A virtual Easter egg is an intentional hidden message or an in-joke in a work such as a computer program, web page, video game, movie, book or crossword. The term was coined—according to Warren Robinett—by Atari after they were pointed to the secret message left by Robinett in the game Adventure.[1] It draws a parallel with the custom of the Easter egg hunt observed in many Western nations as well as the last Russian imperial family's tradition of giving elaborately jeweled egg-shaped creations by Carl Fabergé which contained hidden surprises.[2]
This practice is similar in some respects to hidden signature motifs such as Diego Rivera including himself in his murals, Alfred Hitchcock's legendary cameo appearances, the appearances of Fritz in the works of Chris van Allsburg, and various "Hidden Mickeys" that can be found throughout the various Disney Parks. An early example of this kind of "Easter egg" is Al Hirschfeld's "Nina".
Atari's Adventure, released in 1979, contained what was thought to be the first video game "Easter egg", the name of the programmer (Warren Robinett). However, evidence of earlier Easter eggs has since surfaced. Several cartridges for the Fairchild Channel F include previously unknown Easter eggs, programmed by Michael Glass and Brad Reid-Selth, that are believed to predate Robinett's work.[3][4]
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Easter eggs are messages, videos, graphics, sound effects, or an unusual change in program behavior that sometimes 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.
In the TOPS-10 operating system (for the DEC PDP-10 computer), the "make" command was used to invoke the TECO editor to create a file; if given the file name argument "love", so that the command was "make love", it would respond "not war?" before creating the file. It included a short, thoughtful pause before the response. This same behavior occurred on the RSTS/E operating system, where TECO would provide this response. Easter eggs found in some Unix operating systems caused them to respond to the command "make love" with "not war?" and "why" with "why not" (a reference to The Prisoner in Berkeley Unix 1977).
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. Easter eggs in the 1997 version of Microsoft Office include a hidden flight simulator in Microsoft Excel and a pinball game in Microsoft Word.[5][6]
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.[7]
The Archlinux package tool Pacman has an Easter egg involving an ASCII Mr. Pacman logo when type "pacman --version" into the shell; another Easter egg shows a Mr Pacman eating candy when you update with the command: "pacman -Syu" or when you install any program, you have to add the word "ILoveCandy" in the configuration file: "/etc/pacman.conf".[8]
VLC media player contains an Easter egg which changes the VLC traffic cone logo so that it's wearing a Santa hat. The logo changes on December 18, one week before Christmas, and reverts to its normal appearance on January 1.
An Easter egg is found on all Microsoft Windows operating systems before XP. In the 3D Text screen saver, entering the text "volcano" will display the names of all the volcanoes in the United States. Microsoft removed this Easter egg in XP but added others. One which continues still in Windows XP is to simultaneously press <kbd class="keyboard-key" style="border: 1px solid; border-color: #ddd #bbb #bbb #ddd; border-bottom-width: 2px; -moz-border-radius: 3px; -webkit-border-radius: 3px; border-radius: 3px; background-color: #f9f9f9; padding: 1px 3px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.85em; white-space: nowrap;">Alt</kbd>+<kbd class="keyboard-key" style="border: 1px solid; border-color: #ddd #bbb #bbb #ddd; border-bottom-width: 2px; -moz-border-radius: 3px; -webkit-border-radius: 3px; border-radius: 3px; background-color: #f9f9f9; padding: 1px 3px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.85em; white-space: nowrap;">⇧ Shift</kbd>+<kbd class="keyboard-key" style="border: 1px solid; border-color: #ddd #bbb #bbb #ddd; border-bottom-width: 2px; -moz-border-radius: 3px; -webkit-border-radius: 3px; border-radius: 3px; background-color: #f9f9f9; padding: 1px 3px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.85em; white-space: nowrap;">2</kbd> in the Solitaire game to produce a forced win.[9]
In the Pinball game in Microsoft Windows, typing in "hidden test" (with the space) and pressing Enter will allow you to drag the pinball around with the mouse.
Microsoft Excel 95 contained a hidden Doom-like action game called The Hall of Tortured Souls.[10]
Some computer and video game secret levels are triggered by an Easter egg. In 1994's video game Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle, a highly acclaimed video game developed by George Lucas's LucasArts, the original prequel Maniac Mansion from 1987 can be played in its full version by using a home computer in one character's room.
In Saints Row 2, there are many known Easter eggs, one of which is a purple Easter bunny rising out of the water.
