‘Twisted Metal’ Season 2: How the Show’s Combatants Compare to the Games

The Show: The series’ co-leads John Doe (Anthony Mackie) and Quiet (Stephanie Beatriz) are one of several two-person teams seen in Season Two’s tournament. John is an amnesiac milkman looking to piece together his past when he stumbles across Quiet, a sharp-witted scavenger who has plenty to say despite her nickname — and the two quickly become lovers. As one of the few dual combatants competing together, they routinely swap roles between driver and gunner depending on the situation.

Last season, they initially drove Evelyn, John’s beloved 2002 Subaru sedan. To his dismay, Evelyn is destroyed by a clan called the Holy Men, but the duo picks up a new ride in the form of Roadkill — an armored 1988 Chevy Camaro, pulled directly from the games, that they use to fight their way to find Calypso in New San Francisco. The armored muscle car evokes a beat-up, makeshift aesthetic akin to the wasteland vehicles in the Mad Max movies.

The Games: The car Roadkill appears in multiple games, including the 1995 original, Twisted Metal 2 (1996), Twisted Metal III (1998), Twisted Metal: Black (2001), Twisted Metal: Head-On (2005), and Twisted Metal (2012) — changing drivers multiple times throughout the entries despite retaining its brutalist, Max Max-inspired design.

In the first game, it belongs to a commando named Captain Spears; he’s replaced by a mysterious homeless man named Marcus Kane in 2, III, and Head-On. In Twisted Metal: Black, a version of John Doe is behind the wheel, hoping to restore his memories just like in the show, although the similarities end there. There is no in-game character associated with Roadkill that’s analogous to Quiet.

The Show: The masked Dollface is initially teased at the tail end of Season One, where she intercepts Quiet and reveals herself as John’s long-lost sister, Krista (of which he has no clear memory). This season, Dollface (Tiana Okoye) appears in all her glory as the leader of the Dolls, a clan of all-female wasteland survivors called Outsiders fighting back against the inner-city elites (Insiders).

Dollface is a tough yet charismatic leader who manages to make a cracked porcelain mask and all-black garb feel high fashion even post-apocalypse. She’s portrayed as empathetic and fiercely protective of her flock, sharing credit for her victories among the group. She also has multiple vehicles at her disposal, although they’re mostly driven by members of her clan. One is a Volkswagen buggy named Shrapnel that’s been designed just for the show; another is the big rig car carrier that closely resembles Darkside — a menacing boss-turned-playable character in the games. Once the tournament begins, Dollface adopts a more mobile ATV, which is a vehicle previously only seen once in Twisted Metal: Head-On.

The Games: There are two different women with the name Dollface that appear across different titles. In Twisted Metal: Black, she’s a nameless young woman who is trapped in a mask, competing for a wish to free herself. In the 2012 entry, she’s an aspiring supermodel named Krista who ends up disfigured, hiding behind the mask. The show’s incarnation of Dollface shares the name Krista and the overall aesthetic of both characters, but is a much more sympathetic character. While the adaptation’s Dollface mainly sticks to her ATV in battle, both in-game versions drive a semi-truck named Darkside that’s similar to the one in the Dolls’ fleet.

The Show: Like Quiet, Mayhem (Saylor Bell Curda) is an new character created for the TV show. A fast-talking wiseass, Mayhem is introduced as a vagrant searching for supplies in the Dolls’ camp, eventually joining the group on their mission to win the Twisted Metal tournament. Endlessly adaptable despite her young age, Mayhem’s strength lies in mischief, sewing discord between other drivers in the lead up to the main event and frequently finding herself behind the wheel of different vehicles as the season progresses.

Also like Quiet, she’s a character who isn’t directly bound to any one specific vehicle, forced instead to bounce between the Dolls’ buggy Shrapnel, Roadkill, and a beat-up Toyota Corolla. Without any direct ties to the source material, she’s a wild card who can play the part of multiple character stand-ins from the games. And true to her name, Mayhem breeds chaos amid the show’s many action sequences — often accidentally due to her inexperience as a driver — but part of the fun is seeing which classic character’s car (and identity) she commandeers next.

The Games: There is no specific in-game counterpart for Mayhem, although her reckless behavior is reminiscent of young female characters like Twisted Metal 2‘s Amanda Watts, a racecar driver whose impulsiveness becomes her undoing.

The Show: One of the biggest changes in Twisted Metal’s new season is the pivot to a new version of Raven. In Season One, the role was played by Neve Campbell as a deceptively sweet figurehead within New San Francisco who ultimately turns the screws on John Doe. This time around, actress Patty Guggenheim picks up the moniker to play an entirely different character who’s actually the real Raven — or at least, the big boss of a network of women sharing the name.

