40 Star Trek Easter Eggs Explained

Star Trek: Picard opens with the song “Blue Skies” by Bing Crosby. In Nemesis, Data sang this song at Riker and Troi’s wedding. It was later hummed by B-4 after Picard informed him of Data’s heroic death. 

The doctor of genetics that Enterprise gets tangled up with in “Borderland,” “Cold Station 12,” and “The Augments” is Arik Soong, whose scientific breakthroughs led to the creation of Soong-type androids like Data. The role is played by a makeup-less Brent Spiner. 

And in Prodigy's "Masquerade," Dal learns he's work of Dr. Arik Soong's protégés.

In The Next Generation episode “Yesterday’s Promise,” the planet Archer IV is referenced. In Enterprise’s “In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II,” Captain Archer’s personnel file mentions that he has two planets named after him: Archer IV and Archer’s Planet.

Armin Shimerman (Quark the Ferengi) and Marc Alaimo (Gul Dukat the Cardassian) from Deep Space Nine both played the first representation of their respective species in The Next Generation. Shimerman played Officer Letek in “The Last Outpost.” Alaimo played Gul Macet in “The Wounded.”

In Discovery, Captain Pike investigates the planet Boreth in order to procure the time crystals housed within. This is the same planet that a contemplative Worf visits in The Next Generation’s “Rightful Heir.”

In Picard’s “The Impossible Box,” the gang learns that the Borg Queen had Sikarian travel technology implemented into her. This technology, known as the spatial trajector, was a key element of the Voyager episode “Prime Factors.”

In Enterprise, Captain Forrest is played by actor Vaughn Armstrong. Thanks to the stellar Star Trek makeup team, Armstrong has also played at least 10 other characters in the Star Trek universe. 

In Picard, the titular retired Starfleet admiral goes to visit his friend Raffi at Vasquez Rocks in California. This is a real place that has been used as alien landscapes many times in Star Trek shows and movies. You might recognize it from Captain Kirk’s iconic fight against the Gorn in The Original Series. 

With its inclusion in the Discovery episode “New Eden,” Shakespeare’s Hamlet has now been quoted or referenced in The Original Series, The Next Generation, Enterprise, Discovery, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

When Rios visits Stardust City, Freecloud in Picard's “Stardust City Rag,” there are a few significant business locations. One is “Mot’s Hair Emporium,” named after Mot, the barber of the U.S.S. Enterprise-D. It also looks like Quark’s Bar has been franchised from the success of the Deep Space 9 station location.

In the Discovery episode “Context Is for Kings,” Lorca mentions three pioneers of space travel, which includes the Wright Brothers and Zefram Cochrane. Cochrane is the man who first encounters Vulcans in Star Trek: First Contact.

In the Enterprise episode “Oasis,” an incredulous Tucker asks, “What are you going to do, program a holographic doctor?” This is a foreshadowing of the Emergency Medical Holographic (EMH) used as a doctor in Voyager, and later, Picard.

Star Trek: Picard opens with Data and Picard playing poker. This is a fitting companion to the very last scene of The Next Generation, where Picard joins his officers’ poker game for the very first time. 

During the Discovery episode “Lights and Shadows,” the ship console has several labels that read “TNG,” “DS9,” “VOY,” and “ENT.”
 

With her brief inclusion in the “Previously on Star Trek…” opening of Discovery’s “If Memory Serves,” Majel Barrett-Roddenberry has now officially appeared in The Original Series (Number One and Nurse Chapel), The Next Generation (Lwaxana Troi), Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise (various computer AI), and Discovery. 

In Discovery, Tilly, Detmer, Owosekun, and Airiam discuss playing the game kadis-kot together. Kadis-kot is a board game played many times aboard the U.S.S. Voyager.

Burnham reads an excerpt from Alice in Wonderland during the Discovery episode “Context is for Kings.”

This makes sense since The Animated Series episode “Once Upon a Planet” establishes that Amanda Grayson adored Lewis Carroll. McCoy and Kirk both reference and quote the book in The Original Series and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, respectively. 

When Pike and Tyler are caught in a temporal rift in “Light and Shadows,” they ignite the nacelles’ plasma so the Discovery can notice them. Igniting plasma is a key part of the Kolvoord Starburst, an illegal precision maneuver that went wrong and killed a member of Wesley Crusher’s flight team in The Next Generation's “The First Duty.”

Commander Williams and Leonard from the Enterprise pilot are named after legacy talent William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.

During Discovery, the ever-traditional Pike orders the U.S.S. Enterprise communications to switch to “old school methods.” This is perhaps an attempt to justify why the technology used in Discovery seems so much more advanced than in The Original Series, which canonically happens a decade later. 

