10 Of The Best Easter Eggs Found In Video Games

In 1980, Atari released the sword and sorcery video game "Adventure." Hidden within its collection of castles, mazes, and dragons, all rendered in chunky pixel graphics, players could find the world's first video game Easter egg.

At the time, Atari was a juggernaut in the emerging home video game market, but its programmers, the people responsible for the company's success, weren't getting the credit they deserved for their work on the game. The company had recently been sold to Warner Communications, and the parent company didn't want programmers to have any name recognition, according to "Adventure" programmer Warren Robinett, via Forbes. So, Robinett did something about it. He programmed in a secret room that could only be accessed after a specific series of actions.

First, the players found the black key and opened the gate to the black castle. If they traveled the right path inside the black castle's intertwined double mazes, they would find a single pixel known as The Dot. If they then took The Dot to the right room, they'd find a hidden message revealing Robinett as the game's creator. What was supposed to be a way for Robinett to get credit for his work accidentally created the idea of video game Easter eggs, which are now an expected and beloved part of gaming culture. Here are some of our favorites.

In the Nintendo 64 game "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time," you can find portraits of various "Mario" characters on the walls of Hyrule Castle. It's not the first or last time Nintendo has hidden "Mario" references in its "Legend of Zelda" games.

Mario is often considered Nintendo's mascot and most popular character, but there are many within the Nintendo fandom who would argue that Link should take the title. In truth, both characters often go hand in hand. Mario and Link have each had their own cartoon adaptations, and they compete against one another in the "Super Smash Bros." and "Mario Kart" series. In addition, you can find even subtler crossovers throughout the Nintendo canon.

The "Legend of Zelda" characters Talon and Ingo are modeled after Mario and Luigi, and you can find a Chain Chomp being kept as a pet in "Link's Awakening." Perhaps the most famous example is in the courtyard of Hyrule Castle in "The Ocarina of Time." While you're still Young Link, if you look through the right window of the courtyard, you can find hanging portraits of Yoshi, Princess Peach, Mario, Bowser, and Luigi. Of course, the princess you're looking for is in another castle.

The "Halo" series features a wide array of technologically advanced weaponry. Success in its many levels and challenges often depends on getting the right weapon at the right time.

One of the most common weapons in the series is the Type-25 Directed Energy Rifle, commonly known as the Plasma Rifle. It's a basic weapon for the Covenant infantry, which fires superheated plasma instead of more conventional projectile weapons. The Plasma Rifle can fire more than 500 bolts per minute, unleashing incredible damage on low-powered enemies, but it has one major flaw. The Plasma Rifle overheats quickly and has to cool down before it can be used again. Meanwhile, the Covenant Scarab (a plasma-powered construction and mining platform modified for combat) features a powerful plasma beam that demolishes everything in its path.

In the Metropolis level of "Halo 2," players can find a plasma rifle with the firing capabilities of the Scarab's focus cannon. It has unlimited ammunition, continuous firing capability, and it never overheats. There are several different ways to obtain the weapon, depending on which version of "Halo 2" you have, and some are easier than others. You should also know that the weapon is so powerful that players are at significant risk of killing their own characters while using it.

The 2015 horror survival game "Dying Light" follows Kyle Crane, an undercover agent investigating a quarantine zone filled with zombies. Its day-night cycle of slow, lumbering zombies during the day and fast, aggressive zombies at night provides an interesting spin on the genre. And its parkour-style gameplay lends itself nicely to an unexpected but welcome classic gaming homage.

About halfway through the game, once you've unlocked Sector 0, you can enter Old Town, where our Easter egg is hidden. Look for an L-shaped building in the southwest corner of the map. You'll find a chimney housing a green pipe at the top of a tall brick house. That pipe will look familiar to fans of Nintendo's classic game lineup. Interact with the pipe once to pull out the plug, then interact with it again to jump inside.

