Jeb Bush Campaign Website Had Hidden ‘Die Hard’ Messages
The Jeb Bush campaign website had a surprise buried within the site code for a few hours Monday — a synopsis of the movie Die Hard.
The references to the movie in Jeb Bush’s website were first noticed by Jeremy Bowers of the New York Times, who tweeted the findings and added that it “seems like an odd thing to include in the JS of your presidential announcement page.”
The excerpts that appear on the Jeb Bush campaign website seem to have been taken from the Wikipedia page for the series.
“At the fictional Nakatomi Plaza, East German terrorists break in and take the celebrants hostage. McClane escapes detection and hides throughout the building. He kills off the gang and learns their real aim, to steal millions in bearer bonds from the building vault.”
The developers also put their own additions into the synopsis included on the Jeb Bush campaign website, including adding that Die Hard starred Severus Snape.
Both references involving Die Hard and Severus Snape were taken down from the Jeb Bush website on Monday, shortly after they were noticed.
The only harm that came from the hidden message, however, was a spoiler to anyone reading the site code who has not yet seen Die Hard.
The functionality of the Jeb Bush website was not affected at all by the unique addition.
Jeb Bush is not the only presidential nomination hopeful to have a web developing team with a sense of humor, as jokes and other creative messages have been found in other candidate’s pages.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign website has coding that looks very similar to her logo, featuring a red arrow through a blue “H.”
Rand Paul’s logo is also featured within coding on his website, but developers added an invitation for those who chose to view the code saying, “I bet a person like you would love to work on a team like ours!”
Sometimes, the codes are used as a way to impress potential job candidates, or appeal to a certain group of people who could appreciate the coding.
It can be fairly common for developers to leave hidden messages buried in website code, regardless of what the site is used for. In the programming community, the messages are called Easter Eggs.
Still, Jeb Bush’s campaign did not respond to any immediate requests for comment on the site code.
Jeb Bush is the second latest to officially announce his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2016 race.
[Photo By Darren McCollester / Getty Images]
