Easter Egg / Video Games

• Ur-Example: Moonlander, a version of Lunar Lander released in 1973, has a McDonald's restaurant waiting for anyone who flies their ship horizontally enough.

Action

• Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening: There is a hidden two-player co-op mode, albeit under strict conditions; a second player can press Start on a spare controller to control Dante's shadow clone whenever Dante uses his Doppelganger Style. The same trick can also be used to control Vergil during the twins' battle against Arkham.
• Devil May Cry 4: Data-mining or looking through the game's texture files reveals that a page from Agnus's research notebook has the header "Nero = Dante ???", implying that Agnus has been suspecting a connection between the two.
• Devil May Cry 5:
  • If you're playing as Vergil in the final missions of the Special Edition and use his EX Provocation Taunt at SSS Rank against Dante, the latter would also pause and dance to Mozart's Dies Irae. There's a video clip demonstrating this interaction.
  • As discovered by players who looked through the game's texture files, V's poetry book contains other William Blake poems such as "Holy Thursday", "The Tyger", "Infant Sorrow", "Ah Sunflower", and "The Lilly".
• Power Bomberman:
  • Inputting the Konami Code in the title screen will give '83 Bomberman a new alternate costume based on the Sharp MZ-700 version of the game.
  • The cursor for the Score Mode menu is Bomberman's old NES sprite. Holding the up or down key for a few seconds will make him move too fast, causing him to get dizzy.
  • Playing the game on April Fools' Day will play a special intro before the title screen parodying the SNES version of WWF Raw.

Action-Adventure

• Trope Codifier: The most famous early Easter Egg in a video game (to the extent where it's often mistakenly believed to be the first) is Warren Robinett's famous hidden signature room in the Adventure cartridge for the Atari 2600. By finding an item hidden deep in a maze of the same color and bringing it into the right room, one can move though a previously impenetrable barrier, where the text "Created by Warren Robinett" can 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 takes 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:
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past:
    • This entry contains one of the most unusual Easter eggs in gaming history. Nintendo Power magazine held a contest and the winner, Chris Houlihan, had a secret room named in his honor placed in the game. "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, if the game fails to load an area, or if Link manages to displace the overhead camera from where it's supposed to be based on his positioning, the game will recognize the failure and put Link there as a failsafe to reset everything. On exiting, he will appear outside his house. The only ways to enter are by pure accident (which is by far the hardest way), by completing a series of dashes from the Sanctuary to the cave with Link's Uncle to out-pace the loading speed, or by drowning Link several times at a specific place to displace the camera and then falling into a fairy fountain hole.
    • Also in this game, if you corner and repeatedly attack a chicken, the other chickens in the game will attack you en masse, and do damage to boot!
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time:
    • When in the Hyrule Castle Courtyard, one of the windows shows portraits of Super Mario Bros. characters, which is changed to a New Super Mario Bros.-esque screenshot in the 3DS remake. Shooting the window awards a Red Rupee. Shooting the other window will have a guard call Link out and throw a lit bomb at him.
    • When entering the Market after Zelda and Impa flee from Ganondorf, a wounded guard can be found in the back alley before obtaining the Master Sword and becoming adult Link. He gives Link the message Zelda told him telepathically, to go to the Temple of Time, and then talking to him after that has Navi say that he is not moving, heavily implying he died.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: The spirit of one of the Composer Brothers will appear before Link when he enters the Spring Water Cave in Ikana, and begins to curse him and slowly drain his health. Playing the Song of Storms that the other Brother composed will heal his spirit. Playing the Song of Healing, the standard tune in the game for this kind of purification and healing effect, will have the ghost pause and say that it soothes him but that it's not enough to make him stop and spare Link.
  • Hyrule Warriors:
    • In the Legend Mode mission The Water Temple, after encountering Fake Zelda inside the Water Temple, King Dodongo is summoned to attack your allies. At this point, Darunia and Ruto appear to fight the monster, telling you to stay where you are and finish the mission while they take care of it. If you choose to disengage with the boss and run back to fight King Dodongo, you see that rather than the usual yellow Dodongo that appears everywhere else in the game, in this mission (and only this mission) it is the black-scaled version with large crystals on its shoulders, which appeared in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It's no longer quite so Easter-y in Legends or Definitive Edition; not only has it been upgraded to a mission objective, it also appears as the final boss of Linkle's Tale.
    • In Legends and Definitive Edition when you're on a loading screen during Adventure Mode, try pressing any button but A. They play ocarina notes from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask with the same control scheme as in the 3D remakes, save for B/A being swapped due to those buttons serving non-note purposes in each game.
• LEGO Adaptation Game in general are filled with Easter Eggs, most of them necessary for 100% Completion.
  • 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 LEGO Indiana Jones even has several Star Wars characters hidden in various levels. Find all of them to unlock Han Solo.
  • 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 theme in LEGO Indiana Jones, for example).
• The Batman: Arkham Series has a tradition of including Easter Eggs that foreshadow later games in the series... but are either hard to find or hard to decipher.
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum: One easter egg was 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." In Warden Sharp's office in the mansion, placing multiple explosive gels on a wall will reveal a secret room with plans for Arkham City.
    • Aaron Cash's employee ID # is 894390. This was taken directly from his initial appearance in Arkham Asylum: Living Hell where it is mentioned exactly once.
  • Batman: Arkham City: If the player uses the radio frequency scanner, they can find three unregistered stations, all of which just consist of a voice reading off a string of numbers. After translating the codes (which requires various cyphers — including two different ones for the last message), the player gets three threatening messages from Scarecrow, including "You will pay for what you did to me" and "Fear will tear Gotham to shreds", foreshadowing his role as the Big Bad of Arkham Knight. There is also a boat with an interior you can visit by decrypting its lock (the game does not hint that this is possible) - upon entering, you discover schematics and chemicals, with a lease from the Broker informing this is the Scarecrow's latest hideout. Oh, and a seemingly dead man tied to a chair, victim of Crane's experimentation.
    • One-upping its predecessor, City had an Easter Egg with Calendar Man that went hidden for over 3 years. If you talk to him on the day that Rocksteady (the developer of the series) was founded (as in the actual day in 2004, meaning you have to change the system clock to do this), he has unique dialogue, including an important bit of foreshadowing: "I was there at the beginning, and I will be there at the end." Indeed, Calendar Man can be seen in the crowd around Wayne Manor in the Golden Ending of Arkham Knight.
  • Batman: Arkham Knight: Interacting with the piano on the Wayne Manor challenge map (which was added in the last DLC) will open a hidden panel in the nearby wall, revealing a diagram for an investigation. It turned out to be Batman's notes about the events of Batman: Arkham VR, which was in development at the time.
• 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 "Stop 'n' Swop".
• In X-Men Origins: Wolverine the video game:
  • There's a section of the game where you can see 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 that reference Portal and Lost. You get achievements for finding each one.
• In Assassin's Creed II, pull the lever and stare into the water in one of the Assassin Tomb dungeons long enough and a giant squid swims by. Hang around a little while longer and it attacks you!
• Dempa's superb port of Namco's Motos to the Sharp X68000 had three songs on loadup played dependent on holiday. In addition to a normal theme, there's a koto/shakuhachi duet for New Year's, and a cute rendition of "Silent Night" for Christmas.
• Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire has a few of its own — of note is the Max head challenge point in the Swoop bike level. Entering _credits as the name of your file will cause the game to play the credits instead of a selected level, and once the regular credits end, it starts spewing out Monty Python and cartoon references.
• The Starfighter series developers liked including these.
  • In Star Wars Starfighter, they hid a droid grilling hamburgers in the second mission.
  • In Jedi Starfighter, they hid literal Easter eggs and a droid building a snowman in the Mount Meraken mission.
• Shovel Knight:
  • After having Plague Knight learn how to dance from the Troupple King, you can hold down to practice at any time... except in front of Mona; attempting to do so will make Plague Knight shyly tap his fingers together (including in any cutscene where she appears).
  • In Plague of Shadows, the final boss's first form is a shadow clone of Plague Knight. There are two ways to end the fight and go to the second phase; either defeat the clone, or sit for 40 seconds without doing anything, which in turn causes you to take no damage. Doing the latter not only ends the first phase early, but it also nets this:
    Shadow Plague Knight (also known as ????): You are steadfast in your resolve... Maybe there's hope for us yet...
  • The Specter of Torment campaign has several special, numerous unspoken applications for pressing the down button, especially after getting the Cold Shoulder; he can pet a Memmec (after checking for possible onlookers), his Skeletal Sentry will have hearts appear over their head, and doing it twice while wearing armor you only get after 100% Completion causes him to dance.
• God of War has two hidden phone numbers. For the first one, if you access a menu and find one of the "Secret Message" options, you get a screen with numbers on it. Arranging the numbers in a specific way into a phone number and calling the number gets you this.
• The Wolf and the Waves: If you hit the lilypad on the main menu with a rock, you can spawn a golden mushroom somewhere on the island during the actual game.
• In the 2024 remasters of the first three Tomb Raider games, holding the Walk and Look buttons before loading a save file will give Lara her signature red sunglasses that she wore in various promotional materials in the 1990s.

Adventure

• In Myst, Achenar's treehouse in Channelwood plays a series of recordings, which can also be accessed as video files on the game disc. Playing one of the videos backwards will reveal the message: "Rush Limbaugh understands."
• Riven: The Sequel to Myst had a series of "Spyder Eggs" riddles on its website (and those of the associated companies), leading to the discovery of the five Easter Eggs in that game. (By far the best is the one where the actor playing Gehn bursts into song. He's actually quite good.)
• Myst III: Exile and Myst Online: Uru Live also have Easter eggs. Some re-releases of the original game Myst have Easter eggs as well, but these were added later and are not part of the original game as designed by the creators. A well-known Myst fan named Zardoz is responsible for cracking some of the tougher to find eggs.
  • 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 drive a Zamboni around outside the starting area.
• Back in LucasArts's prime, they had Steve Purcell's Sam & 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. Dying also counts as an Easter Egg in LucasArts games because it is almost impossible to do.
• There's a number of Easter Eggs to be found in 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.
  • On Blood Island, go to the lake and try to pick up the water to make Guybrush remark "I don't really want to go in the ocean." Do it 25 times, and Guybrush will eventually go underwater — and appear in the underwater scene from The Secret of Monkey Island, complete with drowned Guybrush sprite (which is labelled as "fish food"). After Guybrush leaves, search the water and you can find an arrow that lets you go down and have a proper look round.
  • In the Goodsoup Family Crypt on Blood Island, examine the hole in the back wall (where the roots are) to find yourself in the forest of Mêlée Island from the first game, complete with original music and HUD. Unlike the water scene, you don't get to have a proper look round, but it is a nice Call-Back to the first game, where examining the stump (which Guybrush pops out of in this Easter Egg) reveals that it leads to "a system of catacombs" — presumably the Goodsoup Family Crypt.
  • On Skull Island, when talking to the bandits, ask "What about toys, got any toys?" and Guybrush will be given a LeChuck doll. In the final area of the game, try using the doll on LeChuck.
  • Examine the clock on Puerto Pollo and Guybrush will read out the time, right down to the second. The time is the same as your computer clock. The clock also chimes every half hour.
  • Mess with the lights in the theatre and you can make them form the shape of Max.
  • 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 LucasArts 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 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 contain several references to (usually) their immediate predecessor
  • Zak McKracken has references to slimy meteors, an unuseable gas tank, and the protagonist having dated the Damsel in Distress from Maniac Mansion.
  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade has 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.
  • The Secret of Monkey Island has numerous references to Loom, including a pirate making a lengthy advertising shill on demand.
• In Telltale Games' Sam & 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 and an achievement for the 360 version.
• A lesser known Sierra game, Shivers (1995), 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.
• In King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne:
  • One egg involves a note pinned to the back of a tree where you wouldn't be expected to go to read a note, with an advertisement for King's Quest III and the then-new Space Quest series. In the 1985 release, the ad is for The Black Cauldron.
  • Another involves the Batmobile occasionally coming out of Hagatha's cave instead of Hagatha. If you type in "LOOK BATMAN", the message responding to you will say, "He looks lost. I don't think he belongs in this game."
  • And then some depend on the player doing silly stuff. (see 1:42 into the video)
• In King's Quest III, looking behind the tapestry outside Gwydion's bedroom reveals a message about King's Quest IV.
• In King's Quest IV, in the AGI version, typing "Beam Me Up, Scotty!" in a certain area sends Rosella to the Developer's Room.
• In King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!, putting the cloak on the broken sled causes King Graham to appear in a boat on the snow. While in the boat, clicking on the sled with the cloak causes a sea monster to appear, and the message "For Lisa from 0." The sea monster pushes King Graham off of a cliff.
• This trope is a staple of the 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 harangued 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 website of a character from a previous game.
• Discworld has a somewhat infamous one 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?
• The Doctor Who adventure game, "The Gunpowder Plot", has these innocuous facts about the level... But after reading them, you can hear a sinister clicking noise, and when you turn back, you can see one of the Silents. Looking at the fact again will result in the Silent talking about the history of whatever you looked at, and then just disappear.
• In Space Quest VI: Roger Wilco in the Spinal Frontier, playing Stooge Fighter III on the programmers' birth dates, April 11th, January 3rd or December 29th, will change the names of the fighters Lar-Man, Coily Joe and Big Mo to Shockmeister, Conradinator, and Flash Lytton.
• Did you like the Thunderbird scene Leisure Suit Larry 6:? Well go to the lobby and click on the ashtray a few times and you will see it again.
• Day of the Tentacle:
  • Ringing the bell in the Lobby 100 times causes Weird Ed to scream upstairs. This is worth an achievement in the remake.
  • If you attempt to push or pull the portrait of Max in the past, there is a 1 in 100 chance for Hoagie to chuckle after saying "He's hung well the way he is."
  • When attempting to push, pull or pick up the posts in the Seventies Room, there is a 1 in 100 chance for Laverne to say "No, that was a different game" instead of her usual line.
• In Syberia: The World Before, the phone in the modern-day Vaghen Music Academy can not only be used to call a puzzle-related number and other, non-puzzle related numbers you've seen in-game, including Olivia's current number, but almost every single phone number Kate Walker could ever call across the series. These numbers include Kate's mother, her ex-boyfriend Dan, Oscar, and the Hotel Meuritz. (Unfortunately, the Barrockstadt Locks' number, 2766-6742, doesn't work, so you can't try solving that puzzle again from half a continent away.)

Art Games

• Flower: A hidden area in Dream 3 contains audio and visual references to flOw, a.k.a a depiction of some of its creatures, and a trophy of the same name for finding it. In addition, in the ending cutscene, some graffiti can be found also referencing flOw.
• Journey (2012): The Flow Hunter and Flow Creature are flOw references.

