Top 10 Best Easter Eggs in High on Life

Let’s face it — High on Life is an easter egg factory! It would be very difficult to highlight only ten of them, but that’s exactly what we’re going to do here! So, kick back … munch on some Space Applebee’s, snuggle up to your favorite Gatlian, and … well … LEZDUEIT!!

10. Red or Blue, It Makes No Difference

No sooner than you arrive in Blim City, you’ll depart for the Slums to take on 9-Torg. But, before you can get there, you’ll encounter the Red and Blue Gatekeepers. They will force you to decide which of them is the most attractive, and whichever one you pick will open their respective gate. The other? They say their gate will forever be closed off to you. It might feel like a lot of pressure … until you realize that both gates lead to the same location, and the binary choice was kinda arbitrary.

It reminds us a lot of a certain iconic meme of a cow choosing between two options only for both options to lead to the same point. In fact, it’s exactly like that, just with more jokes thrown in.

9. Mario Land is Our FAVORITE Mario Game

It’s absolutely no surprise that the Gatlians have a hefty amount of personality. In fact, some of said personality breaks the rules of the established narrative for fun. In the quest to eliminate Douglas of the G3 cartel, you come across a platforming section involving electrified floors. It’s then that Kenny will note that:

“It looks like some simple platforming, y’know, like what you’d see in, like, Lucky’s Tale … on, ah, y’know, or umm … y’know, that one, uhh, that one game that we, that we all know and love. Mario Land … or whatever.”

I guess we’re not acknowledging the fact that humanity was only recently discovered at the beginning of High on Life, huh?

8. Is It A Shared Universe??

If you purchase the Movie Theater Warp Disc from Blorto’s food stall, you might notice a previous Squanch Games work — Trover Saves the Universe — adorning the side of the building. It’s an internal reference, sure, but it makes you wonder if High on Life and Trover exist in the same universe.

7. It’s A Film Festival!

Speaking of the theater, if you have an hour-and-thirty-six-minutes to kill, consider watching a screening of Demon Wind (1990) by Charles Philip Moore. To add another layer of depth to this easter egg, there are three aliens in the front row, riffing over the movie a la RiffTrax or Mystery Science Theater 3000. But, this isn’t even the only time you can (theoretically, anyway) watch a full-length film in High on Life.

At various times in the main story, you can catch Gene watching several old movies on the living room TV, including Tammy and the T-Rex, Blood Harvest, and Vampire Hookers.

6. Kenny Yells At You For Pausing the Game

In the very beginning of High on Life, when you first acquire Kenny as a weapon, try pausing the game. If you do, he’ll viciously berate you for pausing the game in the middle of an alien invasion.

5. Jack and Susan

In the late-game, Garmantuous tries to coax you into giving up by saying he’s captured the two most important people in the player character’s life. It can naturally be assumed he means their parents, as they were — seemingly — left on Earth while they went on their bounty hunting adventure. But, during the fight with Garmantuous, he reveals that the two people he’d captured were actually Jack Black and Susan Sarandon. They are promptly exploded before the fight continues.

4. King of the Monsters

If you purchase the Cutie Town Warp Disc from Blorto’s Food Stall, you’ll be presented with a small town. And, by small town, I mean SMALL … TOWN. An emissary from Cutie Town will invite you in, but … as soon as you get close, you’ll start knocking buildings over, decimating the town a la Godzilla. It was probably a bad idea for them to invite us in, but … eh?

3. Nipulon Mantis???

In the fight with Nipulon, you’ll be forcibly sent on a drug trip. At several points in the fight, he’ll reference the iconic boss fight with Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid. He even references the strategy to beat that boss, telling the player to switch the controller ports, until he remembers there’s no such thing anymore.

2. Interdimensional Cable Returns!

It’s quite amazing how, theoretically, you could be entertained for a half-hour or more just by watching the ads on your living room TV or in the Blim City Plaza. To be fair, though, it’s hardly the first time Justin Roiland has done something similar. In the Rick & Morty episode entitled “Rixty Minutes,” the episode is so memorable because it’s just non-stop improvised ads and shows, much like the ads in High on Life.

1. I LOVE Space Applebee’s!

It’s less of an easter egg and more of a direct reference, but we still can’t believe they got away with this. Space Applebee’s. SPACE APPLEBEE’S. To make matters more (darkly) hilarious, they built it in the middle of the Blim City Slums. This shows that you can’t escape gentrification, even in the midst of a futuristic, space-faring alien civilization.