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Wander around long enough and you'll hear civilians drop lines like 'you can sail the seven seas' or 'there's no need to feel down.' They sound like throwaway barks, but they're actually nods to Village People lyrics.
The film got the full fast-food tie-in treatment, with McDonald's releasing a set of eight Happy Meal toys based on it, plus another set a couple of years later blending in elements from the theme park ride too.
After the wedding turns into a bloodbath, the survivors reach for Stimpaks to patch themselves up, and the props team clearly did their homework because the syringes are basically lifted straight from the games, right down to the shape and the needle design. Small touch, but fans noticed immediately.
Long before it became one of the biggest shows on the planet, Stranger Things was turned down by roughly 15 to 20 different networks and studios. Execs weren't sure what to do with a story mixing kids, adults, sci-fi and horror all at once, and some even suggested reworking it into either a straight-up kids show or an adult mystery centred on Hopper. The Duffers held their ground and kept pitching the version they actually wanted to make.
In the GTA Online character creator, players can choose Claude from GTA III, Niko Bellic from GTA IV, or John Marston from Red Dead Redemption as their custom protagonist's father, quietly tying the online world into the wider Rockstar universe.
Michael Dorn, best known for playing Worf, returns as the super mutant Marcus, a character he'd already voiced back in Fallout 2. It's a nice bit of continuity for long-time fans, bringing back the same actor for a character who'd been off-screen since the second game in the series.
Subject 16 hid twenty encoded Glyphs across the Animus recreation of Renaissance Italy, five in Florence, one in Monteriggioni, five in Tuscany, two in Romagna, and seven in Venice, each unlocking a fragment of the video known as "The Truth."
Small detail, but a telling one: masks have been pulled into the same item wheel used for weapons, and guns now automatically holster the moment you walk into a shop. It's a quiet convenience upgrade that suggests Rockstar spent real time smoothing out the friction points GTA V players complained about for years.
The Empire Hotel, which Chuck Bass owns on the show, is an actual working hotel in New York. Fans started showing up in droves after it aired, so the bar there began serving Gossip Girl-themed cocktails, including a secret-recipe 'XOXO' drink.
Cameras started rolling on the series back in June 2022, with filming spread across New Jersey, New York, and Utah. Some of the earliest behind-the-scenes shots that leaked online were from a Super Duper Mart set built on Staten Island, a location name that longtime players will recognise instantly.