Card Games

• Hearthstone has plenty of Easter Eggs hidden throughout it.
  • On certain battlefields, it's possible to play musical instruments. If you play part of the battlefield's respective theme song (or occasionally something else), the rest of the song will play in all its orchestral glory, complete with an elaborate animation.
  • Before it was reworked to only target friendly characters, it was possible to cast Sacrificial Pact (destroy a Demon to restore 5 health to your hero) on an opponent who became Lord Jaraxxus. This would instantly kill them.
  • If you have Headmaster Kel'Thuzad on the board and summon a cat, he'll say "Kitty kitty!". Fill the board with cats, and he adds Mr. Bigglesworth to your hand. He's just a 1/1 token with no effect, but that hasn't stopped people from building decks just to summon him.
  • Kingpin Pud is a legendary minion that resummons all of the members of "the ogre gang" (a set of three specific synergy minions) that died this game. However, he can also resummon Boulderfist Ogre, a largely unremarkable Vanilla Unit that's nonetheless memed as being the most powerful card in the game.
  • Most single-player bosses will have special interactions for certain cards. Some of the most notable:
    • The majority of Unusable Enemy Equipment minions have incredibly funny, bizarre, or otherwise elaborate lines when attacking, which can only be heard if you manage to steal them.
    • Playing Animal Companion against the original Kel'Thuzad encounter in Curse of Naxxramas will summon Mr. Bigglesworth instead of one of the usual minions. Mr. Bigglesworth is a 1/1 token that Kel'Thuzad is programmed to avoid killing - even if you give it Taunt, Kel'Thuzad will ignore it.
    • If the first encounter against Rafaam, he steals your deck and uses it against you. If your deck was all Golden, he compliments you for it. Although, if you put Magma Rager in your deck, you instead insults you.
    • Raid Leader has different dialogue when played against Netherspite, mirroring the Onyxia Raid Wipe video his flavour text mentions.
    • Turning into Lord Jaraxxus while facing off against Prince Malchezaar will have him complain why Jaraxxus was invited to the party while he wasn't. Jaraxxus explains it's because he kills at karaoke, before demonstrating his singing skills.
    • In the Knights of the Frozen Throne adventure, The Lich King has a different cheat card for every class which he plays on the first turn. Since these are treated as spells, they can be interacted with if you have the right set up, which were properly accounted for. As Mage, you can play Kabal Lackey for 1 mana to make your next Secret cost 0. If you play Counterspell, he'll ask how that got past QA. If you instead Mana Bind it, he complains that nobody tests these adventures. As Priest, his card has the joke effect of Silencing your hero, which causes all of your emotes to be muffled. However, you can Mind Vision to steal the card, which will causes all of his voicelines to be muffled as well.
    • Beating The Lich King with all nine classes awards his uncorrupted form, Prince Arthas, as a Paladin hero. Taking Arthas back into the Lick King fight will have him mumble that he hates mirror matches.
    • If you idle for long enough on the Cravitz Lorent fight, he'll begin reading you an excerpt from one of his "steamy romance novels". Cravitz is a Forsaken undead.
    • If you summon Millhouse Manastorm against his wife Malificent, she'll accuse him of throwing her in the Violet Hold while he begs to go back into your deck. If you manage to summon five of him on the same turn, Malificent screams and instantly dies.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction, by inputting a certain code at Grandpa's Shop, Reshef becomes Goemon Impact.

Eastern RPG

• One of the longest-recurring Easter Eggs is found in the Atelier Series. In every game, examining any barrel will result in the protagonist simply saying "Barrel". This line is usually voiced, to boot. Some entries have barrels that have gameplay uses, so those won't trigger the line, and there are some games that have a longer line such as "It's a barrel!" or require you to progress in the game to unlock the Easter Egg. Regardless, this is always present in games within the series in some form, no matter what.
• Persona 3 has some unusual Easter Eggs found when using a Game Shark or other devices. Most notably, it has Mitsuru or Fuuka scolding you for cheating — using several differently lines, and fully voiced, to boot. This happens if you use a cheat device to enable usage of the Universe Arcana Persona in normal gameplay specifically.
  • Other Easter Eggs also exist — once you have all the characters, try making a party of all girls (barring the MC, of course, unless you play the female protagonist in Portable), a party of all guys (Junpei, Akihiko, and Ken or Akihiko, Shinjiro, and Ken are the only combinations that work), all second year students (Yukari, Junpei, and Aigis), or the original SEES members (Mitsuru, Akihiko, and Shinjiro) and talk to one of them in Tartarus — the members will say something about the party. Another one happens if you equip Mara as your Persona and enter the Velvet Room.
• In Persona 4 Golden, if you go to the T.V. Listings from midnight to 1 A.M., you'll see Teddie running around. Tapping on him brings you to a screen filled with static, and Teddie saying that he made his own Midnight Channel, just so the player can see him. You can tap on him to see how he reacts. Each time you catch Teddie, you can play for about a minute and a half, before he runs off, but you can go to Teddie's Midnight Channel as may times as you wish during the time allotted.
• The first four .hack games came with DVDs detailing what happened in the real world during the events of the game. Watching these with the subtitles on will reveal area keywords for the game where you can find rare items.
  • On a related note are the DVD cases of .hack//SIGN. The back covers of the boxes have several random words highlighted. These are keywords leading to special areas in the .hack games that deal with a character or event covered in SIGN. Not only that, but when the DVDs are stacked in order, they spell "LOGOUT". The .hack series is one where avid fans learn very quickly that NOTHING is insignificant...
• The first-generation Pokémon games have a truck in the game which isn't even seen during normal gameplay. The truck is only accessible if you have the move Surf which is not available until much later in the game, and the area from where you can get to the truck is closed off after its role in the story is complete. The only ways to get to the truck are to trade for a Pokémon that knows Cut in order to bypass getting the HM for Cut on the S.S. Anne, be defeated by a trainer and get instantly transported back to Vermilion from the S.S. Anne, so that you can leave the ship without triggering the cutscene where it sails away (which would render the area inaccessible), or use a Good Bad Bug to get back into the area after it's locked off. Then, after getting Surf, you can get to the truck. The secrecy of this truck made it infamous, with many rumors circulating that Mew was under the truck, that there was a sidequest involving a set of keys the player can notice left at the Game Corner — however, the truck in fact had no significance whatsoever. This truck is still present in the remake, and is no easier to get to. However, looking south of the truck this time gets you a Lava Cookie; a mildly-useful item which cannot normally be obtained until much later in the game. By giving it some significance, the developers are acknowledging the billion rumors surrounding the truck all those years ago.
  • The first-generation Pokémon games have perhaps the most famous easter egg of all time: Originally, the Pokémon Mew was included as an easter egg by a programmer who slipped it into some left-over space on the cartridge at the last minute, with no legitimate way to obtain it in-game.
  • A more easy-to-find Easter Egg appears in Pokémon Yellow. If you are jump down from a ledge so that your following Pikachu is still standing on top of the ledge, and stay there for a bit, Pikachu will start dancing.
  • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: The Nintendo Switch in your player character's home has joycons that match the color of the joycons in your own system.
• Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete has a Warlords-like mini-game hidden on its "Making Of..." disc, accessible via a hidden code.
• BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm has a few:
  • There’s a very strange subplot involving, (we think), two children who knew each other before being born, and whose souls are subconsciously trying to reunite. One of them, a girl named Amelie, inhabits the game as a sort of W.D. Gaster-like ghost, while the other may or may not be the player themselves. The story is told through hidden items and areas that are unlikely to be seen by an average player.
  • If you keep speaking to Pinkie Pie during her cameo at the party, then she’ll eventually decide to follow you for the rest of the sidequest. This was added because the real Catie Wayne used to be a very outspoken My Little Pony fan, and Pinkie was her favorite character.
  • The first area of the Tower of Plot is a village, where you’re expected to help the local farmers with their troubles. Instead, you can go south and find a frog sitting between two fence posts. If you talk to it once and then back off, it’ll hop aside and let you slip through. There are several hidden field areas, and even other towns, with NPCs who say some strange and vaguely ominous things.
    Villager: Your objective is miles away.
    Tourist: These pretty lights can't trick me. There's no stars in the sky tonight!
  • Totaka’s Song, of all things, appears in this game. Go to the cottage in The Woods (the one with the bed) and wait inside for 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
• In Tales of Destiny 2, usually Judas will "fail" his last hi-ougi, Gishouken (Holy Sword of Justice). However, play through the game twice and unlock extensions in the grade shop the third time around, and he'll gain a 20% chance to "succeed". When he succeeds, his mask shatters, revealing Leon Magnus, and he'll perform the last bit of the hi-ougi, turning it into Infernal Suffering, and play through the rest of the battle unmasked. There's also an increased chance for new end battle quotes from him if he delivers the last hit of the battle.
• Granblue Fantasy:
  • Lyria's victory animation has a small chance of imitating the Grand Blues! version, dribbling Vyrn like a basketball or eating a seemingly infinite amount of noodles.
  • Diola has a chance of going completely off-script in Summer Diantha's charge attack, interrupting their synchronized lines up to the final line.
  • Sakura's victory animation has a chance of having Tomoyo popping out of a bush that appeared out of nowhere and squeal at Sakura being in action like her home series does.
• In Last Word, winning the Hopeless Boss Fight against Chatters will lead to some humorous banter about how Whitty wasn't supposed to win. She then pretends she lost so the story can continue the way it's supposed to.
• On a New Game Plus in A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky, the number of endings you've found will be added to Amos' rotation of statistics. If you get all 13, Amos will scream "Oh, God! It's the voices again!" and the developer will speak through him to provide congratulations and some hints on the Bonus Dungeons.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest:
    • In the original NES version, there are many references to people looking for "Nester", until you eventually find him and he asks if anyone has been searching for him. Nester was the name of a comic strip character in Nintendo Power (For a while it was also the name entered by players at the magazine for games that let you name your character, as could be seen in the screencaps used in the articles).
    • You also can run into a character named Howard, who is named after Nester's partner in the comic
    • The name you give your hero can have an effect on your base stats and leveling rate. Perhaps unsurprisingly, "Loto" is one of the best names to pick.
    • Returning to Hauksness after defeating the Dragonlord will let you meet the ghost of Garin (the bard whose tomb you explored earlier in the game to obtain his Silver Harp), who shares with you the tragic story of Hauksness' past as a busy, bustling town before it was destroyed.
  • In the relatively obscure MSX version of Dragon Quest II, removing all of your female party member's equipment and returning to the castle where the game begins will cause the king to become shocked at her walking around nude and give her a Provocative Swimsuit to preserve her modesty, which you then see a picture of her wearing. (If this sounds familiar, it's because La-Mulana directly homaged this scene by - ahem - "rewarding" players who complete the Hell Temple with a similar picture using its very male main character.)
  • Dragon Quest III: In the remakes, The Hero has the ability to "memorize" NPC speeches and dialogues, which the player can play back again by using the hero's Recall spell. As the hero levels up, it gets upgraded versions of this spell, Remember and Recollect. If you use these upgraded spells without having memorized too many pieces of dialogue throughout the game up until that point, the hero will be able to remember a conversation they overheard between their parents when they were just a small child.
• Super Mario Bros. RPGs:
  • Super Mario RPG:
    • Going behind a curtain in Booster Tower will have Mario emerge with his original 8-bit appearance from Super Mario Bros.. It only lasts for the room before Mario automatically runs back in to the curtain and changes back.
    • Link and Samus can be found sleeping in beds at different inns after clearing certain events, which need to be backtracked to in order to see. Link's cameo is missable as he disappears when another event is completed, but Samus stays in her bed for the rest of the game.
  • Paper Mario 64: 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. theme would play.
  • Super Paper Mario: In the postgame, you can buy a robotic duplicate of Tippi the Pixl named Tiptron, if you go and visit Francis in World 3. Tiptron's tattle readings are exactly the same as Tippi's for most characters, but if used on Francis Tiptron will begin to say that 'He created me...', before seemingly having an identity crisis and desperately trying to assert that she's the real Tippi.
• Skies of Arcadia: Playing the Sega Dreamcast disc in a CD player would yield a bonus voice clip where the heroes berate you to not play their game like a CD.

Edutainment Game

• In many of the Living Books games, there would be at least one Easter Egg in each title.

Fighting Game

• The now-freeware DOS fighter Xenophage Alien Bloodsport allows you to beat up Barney 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, 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' also drops his usual fighting stance, starts blinking his eyes slower and slower and falls asleep if you stand still long enough.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future:
  • Normally, Young Joseph's taunt is his "Happy, joy-py, nice to meetcha-py!" line he said against Santana in Part 2. When up against Jotaro, Polnareff, Avdol or Kakyoin, however, he instead does his signature "Your next words will be..." line and imitates their catchphrase. (Jotaro - "Yare yare daze.", Avdol - "Tch tch tch!", Polnareff - "Butage te yaru!" and for Kakyoin, "Rero rero.")
  • The Stone Mask briefly shows up when a Stand Crash occurs or when Shadow DIO connects his "WRYYYYY!" super.
  • Everyone has a unique transformation when struck by Alessi's Stand moves. Most are turned into kids but others transform outright.
  • One loading screen on the PSX version sneakily displays DIO's part 1 full name ("Dio Brando")
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle retains Part 2 Joseph's talent for anticipating what his opponent is about to say, having one line for every character.
  Joseph: Your next words will be, "WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYY"!
  Dio Brando (Part 3): WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!...*gasp*
• Street Fighter II: The World Warrior: The red Hadouken that Ryu and Ken can rarely throw, originally thought to be a glitch, is in fact an intentional easter egg that the programmers put in.
• BlazBlue games let you change the system voice used on menus from default to a playable character. On the character selection screen, the selected characters may be announced differently depending on their relationship to the current system voice character. For example, most people announce Yuuki Terumi with a note of disgust or anger, and Nu-13 breaks her Machine Monotone for her lover Ragna^*She also breaks it for Naoto, Ragna's Alternate Self, where she screams at him for not being the real Ragna. Several characters will announce others by their in-series titles, such as referring to Tager as 'Red Devil' and Mu-12 as 'Kusanagi'.
  • In actual matches, Terumi's system voice will announce himself (eg. on winning a round) as 'Ore-sama'^*A Japanese profession of extreme arrogance instead of his name.
• Skullgirls:
  • Connecting a keyboard and typing 'gottatypefast!' during the developer logos at the start will unlock The Typing of the Skullgirls mode. The exclamation mark is necessary.
  • Typing 'ifearchange' on the developer logo screens will revert the Glass Canopy stage to its placeholder music, In A Moment's Time.
  • Some characters have Gag Dub voice packs that can be selected on the character select screen by either toggling up and down on the colour selection or holding the button down when selecting the character. The character's name will change colour to show that it's activated. The five available are Anime Peacock, Salty Parasoul, Valley Girl Painwheel, Politician Double and Saxploitation Big Band.
• Dragon Ball FighterZ has Dramatic Intros and Finishes. If the character teams and stage are selected to recreate certain scenes from the animes, the normal intro animations will be replaced by a small scene of what happened just before that fight in the show. Similarly, recreating certain defeats will replace normal match-end animations with a recreation of the scene in the anime.

