History Trivia / Anpanman

* FanNickname: Dokinchan is frequently called 'DQN' at Nicovideo.

* DescendedCreator: Before his passing, Creator/TakashiYanse (creator of the Anpanman franchise) was the voice of "Yanase Rabbit" who was a recurring character and AuthorAvatar for the author

* FountainOfExpies: Baikinman's unique devil and fly hybrid design, along with his popularity as a character, has caused his design to become shorthand for germs of various uses in other franchises, including computer viruses.

** As of 2019, the only main characters that had voice replacements are Uncle Jam (Hiroshi Masuoka is retiring from acting due to age) Horrorman (Kaneta Kimotsuki died on October 20, 2016) and Dokin-chan (Creator/HiromiTsuru died on November 16, 2017). Uncle Jame was replaced by Kouichi Yamdera, Horrorman was replaced by Kazuki Yao and Dokin-chan was originally replaced by Creator/ReiSakuma [[TalkingToHimself who also plays Butterko]] for the 2017 Christmas special until Miina Tominaga took on the role for future episodes and productions.

** There's a streaming service in Japan called "Anpanman Channel" [[note]] Available on Nippon Television On Demand, Creator/{{Hulu}} Japan, and U-Next.[[/note]], which streams some episodes. However, there are two downsides to it: '''1.''' The only episodes on the service are just from 2010 and beyond (except for episode 1000, which aired in 2009), making the service useless to fans who want to legally watch the pre-2010 episodes online. '''2.''' The episodes are only available for a limited time. So if there's a particular episode on the service that you want to watch, don't put off watching it for too long.

** However, this trope is technically averted in North America since the series currently airs in Japanese (with no English subtitles) on TV Japan. There's still no word on an English dub, though.
** Averted in June of 2020, when it was announced that [[https://deadline.com/2020/06/tubi-unveils-new-library-content-including-lego-masters-garfield-anpanman-movies-more-at-virtual-newfront-1202966284/ TMS made English and Spanish dubs of six Anpanman movies for Tubi.]]

* ColbertBump: When Music/{{BTS}} created a song about this franchise, more people wanted to learn about it. In fact, it lead to two major breakthroughs for the franchise: the show's music being added to Apple Music worldwide, as well as the show being licensed for the North American market, which Tubi even mentioned as the reason in their press release!

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Creator/MasakoNozawa once stated that becoming the voice of Son Goku in Franchise/DragonBall came down to the fact that Keiko Toda replaced her as the voice of Kitaro in the third series of Manga/GeGeGenoKitaro (as standard industry practice wouldn’t have let her voice two main characters in two separate shows on competing networks). Perhaps, there is an alternate universe out there where Goku ended up voiced by Keiko Toda, and Anpanman by Nozawa....

* ReferencedBy: the song "Anpanman" by Music/{{BTS}}, which talks about heroes who might not fit the Batman or Superman idea of a hero, but use the best of their abilities to help people. It makes a parallel between him and themselves as artists ("I'm a new generation Anpanman!"): while they might be imperfect people with weaknesses, they aim to inspire and help people with their music.

** As of 2017, the only main characters that had voice replacements are Horrorman (Kaneta Kimotsuki died on October 20, 2016) and Dokin-chan (Creator/HiromiTsuru died on November 16, 2017). Horrorman was replaced by Kazuki Yao and Dokin-chan was originally replaced by Creator/ReiSakuma [[TalkingToHimself who also plays Butterko]] for the 2017 Christmas special until Miina Tominaga took on the role for future episodes and productions.

* AuthorExistenceFailure: The voice of Dokin-chan, Creator/HiromiTsuru, died on November 16, 2017. Creator/ReiSakuma, [[TalkingToHimself who also plays Butterko]], took on the role for future episodes and productions.

* ReferencedBy: The song "Anpanman" by Music/{{BTS}} is a Shout-Out to the character, talking about heroes who might not fit the Batman or Superman idea of a hero, but use the best of their abilities to help people. It makes a parallel between him and themselves as artists ("I'm a new generation Anpanman!"): while they might be imperfect people with weaknesses, they aim to inspire and help people with their music.

** Also extremely rare is an English version of the film ''Fly! Fly! Chibigon'', which was made in the mid-to-late 90's as a test pilot to get English TV stations to pick up the series. One of the actors in this pilot was Richard Kind, famous for playing Paul Lassiter on Series/SpinCity and Bing Bong in WesternAnimation/InsideOut, as Baikinman.

* AuthorExistenceFailure: The voice of Dokin-chan, Creator/HiromiTsuru, died on November 16, 2017. Creator/SakumaRei, [[TalkingToHimself who also plays Butterko]], took on the role for future episodes and productions.

* ActorAllusion: Naganegiman is a parody of Zorro. His voice actor, AkioOhtsuka was the dub voice for Zorro in ''Film/TheMaskOfZorro''.

* TechnologyMarchesOn: In the original cel-animated episodes, Baikinman's control panel on his computer was a [[NintendoEntertainmentSystem Famicom controller]]. Since the mid to late 90s and the recent digital ink episodes, it's changed into a [[SuperNintendoEntertainmentSystem Super Famicom controller]].