Whether hidden in the code or the cutscene, these characters could've gone unnoticed.
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00:00In media, characters are the bread and butter of telling a story.
00:03After all, nothing gets us invested in a universe quite like relatable and compelling characters.
00:08Some, however, just weren't meant to be seen.
00:11I'm SciForWhatCulture.com and these are 10 hidden video game characters you weren't supposed to see.
00:1710. Calendar Man, Batman Arkham Knight
00:21Batman has some of the best villains in all of comic books, period.
00:24He also has some downright nutty stuff.
00:26Props go to the Arkham Games for actually giving Calendar Man,
00:29the killer who only strikes on holidays, some interesting depth.
00:33This little easter egg actually ties two games in a franchise together,
00:36so it really shows that developers Rocksteady were looking to make a secret that would be
00:40followed and noticed by only the most dedicated.
00:42In Batman Arkham City, the player can visit Calendar Man in a cell.
00:46On certain dates, the character regales Batman with tales of crimes he's committed on holidays
00:51past, but there's an extra message tucked away for those who think outside the box.
00:55On December 13th, the anniversary of Rocksteady's founding,
00:58Calendar Man tells Batman, I was there at your beginning and I will be there at your end.
01:03Spooky, but also not totally meaningless.
01:06Four years later, in the fourth game in the series, Batman Arkham Knight,
01:09the story concludes with the Knight's Fall Protocol,
01:12essentially the complete destruction of Batman as a superhero.
01:15It's a blink and you'll miss it cameo,
01:17the kind of thing you'll only see if you were told to look for it in a previous game,
01:20but the back of Calendar Man's head can be seen in the crowd outside Wayne Manor.
01:24On this red letter day for Batman's adversaries.
01:28Number 9, Master Hand, Super Smash Brothers Melee
01:32This one is a bit of a misnomer.
01:34You are supposed to see Master Hand in Super Smash Brothers Melee,
01:37but only in the circumstances the game has specifically built for him.
01:40That is to say, Master Hand is one of the potential end bosses for the game's adventure mode,
01:44a climactic face-off between your selected Nintendo mascot and some sort of omnipotent glove.
01:50For a long time, the possibility of playing as Master Hand was discussed and shot down,
01:54and it took years for the truth to be finally revealed.
01:57With some controller trickery and pokery,
01:59it is possible to glitch Master Hand into the hands of players.
02:03Never intended to be playable, Master Hand cannot be moved by the analog stick,
02:07but inputs on the controller can make the character perform actions
02:10to get him around whatever stage players see fit.
02:13And it's not just the standard melee mode either.
02:15Master Hand is playable in several other game types,
02:17such as the event matches and the home run contest.
02:20Although the character will always spawn with an over-the-top introduction animation,
02:24so you'd be lucky to get little more than a slap in against
02:26the very fortunate sandbag before the timer runs out.
02:318. ETHAN WINTERS – RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE
02:34Resident Evil 7 was a refresh for Capcom's horror series,
02:37bringing it back to its creepy roots and shifting the playstyle to first-person
02:41to better put us in the shoes of regular Joe Schmo, Ethan Winters.
02:45As video game fans are wont to do,
02:47some couldn't resist the urge to take a peek at what Ethan looked like
02:50from some different perspectives.
02:52Not so shockingly, they found that most of the game,
02:54Ethan wanders around the Baker Plantation without a head on his body,
02:57but there are some scenes where this isn't the case.
03:00When controlling secondary character Mia,
03:02it's possible to get a look Ethan's face as he lies prone in some water,
03:05modelled on his actor Todd Soley.
03:07Resident Evil Village pushed a little more towards showing Ethan's face
03:11as part of its story, but never quite got there.
03:13That being said, immediately after release,
03:15some keen fans noticed something in the game's epilogue.
03:18Just before the game cuts to black and the credits roll,
03:21as Rose Winters is driven down a long road away from the cemetery,
03:24if you squint you can see a figure by the roadside.
03:27More camera trickery sees Ethan, face and all, standing there chillingly still.
03:32At this point, we don't know if this is a case of
03:34leaving Ethan's model on the map accidentally,
03:37or intentionally placing him there to creep out fans.
