The Best Google Easter Eggs Of 2022

Google is the go-to search engine for the internet, handling over 92% of the global volume for search engine queries (via Statcounter). With such a serious role to play, it's possibly surprising to find that the Big G has an advanced sense of whimsy. The most obvious evidence of this is the Google Doodle, which has replaced the Google logo on the search page over 5,000 times since its inception. There is another, more hidden set of whimsical animations in Search, with a growing list of Easter eggs.

These are hidden but easily found activities appearing when the right words are searched. The first of these was a fully-playable Doodle of "PAC-MAN," created in 2010 for the 30th anniversary of the game. Now there are dozens and dozens of Easter eggs, with Google adding more every year to commemorate special occasions, dates, and sometimes posthumous tributes. Here are our favorite new Easter eggs from 2022 and the first couple of 2023 to start the year off.

Robert Pattinson's portrayal of Bruce Wayne and his alter ego in "The Batman" was critically well-received when it hit the big screen in March of 2022. Batman was back to blockbuster numbers, swinging through theaters worldwide to gross over $770 million (via Box Office Mojo). The internet went wild for Pattinson and for the marketing efforts, which included hidden messages on the theatrical posters that could only be seen under blacklight. The production company even recreated The Riddler's cryptic website for the real world, bringing the cryptic criminal's clues to life.

Google got into the internet fun in the lead-up to the theatrical release. That's no big surprise; the Big G likes to pull its Doodles and Easter eggs from topics with high search volume. Having Batman take over search if fans searched for specific Gotham-related queries likely spurred further search volume as it became widely known. A small animated Bat Signal appears under the callout box on the right of search. Clicking on this transforms your browser tab into Gotham City's nighttime, with the Bat Signal playing over the gloomy clouds. If you wait a few seconds longer, Batman grapples across the screen, likely searching for The Riddler's latest victim.

One day in 2022 was graced with its own Easter egg due to the special way its date could be written either forwards or backward. That date was February 22, 2022, or 2-22-22. That's a palindrome, reading the same whichever way you read it. It's even a palindrome in those countries that use day/month/year order for the date. To top it off, the date fell on a Tuesday, so it became colloquially known as Twosday. The next date that will read as a unique palindrome in this way is March 3, 2033. The next non-unique palindrome date is March 20, 2023.

For Twosday, Google put a celebration into search. Looking for "twosday" gave you the usual mix of news and other websites with stories about the date. So did the first time you searched the date. The search results also had a button at the bottom that looked like a party popper. When clicked, it threw confetti, the number 2, and a message saying "Happy Twosday to You" over the browser tab. 

Many other people and companies celebrated this date. The Californian State Capitol in Sacramento hosted 222 couples for a mass wedding. Fast-food outlet Jack in the Box gave away two tacos with any other order because it was also Taco Tuesday. And multiple restaurants had drinks deals, as it happened to fall on National Margarita Day.

On September 26, 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, bounced a cheap spacecraft into an asteroid to deflect it as a test for protecting the Earth from future threats. The test was successful, with NASA scientists taking two weeks to decide that the mission had outperformed expectations. The mission had to shift the asteroid's orbit slightly to increase its orbit by 73 seconds or more. When the analysis was finished, the hit from the outer space fender-bender increased the orbit by 32 minutes. A large debris trail was also formed, which quickly grew to over 6,000 miles long. The science doesn't stop there, as NASA will study how the asteroid's orbit changes over time, giving them vital information that can't be found in lab tests.

To commemorate the occasion of potentially saving the Earth from a rogue asteroid without sending Bruce Willis up with a nuke, Google added a new Easter egg. Searching for "NASA DART" or "NASA DART mission" turns your search results into an animated rendering of the collision. The DART spacecraft will streak onto the screen, hit the whitespace on the results, and make the results page shudder. The page will then get left askew, so the digital spacecraft successfully shifted things.

