Funny To A Point – Six Mind-Blowing Video Game Conspiracies Revealed!

As regular Funny To A Point readers know, this column gives me the opportunity to explore a lot of fun and goofy ideas. But don't let my passion for humor fool you; while I enjoy yukking it up from time to time, I am also a serious, capital-J Journalist. Sometimes that means voicing inconvenient truths that gamers don't want to hear. Other times it manifests itself as a hard-hitting exposé, like my investigation into why modern box art sucks.

However, all those years of hard work were just a prelude to the following report, which is such a monumental journalistic achievement that scientists will need to create a whole new scale just to measure it. Today I'm uncovering not just one, but the SIX biggest video game conspiracies of all time. These diabolical truths have been hidden right under our noses the entire time, and once you see them, your life will never be the same. So buckle up, because...well, I just told you why – how much more freakin' hype do you need?

CONSPIRACY #1: BLIZZARD'S LIBERAL AGENDA
Blizzard is one of gaming's most beloved and respected developers, but that hasn't stopped the company from systematically subjecting its passionate fan base to a secret liberal agenda designed to infiltrate their hearts and minds. While that kind of mind-hack may sound like the work of Sombra, the blame actually falls on Overwatch's sickly sweet teenage gamer gurl.

D.Va is one Overwatch's most popular characters, so much so that you've probably seen the above screen a bajillion times. However, have you ever really seen it? If you did, you'd realize that D.Va isn't just an esports pro – she's also a walking propaganda machine!

That's right: Blizzard has been using subliminal messages to push its pro-vegetarian agenda, with a made-up acronym meant to demonize the meat industry. And the fact that Blizzard is using D.Va to do their dirty work is no accident; she's portrayed as the quintessential gamer – who better for millions of impressionable Overwatch players to look up to and subconsciously try to emulate?

Blizzard openly flaunted its subliminal anti-meat motive even further when it released the D.Va gremlin emote. The popular emote shows D.Va chowing down on a bag of Doritos, which last I checked WEREN'T MADE OF MEAT.

I know what you're thinking: "But Jeff, fans were the ones who made up the D.Va Doritos meme in the first place, not Blizzard!" But that  just proves Blizzard's conspiracy is working!

CONSPIRACY #2: UNCHARTED'S KILLER PET PREMONITION
Naughty Dog makes some of the most polished and meticulously produced action games on the market – in a Nathan Drake adventure, no detail is too small. Nowhere was this fact more evident than in Uncharted 3, where some eagle-eyed players retroactively spotted an ingenious Easter egg hinting at the developer's next game, The Last of Us. Just take a look at the newspaper headline, warning about the upcoming killer outbreak.

As it turns out, however, those eagle-eyed players were actually as blind as bats, because this Easter egg hides an even deeper secret just beneath its shell. Look what happens when you isolate the words that are conspicuously aligned on the "right" (i.e. correct?) side of the paper.

Our pets oversee deadly fun? Critics praised The Last of Us for grounding its zombie survival tale in the real-life science of the cordyceps fungus, but clearly the developer was pointing us to an even bigger and more imminent danger: our pets, whose adorable puppy eyes mask their murderous intent. The Washington Post ran an exposé on this very phenomenon in 2015 – but Uncharted 3 came out four years before that. If only we had seen the signs! Regardless, I'm glad to see that Naughty Dog takes this danger so seriously.

Wait a minute – NAUGHTY DOG?!!! The conspiracy deepens!

CONSPIRACY #3: THE "BRO" OF MARIO BROS.? IT'S SATAN!
If you're thinking that it doesn't get more serious than killer pets, you're DEAD wrong. Our next conspiracy involves nothing less than the eternal battle between good and evil – and if you played Super Mario Bros. back in the day, you've probably already lost! Like the other two examples, the clue was hidden in plain sight the entire time. Ask yourself: How many times did you see this screen?

Finding out that Princess Peach was still in peril was frustrating, but what you probably didn't know was that the very fate of your soul was also in danger. Unscrambling the hidden message in Toad's oft-repeated invocation reveals that Mario is in fact an agent of Satan!

Here is what the dialogue exchange between Mario and Toad was actually imprinting on your impressionable subconscious every time you completed a castle:

Based on this hidden message, the "unholy bricks" in Super Mario Bros. actually represent Satan, whom Mario and Toad clearly revere. Every time Mario breaks one of them, he's symbolically releasing the dark prince into the world. Nintendo reinforces this ritual of destruction by rewarding you with coins (greed) and power-ups – the most iconic of which lets you hurl fireballs out of your hands. Gee, who else is capable of spewing fire at will? That's right – SATAN! Wake up, sheeple!

