Easter Eggs

[Douglas]

What are some of the best easter eggs you've ever seen in games? Here's the one that prompted me to post this, as my "holy crap he actually did it" reaction is still going:

Long explanation:
Neverwinter Nights 1. Fan made custom modules. There's this guy on nwvault.ign.com who goes by the name Baldecaran and made a great little set of modules called the Prophet series. He set them in his own custom campaign world, and they're really quite good. The main story isn't relevant to the easter egg, though, so I'll leave that to your own investigation if you're interested.

There are a lot of little side fluff details in these modules that are part of what make them so good, and one of those is the story of a half-elven prince. His elf father discarded his human mother when she got old and decrepit (different racial lifespans are a problem), and in his anger the young prince took a powerful magic ring that was a family heirloom and symbol, put an illusion on it that makes it appear as a common copper ring, and sold it to a random human woman in a far away city for a single gold piece. It turns out, of course, that you can find this ring, remove the illusion, and make good use of the restored ring's power.

What really has me amazed about this is the depth of the easter egg - what you have to do to pull it off. The disguised ring cannot be acquired in the Prophet series of modules. You have to play a separate module, called Honor Among Thieves, made by the same person and set in the same world. In the central city of that module, there is a female human commoner somewhere in the city. She is not relevant to the plot, she has no special role, she just happens to have a copper ring. A plain copper ring just like the countless others you find, with no special powers, and there's nothing to guide you to her either. I imagine few players even acquire this ring at all, and most of them waste no time tossing it at the nearest merchant for a pittance. Even if you do acquire and keep the ring, there is nothing in Honor Among Thieves to remove or even detect the disguise.

In order to trigger the easter egg, you have to get this ring, keep it to the end of the module, save your character, import the same character - still with the useless ring in inventory - into the (story-wise) unrelated Prophet series, and then play through the prologue and first third or so of chapter 1, until you reach the elven city that the ring originally came from. If you still have the ring when you enter the hall of that city's Council, the illusion will be dispelled and the ring's magical powers (which are some quite good but not overwhelming ability score bonuses) will become functional.


Summary: Background fluff detail in a computerized D&D story turns out to actually be implemented - in a crossover between two unrelated adventures in the same world that are connected only if you happen to play the same character through both, and the "random unidentified human woman" involved in the story really is exactly that.

The part that really impressed me is how he told the story, put it in, made the resolution not even self-contained within a single series, and then just left it. There's no sly hints about where the ring went, the story is presented as one background detail among many, there's no metaphorical flashing "Easter Egg in this direction" sign, and even if you start down the path there is a completely logical total lack of indication that you're on to anything at all until it finishes.

And no, I did not discover this easter egg by playing through it. I happened to notice parts of its implementation while looking at something in the module editor.

[Grinner]

At the title screen of Geneforge, if you click on the creations till you get only the maximum number of a single kind, messages from the designer will appear.

[DigoDragon]

What are some of the best easter eggs you've ever seen in games? Here's the one that prompted me to post this, as my "holy crap he actually did it" reaction is still going:

Wow, that is a really good Easter Egg. :smallsmile:

I wish I had a cool tale like that. Most Easter Eggs I know of are just little novelty tricks. I think there was a decent one where if you have a completed save from the playstation Suikoden I game, that it carries over some levels for specific characters in Suikoden 2.
My brother found that out by accident.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Guile may not be in SF X MM, but you can still play an 8-bit remix of his theme. During any level pause gameplay and then hold 'Jump' and press 'Up', 'Down', 'Down', 'Down'.

[Eldan]

I've been playing fallout New Vegas again. There's a relatively well-known one:

You are in the middle of the Mojave desert, after a nuclear war. Wandering in the middle of nowhere, you find a fridge in the middle of a bomb crater. In the fridge is a skeleton wearing a unique brown fedora and a revolver.

I thought that was quite fun.

[Ianuagonde]

Lots of dialogue easter eggs in the Baldur's Gate series. My favorite, from the megalomanic gnome Tiax: "One day, Tiax will do the pointing and clicking!"

And from Warcraft 3, of course. When you click on a unit, you get a response such as "Ready", "Standing by" or something like that. Click enough times, and you get...
"Say hello to my little friend!" (forest troll)
"Tell Blizzard I make a great action figure" (wind serpent)
"I never say Ni" (knight)
"This...is...my...BOOMSTICK" (rifleman)
"For the end-of-the-world spell, press control-alt-delete" (sorceress)
"I said a bowstring, not a G-...oh never mind" (night elf archer)

I need to stop writing these down while I still can...

[Douglas]

If we're listing Warcraft 3 unit quotes, how could you forget the best of them all?

Priest: "Side effects may include: dry mouth, nausea, vomiting, water retention, painful rectal itch, hallucination, dementia, psychosis, coma, death, and halitosis. Magic is not for everyone. Consult your doctor before use."

