Summary
The story of Seth Rogen’s raunchy cartoonSausage Partyhas continued in Prime Video’s sequel series,Sausage Party: Foodtopia, but some of the mostimportant characters from the movie are missing in the spin-off show.Sausage Partywas conceived as a twisted, hard-R spin on the Pixar formula. Rather than imagining toys or cars or monsters coming to life,Sausage Partyimagines the secret lives of food on the shelves of supermarkets. It sees a hot dog named Frank and his bun girlfriend Brenda uncovering the sinister truth of “The Great Beyond,” that the human shoppers want to eat them.
Picking up after the events of the film,Sausage Party: Foodtopiasees Frank and Brenda staging an uprising against the human race. The foods manage to topple humanity and become the new dominant species on Earth, allowing them to reshape society how they see fit.The religious satire of the original movie expands to satirize democracy and dictatorshipsas different foods have different ideas of how the brave new world should be run. Frank and Brenda have to stop a tyrannical orange named Julius – rich in the new currency: human teeth – from ruling the rebuilt society with an iron fist.
The sequel series brings back a lot of major characters from the movie. Rogen and Kristen Wiig reprise their roles as Frank and Brenda, respectively. Michael Cera returns to steal the show as Barry and Edward Norton dusts off his Woody Allen impression to play Sammy Bagel, Jr.The show also introduces some exciting new cast members, like Sam Richardsonas the villainous Julius, Stephanie Beard as a grain of rice called Jeri Rice, and Will Forte as a surviving human and unlikely food ally named Jack. But some key characters from the movie were left out of the show.
How We Got to Sausage Party: A History of Adult Animation
Sausage Party’s bait-and-switch trailer played off the idea that cartoons are for kids, but there’s a long history of animation aimed at adults.
8Firewater
Bill Hader
In the movie, Bill Hader voiced Firewater, a Native American bottle of liquor who leads a group of wise old foods called “The Non-Perishables.” Firewater was a really significant character in the film, becausehe provided a lot of key exposition about the truth behind “The Great Beyond”and, ultimately, the truth behind their entire cartoon reality. But Hader wasn’t brought back to reprise his role as Firewater inFoodtopia.
This is possibly because of a scheduling conflict, or because of the optics of a white actor playing a Native American role. His omission could also simply be down to the fact that there was no place for him in the story.Hader also voiced a Mexican bottle of tequila named José Tequilaand a guacamole container named El Guaco, but they were both killed off in the original film, so it’s understandable that they weren’t featured in the sequel show.
7Mr. Grits
Regular Rogen collaborator Craig Robinson appeared inthe voice cast of the originalSausage Partymovieas a character named Mr. Grits.Mr. Grits is a box of grits and another member of the Non-Perishables under Firewater’s leadership.In a fun play on words, Mr. Grits has a prejudice against crackers. Robinson previously worked with Rogen onPineapple Express,This is the End, andZack and Miri Make a Porno– and he was great in all three of those movies – so his inclusion in theSausage Partyvoice cast was a no-brainer.
Craig Robinson also voices Mr. Shark inThe Bad Guys(2022), a character in a group of criminal animals trying to reform their image.
Robinson is a hilarious performer who makes any TV show funnier. That’s how he rose from occasional guest star to main cast member onThe Office, and why his recurring character Doug “The Pontiac Bandit” Judy kept coming back throughoutBrooklyn Nine-Nine’s run. So, it’s baffling that Rogen and co. wouldn’t bring him back fortheSausage PartyTV series. However, since Mr. Grits is pretty much a one-joke character, it’s possible they just couldn’t think of something substantial to do with him.
6Sergeant Pepper
Frank isn’t the only character that Rogen played in the originalSausage Partymovie. He also had a second voice role as Sergeant Pepper, a British pepper whose name, voice, and appearance are alla parody of the iconography from the Beatles’ 1967 albumSgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.Sergeant Pepper’s brief cameo appearance was a great gag in the original film, and Rogen clearly had a lot of fun doing a Beatles impression to play him, but he’s nowhere to be seen in the sequel series.
Much like Mr. Grits,Sergeant Pepper is a one-joke character. It’s funny that he’s an actual pepper who’s styled after the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper personas, but that’s pretty much all there is to this character. He could’ve appeared as a musical guest in Sammy’s show, but there were plenty of fun new music/food puns in that sequence, like Olive-ia Rodrigo and Megan Thee Scallion. It’s better to make new jokes than rehash an old one.
