The Runaway Guys Colosseum/Trivia

This is a planned Trivia section for the TRG Colosseum page to lessen the bloat of the main page.

Some trivia regarding the totals come from this spreadsheet kept up by Kinstone's archive group.

General Trivia
The trivia below apply to most (if not all) of the events.


 * The "Colosseum" moniker is not exclusive to TRG's charity events. Kinstone and Direct Relief Gaming also uses this name for Mario Masters Colosseum.
 * TRG Colosseum was not only the first of these, but also the most consistent to happen every year. Since its inception in 2018, it has been an annual event even through the COVID-19 pandemic. It has also raised the most money compared to the other Colosseum-labeled events, for per-segment total, event total, and grand total between all events.
 * The logos and stream package also looks the same. In 2023, Kaizo Colosseum (hosted on GrandPooBear's channel on the weekend of August 18th) had the same style of logo update that TRG Colo did earlier that year.
 * Pokéthon, another event run by Kinstone and Direct Relief Gaming, also uses a similar stream overlay but is not grouped under the Colosseum name.
 * The spelling used reflects the spelling of the game Pokémon Colosseum, which Emile has LP'd in the past.
 * The Tiltify account used for these events was originally MC's account. This was later renamed to simply "Colosseum".
 * The Lamp and Lord Dona'tor were both conceived because of this event and have since become staples of the show to some degree.
 * Emile's LP during the inaugural event was Pokémon Black and White. Several months before the event, in Episode 40 of that LP, he reveals that he does a little dance upon hearing the Hiker Encounter theme in Black and White (and its sequels) to annoy friends. This "Hiker Dance" has stuck as the theme that plays for every USD$10,000 milestone since, to Jon's chagrin.
 * Jon genuinely started to hate the dance due to the repetitive nature and doesn't hide it, mostly due to his own segment (Chaos Cookie) crossing the $10,000 threshold multiple times. Reluctantly, he tries to spice things up when doing it by swinging other objects like Rosa's star nunchucks ( especially when he was cosplaying as Rosa ), for example. At the end of TRG Colo 2023, he literally exits the frame upon someone else mentioning it.

2018

 * A stranger who was high suddenly tried to break in during the event. Jack persuaded the person away claiming the party they're looking for is down the road.
 * This is the only event where Kinstone crew members other than MC, Jyggy, and Kampy were a part of the production crew, including Abra. They appeared on or by the couch throughout the event, but not all of them participated.

