An NPC appearing in Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II is potentially a reference to American domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. It should be noted that while his character portrait and overworld sprite look similar to Kaczynski, it is used for several different NPC characters in the game, so it's unknown if he was originally intended to physically resemble the real-life Unabomber. However, like the Unabomber this character is also named Ted, he moved to a cabin in the woods, and believes society is too reliant on industrial technology, even complimenting Vegeta on "blowing up" a neighbor's generator after he failed to destroy it himself. His dialogue is the following:
Ted: "I moved out here because society is too reliant on Capsule technology. Civilization is falling apart, and we've all filled our pockets with capsules, SUV's and capsule cappuccino machines. It is unnatural. It was very peaceful here - until that Vinnie guy moved in. He makes me sick! Listen to that music he is always playing:
"Feel the danger around you! The black darkness surrounds you!" "What are you going to do? The eyes of the lion!"
I can't stand that corporate pop music Vinnie is always playing: [same lyrics as above]
[After destroying Vinnie's generator]: You blew up his generator? I like your style! I would have done it myself, but I couldn't figure out his security code."
There has been a trend of retrospective reviews and historical content relating to the North American video game crash of 1983 mentioning Chase the Chuck Wagon as a contributing game to the crash, despite the fact that it only had a limited mail-order release and was not the first product-placement-based video game. This is theorized by Cassidy of the "Bad Game Hall of Fame" to be the result of a quote from the G4 documentary series Icons that was taken out of context, referring to a proliferation of companies trying to branch into video games as opposed to any specific games or the use of product placement, with the mistaken belief that Chase the Chuck Wagon was published or developed by Purina itself like with Quaker Oats' "U.S. Games" brand. The quote in question reads:
"Toy companies like Parker Brothers and Hasbro form video game divisions. But when unrelated companies like Chuck Wagon dog food and Quaker Oats jump on-board, the market begins to turn."
A sword kit named "The Stonecutter" can be obtained at the Zasho River Pillar of Honor. Its description reads: "Humble, but more powerful than a prince". The sword name and description are possibly a reference to a story by the same name contained in Andrew Langs' The Crimson Fairy Book. In the story, a humble stonecutter wishes to be turned into many things that hold power by a mountain spirit, the first of which being a prince. In the end, he wishes to be changed back to his original form realizing that he is satisfied living as a humble stonecutter.
A sword kit named, "Ōmukade's Revenge", can be obtained by completing the mythic tale "The Spirit of Yarikawa's Vengeance". The design on the sword wrap depicts a coiling giant centipede. This is possibly a reference to the Japanese folktale of Tawara Tōda Monogatari in which a giant centipede (mukade or Ōmukade in Japanese) yokai terrorizes a kingdom.
In the city set of Nickelodeon 3D Movie Maker, a fried chicken store titled "Chick N' Chunks" can be seen. This is not the name of any one location from any Nickelodeon series, but its branding is reminiscent of the Chokey Chicken restaurant from Rocko's Modern Life, a connection further supported by Filburt and Dr. Hutchison's trailer home appearing on the same map.
In Season 4 of Rocko's Modern Life, released the same year as Nickelodeon 3D Movie Maker, the Chokey Chicken was renamed "Chewy Chicken" due to the original name's sexual slang meaning, meaning that Chick N' Chunks may have been an alternate censorship of the "Chokey Chicken" name.
Steve's win animation after a match was him eating a steak and holding it at waist level, but in a subsequent update after his initial release, the animation was changed to remove the meat after he ate it. Some speculate that this change was made because the way he held the meat after eating made it look like a phallic object.
Infamously, the ending cutscene of Banjo-Tooie has series antagonist Gruntilda threaten "Just you wait until Banjo-Threeie!". Contrary to popular belief, the lead designer for the Banjo series, Gregg Mayles has stated on Twitter that a direct sequel to Tooie was never planned for development, and that the supposed "tease" was merely a joke, playing on how the world "Threeie" would be unpronounceable in British English.
