10 Video Game Developer In-Jokes You Totally Missed

With every entry in the Mortal Kombat franchise comes a roster of new and inventive playable characters to slot in right alongside the iconic series mainstays. And with so many fighters to manage, you just know the developers are going to incorporate a little whimsy into some of their designs.

Enter Noob Saibot, a character introduced in 1993's Mortal Kombat II and continuing to appear in the series right up to the present day. Aside from just being inherently funny, Noob's first and second names are derived from the reversed surnames of two of the Mortal Kombat series creators: Ed Boon and John Tobias.

Also of note is Ermac, who was originally present in the original Mortal Kombat as a red-coloured clone of Scorpion. In the earliest arcade versions of the game, the list of fighters would show the name 'Ermac', an abbreviation of 'Error Macro' due to a coding error. People enjoyed this 'secret character', however, and Ermac then went on to become his own persona in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.

Just goes to show that developers do sometimes listen to their fans.