Smiling Friends has ton of hidden lore and it's great, from the waitress at Spamtopia, to Mr. Frog's presidential ambitions, to Zoey's various theories. In this essay/Easter egg hunt, I will uncover and explain it all.
You forgot another 5th smiling friend. Zongo. He exists outside of the show as zach and Michael have joked about him being in season 2 during interviews and he’s named as one of the main characters on seasons 2’s synopsis Another recurring background character is the grey critter who’s at Charlie’s funeral. He’s also seen twice in season 2 at the beach and at the bosses wedding
@@zeepsterd he used to be listed on the smiling friends wikia as one of the 5th but someone made a bunch of fake pages for season 3 and put him there instead smh. Genuinely though the idea of a 5th main character existing only outside the show is so funny. I hope he never actually appears but they keep naming him in interviews and such
You could also say Charlie didn’t get a good look at Earth considering God chucked him at the speed of light essentially crashing into his funeral into paste from the sheer speed the Good Lord immediately reforming him back to normal
@@kryptonianotaku4975 or god threw/lifted him directly above the flat-earth, causing him to only see a circle(globe). So when he saw flat earth, he was shocked and appalled.
Fun fact: The homunculus episode is DEFINETLY a reference to a russian youtube channel about a guy using his...spеrm... to make a homunculus. The homunculus getting hit by the book is a direct reference to the channel. Also, the video in "Erm, The Boss Finds Love?" is also a direct reference to the channel.
at 3:00, that was glep's retelling of the incident. He doesn't know the earth is flat, but charlie does. Dude said he's keeping that to the grave, too.
Clinton was elected in 2000 after campaigning on solving the helium crisis, as well as finding a diplomatic solution to the ongoing civil unrest that's going on in Blingostan. It's so awful such a ruthless bastard like Mr. Blingo can continue to be in power after committing such abhorrent atrocities against his own people.
Be wary, Zack once said that he dislikes that everything has to have huge amounts of lore. So he might be messing with the audience by building up the world of S.F. and then doing absolutely nothing with it. Or not.
One thing i found interesting in the lore was squigly miggly having his own subspecies seeing that in "a allen adventure," the border patrol guards are the same
One thing I adore is the simple fact that characters we talk about have names like Squigly Miggly or Jimbo. Makes me laugh a little that we have to use absurd names for lore.
When I first saw that picture I thought it was an MS Paint doodle that either Doug or Psychotic made as kids, didn't expect that was actually how their mom looked like 😭
14:20 Fun fact about James: He’s actually the guy who got requested a Cameo from Gwimbly telling him Happy Birthday! Gwimbly says “James from Idaho” which I don’t know how he went from Idaho to Pennsylvania so fast-
I mean smormu’s name is also james I think it makes sense theyre different characters. I doubt that the tyler gwimbly mentions is the tyler shown in the jewel episode
This is wrong, there's multiple background characters that share names like Jason (Fake Shrimpina's Ex-Boyfriend who died in a bike accident) and Jason the Boss' 18 year old son, sharing a name doesn't mean they're the same character
I'd like to point out that during the "Brother's Egg" episode, Alan wanted to change the TV channel at the start of the episode because he wanted to see "updates on the war", which could be a reference to the war President Jimbo started by shaking hands with Mr Blingo.
Pim says "President Ross Perot won *re-election* in 1996." Pretty much stating that Bill Clinton wouldn't have been president at any point he was in real life. Either, Bill Clinton was somehow president before or after his actual administration, or Mr. Frog just liked showing off his photo with Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, which is funny enough I could see that becoming the accepted internal reasoning for the show's creators.
You didn’t mention it but you can hear Alan mention “The War” during the opening of Brothers Egg which is probably what the Critter War video is referencing in The Boss Finds Love
@@Schlorb-Lord-of-Schlirb video says "the critter war: every day" and i've seen videos titled that before where the events are still happening so i think that's the case with this as well
Some member of pims family had a desert/Iraq war type picture on the wall, so its entirely possible the critter war is a complex and multifaceted affair
Weirdly, there's an implication that the war in the RU-vid section is happening in the background. In the Dr. Psychotic Episode, Allan mentions how he wants to see updates on the war instead of watching the ham guys.
this episode is literally just a bunch of zach's hypothetical situations he poses while on Oney's stream. he just asks his friends about crazy crap all the time and that's exactly what smiling friends is.