First-Person Shooter

• Each major entry in the Borderlands series tends to contain a few notable Easter eggs in each game:
  • Borderlands has a secret room in the New Haven area that can only be accessed while the quest "Another Piece of the Puzzle" is active but not completed, inside there is a red loot chest containing the unique "Rider" sniper rifle, a reference to the Red Ryder BB Gun scene in the film A Christmas Story.
  • Borderlands 2 has a Minecraft Easter egg in an inconspicuous corner of the Caustic Caverns area where a cave entrance is blocked off by Minecraft blocks that players will have to melee attack to break (there are even ore blocks that drop pickups when smashed but take longer to smash). Upon entering the cave, players will be attacked by the "Creeper" enemies with a larger badass variant at the end, which will drop Minecraft themed cosmetics and weapons.
  • Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! has a 2001: A Space Odyssey Easter egg that can be found in an offshoot in a cave in the Stanton's Liver area. It features recreations of iconic moments from the film (such as the Dig Site on the Moon and the White Room) that can be transitioned through using a monolith which will teleport you with a transition effect similar to the Star Gate, it even ends with a recreation of a scene from the end of the film. Also, there are big loot chests, because it's Borderlands after all.
    • An additional Easter egg can be found by going up a certain pipe in the Tycho's Ribs area, transporting the player to a retro Super Mario-esque area with pixelated loot chests.
    • Finally, in the Motherlessboard area in the Claptastic Voyage campaign DLC a hidden chest contains the "M0rq" legendary shield, which has a voice modulator impersonating the late Robin Williams as tribute. The name and red text caption reference Mork & Mindy.
• The Call of Duty: Zombies horde game mode in Call of Duty is famous for its myriad easter eggs, from secret weapons to soundtracks composed specifically for the Zombies game mode to the convoluted easter eggs that convey the game mode's story.
• Duke Nukem 3D map makers also loved to sign their names, often creating whole rooms that can only be seen by entering the "show map" cheat. However, a few are signed in-game along with messages asking the player how they got to the location. Ironic, considering that two of the messages are easy to find with no cheats at all!
  • The 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. In response to increasing interest, on June 2, 2014, Lee Jackson released the complete MIDI.
• The Halo games have lots of these; the below entries are just the tip of the iceberg:
  • Most notable are the skulls, first introduced in Halo 2, which have effects in-game when activated.
  • A number of games include hidden terminals/audio logs/etc. which contain additional and often substantial lore information.
  • There's the secret "Siege of Madrigal" music from Myth, which is heard as Source Music in hard-to-reach locations in every Bungie-made entry, and also appears as a stinger on the Halo: Combat Evolved soundtrack CD, at the end of the last track^note Bonus points: the original "Siege of Madrigal" sounds VERY MUCH like the song "Here Comes the Flood" by Peter Gabriel.
  • Most of the Bungie games also have a hidden Grunt with special dialogue.
  • In Combat Evolved's "Pillar of Autumn", a developer left a surprise for his girlfriend in the room the Unkillable Marines come from. It was her name, Megg, written in human blood. Another Megg egg appears in Halo 2; if you make it through "Cairo Station" on Legendary without losing your shields once, a sound clip will play in the final room that says: "Megg, please report to the red courtesy phone. Megg, to the red courtesy phone."
  • The giant soccer ball in 2's "Metropolis". It shows up again in Halo 5: Guardians's "Meridian Station".
  • Several of the music pieces in 2 have backmasked speech that sounds like the Gravemind.
  • Halo 3 has a goofy one on "The Covenant" which is just Microsoft Sam commenting on the game and its developers.
  • 3's "Siera 117" has hidden cavemen figures with then-Creative Art Director Marcus Lehto's face on them. They appear again in the end of Halo 3: ODST's epilogue cinematic if you push your right thumbstick to the left.
  • Halo: Reach has the Club Errera (named after halo.bungie.org founder Claude Errera) in "New Alexandria" where, by hitting a switch on another building, you can hear "Never Surrender" from the Halo 2 OST 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.
  • In Reach's "Pillar of Autumn", if you hold the right analog stick to the right in the cutscene where a Pelican lands in the Autumn's hanger bay, you'll see the Master Chief in a cryotube.
  • If you played Spartan Ops's "All the Secrets" solo, you can find a group of Grunts dancing in a circle.
  • Several chapters of Spartan Ops also have hidden radios that, when shot, will replace certain lines of key dialogue with humorous lines from the Red vs. Blue cast. In "Spartan Thorne", it'll even replace the normal Spartan Laser ordinance drops with Gravity Hammers marked as "Sports equipment" (since someone accidentally dropped their Grifball equipment).
  • In Halo 5: Guardians, several levels have REQ-exclusive weapons hidden in them. These REQs are more powerful versions of standard weapons (often with unique properties) that otherwise can only be found in Warzone multiplayer and custom games.
  • Halo 5 also has a rather strange one on the first level; if you light all seven hidden knives on fire, your weapons will be replaced with a Prophet's Bane energy sword and Plasma Pistol, you'll gain active camouflage, and you'll have to fight several additional Promethean Knights plus a giant-sized Warden Eternal.
• Left 4 Dead and its sequel have numerous Easter eggs in its graffiti, with Shout-Outs to internet culture, other games, Stephen King, and so on.
  • One piece of graffiti from the second game reads as follows:
  Otis
  Out of film
  No helicopter
  Zombies are too fast
  Not going to make it
  Frank West
  • The community-made campaign for the sequel, Suicide Blitz 2, while fan-made, deserves special mention due to having an amazing and well hidden Easter Egg. There's a garden gnome in the first leg of the mission, holding it prevents you from using any weapons or items and using it for melee attacks does partial damage. If you carry it to the last leg of the mission, you can place it in an alcove in an out-of-the-way room to gain access to an Aperture Laboratories testing facility.
• Many of the older 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 II is an Easter Egg. You're forced to shoot rockets into the exposed brain of a demon's head which takes up most of the wall. 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 clone, has a secret room in the third stage accessible only by jumping from a rising elevator platform. Inside the room are framed pictures of the programmers and the BFG-reskin.
• 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 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 here.
  Greetings. You're asking yourself: Is this a trap or just a dead end?
• A literal case 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 the Day of Defeat maps, Axis, one can get (with some risk) hidden FG-42 (a paratrooper weapon unavailable on normal maps).
• Pathways into Darkness has an actual easter egg hidden behind a fake wall on the level "Happy Happy, Carnage Carnage".
• The Quake games have Easter eggs hidden in certain levels. Quake and Quake II have the Dopefish in hidden areas. Quake II also has a rubber ducky in a secret level (which appears on a wall after riding a cycling elevator a certain number of times), a hidden area in the enemy base level where you can 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 has the Dust Puppy underneath one of the maps (i.e. you have to fall off it to see it).
• Medal of Honor: Underground has the "Ghost Milice" in the second level, set in Paris' infamous catacombs. You come across a semi-translucent mook in an empty room, who runs off immediately when shot at (your bullets won't affect him in any way) and somehow dissappears into thin air, despite being on an alcove with nowhere else he could've gone to. Yes, really. It's a reference to the Paris Catacombs being allegedly haunted in real life.
• In Medal of Honor: Frontline, as you are boarding Sturmgeist's train, a UFO flies overhead.
• In F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate, you can 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.
  • In one specific room in the previous expansion, Extraction Point, you can shoot an air vent cover to reveal a secret room with Norton Mapes dancing to the Shogo: Mobile Armor Division theme. And you can finally punch him in the face.
• 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 display a sketch of the wall smiling as it flees into space. This can be activated intentionally on a hidden level, appropriately named "This Causes An Error". Apparently one of the devs was so tickled by the choice of verbiage in the original error message ("Pushwall escaped at [x]!") that they drew a silly sketch to illustrate it, and everyone else was tickled enough by that to Throw It In! along with the message.
• One of the many, many achievement farming maps in 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.
  • Finding Painis Cupcake himself.
  • A giant invincible cardboard cat head cutout shoots lasers and bees at everything before whiting out the screen, ending the match.
  • A long invisible walkway outside of the map that takes you into a glass box above the fighting area, filled with sandviches, a pool, and Saxton Hale himself.

Idle Games

• ALTER EGO (2018): If you tap Es enough times, you can unlock 'Es Worshipper' as a result of your final mirror piece. The text on it was apparently written by Es and teases you about how much you've interacted with her, you pervert.
• Disco Zoo: The parking lot by the office has a bus in it. Tapping the bus three times brings you to "Funky Bus", a traffic-themed clone of Flappy Bird where you can earn a few extra coins.

Interactive Fiction

• "XYZZY" has been a secret command or veiled reference in hundreds of programs (games and otherwise) over the decades since Colossal Cave first appeared. The recent Interactive Fiction offerings (created by the fandom) often have some kind of response to the command.
  • In Ad Verbum, entering "XYZZY" causes the Wizard of Wordplay to appear out of nowhere and thank you for giving him the word he needed to finish his crossword puzzle.
• Easter Eggs in a (more recent) work of Interactive Fiction are often hinted at by the author after the game ends.
• Trying to scream or cry in Anchorhead will yield different results depending on which stage of the plot you're in.
• Emily Is Away has several hidden user icons that are unlocked by inputting specific usernames at the beginning of the game. Emily's dialogue at the start changes based on what icon you have; she'll make references to popular video games, music groups, memes, and even concepts and websites that didn't exist in 2002, such as YouTube or Let's Plays.

MOBA

• League of Legends:
  • If enough player champions perform their /dance emote together near the Rift Herald (or, on the Twisted Treeline map, the Vilemaw), the monster will join in.
  • An area of the blue-team-side jungle near the Dragon's pit has a grave set into the wall. This is reportedly the grave of Urf the Manatee, who was supposedly killed by Warwick before he could enter the game proper. If you approach the grave as Warwick wearing his Urfwick skin, Urf's ghost will raise from the grave and try to attack you (for no damage).
  • Ninjas operate best alone, so putting any combination of Shen, Akali, Kennen and Zed on the same team will cause each of them to have one less hit point for each superfluous ninja.
  • Searching 'Bloothirster' in the item shop will bring up the Essence Reaver item, and searching 'Golden Bicep of Kobe' will bring up the Guardian's Horn. 'Spooky Ghosts' will bring up Twin Shadows. As Nami, searching 'hat' will bring up Boots of Speed.
  • Leona's Sunlight ability will deal one less damage to characters wearing shades, and will cause Zyra's character model to grow slightly.
  • If Aurelion Sol travels far enough with his Comet of Legend ability, his theme music will start to play in the background until he stops flying.
  • If a game lineup has Caitlyn or Vi on one side and Jinx on the other, they will gain a cosmetic tooltip that counts kills gained as 'Criminals Apprehended' and 'Cops Outsmarted' respectively.
    • Vi also has reaction lines if Caitlyn kills an enemy in her vicinity.
    • If Vi taunts an enemy Caitlyn, Caitlyn will gain a brief status saying 'Aggravated: How aggravating'. She also has a similar one for Jinx's taunts.
  • When a map reskin for the Harrowing event was released for Summoner's Rift in 2010, the bottom right corner of the map, just far enough out of reach to need manual control of the camera, had a disrupted site with three coffins that had been broken open. Each coffin contained a champion that had been canceled for one reason or another; Tabu the Voodoo Shaman, Averdrian, and Gavid the Plant King.
  • Occasionally, the Announcer will introduce the Howling Abyss map with 'Welcome to the Murder Bridge!'
  • If Fizz's 'Chum the Waters' kills a smaller champion like Annie, Amumu or any Yordle champion (except Heimerdinger, Rumble and Teemo), it completely devours them.
  • Pyke gains 1 bonus movement speed while in the river.
• Heroes of the Storm:
  • Typing any specific game or expansion into the shop search bar will show you heroes from said game. Likewise, key terms like "Protoss", "Dragon", and "Angel" are all accepted and will filter accordingly.
  • If you look at heroes in the shop, you'll get to see 3D models of them. Spin those models around quickly enough, and the results are priceless.
    • ...except for Deathwing, whose trait renders him permanently immune to all crowd control. Even in the shop.
  • Like other Blizzard games, characters have multiple Stop Poking Me! quotes. HotS takes it to the next extreme, with most heroes having more than a minute's worth of hidden dialogue.
  • If you kill the target dummy in Try Mode (a time-consuming task considering it has around a million health), you get to see a special Easter egg. By which we mean it literally turns into an Easter egg.
  • Almost every map has an Easter egg hidden somewhere.
    • On Tomb of the Spider Queen and Sky Temple, you can get a cameo from Harrison Jones. Knock the jewel loose on the wall near the Boss on the former, and he'll scale down the wall to collect it. Open up the well in the bottom lane on the latter, and he'll climb up with the jewel in hand and fly away on a magic carpet.
    • Similar to the above, clicking the sharks on Blackheart's Bay causes them to wriggle. Do it enough, and they'll break free and jump back into the ocean.
    • Speaking of Sky Temple, pay close attention to the aqueducts. You might catch a shark chasing somebody through them.
    • While you're dead on Towers of Doom, a Spirit Healer becomes visible in the graveyard near the red team's bottom fort.
    • Panning the camera far outside the boundaries on Volskaya Foundry reveals a civilian street, not unlike the Attackers spawn on Volskaya Industries.
    • Above left team's top fort on Braxis Holdout, there's a small semi-hidden arcade room (it's not behind anything, but it's also not a spot players would likely go). Clicking on the cabinet titled Samuro Shodown pops up a large holographic fight between two blademasters. It also counts as an Early-Bird Cameo for Samuro, who was at the time unannounced.
    • On Warhead Junction, an eyeball will occasionally pop up in a pool of sludge between right team's top and middle lane. Clicking on the eye enough will cause it to emerge from the pool, revealing the trash compactor monster from A New Hope.

