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


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

The origin of the term is sometimes falsely attributed to the movie Return of the Living Dead, where a military officer uses it as a code word for lost U.S. government containers of zombies created by a chemical spill, or to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, in which actual Easter eggs are visible in certain shots (under Frank N. Furter's throne, for example). Return of the Living Dead was not released until 1985, and Atari's ''Adventure,'' released in 1978, contained what is thought to be the first video game Easter egg (the programmer, Warren Robinett's name).

In computer programming, the underlying motivation is probably to put an individual, almost artistic touch on an intellectual product which is by its nature standardised and functional, although Warren Robinett's motivation was more likely to gain recognition, since video game programmers were routinely uncredited then. It is analogous to signature motifs such as Diego Rivera including himself in his murals or Alfred Hitchcock's legendary cameos.

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


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

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

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

Western Digital's MyBook Pro has several words on the metal band that wraps around 3 sides in Morse Code. The code reads:
PERSONALRELIABLEINNOVATIVESIMPLE
INNOVATIVEPERSONALDESIGNRELIABLE
INNOVATIVEDESIGNPERSONALDESIGN
SIMPLEINNOVATIVE
This is also mentioned in the MyBook Wiki. There is more information about it there.

Commodore's Amiga 500 computer also featured an easter egg, etched upon the main PCB. The words 'The B52's Rock Lobster' in homage to the B52's song.

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the Nintendo 64 classic, Perfect Dark, pieces of cheese that had no purpose or explanation could be found in every level.

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

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

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

In the video game Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, there was an in-game myth of a demon hidden inside a pink bunny. If the player used auto-travel, there was a minute probability that he could be stopped by a pink bunny. If the player attacked the bunny, it would instantly transform into a giant monster, which is impossible to kill unless the player was very high level.

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

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

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

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

The practice also occasionally occurred with LPs. Possibly the first ever Easter egg on record was on The Beatles' 1969 album Abbey Road. Original sleeve pressings list "The End" as being the last track on the album. However, after a break of about 12 seconds, a short piece called "Her Majesty" appears. However, the surprise was spoiled for CD buyers as this track is included in the sleeve listings.

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

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

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

Jack Black's parody of the "Council of Elrond" scene

Gollum's "award acceptance" speech

A comic interview with Elijah Wood

A trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

A comic interview with director Peter Jackson