Guggenheim’s take on the character more closely resembles the goth girl aesthetic of the in-game incarnations than before, and serves as the primary antagonist for John, Quiet, and the Dolls. She enters to tournament after John escapes her grasp, fighting to wish her friend Kelly back to life. In combat, she drives a souped-up 1997 Ford Probe GT dubbed Shadow, which is big departure from the vehicles bearing that name in the games.

The Games: Raven’s car Shadow appears in multiple entries but originated in Twisted Metal 2, usually depicted as a purple and black Cadillac-inspired hearse. It has had numerous drivers, occasionally helmed by the undead Keeper of Souls, Mortimer, although a character named Raven does drive the vehicle in Twisted Metal: Black. Like the show’s, the in-game Raven seeks to win the tournament to bring back her friend Kelly, who drowned when they were teens — but isn’t really a major villainous presence.

The Show: Vermin (Lisa Gilroy) is one of the goofiest characters vying for the Twisted Metal crown — and that’s saying something. Growing up in the Florida swampland, Vermin is a hillbilly caricature, from her caked-up teeth to her ratty overalls. With a bizarre twang, her speech is practically indecipherable, and she frequently plays antagonist toward the other drivers, when she isn’t making an uncomfortable sexual pass.

Vermin’s ride is a beat-up exterminator’s van adorned with a mechanical roach on its roof. Her reason for joining the competition is to eradicate the pests she deems most disgusting — humanity itself — to live in world run by insects.

The Games: The character is a mix of different influences from multiple Twisted Metal games, pulling the name of a vehicle seen in Twisted Metal (2012) but more directly adapting Roach Coach from Twisted Metal 4. Roach Coach’s driver is an exterminator named Goggle Eyes that wants to do the inverse of Vermin and kill all insects on earth. Overall, both Vermin (the vehicle) and Roach Coach are mostly footnotes in the franchise, lending only minor details to TV series.

The Show: After his noticeable absence in Season One, fan-favorite motorcyclist Mr. Grimm joins the cast and immediately proves himself to be a major threat. Played by a sickly-looking Richard De Klerk, the show’s version of Grimm is plucked from Blackfield Asylum (a familiar location to Twisted Metal: Black players) by an unknown figure to compete in Calypso’s tournament. His introduction goes big, seeing the biker slaughter numerous people and seemingly absorb their souls into his own internal collective of personalities. Or, perhaps, it might all just be a delusion.

True to his video-game roots, Grimm rides a motorcycle — although this version finds the bike fully intact (and somehow functioning) buried deep within his deceased father’s grave. Wearing a black helmet with a skull painted on the face visor. It’s unclear if he’s genuinely got supernatural abilities, but regardless, TV’s Mr. Grimm remains adept with a sickle, often steering his motorcycle singe-handedly while swatting missiles and bullets out of the air with his curved blade.

The Games: Mr. Grimm is a staple of the video game series, being one of only three characters (including Sweet Tooth and Calypso) to appear in every entry. In most versions, he’s the physical embodiment of death, the Grim Reaper, whose motivation for winning the tournament is to finally collect Calypso’s soul. Occasionally, he’s depicted as human; in the 2012 game, his name is Daniel Grimm, a man looking to bring back his deceased stuntman father. It’s this iteration that seems to be the inspiration for the show. Outside of Twisted Metal 4‘s ill-advised redesign that made Grimm into a skeletal pirate in a wooden soap box racer, he’s always ridden a motorcycle, although he usually has a sidecar that houses his machine guns and ammo.

The Show: A returning cast member from Season One, Stu (Mike Mitchell) has undergone some of the most drastic character changes since his introduction early in the series. Originally partnered up with his best buddy Mike, Stu is forced against his will to join the sadistic killer Sweet Tooth — a partnership he’s appeared to leaned into after the apparent death of his pal. Season Two picks up with Stu getting along pretty well with Sweet Tooth, learning the ins and outs of murder as a sidekick on their blood-soaked road trip. That is, until someone with a personal connection to Stu joins the tournament to throw a wrench in his newfound life of as a minion.

Stu is based on a character in the Twisted Metal 2 who drives the monster truck, Hammerhead. Unfortunately for the show’s Stu, he enters the tournament saddled beside a psychotic clown in an ice cream truck rather than competing for his own desires.

