Infinity Train - TV Tropes (2024)

Trivia With Their Own Pages

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• What Could Have Been

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• Accidentally Correct Writing: The movie Tulip mentions in "The Crystal Car" is an obvious parody of Titanic, but centering around the Hindenburg disaster. Believe it or not, a mini-series such as this exists, also centers around two Star-Crossed Lovers falling in love on the Hindenburg, and (strangely enough) wasn't created as a parody of the James Cameron film.
• Acting for Two: Ashley Johnson voices Tulip, the Steward, and Tulip's reflection MT/Lake.
• Actor Allusion
  • This isn't the first time Ashley Johnson is in a story that has a very ball-shaped and chipper robot.
  • It also isn’t the first time she voiced a character with a friend named Jesse, nor is it the last.
• Actor-Shared Background:
  • According to Owen Dennis, Jesse is a Native American from the Apache Tribe. His voice actor Robbie Daymond is part-Apache himself.
  • Similarly, Season Four's protagonists Min-Gi Park and Ryan Akagi are voiced by Johnny Young and Sekai Murashige respectively; both Park and Young are Korean, and both Akagi and Murashige are Japanese.
• All There in the Manual: Each season/book has its own subtitle that its referred to by the creator and show staff, but goes unmentioned in official media and press releases. These being "The Perennial Child", "Cracked Reflection", "Cult of the Conductor", and "Duet" for Books 1-4, respectively.
• Approval of God:
  • Creator Owen Dennis was quite fond of this Doctor Who-inspired fake opening created by a fan shortly after the original pilot released.
  • Both series composer Chrome Canyon and the Cartoon Network social media account praised this remix of "MT's Theme" in the comments.
  • Owen Dennis also was amazed at learning about Infinitysonas which are fan-created characters and partner denizens.
• Channel Hop: A rare example wherein a show channel hops to its intended home. The series aired its first two seasons on Cartoon Network, but it was always intended as an original series for HBO Max. The Warner/AT&T lawsuit led to the streaming service being delayed, with Cartoon Network opting to air the show themselves until said service launched; the last two seasons would remain exclusive to HBO Max for quite some time, before getting pulled altogether. Thankfully, it's still available to download on Amazon Prime and similar services since September 2021.
• Children Voicing Children: Token Mini-Moe Hazel is voiced by child actress Isabella Abiera.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Creator Owen Dennis points to the "The Mall Car" and "The Tape Car" as his favorite episodes, though his favourite scenes are MT and Mace's argument in "The Wasteland" and Simon's death in "The New Apex".
• Dawson Casting: All the main passengers in each of the books are teenagers, with Tulip as the youngest at 13 and Grace as the oldest at 18, but they are all voiced by actors in their 30s.
• Defictionalization: Tulip's video game, "Good Guys Popping Bad Guys", is a real game on the CN Arcade mobile app.
• Denial of Digital Distribution: Of the Denial of Streaming variant.
  • The series was pulled from HBO Max in August 2022, alongside dozens of other programming, to save money on paying residuals. The show would begin being removed from other streaming platforms a year later, though can still be purchased on sites like such Amazon Prime Video and Vudu.
  • The Book 1 official soundtrack was pulled from streaming sites, as well as made unavailable to purchase, on the same day as the HBO Max removal.
  • Books 1 and 2, the only two seasons of the series that were released on DVD, also had their DVD releases taken out-of-print on the day after the HBO Max removal. However, they were eventually brought back into print in October 2022 in response to the backlash surrounding the aforementioned removal, but given that Cartoon Network already has a tendency to stop season DVD releases of their shows after covering the second season to begin with, it is very unlikely that Books 3 and 4 will ever be released on DVD.
• Descended Creator:
  • Owen Dennis voices Sad-One, as well as various incidental characters.
  • Roy from "The Color Clock Car" is voiced by writer Justin Michael.
• Development Gag: The entire premise of "The Toad Car" is based on a line in a meeting to executives discussing the differences between Tulip and M.T., where one of the writers used the example of "Tulip would clean up her room, while M.T. would kick a toad." Although she doesn't get to kick it in this instance.
• Executive Meddling:
  • The crew was worried about overtly tackling the subject of divorce in the show, fearing that the network would reject the idea. After the first pitch, Cartoon Network not only encouraged them to directly say that Tulip's parents are divorced, but also supported them exploring it in-depth, as some of the executives themselves were children of divorce who resonated with idea.
  • The crew received a lot of pushback from the network towards Jesse being Native American, with executives feeling it would be too risky to represent such a minority group and even rejecting the idea of bringing in a consultant to help with writing the character. It took months of convincing the network to let Jesse remain Apache, but it came with a long list of restrictions that prevented them from even alluding to his cultural heritage; the sole reference (him mentioning attending pow-wow in "The Lucky Cat Car") was snuck in during post-production of Book 2.
• Fake American: Grace speaks with an American accent but is voiced by London native Kirby Howell-Baptiste. Interestingly, Howell-Baptiste also voices Grace's mother, using her natural accent.
• Fan Community Nickname: Fans already started calling themselves "passengers" before the show even got greenlit.
• Inspiration for the Work: Owen Dennis came up with the idea for the show when on a return flight to the United States from China in 2010. Partway through the flight, he awoke to a darkened plane cabin while over the Pacific Ocean and was only able to see the faces of other passengers illuminated by TV screens. His immediate thought was "If I had no idea what this was, this would be pretty terrifying.” As mentioned below, early versions of the first season even had Tulip wake up in a similar situation on the train.
• Meaningful Release Date:
  • The last two episodes of Book One aired on August 9, 2019, Ashley Johnson's birthday.
  • A more intentional example: the Book Two trailer was released on November 22, 2019, the exact day Tulip ran away from home and ended up on the train.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The second half of the San-Diego Comic-Con 2018 trailer was entirely original footage, animated by Owen Dennis himself.
