According to Wikipedia, media Easter eggs are “a message, image, or feature hidden in a video game, movie, or other, usually electronic, medium”, with the term first being employed in this manner after Atari employee Warren Robinett secretly programmed the message “Created by Warren Robinett” to appear when a player moved their avatar over a specific pixel during a certain part of the 1979 Atari video game, Adventure.
This move was Robinett’s secret protest against Atari’s practice at the time of not including the names of programmers who worked on video games in the credits, in case competitors would try to snatch away employees. After a player found Robinett’s hidden message in the game, Atari decided to keep the message in the game, with Steve Wright, Director of Software Development in the Atari Consumer Division, suggesting that the inclusion of messages like the one Robinett programmed into Adventure would be fun for consumers to find.
While traditional Easter eggs have been around for hundreds of years, the term has gained an entirely different meaning in the internet age – although the joy of finding one after spending some time looking for it still gets people just as excited as they were when they were children. Today, Easter eggs can be found in games, comics, movies, TV shows and most forms of media, with the internet also joining in the fun since its inception.
If you have some time to kill, why not follow the clues and see if you can find some of the internet’s most entertaining Easter eggs. The hunt is on!
Wikipedia
Head to the Wikipedia entry for “Easter egg (media)” and follow the rabbits’ gaze.
Coca-Cola
The most popular soft drink in the world has also built an Easter egg into its website. To find it, right click on the Coca-Cola homepage and click on “View the source code” or “View page source”, and scroll down.
Easter eggs have always been popular amongst the programmers at Google, and new hidden features can be found on the search engine quite regularly. Try typing “askew”, “do a barrel roll” or “anagram”.
If you have a little more time, search for “text adventure” in a Chrome browser, then click on the three vertical dots in the right-hand corner, and select “More Tools” and “Developer Tools” in the dropdown menu. Click on “Console” in the lower-right corner, and follow the instructions.