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  • Acting for Two:
    • Creators Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki voice most of the main cast and any minor characters who occur in pairs.
    • Brazilian voice actor Marco Ribeiro voices most of the deep voiced characters in said country's 2nd dub, including Larry. He even does the singing voice of Mr. Lunt.
      • Speaking of Brazil, Sérgio Fortuna does the singing voices for plenty of characters in the 3rd Brazilian dub, including Bob, Mr. Nezzer, Mr. Lunt, and Archibald Asparagus.
  • Adored by the Network:
    • TBN's Smile Of A Child channel loves this show. It's the first show you see when you go on their website, and the specials air often, with the most common one played being "If I Sang A Silly Song". As of July 2023, the show plays four times a day.
    • This one is more of an example of "Adored by the Distributor." The Star of Christmas is arguably Lifehouse Film's favorite episode (Lifehouse Film distributed VeggieTales in Germany) to the point where it got its own CD and book adaptations along with a box set, unlike all the other episodes.
  • Amateur Cast: The voice cast consists almost entirely of Phil Vischer, Mike Nawrocki, and family members of the production team. On a few occasions, there have been celebrity guest stars, usually Christian music artists. However, In the House uses famous voice actors such as Tress MacNeille and Rob Paulsen, while The VeggieTales Show features Kira Buckland and Sean Chiplock.
  • Bad Export for You: The Brazilian releases of post-2005 episodes contain almost no bonus features.
  • Blooper: In the 1st Brazilian dub of Where's God When I'm S-Scared?, someone in the dubbing studio can be faintly heard saying "Uhhhh...." at one point.
    • The Slovenian dub is filled with these, with horrible lip-sync being among the most noticeable things. The voice actors also improvise their lines most of the time, and Bob's voice actor tends to say "Ja" as an excuse to fill in the remainder of a line if he finishes it at the wrong time.
    • In the theme song to the Persian dub of Tomato Sawyer and Huckleberry Larry's Big River Rescue, one of the singers can be heard laughing while they are singing towards the end of the song.
  • Celebrity Voice Actor: In the German dub, Laura Carrot is voiced by gospel singer Florence Joy.
    • Jean-Claude, Philippe, and Pa Grape'snote  singing voices were done by Hanjo Gäbler, another German gospel singer.
  • Channel Hop: VeggieTales has gone through a lot of distributors over the years. While in the Christian market it has always been through Word Entertainment (initially under their Everland Entertainment label), it's a different story for wider video outlets. The episodes were first released by home video distributor Lyrick Studios, then very briefly by their new parent HiT Entertainment before moving to Warner Home Video for a little longernote  then going from Sony Wonder, Genius Entertainment, Vivendi Entertainment, Anderson, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment (only in Australia and later the rest of the world due to DWA's then-current distribution deal with the company), to finally current owner Universal. Phew.
    • The "On TV" version of the show aired its first two seasons on NBC, and its' third season note  would later air in syndication networks and COZI TV six years after leaving qubo.
  • Children Voicing Children: Shelby Vischer, Ally Nawrocki, and Maggie Roberts were all children when they began their respective tenures as the voice of Annie Onion.
  • Creator Backlash:
    • In an interview conducted with World Magazine in 2011, Phil Vischer, who no longer has any control of VeggieTales or of Big Idea, said that he now considers the series something of a disappointment and something of a failure because it stressed basic morals while largely downplaying the Christian beliefs behind those morals (something he decided to rectify for his new streaming service, Jelly Telly, which he produces through his new company, Jellyfish L.L.C.). Those statements do not mean he doesn't like working on the show, and knows that it's in good hands with Doug TenNapel.
    • Downplayed when, in another recent podcast, he states that he didn't mind the new designs of the characters. However, he does think that Jimmy looks kinda scary with his new teeth.
    • While they held no ill will towards it, the crew of Larry Boy & The Rumor Weed later admitted that trying to create a "racially diverse" metropolitan area was more trouble than it was worth, as they not only had to create a ton of new characters from scratch out of veggies they'd never featured before, but there had to be enough to fill out any potential dead space in the frame. Some of them tried to cheat by making larger characters, such as a pumpkin and a broccoli florette.
