Trivia / PAW Patrol

• Acting for Two:
  • Cap'n Turbot, Mayor Humdinger and Farmer Al are all voiced by Ron Pardo.
  • British English dub:
    • Cap'n Turbot and his cousin Francois are both voiced by Andy Turvey.
    • Mayor Goodway, Farmer Yumi, and Ms. Majorie are all voiced by Niki Felstead.
  • Hebrew dub:
    • Skye and Katie are both voiced by Alona Alexander.
    • Mayor Goodway and Farmer Yumi are both voiced by Hadar Shachaf-Ma'ayan.
• Adored by the Network:
  • Nickelodeon loves promoting and airing, to the point where it airs more times a week than SpongeBob SquarePants. Alongside SpongeBob and The Loud House, it is considered one of the network's "Big Three". This treatment has been going on since Labor Day 2013, when the show was a month old.
    • This was taken up to eleven when the Nick Jr. block showed nothing but this show during Summer 2019, save for one episode of another show (usually Blaze and the Monster Machines) filling in the last half hour or so.
    • In 2021, a visit to Spin Master's website is greeted with a "Welcome to Spin Master" banner... and a picture of the pups, so it seems Spin Master's decided the pups are their unofficial mascots now.
    • In February 2021, the show was announced for a ninth season, making it the first Nick Jr. show to exceed its eighth season, making PAW Patrol to become the longest Nick Jr. show ever, surpassing Dora the Explorer. This is further cemented with a 10th season announced in March 2022, potentially making the show the third longest running show on Nick Jr. after Blue's Clues and Dora.
    • In March 2021, Nick Jr. ran seven straight hours on Saturdays to promote a preview of the upcoming movie on the Kids Choice Awards that occured the same month, something not even SpongeBob did in a single day.
    • On July 4, 2021, a five-hour marathon, consisting of only Mighty Pups episodes and the mini movie, ran on Nick Jr. Various shorts aired during commercial breaks, such as one on diggers with clips of Rubble in between, and a quiz about Skye.
  • Beginning in fall 2023, a good majority of Nick Jr's schedule was this show, and it and its spin-off air for at least 12 hours a day, with only the occasional break for Peppa Pig and Bubble Guppies, the latter of which is only shown in early-morning graveyard slots, breaking up the big chunks of this show.
• Billing Displacement: Ryder has the least amount of focus of the PAW Patrol (not counting Sixth Rangers like Everest, Tracker, Tuck or Ella), but has top billing in the theme song.
  "Whenever there's a problem round Adventure Bay, Ryder and his team of pups will come and save the day!"
• Baby Name Trend Starter: Chase and Skylar (often shortened to Skye) became popular baby names in 2016 due to the show's most popular characters having those names. Another name the show helped raise the popularity of was Rocky, which wasn't even in the top 1000 baby names the decade before, but re-entered the list when the show debuted.
• Blooper: In "Sea Patrol: Pups Save a Pier", there are several instances where Ryder has his normal hairdo rather than the Expository Hairstyle Change he normally has in specialty episodes.
• Breaking News Interruption: On March 14, 2018, Nickelodeon, as well as most Viacom networks, interrupted a re-run of "Pups Save a Baby Humdinger/Pups Save a Piñata" to go off-air in support of the National Walk-Out that day. Parents were not too pleased, which led to a controversy on Twitter.
• Cash-Cow Franchise: Being that the show was created by Spin Master, it quickly became this. In 2016, it was the top-selling character license based on a television show. As of 2023, the franchise has grossed over $10 billion.
• Children Voicing Children: All the pups and all the child characters (with the exceptions of Ace and Danny) are voiced by children. Averted in foreign dubs.
  • Ryder had four voice actors, Chase, Marshall and Zuma had three voice actors and Rocky had two voice actors.
  • Skye and Rubble kept their original voices (Kallan Holley and Devan Cohen) throughout the first five seasons. In Season 6, they received new voices by their new voice actors (Lilly Bartlam and Keegan Hedley).
• Content Leak:
  • Rex was revealed via an eBay listing from China selling a toy based on him.
  • The designs for the film adaptation were leaked via a pre-order for lunchboxes.
• Credits Pushback: All Nickelodeon airings of "The New Pup" have a bizarre example of this. The Nickelodeon split-screen credits template, alongside a video of SpongeBob and Patrick looking confused, plays in conjunction with Nickelodeon's normal "bottom of screen" credits, making this episode the only program as of 2020 to use the old split-screen credits.
