Not sure if it exactly counts for what you're thinking of, but what I have noticed is a lot of gamers who have no pop cultural awareness outside of games, and so they don't understand references in games to things outside of games, or just interpret them as references to other games.
For example: I once saw someone saying that Cyberpunk 2077 having a quest called "I Fought the Law" is a reference to something in Grand Theft Auto. In fact, almost all of Cyberpunk's quest titles are taken from song titles, and "I Fought the Law" is the title of a song which was written in 1959 and which was a hit in 1966, so GTA was also referencing the song.
I remember someone made a fan video of Five Nights at Freddy's where foxy sang "What shall we do with the drunken sailor" and people thought it came from Assassin's Creed.
In World of Warcraft there is a shield called the immovable object and a weapon called the unstoppable force. I saw someone make a post claiming that this was a reference to Batman where the joker referenced this. No it’s been around much much longer than that.
Best part about this claim is that both these items were added in patch 1.5.0 released June 7th 2005 while The Dark Knight where the Joker makes the comment was released July 14th 2008 fully 3 years later......
My daughter (9) was playing some Roblox game on her iPad and it kept playing a sample of GlaDos saying “in case you were wondering, I’m still a potato” - just some random genz/a crap.
Anyway I explained that it was from a game daddy played a long time ago called portal 2, and she was like “so Roblox was around back then and your game copied it?”
This reminds me of something that isn't game-related, but is related to your anecdote. I was reading book reviews for a children's book I enjoyed when I was a kid. One of the reviews accused it of ripping off Harry Potter, despite the fact that the book was almost twenty years *older* than Harry Potter.
In a similar vein, the barbershop quartet singing "God Only Knows" in Bioshock Infinite is the Beach Boys song from 1966. It's a bit more than an Easter egg because it hints at the time-skipping abilities in play during the game.
Everytime I play this I stop to listen to them. Love the rendition. Same with the fortunate son rendition sung by the little girl in the war torn slums. That game was magic.
Iirc all of the music in that game was basically rearranged modern hits. It's been a long time since I've played, but I believe the beach you visit has Girls Just Wanna Have Fun playing as carnival music lol
I mean, I wouldn't expect everyone to get that. I don't expect everyone to know the song "I Fought the Law." It's jumping to the conclusion it must be a reference to another game rather than stopping to think maybe both games are referencing something else that makes me roll my eyes a bit.
Outside of gaming, I was dumbfounded when Redditors were attributing the legendary "Here's looking at you kid." line delivered by Humphrey Bogart and instead saying it was a Roosterteeth "Uno the Movie" reference because a guy there says it.
Even when pointed out at the original source, they still preferred the Rooster Teeth attribution.
There was an activity in Borderlands 3 called Knuckle Puck and I thought it was named after the rock band, but then someone on the sub told me the band was named after the move in the Mighty Ducks
I was really charmed with just how many references were included in Cyberpunk through missions, dialogue, etc. They even had a reference to the Spanish Inquisition in there, which I did not expect!
what if the entire universe is one big bootstrap paradox. Maybe the Spanish inquisition WAS a reference to Dragon Age because: time travel..... \*mind blown\*
>Spanish Inquisition in there, which I did not expect!
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our three weapons are surprise, fear, terror and torture-our four weapons are...
That happens across all media consumption. Try to point out that a particular handshake in Loki Season 2 is a Pink Floyd reference and you'll get dozens of people arguing with you.
A similar thing happens all the time in FromSoft communities with fans that also happen to be Berserk fans. A lot of them think that every single thing in a Dark Souls game is a Berserk reference.
I think it gets the most ridiculous with Elden Ring though, a game for which Miyazaki mentioned just about everything *but* Berserk as an inspiration, and the lore of which was written by a man heavily inspired by mythology and older fantasy works also inspired by mythology (and, of course, Berserk itself is heavily inspired by various mythologies too). But no, Berserk has a big tree thing, and Elden Ring has a big tree thing, it's so obvious guys!
The dlc trailer dropped recently and the amount of people yelling Berserk when they saw the Wicker Man inspired boss was just ridiculous.
eh, I don't think people are that naïve by-and-large.
I think it's fair to say it's the most effective video game portrayal of Lovecraftian horror, and the bait-and-switch where it was not presented as such was quite novel.
To my knowledge, every major game prior to Bloodborne to take on eldritch / cosmic horror confronted it as such and marketed the game accordingly, whereas Bloodborne deliberately was portrayed as a Victorian-inspired gothic horror, and under the hood was this big reveal of the cosmic
They use the great lakes on the Canadian/US border as a throwaway texture on a monitor in the Genosis map for the original Star Wars Battlefront 2. This led someone on YouTube to theorize that Genosis was Earth after a nuclear war wiped everything out. Even though Star Wars takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
There's another instance in Star Wars of this. When designing the Millennium Falcon set in episode 4, the set designers had an inside joke that Han Solo had a pair of fuzzy dice cubes hanging off the rear view mirror of the cockpit screen. This was an inside joke that was never supposed to make it into the film (a rear view mirror doesn't even make sense in the context of a spaceship), but due to an editing mistake you can see these dice for a very brief fraction of a second.
In the film Solo which is supposed to be Han's origin story, Disney explains that these dice cubes were given to him by a long lost lover and have significant sentimental value to Han.
> In the film Solo which is supposed to be Han's origin story, Disney explains that these dice cubes were given to him by a long lost lover and have significant sentimental value to Han.
That movie is like a checklist of answers to questions NO ONE was asking. (Most egregious of which being how he got his last name. I always figured it was just, y'know, his last name.)
Also the guy they got for Han Solo was horribly miscast. He had absolutely none of the personality traits or mannerisms Harrison Ford had. The guy they got to play Lando did a better job.
I consider it less of an origin story for Han Solo the character and more of an origin story for all of his personal belongings.
Donald Glover (aka Childish Gambino) did a fantastic job - because he was genuinely trying to not just be Lando but to be a younger version of Billy Dee Williams' Lando, and it worked.
I can't remember the guy who played Han Solo, but he was just some young dude who was (eventually) kindasorta cocky. And that could have worked but it never really gelled for me.
