As of now, there are 100 days until the release of the final chapter in The Hunger Games saga, Mockingjay—Part 2. To mark the occasion, Lionsgate took to the film’s official Twitter account to reveal a new bit of promotion for the highly anticipated film. Pretty standard stuff, until some users noticed a hidden, likely inadvertent, and filthy message lurking in the image.
The tweet has already been taken down, but fortunately for us in this instance, nothing ever truly goes away on the internet, and the folks over at Mashable were able to snap a screen shot of the image before it evaporated into the ether. The picture is a close up shot of heroine Katniss Everdeen, played by Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence, with the reminder that there are 100 days until the release of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 2. That’s all fine and dandy, but the way the text is laid out over the image, however, appears to spell out a particularly foul curse word. Take a look for yourself and see if you can spot what’s amiss.
Did you find it? It is a little bit like one of those Magic Eye puzzles—I fully admit that I didn’t notice it at first, but it’s one of those things that once you notice, you can’t help but see. If you still don’t see it, take a look at this highlighted version.
Yeah, if you look at it just right, it appears to spell out a particularly unpleasant term that we’ll just call "the C-word" for the sake of propriety.
Now that you’ve noticed this, the question arises, was this purely an accident, a flaw in the design that managed to make it past however many eyes in the Lionsgate marketing department that see something like this before it goes public? Or was this intentional? Did some clever graphic artist think he or she could pull something over on everyone else and slip something past? Perhaps it was the work of a disgruntled employee out to exact a wee bit of revenge for some slight.
There are many instances—some real, others urban legend—of this sort of thing, especially when it comes animators sneaking hidden elements into kids movies. There’s building that looks like a penis on the VHS cover of The Little Mermaid; the bishop who looks suspiciously like he has an erection, also in The Little Mermaid; Aladdin telling teenagers to take off their clothes; and many more.
We’ll probably never know for sure if this was intentional or an accidental case of graphic design running amok, but it’s one of those things you’d think people would have noticed. As for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 2, you’ll be able to check it out for yourself in a few months when the film opens everywhere on November 20.
