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Before settling on World at War, Treyarch and Activision were reportedly planning to just call this one Call of Duty V, keeping the numbered naming from the earlier games going. Glad they didn't - 'World at War' has aged a lot better as a title.
San Andreas quietly introduced a weapon proficiency system, where sticking with the same gun over time made CJ noticeably more accurate and stable with it. It's the kind of mechanic that later open-world games leaned on heavily, but San Andreas had it running back in 2004.
The title of season two's second episode, "Breaking Brad," is a play on Breaking Bad, and it works on more than one level. TVA hunter X-5 goes rogue and starts a secret double life under the alias Brad Wolfe, essentially living out his own quiet Walter White transformation.
The wanted posters scattered across towns in the first game weren't just set dressing, some tied into actual missions. Rockstar apparently made so many of them during development that a huge number never got used at all, and there's a decent chance a few of those leftover designs quietly resurfaced in the sequel.
Each Barrows equipment set comes with its own unique special effect, but here's the catch: you only get it if you're wearing every single piece of that brother's full four-item set at once. Mix and match with other gear and the bonus just doesn't trigger.
During the Highlighting the Problem quest, a glowing blue statue demands a password before it'll do anything. That password, 'pthentorok', is tucked away in a completely different vault, sitting on an elevated ledge in a room full of giant rats, and you don't even need to clear the rest of the vault to grab it.
Los Santos' answer to the Hollywood sign isn't just there to look at from a distance. Players can actually climb up and sit inside the letters themselves, taking in one of the best skyline views the game offers, especially if you time it for the evening when the city lights start coming on below.
While working in the gift shop stockroom, Steven hands his coworker Donna a box full of plush toys shaped like the hippo goddess Taweret. It's a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, but it's really the show quietly planting the seed for one of the biggest reveals of the season.
Tucked into the Spider-Society's endless background noise is a voice line lifted from Alfred Molina's Doc Ock in No Way Home, reused here as just another piece of multiverse chatter. It's the kind of thing you'd only catch with subtitles on or a very good pair of headphones.
While filming, Cumberbatch cuts out drinking and smoking entirely and gets into swimming and Bikram yoga sessions in a sauna. It's a nice bit of accidental accuracy too, since sauna-going was actually something Holmes enjoyed in Conan Doyle's original stories.
