Skip to main content
PC Gamer PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES
flag of UK
UK
flag of US
US
flag of Canada
Canada
flag of Australia
Australia
Sign in
  • View Profile
  • Sign out
  • Games
  • Hardware
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Guides
  • Video
  • Forum
  • More
    • PC Gaming Show
    • Software
    • Movies & TV
    • Codes
    • Coupons
    • Magazine
    • Newsletter
    • Affiliate links
    • Meet the team
    • Community guidelines
    • About PC Gamer
PC Gamer Magazine Subscription
PC Gamer Magazine Subscription
Why subscribe?
  • Subscribe to the world's #1 PC gaming mag
  • Try a single issue or save on a subscription
  • Issues delivered straight to your door or device
From$32.49
Subscribe now
Popular
  • Battlefield 6
  • Essential Hardware
  • WoW Midnight
  • Silksong
  • Quizzes
Don't miss these
a bunny watches a, um, i want to say a cat man thing, playing a ukelele of some sort behind her
Games A singing axolotl and a magical bunny team up in Billie Bust Up, a retro platformer with rhythmic boss battles and witchy movement abilities
Bing Bong being held
Sim Peak devs admit they've been speaking through Bing Bong, but not anymore: 'Anyone claiming that the devs are joining them through Bing Bong, or any other way, they are full of sh*t'
Final Fantasy Tactics intro cinematic
Final Fantasy Holy baloney Batman: Final Fantasy Tactics genius/maniac proves that Chocobos canonically believe in god
Eric Barone Photoshopped onto the head of Hornet, Silksong's protagonist
Action Stardew Valley's Eric Barone is in the Hollow Knight: Silksong credits for voicing a mystery character
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater Gako locations - Snake in Gako mask
Action All Gako locations in Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater
Crates in a storage facility
Games Think you can guess the PC game just from its crates? Try to smash our latest quiz!
A person holding a phone in the future
RPG Wordle comes to Cyberpunk 2077, only it's better because it accepts Night City slang like 'CHOOM' and 'GONKS'
A screenshot of the Google Preferred Sources window with PC Gamer selected, over the top of a Google Search for Hollow Knight: Silksong.
Gaming Industry Google now lets you choose who you trust for your gaming news—here's how to support PC Gamer and other human-made content
A man in a mask
Games How well do you know Kojima game character names? Take our quiz to see if we should start calling you Smart Quizman
Gabe Newell
Gaming Industry The first 'real videogame' Gabe Newell played was Star Trek, where you made your choices via punch cards before running over to the printer: 'It usually takes about 15 minutes to do a move'
An old CRT computer monitor with a keyboard sticking out of its broken, smoking glass screen.
Platforms When we need it most, search sucks
An argonian walks down an empty street in one of Morrowind's towns
RPG 'Because no one was paying attention we could just put anything into the game,' says the writer responsible for sneaking The Lusty Argonian Maid into Morrowind
Jokers from Balatro
Games How well do you know Balatro's jokers? Try to ace our latest quiz!
An image of a spoof ReCAPTCHA with text that reads "Select all the squares without a traffic light".
Games This browser game transforms the reviled reCAPTCHA into a delightfully silly puzzler
Volo, a bard extraordinaire, holds up his hand in caution in a brightly-lit forest grove, from Baldur's Gate 3.
Baldur's Gate Swen Vincke had to tell Baldur's Gate 3 writers to tone it down with the poop-based insults, which is saying a lot, since I still count at least 17 scat-based Vicious Mockery voicelines
  1. Software

Tired Of Doing Barrel Rolls? 22 Google Easter Eggs You HAVEN'T Heard About

Features
By Brad Chacos ( Maximum PC ) published 22 November 2011

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

"Do a barrel roll" ain't Google first barrel roll. That honor goes to the deeper-than-you'd-think flight simulator buried inside of Google Earth. It used to be a hidden feature accessed by pressing Crtl + Alt + A, but newer versions let you access it from the Tools menu.

Page 1 of 22
Page 1 of 22

Look in the lower-right corner at Google Maps' pegman. Or should we say PENGUINMAN? In a remote stretch of Antarctic land, pegman does his best "Danny Devito in Batman" impression and goes native. Check it out for yourself.

Page 2 of 22
Page 2 of 22

Google's calculator function has dimensions for all kinds of joke units, including donkeypower, Potrzebie, "number of horns on a unicorn," and how often "once in a blue moon" occurs. My favorite, of course, is "beard second," which Wikipedia says is "a unit of length inspired by the light-year, but used for extremely short distances such as those in nuclear physics." How long is 1 beard second? You gotta Google it to find out.