  • Creator Breakdown: Eric Metaxes, who co-wrote the scripts of some episodes, cut ties with Phil Vischer in 2021 after political differences between him and Vischer, which resulted not only Phil, but also any family members blocked from his Twitter. Phil felt upset about it after being good friends with him since 1999.
  • Creator Killer: Noah's Ark as well as the Netflix spin-offs seemingly killed Big Idea for a few years, but the company was still active during that time period. Fortunately, they came back in 2019 with the announcement of The VeggieTales Show.
  • Cross-Dressing Voices: Junior is voiced by Lisa Vischer, Phil Vischer's wife.
    • He is also voiced by Marisa Leal (female) in the Audio News dub for the Brazilian VHS releases and the original DVD releases, but is subverted because Manolo Rey (who sounds nothing like Junior and is male) does his speaking voice in the dub.
      • Averted in the German and Hungarian dubs, where he is voiced by males (Tammo Kaulbarsch in German and Márk Jelinek in Hungarian).
    • Larry is, surprisingly enough, voiced by a little girl in the Croatian dub.
  • The Danza: In "Where's God When I'm Scared?", Phil Winklestein was voiced by Phil Vischer.​
    • Larry is also voiced by Larry Villanueva in one of the Latin Spanish dubs.
  • Dawson Casting:
    • Lisa Vischer was in her early twentiesnote  when she was cast as five-year-old Junior Asparagus.
    • Inverted with Pa Grape's original voice actor, Phil Vischer. Pa is 82 years old In-Universe, but Philnote  was actually in his late twenties when he started voicing the character.
  • Descended Creator: The show's creators, Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki, voiced numerous characters in the franchise from 1993 to 2022.
  • Development Hell: The idea to adapt the story of Noah was pitched in 1998 but ditched in favor of what became Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie because "the fur would've killed us!'. The story was finally tackled for a show released in March 2015 (more than 15 years after the original idea was proposed).
  • Direct to Video: Episodes of the show were originally released straight to VHS tapes and DVD before it got a movie in theaters and TV airings courtesy of qubo and TBN. However, PBS Kids aired "The Star Of Christmas" before it was released to DVD and video as a special event, and PAX ran a Christmas special based on the series before its VHS release.
  • Distanced from Current Events: ''Robin Good And His Not-So-Merry-Men was to feature a Silly Song about tornado hunting, but it was cut due to a tornado outbreak that occurred around the time of the video's production.
  • Dueling Dubs: The show was dubbed into Brazilian Portuguese three times. The original dub was done by Audio News during 1996, while the second dub was done by the same studio around 2004-2006, and the third dub was made by Herbert Richers during 2007-2008.
    • Not only that, the show was also dubbed two times into Latin Spanish. The first dub was done in Chile by DINT Doblajes Internacionales during 1996-1997, while the second dub was done by HCJB - Televozandes in Ecuador and by BVI Communications, Inc. in Miami from 2006-2008.
  • Edited for Syndication:
    • When the show aired on NBC and any of its subchannels or blocks (Cozi, Qubo, etc.), any religious references were cut out. For example, in "Dr. Jiggle and Mr. Sly", "You're special just the way God made ya!" was cut to "You're special!" Sometimes, scenes that weren't religious at all were cut for time constraints. For instance, the line in "Larry-Boy! And the Fib From Outer Space" where LarryBoy says that he is tired, hungry, and he has to go to the bathroom was cut for an odd reason, probably to allow more commercials to run.
      • A particularly egregious example of this is in The Toy That Saved Christmas. They cut to the ending straight after Mr. Nezzer's Heel–Face Turn, completely leaving out the entire climax!
    • This is also in effect with the Smile of a Child airings.
  • Executive Meddling: NBC adopted the series to air on their former children's programming block Qubo, but not before bowdlerizing any and all references to Christ, God, the Bible, and Christianity. Public response eventually made them lighten up — the Biblical discussions before and after each story were still cut, but religious references within the episode could stay.
