A Guide to Easter Eggs in Video Games | Gaming's Hidden Gems

Non-gaming folk might associate Easter eggs with a nice decoration, or even a fun activity for children, involving looking for chocolate eggs hidden around a house, backyard, or park.

And it’s all fine and good, but like with many different things, gaming took that idea and ran with it, taking it to a delightful extreme of absurd, abstraction, and absolute satisfaction.

What are Easter eggs in video games, then? Well, they aren’t cute sweets hidden just out of view. They are tests of determination, cleverness, perception, and sense of humor. And the rewards? They range from a sensible chuckle to game-breaking joke weapons.

Let’s take a flashlight and investigate the bizarre geometries and lingering mysteries of the easter egg phenomenon, shall we?

Where do Easter Eggs come from?

Easter eggs in games are basically as old as the hobby itself. The term itself dates back to 1980, used in reference to an Atari programmer, Warren Robinett, who defied company policy by sneakily displaying his name should the players move over a specific pixel.

However, it’s not the first known game easter egg in gaming, as we understand them. this distinction goes back to 1973 game Moonlander, a neat game about steering a lander safely to the Moon’s surface (shocker, I know).

Should you move horizontally far enough you end up on a screen with… a McDonald’s restaurant, of all things. This is probably cheeky enough, implying that McDonald’s had presence on the moon before NASA managed to.

Okay, so much for the ancient history, let’s talk shop, shall we?

Easter eggs of all shades and shapes

There’s virtually no limit to what form an Easter egg might take.

Some of them are just neat references, like the Soul Reaver from the Legacy of Kain series appearing in the same developer’s run of the Tomb Raider games (Legend and Rise of…) or Fallout: New Vegas sneaking in a reference to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in the form of a skeleton in a fridge.

Other eggs are a reward for the player deciding to actually have fun with the game, the mission be damned. A great example is 2016’s Hitman. In the Sapienza map you technically have a hit to do, but if you instead decide to goof around and shoot the bells on a certain yacht in a certain order… a Kraken will appear and destroy the boat.

Why would you shoot the bells? Because testing the boundaries of the simulation is fun! And it’s always awesome when developers reward such curiosity, even if some expressions of it might be creepy or existentially mortifying.

Sometimes an easter egg might actually be a teaser, or, depending on your outlook on this, a spoiler. For instance, if you read the first letters of each mission in Dead Space 1, you’ll get hit with a major plot reveal, and if you wrecked a certain wall in the late stages of Batman: Arkham Asylum you got a teaser of what the next game in the series was going to be, long before any trailer for it.

And there are many more kinds than any one person would be able to collect and describe.

Everybody loves eggs

Why wouldn’t they? They are nutritious, tasty, and easy to prepare. Anyway, on topic of Easter eggs, sometimes you can find them beyond games. Programmers might leave a cheeky comment in the code, or put in a game in an otherwise serious program, like a Doom-like game hidden in the MS Office 95 version of Excel.

Sometimes even online retailers and marketplaces play around with Easter eggs, such as G2A.COM hiding discount codes in various places on the website.

Egg-finder’s Primer

The usual method of discovering Easter egg is much like the eggs themselves: out-of-the-box. While some are hidden behind fairly obvious unlocks, usually finding them requires lateral thinking, or just trying random stuff to see if it works, like the bells from the Hitman example. Sometimes, the Easter egg doesn’t really require you to do anything, like Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes reading your memory card and commenting on certain games you might have had saves for.

Some Easter eggs are put way out of the beaten path, as a reward for exploration, like the famous Minecraft axe in Skyrim, or appear casually and without fanfare in the background, like the origami figurines in Ghost of Tsushima, waiting for eagle-eyed players to notice them.

Nourishment for the gaming soul

On a broader scale, Easter eggs are more than just sneaky little jokes and nods from the developers. For years the legends around things like Diablo’s alleged cow level, or a secret way to save Aerith in Final Fantasy VII have been the causes of fans of the game coming together to brainstorm solutions and share discoveries.

It’s only become more advanced with the advent of social media, which gave discoveries more exposure than old-school forums and message boards would have.

The internet hive mind loves eating easter eggs, and loves decoding and unlocking secrets that might stump individuals.

Go forth and seek!

It’s impossible to address Easter eggs in this phenomenon’s entirety, there are too many examples, too varied in form and purpose. However, hopefully, you’re now inspired to seek the reality lying beyond the intended gameplay and guided perception games use to prod you along the path to the next objective. Stop, smell the roses, take a look around and shoot that three trunk three times. Who knows what will happen?