Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Write That Down, I’m In Trouble | Ep. 313

Episode Date: January 1, 2026

A listener email from Danielle turns into a full-on behind-the-scenes autopsy of visual gags in adult animation: marquee jokes, fake brand names, book titles, and who actually adds what—writers, artists, animators, or a chaotic mix of everyone. Soren breaks down what tends to be scripted versus what often comes from the production/art side.Daniel relates it to his own show’s graphics pipeline, including the infamously over-specified “opposite snakes” ordeal on Last Week Tonight. Plus: the American Dad! theme-song detail Danielle noticed—Roger’s intro disguise being pulled from the writer’s prior episode—and why it’s basically a present from the animation team.Thanks to DripDrop for sponsoring this episode. Get 20% off your first order: dripdrop.com and use promo code qq.Follow the guys on Bluesky!https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.socialBonus episodes 2x/month at patreon.com/quickquestion OR Apple Podcasts

I've got a quick, quick question for you all right. I want to hear your thoughts on, I know what's on your mind. I've got a quick, quick question for you all right. The answer's not important. I'm just glad that we could talk tonight. So what's your favorite? Who did you get? When would I be in your members?

What's it out? Word it all. You got to ignore. Oh, forget it. I saw a movie Daniel O'Brien. Two best friends and comedy writers. If there's an answer, they're going to find it. I think you'll have a great time here.

I think you'll have a great time here. Hello again. It's the podcast. It's quick question with Soren and Daniel. A little peek behind the curtain. Well, peek in front of the curtain first. I'm Daniel. Now we'll peek behind the curtain. We normally record this podcast much earlier in the day for the sake of my sanity. And I assume Soren, it's a preference of yours as well. I don't know. I don't know 1,000%. You don't. I've never bothered to care. Every time I want to record the podcast and I say the earlier, the better would be great for me.

I choose to ignore that earlier means like 8 o'clock in the morning. The idea that you're recording this in actual morning time is very foreign to me. Yeah. In fact, a little peek behind my curtain. Oh, I'm not wearing underwear back here. Get out of here. Get out. I'm changing.

It's my changing curtain. A little pink behind my curtain. I will get up in the morning. My wife and I alternate when we get up with the kids. The other person gets to get a few extra winks sometimes in the morning. And that's been a really good deal for us. But if it happens to be a morning where I had gotten up early, I'll take the kids to school and then I'll come right back home.

And I will go back to sleep until we do the podcast. And then I will wake up five minutes before the podcast and I will turn everything on and I will begin. That is nuts. I don't think that's good information for me to have. What's going to happen, though, is if I'm incredibly lucid on this and, like, I feel really on, then we've discovered a problem. And then maybe we should start recording it a different time. I don't know if changing things is the right solution at this point. No, it actually does work out better for me because I also, my work schedule doesn't allow for me to do it any later in the day anyway.

I'll peep behind a separate curtain to a show that's not even ours. I was invited to be on Michael's frame rate. Michael and Abe do frame rate together. show and when I was like yeah I can do it any day before I said I can do it any day as long as I have like a heart out at 10 15 so I can go to work and they were like oh we we're not going to do that it's like oh okay all right well then I guess I'll just never be on the show when I uh somewhat famously recorded behind the bastards a few months ago I there was nothing was going to get me to not do that show because I've been I just been really just trying to get back on that show and just like plug our show and just like it could really move the needle for us I thought um so no matter what time they were recording I was going to do it and because Robert Evans is a freak monster who has never adhered to a normal human schedule in his life uh we recorded at um for I think two and a half to three hours um beginning at 6 p.m my time

on a Friday night, and I just sat in my little recording booth and watched it go from from sun to dark and felt my body as being like, this is like, we can skip lunch here and there, but this is dinner. We can't have dinner at 9 p.m. That's our whole lives are going to be different. Our wife is having dinner now. Well, I'll say that afternoon, Daniel, usually I get you in the morning after you've just run or that shouldn't say morning

you in the afternoon but now you're you're dressed like an AP English teacher who might be having an affair with one of the students. Thank you. Wow. High praise.

I'll take that. From somebody who fucked his AP teacher. Good Lord. So what I want to get into the show. Yes, please. And we have some, we have a listener email that's going to drive the conversation It's from Danielle from Seattle, who is a Patreon member.

Crazy that we are moving this over here. Ordinarily, we would answer our Patreon questions in an actual Patreon. But here, it was such a good question that we're moving it over to the prime time. Yeah. I have a quick question for Soren. I'm a big fan of adult animation. And of course, American Dad, exclamation mark. She put the exclamation mark.

