We’ve gathered together over one thousand of the juiciest facts, figures and shocks from the world of playstation to educate your brain and tickle your funny bone. Topic 301-403.
301. Snake’s moustache in MGS4 is based on Hollywood Western actor Lee Van Cleef’s.
302. When Harmonix was developing the Rock Band Network (which lets bands put their music into games across the series) it was codenamed Rock Band: Nickelback because the studio assumed no one would care if they saw it and it wouldn’t be leaked.
303. At one point, Tekken was going to have an extra character called Sake. He’d be a fish whose only response would be to fall on the floor and flop about.
304. Metal Gear Rising was originally going to star Cyborg Ninja until they settled on Raiden.
305. Solid Snake’s earliest, pre-PS1 face was originally based on Christopher Walken before Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken character took over.
306. Dead Space 2 developer Visceral created over 20 fake brands and products to fill the world with consistent and believable adverts.
307. It’s widely believed that Dr Robotnik is a caricature of American President Teddy Roosevelt.
308. LA Noire was going to have an 11-mission Fraud Desk to work, but it was cut because it pushed the game over capacity for a Blu-ray disc.
309. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck were both originally first choices to be the star of Kingdom Hearts before Sora, whose shoes, shorts and gloves mirror Mickey’s outfit.
310. George A Romero, the father of modern zombie movies, directed a series of adverts for Resident Evil 2 and was the original choice to direct the movie. He had his secretary play the entire series while he took notes.
311. In Batman: Arkham Origins, you can investigate a double murder in Crime Alley; when you solve it the bodies of Bruce Wayne’s parents, Thomas and Martha, appear for a split second.
312. At one time some Japanese developers made their staff use pseudonyms to prevent poaching by other studios and prevent anyone becoming famous enough to demand more money. Because of this no one can be sure who made the original Castlevania.
313. At the end of Final Fantasy X Yuna never said she loved Tidus – in the original Japanese, she only said thank you.
314. Most of LA Noire’s cases are based on real crimes from the 1940s.
315. In GTA : Vice City, there’s a literal Easter egg hidden behind a non-solid window you can jump through.
316. You can reach the same room in the PS2 version of GTA: Vice City Stories where the egg is being built by a tiny little crane.
317. Dead Rising began as a sequel to Capcom’s gladiator hack and slash Shadow Of Rome. The shop Ned’s Knicknackery contains a selection of weapons from the cancelled project.
318. You can actually find the ‘buried head guy’ from Far Cry 3’s cover in the game.
319. During Bioshock Infinite’s development, Rapture was considered again as was a Renaissance setting, which was rejected after Assassin’s Creed II was announced.
320. Xenogears was initially an early concept for Final Fantasy VII.
321. In Mass Effect 2, Legion has unused dialogue options for nearly every cutscene in the game, suggesting he was originally going to appear much earlier in the story.
322. Destiny was first teased in a poster that appears in the 2009 Xbox 360 game Halo: ODST. A poster shows the Earth, a white sphere representing the Traveler and slogan that states ‘Destiny Awaits’.
323. A Dead Space trophy called ‘Live With The Hot Ones’ is a reference to an obscure phrase in the EA employee code of conduct. No one knows what it means.
324. Mercer Frey, the head of the Thieves Guild in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, is voiced by the same actor who played Garrett in Thief.
325. Psychonauts was inspired by a peyote-induced hallucination level cut from a previous Double Fine game called Full Throttle.
326. In Brutal Legend, the save icon changes on certain days to remember dead rock stars including a lightning bolt for AC/DC vocalist Bon Scott, ‘RR’ for Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Randy Rhoads and a dime for ‘Dimebag’ Darrel, the guitarist from Pantera.
327. In Bioshock Infinite, Elizabeth opens up a tear to a cinema showing ‘La Revenge du Jedi’ a reference to the original title for The Return of The Jedi.
328. In Assassin’s Creed III, you can find a turkey near the homestead that will follow you around. Input the Konami code and it wears its own Assassin’s hood.
329. In TES IV: Oblivion, a piece of mis-edited dialogue for the character Aurelinwae contains the actor saying, “wait a minute, let me do that one again.”
330. Resident Evil originally had two extra characters to play as: a cyborg called Gelzer and Dewey, who was based on Eddie Murphy.
331. Insomniac has a ‘Snowbeast Award’ for the worst feature in anything it releases. It’s named after a hurriedly created enemy in Ratchet & Clank 2 that was put together in days and made it to the final game despite being almost impossible to beat.
