History Trivia / MagicTheGathering

* ExecutiveMeddling: ''Outlaws of Thunder Junction'' was, in early design phases, meant to focus more on the crossover of various villains from across the multiverse. The WeirdWest aesthetic was added by demand of the marketing department.

* NoDubForYou: Starting in the 2020s, Wizards of the Coast has begun cutting back on how many languages are supported by paper ''Magic'' products; by Q4 2023, Portugese, Chinese (both traditional and simplified), Korean and Russian will no longer be supported.

* InMemoriam: The ''Planar Chaos'' card [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=124478 Timbermare]] [[http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/13483.html was designed in honor of the memory of Marilyn "Mare" Wakefield]], wife of pro player Jamie Wakefield (who was well-known for playing green stompy decks that used cards like Timbermare). Marilyn loved horses.

** In 2020, seven cards from 1994 and earlier were effectively removed from the game over racially or culturally insensitive names. These cards were banned in all formats they were previously legal in, had their art removed from Gatherer (Magic's official card search tool), and a promise was made that the cards would never be reprinted. Wizards was also clear that they were banning these seven cards ''first'' and other bans over similar concerns were explicitly ''not'' off the table. This included cards like "Jihad," "[[{{UsefulNotes/Romani}} Pradesh Gypsies]]," and the infamous "Invoke Prejudice" which features an expy of TheKlan. This was somewhat followed up when it was revealed that select ''Dominaria United'' collector's boosters would feature cards from ''Legends'' packs that had been sitting in storage for almost three decades. This set is notably the one in which "Invoke Prejudice" and a couple other banned cards are from. They were withheld and presumably destroyed. Also withheld were other cards with art by Invoke Prejudice's illustrator [=Harold McNeil=], who is an alleged Neo-Nazi based on his other, non-Magic artwork, suggesting [=McNeil=] himself has also been disowned and [[UnPerson Un-Person'd]] by Wizards.

* FollowTheLeader: Magic was the "leader". See the CollectibleCardGame article for those who followed.

** In 2020, seven cards from 1994 and earlier were effectively removed from the game over racially or culturally insensitive names. These cards were banned in all formats they were previously legal in, had their art removed from Gatherer (Magic's official card search tool), and a promise was made that the cards would never be reprinted. Wizards was also clear that they were banning these seven cards ''first'' and other bans over similar concerns were explicitly ''not'' off the table. This included cards like "Jihad," "[[{{UsefulNotes/Romani}} Pradesh Gypsies]]," and the infamous "Invoke Prejudice" which features TheKlan. This was somewhat followed up when it was revealed that select ''Dominaria United'' collector's boosters would feature cards from ''Legends'' packs that had been sitting in storage for almost three decades. This set is notably the one in which "Invoke Prejudice" and a couple other banned cards are from. They were withheld and presumably destroyed. Also withheld were other cards with art by Invoke Prejudice's illustrator [=Harold McNeil=], who is an alleged Neo-Nazi based on his other, non-Magic artwork, suggesting [=McNeil=] himself has also been disowned and [[UnPerson Un-Person'd]] by Wizards.

* IKnewIt:
** [[spoiler:Emrakul]] being behind the craziness in the ''Shadows over Innistrad'' block was widely predicted as soon as the block began.
** When people first saw [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=435168 Ixalan's Binding]], they were quick to suspect that [[spoiler:the Azorius and/or Ugin]] is behind Ixalan's anti-planeswalking lock. They were right.
** In the lead up to the Dominaria block, many people were able to guess that [[spoiler:Mother Luti, head of the Keral Keep Monastery, was actually Jaya Ballard.]]

** The now-discontinued annual [[http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Magic_Invitational Magic Invitational]] tournament invited the game's top players to compete for the chance to submit their own custom card to the game and get their face featured in its artwork. Similarly, the 2018 world champion, Javier Dominguez got his likeness on a card in *Throne of Eldraine*, though he did not get the chance to design it.

** Orginally in ''Wilds of Eldraine'' Kellan was set up to be an expy of Jack from ''Literature/JackAndTheBeanstalk'', however at some point they decided to have him be one of the main characters for the Omenpath Arc and changed his story, instead making the Ravincian Troyan be the Jack expy.

** Mark Rosewater also has a few sets he isn't very proud of, chief among them Unhinged [[note]]Which was a commercial failure and which featured the hated Gotcha mechanic, ultimately killing Un-sets for thirteen years until Unstable[[/note]] and Battle for Zendikar [[note]]Which had numerous problems, from weak cards to bad draft gameplay to a story which largely ignored the charm and flavor of the original Zendikar block in favor of just focusing on the battle between the [[BaseBreakingCharacter Gatewatch]] and the Eldrazi[[/note]].

** ''Heads I Win, Tails You Lose'' was a Secret Lair Commander deck sold in November of 2021; rather than release with the rest of the Secret Lair product that following April, it didn't arrive until ''a year later'' for undisclosed reasons. Some people who ordered the 30th Anniversary Secret Lair in October of 2022 got it before ''Heads I Win, Tails You Lose''. The subsequent Secret Lair Commander product, ''Cute to Brute'' (which focused on double-faced cards) was pre-printed in limited quantities to seemingly avert this issue.

** There was no definitive name for the various color combinations of ''Magic'' (i.e. Blue-Green, Red-Black) until the original ''Ravnica'' block released, at which point people began using the names of various guilds to refer to those color combinations (Simic for Blue-Green, Rakdos for Red-Black, etc). ''Shards of Alara'' and ''Khans of Tarkir'' gave rise to similar naming conventions for three-color combinations, and these have been recognized by [=WotC=] in various places, such as naming the preconstructed Challenger Decks things such as "Izzet Phoenix" or "Gruul Stompy".

** ''Throne of Eldraine'' was originally going to be two sets, and the figure responsible for the disappearance of King Kenright would have been a character called "The Whispering Witch" - though card art would show that she was Sheoldred, the black Praetor of New Phyrexia. However several changes were implemented during the development, including condensing the story into a single set and making it a BreatherEpisode since it was the immediate follow-up to the ''War of the Spark'' storyline that had been brewing for the past decade. Instead the first warning sign of New Phyrexia's invasion was Vorinclex appearing two years later on Kaldheim, and Sheoldred's new card was not debuted until the invasion of Dominaria in ''Dominaria United''.

** ''VideoGame/Fallout2'' had a BlandNameProduct version of ''Magic'' called ''Tragic: the Garnering'' that could be played against Wooz in the town of Gecko. Funnily enough, ''Tragic'' was stated to have come into existence in 2023... the same year that an official "Universes Beyond" Crossover between ''Magic'' and the ''Fallout'' franchise was announced.

* WorkingTitle: Every set has a codename that the designers and developers use before the final name is decided.

** Currently, the codenames are going through an alphabetical list named after sports - ''Throne of Eldraine'' was "Archery", ''Theros: Beyond Death'' was "Baseball", ''Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths'' was "Cricket", ''Zendikar Rising'' was "Diving", ''Kaldheim'' was "Equestrian", ''Strixhaven: School of Mages'' was "Fencing", ''Innistrad: Midnight Hunt'' was "Golf" (with partner set''Innistrad: Crimson Vow'' as "Clubs"), ''Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty'' was "Hockey", and ''Streets of New Capenna'' is "Ice Skating", with more along the same lines upcoming.