Really appreciate that. whatever I talk because I have such this is me talking not Daniel. This should be easy to bounce back and forth between Daniel and Daniel whenever I talk to people about your show even casually over

text or slack as I do often because I am so respectful of you and your work and also such a stickler for the written word never refer to this show to your show

without the exclamation mark because that's in the title and like when you're in Slack and I'm like oh yeah my buddy's sword horse for American Dad and I've italicized it and put the exclamation mark it bothers people

they don't like it it's a that's one step removed from a guy used to work at our show who would do American Dad and then he would put the the American flag emode

emoji 205 oh it's just an old man he would do The emoji, too. So, like, here are the jokes for American Dad, and it'll be a exclamation point flag. That's pretty funny. Back to the email from Danielle.

Some of my favorite jokes are visual gags that don't drive the storyline forward, things like funny story names, brand names, book titles, etc. I'm curious when and how these jokes, these kinds of jokes come about. Are they something you're thinking of and writing directly into the script? Do they come out of breakout rooms or punch-up sessions? Or do animators or other team members suggest them or add them later in the process? I rewatch the six American dad episodes where you're credited as the writer.

Bonus question, can you name your six episodes off the top of your head? And I have a few examples. There's not an opportunity for you to name them off the top of your head because they're also in this email. Yeah, I'm not going to do that anyway. But could you have? Yeah, I've only written.

I mean, now at this point I have eight, but two of them haven't aired yet. But yeah, they're, I, it's because it's only, it's like less than you can count on your hands. It's very easy for me to go through and name every single episode I wrote. I cannot recall which episodes of last week tonight I have worked on in a given year. Well, that's different, right? Throughout the show, I have jokes in every single episode.

So I don't know, I've worked on, if you were like, which one did you work on? I'd be like, well, all of them. But like, which ones did I break with people, I would have a hard time remembering which ones I broke. And that's like, that's a, you're creating a story there. Even my A stories, though. when it's like me and one or two other writers who are delivering most of the episode, because you're right, we all bounce around

and do jokes on everything. But the ones where I've been like one of the two or three principal writers, when we get to the end of the season and I look at a list of all of our episodes, I will have questions that are like, did we really air a piece about content moderation? It will be my first question.

And then my second question, did I work on content moderation? Anyway, we've got the six episodes. Should we dig into the specifics first, or do you want to, okay. Let's dig into it because this is like, I love this question. Danielle put the work in. Danielle from Seattle really went the extra yard. Like, even when she talks about breakout rooms and like punch-up sessions,

like it's clear that she knows. She knows Paul. Yeah, she knows where our show. She knows, and like, she knows that you and I talk about this and like the way that we've referred to things. which wow thanks for listening somebody absolutely that's amazing um but yes the way that like if you listen to the script notes podcast a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters they will feature listener questions once or twice an episode and they'll do like live shows and their audience based on questions are like exclusively working successful screenwriters

their questions are so good and so in depth and they're always like like, hey, my name is Mark from Milwaukee. I've written three screenplays, sold a couple, nothing's been produced yet, and it was like, fuck, I got to ask this guy questions. How do you? I'm the type of person who gets headaches, ladies and gentlemen, and I occasionally get migraines as well. Now, there are triggers that I've discovered in my life for why I get them, but more importantly, there's the opposite of a trigger, which is things that will protect me against them, and I regularly don't do those things. The primary one of them all,

staying hydrated. When I'm hydrated, everything just works better. My energy, my mood, my focus, literally everything improves. That's why it's a good idea to use drip drop. It's a feel sharper and calmer, and honestly, I'm going to say it, more handsome. Turns out hydration is a beauty hack,

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Sorry, that's my reading. The letterboard slash marquee in front of Graff Community College says Foozball quarterfinals tonight and the library says library. Library, yeah. That's the joke. Community College, yeah. In Ghost Dad. Ghost Dad, they eat at a restaurant called Mark Ruffalo's Buffalo Wild Wings.

Yeah. I'm laughing already. In plot heavy, the posters of Scottie Pippen's book show him spinning the book on his finger a la a basketball. So Haley is wearing her bandana over her mouth and nose while she scrubs bodies. In the curious case of the old hole, the letterboard marquee in front of Pearl Bailey says, Last Day of School again. Yeah.

Okay. This is like a great question about when jokes get added or like whether animation is also pulling the trigger on a bunch of different jokes too. And I'll say that a lot of the ones. that she's pulled up, by the way, like, she went through every single one of my episodes for those questions, it looks like, because she went through and was like, well, did he do anything in this one?