At the end of the level, "Pelennor Fields", there is a cutscene depicting the battle between the Witch King of Angmar and Eowyn where the armor and weapon of the Witch King does not match his film counterpart. His weapon being a large mace rather than a flail and his helmet having a different design entirely. This was an early alternate design that went unused in the Return of the King film. Because this game was being produced alongside the film the developers presumably had no time to change it to his final film design before launch.
In the Stillwater Loft where the Bachelor takes refuge during the course of the game, a map of the Town can be found. Almost everything on this map reflects the in-game map except for the Train Station, as the positions of the railways and station buildings are different. It's possible that this was an earlier version of the game's map used by the developers and was not updated as the layout of the Town changed.
On the Game Pak Check screen of Pokémon Stadium 2, there is a Nintendo 64 cartridge with a vague label on it. This label does not match the cartridge for Pokémon Stadium 2, but instead appears to be the one used for the game Road Rash 64.
In the game's code is evidence of an unused Event Pokémon. Event Pokémon are exclusive Pokémon throughout the franchise's history which usually have movesets or other unique properties that would not otherwise legitimately occur in normal gameplay.
A code string indicates that Diglett learns the move "Acid" at Lvl. 1, found at the end of Diglett's Generation 1 move pool, as this programming method was the manner in which the programmers ensured Event Pokémon transferred via the Game Pak to Stadium could function properly during gameplay.
To date, a Diglett with Acid being legitimately learned in it's moveset has never been released or distributed by an official Event by Nintendo nor Game Freak.
Within the game's data is an unused Mashup for the song "Istanbul" by They Might Be Giants. While it is unknown why the Mashup was removed, it is theorized that it was because of the low amount of dancers within the Mashup, as only 6 dancers are used.
In the first, second and sixth SoulCalibur games, the classic numeric input for Ivy's notoriously difficult Summon Suffering throw is 376231A+G (Attack + Guard). This number combination actually holds significance as it appears to be a reference to the former phone number for Namco's headquarters from before they were acquired by Bandai, being 03-3756-2311.
Allegedly, the developers used the phone number as the basis for the input as a reaction to an in-joke among Tekken and Soul Edge arcade communities, who would react to degenerate or weird stuff in the games with "gonna call Namco about this". The joke being: "If you can't do the throw, go call Namco about it." However, since this input was brought back in SoulCalibur VI long after the phone number stopped being used by Bandai Namco, this adds an additional (albeit probably unintended) layer to the joke: "Go call Namco about it. Oh wait, you can't."
In the 2023 film "The Super Mario Bros. Movie", the Japanese name for the character Spike (the foreman from Wrecking Crew) was changed in the corresponding dub. Although no specific reason was given as to why the change was made, it can be assumed it was done to avoid controversy as the character's original Japanese name is "Blackie", which is also a derogatory racial slur in English-speaking countries used to refer to dark-skinned people of African descent.
According to a later version of the "Project Wombat" developer bible for Crash Bandicoot (this version was given to a fan by the game's producer David Siller in 2015; an earlier version of it was officially published in 2018 in the book "The Crash Bandicoot Files: How Willy the Wombat Sparked Marsupial Mania"), Dr. Neo Cortex's backstory describes how he and Dr. Nitrus Brio when they were younger destroyed their high school by tampering with the physics department's test nuclear power plant. Afterwards, they traveled the world looking for a new home, but no matter where they went they were ridiculed and ostracized, and it is noted that soon after they left a location, that place was then met with "violent explosions and catastrophes". This culminates in one last account where the pair left the city of Chernobyl, drawing the attention of various international law organizations who connected the dots to their past incidents and soon added Cortex and Brio to the international most-wanted list. Feeling the heat, they finally settled down far away from humanity on the Australian island that he would soon name Cortex Island. This backstory heavily implies that Cortex and Brio were responsible for the real-life 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union.
The game's data contains labels for player 3 up to player 8. It is possible that a mode reminiscent of the Tournament Battle variant of Super Street Fighter II (a special version that networked 4 cabinets together to allow for 8 player elimination tournaments) was considered at one point in development before being scrapped.
During the cases "The Black Caesar" and "The Consul's Car", you can find two pieces of toast with images of a cowboy's face burnt into them. This toast is not interactable, and fans have assumed that these are the likenesses of John or Jack Marston from Red Dead Redemption.
