Fridge Logic
- At the end of "The Secret of Snow", Tyrone bellyflops into the snow... and starts gliding. Wouldn't that mean that whole area is ice (which is dangerous)?
- Chances are the animators were probably just messing around.
- Another one related to everyone's second favourite cartoon moose and snow: In "The Yeti", Tyrone is willing to go inside the igloo to warm up. Don't moose love the cold?
- Even cold-adapted animals have their limits.
- In "Race Around the World", Pablo proves to be great at hurdles, while Austin proves to be terrible. This despite the former being a penguin and the latter being a kangaroo.
- "Knights Are Brave and Strong" is one of the few episodes where no one's belly rumbles. Instead, Tasha asks Uniqua to deliver a message to Austin that she is not to read until Austin gets it. At the end it is revealed that the message was to tell Austin that it was snack time. Does this mean that Tasha was hungry since the beginning of the episode?
- Not necessarily. It just means she thought of the snack ahead of time and was planning on being ready to eat it whenever Austin got the message
Fridge Brilliance
- If you pay attention to the choreography in the theme song, you'll notice that Austin dances slightly offbeat compared to the others. Nickelodeon's character bios also state that he had recently moved to the Backyardigans' neighborhood (Backyardihood?) at the beginning of the series. Of course he wouldn't be perfectly synced up; he hasn't known the others as long!
- There are also a few parts where Uniqua is offbeat as well. Maybe she's doing that on purpose to make Austin feel better.
- Uniqua does a lot of fancy dance moves. When she really gets into a groove, she adds a lot of flourish to her dancing. Really, the entire group was freestyling near the beginning of the song.
- Some events in the fantasies may occur due to the characters incorporating objects in the yard into the adventures.
- In "News Flash", there's a scene where farmers Pablo and Tyrone are sitting in chairs on their front porch. A similar set of chairs can be seen on the front porch of Tyrone's non-imaginary house.
- Any instances of characters getting wet? Ever noticed that kiddie pool on Pablo's side of the yard?
- At the beginning of "The Amazing Splashinis", Uniqua, Pablo, and Tyrone slide down the slide in the backyard. This is possibly the real-life equivalent to the waterslides at Splashini Water Park.
- The ending credits play the instrumental theme song over the Nick Jr. and Nelvana logos. This may seem insignificant at first glance...until you realize that the series has a heavy focus on music.
- Each of the characters fits certain archetypes and likes to play certain roles, so whenever a certain scenario doesn't strike their fancy, they just stay home. Uniqua is in every single episode because she's the type of girl who will never turn down an adventure.
- An alternate reason why Tasha and Austin are absent from so many episodes is because it's not really their backyard. Uniqua, Pablo, and Tyrone all share a backyard, but Tasha's and Austin's backyards are both fenced off. Notice how, whenever they go to Tasha's house for a snack, they walk in front of Pablo's house to get there, and whenever it's Austin's house, they go through a gate in the fence.
- Why doesn't Tasha know what a worman is in "What's Bugging You?" There are two earlier episodes that featured wormans, "The Heart of the Jungle" and "Polka Palace Party", neither of which featured Tasha.
- At the end of "Blazing Paddles", Uniqua burns a hole through Pablo's paddle, but after Pablo returns everyone's paddles, his own paddle is intact again. Maybe it's a continuity error...or maybe the blue paddle that Pablo is holding belongs to one of his victims outside of Ping-Pong Mesa and he will return it to that victim later.
- Relationships between sapient and non-sapient animals:
- In "Horsing Around", Uniqua and Pablo see their horses as tools to help them win races, but Tyrone sees his donkey as more of a friend. This is because he is a hoofed, hairy mammal as well.
- In "Tale of the Mighty Knights", Pablo is the owner of a duck-like dragon who hatches from a bird-like egg. Pablo is the only one of the five friends to be a bird.
- In "Elephant on the Run", Tasha is the owner of several elephants. She is also a large, gray note , hoofed, hairless mammal.
- Why do the Backyardigans always react to Pablo's panic attacks with mild, deadpan annoyance? Because every episode is a game the kids came up with, where no matter what happens, everything ends happily for all the characters playing the game and everybody rushes to somebody's house for a snack once the game's over. The other kids know that whatever scenario Pablo is freaking out over can be resolved quickly because it's completely under their control, but in his panic attacks, Pablo temporarily forgets that the stories are only taking place in their imaginations and gets carried away.