MMORPG

• The redesign of the Faultline zone in Issue 8 of City of Heroes inlcudes a well-hidden "lounge room"; entering earns you the "Egg Hunter" exploration badge. Of course, the problem with that is that unlike the Warhammer example below, it's fairly easy to find, so about 5 seconds after the first hunter found it, everyone knew about it.
• Kingdom of Loathing is full of Easter eggs and other stuff for MMORPG explorers (or "spades") to discover, including a literal one: during the final quest in the main game, you pass through one part of the Naughty Sorceress's tower by using a set of special keys on a Strange Door. If you use a balloon monkey on the Door, it opens to reveal Unexplained Jamaican Man, who gives you an Easter egg balloon with the line "How about a balloon, mon?"
• LEGO Legends of Chima Online: While not visible under normal circumstances, the game bugging out can reveal that the default player name is "Tony TheTiger" after the cereal mascot of the same name.
• The jukebox found in various areas of Ni No Kuni: Cross Worlds has among its tunes the Japanese version of "Pieces a Broken Heart" from the original Ni no Kuni.
• Warhammer Online has an Easter egg zone — a player in the Inevitable City who manages to successfully navigate a battle-filled arena and do some careful jumping across a series of floating rock islands can find a Chaos gateway. Jumping through it lands one in an area identified by the loading screen as the Winds of Chaos, which consists of a random location filled with eye-candy. Possibilities include an icy crater filled with frozen daemons and one very cold high elf, a beautiful elven beach, a bird's nest on a mountain next to fleets of ships hanging in the sky, the moon, and the starting village from Mythic's Dark Age Of Camelot. Sadly, you only remain in these areas for a few seconds before being teleported back to the Chaos capital, allowing only brief exploration.

Party Game

• Super Mario Party: This game has a minigame called Rhythm and Bruise, where the players bop plastic Monty Moles in time to the rhythm. If you play as Monty Mole in Rhythm and Bruise, Monty Mole will spend the entire minigame with a panicked expression and look away when he hits the plastic moles.

Platform Game

• Afterimage:
  • Some "special" Echoes look like dark blue glitched-out blocks to differentiate them from the normal lore-relevant Echoes. They're mostly found in well-hidden spots and instead contain notes from people involved in the game, like personal messages left behind by a developer or backer. In the pause menu tab, they're listed last in the bottom of the lore-relevant Echoes.
  • "The Wall" ending is not just an entire reference to The Matrix, it also takes a lot of effort to achieve it in the first place (completing the "Words of Shenlong" sidequest is just a prerequisite), and one of its final requirements involves staying in the Misty Waters within a given period of time, then reversing the boat's course, something that's not easily obvious. What you'd also get for your efforts are implications that Renee is transported to another world, a new outfit, and a new weapon.
• Beacon of Hope has a poster for fellow indie game Gecko Knight located in a back alley.
• 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.
• In Super Mario Galaxy:
  • If you drop down the side of the Warp Pipe platform on the third planet in Toy Time Galaxy's first mission and enter the first-person camera view, you can see a tiny model train inside one of the cracks in its walls.
  • A more disturbing Easter egg can be found in 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, they will still be in front of you. Apparently, the game calls them "trees." Still quite disturbing, even knowing that.
  • New Super Luigi U has a hidden Luigi in every level, some more obvious than others. Also, it is possible to play as Nabbit by holding down a button while selecting a stage. Doing this on "Flying Squirrel Ovation", a level near the end of the game, allows you to play as a Mii. Similarly, there's a Luigi sprite in nearly every world map and every level in Super Mario 3D World and each one has specific conditions that have to be met before you can find them.
  • Super Mario Maker is chock full of easter eggs, starting with the title screen—and many of them are based on Mario Paint (yes, the fly swatter minigame is in this game too). It is very worth your time to find these, as many of them will give you additional costumes (the previously mentioned fly swatter minigame gives you Builder Mario, for example).
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic CD has a secret passage in the Past and Bad Future versions of Wacky Workbench Act 1. In the Past, a green statue of an angel will be waiting for you and gives you a good amount of rings. However, in the Bad Future, a gold statue of Eggman will appear instead. You can destroy it, but bombs will rain on you seconds later.
  • Also from Sonic CD, if you input certain codes into the sound test, you can get several pictures, such as Tails in front of a car saying "See you next game!", Sonic, Metal Sonic and Robotnik in a band, and the infamous "Fun is infinite" message.
  • Sonic 3 & Knuckles has Blue Sphere, a standalone version of the Special Stage minigame from said game that can be played if you slot any Sega Genesis cartridge other than Sonic the Hedgehog 2 or Sonic the Hedgehog 3 on top of the Sonic & Knuckles cartridge. Almost all Genesis cartridges work with this feature^note Exceptions include very large games like Phantasy Star IV, as well as locking Sonic & Knuckles onto itself and will unlock a specific Blue Sphere stage based on the specific game. If you slot the original Sonic The Hedgehog, the "complete" version of Blue Sphere unlocks instead, which lets you select from and play literal hundreds of millions of Blue Sphere levels.
  • In both Sonic Adventure games, by raising Chao in certain ways, it's possible to get them to resemble certain characters, including Sonic, Shadow and NiGHTS. There's also an official Tails Chao that you can get if you have Phantasy Star Online, as well as Knuckles and Amy Chao that are only available through the Japanese version with the Nintendo GameCube Software e-Catalog (Summer 2003) disc.
  • Sonic Adventure 2 has a cameo appearance by Big the Cat in almost every level. He also appears in some of the cutscenes too, though you usually have to hit a button to make him appear. The GameCube version removed all the Big cameos, sometimes replacing him with a Ring, but most of them were returned in the HD remake.
    • In Shadow's level White Jungle, if you pick up Omochao at the end of the level and carry him through the Goal Ring, he'll say "This weather reminds me of San Francisco" (note that it's raining in the stage). This is a reference to the game being developed in San Francisco. This line still exists if the voices are set to Japanese, with Omochao still saying "San Francisco" (rather than an equivalent Japanese city).
    • Speaking of Omochao, if you die to any boss, Omochao will appear and give you a hint. You can grab him and throw him at the boss for massive damage.
    • If you wait during the battle with The Finalhazard, you'll hear extra dialogue from the characters. Some of it is actually worth hearing at least once.
  • Similarly, Shadow the Hedgehog has extra dialogue if you take a long time to beat the True Final Boss, Devil Doom, including Eggman affirming that Shadow is indeed the real Shadow, and explaining how Shadow survived after the events of Sonic Adventure 2 (one of Eggman's robots found Shadow and took him back to Eggman's base, where Eggman nursed him back to health). This line only plays if you spend more than six minutes on the battle (which has a time limit of ten minutes), which requires you to either do so deliberately or be really bad at it.
• Metroid:
  • Super Metroid: If you return to the Surface of Zebes after obtaining the Super Missiles but before descending into lower Brinstar (when it's still raining) and use the bombs and super missiles to go into the cave on the right, you can listen to the "arrival on Zebes" music again.
  • Metroid Fusion is more linear than most games in the series, but it still rewards would-be sequence breakers with an Easter egg — a short cutscene which hints at the game's big Reveal and ends with one character musing "I wonder how many players will see this message??" The answer is very few — legitimately, anyway. The sequence break is incredibly difficult and accomplishing it is a badge of honour among Metroid fans.
• Pitfall II: Lost Caverns for the Atari 8-bit and 5200 has an entirely new level after you beat the game that is longer than the actual game itself. This may be the largest relative Easter egg in any game.
• 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 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.
  • One mission in Jak 2 involves Jak fighting Krimzon Guards who launch explosives out of their blasters. If you look closely, the projectiles look just like the precursor explosive that knocked Daxter into the pool of dark eco in the first game.
• If you manage to get your hands on a copy of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, you can put it into a CD player and set it to track 2 to get a cool remix of one of the game's main themes. Topping it off are the opening moments of it, when Alucard says "As you can see, this is a PlayStation black disk. Cut number one contains computer data, so please, don't play it. But you probably won't listen to me anyway, will you?" He's being honest; nothing is there to listen to.
  • 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...
  • The PC Engine version of Rondo of Blood has two classic Easter eggs. The first one, like the above, requires you to play it in the CD player (which will play the game's soundtrack if you skip the non-music tracks), which starts 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."
• 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!
• The Insomniac Museum of Ratchet & Clank fame. The exact contents vary, but in every version except for Ratchet & Clank (2016) they're full of stuff that didn't make it into the game, from enemies, items, and weapons, to locations, props, and concepts, with the Museums laid out in the style of the actual Insomniac Games office layout. Various Insomniac staff members have commentary on each item, and there's usually interactive content scattered around to play with as well. The location of the Museum tends to be on either "Planet Burbank", in reference to where the company is located, or on "Dantopia", in one of the company's many references to Insomniac employee Dan Johnson.
  • Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando: The Museum can be accessed with a teleporter atop a fountain on the left path of Planet Boldan, which is only active from 3 am to 4 am (it is the Insomniac Museum, after all). When used, it warps you to a small room inside a Disconnected Side Area building which contains a few enemies and a teleporter to the Museum. This building can also be reached from the grind rail if you take damage at a certain point and fall off the rail. The other legitimate way to enter the Museum requires unlocking it in the Shortcuts menu, which requires 100% Completion but also enables you to visit any time you want. A few notable features include the particle, shot and explosion effects they use throughout the game and a tool to let you customize your own for each, a station to build and play your own Infiltrator puzzles, a structure made to test the Magneboots in the first game, a few otherwise-unused vehicles, and a giant tower made to customize and test Ratchet's mobility and platforming strength.
  • Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal: The Museum can once more be reached with a teleporter active for an hour from 3 am, this time on the side path at the beginning of Planet Kerwan. The alternate access method requires getting all the trophies in the game (meaning 100% Completion once more) to open the other door in the Starship Phoenix's trophy room and enable access via a teleporter any time. Some things of note include another effects editor, a station to customize and play your own Hacker minigames, two unused Qwark Vid-Comics, teleporters to the sets of the minigames Bombs Away! and Pirate vs. Ninja (the codes to play these minigames are hidden on certain computers in the Museum and must be entered on the VG-9000 system in the Phoenix - now you know where the games are hosted!), the unused Florana Turboslider racetrack, and a few photos of Ratchet & Hank (Insomniac's new mascot, so says Carl Grande).
  • Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time: This time, the museum can be accessed by collecting all 40 Zoni to gain access to Lord Vorselon. For defeating him for the third and final time, the Insomniac Moon is placed in the Corvus Sector (subsequent Challenge Mode playthroughs move it from the final sector to its own area that can be selected from the Galactic Map at any time). Pre-ordering the Discovery Package version of the game or buying the Collector's Edition also granted you earlier access to the Museum. Things of note in this iteration include a minigame where you can customize two Argorian warriors to fight Nefarious robots for a few rounds, a randomly-generated platforming gauntlet, a racetrack for the Hoverboots, a subarea cut from Lumos, a short video about the game, and a statue of Dan Johnson.
  • Ratchet & Clank (2016): The Insomniac Museum here is significantly different. This time, you unlock it for beating the game and access it through a teleporter in Ratchet's garage on Veldin, and the amount of it you can access is dependent on how many Gold Bolts you've collected. Rather than being modeled after the offices of Insomniac and featuring content cut from the game, it instead hosts a whole bunch of props, assets, stills, promotional art, and concept art from throughout the series' then-14-year history inside a warehouse-like building. The second room also includes the games' cutscenes, as well as two Japanese commercials for Going Commando and the reveal trailer for this game. The HUD for the Plasma Striker has also been disabled, allowing you to get close-ups on everything you like as you wish.
• In the Updated Re-release 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, the intro fanfare and BGM change to that of Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts' first stage.
  • Capcom insists that Mega Man 9 has an unfound secret, but none of the many references, secrets, and little touches found by the players seem to be it.
  • Mega Man X and Mega Man X2 give you the Hadoken and Shoryuken, respectively.
• The 128K version of the ZX Spectrum game Zub has 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).
• The Spectrum game Booty, if loaded with a Currah MicroSpeech unit attached, comes up as a diving game.
• The first Alpha build of A Hat in Time contains one not in the final build. In the first area, Mafia Town, there are several small islands ringing the level that you're not supposed to be able to reach due to the aggressive Border Patrol. However, if you manage to make it past the shark, you can find a tent on one of the islands with a chalkboard inside with a hidden message: "You're not supposed to be here! >:( Go away, or I'll send Queen Vanessa on you!" There's also a small monolith which contains another hidden message, this time in a cryptogram, and a special rainbow rocket with lots of fuel that you can use to explore the level and get to even more places you shouldn't.
• In Something Else, there is a platform beyond the pipe at the start of "Darkave". It can only be accessed through clever use of the Athletic Peach, and features a mid-level gate and a pipe that leads to what is perhaps the best Overly Long Gag in any video game:
  • The first room is a replica of a test level in the original Super Mario World: a short room, without any background music, full of yellow blocks spelling out the word "TEST" (with an added invisible wall below the T; you need the Athletic Peach to wall-jump onto the blocks and bypass it) and a downward-pointing arrow. However, instead of a bottomless pit, there is a hidden pipe right below the arrow, leading to the next room. The bottom of the screen is an invisible floor.
  • The second room is a raised platform, where 90% of it is covered in ramps that produce a hilariously glitchy effect when you run across them. Once again, the bottom of the screen is a floor (in case you fall off), and green apples rain down like confetti. There is a coin formation in an unknown shape at the end, and several doors throughout the level. Only the last one leads to the next room. The music here is just a steel drum playing one note every two seconds.
  • The third room is a carbon-copy of the second one, but the coin formation is replaced with a door leading to the final room.
  • The fourth and final room features Luigi chasing a 3-Up Moon across a flat span of land, until a 1-Up Mushroom is generated. At this point, Luigi can touch the 3-Up Moon to exit the room.
  • After venturing through this incredible, pythonesque series of rooms, Luigi just gets dropped back at the pipe he was supposed to go down to properly continue the level, with a refilled time limit.
• Xland Software's Electro Man has two on Level 6:
  • A dead-end room (no, not in the trope sense) has a distinctive pattern of tiles on the wall. Blast them away and a map of the level will be revealed.
  • The room below this one has a set of pipes forming a swastika (the peace version, not the Nazi version).
• All three episodes of Duke Nukem 1, as well as the standard 10 levels, have a secret 11th level (the same one in all three cases; similar to, though not identical to, Episode 2 Level 1) which can only be reached by using the level-warp cheat. Of course, the exit leads only back into the same level, and the items (including the exit and some of the backgrounds) disappear.
• The Futurama video game has a literal example. A giant Easter Egg is hidden behind one of the walls in the Planet Express level and can only be seen by moving the camera out of boundaries in a specific way.
• In Yo! Noid 2: Enter the Void, if you manage to get to the edge of the world and skybox in the Noid Void, you can look beyond it and be greeted with another skybox, made of pizza.
• In the Famicom game Dragon Unit, when the player walks through the corridor to the princess after beating the Final Boss, if Up, Left, A, B, Start and Select are all held at once, the princess will appear before the player topless. The game's western localization, Castle of Dragon, surprisingly kept this in.
• Psychonauts 2 has a very bizarre Easter Egg found within Hollis' Hot Streak: If you return to the level after beating it and go to the Maternity Ward, you'll find a pen on top of the entrance to the area. If you throw the pen at the "Ward" sign, you get an animatic cutscene involving Raz giving psychic birth to Dr. Loboto as Sasha, Milla and Ford (who are dressed like clowns) assist him in the birth. ...Yeah.
• The Kirby series has a recurring one: if a crescent moon appears in the background of a stage, then there's a good chance that Kirby will be able to enter it like a door. This even applies to when the moon is painted onto the background (Kirby: Triple Deluxe) or on a computer screen (Kirby: Planet Robobot). Entering it will generally lead to a bonus room with powerups and health-restoring items where Kirby falls a long distance, but it changes depending on the game; Kirby's Adventure hides the final Big Switch there, while Kirby Super Star has a Mini-Boss encounter with Bonkers, giving the powerful Hammer ability.
• Pizza Tower:
  • Wait on the file select menu while it is dark for around 40 seconds and Peppino will suddenly leap out at the screen screaming with a huge, gaping mouth and forcefully closing the game. While the lights are on, you can click on Peppino (or press the Mach Run button if you're using a controller) to beat him up. He'll contort in comical ways, including turning into a pizza, and will clench his fist in anger once you stop. Slapping him enough times will unlock The Noise from the get-go on a fresh game.
  • Hold the parry button to breakdance and spawn a boombox.
  • There are some hidden rooms around the hub areas, such as Noisette's restaurant, one with a clown car powerup and another with nothing but a car and a trash can with somebody hiding on it. These rooms typically contain content that was present in earlier builds, but got scrapped in the final release.
  • In Tricky Treat^note a new level added exclusively for the Halloween update, if you backtrack to the level's entrance or get caught by the Ghost Pumpkin while using the ghost transformation, you're treated to a Smash Cut to an silent Jump Scare of the unused "The Judgement Was Final" screen without any text. Peppino just stands there staring at the player in disappointment for a while until the game forcefully closes itself.
  • Want to Rematch The Doise without him being dead? Taunt three times in front of his boss gate, and he'd come back to life! He's still dead during the final boss rush, though.

