Trivia / Twenty One Pilots

• Ascended Fanon: According to Tyler's track-by-track Spotify-exclusive commentary for Vessel, "Ode to Sleep" received its name after the band played the song at a small show when it was untitled and fans were asked to write down and submit possible titles.
• Black Sheep Hit:
  • "House of Gold" is much more genuinely happy and upbeat than most of their songs and contains no rapping, instead being an indie/folk song about Tyler's love for his mother. This led to many stories of people who enjoyed the song and wanted to check out more of the band's work, so the next song they came to would be the band's other most popular song at the time of its release... "Car Radio", a moody and eclectic song with rap verses about struggling with dark, intrusive thoughts.
  • The diversity of their sound gives this quality to almost any of their songs that gains popularity. Stories like this spring up regularly for people whose first song was the pop-rock love ballad "Tear In My Heart" or the laid-back hip-hop track "Stressed Out".
• Creator Backlash:
  • Somewhat of an example with their first two albums. Tyler regularly refers to them as "mixtapes" and "products he tossed together for the merchandise table", and once acted amnesiac when asked about Regional At Best. Even still, songs from those albums are occasionally played at concerts, and Tyler has stated in interviews that while there are elements he considers "sonically wrong" about those amateur projects, they are an honest representation of that stage of his life and career.
  • According to Tyler's Spotify-exclusive Vessel commentary, he disliked the name of "Holding On To You" at first since it sounded more like the name of an '80s rock song to him.
  • After "Stressed Out" became a major radio hit, Tyler began to display some signs of this in interviews, culminating in a performance of the song at a Cleveland concert where he swapped its opening verse out for an alternate verse about how overplayed he felt it had become. This backlash was caused not by any personal distaste for the track, but rather Tyler's perceptions that his song had been co-opted by people who didn't know or care about him and that the fanbase was experiencing Hype Backlash from the song's constant radio play.
  • Tyler confessed in a concert during the Scaled and Icy era that he wrote "Saturday" mainly to be a commercial hit, which "didn't quite pan out"; in "Backslide", from the following album Clancy, he at one point states, "Kinda wishing that I never did 'Saturday'."
• Fan Community Nicknames: The Skeleton Clique (or "the Clique" for short), with individual members commonly identified as "Clikkies". "The Few, The Proud, and The Emotional" also gained some traction after the release of "Fairly Local".
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Regional at Best is out of print and can no longer be purchased digitally. If you want to acquire it through legal means, be prepared to shell out $500+ for a copy of it on eBay, assuming someone is actually selling one.^note This was a result of their decision to re-record songs from Regional at Best for Vessel after signing with Fueled by Ramen.
  • "Time To Say Goodbye", "Two", and "Save" were available on early mixtapes and briefly on the band's official website, but also cannot be purchased.
  • Tyler's self-published solo album No Phun Intended was never widely released and cannot be purchased.
  • The original music video for "House of Gold" takes a bit of digging through YouTube to find now, as it was replaced by the second, higher-budget one for its re-release as a Vessel single.
  • The UK-exclusive video for "Migraine" was never officially released in other regions, although it is readily available online.
• The Pete Best: The other two members of the original lineup, Nick Thomas and Chris Salih, who left before the release of Regional At Best.
• Promoted Fanboy: Josh actually started out as a fan of the band when Nick and Chris were in it, and was personally approached by Chris — who he had worked alongside at Guitar Center for three years — with the offer of replacing him just as he quit his job and was planning on moving to Nashville to forge a drum career. Josh was once quoted saying, "I loved everything about the band, except for one thing: I wasn’t in it."
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Tyler's violent love interest in the video for "Tear In My Heart" is played by his wife Jenna.
  • Both band members' wives make cameo appearances in the Scaled and Icy Livestream Experience. Jenna lip-syncs her own vocal sample from "Saturday", while Debby Ryan plays an angry resident of Mulberry Street who ends the performance of "The Outside" by chucking a bucket of water out the window.
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to original drummer Chris Salih, Tyler initially considered naming their band either "Chill Coat" or "Bicycle Thieves" until discovering other groups with similar names.
  • "Holding On To You" was originally named "Entertain My Faith"; Tyler was convinced to change its name to make it sound more radio-friendly.
  • Tyler and Josh briefly considered naming their 2013 album Schizoid Pop in reference to a semi-critical review's description of their music. They decided that they didn't want to be labeled with that term for their whole career and switched to Vessel.