Page 3 of 22
Page 3 of 22

We love minigames, and we love YouTube, so YouTube's "Snake" minigame makes us swoon. Just play/pause a video, then immediately press the up and left arrows on your keyboard. Presto! Now don't hit a wall or run the snake into itself. This doesn't work on embedded videos, only on YouTube itself.

Page 4 of 22
Page 4 of 22

Simple and funny: searching for "Askew" turns the screen askew. You get the same result searching for "Tilt."

Page 5 of 22
Page 5 of 22

Chrome may be Google's baby, but you can still find a Firefox logo doing a crop circle impression in Google Earth by flying to 45° 7'25.87"N 123° 6'48.97"W

Page 6 of 22
Page 6 of 22

Geeky fun: searching for "Ascii art" transforms the Google logo into ascii.

Page 7 of 22
Page 7 of 22

Even Picasa gets in on the Easter egg fun: press Crtl + Shift + Y and you'll see a bear. Do it over and over again and you'll see a veritable army of bears!

Page 8 of 22
Page 8 of 22

More Google calculator oddities: try searching for "The answer to life, the universe and everything" or "The loneliest number." We love Douglas Adams references!

Page 9 of 22
Page 9 of 22

It doesn't happen every time, but a user named Michael Smith on Technocrat.net pointed us towards the fact that trying to get directions from one continent to another sometimes results in odd Google Maps directions. Try to get directions from Clarence St, Brunswick East VIC 3057, Australia to W 73rd St, New York, New York, New York 10023, United States and you'll be told to kayak across two different oceans!

Page 10 of 22
Page 10 of 22

Oh, those cheeky Googlers: the caption speaks for itself.

Page 11 of 22
Page 11 of 22

Finding the Firefox logo in Google Earth is cool, but finding the KFC colonel's logo is finger-lickin' awesome. Fly to these coordinates: 37°38'46.50"N 115°45'2.98"W

Page 12 of 22
Page 12 of 22

You may know that you can change Google's default language to nifty things like Sesame Street's Swedish chef. But did you know that searching for "xx-pirate", "xx-klingon", "xx-bork," "xx-piglatin" and "600673" brings up the landing pages for those themes?

Page 13 of 22
Page 13 of 22

Who says aliens aren't real? Boot up Google Earth and bring up the "Mars" planetary feature, then fly to "Meliza." You'll be taken to a chat conversation with a real live Martian whose name and responses are curiously similar to Eliza's, a famous chat bot.

Page 14 of 22
Page 14 of 22

You know porn -- um, "Incognito" -- mode in Chrome? Sure you do. But have you ever actually read its warning?

Page 15 of 22
Page 15 of 22

Take a trip over to the Googleplex headquarters in Mountain View to catch a glimpse of the Street View team.

Page 16 of 22
Page 16 of 22

You might have tuned out the Google Ads around your Gmail account by now, but if you check out the ad at the top of your "Spam" inbox, you might just find yourself delighted by a delicious Spam recipe.

Page 17 of 22
Page 17 of 22

That wacky pegman! He transmogrifies into a Lego version of pegman if you visit Lego Land in Carlsbad, California. Make a point of checking him out on holidays, too.

Page 18 of 22
Page 18 of 22

If you try sending a text message of more than 320 characters in Google Voice, the word count changes to "Really?" And we happen to agree with it. Image credit: techworld.com

Page 19 of 22
Page 19 of 22

Less an Easter egg than a super-cool Google Bomb (Google the term if you need to), try an "I'm feeling lucky" search for "Find Chuck Norris". Even Google fears the beard!

Page 20 of 22
Page 20 of 22

If you laughed at this without needing to Google it first, you're officially a geek and have our respect.

Page 21 of 22
Page 21 of 22

Now this is nifty! Head into a Google Docs spreadsheet, then click on an empty cell and press Shift + F12. Who knew slaying a dragon could be so easy.

Page 22 of 22
Page 22 of 22
TOPICS
YouTube
Brad Chacos
Read more
Bing Bong being held
Peak devs admit they've been speaking through Bing Bong, but not anymore: 'Anyone claiming that the devs are joining them through Bing Bong, or any other way, they are full of sh*t'
 
 
Final Fantasy Tactics intro cinematic
Holy baloney Batman: Final Fantasy Tactics genius/maniac proves that Chocobos canonically believe in god
 
 
Eric Barone Photoshopped onto the head of Hornet, Silksong's protagonist
Stardew Valley's Eric Barone is in the Hollow Knight: Silksong credits for voicing a mystery character
 
 
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater Gako locations - Snake in Gako mask
All Gako locations in Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater
 
 
Crates in a storage facility
Think you can guess the PC game just from its crates? Try to smash our latest quiz!
 