• No Dub for You: For unexplained reasons, Book 1 was initially broadcast in Latin America sub-only, being the first time in decades that CN's Latin American feed had done such. Subverted a few months later, with the airing of a Spanish dub.^note
• No Export for You: The final two seasons never saw release in European territories, with the show as a whole getting pulled from HBO Max in those areas in August 2022. Some countries never even got the second season, with Cartoon Network France in particular seeing its scheduled airing of Book 2 pulled at the last minute that same month.
• Older Than They Think: Adventure Time features an episode where the main characters wind up on a train with an infinite number of carriages, containing puzzles and challenges that lead them onto the next carriage. Owen Dennis was gutted to learn that, prior to pitching the show, Adventure Time had already used a similar premise, and told the show's crew about the situation, with them giving him the go-ahead to still use it.
• Recycled Script: "The Corgi Car" is just the original pilot set in the context of the show's continuity. Several of the shots are almost exactly the same as in the pilot, Tulip's redesign notwithstanding, and even much of the audio is reutilized.
• Role Reprise: As far as the English voice cast is concerned, everyone from the pilot returned to voice the same characters for the series.
• Screwed by the Network:
  • The ultimate fate of the show. Executives were becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the topics and themes the writers wanted to explore, deeming it inappropriate for a child audience; imagery such as the graphic death of Simon in Book 3 certainly didn't help matters. This came to a head when the staff pitched Book 5, with Cartoon Network rejecting it and declining to renew the show entirely due to lacking a "child entry point" (i.e., as it would have taken place at the same time as Book 4, it would have solely starred Amelia, and they didn't like that an older adult was the main protagonist rather than a kid or teenager).
  • HBO Max did its level best to erase the entire show from existence — not just pulling it from its streaming service, but removing all official YouTube clips, cancelling all related products and basically acting like the series never existed. The fact that they did this with little warning or explanation (even the creators were caught flat-footed) only added salt to the wound.
• Sending Stuff to Save the Show: After Book 3 began airing on HBO Max, Owen Dennis revealed that they were wrapping up production, with much of the crew having already disbanded and himself due to leave the studio that November. Concentrated efforts started to spread the word out through social media, with some media outlets and even other communities such as the Glitch Techs fandom helping to get the word out. Strategies included purchasing what little merchandise exists for the show, playing the entire series repeatedly on HBO Max to boost viewership statistics, getting it to Twitter trend on the following two Thursdays that new episodes premiered, and just contacting HBO and Cartoon Network about the desire for more episodes. Book 4 was announced in February of 2021, making it appear like a win... but it was also announced to be the last season, with Word of God revealing that it was part of the same production order as Book 3 and that Cartoon Network rejected the pitch for Book 5 (out of a planned eight) due to doubts over its appropriateness for children.
  This began the start of an even more concentrated effort to renew the series, beginning with an April 29th Twitter #FinishInfinityTrain campaign — promoted by Dennis himself with a prize giveaway that was contributed to by other crewmembers and even brands such as Stylophone◊ — that managed to become the top trend in the United States for several hours, culminating in over 320K tweets before dropping out of the Top 10. A second campaign held in June, after the Books 3 and 4 starting being made available legally outside North America, also saw decent success and garnered 70K tweets.
• Similarly Named Works: Before revealing the actual name of the season, Owen Dennis joked that the subtitle for Book 4 would be Demon Slayer, in reference to Kimetsu no Yaiba: The Movie - Mugen Train, which was being released in North America around the same time as Demon Slayer: Infinity Train.
• Sleeper Hit: The pilot gained a ton of popularity within a few days of release, gaining over a million views in a month, and is the most viewed original short ever uploaded to Cartoon Network's YouTube channel, gaining nearly 5.8 million views by the time it was deleted in August 2022.
• Streisand Effect: Discovery announced that Infinity Train was going to be pulled from HBO Max "this week"... while hiding that the precise date was August 19, 2022 on midnight. Moreover, everything related to ''Infinity Train'' got deleted from YouTube, Twitter, Pandora, Apple Music, and Facebook. This only had people spread along and panic-download pirated material Infinity Train publicly; not only did the fan Reddit actually repeal its anti-piracy rule, but Owen Dennis outright approved of piracy of the series.
• Throw It In!:
  • When Alan Dracula had to be named, two writers simultaneously said "alan" and "dracula", and they thought that was perfect.
  • The idea for "The Toad Car" came about when one of the writers was trying to help explain the differences between Tulip and MT to network executives during a meeting, saying that "Tulip would clean put her room, MT would kick a toad." Both the execs and the other writers were baffled by this example, but loved the mental image so much that they became determined to make it an episode.
• Time-Shifted Actor: There are some examples of this:
  • Tulip is voiced regularly voiced by Ashley Johnson, though flashbacks to her youth have her voiced by Naomi Hanson when she's 5 and by Lily Sanfelippo when she's 6 and 8.
  • Grace and Simon are voiced by Kirby Howell-Baptiste and Kyle McCarley. Flashbacks to their youth in "The Origami Car" have them voiced by Brooke Singleton and Samuel Faraci.
• Trolling Creator:
  • Owen loves messing with the fans — including on whether Tulip's last name is Van Helsing or Olsen. Or how tall she is. Or just about anything else. Even the nature of the series was obfuscated, with him and Cartoon Network referring to the show as a ten-episode miniseries upon its premiere. When a promo that aired after the last episode of Book One confirmed another season, he cheekily refused to reveal whether or not Tulip would return.

