When Avatar: The Last Airbender was released in early 2005, the entire American cartoon industry was put on notice. Avatar: The Last Airbender set a new standard for kid’s shows, and has been praised as one of the best kid’s cartoons, if not one of the best shows period, ever made. The story, setting, characters, themes, action, and animation were so amazing and creative that nothing like it had ever been seen before or since (besides its sequel The Legend of Korra). Dubbed as “the first American anime,” the creators took inspiration from martial arts, philosophy, Kung Fu movies, yoga, and of course, Japanese anime, to create an almost perfect tele🐈vision show with a lasting legacy.
Avatar: The Last Airbender was so popular that it even had multiple spin-offs, including a comic book series set right after the events of the finale of the television show, a sequel set 70 years after the events of the first show titled The Legend of Korra, about a new Avatar, and even a live-action movie by M. Night Shyamalan of The Sixth Sense fame (that we don’t EVER talk about).
It stands to reason then, that such a popular and influential television show would have some pretty big secrets. In this list♋ we will be looking at them all. We will look at every kind of secret we couldn't possibly think about🧔, and maybe just a fun fact or two that even the most die-hard fans among you didn’t know. Let’s get to it!
25 No Zuko?
It’s hard to believe now, but the character of Zuko was actually one of the very las😼t characters that was written into the show. The main villain of the series was planned to be the evil Fire Lord Ozai, but the writers realized that they needed a different villain who could actually chase Avatar Aang. Fire Lord Ozai would be confined to his throne room, so he wouldn’t really be able to fight Aang one-on-one.
Zuko has been described as one of the most in-depth characters ever written.
Luckily, the writers realized they needed a more immediate threat than the Fire Lord. So Zuko, the Fire Prince, was born. Zuko is one of the most complex and in-🔥depth characters we have ever seen in any show. Can you imagine how disturbing it would꧟ have been for him to not exist?
24 Bye Bye, Familyℱ Guy
One very interesting secret about one of the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Michael Dante DiMartino, is that he actually left a job working on Family Guy to work on his new show! Family Guy is an American animated show that is centered around the Griffin family, Peter, Lois, their children Chris, Meg, and Stewie, and their talking dog Brian. Family Guy is seen a🌄s a more adult show, with racy humor that comes in the form✤ of cutaway gags.
It’s hard to believe one of the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender worked on a show like Family Guy.
Family Guy is a very popular show in its own right, however it is targeted for a much different audience than Avatar: The Last Airbender. Luckily, the type of gags that are featured in Family Guy didn’t make their way to the kid’s show!
23 ꦰ My Cabbages! 🐼
One of the most popular characters in the entire series isn’t even a main character. He’s actually not even close to being a main character! The character I’m talking about, is of course the Cabbage Merchant. This background character was only planned to be in a single episode, but the fans’ response to him wasꦏ so great. The writers found him so humorous that he became a recurring character in the show.
The Cabbage Merchant was so popular that he can be seen in each city during the show.
Another interesting secret you may have missed is that in the sequel, The Legend of Korra, the Cabbage Merchant is honored with a statue. He is the only main character to have such an honor in Republic City, t꧑he main city i𒉰n the show.
22 ▨ The Re-cast Main Character
One potentially disturbing secret about Avatar: The Last Airbender has to do with the voice actor who originally played Uncle Ir🉐oh, the uncle of Prince Zuko. The voice actor was Mako Iwamatsu, a long established Japanese actor who had been active since 1959. Mako passed away partway through recording his lines for Uncle Iroh during the second season of the show.
The writers then had to recast the role for Uncle Iroh, which went to actor Greg Baldwin for the third season.
The writers even named one of the main characters in the sequel, The Legend of Korra, after Mako as a tribute to the voice actor. His work on Avatar: The Last Airbender won’t be forgotte෴n for a long time, as 🅠Uncle Iroh is one of the most popular characters on the show.
