Trivia / Paladins

The Video Game:

• Acting for Two: The game reuses voice actors all over the place, with some VA's lending their voice to other characters, or to skins for other characters:
  • Ricco Fajardo voices Dutchman Makoa, Battlesuit Godslayer Androxus, Corvus, Mernos Jenos, and Berserker Torvald.
  • Brad Venable voices both Makoa and Barik.
  • Joshua Tomar voices Bomb King, Pumpking Bomb King, Buck, Triggerman Buck, and Chancellor Mal'damba.
  • Lindsay Seidel voices both Cassie and Shore Patrol Lian.
  • Bill Rogers voices Dredge, Merrymaker Dredge, and Dark Lord Torvald.
  • Kira Buckland voices Evie and Merrymaker Lian
  • Mick Lauer voices Khan, Chieftain Grohk, and FN-01 Helios / Erebos Fernando.
  • Daman Mills voices Koga, Omega Makoa, Fallen Androxus, and Demon Slayer Zhin, and Freegle Drogoz.
  • Jad Saxton voices Maeve, as well as most of Maeves' skins released thus far (Raeve, Merrymaker, Street Style, and Pirate's Treasure) with the exception of her Emerald Bandit, Demonette, Cammie, and Schoolyard skins.
  • Rachael Messer voices Moji, Dire Wolf Tyra, and Infernal Seris
  • Edward Bosco voices Ruckus and Viktor.
  • Aaron Roberts voices Bolt and Code Green Viktor.
  • Tiana Camacho voices Seris, Full Throttle Vivian, Galactic Conqueror Vora, and Betty La Bomba
  • Caitlin Glass voices Lian and Cammie Maeve.
  • Laila Berzins voices Saati and Death Speaker Ying.
• Actor Allusion: Cristina Valenzuela voicing a character that has a genie motif? Now where have we heard that before?
• Acting for Two:
  • Bomb King and Buck are both voiced by Joshua Tomar with Bomb King having kill taunts for Buck.
  • Ruckus and Viktor are both voiced by Edward Bosco with Viktor having kill taunts towards Ruckus.
  • Barik and Makoa are both voiced by the late Brad Venable.
  • Kira Buckland very briefly took over the role of Willo in OB66-67, replacing Xanthe Huynh, and had a voice line lamenting Evie's voice.
• All-Star Cast: A lot of the voice actors are shared between SMITE and Paladins (given both games' predilection for creating skin voice packs and having around 170 characters between the two games, this was inevitable). Usually anime voice actors are cast for roles, so the voices heard would not be out of place in a Crunchyroll or Funimation dub. To name a few examples; Achille's in SMITE is has the same VA as of Corvus and Jenos' Mernos skin (Ricco Fajardo), while Christopher Sabat voices both Zeus and Grover. And that's just the Greek pantheon.
• Ascended Fan Nickname: Almost every character has a shortened version of their name that players use in-game over typing out the whole thing. So far, two of these have ended up being used in-game, those being "Andro" and "Yago", shortened nicknames for Androxus and Yagorath, with the former's Avatar / Modded skin and the latter's Cuddly skin being where these names were used.
• Ascended Fanon:
  • Originally, the conflict between the Magistrate and Resistance didn't have a specific name, however, many in the community began referring to it as the "Crystal War", which was eventually canonized when the Trials of the Realm system was introduced, with the description for Brightmarsh directly calling it the Crystal War.
  • When Corvus was exiled from the Magistrate for being tricked into summoning Raum, he formed his own group to continue what he believed was right, yet for the longest time, this group had no official name. However, the community soon began referring to this group as the "Shadow Tribunal", based on one of Corvus' cards, and his previous connection to the Outer Tribunal. This name was eventually canonized after a developer was asked what the official name of the group was.
• Ascended Glitch: According to the developers, Khan's ultimate was only meant to grab onto a character, and bring them to him, it wasn't intended for the ult to also let him move around while he had someone in his grasp. They left it in as Rule of Cool and worked up from there.
• Content Leak: Upcoming content has a tendency to be leaked by dataminers going through new patches, sometimes revealing everything, other times only a few new skins. It's not clear if this was unintentionally leaving things in the code, not being bothered to fix things up, or purposefully leaving the data in in an attempt to build hype:
  • Before Yagorath's release, her unfinished card art had leaked a few weeks beforehand◊ in the previous patch, and had already confirmed some of the big reveals otherwise released on the patch preview stream (the community manager at the time even referenced the leak saying "things people shouldn't have seen yet"). (a new sniper-based champion later revealed to be Octavia, Yagorath herself and her ability to roll up into a ball, a new design for Pepper running alongside Pip and Moji, and Old Viktor working with New Viktor in an attempt to kill Yagorath).
