Sneaky Secrets: Easter Eggs in LEGO Sets

One of my favorite is the CODEC from Metal Gear Solid in 70164

And what exactly am I supposed to do with 50 pink frogs in one of my own builds??
Is it some weird Paul McCartney reference?
Or just some way to boost our piece count without them being useful?

Apart from that it's always nice to find the easter eggs, even if they a couple of croissants.

@ThunderCracker81 said:
" @raven_za said:
"There is also a growing trend of easter eggs and self-references in the modular building series, to mention but a few:
- 10182 Cafe Corner box in 10182 Cafe Corner
- Creator Expert logo in 10297 Boutique Hotel
- Art Piece (10243 Parisian Restaurant) in 10297 Boutique Hotel
- Soap and Studs (10251 Brick Bank) advertisement in 10278 Police-Station
- The entire museum in 71741 NINJAGO-City-Gardens

Not to mention the Easter eggs in 76178 Daily-Bugle and 76218 Sanctum-Sanctorum

Personally I love these as it also helps to tie the theme(s) together."

None of them top the sheer amount of easter eggs/references in 10255 Assembly Square, though. Three "modular" microbuilds(Parisian Restaurant, Market Street and Cafe Corner), two cars(VW Campervan and Mini), the Horizon Express and that same Cafe Corner box.

If you can’t tell, I just finished building it and am
still over the moon. Wish I’d gotten into modulars earlier, that’s for sure!!"

The first line was supposed to read "in 10255 Assembly-Square" :-) Fixed now

I think I read somewhere , possible an interview on Brickset, that one of the Lego designers always incorporates a frog piece in all the sets they have worked on.

@benbacardi said:
"Great article, thanks Ben! There's also nods to fan designers in Ideas sets, such as the Polish flags in the back of 21340."

Thanks, and absolutely - even Tiago snuck an allusion to the flag of Portugal into his Gingerbread House 10267 as a pair of hand towels in the bathroom!

One of my favorite, I discovered it later. On the outside pavement of the first modular building, the café corner 10182, you can see CAFE written with tiles under the two yellow table... That's really great.
Recently, the A-cabin has a lot too... Marco Bessas often added the red and green Portugese map colors in it's model...etc etc...

To mind come the now-recurring but probably own-category Lego self-reference Easter Eggs. For example, 70620-1 Ninjago City had numerous Lego-theme references spread across. I mean, they even referenced Galidor! Those Ninjago City sets also had a lot of elements that were buried deep within, like the sewage parts and hidden stashes. Similarly, 21324-1 Sesame Street includes a lot of references to Sesame Street universe but also a hidden spider layer inside the basement (which I'm not aware is a Sesame Street reference).

@benbuildslego said:
" @benbacardi said:
"Great article, thanks Ben! There's also nods to fan designers in Ideas sets, such as the Polish flags in the back of 21340 ."

Thanks, and absolutely - even Tiago snuck an allusion to the flag of Portugal into his Gingerbread House 10267 as a pair of hand towels in the bathroom! "

And the Italian flag in the A-frame Cabin.

71722 has a poop and gold piece in its base. These are very suspiciously placed together at page 32 entirely out of context. I keep wondering what they could mean. My initial thought was that it could be hinting to "making gold out of s***". But that may have been due to my anger about the instructions for the advertised game that did not work at all, starting with the dice having the wrong number of sides in the instructions.
I even took over this easter egg into my alternative build for this set. A much better use of the pieces, if you ask me :)

Do you have any ideas what else it could mean?

@punisher3564 said:
"doesn't the Speed Champions Koenigsegg 76900 have the Swedish Flag inside of it"

That gets into a fifth class that this article missed, which is personal signatures. Other than the fact that frogs appear in _every_ set from the last wave of Jurassic Park, one designer in particular (who did design the Bonsai) is fond of finding ways to include frogs in every set he designs. I try to work at least one part in some shade of purple into anything I build. And, straight from the mouth of one of the Friends designers, many of the foreign nationals who moved to Billund to design sets like to include the colors of their national flags, even if they can’t incorporate the actual flag pattern. Red/white/blue would work for at least half a dozen countries, including the US, UK, and France. It’s not really any sort of joke, per se, nor does it fit within the other three categories listed here.

Friends models are full of inside jokes and Easter eggs. Those kids are funny!

The recent theatre is a great example.

The inclusion of the TC tile in the Titanic set is ridiculous.
Catarino wasn't the first LEGO designer to propose a Titanic set. Throughout the years, many LEGO designers proposed it. Fans proposed it. And unlike the Haunted House, he had no involvement with the UCS Titanic. So adding that tile there was a joke between former colleges that LEGO should have not allowed. In the Haunted House it could be forgiven: he did help colleagues with the set, he was still at the company and he had just left. And the tombstone fit the model.
But adding the tombstone piece inside the Titanic, not only was unwarranted even as an undeserved homage, it was absolutely tasteless considering History.
But I guess LEGO let it slide as he became a mouthpiece for LEGO's marketing team (aka a LAN-member).

I'm fine with the self-references and the pop culture references. I'm even OK with the small flags of the country of the designer inside the builds. But that's where the inside references should stop.

@benbuildslego Great article, I also love certain type of Easter Eggs that TLG use in the print of Minifig Torsos, like the BLACKTRON logo in these minifigures:

https://brickset.com/sets/71025-11/Galactic-Bounty-Hunter

https://brickset.com/sets/71029-2/Violin-Kid

31109 : Pirate Ship has red and green coloring inside it's hull which matches the Port and Starboard coloring.

