One of the weirdest storytelling tricks employed by your favorite TV shows is subliminal messaging:
the art of sneaking little clues, imagery, or hints onscreen that a viewer might not
even notice the first, second, or even third time through.
Get ready to have your brain snapped around like a rubber band when you see how ingeniously
these shows have been messing with your head, you might never trust TV again.
Lost
Lost was loaded with more hidden messages than a bag full of fortune cookies, and one
of the most interesting came from the fan-favorite Mr. Eko, a violent Nigerian warlord turned
Catholic priest.
“You do not know who I am."
Throughout the series, Mr. Eko wields a wooden stick with the numbers of Bible passages carved
into it.
The only explanation we’re ever given is when Locke says it’s just because he’s
a priest, but if you’ve ever been to a Catholic church, you may have noticed that a bo staff
is not a part of the usual vestments.
If you're one of those curious viewers who paused the screen on closeups of Eko's stick,
then you know that the specific Bible passages scrawled into the wood explain Eko's entire
story.
Titus 3 tells of sinners living in "malice and envy" but finding salvation in God, thus
explaining Eko's background story before the show does, and Acts 4:12 is a subtle clue
about Eko's less-than-authorized priesthood.
Most importantly, it also features the famous Psalm 23, referring to Eko's final encounter
with the smoke monster.
The Simpsons
The Simpsons has been on the air for so long that we barely even notice that the characters
look really … strange.
The yellow skin and blue hair are weird enough, not to mention whatever bizarre cartoon magic
is going on with the kids’ spiky heads.
On top of that, they all have four fingers instead of five.
To be fair, most cartoon characters in history have had four fingers.
It's just easier to animate, and as Walt Disney himself said,
“Five fingers would have made Mickey’s hands look like a bunch of bananas.”
There is one Simpsons character whose hands bear that all-powerful fifth finger, though:
God.
When the Almighty shows up to hang out in "Homer the Heretic," the divine creator has
five-fingered hands and five-toed feet, just like we do.
It’s a clever subliminal that message raises many questions, including whether God in the
world of the Simpsons is one of our world’s human animators in charge of Springfield.
Or maybe that Sunday school song was right, and he just needs that extra finger to hold
the whole world in his hands.
Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones is usually known more for bloody violence and killing off your favorite
characters than for subtlety, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Just take a look at the costumes, designed by Michele Clapton, which are full of tiny
details that hint at story.
Perhaps the most ingenious bit of subliminal messaging that Clapton literally wove into
a Game of Thrones outfit is on Sansa Stark's wedding dress, worn when she marries into
House Lannister.
The dress depicts a direwolf — the sigil of House Stark — being wrapped up and dominated
by a lion, the Lannisters’ sigil.
Embroiderer Michele Carragher described on her website how the colors of the dress, hinting
at the families those colors represent, tell Sansa's entire story.
The red weavings depict the growing influence of the Lannisters on Sansa's psyche, just
as the series itself shows her slowly evolving to be more and more like those manipulative
blond scoundrels.
How I Met Your Mother
As a standard three-camera sitcom, How I Met Your Mother certainly didn't employ esoteric
magic of subliminal clues on a regular basis, but it did make clever use them in the episode
"Bad News."
If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that in the first scene, the number 50 is
right in the middle of the screen, kicking off a countdown that runs through the entire
episode, from the label on a beer to book covers to a weirdly sequential set of lottery
numbers.
If you’re sharp-eyed enough to notice, you’ll know that the bad news is inching closer and
closer, until the countdown reaches 1.
After building up that kind of subliminal dread about the unstoppable march of time,
the news is revealed, and — as expected — it's quite bad.
Breaking Bad
When future generations look back, Breaking Bad might end up being regarded as the Shakespearean
epic of our time.
It’s got compelling character progression, fantastic writing, great acting, a dead body
crashing through a bathtub, and, of course, subliminal messaging.
Every item, scene, and moment in Breaking Bad is there for a reason, particularly when
it comes to the show's use of color.
The color coding has been analyzed in major publications like Slate and Time, revealing
that the colors that any character wears on the show will hint at what's going on in their
head.
When we first meet Walt, he's a mild-mannered creampuff who wears the muted colors of a
potato sack.
When Walt takes the identity of Heisenberg and starts getting drunk on power, his wardrobe
switches to darker, stronger colors, only moving back to a milder khaki during moments
of insecurity.
Daredevil
In the comics, Daredevil’s arch-nemesis, Wilson Fisk, called himself the Kingpin and
always wore luxurious white suits.
In the first season of Daredevil, though, Fisk never uses the “Kingpin” name, and
sticks to basic black.
As the show goes on, Fisk’s evolution into the Kingpin is symbolized by color coding:
the more evil he gets, the lighter his clothing.
When his girlfriend Vanessa convinces him to go public, she also steers him toward lighter
gray suits, and in his final scene of the season, sitting in a prison cell, he's finally
wearing a pristine white.
His wardrobe change means he's accepted the rage within him, which is bad news for a certain
blind lawyer whose clothes take their own change, from black to red.
Fringe
One of the creepiest feelings that you can experience is the sensation that you’re
being watched, and if you’ve ever had the urge to look over your shoulder while you’re
watching Fringe, there’s a reason for that.
Hidden within every single episode — yes, every episode, over multiple seasons — is
an "Observer," a bald man in a business suit who lingers in the background and watches
whatever weird stuff is going on.
"Oh come on."
If that wasn’t creepy enough, Fox marketed the Observers’ reveal on Fringe by having
an "Observer week," where Observers popped up in all of Fox's programming, appearing
in unlikely places like American Idol, and even a NASCAR race and an NFL game, with no
explanation offered.
It’s a long way to go to creep out your audience, but it’s pretty cool.
Thanks for watching!
Click the Grunge icon to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Plus check out all this cool stuff we know you'll love, too!