easter eggs

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

A virtual Easter egg is a hidden message or feature in an object such as a movie, book, CD, DVD, computer program, or video game. The term draws a parallel with the custom of the Easter egg hunt observed in many western nations. 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 including himself in the opening scenes of his movies (the latter known as a cameo).

Computer-related Easter eggs

In computing, Easter eggs are messages, graphics, sound effects, or an unusual change in program behavior, that occur in a 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 text editor, and TECO would also provide this response. The largest easter egg is purported to be in the Atari 400/800 version of Pitfall II, which contains an entire game that was more complex and challenging than the original Pitfall II (Pitfall). Many personal computers have much more elaborate eggs hidden in ROM, including lists of the developers' names, political exhortations, snatches of music, and (in one case) images of the entire development team. The 1997 version of Microsoft Excel contained a hidden flight simulator^[1][2]; the 1997 version of Word, a pinball game^[3]. The Palm operating system has elaborately hidden animations and other surprises. The Debian GNU/Linux package tool apt-get has an Easter egg involving an ASCII cow when variants on "apt-get moo" are typed into the shell. Another notable easter egg is from The MathWorks' MATLAB: the why command provides succinct random answers to almost any question:

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

Non-software

While computer-related Easter eggs are often found in software, occasionally they exist in hardware or firmware of certain devices. On some PCs, the BIOS ROM contains Easter eggs. Notable examples include several early Apple Macintosh models which had pictures of the development team in the ROM (accessible by pressing the programmer's switch and jumping to a specific memory address, or other equally obscure means), and some errant 1993 AMI BIOS that on 13 November proceeded to play "Happy Birthday" via the PC speaker over and over again instead of booting. Perhaps the most famous example of a hardware Easter egg is in the HP ScanJet 5P, where the device will play the Ode to Joy or Für Elise by varying the stepper motor speed if users power the device up with the scan button depressed. Another fun Easter egg is found in the Kurzweil K2x musical keyboard series (K2500, K2600 and others): if users type "Pong" while in search mode they can play the game Pong.

Chip and PCB-based Easter eggs

Main article: Chip art

Many integrated circuit 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.

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.

Video game Easter eggs

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. In Grand Theft Auto: III there is a sign on top of a hard to access building roof saying "you weren't supposed to be able to get here you know". One of the most famous Easter eggs was 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."

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.

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.

In every incarnation of The Legend of Zelda that features Cuccos, if you strike one repeatedly you will suddenly be swarmed by a countless number of flying Cuccos that damage you significantly until you go inside/outside/etc.

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.

In Halo 2, there are skulls hidden about in secret locations throughout the campaign mode, which will give the player special abilities when picked up.

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.

On Dragonball Z Tenkaichi, if you play as SS4 Goku vs. SS4 Vegeta if Goku wins he will speak in Japanese.

Compact disc and DVD Easter eggs

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; a lesser example of this is on the album In Utero, where a 13th track Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through The Strip is listed but cannot be selected—instead it comes in 20 minutes after track 12 has ended. Another example of this is the The Black Eyed Peas CD, Elephunk, wherein the last track, "Where Is the Love?", has approximately 15 seconds of silence followed by a full song. This is also the case with U2's The Best of 1980-1990 album. After the final song, about a minute of silence is followed by the song October. The 1994 Live CD Throwing Copper also has a hidden song at the end, unlisted on both the track listing and the lyric sheet. A similar technique is used on Good Charlotte's The Chronicles of Life and Death. After the last track there's a long silence before the song "Wounded" begins. Similarly, Kid Rock's Devil Without a Cause contains a remix of "I Am the Bullgod" 10-13 seconds after the final song ends. On the album "Americana" by The Offspring, the track ('Pay The Man') ends in silence just before the 8 minute mark, but an alternative introduction to 'Pretty Fly for a White Guy' can be found 1min and 15secs further on.

Possibly the first ever Easter egg on record was on The Beatles' 1969 LP 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. The surprise was spoiled however for CD buyers as this track is included in the sleeve listings.

Using a more unusual method of hiding tracks, the album Factory Showroom by They Might Be Giants contains a short song before the beginning of track one; the CD has to be "rewound" approximately a minute and a half. This feat is accomplished by placing the audio data in the "pregap" between Index 0 and 1 of the disc. Other examples of this include the Rammstein album Reise, Reise, where if the album is rewound 38 seconds before the first track, a segment from a flight recorder recording is heard; the British Sea Power album Open Season where, rewound 2:31, an organ version of the song "How Will I Ever Find My Way Home" known to the fans as "How Will I Ever Find My Organ" or "Wilde Is a Wanker" is played; the 2 Many DJ's album "As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2", where a remix of Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You Out of My Head" appears before the first track; and the UK edition of Autechre's EP7, in which a rather glitchy composition is placed more than 9 minutes before the first track. On Muse's album Hullabaloo you can hear the intro of the concert, the poem What's He Building by Tom Waits, in the pregap. On Umphrey's McGee's album Safety In Numbers, when rewound before the first track there is a Speak 'n Spell that spells the words "This Album Eats" and plays backward the letters to "hippies."

One such other example is in the CD the Duke Nukem 3D Plutonium Pack. If one plays the second track of the CD, it plays an instrumental version of the Duke Nukem "Grabbag" theme.

Some CD authoring software, such as K3b, allows users to create audio CDs with the first track hidden.

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Security concerns

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

Other Easter Egg Types

In the write-up of the plagiarism trial of the Da Vinci Code, Judge Peter Smith included a coded message.

BBC MindGames Magazine contains a number of hidden puzzles and messages each issue which it refers to as Easter Eggs, and challenges its readers to find them.

Notes

1. ^ Excel 97 Flight to Credits. The Easter Egg Archive.
2. ^ Excel 97 Flight Simulator - For later versions of Microsoft Excel. The Easter Egg Archive.
3. ^ Pinball in Word 97. The Easter Egg Archive.
4. ^ Larry Osterman (October 21, 2005). Why no Easter Eggs?. Larry Osterman's WebLog. MSDN Blogs. Retrieved on 2006-07-29.

See also

• Hidden track
• Undocumented feature
• Easter eggs in Microsoft products

External links

• Easter eggs and the Trusted Computing Base – Network World article outlining the concern over Easter eggs
• Easter Egg Archive – Up-to-date lists and discussions of Easter eggs, both digital and found in art, books, etc.
• Egg Heaven 2000 – Computer Easter Eggs Database
• Chip Fun: Microchip-based Easter eggs – From the National Museum of American History; photos by Integrated Circuit Engineering Corp.
• DVD Easter Eggs – Lists many Easter eggs in DVDs
• List of hidden features on DVDs – At the "DVD Review" website
• Digital Press' classic video games Easter egg compendium
• Lee's PeeknPoke Issue 5 – PDF retro game magazine with Atari 2600 hidden easter egg feature
• Easter Eggs – Software Easter Eggs