2019

 * Bumpers began airing during intermission starting with this event. This would culminate to more elaborate and creative bumpers in the following years that would add up in view time. While this year's bumper compilation would barely fit a two-hour segment, watching a more recent one would easily fill a single two-hour segment.
 * The event took place in Stephen and Dan’s home state at the time, which enabled them both to edit each bumper from home and in a timely manner. This is how some bumpers were filmed on Myrtle Beach itself, inside Stephen's house at the time, and the mall in which the Player's Choice game store and arcade are located in. The latter bumper featured the owner, Roland. and his one-liner of "Money." was the inspiration for the :georgMoney: emote on Stephen's Twitch channel.
 * The vacation home they used was a three-story duplex with many stairs and an elevator. Furnished inside were TVs, a pool table, a foosball table, many refrigerators, many sofas, a long dining table and kitchen, multiple washing machines, and enough individual bedrooms for everyone to have their own bed and bathroom (even on their side of the duplex). They somehow got in trouble for elevator issues, but it was a previous tenant and not them.
 * Despite the mixup, they were able to keep using it for the Team East and master stream side of the 2022 event (though coerced to do the event earlier than expected due to expiring AirBNB credits).
 * A new mainstay tradition began in giving the spotlight to the musicians of the group in their own musical concert segments. This change introduced Carlos/insaneintherainmusic, Sab_Irene, and Jerod/The8BitDrummer to the mix of guests, and Adriana got her own singing segment (modeled after her singing streams that she started doing just over a year prior at this point).
 * Starting this year, bait-and-switch remixes of “Play a Mini Game” from Mario Party 1 play during intermissions between segments (rather than before the bumper with an event info interlude), courtesy of the “HQ rip” VGM remix team known as TimmyTurnersGrandDad.
 * The Lamp was rigged to be able to change its light color, and an incentive was added to specifically change that color with a hex value or color name.
 * There was a Soul Caliber VI segment that featured custom-made fighters by Jewker. Some of these were Jon's early alts, such as Jumney's Rosajon, Icee's Joanne, and Tiger-Brows' Cat-Jon and Goose Jon (Female).
 * This is both the only four-day and five-day event. There is one segment missing in the playlist, that being Jules' bonus "Day 5" incentive segment streamed to his channel from Emile's house a week(?) after to push the final total past $180k. It was a Mario 64 speedrun race between Jules and Masae, much like the Mario 64 speedrun race from the year prior that began their soft speedrun rivalry that's referenced in later years. The only surviving footage of this stream is in a highlight clip posted by 1PressL2P. As far as we know, Jules did not archive the original VOD and it may be lost to time.
 * This bonus segment, as explained by Emile, was an incentive during the 2D Mario Relay Race on Day 4 that would've happened right before the finale (the next segment after) as a bonus race. Due to time, the incentive was quickly replaced by the now-infamous Jump Up, Super Star!/"THIS IS AN AD" singalong at the end of the 2019 Super Mario Odyssey Moon Race during Day 4's finale. The team decided to do the incentive anyway as a separate stream because so much money was being raised for it to be met before the goal changed.
 * There was a $180,000 goal incentive made during the last segment for sending Jon to bed early. This made everyone STOP donating instead. Though not played straight, this was referenced by Emile when the milestone was finally reached. During the bonus segment, it forced Jules to change his speedrun to 70 stars (rather than 16 stars, which is possible thanks to a glitch). For every additional thousand dollars donated after, Masae must collect 1 extra star.
 * Though officially "Day 4.5", if you count this segment as "Day 5" like the Bokoblin spreadsheet does, this is the only event that has lasted five days. Technically, Colosseum campaigns run for several months before closing, but this actually counted as an official day of the event even if it only lasted one segment and was mostly done to push the grand total higher one last time.
 * The final total on Day 4 at the finale was $178,106. Before this segment started, the total went up about 150 dollars to $178,260 (even).
 * The team opted to return to a three-day format for future iterations. The main reason cited was simply because of exhaustion; a three-day event was already a lot, especially now that they've upped the production value with an intro and bumpers. Since TRG is not as big as Zeldathon, it's not sustainable for them.

2020 (Direct)

 * The official name of the event (Direct) alludes to Nintendo becoming very sparse with major announcement keynotes ever since the pandemic began as a way to avoid publicly announcing so many COVID-caused delays (among other unknown reasons). The announcement clearly makes a jab toward this fact.
 * Three new guests for the event were related to relationships, one of them being Donnabellez since she was dating Tom at the time. Similarly, the wife of Jerod (former Twitch staff Erika/Chatia) and Josh's now-former wife (not-yet-VTuber FireLordBrooke) make their first guest appearances in the history of the event AND the channel. Brooke did not appear on camera during any segment she was in.
 * The Lamp does not appear outside of the non-canon bumper, The Lamp, because Stephen and Mal had kept The Lamp at their house for safekeeping between events, physically separating it from Lord Dona’tor despite what the ending scene of the 2019 event’s outro suggests. This fact is played out in later events.
 * This is the first year that new TTGD rips would air during intermission, now including song remixes other than MP1's "Play a Mini-Game". While slowly uploaded on the former’s YouTube starting a week after the event, playlists of these “rips” (separated by year) can be found on Brawlcat’s YouTube channel.
 * This is also the first time Chaos Fortune Cookie was run as a segment by Jon, which he had done for previous charity streams. Now as an adaptation of the Stephen and Friends' Extra Life format, Jon's entire game collection was in the pool as a donation incentive to change the game every 30 minutes (see previous hyperlink for details). Any games in the Top 10 and 20 at the end of the event would eventually be played in 30-minute intervals on bonus streams thanks to an incentive.
 * A long-running gag between Stephen and Jon's community (since Stephen's EL 2018) also ends in the first ever "Disc Only" segment to occur within Chaos Cookie thanks to "Game Boy Player (no game)" winning the donation incentive race at one point. This eventually spawned the podcast of the same name two months later that is still ongoing, as well as an entire segment being dedicated to it in the 2023 event—the first time said podcast has been recorded in-person and with cameras.
 * This is currently the only event where multiple surprise special guests appeared throughout the weekend:
 * Voice actor D.C. Douglas appeared in a bumper, both as himself and a mo-capped Albert Wesker.
 * Following Douglas, legendary composer Grant Kirkhope also appeared in a bumper, giving a shoutout to FamilyJules who has made metal covers of his works from the Banjo-Kazooie series.
 * Voice actress Lindsay Jones (from RWBY) is the only surprise guest to be in an actual segment this year, playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons with Jules, Adri, Jack, and other TRG friends.
 * Immediately following the AC:NH segment, VoiceoverPete features in a bumper telling people to donate. His appearance was apparently commissioned by Emile.

