History Main / EasterEgg

** Ditto with ''RollerCoasterTycoon''.
** ''ZooTycoon'' too. Naming guests "Mr. Blue" or "Mr. Pink" after ''ReservoirDogs'' will change the colour of all the guests' clothes.

** ''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 homosexual. Annoyed at the request, the artist included several speedo-wearing men, some of whom were kissing. Maxis fired him and was forced to recall early editions of the game.
** Also should note that in ''[[VideoGame/SimCity Sim City 3000]]'' and ''Sim City 4'', many of the office buildings were named after a person who helped develop the game ([[MemeticMutation like Wren Insurance]]). And let's not forget the ''biggest'' EasterEgg 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).
** Every game in ''VideoGame/TheSims'' including its two sequels all contain easter eggs.

* SonicCD has a secret passage in the Past and BadFuture 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 BadFuture, [[OurFounder a gold statue of Eggman will appear instead]]. You can destroy it, but bombs will rain on you seconds later.
* ''{{Metroid}} Fusion'' is more linear than most games in the series, but it still rewards would-be [[SequenceBreaking sequence breakers]] with an Easter egg -- a short cutscene which hints at the game's big [[TheReveal 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 [[http://www.metroid2002.com/fusion/other_secret_message.php incredibly difficult]] and accomplishing it is a badge of honour among ''Metroid'' fans.

** Google Maps has several of these as well. Inputting driving directions between specific locations in the US and Europe will instruct the user to canoe or swim across the Atlantic Ocean. Additionally, Google Street view has several unintentional ones just as the result of people not being aware of their camera vans driving around.
*** The twenty-eighth step of the Google Maps directions for 'America to China', which generally reads like normal directions -- 'turn right at the NE Northlake Way', etc. -- is 'Kayak across the Pacific Ocean.'
*** Driving directions for Japan to China have as the 41st step: "Jet ski across the Pacific Ocean." From China to Japan, this is the 38th step.

* When asked for a certain set of directions, Google Maps advises you to "swim across the Atlantic Ocean." This is a reference to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benoit_Lecomte Benoît Lecomte]].
** [[http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&saddr=Clarence+St,+Brunswick+East+VIC+3057,+Australia&daddr=W+73rd+St,+New+York,+New+York,+New+York+10023,+United+States&mra=pe&mrcr=0&sll=1.508262,-144.487875&sspn=126.922833,217.96875=UTF8&ll=5.266008,-144.492187&spn=126.733209,217.96875&t=h&z=2 Another]] insists at step 46 that you need to cross the Pacific in a kayak.
*** And then takes 27 toll roads in a row going through Japan. And then it makes you kayak across the Pacific ''again''.
*** And let's you walk down Kamehameha road.
*** It's even more fun if you walk instead of drive.
*** And if you do the math, it gets even better. Given the distance traveled vs. time spent, it's actually assuming you go at a very reasonable speed in a kayak...for 15 days straight...without sleeping...and no equipment or supplies to weigh you down... It sounds like they expect you to do the oceanic trips with only a fishing rod, a fillet knife, and a plastic jug with a water filter.
*** If your path crosses through the East China Sea, the directions insist that you ''jet ski'' rather than kayak.
*** Ask Google Maps for walking directions [[LordOfTheRings from "the Shire" to "Mordor"]] and the resulting page tells you to use caution as [[MemeticMutation one does not simply walk into Mordor]].
** Then there's the one with about nine hundred U-turns.
** Google Moon used to turn the map into cheese on the closest zoom-in.

* The Windows-only version of [[http://www.chromium.org/ Google Chrome]], 1.0, takes the URL "about:internets" and displays Windows's 3D Pipes screensaver; a ShoutOut to the infamous "it's a series of tubes" HammerheadSnark / MemeticMutation.

* It was recently discovered that the GameCube system menu's ambient background music is actually [[http://fryguy64.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=cameo&thread=3527&page=1#88809 a version of the Famicom Disk System startup music slowed down to about 1/25th of the original speed]].

