Here’s the page for ascension talking about the Easter egg, and I love it because they had the idea that nobody would ever figure it out but somebody just happened to get the first step and it kinda went out of control. I love the idea that this “quest” at one point was considered something they hoped NOBODY could figure out and it’s how they approached the next one…
Book:
When it came time to create an ending, we asked if we could give them a power-up or something cool, but the reaction was 'No one's gonna find this! We don't wanna waste a cool asset on this,'" remembers Collin Ayers, Senior Sound Designer. "So, we didn't give players much of anything if they got to the ending."
Maestas adds, "Everyone was so sure no one would ever find it. But some journalist accidentally found the first step and mentioned it in a review, and players just piled onto that. It became a thing people obsessed over trying to figure out."
"Forums were filled with people spending all this time [on it]," says Ayers, "But no one knew how to solve it. Once people did figure it out, they were pissed. 'After all that work we had to do, you end it like this?!'" (The team built it to unlock ninety seconds of a "free" power-up that replaced players' weapons with a powerful minigun, but it was nothing unique to the quest.)
"It was a double-edged sword," continues Ayers, "Because on one hand, it sucked to see people be disappointed, but then back at Treyarch the reaction was, 'Okay. Next time we need to make the grind worth it.'"
Maestas says, "It's become a staple of how we do a lot of our storytelling. Before that it was just little radios or messages, but it's grown into these things that aren't even Easter eggs anymore. Now it's the main quest."
"And it was just very cool to be there for the very beginning of that," notes Ayers.