Thank you to all of you who’ve written notes expressing your concern, haven’t given up on me or my channel, and have otherwise endured during my period of silence. I wanted to find another platform where I could at least talk about what has happened before I said anything more on the old platform.
At the peak of a recent recommendation wave, on October 21, 2023, YouTube analytics recorded that my channel got over 94000 views and gained 371 subscribers. In the entire year of 2022, my channel got almost 738000 views and gained 366 subscribers. In October 2021, and until May 2023, my viewership, ratio of subscriptions to views, and earnings plummeted and stayed uniformly low in a fashion I have never seen before or since. I had heard descriptions of declines in recommendation traffic in other channels that were eventually deleted, so I took my channel’s extremely anomalous statistics as a sign that I was about one comment away from having my channel taken down and stopped posting. The reduction in revenue and the apparently bleak future outlook for my channel made it harder for me to devote time to making videos and answering comments, and what time I could spend always seemed to produce the material that might get my channel taken down if I were to post it. This was because, in the midst of my channel doldrums, I began to find one Q drop term after another that had appeared in the Smallville television series years before (“drops” are message board posts by “Q” to followers and interpreters called the Anons, starting in the fall of 2017, supposedly about a secret organization of patriots devoted to truth and justice executing a secret plan to save the world from a shadowy cabal). I’ve since found over 40 of these terms which, taken together, might be seen to constitute an extended joke on the community of people who discuss the Q drops and use phrases like “How many coincidences before it becomes mathematically impossible?” Namely, how many references to a single television series about a cryptically communicating hero hiding in plain sight as Clark Kent while secretly defending truth, justice, and the American way could be slipped past the readers of the posts without anyone noticing or saying anything about them? I haven’t looked deeply enough into the discussions of Anons to know if they’ve already seen what I have, and the volume of historical Q style references which resemble the drops is probably enormous based on what I’ve seen from one show, but it seems to me that the history of popular culture references that foreshadow the Q drops deserves more attention than it has received. It appears to me that occult references using the same words, ideas, and symbolism discussed in the Q drops go back decades in popular movies and television, and that these earlier references are easier to decode because they’re made in context. Moreover, many of the meanings aren’t the same as those commonly deduced from looking at the drops alone, so that when one looks up the presumed Q post meaning and then the Smallville meaning, one sometimes provides the setup for the other to sound like a punchline. Other terms expand greatly on the possible range of meaning when examined in Smallville context; one word Q post of the word “Justice” doesn’t contain as much information as the Smallville episode entitled “Justice,” for instance. A Q drop may not be a reference to Smallville, but at least when you look it up in Smallville, it provides more tangible food for thought. Here, then, are some crumbs:
(Future proves past): I’ve placed the future proves past words in round brackets because they can be searched for in Q drop databases but don’t explicitly appear in Smallville; most terms from here on can be found in both places. Terms in quotation marks are spoken in Smallville episodes and can be searched for in Smallville scripts, while those in print appear in the background in Smallville episodes. Smallville ran from 2001 to 2011 and, after having heard discussions by QTubers, comes across as a run-on intelligence community joke with a punchline that wouldn’t be delivered until 2017 because Clark and those close to him are surrounded by things that would later be discussed as Q community slang terms connected with CIA agents, such as “the farm,” “flannel,” and “corn,” and Clark has a confrontation with “clowns" as soon as he leaves home. Therefore, the best kept secret of the show may be, not that Clark is an alien, but that his environment is swarming either with CiA agents or with people so immersed in an environment of secrecy that they might as well be CIA agents. Smallville, in turn, might be seen in retrospect as an extended metaphor for the process the intelligence community would go through in adopting a heroic public persona, since Smallville ended in 2011 after Clark Kent was forecast to be publicly seen as Superman on October 15, 2017, about the same time that the Q drops started.
