Byrd is the Word

Tangential learning is the process by which people will self-educate if a topic is exposed to them in a context that they already enjoy.

You know, that’s lovely, wikipedia, but I somehow don’t think this is going to do the trick. Now, I know Sony is a Japanese company, but Spyro is the work of Insomniac games, a California company. When they were doing the character design process for these things, surely there had to be some sort of editorial process. Some place where a conversation took place like:

A: “Hey, we need a name for this penguin character. Something funny and punny.”
B: “Hm, how about we name him after James Byrd?”
A: “Oh, that, that’s familiar. Man. Who’s that?”
B: “I dunno. Could look it up, I guess.”
A: “Nah, screw it, the kids will look it up themselves.”

Bonus, it’s a bird that’s black and white.