In Picard’s “The Impossible Box,” Soji is seen with a “The Adventures of Flotter” lunchbox. This is a children’s Holoprogram that Captain Janeway reminisces about in Voyager. 

When the Enterprise’s crew goes into the mirror universe in “In a Mirror, Darkly, Parts I & II”, they run into the U.S.S. Defiant. This is canonically the same Defiant (NCC-1764) that Kirk and crew searched for in “The Tholian Web” during The Original Series. 

Captain Picard always treated his special day with disdain in The Next Generation. But it looks like the resulting decades have made those memories seem more fond. You can see the Captain Picard Day banner hanging in his Starfleet vault in the Picard episode “Remembrance.”

Dr. Gabrielle Burnham, Michael’s birth mother who has seen multiple accounts of the future, tells Pike, “I could say more about your future, but you won’t like it.” This is yet another foreshadowing of Pike’s fate that can be seen in The Original Series' “The Menagerie.”

In the Deep Space Nine episode “The Nagus,” Quark rewards Rom by promoting him to “assistant manager for policy and clientele.” When Rom asks what that means Quark says, “How should I know? I just made it up.”

In the episode “Call to Arms,” Rom stays on a Dominion-controlled Deep Space 9 to spy under the guise of being the “assistant manager for policy and clientele.”

In Discovery, while procuring time crystals, Captain Pike sees a vision of his future where he is bound to a life support chair due to radiation. This is the version of Pike that we see go and live with the Talosians in The Original Series' “The Menagerie."

Soji Asha’s confused head tilt in Picard’s “Nepenthe” is a nod (literally) to the one done by her father, Data, throughout The Next Generation.

In Discovery’s “If Memory Serves,” Pike is shocked to reunite with Vina. This serves as the middle of their story that starts in “The Cage,” and ends in “The Menagerie, Parts I & II” from The Original Series.

Alexander Enberg, who recurs as Vorik the Vulcan engineer in Voyager, also played a Vulcan engineer in The Next Generation episode “Lower Decks.” His mother, executive producer Jeri Taylor, claims the two characters are twins. This idea was solidified in the video game Star Trek: Starship Creator.

In Discovery’s “Light and Shadows,” Burnham is confident that Sarek will “weigh the needs of the many” when making a decision. This is in reference to Spock’s famous line in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan — “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.”

In Enterprise, Admiral Forrest is named after DeForest Kelley, who played McCoy in The Original Series.

In the Voyager episode “Non Sequitur,” Tom Paris says he once went to Deep Space 9 where he “got into a bar fight with a Ferengi and was thrown into the Brig by a very unpleasant shapeshifter.” This is undoubtedly a reference to Quark and Odo.

A bottle of Chateau Picard can be seen in Captain Philippa Georgiou’s Ready Room in the Discovery episode “Battle at the Binary Stars.”

Klingons guarding time crystals as a major plot point of Discovery is perhaps a nod to Gene Roddenberry’s initial plot for the second Star Trek movie. This abandoned story revolved around time-traveling Klingons and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. 

In Discovery’s “The Red Angel,” Tilly tells Pike she didn’t knock because “these doors pretty much open right on their own… most of the time!” This is a cheeky nod to the fact that doors in the Star Trek universe open freely, or don’t, depending on what is needed for the plot. 
 

In Picard, Riker and Troi’s children both have significant names. “Thad” is named Thaddeus Riker, William’s ancestor who fought in the Civil War, as referenced in The Next Generation’s “Death Wish,” while Kestra is named after Deanna’s sister, who died at a young age in “Dark Page.”

In the Enterprise episode “Regeneration,” Archer and Crew run into the Borg. They end up decoding a message sent from the Borg to Earth. Archer tracks the message to somewhere deep inside the Delta Quadrant. This is perhaps the first time Starfleet learns the home of the Borg, a place the Voyager crew becomes all too familiar with two centuries later. 

In the Discovery episode “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad,” Henry Mudd yells “Adieu, mon Capitaine!” This is perhaps in reference to Q’s famous line “Au contraire, mon Capitaine!” in the Next Generation episode “Deja Q.”

Star Trek crews constantly refer to planets suitable for human life as “Class M.” It wasn’t until the Enterprise episode “Strange New World” that keen-eared viewers learned it was an abbreviation for “Minshara class.”
 

Star Trek often relies on time travel for generational crossover episodes, but not so for the series finale of Enterprise. In it, Riker observes the Enterprises’ final mission through a Holodeck simulation. Canonically, the episode takes place sometime around The Next Generation episode “The Pegasus.”