Mr. Robot isn't a TV show anymore. It's a video game.

And if you look closely, you'll find it is packed full of fascinating Easter eggs for fans to discover

Mr. Robot has changed.
(Image credit: Michael Parmelee/USA Network)

If you happened to glance at the Mr. Robot Twitter page when the show started Wednesday night, you might have noticed something off about the banner and logo. The show — a buzzy, dystopian meditation on hacking, paranoia, and how debilitating mental illness mixed with revolutionary fantasies could temporarily hobble American capitalism — suddenly looked like a Full House remake. For the episode's first 19 minutes, Mr. Robot remade itself as a show from the 1990s.

In this alternate reality, the Aldersson mother and father — nightmare figures borrowed from Fight Club and Psycho, respectively — are a typical American family on vacation. They're in a convertible, Christian Slater is in the traditional blue plaid dad shirt, Vaishnavi Sharma's mom dress is on point, and the kids are squabbling over the Gameboy. There are signs that the reality doesn't quite match the laugh track: Carly Chaikin's makeup as Darlene seems a trifle strong, the game she's playing looks a lot like footage of Elliot being beaten to a pulp, and maybe Mrs. Aldersson shouldn't stub her cigarette out on Darlene's arm (or rob a gas station).

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Lili Loofbourow

Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.