Trivia / Freaktown

• Acting for Two: Ron Pardo does pretty much all the secondary characters in the show.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Co-creator Peter Ricq isn't very proud of the show, due to the massive amounts of Executive Meddling resulting in a show that didn't turn out at all like he wanted. For all intents and purposes, he considers his real creation to be Sweets vs. Freaks, with Freaktown being "a series out of our control".
  • While this applies with many of the final choices Portfolio Entertainment made with Ricq's character designs (on his website, the most positive thing he has to say is that Priscilla "kinda turned out okay"), he was especially displeased with the final design for Princess Boo Boo, explaining it was his "least favorite" of the concepts for her that he had sent to the studio.
• Creator's Oddball: The only one of Ricq's three series to be animated in 2D Adobe Flash rather than as an All-CGI Cartoon, sporting a markedly different artstyle as a result.
• Executive Meddling:
  • Creative differences between Ricq and Portfolio Entertainment caused the series to go through numerous revisions, and Ricq had a huge distaste for most of the changes. As a result, he chooses to distance himself from Freaktown, since most of his ideas and concepts were ignored or changed without his approval.
  • Ricq's contract with Portfolio was supposed to let him direct the first three episodes, but as Ricq explains on his website, "the studio did everything they can to not have me there to direct". Ultimately, Ricq was only allowed to co-direct remotely from Vancouver, sending notes to the Toronto-based Portfolio from his apartment. Aside from selective character designs, his input was mostly disregarded.
  Ricq: They just did whatever they wanted, using whatever they wanted.
• No Export for You: The series has never aired in the United States.
• Screwed by the Network: Hard. After airing the show every Monday through the summer of 2016, Teletoon suddenly aired multiple episodes of the show on the last Saturday of August before putting it on a hiatus. The rest of the season was then dumped onto Saturday afternoons in October 2016, with the last episodes being aired on a lone Sunday afternoon and cancellation being declared. The series vanished from the channel almost immediately afterwards and has never returned since.
• What Could Have Been: Series co-creator Peter Ricq has revealed quite a bit of behind-the-scenes stuff on his official website.
  • The series was initially titled Sweets vs. Freaks, which sold the show to Teletoon in the first place. His original network pitch however had a completely different artstyle from the final product, one more in line with his usual work and with many characters having vastly different designs.
  • Ben initially had a grey shirt, but Executive Meddling forced Ricq to change it to red for reasons unknown.
  • Lenny was originally named Manny^note Ricq never acknowledges the name change on his website, suggesting he wasn't very fond of it and still considers the character's name to be Manny. Ricq was strictly against him having a Surfer Dude voice and insisted he sound more akin to the cast of Workaholics, but his requests were ignored.
  • Cuddles was supposed to have dark bead-like eyes to make him look more like a real teddy bear.
  • Ricq suggested the Freaktown island to have a more dark-saturated color to contrast with the bright Sweetlandia exterior and even sent a revised illustration design. According to him, he never heard back from the studio about this.
  • The episode "B-1000" was initially boarded by Ricq, and he had some very specific indications, such as Ben throwing "angry coo-coo nuts" instead of "boogermelons" and Cuddles going through an extended screaming gag, as well as specific voice directions in the board reminiscent of popular media (e.g. characters yelling like Chris Tucker's character in The Fifth Element or Cuddles saying "Yooou!" like Ren). The board was subsequently re-written without his input.
• Working Title: Sweets vs. Freaks, and later Freak vs. Sweet. Teletoon apparently loved the first title enough to pick up the series, but it wasn't to stick.