Trivia / Twilight Histories

• Actor-Shared Background: The Ukrainian characters in "Ghosts of Chernobyl" are voiced by actual Ukrainian voice actors, some of whom recorded from within an active war zone during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
• Approval of God: Sam McDonald was pleasantly surprised to see his idea for a sea-faring Inca Empire mini-episode incorporated into “OMG Daily.”
• Crossdressing Voices: A necessity given that each episode usually only uses a single narrator.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: The Twilight Histories Patreon regularly holds contests for fans to submit ideas for mini shows.
• Promoted Fanboy: Josh, Kevin, Tristan, and Devon were all big fans of the podcast before getting a chance to be part of the team. In fact, Kevin modeled his former podcast Voices From the Ages off of Twilight Histories.
  • Likewise, Sam McDonald, Tyler Bugg, and Christopher Moore were also big fans before getting a chance to write guest episodes.
• Reality Subtext: "Ghosts of Chernobyl" deals with a Russian invasion of Ukraine. As noted under Actor-Shared Background, the voice actors recorded their lines from within war zones during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
• Shown Their Work: The writers take great care to accurately portray the different cultures and time periods the show explores.
• What Could Have Been: Fittingly enough for an alternate history podcast, it has a few examples:
  • “The Winged Victory was going to be the grand finale for the series. Jordan was worried that he wasn’t able to get the episodes out fast enough, and was going to pull the plug on the show. Then, a fan named Josh Hutchins asked to write an episode. Jordan said yes, the episode was a success, and Jordan took Josh on as a fellow writer, before expanding the team to include several other writers. Jordan himself gained a second wind of inspiration, and the rest is history, or perhaps, alternate history.
  • Jordan planned for an episode exploring a world where a Buddhist philosopher opened a school in Athens, but nothing ever came of this.
  • Likewise, Jordan also planned an episode where Ethiopia aided Christians during the Crusades.
  • Another episode Jordan planned involved a world where the American Revolution never happened.
  • Sam McDonald has stated that he wanted to write a follow-up episode to “True Aztec” The framing device would follow the characters in the aftermath of invasion, but with the bulk being about Tupac’s life in Cusco before moving to Tenochtitlan.
  • Speaking of which, the original draft of “True Aztec” had Necalli not be a religious fanatic. There was a separate unnamed street priest who filled that role. Instead, Necalli killed Xiuhcoatl by accident. Sam decided to combine Necalli and the priest in the subsequent draft.
  • Sam has mentioned that before he settled on Jingjing and Haruhi’s names he kicked around with naming them Jia Li and Haruko
  • In fact, “True Aztec” almost didn’t happen. Sam McDonald was worried that he wouldn’t be able to measure-up to the greatness of Twilight Histories. He instead offered some short stories he’d been trying to sell. Jordan encouraged him that he did have what it took to write a great Twilight Histories story. “True Aztec” soon resulted from this.