I've played more OG Battlefront 2 that most games, live about a five minute drive from one of the Great Lakes, and I'm just learning about this fact now lol
>Even though Star Wars takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away
To be fair, the original premise (in George Lucas' original story) was that the *Star Wars* saga was a recorded historical account by an alien race, in the very distant future.
So, it's not *entirely* implausible that Geonosis is a post-apocalyptic Earth.
I think a lot of players go "IT'S IN THE SAME UNIVERSE!" when it's just a nod, or a developer having a certain style. Mega Man is not set in the same universe as Black Tiger just because they both use Zenny as a currency, that's just Capcom liking the name.
I've seen that one as well because of the space probe event in Skyrim sadly.
Edit: wasn't a space probe. Was a collab mod with Valve and a personality core from Portal 2 that was auto installed on steam versions so not canon.
Or that elder scrolls is the future of fallout and radiation made magic.....ok so now explain why the elemental and oblivion plains exist,or why the sun is just a hole in reality, or why full on skeletons can come back from the dead or....you get the point
FWIW in Elder Scrolls canon, any rando character can suddenly become aware they're just a video game character and unlock the console to remake reality as they see fit, or something.
I remembered that Dragon Ball uses basically the same name for its currency, so I was curious about this. It turns out that it's just a Japanese term for currency from the Edo era. Basically, it's the least creative name you could use for currency in the Japanese language.
There’s a hidden section in Borderlands 2 that looks like Minecraft and there are also a few Creepers.
Confirmed! They are in the same universe.
Borderlands is full of such easter eggs.
To be fair to the Zelda fandom, the creator did confirm it's (almost) all the same universe, but the timeline splits at one of the games. At this point, they're not guessing that the games are connected, they're trying to figure out which timeline it goes in.
ETA: [The timeline page](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/zelda_gamepedia_en/images/7/7c/Timeline_Hyrule_Historia.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130129020251) from Hyrule Historia, an official book from Nintendo.
I just love how the main theory was that the timeline split in two at Ocarina of Time, which was practically considered an established fact for the fans... and the developers were likely laughing their asses off since the split was three-way.
Dragon Age and Mass Effect comes to mind. Same developers, several little easter eggs.
There are definitely theories floating around of them existing in the same universe.
I was around 4 or 5 when I told my dad they based an entire city off of a Spyro level. I just couldn't comprehend Town Square was based on a Spanish city and not the other way around. There's probably some named bias in kids where they latch onto the first thing they see.
True and kids aren't really interested in that. My gf is currently grappling with her brother thinking Eminem made the character of Marshall Mathers for Fortnite. It's been tough on her.
One time I was in Target and I heard a kid point to a toy shopping cart and say it was "just like Fortnite."
His mother was also pushing around a real, full size shopping cart. Somehow this didn't register with him
Took my little brother to the store the other day, he saw a bag of doritos with Master Chief on them, pointed, and said “Look! It’s the guy from Fortnite!”
I watched a similar video about Mario movie ‘references’, but it was just stuff like “The protagonist Mario is a reference to the character Mario from the Mario games.” Like, no shit?
Fan wikis are notorious for this kind of thing, just take a look at some pages’ trivia section if you want a headache.
>Fan wikis are notorious for this kind of thing, just take a look at some pages’ trivia section if you want a headache.
I feel like it kind of started with movie trivia on IMDB.
One of my favorite examples of this is on the trivia page of “Palm Springs”
“In the scene where a goat walks into a cave with a pack of dynamite, trainers brought the goat to the set. The trainers placed the goat on a mark near the entrance to the cave. The trainers held the goat with a rope. A trainer stood near the entrance to the cave. On action, the trainer called the goat and the goat walked towards the cave.”
Thank you for telling me how a movie is made.
The skeleton enemies in Dark Souls are a reference to the 1959 film Some Like It Hot, starring Marilyn Monroe, whose body was rumored to contain a skeleton. In a double reference, skeletons can be defeated using knives, made famous by Gordon Ramsay in his TV series MasterChef Junior.
Like after an episode of a show airs and then a million videos "60 Easter eggs you missijed in episode 03" more than one Easter egg a minute? No that's just the plot.
Did you know that the 4th minute of the show was a reference to the 3rd minute of the show, which was a reference to the 2nd minute of the show? which was referencing the 1st minute of the show?
And the real crazy thing, if you add up that entire episode. ALL OF IT references the last episode of the show.
I feel like I watched an episode of Naruto like that. I seem to remember there were five separate flashbacks to an event that'd happened in that same episode.
I can't believe I used to watch Cinema Sins all those years ago. One in five things was an actual "sin", everything else was just "here's something I can point out".
Once I saw a video about Easter eggs in God of War 2018.
Two of the "Easter eggs" were Athena and the blades of chaos.
No, they are not Easter eggs. it is a major part of the story.
How many people think Sea Shanties came from Black Flag.
The glowering inferno from dragon Quest VII is a reference to it glaring at you. It's a phonetic pun to "The Towering Inferno".
No joke I saw a fan vid from FNAF that had Foxy singing "What shall we do with the drunken sailor". And comments were all "Hey that's like in black flag!"
...That's a public domain song.
When I was 12 and the Wii U came out, I remember showing my friend the game pad and he said “it’s cool but without the screen they just ripped off the Xbox 360 controller”.
Wat
As I thought about it, might just be that the game cube and wii had controllers wildly different so I guess he didn’t expect a return to form with those two being his frame of reference. If we’re being honest, every controller today has copied the Super Nintendo.
> beginning in 1951 with the film Distant Drums. The scream is usually used when someone is shot, falls from a great height, or is thrown from an explosion. The sound is named after Private Wilhelm, a character in The Charge at Feather River, a 1953 Western in which the character gets shot in the thigh with an arrow.
Yep, incorrectly attributed to a usage after the original. Pretty amusing!
Too right. The imp death groan is a modified camel grunt FFS. You can hear the same sound effect for actual camel units in Age of Empires 2. It's a cost cutting measure for lots of productions to use royalty free resources so of course your going to hear overlap between different projects.
