My Software Easter Eggs

Back when I first started working at Uplynk, my first major project was to create an online video clipping tool that would allow our customers to create clips of their video assets so they could post them on their social media channels and other platforms.

For example, let's say a news station wanted to create a clip of their weather report and upload it to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. They could load their new program into the video clipping tool and create a clip of the weather report. The tool would then generate a new video and upload it to the places they had configured to send it.

It was a lot of fun and I was in a whole new world of technology. I had never really worked with video before and I was learning a lot.

But, this post is about easter eggs!

I added two of them into this system. One of them was found.

My co-worker had ingested a copy of the movie "Cool As Ice" from his DVD into the system. It was so cringy. I actually watched the whole thing. I started using that video asset for testing. Initially, while in the early stages of development, I had it hard-coded to load that movie.

As the project progressed, it didn't make sense to load it. But I still liked using it to test. So, I put in an easter egg to load it when the Konami code was entered.

For those unfamiliar, the Konami code is a famous cheat code that originated in video games developed by Konami. The code is: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A. It was first used in the 1986 release of Gradius for the NES, where it gave the player a full set of power-ups. The code became legendary when it was used in Contra, also for the NES, where it gave players 30 extra lives.

Since then, the Konami code has become a cultural phenomenon, appearing in numerous video games (even those not made by Konami) and various websites as an easter egg. It's a nod to gaming culture and often unlocks special features or humorous content when entered on a website or app.

Fun fact: in the 2012 Disney animated film "Wreck-It Ralph", the Konami code is used by King Candy to access the Sugar Rush game's code room, demonstrating its enduring legacy in pop culture beyond just video games.

That is cool and all, but it was never found by the customers.

But here is where the story gets more fun.

The code name for this project was "Clippy" because it was a video clipping tool. But, it also paid homage to the Microsoft Clippy character.

Microsoft Clippy was an animated character that served as an office assistant for Microsoft Office from 1997 to 2003. Clippy was a paperclip with eyes and eyebrows, designed to help users by offering tips and suggestions while they worked in various Office applications.

Clippy was created by Kevan J. Atteberry and was first introduced in Office 97. The character was Microsoft's attempt to make their software more user-friendly and interactive. Clippy would pop up with dialogue boxes offering help, often starting with phrases like "It looks like you're writing a letter. Would you like help?"

Despite Microsoft's good intentions, Clippy became notorious for being more annoying than helpful to many users. The character would frequently interrupt work with unsolicited advice, and its suggestions were often obvious or unhelpful. This led to Clippy becoming a subject of ridicule and frustration among Office users.

Due to its unpopularity, Microsoft began to phase out Clippy with Office XP in 2001, where it was disabled by default. By Office 2007, Clippy was completely removed from the software.

But, thanks to some crafty developers, Clippy was resurrected in the form of a JavaScript library called Clippy.js.

I added this library and had it give some obvious and obnoxious advice to the user explaining how to use the system.

The best part, in my humble opinion, was that it would end with a phrase taken from Nick Burns. Nick Burns, also known as "Nick Burns, Your Company's Computer Guy," is a recurring character from Saturday Night Live (SNL) portrayed by Jimmy Fallon. He's an IT technician who is notorious for his condescending attitude and rude behavior towards his coworkers who need computer help.

Nick Burns is particularly annoying because of his arrogant demeanor and his tendency to belittle others for their lack of technical knowledge. He often makes his coworkers feel stupid and incompetent, even when they're asking for help with relatively simple computer issues.

Here are some examples of the Nick Burns' lines that I would randomly show at the end of the help routine:

• "Was that so hard?"
• "I can't wait to get my MCSE and get the heck out of here."
• "Shouldn't you be wearing a helmet?"
• "Hey, you know they're training monkeys down at the zoo to use computers, maybe I'll sign you up for a class."

Clippy always closed with the same phrase as Nick Burns. "Oh, and by the way... YOU'RE WELCOME!"

I'll admit, I enjoyed this easter egg so much, that I wanted it to be found. So, I made it fairly easy to get to.

All you had to do to trigger it was to type the word "help" anywhere, anytime in the app. As soon as you entered that four-key combination, Clippy would appear and give you a little "help".

So, if you were creating a video clip and it happened to have the word "help" in the clip title for example, Clippy would appear.

But, it wasn't obvious what exactly triggered it. We had a certain customer that apparently triggered it enough to complain to our support team about it. But, our support team didn't know anything about it! The customer tried to explain what was going on, that the Microsoft Clippy character was randomly showing up and insulting him. Support could not reproduce it.

Support assumed that the customer had a bug on their computer that was triggering it.

To prove his point, the next time Clippy made his appearance, the customer whipped out his phone and started recording it. Notice he was looking for the "zoo" line again, as that one seemed to really trigger him.

Support still had no clue what was going on. So they reached out to us and asked if we had any ideas as to what might be causing this.

I should explain here that this was about 5 years later. I was now managing the full-stack dev team. This question came to me. I felt a mix of joy, laughter, and a little fear. When I wrote this, we were still small. The founders thought the easter egg was funny and didn't care. They had since fully vested and gone in a new direction. Now we had new management and some of them were a little pissed off.

So we killed Clippy. We also removed the Konami code in the process. That one would be a little more scary if someone actually found it because it might have copyright implications.