Biggest Easter Eggs In Westworld

Westworld's creator Jonathan Nolan hasn't been shy about using video games to both research and influence his show. The in-show world of Westworld resembles an open sandbox game like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, both of which Nolan admitted to playing as "research" with his wife, Lisa Joy, who co-created Westworld.

Another influence came from the Bioshock series, which Nolan called "among the most literate and thoughtful pieces of entertainment" he'd seen in years. In particular, Nolan was blown away by the intricate backstories of all the nonplayable characters. He found it amazing that so much attention and detail was given to these trivial characters, most of whom are just shot down by players without a second thought as they blow through a room.

That's basically the premise of Westworld — nonhuman characters that the "real" players can talk to, take to bed, or kill on a whim. That's probably why somebody stuck the head of Sander Cohen, a prominent resident of Bioshock's city of Rapture, in Episode 3 of Westworld. Check out the comparisons above — give it a mustache and it's clearly the same face. It makes you wonder if any of the other decommissioned hosts will be a platform for more Easter eggs in the future.

One of the running references in Westworld has been the theory of the bicameral mind, a philosophy that originated in the 1976 book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. Basically, the theory says (and we've heard this often in the show) that our thoughts were interpreted by early man as the voice of God, a belief that gave rise to modern consciousness. In Westworld, Ford mentions that Arnold programmed a type of bicameral mind into the early hosts to push them toward consciousness.

Although the bicameral mind is mentioned specifically in Episode 3: "The Stray," the series then kind of lets the idea float away. Or does it? As mentioned in the video above, the series kept dropping Easter eggs about the bicameral mind, but we were just too caught up in everything else to notice. For example, In Episode 4, Ford mentions that the first hosts thought the programmers were gods. In Episode 2, Lee Sizemore unveils his new storyline "Odyssey on Red River," a name that harks back to Julian Jaynes' theory that the characters in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were displaying symptoms of the bicameral mind (going to war because the "gods" told them to, etc.).

Wild? You bet. But even Marcel Kuijsten, the director of the Julian Jaynes Institute, has weighed in and said that Westworld's entire storyline so far goes hand-in-hand with Jaynes' original theories. It definitely gives you a lot to think about. Check out the fantastic video above for a deeper look into this long-running Easter egg.

Despite being set in both the future and a simulation of the past, Westworld likes to drop modern-day songs into its episodes. If you haven't noticed them, that's because they've been disguised as old-timey jingles (and one epic orchestra rendition). They show up mostly as the songs belted out by the player piano in the Mariposa Saloon.

The first anachronistic song we heard from the player piano was Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" in Episode 1. In Episode 2, it plunked out Radiohead's "No Surprises," and then "The Forest" by The Cure filled in the fourth episode. There are a couple reasons for these odd Easter eggs, according to showrunner Jonathan Nolan. First, they're designed to pull you out of the story line in the chance that you recognize one of the songs. It sounds counterintuitive because most shows do all they can to keep you immersed in the action, but Nolan explained that that's the whole point. He's reminding us that we're not really in the Old West and that in spite of the thrills in the park, we're really in the future, where these songs would actually exist.

And then there's the odd style choice of using The Rolling Stones' "Paint it Black" during the saloon robbery in the climax of Episode 1. While Nolan had no specific answers about that one, it probably follows the same logic, namely, reminding us that this absorbing scene is all scripted. We're just watching a show within a show.

In Episode 6: "The Adversary," Bernard Lowe takes the elevator way down to Level B82 to check up on host anomalies that he's been noticing in the park. Since the anomalies are coming from first-generation hosts, he needs to use the old computer systems to track them. While he's down there, swinging his flashlight around the dark, disused sub-level, the flashlight beam falls for an instant on a shadowy cowboy pushed back up against the wall. You don't pay much attention to it — Level B82 is full of old relics from Westworld's early days as a park. A decommissioned host here and there is nothing to bat an eye at. Or is it?

That old cowboy in the background is none other than an exact, pose-perfect match of Yul Brynner in character as the Gunslinger in the Westworld film from 1973. It's a nice little nod to the show's origins, although some people have already speculated that using the Gunslinger is foreshadowing the events to come. In 1973's Westworld, the Gunslinger was a robot who bucked his programming and went around killing people. But really, do we need an Easter egg to tell us that the hosts in Westworld are going to eventually kill some people?

Episode 8: "Trace Decay" opens on a familiar scene: a conversation between Ford and Bernard, one no different than any of the countless similar conversations we've already seen in the show. In the midst of the conversation, an emotional Bernard asks why Ford made him kill Theresa. Ford takes the opportunity to launch into a speech about "one man's life or death." It seems to imply that Theresa's death made no difference to the grand plan.

Or does it? Let's hear that full quote again: "One man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire."