“45:” This number in Smallville episodes is associated with pursuit, attempted recruitment, political candidacy, attempted sacrifice or assassination involving automobiles, delays, and reversals of fortune. Donald Trump’s digital trading card depicting him (the 45th president, sometimes referred to as ‘45’) as a superhero standing on a 45 with four 45s printed on his costume wasn’t the first association of the number with a political candidate. The pilot episode has four repetitions of numbers containing 45: the Kent’s phone number is 555-0145 (S1E1, 9:19), Smallville’s population is 45001 (11:02), Pleasant Meadows has new homes starting at $245000 (11:22), and Clark is grabbed by four football players and thrown into a truck with licence plate DPA 453. Clark’s abduction by four players who symbolically make him their fifth by painting a 5-shaped S on his chest and crucifying him foreshadows the attempts by the four powerful families of the Veritas society to control the world by controlling the member of a fifth family, which is Clark. Clark’s abduction and near fatal crucifixion is also the first of four associations of 45 with near death experiences in automobiles. In Season 1 Episode 18, Drone, Felice’s Volkswagen is shown to also bear the licence plate DPA 453 at 21:38 as the principal (who is killed by a car in the next episode) honks at her and eventually discovers that she has been attacked by bees. In Season 4 Episode 5, licence plates including the numbers 945 with different backgrounds appear when the Flash meets criminals to fence stolen goods (00:09) and when Jonathan, who eventually runs for political office, is about to be hit by a truck when the Flash saves him (02:54). Lana fakes her death by blowing up a clone of herself in a vehicle with a licence plate that also includes the number 945 (S6E22, 26:34). These licence plate numbers are echoed in blood donation times from S1E10. Lana schedules 9:45 as a blood donation time for Chloe (4:52) and Amy donates blood at 3:45 (28:29). In regular media, Anne Heche stayed in her car for 45 minutes after it crashed:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...urning-home-45-minutes-records-show-rcna45990. Clark uses Lex’s slogan and calls himself the Man of Tomorrow when running for class president (S1E18, 13:00, 15:11) and Paul Chan depicts himself as a superhero in red and blue with an S on his chest (S1E18, 01:59). In the first of four episodes featuring 45 minute delays, Sir Harry keeps Lex waiting for 45 minutes (S1E2, 20:49), thinking that he has gained control of Luthorcorp, only to find out that the Luthors will be taking control of his company instead. At 6:27 of Season 1 Episode 19, Chloe complains that Clark has spent only 45 minutes with her over the last two weeks when her car broke down, then gets her chance to go to a dance with Clark soon afterward. Lana has a “45 minute wardrobe crisis” (S2E11, 12:43) when trying to sort out her feelings for Whitney after she thought she had broken up with him and he apparently returns from war, although it turns out that he’s dead and being impersonated by a shapeshifter. Lois waits 45 minutes for a doctor after finding the amnesiac Kal-El in a cornfield (S4E1, 10:43), but she meets Martha in the hospital, and Martha turns Clark back to Kal-El with black kryptonite. Clark is three hours, or four times 45 minutes, late to pick up Lois, who spends the time standing in a downpour (S8E15, 01:29). Principal Kwan’s zip code is also revealed to be 66645 (S1E19, 22:05) in the same episode as Chloe’s 45 minute complaint. Jimmy’s character’s odometer says 45003 when he’s being chased by Lex’s character (S6E20, 17:41). Harry Volk committed his murders in 1945 (S1E6, 22:40). Lachlan Luthor is 45 years old when he shoots Kal-El and the bullet bounces off and kills Lana’s great aunt (S3E6 10:11). One of the times remaining before the impending meteorite impacts in S4E22 is at 23:57, when the clock counts down from about 45:10 to 45:07.
“Truth: “ The title of Season 3 Episode 18.
“Justice:” Title, S6E11.
“Patriot:” Title, S10E9.
“Conspiracy:” Title, S9E14.
“Trump:” When a Kryptonian artifact puts Clark’s mind into Lionel’s body and vice versa, an inmate refers to the baffled Clark in Lionel’s body as “Trump” and says that “Trump” owes him $5000 (S94E6, 15:48, 16:01, 31:11). Get in line, huh? Is the inmate staging a fight to make the man he thinks is Lionel look good, or, since he cut Lionel’s hair a few episodes before (S3E22, 38:20), is he just a very high end service provider? Only the hairdresser knows for sure. The ambiguity thickens to verb versus name consistency when, just after accusing Clark of being the ringleader of a “witch hunt,” Chloe tells Clark that his bonus features don’t give him the right to trump anyone else’s judgment (S8E6, 25:41). At 41:10 in the commentary on S8E7 from Season 8 Disc 2, Cassidy Freeman says “you learn that nothing will trump Clark in Chloe’s mind.” After being welcomed to the Watchtower team and seeing its hardware, Lois says “Your
satellite officially trumps my cellphone” (Patriot, S10E9, 38:56). When Linda Lake grabs the Legion time travel ring (S8E15, 31:57), she taunts Clark with how quickly she got people to turn on him and imagines how famous she’ll become by knowing news stories before they break, saying that the ring “trumps your Blur any day.” Oliver calls his wedding to Chloe the quietest non-event of all time because they got married while under a spell, didn’t remember it, and stayed married; Chloe replies that “we may be trumped in the non-event category by Lois and Clark” (S10E21, 7:39).
“Election:” In the state Senate race between Jonathan Kent and Lex Luthor, but resemblances to Trump surface on both sides; Kent’s supporters wear red baseball caps and he runs under the MAGAesque slogan "Bringing Kansas Back” (S5E10, 30:50, 32:4
. Lex has a bright red copy of The Art of War which he got as a gift from Lionel and read three times before he finished high school (S5E10, 34:21). Both of them have also possessed alien spacecraft at one time or another, something that could conceivably be a campaign issue, but which is addressed by neither of them. Jonathan Kent dies and is given a funeral immediately after winning; Lex dies three seasons later, but is eventually elected President as a patchwork of clones.
