Is there any explanation for how Akihiko Kayaba managed to trap everyone in SAO? It seems farfetched that Akihiko Kayaba would be able to sneak in all that malicious code into Sword Art Online without anyone knowing. Surely it would have been a big project with many developers. Furthermore, it seems like it would be difficult for him stop the other developers from fixing Sword Art Online. Even if he destroyed the source code or something, they still had a whole year to figure something out. Do the light novels shed any more light on Kayaba's scheme?
I've read the Light Novels and it doesn't really cover any more than the anime on how he managed it. And in all honesty, its entirely possible that he was able to slip all that coding in. My father is a programmer so I have a rough idea on how much code goes into a lot of projects and there are actually very few times that people get to view the code as a whole, with each person or group working a small part and then sending it in to add to the bigger project. With this knowledge in hand, being able to work that much code in wouldn't be too far fetched even if Kayaba wasn't top dog, but since he is it is very conceivable that it could happen.