Unraveling the Lore of Smiling Friends
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- čas přidán 24. 06. 2024
- 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.
- Zábava
Live, Laugh, Love, Smiling Friends
Fr
2006 [adult swim] type beat
You mean Britney’s beautiful demonic flowers?
Really
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
I DID FORGET ZONGO NOOO
@@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
What about smogo? ( I don’t know if i spelled it correctly)
Pou is at mr boss's wedding
Shmoru is better
Charlie seeing the earth was told from Gleps point of view.
I never even thought of that. Lol
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
No, glee only read that episode
@@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.
@@orangemonks894you just said "no" and then confirmed what the original comment said like it was an argument lol
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.
I have a really bad theory where the fun twins are homunculuses just because a worm spat on that guy
Found out about him through Whang
Also I’m the video it’s crushed with a Bible while The Professor crushes his with “The God Delusion”
erm what the sigma
Zach has definitely talked about that channel in an Oneyplays video
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.
WAIT, YOU’RE RIGHT. I DIDN’T THINK OF THAT.
@zeepsterd same here brother. My Mind was freakin Blown
How'd the boss get to the moon in the most recent episode if there's a dome?
@@loganmartin9304 Idk ask the boss or the aliens that abducted pim, charlie and bill
If that was the case Charlie wouldn't be surprised when arriving by spaceship. He either didn't take a good look the first time or it was a joke.
The racial tension between the humans, critters and demons is an tragic but real background element of this show 😔
You know we live with real life demons among our human population too right? You just can't tell who's who
@lsd-rickb-1728 that's why we use nord vpn
@lsd-rickb-1728 Demons is a loaded word to use, Instead try Mortally challenged.
@@lsd-rickb-1728chill it with the anti-semetic remarks
@@lsd-rickb-1728 i hope you're joking
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.
Yeah or making it completely illegible lmao
The flat earth will probably never be mentioned again😂
I believe he and the crew said they don't wanna have a ton of lore, but they DO wanna have a cohesive and semi-logical worldbuilding
I think he means like super deep complicated lore
i feel like it’s better this way, so you can still have a show that is enjoyable without having necessary lore to follow
"Oh I swear to God IF I HAD MY GWIMBLY GUN ON ME RIGHT NOW I'D-"
I just love imagining Zach in the booth screaming that
Ngl it got ten times funnier when you realize critters are essentially the muppets of this universe, just a bunch of weird colorful little guys
Muppets on pcp
They actually say Ross Perot was RE-elected in '96, so he won in '92 as well, meaning Clinton must have served in a different period entirely
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.
its never explicitly stated that bill clinton was ever elected, he could have just been a candidate that mr frog supported
He beat George W Bush
8:27 I've always had a feeling Joel was half Spamish. That explains a lot.
Yeah
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 😭
I was just thinking about how this show seems like early Regular Show worldbuilding right now lmao
“worldbuilding” and it’s a guy from Pennsylvania
sick pfp
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.
I think they're just Critters who speak Spamish. Same species as the 4 main boys.... Except Glep, maybe. Idk what he is. Green?
@@FarflungClownGreen AND Retired
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-
NO WAY
This actually makes a lot of sense, considering James clearly had a troubled childhood. Gwimbly probably was his only role model growing up
@@Nae_ex It can explain the excessive violence
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
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.
Cool fact!
Perhaps Ross Perot served nonconsecutive terms, beating another candidate in a previous election, and Clinton was a 1 term president in SF.
Ross Perot IS Mr. boss
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.
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.
MANY ARE SAYING THIS
Charlie becomes a slightly different character after he died, went to hell and got sent back to earth.
I guess dying and going to hell then coming back to life after god baseball pitches you at Earth does something to you
8:24 it makes sense for the rotoscoped people to be half spamish
So then the rotoscoped dude in season 1 is half Spamish
Kinda sad you didn’t mention it but Mr Frog’s economic plan in the president jimbo episode is the unabomber manifesto
Charlie also told Ketchup that he'd "never break the 6th commandment" instead of just saying he'd never kill anyone.
it’s awesome how they take background characters and turn them into full on characters, seeing as they do have to make alot of unique creature designs
Speaking of creatures i like how they call other people things like when gwimbly said i hate this red thing when referring to Alan
The critter war video looks like a parody of a timeline of the eastern front in WW2.
True actually
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
Which implies that the Critter War is ongoing althought its also possible that hes refering to the War in Blingostan
@@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
It's possible he's referring to the Blingostan's invasion of that country Pim's imaginary exotic wife is from.
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
I think James knew who Tyler was before he got fired because Gwimbly's cameo says he's supposed to tell Tyler to go to hell
James was jealous of the strong bond Tyler has with charlie.
Omfg you’re right
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 just love that the plan was to fly Mr Blingo all the way from Blingostan to Washington DC just so he could be condemned.
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.
I like to imagine that Mr. Frog ate Mr. Blingo or at least plans to do so.
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.
Interesting theory!
The aliens in the enchanted forest are (science) fantasy creatures, presumably they don't come from space. Big difference.
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)
I think the enchanted Forrest is it’s own little pocket area
Weirdly, there's an implication that the war in the CZcams 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.
