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Easter Egg (view source)

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{{quote|''"You are a stupid, square-headed bald git, aren't you? And you, I'm pointing at you, I'm pointing at you, but I'm not actually addressing you. I'm addressing the one prat in the whole country who's bothered to get hold of this recording, turn it round and actually work out the rubbish that I'm saying. What a poor, sad life he's got!"''|Backmasked message played in ''[[Red Dwarf (TV)|Red Dwarf]]'', "Backwards" }}
{{color|white|Y}}<br />The little bits of stuff programmers left behind in the game. They're secrets, intended to tickle the fancy of those who discover them. Programs far too numerous to mention have included Easter eggs -- everything from Microsoft Office to ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]: [[Grand Theft Auto San Andreas|San Andreas]]''.
 
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Easter eggs aren't just found in games anymore: the term is also used for a variety of hidden content, such as unadvertised [[DVD Bonus Content]].
 
An article on why Easter eggs exist (focusing on ''[[Magic: theThe Gathering]]'', but applicable to all games) is available [http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mr257 here].
 
For time-sensitive Easter eggs, see [[Holiday Mode]]. Compare [[Bilingual Bonus]], [[Freeze -Frame Bonus]] and [[What the Hell, Player?]]. For in-story [[Easter Egg]] dates that reference original air/release dates, see [[Significant Reference Date]].
 
{{examples}}
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== Action-Adventure ==
* [[Trope Codifier]]: The most famous early [[Easter Egg]] in a video game (to the extent where it's often [[Older Than They Think|mistakenly believed to be the first]]) was Warren Robinett's famous hidden signature room in the ''[[Adventure (Video1979 Gamevideo game)|Adventure]]'' cartridge for the [[Atari 2600]]. By finding an item [[Pixel Hunt|hidden deep in a maze of the same color]] and bringing it into the right room, one could move though a previously impenetrable barrier, where the text "Created by Warren Robinett" could be found. This was in an era when Atari refused to put the names of game creators on any of its game packaging, and it neatly took up the leftover memory on the 4K ROM comprising the cartridge.
** An Atari executive coined the term when he compared finding the hidden room to "hunting for Easter eggs". While Atari hired a programmer to find where Robinett's name was in the code, they let it slide; Robinett later asked the programmer what he would have done if told to delete the code, and was told that he would have switched it to "Replaced by (programmer's name)".
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda: aA Link Toto T Hethe Past (Video Game)|The Legend of Zelda a Link To T He Past]]'' contains one of the most unusual Easter eggs in gaming history. ''[[Nintendo Power]]'' magazine held a contest and the winner, Chris Houlihan, had a [[Contest Winner Cameo|secret room named in his honor]] placed in the game. [http://zelda.wikia.com/wiki/Top_Secret_Room "The Chris Houlihan Room"] is filled with Rupees (the monetary unit of the game) and a small plaque identifying it. Many players are still unaware of its existence, due to the difficulty it takes to get there: outside of cheating, it can only be accessed if the game fails to load an area.
** Because it's contested whether the Chris Houlihan Room is meant to be in the game at all. Evidently, not everyone at Nintendo was on board with the contest, so the room ended up getting added and removed multiple times as the game went back and forth between decisionmakers who thought Chris ought to get his room, and those who thought the contest was bunk and shouldn't be honored. Leaving it in but buried so that it was inaccessible to anyone who wasn't cheating was evidently the compromise they came up with.
* One of the doors in a hallway on Kamino in ''Lego [[Star Wars]]'' leads to a room where there is a puzzle to be completed. If you solve the puzzle, the floor becomes a disco and a disco version of the ''Star Wars'' theme plays.
** The Lego games in general are filled with Easter Eggs, most of them necessary for [[One Hundred Percent Completion]]. ''[[Lego Indiana Jones]]'' even has several Star Wars characters hidden in various levels.
** In fact, a "disco" egg appears in pretty much every Lego game in the series, with the music adjusted for the game's theme (a disco version of the ''[[Raiders of the Lost Ark (Film)|Raiders of the Lost Ark]]'' theme in ''[[Lego Indiana Jones]]'', for example).
* ''[[Batman: Arkham Asylum]]'' actually had an [[Easter Egg]] so well-hidden that it wasn't discovered until the developers threw the fans a bone four months after its release and outright said "There is an [[Easter Egg]] nobody has found in this room of the game." {{spoiler|It's in Warden Sharp's office, and contains a [[Sequel Hook]] for ''Batman: Arkham City''.}}
* ''[[Grabbed By the Ghoulies (Video Game)|Grabbed By the Ghoulies]]'' contains ''tons'' of Easter eggs from the ''[[Banjo-Kazooie]]'' games, mostly in the form of paintings of the various ''Banjo'' characters placed around the mansion. There's also an infamous whiteboard in one room apparently listing part of a(n incomplete) solution for ''Banjo'''s [[Urban Legend of Zelda|"Stop 'n' Swop"]].
* In ''X-Men Origins: Wolverine'' the video game there's a section of the game where you can see [[World of Warcraft|Frostmourne]], the Lich King's sword, in a heap of ice rocks. Next to this is a skeleton with an exclamation point above it, referencing the marks for quests in ''World Of Warcraft''.
** There are two other easter eggs in it that reference ''[[Portal (Video Gameseries)|Portal]]'' and ''[[Lost (TV)|Lost]]''. You get achievements for finding each one.
* In ''[[Assassin's Creed II (Video Game)|Assassin's Creed II]]'', pull the lever and stare into the water in one of the Assassin Tomb dungeons long enough and {{spoiler|a giant squid swims by.}} Hang around a little while longer and {{spoiler|''it attacks you!''}}
 
