Upon its release in 1999,The Matrixmovie became iconic almost overnight. Geeks and nerds the world over rejoiced, seeing a gang of characters whose strength and slick moves were not attributed not to muscle or to superpowers, but to uploading kung fu into their minds.RELATED:The Matrix Online MMORPG ExplainedIt’s no surprise, then, thatThe Matrixwas extremely influential for game developers. In the early 2000s, gamers couldn’t move (in slow motion) for bullet-time sequences. NPCs everywhere were making sly nods to red and blue pills, spoons, and guns. Lots of guns. Plenty of action scenes drew visual inspiration from the film, and the franchise’s themes recurred in plenty of games as well.The Matrix’s influence on gaming still lives on today, as seen in the titles below.
10Max Payne
The Matrix’s iconic “bullet time” effect has been imitated in a huge number of video games, but none adopted the idea as wholesale as Rockstar and Remedy’s third-person shooter,Max Payne. It’s pretty much the central mechanic to the whole game.
Diving sideways in slow motion while dual-wielding SMGs may have been invented byThe Matrix, but it wasMax Paynethat perfected the art. This is one of the reasons why Remedy is thefirst choice studiofor manyMatrixfans to make a game tie-in toThe Matrix 4.
9StarCraft 2: Wings Of Liberty
It’s hard to say for sure, but “Dodge this” is probably the most referencedMatrixline in the video game world.StarCraft 2: Wings Of Libertyis one of three games that use it as the name of an Achievement or Trophy (the other two beingRed Dead RedemptionandRatchet: Deadlocked).
In order to get “Dodge This” inStarCraft 2, the player has to complete theAmon’s Fall missionwithout losing any army units to terrain destruction abilities. This is one of severalMatrixreferences in Blizzard games, so they must be big fans.
8Mass Effect 3
Autistic people often have a remarkable capacity to accurately recall and quote lines from movies. Some even find it very difficult to communicatewithout quoting and referencing films. This might go some way to explaining why David Archer, an autistic character in theMass Effectseries, quotesThe Matrixin conversation with Shepherd almost 200 years after it was made.
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If the player has playedMass Effect 2: Overlordand freed Archer from the Overlord experiments, he can be encountered again at the Grissom Academy inMass Effect 3. There, he’ll grant the Normandy crew access to the school’s security office, which he says contains “Guns. Lots of guns,” a reference to Neo’s request at the start of his and Trinity’s mission to rescue Morpheus.
7Mortal Kombat 11
Developers producing games published by the same media empire that producedThe Matrix, namely Warner Media, don’t have to make subtle nods to their favorite green-hued, sci-fi-kung-fu blockbuster. They can just go ahead and duplicate whole dialogue exchanges without fear of legal action.
That’s exactly what NetherRealm Studios did inMortal Kombat 11in one of the intro sequences that plays whenJohnny Cage squares upagainst his daughter Cassie. She asks if he’s trying to say she can dodge bullets (just as Neo asks Morpheus) and he tells her that when she’s ready, she won’t have to (just as Morpheus replies).
6Runescape
While some games make sly nods to iconic lines fromThe Matrix, others pay tribute in much bolder ways. One such game isold school MMORPGRunescape, which features one very familiar animation sequence.
During the Brimhaven Agility Course mini-game, the player will encounter various hazards and obstacles designed to test their agility, one of which is a low stone column that shoots darts. When the player dodges the darts, both the character animation and the camera pan are direct imitations of the scene inThe Matrixwhere Neo dodges bullets in what can only be described as a “limbo dancing” style.
5Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
At the end of the “Crew Expendable” mission, in which the player must escape a sinking cargo ship by jumping from the deck to a waiting helicopter, there is an explicitMatrixreference. But it can only be seen if the player fails to make the jump.
The whole sequence is pretty cinematic and scripted, so it’s actually quite difficult to mess this jump up. However, for any player thatsomehow manages to fail, the loading screen that precedes their second attempt will be adorned with the comforting (and ironic, given how easy the jump is) line, “Nobody makes the first jump.”
Many games make pop culture references in the names of their Trophies and Achievements, andThe Matrixhas more than its fair share of famous lines that work perfectly for this purpose.
InRed Dead Redemption, the player can earn an Achievement/Trophy named after the line Trinity says immediately before popping a bullet in the head of an agent: “Dodge this.” The same line is referenced in various other games too, and is also used as a Trophy name inRatchet: Deadlockedand an Achievement inStarCraft 2: Wings Of Liberty.
3Cyberpunk 2077
The connections betweenCyberpunk 2077andThe Matrixare actually very explicit. The Cyberpunk universe was created by Mike Pondsmith for his 1988 tabletop RPG, Cyberpunk 2020. Given what obsessive tabletop gamers the Wachowskis were in their teens, it’s highly likely they played it.
RELATED:The Biggest Cyberpunk Genre Tropes in Cyberpunk 2077
Pondsmith himself worked on bothThe Matrix Onlinewith Monolith Productions, and with CD Projekt Red onCyberpunk 2077. TheMatrixreferences are numerous, but the most obvious are the casting of Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand, and the scene in which a dealer offers the player a choice between a blue pill and a red pill.
2Fallout 4
TheFalloutseries has a lot of general themes in common withThe Matrix. The two both feature apost-apocalyptic world, a “chosen one” protagonist uncertain of who he or she really is, and various kinds of “virtual worlds” (within the virtual world of the games themselves, of course).
Fallout 3features Tranquility Lane, a simulation designed to take vault dwellers back to a time before the apocalypse. And inFallout 4, there are memory pods, which are similarlyMatrix-esque. Bethesda even makes a nod toThe Matrixon aFallout 4loading screen, accompanying an image of a memory pod with Morpheus’ famous line, “Free your mind.”
1World Of Warcraft
No one would thinkthat an MMOwith a classic fantasy setting would be able to draw influence from a slick, pseudo-philosophical, cyberpunk action movie. However, that would be an incorrect assumption.
There are actually severalMatrixreferences dotted around Azeroth. For example, the guards in Ironforge sometimes say they wish they’d taken the blue potion and not the red potion. Various NPCs in Stormwind will occasionally say “There is no spoon,” which is also a cheat code inWarcraft III: Reign Of Chaos.