• Cross-Dressing Voices:
  • Possibly to avoid Vocal Evolution, all the child male characters (Ryder included) are voiced by females in the Japanese dub.
  • In Spanish (both Latin American and European), French, Italian, and Polish, the pups are all voiced by women, while Ryder is voiced by a male actor.
  • Speaking of the Latin American Spanish dub, Ryder is voiced by an adult male voice actor (Rene Pinochet), whose voice was very notorious for years for sounding incredibly childish, as he was born prematurely, causing his vocal cords not to develop at all and sounding like a kid until he reached his 40s, when his voice suddenly began to sound more mature without warning, this was after when dubbing of Season 1 was finished and when dubbing of Season 2 began.
• The Danza:
  • Kingsley Marshall as Marshall.
  • Of a sort: Daniel DeSanto as Danny.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Ace and Danny are voiced by adults.
  • In stage productions, Ryder is always played by an adult despite being 10 years old in the series.
  • Likewise, the pups are supposed to be 5 to 7 years old, however their voice actors range from 11 to 15.
• Died During Production: Ted Bastien, director of the show, died of cancer while the tenth season was being produced.
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: Zuma's first voice actor, Emily Thorne, had rhotacism (a speech impediment where she couldn't pronounce her R's properly). This helped her land the role because that, coupled with her more high-pitched voice, made Zuma sound younger than he really is.
• Distanced from Current Events:
  • Being that one of the canine protagonists is Chase, who is a police officer pup, the show suffered from a nasty case of this in wake of the death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers:
    • In remembrance of Floyd's death, the show's social media accounts decided to go dark for what was intended to be a five-day hiatus. However, many people complained about the post because of Chase, causing the accounts to temporarily go on hiatus.
    • The Nick Jr. website had Chase as their icon for PAW Patrol. On June 17, 2020, it was changed to Marshall.
    • Two "Ultimate Rescue" episodes ("Pups Save the Royal Kitties" and "Pups Stop a Meltdown; Pups and the Mystery of the Missing Cellphones") were pulled from rotation because in these episodes, the other pups become police officers like Chase.
    • Finally, on some streaming providers, Chase was removed from promo art.
    • An example excluding Chase, but for the same reason many of these Chase-related things were changed, was when Mayor Goodway's voice was changed from Deann Degruijter to Kim Roberts in order for her voice actress to match her race, a similar method that was employed by shows such as The Simpsons, Family Guy, Central Park, Big Mouth and Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood.
  • "Pups Save a Sniffle" was temporarily pulled from Nick's line-up in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic because it dealt with most of the pups coming down with an illness. However, Nickelodeon accidentally aired the episode at least twice during this period.
• Dueling Dubs: There are two Finnish dubs, which are easily identifiable by whether it uses localized names or not. The dub that uses localized names (Ryhmä Hau) is done by Dub On/Revolver Studios and presented by Yle TV2 as part of the children's magazine show Pikku Kakkonen, while the other dub that keeps the English names is done by KM Studio Finland, commissioned by Nickelodeon and used for the streaming service Viaplay and the DVD releases of the show. Note that the movie uses the former dub.
• Dueling Shows:
  • It competes with two similarly themed shows on Disney Junior: Puppy Dog Pals, which centers on the adventures of dogs in the city, and PJ Masks, another show starring superheroes. While Puppy Dog Pals isn't as successful as PAW, PJ is just as popular as its toy sales are on par with PAW, to the point where the franchise grosses more money than the Disney Princess line.
  • Ironically in both France, and Mexico, PAW, and PJ broadcast on France's TFOU since PJ's sixth season, and on Mexico's Canal 5, when Televisa licensed both shows in the mid 2010s from Nickelodeon (Who license the show outside of Canada from the IP's owner, Spin Master), and Entertainment One respectively to broadcast both shows domestically on their network due to both shows being extremely popular in the country.^note Hasbro still allows Televisa to continue broadcasting PJ Masks, along with Peppa Pig when Hasbro gain control of those two properties from eOne.
  • Before Puppy Dog Pals and before PJ Masks, The main competition for PAW throughout 2013-2018 was with another Disney Junior series Sofia the First, while Sofia had better ratings than PAW at first,^note Not helping the matters was that Nickelodeon was being overtaken by Disney Channel through 2013-2015. PAW would quickly turn things around and surpass Sofia in overall ratings and mass global popularity.^note  What also helped is that Disney would end their shows after three or four seasons, Sofia ended after it's fourth season and the IP countinues to exist through sequel/spin-offs shows like Elena of Avalor and an upcoming Sofia spin-off, much like Adventure Time, while PAW Patrol, thanks to the IP being on Nickelodeon, and is owned by Spin Master, has went beyond 4 seasons and is still going on to this day.
