Sunday, March 30, 2014

The Super Bowl Egg

Sometimes, when you're doing everyday things, driving your car, watching tv, or listening to the radio, you come across some things that make you go hmmm.

Why is this pic even here?!


I was driving to work when I heard of this whopper of an Easter Egg. Apparently, Old Spice had been airing some commercials, both on TV and on the internet. A very particular ad had been showing on the internet that featured a business meeting. One of the men at the meeting apparently has a living toupee that removed itself from the owners head, moved over to the beautiful lady on the other side of the table, flirted with her and obtained her number.

Here's a link to the video: Old Spice: Meeting

What made this commercial so special was the the number the lady wrote down was not your typical "555-XXXX" number that most media productions display, but rather it showed a real number.

Would you have called this number?


What happened next became the most beneficial easter egg ever.

Scott Knowlton, a Buzz60 (news media website) producer, decided to call the number out of curiosity. Because he was the first person to call the number, he won himself 2 tickets to the Super Bowl against the Seahawks and the Broncos.

(Of course this happened before the Super Bowl)

Old Spice used marketing and Easter Eggs to their advantage, knowing people would be curious about things in their commercials. It was a brilliant move, and garnered a lot of buzz with a contest that was never advertised.

Good Job, Old Spice, good job.


I hate to refer to another website, but this one...

I do a lot of research on the web and in my own travels, looking for easter eggs and thinking of how I'm going to put that into a blog post. It's a lot of work, but when I see the final result, it's pretty awesome.

(plus I'm doing this for my Masters course hehe)

Anyways, I came across this post and I just couldn't repurpose it to do it justice, but I was really impressed on how many easter eggs this post revealed; it went deeper than I usually see, and I see pretty deep.

But this is no excuse for a post, I just thought that this was a great post and I wanted to share it:

Here it is: 50 Marvel Movie Easter Eggs


Monday, March 10, 2014

Am I my own Easter Egg in Titanfall?

I have to give you all a little history...

I started in the game industry way back in 2003 when I worked for Blizzard with a very early, unreleased version of World of Warcraft. I'll admit, there were times I was asked to send in a list of potential names for items to try and make my personal mark in the World of Warcraft. At the time, I was excited to do it, but I ended up being lazy and just spaced it.

Still, I would have loved to see items in the game that I could have named myself.

As I moved on in the game industry, I noticed many of my friends had created their likeness in game…a very personalized Easter Egg that few people would ever know. This wasn't just for World of Warcraft, it was for other games as well. They were making their mark, why wasn't I?

This non-playable character (NPC) is named after a real Quality Assurance employee at Blizzard


I mean, who wouldn't want their likeness in a game?

And while I've had chances, I felt like I didn't need to. The excitement of just being in the game industry was awesome enough. Maybe someone would think I'm cool enough to model me and just place me in a game.

Well that time (I think) has come.

Next week, Titanfall releases for XBox One and PC…and soon thereafter for XBox 360.



In Titanfall, there are currently 2 factions: The Militia and the corporate conglomerate IMC. Introduced so far from these factions are 6 characters. The Militia has the leader MacAllan, intel specialist and engineer Bish, and Marauder Corps leader Sarah. The IMC has Frontier operations commander-in-chief Vice Admiral Graves, intel specialist Blisk, and artificial intelligence companion Spyglass.

From what people have said about the game, apparently I look like the Bish character. What do you think?

I swear, someone at Respawn Entertainment used me as a template for this guy...

I'll be honest, I think this is kinda cool. There are theories that this character is modeled after another guy: Markman, from Madcatz.


Does this guy look like Bish?

What do you think?

Sunday, March 9, 2014

What Easter Eggs have YOU found?

When I started my Facebook site, I wanted to ask and see if my followers if they knew of any Easter Eggs…specifically ones that were not easy to find. I had an idea of what kinds of responses I'd get, but I got something entirely different.

