Trivia / The Legend of Vox Machina

• Acting for Two:
  • Downplayed with Matthew Mercer, who voices numerous characters in the show, but none of them have directly interacted with each other yet. Similarly, Taliesin Jaffe voices Lord Frederick de Rolo on top of his main role as his son Percival, but while Frederick and a young Percy appear in flashbacks and dream sequences together, they have no direct dialogue with each other.
  • Max Mittelman voices the Briarwoods' carriage driver Desmond, as well as one of the bandits trying to rob said carriage at the end of episode 2.
  • Starting in Season 2, Liam O'Brien is also pulling double duty as both Vax'ildan and Vorugal the Frigid Doom, so far the most Out of Focus member of the Chroma Conclave.
• Actor-Shared Background: By the end of episode 12, Percy has a prosthetic in his hand. Taliesin Jaffe has a benign tremor in his hand, noticeable on the stream occasionally but especially in moments of high emotion. Percy's struggle with Orthax also mirrors Taliesin's own real life struggle with depression, Orthax having been referred to as "the dark specter of [Taliesin's] soul" on stream.
• All-Star Cast: The show's cast is a nice mix of voiceover legends (both guests and non-guests of the original stream) and Hollywood celebs, alongside the main party members (no slouches themselves in the VO community).
• Awesome, Dear Boy: David Tennant wanted to be a part of this after being asked because he found the story of its creation, from friends playing in a living room to an acclaimed multimedia franchise, to be so inspiring.
• Cast as a Mask: Billy Boyd as Garmelie, as Matt Mercer immediately takes over when he's revealed to be Artagan.
• Cast Full of Writers: Matt Mercer and the players from the original campaign count insofar as they shaped the original campaign storyline the cartoon's based on and return to voice many of their characters. Travis Willingham and Sam Riegel also directly contributed to the cartoon's scripting, according to the Internet Movie Database.
• Casting Gag: In "Pass Through Fire", Keyleth's mom Vilya, an Air Ashari who is able to control all four elements, is played by Janet Varney, most famous for playing Avatar Korra. Particularly appropriate since Avatar: The Last Airbender inspired the creation of Keyleth, according to Marisha Rey.
• The Cast Showoff: Sam Riegel, who started his acting career in childhood as a classically trained musical theater actor, predictably puts his talents to use a lot as Scanlan. Later, occasional folk singer Aisling Franciosi also gets in on the action, singing a fun, jaunty duet with Sam as Scanlan's daughter Kaylie.
• Creator Cameo:
  • Along with established roles like Sylas Briarwood (see Descended Creator below), Matt plays multiple smaller NPC roles throughout (see Ink-Suit Actor below), including Victor the Blackpowder Merchant.
  • Felicia Day, who first proposed the streaming of Mercer's game on the Geek & Sundry Twitch channel, and thus spawned the whole enterprise, is killed twice in Episode 2, first by Brimscythe as an Emon soldier, then by Sylas Briarwood as a bandit.
• Descended Creator:
  • Matt Mercer voices Sylas Briarwood, Orthax, Craven Edge, and Umbrasyl, the Hope Devourer.
  • Voice director Mary Elizabeth McGlynn plays Zahra in Season 2, a character she created for the livestream campaign.
• Died During Production: Lance Reddick, who voiced Thordak, passed away in March 2023 during the break between seasons 2 and 3.
• Dueling Works: The first three episodes started streaming two weeks before part 2 of season 2 of Disenchantment, another black comedy fantasy series, started streaming.
• Fake Brit: The actors playing Vox Machina are all American, but Percy and the twins speak with RP English accents, while Grog uses something closer to Cockney. The Briarwoods, who use RP English accents as well, are played by the American Grey Delisle and Matthew Mercer.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Matt Mercer appears a few times as an elf NPC who strongly resembles him, who runs around doing jobs in Tal'Dorei and Vasselheim. Hilariously, most of the scenes with him as this involve Vox Machina making his life complicated in one way or another.
• Older Than They Think: During the Legend of the Story of the Legend of Vox Machina mini-doc, executive producer Brandon Auman claims that no one had tried adapting an RPG campaign into an animated series before The Legend of Vox Machina, except that Record of Lodoss War was also adapted from a series of Basic Dungeons & Dragons replays way back in the 80s and 90s.
• The Other Darrin: Most of the major supporting cast is voiced by a slew of voiceover legends and Hollywood celebrities instead of Matt Mercer, who voiced them on Critical Role. That said, he still voices Trinket, Sylas Briarwood, Orthax, Umbrasyl, and other minor characters.
