Trivia / Meta Runner

• Acting for Two:
  • Anthony Sardinha voices both Lamar Williams and Dr. Sheridan.
  • Elsie Lovelock voices Evelyn and Bo.
  • David J.G. Doyle voices both Lucks and the Elder Tomato.
• Author's Saving Throw:
  • When it was first announced, some fans were concerned that the brothers were actually planning to release it on YouTube Premium, and thus it would cost money to watch due to the trailer not making it clear how the show was going to be released. These fears were assuaged when they confirmed that, no, it would be uploaded to YouTube normally, free to watch (and, in fact, making it has cost them a lot of money, but they don't care and just want to tell a new story).
  • After the initial mixed reaction to Tari’s look in Skybreakers in Season 3, Glitch was quick to reassure fans that the new look would only apply in that game, with the scenes outside the game still using the Season 2 artstyle.
• Channel Hop: The first season aired on the main SMG4 channel. Seasons 2 and 3 aired on the new standalone Glitch Productions channel.
• Creator Cameo:
  • Kevin voices various Bot Boys throughout the series. Luke gets in on the action in the Season 2 premiere by voicing a Bot Boy facing off against another one voiced by his brother.
  • Luke and Kevin voice two of the streamers in the pods in Episode 3 and a couple players on the team of soldiers in the Hidden Heroes match in episode 16 who complain about Masa and Lamar's team-killing.
  • SMG4 is one of the names visible in both the stream chat and in the leaderboards in the same episode, as well as Kevin's social media name "kevdevz" and "HomelessBrothers", a Captain Ersatz of Hobo Bros.
  • SMG4 himself makes a cameo in the sixth episode of the final season as a pink haired Meta Runner.
• Creator's Favorite: Surprisingly, Evelyn, of all the characters who appeared. The Making of Meta Runner reveals that most of the staff liked her because she had the most personality and dynamic with Tari, in a Love to Hate kind of way.
  "Evelyn's not a person. She's a state of mind."
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Theo, who is male, is voiced by Robyn Barry-Cotter, a female cast member.
• Defictionalization: Tari's hoodie exists as official merchandise on the Glitch Productions Store.
• Development Gag: Tari's robotic design in Hidden Heroes for Season 2 takes after one of her original character designs, particularly her mouthless face and red node antenna.
• Fake American: Deep-voiced Lucks and Masa have American accents but are respectively voiced by Australian actors David J.G. Doyle and Brendan Barry-Cotter.
• He Also Did:
  • Anthony "Antfish" Sardinha (voice of Lamar and Dr. Sheridan) is a member of Team Four Star, where he produced JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Abridged and Final Fantasy VII: Machinabridged.
  • Robyn Barry-Cotter (voice of Theo) runs Anime America, a YouTube channel focusing on anime and other related material. Her husband Brendan (voice of Masa Shimamoto) also has a hand in the channel, voicing the channel's mischievous mascot, Tsumi.
  • Evelyn is voiced by Elsie Lovelock, who provided the singing voice of Charlie in the Hazbin Hotel pilot. She also gave rise to the Scottish Pokémon Trainer meme.
  • In the main SMG4 series, Elsie provides Saiko Bichitaru's singing voice. In 2022 she took over the voices of major character Meggy Spletzer and minor character Karen the Cat.
• Real-Life Relative: Masa's voice actor Brendan Barry-Cotter, was married to Theo's voice actress Robyn Barry-Cotter approximately 6 years before this series even came out.
• Series Hiatus: The series took an extended break in 2021 while Glitch worked on Sunset Paradise and the pilot for Murder Drones.
• The Other Darrin: In the teaser trailer for Season 2, Bo was voiced by Aimee Smith. But when she was spun off into her own videos, she was voiced instead by Elise Lovelock.
• Trailer Delay: The original trailer for season 1 promised a release date of June 2019. It was later pushed back a month to July to add some extra polish to the visuals.
• Trolling Creator: One of the most notorious aspects of Season 1 was the numerous episodes that ended on Cliffhangers, including the season finale. The GLITCH channel left a comment on Nathanial Bandy's video "How Meta Runner TRIGGERS You!", where he points this out, promising that Season 2 would have less cliffhangers. Season 2 ended up having, if anything, more episodes that ended in cliffhangers, with the season finale once again being among them.
• Troubled Production: Kevin charitably described the production of Season 1 as "organized chaos". In short, Kevin and Luke went in with basically zero experience in professional animation, and what they thought would take one month to make ended up taking two years instead, with them pouring in basically all their money into making it. The first half of the season ended up needing to be redone after Kevin realized they didn’t gel well with the second half of the series due to his process of writing the season as it was being produced. Luke also recalled staying up until 3 in the morning just to get stuff done on it. And all this while the two were still working on their other shows. This was averted by Season 2, Kevin and Luke were able to get the season done in half the time as the first, thanks to the experience they gained and an expanded production crew.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Kevin and Luke admitted in their Deleted Scenes video that they initially made up Season 1's story by the episode, which led to mysteries like Tari waking up in a junkyard being set up with no clear answers in mind. This changed as they reached the midway point, leading them to rework and reanimate the entire first half to be more consistent with the rest of the season.

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