Players of Doom Eternal could find a new Easter egg in the newest update of the game, which came with the DLC expansion. The Easter egg in question could easily be accessed by going to a menu and pressing the chainsaw button four times. When done, an altered version of the Doom logo that reads "Doog Eternal" would be revealed. While this is far from the only Easter egg in Doom Eternal, which features nods to games like Fallout and Half-Life, the subject matter it references is incredibly different.
The term is a nod to Japanese VTuber, Korone Inugami, who had recently played through the game on her own channel, where fans coined the Doog title. During her playthrough, her favorite weapon was the chainsaw; hence the button was used to bring up the logo. The Easter egg would be removed in a patch on October 23, where it was announced by Doom Eternal's studio to have been patched out, although the reasoning for this is unknown.
Despite its removal, the not so subtle reference shows how far of a reach the VTuber has developed. While figures like Kizuna AI have been prevalent on the internet sphere through memes and viral clips, the industry has grown into an incredibly popular form of content creation. Korone herself has just reached one million subscribers and consistently draws in thousands of viewers on streams.
Her talent agency, Hololive Production, has even begun to branch out beyond Japan, with groups of VTubers in China, Indonesia and even a newly founded English segment. Just two months after her debut, English VTuber Gawr Gura hit one million subscribers of her own, with those numbers continuing to climb. With these impressively large fan bases and viewership that is growing to rival some of streaming's biggest names, it's evident that VTubers as a whole is a phenomenon that is slowly evolving past the small niche they initially fit.
Other large content creators have seen explicit nods and even official content added to titles in their honor, with some of the most prevalent examples being Ninja's Fortnite skin or Rogue Company’s addition of a Dr. Disrespect skin and map. But when one considers Korone's short career of fewer than two years, this feat is a massive one. As time goes on, Korone and other VTubers are sure to infiltrate the larger sphere of internet and popular culture as genuine content creators.