Let's explore a Hollow Knight iceberg Script
There have been a lot of Hollow Knight icebergs to pop up over the past year. And I’ve always wanted to make a video covering one. But Hollow Knight icebergs, like a lot of other icebergs, tend to get a bit too memey. Also I show up on a lot of these icebergs which makes me feel weird.
However, just recently a reddit user known as SteevPoyo96 posted an iceberg that I wanted to talk about on this channel [Source]. Normally these icebergs end up covering a lot of material I’ve already discussed before, which is another reason why I haven’t done one of these videos yet. There’s a little bit of that here too, but for the most part, there’s a lot of things I’ve never even talked about on this channel. So that’s pretty convenient.
If you don’t know how icebergs work, basically the further down the image we go, the more obscure or mysterious the entries are supposed to be. With Hollow Knight being a fairly recent game, and the fanbase being fairly large, it’s hard for anything to really be all that obscure without it just being made up. But thankfully that’s not the case here. So let’s dive in.
Surface Level
The surface level is all the normie stuff. If you have put any time into researching Hollow Knight, you have probably heard most of these entries.
Land of Storms
The Land of Storms is a hidden area in Godhome that can only be accessed by clearing each patheon challenge with each binding. It shows off a strange land the Godseekers once inhabited before making their pilgrimage to Hallownest. It’s a super secret area that the vast majority of Hollow Knight players won’t even encounter. But it’s a very well known area at this point, so it’s not surprising to see it at the top of the iceberg.
Kingdom’s Edge tent
In Kingdom’s Edge there is a room with a single exit with a tent blocking off the rest of the area. There really isn’t anything significant here, but I think it captures that feeling of wonder and mystery about what’s laying just beyond our reach. I remember feeling that way a lot as a kid playing Super Mario 64, trying to get out of the courtyard behind the castle.
Extended Elegy for Hallownest
The Elegy for Hallownest is a short poem that appears at the start of the game. Within the code for Hollow Knight, there’s actually several more verses that go into detail about how Hallownest grew over time, fell due to the infection, and the Pale King’s plan to stop it. There isn’t much here that can’t be inferred from other lore sources, so we aren’t missing much without this extended poem. One interesting thing to note about this poem is that one of the game’s developers, William Pellen, didn’t even know these extra verses existed until after the community found them in the game.
Record Bela
This is a reference to a cut lore tablet that was going to appear in the Soul Sanctum alongside Record Aba and Cenda. It’s a real shame too, because this lore tablet actually explicitly tells us how the Soul Sanctum scholars had to reform how their minds worked entirely to gain a mastery over soul.
Macebug
After defeating the False Knight in Forgotten Crossroads, the head of his weapon will sprout legs and scuttle away. If you Dream Nail it, it will even say “free at last!”
TO BE CONTINUED
If you encounter Mister Mushroom all seven times throughout Hallownest, he will appear in a post credits cutscene rocketing through the air. This is followed by a black screen with the text “To be continued”. This is probably implying that Mister Mushroom will be making an appearance in later games developed by Team Cherry. This would be inline with his character, as his dialogue when encountered in the game implies that he is somehow connected to earlier games made by Team Cherry such as Hungry Knight. So he’s kinda like Phase One Nick Fury.
Warrior Iselda
Iselda has Dream Nail dialogue about how she put down her weapon to live a quiet life with Cornifer, but that she’d like to stretch her legs again some time soon. William Pellen even reiterates this in a Reddit AMA from four years ago, as if this dialogue might actually be relevant at some point in the future [Source]. Or William is just trolling us as usual.
Shallow Waters
Next up on the iceberg are the shallow waters. This is stuff that is pretty easy to overlook, but there still isn’t much mystery to them. It’s mainly small details about the game or pretty well known behind the scenes development stuff.
Empress Muzznik
Empress Muzznik is just the early name Team Cherry gave to the Gruz Mother. Back during the Kickstarter, the enemies that were shown off had these weird names.
Lore Bible is real
The Lore Bible is an internal document used by Team Cherry to keep track of Hollow Knight lore. Team Cherry has only ever referred to this document once in an interview from 2016 [Source].
William: It’s all planned well in advance.
Ari: Of course. Everything’s set in stone.
William: We’ve got an extensive lore document back at the office.
Will we see this lore document in its entirety some day? Nope.