Yes, he did. A lot of that stuff is jokes that are in the script. So, like, because you know you have these different places where you could just, like, pack in jokes, the marquee outside of the school, you're going to put stuff in there because you think it's funny. Or, like, when I wanted with Groff called,

Groff calling their library, the library, you're just, like, adding these low rent, aspects to groff to give it more of like a the feel that you want that this is just not a good school and i can i can remember in ghost dad that mark ruffalo's buffalo wild wings that was a pitch from joe chanler in the room to call it that and we're like yeah that will be the name of where stan goes because you can't just have your your characters go to a restaurant it feels like i'm sure you get this too where you're like oh well that feels like a waste what am i they should be going somewhere fun like it should be something cool you can't just have your character stealing

gold boy on you got to be like no they should steal something cooler what about the ford bronco from the oj chase like you there's going to be things you want to do um the one that i don't actually remember and i think that the artist might have done it was scotty pippin spinning the book on his finger in the cutout and then also haley wearing her bandana over her mouth usually we get design uh designs from them before they even start building the episode once the episode's written you go through a storyboard launch where you basically say what you want in any individual scene

and like there's questions that the director will have for you and like the composition of it and when we do all that they have some ideas for like oh what if like what if Haley's got like the bandana on or on her face

and some of the times that stuff comes to me first and I could be like yeah that sounds great along with the showrunner and sometimes it just shows up and I'm like oh that's cool that's a good idea yeah that's great um but generally if it's wording like if there's a sign or something like that that's us and if there's if it's something that's a design choice and one of the characters

a lot of times that is the actual uh animators or that the artist there's i was very curious about this with bojack because bojack had so many hidden jokes all over it that i was like wow who is doing this like are the writers writing all this in because their scripts got to be huge because you know you've got to trim it down to get it at just length and everything And so you're not, you're not burning a lot of time on jokes on action lines. But I talked to somebody, the woman who wrote The View from Halfway Down, Al St. Tafel, she's a great writer. I was like, well, who's doing that? And she's like, it's both.

A lot of times the animators are just, or the artists are like, they make a decision. They're like, isn't this funny? And you can be like, yeah, they think we should keep it. I haven't talked in a while. It's interesting because I've, sorry. I feel like there's probably a way to check the history on this, but we, you and I and every writer that we know, lives in the shadow of the Simpsons, and they were masters of this. Masters of like, we're going to, we have an establishing shot of Springfield Elementary School. We need to let the audience know that we have gone from house to school.

And before we go inside the school, we're going to show you the school from the outside so you know where we are. that's the function that the frame has, but Simpsons writers were like, let's also put a joke in here. It's going to be on screen, so there's room for a joke, we're going to put something on the marquee or like the bulletin board outside of the school.

There's always going to be like a joke or two in there for the audience to see. And I don't know if that was revolutionary at the time, but that was like, that's like a defining feature of Simpsons that not only is every, book title that you see when you're scrolling through a bookshelf going to be a joke every marquee is going to be a joke in the few times where like you are it's sort of like a um

like an open-faced doll house basically where the camera is panning from above to below and you're going like seeing every floor of the house they're going to be jokes inserted underneath the floorboards and underneath the the floor and in the dirt like like simpson's no stone was left unturned for joke opportunities. I think they're the first ones. I'm trying to think back if, like, Looney Tunes was doing that kind of joke, like, murky-style joke. I'm sure they were puns.

You're talking about them, like, panning through the floors of a building. They would do, like, you go underground to go see somebody digging a tunnel. And as you're getting down there, you're also going past a bunch of dinosaur bones and things like that. Like, you're seeing, you're getting, like, these visual, like, little, Easter eggs where you're like, oh, that's kind of fun. Like, they just barely missed that T-Rex. Yeah. Like, I don't know if Flintstones was putting that kind of level, that attention to detail.

Someone... In a Barbarra, it was not doing it. Someone can probably say, like, actually the first person who was doing this kind of, like, this attack of jokes in every single corner of a frame. Someone was doing that back in 1900. But as far as I know, like, the Simpsons owned that, and we're all, like... Like, the idea of putting jokes everywhere, even if I do it in a new way, is still me being the Simpsons. And I think it's fair to say, like, family guy and American dad and BoJack as well. They're also saying, like, this is a, there's room for jokes in this frame.

Even the good place. Like, they, when they're in heaven and we're walking through a town created by an architect in a place that, for all intents and purposes, is heaven. That show is like wall to wall. If we're going to be in a town, then the town's going to have storefronts and restaurants. And if we're going to have storefronts and restaurants, they're going to have names. And the names are going to be jokes. And you could see, like, Megan Amram, who was a writer-producer on that show,

has, like, gifted the world with pages of pun-filled joke suggestions for what the restaurants and the storefronts could. be called and that's a very end of sentence no yeah I've run out of steam you've made the point I totally agree with you like I guess yes I didn't realize where we were borrowing it from but you're absolutely right like it was Simpsons when I was growing up where you're like you're hunting as you're watching you're also hunting to see like what else they added just for you and that's something I don't know I think you learn that kind of in literature classes when you're young. It's like, well, what else is here that you're not actually seeing on the

surface that's beyond the story? And so you start applying that to television, and sometimes you're really richly rewarded. And it's fun to do. I mean, it's fun to just like stuff, stuff in when you can. And a lot of times, like stuff will be born from, they will make a choice. Like, Haley's basketball, for instance. Like, we talked about this on the show, but Haley is very into basketball, and that's like a more of a recent evolution of her character. And that stemmed from There was an episode where she and Jeff are fighting and in the closet is a basketball of her bedroom. And we were so tickled by that in the animatic, like, one of the rewrites, that we were like, why she got a basketball? And then it became this running joke that Haley was really into basketball.

