Hidden Easter Eggs in Hollow Knight

I hate references.

Remember when Wario was on SNL?

Or that time Rick and Morty showed up in Space Jam 2? That was so pathetic.

I will never forget this scene until the day I die.

These faceless corporations and billionaires 
think they can co-op our relationships with

beloved fictional characters just to make us like 
them. No, thank you. However, if done tactfully,

references can actually be pretty cool. A lot 
of indie games like to do references and cameos,

but it’s usually to show appreciation for the 
properties that inspire them. That’s why Meatboy’s

corpse can be found in Ori and the Blind Forest, 
or why Chozo statues can be found in Guacamelee.

Turning our attention to Hollow Knight, it 
is a bit more subdued in its references.

Very few things stand out as blatant Easter 
eggs, which helps Hallownest feel more

believable. But the game isn’t completely 
devoid of cheeky nods to other properties.

So in this video, we’re going to 
poke around the world of Hollow

Knight to see if we can find some subtle 
references to other games and media.

Metroid is a good place to start since that’s an 
easy comparison to make. A big connection a lot

of people make is the jellyfish of the Fog Canyon 
and the titular Metroid creatures. Metroids are

artificial lifeforms that suck the lifeforce 
out of their victims. Whereas the jellyfish

of Hollow Knight are maybe artificial lifeforms 
that kinda just explode. While they aren’t very

similar mechanically, it makes sense to consider 
this a reference, seeing as jellyfish would be a

pretty weird thing to put in your bug game for no 
reason, unless you were paying homage to Metroid.

The more blatant Metroid reference, I think, 
is the Shade Beast where the Knight gets the

Shade Cloak ability. The way this creature is 
positioned and how the Knight interacts with it

is very reminiscent of the Chozo statues from 
Metroid. The Chozo are a race of bird people

who have apparently been to every single planet 
in the universe. They always leave behind these

statues holding power ups that Samus can 
use to help her progress through the world.

Next up is Castlevania. Most Castlevania 
games end with a fight against Count Dracula,

one phase as his normal design, and a second phase 
where he turns into a giant cookie monster or a

Final Fantasy boss or a 1993 Toyota Camry. Grimm 
himself obviously takes inspiration from Dracula

in general, but the Grimm fight definitely has 
some clear parallels to the phase one Dracula

fights of Castlevania. The pillar spikes are 
very reminiscent of the fire pillars from

Castlevania 3. And the cape attack with the 
bats is also similar to the fireball attack.

Another Hollow Knight boss, Galien, also appears 
to draw from the fight with Dracula’s henchman,

Death. Both fights involve scythes flying 
around the room. This one seems pretty vague,

so it might not be intentional. Also, 
this boss was created by a backer,

so it could be that the backer was the one 
making this reference, not Team Cherry.

In fact, backer content is where the 
most blatant references can be found.

Waldie in the Spirit’s Glade is an obvious nod to 
the character Guts from the critically acclaimed

manga series, Berserk. And then, there’s 
the super hidden area Shrine of Believers,

where backers were able to leave simple 
messages. One message is literally just an

H. P. Lovecraft quote, except they replaced 
the phrase “human mind” with “insect mind”.

Another message says “Good Luck Skeleton”, 
which I think is a reference to the messages

people can leave in Dark Souls games. And 
here’s another subtle Dark Souls reference.

A lot of people claim that Dark Souls had 
a lot of influence over Hollow Knight. And

it’s undeniable that Hollow Knight 
did draw a little from Dark Souls,

especially in terms of the respawn mechanic. But 
outside of the backer content we just covered,

there really aren't any blatant references to Dark 
Souls. You can make some broad comparisons of the

story between the two games. The main comparison 
being that they are both stories about discarded

warriors who are tasked with fighting off a 
curse by sacrificing themselves to prolong an

age of stagnation. So there’s sort of a 
connection there, but I think Team Cherry

missed the opportunity to put the T-Posing guy 
somewhere to really cater to Dark Souls fans.

A similar fantasy themed game that Team Cherry 
actually does mention in their interviews

is Faxanadu. This old NES game is about a traveler 
arriving at their home town at the base of World

Tree. The protagonist finds that an Evil One 
has turned all the Dwarfs into monsters who

are now attacking the Elves, and they now have 
to free the kingdom from the Evil One’s curse.

Team Cherry has stated explicitly that Hollow 
Knight’s story parallels Faxanadu at the

beginning. There’s a wanderer arriving back to a 
place they left long ago that is now under some

kind of affliction. So you could consider the 
opening sequence where the Knight arrives in

Hallownest as a sort of homage to the opening of 
Faxanadu. But I’ll admit, a character arriving at

a place is such a standard plot point, it’s hard 
to call this an Easter egg or direct reference.

Another stretch I’ve seen people make regards 
a certain charm known as Dashmaster. So many

people have pointed out that the Dashmaster 
charm looks like Sans the Skeleton from the

hit Earthbound-inspired indie RPG Undertale, that 
it’s honestly insane. The charm has a white face

with black eyes and blue on the sides, a design 
first made famous by Sans Undertale himself.

Do I think this charm is an intentional 
reference on Team Cherry’s part?

No.

But would it be so bad to just pretend 
for a moment that it is intentional?

Yes.

One aspect of Hollow Knight I really love is how 
Cornifer hums whenever the player is nearby. But

something about this tune sounds oddly familiar.