“Lockdown:” In S4E6 at 31:58, the word is first used in an officially defined sense, when prisoners are told to return to their cells. The meaning shifts in S5E11, Lockdown, which is one of the most heavily laden with terms that would later appear as posts. During the “election” (6:12) campaign between two candidates who both resemble “Trump,” in which Jonathan uncovers the source of his campaign (ever)“green,” Lex and then Lana are forced into “lockdown” and take refuge in the “panic” room (19:02) where they play a “game” (1:12) that reaches a “stalemate” (6:34) as two “renegade” cops (DVD title, chapter 1), one of whom is named “Flynn,” try to force Lex to reveal the location of a spaceship that carried the alien artificial intelligence that will eventually inject and infect Lex in a one person version of a “pandemic.” It ends with Chloe telling Clark that revealing the truth to Lana is “The only way” (DVD title, chapter 6).
“Disclosure:” The word shows up in connection with Lionel’s crimes (S3E17, 11:29), the existence of Lana’s newly established Isis Foundation (S7E6, 14:3
for helping the meteor “infected,” mutual deception between Clark and Lois when Clark’s hides that Zod is an alien rather than an FBI agent and Lois hides alien blood (S9E14, 37:24), and Oliver’s public declaration of his Green Arrow identity (S10E7, 30:34),
“Panic:” The Luthors employ security features such as a panic button (S2E12, 18:00) and Helen claims to have acted out of panic to make herself seem less guilty (S3E2, 15:43). Season 4 Episode 10 is called Scare but is devoted to a “meteor rock” based (S4E10, 13:12) synthetic toxin developed by Luthorcorp that puts those affected by it into a state of panic followed by nightmarish unconsciousness and death (S4E10, 5:07, 14:26, 15:40, 29:15). When Clark asks Lex what the panic toxin is, his panic state nightmare provides an answer in the form of a meteorite strike (S4E10, 25:40). An antidote is rushed into use without animal testing and knowing that “it’s like a flu inoculation in that it contains traces of the infectious element” (S4E10, 22:53). The first antidote recipient dies; Lex lives after injecting himself with the antidote, but not before seeing himself, as President in a white suit with a Doctor Strangelove black gloved right hand, destroying everything and everyone around him with nuclear weapons (S4E10, 30:46). Lionel is released from prison and walks out wearing a white suit just after the release of the panic toxin, implying that he is toxic by association (S4E10, 32:12). Chloe fears succumbing to hereditary mental illness (S4E10, 11:09), Lana fears having everyone she loves die and leave her (21:54), and Jason (2:35) and Clark (27:36) both fear that Lana will kill them if she learns what they’ve concealed from her. The association between panic and the threat of explosive impact returns in Commencement, however, when the military announces the impending meteor shower and says there’s no need to panic, whereupon Lois tries to advise Clark not to panic and panics in the process (S4E22, 18:11, 19:14, 19:19, 19:22). Retreats to the panic room are the result of attacks by people seeking disclosure in two episodes, Lockdown (S5E11) and Static (S6E8 2:09, 2:24). In the first case, Lex tells renegade cops seeking exposure of the ship from the second meteor shower that the walls of the panic room can withstand a nuclear blast (S5E11, 6:21). In the second case, an electrician who can shift frequency and visit other planes of existence wants to expose Lex’s experimentation on kryptonite empowered people under the 33.1 project. Panic is discovered to have initiated Jimmy’s dreamscape crime solving in Noir (S6E20, 30:52) when a reporter admits to having panicked and hit Jimmy over the head. Chloe uses the word “panicky” when she loses her laptop with details of superhero operations on it S8E19, 5:24). Clark says that making Davis Bloome front page news every day is reckless after he says Tess is “spreading panic” (S8E21, 1:2
. A general says “We can’t spread panic” when Lois asks why the President and his staff plan to release a nuclear strike that could kill one third of the earth’s population without giving them any warning (S10E21-22, 1:03:04).
“Witch hunt:” In S8E6, Clark profiles a list of kryptonite empowered people in his search for a killer. The list comes from a support group that Chloe has organized, and she accuses Clark of unfairly investigating them just because they have powers when he hasn’t gone public himself. Unfortunately, one of the group is actually guilty, and his copycat crimes keep the worse killer, Doomsday/The Beast/Davis Bloome, from being discovered for a while longer (S8E6, 25:27). When Jimmy guesses Clark’s Identity (S8E7) and Clark and Chloe want to deny that Clark is the Blur, Chloe double bluffs Jimmy by telling him “This isn’t a witch hunt” (20:45), which, since he’s right, is technically true. Witches don’t have to be hunted to be found in Smallville anyway; Chloe herself hosted one in S4E8. General Lane nevertheless conducts what Clark sees as a witch hunt against him and his superpowered allies (S10E7, 22:01) perhaps because having the Pentagon investigate your daughter’s boyfriend is just what good fathers do.
“My fellow Americans:” A phrase used in exclusively by the U. S. President when he is about to launch a nuclear strike against millions of people, including his own citizens, and he is on his way to a safe location (S7E18, 16:31, S10E21-22, 50:55).
(You must show them) “Let me show you:” Brainiac-infected Chloe says this to a kryptonite infected memory reader who knows too much about Clark, just before she mentally overloads him and fries his brain (S8E7, 41:1
.