== Adventure ==
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* Back in the days when [[Lucas Arts]] still made some of the best adventure games on the planet, they had Steve Purcell's ''[[Sam and Max Freelance Police]]'' as mascots. Max has appeared in some form or other in ''every single adventure game'' they ever made, usually as the design of a room, or as graffiti on a wall. Look for a oval with two rabbit ears on it -- that's Max.
** Furthermore: Dying counts as an [[Easter Egg]] in [[Lucas Arts]] games because it is almost impossible to do so. But when it does happen, it frequently happens as [[Crowning Moment of Funny]].
** There's a number of [[Easter Egg|Easter Eggs]] to be found in ''[[The Curse of Monkey Island (Video Game)|The Curse of Monkey Island]]'' too. To list but a few examples:
*** Starting a new game on 25 December or 1 January will display a message upon starting.
*** Talk to Palido (the sunbather guy on Puerto Pollo's beach) and ask him how long he's been there. He'll tell you he's been there since eight months before the current month on your computer calendar. If your computer calendar shows January, he'll wish you a happy new year.
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*** When looking into Mort's room in the Goodsoup Family Crypt, you can find a book called Zombies Ate My Neighbors, the name of another [[Lucas Arts]] game.
*** In Blondebeard's restaurant there's a single table visible with an undead pirate sitting there, wearing a hat that's obscuring his face. If you prompt Guybrush to touch the guy, he shoves him to get his attention, causing him to collapse onto the table and his hat to fall off. The pirate is actually [[Grim Fandango|Manny Calavera]]. As a bonus, a button falls off his jacket onto the table that reads "Ask Me About Grim Fandango".
** The early Lucasarts games contained several references to (usually) their immediate predecessor - Zak Mckracken had references to slimy meteors, an unuseable gas tank and the protagonist having dated the [[Distressed Damsel]] from ''[[Maniac Mansion]]'', while ''[[Indiana Jones and Thethe Last Crusade]]'' had the yellow shard and crayon map in the school and the book "Everything you wanted to know about Caponians and Skolarians" in the Venice library. ''[[Secret of Monkey Island]]'' had numerous references to ''[[Loom (Videovideo Gamegame)|Loom]]'', including a pirate making a lengthy advertising shill on demand.
* In [[Telltale Games]]' ''[[The Adventures of Sam and& Max: Freelance Police (Video Game)|Sam and Max Freelance Police]]'' game ''Abraham Lincoln Must Die!'', Max becomes President and has the power to change the date. Try changing it to Easter and checking the golf hole. You find a nice [[Lampshade Hanging]] and an achievement for the 360 version.
* A lesser known [[Sierra]] game, ''[[Shivers]]'', involves the player traversing a deserted museum to capture elemental monsters that killed three people in the past. As the museum is dedicated to the "strange and unusual", and the player is constantly afraid of bumping into these monsters, it's surprising that the Easter eggs are the scariest parts of the game. There are funny eggs, but also disembodied shadows and glowing red eyes in cramped, dark spaces. Their appearances are randomised, and all the more pants-wetting.
* Other Sierra games contained numerous eggs as well. One in ''[[King's Quest II]]'' was actually an advertisment for the then-new ''[[Space Quest]]'' series.
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** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5UwAuQu2Bk And then some depend on the player doing silly stuff.] (see 1:42 into the video)
* ''[[Myst|Uru]]'' has a secret egg quest which starts out in a room with a giant Easter egg floating in the center of it, and ends with you being allowed to {{spoiler|drive a Zamboni around outside the starting area.}}
* This trope is a staple of the [[Nancy Drew (Videovideo Gamegame)|Nancy Drew]] video game series, sometimes allowing the player to add actual Easter eggs to Nancy's inventory. Perhaps the most memorable is a phone number which, if dialed in-game during ''White Wolf of Icicle Creek'', gets Nancy harranged by a phone-in psychic who references every previous game in the series.
** One [[Easter Egg]] in ''Legend of the Crystal Skull'' can only be accessed by visiting the out-of-game [[Viral Marketing|website]] of a character from a previous game.
* The first ''[[Discworld]]'' game has a somewhat infamous one [http://trueblueaussie.com/Discworld1EasterEgg.htm detailed here.] Eric Idle had jokingly recorded the line "I want to be the first person in a game to say fuck," and they had to put it ''somewhere'', didn't they?
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== Fighting Game ==
* The now freeware DOS fighter ''Xenophage: Alien Bloodsport'' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZuCJgAOKKQ allows you to beat up] [[Barney and Friends (TV)|Barney and Friends]] if you fiddle around with the config files. And yes, the game does mock you if you lose to him (which is pretty much impossible to do involuntarily.).
* ''[[The King of Fighters]]'' is not above secret special moves and such (in fact, in SNK’s earliest fighting game offerings, all super moves initially went unpublished, and to this day they sometimes keep a tiny number of them initially secret), but on occasion they put in some just for fun. As Bao in ’99-2001, for instance, {{spoiler|if you hold down and the opponent does nothing, he starts drawing stuff on the ground... then sits down looking bored, then sort of nods off. Aww}}.
** K' {{spoiler|also drops his usual fighting stance, starts blinking his eyes slower and slower and falls asleep if you stand still long enough.}}
* In ''[[Super Smash Bros]] [[Super Smash Bros Brawl|Brawl]]'', try listening to [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAXbb8R11pc Peach's final smash in slow motion]. {{spoiler|it's a speed up version of the Sky Heaven theme in ''[[Super Mario Bros 3 (Video Game)|Super Mario Bros 3]]''.}}
 
