Gaming's Greatest Easter Eggs

Easter eggs in gaming are something that have come to be expected nowadays, and there are entire online communities dedicated to Easter egg hunting in games that are known for having them. They can be big or small, but finding one for yourself is always really satisfying. We've put together a list of some of the best Easter eggs in gaming, be that because they were extremely well hidden, because they made us laugh, or because they were huge and entertaining.

Halo 3 - Happy Birthday, Lauren!
Halo 3 has a myriad of amazing Easter eggs and secrets, but this one made it to the list because of how well hidden it was. If you set your game to Christmas day, load up a single-player campaign and hold both thumbsticks in whilst the game is loading, the Halo ring that acts as a loading bar displays the message 'Happy Birthday, Lauren!' This message was so well hidden that it wasn't found until 2014, seven years after the release of the initial game. Easter egg hunters wouldn't have even known of the existence of this particular example if one of the developers hadn't given a hint in 2012: "There is one Easter egg in Halo 3 that I don't think anyone has found - I stumbled across it in code a while back. It only happens on a specific day... so good luck."

Batman: Arkham Asylum - Hidden Blueprint Room
Here we have another extremely well hidden Easter egg, and this one was arguably even more sneakily tucked away than the Halo 3 one. Throughout the game, there are a number of walls that can be destroyed using Batman's explosive gel, and such walls are normally indicated through detective vision. Located in the warden's office, however, there is a plain wall that doesn't show up as anything special, even in detective vision. If you spray explosive gel on this wall three times, then detonate them all at once, the wall will be destroyed revealing a secret office. Inside this office, there are plans for an 'Arkham City project,' with plans to expand the asylum having been approved. There is also concept art for Batman: Arkham City, the sequel to Arkham Asylum, scattered around the office. This Easter egg would've been amazing to find, and would have leaked the existence of Batman: Arkham City. Unfortunately, though, it was so well hidden that the Easter egg was only found after Arkham City was confirmed.

*SPOILERS* Dead Space - Chapter Titles
This is an interesting Easter egg, but it contains endgame spoilers for the first Dead Space game, so if you care about that sort of thing, skip over to the next one. There are 12 chapters in the first Dead Space game, where you play as Isaac Clarke, searching for his girlfriend Nicole. The chapter names are as follows:

Chapter 1: New Arrivals

Chapter 2: Intensive Care

Chapter 3: Course Correction

Chapter 4: Obliteration Imminent

Chapter 5: Lethal Devotion

Chapter 6: Environmental Hazard

Chapter 7: Into the Void

Chapter 8: Search and Rescue

Chapter 9: Dead on Arrival

Chapter 10: End of Days

Chapter 11: Alternate Solutions

Chapter 12: Dead Space

Individually, these chapter names mean nothing, but if you look at the first letter of each chapter in order, the sentence 'Nicole is dead' is revealed. Of course, this is something you find out at the end of the game anyway, but it is a really cool little addition.

Grant Theft Auto IV - Heart of Liberty City
The GTA series has always had its fair share of Easter eggs in each iteration: there's things like the ghost or the UFO in GTA V, but this one from GTA IV is especially well-known and well done. Located inside the Statue of Happiness, the Grand Theft Auto version of the Statue of Liberty, there is a nice hidden feature. The door you use to access the inside of the statue cannot be accessed on foot, and you must use a helicopter to jump onto the platform. Once on the platform, there are four doors, each with a plaque next to them saying 'no hidden content this way.' Three of the doors are just solid, and you cannot enter them, but one of the doors you can walk through. Once inside, climb up the ladder and you'll see a giant beating heart, held in place by chains.

Metal Gear Solid 3 - The End Fight
The Metal Gear Solid games have always had little features, tricks and hidden stuff, especially in boss fights. One of the earliest fun additions in an MGS game was done was during the Psycho Mantis fight in Metal Gear Solid 1, where he'd read your memory card and the only way to beat him was to plug your controller into the Player 2 port. These weren't Easter eggs as such, though, but one during the boss fight with The End in MGS3 is. The End is an extremely old sniper, being over 100 years of age when Naked Snake takes him on. There are a number of amusing ways to avoid this fight completely, and the most well-known way to do so is to save the game during the fight, and simply wait a week before playing the game again. If the player does this, then The End will die of old age, and the boss fight will end. You can also set your console's internal clock forward one week to achieve the same effect. This is a hilarious feature that is only natural coming from a Hideo Kojima game.

Borderlands 2: Minecraft Cave
This Easter egg is a great nod to one of the most successful games of all time, Minecraft. Once you get past chapter 9 in the main game, you gain access to a location called the Sanctuary hole. If you get through this area, you gain access to another area called the Caustic Caverns. Fight your way through the Caustic Caverns and make your way to the Northwest area of the map where, if you look hard enough, you will find some familiar looking pixel dirt blocks near a mine cart. Bash your way through these and you will come into a cavern full of Minecraft blocks of Stone, gold and other minerals, and you will also have to fight off a few creepers. The best part about this Easter egg is that you can unlock a skin for your class which gives you a Minecraft-themed head and body colour, and there are also a few similar themed weapons that you can get if you're lucky. This Easter egg is one of the best out there, and it's a great nod to a widely loved game.