“The only way:” In S4E20 at 28:46, Lex says that sealing the rapidly aging Evan in a containment chamber is the only way to contain the energy from his final blast. However, a young man who can suspend animation, and could therefore have saved Evan if anyone had known about him, is the subject of Forever, the following (S4E21) episode. The phrase is spoken in S5E3 at 1:57 by the son of a Smallville military officer who wants to wipe out all the local kryptonite-infected people by hacking in to an old missile silo’s computer system and nuking his own town. It’s also spoken by Imra, a Legion telepath from the future, when she tries to convince Lana that taking Chloe's life is the only way to stop Brainiac, and repeated by Lana (S8E11, 17:32, 18:54, 24:02). The phrase “another way” is actually more common, including when Clark says “There’s always a way” (S8E11, 37:44) and “There’s always another way” (S8E18, 34:45). Chloe, in reading the comic book story of Clark to her son, says “he believed the only way to seize his destiny was to turn his back on both his parents and refuse to see the darkness descending on Earth” (S10E21, 1:46). Lana says “There has to be another way” when she vows to save the Talon theater (S1E12). “The only way” is a DVD chapter heading from the Lockdown episode (S5E11), at the end of which Chloe notes that Lex took a bullet for Lana and got Lana to talk to him because of her interest in a spaceship; although Clark saved her from a bomb and came to earth in a spaceship, Chloe says that the only way Clark can be with Lana is if he tells her the truth. Lana eventually finds out on her own, and the truth isn’t enough to keep them together. When Clark seeks to save the Kandorians and take them to another planet to avoid bloodshed at the cost of taking himself away as well, members of his team say “There’s got to be another way” and “With us by your side you don’t have to do this alone” (S9E21, 19:41), which, if you count the Zs burned into various landmarks around the planet (S9E21, 17:19-18:00) as an “it’s coming” sort of message, makes a cluster of three of the messages discussed in this article. When Zod stabs Clark with blue kryptonite at the moment of the Kandorians’ ascension (S9E21, 41:10), the other way is found and Clark stays on Earth. Where all the Kandorians go, Zod goes as well, once he lets go of the blue kryptonite dagger, whether he wantts to go or not. If his ascension is considered to be “what’s coming,” then it is indeed true that once he lets go of the dagger, nothing can stop what’s coming, although the action would be better described from the Earthly point of view as a going rather than a coming. The White Squall “Where we go one we go all” slogan is fulfilled in reverse with respect to the ending of the movie; where all but one of the Kandorians go, one then goes after a delay, they are better off together than apart, and they ascend rather than dying.
(...save the world) “I didn’t know you had a secret plan to save the world:” Clark reacts by saying this in response to his discovery of Lana’s work at the Isis Foundation in terms of her goal to help the kryptonite-”infected” embrace their powers (S7E4, 14:35). The Legion from the 31st century don’t speak of kryptonite empowerment as an infection.
(Trolling is fun): When General Sam Lane gives Clark a list of 19 tasks to perform to bring the farm “up to code” and supposedly prove that he is worthy of Lois (actually a test to see how much Lois will allow her father to humiliate Clark before she stands up to her father), the most ridiculous task Clark can think of before looking at the list, and which Sam has actually added to the list, is item number 17 (S10E7, 5:23). After being given Clark’s powers by Jor-El as a supposed wedding gift, Lois puts herself under Toyman’s control for 17 minutes, from 6:41 (S10E20, 27:51) to 6:58 p.m. (S10E20, 12:10). Note that 6+5+8=19.
(Shall we play a game? How about a nice game of chess?) “Let the games begin:” Struggles to possess the element artifacts lead to accusations of game play, such as in S4E16 at 37:46. A character especially devoted to the concept of game play is Toyman, who is fond of games involving the threat of bombs exploding. An employee hurt by Lionel’s corporate machinations forces him to play a series of life-threatening games in Mercy, S5 E19. Oliver sets a white queen chess piece down in the coffee shop table and says “Nicely played” to Chloe (S9E5, 33:31) when he realizes that she has staged an elaborate deception to make him fight to regain his image of himself as a hero. Lex describes struggles for control of Luthorcorp as chess games, whether between himself and Victoria Hardwick (S1E10, 23:56), or between himself, Lucas, and Lionel (S2E15, 23:46, 36:49). In Season 5 Episode 19 at 4:52, Lionel says to Lex, “I used to dismantle your two-dimensional assaults with alarming regularity.” Season 3 Episode18 has the following exchange at 22:59 after Lex asks Chloe to use her kryptonite-induced truth finding power to help him recover memories wiped by his father:
Chloe: Meaning that my family's future is just one chess move in the endless game of one-upmanship played by you and your dad?
Lex: It's not a game, Chloe. You're the only one who can get me the truth.