I don't know if there's been any indication of where in PA the show takes place, but I choose to believe it's near the NJ border and "Crimeville" is actually Pleasantville, which has a reputation for being anything but pleasant.
My theory is that the episodes don't air in chronological order. In the alien episode, Charlie and Pim both don't know if aliens exist, and Charlie hasn't seen the Earth from space. It would make sense that this episode occurred before the enchanted forest episode since neither Charlie nor Pim are phased by the sight of an alien, and before the episode where God throws Charlie back to Earth, since he sees the Earth from space.
I did also have some questions about the timeline because in the last episode of season 2 Pim says that Christmas, which is probably referring to the last episode of season 1, was 6 months ago, and in the Spamtopia episode Charlie refers to Alan sucking his nose in the first episode as something that happened "recently" so if its all chronological that would mean the nose sucking incident would have to be the previous year, which doesn't seem super recent to me.
@heman937 I think you're slightly confused on the first part, we can see the smiling friends build rotten the snowman at the start of the episode, when it's clearly winter. When rotten gets put into the freezer, a timejump is implied, which is later stated to be six months, when they go to the beach, and it's clearly summer. I couldn't tell you what the second part is about, and it's definitely possible the episodes aren't 100% chronological (or canon, like charlie going to hell which is a story glep tells, so who knows)
Also, little off topic but I have an idea as to why Pim become a Smiling Friend. Clearly Pim's family has a lot of issues, 2 parents that always fight, too many siblings, some of which hate him or don't have any life skills, his dad's always working, his mom's always drinking, and maybe because he wasn't happy with his home life, he wants to make other people's lives better.
There's one cool background detail hinting about the Smiling Friends taking place in Philadelphia: In the 1st episode scene with Gwimbly's CEO, you can see two buildings in the background that resemble actual buildings in Philadelphia
Another Easter egg that I don't see anyone talking about is how the episode "Brother's Egg" is based on a video of a Russian guy making a homunculus from an egg and then killing it with a bible. Zach mentions the video on Oneyplays a few times.
1:34 You can also see a doc titled "Jimble's Empire of Dirt" an episode before we meet Jimble, and at 1:29 on the bottom row we see 2 men that look like the ending of that Ham thing they were watching in "Brother's Egg"
What if Ross perot winning the election was the critical moment where the timeline of the smiling friends universe diverged from our timeline and eventually became how it is now.
couple of theories i have are the red crytal mr boss got in the spamtopia episode might've revived charlie's girlfriend and glep voted mr frog because him winning could lead to glep becoming president, he's got this whole thing planned out
I'm surprised you didn't also point out thw fact that they made a call back to Season 1 episode 1 where Allen noms Charlie's nose. I was not expecting that. Lmao
Fun fact: the fun twins are shown in the flashback crash landing on spamtopia, then they started killing a bunch of spamtopians after they go into a portal, this could be “The Critter War” as if The Fun Twins aren’t spamtopian they are a different type of critter, that portal could’ve been earth where Simon S Salty found them??? Although the portal cant be earth as in the Spamtopia episode Mr Boss is driving to Spamtopia.
i'm a filthy charpim shipper but i can't help but appreciate charlie's GF. her design is cute and...hell, she survived a damn bulldozer. she's got looney tunes powers i guess
@@imfunniguy3744 their chemistry is funny and cute idk. i definitely understand finding it weird, hell i find it weird i'm so invested in these dumb muppet creatures lol
The whole "homunculus out of egg" thing and the fact that Psychotic kills it with a book is actually a reference to a bizarre russian video series "как сделать гомункула" (how to make homunculus) that was extremely popular back in 2016. The guy was raising the thing literally the same way it described in the show, and at one point he killed a failed one with a book.
