Share Secrets/Foreshadowing hidden in your Comic's Background Art

[MerrowBros]

I, for one, love to hide jokes and foreshadowing in the backgrounds of my comic. Probably a little too much, even (some of the things I've hidden are downright microscopic).

Just to give you a few examples, here's a case where I foreshadowed the arrival of an important character about 100 entries early.

Entry 8: Character's wanted poster in a phone booth

Entry 33: Character in newspaper headline

Entry 88: Character in background

Entry 117: The character's first actual line of dialog

To not belabor the point, here's just one more example (a ridiculously small one), only readable at like 500% zoom.
A George Lucas action figure in the trash can XD

All right, that's enough out of me for now. Now show me your hidden secrets!

Feel free to drop a link to your comic if you participate.

Tall Poppy Syndrome | Tapas

[Colours_dont_match]

This is so cool, you put so mich thought into it I love eastereggs in media, if they are done well.

Do your readers actually find or see them?

For my comic, I just put one easter egg in it for now. As it's a sci-fi story with a totalitarian state, there's a little "joke" in the coordinates one of the Law Enforcement agents gives to the watchtowers.
They are the coordinates of Pyongyang.

[arxianfall]

I have one. But I made it intentionally very hard to spot. It's a huge huge plot point so I can only reveal it when the time comes.

[pilot-obvious]

The little bee hanging from the mirror foreshadows the alias of a notorious hacker that shows up a few episodes later!

[BreakingChalk]

There are some indeed

Though I prefer not to explain them as much to not spoil important stuff

Some details I didn't show here are KEY for the next arc coming on June
I love hiding secrets and details!
I think it makes the story more enjoyable when re-read.

TMBD - The Memorable Bittersweet Days | Tapas

[Macarenaoftime]

MCU stands for Macarena Comic Universe

(sorry for the cringe I'll see myself out)

[Kaydreamer]

There is one major thing which I used in my first episode, and a few things I intend on adding when I re-do the early episodes.

• The tracker beeping on the outside of the spaceship.
• (To be added.) The amount of clutter all throughout the interior of my protagonist's spaceship. Also, all his pot plants are kinda struggling. It establishes that he's messy and a tad forgetful.

[MerrowBros]

Readers rarely seem to notice this stuff. Or if they do, they don't mention it. The few times comments actually mention something I've hidden, I get many self esteem units.

[Hambonous]

They're not in every chapter but I tend to add a pair of glasses as a signature for my work, works better than a water stamp.

[Llyrel]

Ooooh, I have a bunch! Since chapter 4 is set in a cemetery, I'm having lots of fun throwing spoilers and quotes all over the tombstones. A bunch of them were mostly thrown in for old friends of mine who are already familiar with the story and may recognize a name or two, while others are hints that some literature fans might recognize, whether they're familiar with characters of The Emergency Coven or not

One example? When Aaron first shows up in the story, he stops to catch his breath right in front of the tomb of someone called E. Dunlap:

The name was taken from Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology. The poem #161 is dedicated to a certain Enoch Dunlap and it goes like this:

HOW many times, during the twenty years
I was your leader, friends of Spoon River,
Did you neglect the convention and caucus,
And leave the burden on my hands
Of guarding and saving the people’s cause?— 5
Sometimes because you were ill;
Or your grandmother was ill;
Or you drank too much and fell asleep;
Or else you said: “He is our leader,
All will be well; he fights for us; 10
We have nothing to do but follow.”
But oh, how you cursed me when I fell,
And cursed me, saying I had betrayed you,
In leaving the caucus room for a moment,
When the people’s enemies, there assembled, 15
Waited and watched for a chance to destroy
The Sacred Rights of the People.
You common rabble! I left the caucus
To go to the urinal!

...A few pages later in the comic we learn that, kinda like our Mr. Dunlap, Aaron is the leader (of a rock band) and was abandoned by his mates... after he went to the toilet to pee

[iHateFridays]

Oooo secret foreshadowing, my fave XD

Most of my secret foreshadowing is showing off this mysterious character (the one with the sunglasses on the right), she's appeared a few times already

Demihumans | Tapas

[summermcallen]

I put a movie picture of my ongoing webtoon in the background of my short story. sorry for the bad art my short story is already kinda old XD

[darthmongoose]

Some fun bits from backgrounds in Errant:

The three runes on the sword above the door are the logo from the comic Errant is a reboot of, Fan Dan Go.

Over on the right here among the graffiti, drawn faintly, you can see a picture of Crow's mask, and the word "CROW" is written a couple of times among some random tags, as well as Crow's slogan "NO KINGS", a few pages before Crow actually turns up in the comic.

The street sign over there on the left has some interesting bits. The crest for Joysgard is a white shield with three red stripes, because Joysgard is a settlement that grew around Joyous Guard, the castle of Sir Lancelot in Aurthrian legend. The castle was called Dolorous Guard originally, and he conquered it solo using a white shield with three red stripes which could be expended to give him super strength.
Like all places in real life Britain, Joysgard has an area postcode, in this case it's JY, so this part of joysgard is JY12 (this suggests Joysard is actually a ridiculously large city, honestly and the reason I wrote 12 at the time was that I grew up in a rural area an hour away from any cities, so my post code was 12 and I wrote 12 without even thinking... ) .

[allenT]

From chapter 1 of MAOR:

1st: Why did I draw blood in such a 'close-up' manner? Isn't this a type of heart-warming story(so far)?

*This gotta take me so many years to make sense.

---

2nd: Here's a little too much emphasis on a background character for a comic panel that gives a quick overview of the village people, don't you think?

[BarBarKetrab]

My banner's nice and all, isn't it?

If only it wasn't for that guy.

They have appeared a few times in some of my other panels, usually out of focus in the background.

In the lower right hand corner.

In the background, standing by the road.

I wanted to include a bit of an uncanny element to otherwise ordinary scenes. The white figure is a character from my other comic (the two are not really connected) that I included in my current one. The other one isn't published anywhere yet.

[irresponsiblepics]

I dont have the images to hand so will link my comic which show the reveal.

https://tapas.io/episode/2111100

I actually have a few other bits of foreshadowing in past strips.
Characters particularly.

[irresponsiblepics]

Its why I like your comic so much. I like references and secrets in your work..

[DanielRKM]

That's fun!

I haven't done much foreshadowing in the background art, but I did sneak in a couple of homages. My comic is like the Saturday Morning cartoon show version of my wife's favorite childhood stuffed animal, so I also brought in my favorite childhood stuffed animal as well (Gizmo from Gremlins). Also pictured is a stuffed animal of Sally from the old Sonic The Hedgehog cartoon since The Unstoppable Monkey Bunny was pretty heavily inspired by that series.

Unstoppable Monkey Bunny | Tapas

[allenT]

You too? That makes the 3rd comic creator in Tapas i know whose comic inspired by Sonic. Me too.

[DanielRKM]

Dang! That's awesome. Aside from Taylor Reindeer and Vashti the wolf being based on actual people I know, I set the characters up as proxies for Sonic and Sally (but, you know, just weirder and more grown up).