== First Person Shooter ==
* ''[[Duke Nukem]] 3D'' map makers also loved to sign their names, often creating whole rooms that could only be seen by entering the "show map" cheat. However, a few were signed in-game along with messages asking the player how they got to the location? ironic, considering that two of the messages were easy to find with no cheats at all!
** The ''[[Duke Nukem 3D (Video Game)|Duke Nukem 3D]] Plutonium Pak'' CD, which patches Registered v1.3D to v1.4 and adds a fourth episode, contains a CD audio track of the finished version of "Grab Bag", the game's title music. A little-known fact about the tune is that the [[MIDI]] version included in ''Duke Nukem 3D'' is actually incomplete.
* The ''[[Halo]]'' games have lots of these, most notably the skulls in ''[[Halo]] 2'', which had effects in-game.
** There's the secret "Siege of Madrigal" music from ''Myth'', which is heard as a "[[Source Music]]" in hard-to-reach locations, and also appears as a stinger on the soundtrack CD, at the end of the last track.
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** The giant soccer ball in "Metropolis".
** Several of the music pieces have [[Subliminal Seduction|backmasked speech]] that sounds like the Gravemind.
** ''[[Halo: Reach]]'' has the Club Errera (named after Claude Errera) in New Alexandria where, by hitting a switch on another building, you can hear "Never Surrender" from the ''Halo2'' OST [[While Rome Burns|while the city is burning]], as well as a techno remix of "Siege of Madrigal" after hitting the switch on the roof of the building.
* Many of the older ''[[Counter-Strike (Video Game)|Counter-Strike]]'' maps featured credit sections or rooms. Notable examples are rooms in Aztec and Italy, and a breakable section of wall in Office. These have since been removed.
* The final boss of ''[[Doom]] 2'' was an Easter Egg. You were forced to shoot rockets into the exposed brain of a demon's head which takes up most of the wall. {{spoiler|If you cheat through, you can see that the demon's brain is designer John Romero's head on a pike. And the demonic-sounding sound file at the beginning is just the phrase "To win the game you must kill me, John Romero" played backwards.}}
* ''[[Chex Quest]]'', a non-violent ''[[Doom (Video Gameseries)|Doom]]'' clone, had a secret room in the third stage accessible only by {{spoiler|jumping from a rising elevator platform}}. Inside the room were {{spoiler|framed pictures of the programmers and the BFG}}.
* In a women's locker room in ''[[Geist]]'' there are a few lockers that can be opened to reveal a Gamecube and Samus' suit.
* The ''[[Marathon (Video Game)Trilogy|Marathon]]'' series is infamous for hiding terminals in out of the way places, but they sometimes used them to hide "credit terminals" towards the end of the game. ''Marathon Infinity'' takes this one step further, hiding an entire multiplayer map (that was used to make screenshots for terminal pictures that showed up elsewhere in the game), in hex format, in two terminals: one in the first level, and one in the final level. The trick was, turning this hex code into plain text. From there, a couple runs of the text (in a text file) though Stuffit Expander would result in the final, usable level. Full details can be found [http://marathon.bungie.org/story/hangar96.html here].
<!-- %% Greetings. You're asking yourself: Is this a trap or just a dead end? -->
* Played straight in the co-op mode of ''[[Resistance 2]]'', there is a broken bridge in Chicago's Garfield Park that when you stand on the edge of it and look down, you see a nice blue and purple easter egg.
* In one of ''Day of Defeat'' maps Axis [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBpHPL8-ins can get] with some risk hidden [[Rare Guns|FG-42]] (a paratrooper weapon unavailable on normal maps).
* ''[[Pathways Intointo Darkness]]'' has an actual easter egg hidden behind a fake wall on the level "Happy Happy, Carnage Carnage"(I think).
* The ''[[Quake]]'' games had Easter eggs hidden in certain levels. ''[[Quake (Video Gameseries)|Quake]]'' and ''[[Quake II (Video Game)|Quake II]]'' had the Dopefish in hidden areas. ''Quake II'' also had a rubber ducky in a secret level (which appeared on a wall after riding a cycling elevator a certain number of times), a hidden area in the enemy base level where you could find and get John Carmack's head, and in the final level a hidden credits section along with a rather raunchy scene involving a few of the enemy units. Finally ''[[Quake III Arena (Video Game)|Quake III Arena]]'' had the Dust Puppy underneath one of the maps (i.e. you had to fall off it to see it).
* In ''[[Medal of Honor]]: Frontline'', as you are boarding Sturmgeist's train, a UFO flies overhead.
* In ''FEAR: Perseus Mandate'' you can [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bB4ue891Js jump off from an elevator] with godmode enabled and see the message "I suck at making maps" written on the wall at the bottom of the pit.
* Apogee's ''[[Rise of the Triad]]'' had a very silly egg added to a certain bug in the game. If a pushwall isn't properly defined, and escapes the boundaries of the map, the game will crash - and [http://www.eeggs.com/items/8590.html display an sketch of the wall] ''smiling'' as it flees into space. This can be activated intentionally on a hidden level, appropriately named "This Level Causes A Bug".
* One of the many, many achievement farming maps in ''[[Team Fortress 2 (Video Game)|Team Fortress 2]]'' has several of these, down, but not limited to:
** A Pyro performing a [[Jump Scare]] in an airvent.
** Being able to get out of the area you're fighting in.
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== Platform Game ==
* In Super Mario World, when you stay on the map of the "special" zone (on "Star Road") for a couple of minutes, it starts playing a steeldrum version of the classic [[Super Mario Bros.]]. theme.
** A more [[Nightmare Fuel|distu]][[Paranoia Fuel|rbing]] Easter egg can be found in ''[[Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Video Game)|Super Mario Galaxy 2]]''. Go to the Shiverburn galaxy, from the start go to the left, enter first person, and look up. You will see three shadowy figures with big eyes (?) looking at you from the cliff. And if you move to the next part of the galaxy, ''[[Offscreen Teleportation|they will still be in front of you]]''.
*** Apparently, [http://gonintendo.com/viewstory.php?id=126769 the game calls them "trees."] Still quite disturbing, even knowing that.
** In the first ''Paper Mario'', if you left the controller idle on the Chapter start screen (e.g. the ones that displayed the Chapter's title), the original version of the ''Super Mario Bros. (World 1-1)'' theme would play.
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* Later games in the ''[[Jak and Daxter]]'' series scattered (coincidentally egg-shaped) Precursor Orbs around the levels for players to find, which could be spent on various cheats and Easter eggs (found under Cheats in the pause menu), ranging from [[Game Breaker|game breakers]] such as infinite ammunition and invulnerability to more trivial stuff like mirroring the game world and toggling the protagonist's goatee on and off. The in-world explanation is that since the game takes place in the future, the formerly abundant Orbs have now become increasingly rare, and extremely valuable in the process.
* If you managed to get your hands on a copy of ''Castlevania: Symphony of the Night,'' you could put it into a CD player and set it to track 2 to get a cool remix of one of the games main themes. Topping it off were the opening moments of it, when {{spoiler|Alucard says "As you can see, this is a Play Station black disk. Cut number one contains computer data, so please, don't play it. [[Schmuck Bait|But you probably won't listen to me anyway, will you?]]" He was being honest; nothing is there to listen to.}}
** The [[PCTurbo EngineGrafx 16]] version of ''Rondo of Blood'' had two classic Easter eggs. The first one, like the above, requires you to play it in the CD player, which started up something like a miniature [[Drama CD]] track explaining that you can't play the game in a CD player, ending with Richter exclaiming "By the way, turn the volume down," which was shortly followed by ''massive screeching'' as the CD player tries to play the game's data and programming tracks. The second shows up if you play the game with a version 1 system card instead of the required version 2 card; you play a game that is an absolute mockery of a game, with horrifyingly cutesy renditions of Richter and Maria. The name of the level is "Stage X -- The System Card 1 Level."
*** The cool thing about PC-Engine discs in general was that they also served as soundtrack discs, due to how the PC-Engine handled music data. Any standard CD player can handle PCE music tracks. You have to watch out for when the non-music data cues up, though!
** Symphony of the Night in general has shitloads of easter eggs. Like the fountain in Olrox's quarters, which turns red for no reason, the birds nesting in one room, the random little upside down things in the first castle, the rare alternate form when Alucard gets turned to stone...
* In the DOS platformer ''[[Stix World]]'', [[Bottomless Pits]] are usually marked with a "Danger!" sign. However, if you fall past a certain one that says, "Banger!" instead of "Danger!" while possessing a blue key, you can find a room with a giant actual easter egg. Collecting this egg causes a message to pop up informing you to "check in the game directory." Doing so reveals a rather bizarre easter egg: a text file containing the entirety of ''[[Alice in Wonderland (Literature)|Alice in Wonderland]]''!
* The Insomniac Museum of ''[[Ratchet and Clank]]'' fame. It's an easter egg level full of stuff that didn't make it into the game in the style of the actual Insomniac Games office layout, and various Insomniac staff members have commentary on each item. The Museum appears in only three of the games, and is located on 'Planet Burbank' (in reference to where the company is located), or on 'Dantopia'. Getting into it usually happens by chance, since the rather out-of-the-way telepads that send you there only work when your [[PSPlay Station 2]] internal clock is set to the top a specific hour. In Going Commando, there's second way to get in that doesn't require setting your clock, but is much more difficult to discover, since you have to do a series of very specific things most people would never consider doing otherwise.
* The secret stars in ''[[Braid (Video Game)|Braid]]''.
* In the [[Updated Rerelease]] of ''Jinsei Owata no Daibouken'', if you take the left path, you end up in the world of ''[[I Wanna Be the Guy]]'', and the [[Final Boss]] is the Kid.
* If you hold B while selecting Shade Man's stage in ''[[Mega Man 7 (Video Game)|Mega Man 7]]'', the intro fanfare and BGM change to that of ''[[Ghosts N'n Goblins (Video Gameseries)|Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts]]''' first stage.
* The 128K version of the [[ZX Spectrum]] game ''Zub'' had the hidden game ''Lightfarce'', supposedly by Fast-As-You-Like Software (a parody of FTL's ''Lightforce'') as an easter egg. It later saw release as a separate game (''Zarjas'').
 
