Up, Up, Down, Down

Movies on DVD almost always have "Easter Eggs," hidden content that you can only get to by doing something obscure, like clicking on an object that doesn't appear to be a button.

Similarly, almost every video game has some sort of cheat code, unlocked by fulfilling some incredibly esoteric requirement, like hitting any button thirteen times while rotating the d-pad clockwise.*

And then there are the multitude of websites, like J.K. Rowling's, that contain all sorts of secret content.

Based on these things, it's clear that we cannot craft an interactive experience without adding some special "thing." The temptation is simply too great.

So when God was creating Reality, the most robust interactive experience of all, doesn't it seem like he MUST have done stuff like that?

I imagine that someday we'll develop tools for looking deep into the Earth, and somewhere a few thousand miles in we'll find a big smiley face across the whole eastern hemisphere. It'll be a major controversy, with scientists rushing to explain how it's merely a natural formation that happens to look kinda like a face. Then the next day they'll check out the western hemisphere and find :oP***.

And there's no telling what he did with outer space. I feel bad for the future astronaut who will someday have to submit an official report that says: "Planet XJ-299 is mostly gaseous with a loosely compacted core of dust. Planet XJ-300 has no atmosphere but could be terraformed into a habitable world. Planet XJ-301, well I don't know quite how to say this . . . it seems to be made entirely out of candy cane. Red stripes and everything."

And if God HAS put Easter Eggs into reality, doesn't that do a lot to explain the platypus? He knew we'd try to document all the animal species we found, so he created one just to mess with us. "Ok, ok, the giraffe, that's pretty funny, Gabriel, but check this one out. It's got fur, but it also has a duck's bill, plus an electroreception sense and ten sex chromosomes. Yeah, TEN. Just for no reason. This is going to be hilarious."

For all we know, some of these could be psychological. Maybe the term "Easter egg" is, itself, an Easter egg. Maybe God influenced us to name "hidden stuff in DVD's and games" after a relic of HIS big holiday.

Or maybe there are little codes in daily life that we don't know about. Obscure, esoteric things that, if you do them just right, unlock God's own "Behind the Scenes" documentary, or 30 extra lives!

*Props if you know the reference.