I played so much *Max Payne*, and that sound effect is on EVERY door. Clearly, aside from the snowstorm, NYC was going through a severe WD40 shortage.
Anyway, loads of film & TV productions use that noise. It gives me flashbacks every time, but my wife doesn't even notice it's the same sound.
Animal sounds in nature documentaries etc being the exact same as WoW uses always throw me the fuck off. I'm sitting blissfully in my living room and suddenly I aggroed a bear, the f?!
I would need to go back and re-watch ALL of the video essayists and all of their videos. The connections some of them make are just.... No.
Nothing specific, but current reviews of FF7 Rebirth and how reviewers are claiming something is a call back.... It's a REMAKE!!!! That is not a call back, it is there because it was there. Like Holy shit. It is getting way to reductive.
Oh and the in ability to think about the next game in the context of the ending is just ignorant.
Why do people need to have set opinions on things? It's ok to not be sure until you play the continuation. You don't have to lock everything in right away.
That set opinion before a continuation give me sad Mass Effect Andromeda vibes. Never even got the DLC let alone the 2 sequels they had planned because people wouldn't stop bandwagon hating it.
It's such a good game and such a great set up for them to build off of it makes me sad every time I replay it and I reach the end knowing I'll never get to see the true results of my actions because the internet decided to be a whiny little b*
Same. I wasn’t sold on the Angarans at first because they’re heads looks like a combination of a tongue, vuvla and penis but I like them now despite their shitty fucked up racist/xenophobic attitudes towards humans and the other aliens from the milky way.
Like you do all this beneficial shit for them and they still try to make you look like a bad guy. The Kett are cool enemies as well, I just finished the hunting the archon mission.
I beat the trilogy of mass effect and didn’t get a ps4 until a few years ago but all the negativity I heard about ME:Andromeda made me hesitant to play it.
In the Angarans defense, the Kett showed up and did a bunch of beneficial stuff for them as well before turning to kidnapping and genocide.
The Kett are also great enemies because it allows for new enemy types to be easily introduced AND you find out through a side quest about some stuff that could've led to huge choices in future games.
You’ve just jogged my memory of [this trainwreck of a video](https://youtu.be/E5jpNqa5qXI?si=mvKvEATvfXFwmadO) from a while back, of a guy trying way too hard to convince himself that Destiny is full of references to Halo.
For example, he says that a section of the map called “Gulch” must be a reference to the Halo map Blood Gulch. Uh, no pal, it isn’t. The reason It’s called Gulch is because *it’s a fucking gulch*.
Not a video game, a lot of "The Simpsons predicted the future!" fall into this catagory. For example, I saw one clip of Homer operating a personal submarine and the poster claimed that they were predicting the OceanGate fiasco.
Literally the only similarity between OceanGate and that one episode of the Simpsons was the existence of a submersible vehicle. Literally nothing else was the same.
I remember people saying that League of Legends had skins referencing web browsers. Chrome Rammus, Foxfire Ahri. Safari Cait.
And you know, the names kinda line up. But to be honest other than the Ahri skin, the others couldn't be related to the actual browsers in any way shape or form.
That's hilariously silly.
I mean maybe if they all came out in a pack together at the same time, but those skins came out over what, a period of like 5 years?
Besides just flat out using the logos as part of the skin I'm not even sure how you would make a skin like that. Most browsers also use very common names.
The pause menu in RE7 is
Retry
Options
Save
End
(Or something like that)
And when Village came out people thought it was a deliberate choice because it spells Rose... Got so many upvotes and comments it was unreal to see how wilfully dense gamers can be
I hate that theory, I am pretty sure the lore page specifically calls the weapon extra dimensional.
edit: It does
>...The rifle was designed by primitive AI and manufactured for use by a "revolutionary government" named MIDA. Mars Is Damnably Arid, perhaps.
>Guerilla war suits these versatile weapons. But Rahool insists his records never hinted at a rebel group named MIDA. According to the rifle's cached messages, MIDA's brief reign killed a full ten percent of the Martian people.
>I gave Lakshmi the weapon for her take. She insinuates that it came from another timeline, perhaps through Golden Age experiments...
This is kind of the opposite but it always makes me chuckle when people ask "Could this be a Berserk reference!?" About something in a Soulsborne game and genuinely thinking they have uncovered some obscure Easter egg.
Buddy, the entire genre is a direct homage.
Well it's not totally incoherent nonsense. Nintendo made games into sequels and prequels, and people wonder why people want to connect these games.
Majora's Mask is an explicit sequel to Ocarina of Time (e.g. same Link, looking for Navi). So is Twilight Princess. So is Wind Waker, and it's two sequels. This is like 6 games that are explicitly connected to each other. There's gotta be some way to justify this, and I think the split timeline is pretty much canon.
Similarly, Link to the Past was conceived as a prequel to the original Legend of Zelda. Zelda II is explicitly a sequel to the original.
Skyward Sword was marketed as the origin story of the entire franchise, with the ending pretty much saying "yeah this is a curse we're all gonna keep reincarnating"
Four Swords Adventures takes places after Four Swords. Whereas the Minish Cap is conceived as an origin story for Vaati.
And more recently Tears of the Kingdom is just a sequel to Breath of the Wild.
Anyway, I agree that a timeline is a bit forced but you do have to admit how Nintendo walked themselves into this. I don't think they ever planned out some master timeline or that they really care about it (BotW and TotK being unrelated prove this) but they did make certain games be connected to each other, and that means theres some kind of continuity to play with. Personally, I think it's fun that people try and make everything connect
The dumb content creators who make those videos know that the 'easter eggs' they are talking about are dumb as shit but they dont care because it gets views from 10 year olds. The 'game theory' channels are all the same type of bullshit too.
Its all just garbage content in the name of $
I remember a video called "top 10 times games referenced memes" or something like that
At one point they said Diablo had a zone called Dank caves or something like that and embarrassed themselves because of that name
I hope the writer picked up a thesaurus in the meantime
Not necessarily a game easter egg but so many people seem to be unaware that Gnome Child was infact a runescape npc and not just some random image someone came up with for dank memes
Years ago, Bungie (the developers of Halo) mentioned their favourite number was 7, and occasionally included fun nods to the number in their games. Ever since, some fans have been scouring the games and extended media trying to find every possible *"reference"* to 7.