== Real-Time Strategy ==
* [[Blizzard Entertainment]]'s games are rife with various Easter eggs. In the RTS games, clicking on a unit often enough results into them [[Stop Poking Me|uttering various funny lines]] (or, if it's a critter, they explode), and exploring the map in great detail may result in finding Easter egg units. For instance, zerglings, hydralisks and marines from ''[[Starcraft]]'' can be found in ''[[War CraftWarcraft]] III''. And let's not get started on ''[[World of Warcraft]]''...
** In addition, with the exception of the first ''[[War CraftWarcraft]]'', every Blizzard RTS (Usually the expansion packs) to date has had a hidden music track. ''[[War CraftWarcraft]] II: Beyond the Dark Portal'' had 'I'm a Medieval Man' earned by typing disco or putting the game disc into a CD player, Typing Medieval Man in ''[[War CraftWarcraft]] II'' (Battle.net Edition) also yielded this music, ''[[Starcraft]]: Brood War'' had Radio Free Zerg, a semi-subliminal [[Stupid Statement Dance Mix]] featuring the Overmind, earned of course by typing Radio Free Zerg while playing Zerg, and finally ''[[War CraftWarcraft]]'' III: The Frozen Throne'' has 'Power of the Horde' by either typing in Tenth Level Tauren Chieftain or by beating the campaign (Which accompanied the song with a nice ingame engine music video).
** ''[[Starcraft II (Video Game)|Starcraft II]]'' has the usual crossovers between Blizzard games (Tauren and Murloc marines for example), but in the Wings of Liberty secret mission, there is a [[Metroid]] in a holding tank.
* ''[[Star Wars]] Galactic Battlegrounds'' has several Easter egg characters hidden in the corners of maps, such as Mara Jade. There are also cheats that will give you absurdly overpowered joke super-units such as the Death Star, a Star Destroyer, and [[Killer Rabbit|Simon the Killer Ewok]].
** The Star Destroyers were interestingly left out of the game entirely, despite being featured prominently in briefings. Eventually, the expansion introduced Air Cruisers that were pretty much the same as the Easter Egg Star Destroyer, but even with the lack of scale, they were visibly designed to look smaller.
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== Simulation ==
* Naming sims in ''[[The Sims]]'' after Greek gods or old Hollywood stars sometimes gives special benefits and gifts to those characters.
** Ditto with ''[[Roller CoasterRollercoaster Tycoon]]''.
** ''[[Zoo Tycoon]]'' too. Naming guests "Mr. Blue" or "Mr. Pink" after ''[[Reservoir Dogs]]'' will change the colour of all the guests' clothes.
*** Other names will result in far more dramatic results, such as the men in the park becoming violently ill, and [[The Birds|birds inexplicably menacing the guests, causing widespread terror]].
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* ''[[Creatures]]'' had many, but the most famous was a Bustr.txt, a file which read: ''Hunting scuba cows (A Poem) / Pebbles are not edible. It is fruitless to try eating them. / I have not eaten a sandwhich in many days. / Despair not for Wednesdays. / Salmon unite. / Boo hoo. / Bye. / Thankyou. ''
* ''[[Star Wars]]: Starfighter'' had a force-field cube with silly pictures in picture frames accessible by turning around at the beginning of the first level. Also, one mission features a missile frigate that launches two "Chris Corrpedoes", named for lead programmer Chris Corry.
* In ''[[Wing Commander (Videovideo Gamegame)|Wing Commander]] IV'', typing "animal" when the shipboard computer terminal text is scrolling, before it gets to the prompt for a callsign, results in a text based "20 questions" type game called "Animal Gump". Replacing "animal" with "chicken" gives an alternate version of the credits, with strange comments.
* If you play ''[[X Wing]]'' when your system clock says it is December 25, a tiny Santa Claus is visible in the background on the menu screen.
** On December 25th, ''Beyond [[Dark Castle]]'' has a Christmas tree on the backside of the revolving door to the castle.
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== Sports ==
* [[The Reveal|"Uh, don't tell the other kids, but, uh, I speak English. I learn Spanish in school."]] (Pablo in the original ''[[Backyard Sports|Backyard Baseball]]'' when you hold Shift while clicking on his player card.)
* There was at least one [[Football Manager (Video Game)|Championship Manager]] game that allowed you to play as an international team if you gave yourself the same name as the manager of that team in the year the game was released.
 
== Stealth ==
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== Visual Novel ==
* In the mirror moon translation of ''[[Fate/stay Stay Nightnight]]'', go to Caster's Info screen and go to her first skill page. A little Neko-Arc from ''[[Tsukihime]]'' is in the corner of the text box.
 
== Western RPG ==
* ''[[Fallout]]'' has many examples. [http://www.nma-fallout.com/content.php?page=fo2-easter This link lists some]
** In an example of this perhaps being taken too far, the [[Expansion Pack]] ''Mothership Zeta'' for ''Fallout 3'' is ''based entirely around one particular easter egg''.
** The "Wild Wasteland" perk in ''[[Fallout: New Vegas|New Vegas]]'' essentially places a bunch of Easter Eggs on the map that also double as [[Shout-Out|Shout Outs]] to other media.
* In ''[[Ultima]] V'' on the Commodore, yelling FLIPFLOP would flip the screen upside down.
* The ''[[Gothic]]'' series has the Mighty Alien Dwarf, who leaves signed messages to the player, either in areas of the game that can't be reached without cheating or in places that there's no real reason to explore. One message not from the Dwarf was a rusted-out old car hidden deep in an uninhabited corner of the map, with a note from the game developer saying, "Well, I always wanted to make a game with cars, you know."
* One of ''[[Neverwinter Nights]]'' bookshelf models has a book on top, titled "BioWare corp" on the cover and "This is a Book" on the spine.
* In ''[[BaldursBaldur's Gate]]'', there's a character called "Peter of the North." It's clearly a joke on Peter North, the porn star. He talks about being a "master woodsman" and his console code is "coksmth." Not sure if that's exactly an Easter Egg; maybe a programmer was really into porn... inconceivable!
** Fairly early in the game you can run into a ranger named "Bub Snikt", who claims that he's the best at what he does, and what he does ain't pretty. If asked to join your group, he claims he works alone.
** At another point you can meet "Lord Foreshadow", who makes oblique comments about trouble brewing down in Amn, and that he recently visited Neverwinter.
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* [[The Elder Scrolls]] [http://uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Easter_Eggs Morrowind] and [http://uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Easter_Eggs Oblivion] are full of Easter eggs.
* In ''Vette'', driving off the far end of the Bay Bridge would lead you to Alameda, home of Spectrum Holobyte, the developers.
* ''[[Scarface the World Is Yours (Video Game)|Scarface the World Is Yours]]'' has this in dialogue trees. Unique conversations give performance bonuses. Talk to everyone (sometimes twice). That old lady in the hat? Tony Montana will try to pick her up. The masked wrestler really likes candy. And fried chicken. Tony even tries family counseling on a teenager wandering Miami Beach.
 
