A friend who’s fully into the covid conspiracies sent me this post that says Captain America predicted the coronavirus outbreak in 2011, and while its obviously bs, I started fixating on that circled image on the right.

It looks so familiar. What is it? I began to investigate.

At first I thought it reminded me of a YA novel cover design from that era. I went through all the main ones until I remembered the Divergent cover had the same color scheme, but not quite the same design. Close, but no cigar

I enlisted my friend Wes for help, who found a clearer screenshot and zoomed in and it felt even more familiar but we couldn’t quite place it.

I figured out the filming date of the scene—23 April 2011.

I looked up every movie and broadway show released from April through the summer. Nothing.

I started watching random YouTube videos and looking for images from April 2011 in Times Square. No clear view of the poster. Wes started scouring Bing and google street view.

Finally, Wes found this

We recognized the logo and the color scheme. We cracked the case.

It’s spaghetti.