After a quick fade to black, you'll find yourself in a first-person view of the classic 1-1 level of "Super Mario Bros." A nasty-looking pool of toxic muck surrounds you, keeping you on a narrow path. Warp pipes are replaced by stacked metal barrels but you can still find Goombas with an undead twist. You can bump blocks to release loot as you parkour your way to the end. You'll even climb a staircase and slide down a flag pole before hopping another warp pipe back to the main game.

Syzoth, better known as Reptile, is one of the most recognizable characters in the "Mortal Kombat" franchise. He wouldn't become a playable character until "Mortal Kombat 2," but he could be found in the first game as a secret enemy you could unlock at the end.

The character started out simply enough as a palette swap of two other characters. Reptile's green coloring comes from combining the blue of Sub-Zero and the yellow of Scorpion, and he had a combination of their moves. Palette swaps are usually a way to get more mileage out of existing assets and don't often result in the creation of iconic characters.

Reptile appears at random throughout the game, always at the beginning of a fight. He'll strike a pose and deliver a cryptic line of dialogue. Everything he says is a clue to how to find him. "Look to La Luna" is a reference to the Moon in the background of The Pit stage and the silhouettes that sometimes fly past it. Other clues include "alone is how to find me," "perfection is the key," and "fatality is the key."

To unlock the Reptile fight, you must be playing in single-player mode, be in The Pit stage, win two flawless victories in a row, refuse to block, and end the fight with a Fatality. There must also be silhouettes flying past the Moon.

These days, "The Last of Us" has evolved into a blockbuster media franchise with two games and a live-action HBO series featuring throwback technology, but back in 2011, Naughty Dog was just finalizing the details on the first game's announcement.

It happened that Naughty Dog was about to release the third game in its "Uncharted" series, so the programmers put a little nod to the zombie fungus inside "Uncharted 3." The company planned to announce "The Last of Us" in June of 2011, several months before the release of "Uncharted 3." By then, "The Last of Us" would have been public knowledge, and the Easter egg would have been a nice bonus for players to find. But that's not what happened.

Instead, the announcement got pushed to December, a month after "Uncharted 3" hit store shelves, but nobody thought to remove the Easter egg. There was about a month after the release of "Uncharted 3" when players could have stumbled onto a hint for what would become an incredibly popular mushroom-zombie media franchise. Of course, you can still go find the Easter egg for yourself. Inside a bar, there is an issue of a newspaper called "The Overseer" with the headline "scientists are still struggling to understand deadly fungus."

The 2008 action video game "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" takes place between the political machinations of the prequel trilogy and the rebellious uprising of the original trilogy. Prior to Disney's acquisition of the Star Wars franchise, it outlined the origin of the Rebel Alliance from the perspective of Starkiller, a secret apprentice to Darth Vader. Today, it is non-canonical and part of the Legends timeline.

While on occupied Kashyyyk, Starkiller can travel to Ozzik Sturn's trophy room, a museum collection of malice. There, you can find a Gungan frozen in carbonite. While the Gungan is unnamed, many fans assume it to be Jar Jar Binks.

At the time, it may have been a nod to fans who weren't very happy with the cheesiness of the character following the conclusion of the prequel trilogy. Looking back now, it almost seems an honor to see Jar Jar given the carbonite treatment, like an extragalactic version of putting handprints in Hollywood cement. While the frozen Gungan almost certainly wasn't Jar Jar Binks, now that "The Force Unleashed" is non-canonical, it can be whomever you want it to be!

If you get tired of the non-stop action of first-person shooters, several "Call of Duty" titles allow you to take a break with some classic Atari games. You can play four titles on the Nuketown 2025 map of "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2." To unlock the games, first shoot the heads off all the mannequins in Nuketown within two minutes. It's easier if you have some friends to help get it done in time. If you're successful, the giant TV screen changes to an ActiVision logo, and you can play "Pitfall II: Lost Caverns," "H.E.R.O," "Kaboom!," and "River Raid."