McFarlane Toys
In February 2019, McFarlane toys teased an upcoming Hollow Knight collaboration on their Facebook account [Source]. Later that summer, placeholder displays for Hollow Knight were shown off by McFarlane at the 2019 New York Toy Fair [Source]. However, after this, there have been no further updates about the Hollow Knight figure, and we have never been given an explanation about what happened. I guess we’re stuck with figures of Shrek and piss colored Flash.
Hunter fought Radiance
The Hunter’s Journal doesn’t really make sense from a lore perspective. The Hunter explicitly tells us that by defeating enemies, we gain the ability to decipher the text he has written in his Hunter’s journal. There are some instances where it is implied it isn’t the Hunter though. For example, the Dreamer fights and Grimm Troupe enemies have different symbols over the description text as opposed to a symbol of the Hunter’s eyes. This could imply that he didn’t necessarily write these notes. But then how did they get into the journal in the first place? How exactly do we get excerpts from poems like the Grimm Troupe or smut like The Grey Prince? And even if we ignore those oddities, the Hunter symbol does appear for enemies like the Radiance. So does this mean the Hunter fought the Radiance at some point?
Green Hwurmp
In early development screenshots of Hollow Knight, the Hwurmp enemy had a more green shade to its body. And it somehow looks even uglier than what we got in the final game.
…
There are a number of enemies in the game who give Dream Nail dialogue that is nothing more than an ellipsis. Fool Eater, Gulka, Sporg, Shrumeling, Bluggsac, Nosk, Shadow Creeper, Broken Vessel and Lost Kin. It seems more non-animal based enemies and ones closely tied to the Abyss share this attribute. As for Nosk, it has this whole thing about being able to read minds, so it’s hard to know what it would actually be capable of thinking. Is its Dream Nail dialogue just a reflection of how the Knight doesn’t have thoughts either?
Lake of Unn Shade
If you die in the Lake of Unn room and come back, your shade will be looking out over the lake, just like the Moss Knight we also see there. We know that Unn is calling to the Moss Knight. Is the Shade also hearing this call, or can it somehow sense her power in another way? Regardless, it’s a neat little detail, since we don’t see the shades interacting with other creatures in Hallownest all that much.
Marm
Relic Seeker Lemm’s name is shown as Relic Seeker Marm in development screenshots of the game.
Early Nosk
Nosk’s lair is located behind a breakable wall in the lower portion of Deepnest. In this section, Nosk appears just out of reach of the player several times, luring them to his boss fight room. However, Nosk can actually be seen fairly early on in Deepnest. Nosk first appears in the room leading up to the big drop into lower Deepnest.
God Tamer is already attuned
In order to attempt a pantheon in Godhome, you have to defeat all the bosses who appear in that pantheon in Hallownest. There are two exceptions to this. One is Grey Prince Zote. If you don’t save Zote in Greenpath, Grey Prince Zote won’t appear in Godhome at all. And if you do save him, Grey Prince Zote won’t appear in a pantheon until you fight him in Bretta’s house.
Another exception is God Tamer. You don’t have to encounter her at all to fight her in the Pantheon of the Sage. This is probably because Team Cherry didn’t want to force the player to have to finish the entire Colosseum of Fools before being allowed to do the third pantheon.
Lorewise, it doesn’t really make sense and it kinda breaks the logic of Godhome entirely, but if we factor in gameplay considerations, it’s reasonable.
City of Tears true name
As far as I know, we have no idea what the actual name for the City of Tears was before it became the City of Tears. It’s been referred to as the Heart of Hallownest, but an actual name doesn’t appear anywhere I’ve seen. And chances are, we’ll never know.
Deepnest East
Deepnest used to be a lot bigger than what we see in the final game. Eventually, the eastern portion of Deepnest was reworked to be a new area called the Outskirts, which eventually became a catch all for stuff Team Cherry hadn’t found a place for yet. Eventually this area became known as the Kingdom’s Edge.
No infected bugs in Fog Canyon
The only enemies we see in Fog Canyon are the jellyfish. There are a few bug corpses here and there, but no infected husks like we see pretty much everywhere else. One theory I’ve seen is that the jellyfish were explicitly created as a way to contain infection, since they remain entirely passive while the infection remains controlled inside their body.
Accordion Bug
Brumm and Nymm are both musicians playing on what appears to be an accordion. But if we look closely at this accordion, we can see that it actually has legs, implying it’s in the same boat as Macebug. Unfortunately, there is no way to murder Brumm to rescue this poor creature. So instead it must suffer in agony as we look on in horror.
