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Reeves has pointed to Fredo from The Godfather as a direct inspiration for Colin Farrell's Oswald Cobblepot, the idea being a guy everyone underestimates and writes off, but who's actually got real ambition and menace bubbling under the surface.
There's a body floating in the lake just west of Fort Nikel called Nath Dyer, and on him you'll find a primrose and a love letter he never got round to sending. Dig into the construction set files and his hidden internal name is 'NathanMcDyer' - almost certainly a nod to Nathan McDyer, one of the QA testers who worked on the game. Poor Nath never got the girl, but at least he got a tombstone-worthy in-joke out of it.
The Lich King isn't one villain, it's a title that's been passed around. It started with Ner'zhul, an orc shaman whose soul was frozen into a block of ice by the Burning Legion, and it only became Arthas Menethil once the paladin claimed both the cursed runeblade Frostmourne and the Helm of Domination, fusing the two souls into the icon most players remember.
At around two hours and twenty minutes, this is genuinely one of the lengthiest animated films to come out of a major Western studio. Producer Amy Pascal has said the goal was never to just make things bigger for the sake of it, the extra runtime was there to actually earn the audience's investment in the characters.
One shot in the Season 2 trailer echoes Loguetown's nickname from the manga, the Town of Beginnings and Endings, referencing the fact that it's both the birthplace and execution site of the legendary pirate king Gol D. Roger.
All Might didn't just invent his catchphrase out of thin air, the Latin phrase 'Plus Ultra' is the real-life motto of Spain, meaning 'further beyond.' It dates back centuries and shows up on the Spanish flag's coat of arms.
Koby, the timid cabin boy who befriends Luffy in the very first episode and eventually joins the Marines, is played by Morgan Davies, whose earlier credits included the film Storm Boy.
There's a moment where Miguel has to inject himself with a mystery serum just to keep functioning, and his eyes flash red right after. It's a subtle nod to his comic-book backstory, where his abilities are tangled up with an addiction to a chemical formula, though the film never spells this out directly.
The yearly Urf celebration on April Fools' Day traces back to a fan-favourite riverboat captain that Riot ended up killing off in the story, and players never really let it go. The whole event doubles as a tribute to him and, a little cheekily, as a reminder of Warwick's animal instincts, since it was his appetite that did Urf in.
Grab the Undead Nightmare DLC and you can genuinely track down and kill Bigfoot, a direct wink at the years of rumours that Bigfoot was hidden somewhere in GTA San Andreas. Rockstar basically decided to settle the debate by giving players the real thing, teeth and all.
