Diablo III Knowledge
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Whimsyshire, the Cow Level's Weird Cousin
Craft the Staff of Herding and use it on the pink lights between old and new Tristram, and you'll open a portal to Whimsyshire, a candy-coloured field full of teddy bears, unicorns and giant butterflies that turn out to be just as deadly as anything else in the game. It's basically Blizzard's way of keeping the old cow level joke alive.
The 'Cute' Level Has a Dark Secret in Its Music
Whimsyshire sounds all bubbly and 8-bit on the surface, but the actual track is Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit playing backwards. That piece's title translates loosely to 'the Devil of the Night,' so even the silliest level in the game is hiding a joke.
There's a Whole Dungeon Named After the Dev Team
Sometimes the Cemetery of the Forsaken swaps its usual Defiled Crypt for one called Development Hell, and every single monster inside is named after a real Diablo III staff member. You can literally fight lead director Jay Wilson in there.
Larry, Curly and Moe Got Turned Into Skeletons
After you take down Ezek during the Broken Blade quest, three skeleton guardians show up named Brother Larel, Brother Karel and Brother Moek. Say them out loud and it clicks: it's a goofy little Three Stooges reference tucked into a pretty grim questline.
An NFL Team Snuck Into Act II
Wander into the Ruined Cistern and you might run into a group of elite Berserkers named after actual New York Giants players, including Jacobs the Gigantic and Bradshaw the Behemoth. No idea who on the dev team was the football fan, but they had fun with it.
Nine Toes Becomes Nine Toads
There's a rare spawn called Nine Toads, which is a pretty obvious wink at Borderlands' Nine Toes. It doesn't stop at the name either, since killing it can drop a weapon called The Clipper, the exact same name as the gun Nine Toes drops in Borderlands.
Typing 'starcow' Broke the Internet for a Day
During the beta, someone found a mysterious empty text box hidden on the Diablo III forums. After a load of guessing, a fan worked out that typing 'starcow' into it unlocked a hidden animation of a cow drifting through space to a Nyan Cat remix. Nobody really knows why it's there, it's just there.
The Butcher Moonlights in Two Other Blizzard Games
He's a fully playable melee assassin in Heroes of the Storm, built around a trait literally called Fresh Meat. Over in Overwatch, Roadhog has a Butcher skin, and one of its unique voice lines is, of course, 'Fresh meat!'
Even World of Warcraft Has a Third Leg for Wirt
By the time World of Warcraft rolled around, Blizzard had turned the whole thing into a running gag across the company. Somewhere in Azeroth there's an item called Wirt's Third Leg, quietly keeping a decades-old Diablo joke alive in a completely different game.