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The Best Hidden Easter Eggs in Books

by Samantha Knoerzer •  March 25, 2016  •   Follow SamanthaKnoerze

Published in Publishing Tips  •  13 comments

 

Hunting for hidden eggs is one of the most famous traditions of Easter.

Its always fun to search for the eggs hidden all throughout a house, backyard, or really anywhere else you can think of. Being book lovers, we would love nothing more than to combine all of our traditions, daily routines, and complete lives around books. That is why we have comprised a blog post of secret Easter Eggs hidden in famous literary works.

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In case you don’t know, a metaphorical Easter egg is a message or symbol hidden in a text that can foreshadow something in the books future, connect more than one authors works, or even make reference to something or someone completely unrelated. Many literary works contain Easter eggs, and its always fun for a reader to look for them. Given that Easter is Sunday, what better way to hunt for Easter eggs then within your books:

 

1. The Da Vinci Code – The cover has encryption codes that hint to his next book. (Just like many believe that his first book had Easter eggs hidden to hint toward The Da Vinci Code)

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2. A Series of Unfortunate Events – The illustration at the end of the first book hints toward the name of the next book. There is a snake in the corner, which hints toward the next book The Reptile Room. Another Easter egg is in the final illustration in The Wide Window where it contains an optician’s sign. This is linked to The Miserable Mill, where the children encounter Dr. Orwell, an optician who lives in an eye-shaped house.

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3. The Fellowship of the Ring – The words along the title page are the language within the book. Each cover has actual messages along the boarder, and the language is an full language created by Tolkien who was a linguist before a writer.

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4. Harry Potter series – “I open at the close” on the snitch hints toward the year of book publication versus the final year at Hogwarts. More specifically, the first Harry Potter book was published in 1998, the same year the final Battle of Hogwarts was fought. This gives you a proper, realistic timeline for the entire books, as well as character’s chronological lives.

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5. Game of Thrones: The Song of Ice and Fire – This one is actually a theory and not a proven Easter egg. The actual “Song of Ice and Fire” is believed to be a reference to Jon Snow who it is believed to be the son of Ned’s sister Lyanna and Rhaegar Targaryen. Ned is the King of the North and is connected to winter and snow therefore he is the ice, while the Targaryen’s are controllers of the Dragons which makes them the fire. Therefore Jon snow is the child of both, and therefore the song of ice and fire. Though this is not a confirmed Easter egg, it is a pretty good argument.

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6. Through the Looking Glass – The book has an acrostic poem that spells out “Alice Pleasance Liddell,” which was the actual name of the real existing girl who inspired the fictional Alice character.

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7. The Great Gatsby – The beginning of the book contains an epigraph that reads, “Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her…” quoted by a man named Thomas Parke D’Invilliers. True Fitzgerald fans should recognize the name as a fictional character in Fitzgerald’s third novel, This Side of Paradise.

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8. The Star Wars – This one is connected to the movies as well as the books (since the movies came out first). In some of the Star Wars books, Han Solo mentions that he uses the name Jenos Idanian as an alias. This name is an anagram of Indiana Jones, who is famously played by Harrison Ford—the same actor who plays Han Solo in the Star Wars movies.

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9. *All of Stephen King’s books are connected – Every book has a single connection that connects it to another, making all his books present in a similar universe. There are so many, so make sure to checkout this list to see them all.

 

These are only a few of the many hundreds of Easter eggs in books. Try and find some in the books you’re reading now!

Happy Easter! Happy Hunting! And Happy Reading!

About Samantha Knoerzer

I am the Social Media Coordinator and Author Relations Manager for BiblioCrunch. And I love to read, OF COURSE! From the classics to YA and children's, you can find me reading it all. I have a masters in publishing from NYU's Print and Digital Media Studies masters program, and have undergraduate degrees in music, marketing, and english. I have a passion for reading, music, and travel. My goal is to travel to as many places around the world as possible. If you need to find me, you can catch me traveling all around the world at any chance I get – always with a book in hand!