Before Elden Ring and Bloodborne and Dark Souls, FromSoftware had a weird, struggling project that ended up getting passed to Hidetaka Miyazaki, a then-designer who was free to do almost whatever he wanted with it. The result of that little experiment was Demon's Souls, the off-beat dark fantasy action RPG still quietly acting as royal advisor to the newly crowned king that is Elden Ring. In its new Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, FromSoft seems to pay tribute to the game that started it all in an easily missed Easter egg – or at the very least, I'm convinced it's a clear reference.
For those who've forgotten Demon's Souls or never played it, there is (or at least was) a group of central figures called the Monumentals, prophets who aid the player in their quest to silence the Old One. The last remaining Monumental looks like a capped, robed, squatting young boy, sat in a semicircle line of others who look just like him in a candle-lit corridor. Here's a shot of the Monumental from the original Demon's Souls, not its PS5 remake:
