From Dark Souls lava to cursed Zelda NPCs, the internet's "useless video game knowledge" is actually really cool

A new water cooler discussion went viral on Twitter this week, with a post from the Super Pod Saga prompting everyone and their dog to share "useless video game knowledge" which is also really cool video game knowledge.

The turnout has been immense – over 17,000 quote tweets alone at the time of writing – and yielded some unbelievably niche trivia fodder, so if you plan on diving in you'd best prepare for quite the rabbit hole. I picked through a decent chunk of this iceberg in search of the wildest factoids I could reasonably verify, and have returned to share my findings. 

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild NPCs are based on Miis

This is a bit of an older one, but it still does my head in. Because some character models use a similar system, modders have found you can even inject actual Miis into Breath of the Wild. 

Star Wars' Mark Hamill was in the Yakuza games 

Remember that time Mark Hamill voiced Goro Majima in 2006's Yakuza? Neither does he. 

Splatoon has haunted statues that will laugh at you

This one sounded like some creepy pasta nonsense, but nope, several videos confirm these statues do exist, and are indeed possessed by the spirits of giggling squid kids. 

The Sonic & All-Star Racing Transformed announcer does not appreciate being silenced

You've got to love an audio menu with reactive audio, especially when the reaction is shrinking, increasingly desperate shrieking from a startlingly upbeat announcer. 

The Final Fantasy 9 save Moogle does not appreciate being spammed

This is another great example of how menus and the characters tied to them can respond to the player's actions. Is it reasonable to threaten someone with a knife just because they sent you too many DMs? Possibly. 

You can block lava damage in Dark Souls 3, but only if you're facing the right way 

This is exactly the kind of jank I'd expect from environmental hazards in a Dark Souls game. Anecdotally, I'm pretty sure Dark Souls 3 isn't the only Souls game with directional lava damage, but it might be the most famous. 

Objects in Kingdom Hearts 2 can technically win battles 

This is one of my favorite posts because it highlights how much weird stuff goes on under the hood of every game, and how that weirdness really doesn't matter unless you find yourself in some incredibly strange circumstances. You know, like using a box or some other prop asset to deal the last blow of a fight and give that box an Overwatch-style play of the game moment. Hey, as long as it works. 

You can accidentally kidnap a small man in Cave Story 

This one had me trawling some wikis. Cave Story apparently contains a tiny guy named Littles who you can place in your inventory for a delivery side quest, and if you finish the game before letting him out, you'll get a special prompt in the credits that asks if you've forgotten something. 

Derkeethus is the flightiest groom in Skyrim

Of all the Skyrim NPCs you can potentially marry, Derkeethus the Argonian is the only one who'll instantly trek across the wilderness toward Darkwater Crossing as soon as the ceremony is over, and also every day afterward. This bug, which can apparently be triggered by Derkeethus joining the Blades as well, is so well-known that it even has a dedicated fix on NexusMods.

Choreography for Street Fighter's Elena matches a David Lee Roth music video

We're getting into some weird stuff now. The victory pose for Elena in Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike was reportedly rotoscoped directly from one of the women in the music video for David Lee Roth's "Just A Gigolo." That sure is a sentence I just wrote. 

There's a random glowing cup floating off-screen in Portal 2

I would like to award this post the honor of being the most useless video game knowledge I've found so far. How would you discover this? Why is this cup here? Why does it glow? Will the game explode if it's deleted? I don't know, and neither do the folks who looked into it, but I'm glad thousands of people are aware of this cup now. 

I would expire before I got to all the interesting conversations sparked by this tweet, so to round things out, I got some of my coworkers to contribute their own useless gaming info because it didn't feel right to take from this iceberg without adding to it, so here goes. 

US managing editor Rollin Bishop tells me that Thedas, the Dragon Age setting, actually stands for the Dragon Age setting. Huh.

My fellow news writer Dustin Bailey informed me that the distinctive haircut of Street Fighter's Guile is directly based on the cyborg Nazi Rudol von Stroheim from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. 

As for my contribution, did you know that a 3D model believed to be Shockwave from Transformers was once found in the game files for Genshin Impact? 

Here's some more weird gaming trivia for you: the Final Fantasy 14 devs decided this anime reference was simply too much.