5Troy
Anders Holm
Workaholicsstar Anders Holm had a small supporting role in the originalSausage Partymovie as Troy, a meathead bully sausage who likes to pick on Barry for being smaller than the other sausages (and slightly misshapen).Troy’s bullying is what pushed Barry to become the unexpected hero of the original film.That hero’s journey continues in the sequel series, but Troy is nowhere to be seen. It might’ve been interesting to flip their dynamic and have Barry pick on Troy instead.
It’s possible that Holm was unavailable to reprise his role as Troy inFoodtopia, but it’s more likely that there just wasn’t a role for Troy in this story.Troy’s function in the original story was to bully Barry to the point where he finally stood up for himself.After Barry did stand up for himself and became a stronger and more assertive character, there was no need to keep Troy around.
4Kareem Abdul-Lavash
Kareem Abdul-Lavash was one of the biggest characters in the originalSausage Partymovie. Voiced by David Krumholtz, he’s a Middle Eastern lavash whose on-and-off rivalry with Sammy eventually blossomed into a hot and passionate romance. Technically, Lavash does appear inSausage Party: Foodtopia, but he’s killed off in the opening uprising sequence. In the early episodes, Sammy’s entire arc revolves around mourning the loss of Lavash and believing that he’ll never find true love again.
Technically, Lavash does appear inSausage Party: Foodtopia, but he’s killed off in the opening uprising sequence.
It didn’t add anything to the humor to kill off Lavash and have grief weigh heavily on the early episodes, so there might have been a behind-the-scenes reason for Lavash’s absence. Krumholtz has been in high demand in recent years.Last year alone, he had major film roles as Isidor Isaac Rabi inOppenheimerand the title character inLousy Carter, and a key TV supporting role as William O.Bittman inWhite House Plumbers. Maybe he just didn’t have the time to commit to playing a lavash in an eight-episode animated series.
3Carl
It wouldn’t bea Seth Rogen moviewithout Jonah Hill. In the originalSausage Partyfilm,Hill played another sausage named Carl, who’s friends with Frank and Barry.Carl died in the original movie, so it wouldn’t make much sense for him to appear in the sequel series. But a handful of characters who died in the original film – like Shopwell’s manager Darren, voiced by Paul Rudd, and the villainous Douche, voiced by Nick Kroll – appear inFoodtopiavia flashbacks.
Carl could’ve even appeared as a ghost to mentor Barry during his dark human-slaying odyssey; stranger things have happened in theSausage Partyuniverse. It’s possible that Hill couldn’t fit the series into his schedule, since he’s started working behind the camera as well as in front of it. In the past couple of years,Hill has directed a documentary about his therapist, co-wrote and starred in the Netflix romcomYou People,and he’s directing a movie starring himself and Keanu Reeves.
2Teresa Del Taco
Perhaps the most important character missing fromSausage Party: Foodtopiais Teresa del Taco,the lesbian taco who pursued Brenda in the original movie.Teresa was one of the main characters in the film, joining Frank and co. on their quest to uncover the truth. She was also a scene stealer, with some of the movie’s funniest lines.
The most obvious explanation for Teresa’s absence is that she was voiced bySalma Hayek, one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.It’s one thing to show up for a couple of days to record lines for a movie that’ll play in theaters across the world, but it’s another thing to record eight whole episodes of a streaming series. In the past few years, she’s worked with directors like Ridley Scott, Chloé Zhao, and Steven Soderbergh; Hayek can do whatever movie she feels like and doesn’t have to work if she doesn’t want to.
1The Voice Cast Playing Themselves In The Real World
The most glaring omission from the original movie inSausage Party: Foodtopiais that it completely ignores the film’s sequel setup.The movie ended with the characters learning that they’re just animated creationsbeing voiced by famous actors in the real world. Gum, the Stephen Hawking-style scientist character, built a portal to the real world and the characters all decided to step through the portal and confront their creators. But this twist is completely ignored in the sequel series.
No one goes through a portal to the real world.No one meets the actor playing them or watches their own on-screen adventures.No one even breaks the fourth wall to acknowledge that they’re a cartoon inSausage Party: Foodtopia. It could’ve at least been made into a self-aware B-plot to pay off that unresolved story thread.
Sausage Party
Cast
Written by and starring Seth Rogen, Sausage Party follows a group of anthropomorphized food from a supermarket who inadvertently learn the truth about what happens to food after it’s bought from the store, and set out on a quest to attempt to keep themselves from being bought and eaten. Rogen stars as Frank, that titular sausage, with an ensemble cast that includes Michael Cera, Kristin Wiig, James Franco, Bill Hader, Salma Hayek, and Jonah Hill.