== Misc ==
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** "Secretary" can, intentionally or not, be typed entirely with the left hand. Hmm.
* If you're playing the Macintosh version of ''any'' shareware game made by [http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/all.html Ambrosia Software], press 'X' on that game's title screen for an Easter Egg.
* A particularly common form of Easter egg is a "[[Developer's Room|programmers' room]]". Well-known examples are found in ''[[Chrono Trigger (Video Game)|Chrono Trigger]]''.
* [[Nintendo]] composer Kazumi Totaka is notorious for hiding a short, 19-note melody in most of the games he's worked on? sometimes so well-hidden that fans are still trying to find it in various games, years after their release. The usual method seems to involve pausing the game at some certain place and then waiting a few minutes.
** ''[[The Legend of Zelda: LinksLink's Awakening (Video Game)|The Legend of Zelda Links Awakening]]'' even contains three distinct versions: wait in Prince Richard's house for 2 minutes and 30 seconds for one version, enter とたけけ (Totakeke) as your name in the Japanese version and MOYSE [[Regional Bonus|in the German version]] (ZELDA in the US version plays a remixed ''Zelda'' overworld theme instead) for a second version, and a third version that exists in the game code but can't be accessed in-game (or at least no one knows how), while the German translation is the only international release known to have the second one accessible in-game (with Moyse being the last name of the German translation's writer, Claude Moyse).
* Somewhat of a visual version of the Totaka tune is the [http://www.dopefish.com/fishinfo.html Dopefish], first found in ''[[Commander Keen (Video Game)|Commander Keen]] 4'' and afterwards spread to countless games.
* All Dreamcast game discs have an audio track stating that the disc is for Dreamcast. Sometimes, this track was generic; other times, it was performed in character ("[[Skies of Arcadia (Video Game)|We can't save the world from a CD player, so just? put us back in a Dreamcast, so we can do our jobs!]]").
** Obscure Dreamcast game ''Seventh Cross: Evolution'' had a truly unique twist on this practice; the audio from what could only have been ''cutscenes removed from the game proper''.
** ''[[Shenmue]]'' spanned three discs; each disk's audio track was performed by a different character.
** ''[[Bomberman (Video Game)|Panic Bomber]]'' for the [[Turbo Grafx-16|PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16]] also had such a track, featuring Shirobon (White Bomber) and Kurobon (Black Bomber).
* Often mistaken for an [[Easter Egg]]: Hold down the Start and Select buttons as you start up a [[Game Boy Advance]]; the Nintendo logo under the Game Boy Advance logo will disappear with a four note jingle reminiscent of some sound effects in ''[[Mario]]'' games. The A button will make the logo reappear and make the game continue booting. In fact, it's actually just a method of overriding the cartridge slot so that downloads through the Link Cable (e.g. for single-cart multiplayer games, from a [[Game Cube]]) will work without you having to pull out the game that's already in there. Believing that this is an [[Easter Egg]] shows that someone didn't [[Read the Freaking Manual]].
* Similarly, try holding down the Z button as you start up a [[Game Cube]]. Now try holding down the Z buttons on all four controllers at once as you start it up.
** This also works for holding Z on the first two controllers, but not the first three, sadly.
* While examining a painting of {{spoiler|Flora}} in ''[[Professor Layton and Thethe Curious Village]]'', if you try to touch her breast when you're supposed to {{spoiler|find the mark of the Golden Apple}}, the Professor will say "Now Luke, be a gentleman."
* In the special edition of ''[[Bio ShockBioshock]] 2'', you have several posters advertising Rapture. On each one of them is {{spoiler|Rapturian graffiti in UV-sensitive ink that is only visible under a blacklight. This is hinted at NOWHERE on the poster.}}
* It was recently discovered that the [[Game Cube]] system menu's ambient background music is actually [http://fryguy64.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=cameo&thread=3527&page=1#88809 a version of the Famicom Disk System startup music slowed down to about 1/25th of the original speed].
* The hidden object game ''[[Mystery Case Files]]: Dire Grove'' contains an [[Easter Egg]] that can only be solved if you complete the game ''twice'': once to view the clues that appear in the closing credits, and a second time to solve them and access the egg.
* ''[[Wario Ware (Video Game)|Wario Ware]]: D.I.Y.'' has an interesting one that made a lot of ''[[Mario Paint]]'' fans giddy. If you enter the Game MakerMatic and name your game "Mario Paint", you'll hear one of its BGMs as you draw. (If you change the name to something else, though, the music goes away.)
* In the Solar System installment of the ''[[Magic School Bus]]'' educational CD-ROM games had a video camera sitting on a desk in the classroom. It normally did nothing. When you flick the lightswitch in the room to make everything pitch black, and then clicked the video camera, it made a screen appear on the blackboard of the classroom. You could then watch things such as the credits, more information about the Solar System, or a video about how if a person comes into your school dressed as Miss Frizzle, you should "start packing" (you can't travel through the Solar System in one day!).
* In ''FreeCell'' entering game number -1 or -2 results in an unwinnable deal, while (in the newest version) entering -3 or -4 yields a deal that can be instantly won.
* ''Vectron'' for the [[Intellivision]] would display a message from the programmer if the player did an [http://www.intvfunhouse.com/games/vect.php#eastereggs incredibly difficult series of maneuvers] for seven levels. As with Atari's ''[[Adventure (Video1979 Gamevideo game)|Adventure]]'', this Easter Egg was hidden because Mattel had a policy against crediting programmers.
 
 
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* Matlab, despite being a serious program for mathematics has quite a few Easter Eggs, see the [http://www.eeggs.com/tree/422.html full list].
* Using the [[Konami Code]] (up up down down left right left right B A) in Google Reader will give the sidebar a ninja theme.
* In Python v.3 or later, you can type [[Xkcd (Webcomic)|import antigravity]]. It brings up that comic in your browser.
* In [[Win RAR]]'s "About [[Win RAR]]" window, clicking on the [[Win RAR]] icon will cause it to be affected by gravity (i.e. fall then bounce when it reaches the bottom of the window).
 
