All Knowledge

Page 192 of 228

A Canadian Studio Runs the Multiverse

The actual animation isn't done in-house, it's handled by a Canadian studio called Bardel Entertainment, who also work on shows like The Dragon Prince and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Fittingly weird bonus detail, their CEO happens to genuinely be named Rick.

Three Different Endings, No Real Pattern

As the credits wrap up, there's a short scene of the Batwing heading back to Gotham while a crate of Titan formula bobs in the water below Arkham. An arm reaches out to grab it - but whose arm you get seems totally random. Sometimes it's Killer Croc, sometimes Scarecrow, sometimes Bane, and nobody's quite pinned down what decides it.

Hot Coffee Reached the US Senate

The fallout from Hot Coffee got so big that the ESRB stripped the game's rating, major retailers pulled it entirely, and Senator Hillary Clinton pushed legislation targeting the games industry off the back of it. Rockstar eventually patched the content out for good, a fix fans nicknamed 'Cold Coffee.'

The AC-130 Was Nearly a Multiplayer Vehicle

Leftover game files reference multiplayer versions of the AC-130's 25mm, 40mm, and 105mm guns, suggesting the gunship was at one point planned as a killstreak-style reward you could call in online. It got cut before launch and wouldn't actually show up as a multiplayer reward until Modern Warfare 2.

Run, You're Nearly There

During the grim final stretch through the Firefly hospital, keep an eye on the eye test charts hanging on the walls. One of them isn't random letters at all - it spells out 'RUN YOU R NEARLY THERE DON'T QUIT!!', a bit of dark encouragement for players white-knuckling their way to the ending.

A 2,000-Frame Opening Built From Scratch

The show's title sequence, which sweeps over a pirate map before settling on Loguetown harbour, was an entirely digital build running roughly 2,000 frames, populated with more than 20 individual ships crafted by the visual effects team.

Fluffy the Dog Started the Hellhound Program

According to the in-game lore, Hellhounds exist because Samantha's dog Fluffy got shoved into a teleporter during 'Test 6' instead of a human subject, and came out the other side as a zombie dog. Dark stuff for a mode that started as a joke minigame.

The British Campaign That Never Was

A whole British campaign was planned for World at War at one point, and you can still find unused weapons like the Sten, Bren and Lee-Enfield sitting dormant in the game files. There were even three cut missions set in Holland that survived into the Mod Tools. Would've been a very different game.

The Missing AK-47

Vice City is the odd one out in the whole 3D-era run of GTA games for not letting you carry an AK-47, a weapon that shows up in basically every other title including its own prequel, Vice City Stories. Digging through the game's files shows references to the gun that never made it into the final build, so it looks like it was planned and quietly dropped somewhere along the way.

The Gunship's Three Guns All Behave Differently

In Death From Above, the AC-130's 105mm cannon has a huge blast radius but a painfully long reload, the 40mm Bofors auto-cannon is fully automatic with a medium splash area, and the 25mm Gatling guns trade splash damage for the tightest zoom, useful for picking off targets right next to friendly troops without hitting them.