Trivia / gen:LOCK

• Acting for Two:
  • Michael B. Jordan plays leads role Julian Chase and also the mystery mech Nemesis, swiftly revealed to also be Chase himself. In Season 2, Jordan also takes on the role of the King Demon, the hallucination who continuously haunts Chase.
  • David Tennant plays the show's mentor figure Dr. Weller. After Weller's death, he takes on the role of Weller's robotic assistant Caliban; from Season 2 onward, Caliban's programming within the mindscape takes on the appearance of Weller himself, but it is made clear that it's a different character, as both Caliban's exterior and the Weller in the mindscape have a hollow imitation of Weller's personality, and refer to Weller as a separate person.
  • Starting in Season 2, Kōichi Yamadera takes on the role of numerous Japanese-speaking people from Kazu's past, including his father and his favorite anime hero, Robo-Shogun. Other Japanese-speakers in these scenes are usually played by Paul Nakauchi, who voices Brother Sugiyama.
  • SungWon Cho plays Henry Wu and, later in Season 2, also takes on the role of Sinclair's fellow rebel Chris.
  • Secunda Wood plays Holcroft's publicist Sandburg and Brother Tate's superior Sister Nyokabi.
  • In Season 1, most minor characters were played by Rooster Teeth staff members, some taking on multiple parts; for instance, Cesar Altagracia has four credited roles in the first episode alone. Season 2 takes a more professional approach by casting all minor roles with actors already in the episode, and giving those actors "additional voices" credit. Often, these parts go to the Rooster Teeth staff members still in the cast (Miles Luna, Chad James, Lawrence Sonntag, Blaine Gibson); even David Tennant got an additional voices credit in the Season 2 premiere.
• Actor Leaves, Character Dies: Due to Gray Haddock's departure from Rooster Teeth in 2019, the character he voiced, Leon, is killed off in the first episode of Season 2.
• Actor-Shared Background:
  • Golshifteh Farahani is Iranian, the same nationality as her character. Needless to say, this also applies to the Japanese Kōichi Yamadera.
  • Miles Luna, like his character Migas, is a Texan with a Latino background, though he had to put some research and effort into getting Migas's accent exactly right.
  • Australian actor Angus Sampson joins the cast in Season 2 as Union leader Brother Tate, who is himself from Australia.
• All-Star Cast: With Rooster Teeth's first project made in affiliation with the Screen Actors Guild comes one of the weirdest all-star casts ever assembled, consisting of:
  • A-list celebrities Michael B. Jordan, Dakota Fanning, David Tennant, and Maisie Williams in main leading roles.
  • Respectable screen actors such as Golshifteh Farahani and Asia Kate Dillon are also in leading roles, bringing in authentic diversity, with a few supporting roles being played by experienced actors such as Shari Belafonte and Anisha Nagarajan.
  • Prolific anime creators such as Monica Rial and SungWon Cho are attached, receiving just as much hype as the bona fide celebrity cast. Most remarkably, immensely popular Japanese voice actor Kōichi Yamadera is in the cast in his first-ever English-language project.
  • Major cast members coming from within Rooster Teeth are restricted to those noted for being genuinely great actors, such as Blaine Gibson, Gray Haddock,^note Though Gray had some background as an anime-based voice actor early on before he got involved in RT. Chad James, Lindsay Jones, Miles Luna, and Matt Hullum.
  • Season 2 added Angus Sampson to the cast, and featured a one-shot appearance from Zehra Fazal.
• B-Team Sequel: The first season was listed in its own credits as a Rooster Teeth original series, the second as an HBO Max original, animated at Bardel Entertainment with Rooster Teeth's involvement primarily being restricted to the audio department. The first season's primary creative lead, Gray Haddock, was removed from the project shortly after the first season aired due to being responsible for its Troubled Production. Evan Narcisse, one of the co-writers of the Season 1 finale, is the only Season 1 writer to carry over to the Season 2 writing staff, while Michael B. Jordan and his co-producer Alana Mayo are the only producers on both seasons.
• Channel Hop: Season 2 debuted on HBO Max rather than Rooster Teeth's website, which will only get it months later. The animation done in-house by RT also moved to the Canadian-based Bardel Entertainment. Rooster Teeth's only contributions were restricted to helping with the show's audio and the retention of a single writer.
• Colbert Bump: Battle Tapes, the band that performs gen:LOCK's theme song "Belgrade" (as well as several other songs used as background or end-title music), got a massive boost in exposure because of the fact that their song is being used in the show's opening, which is further augmented by how good the opening is and how well it is synchronized to the song. The cherry on top is that fans of Rooster Teeth's productions have been used to waiting months for the music of the latest season of a show to be released, but since "Belgrade" and the other Battle Tapes songs have been out there for a few years, the fans can just go ahead and listen to these songs. The band even left a comment on Belgrade's page on Spotify noting "gen:LOCK brought you here?"
• Creator Backlash: Multiple Rooster Teeth staff members who worked on Season 1 were unenthused with the direction taken for Season 2.
  • Season 1 animator Torrian Crawford made sure to voice his dissatisfaction at the direction of Season 2. He found the third episode's sex scene in particular to be gratuitous and distasteful.
  • Well after the release of Season 2, Rooster Teeth staff member Austin Hardwicke quipped on Twitter that it's too bad there was never a second season, which earned a like from cast member Miles Luna. Luna himself also dismissively spoke of Season 2 while it was airing in a since-deleted livestream.
• Directed by Cast Member: Gray Haddock created the show and also voices Leon.
