I have to admit, I’m a total nerd for stuff like this, so I figured some of you out there might find it interesting as well. I love it when a filmmaker layers their movie in such a way that there are hidden images and references that you don’t catch with a first viewing. For example, Eric at marathonpacks had a great write-up on Inside Man a while back where he caught a direct reference to Abu Gharaib, and recently The Da Vinci Code DVD was marketed with the promise of finding hidden symbols in the film as well.

There have been many more great examples of this over the years, and Rene Rodriguez, film critic for the Miami Herald, has a great post on his blog about hidden X’s that Martin Scorsese has cleverly inserted into The Departed. Now I will agree that in some cases these hidden images can be a fabrication of the viewer’s mind (which doesn’t necessarily make them any less valid), but in this case once you see the frame grabs from the DVD I’m sure you’ll agree that it wasn’t an accident. And before any of you fanboys go accusing Scorsese of ripping off Bryan Singer (he apparently hid a bunch of X’s in the first X-Men movie as well), Rodriguez explains that Scorsese is actually paying tribute to Howard Hawks’ original Scarface, where they were used as “a symbol of impending doom”. Pretty cool stuff.