  • Fake Brit: Phil Vischer, Iowa-native and cofounder of Big Idea, does the voice for Archibald Asparagus, Scallion #1, and the increasingly-similar-sounding "Silly Songs" narrator.
  • Fake Nationality:
    • The French Peas are French, as their name implies, but are voiced by actors who are not French. To be more specific, Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki, the original voices of Phillipe and Jean-Claude, respectively, are both American.
    • Mr. Lunt is Hispanic, but his original voice actor, Phil Vischer, is white.
    • Mr. Nezzer is implied to be African American, as Word of God states that Nezzer's voice was originally meant to be an impression of African-American actor Ken Page. He was originally voiced by Phil Vischer, who, as mentioned above, is white.
  • Fandom Life Cycle: The series was at Stage 4 in Brazil in the mid-2000s. In 2008, it went to Stage 6a.
  • God Does Not Own This World: Despite being the show's creators, Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki currently do not have any control of VeggieTales. The rights to the show are currently with Dreamworks/Universal.
  • I Am Not Spock: Phil Winklestein, the character who played Frankencelery, is often credited by the character he plays instead of his real name.
  • I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: Sérgio Stern (who voiced Jimmy in the 1st Brazilian dub) did the voice of Scallion #1 in the Audio News dub of Madame Blueberry, and later did the voice of Larry in the 3rd Brazilian dub.
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes: Aside from short snippets of Archibald, Pa Grape and Mr. Lunt story segments, the NBC version of the show has never been released to DVD, and can only be caught if you have a local station that airs the show in syndication. And even that package does not include that particular version of Sheerluck Holmes and the Golden Ruler-it's a version that instead uses the original theme song and is just the titular story of the episode.
    • It has been released on DVD in Mexico, but not the entire series was released there. Fortunately, one of the DVDs contains the NBC version of Sheerluck Holmes and the Golden Ruler.
      • Four episodes of the NBC version note  would be released through IMDB TV in 2020, but not the entire series. This was likely to avoid confusion with the service's uploads of the other VeggieTales videos.
    • The Brazilian spin-off of the show, Os Amigos Vegetais, is also this trope. No episodes have been released to home video except for the VeggieTales stories used in the episodes. Despite this, Jesuslegalcanal posted two episodes on YouTube, with another episode only seen in its first half.
    • Plenty of dubs are this trope. This includes dubs like Popsikkaat (Finnish), the Dutch dub (it has the same name as the original), and Zöldségmesék (Hungarian).
    • The Wonderful World of Autotainment has not been re-released on DVD since 2003.
    • The original VHS release of "Rack, Shack, & Benny" is the only version to include the original, unaltered version of "The Bunny Song". Due to backlash from parents, every subsequent release has changed the more questionable lyrics to be more kid friendly.
    • In 2022, Jonah Sing-Along Songs and More! was finally rescued from this status. Initially VHS-exclusive, it got its first DVD release on the 20th anniversary DVD of the movie it ties in to.
  • Kids' Meal Toy: Chick-Fil-A sold a set of CDs containing retellings of specific episodes alongside "Silly Songs with Larry" segments.
  • Live on Stage!: The series has had many live shows over the years. Some of them were performed at theme parks, while others were performed at churches.
  • Make-A-Wish Contribution: In "The League of Incredible Vegetables" background character Sweet Pea is the first to say Junior Asparagus's alter-ego's name, Ricochet. Sweet Pea was voiced by Kristina Barrett, a 10-year-old cancer patient who got to meet the VeggieTales crew thanks to Make-a-Wish. Sadly Ms. Barrett passed away not long after the episode released on DVD.
  • Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.":
    • Missing episodes not enough? In France, VeggieTales in the House was the franchise's debut!
    • In some countries, such as Germany, Slovenia and Norway, Khalil made his debut in "The Ballad of Little Joe" due to Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie not being dubbed in those countries. In addition, Israel saw him debut in "Pistachio: The Little Boy That Woodn't", an episode of which has Khalil directly reference Jonah.
  • Missing Episode: 7 episodes of the qubo version of the show were left unaired until the show hit syndication networks like COZI TV in 2015.
  • No Budget: Rather noticeable in the first several episodes, but the budget stabilized later on.
  • No Dub for You:
    • Moe and the Big Exit and all episodes after that only got released in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, while dubbed for Latin America, Germany, Russia, and Norway.
    • Only the first four episodes were dubbed in the Netherlands.
    • No foreign versions have ever dubbed Jonah Sing-Along Songs and More!, although there was a rumor that it was dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese.
      • On a slightly lesser scale, Lord of the Beans only ever received a Persian dub.
    • Pistachio: The Little Boy That Woodn't was the only episode to receive a Hebrew dub.
  • No Export for You: The Christmas Rushed version of The Toy That Saved Christmas was not seen outside the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, Latin America, Egypt, or Japan.
    • Subverted in the Taiwanese Mandarin dub. While the video and the additional sequence at the beginning are taken from the current version, the audio after said sequence is taken from the Christmas Rushed version.
    • VHS releases after Sumo of the Opera have not been spotted in Australia.
    • Bob and Larry's How to Draw! was only released in the United States and Canada.
  • Old Shame: Mike Nawrocki admits to not being fond of the original lower and more dopey-sounding Simpleton Voice he used for Larry in the first couple episodes.
  • One-Book Author: Khalil in The VeggieTales Show is Todd Waterman's only acting role to date. He mostly works as a storyboard artist and animator.
  • The Other Darrin: Mom Asparagus has been voiced by at least six different (possibly seven if her appearance in Take 38 as Archie's wife is counted, though it's likely the female asparagus is a prototype of Archibald's canon wife Lovey, using what later became Mom's model) people as of 2014 note .
    • There is currently at least one known instance of Bob the Tomato being voiced by someone other than Phil Vischer. He was voiced by John Trauscht for one of the live touring shows due to negotiation issues in Phil's contract.
    • In 2014, Junior Asparagus had been voiced by Tress MacNeille, replacing Lisa Vischer, who had had the role since his debut in 1993. By 2019, Lisa was back in the role.
    • Laura has been voiced by at least eight different people since her debut in 1995 note .
    • Madame Blueberry has been voiced by five different people since her debut in 1998 note .
    • Similar to Junior, Tress MacNeille had been doing the voice of Petunia Rhubarb since 2014 replacing her original voice actress Cydney Trent whose voiced her since her debut in 2005.
    • Annie has gone through three different voices since her debut in 1996 due to her two previous voice actors going through puberty.
    • Scallion #3 was originally voiced by Mike Sage from 1993 - 2003. Even since 2006, he's now voiced by Brian K. Roberts.
    • Starting in 2019, Mr. Nezzer is now voiced by David Mann, as Phil Vischer felt that his reprising Nezzer just wasn't working out very well anymore since he is Caucasian, and due to Nezzer being voiced as an impersonation of Ken Page, it is generally assumed he is meant to be African-American (which saw Nezzer replaced by Ichabeezer in In The House).
    • Some other minor characters have also had different voices over the years.
    • On the podcast Very Veggie Silly Stories, Bob and Larry are voiced by actors who are obviously not Phil and Mike. According to Phil, Universal fired them, Lisa Vischer, and Kurt Heinecke from future VeggieTales productions. Joe Zieja took over most of Phil's voice roles.
    • Khalil was voiced by Tim Hodge in Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie and all of the episodes that followed until "Celery Night Fever". As of The VeggieTales Show, he's voiced by Todd Waterman.
  • The Original Darrin: In 2019, Lisa Vischer returned to voicing Junior.
    • David Mann was unavailable for several episodes of The VeggieTales Show, so Phil Vischer stepped in.
  • Out of Holiday Episode: The episode "Sumo of the Opera", which contains a segment about Saint Patrick's Day, was released on home video August 31, 2004, five months after the holiday. In addition, the channel Smile runs the episode in regular rotation despite said segment.
  • Playing Against Type:
    • Larry plays a villainous character in King George and the Ducky.
    • In Josh and the Big Wall, Mr. Nezzer gets a cameo as Moses, and in Lord of the Beans, he plays Randalf. In both cases, he is playing a character who is good and wise. Typically the characters he plays lack either goodness (at first), wisdom, or both.
    • In "Duke and the Great Pie War," Mr. Nezzer appears as the herald of Otis the Elevated, who's played by Mr. Lunt. As pointed out in the creator commentary, Mr. Lunt's usually the one who assists Nezzer with his schemes, but here it's the other way around.
  • Real-Life Relative: Done this very much since the show's run. Junior Asparagus is voiced by Phil's wife, Lisa.
    • Annie was originally voiced by Phil and Mike's daughters Shelby and Ally. She is currently voiced by Brian Roberts' daughter, Maggie.
  • Recursive Adaptation: In a sense; there are VeggieTales-themed prints of certain translations of The Bible being marketed towards children, while many episodes of the show were based on Bible stories to begin with. These editions contain the complete Bible, only adding notes from the characters of the show.
  • Recycled Script: 'Twas the Night Before Easter has the same plot as The Star of Christmas. Protagonist wants to teach the city to love through theater, senses competition, tries to keep making the show more spectacular, gets desperate, and does something wrong. Then their plans all go awry when the theater is destroyed. Protagonist learns a lesson. And there's a Forbidden Chekhov's Gun in the climax.
  • Rereleased for Free: Beginning in the mid-2010s, the official VeggieTales YouTube channel began to upload full episodes of the show onto their channel, including the movies.
  • Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Mainly how Phil Vischer lost his reign for creative control. According to his podcast; when Big Idea was under fire due to the bankruptcy and there was a producer who didn't like Phil at the time due to the fact his one production was shut down thanks to him. So when Classic Media rescued the company, the producer put under the contract that Phil shouldn't be in control of Big Idea. Hence why Phil was reduced to just writing episodes and voice roles afterward.
  • Saved from Development Hell: The idea to adapt the story of Noah's Ark was pitched in 1998, but didn't see the light of day until 2015.
  • Screwed by the Lawyers: Shortly after the release of Lord of the Beans, Phil Vischer got a cease-and-desist notice from New Line Cinema about them illegally parodying the Lord of the Rings films without permission. This is the reason why The Wonderful Wizard of Ha's was late in production. Most likely because of this, All the Shows Vol. 3 (2006-2010) did not include this episode and The Wonderful Wizard of Ha's. Despite this, the individual DVD for the episode itself is still available on VeggieTales' Official Store website and in stores.
  • Serendipity Writes the Plot: This is the reason why the show came to be. Phil Vischer was limited to limb-less and hairless characters due to the limitations of the then-current CGI technology (In the early 1990s, CGI wasn't quite as advanced as it is now).
  • The Shelf of Movie Languishment: Some episodes were completed a year before their intended release date.
    • The first two Heroes of the Bible compilations both have copyright dates of 2001, but were released in 2002.
    • The script for The Ballad of Little Joe was finalized in 2002, but wasn't released until 2003. It is believed that there were issues in its production, and The Wonderful World of Auto-Tainment was slapped together as an Ashcan Copy to get something out for early summer of 2003 while Little Joe was completed.
    • An Easter Carol was completed in 2003, but it wasn't released until 2004.
    • Duke and the Great Pie War was released in 2005, but it was completed in 2004.
    • Sheerluck Holmes and the Golden Ruler was released in 2006, but not only the credits, but the box art as well show a copyright of 2005.
  • Short Run in Peru: Are You My Neighbor? was released on DVD in Slovenia and Finland in 2003, three years before it was released on DVD in the United States.
  • Troubled Production:
    • The first video, Where's God When I'm S-Scared?, was reportedly a nightmare to make. It began with Phil Vischer animating the entire thing himself, only to hire two more animators on the fly when it was clear he couldn't achieve the level of animation quality he was aiming for alone. The three animators then moved into a rented storefront for extra space, which stretched the already minuscule budget. The project was funded by a Christian mail-order service, with customers ordering the video while it was still in production, meaning that the creators were legally required to finish the project on a stone-set date, lest they be charged with mail fraud.
