Hogwarts Legacy is catnip for die-hard Harry Potter fans. The game offers up a beautifully rendered recreation of Hogwarts and its grounds, inspired as much by the movies as the books. Poking around the school’s quieter corners reveals that developers Avalanche Software didn’t skimp on detail, with practically every corner featuring some kind of cool magical artefact, object, or animated painting.
The game is set in 1890, long before even the Fantastic Beasts movies. This means that practically every character we’ve seen in previous Harry Potter stories is either yet to be born or too young to be involved in the story. However, Hogwarts Legacy isn’t shy about dropping some fun references to the books and movies that only die-hard fans might spot.
As for what counts as an ‘Easter Egg’, we’re going to leave aside the familiar family names. The game features members of the Weasley, Black, and Gaunt dynasties, presumably the ancestors of characters like Sirius Black and Ron Weasley, though we don’t feel that they really count as Easter Eggs. The inclusion of the ghost characters like Peeves the Poltergeist are also not Easter Eggs, but simply part of the setting.
So, let’s get into the Harry Potter references, as well as some fun nods to other media:
1. Harry Potter’s glasses
The most obvious nod comes in the character creator, where Harry’s specs are one of the initial cosmetic options for your character. These familiar rounded spectacles were worn by Harry in almost every appearance he makes and, for any players wanting to follow in his footsteps, will make your character resemble him.
It should be noted that the character creator doesn’t let you recreate Daniel Radcliffe’s face and there’s no option to add his lightning bolt forehead scar, so your cosplay can only go so far.
2. The Goblet of Fire casket
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire features the Triwizard Tournament. The “impartial judge” for this was the Goblet of Fire, which chose students to represent their schools throughout its dangerous tasks. Nobody knows who created it or when it was made, but the casket containing it is present in the trophy room in Hogwarts Legacy.
There’s no Triwizard Tournament in the game, so it’s just set-dressing, but the casket containing the goblet being here is still a fun nod to the future of the franchise.
3. Secret bathroom potion brewing
In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Hermione tasks herself with creating the difficult-to-brew Polyjuice Potion in an attempt to find out what Draco Malfoy knows about the Chamber. She does this in secret in the Witch’s bathroom at Hogwarts, with Hogwarts Legacy having a nod to this by putting a potion brewing station inside the furthest stall from the wall there.
Polyjuice Potion does eventually play a role in the main story of the game, though sadly, you cannot freely use it like other potions.
4. The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets
Sadly, you can’t access the Chamber of Secrets in the game, though this makes sense as… well… it’s a secret. However, fans of the books and movies will know that the entrance is hidden in the girl’s bathroom. If you head there, you’ll find a point of interest explaining “scratched into one of the copper taps on this seemingly ordinary sink in the girls’ toilets is a small snake. No one knows what it means.”
Only the Heir of Slytherin is permitted to access it by speaking Parseltongue, so your fifth-year student is out of luck. But then again, given what’s down there, you might want to stay away…
5. Salazar Slytherin’s basilisk and a tease of Tom Riddle
At one point in the game, you’ll discover a secret chamber belonging to Slytherin founder Salazar Slytherin. Within this, you can find notes in which he complains that the other Hogwarts founders don’t have the right commitment to blood heritage. He then ominously mentions sealing something horrible inside until a worthy successor arrives.
Said horrible thing is, of course, the Basilisk that Harry, Ron, and Hermione encounter in The Chambers of Secrets, and his successor will turn out to be Tom Riddle aka Lord Voldemort himself.
6. A tribute to Richard Harris?
Iconic British actor Richard Harris played Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and The Chamber of Secrets, though sadly died before The Prisoner of Azkaban and the role was recast with Michael Gambon. But among the animated pictures in Hogwarts, there’s one near the moving staircase that bears a striking resemblance to Harris in the role.
Now, we give that there’s no shortage of wizards with a long white beard and hair, but we think this looks too much like him, is too prominently placed to just be a regular picture and is the game tipping its hat to a dearly departed Harry Potter icon.
7. Ominis Gaunt’s blindness
Ominis Gaunt is a Slytherin student in Hogwarts Legacy and a direct descendant of Salazar Slytherin himself. Despite this, he’s not some crazed Death Eater and actually seems quite embarrassed that members of his family are “pure-blood maniacs.” But one interesting aspect of the character is that he was born blind.
The books mention that pure-blood families practised inbreeding to preserve the bloodline, and by the 1940s, Gaunt family members are known to suffer severe mental and physical ailments arising from it. As the game takes place in the 1890s, Gaunt’s blindness may be a hint that his family’s inbreeding is beginning to have devastating consequences for them.
8. Being able to see Thestrals
On your first trip to Hogsmeade, you’ll pass a carriage being drawn by four Thestrals. In Harry Potter lore, they’re only visible to those who’ve seen death first-hand. Interestingly, the player character can indeed see them, though this may be due to witnessing the death of George Osric and the goblin banker in the game’s introductory sequence.
You have two characters you can bring along for this trip, Natsai Onai and Sebastian Sallow. Natsai doesn’t remark on them passing but Sebastian does… perhaps hinting that he has a darker past than he’s letting on.
9. The Fiji Mermaid
This isn’t so much a Harry Potter reference as a nod to the wider world of the paranormal, but in Hogwarts, you can see all manner of strange creatures preserved around its halls. One of these is a nod to the ‘Fiji Mermaid’, which in real life is a bizarre object consisting of the head and torso of a monkey sewn onto the back half of a fish. P.T. Barnum once exhibited them in his museum and billed it as an actual mermaid.
One example now resides in Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Etymology, but Hogwarts has a number of its own specimens dotted around. Maybe in the Wizarding World they’re real creatures and not fakes?
10. A nod to… ‘Saints Row?’
Upon visiting Hogsmeade, you end up Pippin’s Potions, which is run by Parry Pippin. He wears a bright purple waistcoat with a Fleur-de-lis symbol on it. On its own, a purple waistcoat wouldn’t signify much, but combined with a Fleur-de-lis, it looks suspiciously like a reference to the chaotic open-world game with a very different tone to Hogwarts Legacy. Maybe this is a coincidence, but we like to think one of the character designers was a fan.
11. Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure
The game also features a big nod to the ‘Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure’ rollercoaster at Universal Studios Florida. As shown in the above TikTok, the game faithfully recreates the queue and various elements from the ride in the game – and you can even fly your broom through parts of the course itself. This is the kind of thing only a dedicated Potter fan would ever spot, so kudos to @joanslytherin for spotting it!
That’s all we have for now, but as we play through the game, we’re sure we’ll spot more and update the list!