Astro Bot features a surprisingly naughty reference to a PS2 cult classic

Famous Bloodborne hacker Lance McDonald just made a very interesting discovery in Astro Bot. While he hasn’t found a way to play the game in 120 frames per second, he’s found the next best thing: Sony being quietly very naughty.

In a recent tweet, McDonald shows Mister Mosquito’s cameo in Astro Bot, then reveals its secretly naughty origins.

Astro Bot features numerous cameos from PlayStation characters, most of them from very popular games. Mister Mosquito, however, is but a novelty stealth game from the PS2 where you just went from room to room trying to suck blood off of people without getting noticed.

Mister Mosquito showing up not as an Astro Bot clone but as an actual tiny mosquito in a bloodless world likely had the few people who noticed his presence scratching their heads. Turns out the reason was fan service in the most in-the-know sense of the word. That cameo isn’t a mere reference to Mister Mosquito, but specifically to a level where the titular Mosquito has to suck blood out of a woman while she’s sleeping in a bathtub.

There’s no actual nudity involved, but anyone versed in anime culture will know the exact purpose of including such a stage in a game.

Mister Mosquito even passes out, in a hearts-in-his-eyes cartoon style, upon mission completion. We can perhaps forgive Sony for this weird mission because Mister Mosquito is from a time before Bee Movie inadvertently taught humankind about the grossness of human-insect lust. Still, it’s a pretty peculiar thing to be referencing right now in a game for kids. Did team ASOBI snuck this reference into the game, or, even better, was Sony trying to celebrate the time when developers put all sorts of lewd Easter eggs in games? We may never know.

You can now play Astro Bot on PlayStation 5 or get Mister Mosquito for the PS4 or PS5 from the PlayStation Store.