You may have heard about movie Easter Eggs or video game Easter Eggs before, but have you ever heard about Website Easter Eggs? The internet is filled with copious amounts of weird and wonderful things, so it makes sense that there may be a few surprising features hidden in the depths of numerous different websites. If you're prepared to go on a different kind of Easter Egg hunt this holiday, you will find that websites all over the world incorporate these hidden gems and they are just waiting to be discovered. 

To give you a brief history of where website Easter Eggs came from, it all started back in the late 70's with a game designer. Feeling slightly bitter about the fact that back then game designers were not provided with any credit for their work, this particular game designer decided to hide his credit in the game Adventure, which was made for the 2600 Atari. He designed the game so that when a player performed a specific action at precisely the right moment, the screen would briefly flash the designer's credit. 

This came to be known as an Easter Egg because Atari then had to go on a type of Easter Egg 'hunt' to find the secret message hidden in the depths of the game. From this point onwards, you will be able to find multiple examples of Easter Eggs hidden in games, movies, and websites - mainly to amuse those who are now 'in the know'. Just think of Stan Lee's famous cameos in all of the Marvel movies. The Marvel follower base now awaits these cameos and rejoice whenever Stan Lee's couple of seconds appear on the screen. Website Easter Eggs offer the same effect. They outwardly show that the company has a sense of humour and are willing to go above and beyond to entertain their followers. 

And so, with the Easter holiday upon us, we went on our own website Easter Egg hunt and put together our top 8 favourite website easter eggs hidden on the internet:

Konami Code on Digg.com

If you know a bit about gaming, you may have heard of the Konami Code before. This code was created by Kazuhusa Hashimoto when developing the notoriously difficult arcade game Gradius. To have enough time to test the game, Hashimoto created a code which would provide power-ups whenever needed. That code was up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. This code was allegedly designed only for Hashimoto, but he happened to 'forget' to remove the code when the game went live. Once players got wind of this cheat code, the age of the Konami Code began.

This is why Digg's website easter egg has great comedy value. They understand that the Konami Code is designed as a cheat code, but have managed to turned that on its head by Rick Rolling users whenever they attempt it. We recommend having your sound right up when you enter the Konami code on the Digg website!

Google Search: Do A Barrel Roll

For our second website Easter Egg, simply type 'do a barrel roll' into google and watch as it follows your directions. This is one of our favourite google Easter Eggs, and google has quite a few. It should come as no surprise that Google has the monopoly when it comes to website Easter Eggs. Google is featured a couple of times on this list, but for a fully comprehensive list of all the google Easter Eggs, you can find hidden in the search engine here. 

Youtube Search: Use the Force Luke

Although the Star Wars hype may have died down, YouTube still has a nifty website easter egg stashed up its sleeve. Simply type 'use the force luke' into the youtube search bar and watch as everything on the page becomes controlled by 'the force'. By moving your mouse you can attempt to control the force, too. Another quirky website easter egg happens when you type in 'do the Harlem shake' in the search bar. We recommend headphones for this one too! 

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them on Google Maps

Hold on to your hats Harry Potter fans, for Google Maps can now take you back in time with their website Easter Egg. Google maps have partnered up with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to provide you with an inside tour of the 1926 wizarding world. All you have to do is type in 'Fantastic Beasts, New York City' and google maps will take you to all the focal points of the movie. You will be able to explore and have an inside look at MACUSA (Magical Congress of the United States of America), New York in 1926, The Blind Pig and Tina and Queenies home. It's pretty fantastic if we do say so ourselves.

Wistia's Dancing Team Page

A great example of a company using a hidden website easter egg to display company personality is Wistia. On the Wistia 'about' section, you will find the 'Wistia Class Photos'. On this page, type 'DANCE' and click enter then watch as the team proceeds to dance to some classic jazz music.

Google Search: I'm Feeling Curious

If you're ever feeling bored, just remember that google has this clever little website Easter Egg just waiting to provide you with entertainment. All you have to type into google is 'I'm feeling curious' and google has a widget installed to provide you with a multitude of interesting trivia, ready for you to whip out at all the parties you're invited too. Find out what a heard of unicorns is called or the book the statue of liberty is holding with this useful website Easter egg.

Inspect Source on Coca-Cola Website

Some companies also have website Easter Eggs embedded into the very code of the website. This is because they are aware that many website developers will look at a website's source code to see how specific features were done. With this knowledge, coca-cola has inserted a little nod to anyone who may be looking at their code by inserting the coca-cola logo directly into the source code. To see this, just go onto the coca-cola home page, left click and click 'view page source'. 

Konami Code On BuzzFeed

As you can see, most of the biggest websites have got in on this website easter egg craze. Even Buzzfeed have incorporated the Konami code into their own website. Just press up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A and enter on the homepage and all of the text will change to 'Wilkie!' with a picture of BuzzFeed's chief of technology officer, Mark Wilkie, eating Cheetos with chopsticks. We think this one may be more of an in-joke, but it still shows the great company culture BuzzFeed have.

So, we hope you enjoyed our website Easter Egg hunt. If you know of any others or want to let us know your favourites, either tweet us or leave us a comment on any of our social media platforms. Have a great Easter!