[{AC:Racing]]

* Fisher & Paykel [=SmartDrive=] washing machines will turn patriotic and play God Defend New Zealand if the Power and Advance buttons are pressed together and then the Wash Temperature Up button is held down for two seconds. It is also possible for them to play Advance Australia Fair, The Star Spangled Banner, and the theme from BeverleyHillsCop.

* Fisher & Paykel [=SmartDrive=] washing machines will turn patriotic and play God Defend New Zealand if the Power and Advance buttons are pressed together and then the Wash Temperature Up button is held down for two seconds. It is also possible to cycle through playing God Defend New Zealand, Advance Australia Fair and The Star-Spangled Banner by pressing the Water Level Up button done for two seconds then pressing the Water Temperature Up button down for two seconds.

* Fisher & Paykel SmartDrive washing machines, when the Power and Advance buttons are pressed together and then the Wash Temperature Up button is held down for two seconds, causes them to play the national anthems of New Zealand, Australia and the United States.

* Creator/{{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.

[[folder:Other]]
* In some of the dioramas at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the artist painted in little elves "as a sort of signature of his work." Also, two dioramas have moving butterflies, which must freak unsuspecting visitors out. [[http://www.paleocurrents.com/docs/secrets_of_dioramas.html Here is a webpage devoted to pointing seekers to the right dioramas.]]
[[/folder]]

* In ''MedalOfHonor: Frontline'', as you are boarding Sturmgeist's train, a UFO flies overhead.
* In ''{{FEAR}}: Perseus Mandate'', you can [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bB4ue891Js jump off from an elevator]] with godmode enabled and see the message "I suck at making maps" written on the wall at the bottom of the pit.
* Apogee's ''RiseOfTheTriad'' had a very silly egg added to a certain bug in the game. If a pushwall isn't properly defined, and escapes the boundaries of the map, the game will crash -- and [[http://www.eeggs.com/items/8590.html display a sketch of the wall]] ''smiling'' as it flees into space. This can be activated intentionally on a hidden level, appropriately named "This Level Causes A Bug".

Originally, Easter eggs were inserted by programmers for companies whose policy forbid them from receiving individual credit for their work. The earliest Easter eggs were mostly credits pages, possibly to allow the programmers themselves to prove authorship to friends. For security reasons (and concerns about malicious programmers inserting undocumented and destructive code), most companies don't allow Easter eggs to appear in their software anymore, but as individual programmers now receive full credit for their work, it's a moot point[[labelnote:.]][[SelfDemonstratingArticle Congratulations! You found an easter egg on this page!]][[/labelnote]]

For time-sensitive Easter eggs, see HolidayMode. Compare BilingualBonus, FreezeFrameBonus, and WhatTheHellPlayer. For in-story EasterEgg dates that reference original air/release dates, see SignificantReferenceDate. Some Easter eggs can be found with a RocketJump or a well-timed DoubleJump. You can also find some if you use the bunny hop trick[[labelnote:.]]See? Here's an example of one! Why did you click this anyway? Maybe you should look at the above quote...[[/labelnote]]

Originally, Easter eggs were inserted by programmers for companies whose policy forbid them from receiving individual credit for their work. The earliest Easter eggs were mostly credits pages, possibly to allow the programmers themselves to prove authorship to friends. For security reasons (and concerns about malicious programmers inserting undocumented and destructive code), most companies don't allow Easter eggs to appear in their software anymore, but as individual programmers now receive full credit for their work, it's a moot point. [[color:white:[[hottip:*:[[SelfDemonstratingArticle Congratulations! You found an easter egg on this page!]]]]

For time-sensitive Easter eggs, see HolidayMode. Compare BilingualBonus, FreezeFrameBonus, and WhatTheHellPlayer. For in-story EasterEgg dates that reference original air/release dates, see SignificantReferenceDate. Some Easter eggs can be found with a RocketJump or a well-timed DoubleJump. You can also find some if you use the bunny hop trick.
[[hottip:.:See? Here's an example of one! Why did you click this anyway? Maybe you should look at the above quote...]]

