Missing Contains An Ultra-Secret Easter Egg That Can Only Be Found In Its Home Release

Aneesh Chaganty's "Searching," was a truly inventive thriller, depicting a father's search for his missing daughter as played out entirely in the digital space. In the 2018 film, John Cho's David Kim doggedly tracks down his missing daughter Margot (Michelle La) in an intense scramble across websites, phone videos, security cameras, and virtual desktops. The Chaganty-helmed project was a minor hit, and a messier but just as thrilling anthology sequel, "Missing," arrived earlier this year.

Directed by "Searching" editors Will Merrick and Nick Johnson, "Missing," carries on the central conceit of someone desperately looking for a lost relative via digital means. In the film, Storm Reid's June searches for her missing mother (Nia Long) who disappears on a trip to Colombia. And just as some viewers noticed a whole alien invasion narrative playing out as an easter egg in "Searching," "Missing" appears to be telling a whole superhero origin story in secret. Attentive viewers will be able to track the emergence of a Marvel-esque storyline on the margins of "Missing," carrying on the tradition of telling an outlandish tale alongside the main narrative.

But that's not the only easter egg in Merrick and Johnson's thriller. The pair also included a much harder-to-find detail that requires some serious sleuthing of its own to decipher.

Speaking to Collider, "Missing" producer Sev Ohanian revealed that Will Merrick and Nick Johnson included an easter egg so expertly hidden that only the most dedicated viewers will be able to discover its full meaning. He said:

"Our directors, Will Merrick and Nick Johnson, they incorporated an Easter egg in Missing that I don't feel at liberty to talk about yet because I think it's such a masterpiece that requires somebody to actually treat the entire movie like a video game because there's moments where you have to pause and you have to deduct a code and then apply that code to another moment and apply ... It's insane, Perri. I did not even understand the depths of this Easter egg until the night of the premiere where they told me the final steps. That could be a fun follow up maybe when the home video comes out, but it's insane."

Just what this means remained unclear until the internet did its thing and solved it within a week of Ohanian revealing its existence to Collider. For those that want to know, the Twitter user responsible for unearthing this "masterpiece" of an easter egg posted his finding here, to which Ohanian responded with clapping and winking emojis. But for those that want to do some digital detective work of their own, "Missing" is now available to watch at home. And while "Missing" was always going to have to do something to set itself apart from "Searching," this level of commitment to hiding easter eggs may not have been what most were expecting.