7 Incredible Stories Behind The Making Of WWE Video Games

3. Unfinished Big Show (SmackDown 2: Know Your Role)

SmackDown 2 Know Your Role
THQ

Despite being released just eight months after the original, SmackDown 2: Know Your Role was an improvement on the first game in every conceivable way. There were new match types like Ladder and Casket, the Career Mode finally had some actual tangible storylines and the arcade gameplay was refined to become much more satisfying.

No Big Show though, uh uh.

Show, who had been sent to OVW in the hopes he'd be motivated to shift some weight, wasn't on the official roster for the game. Fans might not have bothered had THQ remembered to take out some code from the title that meant Show occasionally popped up during a Royal Rumble. It's true.

Play enough Rumbles and you'd eventually see a wrestler called 'Unknown' run to the ring. It was Big Show's character model from the first SmackDown game, with zero changes, and it was apparently supposed to be the basis for his new look in SmackDown 2. For some reason, THQ left it in.

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Lifelong wrestling, video game, music and sports obsessive who has been writing about his passions since childhood. Jamie started writing for WhatCulture in 2013, and has contributed thousands of articles and YouTube videos since then. He cut his teeth penning published pieces for top UK and European wrestling read Fighting Spirit Magazine (FSM), and also has extensive experience working within the wrestling biz as a manager and commentator for promotions like ICW on WWE Network and WCPW/Defiant since 2010. Further, Jamie also hosted the old Ministry Of Slam podcast, and has interviewed everyone from Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels to Bret Hart and Trish Stratus.