Implications of Steel Soul
There are some differences between the base mode of Hollow Knight and Steel Soul Mode. The two main differences are that Tuk is dead in Steel Soul mode, and the player encounters Steel Soul Jinn instead of Confessor Jiji. Is Steel Soul mode the more canonical route since death is permanent here? Also, Ellina from the Wanderer’s Journal encounters Jinn and Jiji and Tuk, so what's going on there?
Also, why is the game mode where you are more fragile called “Steel Soul”? It’s kinda back asswards, don’t you think?
Gek tuu
There are a lot of funny and memorable voice lines for the characters in Hollow Knight. Such as
FAAAAAAAA- FUNDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
And
GOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRB
And of course
Does he look like a bitch?
By far one of the most well known phrases is when Hornet appears to help the Knight during the Hollow Knight fight.
GEK TUU
A popular meme within the community is that she shouts “Get Gud”. But Team Cherry has actually addressed this in an 2018 interview with Kotaku [Source].
Ari: Happy coincidence
William: Is the actual word Gek Duu
Ari: I believe it’s Gek Tuu
William: Ah, Gek Tuu!
Mega Wastes
This probably refers to how the Fungal Wastes used to be much bigger early on in development, encompassing the Fungal Wastes, Greenpath, Queen’s Garden and Fog Canyon. Over time, Team Cherry broke up the area into more segmented and distinct regions.
Zote doesn’t breathe
When Zote first appears in Dirtmouth after being saved in the Forgotten Crossroads, he talks about how Elderbug is rambling on about the infectious air in Hallownest below. In response to this Zote says “Has he simply considered not breathing?” Fucking brilliant.
How Tiso died in CoF
While we can find Tiso’s corpse in Kingdom’s Edge, we unfortunately never actually see how Tiso is killed in the Colosseum of Fools. A popular theory that has circulated around is that Tiso was killed by the Brooding Mawlek that appears in the Trial of the Fool, since that’s what he gets killed by in this fakeout scene from the Pantheon of Hallownest.
Mantis Hammocks
Throughout the Mantis Village are these cloths hanging from the ceiling. Once we gain access to the Mark of Pride room we can see that these mantises are actually sleeping in these things. How cute.
Throne Song
Once you find the Pale King’s corpse in the White Palace, you can actually sit on his throne. After a short while, the game will play a royal arrentment of the Hollow Knight theme. It’s a cool, little detail that signifies how Hallownest is basically in the hands of the Knight at this point.
Below the Iceberg
Below the iceberg, things start to get more obscure. At least I think they do. It’s kinda hard for me to know what details are more well known by the majority of people, and which ones are more obscure. I’ve spent so much time learning about this game that it all kinda runs together.
3 Monomons
In the earliest promotional material for Hollow Knight, we can see that the three dreamers were more uniform in the design, each sporting the same mask we see Monomon wear in the final game. In the final game, we can even see an archway near the Black Egg Temple where it still only shows Monomon masks.
Shark Jump
Shark Jump Studios is a company that helped Team Cherry port Hollow Knight to the Nintendo Switch. The Switch is not a very powerful machine, and Hollow Knight was very poorly optimized when it first came out, so Team Cherry hired some help to get the game running smoothly on Switch.
Nailsmith’s client
When we first encounter the Nailsmith, he thinks we are someone else asking for him to hone another nail, implying he has done a lot of work for this person previously. Nailsmith eventually notices we are not the person he thought we were, and he never brings up this other client again. I have no idea who Nailsmith could have been talking to. But I do think there is something going on with the Nailsmith that we just can’t know about.
“False One”
When you Dream Nail the Pale King in the White Palace, he says the iconic line “No cost too great”. However, there was another line left in the game's code that went unused. He said “False one… You can not… reach me… here”. False one probably refers to the Radiance, but it seems Team Cherry wanted the Pale King’s dialogue to be more reflective of his own actions.
Vessel theme in the Abyss.
The Abyss doesn’t really have music like the other areas of Hallownest. Instead we just get a low droning sound which conveys the haunting emptiness of the area. However, if you speed up the music, you can actually hear the Vessel theme that plays at the start of the game and in the Dream No More ending.
