Trivia / RiffTrax

• Approval of God: The crew are fully aware of and approve of the various "Best of..." compilations throughout YouTube. They even leave comments on some of them. Heck, they've even linked the "RiffTrax vs. Coronet" video on their own site!
• California Doubling: During the Batman shorts, the guys make a number of jokes about how Gotham City looks a lot like rural 1940s southern California.
  • The same applies for The Dark Knight, since the filmmakers didn't do anything to hide the fact that "Gotham City" was actually Chicago.
• The Cast Showoff: Usually inverted. Kevin and Mike can both sing but they usually get Disembaudio to sing (badly) during the closing credits. Sometimes they play it straight and let Kevin show off.
• Cast the Expert:
  • Parodied when James Lileks appeared to co-riff Spider-Man 3 with Mike. James is a huge Spider-Man fan and some of the jokes involve him getting irritated about adaptation differences, but it's made clear that (within the track itself) Mike doesn't give a shit and James is just going off on his own.
  • The Adventures of Captain Marvel, their second comic book serial after 1949's Batman and Robin, features writing credits for comic book creators Gail Simone and Matt Fraction.
• Creator Backlash: At the very least Bill agrees with several fans that the transphobic jokes against The Wachowskis in the track for The Matrix Reloaded were highly offensive and he's since assured that the jokes have been edited out.
• Creator's Favorite: Kevin ranks The Guy from Harlem as one of the series's top five riffs, along with Space Mutiny, The Day the Earth Froze, Miami Connection and Twilight.
• Dawson Casting: Bridget and Mary Jo riff a collection of '40s films called The Teen-Agers, specifically Junior Prom, Freddie Steps Out, High School Hero and Vacation Days. The women always make it known that these teenagers look a hell of a lot older than they are.^note For the most part, they're in their 20s.
  • A particularly egregious example in the movie Blood Theatre. The guys are genuinely shocked to discover that the actors, who look like they're in their 30s, are supposed to be playing high school teenagers:
  (When the lead actress begins to undress)
  Bill: Ugh. Exploiting this actress. Where were her parents?! Or her husband of twelve years and her four kids?
• Distanced from Current Events: At the Sharknado 2: The Second One live, they decided against including a joke about Jared Fogle's cameo, since he had been arrested on multiple counts of pedophilia and possession of child pornography the week before.
• Edited for Syndication: Some riffs are condensed versions of the film. Most cases are that the film itself featured some kind of graphic violence and/or sexual content^note Notably, Jack Frost is missing the infamous death by rape scene, copyright issues^note It's a Wonderful Life or simply have too much padding for its own good.^note Spiker
  • The YouTube re-release of The Star Wars Holiday Special omits the entire Boba Fett animated sequence, likely due to copyright issues.^note As of 2020, Disney acknowledges the segment as canon and it is available on Disney+.
  • For the Santa Claus live, the guys claim that they're going to riff the unedited version complete with the full devil dance scene. However, the scene shown is still a truncated version that doesn't include a whole segment that shows some sinister-looking monks/priests making their way to hell as the devil's dance. These hooded figures can be seen briefly in the background right before Lucifer makes the devils disappear.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Wizards of the Lost Kingdom was taken down, possibly due to rights complications. Interestingly, the film would later be used for Season 11 of MST3K with completely different jokes.
  • A number of the official DVDs are out of print due to Legend Films going out of business.
  • Various riffs are (as of 2022) no longer available on the website, largely for licensing purposes. If obtained prior to its removal, you may as well circulate it.
• Milestone Celebration: The Live riffing of The Return of Swamp Thing featured a "sweet sixteen" celebration of RiffTrax.
• Missing Episode: The guys couldn't get the rights to physically release the Starship Troopers live, necessitating a separate audio recording.
  • This seems to be the default situation for the live episodes from Sony, as Godzilla won't receive a DVD release; instead, they included a gift certificate for the site for supporters in a certain tier to compensate for them having to get a DVD of Godzilla to play the riffs. In the case of Sony's films, it seems, according to Word of God, that the problem lies in them having to negotiate with and pay rights to two different departments within Sony for both the live show and VoD/DVD rights. Since the expense in time and money is significant, they've gone the live-only route for them.
  • The Manos: The Hands of Fate live DVD removed all references to Manos 2: The Search for Valley Lodge.