 
A person holding a phone in the future
Wordle comes to Cyberpunk 2077, only it's better because it accepts Night City slang like 'CHOOM' and 'GONKS'
 
 
Latest in Software
A screenshot of the homepage of MSI's AI-powered EZ PC Builder
I tested the beta version of MSI's beginner-friendly, AI-powered EZ PC Builder, and it told me the 9800X3D was the perfect chip for a budget gaming PC
 
 
A stylized illustration of a global network of servers, showing lines connecting computing towers
Big networking software hack seemingly backed by China poses a 'significant cyber threat targeting federal networks'
 
 
LOS ANGELES - JULY 3: The movie "Terminator 2: Judgment Day", (alt: T2) directed by James Cameron. Seen here, a Series 800 Terminator, holding an M95A1 Phased Plasma Rifle. The year is 2029 A.D. Theatrical wide release July 3, 1991. Screen capture. Paramount Pictures. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images)
AI content now outnumbers human-written articles on the internet, but the good news is that the slop seems to have plateaued, for now
 
 
Dall E impression of what a robot lawyer would look like in court.
A lawyer caught using AI citations and quotes in a Supreme Court legal case has been called out by a judge for defending themselves with, err, AI citations and quotes
 
 
An illustration of an old PC with Windows 10's background on the screen.
These are the last few Windows 10 zero-day security updates you'll see without signing up to extended coverage
 
 
Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI Inc., during a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025. Stargate is a collaboration of OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank, with promotional support from President Donald Trump, to build data centers and other infrastructure for artificial intelligence throughout the US. Photographer: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images
ChatGPT is getting 'erotica for verified adults' in December: Sam Altman claims mental health concerns have been addressed, so now it's time to 'safely relax the restrictions in most cases'
 
 
Latest in Features
Borderlands 4 endgame Wildcard modifiers: A close-up shot of Zane smiling as he aims down his rifle, pointing to the right of the image.
Borderlands 4's endgame modifiers make me irrationally angry while I replay old campaign missions on repeat
 
 
fft ivalice chronicles key art with delita and ramza standing back to back
Every Final Fantasy Tactics job, rated
 
 
Battlefield 6: The Dagger 1-3 squad, consisting of Carter, Gecko, Lopez, and Murphy, taking cover against a mossy wall.
If Battlefield 6's gear grind is this slow, I worry what its battle pass will be like
 
 
Characters from TF2 looking at a computer screen
It's our biggest quiz yet: how many Steam game genres and sub-genres can you name?
 
 
Swamp witch
'I'm as surprised as you are': After 7 years, Quantic Dream is taking a 'huge swing' with its first competitive MOBA, Spellcasters Chronicles
 
 
The gang terrorizes a wizard
The next great co-op horror game has arrived, and you can play it for free in this Steam Next Fest
 
 
  1. MSI Vector 16 HX AI and Razer Blade 16 gaming laptops on a blue background with a PC Gamer logo in the foreground
    1
    Best gaming laptop 2025: I've tested the best laptops for gaming of this generation and here are the ones I recommend
  2. 2
    Best SSD for gaming in 2025: the fastest and the best value solid state drives to perk up your PC
  3. 3
    Best Hall effect keyboards in 2025: the fastest, most customizable keyboards for competitive gaming
  4. 4
    Best PCIe 5.0 SSD for gaming in 2025: the only Gen 5 drives I will allow in my PC
  5. 5
    Best graphics cards in 2025: I've tested pretty much every AMD and Nvidia GPU of the past 20 years and these are today's top cards
  1. The Razer Kraken Kitty V2 - Gengar edition wired gaming headset is seen from various angles.
    1
    Razer Kraken Kitty V2 Gengar Edition review
  2. 2
    Creative SoundBlaster GS3 soundbar review
  3. 3
    Ball X Pit review: A wild and excessive mash-up of roguelike action, city building, and a whole lot of ball-bouncing
  4. 4
    Splinter Cell: Deathwatch review: Netflix's animated series brings Sam Fisher out of retirement
  5. 5
    Creative Pebble Pro speaker review

PC Gamer is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

  • About Us
  • Contact Future's experts
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies policy
  • Advertise with us
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers

© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

Please login or signup to comment

Please wait...