8 Video Game References Hidden in Star Wars Movies and TV Shows

Star Wars has a rich history of video games stretching all the way back to 1983. Eventually, Star Wars games extended beyond simply adapting the movies and gave us some of the best original characters and stories from a galaxy far, far away.

For fans, the only catch is that these games stopped being canon in 2014, when Disney rebranded all the Expanded Universe material from games, novels, and comics over the years into the non-canonical “Star Wars Legends.”

Luckily, the creators of modern Star Wars movies and TV shows keep bringing video game references in and making these games (or portions of these games) canonical once more.

Here are all the coolest game references hidden in Star Wars movies and TV shows.

Lead character design in ‘The Mandalorian’

The design for our protagonist in The Mandalorian is nothing short of iconic. But would you believe that design comes straight from a video game that never saw the light of day?

Star Wars: 1313 was a game that went in many different directions before being canceled. Towards the end, the plan was for players to take control of Boba Fett, and he could unlock additional armor options through gameplay. But his basic armor design from the game was used as the design for the early, pre-Beskar upgrade design in The Mandalorian.

RELATED: This Is the Way: How the Canceled Star Wars: 1313 Game Helped Create ‘The Mandalorian’

Dark Troopers in ‘The Mandalorian’

Perhaps the most blatant “game to canon” bit came from season two of The Mandalorian. By the end of the season, we discover that Moff Gideon’s secret weapons are robotic Dark Troopers tough enough to give a Mandalorian a run for his money.

But the basic design of these troopers is not new. It comes from the classic video game Star Wars: Dark Forces. In that game, smuggler-turned-hero Kyle Katarn clashes with different versions of these troops. Later, the Dark Trooper was a bonus playable class in the original Star Wars: Battlefront games.