Lionel’s office has three chessboards visible at different levels in S3E19 at 36:25 in the scene in which Lex devastates Lionel with the recovered memory that he took the blame for his mother’s killing of her infant son Julian. Toyman’s workshop (S8E14, 22:31), Amanda Waller’s room at Checkmate (S9E16, 1:09), and the Kent farm all display checker and chessboard patterns oriented both vertically and horizontally; in the case of the Kent farm, the patterns are made by filled and empty fence board spaces and the shadows they cast (S10E1, 37:06, S10E10, 9:22). The Kents and Els engage in sacrificial one-upmanship; Jonathan Kent tells Jor-El he’ll sacrifice anything to get Clark back (S3E1, 39:49); after complaining that Jor-El pushed Clark too hard and saying that it’s not surprising that the Kryptonians destroyed themselves, he pushes too hard to get Clark home before he’s ready to return and makes a deal to destroy himself. In Jonathan’s fence line conversation with Clark, he says there are losses connected with sacrifice, and that Clark has sacrificed more than anybody (S10E1, 39:16). Jor-El convinces Kara to leave Clark to face Darkseid alone by saying that to “give up what they hold most dear” is the greatest sacrifice a person can make (S10E20, 23:13).
“This is not a game:” Usually there is a question of whether someone values the truth or a powerful being or artifact more than someone’s life when this phrase is uttered. In Pariah (S4E12, 15:03), the element-hunting Genevieve Teague and her son Jason argue about whether she arranged for him and Lana to meet; in Salvation (S9E21,32:5
, Zod wants the Book of Rao and in true Kandorian fashion, that is, candidly, says the phrase and then tells Lois he’s someone who doesn’t care if she lives or dies. In Labyrinth (S6E12, 5:55), after being removed from a common room with the biggest chess pieces in the series (S6E12, 1:1
, Clark is told by a possessing phantom through a hallucinatory doctor that “This isn’t a game.” In Echo (S9E4) at 30:04, Clark says “This isn’t a game. It’s a man’s life,” but Toyman, playing to get Oliver to confess to murdering Lex Luthor and framing him for it, disagrees.
“The farm:” A CIA term for a training ground for intelligence operatives who are raised to become corn (media influencers). The Kent farm is used as a movie filming location in the episode in which a real bullet is substituted for a fake one on the movie set (S7E5).
“Corn:” A term used to describe people brought up in intelligence agencies, much like agricultural products are processed, to serve as media influencers. Smallville’s billboard originally advertises it as the creamed corn capital of the world (S1E1), Kara wins the beauty pageant title of Miss Sweet Corn (S7E3), and Chloe, Lois, and Clark all work as journalists at one time or another. Clark allows the rejuvenated murderer Harry Volk to remain buried in corn in Hourglass (S1E6, 39:5
, and is buried by “children of the corn” in Harvest (S10E6, 31:32). Jeremy Creek (S1E1, 3:52), Clark (S1E1, 39:45), and Lois (S10E1, 29:54) are strung up in cornfields, and Clark teeters on the abyss between life and death in a metaphysical cornfield complete with crows (S10E1, 2:12). Clark lands in a cornfield twice, once as a baby (S1E1, 7:04) and once as 17 year old Kal-El (S4E1, 2:14).
“Flannel:” This is not a Q drop, but is occasionally mentioned by Q commentators. It apparently pertains to the fabric and pattern of choice stereotypically used by CIA agents trying to blend in with the general population:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKVcLCVKQfA
Although the fabric doesn’t have to have a plaid or checkered pattern, as in the Lady Marmalade song lyrics about living the gray flannel life, in Smallville the word refers to fabric with a cross hatched pattern, and is associated with an affectionate, supportive parenting style, manual labor, trust, territoriality, loyalty, possession, and declaration of significant other status. Jonathan Kent wears “flannel” the most often. Lucas Luthor in his “trust me” speech uses flannel as the symbol of environmental determinism, arguing that if Lex had been raised by the Kents and Clark by the Luthors, Clark would be rich and miserable and Lex would be “wearing flannel” (S2E15, 10:32). When Lionel finds his mind in Clark’s body, he doesn’t use the code word, changes out of Clark’s shirt at the first opportunity, and tells Martha “I’m bored with plaid” (S4E6, 12:01). “Flannel” is used as a term of endearment by women close to Clark, as when Chloe says of Clark’s atypical behavior under red kryptonite, “He wasn’t exactly the charming flannel king we all know and love” (S3E2, 22:13). All the women who marry Jonathan and Clark wear plaid. Alicia wears a plaid scarf (S3E14, 5:16) and a plaid skirt (S4E11, 3:36). Chloe wears plaid jackets in the alternate reality of Lexmas when she is married to Clark (S5E9, 10:15), and in reality when she convinces him to play Santa and thereby pulls him away from Lana (S5E9, 12:57). Lana gets out from under Clark’s checkered bedspread and postcoitally dons one of his checkered shirts (S5E3, 4:20), and also wears a checkered shirt when trying to wash all traces of Adam’s presence out of the Talon apartment (S3E15, 34:54). Martha wears what is probably one of Jonathan’s plaid shirts after seeing Brainiac impersonate Jonathan (S5E21, 35:04), Lois wears a probable Clark plaid shirt when hoping that Clark will return from the Phantom Zone (S10E19, 34:32), and Lois also drapes a plaid blanket over herself while watching a video left for her by her departed mother (S10E9, 9:35). Jonathan wears partly green plaid in S2E3 at 28:38 when Clark tells him and Martha that he has told Pete his secret. Pete wears checked shirts frequently, including when he confronts Clark about lying to him and Clark reveals his secret (S2E3, 15:14), and when Jonathan says that he’s proud of Pete but that keeping Clark’s secret is a tremendous responsibility and that it won’t get any easier. At this point, Clark says that this is his father’s way of saying “Welcome to the family” (S2E3, 38:24). The man who crashed and led Pete to the spaceship also wore a checked shirt (S2E3, 1:59), although he couldn’t be welcomed to the family because he was killed in hospital. In Bloodline (S8E
, a highly family-themed episode, Chloe wears a plaid jacket for most of the time and pulls Clark and Kara back from the Phantom Zone, after which Oliver tells Clark that Chloe is no longer living her life, but Clark’s (S8E8, 37:37). In Escape (S9E15), two couples find that they can’t escape each other and easily separate their identities, first when Chloe wears a plaid coat and is possessed by the Silver Banshee (S9E15, 22:11), and then when Lois in full preconsummation Scottish cosplay interrupts the possessed Chloe’s attempt to seduce Clark (23:46) and is herself possessed (24:0
.