  • There's also competition from Thomas & Friends, another preschool series featuring vehicles as the focus. What doesn't help is the Fandom Rivalry (well, to be more exact, Fandom Jealousy as very few PAW fans notice the flaming from the Thomas fans).
  • Oddly enough, despite being aimed at a different demographic, Cartoon Network seems to consider this show to be a rival to Teen Titans Go!, as both shows contain heroes who save their town and often get similar Nielsen ratings. ^note  At one point, the first airing of the day for both PAW and TTG got nearly identical viewerships.It's gotten to where if PAW is having a new episode on a holiday that kids have off from school, Cartoon Network will compete with it by airing a TTG marathon at the same time the new episode is broadcast. At one point, both shows used Fridays as an excuse to hold all-day marathons, which only PAW has now as of 2020.
  • The theatrical film is this with The Loud House Movie, which releases the same day in the United States and is also based on a Nick series.
  • In Japan, the show competes with another Preschool Show about unconventional superheroes, Soreike! Anpanman. Both franchises also appear in the same preschool magazines in Japan (Baby Book and Mebae).
• Early-Bird Release: The Japanese dub aired Ready, Race, Rescue in theaters four seasons earlier than when it should, with appearances from characters that have yet to be introduced left intact. In another, more interesting case, Jet to the Rescue, a 45-minute movie set in Barkingburg that aired in Season 7, is going to air in theaters to coincide with the currently airing Season 4, the season that introduces Barkingburg and the "Mission PAW" subseries. With there being only three "Mission PAW" episodes in Season 4 stretching their synergistic marketing strategy a little bit too thin, TV Tokyo then aired "Mission PAW" episodes from Season 5 in the middle of Season 4, just a week before the movie's release.
• He Also Did: Creator Keith Chapman also did Bob the Builder.
• Invisible Advertising: The film's trailer premiered online two months before release. To make matters worse, it was originally supposed to be released in May, with two different dates slated for release, one of which was mentioned here.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The episodes, Pup-Fu!, and Pups Save Sensei Yumi have been oddly pulled from airing and are not available for purchase on digital store fronts anymore for unknown reasons, they're not even available on streaming services either, while Pup-Fu! can still be easy to get if you own or bought a second hand copy of the Sports Day DVD release, Pups Save Sensei Yumi, however, is more difficult to get since it wasn't released on ANY DVD set. (Unless you live in Nordic countries)
• Kids' Meal Toy: McDonald's Japan released a set of bath stickers in their Happy Meals^*  or Happy Set as it is known over there, making this series one of the few to receive a Happy Meal promotion. It's even one of the rare instances where Sweetie is featured alongside Everest and Tracker.
  • Burger King also released a set of toys in their King Jr. Meal to promote the release of The Mighty Movie, featuring five of the six main pups and Liberty.
• Long Runner: Has been running since 2013, and is the first Nick Jr. show to go past eight seasons.
• The Merch: Naturally, because of the show's Cash Cow status. PAW merchandise of various types ranging from plush toys to dinnerware to shampoo is legion both in stores and online. It's gotten to the point where you can find more PAW merchandise than that of SpongeBob.
• No Export for You:
  • A strange case with the DVDs. In the home country of Canada, the DVDs are made by Kaboom, and those releases often comprise of entire seasons in a random order^note Usually after a season is complete, Kaboom! will release it in a box set, similar to other shows they've released in the past like The Berenstain Bears and Franklin, while in the US, Nickelodeon makes them, and their DVDs often contain episodes that were released on previous compilations.
  • Nordic countries^note Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Sweden. have a DVD set called The Huge Monkey & Other Stories which has the episode, Pups Save Sensei Yumi, an episode which, in recent times, has been removed from airing and is no longer available to purchase anymore on digital stores for unknown reasons, and it's not even on streaming, making the episode extremely difficult to get if you live outside of Nordic countries since it's not available on any other DVD set in any other country.
  • Despite being released theatrically in virtually every other major English-speaking country as well as in Poland and Japan (for the latter film), PAW Patrol: Mighty Pups and Ready, Race, Rescue! have not seen any theatrical releases in the United States, not even as an event cinema release.
• One-Book Author:
  • The show provides Deann Degruijter's only role as a major character (Mayor Goodway), as her only other roles were minor, excluding a recurring role in Franklin and Friends.
  • This is the only animated work Hiromi Okuyama (first voice of Farmer Yumi) has worked on, as she more frequently appears in short films.
