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When Flynn tracks Nate down in the second chapter, keep an eye on the bar's chalkboard behind them, it reads "polytlas dios Nathan," a play on the ancient Greek epithet for Odysseus that roughly translates to Nathan the great sufferer, which, given everything Nate goes through in this game, feels pretty accurate.
Darren Aronofsky's 2008 film The Wrestler has a scene where a kid explains the game to Randy 'The Ram' Robinson while they're playing a fictional title on an old console together, a nice little nod to how big it had become in pop culture by then.
Caitlyn's voice actor, Katie Leung, is probably best known to a lot of viewers as Cho Chang from the Harry Potter films. Arcane marked a proper return to a major franchise role for her after years working mostly in smaller British TV and theatre projects.
During the same scene where Ellie picks up a ring engraved with 'Sic Parvis Magna,' another Uncharted callback, she and Dina end up chatting about Point Break, the 1991 bank-heist movie with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. Two references stacked into one quiet conversation.
A huge chunk of season one's Continent was actually Hungary. The town of Blaviken and the great hall of Cintra were both built as sets at Mafilm and Origo Studios near Budapest, with the crew also shooting real locations like the Kiscelli Museum for the Aretuza scenes.
Partway through the first level you're tasked with saving a Pvt. Ryan, which is about as unsubtle a Saving Private Ryan reference as you can get. World War II shooters just can't resist bringing him up.
Despite being listed as a side activity, the Flying School at Verdant Meadows is mandatory for progressing the main story once CJ buys the airstrip from Mike Toreno. Passing all ten lessons also earns a pilot's license needed to access the game's airports.
Long-time players will remember the riverside house on Overgrown, the one with a climbable roof and a machine gun tucked in the attic, affectionately nicknamed 'grandma's house' by the community for reasons nobody can quite agree on. That same house was quietly rebuilt inside Verdansk when Warzone launched.
Fans had spent years poking fun at how a lighthearted adventure hero racks up such a huge body count, so Naughty Dog leaned into the joke with a trophy literally called Ludonarrative Dissonance, awarded for killing 1,000 enemies across the game.
Jinx's voice actor Ella Purnell had already built a solid resume with Yellowjackets, Army of the Dead and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children before Arcane, and went on to headline Amazon's Fallout as Lucy MacLean not long after. Jinx is generally seen as the role that really put her on the map for mainstream audiences.