Fans of the survival-horror game "The Last of Us" have been anxiously awaiting HBO's adaptation for its streaming video service. Joel and Ellie's trek through the post-apocalyptic U.S. after a mutant strain of the cordyceps fungi turned most of the world into zombies is nearly 10 years old, but that hasn't dampened enthusiasm for the series, which launched recently to critical acclaim. It's been doing numbers, with the largest week-two growth for any HBO Original series in the network's history. The show did this thanks to HBO signing on the creative director for the games, Neil Druckmann, for both writing and directing credits, ensuring that existing fans would relish the new adaptation.

Google seemingly loved the search volume for the blockbuster series and has created a new Easter egg to accompany it in search. Searching for "The Last of Us" or "cordyceps" pops up a mushroom button over the search results. Clicking on that button starts to cover the search page in fast-growing fungi; the more you click, the more fungi appear.

One of the trending topics for 2022 was Wordle, the daily brain-teaser that had millions guessing a five-letter word in fewer than six tries. It became a cultural phenomenon, with The New York Times eventually paying a "low seven figures" sum to buy it from its software engineer creator, Josh Wardle. The game took the internet by storm, with social media users posting their successfully solved puzzles, in the form of green and yellow boxes but no letters, so it didn't ruin the game for anyone else. Google's yearly roundup of Search trends for 2022 put Wordle at the number one spot worldwide, in case you needed any more confirmation of how wildly popular the game became.

Google tweaked its search page to playfully get into the Wordle-mania, with the GOOGLE logo at the top getting a new animation when "wordle" gets searched for. The grid here is six letters wide but is the same as the Wordle layout with green, yellow, and gray squares to let you know if a letter is correct, present but in the wrong spot, or missing. It cycles from COLUMN to GOALIE and then to GOOGLE as a nice hat tip to the game's popularity.

To say that the K-pop supergroup, BTS, has a dedicated fanbase is a gross understatement. The group's fans are called BTS ARMY (Adorable Representative MC for Youth) and have a huge social media footprint that they use to drown out objectionable content (via BBC). The fanbase got its name almost a decade ago and was commemorated by Google in a search Easter egg that went live on July 9, 2022 (via Variety). The members of the K-pop group also got a second unique feature, BTS x Street Galleries, which mashes art curation by the singers with 14 Google Street View places that have special significance to the band. Fans can create street galleries in these virtual locations.

The BTS ARMY can also get some special words of wisdom and appreciation from the band members by searching "BTS" on Google.com. When the search results load, a purple heart with a color-changing microphone inside bounces around above the callout box. Clicking on this heart starts a stream of purple balloons to float up over the screen. Typical balloon shapes can be popped to leave a purple stain on the tab. The heart-shaped balloons with microphones inside can be popped to get written and audio messages from the band members.

When Betty White, the darling of American sitcoms, passed away on December 31, 2021, fans and fellow stars poured out heartfelt stories of how she changed their lives. During her decades-long career, White blazed a trail for women everywhere. Her world-record-setting career earned her a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, 21 Emmy nominations (eight of which she won), three American Comedy Awards, a Grammy, a spot in the Television Hall of Fame, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards (via IMDb).

On the day White would have turned 100, Google honored her with a time-limited tribute. Searching for "Betty White" put an overlay of softly-falling rose petals, a nod to her beloved character Rose on "The Golden Girls." The overlay also had a message which said, "Thank You for Being a Friend," the title of "The Golden Girls" theme song, with the years that White was born and passed away. It was a touching show of affection for one of the nation's most loved actors.

The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is the "second-longest, continuously held sporting event in the U.S.," according to the pawesome, pampered, pedigree pooch pageant (via CNN). With that lineage, it's a slight surprise that it took until 2022 for Google to create a custom Easter egg for the show. When "Westminster Dog Show" is searched for, a light purple button will also appear next to the name of the show, with a paw print on it and an animated dog leg that shows you what to do. 

