Easter egg

"Don't look at me, I'm irrelevant!"

An Easter egg is a special treat hidden in something, (a comic book, a web site, a DVD) as a reward for the person who finds it. Since an Easter egg presumably requires extra effort to find or recognize, it represents a reward for the more 'hardcore' fan. The term has been in use for decades, while the practice of hiding information in artwork goes back millennia.

Naturally, Transformers fiction, and the occasional toy, is replete with them. The very earliest egg is a mention of "that big green, fire-snortin' lizard" in The Transformers #3, a jokey reference to Godzilla, an earlier licensed title. The cartoon, meanwhile, merrily sneaked in connections to the G.I. Joe cartoon.

Easter eggs are especially present in stories drawn or written by fans turned pro, or where key creators have reached out to fandom. Dreamwave was particularly fond of including Easter eggs in their comics. Both Transformers Animated and Fun Publications' Axiom Nexus stories uses them to fill out the crowd scenes. Beast Wars and Animated would both throw in little eggs in their dialogue, with the former making references to then-prominent online fans and websites, and the latter making little nods to other continuities (and sometimes other Hasbro properties).

Sometimes Hasbro itself gets in on the act, making slight nods to past fiction (Beast Wars nods in Cybertron toy bios) or specific fandom memes (Hot Shot's pro-jaAAAaaam! vanity plate).

Sometimes these led to quite a bit of confusion as to whether such inclusions should be taken literally or not; for example, is that really Devcon the bounty hunter, hanging out in the slums of Cybertron, or is it just a little winking extra for fans of the Generation 1 cartoon? Did movie Starscream really have an F-15 form at some point like he says? Are the Visionaries in the same continuity as Animated?

Look at the smug face. He just knows one of us is going to break down and make a page about him.

A notable example of this confusion was in Generation One #3, where several Japanese and Generation 2 Transformers are used as crowdfiller. Most of the Transformers in attendance can be assumed to "be" themselves — but there is a problem with one of the Generation 2 Cyberjets. Specifically, the character this toy represents (Air Raid) is both on Earth and dead at this point in the ongoing story. You either have to assume this (and perhaps the other characters) aren't meant to really be these characters, the artist is just throwing in the likeness of obscure characters to thrill readers; that in this continuity, G2 Air Raid is a different character from G1 Air Raid; or that this is Aero Raid, an obscure Japanese character that shares the same toy.

The latter option is very geeky indeed, and is naturally the path that this wiki takes. Easter eggs are treated at face value unless it makes no sense to do so.

Sample Easter eggs

• The Beast Wars cartoon often included humorous messages in Cybertronix writing, and other gags hidden in the background.
• Megatron Origin features a large number of Easter eggs.
• The Star Screams letters page would routinely drop in little eggs for the older fans, mainly G1 references.
• The Universe ultra-class toy of Onslaught features a nod to uber-fan Monzo.
• All stories set in Axiom Nexus are awash with Easter eggs.
• The AllSpark Almanac, II, and Addendum are the undisputed kings of the Easter egg.
• Cars that look like Prowl appear in Transformers.

Layers of eggs

While large numbers of Transformers creators and designers have snuck in eggs, some have made it a hallmark:

• Derrick J. Wyatt
• Adam Patyk and James McDonough
• Jim Sorenson
• Hayato Sakamoto
• Daniel Warren Johnson

External links

• Easter egg at Wikipedia