Things You Didn't Know About The Division

The Division is one of the most highly-anticipated video games in recent years and stands as one of Ubisoft's biggest titles. It's even been heralded as Ubisoft's answer to Bungie's Destiny due to the similarities the two titles share when it comes to being a massively multiplayer online shooter with role-playing elements. One of the coolest things about this game is that you can explore a snowy New York City after a pandemic, and Ubisoft Massive has made sure to fill it with awesome things for players to find or learn. Here are some of The Division's coolest things you can check out while in the heart of the city. Just a heads up, some of the provided video footage may contain language that is NSFW.

What's a good game without a few Easter eggs? One such secret comes in the form of the office of Ubisoft itself, located in the safe house called "The Firewall." To get there, just head to East 43rd Street between 2nd and 3rd Ave. Once you're inside, you'll find the Ubisoft logo plastered on the walls and a lot of art featuring Grow Home and For Honor. The inclusion of the developer's office is cool, but just don't try looking for it in the real world version of New York City, since there aren't any Ubisoft offices actually there.

As fans of '90s cartoons and hero teams might know, New York City is the home of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Division pays tribute to these turtles in a half-shell with some cool Easter eggs in the form of weapons next to pizza boxes. If you need a refresher, the Turtles love to scarf down pizza, so these boxes let players know that it wasn't just any psycho leaving behind a pair of katanas, but that it was Leonardo himself, the leader of the Turtles. Of course, this means that the TMNT perished in the outbreak, so that's kind of a bummer.

As of this writing, Central Park is an area of the game that is inaccessible. Whether or not it will be used for later content is unknown, but thanks to the work of some intrepid explorers, a way to access the area through the use of glitches has been found. The provided video shows YouTuber Chaz630's instructions to get to the area, starting players out in Hell's Kitchen at the Dante's Run safe house. You'll see some pretty funky, incomplete stuff, but the city in The Division is already messed up enough anyway, so what are a few wall hacks going to change?

One very cool (or possibly frightening) thing about The Division you may not have known is that it's based on a real world event called "Operation Dark Winter", which was a bio-terrorist attack simulation conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies. The experiment was conducted from June 22 to June 23, 2001 and was designed to carry out a mock smallpox attack on the United States and to evaluate the emergency response to such an event. The reason why The Division takes place during winter is because the most devastating time for such an attack to happen would be during the holidays, as if the streets of New York City weren't already crazy enough during that time of the year anyway.

One cool feature in The Division is the use of the ECHO system, which takes data from surveillance cameras, cell phones, and other tech to help piece together a picture of what might have been happening at a certain point in time. You can use the ECHO system to find out what might have happened to certain people in the area and learn more about the environment around your character. One awesome reference to the horror-comedy, Shaun of the Dead, can be found, by some fences that a man named Shaun Packham tried to jump and then failed miserably. This is a nod to the running gag in the Cornetto Trilogy (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World's End) in which Simon Pegg's character tried to hop over fences to take shortcuts, with varying degrees of success. How's that for a slice of fried gold?

What time is it?! Judging by one of the murals you can find in The Division, it's adventure time. Head between 8th and 9th Ave. in Pennsylvania Plaza and you can find a long mural that depicts a cartoonish world with sprawling fields and icy mountains, populated by cute characters carrying textbooks. The art style is very reminiscent of Adventure Time's designs, and it would kind of make sense for there to be a nod to the series in The Division since the Land of Ooo is technically a post-apocalyptic world.

Stop here if you haven't seen the ending of Breaking Bad and don't want to be spoiled, because The Division pretty much spoils the fates of the AMC show's two main characters, Jesse Pinkman and Walter White. Thanks to the ECHO system, you can find a beacon where a rooftop party was raging in the past. Two of the people there were men named Jonathan Pinkman and William White, an obvious nod to Breaking Bad's leading duo. White's short bio even says that he ran a car wash, which is what Walter White did as a front to launder his gains from drug dealing.