The Games: Twisted Metal 2‘s version of Stu also has a buddy Mike, although they’re much more one-dimensional doofuses that are mostly interested in cruising and playing tunes. The first iteration of Hammerhead appears in the the original Twisted Metal, and is controlled by a totally different Mike and another guy named Dave, who might end up making his own appearance in the TV series. Regardless of the drivers, the monster truck Hammerhead perfectly fits the world of Twisted Metal and would make for a great hype moment were it to appear in the show.

The Show: The most famous character from Twisted Metal, Sweet Tooth is a serial killer clown with a flaming head whose face adorns the box art of every entry of the game. In the show, the clown is portrayed by two actors: physically performed by pro wrestler Joe Seanoa and voiced by Will Arnett. Despite his massive body count of mostly side characters, Sweet Tooth plays a somewhat cartoonish role in the comedy series, acting more as an agent of chaos and thorn in everyone’s side than a true villain.

Dragging along his hostage-turned-accomplice, Stu, Sweet Tooth enters the Twisted Metal tournament to prove once and for all that he’s the apex predator. His motivation is similar to some of his depictions in the games — which veer wildly from wanton bloodlust to just wanting to win some candy — but the show’s version lines up pretty closely with Twisted Metal 4‘s version who wants to be seen universally as a a star. His ice cream truck (also named Sweet Tooth) is authentically replicated in the TV series, a junkpile riddled with bullets featuring its signature mechanical clown head bobbing and flopping from a massive spring on the roof. Once the action heats up, Sweet Tooth also lights his head on fire to match the look of his in-game counterpart during battle.

The Games: Appearing in every Twisted Metal game, the character often takes on the name Needles Kane. Although in some cases like in Twisted Metal: Head-On and the 2012 installment, Needles is just the split personality of a man named Marcus Kane. Whatever the version, a handful of Sweet Tooth’s traits remain constant: he’s a clown, a murderer, and he’s completely insane. His ice cream truck is frequently one of the most powerful vehicles in the games, and even morphs into a Transformers-like mech in some entries. In most games, he’s included as a secret unlockable character, despite appearing on the box art, but in actuality Twisted Metal revolves around Sweet Tooth.

The Show: Of all the ridiculous characters in Twisted Metal, Axel might’ve been the toughest to translate to live-action — he’s a man whose body is literally bound between two giant wheels. A beloved combatant in the games, his appearance in the second season of the show has been kept tightly under wraps until recently. Arriving early in the season, ahead of the tournament’s start, Axel (Michael James Shaw) is portrayed exactly as he is in-game (he is a car!), albeit with the ability to step out of his mechanism to interact with other people.

His backstory and motivations remain secretive at first, but the character serves as yet another escalation in the series’ increasingly outlandish tone as it veers closer to the dark fantasy of the games. As seen in the show, Axel is a formidable opponent, but also highly sexualized for laughs as just about every character he encounters pines for his muscular body.

The Games: Conversely, the video game Axel is generally one of the more tragic figures. First appearing in Twisted Metal 2, he’s often portrayed as a man whose father condemned him to live trapped within his dual-wheeled machine. Despite being an exposed target, Axel is often one of the most dangerous competitors, ramming headfirst into other vehicles in ways that should easily kill him. In Twisted Metal: Black, Axel is an even more tortured as his bi-wheel apparatus completely lacks a platform to stand on, leaving his legs dragging across the terrain as he moves.

The Show: The big bad of Twisted Metal, Calypso was previously teased as a shadowy entity pulling the strings behind New San Francisco, but he doesn’t appear in the flesh until this new season, played by Barry breakout Anthony Carrigan. Donning the character’s signature long, silky hair, Carrigan’s portrayal of Calypso is wall-to-wall scenery chewing, imbuing the antagonist with an impishness that belies his malicious intent.

As in the games, Calypso is the enigmatic organizer of the Twisted Metal tournament, who brings together desperate people of all kinds to fight to the death with the promise to grant any one wish to the winner — no matter how impossible it may seem. Clearly, there’s a catch. What’s unknown is whether the adaptation’s Calypso actually has the supernatural ability to make any dream come true, or if it’s all smoke and mirrors. As the one throwing the event, he’s not actually a driver or participant.

The Games: The recurring villain in almost all Twisted Metal games, Calypso is only seen playable as a driver in a single entry, 1999’s Twisted Metal 4. In that game, he’s been supplanted by Sweet Tooth as the organizer of the derby, and drives a nuclear missile launch truck to regain control of his dominion. In all other instances, Calypso is only seen in interstitial cut scenes, teasing participants with his alluring promises that generally end in a darkly ironic subversion of their desires. Although he appears to be devilish, he isn’t immortal. Many of the games’ various alternate endings see the antagonist get his comeuppance, frequently by torture or death.