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One of San Andreas's biggest casting coups was landing Samuel L. Jackson to voice Officer Frank Tenpenny, the corrupt cop who hounds CJ through most of the story. Oddly enough, Jackson has barely ever spoken publicly about taking the role.
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.
Steve Blum voices a 'Sgt. Mason' in the console spin-off Final Fronts, two years before Black Ops made Alex Mason a household name in the series. Completely different character, just a funny bit of naming overlap nobody really talks about.
Not every piece of Halo 3 downloadable content cost money. Cold Storage, the game's seventh multiplayer map, was released completely free on July 7, 2008, timed deliberately to land on Bungie's own internal holiday, 'Bungie Day,' as a thank-you gift to the entire community.
When Sony struck its deal with Take-Two back in 2002, it wasn't just for GTA III, it locked in GTA III, Vice City and the then-unannounced San Andreas as PlayStation 2 console exclusives through October 2004. Xbox and PC owners eventually got their turn, but for a good while Vice City was strictly a PS2 thing, and the gamble clearly paid off for Sony.
If you play through the game without sleeping with anyone, you can earn the reputation title 'Virgin of the Wastes.' It sounds like it should matter, but it's purely cosmetic flavour text with zero effect on dialogue, quests, or stats. Pure bragging rights only.
Before he was known as Finnick Odair in The Hunger Games, Sam Claflin tried out for not one but two parts on Game of Thrones, reading for both Jon Snow and Viserys Targaryen. He didn't land either role, but he'd later end up starring alongside Emilia Clarke anyway in the film Me Before You.
Composer Henry Jackman, who'd scored Uncharted 4 the year before, came back for The Lost Legacy and wove regional Indian musical textures into his usual sweeping adventure sound to match Chloe and Nadine's trip through the Western Ghats.
Barely months after MW2 turned into one of the biggest launches ever, Activision fired Infinity Ward's own founders, Jason West and Vince Zampella, citing insubordination. The pair fired back with a lawsuit claiming they were dumped right before a huge royalty payout was due. It eventually settled out of court, but not before West and Zampella had already gone off and started Respawn Entertainment.
That final scene where Gordon hands Batman the Joker's calling card wasn't just a sequel tease. It's a direct homage to how Frank Miller's Batman: Year One graphic novel closes out, right down to the framing of the moment.