The line is so totally Ford that you don't bat an eye when you hear it. After all, the man spouts witticisms like a fountain buried in Oscar Wilde's grave. That is, until you remember that Bernard is a host built especially by Ford as both an experiment and a tool to carry out Ford's every whim. In that light, the direct quote from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein makes a hell of a lot more sense. The scene is showing us a mad scientist speaking with his creation, who is trying to come to terms with what he really is. The nod to Shelley's Gothic classic is further cinched when Bernard lurches, monsterlike, out of his chair and roars that he'll "raze this place to the ground," a phrase that probably has no place in the future but would definitely be at home in 19th-century England. The whole conversation is basically set up like a deleted scene from Frankenstein.

J.J. Abrams has a long history of building detailed worlds around his shows. He did it five times during Lost, and again for Fringe.

So it's no surprise that several of the biggest Easter eggs in Westworld don't rest within the frames of the show itself — they're buried in the expanded Westworld universe. And one of the most important online Easter eggs is the hidden website contained in DiscoverWestworld.com.

If you visit the site and type the code "VIOLENTDELIGHTS" in the "Access" box at the top of the page, you're redirected to the Delos security panel, a simulated backend server for the Delos security team. This section has Easter eggs aplenty, from humorous emails sent between staff members to "Corp Resources," which explain things like Dolores Abernathy's script loop and how the dead hosts are removed from the park to be fixed and cleaned. You can also access the hidden website by adding "delos" behind the backslash of discoverwestworld.com/ (careful, it's kind of jarring) or just going to delosincorporated.com.

If you've ever wanted to geek out about Westworld, this is the place to do it. Best email example:

"Greetings,

Just a reminder that if you're experiencing technical difficulties with your tablets and terminals, this falls under the auspices of IT, and not Behavior. Apologies if this appears obvious to most of you, understanding this distinction shouldn't be brain surgery. But you know what is brain surgery? The job of the Behavior department.

Many thanks, Elsie"

(Elsie Hughes is played by Shannon Woodward in the show.)

There's a lot to do on the DiscoverWestworld site, including (but not limited to) chatting with Aeden, the "guest services host," and trying your luck with access codes in the dialogue box at the top of the page. But God forbid you press the "Shift" key out of nowhere, because you might get more than you bargained for. The first few times results in a brief screen glitch, but if you press it too often or hold it down, the website breaks completely.

It's designed to do that, of course, although it can be startling — and a little creepy — if you accidentally stumble across this in the middle of the night. Since that's when this article was written... well, you get the idea. You can do it for yourself at DiscoverWestworld.com, or you can watch the whole glitch sequence on this video.

First, the screen pixelates before a reference number and ID number flash across the screen. Then, it scrolls through lines of code, glitches some more, and finally a heavily distorted video of Peter Abernathy (Louis Herthum) begins to play along with audio saying, "Hell is empty, and all the devils are here."

Exactly what this Easter egg signifies is (at this point) unknown. There could be more Easter eggs hidden in the glitches, or it could just be a nutshell metaphor for the creepy and unexpected things that are still to come in the seemingly peaceful world of Westworld.

While the developers of the DiscoverWestworld site obviously had some fun with Aeden's responses, there are also some responses that hint at deeper mysteries within the show. One of the names we became acquainted with in Episode 4 was Arnold, who Ford explains helped create Westworld with him. So what happens if you ask Aeden about Arnold? Aeden begins to explain who Arnold is, then breaks down into an apparent reboot, ending with the error code //ERR404HeLLiSeMPtyERROR//ERROR//V10L3nTd3L1G#t5.

If you look closely, you can pick out the phrases "Hell is empty" and "Violent delights." If you then take either of those phrases and type them back to Aeden three times, you'll get a series of error messages, the last of which ends with the eerie phrase "You're in a prison of your own sins. Hell is empty, and the devils are here. Arnold will come for you." Aeden then glitches and restarts again.

Cool, but what does it all mean? As always, Reddit has broken down every piece of this Easter egg, but so far they haven't come up with anything.

A somewhat opinionated cult has sprung up around the popular theory that Westworld is taking place over two timelines, one in the show's present era and one about 30 years in the past. Basically, the theory says that William and Logan exist in the past, immediately before the mysterious "event" that the show keeps alluding to. Meanwhile, the Man in Black, Bernard, and the main Westworld staff are living in the present. Dolores is in both, since she's a host and doesn't age. There's already been so much said about the intricacies of this theory that we're not going to go into it here, but you can cannonball into the madness anytime you want on Reddit or right here on Looper.

And madness though it may be, the show just can't seem to stop dropping hints that the theory might be right after all. Westworld dropped another possible Easter egg hinting this in Episode 6: "The Adversary" during the same scene in which Bernard travels down to Level B82. When he logs into the computer, the Westworld logo on the screen is an older version of the main one. That makes sense — the computer is old, and it's running an old system. But it's also the same version of the logo that appears in the welcome video when Logan and William first show up to the park in Episode 2: "Chestnut." Compare it to the normal logo from the "same" welcome video that plays while Maeve is getting a tour of the upper levels (in Episode 6). Hat tip to Reddit user iheartmovies, who compiled all the scenes where the old logo shows up. Maybe the two timelines thing is an insane theory, but then again, isn't insanity a way of life in Westworld?

Those are all the Westworld Easter eggs we could find, but no doubt there'll be tons more hiding in both the show and the website as the series continues. Keep your eyes open!