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Rather than lean on gameplay footage, Halo 3's centerpiece 'Believe' campaign built a physical diorama over 1,200 square feet in size, a miniature war memorial populated with hundreds of hand-sculpted human and Covenant figures at one-twelfth scale. Fans could pan across the entire model on a dedicated website, and the ad series went on to win gold at Cannes Lions the following year.
The rings were never a weapon aimed at the Covenant or humanity specifically. They were the Forerunners' final, horrifying failsafe against the Flood, designed to starve the parasite out by erasing every sentient species in range that could act as a host, a scale of sacrifice the game only hints at until deep in the campaign.
Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard both scored the film, with extra contributions from Ramin Djawadi, Lorne Balfe, and Mel Wesson. The idea was deliberate: the composers worked on separate musical themes to represent the divide between Bruce Wayne and his Batman persona.
Season three's fourth episode opens with Geralt walking into an inn already covered in Selkie Maw blood and guts. The full fight was originally meant to be shown on screen, and concept art for it exists, but it got axed because the budget couldn't stretch that far.
Months before release, Bungie opened a public multiplayer beta to anyone who bought Crackdown. It wasn't just a marketing gimmick, in the space of three weeks the beta pulled in more than 800,000 unique players, effectively turning early access into one of the biggest live playtests in gaming history up to that point.
Halo 3 let players brand themselves with a short callsign called a service tag, but Bungie blocked a surprising number of combinations. Anything that spelled out a rival console, a real Halo character's name, or an offensive word was rejected outright, and any tag ending in double zero was banned entirely.
Return of the King is tied with Ben-Hur and Titanic for the most Academy Award wins, but it stands alone for going 11 for 11. Every single nomination it received, it won.
H.P. Lovecraft fans have plenty to chew on in the Commonwealth. Pickman Gallery and its unsettling artist owner are a nod to Lovecraft's short story Pickman's Model, while the Kingsport Lighthouse borrows its name from Lovecraft's fictional seaside town, seen in stories like The Terrible Old Man. Dunwich Borers piles on even more of the same eldritch dread.