** And it didn't originate there; in Colossal Cave itself "xyzzy" was a reference to an acronym for remembering the formula for vector cross product (the first line is x*=y1z2 - z1y2 and the remaining lines follow the same pattern). To complete the circle, this formula is now essential to many 3D graphics engines, but at the time of Colossal Cave it would never have been used in a computer game, or thought to be..

* ''StarWars: Shadows of the Empire'' had a few of its own -- of note is the [[SamAndMax 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 Creator/MontyPython and cartoon references.

*** 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 ''SecretOfMonkeyIsland'', 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 CallBack to the first game, where examining the stump (which Guybrush pops out of in this EasterEgg) reveals that it leads to "a maze of caverns" - presumably the Goodsoup Family Crypt.

** The early Lucasarts games contained several references to (usually) their immediate predecessor - [[ZakMcKrackenAndTheAlienMindbenders Zak Mckracken]] had references to slimy meteors, an unuseable gas tank and the protagonist having dated the DistressedDamsel from ''ManiacMansion'', while ''IndianaJonesAndTheLastCrusade'' had the yellow shard and crayon map in the school and the book "Everything you wanted to know about Caponians and Skolarians" in the Venice library. ''SecretOfMonkeyIsland'' had numerous references to ''VideoGame/{{Loom}}'', including a pirate making a lengthy advertising shill on demand.

** Another involved a note pinned to the back of a tree where you wouldn't be expected to go to read a note. A third involved 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 there are easter eggs galore in the other KQ games. I believe sierraplanet.com has pretty complete lists.

* ''[[{{Myst}} Uru]]'' has a secret egg quest which starts out in a room with a giant Easter egg floating in the center of it, and ends with you being allowed to [[spoiler:drive a Zamboni around outside the starting area.]]
* This trope is a staple of the VideoGame/NancyDrew video game series, sometimes allowing the player to add actual Easter eggs to Nancy's inventory. Perhaps the most memorable is a phone number which, if dialed in-game during ''White Wolf of Icicle Creek'', gets Nancy harranged by a phone-in psychic who references every previous game in the series.

* The ''Series/DoctorWho'' adventure game, "The Gunpowder Plot", has these innocuous facts about the level... But after reading them, you can [[spoiler: hear a [[HellIsThatNoise 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]].

** That happens if you use a cheat device to enable usage of [[spoiler:the Universe Arcana Persona]] in normal gameplay specifically. Other Easter Eggs also exist - once you have all characters, try making a party of all girls (barring the MC, of course), 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.

* The now freeware DOS fighter ''VideoGame/XenophageAlienBloodsport'' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZuCJgAOKKQ allows you to beat up]] Series/{{Barney|And Friends}} if you fiddle around with the config files. And yes, the game does mock you if you lose to him (which is pretty much impossible to do involuntarily.).

** K' [[spoiler: also drops his usual fighting stance, starts blinking his eyes slower and slower and falls asleep if you stand still long enough.]]
* In ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros [[SuperSmashBrosBrawl Brawl]]'', try listening to [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAXbb8R11pc Peach's final smash in slow motion]]. [[spoiler:it's a speed up version of the Sky Heaven theme in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3''.]]

