Trivia / Mass Effect 2

• Actor Allusion:
  • The krogan are very similar to Klingons. It's no surprise then that Wrex's adviser Gatatog Uvenk is voiced by an actor famous for playing a Klingon.
  • Kal'Reegar, the quarian you meet before facing the Geth Colossus, concerns himself less with politicking and more with shooting, just like another character played by Adam Baldwin.
  • Miranda, the Cerberus Femme Fatale, is voiced by (and modeled after) Adam Baldwin's co-star from Chuck, Yvonne Strahovski, who plays Sarah Walker, a CIA Femme Fatale.
  • Steve Blum plays a strong, deadly, artificially created, technically newborn lizard warrior with a childlike (for his species) demeanor, a love for battle and an Undying Loyalty to his human master. Just like Guilmon.
  • Mordin's actor really did perform Gilbert and Sullivan.
  • One of the ways EDI messes with Joker when Shepard talks with the latter is to move his chair around a few times. One of the gags in Austin Powers was when Dr. Evil's chair went out of control and spun him around. Although Seth Green's character in the movies didn't have that happen to him then.
  • Ali Hillis plays Liara who comes off as cold and ruthless, traverses a place with lightning all around to get to a person named Feron, then defrosts after it is over. Hmm, Lightning and Feron! Where have we heard those phrases before?
• Ascended Fanon: BioWare's response to Garrus' and Tali's popularity and the fans' desire to have them romance options.
• Dummied Out:
  • Cut news reports for ME2 show what results Shepard's actions would have had. Had Shepard endorsed Charles Saracino, then Terra Firma would have gained seats in the recent election. Had Shepard refused, then Saracino would have been charged with tax evasion. They're restored in the Legendary Edition version.
  • Apparently, Zaeed was planned so it would be possible for him be taught proper squad tactics in the suicide mission, allowing the specialist to live and surviving the long walk if he's the fire team leader.
    Zaeed: Suppression fire. Something comes through the door, kill it.
  • Much like Kaidan from the first game, Thane Krios was originally intended as a bisexual romance option. Some dialogue from his romance with Male Shep is still floating around the Internet.
  • The post-Horizon squadmates—Samara, Tali, Thane, and Legion—have unique pieces of dialogue that were rendered inaccessible by the decision to split the party recruitment into two separate phases, in order to fit the game onto two discs. It's possible to modify your save game to get them in your party earlier, where they'll have normal lines almost everywhere. (The one exception is Horizon itself; only Tali has lines there.)
  • Like in Mass Effect, same-sex romance options were apparently planned and even partially voiced and scripted, but dummied out in the final version. See also Bury Your Gays and Hide Your Lesbians.
  • The newly introduced heat sink system was initially implemented as a more logical hybrid system in which the heat sinks cool down and "fill up" again, if not ejected. Reportedly playtesters didn't like it, so the cooldown was dummied out. Editing some values in the game's internal .ini file allows re-enabling the hybrid system at the risk of unbalancing some guns that were balanced for the new system.
  • The PS3 version of the game has a few things dummied out, namely that it will always be Liara who is seen evacuating people from the Normandy at the start of the game, as "Mass Effect: Genesis" (the interactive recap of the first game) takes place following the title card, so the game has no way of knowing if Kaidan or Ashley will be alive in the game. (In the PC and 360 versions, Liara will only be seen in the opening cutscene if she was romanced in the first game.) Even if a save file is imported from the PSN release of the first game, Liara is still the only one seen.
  • There was originally supposed to be a loyalty conflict between Mordin and Grunt, similar to the ones between Jack and Miranda and Tali and Legion.
  • Mordin was originally a biotic, and he would have been a "good" choice as the biotic specialist during the suicide mission.
  • There are even more death scenes during the trip through the Omega-4 relay, also dummied out thanks to the aforementioned decision to split the game.
  • The Paragon version of Conrad's sidequest was accidentally dummied out thanks to a save import error. This one is referenced in Mass Effect 3; Conrad apologizes for claiming that you put a gun to his head when you didn't. This was not rectified for the Legendary Edition version.
  • The DLC Firewalker side missions had a lot of interesting logs cut out; most notably, the Dr. Cayce from Firewalker was supposed to be revealed to be Dr. Manuel, the rambling scientist on Eden Prime in the first game.
• Executive Meddling:
  • Ahead of the anniversary re-release, a dev on Twitter revealed that there were originally two additional same-sex romance options in the game (between FemShep/Jack and ManShep/Jacob). It got far enough into development that the scenes between them were fully animated before the decision was made to cut them, citing fear of boycotts from Heteronormative Crusader groups.
  • The developers themselves decided to tone down and cut back on the gratuitous butt shots in some scenes with Miranda due to acknowledging that they did not age particularly well and clashed with the tone of the scenes.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Brandon Keener didn't sleep for over 24 hours before recording for Garrus' recruitment mission in order to authentically sound like he had just spent several days fighting waves of mercs.