Godseeker Mode is canon
After beating the third pantheon in Godhome for the first time, you unlock Godseeker mode. This mode locks you into Godhome permanently where you can redo all the pantheons and the Hall of Gods on a separate save file. It’s a small addition for people who want to start new save files immediately in Godhome, but it also has some weird lore implications. The Godseeker talks to us completely differently in this mode, groveling to us in all her dialogue. According to a playester and translator, this entire mode canonically happens after defeating the Pantheon of Hallownest. So does that mean that all the stuff with the Vody Entity filling Godhome with Void got cleared up? That’s good, I guess. But what’s going on in Hallownest then? Are we seriously just going to dick around in here while God knows what is going on outside? It really is a head scratcher.
Small White Lady
We only ever see White Lady in her giant tree form, but we can assume she used to be smaller and not rooted into the ground. Her silhouette can be seen on the back of the chair in the White Palace, and there are some early sketches of her that might show off what she looked like before Hallownest fell to ruin [Source].
Willoh’s Tent
In the same little part of Queen’s Station where we meet Willoh, we can see that she has a red tent. This has generated a theory that she was once a member of the Grimm Troupe, like the Grimmsteed, but somehow escaped. It’s a fun idea but it seems unlikely to me, honestly. She has no dialogue that even hints at the Grimm Troupe. Maybe if she reacted to the Grimmchild in some way, then I’d have more confidence in this theory.
Lost Kin Unique Arena
Lost Kin is similar to Soul Tyrant and Failed Champion in that they are all dream variants of bosses found in Hallownest. However, when fighting Soul Tyrant and Failed Champion, the boss arenas look very similar to the places their normal versions were fought. The Lost Kin however doesn’t follow this trend. It looks like this arena is from the City of Tears or Forgotten Crossroads, as opposed to the Ancient Basin. There really isn’t any explanation for why this is the case. The Broken Vessel boss fight used to be located where the Hornet 1 fight is now, but that doesn’t really answer our question, since the Lost Kin area doesn’t look like Greenpath either.
Giant Nails
In Kingdom’s Edge, the player can find the corpse of the Ancient Nailsmith along with several massive nails. Who were these nails for? Did the giant creatures we see throughout Hallownest carry these things around and fight one another? It’s pretty crazy to think about.
Fourth Soul Vessel
There are some development screenshots of Hollow Knight where the Knight actually has a fourth Soul Vessel. There’s not much else to say about this.
White Palace Non-Euclidean Geometry
The White Palace has one section where the rooms don’t line up at all. The room where the Pale King experimented on Void connects to another room in two separate ways that make no sense geometrically. The White Palace is in the Dream Realm so it’s not that surprising, but it’s the only part of the Palace that really acts like this.
Dirtmouth is underground
While Dirtmouth is at the top of the world of Hallownest, it’s not quite clear if it’s actually on the surface of the world. There’s no sun, no moon, no stars. On top of that Leth, Team Cherry’s marketing director, posted on Reddit a few years back saying that Dirtmouth was actually underground [Source]. However, there are a few mentions of the “surface” and the “surface world” that kinda contradict this claim. We can also see that there’s actual weather in the Land of Storms, which I don’t think can happen underground, so I’m not exactly sure what to think.
MASKH
The first four pantheons in Godhome are the Pantheons of the Master, Artist, Sage and Knight. Those four titles spell out the word mask, which is obviously a reference to 1994 film the Mask starring Jim Carrey. But there’s also the Pantheon of Hallownest, which would make the complete acronym MASKH.
Zote invades Godhome
There is a hidden area in the Hall of Gods where you can find a breakable wall. Destroying this wall allows Zote the Mighty to break into the Hall of Gods. There is even unused dialogue that calls Zote an ”intruder amongst the gods of Hallownest”. Apparently the Godseekers didn’t view him as powerful enough to belong here, which is really saying something considering they have statues of Vengeflies.
Blue Lantern
The blue lantern is a mysterious unused asset from the game files. It looks like it holds some kind of blue flame, but I have no idea what this would have been used for.
Cornifer speaks Hungarian
This is a myth that has been floating around for a while. One person once pointed out that Cornifer sounded like he was speaking Hungarian, to which William Pellen replied that the voice actor for Cornifer, Dave Kazi, is Hungarian [Source]. But most people who I’ve heard from who are Hungarian say that Cornifer is definitely not speaking Hungarian. So it seems like it might only sound Hungarian because it’s gibberish being said by a person who happens to be Hungarian.