*** Bonus points...the original "Siege of Madrigal" sounds [[SuspiciouslySimilarSong VERY MUCH]] like the song "Here Comes the [[GeniusBonus Fl]][[StealthPun ood]]" by PeterGabriel

* The final boss of ''VideoGame/{{Doom}} 2'' was an Easter Egg. You were forced to shoot rockets into the exposed brain of a demon's head which takes up most of the wall. [[spoiler: If you cheat through, you can see that the demon's brain is designer John Romero's head on a pike. And the demonic-sounding sound file at the beginning is just the phrase "To win the game you must kill me, John Romero" played backwards.]]
* ''ChexQuest'', a non-violent ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' clone, had a secret room in the third stage accessible only by [[spoiler: jumping from a rising elevator platform]]. Inside the room were [[spoiler: framed pictures of the programmers and the BFG]].
* In a women's locker room in ''VideoGame/{{Geist}}'' there are a few lockers that can be opened to reveal a Gamecube and Samus' suit.
* The ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'' series is infamous for hiding terminals in out of the way places, but they sometimes used them to hide "credit terminals" towards the end of the game. ''Marathon Infinity'' takes this one step further, hiding an entire multiplayer map (that was used to make screenshots for terminal pictures that showed up elsewhere in the game), in hex format, in two terminals: one in the first level, and one in the final level. The trick was, turning this hex code into plain text. From there, a couple runs of the text (in a text file) though Stuffit Expander would result in the final, usable level. Full details can be found [[http://marathon.bungie.org/story/hangar96.html here]].

* Played straight in the co-op mode of ''VideoGame/{{Resistance}} 2'', there is a broken bridge in Chicago's Garfield Park that when you stand on the edge of it and look down, you see a nice blue and purple easter egg.
* In one of ''Day of Defeat'' maps Axis [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBpHPL8-ins can get]] with some risk hidden [[RareGuns FG-42]] (a paratrooper weapon unavailable on normal maps).

* The ''VideoGame/{{Quake}}'' games had Easter eggs hidden in certain levels. ''Quake'' and ''VideoGame/QuakeII'' had the Dopefish in hidden areas. ''Quake II'' also had a rubber ducky in a secret level (which appeared on a wall after riding a cycling elevator a certain number of times), a hidden area in the enemy base level where you could find and get John Carmack's head, and in the final level a hidden credits section along with a rather raunchy scene involving a few of the enemy units. Finally ''VideoGame/QuakeIIIArena'' had the Dust Puppy underneath one of the maps (i.e. you had to fall off it to see it).

* In ''{{FEAR}}: Perseus Mandate'' you can [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bB4ue891Js jump off from an elevator]] with godmode enabled and see the message "I suck at making maps" written on the wall at the bottom of the pit.
* Apogee's ''RiseOfTheTriad'' had a very silly egg added to a certain bug in the game. If a pushwall isn't properly defined, and escapes the boundaries of the map, the game will crash - and [[http://www.eeggs.com/items/8590.html display an sketch of the wall]] ''smiling'' as it flees into space. This can be activated intentionally on a hidden level, appropriately named "This Level Causes A Bug".

** 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.
* ''WarhammerOnline'' 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 thought 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.

* SonicCD has a secret passage in the Past and BadFuture 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 BadFuture, [[OurFounder a gold statue of Eggman will appear instead]]. You can destroy it, but bombs will rain on you seconds later.

* If you managed to get your hands on a copy of ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight'', you could put it into a CD player and set it to track 2 to get a cool remix of one of the games main themes. Topping it off were the opening moments of it, when [[spoiler:Alucard says "As you can see, this is a PlayStation black disk. Cut number one contains computer data, so please, don't play it. [[SchmuckBait But you probably won't listen to me anyway, will you?]]" He was being honest; nothing is there to listen to.]]

* The Insomniac Museum of ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClank'' fame. It's an easter egg level full of stuff that didn't make it into the game in the style of the actual Insomniac Games office layout, and various Insomniac staff members have commentary on each item. The Museum appears in only three of the games, and is located on 'Planet Burbank' (in reference to where the company is located), or on 'Dantopia'. Getting into it usually happens by chance, since the rather out-of-the-way telepads that send you there only work when your PS2 internal clock is set to the top a specific hour. In Going Commando, there's second way to get in that doesn't require setting your clock, but is much more difficult to discover, since you have to do a series of very specific things most people would never consider doing otherwise.