The responses I got really got me thinking that there are a lot more Easter Eggs out there and that people have varying definitions of the term Easter Egg; it's not as simple a definition as it appears.

For Kyle Hoover, Easter Egg just meant something that was out of the ordinary; something that just doesn't fit with the rest of the world that didn't really reference anything.


In the game Call of Duty: Finest Hour (a war game), there appears to be a giant apple in the environment.

Strangely, you can clip (pass through) the apple only to reveal…a UFO?

For Roberto Reynoso, an Easter Egg is something that is already known, but no one has found it yet. In his words:

"Well right now, no one knows where it is. The jet pack's legend started in GTA San Andreas. The jet pack was very easily accessible through a cheat code. In GTA V, we all know that the jet pack is in the game, yet no one has found it despite the many connections to the history of the jet pack being in the game and even real world connections to a jet pack. One of the most popular being 2001: A Space Oddity. There is a shed in Trevor's air field with the name of the company that built the shed (Jack sheep servicing) and even referencing a 90's porn star actor's name of the Hanger (Jake steed as Jack Sheepe). On the bottom of the shed is a letter number combination. (R-108 being the run time of the movie.) Despite a whole community of people looking for the jet pack around the clock, the community has not made much progress as a whole. Rockstar has even come out to say that there are eater eggs hidden in the game we will never be able to find."

Rafael Lopez has a different take on the Easter Egg:

"There is a world that just released for The Sims 3 called Roaring Heights. In the world there is a Town Hall structure and there is a really big easter egg on it, it's not really hidden but it's something that not a lot of people see because it blends in with the buildings deco. The easter egg is basically a big plaque/ sign showing off the new deigns, and art style for the new and upcoming Sims 4, hence this is the last world that will be released for TS3."

This appears to be a foreshadowing of Sims 4. 
In conclusion, Easter Eggs are what we believe them to be. The definitions may be slightly different from person to person, but everybody can agree it's something special that creators put in there for our enjoyment.

So until next time, happy hunting everyone!

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Easter Eggs in Wrestling!

Last week, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) launched their over-the-top streaming network, aptly named WWE Network. It allows subscribers to access WWE's growing and massive library of wrestling content of more than 50 years and includes content from WWE, World Championship Wrestling (WCW), Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF), and many other smaller wrestling promotions. Much of the content chronicles debut appearances of popular wrestling personalities and shows character progression over the years.

But with the birth of modern wrestling entertainment, audiences began to see an uncanny relationship between some wrestlers' personalities and pop culture.

Back in 1982, comedian Andy Kaufman started doing skits where he wrestled women and declared himself the "Intergender Wrestling Champion of the World". A very young Jerry "The King" Lawler had proposed a challenge to Kaufman, which became very public and even had an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman. The story is well chronicled in the movie "Man on the Moon" with Jim Carrey.

Contrary to popular belief, Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lawler were good friends


The name "Hulk" in Hulk Hogan came from an appearance with Lou Ferrigno on a talk show. It was mentioned that Hogan appeared physically larger than Ferrigno and, at the time, Ferrigno was playing the title monster in the Incredible Hulk TV show. Vince McMahon Sr. (the father of the Vince McMahon you see on TV now) suggested the name Hulk, secured the rights to use the name from Marvel Comics (which was a popular comic at the time) and the "Hulk" in Hulk Hogan began.

He looks like the Incredible Hulk…right?


Brother Love was a character that mocked the popularity of TV evangelists at the time.

I…Luuuuuuuve yoooooooo!


The infamous Austin 3:16 phrase was borne out of a promo (impromptu speech displaying the character of a wrestler) that Stone Cold Steve Austin gave at the Pay-Per-View event King of the Ring in 1996 mocking Jake "The Snake" Roberts using the John 3:16 verse that had been become popular amongst modern Christians.

And it doesn't stop there. D-Generation X was a fictional rebel faction that was created as a response to a real life ratings war between WWE (WWF at the time) and WCW. As WCW started to get grittier in their content, WWE compensated by creating what was known as the Attitude Era to "out-grit" the competition.

