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The massive stone carving known as Alduin's Wall, which kicks off the hunt for the Dragonrend shout, hides visual references to events from earlier Elder Scrolls games: the Staff of Chaos from Arena, Numidium from Daggerfall, Red Mountain from Morrowind, and an Oblivion Gate from Oblivion, all worked into the carved history of the World-Eater.
Vengerberg, the town Yennefer grew up in, was filmed at the Szentendre Skanzen Village Museum in Hungary, a site normally dedicated to preserving traditional Carpathian folk architecture rather than housing fictional sorceresses.
Right at the start of the game, there's a cutscene featuring a painting of Cain carrying his dead brother Abel's body. Stick with it all the way to the ending, and when Joker finally dies, Batman carries his body out of the theatre in the exact same pose as that painting. Easy to miss if you're not paying attention early on, but it's a nice bit of visual bookending.
Bethesda deliberately released Skyrim worldwide on November 11, 2011, exactly a year after announcing it at the 2010 Spike Video Game Awards on November 11, 2010, turning the memorable 11/11/11 date into part of the game's marketing and cultural identity.
It's a subtle one, but a few of Jon Snow's companions at the Night's Watch share names with Frodo's closest friends from The Lord of the Rings. It's the kind of overlap that feels like a deliberate nod between two of fantasy's biggest sagas rather than a coincidence.
If Subject 16 sounded a little different to you this time round, that's because he was. Cam Clarke voiced him in AC2 and Brotherhood, but for Revelations the North American version swapped him out for Graham Cuthbertson instead.
Out of everything in this three-hour epic, the actual moment Tony snaps his fingers in the gauntlet was the last piece of footage captured for the whole movie, shot during reshoots in January 2019, with the visual effects team still finishing work on it right up until the premiere.
This was the first movie Marvel Studios financed entirely on its own, rather than licensing a character out to another studio. It was also the opening chapter of a planned six-picture distribution deal with Paramount, which later got reshuffled once Disney bought Marvel outright.
There's a QR code tucked away in the asylum in episode five, right next to Steven as he peers through one of the doors. Scan it and it takes you to Moon Knight #1, the character's very first solo comic book.
There was a point where the Duffers seriously floated the idea of moving each new season forward a decade, starting in the 80s and eventually landing in the present day by Season 5. It would have been a wild ride through changing fashion and pop culture, but they ultimately scrapped it because they realised the heart of the show was really the kids and their journey together, not the era they were stuck in.
