25 DVD Easter Eggs You Need To See Before You Die
Twice as delicious as their namesakes, and not as fattening.
As we all begin to snuggle up to Netflix streaming through our tablets, video-on-demand placing films in our living rooms at the same time as the cinemas, and a brave few decided that Amazon Premium Video is going to actually stick around and be a viable contender in the market, we've all but signed the death warrant for DVD. Time was that home video was the only way to, well, watch movies and TV shows in your home between the cinema and the inevitable syndication a couple of years down the line (or every Christmas, in the case of the Harry Potter series). We'd already settled with video tapes as the ideal way to revisit the magic of the big screen in the comfort of our own homes, but then DVD came along and offered so much more. The picture was so much clearer, the audio crisp, and you didn't have to worry about rewinding rentals before returning them to Blockbuster. Remember Blockbuster? Since then they've been usurped by blu-ray - it still could've been HD-DVD, we tell ya! - but the high definition format pretty much just carried on the improvements introduced by DVD. One said improvement was the invention of special features. Strictly speaking this was laserdisc's innovation, but nobody bought those expense, vinyl-sized things. DVDs, meanwhile, offered curious film fans a peek behind the curtain, with deleted scenes and behind the scenes featurettes about the movies they were watching. Even more magical than that, however, were the easter eggs: twice as delicious and nowhere near as fattening as their namesakes, these hidden bonuses concealed on DVD menus, commentary tracks and within the films themselves opened up a whole new world of weird, funny and enlightening content that would otherwise have been completely lost. As we begin to mourn the slow death of the home video, we take a look back at 25 of our favourite DVD and blu-ray easter eggs - and if there's any you think we missed, shout out in the comments. C'mon shout. Shout. Let it all out. And the other words to that Donnie Darko song.