Line #17 Trivia/SandersSides


1	'''WARNING''': Untagged '''spoilers''' ahead. Read at your own risk.
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4	!!Trivia Tropes:
5	* ActingForTwo: Thomas Sanders is playing not one, or two, or three, or four... but five! characters at the same time, and we're not even counting the Dark Sides.
6	-->'''Joan''': You've got to get sick of playing all the characters... every once in a while.
7	* AlternateUniverse: [[WordOfGod Thomas Sanders has officially established]] one universe for the ''Sanders Shorts'' series and another one for the ''Sanders Sides'' series. In the ''Sanders Shorts'' universe, he has the Teacher Guy, the Dad Guy, the Prince Guy, several Anxiety Guys and other characters like Sleep, Brain, and many others. These characters are completely independent from Logan, Patton, Roman and Virgil, and each group of characters follows their own continuity and has their own personality traits and tropes. More so, Thomas has also announced that there will be no kind of interaction between each universe for the time being, so, even though it has been repeatedly requested by many Fanders, Sleep will not appear on ''Sanders Sides'' until further notice.
8	* ApprovalOfGod: Both Thomas and Joan have stated that they enjoy that their art can inspire more art in turn. While they do not read fanfiction because they don't want external sources to influence what they have planned for the series (even though Joan said that if and when ''Sanders Sides'' should come to an end, they plan to binge-read all of these fanfics afterwards), they do watch animatics, animations and other forms of arts, they share them and give recognition to them. In fact, for the Duke's Song [[DisneyAcidSequence sequence]], they got some visual inspiration from some of these animatics made by fans of the series and credited them in the [=YouTube=] description of the episode.
9	* AuthorPhobia: Thomas has arachnophobia, that is, a huge fear of spiders. Spiders in turn are a mortal enemy for Patton and a favorite of Virgil's.
10	* CreatorBreakdown: In 2017, Thomas went through a painful romantic break-up. To help him release his feelings and ease his pain, Joan, inspired on Thomas' story, wrote the two-part episode "Moving On" from "Sanders Sides" where the Sides try to help [[AuthorAvatar Thomas]] find a way to move on after a break-up.
11	* CreatorsFavorite:
12	** Thomas enjoys playing Virgil, but has the most fun with Patton and Roman.
13	** Joan's is Logan but they admit that all of the characters are growing on them.
14	** Talyn's is Patton.
15	** Davi's is Janus.
16	* CreatorsFavoriteEpisode: Counting only episodes from season 1 and early season 2, which is when they said the following:
17	** Thomas' favorite episode from "Sanders Sides" is "Making Some Changes!", since he was able to direct his friends and see them act as his characters.
18	** Joan's favorite episodes are "Am I Original?", "Fitting In (Hogwarts Houses!)", and "Accepting Anxiety". They also have a special place in their heart for "Alone on Valentine's Day" because it was the first episode they wrote with Thomas.
19	* {{Crossover}}: The original intention of the first episode, when it was released as a one-off vlog with no hope for continuity, was to create a crossover between Thomas Sanders' most successful fiction series from the Sanders Shorts, the "School Vines" series starring the Teacher Guy, the "I Shall Be a Great Dad" and "Dad Jokes Become Legit" series starring the Dad Guy, and the untitled Prince Guy series. These three characters joined together, originally just for that one, but the success of that vlog led to a second installment with the Dad Guy, and then an even more successful third one introducing Anxiety that finally spelled the creation of the long-term ''Sanders Sides'' series we know today. WordOfGod {{Retcon}} established that the Sanders Sides only take the appearance of the Sanders Shorts characters, they're not the same characters, but that was clearly not the original intention on the early episodes, where characters, even though they still represented aspects of Thomas' personality, were the same characters from Vine in all senses. Notably, in "Way Too Adult", when Patton appears, Thomas says "my Dad character", in "Taking on Anxiety...", Thomas calls Roman "Prince Dude", and in "The Mind vs. The Heart", Logan and Patton were called "Dad Guy" and "Teacher Dude". All of these are alternate names for the Shorts characters that, as the series went on, started being avoided on Sanders Sides, preferring the simple "Dad", "Princey" and (sporadically) "Teacher" or "Teach" for Patton, Roman and Logan.
20	* DirectedByCastMember: Thomas has directed himself in many episodes, particularly on the first age of the series when he did them on his own. After Joan joined the series, they have helped Thomas in delivering lines or plainly co-directed with Thomas for many instances, and some episodes like ''Nightmare instead of Christmas'' have even been completely directed by Joan alone.