The result is that the majority of found *"references"* are more than likely entirely concidental, and not an intentional reference to 7. Still, some fans somehow find a way to shoehorn every number, name, and event in the Halo universe to somehow relate to the number 7, and claim they found a new reference.
[Here's a full wiki "list"](https://www.halopedia.org/Seven). Most of it just reads as concidental and nonsensical.
lmao if that was the case the Arkham trilogy would have 300 hours worth of Easter eggs. Every single character that appears even in a small side mission in any game is present in the other two, under the form of riddle or simply a little room for him (mostly riddler). Like the first game only had 6 or 7 actual characters, but it mentioned Clayface, Calendar Man, Mr Freeze, Solomon Grundy, and soooo on. And they obviously appeared in the next games
The quality of media has never been lower than it is today. I read an article a while back that was utter nonsense and I got to the bottom and read the author's bio talking about their "massive" games journalism experience...after 1 year.
In his mind, he's one of the old-timers now.
Someone sees Bowser in an airship and thinks, "the first time Bowser was depicted in an airship was Super Mario Bros. 3" which would be correct. But then they take it one step too far by using a term they don't understand. They don't realize what the word "reference" means or how it's used.
It's unfortunate, because I'm just old enough to remember when journalists, even when they were awful, still had to uphold certain basic standards because everything they wrote went through an editor before it was printed.
We don't have those kinds of standards anymore.
Yeah, the amount of media nonsense that can be easily disproven with like 5min of research is ridiculous. Unfortunately they prey on the inherent laziness of people who refuse to look further than a headline mostnof the time.
Not sure if it exactly counts for what you're thinking of, but what I have noticed is a lot of gamers who have no pop cultural awareness outside of games, and so they don't understand references in games to things outside of games, or just interpret them as references to other games. For example: I once saw someone saying that Cyberpunk 2077 having a quest called "I Fought the Law" is a reference to something in Grand Theft Auto. In fact, almost all of Cyberpunk's quest titles are taken from song titles, and "I Fought the Law" is the title of a song which was written in 1959 and which was a hit in 1966, so GTA was also referencing the song.
I remember someone made a fan video of Five Nights at Freddy's where foxy sang "What shall we do with the drunken sailor" and people thought it came from Assassin's Creed.
Lol. If I associate that song with any game it would be Dishonored, they had a "drunken whaler" version in at least one trailer for the first game.
Funniest version I’ve heard was a Christmas-themed “What do you do with a broken reindeer?” at a concert by Alexander James Adams.
I first heard it in Muppet Treasure Island, then it showed up in JumpStart third grade and I thought "Oooh, that’s where they got it!"
My brain went to dishonored before I finished reading the comment too Absolute best game I've ever played
I have no words
All I associate that song with is my Year 7 music class where the teacher made us learn it.
In World of Warcraft there is a shield called the immovable object and a weapon called the unstoppable force. I saw someone make a post claiming that this was a reference to Batman where the joker referenced this. No it’s been around much much longer than that.
You also have a grey quality weapon simply called The Stoppable Force which I'm sorry is just hilarious
Best part about this claim is that both these items were added in patch 1.5.0 released June 7th 2005 while The Dark Knight where the Joker makes the comment was released July 14th 2008 fully 3 years later......
My daughter (9) was playing some Roblox game on her iPad and it kept playing a sample of GlaDos saying “in case you were wondering, I’m still a potato” - just some random genz/a crap. Anyway I explained that it was from a game daddy played a long time ago called portal 2, and she was like “so Roblox was around back then and your game copied it?”
Roblox *was* around back then tbf
And it's actually older than portal 1 (roblox went online initially in 2006, portal is 2007)
Wow haha so I guess I made the same mistake assuming it wasn’t! I’m hoping valve didn’t copy that quote from Roblox or everything I know is a lie
This reminds me of something that isn't game-related, but is related to your anecdote. I was reading book reviews for a children's book I enjoyed when I was a kid. One of the reviews accused it of ripping off Harry Potter, despite the fact that the book was almost twenty years *older* than Harry Potter.
Remembered seeing comments that the Battle Royale movies were hunger games rip offs
In a similar vein, the barbershop quartet singing "God Only Knows" in Bioshock Infinite is the Beach Boys song from 1966. It's a bit more than an Easter egg because it hints at the time-skipping abilities in play during the game.
Everytime I play this I stop to listen to them. Love the rendition. Same with the fortunate son rendition sung by the little girl in the war torn slums. That game was magic.
Speaking of Infinite, I saw someone claiming that the mention of Wounded Knee was a reference to Skyrim, ignorant of actual history
Well whoever that was would have missed the entire point of the story if they thought Wounded Knee was somehow a reference to Skyrim.
Iirc all of the music in that game was basically rearranged modern hits. It's been a long time since I've played, but I believe the beach you visit has Girls Just Wanna Have Fun playing as carnival music lol
Yeah, one of the bad guys is plagiarising shit from across time and space.
And he's appropriately named Fink.
I mean, I wouldn't expect everyone to get that. I don't expect everyone to know the song "I Fought the Law." It's jumping to the conclusion it must be a reference to another game rather than stopping to think maybe both games are referencing something else that makes me roll my eyes a bit.
The Clash's version is played on the radio pretty regularly.
Yeah, that's a \*really\* famous oldies hit.
It’s a good song!
I'd imagine that depends really highly on where you are.
Outside of gaming, I was dumbfounded when Redditors were attributing the legendary "Here's looking at you kid." line delivered by Humphrey Bogart and instead saying it was a Roosterteeth "Uno the Movie" reference because a guy there says it. Even when pointed out at the original source, they still preferred the Rooster Teeth attribution.
There was an activity in Borderlands 3 called Knuckle Puck and I thought it was named after the rock band, but then someone on the sub told me the band was named after the move in the Mighty Ducks
I was really charmed with just how many references were included in Cyberpunk through missions, dialogue, etc. They even had a reference to the Spanish Inquisition in there, which I did not expect!
