What is an Easter Egg and Why Are They Hidden in Movies and Games?

Learn the history of Easter eggs, discover iconic examples, and join Domestika's egg hunt for 10% off your next course

Easter eggs are not just for the springtime holiday: nowadays you’ll find them everywhere in gaming, 3D and animation, and film. These hidden secrets for fans to uncover can simply be a bit of fun, drop hints about storylines, or even protect copyrighted material!

In this article we explore what an Easter egg is, the history of this practice, and where to find some classic examples to spot on your next movie or gaming night. Then, it’s time to get cracking and search for your own holiday surprise…

Keep reading to learn how to take part in the Domestika Easter Egg Hunt and get a 10% discount.

What is a hidden Easter egg?

Easter eggs are secrets, tricks, and jokes hidden in pieces of media, such as TV series, movies, video games, websites, and so on. Usually hard to spot, they might reveal a new detail or clues about the story, or simply pay homage to an inspiration that the creators loved.

For example, a coder might put a joke in their codebase that wouldn’t usually show up in a game, or an animator might add a poster for their favorite film in the background of a scene.

Why do creatives include Easter eggs in their work?

When it comes to film and gaming, the inclusion of small bonus details for audiences to find is usually just for fun, but can also serve a purpose. Firstly, it can be a marketing tactic to build hype online, with forums like Reddit being ideal places for users to share their discoveries.

More seriously, placing deliberate inaccuracies and jokes inside maps has been used by mapmakers to ensure their unique maps don’t get printed by someone else. If their work was stolen, they’d be able to point to the inaccuracy and prove the work was theirs.

Which was the first Easter egg in a video game?

The answer to this question is a little nebulous. Technically, the very first known example is in Moonlander (1973), a game where you land a spaceship on the Moon. If you fly far enough horizontally, you find a McDonald’s restaurant instead.

But there is a more famous example from Warren Robinett, a programmer who created the game Adventure, which was released on the Atari 2600 gaming system in 1980. Due to disagreements over royalties and employee treatment, Robinett left a secret note in the game that he was the true creator, even though he was otherwise uncredited.

This secret was found by a player and investigated by the team after Robinett left. Steve Wright, director of software, dubbed it an “Easter egg” and suggested that Atari games should contain them going forward, as they were fun for players to find.

The term has proved so powerful that it has gone on to become popular in movies, books, and many other media (discover more famous examples of Easter eggs in classic films).

Famous Easter eggs in movies and other media

The alumni of CalArts (California Institute of the Arts) might be the most prolific hiders of Easter eggs. “Room A113” is a classroom used by many icons of filmmaking and animation, and as such the number appears in almost every Pixar film (from Toy Story to Turning Red), many Disney films, and tons of other media including The Simpsons, Rugrats, BoJack Horseman, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and Fallout 4.

The book and film adaptation of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline took the concept to the extreme. The story follows several characters in a battle to find all of the Easter eggs in a huge virtual reality world, with the final challenge being a callback to Adventure's iconic example.

And websites do it too. Try searching any of the Friends characters’ names on Google, and click on the little icon next to their name in the sidebar that appears on the right of the results page.

Domestika’s 2022 Easter Egg Hunt

But if your average Easter egg is purely for entertainment, at Domestika we wanted to add the extra elements of creativity and learning. We have hidden our own Easter eggs somewhere in the pages for our 3D & Animation course lists.

All you need to do is find the egg hidden on course thumbnails, click in to the course page, and use the promo code that pops up to get an extra 10% discount off any course you purchase.

The Domestika Easter egg hunt will run from now until April 19 at 3pm.

How to play

1. Visit our 3D & Animation courses page to get started.

2. Find an Easter egg in one of the course thumbnails.

3. Click on the course to reveal a promo code.

4. Use the promo code for any course you then purchase (even if it’s not from the 3D & Animation category).

5. Remember to buy before April 19 at 3pm.