21	* EnforcedMethodActing:
22	** Thomas mentioned that he usually filmed Virgil's scenes last, since Virgil wears heavy makeup that's hard to get all the way off. By then, Thomas was usually exhausted and ready to quit -- which actually works out very well, since Virgil is much more low-key and grouchy than the other characters.[[note]]This was mentioned at the end of season 1, when episodes were filmed all in a day, maybe two. Nowadays, when filming takes months, there's not a fixed order of filming, they just film scenes in the order that suits better production needs.[[/note]]
23	** In "Dealing With Intrusive Thoughts," Thomas was actually tearing up while playing Virgil during his confession (about having been a Dark Side)... because it was such a big moment for the series that the crew had been working up to for over 18 months. He also compared Virgil's energy in that moment with the moment someone decides to come out of the closet, specifically mentioning that once you reveal something so personal, it's out there and there's no turning back, and he channeled these emotions into Virgil's "coming out".
24	* ExtremelyLengthyCreation: The season 2 finale has gone through an inferno of a preproduction, first because of the delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, then because the production values intended for the finale exceeded the average of the rest of the series. So far, it's been revealed that it's going to be 4 parts, that they are all going to feature original musical score and songs, as well as special props, sets and costumes, and that the music which is currently under production, is the biggest factor in the delay of the preproduction, which started late 2020, and as of June 2023 is still going, with an expected release of parts 1 and 2 in late 2023 and parts 3 and 4 in 2024. If these dates are met, it will be a total of 4 years for this superproduction of a Sanders Sides story.
25	* IronyAsSheIsCast: Thomas is an accomplished singer, but he can sing not so good, or plainly horribly bad if required by the script.
26	** Unless he feels motivated by something related with Crofter's, Logan hates singing, and sings out of tune when he tries, prefering to rap instead. Joan commented in a blooper that Thomas' out-of-tune voice as Logan "sounds like a robot".
27	* PropRecycling: Several garments from ''Sanders Sides'' had already been utilized by Thomas long before the series even existed.
28	** Deceit's yellow gloves are a garment that had already been utilized by Thomas Sanders in the Sanders Shorts series, when he played Fix-It Felix in a Halloween Vine in 2013, [[https://vine.co/v/hD9gvD23wvq here]].
29	** Roman's samurai sword was used as early as August 2013 in one of the "Life as a Video-game" Vines. The sword, though, is much older, as Thomas used it for the first time when he played Ko-Ko on a stage production of ''Hot Mikado'' in 2007 and the director gave it to him as a present after the show ended. Roman's first season outfit was also from a stage play Thomas was part of, ''Into the Woods'', in 2014, from when he played the Cinderella Prince. When he started borrowing it for the Prince Guy shorts, the costumer gave it to him as a present.
30	** In June 2013, as part of ''Sanders Shorts'', Thomas released his first ever mini-series, a series of five Vines titled ''Love Is in the Air'', co-starring fellow Viner Ima Pube, who in turn also released five more Vines featuring him in the character. In these shorts Thomas portrayed an extremely nerdy character with a red bowtie and black framed glasses. If someone looks back at these Vines and thinks these glasses look familiar... they'd be right: that nerd character used for the first time in front of the camera the very same Warby Parker glasses that are now part of Patton's and Logan's outfits. [[https://vine.co/v/huX0HqQKrED here]] is one of the episodes from these series.
31	* QueerCharacterQueerActor: Thomas Sanders has confirmed to be gay, and character Thomas, and all of the Sides, are gay too.
32	* RealLifeWritesThePlot: Events that occur in Thomas' real life are frequently mentioned/focused on in episodes of Sanders Sides.
33	* RealLifeWritesTheHairstyle: In December 2022, real life Thomas got a skin issue that provoked an irritation all over his body and especially on his scalp, under his hair which provoked the apparition of bald zones on his head. Even when the skin irritation got treated and the hair is expected to return eventually, in the meantime, Thomas decided to appear on-screen always wearing hats, beanies and other head garments. Except Janus, who already was wearing a bowler-hat, this translated to the Sides too, with Logan wearing his cogitating cap he wore already in a previous episode, Roman wearing a crown, Patton wearing a cap reading "#1 DAD", Virgil wearing a purple beanie, Remus wearing a jester hat and character Thomas wearing a blue beanie. This changed months later when, to regain control of his own image, he cut his hair really short, grew a beard for the first time in his life and removed the hats altogether. With this new image, all the Sides started showing the new beards and hairstyle, and only Virgil kept his beanie, as the short hair didn't match plot-wise with his regular emo appearance. The hair has healed and is growing back so along 2023 it's expected that Thomas and his Sides return to his regular hairstyle when the hair grows back, but since the beard is staying for real-life Thomas, the beards are also staying for all the Sides, including Janus with his scales and Remus, who still has the fake moustache over the real beard and moustache.
