Darktide Easter Eggs have decades of Warhammer 40,000 worldbuilding to pull from. Fatshark’s previous games, the Vermintide series, also had years of Warhammer Fantasy backstory to draw on and were delightfully rich in references.
Vermintide had Easter eggs from the Warhammer Fantasy novels (the vampire Franz Lohner talks about is the protagonist of Drachenfels, which also provides the setting for a DLC), the paper-and-pen RPG (expansions like Death on the Reik and Shadows Over Bögenhafen are named after his adventures), and other Warhammer video games (Lohner has a shield with Grudgebringers heraldry from Shadow of the Horned Rat and Dark Omen, and makes sly references suggesting he was actually their commanding officer, Morgan Bernhardt).
Darktide may have a few fewer easter eggs than the two Vermintide games at the moment, although that’s only fair considering they’ve had years of updates and add-ons for them. wrap. Darktide Easter Eggs are always a lot of fun to spot. . Here’s what we’ve found so far.
This Chaos graffiti means something
You may have been too busy escaping prison in the prologue to notice, but the Chaos minions on Tancred Bastion took the time to leave some graffiti behind. As you make your way to the loading bay, you pass containers full of junk, one of which has cryptic runes painted on the inside. These aren’t just random squiggles; they actually mean something. To understand what, we will have to go back a few decades.
Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned, published in 1990, was one of two books that properly detailed the main Chaos Gods and their followers for the first time. It was packed with information you might want for your tabletop games, like pages of runes if you were to paint a few words in the Black Tongue. (opens in a new tab) on the banners held up by your miniature Chaos worshipers.
With this we can translate some of the graffiti from Darktide like the writing in this container on the Tancred stronghold. It says, in phonetic runes, “NURGLE LOVES YOU.” Other happy phrases repeated in graffiti and on other map flags include “KILL MAIM DESTROY”, “ROT DEATH”, “DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR”, and “FOP THE DARK GODS”, which is obviously meant to say ” FOR THE DARK GODS”, but you can’t fault the cultists for making the occasional typo.
Not all graffiti has been conveniently translated into English for us. In a few places, the runes spell out the word “GUNAGGHHHYRAN”, which is the name in the black tongue of the beasts of Nurgle, or “Gu’nagh’ghyran”. Other runes spell “AKSHO DAKH”, and while “aksho” means “seek” according to the Brief Black Tongue Glossary in Realms of Chaos, “dakh” has no stated meaning. Neither is “BAKGURANI AGKWAMI,” another repeated phrase, though that might be the name of someone we haven’t met yet.
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Other graffiti is written using the runes that refer to mutations and gifts from the gods, and these seem more randomly chosen. Along the way to Main Control on the Relay Station TRS-150 board are runes for several of the gifts Chaos minions can receive: tentacles, pinhead, and irrational hatred. Elsewhere there are runes for Rapid Regeneration, Cloud of Flies, Resilience, Eye of the God, Face of a Beast, Biting Tongue, Lord of Chaos, and Loss of Limbs. In the Realm of Chaos rulebooks, these attributes were chosen for your characters by rolling over a random table, and appear to have been applied to the walls of Tertium Hive in an equally whimsical way.
Some graffiti that isn’t written in the Black Tongue is an easter egg for players coming over from Vermintide. It’s the triangular symbol of the Horned Rat, which Skaven seem to like to doodle on every available surface, even in games they don’t participate in.
Our ravaged bodies are ready
Tertium Hive’s medic minions get some of Darktide’s best lines, morosely begging to be taken with you and lamenting their lack of purpose once their charges are depleted. They’re voiced by David Shaw Parker, who played innkeeper Franz Lohner in both Vermintide games as well as the narration of their trailers, and he can recall Fatshark’s previous Warhammer games when the servant of Medicare asks, “Can I heal your ravaged body?”
It’s a reference to witch hunter Victor Saltzpyre’s immortal line, “Holy Sigmar, bless this ravaged body”, which became something of a meme after its use in the original Vermintide, and was brought back for the sequel in due to fan demand. I even saw it on a T-shirt available on wish dot com of all places.
A tribute to Space Marine
The description of the Graia Mk VIII Infantry Autogun explains that it was made on the Imperial Forge world of Graia, a planet that has been mentioned in the Warhammer 40,000 books for a long time. Graia was chosen for a Darktide nod specifically because it’s also where one of the other 40K games that did the setting justice took place: Relic’s third-person action game, Space Marine, took place there.
As the description for the Graia Mk VIII notes, it’s a weapon “in short supply after a series of calamities that befell the forge world of Graia”, which is certainly one way to sum up the events of Space Marine.
Not all tattoos are skulls
There is a huge selection of tattoos to choose from when designing your character, some with appropriate slogans like “DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR”. There’s also a couple with a more unlikely motto, like the lower back piece with the crowns, which says “LOVE WE SHARE”.
The only time I’ve seen this phrase mentioned in relation to Warhammer 40,000 was in the first book in the Ciaphas Cain series, For the Emperor (opens in a new tab), where it is the name of a song sung by Amberley Vail when Cain meets her – one of many “sentimental old favorites” she sings. I guess it’s still popular after all these years.
uplifting words
About the music, Zealot Preachers will occasionally burst into song mid-mission. One of them sings the words “We all walk in his immortal shadow”, which is a line from a hymn called Imperial Lobgesang. The final lines are also quoted in a Battlefleet Gothic Armada cutscene, but here are the full lyrics, via The Imperial Infantryman’s Uplifting Primer background book.
Love the Emperor,
For He is the salvation of mankind.
Obey his words,
for He will lead you into the light of the future.
Heed his wisdom,
for he will protect you from evil,
whispers his prayers with devotion,
Because they will save your soul.
Honor his servants,
For they speak of His voice.
Tremble before his majesty,
For we all walk in His immortal shadow.
I’ve seen this container before
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Darktide really feels like being transported to a tabletop game of Warhammer 40,000. The designs for all the scenery are spot on, from barrels to barricades, and in some cases that’s because they come straight from the terrain designed for the miniatures game. (opens in a new tab).
Cargo containers are one of the most obvious pieces imported directly from Games Workshop designs, part of the Munitorum Armored Containers set released as part of Battlezone Manufactorum. While all vehicles in Darktide are also based on existing 40K machines, one semi-dark that usually spawns attached to a trailer near these containers is a four-wheeled vehicle called Wolfquad which is also used by Atalan Jackals. (opens in a new tab).
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Our friends from the first trailer return
The team of four introduced to us in the trailer (opens in a new tab) didn’t make it out alive, I’m afraid. You can see them hanging from a wall on the Hab Dreyko map, impaled above an arch on the way to HL-16-11-1318 hab. Sometimes, when you pass under them, Sergeant Major Morrow will tell you that they were “one of our recon teams when this started”, and he’ll be happy to finally hear what happened to them. You can see them meet their sticky end at the end of Darktide’s intro video (opens in a new tab).