Trivia / Darkest Dungeon

• Approval of God: The developers loved how much attention the game got on Twitch, creating a voice pack of the Ancestor for Twitch streamers. They also contacted a few streamers such as BaerTaffy and LobosJr, offering to sponsor their streams on the day of the release along with giving them personalized versions of the Twitch voice pack.
• Cast the Expert: Wayne June, the voice of the Ancestor, was specifically cast because the Red Hook developers were familiar with his experience and acumen at narrating audiobook versions of various works by H. P. Lovecraft. Because of this, he was considered a perfect fit to narrate a game heavily inspired by Lovecraft's work.
• Dummied Out: Several features and items are in the game's code that are not in the current released game. Some of these unused items may appear in the game later as part of an update.
  • An icon and several pieces of dialogue exist for a "Hobby" camp skill. Said dialogue reveals some information not mentioned anywhere else in the game, such as the Highwayman writing poetry, the Hellion learning to read, and the Vestal shaving her legs.
  • An unused item reveals that the game's Vicious Cycle may be worse than previously implied.
  Ancestor's Portrait: Though painted a hundred years ago, the resemblance to you is uncanny.
  • "Prosperous" was once going to be a virtue. A description for it states that an affected hero would have "increased treasure draws."
  • The data also holds several unused quirks.
    • The Darkest Dungeon itself once had adventurer, tactician, explorer, and phobe quirks associated with it, like the other dungeons, implying that heroes could once return to it after completing one mission.
    • All the dungeons, including the Darkest Dungeon, also had survivor and master quirks associated with them as well (for instance, a Cove Survivor and a Ruin Master once existed).
    • Other unused quirks include tither ("pays extra gold for all Abbey activities"), too boastful (no description), inspired (no description), and leprosy (whose description just says "leprosy...").
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • BaerTaffy, one of the bigger-named streamers and Youtubers covering the game (with literally hundreds of episodes in several playlists), is the voice of the Baron and Fanatic in the Crimson Court DLC. Likewise, Youtuber and streamer Nic of Bitter Bits did the voices for the Manservant and Chevalier enemies, the Viscount boss, and the bodybags that spawn during in the Viscount fight.
  • Marvin Seo, author of The Sunken City Collection and one of the most successful mod authors for the game, was hired on as staff at Red Hook and helped with development of the Color of Madness DLC.
• Referenced by...: The World Guide of Delicious in Dungeon reveals that the middle brother of one of the main cast is also dungeon delving, with one panel apparently showing him and his retainers fighting the tutorial bandits.
  "What is with this dungeon? Isn't this a bit advanced for me?"
• Similarly Named Works: Not to be confused with a Chick Tract about how Tabletop RPGs are evil, titled "Dark Dungeons".
• What Could Have Been: While Darkest Dungeon remains a distinctive Gothic Horror Roguelike RPG of flawed heroes, as the original Kickstarter page can attest, not everything panned out entirely as was originally envisioned.
  • The Musketeer class, exclusive to Kickstarter Backers who donated $49 or more, was originally planned to have her own unique moveset, before Red Hook realized that having a class with a unique moveset exclusive to Kickstarter backers would be unfair. They settled on making her a Moveset Clone of the Arbalest instead.
  • The Crusader was originally going to have a helmet that exposed his face; this design can still be seen on the official website and the 2013 trailer.
  • Characters' flaws would have to be significantly worked around and dealt with, while the usual option in the actual game is simply to dismiss heroes that have accrued too terrible negative quirks and afflictions can and should be avoided (and once you get them, they can be removed just after a week of stress relief).
  • Party formation mattered in sniffing out traps outside of combat, while anyone can be chosen to disarm a discovered trap in the true game and traps can only be found through scouting which is also independent of formation.
  • There was supposed to be significantly more dynamic events and interactions from character distinctions that did not end up in the final product - such as a character taking it upon himself to gorge on the party's rations (while actual food consumption penalties simply have a character eat more food whenever you choose to let the party eat while camping or from a hunger check), a problematic alcoholic character also doing more damage in battle if his alcoholism is sated (players cannot actually directly fuel the flaws of a quirk or affliction to make use of a bonus, and a tiny amount of the game's actual quirks have both a benefit and a penalty), or another character refusing to accept help from another specific character while on expedition (afflicted characters only randomly refuse to accept help from any other party member rather than having a bias against specific ones).
  • Originally the dungeons were planned to have multiple different out-of-the-blue random events with positive or negative effects (called "happenings") - some of your food spoiling, a haunting noise disturbing the heroes, etc. In the finished game only the hunger checks remain.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: The Musketeer skin was originally available only to Kickstarter backers and the developers vowed to never make it available to the general public. Unfortunately, the proliferation of mods that do just that prompted them to make the Musketeer available to everyone for free alongside the release of The Color of Madness DLC, with the original backers getting a free copy of CoM as compensation.

---