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Watch the trilogy back to back and you'll catch each film naming itself in dialogue. Elrond calls the group a 'Fellowship of the Ring' in the first, Saruman says 'the Two Towers' in the second, and Gandalf tells Denethor he can't deny the 'Return of the King' in the third.
William Fichtner voices Delta operator Sandman in MW3, and it's not the first time he's played this exact type of soldier. In the film Black Hawk Down he portrayed a Delta operator named Sanderson, so the casting almost feels like a knowing callback.
After The Dark Knight, studio executives reportedly wanted the third film built around the Riddler, with Leonardo DiCaprio in mind for the role. Nolan wasn't interested in another cerebral, chatty villain right after the Joker, so he went a completely different direction with Bane instead.
On its first day alone, Black Ops moved roughly 5.6 million copies across North America and the UK, pulling in about $360 million and beating the previous record set a year earlier by Modern Warfare 2. Activision called it the biggest entertainment launch in history at the time, and for a while nothing else in games, film, or publishing had come close.
During the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, the fandom showed up in an unexpected place. Greek long jumper Miltiadis Tentoglou greeted crowds by striking Luffy's Gear Second pose, while American shot putter Payton Otterdahl channelled Franky, shouting 'Super!' before launching into his throw.
Zoro's signature Three Sword Style meant Mackenyu needed to convincingly hold a blade in his mouth, so the production had a special sword made just to fit safely between his teeth for those shots.
According to one of the game's designers, one of the intelligent deathclaws in Vault 13 was originally meant to double as an unarmed combat trainer who could teach the player new fighting skills. The idea got dropped late in development, so in the final game the Vault 13 deathclaws are a lot less chatty and useful than they were planned to be.
Players who let Michael get drawn into the Epsilon Program can work through a full chain of optional missions, handing over cash, wearing the robes for ten days straight, running miles through the desert, and even stealing cars in the cult's name, all in pursuit of an ending where he finally has to decide whether enlightenment or their money is the real prize.
Eiichiro Oda reportedly reviewed Iñaki Godoy's Zoom audition tape personally, and told the actor later that the moment he saw it he started laughing because Godoy looked exactly like the Luffy he'd drawn, and he couldn't picture anyone else in the role.
There were plans for proper weather effects across Arkham City, including a whiteout that would've dropped visibility to basically nothing and forced players to lean on Detective Mode just to get around. It got scrapped because it hammered performance too hard on the hardware at the time, which is a shame because it sounds genuinely tense.
