There’s not a lot of exciting news today, as the industry settles down from a busy couple of weeks. So let’s take a break from the the rollercoaster ride of new games, massive industry changes and Xbox doing Xbox things and enjoy something heartwarming, shall we? Let’s learn how an obscure line in Gears of War came into existence.

Laura Fryer isn’t just a former Xbox employee. She was one of the founding members of the original Xbox team, joined Microsoft Game Studios in 1995, served as Director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, and later worked as Executive Producer on the original Gears of War and Gears of War 2. After leaving Microsoft, she held senior leadership roles at Warner Bros. Games and Epic Games before launching her own YouTube channel focused on game development and industry insights.

In her new video, Fryer discusses her excitment over Gears of War: E-Day and in the process reveals a fascinating feelgood origin of an innocous line in the original game: “Stay vertical.”

“During Gears development, I had a bit of a health scare. Basically, my immune system decided to attack my spinal cord,” says Fryer. “In fact, we weren’t even sure if I was going to survive.”

She explains that part of the issue was that when she stood up, the fluid in her skull intended to cushion her brain would start draining downward, causing a horrible feeling. It meant she couldn’t stand for more than a few minutes at a time, and ended up working from her bed.

“We had a joke that all I needed to do was focus on staying vertical,” said Fryer of herself and her husband.

Apparently, the joke spread to the studio where both Cliff Blezinski and Rod Fergusson would both ask her, “you staying vertical?”

“That little joke meant more to me than they probably ever realized because it made me feel supported and loved by the team even when things were really scary.”

Eventually, the joke was overheard by Gears of War lead writer Eric Nylund: “…he heard us talking about it and thought it was perfect, so he put the line straight into the game.”

Cheers to Tyler27 who posted this clip a year ago, including the line.

It’s one of those tiny pieces of gaming trivia that most of us would never have thought twice about. A throwaway line, tucked away in a game famous for chainsaw bayonets, exploding Locust and Marcus Fenix yelling at things.

Yet behind it was a real person going through one of the toughest periods of her life, and a development team rallying around her with a simple joke that eventually found its way into the finished game.

Not bad for two little words.