League of Legends launched in 2009 and has since released a wide variety of characters, eventually reaching a total number of 161 champions (including Nilah). Riot Games' sources of inspiration for creating champions are very varied. Some of them were born thanks to films, others are inspired by video games, myths or legends. The same goes for the names given to each of the heroes. Riot Games paid homage to historical figures or just picked a few that sounded good. However, there are a few exceptions where the game's protagonists owe their identities to real people and those are the cases we'll be looking at below.
World
Dr. Mundo refers to one of Riot Games employees at the time of the game's release. However, this is not a nod to major directors or creators, but rather an artist who worked in the game. company since 2007 and received this nod when the champion was initially released two years later. The truth is that, if at that time he could already deserve this tribute, he would deserve it more today. Edmundo Sanchez worked at Riot Games until February 2022, being one of the employees who spent the most time in the company.
The story was revealed in 2011 by Rinoa on the old League of Legends forum , (the fourth comment) and as you might have guessed, Mundo is short for Edmund.
Ashe and Tryndamere
It is the one that a good part of the community knows. The champion is named after Marc "Tryndamere" Merrill, one of the co-founders of Riot Games. However, this is not the only character to reference his life, as he chose the name Ashe, who is married to Tryndamere in the lore. The one that symbolizes the League of Legends sniper archetype is a reference to Ashley, the first name of Merrill's wife. He himself acknowledges this in his Twitter bio in which he refers to "being married to the real Ashe".
Ezreal
The prodigal explorer of Runeterra shares a bond with Colt Hallam. He is also a Riot Games employee whose nickname is Ezreal. Once again we are faced with an origin linked to the history of the company. He was part of the design team of the original game, was responsible for the creation of the ARAM or Dominion card while working on other systems less interesting for the players like monetization. Arrived in the company in 2007, this person still works at Riot Games at the time of writing these lines.
Kassadin
If you thought this was a tribute to twitter user Riot Kassadin, you'd be wrong. However, there was a studio employee with that nickname who gave the character his name. This is Jeff Juif, who started at Riot Games in 2007, like the other collaborators who have been entitled to a tribute, since the beginning of this article. Since then Jeff Juif has been a designer, associate producer, producer and even executive director of Legends of Runeterra. He is credited with the existence of Katarina, among other characters. Whether that's a good thing or not is up to you.
Maokai
This time, it is necessary to abandon the great management positions to return to the artists. This is another of those little-known and fairly rare cases where the artist was responsible for naming the character he was working on. The funny thing is that he has remained one of the lesser known employees of the studio despite having worked there for years. In fact, a significant part of the community began to think that a Riot Games employee had changed his nickname because of the character, when the opposite happened.
Ryze
This case is identical to that of Tryndamere. Brandon "Ryze" Beck is one of the founders of Riot Games. Recently, he has focused more on the League of Legends universe and the rest of the company's games, rather than MOBA
Ziggs
It is relatively well known, but less obvious than all the cases cited above. Ziggs was named after Riot employee Joe "Hephastopheles" Ziegler. He started working at Riot Games in 2010 and has been one of the company's most prominent employees ever since. He was game director for Valorant and currently works in the research and development department.
A player used the official numbers from the online store to create an Ancestral Rift Simulator with 10 Legendary Emblems, which cost around $25. This allows you to visualize your chances of getting one, and how much it would cost you.
