Trivia / Happy Tree Friends

• Acting for Two:
  • Giggles, Petunia and Cub have always had the same voice actor, although the role has changed twice.
  • Lumpy and Splendid have always shared a voice actor, even when Montijo left the show.
  • Lifty, Shifty, Cuddles and normal Flippy are all voiced by Kenn Navarro, although initially, Kenn only did Cuddles' voice.
• Ascended Fanon:
  • Fliqpy referred to as "Evil Flippy" is sometimes used as a name on certain blog posts.
  • Fans' suggestions about an episode with Splendid fighting Flippy eventually happened in Happy Tree Friends: Deadeye Derby, though indirectly. Splendid is a playable character in the game and Flippy is a boss, making it possible for Splendid to fight him.
• Author's Saving Throw:
  • The Ants, being retired in Season 3, considering most of the show's fans hated them.
  • The Classic Remastered fixes a majority of the older episode's errors as well as the ones that were exclusively present in the YouTube uploads. The "Quick Shot Moments" were removed from these as well, preventing spoilers.
  • Lumpy was a rather polarizing character during the early seasons and especially the TV season. What with many fans being fed up on how many episodes were centered on him and how many plots are stemmed on how Lethally Stupid, or even a Jerkass he is. Seasons 3 and beyond rectified a lot of these complaints in a few ways: For one, he shows a more competent side in episodes such as "Read 'em and Weep" and "By the Seat of Your Pants". He also shows a much more heroic and good-natured side of him in "All Flocked Up" and "Blood Donor". And episodes that run on him accidentally murdering people show that he is not entirely to blame all the time ("All Work and No Play" for example; sure he unwittingly killed the Tree Friends, but they should've known better than to play at an active construction site). Furthermore, episodes that have him as a villain clearly show that this Lumpy is assuming an entirely different role rather than his usual dumb self. Finally, Lumpy has diminished in prominence during the last two seasons. From a technical standpoint, he still appears in most episodes, but in Season 4 and onward, his number of starring roles was reduced to barely a quarter, if less. The Still Alive episodes cemented this further by rendering Lumpy completely Out of Focus, save for the last episode. Lumpy is still very much a Base-Breaking Character, but fans do acknowledge it is not as bad as it was before.
• Banned Episode: While part 1 for "Wishy Washy" is still available on YouTube, part 2 was removed for violating its terms of service. It's speculated that either Lumpy's death and hideous corpse or Petunia's suicide was the reason for the video's removal.^note The latter is arguably the more likely reason, since the site doesn't allow videos displaying an intentional suicide, be it animated or on real-life footage. Even the other segments of the TV episode that featured it, "Four on the Floor", were removed from YouTube for the same reason. The entirety of "Wishy Washy" can still be watched on Mondo Media's website, and "Four on the Floor" is available on Amazon Prime Video and Crunchyroll.
• Banned in China: The show's TV season was taken off the air from Russian TV channel 2×2 for "promoting violence and brutality". Several Internet episodes were similarly taken down on YouTube's network in Russia.
• Based on a Dream: The part in "Easy Comb, Easy Go" where Disco Bear looks into the mirror and uses some tweezers to pluck out a single strain of hair growing out of his eye was based on a dream that writer Ken Pontac had.
• Blooper:
  • This occasionally happens with a number of characters who have certain parts that face a specific way. Often, they are mirrored, resulting in said parts getting flipped. The most well-known example is Lumpy's antlers; one is meant to be facing up while the other faces down. Whether it's the left or the right, however, changes with each episode and each moment, even onscreen.
  • The TV series introduced redesigned teeth for characters who have buck-teeth. There are however moments where the teeth revert to the older designs, however.
    • In "And the Kitchen Sink" there is a brief scene where Pop uses his older teeth design◊.
    • In "Dunce Upon a Time", when Giggles is about to knock down the bottles with the imprisoned Tree Friends, they are using their older designs.
    • Even vice versa happens with "Star Kringle", one of the HTF Breaks. The majority of the breaks are supposed to be using the older designs, though for one scene, Toothy actually gets his TV design◊. This is because the scene in question was added into the break (which was originally created in 2004 for the Winter Break special) after the show got its characters redesigned.
  • Toothy had this issue in earlier episodes with his buckteeth, which are supposed to be longer than usual with a significant gape, hence his name. The earlier episodes sometimes shift between his unique buckteeth and for the most part, the ones everyone else has. The most glaring example is "Eye Candy", where Toothy spends the majority of the episode with regular teeth.
  • Sniffles' mouth is supposed to be located in his snout. Yet "Take a Hike" has it located under his snout◊.
