Is This the Master Chief in Destiny?

Bungie is a prolific layer of easter eggs. In 2009, it teased Destiny in the 2009 shooter Halo ODST.

Okay, admittedly this is a slightly ridiculous "slow news day" story, so I thought I should at least preface it with some interesting info to impress your friends with.

Did you know there's an entire scientific body of work that attempts to explain why humans see faces in clouds? Not just clouds, in fact, but numerous inanimate objects like cars, mountain cliffs, and even the surface of the moon.

The generally accepted explanation is that this is a by-product of an evolutionary human instinct to detect faces almost immediately in any given situation. Why? Because quickly detecting the face of a predator proved to be pretty life-saving to our ancestors.

This psychological process, by the way, is known as Pareidolia (that's also a wider term for the phenomenon of seeing patterns in any kind of random data, like songs being played backwards. GameSpot's resident science nerd Cameron has covered the issue here).

Interestingly, in 2009 a magnetoencephalography (don't bother trying to pronounce it) study found that the brain recognizes faces in objects far quicker than it interprets other objects. The argument here being that this skill is "hard-wired" and part of our innate human psychology.

So that's why you can see the Master Chief within this in-game Destiny image, taken by a Reddit user by the name of SmokingGhost:

Is it intentional? Probably. Destiny developer Bungie likes its easter eggs. In fact, it even teased its Destiny project in the 2009 shooter, Halo: ODST.

(Though I'm sure Bungie's legal team would insist this is an entirely coincidental depiction of a character owned by another company).