Trivia / Cyberchase

• Actor Existence Limbo: Coop was voiced by Tony Hawk in "Measure for Measure", but subsequent episodes have him make silent cameos.
• Actor-Shared Background: "Designing Mr. Perfect" introduces Wicked's wand, Wanda. Her voice actress, Danica McKellar, is a mathematician. Naturally, she'd be in a show with math as a core concept.
• Adored by the Network: During the PBS Kids Go! era, it stood alongside FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman and WordGirl as one of the block's most popular and most frequently aired shows, at least until the PBS Kids Go! block was discontinued in 2013.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: Christopher Lloyd and the late Gilbert Gottfried voice Hacker and Digit, respectively.
• Children Voicing Children: Isabel de Carteret as T.W. Parallini and Lilly Bartlam as Harmony.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Google's description refers to Bianca and Harry as the hosts, as if the For Real segments are a Framing Device for the cartoon.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Matt is voiced by Jacqueline Pillon.
• Cross-Regional Voice Acting: Although the cast consisted of well-known voice actors from Toronto, it also features L.A.-based Christopher Lloyd as Hacker and New York-based Gilbert Gottfried (until his death in April 2022) as Digit. This trope is extended with Creech's voice actress Stephanie Beard, as she moved from Toronto to Los Angeles during production, so she now records her lines from L.A. starting with "Jimaya Jam" in season 6.
• The Danza:
  • In "Gone with the Fog", where a movie is being made about the CyberSquad, the name of Hacker's actor is Christopher Droid.
  • For the Cyberchase for Real segments, Bianca DeGroat is played by...Bianca DeGroat. Zigzagged with Harry. He shares his actor's last name of Wilson, but is played by Matthew Wilson.
• Died During Production:
  • During the production of Season 5, Len Carlson, the original voice for Buzz, passed away in 2006, with the last episode he recorded before his passing being "EcoHaven Ooze".
  • Gilbert Gottfried, the voice of Digit since the show's very first episode, passed away in April of 2022. Starting with season 14, which came out the following year, Ron Pardo took over the role of Digit.
• Fake Brit: Dr. Marbles is voiced by the Canadian Richard Binsley.
• He Also Did:
  • Storyboard artist Roy Meurin also worked on The Simpsons, Rugrats, Rocko's Modern Life, The Iron Giant and FernGully: The Last Rainforest among others.
  • Jocelyn Stevenson served as the co-writer for "The Poddleville Case", she previously wrote for The Magic School Bus. The latter show's composer Peter Lurye also provided the music for this episode.
• International Coproduction: For the first five seasons, Nelvana of Canada worked with PBS station WNET of New York City to produce the show; 2007 saw Nelvana dropping out for unknown reasons. Season 6 onward was animated in Adobe Flash by another Canadian studio, PiP Animation Services.
• In Memoriam:
  • "EcoHaven Ooze" is dedicated to Len Carlson, the original voice of Buzz.
  • "Clean Up On Aisle 8" is dedicated to Gilbert Gottfried, the original voice of Digit.
• Invisible Advertising: After Season 8, advertising for Cyberchase became near non-existent, even on PBS stations that still air the show and its new episodes.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The full original 1999 pilot episode was considered lost media for a while. As noted in Early Installment Weirdness, a re-dubbed and edited version of the pilot titled "The Poddleville Case" was aired as part of Season 1 of the regular series. The original version of the pilot was released on an obscure educational video tape allowed to be played for school lessons, and show producer WNET briefly aired it once in 2000 as a sneak peek of the series. Because of this, it seemed highly unlikely it would surface until February 7, 2021, when the original version was finally found and uploaded here.
• Long Runner: Aired on PBS Kids, with occasional new episodes, for over twenty years.
• Out of Order: "The Icky Factor" addresses itself as a direct sequel to the events of "The Snelfu Snafu", though three episodes aired in between them (two from Season 3, one from Season 4.)
• The Other Darrin:
  • Due to Len Carlson's death in 2006, the role of Buzz was recast with Philip Williams.
  • The pilot was this for the entire cast, with no voice actor from the pilot returning for the final series.
  • In the Licensed PC games, all the voice actors were replaced due to the games being recorded in the US instead of Canada, as well as to not pay royalties for Christopher Lloyd and Gilbert Gottfried. Interestingly, Hacker was voiced by Thom Christopher, who also voiced him in the pilot.