  • Owen Mason's only major TV role was Ryder in Season 1.
  • Rex's voice actor, Luxton Handspiker, had his only TV role in this show. Like Okuyama, he mostly does short films.
  • Haruka Sugita, Japanese voice of Everest, had her only TV role here. She mainly does video games and TV commercials.
• Only So Many Canadian Actors: Not as extreme as other Canadian shows, but many of the child voice actors have worked on many recent children's TV shows where the voice actors were Canadian, such as Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, PJ Masks, Creative Galaxy and the Rick Siggelkow-produced version of Little People (Egmont), as well as some alumni from Arthur. This also applies to an extent to some of the adult cast, many from other Canadian works, as listed under Playing Against Type.
• The Other Darrin: See here.
• Out of Holiday Episode:
  • Any episode that's holiday-themed will air on TVOntario months before the holiday being celebrated occurs, since Canada usually airs the episodes in production order rather than holding off the holiday-themed episodes until it's close to the actual holiday like Nickelodeon does. Perhaps the most notable example was the first episode, whose second segment takes place during a festival celebrating the end of fall, aired in August as the premiere of the show. The only time TV Ontario averted this was for the Christmas Episode, which aired on Christmas Eve. This also applies to re-runs on the channel, with one example being a Halloween Episode airing in May.
  • Not even Nickelodeon is prone to this trope. "The Pups' Winter Wonder Show" occasionally airs when it's not winter, usually whenever Nickelodeon airs one of the show's 30-minute episodes on a Friday. It also premiered in Australia in late March, 3 months before winter. And on May 5, 2020, "Pups and the Werepuppy", a segment from one of their Halloween Episodes, aired.
  • Holiday episodes are also part of the regular rotation in the United Kingdom too, at least on Channel 5's Milkshake block.
  • In Japan, "Pups Save Christmas" aired on September 21, 2019, likely due to the channel airing the episodes in production order like TVOntario does.
  • Nickelodeon held off an episode featuring an expy of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade until the day before Thanksgiving. In Canada, that episode aired on October 27, 2019, a month before the actual parade in question was held. Nickelodeon then put the episode into their regular rotation, airing it well after Thanksgiving was over.
  • "Pups Save Election Day" airs even when it isn't around Election Day, which occurs in November. It's justified as it isn't really a holiday, despite the fact that some school districts have off on that day.
• Playing Against Type:
  • You wouldn't expect Ryder (Jaxon Mercey) to share a voice actor with Prince Wednesday.
  • Devan Cohen (Rubble) plays Daniel Tiger. Starting 2018, Rubble's voice actor also voices the Night Ninja, a villain instead of a hero.
  • Likewise, Zuma's old voice actor (Emily Thorne) plays a villain on the same aforementioned show, as Romeo.
  • May we also mention that Danny (Daniel DeSanto) shares a voice with Carlos?
    • As of Season Five, he shares his new voice (Jonathan Malen) with Jimmy Z.
  • One of the penguins in "Pups Save the Jungle Penguins" is voiced by Sonja Ball. Couldn't you imagine a minor role penguin having the same voice actress as Polly Esther, Sagwa's Nai-Nai, Wimzie and Arthur's mother?
  • Christian Destefano, Alex's first voice, was one of the many voices of D.W. Read, a Bratty Half-Pint who is Wise Beyond Their Years compared to Alex's naive nature.
  • Another minor role, Otis Goodway, was voiced by James Rankin, who played Mr. Owl and ten different characters on The Noddy Shop.
• Production Posse: Daniel DeSanto, Christian Destefano, Devan Cohen, Berkley Silverman, Drew Davis, Samuel Faraci, Julie Lemieux, Juan Chioran, Peter Cugno and Sonja Ball all had roles on Arthur.
• Real-Life Relative: Lilly Bartlam (second voice of Skye) and Anna Bartlam (Codi Gizmody) are sisters.
  • The same applies to Kallan Holley (Skye's first voice), and Addison Holley. (The first voice of Julia Goodway, and the voice of The Cheetah.)
• Referenced by...: Has its own page.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: This is why Ryder has a Dub Name Change to Kent in the Japanese dub: Takara Tomy licenses the PAW Patrol toyline in Japan, but their rival Bandai copyrighted the Japanese spelling of Ryder, "raida", for their Kamen Rider toys.
• Sending Stuff to Save the Show: A rare non-cancellation example involved posting images of merchandise without the girls to ask for merchandise with all the pups on it, lead by an organization called Let Toys Be Toys. It worked for the North American merchandise, but merchandise sold outside of that region generally has the same problem.