In "Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare," you can find another version of the Easter egg in the Zombies in Spaceland map. The game selection is a little larger, with the option to play "Spider Fighter," "Robot Tank," "River Raid II," "Pitfall II: Lost Caverns," "Demon Attack," "Barnstorming," Chopper Command," and "Cosmic Commuter."

The largest selection of Atari games can be found in the Headquarters hub of "Call of Duty: WWII." First, find the R&R tent featuring a chess board. Interact with that chessboard, and you can play 15 Atari 2600 titles for 10 armory credits each. The lineup includes "Barnstorming," "Boxing," "Chopper Command," "Cosmic Commuter," "Demon Attack," "Enduro," "Fishing Derby," "Grand Prix," "Kaboom!," "Pitfall II," "Private Eye," "River Raid," "Seaquest," "Skiing," and "Spider Fighter."

When playing the 2012 first-person shooter "Borderlands 2," you never know what you might run into around the next corner. In fact, there's one corner of the game where you can run into an entirely different video game universe filled with "Minecraft" blocks and deadly Creepers.

The Easter egg becomes available after completing Chapter 9. Move to the northwest corner of the map, to the area called the Guardian Ruins, where you'll find some rusted and worn minecarts. Follow the right track to the end and jump onto the ledge. Hop down, and you'll find a small cave opening filled with familiar-looking dirt blocks.

Strike the blocks with a melee attack to break them and reveal the entrance to a larger cavern containing even more blocks and a handful of deadly enemies. You'll find a smattering of Creepers and a single, oversized Badass Creeper. Once they're defeated, make sure to break all of the blocks. You can find ammunition, weapons, valuable materials, money, Minecraft-themed skins, and other goodies within.

Released in 2021, "Hitman 3" is confusingly the eighth installment in the series and the final installment of the "World of Assassination" trilogy. You play as the infamous Agent 47, dispatched all over the world to conduct assassinations and other high-octane missions.

Each level allows for free exploration and flexibility in how the mission plays out from start to finish. In "Hitman," getting your target is only part of the mission; You also have to escape. Each mission has several phases, beginning with planning, ramping up to the assassination itself, and concluding only when you've successfully exited the scene.

In each level, once the primary mission is complete, the player can exit from one or more exit points. Some of them are fairly ordinary, while others are literally out of this world. When you're ready to exit the Berlin: Apex Predator level, you can do it with the help of an extraterrestrial accomplice. To activate the Easter egg, leave the club and look for graffiti featuring a UFO, a phone, and the number 1993. Take a photo of the graffiti and move to the gas station, where you'll find a payphone. Punch in the four-digit sequence from the graffiti, and you'll be lifted out of the crime scene and off the planet in a beam of light.

The cow level is one of the most enduring concepts in video game history. The idea of the cow level began as a persistent rumor after the release of Blizzard's first "Diablo" game.

The rumor alleged that if you found the cow herd in the town hub and clicked a certain cow a certain number of times, a portal would open up, leading to a secret level. The cow level, of course, didn't exist, but the rumor persisted. Blizzard went so far as to include a cheat code in the single-player mode of "StarCraft," which seemingly addressed the rumor. Typing the words "there is no cow level" grants the player an instant victory on the current level. When it was time for "Diablo 2," Blizzard decided to give the fans what they wanted.

If you beat "Diablo 2" on any difficulty, you can unlock the cow level, known as Moo Moo Farm, as a post-game Easter egg. First, collect a Tome of Town Portal from a magic vendor or from the bookcases in the Jail and Catacombs Dungeon during Act I. You'll also need to collect Wirt's Leg during The Search for Cain in Act I. Combine those two items in the Horadric Cube, and a red portal will open at the Rogue Encampment. Jump through the portal, and you'll find yourself in a world of bipedal hell cows, the famed cow level. Blizzard even repeated the Easter egg in Diablo III.