Easter eggs can be cool tidbits that game developers put in for various purposes, whether for humor or for sentimental value. In this blog series, I will highlight some famous, interesting, or obscure Easter eggs in gaming. This article’s particular Easter egg is Borderland 2’s Storm sniper rifle.
For those who have played any of the Borderlands games, you know that finding awesome weapons is one of the fun parts. In fact, since weapon combinations are randomly generated, you may never find the exact same weapon with the exact same stats ever again. The Storm is a Pearlescent sniper rifle that is made by Maliwan. The one pictured here has a 120 percent critical hit damage, a 5.7x weapon zoom, and can possibly deal bonus elemental damage (always shock damage). I have seen it in many different combinations as well. The particular Storm weapon that I have is called the “Gentleman’s Storm,” and it has the red description of “Tut, Tut, It looks like rain.” It is one of my favorite sniper rifles in the game.
Now, you may be thinking to yourself, “Wow, that’s a really nice weapon, but what exactly is the Easter egg there?” Well, it starts with a short story of me reading to my daughter:
I enjoy reading to my daughter before her bedtime every day. A few days ago, we picked up “Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree.” I do believe that there is an animated cartoon that goes along with it as well. The story is about how Winnie the Pooh is trying to get as much honey as he possibly can. One thing that he has his friend, Christopher Robin, do is launch him on a red balloon to try and steal honey from some bees. While up on the balloon, Pooh asks Christopher Robin to dance around and go, “Tut, tut, it looks like rain,” so that the bees think Pooh is a rain cloud.
Now, it was about at that point in the book that I paused and went, “Wait a second! Why does that phrase seem so familiar?” It only took me a few moments to realize that the phrase was on one of my favorite weapons in Borderlands 2. I did some digging and found out that it was indeed from Winnie the Pooh. I suppose someone on the B2 development team has children (tee-hee).
So, there you go: a rarer weapon on Borderlands 2 cross-references a children’s story. The English teacher in me is going nuts right now. Winnie the Pooh, for me, will always be a bit different now!