Easter Egg

Easter Eggs are surprise features or bonus content included in the game as a treat for the fans.[1]

These can be major features, such as Diablo 2's Secret Cow Level, but more commonly they are smaller inside jokes. For instance, Diablo 2 featured the names of the game designers and prominent members of the fansite community as items, monsters, mercenaries and other things.

This page covers Diablo-themed Easter Eggs in other games. See also:

• Diablo I Easter Eggs
• Diablo II Easter Eggs
• The full coverage of Easter Eggs in Diablo III.

Diablo III Easter Eggs

There are dozens of Easter Eggs in Diablo III, both big and small. The full listing is maintained in a separate article, as this page is overcrowded with other related Diablo Easter Eggs.

• See the Diablo III Easter Eggs article for full details.

Blizzard Comments on Diablo 3 Easter Eggs

The Diablo 3 team did not reveal any of the Easter Eggs they had planned for Diablo 3 in advance (of course not, or they wouldn't be surprises!) but the developers have spoken in general terms about wanting to include such surprises and bonuses.

Jay Wilson, August 2008: [2]

We don’t really know at this point. I really like the idea of secret stuff that Diablo II put forward, but it’s not the kind of thing we would decide this early. But if we have something, I can assure people will be happy with it.

I will say the thing I liked about the cow level was that it wasn’t just fluff; there was stuff that you could do there that actually had purpose within the game. The thing I didn’t like about it was that it almost replaced part of the game. And so, if we looked to add something like that, we’d be a little smarter about it. We would want it to have a function within the game, but we wouldn’t want it to replace any core content, which is something that I think the cow level really did.

Diablo II had a lot of little oddities to it that made the experience not as usable. I certainly wouldn’t want things like, ‘Don’t kill the cow king because we’ve got to keep the level open!’ We would avoid scenarios like that. The secret of a cow level is a cool secret. The secret that you’re not supposed to kill the king because you’ll ruin the cow level forever — that’s a bad secret. So we would try to get rid of some of the bad ones.

Blizzcon 2009: [3]

Slashdot: The Diablo franchise is especially iconic for things like easter eggs and secrets. Can we expect the same of depth in Diablo III? Any hints?

Leonard Boyarsky: No, no hints. They wouldn't be easter eggs then. We'll probably drop some hints here and there, maybe post some easter eggs on the web for people to dig out. Maybe some red herrings to send people in the wrong direction, but most of that stuff just comes naturally during development. As you develop areas, these things come up, and we're always throwing around ideas. So yeah, we talk about that all the time, and we are planning on doing quite a bit of that stuff.

They even included some in the Blizzcon demo build itself, in 2009. [4]

Kevin Martens: There's some Easter Eggs.

Leonard Boyarsky: Yeah, there's something hidden in there. It's just fun stuff. It's nothing that the people are going to be like, "Oh my God, I found this thing. I found the fifth class!" Nothing like that. It's just fun little jokes here and there.

Diablo Easter Eggs in Warcraft III

Diablo pod racing.

Warcraft 3 has a ton of Easter Eggs, but not many of them feature anything related to Diablo.

Goblin Pod Racing

An Easter Egg allows for a Star Wars-like pod racing sequence in the Thousand Needles - Shimmering Flats, area. One of the racers is Diablo, who does not look very thrilled about it.

Wirt's Legs and the Butcher

The Butcher, from Warcraft III.

There was a "Wirt's Leg" Item to be found in the game.

There was also a unit called the Butcher who dropped an item called "Wirt's Other Leg."

The Butcher was a huge abomination who hid in the recesses of the Black Temple and attacked Kael'thas and Illidan's forces. He gave the item Wirt's Other Leg when he died.

Wirt's Leg and Wirt's Other Leg.

Note that The Butcher was responsible for cutting off Wirt's Leg in Diablo I, so it's only natural that he still has it around, albeit rotten and bony. The description for this item is as follows:

Wirt's Other Leg

Perhaps the overzealous adventurer pried this off before his journey here thinking it might give him one last opportunity at bovine slaughter. Little did he know where it would lead him.

Diablo Easter Eggs in World of Warcraft

Diablo mini-pet.

There aren't (yet) any specifically-Diablo 3 Easter Eggs in World of Warcraft. There are, however, a number of Easter Eggs derived from the Diablo series on the whole.

