Easter egg

An Easter egg is a message that is hidden or otherwise not immediately evident and is meant to amuse players and often used by the designers to refer to influences, development jokes, pet characters, previous works, or preferences.

Swastika
In released versions of Doom prior to V1.4, E1M4: Command Control contained a swastika design on the floor of one room, presumably as a homage to Wolfenstein 3D. Alpha versions of this level, dated April 2 and May 22, 1993, included the same room, but did not have the swastika design. The swastika was removed in V1.4 of Doom. The presence of a swastika would have caused Doom to be banned in Germany, and not just restricted to adults due to the game's graphic violence.

NIN Reference
E4M1: Hell Beneath includes the letters "NIИ" in a part of the level, a reference to Nine Inch Nails, the American industrial rock band. Also, id software's next game, Quake, would feature sound and music by the band's frontman, Trent Reznor.

Romero's head
In MAP30: Icon of Sin, after the player teleports into the huge room with the head of the final boss, a strange, unintelligible noise is played. This is stored in the Doom2 wad file as DSBOSSIT, and if reversed it becomes a voice saying "To win the game, you must kill me, John Romero". The voice is shifted down in pitch and is that of John Romero himself.

In the same level, John Romero's severed head on a stick features as the main boss creature, although the head is hidden behind the face of the final boss, and can only be approached with the noclip cheat. The player must indeed kill it in order to win the game.

This is a cut out from Bobby Prince's little knowen facts no.4

It was a late night and the walls were shaking at id Software. Why? There could be only one reason -- Romero is in the building! Otherwise, it was a quiet, unassuming office -- better yet, a library. Then things quietened down, and I supposed that Romero had left. In fact, everyone but Romero had left, as I discovered when he came into the room I was using for "sound development." He sat down next to me and said that we needed a sound for the final boss to make when a player enters that level. I said that I had some possibilities roughed out and since he was there we could plug them into the code to see how they'd work. We went into John's office to look at the level (he had the only 21" screen). While he was whizzing around the level, all of a sudden he said, "Wait, what's that?" He had clipping off, which means that he could walk through otherwise "solid" objects. He had walked into the wall where the final boss head was attached. Lo and behold, there inside the brain of the boss was Romero's head on a stick! We both laughed a while and Romero decided that the artists (Adrian Carmack and Kevin Cloud) had put it there as a joke. As it turned out, John Carmack had programmed the code so that Romero's head was the object that a player had to hit in order to kill the boss. And this head was down a shaft inside of the wall so it was normally out of sight. It was at that point that Romero and I decided to record his voice and use it as the final boss sound. We went back into the sound room and John started saying different things in a very pumped up voice. He finally said, "To win the game, you must kill me, John Romero." I took that phrase and put some phasing on it and then reversed it. Shades of the rumors of "Satan" on different pop recordings! We decided not to tell anyone else what it said. We had the fun of seeing the artists' expressions when they first entered the level with this sound going. We made them sweat a long time before we played the phrase in its original form. Can you tell that we always had a great time doing this stuff?

Secret levels
The secret maps, MAP31: Wolfenstein and MAP32: Grosse, resemble E1M1 and E1M9 from Wolfenstein 3D. Both levels include Wolfenstein textures and SS Nazis that attack the player. In MAP31, SS Nazis take the place of soldiers and Demons are found in place of the dogs.

A Cyberdemon is in the place of Hans Grosse in MAP32; the name of this map also comes from Hans Grosse's name.

In the last room in MAP32 there are four Commander Keens hanging on ropes. They must be killed in order to exit the level.

At the beginning of MAP32, the message "You'd better blaze through this one!" is displayed; Billy Blaze is Commander Keen's real name.

Final Doom
Two of the wall textures in Team TNT's TNT:Evilution, CR64HBRM and METAL-RM, have large blood stains which spell the name "Romero", a reference to John Romero.

Doom RPG

 * See Entrance (Doom RPG) and Geek culture references in Doom RPG.

Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders
Attempting to use some of the cheat codes from Doom and Doom II in Heretic has negative effects on the player:


 * IDDQD results in instant death with the message "trying to cheat, eh? Now you DIE!"
 * IDKFA takes away all the player's weapons, except the staff with the message "Cheater - you don't deserve weapons!"

Hexen: Beyond Heretic
Quicken results in instant death.
 * Like the Heretic Easter egg, in the demo version of Hexen the cheat codes from Heretic in Hexen has negative effects on the player:

Rambo takes away all the player's weapons.


 * The first hub's secret level Bright Crucible features a puzzle involving the Heart of D'Sparil. D'Sparil was the final boss in Heretic.

Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel

 * In the Locus Requiescat level, the larger tombstones will give funny messages from the game developers if "used" by the player.

Strife - Quest for the Sigil
There is a sound wave in VOICES.WAD named SUR4A1 that sounds like a bunch of people yelling "surprise!!".

Chex Quest
Chex Quest contains many levels leftover from the original 3-episode Doom albeit trimming to 5 levels.

The texture CEMPOIS has a blackboard and in the bottom right-hand corner of said board, is the equation: √2 = chuck. Charles Jacobi was the Art Director/Lead Artist for Chex Quest.

A secret room in E1M2 contains pictures of all the people that worked on Chex Quest.

In Chex Quest 2, E1M1 is titled HHH International Spaceport. This is a reference to the HHH Metrodome where the Vikings play.

Microsoft Excel 95
In Microsoft's Excel 95 spreadsheet program (included in the Microsoft Office 95 office suite), there is an Easter egg that is a homage to Doom.