• Meme Acknowledgment: BioWare merchandising produced shirts for the "Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest sonofabitch in space!" and "I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store on the Citadel" memes.
• Multi-Disc Work: The Xbox 360 version was split into two discs, however, disc 1 is required again for endgame content.
• The Other Darrin:
  • The voice for the man trying to get a refund from the turian shopkeeper on the Citadel doesn't sound anything like it did in the first game. If he didn't specifically mention that he'd been trying to get a refund for two years, most players probably wouldn't have noticed it was him.
  • Mordin is the only major character to switch voice actors between games. Few noticed the difference.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Martin Sheen as the Illusive Man.
  • Carrie-Anne Moss as Aria.
  • Kal'Reegar is a much more open-minded, upstanding character than some of Adam Baldwin's more notable roles, standing in sharp contrast to Chuck and his parts in the Whedon universe.
  • Fred Tatasciore, the man behind Saren himself and other deep-voiced characters, voices the noticeably high-pitched Maelon.
• Pre-Order Bonus: If you pre-ordered at GameStop, you get a M-490 Blackstorm heavy weapon^note Which shoots exploding black holes and the Terminus Armor, and if you pre-ordered at EBGames, you get the Inferno Armor. However, the Inferno Armor is now available as part of the Equalizer Pack DLC, and the Terminus Armor and Blackstorm weapon are available as free DLC.
• Star-Making Role: Legion is one of two roles that made a star out of D.C. Douglas, the other being Albert Wesker.
• Throw It In!: Michael Beattie, Mordin's voice actor, came up with the idea of sharply breathing between sentences. It's now considered one of Mordin's defining characteristics.
• What Could Have Been: The Mass Effect Wiki has a comprehensive list. Some examples:
  • Cut content from the Firewalker DLC reveals that one of the scientists you're trying to find was a minor NPC from the first game on Eden Prime, the one who was "raving".
  • Unimplemented content, pre-release posts on Weekes's dev blog, and other leaks indicate that Tali, Miranda and Thane could be romanced by Shepards of either gender in earlier development. In the final product, the most visible remainder of this is that most of Tali's lines are the same for both Shepards, which are clearly intended to nudge the player to a romance with her. Female Shepard can even attempt to initiate a romance with Tali, but she will dodge the issue.
  • Similarly, Kenneth and Gabriella were meant to be romanceable like Kelly.
  • Character recruitment was originally intended to be much more open-ended, and modding your save file to add party members before you should be able to recruit them will let you hear their dialog for earlier circumstances, such as taking Legion to Purgatory. This likely changed because of the late decision to split the Xbox 360 version of the game into two discs; the forced recruitment progression funnels the player along a path that's not entirely linear, but predictable enough to split the game with.
  • A few leftover voice recordings in the released game indicated that Liara was initially intended to have a much deeper and longer storyline — which was later made a reality with the DLC Lair of the Shadow Broker.
  • Early video previews showed more involved gun mechanics; weapons would cool down on their own à la the first game, with ejectable thermal clips as a "need More Dakka right this second" option. Specialized ammunition was shown to be a consumable resource instead of a passive ability and as such could be turned on or off at will.
  • Going through the dialogue and screen text files reveals that several of the loyalty missions originally had very different plots:
    "Bored with being the galaxy's top bounty hunter, Zaeed's also exhausted by up-and-comers seeking a rep written in his blood. Now he's learned that the second-best bounty hunter has gone corporate, and job one is to kill Zaeed. Zaeed's plan: wipe them out first... with extreme prejudice."
    "You helped Zaeed fake his own death, and he's grateful."
    "Kasumi revealed that Nava Corp has designed and is about to unleash tailored bio-viruses against the citizens of the Alliance. Only Nava Corp possesses the vaccines. Kasumi needs you to help stop Nava Corp permanently."
  • Mordin was initially intended to be biotic. One correct choice for maintaining Biotic Barrier during suicide mission. Dummied Out content lampshaded by Jack in ME3. Claims Mordin could have protected the party from seekers by incessant babbling. Also, initially would have come into conflict with Grunt. The two have next to no problems with each other.
  • Jacob was supposed to come into conflict with Thane, as seen in his reaction to recruiting him. Instead, it's a small jab that goes nowhere.
  • A cut sidequest in ME2 originally had Shepard forced to find some red sand for Jack, due the fact that Cerberus experimentation meant that red sand was the only thing that could help her sleep without levitating everything in the room.
  • All post-Horizon squadmates have hidden dialogue for earlier in the game, but Legion came off a bit worse than Tali, Thane or Samara because Legion was meant to be Shepard's first squadmate and the person who recovered Shepard's body to give to Cerberus.
  • Jack was originally meant to be pansexual and romanceable by Shepherd regardless of gender, while Jacob was specifically imagined as a gay man and potential love interest for ManShep. Their respective routes were far enough in development to be fully animated before being cut (see Executive Meddling, above), and Jack and Jacob's romance routes were repurposed to permit different-sex relationships only.