That line just handles people who managed to hit the server from a domain they're not expecting at all - for example if I were to map example.org to their serve

That line just handles people who managed to hit the server from a domain they're not expecting at all - for example if I were to map example.org to their server in /etc/hosts. The pertinent lines for your example are 341 and 342: RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} =nintendo.com [NC] RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://www.nintendo.com/$1 [QSA]