“...Isma… So strong… Teach me…”
Dung Defender used to have Dream Nail dialogue about Isma while he was sleeping, but this dialogue can no longer be accessed in game because Dream Nailing him now leads into the White Defender fight. This is a bit of a shame because Isma also has Dream Nail dialogue that nicely parallels Dung Defender’s.
Sharp Shadow eyes
When the Knight has the Sharp Shadow charm, its shade actually takes on a noticeably different appearance during the dashing animations. The shade now has six eyes instead of two, making it a bit more like the Void Entity from the Embrace the Void ending. It also sorta matches the Void Tendril enemies who also appear to have three eyes on one side of their heads.
420 Geo
The Gorgeous Husk in the City of Tears and the giant geo deposit in the Ancient Basin both give the player a total of 420 Geo. Nice.
Lurian the Whisperer
From an old development map of Hallownest, we can see that Lurien’s original name was Lurian the Whisperer. As if this guy wasn’t creepy enough.
White Crystal Ring
The White Crystal Ring was an item seen in one of the earliest trailers for Hollow Knight. It appeared to be a chargeable Vengeful Spirit move, sort of like the Mega Buster from Mega Man 4. What’s funny about the White Crystal Rings is that you can still see a few of them sitting on Sly’s table in the final game.
Hollow Knight full armor
The Hollow Knight was wearing armor when it was sealed away in the Black Egg Temple. We see glances of it in the opening, as well as before the Hollow Knight and Pure Vessel fights. We can get a better glimpse of the armor from sources outside the game. It appears in the Godmaster reveal trailer for a brief second, and it’s also on a card that comes with the Collector’s Edition of Hollow Knight sold by Fangamer.
The Depths
From this point on, we are mainly going to discuss obscure cut content. Stuff that has never really been discussed by Team Cherry or we only have a tiny bit of information on. Lots of single phrases that have appeared on old artwork or in code that we have pretty much no info about.
Never feed Grubs flesh
Back in 2017, a Collector’s Edition of Hollow Knight for the PC was released by Indiebox. This edition had a special Grub plush that came along with the game. Included in some of these releases was a document called Grub Care Instructions [Source]. The document goes into detail about the habits of Grubs: what they like to do, how they show gratitude, and what they do when they are sad. It’s unclear who wrote this document or if Team Cherry ever approved it as accurate canonically. But there’s one line in particular that raises a few eyebrows.
Grubs grow quickly and are voracious eaters. They will happily eat anything, but it is considered taboo to feed them flesh or eggs. This may give them unseemly appetites.
This document makes Grubs out to be like fucking gremins. And people seriously wonder why I hate these little bastards so much.
Dirtmouth Fly
The Dirtmouth fly is an NPC who appears in two very early screenshots of Hollow Knight. These two images were found hosted on the backend of Team Cherry’s website, but they were never actually publicly revealed. So in reality, Team Cherry never even meant for us to see this creature. Why were they hiding it from us? What did it do?
Lighthouse Abyss Monster
In October of 2015, Team Cherry posted an image to Twitter of a whiteboard illustration of some gigantic monster attacking the lighthouse found in the Abyss [Source]. This creature didn’t make it into the final game, although it’s so massive I’m not sure it really would translate well into an actual level. In its place, there are just a bunch of Void Tendrils. And we can even see that these enemies have been stretched and scaled in a way that looks pretty awkward. Although you’d never really see it playing the game legitimately.
Skyward Slash
The Skywards Slash is the name of a cut Nail Art that the player could find in the Forest of Bones. It shows up on an old development map of Hallownest alongside the Dash Attack and Spin Attack [Source]. So at this point there wasn’t the Great Slash ability. I assume Skyward Slash would have been like the Great Slash but upwards, which doesn’t sound too terribly useful, so I’m glad they cut it.
Cave Paintings
There are quite a few entries in this section that come from old development maps of Hallownest we have collected from Team Cherry interviews over the years. So I’ll do all of them in a row.
Apparently there were going to be cave paintings in Deepnest, somewhere near where the hot spring is now located. I don’t know what these cave paintings would have shown. Perhaps it would have given us more history about Deepnest’s inhabitants. We know a little bit about the Weavers, who arrived in Deepnest at some point, but not much about the non-Weaver creatures who lived here.
