Hot on the heels of my review of Ready Player One, I wanted to touch briefly on the "easter egg" concept. An easter egg, whether it be in a movie, book, or video game, is a tiny hidden thing that means little to the overall plot or story, but is there for geeks and nerds to find and ponder over. Sometimes they have meaning to something in the future, but often they do not.
Ever since Adventure for the Atari 2600, folks have been hiding easter eggs in stuff. ET is in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. There's a naked woman in the cartoon The Rescuers. R2D2 is in the hieroglyphics in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Pacman is in Tron. None of these things have any bearing on the plot, so why are they there?
Part of me thinks it's simply out of ego. We geeks like to think we're smarter than everyone else, so we plant secret stuff in our work and snicker about how much more clever than everybody else we are. Of course, also being unable to keep our intelligence a secret, we then scream at everyone to find our clues so they can also know how smart we are.
Some easter eggs are there for the enjoyment of the audience. Putting Sid as a grownup in Toy Story 3 was fun for those who figured it out. It was also laugh out loud funny when they put Samuel L. Jackson's quote about "The path of the righteous man" on Nick Fury's tombstone in Captain America: Winter Soldier. These things can be great fun, but you have to be ready and waiting to see them, and I usually want to enjoy the story the first time through. I look for easter eggs on subsequent viewings.
Sometimes an easter egg can change things or make them a bit more creepy. Scar's pelt(from The Lion King) can be seen in Hercules, making me wonder which big game hunter drug it there. The Sultan in Aladdin has a stuffed toy of the Beast from Beauty and the Beast. Did that mean it happened before or after the Beaty and the Beast movie(the implications could be profound).
While finding easter eggs can be fun, I prefer not to use useless devices in my own work. Those that do, more power to them. That's not to say I don't leave subtle clues. In Salvation Day, I left several clues about what happened to the main character's daughter, and I also left behind several pieces about what you can expect in the sequel, but they're all plot related rather than geek related.
I promise I'm not trying to piss anyone off - I just wanted to point out that these things are often more exclusive than audiences may want. Are they worth the effort? Only the creator can determine that.
Ever since Adventure for the Atari 2600, folks have been hiding easter eggs in stuff. ET is in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. There's a naked woman in the cartoon The Rescuers. R2D2 is in the hieroglyphics in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Pacman is in Tron. None of these things have any bearing on the plot, so why are they there?
Part of me thinks it's simply out of ego. We geeks like to think we're smarter than everyone else, so we plant secret stuff in our work and snicker about how much more clever than everybody else we are. Of course, also being unable to keep our intelligence a secret, we then scream at everyone to find our clues so they can also know how smart we are.
Some easter eggs are there for the enjoyment of the audience. Putting Sid as a grownup in Toy Story 3 was fun for those who figured it out. It was also laugh out loud funny when they put Samuel L. Jackson's quote about "The path of the righteous man" on Nick Fury's tombstone in Captain America: Winter Soldier. These things can be great fun, but you have to be ready and waiting to see them, and I usually want to enjoy the story the first time through. I look for easter eggs on subsequent viewings.
Sometimes an easter egg can change things or make them a bit more creepy. Scar's pelt(from The Lion King) can be seen in Hercules, making me wonder which big game hunter drug it there. The Sultan in Aladdin has a stuffed toy of the Beast from Beauty and the Beast. Did that mean it happened before or after the Beaty and the Beast movie(the implications could be profound).
While finding easter eggs can be fun, I prefer not to use useless devices in my own work. Those that do, more power to them. That's not to say I don't leave subtle clues. In Salvation Day, I left several clues about what happened to the main character's daughter, and I also left behind several pieces about what you can expect in the sequel, but they're all plot related rather than geek related.
I promise I'm not trying to piss anyone off - I just wanted to point out that these things are often more exclusive than audiences may want. Are they worth the effort? Only the creator can determine that.
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