The Counter-Strike franchise has a long and successful history and has brought joy to numerous fans including myself but it has also kept us keen and eager to learn new secrets about the game from Lore regarding the Phoenix and the Coalition Task Force to various visual additions appearing in maps over the years. Many easter eggs have become well known by the ever-growing community whilst others have been so intricate that a majority have overlooked them as simply artistic freedom but throughout this guide I wish to expose them educating the community about only a few of counter-strikes map secrets.

The latest and possibly the most obvious of these said secrets giving inspiration to this guide is the commemorative graffiti added above Dust 2's T-spawn depicting a terrorist holding four AWPs. This was added in honour of Fnatic's four man AWP peak in the overtime of the ESL One Cologne Grand Final against Envyus, due to dominance in the first two rounds they decided to buy four AWP's in the hope of picking cross giving them an advantage in the final round of the half. The strategy worked and Fnatic went on to win the major making them back to back champions. On the left you can see footage of the tactic and on the right you can see the graffiti itself.

In the quarter finals of DreamHack 2014 once again the professional e-sports team Fnatic preformed a 3 man boost on the A bombsite that allowed star player Olofmeister to see a good amount of the map from an almost completely hidden spot. This tactic let Fnatic come back to win a game heavily out of their favour, outraged officials filed complaints due to the use of pixel walking and after countless disputes Fnatic forfeited only to have the map quickly patched and a small sign placed to keep the memory of the occasion living. It can be found where the boost took place and shows a man climbing the wall with the words "geländer übersteigen verboten" German for "The climbing of this railing is prohibited". The video on the left shows the boost in action and the right shows the sign itself.

Olofmeister once again makes an appearance on bomb defuse scenario map Overpass or as the fans like to call it "Olofpass" with commemorative graffiti for his fiery play that let him defuse whilst standing in a molotov at a pivotal point in a match against Team Dignitas at the Cologne 2014 championships. The play was noted with a graffiti that resides on the shed that separates B bomb site and construction, it portrays a counter-terrorist defusing amidst flames. The video on the left shows the defuse whilst the picture on the right is the graffiti itself.

When walking to ivy from T-spawn on the new de_train you will come across a sign that contains Russian writing and a cross of a picture of a foot on a bird. This odd sign when translated says exactly what you think "Don't step on the birds". This is all due to a bizarre glitch discovered when the remastered version of train was added to the official maps, it allowed players near dumpster to stand on top of the pigeons before they flew away resulting on them going up with the birds until their inevitable death or they clipped to the roofs of the buildings above A main. This glitch more comedic than anything else although could be game-breaking and was replaced with this sign. As per usual the video on the left is the glitch itself whilst the picture on the right is the sign.

One of the most famous counter-strike maps is de_inferno, in this map the terrorists are planning on blowing up two critical gas pipelines that run under it but most people already know that. This map has its own fair share of easter eggs ranging from boiler running away to the lion in apartments but not many people know that the map itself is based of a real-life place, this map is inspired heavily by the California Missions in San Juan Capistrano with various parts of the map striking amazing resemblance with the place. A video comparing the map and the missions can be seen below.

On arguably the biggest and most famous map of all of Counter-Strike Dust 2 there resides a small tag from a person who goes by the name of goose. Most would overlook this as merely fine details to the overall decoration of the map but this reoccuring graffiti has an interesting back story. The graffiti has become a call out hence the back of A Site being called Goose. It was placed there in honour of Minh Le "Gooseman" who was the co-creator of the Counter-Strike Series. On the left you can see Gooseman him self and on the right you can see the graffiti in GO's installment.

The last thing I'm going to be covering in this guide is something most people would have overlooked and I know myself didn't know before researching for this guide is the graffiti found near T-spawn on overpass featuring one-up is actually based on a real German graffiti squad popular in the cities they reside in. One-up or One United Power is very famous for their actions and lots of footage on their vandalism can be found online. The map itself is set in Germany so it is cool to see mapmakers really researching what they include in their maps. If you look at the video on the left you can see some of one-ups work whereas the right depicts the graffiti that can be found in game.

I hope this guide has taught you something you didn't already know, if you did enjoy please rate it means a lot. This is my first guide so please ALL CRITICISM IS WELCOME.

Thanks so much,
pukeyy

I do not own any of the videos shown, they belong to their respectful owners.