The main comparison I have seen a lot of people

make is to the Luigi’s Mansion theme. Now to avoid 
a copyright strike from Nintendo, I can only play

the song for a few moments, but it should be 
long enough for you to hear the similarities.

[Unknown music, probably nobody owns it, don't check ]

Pretty similar, right? However, the 
hum actually appears to be inspired

by a theme from Super Ghouls and 
Ghosts for the Super Nintendo.

[Spooky music]

[Cornifer humming some mad bars]

It’s not an exact match, but it sounds like a 
legally distinct enough imitation of it anyway.

However, Team Cherry has denied 
this reference when asked, so

who knows, it might just be a coincidence.

I’ve seen a few people claim that Midwife’s 
design is actually a reference to No Face

from the classic Studio Ghibli film 
Spirited Away. I dunno about this one.

I mean, I do see it, and both William Pellen 
and Ari Gibson studied art and animation at

university. They even have statues of various 
anime characters such as Lupin the 3rd, Batman

and that annoying ass cat from Digimon in their 
office. So there’s no doubt they’ve seen Spirited

Away, as it’s one of the most critically 
acclaimed animated movies of all time.

Their designs are pretty similar, but their 
designs are also just black blobs with legs

and a mask for face, so it’s not the most unique.

Probably the most defining feature of Midwife 
is that her mask splits in half, which No Face’s

mask doesn’t do. But it’s not impossible 
that No Face is where her design came from.

We do see him knitting at some point, so maybe 
he’s even an inspiration for the Weavers too.

Speaking of… anime, I think I should mention 
Angel’s Egg, since Ari Gibson has explicitly

mentioned this movie before as an influence. 
I’ve talked about this 1985 film a few times

on this channel, but I think it deserves more 
attention. This is one of those “what the fuck

did I just watch?” kinda movies. It was directed 
by Mamoru Oshii, of Ghost in the Shell fame,

and animated by him and Yoshitaka 
Amano. The plot of the film,

if you could even call it that, is about an 
unnamed girl living in a dilapidated wasteland,

carrying around this egg waiting for it to hatch. 
She eventually meets a man who tries to convince

her that the egg is empty, and that she needs 
to break the egg to truly know what’s inside.

The film is an inversion of the Noah’s Ark story,

so there is rain throughout a good portion of 
the film. The characters visit an abandoned

city at one point that eventually becomes 
submerged in the rain, and we see the bones

of several long dead creatures have now turned 
into stone in the walls. All of these elements

show up in Hollow Knight, even including a 
fountain as an important landmark in the city.

We can even see these influences from the earliest 
art created for Hollow Knight, when it was still

forging its own identity. This image evokes the 
rainy city and stone fossils pretty well. And

the original art for the Hollow Knight soundtrack 
is so similar to the poster art for Angel’s Egg,

that I think it’s probably intentional. 
So consider this a literal Easter egg.

Speaking of weird media that Team 
Cherry might reference in Hollow Knight,

let’s talk about Dune. Dune is a series of science 
fiction novels centered around political factions

vying for control of a desert planet rich with a 
valuable mind-altering substance known as spice

melange. The original novel was 
written in 1965 by Frank Herbert,

and is considered by many to be one of 
the best works of science fiction ever.

Team Cherry read through the Dune books while 
creating Hollow Knight, so naturally I started

reading through them myself to find any sort 
of parallels. I just recently finished the

fourth book, God Emperor of Dune, and while there 
aren’t any explicit references, there are a lot

of similarities between certain elements of Dune 
and Hollow Knight that might be worth discussing.

For example, the spice in the Dune novels 
can give people the ability of foresight,

the power to see possible futures depending 
on the present. In Hollow Knight, the Pale

King also has a type of presence, although 
the mechanics of it are left vague. In God

Emperor of Dune a giant wormman takes control of 
the entire galaxy, and uses his power to force

all of civilization into a sort of stasis where 
nothing really changes for thousands of years.

This is a little bit similar to what 
happened to Hallownest after the Hollow

Knight was sealed away, although the details 
behind why it happens in God Emperor of Dune

are a little different. I would explain it to you, 
but we’d probably be here another hour if I did.

But there could be one explicit Hollow Knight 
reference to Dune in that of the Pale King’s

Wyrm form, which is similar in design to Dune’s 
sandworms, giant beasts that roam the desert

planet of Arrakis. In particular, the ingame Wyrm 
looks a bit like H. R. Giger’s interpretation of

the sandworms. H. R. Giger is the man behind 
the iconic Alien design from Alien, but before

that he did some concept art on an unreleased film 
adaptation of Dune back in the 1970s. This is by

no means the most popular design for the sandworms 
and I think it’s more likely that Team Cherry

didn’t actually reference it when designing their 
game. But I figured it was worth pointing out.

There’s one final Easter egg I wanted 
to mention. This is Dung Defender,

a character who spends his time wallowing in shit. 
This might be a clever reference to James Corden.

As you can see, Hollow Knight is 
pretty light on the blatant references,

since half the stuff I mentioned in 
this video I’m not even very sure about,

but we can still find a few hints here and there. 
There are probably a few other possible references

that I might have missed, so let me know in 
the comments section how big of an idiot I am.

But all of this discussion does 
raise an interesting question.

Are there any references to Hollow Knight in other 
games? That sounds like a fantastic topic for

someone to make a video about. It would even be 
a great video for me to link on screen right now.