• Permanent Placeholder:
  • Grey DeLisle was originally only hired to do scratch^note a placeholder audio track used for editing purposes recording for the role of Delilah Briarwood, with another actress cast in the part. The Critical Role team successfully lobbied to have Grey cast as Delilah's final voice instead.
  • Liam was originally Vorugal's scratch track, but the rest of the cast liked his take so much he was kept.
• Playing Against Type: During the watchalong livestream, Will Friedle noted that his role as Kashaw was the first time he had ever said the f-word in an animated project, a fact he seemed well pleased about.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Art director Arthur Loftis is a Critter and one of the original 88887 backers, who was surprised to find out that he would be working on the show.
  • Neal Acree, the composer, is also a fan of Critical Role, and asked personally if he could submit a demo.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor:
  • Bisexual Stephanie Beatriz plays Lady Kima of Vord, who eventually gets married to Arcanist Allura Vysoren.
  • Nonbinary Mason Alexander Park plays the nonbinary tavern keeper who kicks Vox Machina out of their establishment for the Bar Brawl.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Travis Willingham (Grog) and Laura Bailey (Vex) are married in real life, as are Matthew Mercer (Trinket, Sylas Briarwood, Umbrasyl and various minor characters) and Marisha Ray (Keyleth).
  • Zoe O'Brien and Maximus Riegel play the boy and girl of the Shale Steps who interact with Vox Machina. They are, respectively, the children of Liam O'Brien (Vax) and Sam Riegel (Scanlan). Kestrel Riegel, Sam's daughter, plays the young girl strung up in Pike's place on the Sun Tree in Season 1 and young Keyleth in Season 2.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Pike's side quest came from Ashley Johnson's absence during the original stream, due to filming across the country for Blindspot at the time. Unlike the stream, while simply had her needing to watch over the temple, Pike is given a subplot to make up for her absence in Season 1.
• Release Date Change: The special was intended to debut in Fall 2020 as stated in the original Kickstarter. Extending the project into a full series put this in jeopardy, and production delays caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic meant the series was delayed by over a year to February 2022. In December 2021, the date was moved up a week to January 28th, 2022 at midnight Eastern time - but then Prime Video made the content available at midnight GMT. Critical Role's official social media posted announcements about the release at the correct time, though.
• Role Reprise:
  • All of Vox Machina's party members ^note excluding Orion Acaba because he left the show reprise their roles for the show, alongside Matthew Mercer taking up the permanent role of Sylas Briarwood and Umbrasyl, as well as voicing a number of secondary characters.
  • In season two, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn and Will Friedle reprise their roles as guest party members Zahra and Kashaw respectively.
• Sleeper Hit: A highly downplayed example. When the Kickstarter page for the show launched, the cast openly admitted that their $750,000 goal for one episode was quite ambitious, as far as Kickstarters go. To assist in the process, they scheduled a special stream to talk about the Kickstarter project and hype it up for the evening of the launch. However, they deeply underestimated their fans; the Critters pledged the entire $750,000 goal in 40 minutes, hit over one million dollars in under an hour, and had easily crested their highest stretch goal of three million dollars before the stream had even started. The Stunned Silence at the start of that night's stream said it all: they had to come up with more and more stretch goals to fill the month, culminating in a lot of Tension-Cutting Laughter and sheer disbelief at what was happening. Ultimately, all of the stretch goals were hit, with the final total cresting over eleven million dollars.
• Voices in One Room: "The Legend of the Voices of the Legend of Vox Machina" shows that the cast began recording this way for a couple of sessions, but unfortunately the COVID-19 pandemic hit and forced them to record remotely.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally, the show was simply going to be an animated special that adapted one of Vox Machina's pre-stream adventures (with the plan from the start to be using the opportunity to adapt VM taking down Brimscythe, one of their big pre-streaming-days highlights, though this got complicated; see below). However, due to the Kickstarter raising far more money than anticipated (just over fifteen times the goal), it was made into an entire series instead, with the former animated special now serving as a two part series lead-in that segues cleanly into the Briarwood arc.
  • The original introductory arc, once the funding for a full series was confirmed, was going to be a completely different story set in the Crystalfen Caverns below Emon, that would have more of a psychological Mind Screw plot that showed Vox Machina's greatest fears. This was scrapped when the cast and writers realized that this wouldn't have meant anything to viewers who weren't already familiar with the characters, and everyone involved realized that the old, unaired Brimscythe storyline actually would make for a pretty solid introduction to VM overall.
  • As stated under Permanent Placeholder, the role of Delilah Briarwood was originally set to be played by a different actress, with Grey DeLisle just doing placeholder work. Matt Mercer says that Grey was always Critical Role's top choice for the role, however.