  • On May 27th, 2022, the Brazilian Paladins account accidentally tweeted (and promptly deleted) this image for the patch preview for 5.5, which featured Stone Keep at night and a new Detonation Moon in place of the old one ...the one seen in RWBY, all but confirming an Event Pass featuring characters from that series was being released for 5.5. The following day, the regular Paladins account posted a similar image of the moon being in Serpent Beach, and after several more teasers, the trailer dropped for the RWBY Crossover Pass, confirming the leaks were real.
  • The PTS for 5.6 accidentally left blank entries for Moji on her character page; confirming a new skin for her several weeks earlier than the actual announcement for it.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: In the gen:LOCK Update Show, while showing off the crossover content, Romanova referred to gen:LOCK as an "anime" multiple times, even though it's an American series.
• Creator's Oddball: Paladins is the first Hero Shooter Hi-Rez has made (though it initially played much more like a MOBA in closed beta). While it shares some abilities with SMITE, it's still an unusual game genre for the company to try their hands at.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: The male Talus is voiced by the female Erica Mendez. Likely a nod to his status as a Stock Shōnen Hero, since shonen protagonists are generally known for having female voice actresses.
• Dark Horse Casting: Be it for budgetary reasons or because they want to give content creators a voice, beginning with the release of Vatu, the developers have sought out content creators to voice act in the game. For instance, Vatu is voiced by YongYea, a YouTube personality. And then, for Io's Salt skin, they brought in LilyPichu to voice her. Later with Lillith's Stellar Witch skin, Amanda Lee was cast to play her. While Vatu's voice actor was generally deemed a good fit, Stellar Witch and Salt's voices have been more controversial, mainly due to people finding the voices unfitting and / or annoying.
• Development Gag:
  • Grohk's Neon Demon skin was actually an unreleased skin from early in Paladins' closed beta that was scrapped for being incompatible with the Parts and Pieces cosmetics system. After the system was removed late in open beta, the Neon Demon skin was finally able to be released in the games' first battle pass (and its associated chest).
  • Battle Pass 8 was pirate themed, a requested theme from the community for quite some time, with two skins for Ruckus and Maeve respectively coming from this concept art post from ArtStation, put together originally by Brian Wells almost a year prior. Thunderbrush on the patch preview for Patch 2.07 even admitted the Ruckus Concept art in particular was the single most requested skin of the lot, and was pretty much given a free pass to be made when the time came to make him.
  • Update 3.01 added Tiberius to the game, but also removed the need to purchase character voice packs in any capacity, making the default announcer voice pack that's used by someone who doesn't own a specific champions' voice pack now being made completely redundant, and Update 3.02 removed the option to use the default announcer entirely. As a reference to this, Tiberius's "Hello" command is a nod to this announcer pack's removal, with the developers using this gem of a voiceline (the filename also implies it was edited after the fact):
  Tiberius: "Bonjour! Oh-oh! Or, as you humans say, *clears throat*; "hi".
• Duelling Works: On release into Open Beta in 2016, it duelled with Overwatch and Battleborn, though Battleborn has since fallen off the radar, it now competes with Apex Legends and Overwatch 2.
• Dummied Out:
  • All champions have a lot of recorded chatter, yet much of it goes unused, some examples include idle voice lines, a few tactical auto-callouts, as well as VGS lines the new system doesn't use. Though this practice can come in handy sometimes, such as when the Legacy VGS system regained the voice lines the new system doesn't use.
  • The announcer packs all had voice packs for the Voice Guided System, despite only the Default Announcer being available to use prior to Update 3.01. Update 3.02 removed the option completely, but the sound files still exist in the game.
  • Talus' "Oni" skin has Talus wear kabuki facepaint without his mask accessory equipped◊, but since the release of the update that removed the "Parts and Pieces" system, the mask can't be removed anymore, and the face paint now goes unseen by the player.
• Executive Meddling: Hi-Rez made a big deal about all of its games being cross-play ready, as well as allowing for cross-purchases and cross-saving. However, the only console left out of this loop when it comes to cross-saving and cross-purchases is Sony, so PS4/5 owners cannot transfer anything on their Paladins accounts to PC or other consoles. Embarrassingly, Evil Mojo have had to retain the "we are working with Sony to come to an agreement" sentence on the FAQ; making it quite clear that it's out of the devs' hands until Sony plays ball.