332. The name Ico is a play on the Japanese phrase for ‘let’s go’.
333. The only reason Lightning is the hero in Final Fantasy XIII is because a trailer was released putting her in the role. Vanille was supposed to be the star early on.
334. In TES V: Skyrim, when you defeat a dragon and it incinerates you can see the effect in the world map, which is just a zoomed-out view of the world.
335. The cars that appear in Fallout are modelled on actual 1958 atomic-powered Ford concepts.
336. Dishonored has a Portal reference: two ovals painted on opposite sides of a wall with a note about using them to travel great distances.
337. The Illusive Man was going to be a boss fight in Mass Effect 3 at one point, turning into a monster to fight Shepard.
338. In the Hitman: Blood Money White House level, throwing a particular briefcase into a fireplace three times will make all the marines line up and dance the can-can.
339. Early in GTA III’s development there were children NPCs.
340. The whispers heard when using the Possession Vigor in Bioshock Infinite are lines from Romeo and Juliet playing in reverse.
341. The Resident Evil series is littered with references to the Queen album Made In Heaven after the cover appeared on Chris Redfield’s alternate costume jacket in the first game.
342. The legendary Guitar Hero III song ‘Through The Fire And The Flames’ by DragonForce went from 2,000 downloads a week to 38,000 after the game came out.
343. Russian wrestler Zangief’s original name in Street Fighter was Vodka Garbolski.
344. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith made more money for the band than any of its albums.
345. During a cutscene in Final Fantasy XIII-2, there’s some hidden text that reads ‘Pray for Japan’. It’s believed to be in reference to the earthquakes that happened during the game’s development.
346. GlaDOS actress Ellen McLain appears in Pacific Rim because director Guillermo Del Toro is a fan and asked Valve’s permission to feature her.
347. During the development of inFamous, Sucker Punch had one guy making sure you could climb the entire city.
348. When Naughty Dog first presented Crash Bandicoot to Sony Japan they rejected the character. In a 15-minute break, the studio’s artist made some tweaks and Sony Japan changed its mind.
349. When Insomniac started it was founder and CEO Ted Price on his own, living off a redundancy check. Before that he sold medical supplies.
350. Mafia II contains numerous real ‘50s Playboy magazines despite the magazine not being founded until two years after the game’s setting.
351. Altaïr was originally going to have a Middle Eastern accent in Assassin’s Creed and actor Philip Shahbaz auditioned using one, but it was dropped at the last minute.
352. In Hitman: Blood Money, there’s a crate with the description, ‘Allan, please add details’. It refers to former IO 3D artist Allan Hansen. Who didn’t.
353. Deadly Premonition holds the Guinness World Record for ‘Most Polarizing Survival-Horror Game’ due to its spread of review scores.
354. The map in Just Cause 2 is 133 times bigger than the one found in GTA III.
355. Despite Wesker’s tendency to come back time and time again, Resi 5 producer Masachika Kawata has stated categorically that his death at the end of five in the volcano is absolute.
356. Jak 3 contains a hidden message to Morgan, one of Naughty Dog’s actual dogs who died during development.
357. Capcom made Resident Evil 2 harder in the US to prevent game rentals taking a bite out of sales.
358. 1999’s Ape Escape was the first PS1 game to use a twin stick DualShock controller.
359. As part of a PR campaign for Burnout 2: Point Of Impact, then-publisher Acclaim promised to pay any speeding fines given out on the day of its release. The UK government was upset and issued a statement that said, “we cannot condone something that so obviously encourages people to break the law and do something dangerous.”
360. Onimusha was developed from a cancelled Resident Evil game called Sengoku Biohazard, which was basically the original game re-made in ancient Japan and with ninja replacing STARS.
361. Meryl in MGS was originally a pre-teen character inspired by Natalie Portman in Leon. She wasn’t changed because of the sexual overtones however, but because it was decided that a child couldn’t use the Desert Eagle gun she was meant to carry.
362. Travis Touchdown from No More Heroes is based on Johnny Knoxville. More specifically, the reference used by director Suda 51 is a clip where Knoxville lets a baby alligator bite his nipple because it let developers know ‘this is the kind of person Travis is’.
363. Shooting the moon in GTA : Vice City with a sniper rifle will make it change size.
364. Sony started life as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo. The Sony name was chosen when the company moved into the Western market and is a mix of the latin word ‘Sonus’ for sound (to reflect its production of radios) and ‘Sonny’, a familiar American phrase.
365. At release a poster in The Last Of Us accidently featured a phone number for an American phone sex line.
366. The RYNO V in Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time plays Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture when fired.