Google Maps contains several Easter eggs whereby a user asking for directions from Japan to China, from New York to Tokyo, or from Taiwan to China would be directed to either jetski, kayak, or swim across the Pacific Ocean.[11] Google's search also contains further Easter eggs, when a user types "Do A Barrel Roll" into the search box the page tilts 360° in a fashion reminiscent of a pilot manoeuvring their aircraft. The suggestion exists that this Easter Egg could be designed to encourage adoption of the Google Chrome Browser because to view the actual effect a modern browser is required. [12] In December of 2011 Google also introduced an Easter Egg that was triggered by typing "let it snow" into the search box. This causes snow to fall and the screen to frost over.[13]
On December 7, 2011 the open-source website http://easteregg.in was released featuring 66 combinations of website Easter eggs. Two Easter eggs have been reportedly found in the source code of the website itself[14]. The site allows developers to add an Easter egg to their website by copying and pasting a snippet of JavaScript. The site initially released with 66 combinations of Easter eggs. It features a range of triggers from the Konami Code to a canvas-based pattern recognizer, and outcomes from Cornify to Occupy the Internet. Within three days of launch[15] the website reached the front-page of Hacker News. Similar to Google's "let it snow" easter egg, the site features an outcome called Snowy.
While computer-related Easter eggs are often found in software, occasionally they exist in hardware or firmware of certain devices. On some home computers, 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.[16] Similarly, the Radio Shack Color Computer 3's ROM contained code which would display the likenesses of three Microware developers on a <kbd class="keyboard-key" style="border: 1px solid; border-color: #ddd #bbb #bbb #ddd; border-bottom-width: 2px; -moz-border-radius: 3px; -webkit-border-radius: 3px; border-radius: 3px; background-color: #f9f9f9; padding: 1px 3px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.85em; white-space: nowrap;">Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd class="keyboard-key" style="border: 1px solid; border-color: #ddd #bbb #bbb #ddd; border-bottom-width: 2px; -moz-border-radius: 3px; -webkit-border-radius: 3px; border-radius: 3px; background-color: #f9f9f9; padding: 1px 3px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.85em; white-space: nowrap;">Alt</kbd>+<kbd class="keyboard-key" style="border: 1px solid; border-color: #ddd #bbb #bbb #ddd; border-bottom-width: 2px; -moz-border-radius: 3px; -webkit-border-radius: 3px; border-radius: 3px; background-color: #f9f9f9; padding: 1px 3px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.85em; white-space: nowrap;">Reset</kbd> keypress sequence—a hard reset which would discard any information currently in the dynamic memory.[17]
Several oscilloscopes have contained Easter eggs. One example is the HP 54622D, known to have an Asteroids clone (and even to save high scores in NV-RAM). Another is the Tektronix 1755A Vector and Waveform Monitor which displays swimming fish when Remote>Software version are selected on the CONFIG menu.
The Commodore Amiga 1000 computer included the signatures of the design and development team embossed on the inside of the case, including Jay Miner and the paw print of his dog Mitchy.[18]
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. This Easter egg requires you to open up the device, which usually voids the warranty.
The Commodore Amiga models 500, 600 and 1200 each featured Easter eggs, in the form of titles of songs by The B-52's as white printing on the motherboards. The 500 says "B52/Rock Lobster", the 600 says "June Bug", and the 1200 says "Channel Z".[19] The Amiga OS software includes a variety of hidden messages as well.
The CVAX microchip implementation of the MicroVAX cpu contained in its etchings the Russian phrase in the Cyrillic alphabet "VAX: When you care enough to steal the very best" in an effort to needle potential intellectual property-stealing clone manufacturers in the Soviet Bloc. [20]
Easter eggs are also found on movie DVDs. In some cases, an extra click to the right or left, or going up in the menu instead of going down to select a choice will bring up a hidden feature (usually a random object on screen will be highlighted for selection), including concept art, humorous outtakes, or deleted scenes.[21]
In the episode "Blink" of the series Doctor Who, Easter Eggs on a set of DVDs help The Doctor relay a message to Sally Sparrow.
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 in their software as part of their Trustworthy Computing initiative.[22]
Douglas W. Jones says that "some Easter eggs may be intentional tools used to detect illegal copying, others are clearly examples of unauthorized functionality that has slipped through the quality-control tests at the vendor." While hidden Easter eggs themselves are harmless, it may be possible for malware to be hidden in similar ways in voting machines or other computers.[23]
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