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** On a side note, it is worth noting that DVDs of classic ''Doctor Who'' stories are stocked with Easter Eggs whereas the only Egg on releases of the new series so far is the "Blink" message. Hmmm...
** The Blink speech wasn't the only one. The series 1 and 2 DVD set have the "Do you want to come with me?" promotion as an Easter Egg.
* The DVD version of ''[[The Lord of the Rings (Filmfilm)|The Lord of the Rings]]: The Two Towers'' contains a hidden video clip of Gollum accepting a MTV award for Best Animated Character.
** ''[[The Lord of the Rings (Filmfilm)|The Lord of the Rings]]: The Return of the King'' has an interview between Hans Jensen (as played by Dominic Monaghan) and Elijah Wood. Something of a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLBDNUvrGQk Crowning Moment Of Funny].
** ''The Fellowship of the Ring'' Extended DVD has a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8ohAwSdIw8 remake of the Council of Elrond scene featuring Jack Black].
* Not unlike the ''Noir'' example above, ''[[Madlax]]'' also has a sock puppet short on Volume 6.
* And so does ''[[The Incredibles]]'' on the second disc of the DVD release.
* On the DVD of ''[[Dr. HorriblesHorrible's Sing -Along Blog]]'', when the standard FBI warning changes to the ELE screen, there is an intercut shot of three actual eggs, representative of the DVD's three hidden Easter eggs. Watching the first scene with the subtitle language set to "Wiccan" gives a coded hint to finding them.
* The DVD of ''[[Memento (Film)|Memento]]'' has an Easter Egg on the main menu that lets you watch the film in chronological order.
* The ''[[Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy]]'' DVD has a rather odd Easter Egg when you use the Infinite Improbability Drive. It shows a rather... strange cartoon.
** In fact, it's the same cartoon that Deep Thought is watching within the movie.
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* The fourth disc of season one of ''[[Life On Mars]]'' has a cell phone next to the ash tray that leads to an Easter Egg when you click it.
* The DVD release of [[Duran Duran]]'s ''Greatest'' video collection contains a number of Easter eggs which the viewer can get to either through a series of convoluted steps, or by going directly to the "track number" in each DVD. The Easter eggs include archival footage of the band playing at the Rum Runner nightclub (where they were the house band) while the New Romantic clubgoers dance around, soundtracked to "Planet Earth"; scenes from a 1984 British TV interview with the band featuring little sound clips of the slowed-down version of their instrumental "Faith in this Colour"; and a lengthy 1990 interview of the band talking about the creative process and the way their then-current album ''Liberty'' came to be.
* ''[[Spider-Man (Filmfilm)|Spider-Man 2]]'' has a couple of memorable Easter Eggs found by moving the cursor off the list of items in a couple of the DVD menus. One has Sam Raimi claim that he's brought in an expert to show Alfred Molina how he wants a scene to be done. {{spoiler|The camera pans over to show Willem Dafoe acting out one of Octavius' scenes, and Molina breaks down laughing.}} Another starts with Molina as Doc Ock snarling at the camera...before breaking out into "[[Fiddler On the Roof|If I Were a Rich Man]]", with the [http://www.jest.com/video/604/dr-octopus-sings-showtunes puppeteers making Ock's tentacles dance along].
* The ''[[Babylon 5]]'' DVD collections contain bloopers and outtakes from the season you're currently watching. All one has to do is find the hidden "5" symbol in the extras menu on the 6th disc of each season.
* Several DVDs of the Star Wars films contain Easter Eggs, including bloopers and the like, and are often revealed by inputting "1138". In the DVD for ''[[Attack of the Clones]]'', select a poster behind Dex in his diner and you'll access a slideshow of rough, hand-drawn student posters: one has C-3PO advertising a Spanish language class.
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* One of the DVDs in the Firefly set features Adam Baldwin singing "The Ballad of Jayne"
* On one of the discs in the ''[[Wacky Races]]'' DVD set, one of the menu screens has two hot spots that lead to pre-commercial bumpers.
* The first DVD of the 3rd ''[[Tenchi Muyo!]]'' OVA series has a hidden subtitle track in the first episode {{spoiler|which contains the actual translation of Washu's "magic fingers" incident.}}
* On [[Rush]]'s ''R30'' DVD, there's a documentary about their titular tour, and if you press one on your remote at a certain moment, [[Big Lipped Alligator Moment|a cartoon plays depicting Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson as dogs(and Neil Peart as their owner), then depicting them all as fighting robots, set to their classic song "By-tor And The Snow Dog"]].
* All of the DVD's for [[Red Dwarf (TV)|Red Dwarf]] have easter eggs in the menus. Sometimes obvious (hit the 'go' button on the Holly Hop drive), sometimes not (When the video pauses in the airlock, hit the green button. You have about three seconds). They generally lead to interviews and videos of the cast goofing around. A list can be found on eeggs.com, [http://www.eeggs.com/tree/80.html here].
* ''[[Sorceror Stabber Orphen]]'', at least in the English release, has some hidden content. You'll probably need to run this on the computer, because some of these will likely be missed just with a menu cursor. These have mainly character outtakes, or private humor.
 
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* There are possibly hundreds of Easter Eggs in ''[[House of Leaves]]'', mostly because of the use of ciphers to hide words or messages in certain phrases throughout the book. A good rule of thumb for finding them is to pay attention to oddly-worded or seemingly nonsensical sentences, take the first letter of each word, and see what you get. One letter of Pelafina's is written entirely in this cipher. There are also phrases that make no sense unless you say their [[Bilingual Bonus|sound-equivalent in a different language]] (usually Latin, as indicated in another of Pelafina's letters).
<!-- %% [[VideoGame/{{Portal}} Well, you found me. Congratulations. Was it really worth it?]] I mean, seriously, don't you have anything better to do, you poor excuse for a human being? Get a life. Oh, who am I kidding, you just used the Find feature, didn't you, [[ZeroPunctuation Adrian]]? -->
* In most of the ''[[Artemis Fowl (Literature)|Artemis Fowl]]'' books, there is a code running along the bottoms of the pages. Ostensibly the message is in Gnommish, the fairy language of the books, but is actually a simple substitution cypher. If you translate them, they are funny or quirky messages that are loosely related to the plot of the series as a whole. Usually, the message is too short to run for the span of the entire book, so when it reaches the end, it repeats until the book is over.
 
