The 2005 animated series “Avatar: The Last Airbender” is the series that sparked off one of Nickelodeon’s most prominent modern franchises. It’s also jam-packed with iconic lines and quotes. Whether it’s the street vendor screaming about his cabbages or Aang spinning marbles in his hands, there are many moments from the show that fans will immediately catch. One of these lines, related to the infamous “there is no war in Ba Sing Se” moment, has been discovered as a small easter egg on Google.
“Avatar” fans found that if you enter the phrase “war in Ba Sing Se” into a Google search, in addition to the actual results, you will always get a correction at the top that reads, “Did you mean: ‘there is no war in Ba Sing Se?'” This is a reference to one of the show’s most iconic lines, which has been regularly used as an ironic meme when someone tries to make an obviously incorrect statement.
Searching war in Ba Sing Se on Google produces a classic line
In the 14th episode of the 2nd season of “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” one of the secondary characters, Jet, is kidnapped off the streets of the Earth Kingdom city of Ba Sing Se after causing a public disturbance. Jet is imprisoned by the city’s secret police, the Dai Li, and subjected to a brainwashing procedure in which he is forced to watch a spinning lamp while an official states, “There is no war in Ba Sing Se.” The officials had been using this procedure to forcefully clamp down on civil unrest and keep people from talking about the ongoing war against the Fire Nation.
Reddit users who discovered this easter egg on Google consider it a fun throwback to this classic moment, though some contest that, rather than a deliberate easter egg, it may just be a coincidence of Google’s search algorithm. Some users speculate that people looking for video clips or explanations of the quote were only writing “war in Ba Sing Se” on Google, so over time, the tool naturally started offering the correction to steer people toward the actual clip.
It’s difficult to say for certain, as Google has not confirmed one way or the other. That said, there is plenty of precedent for this being a genuine reference, as Google previously added easter eggs referencing other major events and media franchises like “Seinfeld” and “The Wizard of Oz.”
