Line #39 Trivia/TheLegendOfVoxMachina


1	* ActingForTwo:
2	** Downplayed with Matthew Mercer, who voices numerous characters in the show, but none of them have directly interacted with each other yet. Similarly, Taliesin Jaffe voices Lord Frederick de Rolo on top of his main role as his son Percival, but while Frederick and a young Percy appear in flashbacks and dream sequences together, they have no direct dialogue with each other.
3	** Max Mittelman voices the Briarwoods' carriage driver Desmond, as well as one of the bandits trying to rob said carriage at the end of episode 2.
4	** Starting in Season 2, Liam O'Brien is also pulling double duty as both Vax'ildan and Vorugal the Frigid Doom, so far the most OutOfFocus member of the Chroma Conclave.
5	* ActorSharedBackground: By the end of episode 12, Percy [[spoiler:has a prosthetic in his hand]]. Creator/TaliesinJaffe has a benign tremor in his hand, noticeable on the stream occasionally but especially in moments of high emotion. Percy's struggle with Orthax also mirrors Taliesin's own real life struggle with depression, Orthax having been referred to as "the dark specter of [Taliesin's] soul" on stream.
6	* AllStarCast: The show's cast is a nice mix of voiceover legends (both guests and non-guests of the original stream) and Hollywood celebs, alongside the main party members (no slouches themselves in the [=VO=] community).
7	* AwesomeDearBoy: Creator/DavidTennant wanted to be a part of this after being asked because he found the story of its creation, from friends playing in a living room to an acclaimed multimedia franchise, to be so inspiring.
8	* CastAsAMask: [[spoiler:Creator/BillyBoyd as Garmelie, as Matt Mercer immediately takes over when he's revealed to be Artagan.]]
9	* CastFullOfWriters: Matt Mercer and the players from the original campaign count insofar as they shaped the original campaign storyline the cartoon's based on and return to voice many of their characters. Travis Willingham and Sam Riegel also [[WrittenByCastMember directly contributed to the cartoon's scripting]], according to [[https://m.imdb.com/title/tt11247158/fullcredits/writer the Internet Movie Database.]]
10	* CastingGag: In "Pass Through Fire", Keyleth's mom Vilya, an Air Ashari who is able to control all four elements, is played by Creator/JanetVarney, most famous for playing [[WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra Avatar Korra]]. Particularly appropriate since ''Franchise/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' inspired the creation of Keyleth, according to Marisha Rey.
11	* TheCastShowoff: Creator/SamRiegel, who started his acting career in childhood as a classically trained musical theater actor, predictably puts his talents to use a ''lot'' as Scanlan. Later, occasional folk singer Creator/AislingFranciosi also gets in on the action, singing a fun, jaunty duet with Sam as Scanlan's daughter Kaylie.
12	* CreatorCameo:
13	** Along with established roles like Sylas Briarwood (see DescendedCreator below), Matt plays multiple smaller NPC roles throughout (see InkSuitActor below), including Victor the Blackpowder Merchant.
14	** Creator/FeliciaDay, who first proposed the streaming of Mercer's game on the Creator/GeekAndSundry Twitch channel, and thus spawned the whole enterprise, is killed twice in Episode 2, first by Brimscythe as an Emon soldier, then by Sylas Briarwood as a bandit.
15	* DescendedCreator:
16	** Matt Mercer voices Sylas Briarwood, Orthax, Craven Edge, and Umbrasyl, the Hope Devourer.
17	** Voice director Creator/MaryElizabethMcGlynn plays Zahra in Season 2, a character she created for the livestream campaign.
18	* DiedDuringProduction: Creator/LanceReddick, who voiced Thordak, passed away in March 2023 during the break between seasons 2 and 3.
19	* DuelingWorks: The first three episodes started streaming two weeks before part 2 of season 2 of ''WesternAnimation/{{Disenchantment}}'', another black comedy fantasy series, started streaming.
20	* FakeBrit: The actors playing Vox Machina are all American, but Percy and the twins speak with RP English accents, while Grog uses something closer to Cockney. The Briarwoods, who use RP English accents as well, are played by the American Creator/GreyDelisle and Creator/MatthewMercer.
21	* InkSuitActor: Matt Mercer appears a few times as an elf NPC who strongly resembles him, who runs around doing jobs in Tal'Dorei and Vasselheim. Hilariously, most of the scenes with him as this involve Vox Machina [[ButtMonkey making his life complicated in one way or another]].
22	* OlderThanTheyThink: During the Legend of the Story of the Legend of Vox Machina mini-doc, executive producer Brandon Auman claims that no one had tried adapting an RPG campaign into an animated series before ''The Legend of Vox Machina'', except that ''Literature/RecordOfLodossWar'' was also adapted from a series of TabletopGame/BasicDungeonsAndDragons [[AfterActionReport replays]] way back in the 80s and 90s.
23	* TheOtherDarrin: Most of the major supporting cast is voiced by a slew of voiceover legends and Hollywood celebrities instead of Matt Mercer, who voiced them on Critical Role. That said, he still voices Trinket, Sylas Briarwood, [[spoiler:Orthax, Umbrasyl,]] and other minor characters.
