Easter egg

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 presumavly requires extra effort to find or recognize, it represents a reward for the more 'hardcore' fan.

Example Easter Egg: Some of the trashed bodies in the Quintesson jail cell in Transformers: The Movie are recolored robots from the Gundam series, a long-running Japanese robot franchise.

Easter Eggs: Threat or Menace?
Easter Eggs are generally enjoyed by most fans... when used with restraint. Dreamwave was notable for its frequent use of Easter Eggs; often Japanese logos on Cybertron or obscure toys and background characters.

Unfortunately, the frequent use of such Easter Eggs resulted in some confusion. Is the empty near the slave trails (at right) actually Devcon... or did the writer/artist simply throw him in as a fanwank to cause 20-something fans to go ''OMG! I rcgniz taht 1!'' and experience near-orgasmic nostalgic delight quite independent of what's actually going on in the story. This could be compared to a "walk-on cameo" by an actor previously associated with the franchise... (Like if William Shatner appeared in a crowd shot in Star Trek: Enterprise,) except in this case Shatner would be dressed like Capitan Kirk, but not intended to be him, which is really more wierd than pleasing.

First Encounter, the pilot for the Armada series, has a scene wherein multiple 'lookalikes' of Generation 1 characters appear... but are not supposed to actually be those characters. It is generally considered the highlight of an otherwise terrible episode. This begs the semi-philosiphical question... if the highlight of a terrible episode is something that is just an Easter Egg and doesn't actually mean anything... doesn't that mean the episode itself sucks? This sort of Easter Egg can be colorfully described as "sugarcoating a turd." The cameo scene had much better animation than the rest of the episode, and it's clear a lot of effort went into this 'meaningless' sequence that, by consequence, did not go into the rest of the episode.

The Problem of Intentionality
Possibly the best example of the problem of unrestrained Easter-Egging is Aero Raid in Dreamwave's G1 ongoing #3. In a large meeting-hall scene, several Japanese and Generation 2 Transformers are used as crowdfiller. Most part 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. As it can not be Air Raid, we are left with three choices;
 * 1) It is actually Aero Raid, a Japanese character despite having one toy (this one) identical to Air Raid's, is a seperate character.
 * 2) It is a previously unknown robot identical to both Air Raid and Aero Raid.
 * 3) None of these robots actually 'represent anything' they're just throwing in the likeness of obscure characters to thrill readers, they're not actually supposed to be those characters.

Option #2 means that we cannot trust anything we read/watch to tell us anything meaningful about the Universe. The non-speaking robot we assume is Gears in the episode Day of the Machines may in fact be an unrelated identical twin.

Option #3 means that Devcon was not Devcon- and Gears may not be Gears (after all, the script probably didn't name him by name, he was just added to fill in the background of Autobot Headquarters!) A character is only 'there' is they are indended to be there by the writers.

Option #1 means that it was Aero Raid in the crowd- even though the writer/artist almost certainly intended it to be Air Raid. This is an argument against author intention, essentially saying "the story says what it says, and they didn't know what they were saying... well they still said it."

By default, a limited version of Option #1 is used on this Wiki. Easter Eggs are treated at face value unless it makes no sense to do so.

The use of Easter Eggs has greatly diminished since Dreamwave's bankruptcy, possibly due to the negative association with the failed company, but more likely simply because rampant Easter-Egging sucks, renders the stories borderline incoherent, and Don is lucky we don't pin the blame on him for starting it.