In the campaign levels "Assault on the Control Room" and "343 Guilty Spark", a glitch can be performed where if you hold down the button to throw a grenade right as a cutscene showing you arriving on the Pelican starts, you will stay inside the Pelican despite map scripting normally forcing you to jump out. The ship will then fly off out-of-bounds. If this glitch is done in the former mission, you can exit at any time and explore, but if you do not jump out in time, the Pelican will fly through a kill barrier and kill you. If done in the latter mission, you can safely get out at any time and explore with no risk of death. If you travel northeast from where the Pelican landed, you may eventually encounter a lone Marine, Private Mendoza from later in the mission, standing around in the empty area doing nothing. In Anniversary Edition, this Marine is slightly hidden behind a tree (several were added to this area in this edition), but he can still be seen as the trees do not have collision-detection, allowing you to walk through them. While it may seem that him standing around doing nothing is just an Easter egg, his presence here is actually a pre-determined location for his model to spawn in at before he is needed later in the level so there are no memory allocation spikes that would occur if his model was just loaded in and destroyed from the level. This is part of a common game programming pattern called "object pooling" where multiple objects are pre-initialized to be in use, and once their usage is finished are set to no longer be in use. The position of Mendoza's model is changed to be used in a pair of cutscenes during the mission.
It's notable that Mendoza's model has very minimal AI unlike other NPCs in the stage. Normally, if you use mods to possess any other character in the level and play as them, the game will recognize that the functions assigned to that character are being overridden by the player character and the level will crash. If you use mods to possess Mendoza's model however, the game will not recognize his functions have changed and you can play through the entire mission as him. He has less functionality than Master Chief, he freezes when he is hit due to him playing an animation central to his original AI, and will die in a few hits, but with the God Mode invincibility cheat on he can complete the level. Although designer Jaime Griesemer mentioned that there was a playable Marine unit named "future soldier" in an earlier RTS prototype of Halo titled "Monkey Nuts"/"Blam!", it's unknown if Mendoza specifically was ever planned to be playable.
An NPC appearing in Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II is potentially a reference to American domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. It should be noted that while his character portrait and overworld sprite look similar to Kaczynski, it is used for several different NPC characters in the game, so it's unknown if he was originally intended to physically resemble the real-life Unabomber. However, like the Unabomber this character is also named Ted, he moved to a cabin in the woods, and believes society is too reliant on industrial technology, even complimenting Vegeta on "blowing up" a neighbor's generator after he failed to destroy it himself. His dialogue is the following:
A sword kit named "The Stonecutter" can be obtained at the Zasho River Pillar of Honor. Its description reads: "Humble, but more powerful than a prince". The sword name and description are possibly a reference to a story by the same name contained in Andrew Langs' The Crimson Fairy Book. In the story, a humble stonecutter wishes to be turned into many things that hold power by a mountain spirit, the first of which being a prince. In the end, he wishes to be changed back to his original form realizing that he is satisfied living as a humble stonecutter.
A sword kit named, "Ōmukade's Revenge", can be obtained by completing the mythic tale "The Spirit of Yarikawa's Vengeance". The design on the sword wrap depicts a coiling giant centipede. This is possibly a reference to the Japanese folktale of Tawara Tōda Monogatari in which a giant centipede (mukade or Ōmukade in Japanese) yokai terrorizes a kingdom.
In the city set of Nickelodeon 3D Movie Maker, a fried chicken store titled "Chick N' Chunks" can be seen. This is not the name of any one location from any Nickelodeon series, but its branding is reminiscent of the Chokey Chicken restaurant from Rocko's Modern Life, a connection further supported by Filburt and Dr. Hutchison's trailer home appearing on the same map.
Steve's win animation after a match was him eating a steak and holding it at waist level, but in a subsequent update after his initial release, the animation was changed to remove the meat after he ate it. Some speculate that this change was made because the way he held the meat after eating made it look like a phallic object.