Puzzle Game

• The Neverhood: If you walk to the end of the Hall of Records with the lights turned off, you can see the faint name of one of the programmers, Mark Lorenzen, near the floor.
• Antichamber: There are several Developer's Rooms that showcase concept art, historical screenshots, and even a piece of shader code (coded with the Unreal Engine graphical editing tools). These tend to be well hidden behind the hardest puzzles in the game.
• Bendy and the Ink Machine:
  • Each chapter has a hidden cardboard cut-out theMeatly - well, of his mascot of course.
  • The radios found throughout the game play fan songs.
  • Various posters and other artworks come from fan art contests.
  • In Chapter 3, there is a broken headset on Level 14 because of a YouTuber who broke his while playing the game.
• The PlayStation version of Jeopardy! has a secret text file on some copies asking you not to pirate the game.
• Squaredle:
  • A number of words, when entered, produce a special response, usually in the form of an emoji at the end of the standard message.
    • If you enter "LEET", you get "l33t (bonus!)" in response.
    • "ROFL" and "LOLOL", though not accepted as words, produce a 🤣
    • "ROBIN" and "PIGEON" produce a 🐦
    • "CANINE" and "SNOOT" produce a 🐶
    • "NOTE" produces a 🎵
    • "QUEEN" and "KING" produce a 👑
    • "KITTEN(S)" and "NYAN" produce a 😸
    • "LION" produces a 🦁
    • "LOVE" produces a ❤️
  • There is a hidden achievement for rotating the board a certain number of times.
• The Talos Principle is chock-full of easter eggs, enough to warrant a walkthrough dedicated to them. It would be easier to list which areas don't have any hidden easter eggs in them. There's even a few literal ones. The Road to Gehenna DLC, while shorter than the main campaign, isn't devoid of easter eggs.
• The Witness:
  • The sand castle from the cover of Braid is found in the sand pits of a glass blowing workshop.
  • Several tableaux appear throughout the game and require the player to stand in a specific position in order to see them.
• Pixelo has a figurative and literal easter egg behind the game's logo on the title screen. Clicking it after dragging away the logo lets you buy it as a badge for 100000G and raise a pixelo duck.

Racing Game

• Wave Race Blue Storm has an easter egg that went undiscovered for over seven years since the game's release. By inputting a button code at the game's audio menu, you change the voices of the coaches to ones that are extremely insulting and berating no matter how good or bad you do in a race.
• You may be familiar with Reiko Nagase, the mascot for the Ridge Racer series. Well, in Type 4, play as PRC and win every race. Around the time she starts appearing in person, she sends you a letter admitting she's a fan of your team but can't show bias as an RRR rep.
• Gran Turismo:
  • If you manage to flip the premium Mine's R34 GT-R in the PS3-era games, you will notice "Thanks for finding this! :)" in the car's underside. The text originally mentioned AUTOart and the respective car model, as well its scale.
  • Some of the fictional racing cars have the developers' names hidden in it. For example, the Pagani Zonda LM Race Car has the names of Takahito Tejima and Yuji Yasuhara (with Italian flag), the data optimizer and GUI programmer, respectively, of the third game. Meanwhile, zooming further the Ford GT LM Race Car Spec II (introduced in 4) reveals the names of real-life drivers Klaus Ludwig and Ricardo Zonta, the drivers of the Mercedes CLK-GTR that won FIA GT in 1998.
  • The High End Performance G37 in 5 and 6 includes a fat-model PlayStation 3 installed in the back seat.
  • The logo of Omega Boost, Polyphony Digital's mecha game (and their only non-racing game so far), can be seen in the side in the Mitsubishi FTO Super Touring Car.
  • Gran Turismo 7:
    • Hideo Kojima appears as a trackside spectator on the Willow Springs circuit.
    • After about 10 minutes on Mount Panorama, a UFO will appear in the distance near the Skyline section (Turns 11 and 12), abduct a cow, and fly off.
• In Mario Kart 64, after winning a race, if you let the music loop 64 times (which is nearly an hour!), the music will change. This is due to a binary counter bug; the music was likely supposed to only loop twice before changing to the other music, which does loop twice.

Real-Time Strategy

• In Age of Empires II, viewing the full map of the William Wallace tutorial campaign's first mission will reveal trees spelling out the Ensemble Studios logo in the lower right corner. As most of this map is walled off by forests and you only control a handful of soldiers, this can't be seen without the "Marco" (reveal map) and "Polo" (remove Fog of War) cheat codes.
• Blizzard Entertainment's games are rife with various Easter eggs. In the RTS games, clicking on a unit often enough results in them 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 Warcraft III. And let's not get started on World of Warcraft...
  • In addition, with the exception of the first Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, every Blizzard RTS (usually the expansion packs) to date has had a hidden music track. Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal has "I'm a Medieval Man" (a reference to the song "Mechanical Man" in Command & Conquer), earned by typing the message "disco" or putting the game disc into a CD player. Typing "Medieval Man" in Warcraft II (Battle.net Edition) also yields this music. Starcraft: Brood War has Radio Free Zerg, a semi-subliminal song featuring the Overmind, earned, of course, by typing "Radio Free Zerg" while playing Zerg. Finally, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne has "Power of the Horde" by either typing in "Tenth Level Tauren Chieftain" or by beating the campaign (which accompanies the song with a nice in-game-engine music video).
  • 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.
• The first Command & Conquer has a hidden 5-mission mini-campaign hidden inside the game. The missions revolve around dinosaurs, and are Westwood's little tribute to Jurassic Park. The missions and dinosaur graphics themselves were found pretty quickly when people started taking apart the game files, but due to some special programming that makes the dinosaur graphics invisible, they cannot be played as they were intended unless the actual unlocking code is used. This code turned out to be a command line parameter, namely funpark.
  • The game also has a set of hidden options that can be put in its .ini configuration file, which will unlock beta behaviour like undeploying the MCV, making wheeled vehicles actually manoeuvre to turn around, unlocking 6-player multiplayer mode, disabling the concrete padding added to the structures, and a lot more. One of the more notable ones is an option to unlock remixed music. This music had long been found in the game files, but before the existence of these options was revealed through hacking, no one knew there was a legitimate way to enable it. Since the words to be given to these .ini options are encoded to a 4-byte value with a one-way encryption algorithm (just like the funpark one), several of them were never found. The one used to unlock the hidden music (an option called "scores") was revealed, through brute-force algorithm cracking, to be "remix". However, due to the way the algorithm works, different strings can result in the same correct value. None of the other words found this way look like actual words, so the actual intended passwords for the other options remain a mystery.
    • Frank Klepacki, the composer, said in a later interview that the remixes are in fact the original versions, but they were deemed too "distracting" due to the voice clips they contained, and "clean" versions were made instead. Oddly enough, most console versions of the game do feature these enhanced versions.
  • The Nintendo 64 version of the game has a lot of funny lines in the skippable intro. One of them, "Clan Warsong is da bom", is an obvious reference to Warcraft II.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert, like the first game, contains a secret mini-campaign involving giant ants. This one is an obvious reference to the nuclear mutants B-movies of the 50's and 60's, more specifically the movie Them!. This Easter egg is already somewhat announced in Morse code innocently hidden in the manual as page decoration. Later interviews revealed that the developers put the Morse code in there without permission, in hopes of getting the producers to allow them to make the Easter egg, a sneaky move which turned out to be successful after the company got hundreds of letters from fans asking about it. Unlike the missions hidden in C&C1, this one was completely added in the Counterstrike expansion, so no files were found in advance. The expansion pack box came with a small paper of Morse code with a pretty straightforward set of instructions (but no further explanation), which turned out to be for unlocking the campaign.
  • Both Red Alert 1 and Command & Conquer 1 contain a hidden option to enable showing actual names for all neutral people and buildings, which normally only show "civilian" and "civilian building" as names. When enabled, each of these civilians will show the first name of one of the people on the Westwood team.
• Tiberian Sun has one in the last Nod mission: there is a civilian building called the "Xmas Tree Farm", which itself is already pretty funny. Destroying it causes CABAL to exclaim "SCROOGE!" at the top of the screen. It also yields a money crate for the effort.
• 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 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 are pretty much the same as the Easter Egg Star Destroyer, but even with the lack of scale, they arevisibly designed to look smaller.
  • One of the Wookiee missions has a fairly elaborate one. If you get up to Tech Level 3 and send a fighter to the right location, or just use cheats to dispel Fog of War and then call upon the power that is Simon the Killer Ewok, you'll find an area containing sand dunes and Tatooine buildings, and the mission objectives will change to defending Queen Amidala from Tusken Raiders.
• In Europa Universalis 3, Aragon has the mission to become King of Gonder, a province in Ethiopia. And to defeat Saruhan, a Turkish state that can sometimes appear as a revolter.
• Crusader Kings II: If you're besieging a holding in Tuscany and have siege events set to provide a pop-up instead of simply a sidebar message (the default setting), you might get a message that Tuscan Raiders have attacked your siege camps (instead of merely "brigands" as is usual).
  Player Character: They will be back in greater numbers...
• Pikmin:
  • Pikmin (2001):
    • The player can make Captain Olimar lie down and cause Pikmin to carry him like they would any carryable object. Once he is taken in to an Onion, he will automatically pop back up just fine, and the Onion will make a firework.
    • Normally, the Nintendo screen at the beginning will have a voice of a Pikmin cheering the series' title. There is a low chance for the Pikmin to be sighing or cheering "Whoo!" instead, and an even lower chance for the sound effect to be a low-pitched voice making a gibberish noise.
  • Pikmin 2:
    • Having twenty of every color of Pikmin out in the squad will have them sing the first few notes of Ai no Uta.
    • Pressing certain buttons on the title screen will make a Bulborb or a Flint Beetle appear, which can interact with the Pikmin on the screen. Another button can have the Pikmin forming the title to leave and be replaced by ones spelling out "Nintendo."
  • Pikmin 3:
    • Having twenty of every type of Pikmin in the squad will have them sing again, this time the first few notes of the game's title theme.
    • Hidden murals of Pikmin can be found throughout the world and seen with the game's camera feature. In Deluxe, there are badges tied to these.

Rhythm Game

• In Rhythm Heaven Megamix, holding L and R while selecting a song from the museum allows you to access a mode where you can drum along to the music.
• Tadpole Treble:
  • Whenever you pause during a level, there's a 5% chance that this will play instead of the normal pause menu music.
  • Leaving the game idle in Etude's Grove will cause the camera to slowly zoom in on his face.
  • Hitting the crossbones in Thunder Creek will flash a picture of the Taranto brothers wearing silly hats^note  the picture is also accompanied by a Spanish translation of the level's song and two doodles that reference Brawl in the Family onscreen for a split second.

Roguelike

• The Binding of Isaac:
  • Codes can be put in the seed menu that will unlock a toggleable mode, usually acting as a Silliness Switch. The codes have a rare chance to appear from a Fortune Teller Machine message.
  • Using The Bible while in the fight against Mom, Mom's Heart, or It Lives will instantly kill the boss. However, using it against Satan will instantly kill you instead.
  • Book of Belial grants a temporary damage boost. If you also have Blood of the Martyr, it secretly grants a huge damage multiplier as well.
  • Blank Card copies the effect of your current card, and ? Card copies the effect of your active item. If you try to use one on the other, both are destroyed and you're sent to the I AM ERROR room.
  • The reverse Chariot card temporarily turns you into an invulnerable, immobile statue. The statue has a very, very low chance to resemble Edith, a character that was removed from The Binding of Isaac: Antibirth and never implemented into Repentance.
  • Glowing Hourglass will normally send you back in time, undoing everything you did in the current room and putting you in the previous one. As of Repentance, if you use it in the starting room of a run without leaving the room^note only possible without cheating by getting it as one of Eden's two random starting items or from Eden's Blessing, it will send you to Home, which is where Isaac came from in the game's opening.
  • Baby Plum has an extremely rare^note 0.0001%, or one ten thousanth of a percent chance to be hit with a missile in her death animation. This was taken from the gag G Fuel runs, where it was her guaranteed death animation.
• Fiend Folio:
  • Using the Rat Poison item, which erases rooms for the run based on who developed them, in a room made by Vermin will have Vermin's Author Avatar drop dead from the ceiling.
  • Marked skulls have alternate skins based on every floor style in the game, even though they are normally only seen in Depths, Necropolis, or Dank Depths. Many are references, some are cameos of the developers' characters, others are gags like trollface or a tree sprout shaped like a butt. They can only be seen by editting them in to the given floor or with a rare chance in certain I AM ERROR Rooms.
  • If the player is base Isaac in the first room of the game and waits until 0:04:20 on the timer, Isaac will pull out a blunt and smoke it.
  • Runes have a literal one in a million chance to spawn as an "Ansus" rune. Unlike the vanilla Ansuz revealing the entire floor's map, Ansus hides the map by activating the same effect as the Amnesia pill.

