Trivia / Wayward Guide for the Untrained Eye

• Acting for Two: Tara Perry plays Olivia Tompkins and Riley Kirkland. Lampshaded in universe. Also leads to a funny moment when the epilogue reveals them as Look-Alike Lovers.
  Riley: (about Olivia) See, people often get us confused because we own two different businesses that should be one business, but we could not be more different in both opinions and appearance.
• Actor-Shared Background: Artemis, like her actress Mary Kate Wiles, has a gluten-free dietary restriction.
• All-Star Cast: At least within the Youtube community. The cast was one of the main selling points of the series Kickstarter, which included popular players from Team Starkid and Shipwrecked Comedy, Jon Cozart, Whitney Avalon, Carlos Valdes, Darren Criss, and freaking Sean Astin.
• Ascended Meme: Subverted. Ever since Sean Astin pretended to be Dylan Saunders at a Team Starkid panel, fans (and Starkid themselves) have joked that they're the same person. Episode 3 has Sean's character talk to Dylan's character over the phone so viewers could see them play off of each other, proving they're not the same person.
• Creator Cameo:
  • Producer/director/writer Corey Lubowich appears in Episode 1 as one of the townspeople who discovers Ryan's body, along with his fellow collaborators Joey Richter and Brian Rosenthal (see Descended Creator below).
  • Composer Clark Baxtresser makes a vocal cameo in the podcast.
• Dawson Casting:
  • 17-year-old Donny Meadows is played by Jon Cozart, who was 25-years-old at the time of filming.
  • In a more downplayed example, 16-year-old Jewel Irons is played by Ryan Simpkins, who was 19-years-old at the time of filming.
  • While Steve Zaragoza and Mary Kate Wiles play twins, Zaragoza in real life is 5 years older than Wiles.
• Delayed Release Tie-In: Averted - because the Kickstarter rewards included things like an investigation kit that had to be used while the series was airing, the release of these rewards was delayed until the series officially aired.
• Descended Creator:
  • Producer/director/writers Joey Richter and Brian Rosenthal play minor recurring townspeople Crispin Lynch and Wallis Gale.
  • Executive producer Paul Komoroski plays Garmin Patrick Saget.
• Development Hell: While Wayward Guide never actually stopped development or had the original creators abandon it/lose control of it, it did take a long time between the initial Kickstarter and the release, with the Kickstarter being launched in 2017 and the series being released in 2020 (three years and change, an eternity in Internet years). The shooting process actually occurred relatively quickly, in 2018, but the scale of the project meant post-production took surprisingly long, especially with other projects cropping up along the way, like Tin Can Brothers' live We Didn't Mean To Kill Our Guest shows and Team Starkid's Hatchetfield series.
  • This was escalated by the COVID-19 Pandemic, requiring much of the podcast to be recorded and mixed from the creators' homes in early 2020.
• Easter Egg: The producers acknowledged hiding a number of references to the Kickstarter campaign that helped fund the series:
  • In Episode 4, Artemis finds a note that Silas wired TFCC $122,123. This was the amount raised for the series on Kickstarter.
  • Later in the same episode, Sybilus references Town Ordinance 2474, the number of original Kickstarter backers at campaign close.
• Harpo Does Something Funny:
  • According to Lauren Lopez in a live chat, the actors in the town council freakout scene in Episode 7 were instructed to scream anything they wanted.
  • Based on the blooper reel, a number of funny lines were meant to be improvised by the cast, with the creators choosing the best takes for the final product.
• Inspiration for the Work: The story was inspired by the social deduction game Werewolf, particularly the One Night Ultimate Werewolf iteration by Bézier Games. Videos of the cast and crew playing the game were part of the promotion for the Kickstarter campaign.
• Promoted Fanboy: The production team, Mary Kate Wiles, and Steve Zaragoza on getting to work with Sean Astin.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Siblings Sean and Sinead Persaud play Jeremiah Stillwater and Rita Waldeburg.
  • Long-time couple and collaborators Mary Kate Wiles and Sean Persaud feature together in a number of scenes.
  • Ashley Clements and Brendan Bradley are real life partners.
  • Chuck Criss, Darren Criss's brother, composed the show's opening theme.
  • Bob and Denise Richter (Joey Richter's parents) voice testimonials in Truman's campaign.
  • Joey Richter and Lauren Lopez's dog Diane plays the Mayor.
  • By the time of Wayward Guide's release, Joey Richter and Lauren Lopez were engaged.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: While the web series was shot in 2018, the podcast was mostly recorded in 2020 during the COVID-19 Pandemic. So while Chapter 6 of the podcast is set in 2018 and was probably already going to feature the Irons family protesting, the exact arguments they make were heavily influenced by current events of the time of recording. (See Does This Remind You of Anything? on the podcast page).
• The Cameo: A number of Team Starkid and Shipwrecked Comedy favorites make surprise cameos in the web series and podcast, including:
  • Jon Matteson (podcast)
  • Jamie Lynn Beatty (podcast)
  • Jeff Blim (podcast)
  • Sarah Grace Hart (web series)
  • James Tolbert (podcast)