Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has earned recognition for its high-energy and remarkable presentation. Although its top-tier production values are commonly seen as the result of its big budget, there are a lot of little things that go into making a game of this quality, some of which are the direct result of development team members who care about the game they are making.
Sledgehammer Games spent years crafting Advanced Warfare , and it shows. If you pay close attention, you’ll find rich inspiration throughout its campaign and multiplayer components.
Also See: 10 Tips for Instant Success in CoD: Advanced Warfare’s Multiplayer
In the gallery below you’ll learn about a few previously unknown easter eggs in Advanced Warfare , and also find out about its real-world influences.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Easter Eggs and Little Known Facts
A special appearance by Sledgehammer's co-founder
Sledgehammer Games Co-Founder Michael Condrey delivered a motion captured performance alongside Kevin Spacey which made it to the game.
Codename Blacksmith
Before its name was finalized as Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare , the game was referred to by codename "Blacksmith", a reference to Sledgehammer Games.
Lagos was chosen for its notorious traffic problems
The Lagos mission is well-known for its crazy drivers, which is precisely why it was chosen for the game. Lagos, Nigera has earned a reputation as the city with the heaviest traffic in the world. It's no wonder Conan O'Brien had so much trouble getting across the highway when playing the level.
Recreating Seoul
If you want to recreate a real city, there's no better way to do it than go there and immerse yourself in its environment for a couple weeks. Well, that's exactly what Sledgehammer Games did for Induction, a level set in Seoul, South Korea. Several staff scouted the capital for weeks to become as familiar with its architecture and atmosphere as possible.
The Golden Gate Bride is as real as it gets
The Collapse mission has the world's most accurately depicted virtual Golden Gate Bridge. It is a nearly exact recreation of the famous bridge in San Francisco, California. The only difference is that it's the Golden Gate Bridge of the future, decked out with futuristic signs and all.
NASA has a Walking Tank
If you had fun using the Walking Tank, you may be happy to know that the six-legged walking vehicle is real. NASA is crafting one for future asteroid mining missions. Speaking of which, ESA just landed a probe on 67P. Maybe there's more to that than meets the eye...
Italy and China meet Call of Duty
New Baghdad's environment in the Throttle mission of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare might be artificial, but it was inspired by real-world Venice, Italy and the Forbidden City in China.
Doing business in style
Early on in the game Irons, played by Kevin Spacey, hands the player his business card. The style of this business card is what Sledgehammer Games Co-Founder Michael Condrey uses.
These are no ordinary NPCs
All of the NPCs that aren't major characters have their names drawn from a pool of developers at Sledgehammer Games, Raven, and High Moon Studios who worked on the game. You can see their names in the credits, too.
A special locker
The "Game Jam" winners who thought of the brilliant idea for the car door shield ability have been honored with a poster inside the locker room of the Fission mission which sends you through a nuclear power plant.
A Twitch phenomenon
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is the most streamed console game of 2014 in its launch week worldwide. Last week, more than 75,000 unique broadcasters shared gameplay from Sledgehammer Games’ latest release, with Advanced Warfare content being viewed over 26 million times. Additionally, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare gameplay was watched by nearly 6 million unique viewers last week, totaling to over 327 million minutes watched.