Trivia / Gears of War

• Acting for Two: John DiMaggio voices both Marcus Fenix and Franklin.
• Banned in Germany: Whilst the first two games aren't exactly banned, Microsoft never submitted them to the USK since they wouldn't get the 16+ rating they were aiming for. Finally averted with Gears of War 3.
• B-Team Sequel: Gears of War: Judgment is the first title developed by People Can Fly rather than Epic. The series would continue this trend, with Xbox Game Studios purchasing both the IP from Epic in 2014 and Black Tusk Studios, which they renamed to The Coalition tasked with continuing the series.
• Channel Hop: The series is now developed by The Coalition since 2016, following the 2014 acquisition of the IP from Epic Games, who sold it outright so they can move on to other ventures.
• Crossdressing Voices: The Berserkers are actually voiced by Dee Bradley Baker.
• Deleted Scene: In the first game fans expressed disappointment that you never got to fight a Brumak, as one showed up dramatically after visiting the Fenix estate and was never seen again. There was intended to be a foot battle against one shortly afterwards before boarding the train in the final act, but was cut for lack of development time. The battle did happen in the PC version of the game, released a year later, and included in the Ultimate Edition. In Gears 2 there was line that suggests a divergent path option would be available, but nothing came of it. It was another sequence that was cut for time and later released as a deleted scene in DLC, where the two have the option of Dressing as the Enemy to sneak around a checkpoint for a bit of gameplay variation.
• Dueling Works: With the Resistance franchise. Both are series of AAA console-exclusive shooters that feature a Crapsack World, with humanity fighting a Hopeless War against an Always Chaotic Evil race of mutated humans. Interestingly, both series saw three major entries on their respective consoles, release in the same years (2006, 2008, 2011). In the following console generation however, the Resistance franchise was shelved due to the third game being a Franchise Killer, while Gears franchise continued on in several B-team sequels.
• Executive Meddling: Microsoft pushing the release date of Gears of War 3 back five whole months from April 2011 to September 2011. It is arguably a positive example of meddling, members of Epic Games have said the delayed release gave them more time to refine the game, they would not have done a multiplayer beta if this had been released as scheduled and that helped polish everything to a spit shine.
• Follow the Leader: Gears of War inspired a wave of third-person shooters and/or Take Cover! games that is still ongoing, like Army of Two, Mass Effect and Transformers: War for Cybertron. Similarly, it's also almost unthinkable these days to play a shooter without a "Horde"-inspired 'endless waves of enemies' mode.
• Franchise Ownership Acquisition: Originally belonging to Epic Games, in 2014 after the release of Gears of War: Judgement, Microsoft bought the Gears of War franchise and assigned it to The Coalition. This also had the side effect of them being able to use General RA'AM in Killer Instinct (2013) as a Guest Fighter.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • As of 2022, the second and third games and Judgement have yet to receive remasters or ports. Downplayed, however, as they're playable via backwards compatibility on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, complete with enhanced resolution and/or framerate.
  • The PC version of the original Gears of War is no longer playable on modern systems, as the disc check antipiracy software is no longer compatible with modern versions of Windows. The Updated Re Release is digitally available, but anyone who wants to play the game with its original graphics and code are limited to either an original Xbox 360 version or a vintage PC.
• Multi-Disc Work: Gears of War 4 is an interesting case - it originally fit on a single disc, but future patches ballooned the file size so much that a reprint had two.
• The Other Darrin: Jace goes from having an Australian-sounding voice provided by Nolan North in his cameo in Gears of War 2 to being played by Michael B. Jordan in Gears of War 3.
  • Richard Prescott is has 3 total Darrins, Charles Cioffi in 2 and Dwight Schultz in 3, who both put on a convincingly similar performance, though Liam O'Brien's performance as Prescott is notably dissimilar to the previous two, on account of it being O'Brien's usual voice.
• The Other Marty: As shown in this interview, Christopher Sabat recorded lines for Marcus Fenix in Gears of War 2 during the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike that affected the LA unions (thus having the game be moved over to Texas for voice recording due to its non-union environment, effectively bypassing the union-related issues) ^note As he's a Texas-based actor until the strike ended and recording moved back to LA.
• Promoted Fanboy: Dave Bautista is a fan of the franchise and lobbied to star as Marcus Fenix in the planned film adaptation. In Gears 5, he was released as a legendary skin for Marcus, and an later update allowed players to play as Bautista (as Marcus) throughout the campaign, complete with new voiceovers.
