[Interesting Trope] Attempts at fanservice/virality that failed not because they were hated, but because nobody noticed them or cared at all.

[u/mp3help]

1) Hoopy the Hoop, Portal (2007) When you defeat GLaDOS and her room is destroyed at the end of the game, debris rains down in the final cutscene, including a big metal hoop that bounces around a bit. Developer Erik Wolpaw said the team dubbed it "Hoopy the Hoop" and expected it to become the big meme of Portal. Of course, none of the fans paid much attention to the hoop since "The Cake is a Lie" became the biggest meme of the game, and overall one of the biggest video game memes of all time.

2) Burgh, Pokemon Black and White (2010) When designing Burgh, developer Yusuke Ohmura said Gamefreak had many of their female employees give input on his design to create their ideal handsome man. However, as someone who's been in the Pokemon fandom for almost 3 decades, in the 15+ years since Pokemon Black and White released, I have personally never seen any fans swoon over Burgh, or even mention him in general. If anything, characters like N and Colress are far more well-known within the fandom as the most handsome and beloved male characters of Pokemon Gen 5.

[u/stevvvvewith4vs]

Arkham City teaser in Asylum. Fans had never found the secret room so Rocksteady themselves had to show this easter egg

[u/JBR_4025 → u/stevvvvewith4vs]

To be fair they hid it in the most anonymous place in the game. Nobody sane of mind would have ever found it unless they plastered every wall in the game with explosives, which probably explains why the Knight teaser was made slightly easier to find since all you needed to do was to stumble upon the right boat

[u/stevvvvewith4vs → u/JBR_4025]

Nobody sane of mind

Dude, the game is set in an insane asylum.

[u/WhosThatDogMrPB → u/stevvvvewith4vs]

I thought it was a serious house on a serious earth.

[u/teracoulomb_2 → u/WhosThatDogMrPB]

Is there a lore reason why it has those names? Are we of sound mind?

[u/Swords_and_Words → u/JBR_4025]

So, did no Metroid players play the game? 

I thought blowing up every inch of every wall was just part of Easter egg hunting

[u/ThrogdorLokison → u/Swords_and_Words]

In a 2D environment is one thing, a whole city like Arkham is another. Not to mention the way the explosives work, it would be annoying as hell to do it to every wall

[u/twinsunsspaces → u/ThrogdorLokison]

You also had to get it on the exact spot on the wall. When I went to find it myself it took me about 20 tries to get the explosive gel placement correct, so I can easily see someone failing to blow up that wall 2 or 3 times and them concluding that there was nothing there.

[u/Swords_and_Words → u/twinsunsspaces]

Just made me go look at videos of people both succeeding and failing to open that wall 

Holy crap, that is some unforgiving criteria for finding an easter egg

[u/Swords_and_Words → u/ThrogdorLokison]

I was gonna bring up Metroid Prime, which os 3D and still encouraged lots of wall bombing

...but then I looked up how Arkham bombs worked and, holy hell, no wonder no one found that easter egg 

[u/The_Magic → u/Swords_and_Words]

I think the big issue is that it required using three explosives on the wall to open when every other wall that could be blown up only needs one. So it was a random destructible wall that did not follow any of the rules of every other destructible wall in the game.

[u/Swords_and_Words → u/The_Magic]

Oooh

Yeah, if the first explosion didn't crack the wall or anything to give any hint that further explosives might do a thing, that's pretty dang hidden

[u/stillnotelf → u/Swords_and_Words]

In 2D and in 1997, sure.

We had fewer new games to move onto, then

[u/moopey → u/Swords_and_Words]

Hollow knight and Silksong is best played by just slashing every wall you see. You never know!

[u/ShirowShirow → u/JBR_4025]

I mean players have absolutely stumbled upon weirder more out-of-the-way things.

[u/Gamerguy230 → u/JBR_4025]

What was the teaser for knight?

[u/JBR_4025 → u/Gamerguy230]

An Easter egg that hinted at the Scarecrow plan

[u/VengeanceKnight → u/JBR_4025]

There were also some radio messages hidden with the cryptographic sequencer.

[u/FlyusAmongUs → u/stevvvvewith4vs]

It's a shame too, because people would have been shitting their pants when they found out about this when the game first released.

Nowadays it would be called "sequel bait slop" or something.

[u/halodevice → u/FlyusAmongUs]

this comment is slopslop

[u/_TheUnseen_ → u/stevvvvewith4vs]

Why was it so difficult to find?

[u/stevvvvewith4vs → u/_TheUnseen_]

The player has to explode a wall in the warden's office that doesn't show in X-ray

[u/ReasonableAdvert → u/stevvvvewith4vs]

They also had to use 3 explosive gels on the same wall.

[u/aaronhowser1 → u/ReasonableAdvert]

I cannot imagine this ever being discovered without using freecam mods or something. Nobody would ever use 3 explosive gels on that particular part of that particular wall, because that's an insane thing to do

[u/VengeanceKnight → u/stevvvvewith4vs]

Pretty sure this was intentional. It was a way of showing “Yeah, we’ve been planning this sequel since before we were done with the first game. It’s gonna be epic, you guys.”