  • Many uploads of the original versions of episodes presented in .swf format (from "Spin Fun Knowin' Ya!" up to "Just Desert") were prone to a couple of mistakes.
    • The fan-dubbed "Quick Shot Moments" refers to the uploads' scenes with a random frame of an episode. Sometimes, it would show a much later scene such as a character's death. Starting with "Peas in a Pod", those frames were gone. The "Classics Remastered" removes these moments alongside less apparent bloopers.
    • The original YouTube upload of "Stayin' Alive" has the transitions of Giggles and Petunia's dead bodies during the second rave scene stretch rather than moving to the left and right like in the original animation and its DVD release. Classics Remastered fixes this.
  • The Classic Remastered version of "Pitchin' Impossible" has Petunia's name label appear as "Lifty and Shifty". This mistake was fixed for the Complete Disaster DVD.
• Creator Backlash: The crew, apparently, did not like "Gems the Breaks", for reasons unspecified^note Though they did specify the episode's runtime was running short, so they tacked on the chase sequence with the laser at the end to fill time. And, on an ask account on Reddit, Warren Graff was displeased on how "Home Is Where The Hurt Is" turned out.
  • On the DVD commentaries, the crew stated that they aren't very fond of "Stayin' Alive" because of how hard it was to come up with creative ideas for Disco Bear's kills.
• Creator's Favorite: Kenn Navarro admits that Lumpy has his favorite character design, due to his lanky limbs.
• Creator's Pest:
  • Disco Bear was this to writers in the earlier episodes of the show as they considered him annoying. This is the reason why he has only one episode in Season 1. Starting with the TV series, however, they started to love him a bit more.
  • The staff have also admitted to disliking Cro-Marmot which likely explains the reasons he has very few starring roles in the show.
  • Toothy is this to Ken Pontac, as he stated in a Q&A that he feels like he is very underdeveloped.
• Cross-Dressing Voices:
  • Cub, Sniffles, and Mime (when he needs a vocal effect) are all voiced by women.
  • All the ants, including the female ones, are voiced by men.
• Descended Creator: All three creators were regular voice actors at one point:
  • Aubrey Ankrum voiced Pop and both of Flippy's personalities before leaving the show. His voice is still sampled for Pop and Fliqpy, so he was only replaced for good Flippy.
  • Rhode Montijo voiced Lumpy and Splendid in the first two seasons before being replaced by David Winn.
  • Kenn Navarro voices Cuddles, and started voicing Flippy, Lifty and Shifty after their original voice actors left.
• Development Hell: A movie for the show was announced to be in pre-production in 2014, but as of 2024, no update on its development has been given since then.
• Enforced Method Acting: In "Shard at Work", Warren Graff choked himself with water while recording the scene where Handy gets a fish bowl stuck on his head.
• Fandom Life Cycle: The series stayed at Stage 4 for the majority of its run, due to its Subverted Kids' Show nature, as well as the over-the-top ways how the characters die every episode. With the show's on-again-off-again hiatus, as well as the underperformance of the "Still Alive" package^note For $6.99 USD, you could watch five HTF episodes. The length of these episodes likely led to the poor sales, with most fans only saying it would be worth it if you wanted to support the creators.invoked, the fandom went to Stage 6b, only being still alive (no pun intended) due to fan content and the infamy of the "YouTube Copyright School" video that was still being used by YouTube to teach copyright strikees how to avoid any more copyright strikes as late as the mid-2010s, long after Happy Tree Friends saw its relevance pass. However, the fandom is quickly going to Stage X because of reaction/retrospective videos on YouTube and two fanmade Flippy mods for Friday Night Funkin'.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Many of the older HTF media had been rendered unavailable from official sources for various reasons, from exclusivity (like the DVD-only content) to obsolete platform (like the entire catalog of Java mobile games) to Mondo inadvertently taking out existing media that were previously available on the official website due to the change in format (that is before going into Banned Episode territory). The more dedicated fans have tried to uncover and archive this kind of HTF media so they can be shared with others.
  • Recordings of the TV airings are typically sought-after for their novelty value, but the most notable is Happy Tree Friends & Friends, an animation compilation show that features other adult animation alongside Happy Tree Friends. Officially, the only remnants are the intro and closing sequences and the show bumpers (except two) that were reworked into the infamous "Happy Tree Friends is dead!" Break shorts.