“Clowns:” Toyman has a clown in his workshop (S8E14, 00:39, 10:43) that theoretically could be used to watch him in the same way as the surveillance camera inside a dummy that allows Toyman to talk to Lex, but Toyman is angered and distracted when Oliver calls him a clown (S8E14, 19:55). This may be because, in one context, clowns may be the foot soldiers, the lower level operatives in a criminal or otherwise secret hierarchy who are cast as incompetent bunglers when they’re trounced by someone more powerful than they are, as when Clark disrupts a bank robbery by men in clown masks and says to Morgan Edge afterward, “Those clowns? They work for you?” (S3E1, 11:33). Images of clowns also appear in three episodes in which Lana is endangered or threatened, and are associated with surveillance, abduction, and mind control. A clown face picture can be seen staring back at the camera in a mirror-like fashion, as if the camera itself has a clown face or the filming is being done from a clown’s perspective. In Obscura, when Lana is exposed to kryptonite during an explosion and takes on the ability to see through the eyes of a corrupt police officer, she’s taken to a fairground where she’s held inside a building with a clown image on the outside (S1E20, 37:36) and clown heads next to the cop (S1E20, 37:17) and a mirror (S1E20, 37:51) on the inside. When Lana is increasingly influenced by Seth, he takes her to a fairground ride with fish faces that look clown-like (S3E7, 33:26, 34:18, 35:31). When Lex decorates a nursery for Lana’s fake unborn baby, the toys, including several faces that look like clowns, change orientation to face the camera when the filming angle shifts (S6E13, 15:10, 15:21). When Lana finds the camera in the dummy in Toyman’s workshop, throws it in the trash as Clark says they’re being watched, and talks about how Lex likes to keep an eye on those who work for him, there are four more possible clowns, dolls with red noses and/or ears, visible lying down on the shelf over her right shoulder (S8E14, 23:01). At least one has the same face and nose shape as the clown-like dolls that were in the Lex nursery. A poster with a blurry possible clown on it also is framed over Clark’s right shoulder twice at 23:19 and 23:32.
“Anonymous:” Acting anonymously is a major element of Clark’s identity as a hero. At 43:50 of the Metamorphosis episode commentary in the features section of Season 1 Disc 1, “This is the ultimate shot here which is the solitary hero walking down the road by himself, alone and anonymous.”
(Misspellings matter): Lois, adept at decoding messages full of military buzzwords and knowing when Clark is lying, also has the strange habit of misspelling simple words, a trait which Clark mentions to gain her trust when he meets another version of her in an alternate world (S10E10, 29:02).
(Do you believe in coincidences?) “Coincidence is an explanation used by fools and liars:” Lionel says this in S3E17 at 7:51. When he confronts Kara at 39:31 of S7E3, Lex says: “Twice I’ve been pulled back from the brink of death, and both times it was by a member of the Kent family. I’m not a man who believes in coincidences. Sooner or later I’ll find out the truth. Are you a saviour, or are you a warning?”
(The calm before the storm): When the military moves in to occupy and supervise the evacuation of Smallville before the second meteor “shower,” people are advised over loudspeaker to “remain calm” (S4E22, 17:47). Smallville seems to have meteor sightings all the time, if the number of streaks that cross the sky in the background is any indication, but their frequency and severity are conspicuously not enough for the nonchalant locals to refer to even the most severe impact events as storms.
“The Storm:” A storm is explicitly mentioned as such in the Tempest episode (S1E21), which includes several stormy confrontations and turns of events. Lionel breezily informs his employees of his intention to close the fertilizer plant and deprive them of their jobs, Lex and Lionel fight over the decision, Jonathan Kent and Roger Nixon fight over the journalist’s intention to expose Clark, Whitney leaves to join the Marines and eventually die in action, Lana pulls Clark away from a critical kiss with Chloe by getting caught in the storm, and Clark gets his first hint that he may be able to fly while trying to save Lana. Lana may also take on a special ability during a storm when she somehow manages to phone Clark from the future in Crisis (S3E16), a possible reenactment and reversal of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Lex also faces the threat of arrest and cuts a deal to get his father arrested during this storm. Lana is chased by a stalker in another storm (S6E14, 26:10, 27:13), so of the four times a weather event is referred to as “the storm” in the series, three of them involve threats to Lana’s life (the fourth puts a leak in Clark and Lois’s would-be love nest room in S9E15 at 4:31). Since meteor strikes in Smallville are called only “showers” rather than storms, and “My fellow Americans” is said when a nuclear strike is imminent, then a drop-style announcement that “My fellow Americans, the Storm is upon us” would, in Smallville code, mean that the storm is nuclear.
