The Top 10 Secret's Hidden in Site's Source Code

The first thing you see in the source code behind the website for The Oatmeal, Matthew Inman’s long-running webcomic, is ASCII art of a massive pterodactyl—so massive, in fact, we couldn’t even fit the entire dang thing into one screenshot. It helpfully lets you know that it’s not only “a motherfucking pterodactyl,” but that it’s also here to “ptero” (“tear”) you a new asshole. Not sure how he’s planning on accomplishing this, considering how he’s literally a drawing of a very, very extinct flying reptile, but he’s welcome to try.

Next up is another ASCII dino, this time (fittingly enough) hidden under the Dinosaur Comics site which is—as you’d probably expect from the name—a webcomic about dinosaurs. Instead of threatening to murder the person that finds him, this guy just wants to know what the words in the website code actually mean (and also to step on a tiny house). 10/10 dino, would hang out with him.

Of course, the website for DogeChain—a site that lets people monitor any recent Dogecoin transactions in real-time—would feature a lil doge giving you some classic doge realness. Y u viewing this, indeed.

If you actually do follow the White House’s link to the USDS site and check out the source code there, you’re greeted by this friendly(?) looking crab that seems to be holding two lightsabers. Apparently, according to the code, her name is Mollie, and she’s the mascot for the organization.

If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the wall of code building up Amazon’s site, you’ll find... a duck. But not just any duck: a duck that meows. The Duck’s been a part of Amazon’s site for years—since about 2016, from what internet sleuths have been able to dig up. And while rumors about what it might mean have floated around programming circles since the start, nobody seems to know where Duck came from, why Duck exists, and why Duck doesn’t make regular Duck sounds.

Slack is one of the tech companies that snuck a bit of job recruitment into their website code—and they decided to rhyme it in a way that’s actually a bit... cute? Or at least as cute as a job recruitment notice can be.

Flickr, like all the others, grabs the attention of those of us looking at the source code of websites. Similar to Slack, Flickr’s source code is their logo and a link to their job openings, with a simple “You’re Reading. We’re Hiring.”

At the top of the code for the Whitehouse’s website, the Biden administration also leaves a job recruitment notice. “If you’re reading this, we need your help building back better,” it reads, with a link leading to the site for the United States Digital Service (USDS)—a tech startup that was established by the White House during the Obama era that’s meant to make the government more tech-friendly.

Speaking of lightsabers—the source code for the Star Wars site is helmed by a spin on one of the series’ iconic quotes: “May the Source be with you.” We love it. Simple. Adorable.

While we’re staying on the topic of Disney properties, the source code behind the official company site features this nod to the folks curious enough to poke around its code, courtesy of Walt Disney himself:

“We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious ... and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”