as she was 11 at the time). As Shalisa aged, Mitzi's voice gradually matured.
** Burt Wilson's Fatz voice started out as very deep in 1980, getting higher and more expressive. When Wilson returned to the role in 2020, Fatz sounded higher, likely due to Wilson aging. Aaron Fechter's Fatz voice evolved from a rough impersonation to a more accurate impression of Wilson's mid-1980s voice (compare his voice in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBhuBrWlmeA 2008]] to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFmW3kO0YKA 2016]]).