I remember playing through the first F.E.A.R. and noticing a coffee machine in an office kitchen. It had an unknown brand name on it so I checked it against the game's credits and it matched up with one of the game's artists.
My favourite, though, was playing through Deus Ex: Human Revolution and finding three sea shells on the wall next to a toilet.
Came from a time when games were a product of passion of a few, and not of a soulless corporation.
But that's still alive in indie games today. Check out the games developed by "New Blood Interactive" for example Dusk, it's full of throwbacks and memes to classic games from the '90's. You can find them on Steam or at https://waste.money/
Only committee-approved and/or mandated easter eggs permitted. Don't forget to catalogue them all so the social media team have more content.
(And yes, I've worked in games myself so I 100% see the reason why they left it in disabled, iirc there is 2 or 3 levels with geometries but broken scripts included on disc in the largest game I worked on)
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_(minigame)
(2) https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/01/30/house-get...
(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Entertainment_Protectio...
It's a loss for sure, but at least they still appear in some indie games.
A cop gets "frozen" as a punishment and when he gets reawoken the world has changed. Including the toilets. They now use 3 seashells instead of paper.