“Kennedy:” Although Roger Nixon might be a reference to Richard Nixon, John F. Kennedy was the only president whose name was explicitly spoken aloud in the show before Trump’s election. Oliver Queen quotes Kennedy in Homecoming (S10E4, 37:24), which is also the future-looking episode in which Brainiac outlines the plan to take Clark public by October 2017 (S10E4, 24:46). After quoting Kennedy’s “Ask not...,” Oliver draws strength from Clark’s presence when facing a hostile interviewer, saying that he’s doing something for his country and that he isn’t doing it alone (S10E4, 38:10). Several Kennedy-related numbers show up in Crisis, S3E16. Kennedy was the 35th president, born in 1917, elected in 1960, inaugurated in 1961, assassinated in 1963 at the age of 46, and buried in a park with a Q shaped sidewalk pattern. The score at the critical assassination moment in the basketball game is 61-60 (S3E16, 1:22), and another quoted score is 52-46 (S3E16, 28:23). There is also a view of a DDI 035 licence plate at S3E16 19:14 just before the heat and air technician with phone number 555-0163 is hit over the head, perhaps by the pattern that DDI in alphabet code equals 4+4+9 or 17, the guy hitting him is 17, and he’s on route 17. In Apocalypse (S7E18, 15:33), there is a 3553JFK licence plate on a parked car seen where Lois was on her way in to see President Lex Luthor.
(Nothing can stop what’s coming) “...coming:” Some things that are said to be coming are a scout from Kansas State (S1E1, 21:29), and a storm (S1E21, 27:14), but a doctor becomes convinced that Clark is going to destroy everyone and is the champion in terms of repeating that the day of alien takeover is coming (S2E22, 1:01 and other places), at least until the Z signs that mean Zod is coming get repeated 32 times (S5E21, 41:47), a display exceeded only in real life by the Russian government, who hung up Z signs all over the country. Clark yells “It’s coming!” in his sleep when the second meteor shower is on its way (S4E22, 5:46). Brainiac in his professor Milton Fine guise says he’s working “to stop what’s coming” in S5E7 at 39:24 after he infected Clark and made him fear that Chloe was coming (S5E7, 18:49). In Season 7 Episode 3 at 28:15, Lex, having had his life saved by Kara, who he calls an “angel,” segues to the threat of alien invasion: “The spaceship you found... wasn't the first to land in Smallville. My work at the dam -- 3 years of research, 300 gigabytes -- all an attempt to prevent what I believe is coming, what I fear is inevitable.” In S7E15 at 12:20, “the traveler is coming,” and at 35:35 ‘what’s coming is so terrible,” in S8E9 at 41:43 “Doomsday is coming,” Zod’s interest in rulership means that “the war of the worlds is coming” (S9E21, 7:34), Darkseid prompts Jor-El to say that “The greatest threat the earth will face is coming” (S10E1, 32:49), and Oliver says “They won’t know Apokolips is coming” (S10E21, 19:42), perhaps thinking that they haven’t seen anything like it before. There is one case of impending arrest when Lex says that Lionel “deserves what’s coming to him” (S3E17, 29:20), but Lionel eventually gets sprung from jail. The arrival of a child who will advance human knowledge of aging is presaged by an “it’s coming!” exclamation in Ageless (S4E20, 0:20). With regard to Evan’s next growth spurt, Lana asks, “Is there any way to stop it?” (S4 E20, 17:49), Lex says “Nothing can stop that from happening now” (S4E20, 28:54), and Evan says “It’s coming!” at 30:29..
“The keystone:" This is Clark’s alien blood, which Waller sees as the keystone to World War 3 (S9E16, 29:13) rather than a means of miraculously healing people or bringing back the dead (she leans a little toward pessimism).
“The Wall:” Agent Amanda Waller, a high ranking member of Checkmate, is sometimes referred to as “The Wall” (S9E14, 4:48, 38:09, S9E19, 8:57).
“Checkmate:” This is an episode title (S9E16) as well as the name of a convoluted plot loving chess-obsessed government agency that seems far more effective at killing its own people than defending the earth from extraterrestrial invaders. It compensates for its rule that no one leaves its ranks alive by delegating its more difficult tasks to a group called the Suicide Squad.
(Trust yourself) “Trust me:” This is one of the most frequently spoken phrases in the show, sometimes when viewers have abundant evidence of what the truth is, but the character spoken asked to trust doesn’t have access to the same information. Several people tell Chloe to trust them in Abyss (S8E9) when Brainiac is erasing her memory. After his ordeal while stranded on a deserted island, Lex credits Lionel with teaching him how to survive and tells Lionel in a rare moment of love and respect for him that “I’ve learned to trust my instincts” (S3E2, 37:52), although Lionel looks more bewildered than loving when they embrace.