This list does not include the dozens of skills, monsters, quests, and other game elements directly derived from Diablo and Diablo 2.[5]

• In reference to his demonic form in Frozen Throne, one of Illidan's gag quotes is "Wings, horns, hooves...what am I saying, is this Diablo?"
• An item called the Cow King's Hide.
• An item called Wirt's Third Leg.

Diablo Mini-Pet

The initial release of World of WarCraft added a Diablo mini-pet as a reward for people who purchased the Collector's Edition.

This pet follows, is very cute in a fierce sort of way, and has a fire-breathing "rest" animation.

Tyrael Mini-Pet

Mini-Tyrael pet, from WoW:BC.

A Tyrael mini-pet was added with a special conversion code given out to attendees to Blizzard's WWI 2008, in Paris. This code enabled the Tyrael mini-pet, who hovers along after the player, and can /dance, when required.

This was one of the rarest and most sought-after of all mini-pets at the time, with codes selling for upwards of $800 on eBay.

Murkablo

This Diablo-styled Murloc mini-pet was seen on the World of Warcraft test realm in April 2011. It's not yet active in the game, and is widely-presumed to be a special prize that will be given out in the BlizzCon 2011 goodie bag, or else as part of the Diablo III Collector's Edition.

The creature can be seen in-game in a short movie embedded in the news post.[6] This is not the finished version; the animations are reused from the Deathy mini-pet from BlizzCon 2010.

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D3CE Fallen Shaman

Fetish Shaman.

The Diablo III Collector's Edition contained a World of Warcraft bonus pet; a Fetish Shaman of the type seen in Diablo II and Diablo III (via the Witch Doctor's Hex spell.

The model was first datamined from a WoW patch[7] in September 2011, with speculation at the time that this was the D3CE pet. Those suspicions were confirmed a month later, when Blizzard revealed the contents[8] of the D3CE in October 2011.

The pet was enabled in a WoW patch[9] in early December 2010. Fans observed that was pointless, since without the D3CE, and the redemption code fans can obtain from within it, there is no way to enable the Fetish Shaman pet. Nevertheless, Blizzard had the pet ready for late 2011, as that was Diablo 3's initially-planned release date, and even after the game was delayed the WoW patch guys saw no reason to hold back the pet even though no one would be able to enable it for months yet.

Oddly, the Fetish Shaman is not riding piggyback, as these demons always have in the game.

Tyrael's Charger

Tyrael's Charger[10] a World of Warcraft epic mount, a flying horse wearing Tyrael-styled armor, was first discovered through data-mining[11] on October 28, 2011. The full details were revealed soon afterwards,[12] and the mount was available as a perk with the purchase of the twelve-month World of Warcraft Annual Pass. Subscribers to that plan also received a free copy of Diablo III upon release, and along with other perks.

Screenshots showing off the creature can be seen below.

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DOTA's Witch Doctor

One of the characters in Blizzard's DOTA is a version of the Diablo III Witch Doctor. See this news post from Blizzcon 2011 for the game trailer video, as well as video of a Blizzcon panel devoted to their DOTA project.

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Diablo 3 Easter Eggs in Starcraft 2

Blizzard continued their habit of working in inter-game Easter Eggs, by placing numerous amusing Diablo 3 items in Starcraft 2.

• See a comprehensive list of the dozens of SC2 Easter Eggs in this SC2 Wiki.

Diablo Decals

Diablo decals in Starcraft 2.

Decal'ed Marine.

Diablo head decals are amongst the many offered for customizing your units in Starcraft 2. These may be unlocked through achievements over Battle.net, their exact function isn't yet known.

They can be used to customize units on player-made maps, as the example Terran Marine shows. The images were first found on the Battle.net site, on July 18, 2010.

Deckard Cain Achievement

A smaller Starcraft 2 Easter Egg features Deckard Cain's classic "Stay awhile, and listen." line of dialogue as the name of an Achievement. A fan reported on where this achievement was obtained. [13]

This achievement is after you finish the Gates of Hell mission in planet Char. There’s a cinematic right after, then you see an interactive Raynor, General Waterfield and Tychus with a char background. The achievement suddenly pops when that loads. It’s interactive as in you hover the mouse over Raynor, the General and Tychus, and they become silhouette-highlighted, you click them and they have a cutscene-dialogue.

Burning Diablo

Diablo in SC2.

Diablo in SC2.