Faraway Grave
The Faraway Grave is an area that would have been located east of the crypts in the Resting Grounds, near where the Soul Eater charm is found. This area certainly sounds important, but we know absolutely nothing about it.
Pantheon of Stone
The Pantheon of Stone is the name of the pantheon shown off in the Nintendo Treehouse Live event at E3 2018. Hollow Knight released on Switch at E3 that year, and Team Cherry was in L.A. to show off the upcoming Godmaster update. The pantheon is pretty short, only showing off a few bosses, ending with Nailmaster Sheo. This pantheon was probably just thrown together to show off Godmaster at E3.
Proto Hornet
Hornet was revealed on December 9th, 2014 in Update 13 on the Hollow Knight Kickstarter [Source]. However, in Update 11 posted on the 6th, Team Cherry shared a drawing of the Knight made by Makoto Koji, the voice actor for Hornet [Source]. It’s a weird picture because it looks like some weird combination of the Knight and Hornet. Was this sketch where the idea of Hornet came from?
Deepnest Cocoon
There is an early concept sketch of this thing in Deepnest known as the Deepnest cocoon. We do see giant cocoon looking structures where Beast’s Den is, but they don’t look like this sketch. So maybe this is some concept that got cut from the final game.
Significance of 249
I’m not sure what Significance of 249 means. I think it’s supposed to be the number of buzzsaws in the White Palace. I counted it once and got a total of 247 though. Maybe SteevPoyo96 should check their math before they upload an iceberg like this again.
Bombeetles
Bombeetles are a type of weapon mentioned in a document Team Cherry sent out to select backers after the Hollow Knight Kickstarter [Source]. This document provided details about the world of Hallownest to help higher tiered backers design their characters. The document has a section all about weapons, and one class of weapon mentioned are Bombeetles. They are described as small, highly volatile creatures that explode when stressed. Relatable.
It appears these designs were later used for the Lifeseed enemy, and an unused wing variant found in the game’s code.
Holy Land
We all know about the cut Forest of Bones area that is coming to Silksong, but for some reason during development, they changed the name of the Forest of Bones to “Holy Land”. I’m not sure if this is referencing the Holy Grounds or what, but it’s definitely weird.
Lifeblood Loading Screen
For some reason, the Switch release of Hollow Knight has a different background for the screen that shows the player the auto save icon. It shows the Lifeblood area in the Abyss, while all the other versions of the game just show the Abyss.
Treasury Tunnels
If you have watched all my videos, you know that there aren’t a lot of pictures of Team Cherry. I have to keep cycling through the same four or five over and over again. But there’s one image in particular of Team Cherry standing in some weird cramped tunnel.
This image has always bothered me. Why are they there? Why is the Knight just floating in space above them? Why do they look like they’re about to drop their next album?
This image bothered me so much that when I met Team Cherry in Australia back in 2019 I asked them about this image explicitly. Apparently, this picture was taken by the local newspaper after Hollow Knight was nominated for a BAFTA award, and the interviewer decided that they should take a picture underground, since Hollow Knight is a game about underground bugs. So he took them to the Treasury Tunnels in Adelaide, Australia.
And I’m glad he did because this pic goes hard. I’m happy I was finally able to talk about this obscure detail, although I’m not really sure why SteevPoyo69 thought it was worth putting on this iceberg. It’s barely even related to Hollow Knight and I’m probably the only person who actually cares.
Ancient Spider Corpse
We have very little on the Ancient Spider Corpse unfortunately. Basically it was just a text prompt that went unused. We get to see other ancient creatures throughout Hallownest, so it would have been cool to see one that looked more like a spider. The closest thing we have to go on is the giant spider we see in an old Hollow Knight trailer, but it might be entirely unrelated.
Soul Society
Soul Society was the original name for the Soul Sanctum. But Team Cherry had to change it because everyone kept thinking it was a Bleach reference. Apparently the Soul Society is the name of the afterlife in that show. I honestly know nothing about Bleach though, so let’s move on.
Tiso’s Glasses
In his original backer drawing, Tiso had glasses or goggles or something. Maybe his bad eyesight is what got him killed.
Ceiling Carvers
In an early screenshot of Hollow Knight, we can see Dirtcarvers hanging out on the ceiling. Thankfully this was removed, as Dirtcarvers are annoying enough being relegated to just the floor.
Earth Splitter
The Desolate Dive move was originally called Earth Splitter. It was also called Tyrant’s Fist at one point too.