 
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* [[Radiohead]]'s ''Ok Computer'' has some text hidden behind the spine of the cd case. It reads "I like you. I like you. You are a wonderful person. I'm full of enthusiasm. I'm going places. I'll be happy to help you. I am an important person, would you like to come home with me". Also, early pressings of ''Kid A'' included a booklet full of artwork and text (some of which later turned out to be ''Amnesiac'' lyrics) hidden underneath the cd tray.
* The booklet to [[Weezer]]'s ''The Green Album'' folds out into a poster-sized crowd photo of one of their live performances: In the right hand corner there's the silhouettes of [[Mystery Science Theater 3000|Mike Nelson, Tom Servo, and Crow T. Robot]], just barely visible because they blend into the shadows of the audience members. It's given away just a little bit because the liner notes include a copyright notice from Best Brains. Also, hidden behind the spine of the cd case of the same album is the word "No". Some fans claim it's an answer to the above ''Ok Computer'' easter egg, since both are hidden in the same place, but there's no confirmation of this from the band - the only official explanation (from the band's webmaster, Karl Koch) has been "no means no".
* [[Dream Theater (Music)|Dream Theater]]'s former drummer, Mike Portnoy, always liked to say "Eat my ass and balls" during live shows. Said phrase appears in Morse code in one of the band's songs, "In the Name of God".
* Mike Doughty's ''Haughty Melodic'' includes a hidden message that can be read by putting the cd in your computer, provided your computer uses Gracenote CDDB to identify track names: The song "Grey Ghost" is listed as "Grey Ghost (Here's the hidden message. Eat your greens. Read 'Everything and Nothing' by Borges. Thanks for listening. Mike)"
* Take a look at the [[Fun Withwith Acronyms|first letter of tracks 4-9]] on the soundtrack to ''[[The Dark Knight Saga|Batman Begins]]''. {{spoiler|It spells "Batman"!}}
* Reggie And The Full Effect's ''Under The Tray'' sort of made the CD ''itself'' an easter egg: When you open the packaging up, it appears at first that you were accidentally sold an empty case. However, if you take the album title to heart and pull out the empty CD tray, you'll find the disc underneath it, along with a picture of a smiling James Dewees and the text "You found it!". Of course, many listeners didn't take the album title as a hint and complained to retailers about being ripped off.
* There is a section in Pink Floyd's song "Empty Spaces" (on [[The Wall|TheWall's]] first CD) of [[Spoken Word in Music|what sounds like someone talking in some foreign language]]. By playing the song backwards, it becomes a hidden message from Roger, basically amounting to "Congratulations, you've found the hidden message!"
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== Tabletop Games ==
* Many cards in ''[[Magic: theThe Gathering]]'' have Easter Eggs in the name, "flavor text", or art. This is especially prevalent in gag sets like ''Unglued'' and ''Unhinged'', and in improved versions of older cards, like the "timeshifted" sets from ''Time Spiral'' and ''Planar Chaos''. [http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/feature/240 This article] reveals some of the tiniest.
* Page 333 of the second edition ''[[Unknown Armies (Tabletop Game)|Unknown Armies]]'' corebook. {{spoiler|The page's top heading and page number are printed backwards while "333" is in the background of the main page.}}
* In the 3.5 ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' sourcebook, the Expanded Psionics Handbook, the power Deja Vu (which makes someone repeat their last action) is printed twice, on opposite sides of the same page.
* ''[[The Dresden Files (Literature)|The Dresden Files]]'' RPG has PDF versions of the sourcebooks available if you buy them online; in several places where [[Painting the Fourth Wall|Harry scratched out part of the text with Sharpie]], you can copy the text into another program and read what was underneath. But it usually turns out to be something like "by the way, if you're reading this, we sure bet you feel clever!"
** That's only part of it; the Sharpie'd out segments are in a larger article about the Christian God and his abilities, with the implication being that Harry Dresden himself blacked out the stuff because he didn't think the Heavenly Host would appreciate having that kind of information spread about them. Performing the above-mentioned trick reveals that the text says (paraphrased) {{spoiler|Their powers are unknown, but presumably have something to do with Jim Butcher's writing. It'll all be revealed in due time, so just be patient, okay?}}
** The first gamebook's section on worldbuilding, the author remarks on having significant pieces of architecture in one's city, saying "Perhaps the St. Louis Arch is a gateway to something deep in the Nevernever. Maybe the Pyramids at Giza are {{spoiler|nowhere near as bad as Chichen Itza}}." This serves as [[Foreshadowing]] to the novel ''Changes'', not yet released when the game books came out, where Harry and crew go to Chichen Itza and {{spoiler|destroy the Red Court of Vampires at the cost of Harry's lover Susan}}.
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== Television ==
* The page quote comes from ''[[Red Dwarf (TV)|Red Dwarf]]''. This was because, in the day when the show was made, it would have taken a lot of time, effort and specialised equipment to actually create the reversed sound-track to hear the easter egg. The show itself admitted it wasn't a very good Easter Egg, and included a live frontwards playback of it in their "Smegups" tape.
* In the ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' episode "The Fix", [[Freeze -Frame Bonus|a quick glimpse]] at Kaito Nakamura's license plate shows that it reads "NCC-1701". George Takei, the actor who portrayed Kaito, also played Sulu in ''[[Star Trek (Franchise)|Star Trek]]'' -- and of course, the Enterprise's registry number is NCC-1701.
* On ''[[The Simpsons]]'', if you enable closed captioning on 'In the Name of the Grandfather', you see that it doesn't display what they are speaking, namely:
{{quote| '''Grampa:''' I had a nightmare. That I was back with your mother!<br />
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** And if you pause the list of “corrections” Rock Bottom wished to make in "Homer Badman", you find out you have no life.
** This is incredibly common, not just in ''The Simpsons'' but in other shows as well. It's not rare for dialog to be changed in post-production after the scripts have already been submitted to the captioners.
* In the re-imagined ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined]]'', the audience can sometimes see ships in the shots of the Fleet that are [[Shout-Out|Shout Outs]] to either the original ''Battlestar'' or other sci-fi shows. Other than numerous ships who were modeled after the original series, the show contained shots of [[Star Trek (Franchise)|the Enterprise]], [[Firefly (TV)|Serenity]], various ships from ''[[Babylon 5]]'' and, of all things, the Kodiak from ''[[Command and Conquer|Tiberian Sun]]''.
** And a weapons locker in Season 4 was numbered "1701", another reference to ''Star Trek''.
** The show also at times made no attempt at hiding recognizable company logos on buildings in Caprica, and one early episode features a crystal clear closeup of the spines of a few of the books in Adama's cabin - revealing them to be Reader's Digest Condensed Books volumes! Eagle-eyed viewers will also see recognizable street signs and traffic lights in the Caprica scenes as well. Given the fact the series is predicated on Caprican civilization parallelling Earth's, these are more likely to be Easter eggs than accidental anachronisms.
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** The easiest one to spot is the opening scene. [[Nathan Fillion|Castle]] dons his old Browncoat for a Halloween Costume. [[Hilarity Ensues]] when his daughter [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q3pdj9p6yI spots him.]
** However, [[Nathan Fillion|Fillion's]] [http://twitter.com/NathanFillion/status/5219538270 Twitter feed] says that the REAL Easter Egg was the Catalyzer from the Episode "Out of Gas."
* The ''Allspark Almanacs'', the guides to the [[Transformers Animated]] universe, are basically a gigantic easter egg hunt. They're littered not only with a million [[Shout-Out|Shout Outs]] to other parts of the Transformers mythos, but to real life (one of the unnamed drag racers, seen in exactly one scene and never named is given the name of a voice actor's daughter) and every tangentially geeky thing from ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)|Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' to ''[[Animorphs (Literature)|Animorphs]]''. The stellar map in ''Allspark Almanac II'' is a particularly egregious offender, featuring hundreds of individual worlds that are ''all'' named after geek references.
* In "Brown Betty" on ''[[Fringe (TV)|Fringe]]'', several things allude to upcoming episodes: Walter sings "Candy man" linking to the episode "The Abducted"; the killer is removing hearts, similar to ep "Marionette".
** The glyphs (six-fingered hand, seahorse, frog, butterfly, etc.) also appear in the background of several episodes, usually in places of significance to Olivia and Peter.
* On the Nicktoon ''[[Invader Zim]]'', series creator Jhonen Vasquez secretly inserted images of GIR covered in blood in a few episodes, without Nickelodeon knowing.
* [[Sealab 2021]] frequently featured the Big Green Phone, which is surrounded by [[Bathroom Stall Graffiti|random graffiti]]. In one episode, it appeared twice, the second time with the phrase "This graffiti is not different stop pausing" added.
* ''[[NCIS (TV)|NCIS]]'' occasionally pokes fun at co-star David McCallum's long career. In one early episode a publicity photograph of McCallum from ''[[The Man Fromfrom UNCLEU.N.C.L.E.]]'' is shown as representing Ducky as a young man, and in another episode, when a character asks Gibbs what Ducky looked like as a young man, Gibbs replies "Ilya Kuryakin".
* ''[[Hill Street Blues]]'' was a very low rated show in its first season, but won a large number of Emmy Awards due to its quality. In the second season opener, one of the statues is sitting on a file cabinet in the station, and Lt Henry Goldblume picks it up and carries it off without any comment as he walks through the scene.
* Lampshaded and used as a rather important plot point in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode ''Blink,'' in which the Doctor places Easter eggs on each DVD owned by Sally Sparrow in order to warn her about the Weeping Angels.
 