Shoot 'em Up

• Steve Kitchen, the programmer of the Atari 2600 version of the arcade game Carnival, had his name appear where the score is by hitting a special target that appears in the game if you hold down the action button to start the game just as you turn on the system.
• You have one hidden weapon and accessory slot in Frantic 3, accessible by clicking on it (it's the one that's dark, but right next to your open weapon/accesory slots).
• The MSX version of Nemesis 2 allowed you to access several Easter Eggs by plugging in games into the second cartridge slot of the MSX.
  • Plugging in Penguin Adventure would turn the player ship into Pentarou, complete with fish as power-ups.
  • Knightmare II: The Maze of Galious would allow you to get all your weapons back after a death.
  • Q*bert would enable 3 special password cheat codes during the F1 pause screen.
    • LARS18TH would fully power-up your ship.
    • METALION would give you temporary invincibility.
    • NEMESIS would skip the stage you are currently on.
• The sound effect that plays when pausing any of the Windows-era Touhou Project games is actually a sped up version of the series' main theme, as shown in this tweet.

Simulation

• Plague Inc.: Playing the game in Cure mode with a virus named "COVID-19" will give you a virus with the symptoms and traits of the actual COVID-19: "Fever", "Pneumonia", "Sneezing", "Coughing", "Systemic Infection", "Asymptomatic" and "Well Understood".
• Renaming guests in the first two RollerCoaster Tycoon games will make them perform special actions. Here is the list for the second game; at least part of them are in the first game as well.
• Zoo Tycoon has quite a lot of secrets, most of which fall under Guide Dang It!.
  • 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 birds inexplicably menacing the guests, causing widespread terror.
  • There are animals you can unlock by finding Easter eggs too, mostly fantastic critters like unicorns or Bigfoot. You can also unlock one dinosaur (Triceratops) and a prehistoric giant crocodile without having the Dinosaur Digs expansion pack.
  • The golden brick path, generally considered the best in the game, is obtained by placing a lion, tiger, and bear in the same exhibit.
• Zoo Tycoon 2 has secrets too.
  • There is a red-eyed sharped-toothed evil penguin capable of killing any other animal in the game (even T-rex), that you can obtain various ways. This is something you should keep in mind before accepting an offer for a free penguin, because this is what it is and it can't ever be given away. This Easter egg is itself a reference to another (unintentional) Easter egg; a glitch in the first game that caused the penguins to be strong enough to kill large animals, and leads to a separate Easter egg; when you acquire one there's a chance of it replacing the scientist in the genetic lab. Eggception?
  • The cavemen that will wander around your zoo if you thaw a glacier.
  • The map select screen has a globe that you can spin. If you do it fast enough, it plays a sound clip of people screaming.
• InTheme Park World, Naming customers after certain production team members causes them to stay longer or spend more money.
• SimCopter has one of the most famous Easter Eggs of all. In the finale, you are greeted by a throng of adoring citizens. Allegedly, the producer told one of the artists to include a bunch of bikini babes in the scene, without knowing that the artist was gay. Annoyed at the request, the artist included several speedo-wearing men, some of whom are kissing. Maxis fired him and was forced to recall early editions of the game.
• Also should note that in SimCity 3000 and SimCity 4, many of the office buildings are named after a person who helped develop the game (like Wren Insurance). And let's not forget the biggest Easter Egg of them all; The California Plaza, where the Maxis studios is located, is a landmark players can build in their cities (actually quite snazzy looking too).
• Drakengard:
  • After seeing all of the game's Multiple Endings. It involves doing a free mission in Tokyo and shooting down three or five jets of the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force, which is much harder than it sounds. After you accomplish this, you can choose to fly either your dragon or an SU-47 in free missions. This is a Shout-Out to Cavia Inc., who develop the Ace Combat series of games and developed the Flight Sim half of the game. Did I mention that the protagonist is still mounted on the outside of the jet?
  • Another can be found in Manah's castle. In the throne room there are four paintings. Three of them are nothing of note, but the fourth has a familiar face: The Skull Knight.
• In the third level of BattleTanx 2: Global Assault there are many cars scattered around the level, many outside the game area. They can be destroyed with careful blasting or a remote controlled rocket. One of these, upon destruction, will cue a whole series of messages from various employees who worked on the game. The theme is "We want to work hard on making a good game".
• Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter has literal Easter Eggs hidden in the Mount Merakan level.
• The Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series has several Easter Eggs, such as a hidden level in the first game that lets you play as an AT-ST. All three games have a code that turns one of the ships into a flying Buick (yes, the car), and best of all the first game has a code that unlocks the Naboo Starfighter. This code wasn't discovered until six months after the game came out (which was also when the movie came out in theaters), when LucasArts unveiled it. Some of the people who worked on the game didn't even know about it.
• Creatures has many, but the most famous is Bustr.txt, a file which reads: 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 has 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 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.
• F/A 18 Hornet has a literal giant easter egg floating over an airbase near Lake Bahr-al-Mith in Iraq.
• The Hollywood Hacking sim Uplink combines this with Genius Bonus in a very interesting and thematically appropriate way. There are supposedly encrypted easter eggs hidden in the game's code. If you want to see them, find the right segments and crack the encryption keys.
• Star Wars: Rebel Assault II has several that are activated by holding down certain keys during a cutscene. One is a falling stormtrooper doing a Wile E. Coyote impression, another is a squad of dancing stormtroopers.
• In Silent Hunter 4, you can find a Ghost Ship (the Flying Dutchman)? as well as...well.
• Spore is about the vast journey of evolution and the rich tapestry of life, so it would only make sense if you were to find at least a few good Easter eggs.
  • In the Main Menu, spin the galaxy around fast enough and pictures of the developer will spill out of the galactic core. In Spore Creature Creator, spinning it will instead show a picture of Will Wright, one of the game's designers.
  • In the Space Stage, zoom out as far as you can (until you can see the entire galaxy) and you will begin to hear the Main Menu theme "Your Own Personal Universe".
  • You can find our solar system, Sol, with all eight planets and the natural satellites Luna (The Moon), Ganymede and Titan, making it the largest solar system in the galaxy. All of the non gas giant planets can be terraformed and colonised. You can get two achievements for finding Earth and destroying it with a Planet Buster
  • If you navigate your way through the heavily-guarded Galactic Core, you will meet Steve in his classic ship (as he appeared in SimCity 2000). He will reward you 42 charges of the staff of life, which fully terraforms any planet to a score of T3 (the maximum), and will even ask you to visit the "third rock from Sol" (see above). Also, it will record this event in your history tab as your species achieving enlightenment.
• In Kerbal Space Program there are various objects hidden on planets. They are pretty hard to find, since planets (even the scaled down versions found in this game) are very large.
• In Cold Waters, an update post-release added scenarios with playable Soviet subs, as well as US Navy ships and aircraft to play against. If you take a look at those ships in the vessel viewer (or put up your periscope close enough to one to get a good view), you can see that they're flying actual international signal flags. They spell out Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo Yankee Echo Alfa Hotel, as if to say "America, Fuck Yeah!"

Sports Game

• Backyard Sports: Pablo Sanchez speaks Spanish on his player profiles. If you hold shift while clicking his picture, he will say a phrase in English. In the original Backyard Baseball, he says this:
  Pablo: Okay, don't tell the other kids, but uh... I speak English. I learn Spanish in school.
• There's at least one Championship Manager game that allows you to play as an international team if you give yourself the same name as the manager of that team in the year the game was released.
• In the original Wii Sports, it's possible to throw the bowling ball in such a way that it starts rolling backwards instead of onto the bowling lane. Do so, and the crowd in the background will jump in surprise.

Stealth Game

• Metal Gear. The whole series. The early ones have a few, but the Solid games contain more than you could possibly ever find — to the point where it's almost closer to Developer's Foresight. They vary from bonus conversations, to lewd posters and jokes, to Konami Easter Island heads, to Running Gags, to strange bonus items and scenes. You can get so much Video Game Cruelty Punishment it's unreal, get enough Fanservice to last you the night, and even make the main character shave off his beard for the finale of the second game, if you decide you don't like it.
• Thief:
  • The Gold edition of Thief: The Dark Project features a hidden joke stage, accessible by altering the configuration file, that intentionally exposes things players aren't supposed to see, such as bugs that were killed before final release and the placeholder texture, along with notes giving insights into the design process and some out-and-out gags.
  • Then there's an Easter Egg basketball court (which doubles as a Developer Room thanks to a scroll with the devs' quotes). It's hidden in the training mission, but you can access it only if you select Expert difficulty.
  • Thief II: The Metal Age has a rather unusual one. In the level where you break into the City Watch HQ, if you throw a Scouting Orb over the wall immediately to your left when the level begins you can see a couple of zombies dancing.
• There's an incredibly obscure easter egg in the sixth-gen version of Splinter Cell: Double Agent (it was so obscure that it wasn't until 2010, 3 years after its release, that someone finally discovered it). If you're playing co-op mode, you can find baby seals hidden in Ellsworth Prison by shooting open lockers for clues. Once you find the seals, they give you more clues and ask you to fetch them certain objects. Giving them the wrong object results in mission failure.
• Hitman:
  • There are a few in Hitman: Absolution, the most entertaining of which is unlocked by trying to show mercy to Lenny via shooing away (and then shooting at) the gathering vultures. Then an ice cream truck comes out of nowhere and wallops Lenny into oblivion. The complete lack of reaction from 47 is also completely in character.
  • The World of Assassination Trilogy is absolutely lousy with joke environmental details to reward players who diligently look at posters, papers, computer screens, etc. Just some examples:
    • The first training mission has an assembly manual revealing the entire plywood mockup of a full-scale party yacht is a single IKEA kit.
    • The funeral parlor in Sapienza has some very interesting features for its coffins, such as a TV stand.

Survival Horror

• SCP: Secret Laboratory: The .44 Revolver has two secret animations with a 1-in-50 chance of occurring; an equip animation which has the gun being briefly twirled, and a reload animation where the entire cylinder is replaced.
• Resident Evil 2 has three sets of film you can find and develop, which reveals photos related to the story. A fourth film can be found if you search Wesker's desk over 50 times. The fourth film contains a picture of Rebecca Chambers, a character from the first game, wearing a basketball uniform.
• In Resident Evil 3: Nemesis if you find every file in the game in the order they appear in the file menu, which either requires a ludicrous amount of luck or a walkthrough and a lot of patience, Game Instruction A will be replaced with Jill's Diary. It gives a bit of brief exposition, detailing where Chris had gone in Resident Evil 2, why Jill had stayed behind in the city, and gives a bit of insight into what her life had become like after surviving the events of Resident Evil.
  • A darker Easter Egg that a keenly aware player will notice is that there are several points in the first half of the game where you can hear, and sometimes even see, other survivors falling prey to the monsters of Raccoon City, though you can't do anything to save them. The official Resident Evil wiki has an article on the subject.
• It's something of a Running Gag in Five Nights at Freddy's and its numerous fan games that you can honk Freddy's (or the fangame's poster animatronic's) nose by clicking a representation of them in your office.
  • In the first game, aside from squeaking Freddy's nose on the 'Celebrate' poster in your office, there are occasional alterations throughout the pizzeria, which you may or may not ever encounter. 'IT'S ME' will show up in various locations, the list of rules will occasionally change to one of several newspaper articles containing Story Breadcrumbs, drawings on the walls will show crying faces, and a poster of Freddy will occasionally change to Freddy tearing his costume head off, or a yellow, eyeless Freddy face. That last change will summon a yellow recolor of Freddy, known as 'Golden Freddy', to your office, where he will crash your game unless you quickly put the monitor back up. When starting the game up, you will also occasionally see an eyeless Bonnie face.
  • The second game continues the nose squeaking with another poster. It also has two game-crashing Golden Freddy-esque figures- Shadow Bonnie (appears in your office) and Shadow Freddy (appears in Parts & Services after everyone else has left). There's also Balloon Girl/JJ (hides under your desk), the Bare Endoskeleton (appears rarely in the Prize Corner and left vent), and the Paperpal (occasionally moves into your office), but none of them can hurt you. The eyeless animatronic openings also continue with Toy Bonnie and Foxy.
  • In 3, you squeak the nose of a Freddy drawing in your office. A slumped empty Freddy suit will occasionally appear in the shadows by the door (it's sometimes called Phantom Golden Freddy, but this is in no way official). The moving paperpal and the changing pictures (this time, turning Freddy into Springtrap) also return. And as a rare opening screen, you get Springtrap taking off his mask to show the Murderer's desiccated face, which you can also slightly see in one of his jumpscares.
  • In 4, you squeak the nose of a Freddy plushie on your bed. Next to the bed (and hard to see because they're only just in flashlight range) there's sometimes one of three objects- a vase of flowers, an IV drip, and a pill bottle, hinting about the protagonist's unfortunate fate. During one between-night minigame, you can also see a 'Fredbear & Friends' cartoon dated to 1983, and in another, you can catch a glimpse of the Murderer at his day job.
  • In Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location, the squeaky-nose object is a clown mask. Ennard's mask, to be specific. You can occasionally catch Bidybab and/or the Minireenas staring at you from the background. Including sometimes when you're at home watching TV. You can also see camera feeds of the Five Nights at Freddy's 4 house if you type '1983' in the Private Room.
  • In Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator, the squeakable object is your mini-Funtime Freddy, Helpy. Some purchasable animatronics come with lore-explaining minigames. You can also occasionally see screens of the Salvage animatronics sitting slumped over in an alley.
  • In Ultimate Custom Night, occasionally, a graphic of a child's face will appear in various locations around your office (and your death screen). You can also hear a voice whisper along with some of the Mediocre Melodies' death quotes. When Old Man Consequences is at AI level 1 and no other animatronics are active, completing his 'better catch a fish' game will send you to his little lake area, where he will tell you or rather, the Vengeful Spirit, to let William Afton go instead of using the game to torture him. Setting Golden Freddy to 1 and using the Death Coin on him will summon Fredbear to jumpscare you. After you unlock every cutscene (which are mostly silly), you'll unlock a short sequence of an ominously twitching Golden Freddy.
• In Cry of Fear there’s a literal example where you can find an actual Easter Egg on a desk in an apartment building.
  • Simon: Very funny...An easter egg...
• JR's: Clicking the nose of the doll on top of the monitor makes a honking sound.
• A Bite at Freddy's: In addition to the nose of the office's Freddy poster making honking noises, clicking on various objects in the environment makes a variety of silly sounds. Posters of the characters giggle, the endoskeleton head backstage sneezes, and the food in the office elicits a "Pee-you!" from Edward.

