Andrew Heaton
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Video games still haven't fully escaped the stigma of being mindless entertainment for young kids and dumb adults, especially in a decade where games about birds crashing into shit have been among the most played in the world. The fact is that a great portion of gamers don't give a crap about the stories. All they care about is which buttons to push and who to shoot ... and that makes it really, really easy for the developers to slip in disturbing details they know will go unnoticed.
But not by us, damn it! We've paid close enough attention to notice ...
(If you're up for some mindful entertainment, watch Cracked's new series Rom.com.)
Nintendo
Star Fox is Nintendo's second most popular franchise involving rolling barrels. In this series, you play a fox who travels through the stars (a Space Canine, if you will) and whose goal is to shoot things that are shooting him while ignoring the ramblings of a frog with debatable credentials. It seems like a fairly straightforward plot for a Japanese video game, but there's a darker element to this franchise, and it's hidden in the character design:
Nintendo
The choice to wear an ascot inside of a fighter jet is baffling, really.
Notice Fox McCloud's legs? Or, to be more exact, his lack of them? Yeah, it looks like Fox and friends all have metallic legs. It seems like a random detail they added to make the characters look cooler, but there's a disturbing explanation for it. In real life, fighter jet pilots and astronauts have to wear a G-suit -- tight clothing that prevents gravity from making blood rush into their legs. Without a G-suit, they'd just pass out, and studies have found that pilots are at least twice as bad at their jobs while unconscious.
However, the Star Fox games are set in a futuristic society populated by fashion-conscious anthropomorphic animals. The implication is clear: They had their legs amputated as a way to deal with intense G-forces that didn't involve sacrificing their precious open blazers.
Nintendo
The only question now is: Did "little fox" have to go, too?
And before you argue that the ships' G-diffusers take care of the gravity problem, let us pre-emptively outnerd you by pointing out that this feature wasn't introduced until Star Fox 64 (at which point Fox and pals probably felt kind of silly). And sure, Star Fox Adventures showed the characters wearing pants and boots, but that game wasn't developed by Nintendo, plus they could still have robot legs under there. Also, this would explain why Fox is so fast in the Super Smash Bros. games -- he's a freaking cyborg.
Nintendo
And we thought Jigglypuff's blatant steroid use was the biggest scandal in this tournament.
Nintendo has never confirmed this, so it remains a theory, but it's the sort of detail that a company that routinely puts nightmarish scenes in colorful games about jumping plumbers would be capable of coming up with. And so we leave you with the delightful thought that, somewhere in the Star Fox universe, there's someone whose job involves disposing of pilot legs.
Sony Computer Entertainment
The Uncharted trilogy of games is about treasure hunters who go around exotic locales swinging on ropes and avoiding enemies -- it's Pitfall in 3D and with more shooting. Part of the charm of this series comes from its characters, like everyman adventurer Nathan Drake, action journalist Elena Fisher, and Nate's cigar-chomping mentor, Sully Sullivan. It's a well-rounded and charismatic bunch, and oh God, they're all going to die horrible deaths.
Seriously. In fact, according to a little Easter egg in Uncharted 3, they might already be dead.
Sony Computer Entertainment
Uncharted 4 will star Pitfall Harry and the dog from Duck Hunt.
The Easter egg is a simple eight-word phrase that almost wasn't included in the game. There's a bar fight early in Uncharted 3, and if you walk over to the counter after kicking everyone's ass, perhaps hoping for a refreshing post-brawl Fresca, you can see a stack of newspapers there. You can barely make out what the headline says, but this being the Internet, of course someone decided to zoom in on the image. This is what they found:
Sony Computer Entertainment
Wait, why do we love our pets? We must learn more about this mystery.
"Scientists are still struggling to understand deadly fungus." That doesn't sound very ominous, does it? Unless, that is, you've played The Last of Us (by Naughty Dog, the same studio as Uncharted), which is about a fungus-based pandemic that claimed about 60 percent of the world's population and threw everyone else into a frenzied, murderous panic. The Last of Us takes place in the year 2033, and the game informs you that this is 20 years after the initial outbreak. This means that we can pinpoint the year 2013 as the moment when everything went to shit and humanity entered into a hellish, mushroomy nightmare.
Sony Computer Entertainment
Don't worry, Ellen Page ripoff. It could be worse.
Uncharted 3 takes place in 2011 ... two years before the fall of humanity. What if fungal infections were simply in the developers' minds when they made these games (maybe one of them visited a brothel) and they didn't mean anything by it? Nope: Naughty Dog confirmed that the connection is intentional and that they actually meant to remove the newspaper, since Uncharted 3 came out before The Last of Us was formally announced, but just forgot about it. So, because someone neglected to erase one small item (or maybe forgot to change the headline to "Everything Is Fine, Don't Worry"), Nathan Drake and possibly everyone else you liked from the Uncharted series are currently dead, mindless zombies, or having a really shitty time.
Oh, and speaking of games set in depressing apocalyptic wastelands ...
Nintendo
Pikmin is an impossibly cute series about a tiny alien who uses a bunch of even tinier plant-like creatures (the titular Pikmins) to collect things and solve challenges. As you play these games, you never really pay much attention to your surroundings, since 1) everything happens on an incredibly small scale, 2) you always have like 12 Pikmins going around doing stuff, and 3) seriously, those things are just too goddamn cute, to the point of being distracting.
Nintendo
What were we talking about? Oh, yeah: Uncharted 3.
