You can thank youTube for this. People are becoming increasingly more aware of ancient history thanks to the emergence of the lampooning of it through pop-culture. If your schoolteacher ever thought watching unicorns frolic around meadows would also prompt searches into the ancient and dreaded ‘first stop’ beasts of the sea – well your school teacher was very prescient.
So now, we have Leopluradons (LPDNs), and I predict an alarming uptick in cultural references as such: comic books, TV shows, GAP tshirts – and more.
See it’d be natural to assume that people would try and claim brilliance and their cultural wit by latching onto unicorns, but let’s face it – unicorns are so kitchy and pastiche (I’m not even sure what that statement really means, that’s how awesome it is), that it’d be OBVIOUS to feature unicorns.
See, the ‘Subreference’, as I call it – is really a nod to something very popular, as a sort of cultural test to see whether a person is a ‘real’ fan, or just someone that’s seen it once, but pretends to like it – because they’re supposed to (eg. Juno).
Arrested Development is commonly known as a ‘good show’ that was totally ‘wrongly’ cancelled by Fox – and as such – everyone has to love it as a scrappy underdog.
So it’s not uncommon for ‘real’ fans to test others with stupid trivia or ‘in-lines’: “Does this suit effectively hide my thunder”.
This is also known (or should be) – as Comic Book Fan-ing it – ie, the process of where comic book fans, in an effort to much malign the fact that there are no real fans left, or readership is dying, will cut-down new fans or readers and ostracize them – thus fulfilling their own insights.