10 Secret Easter Eggs Left By Developers
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00:00Whilst cheat codes in video games seemed to be a thing of the past, over the years we've
00:03only seen a rise in easter eggs.
00:06From little nods and winks, to hidden rooms and menus, sometimes discovering something
00:10tucked away in a game you love gives you another layer of appreciation for it.
00:15Some games that we all thought we knew have surprised us years or even decades later.
00:20With that in mind, these easter eggs are some particularly sneaky ones.
00:23I'm SciForWhatCulture.com and these are 10 secret video game easter eggs left by developers.
00:2910.
00:30Sonic the Hedgehog's Hidden Credits
00:32It's hard to imagine now, but not all that long ago, it wasn't unusual for video games
00:36to have limited to no credits.
00:38In fact the term easter egg was birthed by developer Warren Robinett, bucking this trend
00:42to hide a room in the Atari 2600 game adventure that displayed his name against his boss's
00:48wishes.
00:49Many publishers wouldn't budge on the stance and those that did, such as Sega, had a habit
00:53of asking programmers to use nicknames and pseudonyms for their staff roles rather than
00:57real names.
00:58With the looming release of Sonic the Hedgehog soon to be the crown of the Mega Drive, The
01:02Blue Blur's co-creator Yuji Naka was displeased with the idea that his team would go without
01:07the recognition he felt they deserved.
01:09In a fashion like Robinett before him, Naka went against his superiors and slipped a little
01:13something something in as a gift to his co-workers.
01:15Thus, through a series of long-winded button inputs, Sonic players could boot up a secret
01:20staff role that contained the real names of the men who worked on this 16-bit classic.
01:25Early details on this are light, but it can be assumed that Sega found this easter egg
01:29pretty early on, as it's only possible in the first print, version 0.0, of the Japanese
01:35version of the game.
01:36Later revisions, and international releases, saw the secret credits removed.
01:409.
01:41The Last of Us' TV Easter Egg
01:44There are an infinite number of ways to hide things in games, through invisible walls,
01:48behind button combinations, or simply in the code itself, but very few games ask players
01:52to reset at a very specific point in order to show them something neat.
01:56That's why this The Last of Us secret went unknown for 7 years, before one lucky player
02:01found it by chance.
02:03During the prologue, the game will save as the player, controlling Joel's daughter
02:06Sarah, reaches the bottom of the stairs of the family home.
02:10If the player then quits the game before progressing the story and reloads, upon ascending the
02:14stairs and entering Joel's bedroom, a still image of a cordyceps infected ant is seen
02:19on the TV, instead of the normal static.
02:22It's a clear nod to the clicker enemies of the game, and the odd little easter egg
02:25was acknowledged by developer Kurt Maginow as his creation, who joked it was probably
02:30a bug, to be honest, in a tweet.
02:32Like many obscure secrets, it serves no purpose, other than for a moment of, huh, neat.
02:37Now if people can figure out if there's an easter egg to make that prologue play to
02:40its completion without making my heart break, then we'd be in business.
02:448.
02:45Fallout 76's Skeleton War
02:47Many of the best worlds in video games use documents, files, and diaries scattered throughout
02:52the experience to offer the player more information and to invest them further into the universe.
02:56It's also a great place to insert humour if your game is so inclined, and the Fallout
03:00series is no stranger to documents both foul and fairly hilarious.
03:03Some developers can't help but sneak a few winks and nods in, however.
03:07It's one thing to pay homage to your favourite games, books, movies, and so on, but one file
03:11in Fallout 76 did something unique and paid lip service to, of all things, a tweet.
03:16The file Skeleton Extraction Guide is a fairly macabre document that details proper procedure
03:21on how to prepare a skeleton for mounting, presumably on your wall like some kind of
03:26perverse trophy.
03:27However, the file ends with a hilarious line, note, if your tombstone does not read Rest
03:32in Peace, or some variant thereof, you are automatically drafted into the Skeleton Wars.
03:37Zach Wilson, who worked on Fallout 76, took ownership of this file and used it to immortalise
03:42one of his favourite tweets from the very popular at Drill account.
03:46As far as we're concerned, this is comedy and good advice.
03:497.