In 1994, the movie Interview with a Vampire debuted in theaters and made over $220 million in the box office. Not long after, a character named Gangrel appeared in the WWE; a vampire-like wrestler. In addition, his name came from a vampire clan in the contemporary role playing game Vampire: The Masquerade.

Fangs and Blood? Totally fake. 


John Cena's first incarnation of his character was a white rapper in 2002. Is it any wonder that, during that time, Eminem (a white rapper) was gaining massive popularity as a recording artist?

The wrestling character Fandango appeared on WWE TV during the height of the Dancing with the Stars popularity and, during that time, featured WWE star Chris Jericho as a contestant.

The faction known as The Shield, dressed in signature black military gear, appeared during the time The Avengers came out in theaters. Its leader, Nick Fury led a military group called S.H.I.E.L.D that dressed in…you guessed it, black military gear.

Where's Nick Fury?


There are many examples of wrestlers embracing characters that emulate pop culture. These characters are the Easter Eggs of pop. We attach to them because we can relate to them in some way. They use these characters as a vessel to exploit the culture.

And we eat them up.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

The Quality Assurance tool that became an Easter Egg.

Cheat codes.

To most people, cheat codes are special input sequences that are not explicitly explained in a video game's instructions that give the player access to special items or power ups in game. Usually, it's to boost a player and give them incredible advantages, but sometimes it's something as simple as a cosmetic change or access to a different sound or difficulty level. It's assumed that cheat codes are accidental glitches made by the developer and the player is just taking advantage of the glitch. 

Some games had invisible tunnels, which led many to believe they were glitches in the game.


This is so far from the truth. 

Cheat codes are, in fact, carefully programmed into a game. It's done on purpose as a tool for Quality Assurance (QA or game testers) to access certain parts of the game that need to be tested so that the game can ultimately run smoothly. These codes are revealed (or even unlocked) sometime after the game is released as a way to give more longevity to a game. 

Back in the early 70's and 80's, games had no way of being patched (or fixed) via internet because there was no internet at the time. Games were run off of cartridges and had no lasting memory except for the hard coding used to make the game. As such, games needed to be as bug-free as possible and the only real way of testing games was to actually play through the game. Consequently, it became difficult for testers to adequately test latter parts of a game as it took time to get to those levels or the player was eliminated before they could get there. Hence, the programmers installed cheat codes so that the testers could either jump levels or access power ups to test various aspects of the game. Many cheat codes were never uninstalled before a launch of a game for fear that removing them would affect the game itself. Since they were hard coded into the game, players just assumed they were accidents made by the developers.

Nowadays, with the advent of the internet, hard drives, and editable media, many cheat codes and tools that QA use can either be shut off or disabled and legitimate glitches/bugs in-game can be fixed via internet even after a game has released. Cheat codes are still prevalent in games and QA still use them for testing purposes, but cheat codes have since become things that people expect in their games and some games aren't considered complete if they don't have them. 

But in the 1980's, one particular code stood out above all the others. In fact it was so common that it literally defined a particular company. That company was Konami. And that code is infamously known as: 

The Konami Code. 

Specifically, this code used the controller to input the following sequence: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A. In the beginning, certain Konami games made for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) had this code programmed in and the code did something different depending on the game. 

The infamous Konami Code


The first instance of the Konami Code was in the game Gradius. By pausing the game (pressing Start on the controller), you could input the code and activate most of the power ups in the game for your ship after you un-paused the game. If you were playing co-op with a friend, input the Konami Code while pause and then pressed the Select button, you would activate the same power ups to the second player. 

The Konami Code gave all BUT the following power ups in Graduis: Speed Up, Double, Laser.


Unfortunately, for some time, it was believed that the code included Select and Start when inputting the code when in fact pressing Select was an option and pressing Start only paused/un-paused the game. Not all games required you to pause the game in order to enter the code and not all instances of the Konami code required input devices that featured a Start button. In addition, not all games that featured the Konami code had co-op and some games didn't even have a second player in the game.

