Assassin's Creed: Revelations Easter Egg Hunt

Judging by the chat on the boards and, comparing the ones that we know about to the ones being discussed, it is very obvious that there are still Easter Eggs that have yet to be discovered in the game -- or at least if they have been discovered they have not been widely publicized -- and we expect that the last to be discovered will be the really obscure ones, of which we are assured there are many...

The ones that we can confirm include the obvious ones, and a few of the more obscure; as of the time that this was published we can confirm the following:

-- Batman --

Occasionally, while climbing the side of a building from street level near crowds, a male voice will say "Another capering crusader."

This is obviously a reference to the DC Comics superhero Batman -- AKA The Caped Crusader -- who used to spend a lot of time on rooftops in the original comics and, interestingly is one of only a handful of super heroes whose "powers" were entirely natural rather than being either supernatural or the product of originating from a different solar system.

-- Carl Jung --

A famous Swiss Psychiatrist with an outspoken view of the human psyche, he is best known for his extensive research in the field of dream analysis and symbolization, and his writing on the process of interpreting dreams in a clinical environment. Many psychological concepts were first proposed by Jung, including the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, synchronicity, and considering the main environment of the game, his connections throughout it actually make a sort of twisted sense.

Jung is referenced throughout the AC series:

-- The Animus is named for Jung's anima and animus;

-- Women in the series such as Eve, Maria Auditore da Firenze, Maria Thorpe, and Sofia share their names with stages of anima development;

-- In the Abstergo files it mentions that the Animus Research Project should put an end to the debate over the existence of Jung's collective unconsciousness.

-- Enemy Jamal --

In the first of Altaïr's memories that we replay after obtaining the key, our traitorous Assassin Brother Jamal is encountered and, if you turn on Eagle Vision, you will note that he appears in red rather than in white or subdued gray... If you recall this actually first occurred in the original game, Assassin's Creed.

According to the notes that were blogged by the original dev team members, Jamal was supposed to have been an assassination target in the original game -- but was cut from the final game due mostly to that section being reduced in size for the finished game. In Eagle Vision Jamal is the only Assassin in the scene who appears as a red enemy target -- but when you kill him, even though he is marked as a legitimate target, the other Assassins within sight of your action react as if you are an enemy and attack.

What they do not know -- and you do -- is that Jamal and his buddy Masun have turned traitor and sold out the Brotherhood to the Templar -- and they intended to play a role in a Templar attack on the Masyaf! In fact they are who open the gates that protected the village, allowing the Templar to enter the village below the Fortress pretty much unopposed.

-- Hello World --

Geek Humor: In the very first Memory Sequence in the game the protagonist (Desmond Miles) is met by the AI character construct who we know as Subject 16 (Clay Kaczmarek) from the previous games, and during their conversation Clay explains what has happened to Desmond and relates that he had himself experienced the same phenomenon -- which was why this AI recreation that he is now was itself created -- and hints at both the function of Animus Beach as a protected environment and tells Desmond what he must do to save himself.

As he describes the protected environment of Animus Beach, which was created by Rebecca Crane to gain a feeling for the confines of the Animus itself, Clay proclaims "Hello World!" -- that phrase being instantly familiar to any geek who has ever used a mainframe computer, as it is a reference to the first test program all programmers create when they first learn how to direct output to the display device on a network or system (but usually network).

In addition to teaching the user the basic commands to send output to the display or printer, the hello world program is used to verify that the basic shell, compiler, run-time and development environments for the language that the programmer is using are correctly installed.

The first program that I ever wrote when I was learning to program in COBOL on the terminals at school was (as near as I can recall) :

000010 IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.

000020 PROGRAM-ID. HELLO-WORLD.

000030 AUTHOR. CM FAUBERT.

000040

000050* Intro to COBOL Dr Moore MWF0900

000060

000070 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.

000080

000090 CONFIGURATION SECTION.

000100

000110 SOURCE-COMPUTER. RM-COBOL.

000120 OBJECT-COMPUTER. RM-COBOL.

000130

000140 DATA DIVISION.

000150 FILE SECTION.

000160

000170 MAIN-LOGIC SECTION.

000180 BEGIN.

000190

000200 DISPLAY " " LINE 1 POSITION 1 ERASE EOS.

000210 01 TEXT-OUT PIC X(12) VALUE 'Hello World!'.

000220

000230 PROCEDURE DIVISION.

000240 DISPLAY TEXT-OUT

000250 STOP RUN.

000260

000270 MAIN-LOGIC-EXIT.

000280 EXIT.

All of that would basically result in displaying the following massive and important return on the screen when you ran it: Hello World. It is too funny! Yeah, I guess you had to be there, but still...