Turn-Based Strategy

• Shining Force has two items which, when held by the appropriate (female) character, change that character's field sprites to ones with a little more Fanservice. In the English-language release, their names have been romanized, but not translated.
• Eschalon: Book 1 contains three items called Easter Eggs. If all three are found they can be traded in to make the character advance a level.
• You have to be incredibly lucky or very persistent to see it, but in Phantom Brave, you can generate anthropomorphic owl Player Mooks. One of the possible names assigned to them is Orly.
• In the Special Edition version of Lords of Magic, there are 4 official quests (Fire, Earth, Death, and Order) you can choose from. There's also a hidden fifth quest (based on the story of Siegfried, complete with German accents) that can be accessed by clicking on the center of the quest selection room.
• In Super Robot Wars games where you can select your birthday and blood type to determine your player character's spirit commands, November 11 and the blood type B tends to result in a consistently powerful set of abilities. This is because it is long-time producer Takanobu Terada's birthday and blood type.

Visual Novels

• The diner’s toaster from Daughter for Dessert appears in Dr. Mosely’s office in Double Homework when she is plotting with the protagonist to get damaging information about Dennis on recording. However, this begs the question: since Mortelli gave it to Johanna before, how did Dr. Mosely get it?
• In the Mirror Moon Fan Translation of Fate/stay night, 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.
• In the later chapters of Melody, a few appear:
  • In the Perfect Ending, Melody’s award ceremony takes place in Seaside (a town introduced in Dating My Daughter).
  • Also, in the Cool Aunt Ending, one of the models in Amy’s fashion show is Georgina from Dating My Daughter.
  • The character asset for Rachel, also from Dating My Daughter, appears in a bar where Melody is giving a concert.
• There's a special Easter Egg ending in Zero Time Dilemma where, during the Q-Team Mexican Standoff, you have to manually type the name of who you want to shoot, or no one if you wish. If you type in Zero's real name then Zero is killed instead.
• In Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, if you go to the main gate at the start of the second part of case 3, you can see a cameo appearance by Phoenix, Maya, and Pearl, riding in a rowboat in the background. In the final case of the sequel, if you re-examine the rear entrance after the initial investigation of the murder scene, the camera pans beyond the back wall to show Phoenix and Maya looking up at the Grand Tower.
• There is a funny one in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, during the second class trial. Ryoma is found dead in a water tank that Himiko used for a magic show, and Himiko is suspected of killing him, not helped by her insistence that she did the Underwater Escape using magic. Shuichi can play along and confirm that Himiko actually used magic, surprising her to the point where she will struggle to keep up the act. While Tenko accuses Shuichi of white knighting, Maki and Angie point out that Himiko would be more suspicious if she really used magic to escape, and she simply could have swapped places with Ryoma. This forces Himiko to break character for a moment and point out the actual contradiction in the Nonstop Debate. Tenko will then accuse Shuichi of manipulating Himiko into telling the truth.

Western RPG

• Fallout has many examples. This link lists some.
  • In Fallout 2, you can find a literal Easter egg in a pot in the New Reno Arms basement.
  • 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" trait in New Vegas essentially places a bunch of Easter eggs on the map that also double as Shout Outs to other media, including another crashed alien recon craft.
  • On top of normal random encounters on the world map in 1, 2 and Tactics, if the player is lucky enough, they'll run into a number of "special encounters", many of which are Shout-Out-laden Easter Egg material and often provide some pretty powerful items (though in the second game, there are some unlucky special encounters designed to screw over the player, such as sticking them in the middle of a field of exploding Brahmin, a heavily-irradiated toxic waste dump, or right next to the infamous Pariah Dog.)
• 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 is 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.
• New Horizons, has plenty, mostly regarding Pirates of the Caribbean, and set on Isla de Muerta. Though there are also other ones present:
  • Joshamee Gibbs can be found in the tavern on Tortuga/La Tortue, with voice lines from the movies. He asks to join as a boatswain, and then gives Jack Sparrow's compass to allow access to Isla de Muerta.
  • Blackbeard waits at Witch's Rock, armed with the Sword of Triton. Unless you know his weakness, however, he's invincible. Defeating him grants the most powerful - and useful - melee weapon in the game.
  • Hendrik Van der Decken, the original captain of the dreaded Flying Dutchman according to the legend, appears himself in the bones, and resides inside a shipwreck at the coast. He mostly serves to sell movie-ships, but is also the only way to obtain quest-exclusive ships that would be Lost Forever should they get sunk or sold, with some very rare ones for good measure. He also offers every type of cannon in the game, including some unique ones, and one Infinity +1 Sword - with their prices to match.
  • Clint Eastwood in his role as Dirty Harry is hidden somewhere in the jungles of Nevis with a small shack. He exchanges some words, and then comes gunning with four horse pistols - or a freakin' shotgun when playing in Arcade Sailing Mode.
  • Edward Kenway's flag can be chosen as personal pirate flag in the Beyond New Horizons-version. The long awaited Black Flag 2 is finally here, ladies and gentlemen!
  • Generally there are a lot of playable characters from different books, movies, and games. Including Geralt of Rivia, of all people.
• Baldur'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." 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.
• The voice actors for Hawke in Dragon Age II must have had a lot of fun the day they recorded their combat lines; the source audio file archive includes such menacing battle cries as "There's a donkey in the spoon drawer!" and "This fish isn't working!"
• In The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, you can explore a bit the courtyard from the La Valette castle and discover a dead man besides a broken hay wagon◊, wearing hooded white robes and a bright red bend around his waist. When passing by, Geralt says "I guess they'll never learn".
• TaskMaker has several hidden spells accessible via "other spell to invoke". Some of them display silly messages, such as "eggs", which brings up the message "why did you say eggs?"
• The Elder Scrolls
  • A recurring one in the series is M'aiq the Lair, a Khajiit Legacy Character, who has appeared in every game since Morrowind. M'aiq is a known a Fourth-Wall Observer (and Leaner and Breaker) who voices the opinions of the series' creators and developers, largely in the form of Take Thats, to both the audience (given the ES Unpleasable Fanbase) and isn't above above taking some at Bethesda itself.
  • Each game in the series has numerous, far too many to list here, but are conveniently listed at the links below:
    • Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Online
• In Ultima V on the Commodore, yelling FLIPFLOP will flip the screen upside down.
• Undertale has several:
  • The door in the Snowdin Woods will open if you dodge all of the Kickstarter backer credits perfectly in the Golden Ending.
  • If you do nothing but hum when facing Shyren, this will have a mini-plot where you and she improve your singing careers. In game, this means you can cause Knight Knight to fall asleep faster by singing. This also activates Shyren's yellow title in the epilogue.
  • Each character in the ending credits / epilogue has two descriptions. The first is a standard white description, and the second is a yellow description if you did something unique with them. One of the most obscure is Aaron's, which is triggered by wandering around the lake near Napstablook's house while playing one of their music CDs.
  • When you reach the Last Corridor on a Pacifist run, save the game before you talk to Sans. As soon as you stop talking to each other, reload the game and talk to him again. Keep doing this until you get the key to his room. Search his room for a silver key to the door behind his house. There's a secret lab with what is possibly a time machine there.
  • There's a hidden encounter in Hotland. Follow the path from the Right Floor 2 elevator until you reach the long, straight area with a T-intersection. There's an invisible path going north. Go there when your computer's time and date are set for October 10th at 8 PM to encounter So Sorry.
  • Unpacking the game allows access to a secret audio file from Toby politely asking them to not spoil secrets and post them on the internet. Take a listen.
  • There's an Abandoned Quiche under a bench east of the second Bridge Seed puzzle room. You can use the seeds to get there.
  • By changing a property in the Undertale.ini file, you can have some extra Fun with the game by hunting for secrets. However, should you get the Wrong Number Song to happen, then don't expect any Fun.
    • As of 2020, this has been patched so the Fun value no longer needs to be modified.
  • If you play the game in windowed mode, the title of the game window changes several times:
    • During the opera segment in Hotland, it reads "Undertale: The Musical".
    • When you restart the game after Flowey forcibly closes it and the intro glitches out, the title cycles through random gibberish. Until you beat him, it reads "Floweytale".
    • If you finish a No Mercy run, the game has no title after the Fallen Child destroys the world.
  • Related to the above: when the Fallen Child attacks the game itself and fills the screen with 9s, the window shifts and shakes repeatedly.
  • If the game crashes (unintentionally) or if you launch Program Manager while the game is running, the game's internal description is "Leading Brand UNDERTALE-type software".
  • The "Please Connect A Controller" prompt in the Xbox version can get snarky or outright weird under certain conditions:
    • Repeatedly disconnecting the controller will prompt the message "That seems to be your thing."
    • "No Controlly Cannoli" will rarely appear, seemingly at random.
    • Disconnecting the controller during the "date" with Papyrus will have it state "You were excited about dating a very handsome skeleton and pulled the controller out by accident. I understand."
    • Disconnecting when the game is hijacked by Flowey will cause the game to say "Reconnnect in 10 or your data will be ERASED!" It's a bluff, unsurprisingly - letting the timer run out will simply lead to a black screen, and the game will pick up just fine when you reconnect the controller.
    • Disconnecting during the lab area will have it read "No Controller Connected. No head is connected. No body is connected. No arms are connected. No legs are connected. No skin is connected. No ears are connected. No face is connected."
• Epic Battle Fantasy 5:
  • Since the Version 2.0 update, there is a 1% chance after defeating the third boss that using the 7th Heaven Limit Break will show Natalie naked with two tiny censor bars instead of the usual underwear/fanservice costume based on her equipment. For obvious reasons, this will not happen if the "Cleavage" option is disabled.
  • If Natalie has the Santa Skirt and Red Ribbon equipped, she will be wearing ribbons across her chest rather than the usual top that comes with the former armor.
• Bug Fables:
  • In Chapter 3, the party gets the option to see Bugaria through a telescope, a view that the player can move around. Looking towards the right end above the border of the land will show a large, shadowy figure barely visible in the distance. This is confirmed to be Dead Lander Omega, an unknown monstrous being that is glimpsed at closer much later in the game.
  • Naming the save file certain codes will activate modes for that save. They range from cosmetic (turning most characters in to Tanjirin) to simply changing the gameplay (randomizing Medals) to being a difficulty booster. With the exception of TUFFBUGS, which enables multiple codes at once, all of the codes can be found by completing certain extra challenges not even tied to the game's standard achievement system.
  • A hidden superboss can be fought in the Cave of Trials by having either a Tangy Berry in the fourth item slot when it is completed or by having four Tangy Berries in the inventory.