03:50World Championship Soccer 2's Developer Rant
03:53Every now and then, frustrated programmers will find spiteful ways to lash out at their
03:57employers or the bad experiences they've had working on a project.
04:00There's plenty of stories of developers leaving messages in places that they thought
04:04would never be seen.
04:05One of these can be found in the code for the 1994 sports title World Championship Soccer
04:102.
04:11With FIFA International Soccer having released the prior year, competition in the sports
04:14game space was heating up, and one mystery programmer was definitely displeased with
04:19how WCS2 might stack up against it.
04:22He was so committed to this rant, in fact, that not only did he drop it into the game's
04:25code, but he also altered it, swapping letters here and there so that it would go by without
04:29being spotted, despite being all in heavy, angry caps lock.
04:33The profane message is a bit too strong for us to repeat here, but let's just say whoever
04:37it was was pretty upset that the cheap s*** game can't even come up with a real password
04:42system.
04:43Well, congratulations to you, mystery programmer, because whilst WCS2 was indeed eclipsed by
04:49the emerging FIFA franchise, you at least gave us something memorable to laugh at about
04:5425 years later.
04:556.
04:56Grand Theft Auto V's Black Cell Phones
04:58GTA V will probably go down in history as one of the most successful games of all time,
05:03still making sales numbers today, even 9 years and 2 console generations on from its debut.
05:09It's stuffed with plenty of content to keep players coming back for more, and like many
05:13of the other games in the series, is loaded with fun nods and secrets in its sprawling
05:17open world sandbox.
05:19One such secret took 3 years for players to find, and presumably they did so by pure chance,
05:23as it requires bashing what appears to be a seemingly nonsense series of numbers into
05:27their phone.
05:281999-367-3767 is the magic number, and calling it causes the player's in-game phone to
05:35essentially change from day mode to night mode, swapping the background to black.
05:40Oh and also, it triggers a random explosion above the player's head for some reason.
05:44To this day it's not clear what the point of this is, with some players theorising it
05:48was an unfinished cheat code, part of a cut mission, or something even more sinister,
05:53as some claim that dialing the number whilst standing on Rebel Radio Tower causes eerie
05:57morse code to play.
05:58Some believe that 1999-367-3767 is code for 1999-EMP-DROP, or, the definitely spookiest
06:06sounding, 1999-EMPEROR.
06:09The truth is out there… maybe.
06:125.
06:13Mortal Kombat Secret Menus
06:15It's one thing for a video game to have a secret that goes undiscovered for years,
06:19but it's another altogether when it's something tucked under the hood of multiple
06:23games.
06:24In 2016, 20 years after the release of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, keen-eyed fan of the series,
06:29Your MK Arcade Source, managed to unearth a secret menu known as the EJB menu, named
06:35for creator Ed J. Boon in the first three Mortal Kombat titles.
06:39It's no wonder that the menus were never found, considering they all require extremely
06:43fast inputs of codes of up to 20 characters long, although the exact length and input
06:48differs between the games.
06:49At first it seems apparent that this menu was more designed for those working on the
06:53project.
06:54Each one has various options that can be keyed on or off, such as unlocking or locking characters,
06:59turning off fatalities, difficulty adjusters, and simple diagnostic tests.
07:03However, a final option, at least in the original Mortal Kombat, marked as Hello, includes a
07:08list of names, presumably Boon's family and friends, proving that it was designed
07:12to be shown to at least a lucky few.
07:14And now, 20 years later, we all get to see it.
07:17Here's to you, Ed, and whoever all these people in your list are.
07:214.
07:22Resident Evil 4's Mystery Man
07:24One of the many keys to a great horror game is isolation, and whilst it amped up the action
07:29compared to its predecessors, Resident Evil 4 kept its cast small and tight and dropped
07:34the player in an environment that made them feel alone and outnumbered.
07:37Nearing the final act of the game, after helicopter pilot Mike crashes to his death to prove our
07:42earlier point, lay dormant a secret that took 12 years for players to find.
07:47By equipping the tricked up sniper rifle with the extra powerful scope, it was possible
07:51to see a figure standing in a building in the far distance.
07:55This surprising discovery led Modus to break the camera of the game to go take a closer
07:59look.
08:00What, or rather who, they found still remains the topic of debate.
