10 Video Game Fan Theories That Became Fact
From a trigger happy Ghandi to an imaginary ninja; fan theories sometimes do come true...
Nothing makes fans happier than a good old fashioned video game conspiracy theory. Ranging from subtle tweaks in gameplay, to ideas that completely turn a game on its head, fan speculation can be so intense that it gains the attention of the developers that made the game in the first place.
Most of the time, these sorts of rumours tend to be unfounded. Before the advent of social media, it was much more difficult to dispel or disprove something. For example, many gamers will remember for years being convinced that the Pokemon Mew could be caught in Pokemon Red and Blue.
More often that not, developers will deny or ignore rumours surrounding their video games, which usually only fuels further speculation.
But every once in a while, studios like the theory so much that they integrate it into further updates or future sequels, or go out of their way to confirm a particular theory outright.
This article will look at instances where developers, through subtle and sometimes more explicit means, confirmed video game theories, becoming part of the established culture of the franchise.
10. Civilisation - Ghandi On A Rampage
The iconic Civilisation series revolves around the idea of bringing your selected civilisation into the modern age. To give the game a layer of realism, the developers tweaked each individual civilisations stats to reflect the leaders personalities.
What they didn't count on, was that on reaching the modern age, serial pacifist Mahatma Gandhi, controlled by the AI, would frequently declare war on the player and 'pacify' them by nuking them from orbit.
So how could this happen? The developers programmed Gandhi's aggression level to one out of ten, the lowest value. Choosing to become a democracy in the modern age decreased a civilisations aggression level by two. But in doing this, Gandhi's aggression level couldn't be less than zero, and therefore defaulted at maximum aggression.
Although this didn't happen in every scenario, Gandhi's' itchy trigger finger became synonymous with the series. With every follow up Civilisation title, the developers would not only keep the code in, but would allude to Gandhi's aggression in various in-game events.
By Civilisation 5 & 6, players noticed that Gandhi's stats had been reduced to normal, thus concluding one of the longest running jokes in gaming history.