Summary
Red Dead Redemption 2is packed to the gills with Easter eggs, references, and more. While the main story ofRed Dead Redemption 2is extremely grounded, and many of the game’s elements are simulator-esque, that hasn’t stopped the developers at Rockstar Games from having some fun with the world. BothRed Dead Redemptiongames pay homage to American spiritualism, the supernatural, and the occult. Alongside vampires, ghosts, and allusions to witchcraft,Red Dead Redemption 2features a Manmade Mutant. This is evidence of not only terrible human experimentation taking place in the world, but could also serve as a reference to the popular television programSouth Park.
South Parkis one of the longest-running animated comedy series of all time. Trey Parker and Matt Stone have made a name for themselves and their series by embracing an equal-opportunity approach to humor. If something is relevant in pop culture or politics, one can rest assured knowing thatSouth Parkwill parody it sooner or later. While the show has been no stranger to controversy, it has remained a staple of the American television landscape and has spawned a plethora of video game spin-offs, such as the excellentSouth Park: The Stick of Truth. Like Parker and Stone, Rockstar Games has frequently dabbled in parodic humor and has often courted controversy, so one paying homage to the other only makes sense.
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The Reference Behind the Manmade Mutant
Red Dead Redemption 2’s Manmade Mutant can be found in a large abandoned home directly west of Van Horn. Alongside the statue, statue players can find notes about the experiment. These notes indicate that the statue has the heart of a bear, wings from a vulture, and various parts from a man and a boar. Looking at the statue, it appears parts from other animals may have been used too. The Italian used to write the notes indicates thatthe Mandmade Mutant may be a reference to Galvani, but it also bears an incredible resemblance toSouth Park’s ManBearPig. Referring to it as a Mandmade Mutant, also pays homage to the origin of ManBearPig who is, in the show, originally painted as a conspiracy and nothing more.
While the inclusion of the ManBearPig-esque Manmade Mutant as a statue is cool in its own right, the lack of interactivity sets it apart from many ofRed Dead Redemption 2’s other fantastical beasts.RDR 2features a vampire mysterywhere players can collect clues and find the vampire mid-meal, and multiple ghosts can be found around the map. Next to these encounters, the inclusion of the Manmade Mutant, while more realistic, is underwhelming. While engaging in combat with the beast might prove to be too outlandish for a base game, seeing it running through the woods in the night would fall in line with ghost encounters already in the game.
The originalRed Dead Redemptionreceived a supernatural-inspired DLC in the form ofUndead Nightmare. At this point,Undead Nightmare 2is unlikely as DLC forRed Dead Redemption 2. In spite of being over a decade old with little hope of a sequel,Undead Nightmarehas remained popular among fans of the series, and there is demand for something like it.Red Dead Redemption 3could return to the idea, and instead of focusing on Zombies, it could take on a wide array of mythical beasts. This would be the perfect venue to push the boundaries with the series' ManBearPig allusions. In the context of a more fantastical DLC, players could fight the Manmade Mutant and perhaps even kill it and create gear with its parts.
The inclusion of a ManBearPig reference in the form of the Manmade Mutant statue was a fun nod toSouth Parkand the works of Galvani which inspiredFrankenstein, but it fails to reach the heights of other Easter Eggs included in the game. Rockstar Games has a lot of potential to push the reference to greater extremes. Including the Manmade Mutant in the next game, but having it roam the world would be a fun way to build on the Easter egg, especially ifRed Dead Redemption 3is another prequelor includes anUndead Nightmare-style DLC.
