Easter Eggs in Games

Dopefish Lives!!!

That's dope as in stupid, not dope as in...well, anything else. Dopefish was the creation of Tom Hall, co-founder of legendary first-person shooter studios, id Software (Doom, Quake) and ION Storm (Deus Ex, Anachronox). Hall, when working on Commander Keen: Goodbye Galaxy in 1990, sketched a "stupid little fish," and Dopefish was born.

Dopefish has appeared in more games than John Madden, counting Quake, Battlezone, Max Payne, Hitman 2, and SiN Episodes: Emergence among his (her? who knows?) credits.

It's Dopefish!

Although Dopefish's debut appearance in Goodbye Galaxy was as an enemy, these days it's more usually seen in hidden rooms, graffiti, posters, or secret text -- often accompanied by the catchy slogan "DOPEFISH LIVES!!!"

"There are no Easter Eggs up here. Go away."

So reads a sign on top of the Gant Bridge in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. There might be no Easter eggs up there, but there are plenty to be found in other areas of the game, to say nothing of its other episodes. For example, ever tried visiting any of the web sites in the GTA3 radio ads? Most of them point to real spoof sites put up by Rockstar. Take www.petsovernight.com: It offers "little bundles of love" -- including kittens, stomach parasites, and sharks -- shipped overnight, straight to your door.

Helpful notice in Grand Theft Auto

Connections between Vice City and Scarface are too easy to make to really count as Easter eggs, but there's at least one Vice City location that qualifies for the term. It's near a Pay 'n' Spray location on the eastern island -- there's an apartment building with a blood-drenched bathroom and handily placed chainsaw that strongly resembles the movie's brutal opening. There's also -- literally -- an Easter egg to be found on the other island near the news channel building.