11 Wrestling Easter Eggs You Totally Didn't Notice

Wrestling tends not to hide subtle messaging within its folds because it is generally as unsubtle as the carnival bark from which it originated.

Just listen to Vince McMahon scream over the opening promo package to those early Royal Rumbles, or WrestleMania VI. He is a man possessed...by himself, ranting in that iconic hammy rasp about "examining the universe" to reveal "images" of "strange and powerful forces". The two most powerful forces in the universe were Hulk Hogan the Ultimate Warrior. These were not easter eggs burrowed away for diehard nerds to find. These colossal muscle-heads were motherf*cking constellations, and you were convinced to watch them by a lunatic audibly grabbing you by the scruff of your pencil-neck.

Besides which, the way in which pro wrestling is produced doesn't really lend itself to such loving, careful detail either; the episodic weekly model is closer to soap opera than prestige television or world-building cinematic universes. If there isn't enough reason, there's not a great deal of time, either.

But whether an opportunistic prank artist fancies planting a stealth pop in a documentary, or a new breed of storyteller modifies the very form, if you squint - literally, in one case - your experience will be enriched...

There's an order to AEW's Dark Order, and it isn't sequenced in importance nor chronology - though it was at the beginning, before things got a little playfully dorky.

The Exalted One, Mr. Brodie Lee, was too important to be numbered amongst his lowly grunts. Evil Uno, fittingly, was always ranked #1. His primary tag team partner Stu Grayson is ranked #2. Beyond the creepers who have mercifully crawled back from whence they came, the first proper recruits, Alex Reynolds and John Silver, were ranked #3 and #4 respectively.

Preston Vance joined the stable as #10 in April as a pun on his forename. Alan Angels joined in June as #5, presumably based on the amount of people who agreed that he shouldn't have went six whole minutes with Kenny Omega. Anna Jay was ranked #99 in tribute to Brodie's love of ice hockey and its greatest ever player, Wayne Gretsky.

It gets interesting when you consider that two unnamed enhancement talents were ranked #8 and #9 on the April tapings at QT Marshall's gym. Had AEW lost count? Why did they skip numbers five, six and seven?

Those beautiful nerds laid an invisible easter egg and left #7 free as a number this entire time for the purpose of antagonising WCW's former Seven, Dustin Rhodes, when the time came. And it did, on the December 9 Dynamite.

There isn't a six, either. You know what that means.

Soon, AEW Dynamite will be dealin' with the X-Factor.