Believe it or not, there is a Magic: The Gathering card that's loosely based off of mid-1990s LAN parties.
Magic has always had fun inspirations for cards. Phelddagrif started off as a joke. Proposal was used as an actual wedding proposal. And then there was a card based on a computer game the developers really liked at the time: Ovinomancer.
Originally released in Visions in 1997, Ovinomancer is a blue, 3 mana 0/1 human wizard. As the card states, 'When this creature enters, sacrifice it unless you return three basic lands you control to their owner’s hand.'. And when tapped 'Return this creature to its owner’s hand: Destroy target creature. It can’t be regenerated. That creature’s controller creates a 0/1 green Sheep creature token.'
Overall, not the worst of cards, and it has seen a few reprintings over the years. In particular, it has been a big card for characters with transformation decks and, even rarer, those with sheep-based decks. Hey if otter decks can exist, so can sheep ones. However, the card itself would not have come to be if not for two things: Warcraft II for the PC.
In the mid 90s, many on Magic's Research and Development team were into the game and often played Warcraft II in LAN parties. Warcraft II had a character that turned players into sheep. And, of course, a kooky character like this was going to be noticed. Many developers, led by Bill Rose, loved the idea so much that they made a card out of it.
To date, Ovinomancer has only had the one card art, having gone unchanged since 1997:
Nonetheless, the card remains a favorite of many developers from Visions and has been seen as a an early example of integrating ideas from others sources and giving them a Magic twist to make them unique to the game. No matter the card, there always seems to be a handful each expansion that have some odd background to it. And, in this case, it was a mid-90s LAN party.
