Top 10 Inside Jokes in Video Games

Captain Blackeye only appears in one level of “Banjo-Tooie,” hidden away in the back of Jolly’s Bar, drunkenly ranting about how he once “had a Dream.” He's not referencing Martin Luther King, Jr., but lamenting the fact that a previous role of his was cut from the finished product. You see, Blackeye was originally going to be the main antagonist of Project Dream, an SNES game which eventually became “Banjo-Kazooie.” However, after some significant character alterations, the antagonist was changed to Grunty, cutting Blackeye from the game and leading him to drown his sorrows in a bar.

Blizzard is famous for slipping numerous gags into their games, and “StarCraft” is certainly no exception. When the StarCraft alpha was released, it was often referred to as “Warcraft in space,” a derogatory reference to Blizzard's other creation, “Warcraft,” which “StarCraft” did admittedly bear some resemblance to. Clicking on the character of Artanis numerous times will force him to blurt out “This is not Warcraft in space!” While it's a funny little inside gag for Blizzard fans, it also serves as Blizzard’s defense for creating “StarCraft,” making it both hilarious and meaningful.

Wasteland Survival Guide is one of the most notorious quests in “Fallout 3,” known for being a righteous pain in the butt. A character named Moira Brown wants you to do research for a book that she's writing entitled The Wasteland Survival Guide, because of course she can't just do it herself. At the end of the tedious quest, one of your options is to sarcastically ask Moira if she wants you to go print and distribute the book. While she cheerily says that it won't be necessary, it almost was, as Bethesda originally had you going to Hubris Comics to print the guide yourself. Thankfully, that part was cut, and the quest was mercifully shortened.

Upon your adventures in The Stone Prisoner DLC, you will come across Shale, a chiseled-down stone golem whom you can recruit as a companion. In the game's dialogue, Shale explains her smaller size by stating that her owner chiseled her down because she couldn't fit through the doors of his home. This is a perfectly acceptable answer, because this is exactly what the developers did. Except, you know, with a computer instead of a chisel. During play tests, Shale kept getting stuck in doorways due to her immense size, so in order to alleviate the problem, they shrunk her down and added in the line of dialogue explaining away her smaller stature.

While many of the guns of “GoldenEye 007” are modeled after real world weapons, they take on original names unique to the game. One of these guns was named Klobb, a submachine gun which was found in the multiplayer and various Russian levels of the campaign. During the game's development, the gun was referred to as the Skorpion VZ/61 after its real-world counterpart, but was changed to Klobb after the fictionalization in order to honor Ken Lobb, a man heavily involved in the development of the game. While Klobb is certainly an interesting sounding name, we think they should have stuck with Skorpion.

Well, we think we can safely say that the “Civilization” series is not historically accurate. In what has become the series’ defining joke, the famed Indian pacifist just can't help himself from dropping nukes on everybody like a psychopath. In the original game, Gandhi’s aggression level was set to 1 to reflect his real-world persona, but a bug occurred when the player adopted democracy, and his setting looped back to the max number of 255, making him insanely violent. In keeping with the funny bug, Gandhi has been a highly aggressive nuke-dropper ever since. Sure, it's a little inappropriate, but you have to admit, it's also hilarious.

It's not often that a developer will literally insert himself into his own game, but then again, this is Hideo Kojima, and when did he ever play by the rules? In both “Phantom Pain” and the game's precursor, “Ground Zeroes,” Snake is enlisted to help rescue series creator Hideo Kojima in a special side quest. If this is successfully accomplished, then Kojima will appear as a worker in Mother Base. While some players may not know who he is, it's certainly cool to work with the series creator one on one. Well, at least in the game.

The “Doom” series is certainly not light on violence. It's fitting, then, that one of the game’s developers makes an appearance as a severed head. To access the head, you know to employ the idclip cheat code and launch yourself into the Icon of Sin’s head using the rocket launcher. When inside, you come face to face with the decapitated head of John Romero, complete with dripping blood, in typical Doom fashion. If that wasn't cool enough, the head also serves as a mini boss of sorts, as you can attack it with the rocket launcher and successfully complete the level. Sure, it's a little creepy, but this game isn't for children!

If you were thinking that Guybrush was an odd name, we can't exactly blame you for it. As it turns out, the developers didn't even intend on naming the character Guybrush; it was handed to them on a silver platter. The imaging software that the developers were using to design the character saved the files with the extension “.brush.” When saved with the placeholder “guy,” the file became “guy.brush,” which stuck with the developers, giving the character his unique and offbeat name. In our opinion, it couldn't have worked out better, as the name paired perfectly with the game's wacky sense of humor.

For such a brutal game series, “Mortal Kombat” certainly has a sense of humor. Case in point is the mysterious Noob Saibot. Not only is Noob just a hilarious name in general, but he's also named after developer Tobias Boon, which, when spelled backwards, gives you Noob Saibot. This wouldn't be the last time that “Mortal Kombat” snuck in a development gag, as the character of Ermac was named after the game's debug menu, which used “Ermac” as an abbreviation for “error macro.” While certain Mortal Kombat characters definitely have interesting names, they don't have nearly as memorable a back story as Noob Saibot and Ermac.

Do you agree with our list? Do you know of any funny inside jokes? For more informative top tens published every day, be sure to subscribe to Watchmojo.com.