Computer Easter eggs

Updated: 12/31/2020 by Computer Hope

An Easter egg is an undocumented feature or novelty in a program that the makers added for additional fun and credits. Easter eggs are in no way destructive to any software or hardware in the computer and are usually meant for something unique and fun.

Program Easter eggs

Below is a listing of various Easter eggs found in programs.

Adobe Photoshop

  • Electric Cat - Press and hold Ctrl+Alt and click the eye on the tool bar.
  • Merlin Lives - Press and hold Ctrl+Alt, click the arrow on the layers box, and choose palette options.

Fax Works:

  • Squid Alert - Click your logo's manufacturer or logo of faxworks. When the about screen comes up, press and hold Shift+Ctrl and left click the world until a new picture comes up.

Microsoft Excel:

  • Excel 97 Flight Sim - In a new worksheet, press F5. Type X97:L97 and press Enter, press Tab once. Press and hold Ctrl+Shift and click the Chart Wizard toolbar button, note you must have DirectDraw installed for this Flight Sim with credits to work. To fly, press your hold right to go forward/faster forward, or press and hold the left to backwards or slow down.

Microsoft FrontPage:

  • Credits - In the Microsoft Front Page Explorer, press and hold Shift and go into help and about 3 times, pressing ok 2 of those times.

Microsoft Word:

  • Sex in Spell Check - Type "zzzz" without the quotes and press the spacebar to get the red wavy line to indicate it is spelled incorrectly. Then run spell check and see what it suggests as an option.

Game Easter eggs

Diablo:

  • Cow Jokes - Start a new game, visit the cows on the eastern part of town. Click a cow several times until something happens, repeat the process to get something else, then repeat after that.

Doom 2:

  • Programmer's Head - Warp to the last level; type idclip, run through the daemons face and shoot the head to win the last level an alternate way.

Tomb Raider:

  • Lara and no clothes - During the "Tunnel" round, type "kkooii" at any point, then draw again. Lara then drops the guns, and all her clothes.

Warcraft 2:

  • Hidden Song - Press Enter, type in "disco," and press Enter again.

Other Easter eggs

Palm Pilot:

The below easter eggs have only been tested with the Palm Pilot and Palm Pilot Professional.

  • Credits - Go into the Memory app, hold the stylus on the "System v. 1.0.2" text in the upper left corner, press the scroll down button
  • Dos Error Message - In the giraffe typing game, hold the stylus in the upper-right corner, press the "page down" button.
  • Guys in tuxedos - Hold the stylus in the lower right corner of the display area, press page up.
  • Dancing hula tree - Hit the Help button, then draw the "#" character.

OS Easter eggs

MS-DOS :

  • Joke - Type msd from the DOS directory (this does not work if in Windows directory); select help, then about and press F1. Note that any DOS after 6.2 (or Windows 95 or later) this joke does not work.

Windows 3.x :

  • Picture or Bear - Hold Ctrl+Alt+Shift and continue holding through the remainder of the steps. Go to Help from Program Manager and select "About Program Manager." Double-click one of the four colors on the Windows flag at the upper-right portion of this window. Repeat the steps above twice, clicking a different color each time (still pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift). The Windows flag should begin waving. Repeat the above steps once more to get a picture of a person and their name, or possibly a bear. To get the bear, the process sometimes needs to be repeated several times.

Windows 95 :

  • Windows 95 Main Easter egg - Note: ALL the following are case-sensitive and is typed without the quotes! On the desktop, right-click the desktop and select New folder. Name the folder "and now, the moment you've all been waiting for" and press Enter. Right-click the folder again and type "we proudly present for your viewing pleasure" and press Enter. Right-click the folder again and rename it to "The Microsoft Windows 95 Product Team!" and press Enter. Open the folder to see the Easter egg.
  • Various Volcanoes - For this to work, you must have Windows 95 OSR2. Right-click the desktop, click Properties, then click the Settings tab. Choose 3-D text as the screen saver and click Settings. In the text box, type "volcano" and click OK.
  • Hide the Start button - Press Ctrl+Esc, let go and press Esc, press Alt+- (minus). Move the arrow up to Close and press Enter. Once the start has vanished, to get it back, press Alt+Ctrl+Del, end task Explorer, which brings up your Shutdown window. Press Esc once and wait. It then brings up a message saying that Explorer is not responding. Press Cancel and your Start should be back. If, by some chance, it is not back, press Alt+Ctrl+Del two times or until it reboots. Once it starts back into Windows, the Start is shown again.

Windows NT:

  • Various Volcanoes - For this to work, you must have Windows NT. Right-click the desktop, click Properties, then click the Settings tab. Choose 3-D text as the screen saver and click Settings. In the text box, type "volcano" and click OK.