The internet has been poring and obsessing over the Black Mirror movie/game Bandersnatch ever since it dropped just before the new year. But some have spent even more time with it than most. A handful of particularly thorough viewers/players watched/played it for so long, accessing every nook and cranny, that they actually found something few had: a secret ending with a wild easter egg.
This comes from three writers at The Wrap, who stuck with it for so long, exploring so many possible paths and endings, that Netflix finally gifted them with a surprise conclusion. It arrives after toying around with the business involving our hero’s elusive plush rabbit, which his father may have hidden (or which may simply be a delusion).
Eventually they were given the option to return to Stefan’s childhood, where they were offered a do-over: young Stefan join his mom on the late train, knowing full well that they both would perish in the accident that originally killed only her. If you click “yes,” it jumps to the present, where we see the 19-year-old Stefan has suddenly and mysteriously died in his therapist’s office. The credits roll.
Don’t turn it off, though. There’s a Marvel-style post-credits bumper, which finds Stefan on the bus he was on towards the beginning. This time, however, he doesn’t pull out two music cassettes. He pulls out a tape of Bandersnatch, the game that drove him crazy. Of course, it’s a video game cassette, and when he puts it in his Walkman, it plays some crazy sounds.
Naturally some internet sleuths figured out what it was. They ran it through a ZX Spectrum emulator — which plays early ’80s era British computer games — and it spat out a QR code. They scanned that code and, voila! They were taken to the fake official site for Tuckersoft, the computer game company within the episode, where you can find a copy of their game Nohzdyve. This easter egg had already been unearthed, but still.
If you’d like to see it for yourself, please follow the path the Wrap writers laid out, which goes thusly:
Sugar puffs
Thompson twins
Accept
Accept
Go back
Refuse
Yes
No
The Bermuda Triangle
Shout at Dad
Visit Dr. Haynes
Pull Earlobe
Take them
Follow Colin
Yes
Stefan
Go back
Colin
Flush them
Hit desk
Pick up book
PAC
Throw tea over computer
P.A.C.S.
20541
Who’s there?
Netflix
Try to explain
Tell him more
Fuck yeah
Fight her
Kick him in the balls
Who’s there?
White Bear symbol
Back off
Kill dad
Bury body
Yes
He jumped
Chop or bury?
Chop up body
Destroy computer
Pick up photo
White Bear symbol
Chop up body
Destroy computer
Get rabbit from dad
PAX
White Bear symbol
Chop up body
Destroy computer
Get rabbit from dad
Toy
Yes
(Via The Wrap)