== Theatre ==
* [[Cyrano De Bergerac]]: At Act II Scene VII, Count De Guiche mentions the famous scene of the windmills that appear at [[Don Quixote (Literature)|Don Quixote]], and Cyrano mentions it’s in chapter XIII. But that scene is at chapter VIII. Any character could make a mistake… except Cyrano, who is a [[Broken Ace]]. Chapter XIII (''In wich is ended the story of the shpeherdess Marcela, with other incidents'') narrates the tragic tale of the love between Grisóstomo and Marcela, [[Arcadia|two shepherds]], and is the deconstruction of the [[Romance Novel]], the genre [[Fan Dumb|Roxane is obsessed with]]. The protagonists of [[Cyrano De Bergerac]], Cyrano, Le Bret and Roxane are [[Expies]] of Grisóstomo, Ambrosio and Marcela, the shepherds Don Quixote meets at that chapter.
{{quote| '''De Guiche:''' ''(who has controlled himself—smiling):''Have you read 'Don Quixote'?<br />
'''Cyrano:'''I have!<br />
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* ''[[Homestar Runner]]'' is well known for including Easter Eggs in cartoons on the site. In an inversion of this fact, Macromedia Central has an exclusive ''[[Homestar Runner]]'' toon hidden inside.
* The [[Web Comic]] ''[[Narbonic]]'' has an entirely separate text story, written in two-word segments, hidden in the filenames of each strip (of all places). The story continues into the [[Directors Cut]] version.
* Referenced in [http://www.cinemabums.com/?p=307 this] ''[[Cinema Bums (Webcomic)|Cinema Bums]]'' strip, released on Easter Monday. The comic's title also serves as a reference to [[Doctor Who/NS/Recap/S3 E10 Blink|another story]] where Easter Eggs play an important role.
* The webcomic ''[http://www.bitmapworld.com/ Bitmap World]'' has a number of Easter Eggs hidden around the site, which can be discovered by searching for images of one of the characters, Mike.
* Google [[The HitchhikersHitchhiker's Guide to Thethe Galaxy|"Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything"]]. Just do it.
** This also works on [http://www.wolframalpha.com/ WolframAlpha].
*** Also on Wolfram Alpha, if you input "Easter Egg" it returns "Interpretation: What are your easter eggs?" "Seek diligently and ye shall find. (In fact, you just did.)"
**** Also also on Wolfram Alpha, if you input "[[Pulp Fiction|do they speak English in What]]" it returns "Interpretation: "What" ain't no country I've ever heard of. They speak English in What?" "What? (English, [expletive deleted], do you speak it? (According to Jules, as played by [[Samuel L. Jackson]], in his one-sided conversation with Brett in the 1994 film [[Pulp Fiction]]))".
**** Someone working Wolfram Alpha really likes ''Pulp Fiction'', because if you search "Does he look like a bitch" you get "No!" as the response, which is part of the Jules/Brett conversation.
**** In addition, search "[[2001: A Space Odyssey (Film)|Open the pod bay doors]]" (with or without HAL) and it returns "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
**** Asking "How can entropy be reversed?" returns [[wikipedia:The Last Question|"THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER"]].
** Likewise, there was a time when you googled "failure" and got [[What Do You Mean It's Not Political?|George W. Bush's biography]]. (Although to be fair that was less a case of an Easter Egg and more a result of Google bombing. Google may be one of the few pieces of software that allows its users to embed -- however temporarily -- their own Easter eggs in its output.)
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** Googling "[http://www.google.com/search?q=recursion recursion]" prompts Google to ask if you meant [[Shaped Like Itself|recursion]].
*** Along similar lines, Googling "anagram" prompts Google to ask if you meant "nag a ram".
** Google [[Star Fox 64 (Video Game)|"do a barrel roll" or "Z or R twice"]] (They both give the same result). Just do it.
*** On the same line of thought, google "tilt" or "askew".
** The amount of search results given will be appropirately changed when googling for "binary", "hexadecimal" or "octal".
** In Google Translate, translating "Haruhi" from English to Japanese yields not "ハルヒ" ("Haruhi") but "涼宮ハルヒ" ("[[Suzumiya Haruhi]]"). Surely, someone at Google must be a Haruhiist to skewer the translation result like that?
** Google "[[Zerg Rush]]". We won't spoil its effect for you, so go on.
* In Linkara's ''[[Atop the Fourth Wall (Web Video)|Atop the Fourth Wall]]'' video of ''New Guardians #2'', he plays a clip of [[Adolf Hitler]] giving a speech ([[It Makes Sense in Context]]). Towards the end, there is a message that is onscreen [[Freeze -Frame Bonus|for only a frame or two]] which says: "Yeah, I can see why Germany would want to follow this shouting, drug-crazed lunatic. ZOMG [[Easter Egg]]! [[Shout-Out|Hi]] [[One of Us|TV Tropes!]]"
* ''[[Sister Claire]]'': Known for its hidden Easter Eggs and [[Homage Shot|homages]], ''Sister Claire'' is definitely a [[Shout-Out|Shout-Out Web-comic.]]
* When composing a new mail in Yahoo! Mail. Pressing the text "Subject:" at the top will yield any number of random phrases that refer to either [[Memetic Mutation|internet memes]], [[By the Power of Grayskull|TV catchphrases]], and assorted inane statements.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/881296"