Since season four’s “Black Museum” episode, Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker has had some fun creating some in-universe connections between all the episodes. Some are small and some are large, but one we found most interesting was a reference to “Bandersnatch” that appeared in the premier episode of season five called “Striking Vipers”.

The story of “Striking Vipers” concerns two old friends who develop a twisted virtual relationship when they begin playing a new VR upgrade of their favourite fighting game.

Eagle eyed viewers may have noticed that the developer of Striking Vipers is TCKR Systems which looks like a modern re-brand of Tuckersoft, the 1980’s developer that nosedived in “Bandersnatch”.

TCKR Systems, developer of Striking Vipers VR experience

If you visit tuckersoft.net, you’ll also notice that the website has been redesigned since Bandersnatch. When the choose your own adventure episode was released, it looked like a 1980’s, web 1.0 game designer website.

Now it looks modern, redesigned to push Striking Vipers video games.

We think this means that, despite some endings of Bandersnatch were Tuckersoft goes out of business, the TRUE ending is that Tuckersoft went on to develop some of the largest and most important technologies ever.

In the the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero” for example there are all kinds of references to Tuckersoft. Even the bar the girls meet in is called “Tucker’s” as you can see below.

At the time, it was unclear just how important that was, but now that we can see the whole context we begin to understand that Tuckersoft and TCKR Systems play a pivotal role in shaping the world of Black Mirror.

As the in-universe references to Black Mirror grow, it certainly gets fun to go back and see all the easter eggs as they pile up.

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THE PULSE – Coming June 25, 2019

StoryFix Media produces interactive fiction games and novels. Our sci-fi text adventure The Pulse is out now. Our novels New Horizons and The Blue Moon are available now.

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