Trivia / Phoebe and Her Unicorn

• Author's Saving Throw: One comic involved Phoebe feeding bread to ducks while pointing out that they're more interested in the bread than the rainbow she's sitting on. Many readers pointed out that feeding ducks bread is bad for them, so three years later, Dana released a strip that acknowledges this.
• The Cameo: Llewellyn is seen in silhouette among the dragons attending Todd's halloween party. He's later seen in full along with Drizzle and Tater.
• Channel Hop: According to this interview with Dana, the planned Animated Adaptation originally started production at Amazon before being picked up by Nickelodeon a couple of years later due to an executive shakeup. Then Nickelodeon pulled the plug on it as well.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: It's not unusual for blurbs about the strip to refer Marigold as Phoebe's imaginary friend (akin to Calvin and Hobbes), even though she and other unicorns are very much real in-universe, with Marigold even interacting with other humans on a regular basis.
• Development Hell: An Animated Adaptation of the strip originally started at Amazon in 2017, before being cancelled after an executive shakeup and picked up by Nickelodeon a couple years later. In 2022, the Nickelodeon adaptation was cancelled due to the Girl-Show Ghetto, and the adaptation is still in limbo as of this writing.
• Hypothetical Casting: Dana has said in multiple interviews that she pictures Jane Krakowski as the voice of Marigold.
• Milestone Celebration: The comic's tenth anniversary features Phoebe celebrating her tenth birthday party (a notable aversion of an Ageless Birthday Episode), and Marigold declares it is her tenth birthday as well. (She figures she must be ten of something).
• Missing Episode: The early slumber party storyline originally featured a strip where Phoebe screams upon seeing Marigold's head in her bed as a reference to The Godfather, only for Marigold to not understand the reference. While the strip can still be found on GoComics, it was omitted out of the book collection due to referencing a film too mature for the target audience.
• Post-Release Retitle: Dana Simpson launched the webcomic Heavenly Nostrils in 2012. In January 2015, while working towards a newspaper syndication deal, Simpson renamed the comic Phoebe and Her Unicorn, so that was its title when it launched in newspapers in March that year.
• Reality Subtext: According to this Bluesky thread, the strip acted as major therapy for Dana as a trans woman, as she was able to use Phoebe to explore the childhood she never had.
• Saved from Development Hell: The strip, originally called Girl, was submitted in 2009 as part of Amazon's Comic Strip Superstar contest. While it won, both Dana Simpson and the syndicate realized that the strip needed further work. Eventually, a unicorn was added and everything fell into place. The strip, then re-titled Heavenly Nostrils, debuted online in 2012. Another three years would pass before it finally debuted in newspapers, by which point the title was changed again to the current one.
• Shrug of God: When asked what would happen to Marigold when Phoebe inevitably grows old, Dana replied with "I try not to think about that."
• Word of God: Phoebe's maternal grandfather is Mexican-American, and her piano teacher Mr. Hart is Muslim, according to this post on Dana Simpson's blog.

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