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Easter egg (media)

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For the decorated eggs given out to celebrate the Easter holiday, see Easter egg.

A virtual Easter egg is a hidden message or feature in an object such as a movie, book, CD, DVD, computer program, or video game. The term draws a parallel with the custom of the Easter egg hunt observed in many western nations.


In computer programming, the underlying motivation is probably to put an individual, almost artistic touch on an intellectual product which is by its nature standardised and functional. It is analogous to signature motifs such as Diego Rivera including himself in his murals or Alfred Hitchcock's legendary cameos.

Software based

Easter eggs are messages, graphics, sound effects, or an unusual change in program behavior, that mainly occur in a software program in response to some undocumented set of commands, mouse clicks, keystrokes or other stimuli intended as a joke or to display program credits. An early use of the term Easter egg was to describe a message hidden in the object code of a program as a joke, intended to be found by persons disassembling or browsing the code.

File:Apt-get-easter-egg.png
The ASCII cow from apt-get.

Two well-known early Easter eggs found in some Unix operating systems caused them to respond to the command "make love" with "not war?" and "why" with "why not" (Berkeley Unix 1977 "The Prisoner" reference). The TOPS-10 operating system (for the DEC PDP-10 computer) had the "make love" hack before 1971; it included a short, thoughtful, pause before the response. This same behavior occurred on the RSTS/E operating system where the command "make" was used to invoke the TECO editor, and TECO would also provide this response. The largest easter egg is purported to be in the Atari 400/800 version of Pitfall II, which contains an entire game that was more complex and challenging than the original Pitfall II (Pitfall). Many personal computers have much more elaborate eggs hidden in ROM, including lists of the developers' names, political exhortations, snatches of music, and (in one case) images of the entire development team. The 1997 version of Microsoft Excel contained a hidden flight simulator[1][2]; the 1997 version of Word, a pinball game[3]. Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 contained a small, hidden video game named 'GORILLA.BAS'. The Palm operating system has elaborately hidden animations and other surprises. The Debian GNU/Linux package tool apt-get has an Easter egg involving an ASCII cow when variants on "apt-get moo" are typed into the shell. Another notable easter egg is from The MathWorks' MATLAB: the why command provides succinct random answers to almost any question. 

% why
% because the not very smart system engineer insisted on it

Non-software

While computer-related Easter eggs are often found in software, occasionally they exist in hardware or firmware of certain devices. On some PCs, the BIOS ROM contains Easter eggs. Notable examples include several early Apple Macintosh models which had pictures of the development team in the ROM (accessible by pressing the programmer's switch and jumping to a specific memory address, or other equally obscure means), and some errant 1993 AMI BIOS that on 13 November proceeded to play "Happy Birthday" via the PC speaker over and over again instead of booting. Perhaps the most famous example of a hardware Easter egg is in the HP ScanJet 5P, where the device will play the Ode to Joy or Für Elise by varying the stepper motor speed if users power the device up with the scan button depressed. Another fun Easter egg is found in the Kurzweil K2x musical keyboard series (K2500, K2600 and others): if users type "Pong" while in search mode they can play the game Pong. The EEPROM of Nagra smart cards for the Dish Network satellite television system contain the phrase "NipPEr Is a buTt liCkeR". Nipper was a hacker who broke old security routines on the cards, and this text is included as a fallback to old security routines, where the phrase was hashed against an input text to verify the card. Several Oscilloscopes have been known to contain Easter eggs. One example includes the HP 54622D known to play Asteroids.

Chip and PCB-based Easter eggs

Main article: Chip art
File:Chpsonic.jpg
Easter egg inside an ADSP-2181 chip: an etching of video game character Sonic the Hedgehog

Many integrated circuit (chip) designers have included hidden artwork, including assorted images, phrases, developer initials, logos, and so on. This artwork, like the rest of the chip, is reproduced in each copy by lithography and etching. These are visible only when the chip package is opened and examined under magnification, so they are, in a sense, more of an "inside joke" than most of the Easter eggs included in software.

Originally, the Easter eggs served a useful purpose as well. Not unlike cartographers who may insert trap streets or nonexistent landscape features as a copyright infringement detection aid, IC designers may also build non-functional circuits on their chips to help them catch infringers. Easter eggs, however benign, if directly copied by the defendant, could be used in mask work infringement litigation. Changes to the copyright laws (in the USA, the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984, and similar laws in other countries) now grant automatic exclusive rights to mask works, and the Easter egg no longer serves any practical use.