The Abyss
Here we are at the bottom. There are entries here in the Abyss that I don’t think anyone in the Hollow Knight community has ever really talked about outside of a few Discord messages in the main Hollow Knight Discord server. With Hollow Knight being such a recent game with a pretty large fanbase, it’s hard to find stuff this obscure.
Dark Gem Reward
The pantheons in Godhome have these notches that are used to indicate the possible ways to complete them. The main notch gets filled with a gem if you finish the pantheon. If you finish the pantheon with any of the binding then those ones will appear as well. If you beat the pantheon with all bindings on at once, then all the gems will shine brightly. But there’s actually another condition you can trigger. If you finish the Pantheon of Hallownest without getting hit, the center of the middle gem will shine brightly by itself.
Originally, Team Cherry planned for this middle part to actually turn black like Void. But they decided that was going too far. As it stands now, if you do all bindings, it basically overrides if you did it hitless, but a black gem would have made it a separate condition you’d have to do to get the unique Void gem sprite.
“Gorb” name origins
Gorb is a backer designed character, but the backer didn’t actually give him his name. The name Gorb came from Team Cherry. According to Graig, a close friend of Team Cherry, the name probably came from a television show called Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!. There’s a character in a sketch named Gorb. He is the spokesperson for a product called Cinco Boy, which is a service that sends people mannequins of their dead children. They even send the family new, more grown up ones every so often to make it seem like their children never really left. Yeah, I’m not sure what this means for Gorb in Hollow Knight, but it’s probably best we don’t discuss this any further.
Voicelines are backwards text
There has been a lot of research into understanding the bug language of Hollow Knight [Source]. There are a lot of words and phrases that show up, but it’s not clear how Team Cherry goes about creating this bug gibberish. The closest explanation we got comes from an interview the game’s composer, Chris Larkin, did on a YouTube channel called The Sound Test [Source].
Chris: To be honest, I can’t remember exactly what they did, but I think they found a way of generating text and then reading it backwards or something. I’ll have to ask Will and Ari how they did it but…
Garz Den
In earlier builds of Hollow Knight, each of the area banners that appear in the save menu had their own files with unique file names. The banner for Beast’s Den was originally titled Graz Den. Is Garz someone we should know about? Is that the name of the monster who captures us? It’s always bothered me that something clearly captures us in this part of the game, but we never get to see it. I’m fairly confident that this creature is hiding inside the trilobite statue. But that’s just speculation on my part, and I really hope we get an actual explanation for this stuff eventually.
Spitworm
The spitworm is an enemy concept for the Infected Crossroads. It would have been an infected version of the Goam enemy that fired off infection [Source]. That honestly sounds terrible, so I’m glad this didn’t make it into the final game.
Lion Shaman
Lion Shaman comes from another development map of Hallownest. There was a lion village planned somewhere near where the Stag Nest is in the final game. And it seems that there was going to be a shaman there. But what is this lion village exactly? One thing we know for sure is that the lion village was designed by a top Kickstarter backer. I’m guessing this might be a village of antlions, but I’m not quite sure. I reached out to Team Cherry about this on Twitter a few years back and they did let me know that the lion village is full of lions.
Colosseum Trophy
The Colosseum Trophy is a cut object that would have appeared in the Colosseum of Fools. We can actually see how this object would have appeared in the game. There’s a scene of the Colosseum still ingame that shows the Colosseum Trophy hanging over a much smaller version of the Colosseum. This was probably a pretty early concept for the Colosseum before they had the trial boards created.
ghostCoins
ghostCoins is an unused value stored in the player save data. I think they were an early name for Essence, since it’s basically a currency you get from killing ghosts.
Protagonist's true name
The main character in Hollow Knight goes by a lot of different names, like little Ghost or little one or little shadow. The general consensus in the community is that the main character should be called the Knight. But according to Team Cherry in a stream they held back on Mixer in 2018, the Knight actually has a top secret internal name [Source]. This name is used as a way to differentiate the Knight from the Hollow Knight for translation purposes. Whether or not this name has any lore significance, I guess we’ll never know.
Jack Vine is not a real person
This one is pretty self explanatory. To be fair, I have met Jack Vine in real life before, so I think this might be wrong. But then again, hologram technology has improved a lot over the years.
And that’s the entire iceberg. There sure was a lot to go through, but hopefully there were some new nuggets of Hollow Knight info you weren’t aware of before.
