Adventures in Odyssey

This page is being rewritten at Adventures in Odyssey/temp.

Trivia

• The names of the Barclay family are all based on the movie It's a Wonderful Life: George is based on the character George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, Mary is based on Mary Bailey, played by Donna Reed. While the Adult's names are based on the frictional character's names, their children's names: Donna and James are based on the names of the actors Donna Reed, and James Stuart, respectively. The last name is a close approximation of Bailey. Third third child of the Barclays is named Stuart-Reed, using the last names of the actors. The relation between It's a Wonderful Life and the Barclays on AIO is so close that they made a 1-hour Adventure in Odyssey episode (A Pokenberry Christmas, Part I, II) with the plotline and many of the quotes from the movie. Also AIO characters are forever making allusions to It's a Wonderful Life.
• An AIO episode, #248, "Terror From the Skies", is based heavily on the radio broadcast The War of the Worlds by Orson Welles. The episode features Edwin Blackgaard, owner of the "Harlequin Dinner Theater", producing a radio broadcast dubbed Terror From the Skies. Like The War of the Worlds, it uses news bulletins tell about an alien invasion. In Blackgaard's broadcast, a meteor lands near Odyssey. The meteor breaks open and several hideous aliens emerge, who capture and eat several people, before encountering the National Guard, who try to defeat them, but to no avail. The aliens are not affected at all by the weapons. All appears to be lost, until the aliens succomb to the simplest weapon: water, which affects them in a way similar to acid. This is similar to the way the aliens in The War of the Worlds succomb to viruses and bacteria. Terror From the Skies is confirmed by Edwin Blackgaard to be simply a dramatization, much like the way Orson Welles confirmed his broadcast to be a dramatization.