At the end of the level, "Pelennor Fields", there is a cutscene depicting the battle between the Witch King of Angmar and Eowyn where the armor and weapon of the Witch King does not match his film counterpart. His weapon being a large mace rather than a flail and his helmet having a different design entirely. This was an early alternate design that went unused in the Return of the King film. Because this game was being produced alongside the film the developers presumably had no time to change it to his final film design before launch.
In the Future Redeemed DLC story scenario, the frequencies of the radio in Chapter 5 reference the release years of every Xeno series game.
In the Stillwater Loft where the Bachelor takes refuge during the course of the game, a map of the Town can be found. Almost everything on this map reflects the in-game map except for the Train Station, as the positions of the railways and station buildings are different. It's possible that this was an earlier version of the game's map used by the developers and was not updated as the layout of the Town changed.
On the Game Pak Check screen of Pokémon Stadium 2, there is a Nintendo 64 cartridge with a vague label on it. This label does not match the cartridge for Pokémon Stadium 2, but instead appears to be the one used for the game Road Rash 64.
In the game's code is evidence of an unused Event Pokémon. Event Pokémon are exclusive Pokémon throughout the franchise's history which usually have movesets or other unique properties that would not otherwise legitimately occur in normal gameplay.
In Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact there is an unused female voice that doesn't match either Elena or Ibuki. It's possible these voice lines belonged to an earlier version of Makoto, as she was originally meant to debut in this game but was moved to 3rd Strike due to time constrains.
According to a later version of the "Project Wombat" developer bible for Crash Bandicoot (this version was given to a fan by the game's producer David Siller in 2015; an earlier version of it was officially published in 2018 in the book "The Crash Bandicoot Files: How Willy the Wombat Sparked Marsupial Mania"), Dr. Neo Cortex's backstory describes how he and Dr. Nitrus Brio when they were younger destroyed their high school by tampering with the physics department's test nuclear power plant. Afterwards, they traveled the world looking for a new home, but no matter where they went they were ridiculed and ostracized, and it is noted that soon after they left a location, that place was then met with "violent explosions and catastrophes". This culminates in one last account where the pair left the city of Chernobyl, drawing the attention of various international law organizations who connected the dots to their past incidents and soon added Cortex and Brio to the international most-wanted list. Feeling the heat, they finally settled down far away from humanity on the Australian island that he would soon name Cortex Island. This backstory heavily implies that Cortex and Brio were responsible for the real-life 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union.
The game's data contains labels for player 3 up to player 8. It is possible that a mode reminiscent of the Tournament Battle variant of Super Street Fighter II (a special version that networked 4 cabinets together to allow for 8 player elimination tournaments) was considered at one point in development before being scrapped.
During the cases "The Black Caesar" and "The Consul's Car", you can find two pieces of toast with images of a cowboy's face burnt into them. This toast is not interactable, and fans have assumed that these are the likenesses of John or Jack Marston from Red Dead Redemption.
In the campaign levels "Assault on the Control Room" and "343 Guilty Spark", a glitch can be performed where if you hold down the button to throw a grenade right as a cutscene showing you arriving on the Pelican starts, you will stay inside the Pelican despite map scripting normally forcing you to jump out. The ship will then fly off out-of-bounds. If this glitch is done in the former mission, you can exit at any time and explore, but if you do not jump out in time, the Pelican will fly through a kill barrier and kill you. If done in the latter mission, you can safely get out at any time and explore with no risk of death. If you travel northeast from where the Pelican landed, you may eventually encounter a lone Marine, Private Mendoza from later in the mission, standing around in the empty area doing nothing. In Anniversary Edition, this Marine is slightly hidden behind a tree (several were added to this area in this edition), but he can still be seen as the trees do not have collision-detection, allowing you to walk through them. While it may seem that him standing around doing nothing is just an Easter egg, his presence here is actually a pre-determined location for his model to spawn in at before he is needed later in the level so there are no memory allocation spikes that would occur if his model was just loaded in and destroyed from the level. This is part of a common game programming pattern called "object pooling" where multiple objects are pre-initialized to be in use, and once their usage is finished are set to no longer be in use. The position of Mendoza's model is changed to be used in a pair of cutscenes during the mission.