What are your best easter eggs?

[Writer61]

I think many of us include 'easter eggs' - in jokes and hidden references - in our stories. But, what are your best? The ones that you are most proud of?

Two of mine are references to former British prime ministers, neither of which is complimentary. Can you spot them?

What are yours?

 

[TiberiusPrime]

In some of my stories I add lines from country songs.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

In the true sense, it's been discussed before that an Easter Egg is a bit of one of your other stories to see if anybody recognizes it and comments.

What you're asking about may be considered cultural refences. I've used song lyrics, TV or movie quotes or character names, but of fairly tales and so on. One thing to watch for there is continuity. You don't want to be telling a tale set in the 80s and refence something that didn't happen until the 90s for example. Telling a tale set today and making a reference to something from the 70s may be missed entirely by younger readers.

 

[TheLobster]

My most elaborate one is the alien language in Observation Post 501-3. Although made up, it's not made up by me -- I merely took the already existing language and rendered it into English phonetics, with a few alterations for artistic flair.
So far, no one has brought it up in the comments; to be fair, though, it's not a widely read story.

Some of my other stories include oblique and not-so-oblique references to (reasonably) popular video games, mostly from 2010s, such as here and here.

 

[Areala-chan]

In my What I Wrote and Why for for Dead Space: Kendra, I pointed out a number of them. But my favorite is a haiku I hid in plain sight right in the story's text. No one ever commented on it, so I doubt anyone saw it, but I liked the idea and did it anyway.

 

[crookedletter]

I haven't done it with Lit stories -- I only have one story so far on here so far (hopefully to be remedied before too long), not much room for self reference -- but I like to drop things into my writing sometimes that refer obliquely to my other writing or my own life. Unlikely to be caught by anyone but myself unless I some day, against all odds, gather a devoted reader base. But I enjoy the practice, in my mind at least it gives a sort of eerie quality to the worlds I'm writing in, like the lines between them and the line separating them from reality are bendable and breakable.

 

[StillStunned]

From Flesh 4 Fantasy, when the narrator and his girlfriend adopt a stray kitten:

"We settled on the name Devana. Mel wanted Raurri, after a cat-woman in a story she was reading, but I knew the story. If people asked where the name came from, I wasn't going to explain that my girlfriend had a thing about online erotica."

 

[Writer61]

In the true sense, it's been discussed before that an Easter Egg is a bit of one of your other stories to see if anybody recognizes it and comments.

What you're asking about may be considered cultural refences. I've used song lyrics, TV or movie quotes or character names, but of fairly tales and so on. One thing to watch for there is continuity. You don't want to be telling a tale set in the 80s and refence something that didn't happen until the 90s for example. Telling a tale set today and making a reference to something from the 70s may be missed entirely by younger readers.

I disagree that my examples don't qualify as Easter Eggs. Both are characters that draw somewhat on real people, but are definitely not them (lawyers, please note).

 

[MrPixel]

My favorite is "Acme Manufacturing", a large company that closed its local plant, decimating the small town's economy. They made safes and anvils. Next is, "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it." MMC bought the FMC a sweatshirt with a big, backwards 'F' on it.

It's mostly Boomers in the U.S. who will get these, but I do understand that Nickelodeon was at one time replaying these '60s classics.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

In the true sense, it's been discussed before that an Easter Egg is a bit of one of your other stories to see if anybody recognizes it and comments.

I would consider this allusion, and not an Easter Egg.

I employ purposeful gaffes in my stories, not to influence the tale, but to make it obvious to identify the story as mine if it ever gets stolen and reposted elsewhere. For example, one of my stories here goes from chapter three to chapter five (heading only) and no one has ever caught it.