- The contents of each of the three containers in "International Super Spy" corresponds to the initial locations of that container:
- The first container, containing a glass, is found in a glass building.
- The second container, containing milk, is found at a dairy farm.
- The third container, containing chocolate syrup, is found in a Caribbean jungle, the natural habitat of cacao trees.
- Going back to how Austin's the new kid on the block, it may be a slight nod to the original pilots. Tasha was present for "Me and My Friends" but not the Nick Digital pilot; in contrast, Austin hadn't been created by then. So Austin is essentially the new kid both in-universe and in real life, in virtue of being a last-minute addition to the cast.
- For that matter, just looking at his character design already makes it clear that he wasn't there from the start. Unlike the other boys, he's fully-clothed (even if barefoot), and his character model in Season 1 has noticeably slimmer fingers.
- You might get hung up on how it was possible to animate the characters dancing on roller skates if the motion capture for the main characters was performed by resident dancers who, despite their great deal of talent, were unlikely to have learned how to roller skate so well in very short order. Between animated television shows and newer video games, graphic artists have been animating characters roller skating for quite some time. In order to animate characters dancing on roller skates for The Backyardigans, it was necessary to have the dancers dance in place and for graphic artists to incorporate the motion capture for the dancing as usual, then add onto it the animation necessary to create the illusion of the characters roller skating. The animation of characters dancing while running in "Race Around the World" was probably accomplished in the same fashion. It's sort like how acting dogs have to keep their mouths closed so computers can be used to manipulate images of their mouths so it looks like they're talking.
- Talking about animation of characters roller skating, it's possible that Pablo's character never did so because his legs are so short that he waddles when he walks, and he's seldom animated as though he has any knees. He can't roller skate.
- Pablo having green goo superpowers in "Race to the Tower of Power" is surprisingly clever when you remember the show was produced by Nickelodeon Animation Studio. Nickelodeon is heavily associated with green slime thanks to You Can't Do That on Television. Pablo's goo even seems to have a thicker consistency, like the slime in earlier episodes of You Can't Do That did.
- In "The Key to the Nile", Princess Cleo-Tasha and her three servants, Pablo, Tyrone, and Austin, have to give three presents to Sphinx Uniqua. The first two gifts are the Jewel of the Waters (which is found among other jewels) and the yellow lotus flower (which is found among red and blue lotuses). If any of the other jewels or flowers are touched, "all is lost". The same is true if anyone besides Uniqua drinks from a magical oasis. This revelation is terrifying, especially considering Pablo and Tyrone wanted to drink from the oasis before Austin stopped them.
- It may not seem like it, but "It's Great To Be A Ghost" is surprisingly the darkest episode in the entire show once you think about it. Uniqua, Tyrone and Pablo are pretending to be ghosts haunting a house and trying to scare Tasha. Ghosts are spirits of dead people, so apparently, Uniqua, Tyrone and Pablo are pretending to be dead. Imagine if their parents found out what game they were playing...
- It's not so much that they were pretending to be dead as it is that they were pretending to do what only ghosts could and were having their fun with it. The bit is that they know they're not dead, and they don't think anything of being ghosts, because since it's part of their imaginary game, they understand that it's not real and it's temporary. They weren't even shown dying in whichever way might have made them ghosts.
- "The Legend of The Volcano Sisters" gets pretty dark. The episode is about the titular Volcano sisters (played by Uniqua and Tasha) ordering the Luau Brothers (played by Pablo, Tyrone, and Austin) to get them what they want or else the volcano will erupt and ruin the luau the Brothers are having. Although they don’t explicitly say it, it’s heavily implied that if the volcano erupts it will kill the Luau Brothers. Had Austin not realized that the Volcano Sisters just wanted to come to their luau, the Sisters would have killed them without a second thought. Yikes.
- The girls probably thought about ruining the party and possibly destroying the village, but not killing the boys. These guys are kids and they're playing nice.
- That’s true. Also, if they killed off the boys they would lose their chance at friendship.
- In "The Flipper", it's all-but-outright-stated that Pablo remembers what he does as the titular monster. And he can't control himself. Sure, he acts shockingly casual about it, but that's a hell of an And I Must Scream moment.
