It is official. Marvel confirmed Chris Evans as Captain America. You won’t be getting anymore updates from me. Frankly, this whole mess has me exhausted. I await with you all the result.

I have faith in Chris Evans, but he is going to have to step it up a notch and explore some previously untapped talents to pull off Cap without just making him Human Torch in another costume.

I know I was supposed to have a blog about some of the upcoming comic book movies that look very promising for this year, but I have decided to postpone that a week in honor of Easter. Instead today I would like to talk about Easter Eggs.

No, not actually painted eggs. This would be the geek version. You may know them best as the hidden videos and bits of information found on DVDs, video games, and occasionally thrown into TV shows or movies as a fun game of ‘who can spot the inside joke’.

I’m not talking about really clever cameos, like the original actor who played the Hulk in the TV series, Lou Ferrigno, playing a security guard in both Hulk movies. That could be considered an Easter Egg, but it was pretty much given to us and right there in front of our faces, even if you did have to have enough sense to recognize Ferrigno to get the joke.

No, Easter Eggs are those little secrets in the background that most people don’t even realize are there until they hear talk of it later online.

IN SCENE

For my first example, I would like to discuss some awesome Easter Eggs that were discovered in the Supernatural episode “Dean Men Don’t Wear Plaid” that aired March 25th. I will admit up front that I did not notice any of these Easter Eggs myself, but was informed by the article “Is Captain America the biggest April’s Fools joke in the history of Hollywood?”

In this episode there is a large number of Easter Eggs that point to Jensen Ackles, who plays Dean Winchester, as the actual choice for Captain America.

We now know, as I said above, that Marvel has officially announced Chris Evans as Cap, so these Easter Eggs must have been more of a way for the crew to give their two cents that obviously Jensen would have been the better choice.
 
Some of these supposed Easter Eggs I am not sure I buy, like the fact that there are so many American flags around and a picture of Mount Rushmore. I would like to point out that the episode takes place in SOUTH DAKOTA. So not much to go on there.

There is also a scene where Dean is eating apple pie, Captain America’s favorite food. Anyone that knows anything about Dean Winchester also knows that pie is HIS favorite food.

I do concede on two of the other Easter Eggs, however, which could mean that the extra slew of American themed items have more meaning.

One of those was the initials “CA” behind Dean’s head on one of the vehicles in Bobby Singer’s scrap yard, which would otherwise have no purpose for being scrawled on that window if not to mean “Captain America”.

There was also a red, white, and blue motorcycle helmet in the closet Dean takes refuge in while fleeing rabid zombies, which not only has the American theme, but harkens to one of Cap’s many looks.

Add all of that up together, when we know that Jensen was at one point a contender for Cap, and these are definitely Easter Eggs.

DVDs (and blueray)

The more common Easter Eggs we come across these days are in DVD menus.

Sometimes as a bonus for watching a particular commentary, a hidden selection for another short feature will appear on the screen.

To use Supernatural as an example again, the Season 2 DVD has an Easter Egg that shows up after you have watched some of the special features. The picture on the screen of Dean suddenly has yellow eyes like the notorious demon the characters are hunting in the first few seasons. Selecting over until the eyes are highlighted brings up two other openings for the show that they tried before deciding on the, well, lack of an opening at all.

Other times these treasures need to be more carefully dug up, and can take the inputting of a code to bring them up at all.

To see a hidden series of outtakes in the Dr. Horrible DVD you have to go from the Scene Selections menu to “Act II” and highlight “Moist Dries Up”. Press your Enter button for a countdown. Then press ’6′ on the DVD remote before the count gets to zero and you will get to see the outtakes.

This does not work with a PlayStation controller, we discovered, and were very disappointed.

Almost every DVD has Easter Eggs somewhere. If you doubt me, type in the title of your movie of choice into Google with ‘easter eggs’ at the end and see what you come up with.

These are always fun little extras, sometimes goofs or jokes that are that much more enjoyable when you discover them all on your own.

If you haven’t figured out that these are called Easter Eggs because you have to HUNT for them most of the time, I am highly disappointed.

VIDEO GAMES

In my life, video games are the other example of where I stumble upon Easter Eggs the most often. One of the classic examples I remember was in Final Fantasy VII.

By following these directions, you can get an ad for one of the other SquareSoft games that came out that year, Xenogears.

All you have to do is find Cloud while he recovers in Mideel, talk to him several times, which results in a babbling version of some of the lyrics from the main song in Xenogears, and then Cloud eventually even says, “…zeno gias…”

Video Game Easter eggs are also often ways of earning extra costumes, weapons, or endings.

Probably one of the most famous Easter Eggs of all time for video games, that was supposedly never meant to be implemented in the game in actuality, was a hidden sex mini-game for Grand Theft Auto that the creators named “Hot Coffee”.

“Hot Coffee” has thereafter become its own Easter Egg that pops up in several other games as names of locales, dialogue, and less sexual hidden scenes.

It also adds an extra layer of fun for me to the coffee bit of Eddie Izzard’s that there is sexual connotation implied when asking:

Do you want a cup of coffee?

CONCLUSION

I don’t know how people track down a lot of these Easter Eggs originally, save being highly adept at hacking, unless hints are leaked onto the internet beforehand. But however these awesome little treats are first discovered, info about how to find them yourself will always eventually show up online.

Easter Eggs are aptly named not only because they must be hunted for but because they bring out a sense of childish glee for us when they are discovered. They can show up almost anywhere if you’re a keen enough observer to notice them. And if not, just try Google.

It pains me to have discovered that those Easter Eggs in the Supernatural episode were merely nods to Jensen as a wonderful choice, not that he was THE choice.

But I maintain that Chris Evans might just surprise us and pull this off without falling into his box of the smarmy, charming flyboy that makes us all grin and say, “Oh you.”
 

~G³

Next week (I promise this time) will be “Good Comic Book Movie Adaptations FTW”, a look at some of the new comic book movies coming out this year.

Thanks for tuning in.

Images taken from:
http://images.hitfix.com/photos/287245/Michael-Cera-and-the-cast-of-Scott-Pilgrim-vs.-the-World_gallery_primary.jpg
http://i44.tinypic.com/25ic9w4.jpg

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