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The top 10 best Easter Eggs in Games
Everybody loves a good Easter Egg hunt! Sure, the ones you get from the Easter Bunny are good too, but hunting down the best hidden messages in games is even more fun. We’ve made the hunt easier for you by ranking our favourite gaming Easter Eggs.
10. Assassin’s Creed Shadows — Ringo Starr as a horse
The latest Assassin’s Creed title has lots of fun hidden Easter Eggs. Our favourite? Exploring Feudal Japan on Ringo’s back! Of course, we don’t mean the actual Beatles drummer, but a horse that goes by the same name. If you find and unlock Ringo, you’re free to ride on him whenever you want. He even has a description that states: ‘This good apple steadily prances on beat’.
9. Fallout: New Vegas — Indiana Jones fridge
Who can forget the iconic scene in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull where Indy survived a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator? The creators of Fallout: New Vegas definitely didn’t. If you visit the Mojave Wasteland, you might stumble upon an opened fridge. Inside, there’s a skeleton wearing a familiar fedora. Seems the fridge-trick didn’t work for the atomic war in Fallout.
8. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed — Jar Jar Binks frozen in carbonite
The cartoonish Jar Jar Binks was never a fan favourite among Star Wars fans, far from it, actually. Even the most divided Star Wars fans can agree on one thing: the hate for Jar Jar Binks. The creators of Star Wars: The Force Unleased decided to poke some fun at this universal loathing. If you look around the trophy room in the ‘Imperial Kashyyk’ level, you can see the Gungan frozen in a block of carbonite.
7. Hitman 3 — Abducted by aliens
Getting abducted by aliens is a bit out of character for the normally pretty straightforward Hitman games, but it’s possible. To activate, you need to follow a couple of steps. Find a way around the long line in front of a Berlin nightclub and search for a door that says 'Entrance Shortcut Door'. There will be graffiti of a UFO that you need to take a picture of, and you’ll then get a hit list with 5 targets. Once that’s done, head to the gas station and type 1993 into the payphone. A green light appears from above, and you’ll ascend into the sky.
6. Cyberpunk 2077 — Kojima on a night out
The mastermind behind the Metal Gear series and Death Stranding likes to relax with a drink in a nightclub now and then. In Cyberpunk 2077 you can find this legend in a mission called ‘The Heist’. When Jackie gives you the option to look around, head to the hotel bar. In the back, Kojima is seated at a pink table talking to a group of people about trying to ‘surpass the expressive limitations of braindances’, whatever that means.
5. Batman Arkham Asylum — Arkham City map and teaser
Sometimes an Easter Egg is so well hidden that the developers need to come out and show how to find their own secret message. A few months after Arkham Asylum was released, not one player found the hidden map, so the developers decided to point it out to everyone. If you go to the warden’s office and blow up one of the walls, a secret room will open up. Here you can find expansion plans for Arkham City, which is of course the sequel to Asylum!
4. GTA Online — Join the Illuminati
Generosity goes a long way, especially in GTA Online. In 2018 the developers launched the ‘After Hours’ update which added a toilet attendent to one of the Los Santos nightclubs. Tipping once won’t get you anywhere, though. If you tip the attendant 10 times, you’ll get a message saying that you’re ‘Seeking the Truth’, after 155 tips this message turns into ‘Chasing the Truth’. Only if you tip the attendant 575 times, you’ll get a message saying you’re ‘Bearing the Truth’ and you’ll receive the Epsilon Program robes. Congrats, you’re now in the secret society of GTA Online!
Psst! Want to know more about GTA 6? Check our dedicated hub!
3. Metal Gear Solid — Psycho Mantis reads your mind
Taking on Psycho Mantis in the original Metal Gear Solid game was quite a scary experience, but it became even more terrifying when the villain started reading your mind. The developers gave Mantis the ability to read your memory card, and so he would start talking about other games you played. In 1998, this was pretty advanced technology and left many players terrified.
2. Split Fiction — Cutie the elephant statue
After It Takes Two, everybody was waiting for Hazelight Studios to drop their new co-op adventure. And so they did! Split Fiction is a thrilling co-op game filled with amazing visuals and, of course, Easter Eggs!
Throughout the game you can find lots of callbacks to Hazelight’s first big game, but our favourite has to be the Cutie the elephant. Remember brutally murdering this adorable creature in It Takes Two? Well in Split Fiction she’s the mascot of a toy store that you stumble upon and a big version of her is sitting on top of the building. That probably brought back some traumas.
1. Silent Hill 2 — Shiba Inu ending
Imagine this: a Shiba Inu is secretly controlling your every move and deciding your fate from a big control room. Weird right? That’s exactly what the first gamers to discover this secret ending in Silent Hill 2 must’ve thought. To get to this Easter Egg ending, you’ll have to complete the other endings, and then follow some secret clues. But all this effort is definitely paid off when you see Mira’s (the dog's actual name) cute face.
The company behind Silent Hill 2, Konami, was already known for putting joke endings and Easter Eggs into their games, but the Shiba Inu ending was certainly the biggest one. In a time when Easter Eggs weren’t that popular in games yet, it was a big surprise for gamers and the ending became very popular.
Let your Easter Egg hunt begin!
Did all these Easter Eggs make you hungry to hunt your own? There’s much more to discover! Grab your game card at Startselect and hop into your own Easter Egg hunt.