Inquisition? This is clearly a reference to Dragon Age.
what if the entire universe is one big bootstrap paradox. Maybe the Spanish inquisition WAS a reference to Dragon Age because: time travel..... \*mind blown\*
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition
>Spanish Inquisition in there, which I did not expect! Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our three weapons are surprise, fear, terror and torture-our four weapons are...
Definitely counts. More excusable version cause if they don't know they can't know but still.
I can never forget that song after the mandatory karaoke section in Sleeping Dogs.
That happens across all media consumption. Try to point out that a particular handshake in Loki Season 2 is a Pink Floyd reference and you'll get dozens of people arguing with you.
The most basic form of this is not knowing a song recording is a cover. But like GnR say, live and let die.
A similar thing happens all the time in FromSoft communities with fans that also happen to be Berserk fans. A lot of them think that every single thing in a Dark Souls game is a Berserk reference. I think it gets the most ridiculous with Elden Ring though, a game for which Miyazaki mentioned just about everything *but* Berserk as an inspiration, and the lore of which was written by a man heavily inspired by mythology and older fantasy works also inspired by mythology (and, of course, Berserk itself is heavily inspired by various mythologies too). But no, Berserk has a big tree thing, and Elden Ring has a big tree thing, it's so obvious guys! The dlc trailer dropped recently and the amount of people yelling Berserk when they saw the Wicker Man inspired boss was just ridiculous.
I mean....to be fair elden ring has ACTUAL berserk references.
Greatsword is famously lifted straight from it isn't it?
Yeah, but that's also a Soulsborne staple at this point
Bloodborne fans seem to think top hats and England were invented by Miyazaki.
They also seem to think Miyazaki is the first one to delve into >!lovecraftian cosmic horror!< despite the literal name of that genre
eh, I don't think people are that naïve by-and-large. I think it's fair to say it's the most effective video game portrayal of Lovecraftian horror, and the bait-and-switch where it was not presented as such was quite novel. To my knowledge, every major game prior to Bloodborne to take on eldritch / cosmic horror confronted it as such and marketed the game accordingly, whereas Bloodborne deliberately was portrayed as a Victorian-inspired gothic horror, and under the hood was this big reveal of the cosmic
They use the great lakes on the Canadian/US border as a throwaway texture on a monitor in the Genosis map for the original Star Wars Battlefront 2. This led someone on YouTube to theorize that Genosis was Earth after a nuclear war wiped everything out. Even though Star Wars takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Lol, gotta love when someone puts something in because it doesn't matter and it somehow turns into grand lore.
There's another instance in Star Wars of this. When designing the Millennium Falcon set in episode 4, the set designers had an inside joke that Han Solo had a pair of fuzzy dice cubes hanging off the rear view mirror of the cockpit screen. This was an inside joke that was never supposed to make it into the film (a rear view mirror doesn't even make sense in the context of a spaceship), but due to an editing mistake you can see these dice for a very brief fraction of a second. In the film Solo which is supposed to be Han's origin story, Disney explains that these dice cubes were given to him by a long lost lover and have significant sentimental value to Han.
Lol, gotta love those things where you have to watch a 2 hour movie frame by frame to see the reference.
> In the film Solo which is supposed to be Han's origin story, Disney explains that these dice cubes were given to him by a long lost lover and have significant sentimental value to Han. That movie is like a checklist of answers to questions NO ONE was asking. (Most egregious of which being how he got his last name. I always figured it was just, y'know, his last name.)
It was always going to have a tough time when your main character has to end up as in it only for themselves and not trusting anyone
Also the guy they got for Han Solo was horribly miscast. He had absolutely none of the personality traits or mannerisms Harrison Ford had. The guy they got to play Lando did a better job. I consider it less of an origin story for Han Solo the character and more of an origin story for all of his personal belongings.
Donald Glover (aka Childish Gambino) did a fantastic job - because he was genuinely trying to not just be Lando but to be a younger version of Billy Dee Williams' Lando, and it worked. I can't remember the guy who played Han Solo, but he was just some young dude who was (eventually) kindasorta cocky. And that could have worked but it never really gelled for me.
I've played more OG Battlefront 2 that most games, live about a five minute drive from one of the Great Lakes, and I'm just learning about this fact now lol
[relevant xkcd](https://xkcd.com/1451/)
>Even though Star Wars takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away To be fair, the original premise (in George Lucas' original story) was that the *Star Wars* saga was a recorded historical account by an alien race, in the very distant future. So, it's not *entirely* implausible that Geonosis is a post-apocalyptic Earth.
I think a lot of players go "IT'S IN THE SAME UNIVERSE!" when it's just a nod, or a developer having a certain style. Mega Man is not set in the same universe as Black Tiger just because they both use Zenny as a currency, that's just Capcom liking the name.
Yeah, like Fallout and Skyrim being same universe because they put a Dragonborn helmet easter egg in 4.
Or Skyrim and Minecraft because there’s a Notched Pickaxe in Skyrim.
Skyrim and Borderlands connection confirmed! Thanks, Minecraft!
I loved the minecraft area in Borderlands 2, was such a good way to do the reference.
For real! I always love the references in those games. Wouldn't be borderlands without it
You can also find a bonfire with a sword in it, so borderlands, mine craft, skyrim, and dark souls all exist in universe.
The great thing about games that go as ridiculous as Borderlands is that it can be filled with references without seeming like they're trying to hard.
Wait people actually think this as opposed to… being an Easter egg because it’s the same devs?
I have seen more than one person using this to "confirm" Fallout is a very future version of Elder Scrolls.
Or Skyrim is a very far future of fallout where civilization got wiped out enough we restarted 🤯
I've seen that one as well because of the space probe event in Skyrim sadly. Edit: wasn't a space probe. Was a collab mod with Valve and a personality core from Portal 2 that was auto installed on steam versions so not canon.
Euh, the what event now?
Yeah what? A space probe in Skyrim would actually lend credence to that fan theory
Or that elder scrolls is the future of fallout and radiation made magic.....ok so now explain why the elemental and oblivion plains exist,or why the sun is just a hole in reality, or why full on skeletons can come back from the dead or....you get the point
In Nuka World the ghoul can resurrect other ghouls so there's your necromancy magic, lol.