2021

 * RosaJon hosted most of Jon's segments in part due to a previous charity stream's incentive. The lore reason given was that Jon had an "emergency", revealed in a bumper to simply be wanting to play Picross on Switch.


 * Lucah also starts using her VTuber avatar in some segments. It would have been six months since her debut using her first model, which cameos in one bumper, completely done by Buffpup from a time when she still took commissions. She primarily uses her “Horse Mom” model otherwise, but her appearance in this model predates the brush-up of her model’s rigging by BunChata; the rig shown in her segments is also that of Buffpup's.
 * This was also the first year that commemorative shirts were available, with a design from Drew Wise. All shirt proceeds went to the charity. It has a blue color scheme, which matches the general color scheme of the TRG brand.
 * The person who made the shirts possible, Jirard from TheCompletionist, also made a guest appearance and commentated during FamilyJules' bonus late-night speedrun of Banjo-Kazooie 100%. Delcake fills in a player slot for a one-shot D&D segment.
 * Devin/Marriland, who was present in 2020, did not return (probably due to his resignation from regular content creation in late 2020).
 * Once again, The Lamp does not appear outside of the non-canon bumper, The Lamp II: The Sequel to The Lamp. Stephen and Mal still have possession of it, and they taunt Dona'tor with it during a segment. (Mal was later revealed on Breakfast Stream that she was off-screen changing the lamp colors for the bit)
 * This is the first year an animated bumper was made for the event, which aired preceding Chaos Cookie on Day 2. Jon, Rosajon, and Unedited Bear are also in it.
 * Bear, PhillipDraco, and Aelita1234 appearing in the bumper caused the audience to think that EVERYONE who worked on the bumper and were shown in the faux Discord call were Jon's mods. This is false, as Ben (the one who spearheaded the idea), Rhyme, Jasper, Yolk, and TheFlaming1UP are all Egg PAC members. Ben made a cryptic call for animators in the Egg PAC with no additional context. This was the only hint of this happening before the bumper aired.
 * This was also the first year the Disc Only intro was used to introduce the "Game Boy Player (no game)" segment of Chaos Cookie, now nearly a year after the first episode of the Disc Only podcast was aired, with art by PaperPennies (who also did the redesigned Egg PAC logo later that year) and a jingle by Popskyy.