The parts are later used in alternate builds as red and green build details but still a nice touch to the main ship build to have those colors used for the hull structure, even if not visible from the outside (unless looking from the bottom)

I mean, LEGO could've used different colors there if the only goal was to be reuse the parts for the alternate builds.

I liked that within the build of the 76042 Helicarrier was the flag of the country of the designer.
Felt like he signed the model. Loved that.

You forgot to mention 71741 Ninjago City Gardens and the other Ninjago Cities. They reference the almost every Lego theme especially from the signs on the railings. The Gardens even references the MOC that sparked the idea for the first City.
21343 Viking Village also references the fan designer Brickhammer by printing his initials “BH” on a Thor’s hammer element.
The frogs are also Nick Vas’s signature to all his sets. There’s one in the Destiny’s Shadow and 71741 as well.

My favorite easter egg is a trans green tile in ninjago city gardens referencing a moc that inspired the ninjago city range

@punisher3564 said:
"doesn't the Speed Champions Koenigsegg 76900 have the Swedish Flag inside of it"

First thing I thought of when I saw the article.

@Huw How do you submit an article? I would like to write one perhaps.

@Huw said:
" @beige2 said:
" @Huw How do you submit an article? I would like to write one perhaps."

Great -- get in touch via the contact form with your proposal."

I've not done one yet, but I'll get writing

@ra226 said:
"One of my favorites of all time, though, was the recursive reference of 3221 carrying boxes of itself."

Home Alone also comes with a minifig-scale copy of the set that's sitting on the living room floor.

@TeriXeri:
The irony is that red/green is a modern contrivance (as is Red Green), and wouldn't have meant anything to the pirates on that ship. The other irony is that, as I just learned, the colors are flipped depending on where you're at. Red Right Returning is the mnemonic I learned from the boatbuilder I worked for in high school, meaning that as you return to port, the red navigation aids will be on your right (and by default, the green ones are to port). This only works in the Americas (excluding Greenland), and in Japan, Korea, and the Philippines. In the rest of the world, the colors are reversed. Navigation lights, at least, are consistent worldwide, and even historic tall ships would probably be required to install modern navigation lights if operating in the dark.

I'm with @Binnekamp. I generally like Easter eggs, especially in TV shows and movies (not so much in LEGO sets), but I too prefer quality over quantity. Lately it's been getting a bit much for my liking.

licence plates with the name of the designer on it, are also easter eggs in my opinion

they were used in several models - for example:

42043 - Mercedes Arocs, Designer Markus Kossmann

10262 - Aston Martin DB 5 ("JB" stands vor Jamie Berard, Mike Psiaki mentions in the comment for this set)

10265 - Ford Mustang, Designer Mike Psiaki

10295 - Porsche 911, Designer Mike Psiaki

+ + +

lego designers as minifigures in sets:

10278 - Police Station, Chris McVeigh (the cookie thief)

10326 - Natural History Museum, Chris McVeigh (the window cleaner)

@M_A_L_L_E said:
"lego designers as minifigures in sets:

10278 - Police Station, Chris McVeigh (the cookie thief)

10326 - Natural History Museum, Chris McVeigh (the window cleaner) "

Is he growing his beard out?

@M_A_L_L_E:
8683-8 CMF S1 Crash Test Dummy has a license plate tile with “PA7 70”, which references someone whose last name is “Patton”. I don’t remember what set it is, but something else around the same time had another Patton reference, I think on a sticker.

Not an Easter Egg as such, but I love how 1990's 6399 recycled, for use as airline schedules, a modified version of the sticker from 1983's 7824. (Itself a variant of that found in the earlier 7822, but subsequently 1985's 7745 used city names in place of the set numbers)

@jhs8swd said:
"Most recently, I enjoyed the Lego House Pirate Captain bigfig having a nice little Easter Egg inside his head!"

I sooooo wish that 76393 had included Harry and Hermione's favorite things (e.g. a Snitch, a piece of parchment) as Easter eggs in their heads or torsos.

Has anyone said about Brikheadz brains Easter eggs? For example, Homer from 41632 having way smaller brain than the others or creeper from 41612 having a TNT on top of his brain.

Not such an Easter egg, but a funny detail: there's a family of minifigures in Lego City, and we can watch the child's story. In 60134 we can see a family with the baby, in 60182 the boy has grown up, an in 60283 he is a grown-up and this time, HE has a baby!

Oh, i didn't see this one.

Looks like I ran out of original ideas.

10275 Elf Club House has a piano and a pirate ship as toys/gifts. Ideas sets that year were 21322-1 and 21323-1

On the window of the vet clinic in 10264 there's a sigh that reads as: "Dr. Jones Animal Care. No snakes!". which is a reference to Indiana Jones and his famous snake haterd.

The UCS Imperial Shuttle has stickers on the five control panels in the cockpit, that have text written in the Aurabesh font. When translated, they read: "Front", "Left" (or right, I forget), "Matt made this model", "Kurt was here and wrote", and my favourite, "Come to the Dark Side, we got cookies".

I was the first person in Canada to build the set, as I was working at a Lego store at the time and built the store display model prior to the set's actual release. There's been text in said font in a number of Star Wars sets, but that will always be my favourite example.

@benbuildslego, this was a great article! Maybe you could even do a series on easter eggs in different themes? I'm sure there are more I'm not familiar with, that I'd love to see.