Western Digital's MyBook Pro has several words on the metal band that wraps around 3 sides in Morse Code. The code reads: PERSONALRELIABLEINNOVATIVESIMPLE INNOVATIVEPERSONALDESIGNRELIABLE INNOVATIVEDESIGNPERSONALDESIGN SIMPLEINNOVATIVE

The Commodore Amiga models 500, 600 and 1200 each featured easter eggs, in the form of titles of songs by The B-52's etched on the motherboards. The 500 says "Rock Lobster", the 600 says "June Bug", and the 1200 says "Channel Z". The Amiga OS software includes a variety of hidden messages as well.[1]

Video game Easter eggs

File:YarsRevengeEasterEGG.JPG
The Easter egg in the Atari 2600 game Yars' Revenge: displaying the programmer's initials, "HSWWSH".

Easter eggs in computer and video games are distinguished from cheat codes which allow players to cheat — see Minesweeper for an example.

The tradition of including Easter eggs in video games has created small sections of gaming fandom that are as devoted to finding Easter eggs as they are to playing games as they are intended. In Taito's 1986 arcade game Land-Sea-Air Squad, some of the destructible buildings yielded a winged angel and 20,000 points if hit the right number of times.

A video game series famed for its Easter eggs is the Grand Theft Auto series. In Grand Theft Auto III there is a sign on one of the walls of a hard-to-access alleyway saying "you weren't supposed to be able to get here you know". An actual chocolate Easter egg is hidden in a secret room in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. This was referenced in the sequel San Andreas by a sign on top of a tower of a Golden Gate Bridge-clone that reads "There are no Easter eggs up here. Go away." The GTA III alleyway Easter egg was seen again in the PlayStation Portable game Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, where the same wall said "Hello again" with a smiley face. The same game was later released on PlayStation 2, with the wall this time saying "You just can't get enough of this alley, can you?" with a smiley face with its tongue stuck out. Another Vice City easter egg is that certain air conditioners if zoomed in on will read "George's Bug".

Controversy was stirred when the Hot Coffee mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas revealed a hidden sex simulation.

Another very famous Easter egg is the "Megg" from the video game Halo. It is an elaborate sequence that allows players to see a heart with an M in the middle, made with blood splatters. It is called the Megg after Megan, the girlfriend of one of the programmers. The Megg was never supposed to be seen by anyone except him and his girlfriend.

There are many other easter eggs in the Halo series, probably the most famous being "The Skulls" found in Halo 2. The skulls are objects that you can pick up that activate different effects like "intensified" explosions. A guide with descriptions and videos of the skulls and other Halo easter eggs can be found at Halo Easter Eggs.

On the bonus disc for the Halo 2: Limited Collector's Edition, if the left button is held for ten seconds, a hidden fan work gallery will appear.

Another example would be the ones that can be found in the popular Valve game, Counter-Strike. For example, in the level "Estate", when dead (in Free-View mode), players can slide under the house (using the mouse to direct, and the keyboard to go forward and backwards), to see a cube-shaped Easter egg containing the author's names and one of the programmers' pictures entitled "Tofu X", showing him attempting to drink a bottle of Windex.

In the Nintendo 64 classic, Perfect Dark, pieces of cheese that had originally served as a method of unlocking cheats (scrapped due to lack of time) could be found in every level.

Some computer-era pinball games also included Easter eggs, triggered by pressing the flipper and start buttons in certain sequences. For example, The Addams Family pinball game included two Easter eggs showing extended credits and chainsaw-wielding cows. Cows are used as Easter eggs in many pinball games.

In Max Payne and Max Payne 2, Easter eggs included a memorial to a deceased developer, a radio that plays a message from the programmers, and an in-joke that creates a series of moving fireballs, intending to make the level a Mario-like endeavour.

Text-based games often include hidden messages which appear when the user types specific words into the computer. For example, the Zork series contains a number of these which become running gags and can be used with different results in each game.

In the video game Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, there was an in-game myth of a monster capable of transforming to a blue bunny. After completing a quest in the game related to this myth and seemingly proving that the myth was a hoax, the player has a chance to encounter and be stopped by a blue bunny while traveling in the world. If the player attacked the bunny, it would instantly transform into a giant monster.

The Fallout (computer game) series has many pop-culture references and easter eggs, one of them being an actual (and useless) faberge egg.