 

[Dearelliot]

I never thought of doing that, but it sounds good.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

In one of my stories all the character names are references to Spider-Man characters.
No connections to the Spiderverse other than that.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I sometimes mash up an actor or actress's first or last name with the opposite of a character they played, who's like the character I'm writing... I'm considering doing a little tribute in the story to Betty Davis. She was in a movie (early, early) in her career called Bad Sister, where she played a girl named Laura Madison. If I do it, the character will be either Laura Davis or Betty Madison.

 

[MillieDynamite]

This was her very first role, in 1931. She really does have Betty Davis eyes, don't you think?
I colorized this pic of Betty Madison, I mean Laura Davis, I mean Laura Madison from Bad Sister. She was the good sister in the story.

 

[TheRedLantern]

In some flash fiction I had written on Reddit, one of the characters was being studied in a medical lab and was listed as patient "4546B", a reference to a video game that I enjoyed. No one picked up on it. I was sad.

 

[MillieDynamite]

A nightstick rattles across a prison cell's bars.

Guard: "Morning, 4587. Beautiful day."

In some flash fiction I had written on Reddit, one of the characters was being studied in a medical lab and was listed as patient "4546B", a reference to a video game that I enjoyed. No one picked up on it. I was sad.

 

[Blind_Justice]

In "Rotten To The Core", my Urban Fantasy Geek Pride thing from a couple years ago, I buried around thirty song titles. The first three chapters of "Mud & Magic" are littered with thinly veiled pop culture references. Sadly, barely anyone took me up on the little scavenger hunts.

One of my more popular characters, Arach, has appeared in some non-fantasy stories as a "blink and she's gone" moment. And I somehow manage to cram at least one sex scene under the shower into my stories. Not the golden kind, mind you. That's gross.

 

[MillieDynamite]

The number 4587 appears over and over, or repeatedly if you prefer, in Arrow. It is an easter egg.

The number 4587 is a direct reference to Vince Terranova's "ident code" from the 1980s TV show Wiseguy. This is a personal touch from Marc Guggenheim, who enjoys including references to shows he likes in his work.

 

[Blind_Justice]

Hey, if we're sprinkling in pop culture references, here's one for the computer game players among us.

In the seminal cyberpunk/survival horror title "System Shock", the code 451 is used to open the door from Sickbay to the wider station. It is a direct reference to Fahrenheit 451, the dystopian sci-fi story by Ray Bradbury and it also used to be the security code for the Looking Glass Studio offices, the people who, among others, made System Shock. And it has shown up in dozens of games since, among them

- System Shock 2
- Almost all Deus Ex games
- at least one Thief game
- in Dishonored one of the safes can be cracked with it
- in Deathloop, the main character cracks a joke when a player has him enter the code into the first keypad he encounters.
- in Prey (2017), the main character's office lock opens with 0451.
- in Cyberpunk 2077, you can find the code taped to a drawer in an office as a reminder for a password
- as recent as the Silent Hill 2 Remake

 

[MrHereWriting]

I don't consider my references to other works, people, characters (even my own) Easter Eggs.

I don't care if people recognize them. If I reference something (that has no meaning to the story) it's because I like it, but I don't put references in my stories for the sake of having a good, old fashion Easter Egg hunt.

If I'm writing a scene and I recognize the opportunity to fit something I like from other works or real life in there, I might do it, I might not, but nothing is placed in my stories "to be found."

 

[Writer61]

To be clear, I lay easter eggs for my own pleasure. If somebody later says, 'Is that a reference to X, Y, or Z?' so be it.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

An easter egg dropped on a thread was found by one.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

In this story, right at the end...

I got your girlfriend on my cunt side, she's na-na na na...

I like to steal from random lyrics from time to time and put them as easter eggs, especially if I listen to the song while writing, or it is the song that inspires me.

 

[YDB95]

My story Rock and Roll Cliches is nothing but this. Since it's several years old, even I don't know how many there are at this point.

 

[WaxPhilosophic]

I drop them fairly regularly in my Tales from the Stream series. But my favorite has to be the Monty Python Life of Brian reference in chapter 6.