Easter egg (virtual)
From the custom of the Easter egg hunt observed in the U.S. and many parts of Europe, Easter eggs are hidden messages or features which may appear in movies, DVDs, books, on CDs, or in computer programs.
Computer-related Easter eggs
In computing, Easter eggs are messages, graphics, sound effects, or an unusual change in program behaviour, that occur in a program in response to some undocumented set of commands, mouse clicks, keystrokes or other similar stimuli intended as a joke or to display program credits. See also Undocumented feature. A former 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 a couple of Unix operating systems caused them to respond to the command "make love" with "not war?". 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. Microsoft Excel has a well-known car racing game secreted inside. The Palm operating system has elaborately hidden animations and other surprises.
Whilst computer-related Easter eggs are often found in software, occasionally they can exist in hardware or firmware of certain devices. On some PCs, the BIOS ROM contains Easter eggs. 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 by varying the stepper motor speed if you power the device up with the scan button depressed.
Video game Easter eggs
Easter eggs in computer games and other video games are distinguished from cheat codes which allow you to cheat - see Minesweeper for an example. The first known video game to feature an Easter egg was the classic Atari game Adventure, in which a designer's name would be displayed if the player used a certain item in a certain location in the game. For a more recent example, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City featured a literal Easter egg hidden inside the upper floors of a normally inaccessible skyscraper. 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.
Based on information from the Jargon File.
Movie Easter eggs
Especially since DVDs became popular, Easter eggs have made their way into movies. An example is the DVD for 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 and more DVDs include Easter eggs, although some have started advertising these on the box; these are not considered real Easter eggs by some.
Compact Disc 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 music tracks appended at the end of the disc. An example of the latter is the album The World According To Gessle by Roxette's Per Gessle: at the end of the disc an unlisted acoustic version of Kix appears, sung in Elvis style.
External Links
- - Up-to-date lists and discussions of digital Easter eggs
- - Computer Easter Eggs Database
- - Lists many Easter eggs in DVDs