34	* ScheduleSlip: "Putting Others First" was originally meant to be released in March 2020, but due to some complications and the COVID-19 pandemic, Thomas was forced to delay the production and release it on May the 1st instead.
35	* TeasingCreator:
36	** Thomas and Joan mentioned that the Sides' outfits were going to be updated in a Q&A video shortly after season 1 finale. The outfits would be updated in the following episode, released a month and a half later.
37	** In the 2018 [=VidCon=] Q&A, it was mentioned that Deceit has a name and that there were two more Dark Sides in the works.
38	** In the thumbnail of "Putting Others First", there's a character selection screen displaying 4 characters. Virgil, Janus, Remus and... a grey silhouette which looks suspiciously like Thomas, hinting that there's one last Side to be revealed.
39	*** On that note, during the Mortal Kombat/Beat 'Em Up-style segment of the video, we see the numbers "07734" above Thomas' health bar in orange. If these numbers are shown in a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven-segment_display seven-segment display]] and flipped around (you can replicate this on any old-school calculator), the displayed numbers ressemble the word "hello".
40	* ThrowItIn: As the various blooper videos demonstrate, sometimes an ad-libbed or even flubbed line turns out to be an improvement on the script as written and appears in the finished product. Some examples:
41	** The second part of Roman's line of "Sorry, I'm not thinking straight... ever. I'm not straight!" in "Moving On: Part 2" was allegedly just a line Thomas ad-libbed and it was kept in.
42	** The same happened with the last part of the line "Oh, my gosh, I will kill both of you, with my bare hands... and this sword!" in "Learning New Things About Ourselves."
43	** Also from "Learning New Things About Ourselves," Thomas stumbled a bit over Patton's line "Fleece...fleece cumpleaños" and it was deemed in-character enough to use.
44	** In "Dealing With Intrusive Thoughts," Logan's bewildered "What are you ta...what are you talking...what are you talking about?" was the result of Thomas feeling like he was going to sneeze while recording the line.
45	* TrollingCreator: In the [=VidCon=] Q&A, when asked for his given name, Deceit just kept giving random answers. [[ConsummateLiar To no one's surprise]].
46	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
47	** According to a [[https://thejoanglebook.tumblr.com/post/170558165627/how-long-has-deceit-been-in-production-so-to?is_related_post=1#notes tumblr ask from Joan]] (who is the co-writer for the Sanders Sides), Deceit was supposed to be the ''second'' Dark Side to be revealed. The livestreams reveal that the first Dark Side was supposed to be Remus.
48	** In the [=VidCon=] Q&A, Virgil was considered to be named "Payton" since they think that he and Patton are "two sides of the same coin" and "Ethan" after ethos/ethical appeals.
49	** "Selfishness V. Selflessness" was written as part one of a longer two-part story arc. It was going to have "Part 1" added to the title, but that was scrapped to avoid confusion, as "Dealing with Intrusive Thoughts" was going to be released between both parts of that story. The second part of the story, which was released 13 months after the first, was titled "Putting Others First" and had the subtitle "Selfishness v. Selflessness Redux" added to make the connection clear, as well as a short recap of Selfishness v. Selflessness added as a prologue for the episode.
50	* WordOfGod: In one of his livestreams, Thomas said that Lily Singh appearing in his "Dealing with Anxiety" video was just a "Mind Palace" version of her.
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52	!!General Trivia Facts:
53	* Joan started co-writing the Sanders Sides series on the 8th episode, "Alone On Valentine's Day!". The would remain as a co-writer up until the Sanders Asides episode "Working Through Intrusive Thoughts" included. Joan would leave the team during the production of this episode to pursue other projects, but their contributions remained present in the episode. Also, Joan's influence will remain present in the rest of the series, as both Thomas and Joan outlined all of the remaining of the series and designed all main characters to appear in the future, even if the scripts after "Working Through Intrusive Thoughts" would eventually be developed without Joan's presence.
54	* Talyn, who had already been present in the series as an editor and making props among other tasks (they made the laptop prop that Logan throws at Thomas' head), stepped in as a makeup artist for Virgil's eyeshadow in "Accepting Anxiety: Part 2". Initially, they were going to do makeup in that episode only (to apply the effect of the eyeshadow gradually appearing on the other Sides); however, the new look on Virgil was so highly praised that Talyn remained doing Virgil's makeup permanently, replacing Thomas, who did his own makeup earlier with an eye pencil. When they had to leave the team in 2019 due to health reasons, Quil Darling replaced them in the task.

Context Trivia / SandersSides