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During the party game where everyone takes turns trying to lift Mjolnir, Steve Rogers is the only one who manages to budge it slightly before letting go, a small but deliberate nod toward the comic storylines where Captain America has actually proven worthy enough to wield the hammer himself.
The unsettling corridors of Hawkins Lab have been shot inside a genuine decommissioned psychiatric hospital owned by Emory University in Atlanta. The building was actually scheduled for demolition back in 2023, but the writers' and actors' strikes that year delayed filming, which ended up pushing back the building's destruction too.
Aidan Scott plays Helmeppo, the spoiled son of a corrupt Marine captain who starts the show as a straightforward antagonist. The character's live-action arc follows the manga in gradually softening him, with Garp and Koby ending up shaping him into someone more sympathetic by the season's end.
A rare wandering NPC known as the Headless Horseman roams Skyrim's roads at night, a reference to Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. He's easy to miss since most players fast-travel rather than ride the roads, but following him leads to a decent reward.
When the team first approached J.K. Simmons, they actually had him in mind for Cecil Stedman, the shady government fixer. Simmons read the script and told them he'd rather play Omni-Man instead. Kirkman and the writers agreed on the spot, and Walton Goggins ended up taking the Cecil role instead.
Gollum's left earlobe is missing entirely, and it wasn't a deliberate design choice. A casting mold made for Peter Jackson's approval got an air bubble right where the lobe should be, and the team just decided to keep it that way.
For years the lore treated Guthix as one of the original gods, but it's since been revealed he actually started out mortal and only ascended to godhood by killing another deity, Skargaroth, using an Elder Artefact known as the Blade. Kind of recontextualises the whole 'oldest and most powerful god' reputation once you know he had to earn it the hard way.
Truck and Corporal Dunn both read as all-American soldiers, but the actors voicing them aren't American at all. Truck is played by British actor Idris Elba, and Dunn is voiced by Canadian actor Barry Pepper, both nailing the accent well enough that most players never clock it.
Hidden throughout the campaign are three collectible 'Strange Relics,' and each one is a sly nod to a different chapter of Naughty Dog's history. Find all of them and you get a trophy just for appreciating the studio's back catalogue.
Instead of the usual photorealistic motion blur you'd get in modern CG, the animation team drew old-school smear frames by hand to sell fast movement, the same trick classic 2D cartoons used decades ago. It keeps every pose looking like a clean illustration rather than a blurry photograph, which is a big part of why the action reads like it's ripped straight off a comic page.