21 Not Related 🌄
One of the most iconic characters in the entire series is Uncle Iroh, Prince Zuko’s wise mentor. Throughout the show, Uncle Iroh gives Zuko a lot of advice on how to become a good person. He is ultimately res꧅ponsible for Zuko’s🔯 character development through each season.
Zuko and Iroh’s relationship is much more interesting because they are family.
Originally, the writers did not plan on Iroh to be Zuko’s uncle. He was just going to be another older Firebender who was a mentor to Zuko. I believe their relationship would not have been as fun to watch had they not been related. Writing Iroh as Zuko’s uncle was definitely a stroke of genius that made the character of Uncle Iroh even more iconic.The show would have been much worse off had ඣIroh just been a standard mentor.
20 Old Age
One interesting secret in Avatar: The Last Airbender that most fans probably didn’t notice is tꦦhat only a handful of characters have their age specifically stated during the show. These characters are Aang, who is 112 years old, Zuko who is 16 years old, Yue who is 16 years old, Toph who is 12 years old, Tom-Tom who is 2 years old, and Mai, who is said to be 15 years older than her brother Tom-Tom, which makes her 17 years old.
We also know that at least two other characters besides Aang are over 100 years old!
There's Bumi, who was alive with Aang over 100 years ago. There's also Guru Pathik, who guided Aang wh🔯en he was trying to enter the Avatar State. There are also hints during the show that Fire Lord Sozin, Avatar Kyoshi, and Avatar Kuruk had 🦩lived over 100 years as well.
19 🍨 Hinting At Future Characters
One interesting secret of Avatar: The Last Airbender is that during the opening credits, there is a scene where dark figures are sho𒆙wn practicing the various forms of el𝓰emental bending that is featured in the show. These dark figures are actually characters that will appear in later episodes!
Alluding to future characters this way is very unique.
The Waterbender who is shown is Master Pakku. The Earthbender who is shown is Sud, who was Avatar Roku’s Earthbending teacher. He was also an early design choice for the character of Toph. The Firebender who is shown is Princess Azula, Zuko’s evil sister. The Airbender who is shown is 𝄹Aang. And finally, the one who is shown bending all the elements is Avatar Roku. Most of these characters were not even featured in the show until later seasons.
18 1000𝄹 Years In The Future ဣ
During early development of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the setting of the show was going t🔥o be very different from what we are familiar with now. Instead of the show being an alternate reality type setting, it was planned for the plot to take place thousands of years into the future!
It would be pretty disturbing to think of the show as taking place years into our own future.
Luckily for fans, that decision was scrapped. It was decided that the show would basically just be an alternate reality version of the world. I’m glad this was the case, as I feel like having the plot take place thousands of years intoᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ the future would have cheapened🍨 the show a bit. It would have made it less unique than it is.
17 S🌸pider Cats? Ew!
One of the aspects of Avatar: The Last Airbender that I always found a bit disturbing is the amount of hybridized animals present in the show. Instead of each animal being their own species, as is the case in the real world, in the Avatar world, each animal is a hybrid of🌃 two different animals.
The implications of this could be seen as deeply disturbing.
Examples of these animals include badgermoles, eel hounds, iguana parrots, goat dogs, koala sheep, lion turꦰtles, platypus bears, wolfbats, tiger seals, tiger monkeys, squirrel t🥃oads, turkey ducks, spider cats, polar bear dogs, and more. How did these animals come to be? Why are they all hybrids? Thinking about these questions can be pretty disturbing, but they made the universe of the show that much more interesting.
16 ♕ It Took How Lo♏ng?
One secret of the inner workings of Avatar: The Last Airbender that many people don’t know, is that each ep♛isode took a considerable time to make. The average time it took an episode of the show to be completed, from the time when the writers began writing the script to when it was finally ready to air, took about nine months.
That’s a lot of time to work on a 23 minute long television episode!
If they had worked on a single episode at a time, it would have taken the series a long time to finish. There were 61 episodes, if each one took 9 months, it would’ve taken 5๊49 months, or around 45 years, to complete the series. Luckily the producers worked on many episodes at one time.