367. The RYNO VII in Ratchet & Clank: Nexus plays Mussorgsky’s Night On Bald Mountain when fired.
368. Guns ‘N’ Roses singer Axl Rose made a deal with Activision to include ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ in Guitar Hero III as long as guitarist Slash wasn’t mentioned. When Slash appeared via his other band, Velvet Revolver, Axl Rose tried to sue the publisher for breach of contract.
369. Carol Shaw is credited as the first female videogame designer and created 3D Tic-Tac-Toe on the Atari 2600 in 1979.
370. Promotional artwork for GTA IV featuring the prostitute character Lola Del Rio shows she has six fingers. She also doesn’t appear in the final game.
371. The original Dead Space uses the same engine as 007: From Russia with Love.
372. Metal Gear Solid 2 features a sinking ship. Raiden’s real name is Jack and his girlfriend is called Rosemary, the names of the main characters in the movie Titanic.
373. GTA : San Andreas was originally meant to feature multiple playable characters before GTA V, but the PS2 wasn’t powerful enough.
374. Marc Ecko’s Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure is banned in Australia as it was believed it provided instructions for graffiti and promoted the activity.
375. Hideo Kojima’s first videogame credit is as assistant director on Konami’s 1986 game Penguin Adventure.
376. Some of the soldiers who acted as consultants for Medal Of Honor: Warfighter were investigated by the US Department Of Defense for possibly releasing classified information on past missions.
377. In Max Payne 2, there’s a hidden memorial for Miika Forsell, a developer who died during the game’s development.
378. Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann grew up in Israel and taught himself to read English in order to play King’s Quest.
379. Kojima chose Harry Gregson Williams as composer for MGS2 after watching The Replacement Killers at the cinema. He only saw the film because the queue for his first choice, Saving Private Ryan, was too long.
380. The PS4 is the fastest selling console in history, shifting 1 million units in 24 hours.
381. During this time Sony was making $4618.05 per second.
382. Manhunt’s Carcer City location is referenced in several GTA games.
383. The Guy Game was a 2004 PS2 quiz title that rewarded correct answers with clips of naked ladies. It landed Sony in court when it was discovered one of the girls was 17 and thus a minor in the US.
384. Using a freeze grenade throwing glitch it’s possible to leave Arkham City and glide around all of Gotham. You’ll find a fully modeled city with cars on the roads but nothing’s solid so you can’t land anywhere.
385. GTA IV’s Niko Bellic is based on the character of Sasha in the film Behind Enemy Lines. The actor who played him, Vladimir Mashkov, turned down an offer to play the role in the actual game.
386. Sonic The Hedgehog’s original designs gave him a human girlfriend called Madonna.
387. Call Of Duty lets you save Private Ryan twice. Once in World At War and once in Ghosts.
388. In Fallout 3, Med-X was originally just called morphine but changed due to issues with ratings and the ability to become addicted.
389. Kojima originally wanted MGS4’s Beauty And The Beast Unit to appear naked in the game’s cutscenes, with character designer Yoji Shinkawa stating they were even asked to record their mo-cap nude. They didn’t.
390. The original Tomb Raider was created by a team of just six people.
391. Sephiroth only has 1HP during his last fight with Cloud in Final Fantasy VII. It’s virtually impossible to lose as almost any action, including Steal, will kill him.
392. A teleportation plasmid was cut from Bioshock because players could break the game using it. An ‘Unstable Teleportation Plasmid’ later appears in Bioshock 2 but moves whenever you try to pick it up.
393. The mechanical patriots in Bioshock Infinite were partly inspired by a doll with a cracked porcelain face that gave Ken Levine nightmares as a child.
394. Fallout 3’s Fat Man nuke bazooka is based on the M-29 Davy Crockett Weapon System, which was actually a real weapon built in the 1950s and makes an appearance in MGS3.
Most classic Street Fighter characters are inspired by real people, including:
395. Ryu who was partly based on karate master Masutatsu Oyama.
396. Joe is based on kick boxer and actor Joe Lewis.
397. Eagle is based on a combination of a bouncer from Fists Of Fury and Freddy Mercury from Queen.
398. M Bison is an almost direct copy of the villain Yasonori Koto in the film Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis.
399. DeeJay is based on Tae Bo’s Billy Blanks.
400. Fei Long is Bruce Lee.
401. Hugo is based on wrestler Andre The Giant.
402. Alex is based on Hulk Hogan.
403. Balrog is based on Mike Tyson.