The appearance of Salarian scientist Mordin Solus, who appears in the second installment of the series, was modeled after Clint Eastwood. ¹⁾

In Mass Effect 1, during one mission you can come across the wreck of the Luna 23 probe. This was a Soviet probe launched to the Moon in 1974 as part of the “Luna” project, which could not be brought back due to technical problems. ²⁾

Drew Karpyshyn, who was responsible for the script of the games until a certain point, also wrote books related to the universe. These were “Mass Effect: Revelation,” “Mass Effect: Ascension,” “Mass Effect: Deception” and “Mass Effect: Retaliation.” The books complemented the storyline presented in the games by depicting events happening before the first title of the series, as well as between the events presented in the sequels. ³⁾

The artificial intelligence, EDI, which first begins to accompany the main character in part two of the game was modeled on the robot character “Maria” from the movie Metropolis (1927). This is not the only interesting fact about the friendly AI. It turns out that in the first part of Mass Effect players got to know it as a rogue AI causing problems on the moon. ⁴⁾

The music for the third part of Mass Effect was composed by Clint Mansell, among others. He is the creator of the soundtracks for a number of acclaimed films such as Black Swan, Your Vincent and Requiem for a Dream. ⁵⁾

The title of the game was supposed to indicate the essence of the whole story. Mass effect and dark energy were the bases for the functioning of the Mass Effect universe. The first allowed us to colonize the Milky Way and contact different civilizations, and the second was to have a disastrous impact on life in our galaxy. Although Drew Karpyshyn followed the path of explaining the story in this way, in the end, the creators decided to change the coherent plot presented by the three parts, achieving, unfortunately, the effect of dissatisfaction of the multitude of fans, for whom the very finale of the series was strongly illogical. ⁶⁾

The game was originally going to be called “Science Fiction X.” ⁷⁾

Although the Asari looked like women and had rather feminine voices, this species did not really have a gender. ⁸⁾

Krogan faces were inspired by bats. ⁹⁾

The name of the main character was inspired by a historical figure. We are talking about Alan Shepard, who was an American astronaut and a participant in the first manned space flight program “Mercury.” ¹⁰⁾

The romance with Garrus Vakarian would not have been possible if not for fan interference. BioWare decided to add the option to start a romance with Turian after receiving many messages from players hungry for this option. ¹¹⁾

The Illusive Man was supposed to be the main antagonist in the series finale. Eventually, the leader of Cerberus passed away in a less spectacular way. ¹²⁾

The Stargazer's voice heard in the epilogue of the series belongs to Buzz Aldrin. He is a distinguished American astronaut who participated in the first moon landing. ¹³⁾

Mark Meer providing the voice for the male version of Shepard spoke more often than one might assume. The actor also gave his voice to the Vorchas, among others. ¹⁴⁾

Javik, a miraculously saved Protean, was originally supposed to be present in the base game. Instead, the developers introduced this character in the DLC The “From Ashes” DLC was released on the same day as the third installment of the series and was available free of charge to players with the Collector's Edition. ¹⁵⁾