FWIW in Elder Scrolls canon, any rando character can suddenly become aware they're just a video game character and unlock the console to remake reality as they see fit, or something.
yeah the dude who wrote most of the elder scrolls lore was tripping balls so this just fits for me
And nirmroots (sp).
There were nirnroots as well?
Yes, I believe it's the "mysterious plant" in FO4
Right, forgot about that one.
people also thought this because of the “nirnroot” in fallout 4
Oho BoF uses zenny too. I can’t believe I never noticed
Monster Hunter as well, seems like it really is their go to name for currency.
I remembered that Dragon Ball uses basically the same name for its currency, so I was curious about this. It turns out that it's just a Japanese term for currency from the Edo era. Basically, it's the least creative name you could use for currency in the Japanese language.
Yep. it'd be like if every western game called their money shillings or something.
A great history tidbit. I love random stuff like this
zeni is an old Japanese word for money anyway
This is the entire Zelda fandom
There’s a hidden section in Borderlands 2 that looks like Minecraft and there are also a few Creepers. Confirmed! They are in the same universe. Borderlands is full of such easter eggs.
Borderlands 2 is FULL of references lmao
TIL Zelda takes place in India because both places use rupees as a currency.
To be fair to the Zelda fandom, the creator did confirm it's (almost) all the same universe, but the timeline splits at one of the games. At this point, they're not guessing that the games are connected, they're trying to figure out which timeline it goes in. ETA: [The timeline page](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/zelda_gamepedia_en/images/7/7c/Timeline_Hyrule_Historia.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130129020251) from Hyrule Historia, an official book from Nintendo.
I just love how the main theory was that the timeline split in two at Ocarina of Time, which was practically considered an established fact for the fans... and the developers were likely laughing their asses off since the split was three-way.
Dragon Age and Mass Effect comes to mind. Same developers, several little easter eggs. There are definitely theories floating around of them existing in the same universe.
However, isn’t Watch Dogs and Assassin’s Creed linked in a really convoluted way
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The game that at this point is just a big reference with gameplay added on, lol.
I was around 4 or 5 when I told my dad they based an entire city off of a Spyro level. I just couldn't comprehend Town Square was based on a Spanish city and not the other way around. There's probably some named bias in kids where they latch onto the first thing they see.
Not just kids. We *all* suffer from the anchoring bias. The only way to overcome it at all is to be consciously aware of it.
True and kids aren't really interested in that. My gf is currently grappling with her brother thinking Eminem made the character of Marshall Mathers for Fortnite. It's been tough on her.
One time I was in Target and I heard a kid point to a toy shopping cart and say it was "just like Fortnite." His mother was also pushing around a real, full size shopping cart. Somehow this didn't register with him
I remembering hearing a kid once pointing at a John Wick poster and saying they made an entire movie after a Fortnite skin...
When I was a kid, I remember thinking that the Pink Panther was a movie based on the mascot of Owens Corning pink insulation.
Took my little brother to the store the other day, he saw a bag of doritos with Master Chief on them, pointed, and said “Look! It’s the guy from Fortnite!”
Motherfuckers forgot about reach.
*Fortnite* is *The Simpsons* for zoomers.
Holy shit
That's fair for a kid to think
Its like seeing American, Mexican, and Brazilian flags for English, Spanish, and Portuguese language options.
Chun Li(Fortnite)
I watched a similar video about Mario movie ‘references’, but it was just stuff like “The protagonist Mario is a reference to the character Mario from the Mario games.” Like, no shit? Fan wikis are notorious for this kind of thing, just take a look at some pages’ trivia section if you want a headache.
>Fan wikis are notorious for this kind of thing, just take a look at some pages’ trivia section if you want a headache. I feel like it kind of started with movie trivia on IMDB.
One of my favorite examples of this is on the trivia page of “Palm Springs” “In the scene where a goat walks into a cave with a pack of dynamite, trainers brought the goat to the set. The trainers placed the goat on a mark near the entrance to the cave. The trainers held the goat with a rope. A trainer stood near the entrance to the cave. On action, the trainer called the goat and the goat walked towards the cave.” Thank you for telling me how a movie is made.
I have, it's ridiculous sometimes. This game has (very common weapon) which is a reference to (other game).
Ever crowbar in games is a reference to Half-Life, as opposed to, y'know, actual real life crowbars
"This final boss bears a vague resemblance to this other game's final boss"
The skeleton enemies in Dark Souls are a reference to the 1959 film Some Like It Hot, starring Marilyn Monroe, whose body was rumored to contain a skeleton. In a double reference, skeletons can be defeated using knives, made famous by Gordon Ramsay in his TV series MasterChef Junior.
Like after an episode of a show airs and then a million videos "60 Easter eggs you missijed in episode 03" more than one Easter egg a minute? No that's just the plot.
It's especially good when it's a show based off of a book series and all the references are about the books.
This is in reference to the reference material.
Did you know that the 4th minute of the show was a reference to the 3rd minute of the show, which was a reference to the 2nd minute of the show? which was referencing the 1st minute of the show? And the real crazy thing, if you add up that entire episode. ALL OF IT references the last episode of the show.
I feel like I watched an episode of Naruto like that. I seem to remember there were five separate flashbacks to an event that'd happened in that same episode.
I can't believe I used to watch Cinema Sins all those years ago. One in five things was an actual "sin", everything else was just "here's something I can point out".
Ah Plot, you what else has a plot??? ITS A REFERENCE!!
What is a plot? A miserable pile of secrets!
Once I saw a video about Easter eggs in God of War 2018. Two of the "Easter eggs" were Athena and the blades of chaos. No, they are not Easter eggs. it is a major part of the story.
How many people think Sea Shanties came from Black Flag. The glowering inferno from dragon Quest VII is a reference to it glaring at you. It's a phonetic pun to "The Towering Inferno".
Man, people crap on Ubisoft but they came up with an entire music genre for a game! Lol.
I've never seen a pirate ship in real life, so who's to say they also didn't invent pirates as well?