• Ripped from the Headlines: The general backstory of the series, with the Coalition of Ordered Governments' industrial might being thanks to their ability to exploit Imulsion, is born out of anxieties surrounding both Post-Peak Oil and the motives behind the Iraq War, two hot topics in the mid-2000's. You can even find a 'No Blood for Imulsion' poster as decoration in the first game, a direct nod to the 'No Blood for Oil' protest slogan. Later games would take this further, with the reveals of the ill-effects of Imulsion such as rust-lung and lambency reflecting increasing concerns regarding the negative health and environmental effects of fossil fuel usage.
• Sleeper Hit: Epic was plainly dedicated to the Unreal series in 2006, with Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict being released as a closure title for the original Xbox, and the then upcoming Unreal Tournament III (then Unreal Tournament 2007) having been announced at the same time. But Epic was also working on this title as well, to little fanfare during development. It eventually launched with (and became the Killer App for) the then just-released Xbox 360 as well as popularizing cover-based shooters and pulling Epic out of their "only Unreal games" stigma by giving it another Cash-Cow Franchise.
• Throw It In!: A possible JD line after killing a Sentinel ("Sentinel? More like send it to hell! Right, guys? No? Too much battle? Too much battle, too much battle, we'll do it later.") was an ad-lib that not even voice actor Liam McIntyre thought made it in. He's also amused that this line singlehandedly brought the concept of hell to the Gears universe.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The series staple, the Lancer/Chainsaw Bayonet, was on the edge of whether it was going to be actually included in the game. It wasn't until they devised the design of it being integrated into the grip that they devised a semi-plausible chainsaw mounted assault rifle. Somewhere, a group of "Stop Having Fun" Guys who want everyone to only use the Gnasher are cursing their rotten luck.
  • The Locust were supposed to have an entirely different type of the Triple Punch execution in which they would rip the enemy's arm off, then beat their face with it. It was cut out due to timing issues in Gears of War 2, but made its debut in Gears of War 3, giving them a unique execution from the COG.
  • Baird and Cole's roles were originally reversed, with Baird being the one who was a former sports star.
  • Epic Games had originally planned to allow players to choose the gender of Dom, potentially making him into the female Dominique, but the idea was scrapped, as having two genders for Dom would've drastically increased the length of the script and limited the budget, so female characters wouldn't become playable until Gears of War 3.
  • As noted under The Other Marty, Marcus was almost recast with Christopher Sabat in Gears of War 2 due to the 2007-2008 Writers Strike potentially forcing the game's voice recording to be moved to Texas; however, the strike ended in time for the recording to occur in Los Angeles with the original cast reprising their roles.
  • The Rousing Speech given in the beginning of Gears of War 2 was originally supposed to be narrated by Hoffman, but he lost out when the developers created Prescott, as they felt the speech was better suited for him instead.
  • Originally, Hoffman was supposed to die in Gears of War 3. He was supposed to come with Delta to acquire the submarine instead of Dizzy and would've died protecting it while it sailed off to Azura. However, Karen Traviss considered Hoffman one of the few people in the universe who had a historical perspective on the series (he could talk about the world before the war) and didn't want to lose him as a narrative vehicle for the books.
  • When playing through Beast Mode in Gears of War 3, one will notice that there are 5 empty spaces in the Locust selection interface. Indeed, there were originally 20 playable creatures to choose from in the mode. Early beta footage showed that the Grenadier Elite was playable; most likely cut for playing identically to the Savage Grenadier, so it was unnecessary to include both grenadiers. The footage also showed that Grinders were originally playable as well; most likely cut for being too easy to sit in the back of the maps and pick off humans from a distance since Beast encourages players to get close to the action. Also, Grinders don't possess melee attacks, so they would have no reliable way to kill Hero units and Onyx Guards. In addition, Reavers were also playable as well. They were stated to have been cut due to the developers having issues with them fitting on the smaller and indoor maps like Checkout and Rustlung. However, since Reavers are very large, it was also probably overpowered since you could potentially just launch rockets over the scenery to get easy kills while bypassing the fortifications. Another minor one, but the Armored Kantus was also shown Dual Wielding Boltok pistols in beta footage, but was changed to dual Gorgons. Sadly, it is unknown what the other 2 cut creatures were.
  • Players hacking into an FPS made by Epic Games Shanghai, Passion Leading Army, discovered scripts of GOW 2 that indicated the developement had already went into advanced stages.
  • There was originally going to be a movie trilogy based on the game series, with Marcus Fenix as the lead character.
  • The Locust were originally going to be called the Geist, and Epic took such a strong liking to the name they even considered naming their new IP after it. In the middle of development, during 2003's E3, Nintendo announced their own game called Geist, and thus sinking that opportunity.

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