While Toronto has served as a backdrop of many a movie and TV show, it seems more common that the city is disguised as New York or another metropolis rather than honoured as a setting of its own (though there are still a few flicks and series that do just that).

It is certainly fun as a resident of the 6ix to recognize an iconic landmark or local street on the big screen, but sometimes it's the more covert nods to one's hometown that are the most fun to spot.

One of these has just been discovered in a simple yet challenging video game that is, pun intended, ascending the charts in recent weeks, though it is not set in T.O., but a crumbling, impoverished fictional world.

Only Up! has been surging in popularity, which is baffling some given that the game can be completed quite quickly, is absolutely punishing to play and is not at all an epic with some intricate storyline and multiple characters like so many others are.

It is instead a "platformer," where you must scale buildings, climb over obstacles and get past objects to get to outer space — with far too many chances to fall back to the ground and start all over at every turn.

That 'Only Up' game everyone is playing? There's a random map of the TTC in it for some reason.
by u/conconblazini in toronto

Amid all of the chatter about the game online, one player has found a hidden reference to Toronto that they shared on Reddit this week: a TTC subway map located in the earthly realm that the main character originates from.

The image is completely arbitrary and has no point in the game, but is an interesting and quirky little choice made by developers who decorated the scene.

As one commenter jokingly speculated, "The game is about escaping poverty so they had to choose a realistic subway line for such an area."

In the thread, people are also recalling other games that the TTC has made a seemingly random appearance in, such as 2017's South Park: The Fractured But Whole, in which a map of the network can be seen hung on the wall of a lab setting.

Some guessed at the time that the Easter egg may have been the work of Ubisoft game designers here in the 6ix.