03:417. Turok – WWF Warzone
03:44Over the years, wrestling games have featured numerous bizarre cameos and guest spots,
03:49from Colonel Saunders to Fred Durst.
03:51If you avoided the bug-ridden hellscape that was WWE 2K20,
03:55and why wouldn't you, you probably didn't see
03:57Ribby the Rib and you're all the better for it.
04:00Iguana West, an offshoot of Iguana Entertainment,
04:03got the license to develop several WWE games during the company's heyday,
04:07such as WWF Attitude and WWF Warzone.
04:10The latter of these has a guest character who isn't quite unlockable,
04:14but remains lurking in the game's files, Churok the Dinosaur Hunter.
04:18Iguana Entertainment were the masterminds behind the Churok franchise,
04:21which is exactly how this came to be.
04:23How it came to not be is still anyone's guess,
04:26but it's likely that the WWE put the kibosh on this one themselves.
04:316. Mel – Portal 2
04:34The original Portal was a brilliant blend of innovative puzzle solving
04:38with great writing and voice performance.
04:40A sequel seemed like a surefire thing,
04:42but how could you possibly continue a story that ended so perfectly?
04:46Originally, Portal 2 was going to let Chell live a presumably peaceful life
04:50after the events of the first game,
04:51and instead was going to pick things up with a new protagonist.
04:54Through concept art, we are introduced to Mel.
04:57Likely to have just as much dialogue as her predecessor, that is Zero,
05:01she would have just been another player avatar.
05:03However, Portal 2 needed more than just any old player avatar,
05:07it needed Chell specifically.
05:09The writers for the game found that without her usual foil,
05:11GLaDOS just wasn't as fun.
05:13The dynamic that she and the player had formed in the original Portal was via Chell,
05:18and there was to be no oh-it's-you moment without her.
05:21Mel was then relegated to being the Player 2 character for the game's co-op mode,
05:25but then hit the cutting room floor completely when P-Body and Atlas were designed.
05:30Essentially, it made more sense to use robots for these tests
05:33who could die over and over and respawn
05:36without needing to justify how Chell and Mel were apparently suddenly invincible.
05:41Number 5, Vamp.
05:43Metal Gear Solid 2, Sons of Liberty.
05:45Metal Gear Solid and background secrets go together like infiltration and cardboard boxes.
05:50In Sons of Liberty, we are introduced to Vamp.
05:53One of the members of the villainous dead cell,
05:55his particular gimmick was immortality,
05:56which is a pretty neat trick to have on your side.
05:59Because of this, it was difficult to suspend our disbelief too much
06:02that the boss fight against him actually resulted in the character meeting its untimely end,
06:06especially considering that Vamp had been shot in the head numerous times already, of course.
06:10Vamp returned five years later during the events of Metal Gear Solid 4,
06:13Guns of the Patriots, to have another showdown with Snake.
06:16Insanely eagle-eyed players may have seen this coming, however,
06:20if they paid very, very close attention to the final cutscene of Metal Gear Solid 2.
06:24As Snake and Raiden stand outside Federal Hall and wax lyrical about philosophy and politics
06:29it is a Metal Gear title after all,
06:31Vamp can actually be spotted in the crowd around them at multiple points,
06:35albeit for just a few milliseconds.
06:37But that could be any handsome devil in a big brown duster, right?
06:40Well, thanks to fan-hacked camera tricks, we know that it is indeed Vamp,
06:44proving that he was still alive and would be returning in the future.
06:48Number 4, T-Rex, Need for Speed 2
06:52In a time before unlockables, entering in a cheat code always felt like you were actually,
06:56well, cheating, hence the name.
06:58It was like being Indiana Jones,
07:00grabbing something elusive you perhaps weren't supposed to see.
07:04Need for Speed 2, released for PS1 and PC in 1997,
07:07features plenty of cars to pick from to race around in,
07:10but if you want to mix it up, the game's bevy of cheat codes
07:13have some wonderfully weird things to choose from.
07:15Fancy flying around courses as a UFO?
