The high-speed, high-stakes world of Twisted Metal shifts gears in Season 2 as the series moves away from world-building and shifts directly into familiar settings, narratives, and characters, including the introduction of legacy figures beloved by fans of the franchise.

In this new world order, John Doe (Anthony Mackie) and Quiet (Stephanie Beatriz) are thrown into the demolition derby known as Twisted Metal, a deadly competition created and ruled by its enigmatic founder, Calypso (Anthony Carrigan). He gathers drivers from all walks of life to compete in his tournament, forcing them to risk their lives for the ultimate prize: a single wish that will grant them their deepest desire.

Since 1995, the franchise of Twisted Metal has seen several incarnations, each with a similar premise: to destroy the competition in an all-out brawl. In 2001, the games took a dark turn with Twisted Metal: Black, in which the competitors were seen as escapees from Blackfield Asylum looking for redemption, revenge, or just a plain old-fashioned reckoning.

Throughout the franchise, players got to know the different incarnations of the unhinged personas that populate the game, including the bloodthirsty clown Sweet Tooth; goth girl Raven, who is looking for vengeance for her fallen friend; the tragic Dollface; and the demented Mr. Grimm. But to make it to the small screen, their characters and the game itself required a little bit more than just a dark backstory to bring them to life.

TV Insider chatted with showrunner Michael Jonathan Smith about the journey he took to bring the game to the small screen.

In the original games, the first few installments from the franchise are campy, kooky, and even a little goofy, while later installments are more horror-based and grittier. The show walks that line between the two. What made you bring both elements? Why didn’t you go either full comedy camp or full horror?

Michael Jonathan Smith: I think the main reason is that everyone has a different favorite game. If you asked 10 gamers which game is their favorite, they are all gonna have a different answer.

I wanted to kind of pay homage to all of them. I love all those games. Twisted Metal: Black was my first one, but I didn’t want to just go grim and dark. I wanted it to be a comedy. I really wanted to reference all of them. I wanted to have the freedom to reference all of them, and the one thing that unites all of them is how fun the game is.

When you’re playing Twisted Metal, regardless of how dark the game is or how goofy the game is, you have a big smile on your face when you’re playing it. You have a great time firing that well timed bomb or jumping off the Eiffel Tower in the second one, or like, setting off a Ferris wheel in Black. Like, the game is just so much fun that that’s really what I wanted to adapt, is just how much fun the game is and how you have a big, goofy smile when you’re playing it.

I want you to just watch this show and have so much fun while watching it, and at the end of the day, that’s what matters to me the most.

Some of the game’s characters were very much changed from the game to the show. For example, Dollface had several backstories over the course of the franchise. We’ve seen her as both a victim and as a mean-spirited former fashion model. What made you decide to alter them for the screen in this way? Were you afraid of fan reception?

I think, to me, the reason I’ve made changes was that some of the back stories felt like things we’ve all seen before. Even if you argue, “Well, but it’s like in the game,” people who have never seen the show before aren’t going to know that.

What’s important to me is to make sure that the bones feel similar enough. I feel like if the bones are similar enough, then we can kind of do whatever we want. If you kind of think of our show as a lost Twisted Metal game, we kind of have a little bit of freedom to make our changes. This is our version of Dollface, but we were able to reference the fashion model-ness of her.

We really tried to harken back to what is the core of these characters and what are the things that the deep cut fans will totally reference, while still making sure that new audiences will love these characters for who they are and appreciate that. It’s a tricky balance.

You’re building the story set between the gameplay of the tournament. What was the best part of this type of world-building? What were the challenges? 

I think the challenges were definitely how to come up with ways to make sure that we are capturing the feeling of these rounds without feeling like we’re just doing the same thing over and over again. I didn’t want to feel like we’re just going to do the same round five times. We wanted to make sure that every round of the tournament felt different and cool and special.

And the challenges were, how are we going to do this practically? Because there are so many cars, there are so many explosions, and it’s tricky. It’s really tough to do that for a half-hour comedy. So it was really, really difficult pulling that off. There were a lot of moments where they were like, “We might have to cut around,” and we pushed really hard and said, “No, we have to do it. This is the tournament we have to do. We have to have these rounds. People are going to expect it.”

The show also had a surprising amount of feel-good and heartbreaking moments. How do you strike that balance between adding heart to the chaos and the violence of a show filled with dark humor?

It’s really important to me that you care about these characters. If you don’t care about these characters, when they’re doing horrible s**t, then you’re not rooting for anyone. For me, the heart of the show is my favorite part. If you can make them laugh, you can make them cry, that has always been something I believe in.

I think to me, it’s really fun to give you these moments of joy and these moments of warmth because this world is very hard, this world is very violent, and I think having these moments of community is great for these characters because we all need those moments too.

Twisted Metal, Season 2, Thursdays, Peacock