[The_Ditto]

Most recently, Borderlands 2 has a Minecraft easter egg. Complete with creepers :smalleek:

[GolemsVoice]

You can find a dead Assassin wearing the distinct white and red of the Assassin's Creed Assassins near a haystack in The Witcher 2. Sadly, this haystack wasn't as good at blocking falls than others of his kind

[Lentrax]

The assassinate the assassins quest in Borderlands 2 uses different terms for assassinate. One of them is MDK, which is a reference to the movie Demolition Man. MDK is the abbreviation for Murder Death Kill.

Loved that the first time I noticed it.

[Zevox]

I don't know if it qualifies as an Easter Egg (as I'm not entirely clear on what the term specifically means), but one that may: I'm currently playing Valkyria Chronicles, and two of the characters you can recruit are Vyse and Aika, the main characters of Skies of Arcadia. Which took me by complete surprise, as I was unaware that the games were made by the same developer.

I recruited them right away, of course. I love Skies of Arcadia.

[flare'90]

Most recently, Borderlands 2 has a Minecraft easter egg. Complete with creepers :smalleek:

In the same zone there is also a Dark Souls easter egg, on a little island somewhere in the sea of acid.

[OracleofWuffing]

Totakaka's Song (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazumi_Totaka).

The New Tetris for the Nintendo 64 has a bunch of rants from the programmers (they are not safe to link to) that aren't actually viewable in-game, accompanied by a large collection of ASCII art.

E: Oh, yeah, um, there's also an Arwing enemy-like-object in Zelda: Ocarina of Time that some folks can access by game enhancement devices or not putting the cartridge in correctly.

[Androgeus]

I've been playing fallout New Vegas again. There's a relatively well-known one:

You are in the middle of the Mojave desert, after a nuclear war. Wandering in the middle of nowhere, you find a fridge in the middle of a bomb crater. In the fridge is a skeleton wearing a unique brown fedora and a revolver.

I thought that was quite fun.

You need the Wild Wasteland trait to encounter it, much like all the easter eggs/references.

[ShadowFighter15]

You can find a dead Assassin wearing the distinct white and red of the Assassin's Creed Assassins near a haystack in The Witcher 2. Sadly, this haystack wasn't as good at blocking falls than others of his kind

Actually I think the fact that he's near the haystack tells you everything you need to know about what happened there.:smalltongue:

Although finding that gets you a little bonus ability, doesn't it? Been a while since I played.

Sadly, I don't have any video game easter eggs that I can think of off the top of my head save for one that I think's been removed since then.

I don't know if it's still there, but on a map in Mechwarrior Online called River City; there was a billboard advertising the game on one of the buildings just downhill from the northern spawn-point. I found it by sheer fluke way back in closed beta and haven't been able to find it since.

Screenshot linked to avoid page-stretching. (http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/1137415518073450430/013D2062CE2C0CC87F120B6587038698D02BB3DB/)

[DigoDragon]

Going back through my collection of old games, I found another.

Master of Orion 2: Play the game on April 1st (Or set your computer clock to that date). When the turn summary pops up showing you what's been build/upgraded/etc, occasionally you might see an entry like this--

"Your citizens demand a Stadium, and more tuna casserole."

The first part is a reference to Sim City.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Borderlands fishy easter eg. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lXwsY9RVlQ)

[endoperez]

Dungeon Keeper 1:

On specific levels, if you have a printer connected to your PC, the enemy boss sends you "a fax".

If you play the game during the full moon (checked from the computer clock), a two-line poem is displayed and there's a link to a special level. There are also a bunch of messages about developers' birthdays in there, linked to the actual date or otherwise hidden.

[Ianuagonde]

If we're listing Warcraft 3 unit quotes, how could you forget the best of them all?

Because if I list all the best ones, this thread would hit page 2 in a matter of minutes.

In Diablo 2, you need to travel to the ruins of Tristam, the starting point of Diablo 1. This is cool in itself, but the you find the corpse of Wirt, the peg-legged basterd. I wasted so much gold on him in Diablo 1...

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Because if I list all the best ones, this thread would hit page 2 in a matter of minutes.

In Diablo 2, you need to travel to the ruins of Tristam, the starting point of Diablo 1. This is cool in itself, but the you find the corpse of Wirt, the peg-legged basterd. I wasted so much gold on him in Diablo 1...

That's not really the easter egg. The easter egg is using that leg and combine it with a scroll of town portal in the Act 1 town after beating the difficulty. It will open a portal to the secret cow level.

[Ianuagonde]

That's not really the easter egg. The easter egg is using that leg and combine it with a scroll of town portal in the Act 1 town after beating the difficulty. It will open a portal to the secret cow level.

