Page 178 of 269
Pvt. Chernov, one of the Soviet squadmates, secretly keeps a diary throughout the campaign. Reznov actually catches him writing in it at one point, snatches it away, and tells him to 'fight like a man' instead - a small character beat that a lot of players miss entirely.
Once Naughty Dog wrapped up Jak 3, they pulled their most technically skilled staff together and quietly started working on something new under the internal codename 'Big'. Rather than just building another PS3 Jak and Daxter game, they wanted a fresh IP built around realistic human characters, which is how Drake and his adventures were born.
On The Russian, there's a snowman wedged between two trees that most players run straight past without noticing. It's not exactly hard to find once you know it's there, but blink and you'll miss it mid-firefight.
Fans were bummed the show skipped Mihawk's famous solo arrival at the Baratie, but his little ship, the Hitsugibune, actually does appear. It's docked quietly among other boats in Loguetown during the very first minutes of the pilot.
When Jasper cuts off Joe's finger in season two, that wasn't Penn Badgley's real arm on screen. He wore a prosthetic limb built specifically so it could be sliced open convincingly for the camera, letting the effects team get the gory shot without anyone actually losing a finger.
For season two, production shifted away from Namibia and New York entirely, relocating to California so the team could recreate the neon ruins of New Vegas. The shift also let the crew build out locations more familiar from Fallout: New Vegas, following on from that final season one shot teasing the Strip.
To get the sound of a 10,000-strong Uruk-hai army chanting outside Helm's Deep, Jackson went to an actual New Zealand versus England cricket test, put Orc words up on the big screen, and had the crowd of 25,000 spectators chant along while it was recorded.
For a film with six different animation styles running simultaneously, the reported production budget of around $100 million is surprisingly restrained compared to what major studios usually spend on animated blockbusters. It ended up pulling in close to $691 million worldwide, making it one of the most profitable films of its year.
Years before rapper Danny Brown got his own dedicated station added to the game, he'd already snuck into GTA V in a much smaller way, voicing a random NPC hanging around the Los Santos beachfront who reacts in his own voice if players decide to mess with him.
To mark the anime hitting 1000 episodes, Toei Animation didn't just throw a party, it went for a Guinness attempt. Fans worldwide were invited to upload selfies to an official site in hopes of building what organisers called the largest digital photo album ever assembled for a single anime milestone.
