If you’re a sucker for Easter eggs, buckle up, because this YouTuber‘s analysis of the Silicon Valley opening credits spots enough to make your head spin.
While most HBO shows have iconically long opening title sequences (think Game of Thrones, Westworld, or True Detective), Silicon Valley‘s have always been short—season 4’s opening clocks in at an impressive 15 seconds. Apparently the brief runtime is creator Mike Judge’s preference—he was originally aiming for no credits at all, in order to maximize actual episode time. When the network let him know that Silicon Valley had to have some kind of credits, he partnered with a design firm called yU + co and they came up with the tiny town credits we know and love.
It’s easy to zone out for a couple of seconds while the camera pans past a Where’s Waldo-like tangle of buildings labeled eBay, Google, and Uber, but according to YouTuber Shots Fired, the animation is “full of tiny little in-jokes and stories, and every season, the show has added and updated these.” As companies rise and fall in actual Silicon Valley, so do they in the title sequence. A building that was unmarked in previous seasons gets a Slack sign erected later on after the company rocketed to popularity. On the other end of the spectrum, the Theranos building starts out plainly labeled, and eventually gets little FBI trucks parked outside. You get the picture.
It’s pretty amazing to see how jam-packed with tech references every single frame is:
We’ll all have to keep our eyes peeled for differences when season 5 starts in 2018.