The first and most dramatic is an appearance of a miniature Diablo in a SC2 single-player mission called "The Devil's Playground." Diablo is just a "critter," one of the forms of ambient life, but it's definitely Big Red, though he's small and gloriously burning, the model looks to be the same one used for the World of Warcraft mini-pet.

A screenshot can be seen to the right. See the original news post for more details and a movie of the little guy.

Funny Movie Names

Diablo: The Musical! Full image here.

An animated theater sign on the "Media Blitz" map shows various scrolling movie titles, all of them various inside jokes. The names include:

Cineplex 5000: Diablo: The Musical. ... Enter the Dragoon ... Ladies of Lordaeron 3 ... NWO: Silent Takeover ... Night of the Zerg VI ... The Perfect Psi-Storm.

Map information: City Billboards [72.58.113.02] in the map editor. It is named THorner04.SC2Map. It's where Tychus Findlay mounts the Thor and wrecks havoc in Korhal city to broadcast off-world the tape where Mengsk says he wont let anyone stand on his way, and he will rather see the sector burned to ashes.

Diablo Marine Avatar

Diablo Marine Avatar.

The Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty Collector's Edition contains four avatars accessible in the Battle.net Rewards tab, Portraits section. The avatar is titled onscreen as Diablo Marine (Devoted fan).

Laptop Game Selection

Would you like to play a game?

In one of the Single Player missions: Ghost of a Chance, on the planet Avernus, a laptop is found on a desktop in one building. The World of Warcraft character selection screen is displayed on a different screen, while the main screen shows a message: Want to play a game?" Various options are listed, including Diablo III:

• Bridge
• Checkers
• Chess
• Fighter Combat
• Desert Warfare
• Diablo III
• Theaterwide Tactical Warfare
• Global Thermonuclear War

This is a larger Easter Egg referring to the 1983 Matthew Broderick movie WarGames, in which a computer hacker starts playing games with the central computer at NORAD, inadvertently nearly starting World War III. The computer in that film's usual prompt is, "Would you like to play a game?" With Global Thermonuclear War as the last of several options.

Diablo Easter Eggs in Other Games

The Diablo games are milestones in video game history, and have been referenced in numerous other titles, both RPGs and other types of games. This section lists Easter Eggs in other games that refer to elements of Blizzard's Diablo games.

Borderlands

Borderlands, a role-playing shooter created by Gearbox, included a number of homages to Diablo. [14]

• A demon named Rakanishu.
• A weapon called the Butcher with, "Ahhh… Fresh meat" in its description.
• A unique item called the "cracked sash," with very high stats. (This reverses the common Diablo 2 joke about a worthless item drop that contained only a "cracked sash."

Hellgate: London

Flagship Studios was formed in 2003 by Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer, David Brevik, and Bill Roper along with numerous other former Blizzard North employees. Their first (and last) title was Hellgate:London, an ARPG set in a demon-infested, post-apocalyptic future. The title was directly influenced by Diablo in numerous ways, but only included a few direct homages.

The most obvious was Wart, an annoying, one-legged NPC boy who was the object of some early game quests. He was an homage to the infamous one-legged Wirt, of Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 fame.

Sacred

RPG Sacred has a map area modeled after the town of Tristram, as seen in Diablo I. A quote from an informative Sacred fansite, which was the source of the images below: [15]

Some of you might not know but Tristram is a famous little village connected with the game Diablo. In Diablo 1 this is the place where your hero starts out. In Diablo 2 it has been destroyed and is where you collect Deckard Cain from. There is a little village in Sacred which is tremendously similar to the Tristram in the original Diablo. It is located north of Moorbrook and shouldnt be very hard to find. Cloest portals to this place are the Mystdale Castle portal and Valley of Zhurag-Nar portal.

Also note when you enter the village the residents all turn into zombies and will start attacking you. This is also the town where Glubba wants to be taken (end of Act 3). And I'm pretty sure this is also the village which is referenced by a rune stone somewhere around Mascarell.

Two images showing off the Sacred version of Tristram can be seen below. Click them for larger views.

The Diablo I version of Tristram, recreated in Sacred.

Closeup view of the Cathedral and cemetery.

References

• Jay Wilson Interview, August 2008
• BlizzCon 2009 Q&A
• Boyarsky and Martens Interview, August 2009
• Diablo appears as a Starcraft 2 Easter Egg, August 2010.