  • The Licensed Game adaptations are another matter. ROMs of the Java mobile games are available on the web and can be emulated, keeping them from being lost. The Flash arcade games have been rendered playable online once more through Ruffle (though the SWFs for offline play are still circulated around to this day). What is complicated is regarding the iOS-only content and the HTML5 games. Slap Happy had long been taken down from the app store and its IPA is hard to come by, and while Deadeye Derby is surprisingly still playable (albeit with only the same set of rotating events), there is no way to buy real-life merch through the in-game store as the submission form is never sent out to players anymore. The app versions of the HTML5 games were eventually taken down^note Even if a player sideloads them, Technology Marches On and the OS incompatibility results in the game not running properly if not simply crashing. and even the official website is no longer able to load the web version, though third-party sites managed to preserve them.^note Most notably Aggravated Asphalt, whose only Android version is only available through Amazon of all things, and even then it being always online makes it just as useless when it now always fails to connect to the server.
• Missing Episode: Several "irregular" episodes can't be found on Mondo Media's website. Among them are "Dino-Sore Days" (a sketch featuring a non-ice-encased Cro-Marmot), "Intimate Spotlight" (an "interview" with Cro-Marmot), Cuddles's "Smoochie" episode, and a Christmas episode titled "We Wish You".
• Newbie Boom: The many YouTube videos of people reacting to the series and the popularity of the Friday Night Funkin' mods VS Flippy and Vs. Flippy: Flipped Out! brought new fans to the series.
• No Export for You: A lot of the merchandise is Japan Only. Averted if said merchandise turns up on Amazon or eBay, though.
• One-Book Author: The series remains the only acting credit for the entire voice cast, as they were mainly animators or crew members.
• Orphaned Reference: Aside from the irregular episode "Mole in the City", The Mole as a secret agent is still somewhat hinted at by his name.
• The Other Darrin: Several changes in voice actors:
  • Giggles, Petunia and Cub have always shared a voice actor, though the role has been replaced twice: first Dana Belben, then Ellen Connell, now Lori Jee.
  • David Winn replaced Rhode Montijo as both Lumpy and Splendid when Rhode left the show. Similarly, Kenn Navarro replaced Mark Giambruno as both Lifty and Shifty (although Giambruno's laughs were sampled in at least one episode) and Francis Carr replaced Jeff Biancalana as Russell.
  • Kenn Navarro voiced Handy in "A Hole Lotta Love" because Warren Graff was unavailable.
    • According to the Happy Tree Friends wiki, Kenn Navarro also voiced Toothy in "Keepin' It Reel".
  • Subverted with Pop; Aubrey Ankrum's voice has been sampled since he left the show. Ankrum is also sampled for evil Flippy, but Kenn took over voicing good Flippy.
• Reclusive Artist: Of the voice actors who worked on the show, only Kenn Navarro, Ellen Connell, Warren Graff, Nica Lorber, David Winn, Francis Carr, and Michael Lipman have given interviews. The others have basically disappeared off the face of the earth since HTF stopped production of new episodes.
• Schedule Slip:
  • No internet episodes were released between late 2005 and October 2007, as the producers were in the process of making the TV series. Even after the TV season came and went in late 2006, the hiatus continued.
    • Only two episodes were released in all of 2007, both of which were Holiday Episodes.
  • There were only three episodes in 2010 and one full episode in 2011, which was also a Christmas Episode.
  • There were also only three episodes in 2014, all of which were released within the first three months of that year, and after their debuts, the show entered a hiatus that lasted through late 2016. The show finally returned yet again with 5 new episodes in December 2016.
    • The first 2014 episode, "Spare Tire", itself was originally intended to debut in December 2013, but ended up releasing on January 7, 2014.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Subverted. They have the "Copyright School" video, which Youtube users would be forced to watch when they get a full on Copyright strike.
• Screwed by the Network:
  • By 2005, the show was at its peak, and G4TV, which at this point was already broadcasting the internet shorts (some of which had just been seen on Attack of the Show!), picked up a TV adaptation of the show, which premiered in 2006. In the months leading up to the TV series' premiere, G4 and the Happy Tree Friends website both comfortably gave it plenty of advertising, with a small number of the TV series' episodes even being given early previews that were sent to subscribers of the show's now-defunct email fan club. Unfortunately, G4 placed first-run episode broadcasts at the highly inconvenient time slot of midnight Eastern Time on Monday nights^note not even the weekend reruns were able to avoid not being placed in overnight timeslots, with the exception of an early evening timeslot on Sundays with extremely poor promotion, which translated into low ratings, which not only ensured the TV series' cancellation after 13 episodes and the scrapping of a planned second TV season, but also indirectly caused the show's popularity to crash, although the show itself luckily avoided the fate of its characters. Making matters worse, the TV series was removed entirely from G4's schedule as soon as the final episode aired, as if it never existed.
