Love him or hate him, Duke Nukem is one of the kings of 90s shooters. Having taken the FPS genre to new heights with his quippy one-liners and cultural references, Duke was the 90s action hero in video game form. While not all of Duke's adventures have been the best, the series has enough fans intoxicated by the nostalgia of some entries that some keep on hailing to the king.
Whether Duke is a satire or just scraping the bottom of the barrel is up in the air, but it is hard to ignore that Duke captured the attitude era of the 90s and was famous for it. There is no limit to what Duke would not poke fun at in terms of popular culture, for better or for worse. In some cases, developers had Duke break some fourth walls by referencing other action heroes. In one case, Duke had a past with another popular video game action hero.
In Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes, players can find payphones scattered throughout levels that they can interact with. In some cases, if a player interacts with the phone they can hear Duke answer. A woman with a British accent lusts over Duke, telling him how much she misses him. Duke refers to the woman as Lara, and tells her she has to wait. In the clip above, two minutes and fifty seconds into the gameplay, you can hear the call for yourself and enjoy the great Duke Nukem flair of epic "this guy has sex" humor. This detail is poking fun at Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, as the English accent and name are a dead giveaway.
In another PlayStation title, Duke Nukem: Time To Kill, players can find payphones that ditches the dialogue and just has Lara moan on the phone for a couple of seconds. Imagine how many kids in the 90s were fumbling with the remote to lower the volume, so their parents in the other room did not hear that gaming detail. This is not the first or last time Lara Croft was turned into a sex object for gamers, though - shoutout to the hilariously dated and kind of rad choice of having Lara Croft star in Playboy.
In a world now oversaturated by Deadpool and fourth wall breaking clones, who knows if players will ever hear Duke make more quippy one-liners. At least we still have the memories of a few good games... and an assortment of "okay" to "average at best" games.