That being said, I need to come clean about something. I made this iceberg, with the help of a few friends. SteevPoyo96 is nothing more than an unpaid actor, I’m afraid. But please understand. I really wanted to do an iceberg video that wasn’t full of memes or stuff I already talked about before. And it was the perfect excuse for me to finally talk about this one picture of Team Cherry standing in a fucking tunnel.
Songs Used:
White Defender - Hollow Knight OST
Dirtmouth - Hollow Knight OST
Godhome - Hollow Knight OST
A Look Inside - Ori and the Will of the Wisps OST
To The Gateway - Super Mario Galaxy OST
Soul Sanctum - Hollow Knight OST
Decisive Battle - Hollow Knight OST
Beast’s Den - Hollow Knight
Aquatic Ambience - Donkey Kong Country OST
Resting Grounds - Hollow Knight OST
Hive Knight - Hollow Knight OST
Firelink Shrine - Dark Souls OST
Jolly Roger Bay/Dire Dire Docks - Super Mario 64 OST
Radiance - Hollow Knight OST
Malo Mart - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess OST
Sea of Darkness - Ecco: Tides of Time OST
Aquatic Mines (Instrumental) - Sonic Adventure 2 OST
City of Tears - Hollow Knight OST
Nosk - Hollow Knight OST
Colosseum Intensity 4 - Hollow Knight
Land of Chocolate - Alf Clausen
City of Tears Outdoor Loop - Hollow Knight
Dirtmouth Accordion Loop - Hollow Knight
Hornet - Hollow Knight OST
Fungal Wastes - Hollow Knight OST
Truth Beauty and Hatred - Hollow Knight OST
Last Day - The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask OST
Piranha Plant Lullaby - Super Mario 64 OST
Queen’s Garden - Hollow Knight OST
Royal Hollow Knight Theme - Hollow Knight
Much Deeper into Ness’ Subconscious - LazyJake
Dreamers - Hollow Knight OST
Aquatic Ruin - Sonic the Hedgehog 2 OST
Majula - Dark Souls 2 OST
Eastern Palace - The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds OST
Gods & Glory - Hollow Knight OST
White Lady - Hollow Knight OST
Grimm Troupe Accordion Loop - Hollow Knight
Broken Vessel - Hollow Knight OST
Subcon Forest - A Hat in Time OST
Snail Shaman Mound - Hollow Knight
Collector - Hollow Knight
Fin to Feather - Ecco: Tides of Time OST
Hydrocity - Sonic the Hedgehog 3 OST
Encounter - Metal Gear Solid OST
It’s Chimera Research - Mother 3 OST
Forgotten Crossroads - Hollow Knight OST
Royal Waterways - Hollow Knight
Haunted Foes - Hollow Knight OST
Banana Blitz - Donkey Kong Country OST
Mephiles' Whisper - Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) OST
Fish City - Ecco: Tides of Time OST
Damnation - Quake OST
Formidable Oak - Pikmin 3 OST
Light and Darkness - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess OST
Don’t Cry Jennifer - Clock Tower OST
Bonebottom - Hollow Knight: Silksong OST
Reflections - Hollow Knight OST
Misty Menace - Donkey Kong Country OST
Haunted Foes Flamespitter Loop - Hollow Knight
Daughter of Hallownest - Hollow Knight OST
Shadow of Mouldwood - Ori and the Will of the Wisps OST
White Palace - Hollow Knight OST
Brinstar overgrown with vegetation - Super Metroid OST
Unused HK Melody - Hollow Knight
File Select - Sonic the Hedgehog 3 OST
Mystic Cave Zone - Sonic the Hedgehog 2 OST
Inside the Deku Tree - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time OST
Soul Master - Hollow Knight
Colosseum Intensity 2 - Hollow Knight
Ikana Valley - The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask OST
New Cello Dream - Hollow Knight
Crystal Peak Main Loop - Hollow Knight
Dream Warrior - Hollow Knight OST
Soul Asylum - Megaman X7 OST
Two Tides - Ecco: Tides of Time OST
Forgotten Crossroads Infected Loop - Hollow Knight
Stickerbush Symphony - Donkey Kong Country 2 OST
Mantis Lords - Hollow Knight OST
Hollow Knight - Hollow Knight OST
Dung Defender - Hollow Knight OST
Enter Hallownest - Hollow Knight OST
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