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Hulk's iconic put down of Loki wasn't invented for the film. In the comics the Hulk's usual go-to insult is 'puny humans', so swapping it to 'puny god' for a literal god was a small tweak that turned into one of the most quoted lines in the entire MCU.
Those streaky 'trail' effects you get when sprinting or driving fast made their series debut here, well before it became standard across later entries.
This was easily the biggest launch of 2020 across both physical and digital sales, moving over four million copies in its opening weekend alone and becoming the fastest-selling PlayStation 4 exclusive of all time.
When Emperor Argall finally shows up and speaks in Season 4, the voice belongs to Frank Welker, best known as the original voice of Megatron in the 1980s Transformers cartoon. Having him face off against Peter Cullen's Thaedus, the show's Optimus Prime, is a deliberate bit of stunt casting that Transformers fans clocked instantly.
In June 2005, a Dutch modder found a disabled sex scene still sitting in the game's files and released a fix to switch it back on, calling it Hot Coffee. It spread fast, and within weeks Rockstar was staring down a full-blown industry crisis rather than just a modding curiosity.
In Dalaran's Legerdemain Lounge, a human named Roscoe and a blood elf named Rachele sit across from each other on the coffee shop's centre couches, a clear stand-in for Ross and Rachel from Friends. Rachele will occasionally wonder aloud where 'Phoe'be' has got to.
ODST's wave-based Firefight mode is Bungie's own spin on the Horde mode Epic had introduced in Gears of War 2 the year before. It went on to become one of ODST's most enduring contributions to the series, sticking around in nearly every mainline Halo game that followed.
The East Empire Company, a recurring monopolistic trading operation in the series since Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansion, is a deliberate stand-in for the real-world East India Company. Its Skyrim warehouse even hides various in-game drugs, echoing the East India Company's real history of smuggling.
There's an item you can find simply called Blue Suede Shoes, and it's exactly the tribute it sounds like - a nod to the Carl Perkins rock and roll classic that Elvis, Johnny Cash, and half of music history have covered since. No real gameplay purpose, just a fun name for the collectors to spot.
The giant statues found in Sovngarde, the Nordic realm of the honored dead, will quietly rotate to face the player whenever they aren't being watched directly, a subtle detail that most players never catch happening in real time.
