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The massive walled capital of the Earth Kingdom wasn't dreamed up from nothing. The creators modeled its layout and architecture directly on Beijing's Forbidden City, which is a big part of why Ba Sing Se feels so imposing and layered compared to the show's smaller towns.
Rockstar toyed with letting players switch between multiple playable characters way back during San Andreas, but the hardware of the era just couldn't handle it. The idea got shelved for nearly a decade until GTA V finally pulled it off with Michael, Franklin, and Trevor.
Partway through Chapter 8, after a nerve-wracking grapple swing off a crumbling tower, drop down into a small hidden nook below the branch instead of continuing on. There's a collectible plastic skull waiting there that you can shake like a Magic 8-Ball for a little fortune. It's the same Strange Skull toy that first popped up in The Last of Us: Left Behind.
Setting a game in Italy was apparently too good an opportunity to pass up. One of Brotherhood's achievements is literally called 'Plumber', and its icon is a green Warp Pipe lifted straight out of the Super Mario games.
The Mount Chiliad mural spawned an entire dedicated subreddit, r/ChiliadMystery, where fans spent over a decade cross-referencing glyphs, murals, and in-game code in the hope of uncovering a hidden reward, becoming one of gaming's longest-running amateur investigations.
Before it was ever an FPS, Halo was pitched as a real-time strategy title for the Mac, and it was actually shown off on stage by Steve Jobs at Macworld Expo back in 1999. Microsoft bought Bungie not long after and the whole project got rebuilt from the ground up as an Xbox launch title.
French artist Kavinsky, best known for scoring much of the synth-heavy soundtrack to the film Drive, hosts his own in-universe station called NightRide FM. It's a neat bit of cross-pollination, especially given GTA V already hides a separate visual nod to Drive in one of its clothing stores.
Laura Bailey landed the role of Nadine Ross before the character's final look was locked in. A concept artist later sketched her as a Black woman, and Neil Druckmann liked the direction, but the team worried about backlash over a white actress voicing a Black character. It wasn't until they saw Bailey's actual performance that they decided it worked and kept her in the role.
For the first season the production didn't stop at one hero ship, they built life-size versions of the Going Merry, Shanks' Red Force, and Alvida's duck-shaped Miss Love Duck, all constructed on the same lot in Cape Town.
One of the largest single cash stashes in the game, $25,000, sits on top of a wrecked submarine deep underwater, next to the vessel's entrance hatch, rewarding players willing to dive for it.
