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Lead writer Joseph Staten had some far darker ideas for Halo 2's narrative than what made it to the final cut. One dropped scene reportedly had Miranda Keyes strapping a bomb to Master Chief's back and throwing him into a pit, a moment of betrayal that never made it past the drawing board once the deadline crunch really hit.
Doofus Rick's Morty is drawn to resemble actor Eric Stoltz, who was actually cast as Marty McFly and had already filmed a chunk of Back to the Future before the studio quietly swapped him out for Michael J. Fox. It's a deep-cut Hollywood reference hiding in plain sight in one of the show's saddest side characters.
A study out of North Carolina State University had a group of 60 to 77 year olds play WoW at home for two weeks after establishing a baseline cognitive score. Those who'd started off with lower scores showed a noticeable improvement in mental agility by the end of it, which is a pretty solid excuse to get your gran into raiding.
For One Piece Film: Z in 2012, the fashion label A/X Armani Exchange teamed up with Oda to design outfits for the Straw Hat crew. It's an unusual pairing on paper, high fashion meeting a pirate cartoon, but it shows just how far the franchise's reach extended even over a decade ago.
When Flynn tracks Nate down in the second chapter, keep an eye on the bar's chalkboard behind them, it reads "polytlas dios Nathan," a play on the ancient Greek epithet for Odysseus that roughly translates to Nathan the great sufferer, which, given everything Nate goes through in this game, feels pretty accurate.
Another special encounter drops you into a group of knights hunting for the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, the same absurdly overpowered weapon from Monty Python's killer rabbit scene. Find it yourself and you get to carry around one of the game's funniest and most devastating explosives.
It launched on PS4 in August 2017, but the game's journey didn't stop there, a remastered PS5 version arrived in January 2022 as part of the Legacy of Thieves Collection, followed by a PC release that October, letting a whole new wave of players hunt for the Tusk of Ganesh.
After Nolan North took over as Ghost, he later also voiced Cayde-6 following Nathan Fillion's departure from the role, recording an entire set of cutscenes, including Cayde's own death scene, in a near-flawless impression of Fillion's original performance.
Scattered across the campaign are 13 collectible Death Cards, usually tucked near fallen soldiers or fixed to makeshift graves. Find one and it unlocks a co-op cheat, like paintball bullets or enemies that never drop weapons - track down all of them and there's an achievement waiting for you too.