In the SNES game Chrono Trigger, if you beat the game in a very difficult and specific way you will be brought to an area in the game that is then populated by the game developers. You can talk to them and some will ask you questions like how you liked the game, and others will have side conversation, like about how a particular sports team is doing.

In the game Ultimate Doom there is a secret room which features the symbol of the band Nine Inch Nails on the ceiling and the floor. Trent Reznor is a fan of the Doom games and has helped contribute music and other work for Quake, another id Software title.

In the game "Doom II", in the last level, where the player must fight with an enormous alien face that spawns monster around him, there's an Easter Egg in the "brain" of the monster. To win, a couple of rockets must be fired in a hole in the head of the creature, but through a cheat mode you can fly inside the head and see that actually the explosions take place on a photo of John Romero, id Software (ex) main programmer and founder. This could be interpreted that he was the "brain" behind all the aliens the player fought.

In Banjo-Kazooie, an Easter Egg can be given if the player obtains the Jiggy from the sandcastle in Treasure Trove Cove, returns to Banjo's house in Spiral Mountain, stands on the yellow lines on the carpet closest to the fireplace, and then switches to first-person view and looks at the picture of Bottles the mole, he will offer the player a chance to complete a "moving picture" puzzle in which the player will receive codes to alter Banjo's looks, such as enlarging his head or making him tall and thin, whereas the final code will turn him into a washing machine. However, this does not affect gameplay. Another easter egg is gotten at the end of the game, once the player collects all 100 Jiggies, where Mumbo Jumbo reveals information about the sequel, Banjo-Tooie.

In Wii Sports (Bowling), on the second stage of the training, on the last lane, throwing the ball to the side in a certain way triggers an explosion, resulting in dropping all 91 pins.

One of Lucasarts's most enduring games, "Sam and Max Hit the Road," was referenced in another classic Lucasarts game, Dark Forces. A hidden cavern at the very beginning of level 8 reveals Max the rabbit's portrait on the overlay map, upon full activation of the LANTFH map-revealing code. (Map attributes for hidden sectors make it possible to explore the cavern fully without the Easter egg showing up unless the code is fully [twice] activated.)

In another Lucasarts game, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, if you enable cheats and try to spawn a vehicle, but make it sound like the vehicle's a character, the message "Bad, bad, bad! Tried to spawn NPC vehicle without entering "spawn_npc_vehicle_(vehicle_name)"! Bad, bad, bad! Shame on you!" is shown.

Various games feature hidden references to/images of the 'Dopefish', a character from id Software's platformer title Commander Keen. (See the Dopefish article for a complete list of games.)

Compact disc and DVD Easter eggs

File:HipHopYoda.jpg
"Dancing Yoda" in an Easter egg from the Revenge of the Sith DVD
File:Bloodygir.png
Bloody Gir, an easter egg on the animated series, Invader Zim.

Some compact discs include hidden features which may be called Easter eggs, such as screensavers for a computer which can only be accessed if the CD is played in a CD-ROM drive, or hidden tracks. An example of the latter is the album Nevermind by Nirvana: at the end of the final track there is a period of silence, after which the unlisted song 'Endless, Nameless" appears. Many other CDs have similar features, some with hidden material appearing on high track numbers (often 69 or 99) and sometimes merely after a long pause in the final track. An exhaustive listing would be nearly impossible.

The practice also occasionally occurred with LPs. Possibly the first ever Easter egg on record was the runout groove track on The Beatles' 1967 Parlophone release, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. After the coda of the final track, "A Day In the Life," the album proceeds to a nonsensical edit of Beatles studio chatter, some spliced in reversed, on the innermost groove of the LP. Since most late 1960s record players' auto-return function would lift the tonearm and stylus from the record's "runout" groove before reaching the final concentric groove, listeners missed the recording. The recording was included on the CD releases of the album, looped six or seven times as it would be heard on a turntable without an auto-return feature. Another innovative Easter egg was found on Monty Python's album "Matching Tie and Handkerchief." Advertised as the first 3 sided album, this was achieved by having two separate grooves running the length of the album side, each containing a separate audio program. Which program you got depended upon which groove the needle landed in.

A more unusual method of hiding tracks is to insert material before the first song, only reachable by "rewinding" the CD from its beginning. This achieved by using the "pregap" space on an audio CD between index 0 and 1. Albums that use this kind of Easter egg include Factory Showroom by They Might Be Giants, Very Proud of Ya by AFI, Burn by Sister Machine Gun, Safety In Numbers by Umphrey's McGee, and many others. Again, a comprehensive list is beyond the scope of the concept's description.