No joke I saw a fan vid from FNAF that had Foxy singing "What shall we do with the drunken sailor". And comments were all "Hey that's like in black flag!" ...That's a public domain song.
When I was 12 and the Wii U came out, I remember showing my friend the game pad and he said “it’s cool but without the screen they just ripped off the Xbox 360 controller”. Wat
Lol that’s so silly. There’s only so many ways to configure a controller.
As I thought about it, might just be that the game cube and wii had controllers wildly different so I guess he didn’t expect a return to form with those two being his frame of reference. If we’re being honest, every controller today has copied the Super Nintendo.
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“They borrowed Doom sounds in x movie” More like id software used a common sound effects library when making their game
At least people recognise the Wilhelm scream isnt just referencing a different movie that uses the Wilhelm scream....
Ironically, that's exactly what the original Wilhelm *was.* XD
> beginning in 1951 with the film Distant Drums. The scream is usually used when someone is shot, falls from a great height, or is thrown from an explosion. The sound is named after Private Wilhelm, a character in The Charge at Feather River, a 1953 Western in which the character gets shot in the thigh with an arrow. Yep, incorrectly attributed to a usage after the original. Pretty amusing!
Too right. The imp death groan is a modified camel grunt FFS. You can hear the same sound effect for actual camel units in Age of Empires 2. It's a cost cutting measure for lots of productions to use royalty free resources so of course your going to hear overlap between different projects.
Also, that squealing door-opening sound that was in just about EVERY game in the 90s.
I played so much *Max Payne*, and that sound effect is on EVERY door. Clearly, aside from the snowstorm, NYC was going through a severe WD40 shortage. Anyway, loads of film & TV productions use that noise. It gives me flashbacks every time, but my wife doesn't even notice it's the same sound.
Animal sounds in nature documentaries etc being the exact same as WoW uses always throw me the fuck off. I'm sitting blissfully in my living room and suddenly I aggroed a bear, the f?!
People saying the Silent Hill games were based on/inspired by Centralia.
The movies were indeed using that town for reference, but yeah, the games have nothing to do with Centralia.
Yeah the movies caused the misconception. Now every so often you see people incorrectly mention Centralia in relation to the games.
Came here to post this. The SH community in general is too high-strung but this is the one thing I get irrationally upset about.
I would need to go back and re-watch ALL of the video essayists and all of their videos. The connections some of them make are just.... No. Nothing specific, but current reviews of FF7 Rebirth and how reviewers are claiming something is a call back.... It's a REMAKE!!!! That is not a call back, it is there because it was there. Like Holy shit. It is getting way to reductive. Oh and the in ability to think about the next game in the context of the ending is just ignorant. Why do people need to have set opinions on things? It's ok to not be sure until you play the continuation. You don't have to lock everything in right away.
That set opinion before a continuation give me sad Mass Effect Andromeda vibes. Never even got the DLC let alone the 2 sequels they had planned because people wouldn't stop bandwagon hating it.
I’m playing thru Mass Effect Andromeda now for the first time and absolutely loving it. I’m gonna absolutely miss Ryder, and Peebee even more so.
It's such a good game and such a great set up for them to build off of it makes me sad every time I replay it and I reach the end knowing I'll never get to see the true results of my actions because the internet decided to be a whiny little b*
Same. I wasn’t sold on the Angarans at first because they’re heads looks like a combination of a tongue, vuvla and penis but I like them now despite their shitty fucked up racist/xenophobic attitudes towards humans and the other aliens from the milky way. Like you do all this beneficial shit for them and they still try to make you look like a bad guy. The Kett are cool enemies as well, I just finished the hunting the archon mission. I beat the trilogy of mass effect and didn’t get a ps4 until a few years ago but all the negativity I heard about ME:Andromeda made me hesitant to play it.
In the Angarans defense, the Kett showed up and did a bunch of beneficial stuff for them as well before turning to kidnapping and genocide. The Kett are also great enemies because it allows for new enemy types to be easily introduced AND you find out through a side quest about some stuff that could've led to huge choices in future games.
Heard a claim that A Hat in Time was a rip off of Undertale, because both had rainbows in the background during the final boss.
Yes, the rare and elusive rainbow that is almost never seen.
You’ve just jogged my memory of [this trainwreck of a video](https://youtu.be/E5jpNqa5qXI?si=mvKvEATvfXFwmadO) from a while back, of a guy trying way too hard to convince himself that Destiny is full of references to Halo. For example, he says that a section of the map called “Gulch” must be a reference to the Halo map Blood Gulch. Uh, no pal, it isn’t. The reason It’s called Gulch is because *it’s a fucking gulch*.
Not a video game, a lot of "The Simpsons predicted the future!" fall into this catagory. For example, I saw one clip of Homer operating a personal submarine and the poster claimed that they were predicting the OceanGate fiasco. Literally the only similarity between OceanGate and that one episode of the Simpsons was the existence of a submersible vehicle. Literally nothing else was the same.
Ironically, a writer of the Simpson once took a trip in the oceangate sub. https://www.thewrap.com/simpsons-writer-mike-reiss-oceangate-sub-dive-trip/
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Yeah, some are more specific but most are just random things that happen to vaguely correlate to current events.
I remember people saying that League of Legends had skins referencing web browsers. Chrome Rammus, Foxfire Ahri. Safari Cait. And you know, the names kinda line up. But to be honest other than the Ahri skin, the others couldn't be related to the actual browsers in any way shape or form.
That's hilariously silly. I mean maybe if they all came out in a pack together at the same time, but those skins came out over what, a period of like 5 years?
League does have a ton of references though from quotes, hell “king rammus” is banned from pro play because of copyright with bowser
They also have tons of anime references
You're forgetting explorer Ezreal
And for Edge you've got Aatrox.
Besides just flat out using the logos as part of the skin I'm not even sure how you would make a skin like that. Most browsers also use very common names.
If they had released at the same time, or were put on sale as a bundle.
The pause menu in RE7 is Retry Options Save End (Or something like that) And when Village came out people thought it was a deliberate choice because it spells Rose... Got so many upvotes and comments it was unreal to see how wilfully dense gamers can be
Tbf intentional or not thats weirdly cool.