The funniest thing about Spamtopia to me is that they literally only had one rule before. Murder was always legal but they decided to only do so afterwards
I’m pretty certain Smiling Friends is headquartered in Philadelphia. When you look at the background anything someone is announcing the news, you can see One Liberty Tower in the background. It looks basically identical to the real building
Something I find very interesting is the mix of humans and "critters". Humans are just that, like Dave, Mr Frog's producer, Bill Nye, etc. Critters are the multi colored creatures like the smiling friends cast, DJ Spit, the Blibleys, etc. Critters are often lanky and move erratically with bulbous eyes perched on the tip of their heads, however there are a significant number that have in-socket eyes. Critters seem to be unable to grow full heads of hair, as most are either bald or have only a few wispy, thin hairs on their scalp. (Based on the consistency of the critter's design, Spamtopians could constitute their own unique category). Some critters like the landlord and Charlie's grandma seem to OVERLY stress RANDOM words in their speech, which could be a cultural thing, like an accent or dialect. Humans and Critters are able to date with no taboo, as Jennifer and Shrimp, Charlie and his girlfriend, and the parents of Doug and Dennis from the Brother's Egg episode. Dennis is odd though. His design seems to be a combination of human traits and critter traits. Pair that with the fact that he is brothers with Joel Haver's character, an obvious human, this implies that humans and critters can have children together. This show is packed full of worldbuilding that most don't notice, and I love it for that.
on first viewing i mistook mr blingo as a jawsh cameo considering how similar they are in appearance and the both have committed heinous acts of terror
My theory is that Pim and Charlie went to the wrong earth, and its the same in every way except its flat, and also a few minor differences, like Alan never "noming" Charlies nose. So the *round* earth has the *flat* earths Pim and Charlie, and the *flat* earth has the *round* earths Pim and Charlie, who may or may not come back in another episode where they meet their identical copies.
6:27 It has also been suggested by Zach Hadel in interviews that the city smiling friends takes place in is based off of Philadelphia, which is also where Zach Hadel himself comes from.
Damn, I consider myself a presidential history buff and I completely missed that the boss’s song was a reference to Carly Fiorina’s weird ballad, so mad respect there
I actually have a theory that blimbles where actually a native species of spamtopia but after facing habitat loss they broke off from spamtopia and became a native species to Pennsylvania.
One detail that stuck with me is in the murder of Simon s salty, Charlie says he's been going to the restaurant since he was a homunculus. Does that mean the other smiling friends are artificially made or just Charlie?
@@zeepsterd I've also been watching your channel ever since you made the first few lost character videos. And I ha e to say, your content is very well made
One piece of lore that I headcannoned is that the only true humans in this world are the real live action characters you see. And anyone like Mr. Boss or Marge Simpson are humans with Critter ancestry.
I'm surprised how no ones mentioned the Humonculous episode might be based off an actual RU-vid channel. It's basically this dude trying to make one, his various failed attempts, him killing said attempts before being sucessful. I saw his videos back in middle school but nearly shat my pants and forgot about it. Until a year ago WOWOMAN made a video talking about the channel. I think the channel is, "how to make..." But in Russian since that's the English translation. So when i watched episode it just clicked that it's based off an actual youtube channel and i was fangirling.
The only piece of lore I really put together is that the Bliblies might be from Spamtopia, since they're kinda similar to the spamtopians. They might even be speaking spamish but there's no way to be sure
You did not mention it, but in the start of Brothers Egg, Alan makes reference to "The War," which is most likely what the Critter War video in The Boss Finds Love is alluding to.
The Christmas episode was a story that Glep read to his grandkid, it is also possible that the alien episode is placed differently in the timeline. So maybe charlie decided not to tell Glep that the earth was flat just like he said when they first found out about it.
Zach and Michael also say on the same commentary they mention the ages, that Mr. Frog is a demon, and is only pretending to be a frog. Demons are the 4th race in the Smiling Friends world, along with Humans, Critters, and Spamish
One thing im wondering about is continuity, is every episode in order or are some episodes chronologically before others not in terms of release date? One thing that makes me ask this is when Charlie was saying the nose biting thing was "recent" when there's been two halloween themed episodes since then, meaning that if it is just chronological by release date, it had been possibly over a year since the pilot. One thing im wondering is if Alan's solo adventure happened BEFORE the pilot, which is why he's always keeping track of the paperclips, to mentally prepare for whenever he might have to go get paperclips again. Oh yeah plus given the time skip in the finale its not out of the question if continuity is mixed then we've seen episodes with Rotten just kinda chilling in the freezer while the episode goes on.
Charlie’s girlfriend come back after the Spamtopia episode. You know… the one with the magical resurrection stone. Which means that her death by bulldozer might still be canonical.
