‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch’ Has a Secret Post-Credits Scene

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, the first standalone Black Mirror movie, made its debut on Netflix on Friday, quickly engrossing viewers in its complex “Choose Your Own Adventure” format. However, while there are five different endings that viewers can send troubled protagonist Stefan toward, it turns out that there is also a secret post-credits style scene that itself leads down a surprising path.

Before we get too deeply into this secret scene it’s important to note that there will be spoilers for some of the more than one trillion unique versions of the story. While most choices lead to non-critical variations, with that many possible versions it’s a pretty safe bet that there are variations of the story most viewers haven’t hit yet so just a head’s up before we get into the secret scene.

Okay, with that disclaimer out of the way, here’s the nuts and bolts of what you need to know about Black Mirror Bandersnatch. The film takes place in 1984 and follows the life of Stefan (Fionn Whitehead,) a young video game developer who descends into madness while working on a new game based on a fantasy book that itself is set up as a “Choose Your Own Adventure” story. As viewers go along, they are prompted to make specific choices — food, music, whether to kill Dad or not — that all lead to one of five main endings. Those endings, very generally, are Stefan dying as a child, Stefan going to jail, a character in the future creating a reboot of Stefan’s game, Stefan being revealed to be on a movie set, and Stefan being dragged away by his father.

When it comes to the secret scene, though, according to The Wrap only two of those endings lead you there and no one has figured out exactly how to trigger it. The scene is pretty ordinary. Stefan is shown back on the same bus he took early in the film to visit game studio Tuckersoft. This time, though, he doesn’t pull out a tape of music to listen to. He pulls out a tape of the finished “Bandersnatch” game. It’s what the tape plays that gets interesting — some strange, dial-up modem connection style sounds and long beeps. Those sounds translate to data that, when run through a ZX Spectrum emulator reveals a QR code. That code takes you to a hidden page on the “official” Tuckersoft website with covers of the fictional company’s games, including “Nohzdyve” and “Metl Hedd” from the film. The “Nohzdyve” page in particular leads to a downloadable version of the game, which requires a ZX Spectrum emulator to play.

It’s a pretty complex, but cool, Easter Egg for the groundbreaking film. If you haven’t managed to trigger it yourself, The Wrap carefully breaks down their sequence of choices that led them to the secret scene (your mileage may vary as some online have reported the path didn’t work for them) which you can check out here. As for many of the various choices in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and where they lead, one viewer has painstakingly outlined them in a detailed chart that you can check out here, giving fans a glimpse of just how complicated the story really is.

Have you triggered Black Mirror: Bandersnatch‘s secret scene? What are your thoughts on this interactive movie? Let us know in the comments below.