Sorry, this is NOT the true Konami code


The code was later used in the NES game Contra, which became more popular than Gradius. This  prompted most players to nickname the code the "Contra Code" or the "30 Lives Code" as it gave players an extra 30 lives (pressing Select will also give the second player 30 lives as well). 

The code became a staple in the Gradius and Contra series of games. Other Konami franchise games would follow, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dance Dance Revolution, and Metal Gear (Solid). Even non-Konami games featured the code to unlock features. Games like Assassin's Creed III, BioShock Infinite, Borderlands 2, Half-Life 2, even Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 all had the Konami code programmed into them. 

In Dance Dance Revolution: Ultramix (XBox), if a gamepad is plugged into the fourth controller port, and the code is entered during the credits, all of the game's hidden songs are unlocked instantly.


But the code moved beyond the game world. In addition to hundreds of games, the code is featured in major movies, TV shows, and websites…all as Easter Eggs! In TV and movies, they aren't entered in as codes, they are blatantly spoken out as a nod to Konami. In games, it does a variety of things from extra lives, to access to higher difficulty levels, to unlocking all available songs, to even messages saying, "There's nothing here" (which, in itself is an Easter Egg!) featured in the original Castlevania on Japan's Famicom console system (Japan's version of the NES). On some websites, the Konami code uncovers very strange imagery and sound bytes. But to name all instances of the Konami Code (and what they do) in games and media would be a task in itself…fortunately, there are websites and even Wikipedia pages dedicated to showing all instances of the Konami Code.

If you go to digg.com and enter the Konami Code you'll…well just try it :)
So the programmer's tool that became an Easter Egg has now become more of a pop culture icon. In some ways, it has transcended traditional Easter Egg boundaries and has become its own entity. It's a voice of a generation. It harkens to a time when the first generation of Nintendo players thought they were secretly hacking their favorite game. It was the secret only the privileged video game players knew.

Now it's a secret (almost) everybody knows. 

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Family Guy: A series packed with Easter Eggs.

When I watch Family Guy, it's not just because I love the humor…that is obvious (at least to me). But what Family Guy excels in is that it is ripe full of inside jokes, Easter Eggs, and surprises presented in a very fast paced storytelling format.

Some episodes are themselves mocks of other works (Blue Harvest, Something Something Something Darkside, and It's a Trap! mocking the Star Wars universe), but even within those episodes there are plenty of Easter Eggs that are to be found.

Some Easter Eggs are overt. A prime example is in Season 3, Episode 19 "Stuck Together, Torn Apart", the character Peter looks for his black book in his attic using the same sunlight-through-a-relic-at-the-end-of-a-standing-staff technique that Indiana Jones uses in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Family Guy - Stuck Together, Torn Apart

But the real treasure is finding the very subtle Easter Eggs…things that are so hidden that it takes a few views to actually get. One of these is in the Season 9, Episode 9 "And I'm Joyce Kinney". After smearing the character Lois Griffin on television, she later reveals herself as Joycie Chevapravatdumrong (said only once in the show). The last name was actually taken from the actual Executive Story Editor/Co-Producer of the show: Cherry Chevapravatdumrong. 

Family Guy - And I'm Joyce Kinney


Season 4, Episode 10 "Model Misbehavior" has a very quick Easter Egg that shows up at the end of the boat race and a graphic of the newspaper showing the Griffin family winning the race. If you pause the show, you can see a headline on the bottom right corner, "DVDS PAUSED FOR HEADLINE JOKE -- MILLIONS DISSAPOINTED" 

Family Guy - Model Misbehavior




So whether your'e a fan of the show or not, take Family Guy for a(nother) spin, only this time look for all the Easter Eggs strewn about the show. It's a fun exercise in observation and you'll find there's a lot more than you thought. 

Happy Hunting!

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Easter Egg News by Joseph Vales is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://eastereggnews.blogspot.com.