Even more prevalent are Easter eggs in DVD releases of movies; these are often in the form of hidden trailers, documentaries, or deleted scenes, and are accessed by manipulation of the disc's interactive menus. An example is the Region 1 2000 DVD release of James Cameron's 1989 feature film The Abyss, which has at least nine Easter eggs, including at least three different trailers for Aliens and two for True Lies, two other James Cameron films. More elaborate eggs include that in the 2002 release of Christopher Nolan's 2000 reverse-time thriller Memento, which plays the scenes of the movie in conventional chronological order. The 2-disc version of The Incredibles has many easter eggs, most of which can be accessed on different screens by clicking the omnidroid that appears (after a little while) in the upper right hand corner. Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate features several hidden trailers for the film.

The deluxe editions of The Lord of the Rings feature the following Easter eggs:

The two-disc Collector's edition of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest offers 4 Easter Eggs in the second disc. These are small snippets of behind-the-scenes documentaries.

The film "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story" has an easter egg that includes several "alternate" scenes and an otherwise unavailable director's commentary by Rawson Marshall Thurber, these are all accessed by pressing the enter button on the DVD remote control every time the character "White Goodman" played by Ben Stiller snaps his fingers.

The animated television series "Invader Zim", pictures of an easter egg named Bloody GIR are hidden in frames through the last 14 episodes.

Even such serious films as Doctor Zhivago, Dances With Wolves and Tombstone can have Easter eggs.

The second Bionicle movie Bionicle 2: Legends of metru nui features a scene where one of the heroes, Matau, flies and smack into a giant banner. If you look closely you can see the 2004 LEGO logo "Play well" Written in bionicle letters.

Most DVD releases of George Lucas' films include blooper reels or hidden videos that can only be accessed by entering "1138" on the DVD remote when the "THX" logo has been highlighted. This is an in-joke referring to his first film, THX 1138.

In the movie Dumb and Dumber, an Easter egg in the form of an actor's commentary on a scene is accessed in the special features menu, and moving the cursor to an invisible icon that looks like an Easter egg when highlighted.

On the Jeopardy! DVD, viewers will find 2 Easter eggs, each in the form of the show's Daily Double. One features the intro to the first of the 3 Final games of the Jeopardy! Ultimate Tournament of Champions, where Alex walks onto stage without his trousers on and hoping that the 3 finalists Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter, and Jerome Vered have done the same as him; the other features announcer Johnny Gilbert mistaking Alex Trebek for contestant coordinator Glenn Kagan in the intro of a Season 16 episode.

DVD releases of television series can also feature Easter eggs, particularly The Simpsons. Moving the cursor to a T-shirt Bart is wearing, for example, gives viewers a news broadcast about the underground manufacture of illegal Simpsons shirts.

In order to distinguish between different editions of the same film, some distributors have taken to listing Easter eggs in lists of "extra features" on the packaging and promotional material; some do not consider Easter eggs advertised in this way to be true Easter eggs.

Security concerns

Because of the increase in malware, many companies and government offices forbid the use of software containing Easter eggs for security reasons. With the rise of cybercrime and the prevalence of the Easter egg's cousin, the logic bomb, there is now concern that if the programmer could slip in undocumented code, then the software cannot be trusted. This is of particular concern in offices where personal or confidential information is stored, making it sensitive to theft and ransom. For this reason, many developers have stopped the practice of adding Easter eggs to their software. Microsoft, who has in the past created some of the largest and most elaborate Easter eggs such as the ones in Microsoft Office, no longer allows Easter eggs in their software as part of their Trustworthy Computing initiative.[4]

Non-interactive media Easter eggs

  • BBC MindGames Magazine contains a number of hidden puzzles and messages in each issue which it refers to as Easter eggs, and which it challenges its readers to find.
  • In the Dan Brown book Digital Fortress, a numerical message at the back of the book, when decoded, spells out "WE ARE WATCHING YOU".
  • Early episodes of South Park show aliens, called visitors, hidden in each episode.

Notes

  1. ^ "Excel 97 Flight to Credits". The Easter Egg Archive.
  2. ^ "Excel 97 Flight Simulator - For later versions of Microsoft Excel". The Easter Egg Archive.
  3. ^ "Pinball in Word 97". The Easter Egg Archive.
  4. ^ Larry Osterman (October 21 2005). "Why no Easter Eggs?". Larry Osterman's WebLog. MSDN Blogs. Retrieved 2006-07-29. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)

See also

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