Trivia / Left 4 Dead

aka: Left 4 Dead 2

• Actor Existence Limbo: Bill got this, and was later killed off, since Bill's voice actor, Jim French, had a busy schedule and had no time to provide new lines for the character. This caused Bill to be Killed Off for Real in The Passing DLC. Valve then reversed the trend by creating The Sacrifice DLC, a campaign that shows how Bill (or any survivor of your choice) meets their end. This time, French returned and provided new lines for The Sacrifice. Eventually averted when French passed away in 2017, several years after Valve stopped updating the game. However, in 2020, they released the Last Stand DLC, with a brand-new campaign for the original Survivors, employing previously unused voice clips to allow them to react to the map and tell a story the same way they do with all the other maps.
• Approval of God: Valve loves community made content and share it whenever they can. For specific examples, the most recent update to the second game included "The Last Stand" as well as 20 fan-made survival maps, Cold Stream has been available for years now, and while they never published the fan map "Dead Before Dawn" themselves, they did give the development team a unique clip of Francis saying "I hate malls" for them to use.
• Ascended Fanon:
  • During the development of Left 4 Dead 2, Valve noticed that the community loved making things explode and wanted more like it, so they tossed in the Grenade Launcher just for that.
  • After the first game's release, a newgrounds user made a Metal genre cover of the Tank's theme. All the way into the Last Stand update in 2020, the theme has become official, playing in the finale of the Last Stand map.
• Ascended Glitch: The infamous Sugar Mill wasn't always filled with Witches, it was just the result of a programming error that the developers ended up liking due to the challenge, then justified in-story by saying the smell of sugarcane attracts Witches.
• Bad Export for You:
  • The German version of the game is censored for violence, and is more difficult as a result (you can't tell if a Hunter is on fire because the flames would be censored, and you can't tell if a common infected is dead or not because it's not dismembered) so a number of weapons are ported from Counter-Strike Source to make up for it. The Australian version of the game is also censored, but they don't get bonus weapons.
  • Since Taito discontinued the online servers and general availability for Left 4 Dead: Survivors in 2017, "The Last Stand" was the only campaign that is not available for the Japanese arcade port, this also includes the update itself that adds the previously German-exclusive Counter-Strike: Source weapons, two new melee weapons, and the Left 4 Dead Common Infected in the original Left 4 Dead maps.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Although the line "WHOO! BUMPER CARS!" is often misattributed to Francis thanks to popular Garry's Mod videos, he never actually says that in either of the games. The voice clip used in those videos is actually that of Mattias Nilsson from Mercenaries (voiced by Peter Stormare), who bears a striking resemblance to Francis and vice-versa.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: A minor case, where several outlets misinterpreted a statement before the release of Left 4 Dead 2 and reported that the game takes place one week before L4D1, rather than one week later.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Female Infected, with the exception of the Witch, are still played by male voice actors.
• The Danza: Rochelle Aytes voices Rochelle the survivor.
• Dummied Out:
  • The "fallen survivor" uncommon infected, which was brought back (albeit with a very different ability) in The Passing.
  • Many survivor dialogue lines are in the game's files, but are not used unless enabled through modded talkers.
• Fake American: Nick, an American implied to be from the Northeast, is played by Hugh Dillon, a Canadian actor and musician.
• Follow the Leader:
  • High Voltage Software's cancelled game The Grinder looked to several people like "Left 4 Dead Wii" upon its first announcement. It was a FPS on the Wii, but the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions changed formats to a top-down shooter, making it more like a Spiritual Successor for High Voltage's own Hunter: The Reckoning.
  • PAYDAY: The Heist is basically "Left 4 Dead as a crime simulator" - which Valve and Overkill have run with, going so far as to make a mission for PAYDAY actually set in Mercy Hospital. By the time the second game is released, the gameplay additions, such as RPG Elements and Character Customization, sets it apart from Left 4 Dead.
  • The End Times: Vermintide is just as blatantly influenced as Payday, with the special enemies, inventory slots and health mechanics practically copy-pasted from Left 4 Dead. Again, critics mostly agree that this isn't a bad thing. Like PAYDAY above, it received a sequel with greater emphasis on RPG Elements.
  • There is also World War Z (2019), which is also a co-op squad shooter set in a Zombie Apocalypse. Like the above two, it also features RPG Elements and Character Customization.
  • Deep Rock Galactic was conceptualized as Left 4 Dead meets Minecraft.
• Game Mod:
  • Being a Source engine game, there was the obligatory deluge of custom campaigns and replacements for models and sounds, which Left 4 Dead 2 made even easier to install with its Steam Workshop support.
  • Left 4 Dead itself in fact originated as a special game setup for Counter-Strike (bots with knives only), which itself originated as a mod for Half-Life.
• No Dub for You: Formerly Dummied Out lines weren't dubbed for foreign localizations because they weren't used in the English version. Thus, when they were restored by The Last Stand, the survivors will switch to speaking English when the lines are played in alternate languages.
• Promoted Fanboy: The Last Stand DLC was created entirely by prominent modders and released by Valve as an official expansion to the game.
• Prop Recycling:
  • In a neat bit of recursion, most censored international versions of Left 4 Dead 2 allow players to use weapon models cribbed from Counter-Strike: Source (the knife, MP5, 552 Commando, Scout and AWP), as a sort of apology for the censorship. Then Counter-Strike: Global Offensive returned the favor by cribbing several models from L4D2 for its arsenal (the Glock, Desert Eagle, MAC-10, and AK-47). And then, the CSGO AK-47 and Desert Eagle were added to the game with the The Last Stand update as possible weapon skins, as can be seen in the eponymous campaign in a foot locker seen right before the finale.
  • Besides this, both games have a tendency to reuse map props from Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, and Day of Defeat: Source
  • The Last Stand's first stage inexplicably features VAZ-like cars with Russian license plates, taken from an asset pack used by the map maker.
• Schedule Slip: Averted, but you would have expected it given the creator's past history. Valve is infamously known for their Valve Time where they either set a date for a release for something and it gets delayed (sometimes several times) or they don't mention a release date at all until the product is good and ready to ship out. Left 4 Dead 2 is one of the few exceptions to the rule; the game was released one year after the original Left 4 Dead due to Valve wanting to prove that they can release on a fixed schedule.^note According to a former Valve dev, the actual reason behind the sudden sequel was due to the technical mess that the first game had and would take too long to fix over time, which would also interfere with mods. The sequel basically let the dev team start over from scratch with an updated Source engine. This action caused a Broken Base and it's best to leave it at that.
  • Over a decade later however, Left 4 Dead 2 has pretty much supplanted the original and still regularly has over 10,000 people online.
• Urban Legend of Zelda:
  • In The Passing, there were rumors of using a defib unit on Bill to bring him back to life. It was quickly proven false^note his body does not have a red outline when you hold out the item and his body is propped up against the generator, which wouldn't play the defib animations correctly since all survivors that die always have a set pose for this, and a few patches later they added a unique message for people attempting it: "Bill doesn't need revival."
  • One myth that many believe to this day is healing each other with first aid kits instead of using them on yourself will make the director spawn more first aid kits due to using more "teamwork." There has been no concrete proof of this.
  • Despite rumors saying there's a very slim chance of it, the Church Guy never turns into a Tank (just a Boomer, Hunter, or Smoker).
• What Could Have Been: So much that it has its own page.
• Word of Saint Paul: Coach's VA Chad Coleman has stated that he believes Coach's real name is Wendell Jones, though Valve have not confirmed or denied this.