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Tucked away at the Sepulcher in Silverpine Forest is a Forsaken innkeeper who goes by the name Bates. Given that the surrounding zone is dripping with gothic horror atmosphere already, it's hard to believe the Norman Bates nod running the local lodging is a coincidence.
The wrecked survey ship USS Ozymandias off the coast of Point Lookout is more than a scavenging spot. Its name, the quest 'An Antique Land,' and the in-game Bysshe Company are all references to Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem 'Ozymandias', right down to using the poet's own middle name.
There's a trophy called Stage Fright that pops up in Chapter 11 if you just stand still for 30 seconds after a certain cutscene. It's Naughty Dog poking fun at themselves, referencing the famously awkward E3 2015 stage demo where the controller froze up mid-presentation.
Craig Fairbrass pulled double duty on this one, voicing both Gaz and a character called Wallcroft, before going on to become a very different fan favourite as Ghost in Modern Warfare 2.
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.
Down in the grim, waterlogged Underside area, there's a creepy little detail easy to miss entirely: a doll's head sitting under a loose floorboard. No explanation given, just one more unsettling prop dropped into an already unsettling place.
The base game features eight named Dragon Priest bosses, each guarding a unique enchanted mask with its own powerful effect. The Dragonborn expansion adds five more named Dragon Priests, bringing the total to thirteen, four of which carry their own unique masks.
One of Altaïr's marks, Conrad of Montferrat, really was murdered in history, just not in 1191, the year the game is set. Ubisoft's researchers spotted the mismatch during development and decided the story worked well enough to run with it anyway.
The quest Caught in the Hunt borrows its premise from Richard Connell's short story The Most Dangerous Game, where a hunter travelling abroad ends up becoming the prey on an isolated island instead of the one doing the hunting.