** Capcom [[WordOfGod insists]] that ''Mega Man 9'' has an [[UrbanLegendOfZelda unfound secret]], but none of the many references, secrets and little touches found by the players seem to be it.

* BlizzardEntertainment's games are rife with various Easter eggs. In the RTS games, clicking on a unit often enough results into them [[StopPokingMe 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 ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}} III''. And let's not get started on ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''...
** In addition, with the exception of the first ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}}'', every Blizzard RTS (Usually the expansion packs) to date has had a hidden music track. ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}} II: Beyond the Dark Portal'' had '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 ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}} II'' (Battle.net Edition) also yielded this music. ''{{Starcraft}}: Brood War'' had Radio Free Zerg, a semi-subliminal StupidStatementDanceMix featuring the Overmind, earned of course by typing 'Radio Free Zerg' while playing Zerg. Finally ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}} III'': The Frozen Throne'' has 'Power of the Horde' by either typing in 'Tenth Level Tauren Chieftain' or by beating the campaign (Which accompanied the song with a nice ingame engine music video).
** ''VideoGame/StarCraftII'' 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 {{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 VideoGame/{{Warcraft}} II.

Originally, Easter eggs were inserted by programmers for companies whose policy forbid them from receiving individual credit for their work. The earliest Easter eggs were mostly credits pages, possibly to allow the programmers themselves to prove authorship to friends. For security reasons (and concerns about malicious programmers inserting undocumented and destructive code), most companies don't allow Easter eggs to appear in their software anymore, but as individual programmers now receive full credit for their work, it's a moot point. [[color:white:[[hottip:*: [[SelfDemonstratingArticle Congratulations! You found an easter egg on this page!]]]]

For time-sensitive Easter eggs, see HolidayMode. Compare BilingualBonus, FreezeFrameBonus and WhatTheHellPlayer. For in-story EasterEgg dates that reference original air/release dates, see SignificantReferenceDate. Some Easter eggs can be found with a RocketJump Or a well timed DoubleJump. You can also find some if you use the bunny hop trick.

** Because it's contested whether the Chris Houlihan Room is meant to be in the game at all. Evidently, not everyone at Nintendo was on board with the contest, so the room ended up getting added and removed multiple times as the game went back and forth between decisionmakers who thought Chris ought to get his room, and those who thought the contest was bunk and shouldn't be honored. Leaving it in but buried so that it was inaccessible to anyone who wasn't cheating was evidently the compromise they came up with.

* In ''Film/XMenOriginsWolverine'' the video game there's a section of the game where you can see [[VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft 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''.

* ''StarWars: Shadows of the Empire'' had a few of its own - of note is the [[SamAndMax 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 Creator/MontyPython and cartoon references.

* ''Riven: The Sequel To {{Myst}}'' had a series of "Spyder Eggs" riddles on [[http://cho.cyan.com/ its website]] (and those of the associated companies), leading to the discovery of the [[ArcNumber five]] Easter Eggs in that game. (By far the best is the one where the actor playing Gehn [[spoiler: bursts into song. He's actually quite good.]])

* The ''SouthPark'' animators have supposedly hidden at least one alien into every episode; there are [[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&ved=0CFwQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eeggs.com%2Fitems%2F1256.html&ei=lI1dUe-ECtL_rAGp04HQAw&usg=AFQjCNFA9NKRwNwEg3oiByIlJOB6wktzVA&sig2=sbxHyAx1yykLRNnbvTfT4w&bvm=bv.44770516,d.aWM web pages]] and [[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&ved=0CEoQtwIwBA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DAHAZBbDoGT0&ei=lI1dUe-ECtL_rAGp04HQAw&usg=AFQjCNHh5o2PR_HS2sgIgJWyoDibE6MZYg&sig2=WLm1C0UsR0wBGyQxzbC8iw&bvm=bv.44770516,d.aWM YouTube videos]] dedicated to documenting as many as possible.