10 Video Game Developer In-Jokes You Totally Missed

Before Rare's hugely influential N64 darlings came to be, the studio was working on an ambitious new project named Dream, a fantasy RPG in the style of a classic fairy tale.

The planned villain of this game was Captain Blackeye, your garden variety evil pirate captain with eyepatch, ascot and "arrrr"s aplenty. When the project was scrapped and reworked into Banjo-Kazooie, however, a new villain, Gruntilda, was created in place of the salty swashbuckler, robbing him of his one and only moment of video game fame.

But while his days as a starring series baddie were over before they'd even started, the captain still lingers around in the dark recesses of Rare's N64 world. In a hidden back room of Jolly's bar in Banjo-Tooie, you'll find the man drinking himself into a stupor, and talking to him sheds some real light about what might have been.

His inclusion here, drowning his sorrows and drivelling about the "dream" that he once had, is a clear jab at his binned role in the Banjo series' progenitor, and without having ever been able to experience Project Dream ourselves, this is definitely an in-joke that calls for a trip to the Wiki.