Madden NFL/Trivia

• Actor Allusion: The players are often given their own signature dance moves to do after they score a TD or record a sack. Examples include Charles Woodson doing his famous Heisman pose, Jared Allen "lassoing" the QB, Santonio Holmes flying around like a Jet, Tebowing, etc. Saturday Night Live even mocked this with a sketch about Eli Manning trying and utterly failing to develop one in motion capture.
• Cash Cow Franchise: Arguably the cash cow franchise. It frequently pops up in Top 10 sales lists despite being a yearly release.
• Colbert Bump: The New York Times published EA stats of Madden teams' usage for the 2010 season. Randy Moss, a physically talented but... hard to handle athlete, changed teams twice during the season and a significant chunk of players followed him around the league.
• Executive Veto: Madden outright refused to put his name on the six man football prototype EA first showed him, forcing the project to be shelved until 16-bit consoles came around which could handle a full team.
• Life Imitates Art: Some unorthodox football strategies gained acceptance in the real NFL in part because Madden made them common knowledge amongst football fans. This includes going for it on 4th down in your own end, running parallel to the goal line to burn off extra seconds, and deliberately stopping at the one yard line to burn off more time rather than scoring. Hilariously, the Genre Savvy Jets tried the Madden counter-strategy of allowing the opponent to score, but the Dangerously Genre Savvy Jaguars refused. (3:55)
  • An article in Wired magazine focused on the aforementioned runback parallel to the goal line, and implied that plays like this wouldn't happen if not for the extra training provided by video games. In reality, this play has occurred at least as far back as Buccaneers safety Neal Colzie's interception return in the 1981 season opener.
• One of Us: Many, many real athletes play this game. There's a Madden Bowl tourney just for them during the Super Bowl festivities.
• Screwed by the Network: Wanna know why the Dreamcast died after about two years on the market? It was partially because Sega could not successfully negotiate with Electronic Arts with releasing this series on their system. A lot of this breakdown happened due to EA wanting greater control over the online modes. EA also had these same demands of Microsoft, but that company was considerably more flexible.
• Vaporware: During the rollout of X-Box "Smartglass", a companion app for the 360 which would allow you to use a second screen from a phone or tablet, the developers showed a functional prototype for Madden and promised it was coming soon. It was never released on the 360, instead being re-worked into "Coach Glass", an Xbox One exclusive.