  • Per this Facebook story, Mondo Media had admitted to be screwed over by YouTube's modern guidelines which made publishing "edgy" content (which their catalog, including Happy Tree Friends, consists of) more difficult due to demonetization (the Banned Episode entry above also does not help). As a result, they attempted reviving the show once more through the channel membership program on YouTube starting from the end of February 2024.
• Similarly Named Works: 21 Jump Street, Captain Flamingo, The Loud House, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and The Zeta Project all also have an episode titled "Change of Heart".
• Trolling Creator: The crew did this with Flaky's gender to intentionally have fans argue about it.
  • A blog post for "Wrath Of Con" initially claims she's a girl, but the next one says otherwise.
  • Many of the Blurbs refer to Flaky with both male and female pronouns.
  • The episode "Something Fishy" has Flaky deciding on which bathroom to use. It's never shown which one Flaky enters.
• Two Voices, One Character: Flippy is a variation in that he was originally voiced only by Aubrey Ankrum, but after Ankrum left the show, Kenn Navarro took over as good Flippy while Ankrum was sampled for Fliqpy. Presumably Navarro couldn't go deep enough.
• What Could Have Been: A commentary in the First Blood DVD revealed various concepts. That also includes prototypes and unused concepts.
  • A few rejected characters:
    • Pranky the bear.
    • Cookie the chef sloth.
    • An unnamed centaur character.
    • A fugitive character whose head is phallic instead of round. (species is not clear).
    • A cyborg bear, with one side of his body being mechanical.
    • Mafia Doctor the deer, possibly based on quack doctors. He has one of his cheeks bandaged, has a broken right arm, has his feet stuck in concrete blocks, and wields a saw.
    • An unnamed monkey.
    • Penny the princess/queen bear.
    • Bunny Bumpkin the, well, country bumpkin.
    • An unnamed bear character in a warrior-like outfit.
    • An unnamed opossum character who is supposed to be Mole's arch-rival. May have been retooled into The Rat from "Mole in the City."
    • An unnamed female opossum character with a flower on her head and small opossum(?) plushies stuck on her body.
    • Swami the skunk, who wears a large turban, possibly based on fortune tellers.
    • Meat Face, a character whose head is covered with a bag.
    • Skizzy the tall, skinny squirrel.
    • An unnamed platypus character in a strait jacket.
    • Princess the rabbit.
  • Prototypes involving existing characters include: Lumpy being a bear instead of a dinosaur in an early sketch about the pilot episode, Shifty being a squirrel, Pop only donning his hat and having his smoking pipe, Flippy having bandages covering his injuries and having a broken arm, Russell with a long beard, Cub being named Fuzzy, Sniffles being a squirrel, and Flaky having ears and being named Corky.
  • Pop was originally going to be in Happy Trails Part 2, but the writers didn't like the idea of him appearing without Cub or murdering Flaky in cold blood. They instead opted for Flippy, which makes it much easier since they were (at the time) voiced by the same person, however, Pop's dialogue was used in the final episode.
  • A second TV season was requested by G4TV, and a promotional poster was even created for press purposes, but it was vetoed by the producers due to how the first TV season got the Screwed by the Network treatment mentioned above.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things:
  • The show's creators have occasionally shown disinterest with a Fliqpy vs. Splendid episode, an episode idea fans have suggested a lot, as shown in the TV show's DVD commentary and on a live stream chat. On the former, the creators themselves state it wouldn't happen while on the latter, they feel that having one like that would be Jumping the Shark.
  • Kenn Navarro has stated that Truffles will not play a significant role that isn't him being The Cameo. He'll stay like this because the show must remain faithful to the Vote or Die contest results.
• Word of God:
  • The Mondo Media Twitter account confirmed that Flaky is a girl. However, Kenn Navarro and the show's crew members remain in the Ambiguous Gender territory per his Reddit AMA, not liking the decision for the tweet being made as it ruined the Running Gag nature of Flaky's identity.
  • Kenn Navarro confirmed that Giggles does have a tail, albeit a really tiny one that viewers can't see.
  • He also stated that the SSSSSSquad members other than Splendid do have names.
    • The fox is named Wonder Wanda.
    • The spider is named Webster.
    • The robot is named Tick-Talk.
    • The jellyfish is named Man-O-War.
  • The creators addressed the infamous two hiatuses (2011 and 2014-2016) by saying that both cases were caused by a lack of funds.
• Write What You Know: In the DVD Commentary of the TV series' Vol. 4 DVD, the crew stated that the Mole's needle carelessness in "In a Jam" was based on a real accident involving an untrained blood drive worker that one of them witnessed.

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