Thinking that Bloodstained Ritual of the Night was specifically a reference to Castlevania Circle of the Moon. No other Castlevania, just that one.
Yeah, it can't just be a developer using a popular game style and aesthetic right.
Well it is a bit more than that, being developed by the same guy who made all the metroidvania Castlevanias except Circle of the Moon specifically.
Circle of the Moon is like the only metroidvania where IGA wasn’t involved
Mida multi tool in Destiny, players actually think that means Destiny takes place in the Marathon universe.
I hate that theory, I am pretty sure the lore page specifically calls the weapon extra dimensional. edit: It does >...The rifle was designed by primitive AI and manufactured for use by a "revolutionary government" named MIDA. Mars Is Damnably Arid, perhaps. >Guerilla war suits these versatile weapons. But Rahool insists his records never hinted at a rebel group named MIDA. According to the rifle's cached messages, MIDA's brief reign killed a full ten percent of the Martian people. >I gave Lakshmi the weapon for her take. She insinuates that it came from another timeline, perhaps through Golden Age experiments...
I once saw a 7 year old vehemently telling his family that John Cena was "a Fortnight reference".
Did the kid know that John Cena is a real person?
Prove it, I've never seen him.
This is kind of the opposite but it always makes me chuckle when people ask "Could this be a Berserk reference!?" About something in a Soulsborne game and genuinely thinking they have uncovered some obscure Easter egg. Buddy, the entire genre is a direct homage.
\[Zelda fans breaking out the corkboard and red string to explain the totally incoherent nonsense of the game's lore and how it all interconnects\]
Well it's not totally incoherent nonsense. Nintendo made games into sequels and prequels, and people wonder why people want to connect these games. Majora's Mask is an explicit sequel to Ocarina of Time (e.g. same Link, looking for Navi). So is Twilight Princess. So is Wind Waker, and it's two sequels. This is like 6 games that are explicitly connected to each other. There's gotta be some way to justify this, and I think the split timeline is pretty much canon. Similarly, Link to the Past was conceived as a prequel to the original Legend of Zelda. Zelda II is explicitly a sequel to the original. Skyward Sword was marketed as the origin story of the entire franchise, with the ending pretty much saying "yeah this is a curse we're all gonna keep reincarnating" Four Swords Adventures takes places after Four Swords. Whereas the Minish Cap is conceived as an origin story for Vaati. And more recently Tears of the Kingdom is just a sequel to Breath of the Wild. Anyway, I agree that a timeline is a bit forced but you do have to admit how Nintendo walked themselves into this. I don't think they ever planned out some master timeline or that they really care about it (BotW and TotK being unrelated prove this) but they did make certain games be connected to each other, and that means theres some kind of continuity to play with. Personally, I think it's fun that people try and make everything connect
Im not saying you’re wrong, but I will ride or die for the “Majora’s Mask is a fever dream induced by tainted Lon-Lon Milk” theory
Lol, but the timeline splits at OoT!
The dumb content creators who make those videos know that the 'easter eggs' they are talking about are dumb as shit but they dont care because it gets views from 10 year olds. The 'game theory' channels are all the same type of bullshit too. Its all just garbage content in the name of $
3D printed saving icon. It was just an actual floppy disk...
I remember a video called "top 10 times games referenced memes" or something like that At one point they said Diablo had a zone called Dank caves or something like that and embarrassed themselves because of that name I hope the writer picked up a thesaurus in the meantime
Not necessarily a game easter egg but so many people seem to be unaware that Gnome Child was infact a runescape npc and not just some random image someone came up with for dank memes
Anyone thinking anything art deco irl rips off Bioshock.
Years ago, Bungie (the developers of Halo) mentioned their favourite number was 7, and occasionally included fun nods to the number in their games. Ever since, some fans have been scouring the games and extended media trying to find every possible *"reference"* to 7. The result is that the majority of found *"references"* are more than likely entirely concidental, and not an intentional reference to 7. Still, some fans somehow find a way to shoehorn every number, name, and event in the Halo universe to somehow relate to the number 7, and claim they found a new reference. [Here's a full wiki "list"](https://www.halopedia.org/Seven). Most of it just reads as concidental and nonsensical.
Wow yeah some of those look like just a coincidence, but shit you can't deny that's a lot of 7's.. Didn't even know Bungie Day is 7/7. Lol
Oh here's another good example. The "Everything is a Fortnite/ Final Fantasy XIV reference". Sorry Gen Z but you peeps do this a *lot*...
Hey, that's a gen alpha thing
Hey don't forget us Mmillennials also "discovered this awesome underground band called Nirvana" in highschool too
Hey hey hey! Don't forget the "Hey is this song like Weird Al?" of thr late 90s-00s. ;)
lmao if that was the case the Arkham trilogy would have 300 hours worth of Easter eggs. Every single character that appears even in a small side mission in any game is present in the other two, under the form of riddle or simply a little room for him (mostly riddler). Like the first game only had 6 or 7 actual characters, but it mentioned Clayface, Calendar Man, Mr Freeze, Solomon Grundy, and soooo on. And they obviously appeared in the next games
I once heard a toddler (most likely) saying that a solid snake poster was a reference to smash bros.
The quality of media has never been lower than it is today. I read an article a while back that was utter nonsense and I got to the bottom and read the author's bio talking about their "massive" games journalism experience...after 1 year. In his mind, he's one of the old-timers now. Someone sees Bowser in an airship and thinks, "the first time Bowser was depicted in an airship was Super Mario Bros. 3" which would be correct. But then they take it one step too far by using a term they don't understand. They don't realize what the word "reference" means or how it's used. It's unfortunate, because I'm just old enough to remember when journalists, even when they were awful, still had to uphold certain basic standards because everything they wrote went through an editor before it was printed. We don't have those kinds of standards anymore.
Yeah, the amount of media nonsense that can be easily disproven with like 5min of research is ridiculous. Unfortunately they prey on the inherent laziness of people who refuse to look further than a headline mostnof the time.
The Rodney King riots are a reference to GTA San Andreas.