Once the purple button is clicked, you can click anywhere on the search tab to get a randomly-colored dog paw to come onto the screen and lay down a pawprint. You'll also hear excited barks, so keep that in mind if your computer has a speaker setup. This mode stops any links on the page from working, so you can deface the results with impunity as if it was a static printed page of newsprint. Unfortunately for those who would want to create tracks, the paws come from randomly chosen sides of the screen, so your efforts to line up the prints will be in vain. When you've had enough fun, hit ESC to wash away all of those pawprints.

Google added this Easter egg to celebrate New Year's Eve 2021. Often, time-limited Easter eggs are only around for the one day that they are commemorated. This one is different, sticking around through 2022, and is still usable today. For 2022, Google also added a new Google Doodle for the day, with fireworks, dangling lights, and some cute jumping numbers that promise to lift each other up as the new year approaches.

To celebrate New Year's Eve 2022 (and every other New Year's Eve), Google-style, search for "New Year's Eve" with the year after it. You'll get a feed of recommended links for global celebrations and exciting information about how the holiday has changed over time. You'll also see a cartoon party popper at the top of the results. Clicking on that popper shoots multicolored confetti over the tab, which slowly drifts down to the bottom. Once most of the confetti has dropped, the party popper resets so you can keep ringing in the new year.

Google has long supported Gay Pride in myriad ways, from grants, collaborations with institutions and artists, and various Google Doodles. When the Supreme Court ruled same-sex marriage would be legalized at the Federal level, Google changed its social networking icons rainbow, created a video celebrating marriage equality, and linked it to everything Google owns. The company also has multiple Pride-related Easter eggs hidden in its software, like the one in Google Sheets that makes the columns rainbow-colored if you put P R I D E in the first five columns.

Google Search also has multiple Easter eggs to celebrate Gay Pride. Searching for "gay pride" or "LGBT pride" show an animated rainbow heart icon in the callout box on the right of the search results. Clicking on that heart throws rainbow confetti all over the page, and a parade of the various LBGTQ+ flags marches proudly at the bottom of the screen. This colorful expression of love also shows up when you search for a familiar character from "Scooby Doo." That's right, Velma is officially out and proud (via Variety), and searching for "Velma," "Velma Scooby-Doo," "Velma Dinkley" (the character's full name), or "Dinkley" all give the same parade of love and flags.

There are innumerable tacos and taco recipes, most of which are savory except for the oddball of the ice cream van, the Klondike Choco Taco. The original oddity was created in 1983 by a former Good Humor ice cream truck driver, Alan Drazen. He had moved up in the world to management at another ice cream manufacturer and needed a unique novelty product to stand out in the crowded market. Mexican food was on the rise in the U.S., and Drazen decided that putting ice cream, chocolate, and peanuts into a waffle cone tortilla was the way to go. After nearly 40 years of service, Klondike, who now owns the brand, decided it was time to end the madness.

If you search for "choco taco" right now, you'll see the news around the tasty treat's demise. You'll also see a scrolling ticker tape with the emojis for tacos, ice cream, a headstone, and the birth and death dates of the Choco Taco. RIP weird chocolate frozen treat, gone too soon but never forgotten (by anyone over 25, that is). The good news is that the outcry over its removal from Klondike's range has meant the company slightly backtracked, saying "the team is working on a plan to bring it back" (via CNN).

In 2021, a group of researchers at Harvard came up with a new theory about how the dinosaurs were wiped out. The existing facts were not in dispute; that the dinosaurs suffered an extinction-level event some 66 million years ago and that a massive crater known as the Chicxulub impactor off the coast of Mexico was the best evidence of the reason for the extinction. This crater is some 93 miles wide and 12 miles deep, so something huge must have collided with our planet. The new study used simulations and analysis to figure out that the rock that created the crater is most likely a piece of a long-period comet from the Oort cloud that was torn off as it came close to the sun. This piece then took a different orbit on its return to the Oort region and was stopped short by the Yucatán Peninsula in South East Mexico.

In 2022, Google added a new Easter egg for anyone searching "Chicxulub impact crater," adding a little extra to the search results. A large chunk of rock comes burning up in the atmosphere from the left of your screen, passing out of view on the bottom right. A split second later, your search window shakes to simulate the impact.