And then it started to make it into the show. And so it kind of goes back and forth. Yeah. And I'll say the same answer as yours for my show, not that Danielle, not that you asked, but for my show, which also has like over-the-shoulder visual jokes to punctuate. spoken nerd jokes it is a mix of the writers writing in specifically like here is what i want to see over there uh and our great graphics department we have like really funny people who work in graphics and very often add to in addition to like doing the impossible task of representing whatever bullshit we wrote if there's room they will add jokes to it to enhance it um and every writer is

different verses like some of us will put in like over the shoulder there's a doctor who made a mistake and they're shrugging um versus a writer like me who is insane and difficult to work with who will like very thoroughly script out what I think the the OTS over the shoulder images is going to have in there and I'll cram in as much jokes as I can like this is a fake movie poster um and it looks like this and the tagline is this and the name of the person who made the movie is this I will be like as thorough and specific as I can be. If people forget to do that or like can't, they don't care, sometimes we'll get a note from graphics that are like,

do you have any ideas for like funny taglines for these things? I have a lot to say about a specific joke from, this is a very rare case because it was truly insane. It was an episode. It's always hard to know what things are episodes come from, but it was about, I think, Narendra Modi. I think it was about Indian elections. And I'd written a joke run about a creature called Opposite Snakes. And it took a very long joke about a creature that doesn't exist, but it does in the reality of our show. And an opposite snake is. in the way that a real snake is just like a face and a tail. Opposite snakes are just arms and legs, no face, no nothing. A hole where it eats and shits and it's the same hole. And I just kept mentioning opposite snakes and calling back to it a few times throughout the show

and describing its natural predators. And it was like the meat of the joke was the opposite snake as an asshole that everything hates and it makes everyone uncomfortable. And part of that did require a lot of, like, back and forth between me and graphics of, like, where they would show samples. This is what we think an opposite snake would look like. I'm like, that's really great. It is not. An opposite snake has to look more like the following things.

And some of it was very necessary dialogue to make sure we were all on the same page of what this horrible creature looked like. and some of it in my on-the-page description of what was happening, it would be an opposite snake and a gorilla, and the gorilla is freaking out, an opposite snake, pointing a gun at a dolphin. And I would have something very specific about, like, the dolphin is scared but not surprised. The dolphin has seen this kind of thing before.

And just, that's not me being helpful. That's me just like, this is fun for me. me to write this description and our executive producer had relayed to me that the graphics department was like, had asked her, do I need to, do I need to show that? Do I need to try to show that the dolphin is familiar with the opposite snake? And it's been held up before by an opposite snake? And I'm like, oh, no, they don't need to do. Like, I understand why it's hard to work with me because I write a lot of stuff and some of it matters and most of it doesn't. And it's You have to know the difference or it's a problem.

That's how I feel for our writer's assistants, because when we sit in a room and we're breaking a story or whatever, they are taking notes on everything. And you see these on monitors around the room, while you just sit on a couch and pontificate. Like, you're just saying stuff and it gets written down. And they kind of use their discretion when everybody's going at once on what to write down, what seems valuable.

And occasionally we will get on a run that has nothing to do with the show. But we're all very much enjoying ourselves. And the writer's assistant has to be like, I think they're just kidding about this. And they will just stick, keep their hands off the keyboard. And occasionally we will be like, what the fuck? Right. I think they're kidding.

But if they're not kidding, I'm in trouble. Which is not a fair position for them to be in by any means. But yeah, we get, there are these ancillary skill sets you build being a television writer that you didn't think you would. assuming anyone listens to you. I think there's probably shows where that doesn't happen where you write an episode and that's the last you see of it.

Once you do your writer's draft, it's not yours anymore. But on a show where you're more involved, you build up these insular skill sets of like describing what you want to the people who are going to be making it. And in your case, you've got these graphics that have to come up.

And for our show, it's something like an animated scene where I'm not going to necessarily put it in the action lines, but when I have a meeting with them about like the storyboard launch or the production launch, I need to know, I need to be articulate in how I describe what I want or I won't get it. And then it's like, they've wasted work. And so you've got to be good at that. You've got to be like, have touchstones from movies or from things that people actually have seen.

It's kind of like this. And then you're just, and then also sometimes I will get up in the middle of a meeting to show them what the move is. Like I want Steve to be so upset that he runs up and jumps a wall. And they're like, what is this? And I'm like, oh, it looks like this. And like, I'll get up. I'd be like, and, like, jump off the wall. And they're like, okay, I understand it now.