If you do look around, you might notice that even though the planet the alien protagonist is visiting looks a lot like ours, it's suspiciously quiet and empty-looking -- and that's because Pikmin takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth where everyone is dead. It never comes right out and tells you this, but the series is full of clues to bring players to this idea. For starters, a lot of the "treasures" that you collect are things used by humans and brands that we recognize, despite the fact that there are no people to be found carelessly chucking batteries into a lake.
Nintendo
If you dig long enough in the desert stage, you come across 20,000 ET Atari cartridges.
Things such as cans, bottle caps, and flip phones are collected and brought back to your ship to scrap for parts. And if you're thinking, "Well, maybe the humans are just hiding" -- no, they're not. In Pikmin 3, the geography of the planet that has been the setting of each game is finally revealed to us through an overworld map. The game never treats it like a big deal or specifically points it out in any way. It's simply known as PNF-404, and it looks like this:
Nintendo
"But our continents don't look like that!" No, you're right. They don't right now, but PNF-404 is almost an exact match for Pangea Ultima, the approximation that scientists of today use to determine what Earth's continents will look like in 250 million years. Here's a handy comparison:
So, not only are they saying that Pikmin takes place in a humanless future, but, considering that the relics you find 250 million years in the future are on par with our current technology (there are no holo-phones or Mr. Fusions laying around), it's implied that whatever caused the human extinction occurred around our current time. Happy Pikmin-ing!
Square Enix
Remember when you could pick up any Final Fantasy game and experience the magic of getting stuck on the first dungeon without having to play any of the previous entries in the franchise? They all had completely unrelated characters and plotlines, but now it's not that simple -- not only are they making confusingly numbered sequels, but some small clues left in Final Fantasy X-2 (pronounced "ten two," which isn't the same as "twelve") revealed that two of the most popular games in the series are actually connected. Basically, if you played X-2, then you're responsible for everything bad that happens in Final Fantasy VII.
Square Enix
THIS IS ON YOU.
How does that work? Well, in FFX there's a guy called Rin who owns a shop. In FFX-2, a precocious kid called Shinra talks to Rin about his idea of harvesting the "life force that flows through our planet" and turning it into energy. This isn't a major plot point, and it's only in a small footnote that you discover that Rin eventually says "Aw, what the heck" and bankrolls the kid's project. All of the money you've been giving Rin to buy potions and whatnot has helped him fund this venture for Shinra. But what's the harm? You've helped develop a possible new source of clean energy and made a little boy happy in the process.
Oh, and you're also responsible for the horrors of a tyrannical regime. Remember this logo from Final Fantasy VII?
Square Enix
Because even in the magical sci-fi future-past, you have to work to keep the power bill paid, apparently.
That belongs to the Shinra Electric Company, aka the bastards who ruin everything for everyone in Final Fantasy VII. They're ruled by President Shinra, a global autocrat with a private army who essentially owns the metropolis Midgar and controls every aspect of the citizens' lives. The Shinra Electric Company is also behind some pretty horrific genetic engineering that causes trouble for everyone involved. And how do they get their energy? Why, by harvesting the life force of the planet -- the same process little Shinra from FFX-2 invented, although he probably didn't foresee that it would turn the mined areas into desolate wastelands.
Square Enix
That, or that kid was a total dick.
So, yes, President Shinra is little Shinra's descendant. In other words, by giving a nice man some money in a game set 1,000 years earlier, you helped fund an evil, world-destroying corporation. Nice one, jackass.
Nintendo
Some game franchises weave complex narratives spanning across their multiple installments, thus elevating the video game medium to something more than just idle diversions. Super Mario Bros. isn't one of those franchises. Mario has about as much character development as a cereal mascot: He does the same things over and over in vaguely different settings, never showing any type of growth (besides the one that comes from ingesting mushrooms).
However, there is a hidden continuity to these games, and it's as easy to miss as it is disturbing. Remember the sunken ship level from Super Mario World? At first glance, it looks like every other haunted house you visit in the game, only, you know, underwater.
Nintendo
We considered bringing scuba gear instead of a cape, but couldn't resist the siren song of slowfall.
But did you ever wonder where that ship (and those spirits haunting it) came from? The answer was in front of you all along: In Super Mario Bros. 3, the game that came right before this one, Bowser and his Koopalings stir up trouble in airships. Airships that you, as Mario, have to go through, killing everything in your path in the process, and presumably making at least one of them crash down into the ocean. Obviously Bowser and his kids made it out, because they appear again in Mario World, but as for the other crew members? Let's just say those underwater ghosts have a reason to haunt you.
Are we reading too much into it? Probably not, because the manual seems to agree with us:
Nintendo
"Or if he wanted to serve you a court citation for destroying his property."
But the most disturbing part is the fact that the sunken ship level ends when you collect a question mark bubble, the only one of its kind in Mario World. In Super Mario Bros. 3, these were dropped every time you defeated one of the Koopa kids. Maybe one of the Koopalings didn't make it out alive after all ... or maybe none did. Lately, Mario's creator has been pretending that the Koopalings aren't Bowser's children, despite the fact that the manual says otherwise. Perhaps that's his way of saying that Mario murdered all of them, and the ones in the current games are just clones Bowser created to try to fill the emptiness in his heart.
Nintendo
"Another soul to add to the collection. Wa-hoo!"
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Related Reading: Speaking of games that put insane amounts of detail into tiny things, Halo 3 has your name engraved on every bullet. And while we're at it, a little robot in Portal 2 gives away the whole plot. Prefer your art less digital and more "fine"? Check out Check out the mind-blowing details you missed in these masterpieces.
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