  • Season 14 has Ron Pardo taking over the role of Digit after the death of Gilbert Gottfried in April 2022.
  • Slider was originally voiced by Tim Hamaguchi in all of his appearances until season 10, where he was instead voiced by Austin Di Iulio (who also voiced Fluff), due to Hamaguchi leaving the series after season 9.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: On Twitter, a screencap of the show's Wikipedia article that said Gilbert Gottfried would be replaced by David Hasselhoff in the role of Digit went viral in May 2022. Said edit quickly got removed as a source was not cited.
• Posthumous Credit: As noted under Died During Production above, Gilbert Gottfried passed on April 12th, 2022, but still voices Digit in Season 13 as all of his voice recordings were done prior.
• Promoted Fanboy: Nissae Isen was a fan of the show growing up as a child. She eventually was cast as Mimi in the multi-part "The Belly Bowl" online short later during the series run.
• Screwed by the Network: Highly strange example; the show has been on the air for over twenty years, but after the PBS Kids Go! block was discontinued (see Adored by the Network), the show almost never airs on the main PBS channel (even on the national feed) anymore, and on the rare occasion when new episodes are released, they're all just dumped out at once with zero prior announcement (with selected stations and the 24/7 PBS Kids channel only airing them). Despite PBS having downplayed the show and effectively pretended it doesn't exist anymore since Season 9, they still maintain the Cyberchase website (which is also still prominently featured on the PBS Kids landing page) and even periodically update it with new content. Furthermore, PBS keeps renewing the show itself for new seasons despite the constant negative reviews and low ratings that recent episodes have elicited. It's gotten to the point where it's hard to tell if the show's still alive or not since there is zero promotion by PBS anymore.
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: Season 5 wrapped up production in 2006, but majority of the season didn't air until 2007 (the same year season 6 premiered).
• Uncredited Role: Outside of the main characters and larger-name guest stars, the voice cast is mostly uncredited, as was the norm for Nelvana's series at the time. From Season 6 onward (after Nelvana left the show), all voice actors are credited.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Early on in its development, the premise of the show was to revolve around the kids getting zapped into an eponymous in-universe video game where they would be assigned various challenges by a "gamemaster" character, and a real tie-in computer game would be released to serve as an educational supplement. This initial concept was largely scrapped, but some key elements would make their way into the final show (like Motherboard serving the same role as the gamemaster).
  • The 1999 pilot, The Poddleville Caper, has several differences between this version and the final one.
    • For starters, Digit didn't appear in the original pilot, and neither was he even mentioned, indicating that he wasn't planned to be in the original concept of the show. In the 2002 redubbed version, he was at least mentioned in a throwaway line Hand-Waving his absence, however.
    • There were different voice actors in the original pilot; Joanna Rhinehart and Thom Christopher both had been confirmed to have voiced Jackie and Hacker, respectively, and several other voice actors had never worked on another episode of the show.
    • Motherboard would have looked much more abstract than in the final product. She had two floating eyes with blue spears and green irises, and a sound wave representing her mouth.
    • The inside of the vortex was completely different;
    • The original version has a more static camera, hand-drawn instead of CGI imagery, and a different background.
    • Objects found within the vortex include a numbers 1, 2, and 7; mathematical items, and even items with little if any mathematical relevance, namely a pizza slice, satellite dish, and sock.
    • Jackie was to live in an apartment instead of a house. She was also less insightful and acted much like Digit in the episode.
    • There were extra scenes that were removed or altered from the final product; An exchange between Hacker, Buzz, and Delete aboard the Grim Wreaker was scrapped, the kids confrontation with the Mayor of Poddleville was rewritten, and a line where Jackie decides to eat cereal instead of an egg.
    • Jackie acts as a narrator in the pilot, similar to the narration used in Dragnet where the final show has no narrator.
    • There was also no For Real segment in the pilot version, indicating that it was a concept added much later in the show's development. The PBS re-edit does include a For Real segment at the end, but instead of Bianca or Harry (neither of whom had been cast yet), it features Kareem Blackwell (best known for portraying Quinn on Are You Afraid of the Dark?) as the main presenter, and rather than focusing on a common everyday problem solvable with the main show's math and logic concepts as later For Real segments would, Kareem doesn't play any kind of character and instead just walks the audience through a straightforward mini-documentary about the STOMP performance art show at the Orpheum Theater in New York City.

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