Answer: Hall of Tortured Souls

Microsoft developers have a long history of tucking Easter eggs—little bits of bonus code hidden inside larger software applications intended to surprise and/or amuse the user that discovers them—into their Office applications. Over the years, Excel, for example, has had all manner of novel Easter eggs, including a flight simulator and a Spy Hunter based game.

Not all of the Easter eggs tucked into Excel have been so light-hearted, however. In Excel 95, there was a strange Easter egg that, after entering the proper commands into Excel, would open up a tiny window with a Doom-like 3D game in it. The entirety of the mini game, labeled “Hall of Tortured Souls”, was a series of unsettlingly empty rooms including a room with photos of the developers on the walls.

While we can’t be certain about what the developers were going for with their little Easter egg, we’re confident that the title of the game, combined with the photos hidden in a secret room, is the software developer equivalent of slipping a note inside a fortune cookie inscribed with “Help me! I’m trapped inside the factory!”