24	* PermanentPlaceholder:
25	** Creator/GreyDeLisle was originally only hired to do scratch[[note]]a placeholder audio track used for editing purposes[[/note]] recording for the role of Delilah Briarwood, with another actress cast in the part. The Critical Role team successfully lobbied to have Grey cast as Delilah's final voice instead.
26	** Liam was originally Vorugal's scratch track, but the rest of the cast liked his take so much he was kept.
27	* PlayingAgainstType: During the watchalong livestream, Creator/WillFriedle noted that his role as Kashaw was the first time he had ever [[PrecisionFStrike said the f-word]] in an animated project, a fact he seemed well pleased about.
28	* PromotedFanboy:
29	** Art director Arthur Loftis is a [[FanCommunityNickname Critter]] and one of the original 88887 backers, who was surprised to find out that he would be working on the show.
30	** Neal Acree, the composer, is also a fan of ''Critical Role'', and asked personally if he could submit a demo.
31	* QueerCharacterQueerActor:
32	** Bisexual Creator/StephanieBeatriz plays Lady Kima of Vord, who [[spoiler:eventually gets married to Arcanist Allura Vysoren.]]
33	** Nonbinary Mason Alexander Park plays the nonbinary tavern keeper who kicks Vox Machina out of their establishment for the BarBrawl.
34	* RealLifeRelative:
35	** Creator/TravisWillingham (Grog) and Creator/LauraBailey (Vex) are married in real life, as are Creator/MatthewMercer (Trinket, Sylas Briarwood, Umbrasyl and various minor characters) and Creator/MarishaRay (Keyleth).
36	** Zoe O'Brien and Maximus Riegel play the boy and girl of the Shale Steps who interact with Vox Machina. They are, respectively, the children of Creator/LiamOBrien (Vax) and Creator/SamRiegel (Scanlan). Kestrel Riegel, Sam's daughter, plays the young girl strung up in Pike's place on the Sun Tree in Season 1 and young Keyleth in Season 2.
37	* RealLifeWritesThePlot: Pike's side quest came from Creator/AshleyJohnson's absence during the original stream, due to filming across the country for ''Series/{{Blindspot}}'' at the time. Unlike the stream, while simply had her needing to watch over the temple, Pike is given a subplot to make up for her absence in Season 1.
38	* ReleaseDateChange: The special was intended to debut in Fall 2020 as stated in the original Kickstarter. Extending the project into a full series put this in jeopardy, and production delays caused by the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic meant the series was delayed by over a year to February 2022. In December 2021, the date was moved up a week to January 28th, 2022 at midnight Eastern time - but then Prime Video made the content available at midnight GMT. ''Critical Role'''s official social media posted announcements about the release at the correct time, though.
39	* RoleReprise:
40	** All of Vox Machina's party members [[note]]excluding Creator/OrionAcaba because he left the show[[/note]] reprise their roles for the show, alongside Creator/MatthewMercer taking up the permanent role of Sylas Briarwood and Umbrasyl, as well as voicing a number of secondary characters.
41	** In season two, Creator/MaryElizabethMcGlynn and Creator/WillFriedle reprise their roles as guest party members Zahra and Kashaw respectively.
42	* SleeperHit: A highly downplayed example. When the Kickstarter page for the show launched, the cast openly admitted that their $750,000 goal for one episode was quite ambitious, as far as Kickstarters go. To assist in the process, they scheduled a special stream to talk about the Kickstarter project and hype it up for the evening of the launch. However, they deeply underestimated their fans; the Critters pledged the entire $750,000 goal in 40 minutes, hit over one million dollars in under an hour, and had easily crested their highest stretch goal of three million dollars before the stream had even started. The StunnedSilence at the start of that night's stream said it all: they had to come up with more and more stretch goals to fill the month, culminating in a lot of TensionCuttingLaughter and [[YouHaveGotToBeKiddingMe sheer disbelief at what was happening]]. Ultimately, all of the stretch goals were hit, with the final total cresting over eleven million dollars.
43	* VoicesInOneRoom: "The Legend of the Voices of the Legend of Vox Machina" shows that the cast began recording this way for a couple of sessions, but unfortunately the COVID-19 pandemic hit and forced them to record remotely.
44	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
45	** Originally, the show was simply going to be an animated special that adapted one of Vox Machina's pre-stream adventures (with the plan from the start to be using the opportunity to adapt VM taking down Brimscythe, one of their big pre-streaming-days highlights, though this got complicated; see below). However, due to the Kickstarter raising ''far'' more money than anticipated (just over ''fifteen times'' the goal), it was made into an entire series instead, with the former animated special now serving as a two part series lead-in that segues cleanly into the Briarwood arc.
46	** The original introductory arc, once the funding for a full series was confirmed, was going to be a completely different story set in the Crystalfen Caverns below Emon, that would have more of a psychological MindScrew plot that [[WhatDoTheyFearEpisode showed Vox Machina's greatest fears]]. This was scrapped when the cast and writers realized that [[ContinuityLockout this wouldn't have meant anything to viewers who weren't already familiar with the characters]], and everyone involved realized that the old, unaired Brimscythe storyline actually would make for a pretty solid introduction to VM overall.

Context Trivia / TheLegendOfVoxMachina