The best easter eggs in video games: between madness and vanity

The easter egg is a practice now known and cleared even at the cinema with the film Ready Player One which makes the videogame Easter egg hunt the leitmotif of the film. In the world of video games, developers have always indulged themselves by inserting signatures, quotes but also just oddities in their works for the pure pleasure of doing it. If you are a lover of these little secrets and you like to hunt them, you will surely find several little gems in this article on best easter eggs in video games!

Easter Eggs: between madness and usefulness

These secrets get their name from the egg hunt that is usually carried out in some countries during the Easter period. The first of them dates back to 1979 when developer Warren Robinett entered his initials in a secret room of Atari's Adventure video game. The author's signature is in fact one of the main Easter Eggs that can be found in a video game but also in software. In the IT field, in fact, it is possible to find traces of the authors of a program by rummaging through its code. A vulgar display of power? An indelible sign of their passage? Folly? Vanity? We don't know, but what is certain is that egg hunt is fun and when you happen to come across one of these oddities, the grin on your face is inevitable, especially when these easter eggs are closer to insanity than anything else.

The signature easter egg has in fact evolved to become a real content studied at 360 degrees and that requires precise mechanics to be unlocked. I had friends who bought video games just to see all the many easter eggs hidden by the developers. I wrote "had" because some of them are still there convinced that there is still something to discover if you can totally skip the Super Mario end-of-level flag. A real madness that however leaves the doubt and pushes players to get lost in the taste of hunting for something that goes beyond the gameplay. Exit the main road, go against the established rules, finding one of these little pearls is more important to some than finishing the game or unlocking particular skills. Some Easter Eggs, however, are not only useless additions but lead to unlocking secondary weapons that may clash with the type of game they are in, but help the player to better face the game. An emblematic case of these weapons is the Star Wars-style lightsaber that can be found in Ico and who stretches out of proportion when the horned boy shakes hands with the fading Yorda:

There is even more out of the code Mr. Toots found on Red Faction Armageddon, a real unicorn that is held upside down by the protagonist and shoots devastating rainbows from the cu… backside. Not to mention Saints Row IV's Giant Dildo Mace or the other crazy weapons collected in this video:

 

While these Easter Eggs can be considered useful, there are others that border on madness and leave the player with a shocked face in front of the screen. Sharks coming out of puddles, terrifying apparitions and even thereflying house from the Pixar movie UP in Battlefield 1 or Shrek's hut in Ark Survival Evolved:

 

The open world, however, are the titles that lend themselves more to hiding the easter eggs. The Witcher 3 is one of the video games that contains more easter eggs and citations to the world bringing examples from cinema, from the world of TV series, from that of video games, from literature and introducing nice tricks against cheaters such as that of the cow watcher. Initially to quickly make money on the game, many players killed the cows present in large quantities in one of the villages in the game and resold their skins. By waiting a few hours the cows were respawned and it was possible to kill them indefinitely. The developers have decided to stop this killing by introducing a special guardian who respawns instead of cows (Minute 5:04).

The philosophy of easter eggs has now become an integral part of the gaming landscape, as if they were the real collectibles to be discovered in each title. These shown are just some of the easter eggs that can be found in video games and if after this feast you are still not satisfied, we leave you with a series of our best articles on the subject:

Marvel's Spiederman and the 883s

Far Cry 5 e IT

18 unmissable Resident Evil 7 easter eggs

Spyro Reignited Trilogy's heartwarming easter egg

Hitman Absolution's wonderful and completely insane easter egg

Ralph Breaks the Internet and all the secrets and quotes from the film

And what easter eggs did you find?