07:17Or perhaps as one of the game's many props, such as wagons or typically inanimate boxes?
07:22The best of all of these is the T-Rex.
07:24Pair it with the similar cheat that turns all of the in-game traffic into dinosaurs
07:28and you're in for a hilariously unique time.
07:30Whilst you take control of the T-Rex,
07:32it's best described perhaps as driving it rather than playing as it,
07:36as though it were a sentient being.
07:38The very well-trained king of the dinosaurs stays very still
07:41as you careen around corners on what we can only assume are wheels underneath its feet.
07:45Sadly, if you lose a race, there's no option to eat your competition out of malice.
07:51Number 3, Link, Golden Sun, The Lost Age
07:55Perhaps some of the most underrated JRPGs of all time,
07:58the Golden Sun series was developed by Camelot Software for the Game Boy Advance
08:02and, after a lengthy wait, Nintendo DS.
08:05The second title, Golden Sun, The Lost Age, takes place immediately after the first
08:09and actually puts the player in the shoes of somewhat antagonist and somewhat anti-hero Felix,
08:14who had been a major part of the first game's story.
08:16Felix and his allies fight their way through monsters,
08:19unlock spells and become embroiled in a story full of magic and ruination.
08:23Though there's one possible playable character who never shows up in the game,
08:27presumably because the lands of Weyard and Hyrule have quite some distance between them.
08:31Lurking in the data for Golden Sun, The Lost Age,
08:34still exists an entire set of sprites for The Legend of Zelda's own hero, Link.
08:38With some simple swapping around of assets, these sprites can be dropped in over Felix's
08:43and players who emulate the game can play through the entire story as the hero of time.
08:48Number 2, Dante, Devil May Cry 4
08:52Devil May Cry 4 brought some excellent advancements to the gameplay and the story
08:56of the series by introducing us to new playable character, Nero.
09:00Now, I'm by no means saying that Dante's appearance in the game is some kind of wild mistake.
09:04Not only is he a huge part of why Nero gets introduced to the DMC universe,
09:08but he's also one of the game's playable characters.
09:11However, there is a particular moment Dante shows up in that most players don't realise.
09:15During the game's introduction, we have a montage of Nero fighting off some demons,
09:19and in a particular shot, if you slow the footage right down or pause it on just the right frame,
09:24you can see Dante watching Nero strut his stuff.
09:27This implies that Dante knew about Nero before encountering him face to face,
09:31and specifically knows about his demon arm in advance.
09:34It probably explains why he acts so nonchalantly about it when the two face off in the game's
09:38opening.
09:39Creepy Uncle Dante is looking out for you, Nero, whether players realise it or not.
09:43Either that, or he's there to rank your style with scorecards,
09:46so make sure you're not using the same combo over and over again, huh?
09:50Number 1, James Sunderland, Silent Hill 3
09:54The fact that this is far and away the creepiest entry on this list is appropriate
09:58considering Silent Hill's penchant for making gamers terrified and uncomfortable.
10:02Silent Hill 3 did this expertly from the off.
10:05The title introduces players to new hero Heather Mason,
10:08the daughter of the first game's protagonist, Harry.
10:10After experiencing some visions, she races home and both Heather and the player are
10:14aghast to discover Harry's dead body in an armchair at their home.
10:19Ah, but is it Harry?
10:21Well, for storyline purposes, yes, it is.
10:23But considering we never get a good look at the body,
10:25it's not surprising that some diehard fans broke the camera out of position for a better look.
10:30After all, we want to see what Harry looks like in PS2 graphics
10:33rather than his original PS1 appearance.
10:35Except getting that closer look reveals that Team Silent didn't make a new Harry model,
10:40and instead just used Silent Hill 2 protagonist James Sunderland instead.
10:44James Sunderland also appears in the game's super secret UFO ending,
10:48but most people don't know that he was lurking in Harry's chair all this time.
10:54And that's the list.
10:55Let us know what you thought of this video down in the comments below,
10:58and any other hidden video game character appearances that you can think of.
11:02Make sure you like this video, share it with your friends, subscribe and hit that notification bell.
11:07I've been Sy for WhatCulture, and have a good week.