• Edited for Syndication: The Toonami version was edited for time to meet the 22-minute runtime mark for television. Some episodes were barely touched, but others (mainly "The Pilot" and "Identity Crisis") were changed significantly.
• Fake Brit: The Scottish David Tennant plays the English Dr. Weller.
• Fake Nationality: Played with; while Puerto Ricans like Raquel Marin are Americans, Monica Rial doesn't even have the same background, given she's Texan from Spanish descent.
• Fake Russian: Valentina (Ukrainian, to be more specific), played by the American Asia Kate Dillon.
• Fake Scot: The English Maisie Williams plays the Scottish Cammie. In an interview, Gray Haddock noted the irony that Williams and Tennant are each playing the other's nationality.
• No Export for You: gen:LOCK was region locked in Japan, with Rooster Teeth never giving a reason as to why. Season 2 would later premiere in all countries that have HBO Max... even those where season 1 isn't in the catalogue.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Val/entina is revealed in Episode 4 to be genderfluid, and is played by the non-binary Asia Kate Dillon.
• Real Song Theme Tune: "Belgrade" by Battle Tapes was released in 2016, three years before gen:LOCK hit the airwaves. However, the song was regarded as being as such a good fit for the show that it became the Season 1 theme song.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Due to David Tennant having not yet been cast as Weller, the 2017 announcement trailer had the doctor voiced by Ian Sinclair.
  • Marc Holcroft is voiced by Kiff Vanden Heuvel in Season 2, replacing Matt Hullum.
• Throw It In!: Kazu and Val/entina's sword dance in episode 6 wasn't in the original storyboards, and was largely left open for Kim Newman to animate as she wished.
• Troubled Production: Making gen:LOCK was not a pleasant experience for the crew. The commentrary track has several frank discussions between the higher-ups in the animation team about how rough the production cycle could be for the show alongside several Harsher in Hindsight comments about the production being difficult, and several ex-employees and staffers came out about the production of the series through Glassdoor complaining about excessive crunch time (specially as Gray Haddock wanted the show to open right after RWBY closed Volume 6 - and worse, a few worked on both shows). Most of the animation staff had to work eighty-hour weeks with unpaid overtime, resulting in a third of the season being effectively made for free. Multiple workers were also brought in on unpaid 90 day temp contracts with the promise of a full-paying job upon completion, but were all unceremoniously let go instead. Gray stepped down as Head of Animation soon after the news broke, and later admitted to having left Rooster Teeth entirely.
• Uncredited Role:
  • Driana Chase makes a brief, hard-to-spot speaking appearance in Episode 4. G.K. Bowes was uncredited in the episode when it first aired in order to keep her appearance a Freeze-Frame Bonus not spoiled by reading the credits. After Season 1 ended, Episode 4 was edited to credit Bowes.
  • Nemesis has its first speaking part in Episode 5. Though its words are meant to strongly hint at its identity, and said identity is swiftly revealed in Episode 6, its voice actor remains uncredited in episode 5, 6, and 7. Similarly, Caliban starts speaking in Episode 7 but is uncredited. Both are credited in Episode 8; in Rooster Teeth tradition, the season finale includes credits for the whole season and finally sees fit to reveal the now-obvious information that Nemesis and Caliban have the same respective voice actors as Chase and Weller.
  • In a minor example, sound designer Phillip Spann goes uncredited as the voice of Val/entina's translation software in Episode 2, but that role is likewise listed in the finale's credits.
  • Miles Luna is uncredited in the fifth episode of Season 2, presumably by accident, as he's credited in every other episode in which he appears.
• Vindicated by Reruns: Though critical reception to the first season on the Rooster Teeth website was positive and the ratings on Toonami were high, response from general audiences on those two platforms was largely mixed. Two years later, the first season was released on HBO Max, and viewers who first discovered the series via the streaming service had much nicer things to say about it.
• What Could Have Been:
  • When Achievement Hunter discussed gen:Lock on their podcast, Geoff Ramsey and Jeremy Dooley mentioned having auditioned for voice roles in the show but didn't make the cut.
  • Tatiana Maslany was originally approached for the role of Valentina due to her experience with Orphan Black, in which she plays a multitude of characters, some of whom are LGBT. Maslany replied that, while she played these characters by necessity, she believes that queer characters should be played by queer actors, and encouraged the creators to find an actor who was actually gender-nonconforming, resulting in the role ultimately going to Asia Kate Dillon.
  • In the commentary track, Gray mentions how the show was initially pitched with a twelve-episode season. It rapidly became clear that Rooster Teeth wouldn't be able to produce that many episodes at once, so the batch had to be parred down to eight. The most notable consequence of this decision is that Kazu and Val/entina, who were meant to get more focus and screentime, had many of their character moments cut for time. Gray expresses regret that they suffered as much as they did.
  • Episode 8 was meant to include footage of the Polity fighting the Union in Chicago while the Holon team fought Nemesis, but the crew were unable to make another large-scale battle so soon after the one in episode 6. Additionally, city shots would have included seeing the Polity soldiers gain Cammie's command codes for Nemesis' modified nanosmoke to let them push back the Union after the final battle.
• Word of God:
  • Gray revealed on Twitter that Julian's late father was a New Orleans native who relocated to New York City due to climate change and met Roberta when they were both on the police force.
  • The reason every member of Cammie's family died one by one is that climate change melted the permafrost, releasing disease organisms that had been dormant for millennia for which the human immune system had little defense against.

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