08:04The identity of the Japanese man in a fetching green parka throwing his two thumbs up, even
08:08several years later, is still a mystery.
08:11Our best bet is a developer sneaking himself, or a colleague, or a friend onto the disc
08:15as a prank.
08:16Still, he's a happy fellow and his bright, albeit odd appearance certainly brings some
08:21levity to a game all about body transforming parasites and death.
08:253.
08:26Halo 3's Happy Birthday Message
08:29Halo 3 was one of the Xbox 360's biggest tentpole offerings, concluding Master Chief's
08:33original trilogy and supplying a multiplayer experience that kept many gamers entertained
08:38until the early morning many times over.
08:40With the number of hours that the game's 14.5 million copies had plunged into them,
08:45it's surprising then that one of its secrets lay dormant for 8 years.
08:49In fact, its creator had to allude to it himself as players hadn't organically come
08:53across it in the first 5 years since shipping.
08:56In the frequent Q&A mailbag sessions that Bungie would post on their site, long-time
09:01Halo developer Adrian Perez said that a specific date and loading screen could trigger something
09:06he had coded into the finished product.
09:08By changing the Xbox 360's internal clock to December 25th, booting up a campaign mission,
09:14and holding down both thumbsticks, players can be treated to… a zoomed-out loading screen?
09:19Huh, that's not all that special.
09:22However, written into the Halo that forms as the mission loads is the message Happy
09:26Birthday Lauren, an ode to Perez's wife.
09:29This is the gaming equivalent of buying your partner a plane with a banner behind it, except
09:33this banner is immortalised in every copy of an award-winning FPS title.
09:38How sweet.
09:392.
09:40Discworld's F-bomb Discworld's hidden gem of an easter egg
09:43went undiscovered for 20 years for numerous reasons.
09:47It's only on the PlayStation release, it takes getting to Act 4 of the game to hear,
09:51and it also takes some pixel-perfect point-and-click accuracy.
09:55When the villagers fill the town square, the player must click rather precisely on the
09:58pupils of two specific townsfolk, and then drag the cursor over the bosom of a particularly
10:04er… top-heavy lady.
10:06Rincewind the Wizard, as played by Eric Idle, will then rather suddenly blurt out the line
10:11''I want to be the first person in a game to say f***.''
10:14What makes this all the more astounding is that gamers had to work backwards to find
10:17this easter egg.
10:19In the sequel, Rincewind proclaims the same line, albeit censored, and is told that he
10:23in fact has already done this, and that no players wrote in to call it out, so it must
10:27have been too well hidden.
10:29Considering that Discworld comes from the mind of the surreal and irony-laden works
10:33of Terry Pratchett, most assumed this was just a weird gag.
10:36However, when home technology caught up, dedicated fans worked through the code to find this
10:41historical easter egg.
10:431.
10:44Chris Houlihan's Secret Zelda Room
10:46In 1919, Nintendo Power magazine fan Chris Houlihan apparently won a competition that
10:51allowed his name to feature in an upcoming Nintendo title.
10:55That game would be The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past, and whilst they got their reward,
11:00it wasn't made known to the public, well, ever really.
11:04Nintendo, for whatever reason, never acknowledged the easter egg, and it remained a secret about
11:08the game for two decades.
11:10It was up to internet fans to discover the Chris Houlihan room in the 2000s after finding
11:15text in the code that proved its existence.
11:18Chris's room is hidden in the trunk of a tree, and requires the players to essentially
11:22glitch or trick their way in, commonly using the Pegasus Boots or bombs to shunt Link inside.
11:27In the room, they'll find a good helping of blue rupees, and a text box that proclaims
11:31it's Chris's top secret room.
11:33Stranger than Nintendo never mentioning it, in fact, is that Chris Houlihan himself remains
11:38an enigma.
11:39Whilst winners of similar contests, for the likes of Turok and Mega Man, have come to
11:43tell their story, try as they might, the Zelda community has never managed to locate Mr.
11:48Houlihan, whose name is inscribed in one of the SNES's all-time greats.
11:53And that's our list!
11:54Let us know in the comments below what you thought of it, and your favourite video game
11:58easter eggs.
11:59I'm Si for What Culture, and have a good week!