    Owen Dennis: FYI, because I've seen this around a couple of times, the cat doesn't call Randall "my affluent friend", she calls him "my effluent friend". I know this is the question that has popped up the most, so I'm happy to be finally be able to answer it.

  • He enjoys joking about the events of the show's Wham Episodes quite a bit. After the airing of Book 2's "The Wasteland", he posted a picture of a puddle of silver fluid. A few hours after the first five episodes of Book 3 premiered, with the last of that batch being "The Color Clock Car", he simply tweeted "lol."
  • During a Twitter Q&A for San Diego Comic-Con 2020, he responded to any and all questions concerning the current status of previous passengers by giving them all gruesome deaths.
  • A curious fan asked if Simon had ears under his hair, since they believed they were never seen in the show. Owen's response? A pic of Simon with his ear cut off. For the record, he does have ears, but Sure, Let's Go with That.
  • Fans took to Twitter to ask Owen as well as writers Lindsay Katai and Alexander Horab about the unknown amount of time Grace spent trapped in her own memories, only to receive increasingly incomprehensible answers.

    Fan: For how long was Grace trapped in her memories?

    Owen: §

• Viral Marketing: The show's official page on the Cartoon Network website was host to a number of minigames, each one revealing a new trailer.
  • The second Book One trailer was accessed via a piano minigame that was solved by playing the show's Recurring Riff of high D, B, high G, F#.
  • The first Book Two trailer was accessed via a claw machine minigame that's solved by removing items relevant to the first season so that the deer has a path to reach the flower.
• Voices in One Room: Kyle McCarley (Simon's voice actor) mentioned on his Twitter that this was how Book 3 was done, though Kirby Howell-Baptiste (Grace) could only come in when her schedule allowed. He also mentions that this made the end of Episode 5 genuinely very difficult to record thanks to Hazel's voice actor's spectacular performance.

  Kyle: The only time I've ever been on a group record and thought, "man, this would be easier if I were recording solo"

• Word of God:
  • The show wasn't originally meant to be a genre anthology; they had already heavily outlined a ten-episode miniseries when Cartoon Network expanded their season order to twenty episodes. The writing team didn't feel comfortable padding out Tulip's story, so it was decided to make it an anthology so they could better explore ideas only touched upon during the first season.
    • This is part of the reason why MT was made the protagonist for Book 2, as they felt following up her story would better ease the audience into the show's format, as fans of the pilot had spent years assuming that the show would be a long-form series about Tulip.
  • A short video released shortly after Cartoon Network's 2018 Upfront revealed some background information, some of which would outright be stated or shown in the first episode, such as the first episode taking place in November.
  • Tulip's love of onions developed out of spite, from a childhood incident where she refused to admit to her parents that she disliked the taste of raw onions.
  • Tulip is from North Branch, Minnesota.
  • There are several cars where Tulip (and thus other passengers) are able to eat, drink, and wash clothing during their time spent on the train.
  • Tulip went through about forty train cars before returning home.
  • While trying to figure out if a fan theory fits the timeline in this video Owen Dennis and Madeline Queripel mention that Simon and Grace are 18.
  • The train doesn't have any kind of Year Inside, Hour Outside power, and its passengers actually are missing from their real lives for as long as it takes them to get off.