Wide Open Sandbox

• The Grand Theft Auto series is as a whole rife with Easter eggs. Notable ones include:
  • The hidden "You weren't supposed to be able to get here you know" sign in Grand Theft Auto III. As a nod to this Easter egg, the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 2 versions of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories include "Hello Again!" and "You just can't get enough of this alley, can you?" signs respectively in its place as if the developers were expecting players to revisit this spot again. And again.
  • A literal chocolate egg with "Happy Easter" written on in a secret room in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. The PlayStation 2 version of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories reintroduces the same room with the egg being under construction, complete with a miniature construction crane.
    • On a more cryptic note, players in Vice City can use a clipping exploit to view a picture hidden behind an Ammu-Nation wall of Ronald Reagan having fired a few rounds at a bulls-eyed picture of Mikhail Gorbachev◊.
  • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas's "There are no Easter Eggs up here. Go away." sign on top of one of the towers of the Gant Bridge in San Fierro.
    • Furthermore, if you go to the Bridge's tourist gift shop, you will see a piece of the bridge's cable◊, and a plaque describing how much disc space the bridge takes up◊ (A "staggering" 1.27 megabytes of space!).
  • Recurring instances of Rockstar Leed's signature smiley seen on the aforementioned "Hello Again!" sign, as well as on multiple hidden signs in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (effectively serving an actual Easter egg hunt) and under the sea in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.
    • The PlayStation Portable version of Vice City Stories has 12 of these signs, with one found under the sea reading "Nothing to see here"; the PS2 version has that very sign altered to read "I wasn't joking, there really is nothing to see here. Go check out the VCN building instead!", referring to the newly reintroduced Easter egg room.
  • The "Beating Heart Of Liberty City" inside the Statue of Happiness in Grand Theft Auto IV, "locked" behind a non-solid doorway bearing a sign reading "No Hidden Content This Way". It becomes less of an Easter egg in The Ballad Of Gay Tony when the interior of the statue is a possible respawn point after the player blacks out from excess drinking.
  • Grand Theft Auto V: Franklin has a book entitled Red Dead written by a J. Marston on his bookshelf.
• Saints Row 2 has an actual Easter Bunny that rises from the water.
  • Someone caught it and boated it to Steelport.
  • In Saints Row IV, there's a "Developer's Room" hidden under the Let's Pretend store. It contains a wall of cardboard cut-outs with the development team's faces on them, along with a new weapon, the Loud Locust.
• Endless Ocean has a lot of these, but they're either very small, unobtrusive, and possibly not intentional (the holes in the rock at Comb Reef, the various findable items, the out-of-season fish) or huge enough to stretch the definition of "egg" (the Ship's Rest area, some of the aforementioned items). The only true Easter Egg is the secret cutscene unlockable by sitting on the deckchair at sunset.
  • There are a few other ones that are almost definitely intentional. Kat can be spoken to on deck, and usually provides information as to what you should do next. However, once story mode has been completed, she says random, sometimes navel-contemplative, sometimes funny things. There's also another secret cutscene unlocked by achieving 100% Completion.
• 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 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.
• In Minecraft's 360 Edition tutorial world, it's possible to find a pyramid which contains a strange tower - four blocks of gold, stacked atop one block of obsidian. This is a reference to Achievement Hunter's Minecraft videos, in which they compete to earn a "Tower of Pimps"... four blocks of gold stacked atop one block of obsidian!
• Subnautica's Cyclops submarine's built-in AI will occasionally say "You are the best captain in the world, I'm not even squidding" instead of the usual "Welcome aboard, Captain" when you enter it.
• Terraria:
  • The 1.4 update added seeds to world generation, and with it came three, then four, then five, then eight secret seeds that have effects on world generation:
    • The first seed is '5162020', which creates a 'Drunk World': Both the Corruption and Crismon will spawn in the world, as will both variations on all Ore tiers, and unlocks the soundtrack of the ill-fated Terraria: Otherworld for use in the game. The seed itself references the release date of Terraria's 1.4 update: May 16, 2020.
    • The second seed is 'Not the bees!' which, predictably, turns the world into a bee-themed world, examples being that almost ALL water in the world is replaced with Honey, the Snow biome is made entirely of hive blocks, the Jungle replaces the forest, Larva can spawn anywhere (even on the surface), and approaching the edge of the world can cause Queen Bee to spawn.
    • The third seed is 'For the worthy', which massively ramps the difficulty of the game up in that specific world, including enemies having more hp and dealing massively increased damage (For instance, in a world with this seed, a Demon Eye, one of the earliest pre-hardmode enemies any given player can face, will deal 40 damage per hit to a character decked out in full Solar Flare Armor, the armor with the highest defense in the game), and trees and pots dropping lit bombs.
    • Exactly one year after was an update adding a fourth seed: 'celebrationmk10,' for the game's tenth anniversary. It spawns a group of NPCs who immediately throw a party and the world is painted pink and cyan. This seed makes certain grinding aspects of the game easier: "rare items" either have a much higher chance of dropping or are sold by the Princess, the Travelling Merchant sells more, and it's easier to obtain Fallen Stars quicker. It is also the only seed that naturally spawns Hallowed grass Pre-Hardmode, on Floating Islands. The seed has two unique enemies: Gold Slimes, which release money when hit; and Jungle Mimics, which were once Dummied Out but now drop either joke items or items with innuendo involved (Golden Shower, Master Bait, etc), and can "vomit" out various blocks. Jungle Mimics are also the only renewable source of certain blocks outside of Journey Mode.
    • The Don't Starve crossover update added 'the constant,' which generates a world with mechanics similar to Don't Starve. There is a hunger mechanic that will kill the player if they do not eat regularly, being in total darkness can damage, the characters' hit sounds are replaced with the music-themed Voice Grunting of that game, and the lighting is different. Crossover items related to Don't Starve also drop more often.
    • 'no traps' does the exact opposite of what it says it would do and litters the world with traps outside of the starting area, including some unique traps not ordinarily seen in a normal world. The loading screen also replaces "Setting traps" with "Not setting traps."
    • 'don't dig up' creates an alien world where almost everything is placed differently. The starting area is a safe zone in the Underworld (the "normal" Underworld can still be found a distance away), with an "underground surface" right above it. The actual surface is repurposed to a dangerous place that is entirely infected by the Evil Biome, with stronger enemies, and there is no sun. Other more minor oddities are present, like certain weapons switching around in progression and power.
    • 'get fixed boi' combines at least some traits of all seven of the above seeds for an especially chaotic world.
  • Ducks have a small chance to make the sound of a person saying the word "quack" in a bored tone instead of the usual quacking noises. Owls likewise have a chance to make the sound of a person saying the word "hoot."
  • The 3DS version contains an exclusive Easter Egg in the Underworld. All the way at the bottom right of the world, the camera typically stops panning as your character reaches it, but using the precision placement mode on the bottom screen lets you see past the boundaries and, with it, you can see a Fire Flower◊ straight out of Super Mario World.
  • The sun or moon can be clicked on and dragged in the title screen, which also changes the time of day. Doing this from update 1.4 onwards will change the logo and title screen music to their versions from before 1.4.
  • The Shimmer is a semi-hidden liquid that transforms objects thrown in to it. Most of the time, it "de-crafts" crafted material, but it has several special interactions if the given item is submerged. Every friendly NPC, even "wanderers" like the Old Man and Skeleton Merchant, has an alternate appearance that they take after being in the Shimmer for a period of time. Bricks crafted from the material the Final Boss drops can also be changed to a whopping eight alternate appearances based on the phase of the moon when they are thrown in.

Miscellaneous

• On the QWERTY type key arrangement, the word "Typewriter" is contained in the top row. Whether or not this is coincidence is debatable.
  • According to Cracked, this was so salesmen could easily type the word to impress potential buyers.
  • "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 Ambrosia Software, press 'X' on that game's title screen for an Easter Egg. (The individual games contain many additional eggs, like Escape Velocity's "forklift"—a Lethal Joke Item that can only be obtained, with difficulty, while viewing another egg.)
• A particularly common form of Easter egg is a "programmers' room". A well-known example is found in 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: Link's 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 (or "MOYSE" in the German localization of DX) 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 of DX 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). In the black-and-white version of the game, "MOYSE" in the German translation plays a song unique to that version while "LOLO" in the French translation plays a song unique to it, but the DX version replaced them with something less unique. Additionally, "ZELDA" plays a remix of the Overworld theme in all versions of the game. In the Switch remake, "TOTAKEKE" can be accessed in all languages, and a new remix of "Ballad of the Wind Fish" plays when entering "MARIN".
  • Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins: Wait at the Game Over screen for 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
  • Virtual Boy Wario Land: After watching the credits, wait on the ending screen for a minute and 15 seconds.
  • Yoshi's Story: Wait on the "Trial Mode" screen for 2 minutes and 10 seconds.
  • Mario Paint: Click on the "O" of the Mario Paint title.
  • Luigi's Mansion: Wait on the screen that shows the Poltergust's controls for 3 minutes and 25 seconds.
  • Animal Crossing games traditionally feature it as "K.K. Song", available on request only from K.K. Slider. In Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Kapp'n will also whistle it if you linger on the Island connection screen for about 2 minutes and 30 seconds, although most players will never hear this because it requires a really bad internet connection.
  • Pikmin 2: Enter an unexplored cave and complete it, collecting all the treasures. When the "Cave Completed" screen appears, wait on it for a few minutes to hear the song.
  • Yoshi Touch & Go: Totaka's Song can be heard during the windy stage if the player pauses the game and waits for three minutes and 45 seconds.
  • Mario Kart 8 (Deluxe): wait near a Yoshi on the side of a racetrack and you can sometimes hear them hum the song.
  • Not only is it hidden in games, but it is also hidden in Animal Crossing: New Leaf's European website! Just click on K.K. Slider to play it.
• Super Smash Bros. has plenty of these.
  • In Brawl, try listening to to the BGM for Peach's Final Smash in slow motion. It's a sped-up version of the Warp Zone theme in Super Mario Bros. 3.
  • Lightly tapping down on the directional pad while playing as Snake on Shadow Moses Island will bring up a codec conversation about a character he's fighting.
  • Similar to Snake, the Star Fox characters can do this at their home stages starting in Melee, and in the fourth installment, Pit does it on Palutena's Temple.
  • Also, as an Easter Egg inside the Easter Egg, when Snake does this while fighting against Falco, Slippy from Star Fox appears on the codec instead of a character from the Metal Gear series, telling Snake that he hacked into the system.
  • Ultimate has expanded camera features compared to its predecessors, giving the player plenty of tools that allow them to make artistic shots from nearly any angle. You can use this to find all kinds of hidden Easter Eggs:
    • The interior of Dungeon Man's head has the face of Brick Road sticking out of the "wall".
    • Great Bay has a Piece of Heart sitting in an indentation on a cliff wall in the background, as well as the gate leading to the Pirates' Fortress.
    • Fourside has Everdred's shirt and sunglasses hanging on a clothesline, and the interior of the Monotoli Building and apartment building can be "entered" by zooming the camera in far enough.
• Somewhat of a visual version of the Totaka tune is the Dopefish, first found in 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 is generic; other times, it's performed in character ("We can't save the world from a CD player, so just put us back in a Dreamcast, so we can do our jobs!").
  • The obscure Dreamcast game Seventh Cross: Evolution has a truly unique twist on this practice; the audio comes from what can only have been cutscenes removed from the game proper.
  • Shenmue spans three discs; each disk's audio track is performed by a different character.
  • Panic Bomber for the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 also had such a track, featuring Shirobon (White Bomber) and Kurobon (Black Bomber).
• While examining a painting of Flora in Professor Layton and the Curious Village, if you try to touch her breast when you're supposed to find the mark of the Golden Apple, the Professor will say "Now Luke, be a gentleman."
• In the special edition of BioShock 2, you have several posters advertising Rapture. On each one of them is Rapturian graffiti in UV-sensitive ink that is only visible under a blacklight. This is hinted at NOWHERE on the poster.
• 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.
• WarioWare: 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, there is a video camera sitting on a desk in the classroom. It normally does nothing. When you flick the lightswitch in the room to make everything pitch black, and then click the video camera, it makes a screen appear on the blackboard of the classroom. You can 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 incredibly difficult series of maneuvers for seven levels. As with Atari's Adventure, this Easter Egg was hidden because Mattel had a policy against crediting programmers.
• The music player program on the Nintendo DSi and the Nintendo 3DS has various sound effects you can play with the L and R buttons and one of them is the iconic coin sound from Super Mario Bros.. Playing the coin sound 100 times plays the 1-Up sound effect at the 100th press. Also, when in the sounds that you can record, move the cursor over any particular sound you want, wait a few moments and 1-1 will start playing, using the first split second of the sound you recorded.
• The console versions of Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 has an accidental one, which doubles as a Bilingual Bonus, where in the options menu, an radio advertisement for a Brazilian beer, Kaiser, can be heard if listened closely. Hear it here. Said ad also makes it to a song in DJ Max Portable 3.
• Sonic 3 & Knuckles has the Blue Sphere mini-game, which can be activated by placing any Sega game cartridge into the top slot (something the instructions specifically tell you not to do) and pressing three buttons on the controller simultaneously.
• A nostalgic easter egg can be found within Pokémon GO: if you select Pikachu as your Buddy Pokémon, he will jump on top of your shoulder as you walk around, similar to how Pikachu travels with Ash in the anime. (Eevee will do the same, probably as a nod to the same Eevee trainers whose names are codes in the game.)
• During the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, colored Olympic torches could appear in the Google Chrome Dinosaur Game, and when collected, the game would reskin itself to match a random Olympic event, and the "GAME OVER" would be replaced with "またプレイしてね" (Mata purei shite ne), which translates to "Please Play Again". Reskins included gymnastics, swimming, hurdle jumping, surfing (and dodging sharks), and horse jumping, complete with the horse.
• In Mystery Trackers: Queen of Hearts, toward the end of the game, the player has to access the title character's computer system. Clicking on one of the icons on her computer brings up a music selection with three pieces composed by Yuriy Ginzburg. It has absolutely no effect on the gameplay; the devs are just giving some extra focus to the music by one of their own.
• On Website/Neopets, searching for some things in the site's mean search bar can yield interesting results. Searching for "cheat" causes several images of robotic Chombies to appear, along with a message saying that cheats aren't allowed and attack Chombies are being dispatched. "Asparagus" yields a cartoony drawing of Adam, one of the site's founders, accompanied by text saying "You can't have it, it's all MINE!". "Treasure" yields a Pirate Grarrl saying "ARRRR! YE BE SEEKING TREASURE!". The site used to return a fake error if users searched for items sold in Jelly World (as part of a Running Gag about how Jelly World supposedly does not exist), but no longer does.

Other

High Score Tables

• Entering SEX as your initials in various Japanese coin-op games results in it being censored to various things. However, entering it in Bubble Bobble also resulted in the first^note unless a higher bonus had been earned, in which case that one appeared first bonus item to appear in the next game to be a fork.
• One ZX Spectrum publisher likewise censored various high-score entries in amusing ways; for instance, entering "t.bridge" (a Shout-Out to Tony Bridge, a popular adventure-game columnist at the time) resulted in it being entered as "Not enough Hobbits I suppose?".

Tower Defence Games

• You can get a secret cat unit in The Battle Cats named Flower Cat by swiping the door on the Cat Base menu at least 100 times.
  • There is also another Easter Egg related to this cat which is a stage that allows you to get his game breaking True Form. The schedule for its appearance is not shown in the game and the stage only appears on specific days and on a specific time, it can only be played after beating Into the Future Chapter 3 and, even with those conditions met, it only shows itself for 2 minutes. The stage only appears on the 2nd and 22nd of any month and appears from 2:22 p.m. to 2:24 p.m.

Video Game Consoles

• The Sega Dreamcast gives an audio warning when game discs are played in the Music Player. Seaman, Shenmue, and Skies of Arcadia have special in-character warnings.
• The Fairchild Channel F console (released in 1976) came with a "Demo Cart", in which a key combination can bring the programmer's name, Michael Glass, up on screen. Both Alien Invasion and Video Whizball (1978) also have a code to display their programmer's last name (Reid-Selth, for Brad Reid-Selth) on the screen.
• The Nintendo GameCube has its startup sound change if you hold the Z button while booting up the system. Holding Z on one controller changes the sound to squeaky toys followed by a giggling child. Holding Z on all four controllers at once changes the sound to Japanese instruments being played followed by a "Yoo~ooh". The GameCube's main menu also holds a secret; what sounds like ambient noise is actually the bootup music from the Famicom Disk System. It can be heard properly if you speed it up by 16 times its normal speed.
• If you boot up a DS (Lite) on your birthday, the startup jingle is replaced with one done by bells. Additionally, on DS, DS Lite and DSi, entering a room in Pictochat will play a short 4-note fanfare and display a message reading "Happy Birthday!" in rainbow-colored text, with "Today is [username]'s Birthday!" below it.
• The Nintendo Switch has a very clever easter egg that can only be triggered on a specific date. The console has to be set to July 11th and you have to perform the Character Tic "directly to you" that was done by the late Satoru Iwata with the Joy-Cons. Doing the gesture properly unlocks the Golf from the NES and it can only be played on July 11th. The date was the day that Iwata passed away and the game was one of the earliest games that he programmed, making the whole easter egg a nice tribute to him.

Demo Discs

• As documented in this video, Issues 44-48 of PSW UK had a hidden menu option in the demo under extras. Clicking on this option would play a trailer for Tetsuo: The Iron Man. This was apparently an accident due to the publisher also making promotional anime discs, which the Egg was intended for.
• A simplistic homebrew Shoot 'Em Up game called Star Fighters was hidden on Official UK PlayStation Magazine disc 16 vol. 2 (released as "Euro Demo 33" elsewhere); it can be accessed by pressing L1+R1+Up+Cross on the demo menu. Its successor magazine, Official PlayStation 2 Magazine, did a similar thing on disc 54 with Fren-zE, another shoot-'em-up, which could be accessed by going into the Comedown menu and pressing L1+L2+R1+R2.

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