An Easter egg is a hidden message in a video game, but it can also exist in websites, movies or 3D animation.  These hidden secrets serve to leave clues about a story or even protect material that is subject to copyright. Their origin comes from the Anglo-Saxon tradition of hiding Easter eggs in different places for children to look for them and entertain themselves.

Every videogame lover knows this term, as it is very appealing to gamers that there are a number of mysteries within games that are not readily apparent.

Sometimes these Easter eggs are tricks or winks to TV series, websites, movies or other videogames.

History of Easter eggs

The first known Easter egg appeared in the Atari Adventure videogame in 1978, introduced by the programmer in which he indicated that he had been the creator of the videogame; the company he worked for had a marked policy of keeping its programmers anonymous.

This secret was discovered by a gamer and aroused great curiosity among videogame lovers. Such was the repercussion that Atari called the message an “Easter egg” and proposed to include it in future titles as it was fun for the players.

Some well-known Easter eggs

There are many companies that use these Easter eggs and not only those dedicated to videogames but from different sectors, although most of them are concentrated in the technological field.

Google

The world’s best-known browser has for years included numerous hidden Easter eggs in its searches. One of the best known is when you search for the word meteorite and the results tab shows an animation of it hitting the bottom of your screen.

Another well-known Google Easter egg refers to the Nintendo 64 video game Star Fox and can be found by searching for “Do a Barrel Roll” and clicking on the first result.

Facebook

This company changed its corporate colour and made a magical effect appear when typing Harry Potter in the search engine of its social network; this was done to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the saga in 2017.

Pixar and Disney

This is perhaps the best known example of an Easter egg in the world of animation. These two companies hide the code “A113” in a large number of their productions. The story comes from the fact that some of the professionals who today work for Disney or Pixar studied in classroom 113 of the California Institute of the Arts.

Apple

The company created by Steve Jobs has included different Easter eggs in its devices over the years. A few years ago they appeared in the brand’s own text editor, but now, due to the large number of users who use the brand, these hidden secrets appear above all in mobile devices.

For example, we can highlight another nod to the film Harry Potter, because if we say to our iPhone “hey Siri lumos maxima” our phone’s torch will turn on. In the films of the saga, when a protagonist mentioned this spell, his wand would light up instantly.

We encourage you to try any of these Easter eggs, and if you want your animation project to have some kind of hidden message, don’t hesitate to contact us.