Doog Eternal: Vtuber easter egg explained

The developers at id Software have once again made a little joke.

Just in time for the spooky Halloween season, the first story expansion "The Ancient Gods - Part One" of the infernal first-person shooter Doom Eternal was released to throw fans into the abyss of hell once again. In addition to giant tentacles, evil shark demons, and all sorts of unpleasant contemporaries, the development team also let themselves be carried away by adding a small easter egg that many players may not even recognize as such.

If you display your runes in the game's pause menu while tapping the chainsaw button four times in a row, the iconic title logo changes to a slightly adapted variant. Instead of "Doom Eternal" from now on you will find the words "Doog Eternal" in every subsequent loading sequence (until you shut down the game). But what does that actually mean?

The reference points towards a famous Japanese live streamer who appears on YouTube as a virtual anime idol under the synonym "Inugami Korone" as part of the company Hololive. Her 3D avatar is a mix of a cute anime girl and a dog, and the young lady has already fascinated almost a million fans on Google's video platform with her entertainment program.

The diabolical contrast of a haphazard dog girl and the brutal first-person shooter seems to be popular with id Software, too, and that may be the reason as of why they adopted the name of Korone's Doom livestream ("Doog") as a pretty direct easter egg in their own game with the latest add-on. It shouldn't hurt the popularity of the VTube idol, so everyone stays friends.

As you may know, id Software has a tendency to combine the cute with brute force. When Animal Crossing: New Horizons was released on the same day as Doom Eternal earlier this year, there were also many successful attempts on social media by the developer to jump on the popularity of Nintendo's cosy IP. Ever since then, fans of both brands have had an unusual bond with each other.