- This article is about games shown in episodes of Lost. For other uses, see: Game (disambiguation)
Several games are featured in the storyline of Lost.
Occurrences[]
Game | Notes |
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American football(Gridiron Football) |
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Axis and Allies
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Backgammon |
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Baseball |
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Chess |
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Connect Four |
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Crossword Puzzles |
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Soccer(Football) |
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Golf |
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Horseshoes |
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I Never |
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Mouse Trap |
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Ping Pong |
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Poker |
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Senet |
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Tic-Tac-Toe |
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Minor occurrences[]
- Rugby League/Union
- A Brisbane Broncos rugby league team poster is seen in Claire and Thomas' apartment. ("Raised by Another")
- The Brisbane Bronco's arch rivals, the North Queensland Cowboys, are seen on an advertisement in the newspaper being read by Jin at Sydney International Airport. ("House of the Rising Sun")
- A Bledisloe Cup match between the Australian National Rugby Union team (Wallabies) and the New Zealand National Rugby Union team (All-Blacks) is shown on the television in the bar Sawyer drinks at with Christian Shephard. ("Outlaws")
- Basketball
- The patients at Santa Rosa played basketball. ("Dave")
- Kevin Callis wore a NBA Miami Heat logo T-shirt. ("I Do")
- The neighbors across the street of the Reyes' in Hurley's childhood scene were playing basketball. ("Tricia Tanaka Is Dead")
- Jack and Hurley play a game of HORSE, a variant of basketball, at Santa Rosa. ("The Beginning of the End")
- Pool
- Sawyer met Kilo at a pool hall. ("Confidence Man")
- Ana Lucia tracked down Jason McCormack in a bar containing a pool table. ("Collision")
- Kate was held prisoner by the Others at the Barracks in a rec room containing a pool table, foosball table, and two pinball machines ("The Man from Tallahassee")
- Efren Salonga is a possible reference to Efren "Bata" Reyes, a professional Filipino billiards/pool player.("Jughead")
- Foosball
- A foosball table was visible (Image) in the toy store breakroom as Frainey visits Locke ("Deus Ex Machina"), as well as the room in the Barracks where Kate is held prisoner by the Others ("The Man from Tallahassee") which also contains a pool table and pinball machines.
- A foosball table was in the recreation room where Kate was held prisoner by the Others at the Barracks. ("The Man from Tallahassee")
- Darts
- A dartboard is also in the Barracks recreation room when Benjamin and Sayid are being held by Locke.("The Economist") It's pattern is in Black and White.
- There is a dartboard and darts in the Swan station which become magnetically attracted towards the electro magnetic force behind the wall of the station at the end of Series 2.
- Sawyer calls the Island "Monkey Island," a possible reference to LucasArts' series of computer adventure games. ("Pilot, Part 1")
- Walt was frequently seen playing fetch with Vincent.
- Boone is seen wearing an old jersey of the Italian national football team. ("Hearts and Minds")
- Ice hockey can be seen played as Hurley quickly surfs between television channels during a flashback. ("Numbers")
- Sanjay is apparently playing a video game when Kate arrives at the front desk of the motel. ("Born to Run")
- Walt played with a Game Boy Advance SP. ("Exodus, Part 1")
- Locke compared the removal of the dynamite to the game Operation. ("Exodus, Part 2")
- Old Scooter Man wore a gambling themed baseball cap. ("Exodus, Part 2")
- A dart board was shown in the Swan station.
- Sawyer compared the Swan computer to the video game Donkey Kong. ("The Long Con")
- While residing at Santa Rosa, Libby is seen seated at a table with a Mancala set in front of her. ("Dave")
- Sawyer boxed in prison. ("Every Man for Himself")
- Desmond is accidentally struck by a cricket bat. ("Flashes Before Your Eyes")
- Two pinball machines can be seen in the Barracks recreation room. One is the 1999 "Revenge From Mars", the other is the 1988 "Cyclone." When we visit the Barracks later in "LaFleur," purportedly in 1974, the "Cyclone" machine is visible, though it shouldn't even exist yet.
- Some residents of the Barracks were playing volleyball at the time of the Purge. ("The Man Behind the Curtain")
- Keamy is seen on the freighter skeet shooting. ("Meet Kevin Johnson")
- Sawyer and Hurley played blackjack. ("Fire + Water")
Recurring themes[]
The "metagame"[]
- Desmond warns Jack that Ben and Eloise are playing some kind of game, and that the survivors are just the pieces. ("316")
- The interactions between Ben and Widmore are governed by a set of rules. ("The Shape of Things to Come")
- Jacob's conversation with the Man in Black on the beach suggests that the two are playing by the same rules. ("The Incident, Part 1")
Games as a metaphor[]
“ |
"I like to use the baseball metaphor which is, you can go to a baseball game and if you don't know a lot about baseball, I think you can enjoy it on one level as a casual viewer and you can enjoy it on a much deeper level as a regular viewer". |
” |
- Operation: Locke told Jack, "I'm removing the driest pieces to minimize our risk transporting it. You ever play Operation?"