    • Rack, Shack, and Benny, while not nightmarish to the same degree, still reportedly had everyone suffering from exhaustion by the end of it due to the ambitious nature of the episode, and only 10 employees armed with four computers. Many of the original workers still say it was the hardest project they ever took on; it was only natural that the next episode, Dave and the Giant Pickle, was much smaller scale.
    • The Toy That Saved Christmas also had a troubled production, due to being another ambitious episode and having a very set-in-stone deadline (since you can't ship a Christmas special late). Not only did the episode end up Christmas Rushed, the air conditioning broke at the headquarters just in the wake of a heat wave hitting Chicago. Phil Vischer was bed-ridden afterwards for almost two months as well due to bacteria in his heart. It was so close to the deadline once production of the show had wrapped that one of the employees had to be flown down to Dallas, TX with a copy of the show in-hand to give to the tape duplicator because (in Robert Ellis' own words) "FedEx wasn't fast enough!". This was one of the few cases where the team was unsatisfied with the episode's original end result, and the following year they went back and re-animated a lot of the scenes, creating a second version of the show that was overall much cleaner than the original.
    • Towards the end of the production of "Esther...the Girl Who Became Queen", there was a server crash at Big Idea leading to two weeks worth of work on the show being lost. Most of the animators were forced to work overtime, up to and including sleeping at the studio, to make up for it.
  • Unfinished Dub: Almost every single foreign dub of the show (except for the Russian Voiceover Translation) is this.
    • Special mention to the Hebrew dub, which only covers one episode ("Pistachio: The Little Boy that Woodn't", in particular).
    • The Norwegian dub dubbed almost every episode up to and including Beauty and the Beet. As of 2024, "Noah's Ark" has never been dubbed.
      • On a side note, the episodes that were skipped include The End of Silliness?, The Ultimate Silly Song Countdown, and Lord of the Beans.
  • Unspecified Role Credit: The first 6 episodes only listed the voice actors' names. Very Silly Songs! doesn't credit the voice actors at all.
    • The Japanese dub only credits Bob, Larry, and Junior under the list of voice actors.
    • The 2nd Latin Spanish dub of Dave and the Giant Pickle lists the English voice actors rather than the dub actors.
    • The German dub usually only credits characters important to the plot. This is Zig-Zagged for some episodes, as for example, Scooter and Tom aren't credited in Josh and the Big Wall!
  • Viral Marketing: Word of mouth was a huge reason this show boomed in its early years. The series had its roots in Christian bookstores, and as mentioned in Phil Vischer's autobiography, typically there would be a children's section with a TV and a VCR playing a tape in the store on an endless loop; when the series hit stores, the workers would eventually give the show a look and discover themselves enjoying it an unexpected amount, which led to the workers recommending it to families and said families recommending it to everyone they knew. Chances are if you attended a Christian church during the show's height and you were a kid or had kids (or heck, even if you didn't), you couldn't leave without at least one family recommending it to you.
  • What Could Have Been: Has its own page.
  • Working Title:
    • The Lone Stranger became Moe and the Big Exit.
    • Larry-Boy and the League of Superheroes became The League of Incredible Vegetables.
    • MacLarry and the Barber-barians became MacLarry and the Stinky Cheese Battle.
    • Miracle at Spring Valley Mall became Merry Larry and the True Light of Christmas.
  • Write What You Know: The IRS coming to Larry's house in "Oh, Santa" was inspired by when the IRS arrested Mike Nawrocki for not paying his taxes earlier in 1996.
  • Write Who You Know: Phil and Mike modeled Jimmy and Jerry's respective voices off of a former boss of theirs.
  • Written by Cast Member:
    • The songs in the 2nd Brazilian dub were written by the aforementioned Marco Ribeiro, according to the 2005 version of the Hits Vegetais Vol. 1 album.
    • Certain songs such as the theme song and most of the Silly Songs were written by Mike Nawrocki.

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