• Flip-Flop of God:
  • Despite popular demand, Hi-Rez originally mentioned that they didn't want to make melee-oriented champions because of how difficult it would be to balance them. Months later, they changed their mind and released their first melee champion; Terminus.
  • This is a recurring issue when it comes to the game's lore, with information constantly being contradicted from one statement to the next, sometimes of facts officially stated in cinematics, to the same developer's own previous statements. The most notable example of this would be the treatment of the Magistrate, who constantly flip flop back and forth between being treated as a the intended respectable government that only wants the best for its citizens, and an evil empire looking for every chance they can to obtain more power and ensure their dominant rule.
• Follow the Leader:
  • Right from the get-go, Paladins has been accused of riding on the coattails of Overwatch for having similar gameplay mechanics and some characters sharing similarities with ones in Overwatch. Exactly how much inspiration they took is unclear, as Paladins was in development before Overwatch was officially announced, but at the same time there were changes made to the gameplay of certain champions to make them play more like their counterparts in Overwatch.
  • However, developers have claimed that Team Fortress 2 and Global Agenda were inspirations to Paladins instead of Overwatch.
  • The scrapped game mode, Battlegrounds, was obviously based off of the Battle Royale genre of video games, right down to having a similar name to the popular Player Unknowns Battle Grounds. It's touted itself as the first Hero-Based Battle Royale game.
• God Never Said That: Multiple comments by players online have claimed that the developers promised the return of Payload, a highly requested game mode by fans, when LTM's were debuting. This is false, as seen here, as the developers very specifically mentioned the possibility of the game mode returning, and were quite careful to not make any promises.
• In Memoriam: Two Paladins players; Superesper26 and Caio "EuMsmSuaMae" Oliveira were dedicated with two unique◊ avatars◊. Superesper26 was a 15 year old Brazilian shopkeeper who got killed in the store, while Caio was a victim of a mass shooting in Brazil. Caio's avatar was sold for 50 Crystals, and all proceeds went straight to the "Instituto Sou Da Paz", while Superesper26's avatar is still free to get, available for purchase with 1 gold.
• Newbie Boom: Beginning from May 2023, the game caught a good chunk of the defectors fleeing Overwatch 2, the inciting incident involving the removal of the promised PVE story mode that alienated Overwatch's playerbase, and contributed to a large and long-lasting player migration. The Paladins subreddit saw several instances of Overwatch players asking questions on how to play, as well as to get some tips and advice when starting out. Steam Charts also saw an increase in players.
• No Export for You: Terminus is absent from the Chinese version of Paladins due to the developers of that version supposedly not wanting a melee character, though many still believe it was due to China's strict censorship regarding certain things, notably undead creatures.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content:
  • Several in-game sprays are actually fan art that Hi-Rez liked enough to put in the game.
  • After announcing the removal of Cards Unbound, Hi-Rez made in-game sprays from the intentionally bad fan art that was made to protest Cards Unbound.
  • There was also a contest for fans to submit and vote on avatar designs for a chance to get theirs in the game. Fans submitted so many, that Hi-Rez decided to pick the top four fan avatars to be in the game.
  • The skins from January 2020's Battle Pass, Ska'Drin Ash, Dark Monarch Lian, Wukong Talus, and Soul Briar Grover, are based on designs submitted by fans as part of a contest.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Kira Buckland was chosen to redo Willo's voice pack in OB66, replacing Xanthe Huynh. While this quelled the complaining of Willo's high-pitched voice, this did come with another issue, and the voice pack was reverted two patches later.
  • Jen Taylor is replaced by Natalie Van Sistine as Salem.
  • A currently unknown voice actor replaces Vic Mignogna and Jason Liebrecht as Qrow Branwen.
  • Jim Foronda replaces Sylvester Stallone as Rambo (as he does in SMITE too).
  • None of gen:LOCK's All-Star Cast reprise their roles for the GenLock Crossover Pass:
    • Caitlin Glass replaces Maisie Williams as Cammie.
    • A currently unknown voice actor replaces Asia Kate Dillon as Valentina.
    • Conrad Haynes replaces Michael B. Jordan as Chase.
    • Toru Uchikado replaces Kōichi Yamadera as Kazu.
    • Lauren Synger replaces Golshifteh Farahani as Yasamin.
