Easter Eggs

An Easter Egg is a hidden message or joke purposely inserted into works of media like books, video games, or movies, not to be confused with the brightly-colored eggs that are hidden from children on Easter Sunday. Easter eggs work to test their audience, or are just little jokes inserted so that the more observant people of the audience will get a chuckle.

Alfred Hitchcock, the famous director of classics like The Birds and Psycho, made cameo appearances in 39 of his 52 major films. In Psycho, Hitchcock is seen through Janet Leigh's as she returns to her office. In The Birds, he's leaving a pet shop with his two dogs. These appearances in his films became one of Hitchcock's signatures and fans would make a game out of trying to spot his cameos. 

The Pixar films are famous for their Easter Eggs and inside jokes that they hide in all of their films. For example, the Pizza Planet truck from Toy Story makes an appearance in every single Pixar movie made from that point on. Observant audiences will also notice that Pixar includes parts of future films in their current ones. In Monsters Inc.(2001) there's a scene in the end where Sully is holding a clownfish toy, clearly referencing Finding Nemo, which came out two years later in 2003. In Pixar's 2007 film Ratatouille, Remy runs into a dog who starts barking at him. That dog is the character Dug, a talking dog from Up, another Pixar film that was released two years later.

Easter eggs are great because they show how much the directors care about a film, book, or video game. Making a movie is extremely hard work, and finding the time to insert little jokes or references just for the audiences' sake shows that the filmmakers care.