Trivia / Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

• Approval of God: Mike Pondsmith, creator of the original Cyberpunk setting, was very happy with how the series turned out.
• Ascended Fanon: Sort of. In a Reddit AMA with Hiroyuki Imaishi, Kiwi's nipples do not dispense fruity, refreshing Gatorade... but they do shoot out spider silk.
• Blooper: The song "Major Crimes" by the band HEALTH is listed in the credits of episodes where it appears as "Health" by Major Crimes (a band that does not exist).
• Breakaway Pop Hit: "I Really Want to Stay at Your House" (originally included in the Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack) has shot into Spotify's top 50, while the OP and ED were Spotify's #3 and #4 most played anime op/ed songs for July 1-Sept 30, 2022. Very impressive, considering they were only available to be in that chart for two weeks, with everyone else in the top 10 having the whole season.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: The English dub features Giancarlo Esposito as Faraday as well as Matthew Mercer as Falco
• Creator Couple: Arturo Castañeda, who voices Katsuo Tanaka in the Latin American Spanish dub, is the boyfriend of Jessica Angeles, the dub's director.
• Creator's Oddball: The show is one for Hiroyuki Imaishi. While he is no stranger to having dark moments in his anime, this is easily his darkest and most serious work yet, having very little of the over the top humor and absurdity that is usually present in his anime (and what humor and absurdity is there is more subdued compared to his other works) and in contrast to the optimistic, happy endings his works tend to have, it ends on a bittersweet, borderline Downer Ending with everyone but Lucy and Falco being dead.
• Cross-Regional Voice Acting: While the majority of the English cast is LA-based (with the exceptions of Ian James Corlett, who is Canadian by birth and thus a dual-citizen; and Emi Lo, a New York native who is based in Texas), the dub also features UK-based actors Samuel Barnett and Alec Newman reprising their roles as the Delamain AI and Adam Smasher, respectively, recording their lines at Side UK. Giancarlo Esposito also recorded all of his dialogue for Faraday at Southern Sound Services in Louisiana.
• Executive Meddling: In an official CD Projekt live stream one of the studio's producers revealed that they had requested Studio Trigger to cut Rebecca's character, stating that "She's a loli. Lolis don't exist in Night City. It doesn't fit the Cyberpunk 2077 aesthetic". However, Studio Trigger insisted the character stay in the story with her design intact. CD Projekt relented, allowing the character to stay. Further reasoning from the lead writer reveals that this is only part of the issue that came up with Rebecca; she was an add-on from Trigger's end that was not planned or written for in-advance, which led to a variety of concerns including potentially bloating up the cast. However, Trigger eased these concerns with their own ideas on the matter, and CD Projekt allowed Rebecca to stay, even agreeing in the end that keeping her was the right call.
• International Coproduction: The show was co-produced between Studio TRIGGER based in Japan, and CD Projekt RED based in Poland.
• Milestone Celebration: The show is meant to commemorate Studio TRIGGER's 10th anniversary.
• Newbie Boom:
  • The show’s popularity has been credited with introducing new fans to the video game and tabletop RPG it spun off from. The game would especially enjoy a massive resurgence in popularity due to the anime, quickly becoming the top selling game on Steam 22 months after its launch.
  • Franz Ferdinand got a boost in exposure thanks to "This Fffire" being used as the opening for the show.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Lucy's English VA Emi Lo, who typically voices characters with a soft or high pitch, utilizes a deep and low contralto for Lucy.
  • Likewise for her Japanese voice actress Aoi Yūki, who's usually known for voicing young girls or characters with softer voices.
  • Alex Cazares as Rebecca, a Lady Swears-a-Lot in contrast to her other roles as characters who are kind and not too boastful.
  • Giancarlo Esposito has been typecast as Diabolical Masterminds on top of their respective food chain feared for their competence. Faraday, despite initially seeming to be this, is eventually revealed to be, at best, an overambitious upstart who proves to be a very incompetent schemer who simply makes everyone hate him.
• Prequel in Another Medium: To Cyberpunk 2077 which in turn is a Sequel in Another Medium to the tabletop games.
• Real Song Theme Tune: The main opening theme is a remix of Franz Ferdinand's "This Fffire".
• Role Reprise: Returning from the game are Alec Newman as Adam Smasher, Ren Hanami as Wakako Okada and Samuel Barnett as Delamain in the English dub.
• Sleeper Hit: Compared to the reputation of Cyberpunk 2077 at launch, the anime has been showered with praise upon release for not only its faithfulness to the game and the experience of the original tabletop game, but being a damn good, heartfelt anime with an impressive range of talent both with its cast and crew. At launch, it jumped into the top 5 of Netflix's most-watched shows of the week.
• Throw It In!: When Aleks Le recorded the Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs scene for the English dub, he decided to give a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure-style take. This was kept for the finished scene.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original teaser poster had a very different design for David compared to the final one. While on the topic of designs, Lucy also underwent a wide variety of different designs before the production team settled on her final design.
  • One of the character posters showed Kiwi walking with a cybernetically-enhanced hyena (which in and of itself was likely a reference to Voodoo Boys concept art from Cyberpunk 2077), but no such animal makes an appearance in the anime.
  • As aforementioned in Executive Meddling, Rebecca was not originally written or planned for the show and was a late addition to the cast by TRIGGER.
  • Concept art of David posted by Rafal Jaki revealed several different ways they could've gone with his design, including shorter hair, a hoodie under his EMT jacket, dog tags, and even a jacket with the 'SAMURAI' oni painted over the back of it a la V's jacket from Cyberpunk 2077.
  • At the 2023 Anime Expo in Paris, the executive producers talked about two alternate endings that had been floated for the series. One ending would have had Lucy be pregnant with David's child after he dies, which was discarded because it would have been a bit too uplifting for Cyberpunk. The other ending would have ended with David brainwashed under Arasaka's control as basically a war machine instead of going out on his own terms, but this was also discarded for being too bleak and also just not very satisfying.
• Word of God:
  • One of the lead producers at CD Projekt confirmed Lucy's full name as Lucyna Kushinada and that she's half-Polish, half-Japanese.
  • On Reddit, showrunner Rafal Jaki shared the ages of the characters seen in the show. Per Jaki, David is 17 years old (turning 18 post-Time Skip) while Lucy and Rebecca are both 20. Moreover, Jaki shared that Maine, Dorio and Pillar are all in their late 30s at the time of the series.