2022

 * The awkward date (the last Saturday, Sunday, and Monday in February) was chosen due to expiring AirBNB credit that was to be used to rent out a home for the event, or else they would lose the property. A poll about the timing was taken after the event and was taken into consideration for future events.
 * The stream room’s furniture was set up differently than it was in previous years. It was also on a different floor/room than they used in 2019.
 * As a reminder, the three-story vacation house Team East stayed at is actually a duplex. A religious retreat was occuring on the other side of the duplex at the same time as the charity event.
 * As far as music segments went, Sab and Carlos took a step back from music segments and instead participated or hosted some of their own non-musical segments, potentially due to them quitting cover work over creating their own compositions. This left Jules, Jack, and Adriana to have their own music segments spread across the three days of the event, streamed live from the mansion house.
 * Lord Dona'tor, however, was able to reunite with The Lamp after two long years as seen in the canonical bumper, "Lord Dona'tor Reunited".
 * Likewise, Emile is able to "reunite" with Jon thanks to Mal's "craft project" in the bumper, "Cardboard Jon". Jon's community adopted it as an Alt-Jon immediately following the bumper's airing on stream. It later appears on the back cover of the Jonaverse Fanzine (Black Hole Chaos) as a gag and makes a cameo appearance in one of the page art illustrations.
 * This is the second year an animated bumper was made for the event, which aired preceding Chaos Cookie on Day 1. Following the event, the animation group of this and the previous animated bumper became the TRG Colosseum Animated Bunch (TRG CAB) to avoid erroneous affiliation within the community going forward.
 * The hundreds of Bizzard the Wizard “book titles” were not just read out by the donation readers during Chaos Cookie. As per the inspiration (Stephen’s Extra Life streams since 2016), ALL donation entries have to be put in manually by Jon’s mods, leading to some stress in the TRG Colo planning server on part of the mods during this particular donation train. This would have been avoided if there was an automatic way to do it, but it was not a thing until the 2023 event.
 * Another shirt by Drew Wise was made available for the event, still benefiting the charity and processed by Jirard’s merch production line. It used a dark blue and red-purple color scheme and the shirt material used was softer than the year prior. There was an extension of sales for the shirt by one day, so the grand total was not tallied until the beginning of March that year.
 * The total raised for this event pushed the grand total for all events to $1.3 million USD.
 * Three TTGD rips included two intentionally uncredited Hololive references:
 * Two rips referenced the chorus of Hololive Idol Project's "Shiny Smily Story", the de-facto anthem of Hololive that debuted in 2019 with a remake made later into 2022. The main menu music for HoloCure is an 8-bit looping cover of the song.
 * The third rip's reference is the track "Tanuki-chi no Bouken" (EN: Tanuki-chi's Adventure) from DOVA-SYNDROME, a Japanese royalty-free music source. This isn't actually a Hololive song per-se but has been popularized by Hololive Fantasy's Usada Pekora for being her choice BGM during Minecraft streams. This has ascended as a theme song for her within the fandom and it's still used by her today. In 2021, Jules did a cover of this track under the name "Usada Pekora BGM".

2023

 * Unfortunately, Tim, Emile, and Adriana were remote for the entire event, but their segments still went on.
 * The absences were caused by:
 * a case of COVID that Emile caught the night before he and Tim were scheduled to fly. Tim started living with him as of the year prior, so he also had to take a quarantine alongside Emile for the safety of others.
 * Adriana having a prior engagement. She attended an awards night hosted by her friend Alpharad. This can be seen in this tweet which alluded to a video on Alpharad's channel that came out nearly two months later. As described below, this didn't stop her from doing two of her segments.
 * Tim and Emile were supposed to play in the Splatoon 3 segment. Since The Shoal (local multiplayer) was used, not even Adri was able to play with them.
 * Adriana was on call during her singing segment. Masae’s Kirby Otomatone took her place IRL, complete with a wig that looks like Adri's hair.
 * Because Mario Kart 8 DX was played online, Adriana, Tim, and Emile were all able to play remotely.
 * Emile’s solo segment idea on Day 1 was Super Mario 3D World: Arcade Edition, where people were swapped in and out depending on viewer donations taking away or giving credits to any given TRG or tech crew member (including Cardboard Jon and The Lamp). It ended up becoming the highest grossing segment in TRG Colo history (besides Chaos Cookie), and for that year for Day 1, with an insane amount of donations. What a quarter muncher!
 * Both Emile and Tim called in during the final segment and stayed during/past the credits (as evident by StephenVlog footage).
 * The total raised for this event had easily pushed the grand total for all events to $1.5 million USD raised. After merch, this was pushed to $1.8 million.
 * The pandemic had postponed many plans for TRG Colo 2020 due to the format change. One of these was having The Completionist be a guest, which didn't happen until 2021. It is unknown if this also meant the move to a hotel ballroom was in the 2020 plans.
 * On the main page, the title of the 2023 section is an homage to how Final Fantasy VI originally released as Final Fantasy III outside of Japan.


