4

Todd McFarlane Hid Felix the Cat in Every Comic Book He Drew

Marvel

Todd McFarlane frequently bumped into a man at his local comic book shop who, at the slightest provocation and presumably in his very best Comic Book Guy voice, would repeatedly inform him that he didn't purchase any of McFarlane's comics because he wasn't into superheroes (McFarlane, in case you're not familiar with the name, is best known for his work on Spider-Man and Spawn). Noticing that the man carried a Felix the Cat doll with him wherever he went, McFarlane utterly failed to do the prudent thing -- namely, hitting 911 on his cellphone and keeping his thumb poised over the call button -- and instead asked him, "If I put Felix the Cat in my comics, would you buy them then?"

The man answered yes, so McFarlane did just that -- he put Felix the Cat into every single comic he drew from that point on. In Spider-Man #1, Felix's grinning visage can be found in the crowd directly below Spidey's either comically muscular or elephantiasis-ridden left thigh:

Marvel
Going as Spider-Man villain Felix Hardy, aka the Black Cat.

3

Rupert Murdoch Got Stealth-Dissed (in a Newspaper Owned by Rupert Murdoch)

Cameron Spencer/Getty Images News/Getty Images

We've all worked for a boss we hated, or at the very least thought was kind of a dick. And chances are you've spent at least a little time daydreaming about how to passive-aggressively get revenge on your bosses in just such a way that you can secretly laugh behind their backs for the rest of your life (or at least your employment) without them ever figuring out who was behind it.

nosonjai/iStock/Getty Images
"Did you get my latte?"
"Yup."

But what if you worked for, say, Australia's best-selling newspaper and your boss was, say, Rupert Murdoch, the man who basically controls the print and TV output of five continents? In that case, it would take balls of truly stellar proportions to try to pull off something like that.

Well, there appears to be a solar system forming around a certain sneaky editor's "binary stars" as we speak, because he or she did precisely that. The puzzlemaster (apparently not something out of an '80s fantasy movie starring David Bowie) chose to hide their message in the one section of the Sunday Telegraph that adults tend to flip right past: the ultra-cleverly named kids' section, the Funday Telegraph.

via Sydney Morning Herald
"OK, so I sneaked in a reference to my band, Live Sihco Drum. Big deal."

2

Every Issue of The Brave and the Bold Revealed Who Would Team Up With Batman in the Next Issue

DC Comics

For much of its run (Issues #74 to #200), The Brave and the Bold was a classic team-up book pairing everyone's favorite flying-mammal-themed superhero with other, less-flying-mammally superheroes in the DC universe. Half the fun of such a title lies in the anticipation of that moment when you first see the cover of the new issue and find out who'll be kicking ass and taking names alongside the Caped Crusader that month -- a lingering unknown right up until that very moment; a mystery solvable by only the creative minds behind the stories. Or, you know, by any fan crazy bored enough to scour every last panel of the previous issue to track down the spoiler hidden in each one.

In this panel from Issue #177, see that shadow to the immediate right of Elongated Man (no shit, that's his actual superhero name)? That's the silhouette of the one and only Creeper.

DC Comics
So, two creepers in this scene then.

1

Military Code Words for the D-Day Invasion Were Hidden in a Crossword Puzzle

Robert F. Sargent

There's no questioning the fact that World War II's D-Day invasion is one of history's most recognizable events -- after all, the Dieppe Raid never landed itself a Spielberg blockbuster (it was more along the lines of a Monty Python skit). So it's not unusual that, back in 1944, U.K. newspaper the Telegraph's daily crossword puzzle featured "Utah" -- the now-famous code name for the beach invaded by the 4th U.S. Assault Division -- as one of its solutions.

But here's the thing: The code word wasn't famous at the time, as that puzzle was published a full month before the Normandy landings.

Daily Telegraph
Weirder still, Utah wouldn't even become a state until 1973.

Still, you could chalk that up to coincidence, right? Sure you could ... right up until, less than three weeks later, another crossword featured a solution of "Omaha" -- aka "the code for the beach to be taken by the 1st U.S. Assault Division." Then, five days after that, it was "overlord" -- the code name for the entire D-Day operation. Three days after that, it was "Mulberry" -- the floating harbors that puked streams of soldiers onto the beaches of Normandy.

Finally, on June 1, 1944 -- still five days before D-Day -- came "Neptune," the aptly named naval assault phase of the invasion. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is when the bright red phone at MI5 headquarters started ringing off the hook.

Daily Telegraph
Possibly because forcing crossword puzzlers to come up with "bivouac" is a war crime.

When MI5 agents stormed the home of Telegraph crossword compiler Richard Dawe and gave him the ol' once over (we're picturing lots of harrumphing accentuated by billy clubs), they soon left ... puzzled. The whole thing seemed to be an inconceivably unlikely coincidence. And that puzzlement lasted 40 years, until Ronald French finally stepped forward with an explanation for the seemingly prophetic crossword clues. You see, Dawe was also a school headmaster (apparently designing crossword puzzles isn't exactly lucrative), and he sometimes had students populate the words into blank crossword patterns, presumably as some kind of sadistic detention punishment. Ronald French was one of said students, and when he wasn't spending time in Dawe's study slaving over crossword grids, he was hanging out with the Allied troops stationed nearby, just, you know, driving tanks and shit.

French was obsessed with the soldiers' activities and sponged up their banter like ... well, like a 14-year-old boy who got to play soldier with actual freaking soldiers. The code words found their way out of the terrifying maze that is a pubescent boy's psyche and into the crossword. And that, kids, is how what at first appeared to be the work of a Nazi spy using a convoluted crossword puzzle plot to snitch valuable wartime information to his superiors instead turned out to be a clever Easter egg inserted by a random teenager.

Robert is a columnist for Freakin' Awesome Network and would like you to follow him on Twitter. Veronica draws a diary and has a Twitter.

For more awesome easter eggs you probably missed, check out 24 REAL R-Rated Easter Eggs Hidden in Famous Pop Culture.

Related Reading: While we're on the subject of Easter Eggs, did you know all the characters who die in The Departed were visibly marked? Even the Internet has easter eggs, and our forums have found the craziest ones. If you prefer your surprises buried in famous TV shows, click right here.