Building Block World: The Alex Parr Special

Alex Parr here—as the writer for this specific episode of Building Block World, me and Kaie felt it was appropriate that I write the Behind the Scenes page for "The Alex Parr Special".

The cold opening is based on a dream I had in November 2022. I was at my Grandma's house along with my parents, and there was a worm next to an oven. I pressed a button that played a sound inside the oven, and the worm went inside.
After going into my room and walking back out, I pressed the button again. The worm came back out, along with a giant, hairy worm, which I started running from and screaming at. I went into the basement, and it followed. It almost caught up to me, until I threw a shopping cart at it. I ran back upstairs and closed the door, which stopped it. Even after I opened the door back up, the giant worm was still completely stationary.
I cut the segment down as the full dream might've been a little too scary for Building Block World standards.

Segment 1 was based on a dream from July 2022. I was in school, and we went to an arcade for some reason. There was a target game, a broken wheel mini game, some sort of Power Rangers racing game and a giant floor that acted like ice hockey.
Some kid came in and asked if he could see my school ID. I said sure and held on to the lanyard so he couldn't run off with it. However, he outsmarted me by pulling the tag off of the lanyard. Then he started to run out of the building with my tag.
While he was trying to run away, I jumped and tried to kick him down, but I only lightly tapped him with my foot instead. Just before he got out, my teacher grabbed him and held him up. When I got near him, he headbutted me and I pulled on his hair. I then grabbed his phone and started messing with his internet history, thinking that changing one of the links would either make him disappear or take me back to when this never happened.
I don't know why I changed "ice hockey" to "air hockey" in the episode, maybe it just made more sense to me? Otherwise this segment in Building Block World is basically identical to the original dream.

Segment 2 was based on a (long) dream from April 2022. I was riding the school bus home, and suddenly the driver went a little nuts and started making the bus jump over the humps on the road. It then jumped so hard that I had to jump off myself, just before it flipped upside down. Nobody else jumped off like I did, though I didn't think they were seriously hurt. The bus driver then said something about the pterodactyls being back, and I started running.
I woke up from the dream (yes, a dream in a dream) and was suddenly back at my old school yard. After talking to one of the teachers about "what the hell that was", I then said something about a counterfeit power supply being the cause of that strange dream. I hopped on the school bus—at least I think it was a school bus—and left school for real.
I fell asleep on the bus, and had another dream-in-a-dream. (Well, I think part of it was a dream-in-a-dream.) I was at my grandparents house, where my cat was suddenly following me and going under the bed. I then saw my grandpa's ghost, and he gave me his life savings, which was like $40 in my bank account, before we took a rollercoaster-type thing back to heaven. No, I didn't go in, but I think I saw him walking up the staircase to Heaven before I fell asleep again and woke up for real.
I cut some things down in the Building Block World episode as this dream was—as you can tell—very long as-is. I think the last part of the dream (the one where the grandpa goes up the stairs and closes the door to heaven) is the part that stayed closest to the actual dream; though that's probably just because I'm the one who animated it. I also voiced the teacher here.

The intermission segment was based on a dream from August 2020. I was playing around with my old Pac-Man Retro Arcade plug and play, and I discovered that by holding left and pressing A it would take me to the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man. I think in the same dream holding Right + A brought up Warlords for some reason. Either that or it was Yars' Revenge.
The Plug and Play also included a game from the N64. It wasn't a game that's actually on the N64, it was a Pac-Man racing game, kinda like Pac-Man Kart Rally—not to be confused with World Rally. It even had a sticker on the top right of the unit claiming it had "One N64 Game". Like Pole Position, it used the Twist Control of the joystick to turn.
I cut this one down to mainly just focus on the Pac-Man 2600 segment. This is the only "full" segment that I had a hand in making; I recorded and edited all of the footage shown myself, while Kaie did all of the animation.

Segment 3 was based on a dream from March 2022. I was in a theme park that had a bunch of slides. They were very big and had large drops; they were practically as tall as some of the buildings around us, maybe even taller.
After sliding down on one of them, I ended up in a retro arcade which had Pac-Man, along with a few other games. I ended up playing one of those car avoiding games (which was called Sprint for some reason) which ended up turning into a Space Invaders Extreme cabinet.
I also tried to buy a DSi from the arcade's shop, but I couldn't because I wasn't 18.
I trimmed the segment down to only focus on the first and third parts; the retro arcade thing was completely cut out. I also went ahead and threw a Potato Fruit Salad joke in there because I thought it would've been funny.

Segment 4 was based on another dream from March 2022, though it happened after the other one. A squirrel ran inside my room via the window. I got it out, only for another one to run inside.
I brought my parents to my room to help get the squirrel out, except that the squirrel had turned into a dog. It kinda looked like one of my own dogs, only with larger claws. The original plan was to let the dog out the door, but our own dogs were already upstairs, ready to run out as well, so we had the dog leave via that same window instead.
In the episode, I had Happy Worm smash the dog through the "open" part of the window (and yes that is very hard for me to explain) because I thought in the context of a dream it made more sense in some weird way?

This script had been laying around for about a year before it went into production, As such, there were some things that were changed about it before release.

The moral at the end of the episode was based on yet another dream I had, from November 24, 2022; where that exact thing happened.

The Composite Video guy wasn't originally in the script for this episode; Kaie added him into Segment 2.

The post-credits scene where Paul gets shot in the head by Bea was also added in by Kaie. Ironically enough, it was also the very first thing that was animated for this episode. This segment was based on a joke from fansdfmovie.

This episode has some deleted bits; in segment 3, after Happy Worm discovered that the DSi she bought had a game in it called "Potato Fruit Salad: The Game", Earl was supposed to say "Of course." before Happy Worm cussed Paul out. No idea why this was cut.

The dog in segment 4 was also meant to say "I want some sopcorn!", with Earl replying with "So wait, you're saying you want some soppy popcorn? ...ew." We changed their lines as Kaie wanted to use the sopcorn bit for one of his scripts; eventually, it found its' way into the Season 2 premiere episode "Where's Earl When I'm A-Afraid?!"

This episode also has an entire segment that was cut; based on a dream from July 2022. In the dream, I was playing a Puyo Puyo clone that starred Earl and Happy Worm. The clone had a story mode, and I was up to Stage 4-1, which went like this:
It used the scene from Happy Worm segment in Episode 5, except rather than having Paul stretch out and turn into the Composite Video guy, Happy Worm ended up taking another person—who I believe was Pac-Man—to her house's living room. It kinda looked like the living room in Mugman, except with blue walls and a purple floor. Also the room was stylized like everything else in Building Block World, and not like construction paper—which is usually how Happy Worm's house is stylized. Then Pac-Man said something like "Your house? This isn't what I expected at all!" It then cut to a frame with every other character throughout the series (Earl, Paul, the Composite Video guy, etc.) looking shocked, before cutting back to Happy Worm; who got mad but still kept a calm voice for some reason. Immediately afterwards, Pac-Man was gone and Daisy (a previous VA for CosmicToons, who you might know for voicing Sue) smashed her head through the wall. After meeting Happy Worm, Daisy insulted her and they engaged in a Puyo Puyo battle.
I believe this scene was scrapped due to Daisy being a very hard person to get lines from lately. This would've gone inbetween segments 3 and 4.