But you don't, if you don't, I learned very early on, like, if you don't do that, you get something completely different. Like, not everyone's seeing it the same way you are, obviously. And so you get something very strange if you don't do it right. That's what I was going to ask you. You said you learned early on. I was going to ask you if you thought our experience with after hours in four. any of this for you at all or made it made it easier because for

an additional peak behind the changing curtain that everyone has in their modern homes we would script after hours and we would shoot it and after hours would cut from us to clips from the movie that we would often... We would like when we're writing the scripts we would tell

the editor like this is the part of the clip where I want from this time code to this time code very clearly what needs to be seen on the screen And we'd also either over the shoulder or in full screen have animations that we would cut to or illustrations, never like the most involved, nothing on the level of like actual animation from America Dad. We would just like have. Yeah, little rudimentary things. A little very, very, like your rudimentary is the word. And sometimes we were having Michael Swam or Cody Johnston edit those.

And sometimes we would have Nick Rood, our chief editor, edit them. but these are people who like animation is not their skill set and our illustrators were like really great illustrators who who weren't animators because they're completely different skill sets and so the writers were often describing like exactly this is what we're going to see and this is what moves need to happen and this is you know the same way that you have jokes on marquise and bulletin boards we were writing those in two And I didn't know if that was something that you poured it over from after hours or if that like you never even made that conscious connection. No, I do. I mean, I remember the first time that I even asked about it on our show where we were, I was in a rewrite. So an episode that had already been made and it was at like the black and white stage. It's called the animatic. And we do get an expert like an exterior shot of the school.

And I saw the marquee and it was bare. And I was like, nothing's in the script. And I was like, do we do a joke here? and they were like, yeah, I mean, it's done. It's just not showing up here. But like, nobody was like, oh, that's a good idea. Like, they'd already been doing that shit forever. So I don't, I don't, I think that I, it was easier to fall into what they were already doing for me because of what we'd already been doing on after hours.

But like, I wasn't bringing anything new to them. I see. Yeah. But I, I love doing little hidden jokes. There's stuff that got cut. Stuff that I really loved. And I thought it was very funny that then, like, just we didn't have time for it or nobody else thought it was funny for me. There was a joke early on in American Dad that Haley had a twin brother at one point.

And then we never really explained what happened. There's like a flashback to Francine in the mall. And she's got Haley and Bailey. And that's part of the joke is like we never found out whatever happened to Bailey. We saw him as a toddler and that was it. and so I had when I in my first episode I there's a part where Stan pulls out a book called the Smith family rules it's like this big bound tone and it shows where Haley has signed some document saying she would move out when she was 18 and it's like look you even signed it and it's just her ink footprint from when she was a baby but then underneath it is also Bailey's as well and then it's crossed out and and I was like I thought oh this will be funny and then eventually everyone was just like, is this really worth it? And I was like, oh, no, I mean, none of this is worth it. No. Nothing I'm writing here is worth it. If you need to something that's to shave time.

Writing writ large, is it worth it? I think we're finding out not particularly. Yeah. That's my favorite. We get notes from our showrunner every once in a while. They're like, this is funny, but is it really worth putting in? Like, is it moving the story and so many times it turns into just like this philosophical debate of like no no none of it like funny is the point yeah that's why we're making the show it's funny it's that's funny it made all of us laugh let's put it in that's more important than the story the story's confusing it doesn't totally matter as long as it's funny yeah that will always be like there are so many um pieces of long bullshit all right into last week tonight that in rewrite my bosses will be like i'm very sorry we are 50 seconds over time

and so things need to get cut and you have this very long run that you wrote about fucking a lobster or whatever and I'm like but let's just talk about this can we cut the end bit

where John's like so what can we do to solve this problem here are some websites here's where you go to vote can we cut that for once can we cut the call to action and keep the jokes

well frequently you'll see now on American Dead that we will play with the introduction the theme song. And the theme song is long. And it takes a good chunk of like what could be story. And so people will be like, well, I'm going to do a different theme song. Like the theme song is only going to half happen. And then like it's going to instead of Stan crashing the car to the CIA, like something else happens right here. And that moves the story along a little bit faster. And so like people are cheating a little bit in that regard. Where it's stuff that, you're like, well, do we really need this? And they're very precious about it. Seth, I think, is probably pretty precious about it because it's supposed to be a sitcom. And sitcoms have a theme song. And like, When you fuck with that, it's, it's fucking with his original vision of what the show was going to be, which I get. I understand that, too. But, yeah, I don't think that there's anything wrong with, like, just trying to do jokes wherever you can. And at the consequence of story sometimes, I guess it's different for you because your guys, your stories are actually winning Emmys.