- Metaphor: The removal of the dynamite was compared to the tenseness of the game of Operation.
- Mouse Trap: Locke said, "One by one, you build the trap; shoe, bucket, tub. Piece by piece it all comes together. And then you wait 'til your opponent lands here on the old cheese wheel. And then if you set it up just right, you spring the trap."
- Metaphor: Locke's description of Mouse Trap mirrored the con Locke's father orchestrated to steal Locke's kidney, and in a more general sense, the ongoing con of Locke by the Man in Black, giving him faith in the Island in order to occupy his body and kill Jacob.
- Poker: In "Lockdown", Jack pretended to have a great poker hand, but Sawyer didn't believe him. In the same episode, Ben told Locke that he typed in the Numbers into the Swan computer.
- Metaphor: Jack's bluffing in Poker was mirrored in his successful ploy to outwit Sawyer, and in Ben's ploy to lie to Locke.
- Baseball: Christian Shephard told Sawyer, "You are suffering. But, don't beat yourself up about it. It's fate. Some people are just supposed to suffer. That's why the Red Sox will never win the damn series."
- Metaphor: The futility of Sawyer trying to end his own suffering was compared with the futility of the Red Sox trying to win a World Series. (see also: Irony)
Half-Life[]
Several events allude to the popular PC game series Half-Life.
- Sound bytes are used from Half-Life 2 ("Pilot, Part 1"): When the plane's engine explodes and debris rains down, a man is hit by a piece and the sound produced is virtually identical to that of a Combine soldier dying. The sound of the debris crashing is also identical to that of wood breaking in the game.
- Jack's sightings of his father Christian ("Walkabout"), ("The Greater Good") watching from a distance, wearing a blue suit, and walking away after a moment strongly resemble the recurring appearances of the "G-Man" throughout the Half-Life series.
- Richard Alpert's appearance in the window viewing the newborn baby John Locke ("Cabin Fever") is also nearly identical to a typical G-Man sighting. (It can even be said that Alpert himself bears a strong physical resemblance to a younger G-man.)
- Sayid's acquaintances, Yusef and Haddad, are playing the 2001 Playstation 2 version of Half-Life when he is first introduced to them in their apartment by Essam. ("The Greater Good")
See this fan video for demonstrations.
Half-Life 2: Episode Two also contains a Lost Easter egg.
The Numbers[]
Some games have references to the Numbers:
- The objective of Connect Four is to get 4 discs in a row on a plane of 42 holes.
- Backgammon consists of two sets of 15 checkers. There are 4 sets of six playable spaces. A die has six numbers on it, the same amount of Numbers there are. The doubling cube has the numbers 4, 8, 16 and 32 on it (which is 23 backwards). The most number of spaces (without being taken out of play) a piece can move if the player is not yet able to take their pieces off the board (which requires all the player's pieces to be in the last six spaces on their side) is 23.
- Each player in chess starts with 16 pieces on an 8 by 8 grid.
- In the game HORSE, the first two letters earned are H and O, the 8th and 15th letters of the alphabet.
Black and white[]
Several games are depicted or described as having black and white elements:
- Locke specifically describes the pieces on a Backgammon board: "One side is light, and one side is dark." The playable spaces on the board also alternate with one being light and one being dark. There are four dice: two for the player playing white, which are white with black dots, and two for the player playing black, which are black with white dots.
- The pieces on a chess board and the board itself are black and white.
- The crossword puzzles are depicted as a grid of black and white squares.
Producers' commentary[]
- In an interview[6] with Entertainment Weekly, writer/executive producer Damon Lindelof defended writing decisions for the show using a game-based analogy:
“ |
I feel like we're playing a chess game. In the first six moves, we've lost our queen and two bishops, and the audience is saying 'They are the worst chess players in the world!' What they don't realize is that we're nine moves away from checkmating you. If we lose, we lose. But that's the play, and we're standing by it. |
” |
See also[]
- Counter-Strike: Source map
- The Lost Experience
- Myst
- Outside references to Lost - by the games: PvP Online's Lost Role Playing Game, Ctrl+Alt+Del's parody of Command & Conquer 3, The Impossible Quiz web game, the game "Desert Island" in The Office, Half-Life 2