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After you take down Ezek during the Broken Blade quest, three skeleton guardians show up named Brother Larel, Brother Karel and Brother Moek. Say them out loud and it clicks: it's a goofy little Three Stooges reference tucked into a pretty grim questline.
Peter B. Parker going through a messy split from Mary Jane is actually a nod to an unmade Sam Raimi script. Raimi had once planned for Peter and MJ to be married and later divorced in a fourth live-action film, after Peter's affair with Felicia Hardy came to light. Raimi eventually backed away from that storyline because it made Peter too unlikeable, and the project got shelved when Sony wouldn't give him time for a rewrite. This film quietly resurrects the idea as a joke.
Remember Badger rambling to Skinny Pete about a Star Trek episode where the crew has nothing to do? Fans loved it so much that an animator actually turned his rant into a proper animated short, which is a pretty rare case of a throwaway scene spawning its own spin-off.
After you take down Ra's al Ghul for the first time, head to the far east end of the Subway Maintenance Entrance instead of following your next objective. Chuck a Remote Control Batarang through the small gap in the bars and hit the switch on the other side. Croc bursts through the wall, snarls at you for a second, then vanishes back into the sewers. Blink and you'll miss him, and this is the only chance in the whole game to see him properly.
While walking through 1970s London, Loki and Mobius pass a poster for a Bollywood film starring one of Kingo's "family members." It's a sly callback to how Kumail Nanjiani's Eternals character covered up his immortality by pretending to be a long line of relatives who kept replacing each other as actors.
There's a rundown pub you pass through called O'Sullivan's, and the layout is a deliberate callback to the bar brawl that kicks off Uncharted 3. The name itself is a nod to Victor 'Sully' Sullivan, Nathan Drake's long-time partner in crime.
The finale's title, 'Felina,' is an anagram of 'finale,' but it's also a quiet tribute. A 16-year-old superfan named Kevin Cordasco, who was terminally ill, got to visit set and meet the cast before he passed away — and his name was worked into the episode's credits.
One of Altaïr's marks, Conrad of Montferrat, really was murdered in history, just not in 1191, the year the game is set. Ubisoft's researchers spotted the mismatch during development and decided the story worked well enough to run with it anyway.
Head into Bluewater Marsh after dark and you might come across a crying woman, or grim little scenes of bodies strung up in the trees. Get too close to either and the Night Folk will crawl out of hiding to come after you. Anyone who played the original game's Undead Nightmare DLC will recognise the vibe instantly.
Brotherhood's main story DLC, The Da Vinci Disappearance, sees Ezio teaming up once again with his old friend Leonardo after the Templars kidnap him to get their hands on his war machine blueprints. It launched on Xbox 360 in March 2011 before making its way to the other platforms.