• Pigeonholed Voice Actor: Josh Petersdorf. He plays big, loud guys normally, and Terminus is yet another one of those roles.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: J. Michael Tatum voices Fernando, who was revealed to be gay in 2018. An Armored Closet Gay, judging by the developers comments on it; his entire personality is a front.◊
• Rule 34 – Creator Reactions:
  • Thunderbrush, Paladins' Art Director, considers much fanart an honor to their work. He just can't share the racy stuff around, of course.
  • Imani's Stellar Sorceress skin has a voiceline for killing Tiberius that acknowledges the large amount of explicit artwork of him and Raum that exists:
  Imani: "You're one of the good guys? That's funny, from what I've seen online, I could've sworn you were on the demons' side!"
• Role Reprise:
  • Grant Goodeve, voice of the Engineer in Team Fortress 2, reprises his role here in a skin voice pack for Barik that makes him look like the Engineer.
  • Most of the voice cast from RWBY (Lindsay Jones, Kara Eberle, Arryn Zech, Barbara Dunkelman) reprise their roles for their characters' respective skins (Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, Yang Xiao Long).
• Shrug of God: This trope was at play for the first couple of years, as the developers took the stance of avoiding revealing information as much as they could, generally being vague and avoiding direct answers when asked by players, most of the time out of fear of not being aware of what the lore surrounding the question actually is. Not only that, but some players got the impression that new information might ruin someone's headcanon. With the advent of Paladins Chronicles however, there was a concerted effort by PR manager Kryptek, to actually explain past events and outcomes to satisfy readers via story snippets on blogposts, something the game would eventually reference and reciprocate when "Trials of the Realm" re-released and the lore blurbs from each region got updated with this new information.
• Sleeper Hit: Paladins was first released as a closed beta in 2015 and garnered very little attention - until Overwatch took off, destroyed the other Hero Shooter of the time (Battleborn), and garnered millions of players not long afterward. Game news sites picked up on Paladin's beta having a resemblance to Overwatch, which triggered controversy - and interest. Jump to 2017, where after numerous improvements to the graphics and gameplay, nearly double the amount of champions, a slew of customization options, and Paladins has risen to being one of the few surviving Hero Shooter games.
• Streisand Effect: Paladins being compared to Overwatch in the Open Beta led otherwise-uninterested players to be curious about why people were making comparisons between the two games in the first place, and thus, getting some people to play the game to find out for themselves.
• Teasing Creator: The developers and the art team love doing this, and they have a habit of following through with their teases . The most famous example would be when Lead Artist Thunderbrush responded to someone on Twitter being salty and setting up a petition to remove Pepper from the game. Their response was jokingly threatening they'd make a skin called "Salt" if they continued being salty online. People on Twitter reacted with mild interest to this proposal, which was then amplified even more when Thunderbrush released some concept art for the idea on a whim later on. Salt then became a skin for Io in Patch 4.7.
• Throw It In!: According to EvilMojoAdanas, The ultimate voiceline for Lifeguard Tiberius when playing for the enemy/ player; "En Garday!", was an Ad Lib by his voice actor, and the people in the recording booth liked it so much they kept it in.
• Two Voices, One Character: Edward Bosco voices Ruckus, while Aaron Roberts voices Bolt. In-game, both are considered to be the same character.
• What Could Have Been: Kasumi's initial concept had her use a koto to attack enemies instead of a Voodoo Doll.
• Writer Conflicts with Canon: Or rather, former artist in this case. The card "Futile Efforts" explicitly shows both the old and new Viktor designs, something Thunderbrush, the lead artist said was intentional and claimed that Old Viktor was New Viktor's father. However, according to the lore team, this was not discussed prior to release.◊
• Word of Gay:
  • At the end of the Developer Q & A for 7/6/18, head developer Martini confirmed that Fernando is gay. Considering Fernando's constant attempts to flirt with women, he's clearly Armoured Closet Gay.
  • Caspian was revealed on Twitter to be pansexual, although his card art only shows him with women, which was explained as being due to the art being outsourced.
• Word of God: Almost everything known about the characters and lore come from these types of statements, and it's not uncommon for different developers to contradict each other or forget / ignore previously established information.

Miscellaneous Trivia

• The sound of Zhin and Koga's footsteps were made...by patting a cat's belly.◊
• Luna was voiced by a corgi named Blu.
• The Absolution Update Notes reads: "Fixed an issue where we called the Haunted Willo avatar “Willow”. We’re sorry, WilloQuarterBot". This is in reference to the Reddit bot of the same name; which trawls the /r/Paladins subreddit to find mis-spellings of the name "Willo".