Just Cause 2 - Lost Island
Easter eggs in games are normally little more than small features in the game - nothing too big, but they're nice when you find them. Just Cause 2, on the other hand, is a huge game; so it's only natural for it to have a huge Easter egg in it as well. In the northwest corner of the map, there is a mysterious island that is pretty sizeable. If you've played through the campaign of the game you'll know that this entire island is only featured in one very minor mission in the game, so it's sort of confusing that the island is still in the game. Approach it by air and your plane will cut out and crash, and that's just the start. The entire island is basically a reference to the popular American television show 'LOST,' where a group of tourists become stranded on a supposedly uninhabited island after their plane crashes, and they stumble upon all sorts of mysterious occurrences. Many things from the show are actually on the island in the game, including the crashed plane, a 'smoke monster,' and also an inaccessible hatch that plays a major role in the TV show itself. It's nice to see games go above and beyond to create tributes to popular culture in their games, especially at this level.

Halo Trilogy - Special Dialogue Grunts
We may have already included a special Halo Easter egg in this list, but this famous one cannot go unmentioned. In each of the games in the original Halo trilogy, there is an extremely well hidden Grunt. This Grunt won't attack you, but instead has some unique dialogue to share with the Master Chief (or Arbiter). The grunt in the original Halo can be located during the timed Warthog run on the last mission, and tells the Master Chief how hungry he is. This isn't much of an egg by itself, but fans enjoyed it so much that Bungie decided to make it a running gag in the series. The Grunt in Halo 2 is located during the Arbiter level 'Uprising,' and pleads with the arbiter to spare him, claiming he was always on the side of the Elites in the first place. The final, and probably most famous Grunt in the series is located in Halo 3, at the very end of the final level. Known as the Final Grunt, or more popularly the Jerk Store Grunt, this grunt is on the cusp of death at the hands of the Halo ring self-destructing, and decides to use his last moments angrily shouting at the Master Chief, then pleading to be saved by him. Ironically, if you go and visit this grunt, chances are high that you will die and be forced to restart from a checkpoint, since you're on a pretty tight time limit during this mission.

Diablo II - Secret Cow Level
This is an extremely famous Easter egg in Diablo II, and it's consistently referenced by Blizzard and fans of the game. After beating the game, the player can start a new game and make their way to one of the earlier areas, the Rogue Encampment. Here you must place a Tome of Town Portal and a Wirt's PegLeg into the Horadric cube and transmute. A portal will open that transports you to the secret cow level. In this level there are hordes of angry polearm-wielding cows that will come at you non-stop, until you confront the Cow King. This was a hilarious little addition to the game, but whenever Blizzard is asked to talk about the Cow level or anything similar, they will always state that 'there is no Cow level.' On the release of Diablo III, despite Blizzard's assertions that there was no such level, fans were desperate to find it. What they found, however, was not the secret cow level, but instead a secret zone called Whimsyshire, otherwise known as the secret Pony Level. For a short period of time in May of 2015, there was a secret area accessible called 'Not the Cow Level,' and during this month, March 2016, there is a new area accessible called Kanai's Stomping Grounds, which is another cow level all over again.

Call of Duty - Zombies Easter Eggs
The Treyarch Call of Duty games have their own special mode, Zombies, which has grown to be a component of the games that are now possibly just as popular as the multiplayer. Starting with World at War, some of the DLC Zombies maps began to tell a backstory through a number of small Easter eggs that were located throughout the map, and players started to try and cobble together the story from these. Each of the maps also had their own hidden song, which players would seek to activate. With the release of the Black Ops Zombies map, Ascension, these Easter eggs grew and became a huge, but entirely optional, part of the map. In Ascension the player could complete a series of tasks that made up an extremely long Easter egg called the Casimir Mechanism, and it told a story and granted players with a buff for a short period of time. Over time, and in different iterations of Zombies, these Easter eggs have always been a feature and have grown each time. They can't really be considered Easter eggs now, as they have become more of a well-known story component, but the Black Ops Easter eggs will always be special.

Battlefield 4: Megalodon
Battlefield developer DICE has been notorious, especially in Battlefield 4, for teasing things related to dinosaurs in parts of their game. It's become something of a running gag for them, and communities of people search for Easter eggs to do with dinosaurs. In 2013, there was a complicated Easter egg found involving two players having to press a button at the same time to trigger a dinosaur's roar that can be heard across the map. This was cool in itself, for players to group together and try to find something so minor in a level, purely because it existed. In 2014, an even bigger dinosaur related Easter egg was discovered and requires 10 players in a server all working together. On the map Nansha Strike, in the Naval Strike DLC, 10 players must stand on a lonely buoy in the middle of the ocean. After waiting by this buoy, a colossal shark, or Megalodon, will leap out of the water and land on top of the players, killing them. This egg, when it was first discovered, caused immense hype from the community, and there are still undiscovered Easter eggs out there that players are still searching for.

There's more brilliant Easter eggs out there of course, like having to shoot John Romero in the face in Doom II, or Robbie the Rabbit in the Silent Hill series, the golden chicken in Gears of War and even the being able to play old games inside new ones (a trick we remember when playing Maniac Mansion in Day of the Tentacle, and more recently Wolfenstein 3D in Wolfenstein: The New Order). Simply put, there's hundreds of hugely entertaining secrets out there just waiting to be discovered, so get out there and start hunting.