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.
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
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"
a few days ago i searched for smiling friends lore on youtube but there wasnt really any video like this going into it
thank you for making this
You’re welcome
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.
12:23 i absolutely love how Smormu showing up was finally Charlie's breaking point after all the crazy stuff throughout the episode
I like to think the characters in Spamtopia were all drawn by the painter from castle crashers. They look like the funny creatures he draws.
charlies girl makes me unwise
Same
I got a smiling friends shirt for my birthday and I’m still happy af
Where from
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
what the fuck people ship the characters in this batshit crazy show
@@imfunniguy3744it’s a show man it’s not that serious 😭
@@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
Pairing characters is just fun man, I personally like seeing Charlie and Allan together lol. But I'm glad Zoey's alive and well
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
REAL.
Shame mr frog becoming president didnt come up in the rest of the season😔
@@orbboom6119it's just like real life
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.
Finally Zeep returns to political history
Zeep might start his MatPat arc.
the lore is whatever they feel like at any given time
That Yeti at the end of the season was the cryptid cherry on top.
Spamtopia was the most unhinged episode yet. My dad watched it with me without context. Season 2 finale was chill
Great video as always Zeepsterd! 👍 I love Smiling Friends! ❤
I think when Charlie and Pim referred to themselves as "homunculus" and "tadpole" they weren't being literal, just Zack and Michael being goofy
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 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
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.
In addition to wearing a cross necklace Charlie also says he'd never break the sixth commandment. He is totally a religious critter.
I get irrationally angry Everytime I see Mr.Frog it’s like a visceral reaction.
That's the natural reaction to seeing Mr Frog
Classic cancel mob hater. Dude is an American institution
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.
0:59 I'm pretty sure that's just a Spamtopian law. I don't think it applies to people who are just from Spamtopia or are Spammish.
This seems like something the smiling friends would laugh at
I NEEDED this video so thanks
NO PROBLEM.
My favorite part of smiling friends lore is trying to find the stuff thats legit and zach gaslighting us lool
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 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
Makes sense considering long running gags are a staple of Zacks humor
pim and the fun twins understanding/speaking spamish is insane actually makes sense holy crap
Me when the friends smile:
Smiling Friends lore goes crazy
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.
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.
Great Video, Keep making awesome videos ❤
Thank you! Will do!
@@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
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
5:36 the song reference is literally insane, had no idea that was an irl political speech. Mr Boss def sung it better 😂😂
small tidbit but i love how they never use the adjective “an” it’s always “a” like “a allen episode”
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.
That was surprisingly comprehensive. I dig it.
Appreciate it!
I'm surprised how no ones mentioned the Humonculous episode might be based off an actual CZcams 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.
Great informative video🔥🔥
Finally someone who breaks down the continuity
James the bully is the one who paid for the Gwimbly's cameo
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
I hate that guy. I’m hanging out with him tomorrow.
Dr Dewey vs Sir Stewie is probably a reference to the Noam Chomsky vs Michel Foucault debate
The reason why earth is round in S1E8 is bc Glep is telling the story who wouldn't have known the earth is flat
"Allan is canonically the youngest smiling Friend"
11:11 "Charlie is 27, Allan is 47, 48, 83 something like that" 😐
Michael said 24 in the beginning
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.
I like how the snowman episode is a dark parody of the classic Christmas animation Raymond Briggs the Snowman
"President Frog BEST MOMENTS" is surely a reference to the insane amount of "Trump's FUNNIEST MOMENTS" videos that get sent into people like Zach's YT Feed who watch political goofs for fun.
This is a funny idea but the show has no real lore outside of vague and inconsistent species for the characters, Zach has said that and there's nothing wrong with that, the world has an inner logic but it's not coherent or consistent and that's intentional, it's just whatever seems funny that day
Super Mario Sunshine music is very smiling friends
Another clue that Charle has been a Christian even before meeting God is in the Salty’s episode when he tells Ketchup he would never break the 6th commandment, that being “Thou shall not murder”
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.
When you understand that creatures are basically the muppets of this universe-just a bunch of strange, colorful tiny guys-it gets ten times funnier.
Unhinged theory: this is an alternate history where Spamtopia, either from alien invasion or interdimensional displacement, appears on earth. The random chaos of Spamtopia infected the world with near lethal levels of silly, causing massive slapstick disasters and mass death with perfect comedic timing. Critters were an attempt at creating a human-Spamtopian crossbreed that would allow humans to survive in the new world, and in current day very few pure blood humans survive on goof-irradiated earth
11:58 Actually Glep would be 1,694 years old as July 9th has not passed yet.
3:16 Charlie also says "I love my god" in the newest episode (2x08)
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.
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
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?
14:01
Ah hell nah, who bought James off Temu 😭😭😭
As a small correction perhaps (or maybe I am getting it wrong): Pim says Ross Perot won re-election in 1996 ( 4:05 ), which means he either won in both 1992 and 1996 and Bill Clinton wasn't the president during that time, or Ross Perot did a Cleveland and won sometime before 1992 before, and maybe Clinton was sometime after him?
6:13 "we wanna remind the audience to NOT cheer for one particular candidate"