Commander Keen/Trivia


 * Easter Egg:
 * While not one in the Keen series, the Dopefish in Secret of the Oracle has since evolved into this, making secret cameos in unrelated games, from 1994's Wacky Wheels to 2011's Deus Ex Human Revolution.
 * Other Keen-related items have shown up in other games as well:
 * The teddy bear from episode 1 is a point item (exact same sprite, even) in Secret Agent.
 * Keen's helmet in a couple of slime pools in Crystal Caves. The story mentions "Yorp herding" and the name "B. Blaze" appears in the high scores as well.
 * Keen is mentioned in one level of the original Duke Nukem.
 * "Keen Commander" is a rank in Guild Wars.
 * Several hanged Keens appear at the exit of the super-secret level of Doom II. You have to kill them to exit the level.
 * Keen is a hostage in episode 2 of Bio Menace. A later level features a giant Yorp in the background and has a hidden developer's room with several items from Keen and other Apogee games.
 * A message in Epic's early game Jill of the Jungle states that "B. Blaze" is retiring from computer games because he "can't compete with those cool Epic heros [sic]".
 * Commander Keen's name is in the high score list for Monuments Of Mars, which also features a Garg-like enemy.
 * A secret in the second episode of Paganitzu features a Yorp wearing Al's hat. Al is meanwhile talking about a strange dream he had about Commander Keen which sounds suspiciously like an ad for the game...
 * In one level of episode 5, some pipework forms a swastika (a reference to the then-forthcoming Wolfenstein 3D, although the swastika is actually the mirror-image of a Nazi swastika) and other pipework below it spells out the name of John Romero. In another level, pipework spells out the name of Tom Hall.
 * Fan Nickname: Billy's pet Yorp is usually called Mort among the fans, even though it is never called this in the game, its food bowl says "Spot" on it, and Tom Hall in the Keen FAQ, confirms that its name is indeed Spot.
 * Keep Circulating the Tapes: The full version of Commander Keen 6: Aliens Ate My Babysitter. Apogee needed FormGen's help to get the game out, and thus they could only act as a middleman in selling the game. Once FormGen went under and Apogee ran out of their stock, that was, as they say, that. Somehow id Software (a longtime collaborator with Apogee) got the rights to include it in the incredibly rare Id Anthology CD set. It's a little easier to find copies of that in order to buy Commander Keen 6 (although it's still a hundred bucks).
 * What Could Have Been: id tried to publish the first game through Softdisk, as they already had a contract with them. Softdisk rejected it because the game didn't work with CGA.