That's cool as well, but given the time I spent gambling away my hard-earned gold...the worst times were when he finally showed an item that I wanted, and it turned out I couldn't afford it after spending gold to get him to show him an item...The first time I saw his corpse, I spent five minutes yelling 'yes, finally. Justice is served!' I immediately made a necromancer, on the off chance I could raise him from the dead (you can't).

Minor nitpick: you need a Tome of TP. A scroll will not work.

[Togath]

In Diablo 3 there's also the secret pony level.
I also just found one in world of warcraft; at the temple of the white tiger, one of the possible challengers is called "Lun-Chi, the Streetfighter"(she's even dressed like Chun-li)

[Derjuin]

I've been playing fallout New Vegas again. There's a relatively well-known one:

You are in the middle of the Mojave desert, after a nuclear war. Wandering in the middle of nowhere, you find a fridge in the middle of a bomb crater. In the fridge is a skeleton wearing a unique brown fedora and a revolver.

I thought that was quite fun.

A much less well-known one is Johnny Five Aces (http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Johnny). Yet, the very fact that he exists in that game is pure hilarity to me.

[GolemsVoice]

In Prince of Persia - Warrior Within, you can find a pink flamingo and a teddy bear which can be equipped as secondary weapons. Talk about darker and edgier :smallbiggrin:

[The_Ditto]

The trivia game: "You don't know Jack". is full of sarcasm/easter eggs. :)

Depending on dates, how many people playing, your names, etc.

Some I came across:

Christmas
New years
Easter (of course) :)

Single player (makes some snide comment about no friends :smalleek:)

No name, he "assigns" you one, and they're all insulting.

[Eldan]

A much less well-known one is Johnny Five Aces (http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Johnny). Yet, the very fact that he exists in that game is pure hilarity to me.

And a slightly more complicated one:
"Two bears high-fiving".

Basically, it goes like this. Someone saw this picture (http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/images/36850-1-1289194539.jpg) in the Rorschach test the game throws at you in the character generation. He was quite convinced that it did not show a mushroom cloud, or a man with a beard, but quite clearly two bears jumping up and high-fiving each other.
So he made a mod which added that answer to the list of possible ones.

Then Obsidian included native americans in one of the DLCs. One of which had the native name "Two bears high-fiving".


Edit: my favourite one when I was a kid. The game Pharaoh (a semi-sequel of the Cesar series of city builder games, I have no idea how well-known they are) had a series of console cheat codes. One of which made a horde of hippoes appear. Now, that's quite normal, near the nile, though hippoes were ridiculously deadly.
However, the code "sideshow" gave every hippo on the map a pink tutu and made it dance ballet.

[Douglas]

Edit: my favourite one when I was a kid. The game Pharaoh (a semi-sequel of the Cesar series of city builder games, I have no idea how well-known they are) had a series of console cheat codes. One of which made a horde of hippoes appear. Now, that's quite normal, near the nile, though hippoes were ridiculously deadly.
However, the code "sideshow" gave every hippo on the map a pink tutu and made it dance ballet.
Please tell me there's a youtube video of that one. A horde of ballet hippos in pink tutus sounds hilarious.

[GolemsVoice]

In Fallout 1 (or maybe 2) you could also find a crashed British police call box that would disappear after a while, leaving an invisibility generator behind.


In Star Craft II, in the Terran mission where you have to wait for the evacuation from Mar Sara, if you go out and attack the Zerg, you can find an outhouse that will then lift up and appear in every screen on the Hyperion where space can be seen.

[Eldan]

It was a strategy game in... I think it was still the 90s. The graphics aren't very impressive, but sure, let me search.

...

Can't find one on Youtube. At least not without digging through videos of the most obnoxiously-voiced Let's Player I've ever heard.

[Teln]

In Warcraft 3's second Night Elf mission, there's a friendly Starcraft Hydralisk unit hidden near the first set of ballistas, behind some trees. That's not even from the same genre.

[The Glyphstone]

In Warcraft 3's second Night Elf mission, there's a friendly Starcraft Hydralisk unit hidden near the first set of ballistas, behind some trees. That's not even from the same genre.

Yeah, but it's Blizzard. I think it was Artanis who had the Annoyed quote "This is not Warcraft in space".

[Thiyr]

I enjoyed two of the eggs in the PS2 era GTA games. The sign on top of a bridge in San Andreas informing the player "There are no easter eggs up here. Go away", and the fake wall on a building which led to a pedestal holding a chocolate egg which read "Happy Easter".

There's the classic Houlihan room in Link to the Past, of course, and WoW has had a few good ones in its run (The conversation between Arthas and his dad if you turn the volume up and the music off in the throneroom over the undercity, a few others as well).

[DigoDragon]

No name, he "assigns" you one, and they're all insulting.

"Your key is P, as in pnumonia."


I just remembered one-- Castlevania Symphony of the Night (PS1). Put the game disc in a CD player and skip to track 2. Has a little hidden narration and a music track on it. :smallsmile: