Mildly Obscure Easter Egg I Discovered

Paper Mario
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I’ve just come to the realization that every once in a while whilst reading or playing though some form of media, I stumble upon the number 5,963. Sometimes it’s the combination for a puzzle. Other times it’s part of a character’s online username. Even more notoriously, it’s in the form of how much EXP is gained after a battle or event.

  • In Super Paper Mario, 5963 is the passcode for the hamster wheel ruby generator room in Merlee’s Mansion.
  • In Final Fantasy IX, Ragtime Mouse rewards 23,852 EXP for answering all of his quiz questions correctly. Divided amongst the four party members, each member gets 5,963 EXP.
  • In the Science Adventure VN series, there is at least one online NPC with the digits 5963 in their username.
  • In the shoot ‘em up game Batsugun, one boss battle has some tanks moving across the screen in two files, and bombing them will score 59,630 points each.

So, what’s the meaning behind this number? It turns out that it can be read as “gokurosan” in Japanese (5 = go, 9 = kyū, 6 = roku, 3 = san), meaning “thanks for your hard work”, or “good job.”

I thought this was a fun little Easter egg/trope, and since it’s used in SPM, I’ll tag it as such. Share ITT if you can find more instances of this. The TV Tropes article is pretty limited here, so I’m actually gonna add these ones to that.

P.S. Are any of you nerrs as keen-eyed as me, or am I just crazy? :stuck_out_tongue:

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From the same TV Tropes article. I think we might have had a post on this one in the past. Still, you’ve got to appreciate the effort that went into the writing here.

“Fort Francis’s passcodes equal phrases in Japanese. The first one, 2828, can be read as「にゃにゃ」(nyanya), for a meowing sound, befitting the many cat robots Francis has around. The other passcode, 2323, is「兄さん兄さん」(nii-san nii-san), an affectionate way to refer to your master, since Francis made all the robots serve him.” (TV Tropes)

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i haven’t heard of this particular one, but i’m aware of these two that are in a similar vein:

  • 765(0) = namco: 7=na, 6=mu, 5=ko
  • 573 = konami: 5=ko, 7=na, 3=mi

3939

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