No, the warden's not watching where we are. I would bet everything in my wallet against everything in your wallet that your viewership destroys our viewership. But it's not as good for you. It's empty calories. Yeah, people hate things they love. Oh, they hate those things that they love. It's interesting that you brought up your theme song,

because Danielle's question continues. And I love the kindness. and generosity in her question because she says please feel free to stop here which I assume means like stop reading the email now if you want but I have another related question

if you have the time Danielle buddy you're the best we all have time it's fine it's an email I'm not gonna stop in the middle of an email and be like oh thank God an out

an exit I can turn off by the way anyone who wants to like send messages to people that you admire not us I don't this is rare I think the rare circumstance in which someone is like, I like your show. But anyone you admire, this is the way to do it. This is so well thought out and researched and like, and then also very polite the whole

way through where it's like, hey, I had, I asked you, I said I was going to ask you a question. I did that. That's been fulfilled. If you wouldn't mind, there's something else I'd like to ask as well. The follow up question is, it seems like the Roger who appears briefly in the intro is always in a disguise from the episode you wrote the previous season. Examples. In Ghost Dad, Roger appears as Lacey Crinkle Hole from Pride. Yeah. Crinkle Hole.

From Pride before the fail. In Plot Heavy, Roger is Chantilly Dubois from Ghost Dad. In the curious case of the Old Hole, Roger is Sexton, the Gravedigger from Plot Heavy. In Fantastic Voyage, Roger is a member of the Secret Society from the curious case of the old hole. In Killer Mamosa, Roger is himself wearing a yellow polo shirt from Fantastic Voyage. I love this detail. and felt brilliant noticing it, Danielle, you are brilliant. But I am curious, are you the one who decides what Roger will be in the opening credits? Thank you, huge fan. Danielle, that is clear.

Danielle from Seattle. Damn, dude. Not only did she realize that that was happening, but she knows the names of the characters. Yeah. Which is something that we spent a lot of time doing, naming Roger characters, because it's the most fun you can have on the show. but man that's okay so here's

you're saying you're saying it was more fun to write Chantilly Dubois than Steve Smith when you land on a Roger name it's so funny because you circle and like the names that lose out to it you're like that's close to a Roger name

but it's not quite a Roger name and then you just like you get to Reagan Freakonomics and you're like yep that's the name that's the one and so uh Yes, this is happening.

What she's describing is that at the beginning of the show and the theme song, Stan drives to work. And as he's driving, there's a last chorus of like, Good Morning USA where Roger pops his head up from the backs or underneath at the floorboards, I guess. And he's always in disguise. He's always as some character. And Stan stuffs him back down and then Stan crashes into the flagpole in front of the CIA. That who they decide that is going to be as Roger, like what Roger character that's going to be. I guess they started this maybe like a few years before I was there

but the animation and the artists are really good at being like okay well who did they have in their previous episode and they'll pull somebody from your previous written by and they will use that Roger character It is on purpose tied directly to you the writer that is so cool but I didn't get to decide that somebody did that for me

as like a present to me basically like it wasn't they weren't they might be doing it for the anyone who's like Danielle who's actually paying attention but I think it's mostly for the writers the other thing that they do really cool that's really cool in the show is that there are models of each one of us so there's a lot of times where you have crowd scenes and they need to just pull models and so every artist on the show every writer on the show and some of the more administrative duties like those people all have their own models so I appear on the show I am a guy um there's a couple of people that go like

passed around in like different roles and stuff and they don't stay consistent but my character or my model is a CIA agent called Tony the reverse werewolf. Sure. Who is only a

Let me get there. Yeah, see if you can figure out what Tony the reverse werewolf is. I mean, is he only a human being on a full moon? Yes, sir. And he's a werewolf most of the other time? Okay, great. Yeah. There was a chance. There was another

a third step to the joke. No, it's just he's a, yeah, he's a reverse werewolf meaning that he's a human only on full moons. Yeah, excellent. And so it's really cool then to have that. And then when they're putting together the offices even, you get a little name placard on your door and then there's a little picture of the animated version of you

because you're a model already on the show. And they do these little things at our show that I'm just like, I don't deserve any of this. That's so awesome. That's really kind of you to do this, but I don't deserve any of this. The first time I saw Lacey Crinklehole show up in the next episode, I was like, for me? You did that for me?

That's so heartwarming. That's really wonderful. Yeah, but it's amazing. I mean, so impressive of her to notice that. She would have to have gone through and just watched those individual episodes on a row. Like, maybe she discovered it. as she was doing that first part, I'm not going to speculate. But I'm so impressed.

What an amazing, amazing job. Thank you so much, Danielle. I look forward to your similarly researched question about me and my show, Danielle. You certainly felt comfortable answering it anyway. I sure did. I have more to say, in fact. You have created characters on your show. You've created the blank void, right?

The white void? Sure, but that's, that's, that's very different. I would say, the show creates the void, you know? Okay. We do, they do find ways to put us into the show. It's nothing as cool as like I think the fact that they

illustrate a you that they do one of like every writer and every person who works on the show is like such a kind gift and such a cool club to belong to that like you can

I don't know that seems like the kind of thing that like would be someone's make a witch or something that like a person could could donate a lot of money to charity for like the privilege of being animated into American Dad. It's like a really cool little Easter egg for the writers. I wonder, it's making me wonder

if other shows do this now because I know Zig, Cody Zieg, Cody Zieg, comics artist who's written on a million shows, wrote for the new Futurama for a while. And I know is like a person who looks like him because Zig has an incredibly distinct look was like featured in a frame of that show. And I, at the time, I thought like, oh, that's really cool. They, they drew Zig into an episode of Futurama. But I'm wondering now if that's like, has every Simpsons writer appeared in Simpsons somewhere? I think it's mutually beneficial. They need faces, basically. You have to have all these big scenes where you're like, well, it's hard to just draw original people over and over again. So if you have something to template, like something to emulate,

it becomes much easier. And that's a good reason to put. people in the show, in the show. But also, like, I'm certainly getting the better end of that stick. Now I have, like, a fun cartoon character myself. That's very funny that as soon as you get higher, they're like, oh, thank God, another face. Oh, fuck. I was out of faces. Which is so funny.

I mean, if you spend a day just going around and maybe you'd get in trouble for this, but just taking pictures of people and you're like, and now these people will all go in the show. I mean, are people really going to know? unless they have an eye patch or a wooden leg or whatever, no one's going to know if it's them or not really. It just kind of looks like them. Which, I don't know.

We have animators. I keep saying animators, but we have artists who have since died who still appear on our show and it's like a really fun thing to see them just at an amusement park waiting in the line. We had our like over-the-shoulder images.

Sometimes we use stock photo models and sometimes we use people from around the office either because we are asking the model to do something that they didn't like contractually sign up to do. Like we can license stock photos and you can do some amount of photo manipulation to them but you can't make a stock photo model fucking someone else even if it's fake, even if you're blurring part of it.

That's just like we have to go in-house for that or hire someone specifically for it. And there was someone on staff that, I can't remember, we have so many jokes where someone is masturbating and so many jokes where someone's taking a shit somewhere. They ought not to. And I get them confused sometimes. One of them was this guy who, for argument's sake,

was taking lots of shits. He was like, our go-to, here he is taking a shit. In a mailbox, here he's taking. a shit on top of the pope whatever it's going to be he left the show and moved on to other things and um we kept hiring him back when we had a joke that involves someone shitting somewhere yeah i would just like see him in the office one day i was like i thought you you were with jacks now what's up was like oh i'm i'm a photoshop model today because they wrote a joke where someone shits on a grill just like and we want the best get the best that's really great yeah we

Early on in the American Dad, I'm sorry that I missed out on a lot of this, is that the writers would voice most of the characters. They would, I don't know if they were early on they were trying to save money or there was just like a thing that was more common back then, but main characters are voiced by, like Santa on our show is voiced by an old writer. Mertz on our show is voiced by an old writer. And those are characters that appear quite frequently. And so every once in a while,

you'll just see somebody in the halls who has not worked on the show in over 12 years. And you're like, what do you, are you going to kill everyone? Like, no, I'm here to do Santa. Pulled out of retirement. Yeah, because then they have to keep, obviously they have to keep coming back. You can't have Santa be somebody new all of a sudden, which is, I think, a really good get. Danielle would revolt. I'm trying to think if we ever have changed somebody.

Oh, yeah, people have, actors have died before. And we brought back their character and then just didn't acknowledge that it was a different voice. But that's usually, it's never somebody huge. I mean, if it's somebody big, we'd have to do something. We'd have to acknowledge it. But yeah, it's fun to talk about the show. I didn't, I thought, I didn't realize we had never talked about this. Because that was my main question when I got to the show was I would see jokes in there where, God, it didn't feel scripted.

You know, like there was something in there where it was Barry just, Steve saying something and then Barry going. and it's just a noise that you can't possibly script and you're like how did we get here like I was like asking them what did the original script say who where did that choice get made like did the actor just get to do that or what happened um and so finding those things out along the way it was very fun and like the evolution of something uh of a joke that didn't just start as like fully formed that it had to be built yeah but like for for your episodes specifically like uh foosball quarterfinals tonight and the library says library or the marquee in front of Pearl Bailey that says last day of school again those jokes apart from sort of setting it in the time of year when school ends they're not really tied to the plot is there a master list of marquee jokes that can get pulled out or is like when you say Joe Chandler did Mark Ruffalo's thing. That is, when you're working on that episode,

you need a sign today. You don't go to share doc somewhere that is like, here's a list of funny restaurant names. That would have been a really good idea. That's not allowed, though. That's just like week of or like cycle in the show. That's when you're coming up with all of the board signs

and all the restaurant names. Yeah, I mean, yes, the board signs sometimes during a production meeting, they'll be like, we need a joke here. Like, it would be nice to have a joke. like, okay, and you go, right, like three, and then the showrunner will pick one. Or you take it back even to the room. A lot of times people take these kind of jokes back to the room and be like, what would be funny?

