Trivia / Legends of Runeterra

• Acting for Two: Given the enormous cast of characters with dialogue, several actors and actresses pull double duty, including Misty Lee voicing Kalista and the Mageseeker Investigator, Liam O'Brien as Yasuo and the Vanguard Bannerman, and JB Blanc as Braum and the Laurent Gatekeeper.
• Author's Saving Throw:
  • Seraphine's design in League of Legends received a very polarized reaction, with a common criticism that even if you accept her Magic Idol Singer basis, her outfit is too glittery and aesthetically out-of-place when set next to the rest of Piltover and Zaun. This was addressed for her addition to this game, with Rioters deciding to explore more of her character with the purpose of better grounding her to Runeterra, leading to significantly updated designs: her level 1 artwork depicts her in a casual Clock Punk-esque outfit more in line with what we see in Piltover, and her level 2 art lightly tweaks her signature idol dress to be less over-the-top and fitting in the context of a Zaunite night club.
  • Nidalee received a substantial redesign when she was added for the game, part of a general effort across all League of Legends media to distance her away from some of her original Nubile Savage Jungle Princess archetype, which has drawn increasing controversy over the years for being built on questionable and reductive cultural stereotypes. In a dev log surrounding Nidalee's addition to the game, Rioters admitted that while their primary goal was to beef up her lore and explore more of her character, the desire to nudge her away from her "dated tropes" was a partial motivating factor.
• Content Leak:
  • In patch 0.9.2 (March 2020), dataminers discovered hundreds upon hundreds of audio files for upcoming content, prematurely revealing the Bilgewater and Mount Targon expansions, as well as raw, unprocessed voice lines for upcoming champions.
  • Riot repeated this mistake with the lead-up to the Empires of the Ascended in February 2021, with many voice lines of champions in the upcoming "Guardians of the Ancient" and "Rise of the Underworlds" expansions (some raw, some with their final audio effects) becoming available for dataminers to find.
• Dueling Games: With Hearthstone, as the two big digital CCGs based on existing massively-popular online games (League of Legends and World of Warcraft respectively). Averted with Artifact, however; despite the intense rivalry between LoL and Dota 2, Artifact flopped so badly it's not even a contender.
• Dummied Out: A vast majority of cards (likely somewhere around 90% or more of Follower cards) have alternate names only available in internal data, most presumably being working titles that were replaced later on. Some of them alter or remove given names ("Tyari the Traveler" was just called "Peak Keeper", "Cithria the Bold" was called "Cinthia [sic] Jorane"), some give names to cards only known by their titles ("Laurent Chevalier" was named "Antoine Laurent"), while others featured completely different titles ("Trifarian Gloryseeker" was once "Trifarian Glory-Hunter", "Draklorn Inquisitor" was known as just "Frost Guard", "Academy Prodigy" known as "Carefree Hextester", etc.). It's not just followers either as a number of spells had similar working titles; perhaps most amusingly, "Heroic Refrain" (a cheaper but weaker Bandle City version of Demacia's "Back to Back") has the code name "Butts to Butts", which is still referenced in its flavour text.
• Meme Acknowledgment: Nasus' card will show up when the player searches for "susan", which is the champion's Fan Nickname.
• The Other Darrin:
  • While most champions have been able to reprise their original champion roles, there are a few examples here and there of replacements:
    • Jason Palmer replaces Dennis Collins Johnson as Heimerdinger.
    • Sydney Rainin-Smith replaces Karen Strassman as Elise (though Strassman would come to reprise Fiora anyway)
    • Jason Spisak takes over the role of Vladimir from Kevin M. Connolly.
    • Teemo is now voiced by Melissa Hutchison rather than his original, uncredited voice actor.
    • Taliyah was recast to Zehra Fazal instead of Erica Lindbeck, with Riot's reasoning being that they wanted to remain "as authentic to her character and heritage as possible" (while they're working with Fantasy Counterpart Cultures, Fazal is of Pakistani descent, racially closer to Shurima than Lindbeck, a white American). One can also assume this same reason is why Azir was also recast to Ike Amadi from Travis Willingham.
    • Reed Shannon officially takes over the role of Ekko from his previous actor, Antony Del Rio.
  • Senna is an interesting case as despite her appearances in both League of Legends and Legends of Runeterra (in the latter as the "Senna, Sentinel of Light" follower card) being developed and released around the same time, she shares a different VA for each, with Cynthia McWilliams in League, and Kimberly Brooks in Runeterra. The reason for this is due to her having two significantly different depictions in each game, representing her before and after her imprisonment in Thresh's lantern. Appropriately, once Senna also became a Champion card, she once again became voiced by McWilliams.
• Promoted Fanboy: Longtime League fan and creator-turned-voice actress LilyPichu voices the Disciple of Doran.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: While Quinton Flynn had been previously allowed by Riot to reprise his role as Jhin in League of Legends (namely for the Dark Cosmic Jhin skin in 2019), he was not invited back for the character's appearance in LoR following numerous allegations of sexual misconduct with younger female fans since late 2020 (his wife claimed in a now-deleted tweet that he hadn't been permanently sacked, but regardless, Jhin was cast to Brian T. Delaney for the game).
• Role Reprise: A good chunk of voice actors returned to voicing their original champion roles, from regulars like Sarah Anne Williams as Jinx, Melissa Hutchison as Ashe, Carrie Keranen as Lux, and Erik Braa as Draven, and those whose original recordings were much further away such as Tara Platt as Katarina, Rashida Clendening as Karma, and Brian Sommer as Tryndamere.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Riot actually started development on a League of Legends digital CCG a long, long time before it finally surfaced- a prototype with the working name "Bacon" was in early development when Blizzard announced Hearthstone at PAX 2013. Getting to play Hearthstone and seeing how it streamlined the digital CCG experience shook up the development team enough that the game ended up being shelved for years and going through multiple revisions before it eventually became Legends of Runeterra.
  • From as early as beta, the game was found to have a few unused region icons, including for those not included in the game yet. Bandle City's icon is completely different, Zaun had its own individual icon (suggesting it was meant to be distinct from Piltover before the two were merged together), and The Void also seemed to have an icon, but didn't make it as its own region.
  • Varus was initially pitched as having three total voices (Varus, as well as his other shared mental occupants Valmar and Kai), but it was returned to just the one.

---