Trivia / Rise of the Triad

• Acting for Two: In the remaster, Shannon O'Neil voices the previously unused female enemies while Gianni Matragano voices the male ones.
• Ascended Fanfic: Prior to his work on AMID EVIL, lead developer Leon Zawada released a Doom mod called Return of the Triad in 2011, which is meant to be an homage to Rise of the Triad running on the Doom engine. The mod was officially included in the Ludicrous Edition.
• Colbert Bump: Some people may only know this game because Civvie 11 uses "How'd I Do?" as his closing credits theme. Due to this Civvie got a cameo in the release trailer for Ludicrous Edition.
• Development Gag: Several:
  • God Mode's noises were inspired by John Romero making what he considered "God-Like Sounds" whenever he played Doom in God Mode with wall clipping turned off.
  • Apogee president Scott Miller's head appears in a secret area in episode 2, level 3. If you collect it, you get 2,764,331 points, a reference to Apogee's order number at the time. It shows up again in the remake's version of the same level, at the end of a Nintendo Hard hidden obstacle course.
  • The three DIP balls found throughout the game reference the dev team, nicknamed the "Developers of Incredible Power".
  • The character Doug Wendt is named after one of the developers' dogs.
  • The names of three protagonists come directly from the Doom Bible
• Genre Relaunch: The 2013 remake of ROTT kicked off the modern revival of the "Boomer Shooter" subgenre of FPS, with many games in the genre that came out since having a lineage that can be traced back to it. After the success of ROTT 2013, the holding company behind Interceptor Entertainment acquired 3D Realms and restructured Interceptor as its subsidiary, and began publishing games like Ion Fury and CULTIC. Meanwhile, key staff from Interceptor that were let go during the restructuring founded New Blood Interactive, who would develop AMID EVIL and publish DUSK.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: Several fan-made maps for the reboot have been put into the game properly.
• Recursive Adaptation: "Big John", a memetically popular boss enemy from the 2013 remake who later appeared in DUSK and would go on to be a mascot of sorts for New Blood Interactive, was based on the Enforcers from the original Rise of the Triad. In the Ludicrous Edition, he appears as a boss enemy in a secret level in the new "The HUNT Continues" episode.
• Refitted for Sequel: In the original ROTT, certain enemies were supposed to have alternate versions who would be randomly cycled in with the regular ones, many of which were Distaff Counterparts. The severe increase in RAM it would've required (by 1994 standards) meant that none of them was used, but a single frame from each one can be seen in the staff roll. Those were all restored in the Ludicrous Edition.
• Role Reprise: Tom Hall reprises his role as El Oscuro for the new episode included in the Ludicrous Edition.
• Schedule Slip: Due to a classification issue with Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, the console ports of the Ludicrous Edition had to be delayed to September 29.
• Throw It In!: The game-crashing Easter Egg level "This Causes An Error". Moving walls crash the game when they reach the boundaries of a map. A playtester made a joke drawing out of that glitch, and so Apogee did the level in question, which merely serves to demonstrate the glitch and show said joke drawing upon the crashing. The enhanced Win32 port fixes the glitch, thereby making the level utterly pointless.
  • Early in the development of the reboot, bullet weapons had limited ammo per magazine and had to be reloaded regularly. Bullet weapons have Bottomless Magazines in the final game, but the reload animations can still be triggered like in any other game.
    El Oshcuro: ITS JUST LIKE THE ORIGINAL. SEE THE INFINITY ICON? OH YEAH. WE KEPT RELOADS IN BECAUSE THEY ARE COOOOOL.^[sic]
  • During development a glitch caused fire spouts to move along the ground. Though the glitch was fixed, the development team liked the effect so much that it was developed into the Flamewall weapon.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original Rise of the Triad was intended to be a sequel to Wolfenstein 3-D, but Apogee (the developers of ROTT) had to change their plans because id Software (the creators of Wolfenstein 3D) cancelled the project, so their then-upcoming Doom would get more attention. Some allusions to WWII-era Germany were retained in the final game. These can be seen in the weapons and uniforms of enemies (although according to the story, the clothes are from Korea). Some other things stayed pretty much unchanged as well: the bosses, for example, are also very similar to those described in the original design document.
  • According to loading screens, three dev teams from other companies showed their own take on ROTT before Interceptor Entertainment was chosen.
  • Weapons had limited ammo per clip early in the development of the remake, as seen in the multiplayer trailer - the optional reload animations are what's left of this feature.
  • The engine of the original game had support for FLIC videos and a cinematic system, but neither was used.
  • A year before the official remaster was announced, Samuel "Kaiser" Villarreal from Nightdive Studios was porting ROTT on the KEX Engine due to the lack of stable source ports for modern systems at the time. Updates on his port disappeared by January 2020, a few months before the official remaster's reveal. Two years later and the remaster, now called the Ludicrous Edition, is now being handled by Kaiser and his team at Nightdive alongside New Blood Interactive.
  • The remastered game was once handled by Destructive Creations (the same developers of Hatred) and was set to be released on 2021, but nothing came out of it since its announcement until Nightdive and New Blood took over development. According to Scott Miller on the Apogee's Discord server, Destructive Creations' work on the port didn't make any progress and the agreement between them and Apogee expired.
• Word of Saint Paul: John Romero posted a tweet claiming that Heretic and Hexen takes place centuries before Rise of the Triad, and implied that the Order of the Triad, which is mentioned in Heretic's manual as being worshipers of the Serpent Riders, are the same faction as the Triad from Rise of the Triad.

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