Secret messages

Ever heard of movie “easter eggs”? They’re  secret jokes or references that directors hide in movies.

A recent Huffington Post article suggests the term “Easter Egg” may have originated from actual eggs on the set of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The cast apparently had an Easter egg hunt and forgot to find at least three eggs that appear in the movie.

As the fan site Cosmo’s Factory points out, three random eggs can be seen in the movie: “under Frank’s throne, one instead of a light in the main room, one as the group goes up in the elevator to the lab.”

Other fun Easter Egg examples …

R2-D2 has made secret appearances in many movies, including “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” along with C-3PO.

The “Star Wars” robots make two appearances in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” First, the pair noticeably shows up as a sort of hieroglyphs on a pillar, right as Indiana Jones finds the ark. Then, shortly after this moment there’s an even bigger depiction of the two on a wall behind Jones and Sallah as they lift the ark. This one also features Princess Leia, who is kneeling next to R2-D2 as she presumably uploads data with C-3PO.

R2-D2 has made appearances in other movies as well. J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek” snuck the little robot amid floating debris in space. Abrams put R2-D2 into “Star Trek Into Darkness” as well. The robot also made its way into “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and another Steven Spielberg movie, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

The “Toy Story” movies are full of homages to “The Shining.”

As mentioned, Pixar movies are famous for their Easter eggs, but they are usually self-referential. The “Toy Story” series, however, has many nods to Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.” In the first “Toy Story,” for instance, the pattern of the carpet in Sid’s house is the same as in the Overlook Hotel. The director of “Toy Story 3,” Lee Unkrich, is a huge fan of “The Shining” and even runs his own fan site. Unkrich explained his obsession to Vulture:

I saw it when I was 12, in 1980, for no particular reason other than that it was a new film in theaters. My mom took me to see it. She’d taken me to see a few bad horror films that had affected me really deeply in terms of having chronic nightmares. But still, that didn’t stop her from taking me to see this one. And it turned out to be the best move she ever made — because it began this 32-year love affair with the film. It was the film that inspired me to become a filmmaker myself.