Let’s talk about eggs. By now Easter is over in both catholic and orthodox cultures. I do not usually follow any of the Easter traditions, but there is a particular type of Easter eggs that I find very interesting, and they are Easter eggs in media, more precisely in movies.
In media, an Easter egg stands for an intentional inside joke, a cleverly hidden message. The whole idea originated from the world of computer games. The first game that is considered to be the origin of Easter egg hunt in media was Atari’s game “Adventure” that was released in 1979. However they’ve recently found that it had been done even earlier in other games as well. Just like in Catholic tradition of Easter egg hunt where kids have to find hidden eggs, the creators of “Adventure” game invited their players to find hidden messages in their game.
And now lets talk about movies where the tradition of the Easter egg hunting got a very nice continuation. Latest Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi movie “Ready Player One” proved that Spielberg is, with no doubt, the best egg planter in Hollywood. The movie itself is not perfect, but once you start watching it, you kind of don’t care about its flaws anymore simply because the world created in the movie brings you so much joy and nostalgia, especially if you were born in the 80s or 90s. All 140-minutes of run time are filled with insanely big number of references to the games, movies, and music of the 80s. It brings you the sweetest and warmest sensation of being a kid again. Back to the future, Batman, Beetlejuice, The Shining, Hello Kitty, King Kong, Jurassic Park — the list of references can go on and on.
If you are wondering how many Easter eggs are in Spielberg’s “Ready Player One” you should thank guys from IGN, because apparently they’ve counted them all. According to IGN’s video there are 138 Easter eggs in the movie. That’s A LOT. But who said that they did not miss a single one? So if you haven’t seen the movie yet, you might need to do it. Maybe you will be the one to find a missing one! It is kind of intriguing, isn’t it?
Of course Spielberg is not the first movie director to implement the whole Easter egg hunt thing in his movie, he might be the best one, but not the first. To give you an idea of how popular is this tradition in cinema here are a couple of very interesting movie Easter eggs that you’ve probably did not know were there.
So apparently you can find a hidden sex scene in “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”. As you might remember, during the credits they show Marauder’s Map in action. If you pay close attention, and with Easter eggs you always should, in the bottom left corner you can see four footsteps facing each other in the corner in a quite peculiar position. How is that for an Easter egg?
You can set yourself on whole other Easter egg hunt while watching Alfred Hitchcock’s movies. He makes a not very noticeable cameo in almost every movie of his, but again it’s not that every viewer will actually see it.
You might have heard about another set of Easter eggs in “Fight Club”. David Fincher stated that he used a Starbucks coffee cup in every single scene of his brilliant movie. And have you forgotten about one particular shot right before the credits? You know, the one where Fincher is actually flashing you with a penis?
What about Martine Scorsese who marked every character who is going to die in his “The Departed” with an “X”? Did you see that in “Toy Story” they’d used the carpet from Kubrick’s “The Shining”. Believe me, it was not a coincidence. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The list can go on and on. And even though you and I will never find all of those easter eggs, isn’t it fun to look for one while watching your next movie? I think it surely is!