  • For reasons unknown, although signs point to the film's licensing rights being taken by someone who doesn't like sharing, MegaForce is nowhere to be seen on the website. It has since been reissued as a Just the Jokes audio file.
  • Ditto for the The Room (2003) live "due to a certain litigious cast member who will remain nameless". (Purely for comedy purposes, they claim it actually wasn't Tommy Wiseau, but in fact the guy who says "Lisa looks hot tonight".)
  • Comments from RiffTrax seems to indicate that the The Five Doctors live will also not get a VOD or DVD.^note Bootlegs do exist.
  • Following Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka being outed as a serial spousal abuser, Troll 2 was removed from the site. His November 2021 death is unlikely to affect this decision. As of July 2022, it has become available once more.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content:
  • The riffs for Troll 2 and Batman & Robin.
  • The Santa Claus live had one riff by a fan for a contest as well.
  • 2017 saw uploads of pre-existing fan-made riff compilations, fully supported by the riffers
• Orphaned Series: Has its own page on franchises they have never completed since they shifted their focus on B-movies rather than Hollywood blockbusters.
• Padding: The guys never fail to mock examples of this each and every time they see it. And since they riff a lot of low-budget films with paper-thin plots, they have many, many opportunities to do so.
  • Curse of Bigfoot is an especially bad example. It takes over half an hour for the actual plot to even get started, and even then there's still long sections of characters mountain climbing and the like. At least half the riffs are about the ridiculous amount of padding. Mike's Nick Nolte impression is very present and very funny.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Neil Patrick Harris is a big MSTie and got to riff Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory with Mike. This would eventually be turned up to eleven when he guest starred on the Netflix revival itself.
  • Longtime fan Harry Partridge was given the opportunity to create an animated opening for the crew.
• Technology Marches On: Extrapolated backwards in Captain America: The First Avenger with a giant metal disc that holds ten thousand bits of information.
• Throw It In!: If they think a joke is particularly funny, the crew will leave their laughter in as opposed to editing it out. During live shows, it can go on for several minutes and almost derail the commentary.
  (After Kevin's "Whoa!" when Santa says to Rudolph "I need you tonight" gets an especially huge response)
  Bill: Well, we lost three lines in that.
  Kevin: It was worth every moment.
  • During the 2016 Sketchfest, the last short freezes, causing the ten riffers to ad-lib for a couple minutes while the projectionist finds where to pick up where they left off. This is all kept in the filmed version.
  • During the opening credits of Dressed to Kill, Bridget flubs her line "performed entirely in shadow puppetry" and accidentally says "puppet shadowery" instead, causing Mary Jo to bust out laughing.
• What Could Have Been: The guys wanted to riff Baffled! and Moment by Moment but were unable to obtain the rights.
  • Similarly, they tried to make a live for The Room but Wiseau wouldn't let them, not right away at least (he apparently called their office and yelled at whoever answered the phone). However, this changed, as they were able to do a live show on May 6, 2015, having raised enough with Kickstarter.
  • They really wanted to do Miami Connection live but Alamo Drafthouse didn't want to license to them. As with The Room, this changed in 2015, as they raised enough money via Kickstarter to successfully negotiate with Alamo Drafthouse for the rights for an October 1 live show.
  • Moment by Moment was never released on home video^note There is a German DVD release (region 2), by MIG Filmgroup, that exists but it can be difficult to find and must be imported. As of yet, no region 1 release exists due to its poor reception so a normal mp3 commentary is impossible due to that which is why they would need to license it.
    • The film eventually saw a DVD and Blu-ray release by Kino Lorber, in August of 2021, but no word on a Rifftrax version as of yet.
  • The Starship Troopers live happened because the guys couldn't get permission to riff their original choice, Twilight.
    • And even that's still well in the realm of What Still Could Be — according to Mike, Bill and Kevin, the response from the licensor was not "hell no!" but instead "We'd love to, but we're not done with it yet. Come back to us in a few years."
  • They offered Neil Breen to riff one of his films but he declined (apparently, Breen doesn't care for the so-bad-it's-good status of his work).
  • In 2008, Legend Films announced a 3D colorized version of Night of the Living Dead would be available on RiffTrax along with a new three-riffer commentary from the trio. The updated commentary did materialize the following year, but the 3D color version... didn't.

---