Abstract
Problem: Many Easter eggs in classic RPGs are discussed online with incorrect explanations or missing context, since people speculate without consulting the developers who are still around.
Approach: Tim Cain walks through personal Easter eggs from games he worked on — Fallout, Arcanum, Temple of Elemental Evil, Vampire: Bloodlines, Pillars of Eternity, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, and The Outer Worlds — providing the real stories behind each one.
Findings: Most Easter eggs have surprisingly mundane or personal origins that online speculation gets wrong. A "BIS sucks" sticker was about a Scottish rock band, not Black Isle Studios. The Pillars monk class originated from a cut WildStar class. A missing 17th chocolate bar inspired both a location and an item in The Outer Worlds.
Key insight: Developers are often still alive and available to explain the real stories behind game Easter eggs — yet the internet prefers to guess, and usually guesses wrong.
1. Fallout: Sasha the Dog
The first Easter egg Tim discusses is a dog behind the Cathedral in Fallout 1. The dog was an homage to Vince DeNardo, a producer at Interplay, who frequently brought his dog Sasha to the office. Tim believes Chris Taylor added Sasha to the game. In Fallout 2, there's a callback — someone wandering around calling out for Sasha, referencing the original Easter egg.
2. Arcanum: Tim's Missing Portrait
Tim notes that people online frequently identify developer portraits used in Arcanum — they always spot Chad Moore as the half-ogre and Leonard Boyarsky as Virgil — but consistently miss Tim's own portrait. He doesn't even know which NPC his portrait was used for (it may only be available as a player portrait). He finds it amusing that compilations of "the development team's portraits" always leave him out.
2.1. The Isle of Despair and Black Isle Studios
In Arcanum, there's a throwaway line when asking how to get to the Isle of Despair (a prison island). An NPC warns you not to go, calling it "the Black Isle." This was indeed a reference to Black Isle Studios, put in by a writer who admitted he was "kind of digging on Black Isle." Tim apologized for this in 2016 — 15 years late — to former Black Isle people at Obsidian, even though he didn't write it himself.
2.2. Leadership and Responsibility
Tim uses this as a broader point about leadership: when you're in charge of a project, responsibility comes with the authority. He contrasts this with people who want power but not responsibility — wanting to make decisions but not wanting those decisions connected to them in case things go wrong.
3. Temple of Elemental Evil: Zaxis Montalbon
Tim's brother had a Bard character named Zaxis Montalbon in their tabletop D&D games. The last name came from Ricardo Montalban, star of Fantasy Island (1980). The character portrait was a newspaper clipping of Montalban in a circus outfit from Circus of the Stars, which Tim's brother cut out and glued onto his character sheet.
Zaxis appears as a random encounter on the world map in Temple of Elemental Evil. He's looking for his sister Ima (an Illusionist) who left home, and has a personal quest to find her.
4. Vampire: Bloodlines — The "BIS Sucks" Sticker
Years after Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines shipped, Tim discovered a sticker on the base of a microphone in one of the game's clubs that reads "BIS sucks." Many people, including former Black Isle Studios employees, assumed this was yet another dig at Black Isle. It was not.
Tim tracked down the real story: a young artist at Troika (his first job, never worked at Black Isle) had placed the sticker. The Troika team working on Temple of Elemental Evil had been constantly playing the album Plastique Nouveau by Bis — an indie Scottish rock band. The artist got sick of hearing it and put the sticker in as a joke about the band, completely unaware of Black Isle Studios. Tim apologized to people who were offended, taking responsibility as a project lead.
5. Pillars of Eternity: The Monk Class from WildStar
The Monk class in Pillars of Eternity originated from Tim's work at Carbine Studios on WildStar. At Carbine, one of the art requirements was that every class have a unique silhouette — identifiable by armor, stance, and weapon — which was considered critical for PvP combat in an MMO. Tim's reaction was to design a class with no weapon that fights hand-to-hand.
The Monk was one of the original nine classes Tim created in his first months at Carbine, but it was eventually cut. He liked the system mechanics enough to rework them for Pillars of Eternity. This is where the wound mechanic came from: monks want to take damage because wounds power their stronger attacks. It's "very karma" — hurt a monk, and it comes back to you.
6. Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire — Tim as a Bartender
Tim's portrait appears in Deadfire as Jacob Harker, a bartender. He didn't even know about it until someone pointed it out online.
7. The Outer Worlds: The 17th Bar and White Chocolate Yummies
Tim is famously not a fan of white chocolate. While he was away on a trip, someone at Obsidian (never identified) hid 17 bars of Nestlé White Chocolate Crunch throughout his office and left a ransom-style note made of cut-out letters saying: "There are 17 bars hidden all around your office. Hope you find them all."
Tim found about a dozen on the first day — taped behind his monitor, under a pillow on his office chair, and in other spots. Some took weeks to discover. One was taped to the bottom of his landline phone, fitting perfectly between its rubber feet. Over three years in that office before leaving Obsidian, he only found 16. He never found the 17th bar.
This is why The Outer Worlds has a bar called The 17th Bar (located in Roseway) and why "Tim Cain's White Chocolate Yummies" appears as a lootable item. Tim played whack-a-mole with the item during development — finding it in playthroughs and asking the team to remove it, only for them to put it on a different loot list somewhere else.
8. References
- Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaJDGtKHyFk