Hunting for Easter eggs in movies has become a passion for large numbers of movie geeks
out there.
In fact, there's no shortage of YouTube channels whose whole deal is all about pointing out
Easter eggs you might have missed in movies or even just their trailers.
Movie sites and wikis abound with lists of Easter eggs to be found in your favorite flicks.
And yet, even with all that, there are some Easter eggs from classic movies that don't
appear on any site or YouTube video for some reason.
In fact, once we point them out to you, you'll wonder how you missed these amazing Easter
Eggs for so, so long.
Here's a whole basket of movie Easter eggs that no one has ever thought to point out
— until now.
"Here kid, have an egg."
Malls attract strange company
The 1995 follow-up to Kevin Smith's seminal cult film Clerks, Mallrats boasts any number
of unforgettable scenes: like the one where a bearded Stan Lee pops up to talk about Ben
Grimm's junk.
Or the one with the schooner in the Magic Eye.
"Wow! A sailboat!"
"Shut up."
Or the one where Michael Rooker​​, currently beloved for his roles in The Walking Dead
and Guardians of the Galaxy, licks butt juice off his hand.
But for true cinephiles who are always looking to trump each other by uncovering the coolest
and most obscure Easter eggs in movies, one scene in particular stands out.
Early in the film, lovable slacker Brodie gets dumped by his girlfriend Rene to date
Ben Affleck's character.
Affleck then kidnaps Brodie and beats him up.
But when Brodie's friends, including Jay and Silent Bob, ask him what happened, he lies
and says the mall's Easter Bunny is the one who busted his nose.
"All I said was the Easter Bunny at the Menlo Park Mall was more convincing, and he just
jumped the railing and knocked me down."
Jay and Silent Bob decide to avenge their pal Brodie in the way they know best: tactless
violence.
But eagle-eyed viewers will catch an added layer to this scene.
If you look in the background, you'll see several plastic Easter Bunnies holding baskets.
And what's in those baskets?
Yeah, boy.
It's Easter eggs.
Bill and Ted's Bogus Holiday
Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey is the vastly underappreciated 1991 sequel to 1989's Bill
and Ted's Excellent Adventure, a movie that somehow managed to both kick off Keanu Reeves'
career and end Alex Winter's.
While the original film is about Bill and Ted traveling through time to gather historical
figures in order to pass their history presentation, Bogus Journey focuses on the two teens getting
offed by evil robot versions of themselves, going to Hell, and teaming up with the Grim
Reaper to save their fiancées.
It rules.
"(awesome guitar lick)"
While in Hell, the two dudes are forced to
face their greatest fears, which include Bill's grody grandmother and a military school colonel
who assigns them infinite push-ups.
The scariest vision of all, however, is one in which Ted is reverted to a younger version
of himself who had stolen a basket full of candy with his younger brother's name on it.
As he digs into the basket, he's confronted by a Chucky-faced pink rabbit who chases and
taunts him for making his brother cry.
Yup — the basket Ted stole from his brother was an Easter basket.
In other words: you guessed it, it was totally loaded with delicious Easter eggs.
Guardians of the Gal-eggs-y
2012's Rise of the Guardians is an incredibly rad animated film about the Guardians of Childhood,
a secret society of magical figures who help protect children and fight to keep childhood
magical for them.
Members of the team include Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman, Jack Frost, and
a mysterious fellow named E. Aster Bunnymund.
To make a long story short, it turns out that this name is actually a cleverly hidden reference
to the Easter Bunny — which would totally explain some of Bunnymund's characteristics.
Like, y'know, the fact that he is a large talking bunny obsessed with Easter.
It also gives a new significance to the swarms of seemingly sentient, mobile eggs that follow
him around.
Once you know Bunnymund is actually the Easter Bunny, you might start to realize that that
these aren't the normal, everyday walking colored eggs that you see all the time.
These are actually Easter eggs.
Cool, right?
And all it took to figure it out was a little word puzzle solving.
Definitely makes all that time spent doing word searches feel like it was worth it.
"If you're not a kangaroo, what are you?"
"I'm a bunny — the Easter bunny."
Nightmare Before Easter
This next scene only makes sense thanks to fan theories from the internet — but if
those theories are right, it makes for a cool and unexpected Easter egg.
The Nightmare Before Christmas is a 1993 stop-motion animated movie where every major holiday has
its own town devoted to the celebration of that holiday.
Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, accidentally stumbles across a portal
to Christmas Town and becomes obsessed with it.
He decides Halloween Town will run Christmas this year, and so he sends his minions Lock,
Shock, and Barrel to kidnap Santa Claus.
Why?
So Jack can do up the Yuletide in his own stripey, spiraly, Tim Burton Hot Topic fever
dream aesthetic that year.
The trick-or-treating trio don't initially come back with Santa Claus, however.
Instead they bring back a roughly human-sized rabbit carrying a basket and wearing a sash
that says "Happy Easter" on it.
Now here's where that cool fan theory kicks in: Since each of the portals leads to a different
holiday, one of those doors might just lead to some kind of Easter Town.
We know — get out those crime boards, people!
That would mean that this man-sized, basket-toting rabbit is actually the Easter Bunny, and those
lumps in his basket are probably those tasty Easter eggs we've been hunting!
That is, if the fan theory is true...
The big picture
Universal Pictures has been using an image of the planet Earth with some version of its
name superimposed on it since basically the beginning of its existence, even if it has
evolved quite a bit in the studio's century-plus history.
One thing has been consistent, however: It's always the logo on top of our regular, old,
round globe Earth.
Or is it?
Hop is a 2011 film from Universal that finally makes a movie out of the old traditional story
we've all known and loved since childhood –– that the Easter Bunny has a son who
would rather play drums in a rock and roll music band than deliver Easter baskets, and
whose dooks are actually jelly beans.
The genius behind the hidden Easter egg in Hop is that it comes before the movie even
starts.
Take a gander at the flick's first few seconds.
That familiar Universal globe isn't quite how you remember it, is it?
It isn't round.
And, no, it isn't flat either.
It's kind of ... oval?
You might even call it...egg-shaped.
The Easter Bunny Is Comin' to Town
These days, Rankin/Bass Productions is perhaps best known for its Christmas specials like
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town.
But they actually produced a large number of non-Christmas specials between 1964 and
1987, including a series of three separate origin films for the Easter Bunny in a span
of six years.
The last of these three Easter Bunny specials was 1977's The Easter Bunny Is Comin' to Town.
As the film's name implies, it's a sequel to 1970's Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, and
it actually follows the template set out by that previous film maybe a little too closely.
Filling the role of the Winter Warlock from Santa Claus is a grumpy bear named Gadzooks
who has a tendency to steal anything holiday-related that anyone tries to carry past his home on
Big Rock Mountain.
In one scene, the future Easter Bunny, named Sunny... just like James Caan's character
in The Godfather... tries to cross the mountain only to be accosted by Gadzooks.
When Gadzooks inspects Sunny's basket looking for snacks, he finds the basket is full of
colored stones that Sunny intends to sell as paperweights.
A close viewing of the film, however, will call to mind an earlier scene in which Sunny
and his friends actually painted a large number of eggs bright colors in order to specifically
fool Gadzooks.
So not only does this scene feature some cool Easter eggs, it actually reveals the true,
totally, 100 percent, historically accurate origin of Easter eggs.
Not too shabby!
Who Hard-Boiled Roger Rabbit
1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit is the most ambitious crossover event in history, no matter
what Marvel Studios says.
Where else can you see Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, Droopy, and Pinocchio
in one movie?
Anyway, one scene in particular stands out to fans scouring this reference-laden flick
for Easter eggs.
In this scene, human detective Eddie Valiant is taunted by an egg-peeling barfly for working
a job with a toon.
Eddie angrily shoves the egg in the lout's mouth before we learn that Eddie's long-standing
anti-toon prejudice comes from the fact that …
"A toon killed his brother.
It might seem like a stretch, but could this regular egg actually be an Easter egg?
Hear us out: Disney is known for its perfectionism, and its animated films are filled with Easter
eggs.
So, it's unlikely that such a noticeable choice would be meaningless.
So, a prominent inclusion of an egg in a movie that stars a rabbit should be setting off
some alarm bells in your head.
Egg plus rabbit?
Sounds like Disney thought they could slip an Easter egg past us without us noticing.
Did we forget something?
Oh, right!
Happy Easter 2018, and happy April Fools' Day, too.
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