The majority of time, they're just like, if you have an idea and it's short, you just put it in the script right away. And then, like, I had Stan going to a Buffalo Wild Wings instead of to his dad's funeral. And Joe is like, what if it's a Mark Ruffalo's Buffalo Wild Wings? And I was like, yeah, that's better. Let's do that. It is better. And I wonder how... I mean, it's funny for anyone in the world, because Ruffalo and Buffalo, ha, ha, ha, ha.

And the idea of Mark Ruffalo owning a Buffalo Wild Wings is really, really good. But I wonder, so growing up in New Jersey, and then I moved to L.A., there was famously, but not anymore, magic Johnson's TGI Fridays, which is a strange thing to see, because there are TGA Fridays everywhere that are just called TGI Fridays. And then one, that was for some amount of time, Magic Johnson's TGY Fridays. And I didn't know if that was like specific to Magic or L.A. I don't feel like I drove around L.A. in, like, Encino and saw Pauly Shores Chili's or something like that. L.A. has a little bit more of it. But yeah, in terms of like a franchise, like a well-known franchise, that was crazy that there was a Magic Johnson's T.J. Fridays. And then it just wasn't. It just stopped being that. which was so fucking nuts.

What changed? I don't know. Like Joe Montanio, who was like, it was an actor from criminal minds and stuff. He has his own, he has his own Chicago restaurant, but it's called, but like he's,

it's just his. And so everyone knows it like, oh yeah, that star also has. Or like Kenny Loggins had his own chicken restaurant, didn't he? Or Kenny Rogers. Kenny Rogers did.

Not Kenny Loggins. Danger's own chicken. I feel like that's really an L.A. thing. I don't know if that happens anywhere else. But, yeah, there's a lot of L.A. stuff that we put in the show. It should. Well, it's making us laugh. And, like, well, is this universal?

Will they actually, will the Midwest know what's going on here? We're like, I don't know, man. Ali knows what's funny to me. I think that the, the, it's funny to everyone. But I think, like, separate thought, I think if you had Magic Johnson, Joe Montana money I think there would the

the Midwest is where you should own something that's where you should like Magic Johnson get out of Englewood or wherever Magic Johnson's TGI Friday's

It was Englewood. I want there to be like someone be like this is a pretty good fud ruckers but you know what would make it even better Chas Pomeratries Fudrickers Yeah a show

A Shoe Otani Panera in Akron, Ohio. So we'll be like, that's cool. Is he from? I know he's not. I know he's not from here. Does he spend a lot of time? He's never been here. You're saying, okay.

Interesting. I will go. You like to see what it's on. It was a good location. Okay. Yeah. I wonder if the, man, we never, because we used to drive past that Magic Johnson's one when we would go volunteering.

And it would have been really interesting to say. see to be able to cross-reference the menus and see if there's anything Magic Johnson specific on the menu at all. Oh, here they're the Showtime Potato Skins. That's cool. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. The joke I really want to make, but I'm not going to do it. Come on, do it. No, I'm not going to do it. It's still too soon. I think we're getting there, but it's still too soon. Well, yeah, thank you, Daniel, for that question.

That was awesome. Such a great question, Danielle. She should be doing the show. And I look forward to answering your question that you asked Daniel, too. Yeah. But anyway, yeah, thank you everybody for listening. And, of course, thank you to our Patreon members for not only listening to our Patreon episodes, but also writing into us. Because that turns out the best way to get a hold of us.

Oh, that's the value of the Patreon is that we'll actually read your messages. I'm sure we still have an email address somewhere and we have like an X account where people might be writing in but I would never see any of that. I will see your messages from Patreon though. Q with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. Oh, that's our email?

I think so. Nice. That comes up when I start typing quick. It doesn't come up first. First thing is quick text at Hyattic.com. So I guess if you have questions for Hyatt, the hotel chain. You must have at some point

I must have You must have You must have utilized that It doesn't seem like a legit email For them though Well Thank you for listening If you liked our themes on this by me Rex

If you like this podcast in general That was Gabe Harder's who's putting it all together And then of course if you want to watch this podcast You can do that on YouTube You can also listen to our Patreon I think you can also get to our Patreon episodes through Apple subscriptions If you're paying for those as well

We do those every other week And they're pretty fun That's it Bye Bye I'm going to I'm going to quick quick question for you all right I want to hear your thoughts

I want to know what's on your mind I've got a quick quick question for you all right The answer's not important I'm just by the week and talk tonight So what's your favorite Who did you get I'll be remember What's it out to

Word it all now I'm going to know I forget it movie daniel o'brien two best friends and comedy writers if there's an answer they're going to find it

I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here