 * Thanks to the move to a hotel ballroom, the following production upgrades occured:
 * The introduction of a full set, featuring a faux wooden wall and a CRT TV that can show a camera feed at will. To add to the 90’s basement ambiance even further, posters were also hung up with art depicting the core TRG members, done by highly regarded members of the TRG artist community: Camille Skyleste, PRimeExplorer, Sonoci (sonocomics), and Sulillium. All of them were given out as segment prizes throughout the event and were commissioned by Jyggy. Besides where the artist may have signed it digitally, the posters were hand-signed by everyone present at the event.
 * The set design in general is attributed to Klinkit, who does the same for Zeldathon.
 * Speaking of Zeldathon…
 * The monitor and camera setup is more akin to what Zeldathon uses.
 * MC's tech setup in general is made available for use, including MC's "Stream Box", which includes multiple capture devices. Its latest 2.0 variant includes two 3DS capture devices.
 * The Meat Couch, as named by Kinstone member Ganon11, is used on set when the couch is desired. Its name was made known in the aforementioned tech tour bumper, to the amusement of TRG fans not in the know.
 * The Zeldathon dungeon wall was almost used as the set backdrop, or at least used temporarily during initial setup, as seen in StephenVlog footage and a couple of the bumpers Stephen shot: Choose a Character and T-Pose Conformity, where it fit very well for those bumpers in particular. In certain shots, you can still see the Triforce insignia on it.
 * The immediate next Zeldathon event, Zeldathon Echoes, happened in the same location as this one. This is evident by the scenes outside the ballroom as well as Jyggy's behind the scenes stream on the day before that event.
 * A donation cam was introduced! The donation prizes were shown behind the donation reader in this space, and the intermission loop played on a TV on the viewer’s left as if the intermission loop itself continued on while on this view. A lava lamp was also on this set below the TV, and fans immediately claimed it as the counterpart to the original metal Lamp.
 * The donation lounge set was the topic of a bumper aired ad-lib of the tech crew explaining why they never appeared in the intro. The punchline of Klinkit screaming "MY AMBIANCE" quickly became a memorable quote.
 * Klinkit found the lava lamp while shopping and decided to put it there. It is debated on whether it is a rival to or a love interest for The Lamp we already know.
 * A backstage green room that ended up being used for props (including the making of the new cardboard cutouts of Tim and Emile in both small and tall sizes), the filming of Stephen's short videos to promote the event, and for Dan and Stephen to edit bumpers from.
 * For the first time, the entire stream was recorded locally using MC's tech instead of relying solely on OBS Studio or Twitch VODs. While still edited down by Dan, the entirety of the streams are properly backed up.
 * The only downside to this is how food is now provided by the hotel or is ordered. This is how Zeldathon operates today, but past Colosseum events at AirBNBs had Mal and Lucah cook for the entirety of the crew. This and any potential cooking segment is very unlikely going forward. Some attendees lamented at the lack of home-cooked meals during the event (the last time this occurred was, of course, at TRG Colo 2019).
 * Due to a party that happened before they came, they were given leftovers by a random guest for free. This occurred right as Stephen was about to go live for Breakfast Stream on the Thursday before the event. The same stream revealed that Masae and Jirard were guests before they were confirmed (especially the latter).
 * A minor quirk is how the group felt like the trip ended too soon because tear-down led right into the end of the group's stay. The closest they got to hanging out at the end of the weekend was a late night talk past midnight. (Even MC feels like it was cut short and agreed with the rest of the group to add an extra day after the event next year for a hang-out).
 * Now as TRG CAB, the animated bumper team released their third annual animated bumper during Day 2. Due to its length, it was split in two, airing between the Disc Only segment (before and after), which still let it end before Chaos Cookie. While the lack of credits may have made it obvious that it wasn't completely done, many people thought the bumper was finished after Part 1.
 * Jon let Stephen screen it prior to the event, who remarked how great it was. During the event, most of the crew was asked to watch the bumper before and after Disc Only--something hinted by Sab relaying Jon's message for everyone to meet at the couch after the TRG Colo band segment. Jon recorded everyone's reactions, as requested by Aelita. While the surprise was spoiled inbetween, Jon showed the resulting footage during his return/recap stream after the event.
 * Erroneously, "Jon's art community" in general was thanked in the reaction footage, though some people who worked on the project are not in Jon's art community, whether completely or in part.
 * Whether combined or separated, this is the longest bumper to date. MC warned for people not to make bumpers longer than 10 minutes, though that was mostly directed toward Tyler and Stephen. Nobody expected the CAB horse inquisition.