The latest patch for Baldur’s Gate 3 contains a reference to a fan-favorite character that never actually appeared in the game, officially making them canon.
As it’s part of the new epilogue section included with Patch 5, which dropped on Nov. 20, some players may consider this a spoiler, so I’ll refrain from saying their name until the next paragraph. Die-hard fans, though, will probably guess who it is.
During the epilogue, it’s possible to trigger a conversation with Shadowheart where she references previous adventures, including the time they met Bing Bong. No, not the Inside Out character, but a stray imp the party recruited.
While Bing Bong is not featured in the game itself, he rose to fame in the fanbase thanks to a one shot Dungeons & Dragons campaign which featured the voice cast of Baldur’s Gate 3 roleplaying as their respective characters. The campaign took place earlier this year and ran across two streams, which you can watch on YouTube (here’s a link to part one).
Bing Bong was meant to just be a random imp, but wound up being adopted by the party thanks to Shadowheart’s voice actor Jennifer English, only to die later into the campaign. Unsurprisingly, his popularity led to demands for him to be added to Baldur’s Gate 3 (one fan even modded him in), and Larian Studios clearly listened.
Given his death, Bing Bong only gets a namedrop (you can assume the one shot took place during the six month time skip between Baldur’s Gate 3’s ending and epilogue), but that seems to be enough for fans judging by their reactions online.
“Wow, Larian is a god tier studio. This is an amazing inclusion that really shows just how much love they put into their content,” says Reddit user maybe_a_frog.
“It’s perfect. This is fan service done as right as it can be, I think. … This brings me such joy,” adds MARS_in_SPACE.
“GOTY right here folks. THIS is how developers show they care and are engaged with their community and taking in feedback,” says MARZmalade before admitting they’ll be buying the game a third time: “Larian can have my money.”