Coming Up Next: Three final mind-blowing conspiracies, hidden in gaming's biggest franchises!

CONSPIRACY #4: DESTINY'S GREATEST MYSTERY REVEALED
Destiny has a huge and devoted fan base, but even its biggest supporters criticized the game's early narrative attempts. The chief complaint was there wasn't enough story, and what was there was too simple. Those criticisms turned out to be wrong on both accounts – we just weren't paying close enough attention.

Fans tore into Destiny's lavish ARG late last year, but when it comes to the game's biggest mystery – the origins of the giant altruistic orb known as The Traveler – Bungie has kept us in the dark. Turns out that's not darkness after all – we've just had our EYES CLOSED, because the clues were there the whole time!

When I initially stumbled upon this dope-looking ping pong ball while surfing imgur at work, something about it seemed strange. At first I thought it was because the graphic appears to show a flying penguin, and penguins obviously can't fly. But then I took a closer look at its wings, which seemed oddly familiar. When I dragged the image into Photoshop for further analysis, I realized I had stumbled upon the biggest Destiny conspiracy of all-time.

First, I lined the ball up with The Traveler so that the bulk of the penguin would "wrap" around the bottom of the sphere if it were mapped to its surface. When I turned the opacity to 50%, the results were stunning (go ahead and click on the image for a hi-res version if you don't believe me. See?! I wasn't lying!!!).

The penguin's wings are a 100-percent match with the peculiar markings on the bottom of The Traveler – there's no way this was a coincidence!

There's only one logical explanation: The Traveler, which is the size of a planet, is actually a ping pong ball. And since a planet-sized ping pong ball is just absurd, that leaves us with a single, irrefutable conclusion: We're actually super small. Hmm...what's another word for small?

Bungie hid the secret right in the name of the game! What an incredible conspiracy! Also, I think that space dust spells out sex:

CONSPIRACY #5: MASS EFFECT'S MESSAGE FROM THE PAST

Many players found Mass Effect: Andromeda's Plants Versus Zombies Easter egg interesting. However, my previous discoveries had primed me to look for deeper clues. Surely BioWare didn't stop with a lame EA crossover cameo, right? After months of searching, I finally found the truth, which shattered my preconceptions about the Mass Effect series. It turns out the answer wasn't in the game, but rather in these centuries-old hieroglyphs from ANCIENT EGYPT!

Anything there look familiar? No, not the one that bears a striking resemblance to a modern-day helicopter. The OTHER ONE.

That's right: The Andromeda Initiative was actually presaged thousands of years ago. The crazy-hair guy was right! Ancient aliens did exist – and based on my experiences in Mass Effect, we probably banged half of them!

CONSPIRACY #6: CALL OF DUTY'S I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT
The final brain-breaking video game conspiracy I discovered is also the most recent. Activision just started talking about this year's ingeniously named Call of Duty: WWII. However, it turns out that the company's initial teaser was actually teasing more than we thought – you just have to know where to look. Here's the image.

One of the biggest conspiracy theory icons is the Eye of Providence, which even appears on U.S. currency. The image depicts a pyramid with an eye, which is watching over...well, everything I guess. That was just the clue I needed to unravel COD's biggest secret ever. Using state-of-the-art imaging software, I zoomed in for a closer look into the window of our soldier's soul.

Closer...

Closer..........

CLOSER!

Wow. I have no idea what the hell that means, but my interest in Call Of Duty: WWII just went through the ROOF!

BONUS CONSPIRACY: TRUST NO ONE
I'd be remiss if I didn't share one last secret conspiracy with you today, which appeared right here on Game Informer. It's not nearly as monumental as Nintendo's Satanism or irrefutable proof of ancient aliens, but it is a pretty solid burn.

That screengrab was taken from one of our oldest news stories after the website's redesign – it's so old in fact that it was misattributed to Andy, an early quirk of the brand-new site. I was the true author, however (and probably the only editor who would write a news story about Bookworm – or continually hound PopCap to bring the series to Android, which they still haven't done!). Anyhoo, after writing the story up, I used my nascent Photoshop skills to include a secret message to my former colleague, Tim Turi.

The best part? I had Tim proofread the story, and didn't point out his oversight until after it was published. The message has been hidden in plain sight for the past seven and a half years – and is yet another reminder that secret conspiracies are all around us! Good, you're learning! Also, DANE COOK SUCKS!!!

Need a few more laughs? Click on the banner below to visit Funny To A Point's fancy-pants hub!