10 Iconic Video Games With Hidden Messages You Totally Missed
4. Nicole Is Dead - Dead Space
Dead Space was the natural progression of the survival horror genre post-Resident Evil 4, in that it tried to mesh action together with scares. While it was a tough to be genuinely frightened thanks to the amount of weapons the player can carry, it had its share of unsettling moments too.
It also has a surprisingly emotional ending, when Isaac learns his girlfriend Nicole – who he’s spent the game trying to find – has been dead the entire time.
For anyone playing attention to the level names, the developers were literally spelling this out; if you take the first letter of the title of each level, it reads NICOLE IS DEAD.
Replaying the game also gives you clues to Nicole’s fate, and while Dead Space is hardly up there with Silent Hill 2 in terms of psychological horror, it’s nice to see the developers put some thought into the small details.