• Sequel First: Japan got Ready, Race Rescue! before Mighty Pups. This might be because the latter movie contains a later series spoiler, with said spoiler being the introduction of Robo-Pup.
• Short Run in Peru:
  • Despite being a Canadian show produced for TVOntario's children's block, PAW first aired in the United States two weeks before its home country. In fact, a majority of the episodes aired in the US prior to Canada, with the exception of several holiday-themed episodes, which Nick decided to hold back. However, Nick aired "Pups Save Christmas" before TVOntario (they aired it on Christmas Eve)
  • "Pups Save a Pool Day" and "Circus Pup Formers" aired in Canada first due to Nickelodeon taking a hiatus in between new episodes.
  • Starting with Season 6, Canada began showing episodes before Nickelodeon. Most notably, the episode introducing Rex aired on TVOntario first and re-aired on BC's Knowledge Network several hours later, as evidenced by screenshots that surfaced several hours after these airings. Apparently, Nickelodeon found out about this, and bumped their airing of this episode to June 26, 2020 (it was originally intended to air in July).
  • "Pups Save Old Trusty" and "Pups Save a Pony" aired in Finland a month before it aired in the United States and seven months before Canada.
  • A few Season 8 episodes, "Pups Save The Hiding Elephants" as one example, all premiered in the UK/Ireland before their American premiere.
• Spoiled by the Merchandise: Lunchboxes revealed the PAW Patrol's new designs as well as the design of Liberty, the new pup who's going to be introduced in the upcoming feature-length movie.
• Trend Killer: The monster successes of shows like this and Doc McStuffins has mostly ended the use of Fake Interactivity in preschool shows that Blue's Clues made popular. Now, most preschool-aimed content tries to teach kids lessons without faking interactivity. A research study done by Disney in 2010 provides further insight into why this is the case. Before the Disney Junior block was conceived, the company surveyed parents and asked them what they wanted to see in the shows their kids watched. Most parents wanted their kids to watch stories that would make them happy and that they could tell back to their parents, a change most likely resulting from the rise of tablet and smartphone apps teaching preschool concepts. In comparison, when Disney conducted the same survey five years prior, parents wanted their children to learn educational concepts from these shows.
• Unisex Series, Gendered Merchandise: Likely because the show features Cool Cars and Transforming Mechas which are traditionally thought of as "boy things", most of the merchandise is aimed at boys. The exception is merchandise featuring the two girls, Skye and Everest, that rarely features the boys on it (and when they do feature one of them, it's Marshall).
• What Could Have Been:
  • It was originally conceived as a Bakugan spin-off aimed at preschoolers.
  • Ryder had two different names before his final name was chosen, with those being Raffi and Robbie.
  • The earliest known concept art had super-deformed designs◊ where the dogs had a more anthro look. There was also a scraped red firefighter dog, with his role being replaced by Marshal. Ryder also had a very similar look to Bob the Builder, the protagonist of creator Chapman's first TV series.
  • Later pieces◊ of concept art◊ had a more realistic style for the dogs and Ryder has a similar look to the final show, but he wore a blue vest and a hat.
  • This piece◊ of concept art shows what some designs of what Katie was originally going to be like before becoming a blond, with some showing her with brown, red and even purple hair, along with one that has glasses.
  • Apparently Rocky wasn't always meant to be some obscure mixed breed. He used to be entirely beige in color (the dog on the top left.)◊
  • One piece of concept art shows a scrapped Timber character who was going to be a companion to Jake.
  • Ryder was going to build the team by rescuing various pups himself instead of having them all from the start, but this was ditched due to a Canadian TV requirement for preschool shows produced there to have pro-social themes. "Pups Get a Rubble" gives a glimpse into what these early episodes could have been like. The first theatrical film touches a bit on how Ryder met Chase, and the second on how Ryder found Skye.
  • This image◊ promoting "Mission PAW" has Ryder wearing a rather spy-esque outift consisting of a black shirt, gray pants and shoes, and a headset. He doesn't wear this gear in any actual "Mission PAW" episode.
  • The official Mighty Tracker toy◊ proves that Tracker was at least considered to appear in the "Mighty Pups" sub-series, enough to have his own costume and his own vehicle — and judging by his pup-tag, his own superpower — if he ever did.
• Working Title: When the show was in development, it had various different names, with the earliest being Raffi and the Rescue Dogs. Other early names include Robbie’s Pup Pack, Robbie's Rescue Dogs, and Ryder's PAW Patrol,