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How are most Easter Eggs discovered? On this site of course! Seriously, the best way to find Easter Eggs is to come to a site like this one and see if others have discovered them first. Many eggs are almost impossible to find on your own, so check the archive first. How are most Easter Eggs discovered originally? There isn't a lot of hard evidence, but our guess is that the information is often leaked by the people responsible for the Egg. They tell a few friends, who tell a few more friends, and eventually the information ends up here. Of course, some Eggs are discovered accidentally or by piecing together detailed background information to uncover an Egg. Some people have accidentally stumbled across the right key combinations to activate some software Eggs. Also, people who happen to know a lot of background on a particular director might spot Eggs they have hidden in their movies. But usually you need some "inside information" to discover an Egg. How can I find Easter Eggs on my own? If you are determined to hunt down some Eggs on your own, here are a few tips: Try what worked in the last version - Especially for software, the way to activate an Egg is often similar to the way an Egg was activated in the previous version of that product. Look for Patterns - Check common Easter Egg patterns, like poking around the About Box for software programs. Do Background Research - If you know a lot about a particular film, director, producer, etc., you are more likely to spot something they have hidden in their films, or recognize them if they make a cameo. Explore the Unexplored - Eggs will often be hidden in places you wouldn't think to look. Try browsing around ALL the menus in DVDs, even in directions where you don't expect a menu item. Look in every nook and cranny within video games. Look in the background, or freeze-frame quick shots in movies to discover hidden Eggs. Eggs are meant to be hidden, so explore everywhere. Why do companies allow Easter Eggs in their products? Most companies don't allow Easter Eggs, and claim that they will remove any Easter Eggs they find and discipline the programmers who put them in. These affairs are internal to the company, however, and we have little data to confirm or deny this stance with many companies. Indeed, some companies (like Microsoft) seem to have had passive approval of Easter Eggs in their software, considering the many elaborate Eggs they have produced in the past. Although it is rumored that Microsoft has become very hard-line against Easter Eggs in its own software, Office 2000 still managed to contain a great Egg. You go, Office Team! Fight the power! I don't like having an Easter Egg in my software! How can I remove it? We hate to tell you this, but you're probably stuck with it. Since Easter Eggs are usually smuggled into the software in the first place, there is almost never a "remove" button. Sometimes companies will remove Eggs in later updates of the software, so your best bet is to wait for a service release, update your software, and see if the egg is gone. However, usually Eggs take up very minimal resources, and their presence is virtually insignificant (see the next question). How much disk space do Easter Eggs take up on my hard drive? It's hard to give exact figures, but usually it is a very small amount, so small that it is insignificant in comparison to the size of the program itself. Otherwise, it would be more easily noticed in the QA process. Even eggs that seem gigantic in size usually take up very little space. Take the Excel 97 Flight Simulator: It contains a few simple texture images, some text, and a simple terrain grid of points. None of this is very big (probably a few kilobytes), and even the "Flight Simulator" code is probably a few calls into the DirectX graphics system, which is already on the system anyway. Bottom line: don't worry about the disk space being wasted by Easter Eggs. The old emails in your Inbox are probably wasting more space than those Eggs. How much do Easter Eggs cost companies in terms of