Summary
One highly attentiveStarfieldfan spotted a somewhat obscure reference toThe Lord of the Ringsfranchise in Bethesda’s latest game. Their discovery adds to the already substantial list ofStarfieldEaster eggs that the fandom has uncoveredsince the RPG hit early access on September 1.
Pop-culture callbacks are nothing new for Bethesda games; many ofthe best Easter eggs inFallout 4referenced classic films such asAlien,Titanic, andJaws, as was the case withThe Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim,Fallout 76, and the company’s other RPGs.
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Starfieldproudly continues that tradition with a wide variety of new movie Easter eggs, some more obscure than others. One such callback that’s particularly easy to miss was recently spotted by Reddit user turntrout101, who realized that the in-game description of a potato is actually a throwback to a famous line fromThe Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The remark, uttered by Sean Astin’s Samwise Gamgee during an exchange with Andy Serkis’s Gollum, sees the hobbit exclaim his love of potatoes by listing some of the many ways of preparing “taters.”
While the 2002 movie took that line word-for-word from Tolkien’s eponymous 1954 book, the quote only reached meme status among the fandom following the release of Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation ofThe Two Towers. Its popularity peaked circa 2008, when YouTuber AlbinoBlackSheep authored a viral EDM songMashed Tatersthat was essentially a remix of Serkis and Astin’s exchange from the film. Bethesda’s latest potato description is yet another testament to the meme’s staying power, adding to the already long string ofStarfieldEaster eggs referencing everything fromSkyrimtoBlade Runner.
Starfieldis far from the first Bethesda game to include a reference toThe Lord of the Rings. That title belongs to the company’s first-ever RPG,The Elder Scrolls: Arena; the seminal 1994 title included several callbacks to Tolkien’s classic fantasy novels, with its “random” name generator frequently suggesting monikers that were essentially the names of famousLOTRcharacters with hyphens in between syllable intonation changes: Ara-gorn, Lego-las, Gan-dalf, Sau-ron, etc. Many names associated with Greek and Roman myths also received the same treatment fromTES: Arena.
While even someLOTRfans might miss the inspiration behindStarfield’spotato description, this newly spotted reference is hardly the game’s most obscure Easter egg. In fact, some of the RPG’s callbacks are so subtle that the fandom can’t even decide whether they are actual references or merely coincidences, as underlined by a recently emerged discussion on aNew Atlantis structure that someStarfieldplayers suspect is actually aDead Spacethrowback.
Starfieldlaunches September 6 for PC and Xbox Series X/S.
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