(Trust the plan) “Stick to the plan:” What Clark is told by being shown his future when the plan to present him as Superman has been unveiled, as mentioned at 11:29 of the commentary feature from Season 10 Disc 6 called Back in the Jacket: A Smallville Homecoming. It’s also spoken by one of the surviving “weathergirls” when the other wants to abandon their beauty pageant contestant cover and cut straitght to the robbery (S7E3, 18:44). In S5E2 at 29:45, the twin Belle Reeve escapees are wavering and want to cut their losses, but the third tells them to stick to the plan. As they prepare to test the antidote to a “meteor rock” based toxin that causes panic, unconsciousness, and death, Lex tells his scientist “I’m responsible for this plan and everyone who works here” (S4E10, 23:17). He’s supervising a plant, but the t is not distinctly pronounced.
“Wake up:” What Brainiac 5 tells Clark when he visits him from the future and shows him the path he needs to take (S10E4 commentary in Back in the Jacket, extra feature from Season 10 Disc 6, 7;21 and 7:57).
“Godfather:” S1E18 Drone is a Godfather themed episode in which even those who don’t like the movies can’t seem to stop quoting them. It features various characters employing underhanded tactics to try to win an election, keep a business from being destroyed, and maintain a desired public image.
“Swamp:” In S8E15 at 5:23, Chloe says of Linda Lake, “I thought that water snake slithered back into her swamp.” After time traveling to defeat Linda Lake, Clark emails Lois to cancel a date, writing that he’s “swamped with work” (S8E15, 41:06). Chloe says “Once again, a Luthor snake manages to slither away from the grip of justice” in S7E2 at 8:29.
(God wins): Since the powers of the Bible are the Elohim or, as I would see it, the council and descendants of El, which are translated as God, and Smallville is based on the Bible, someone in the Smallville universe with a God based El or L name is likely to win in any given conflict, especially since they’re often represented on both sides. Some of the prominent El and L named people include Lana Lang, Lewis Lang, Laura Lang, Kal-El, Jor-El, Zor-El, Kara Zor-El, Lara-El, Lois Lane, Lucy Lane, Lachlan Luthor, Eliza Luthor, Lionel Luthor, Lillian Luthor, Lex Luthor, Lutessa Lena Luthor, Lucas Luthor, Linda Lake, and the Legion.
(Where we go one we go all) “If one of you fails, then all of you fail:” In S8E21 Injustice at 7:59, Tess says this to her kryptonite powered team, whose brains she has thoughtfully implanted with GPS and explosives so that she can send out a signal to kill them all whenever she wants (S8E21, 16:03).
(We are in this together) “We’re in this together:” Milton Fine says this to Clark in S5E7 at 8:07 and 21:08. He doesn’t explain that it refers to a relationship in which Brainiac is the parasite and Clark is the host, and that he’s working to make Clark paranoid and wrongly mistrustful of his friends and family, so that he says “You’re all in this together” (S5E7, 16:5
. A couple of Clark’s suspicions aren’t quite baseless, though.
(We are all equal in this fight/We are all connected in this fight) “We’re all in this together:” This is said when one member of a team can be taken over and used against another or others. Lois says versions of this in S10E9 Patriot at 37:28, 38:12 and 38:16 because Clark isn’t spiritually or morally strong enough to face the darkness yet; he was saved by Kara’s intervention (S10E3, 32:57), as recalled by Jor-El at 22:20 of S10E20. Lois is pure of heart and resists the darkness alone (S10E3, 27:57), and Clark eventually has to face it alone (S10E20, 22:52). Tess tells Oliver (S10E19, 39:5
that fighting Darkseid isn’t his own personal quest, saying “We’re all in this together.” Oliver asks Tess to “trust me,” but has Darkseid’s Omega mark when he says so. Kara and Oliver alternately trust each other because Clark trusts each of them (S10E20, 10:03, 20:05), making it possible to supply the light and dark representation to retrieve the Bow of Orion, but Jor-El stops Kara from retrieving the bow and standing between Darkseid and Clark a second time, (S10E20, 21:49), saying that ultimately, “this battle must be his.” Jor-El might be thought of as asking Kara to trust his plan. Lois decides at 40:30 of S10E20 that “us being together makes you vulnerable” after being given Clark’s powers by Jor-El, being manipulated and controlled by Toyman, and calling Clark her greatest weakness. Hawkman/Carter says “We can’t do what we have to do if there’s an emptiness in our heart” (S10E11, 38:52) after saving Lois and saying that Clark has all the help he needs to fight the darkness although he wishes he could have been there to help.
(Dark to light): Lex thinks that people aren’t born with darkness, but that people like his father find a way to bring it out (S2E13, 37:19).” The central conflict of Season 10 is between darkness, brought out by Darkseid, and light, but they also support each other because the fight is not to create a good world but to preserve the balance between darkness and light. Clark also continues to move toward greater public visibility, as a symbol of hope, “to step into the light” (S10E1, 4:31). The planet Apokolips, drawn by Darkseid, takes a chunk out of Saturn’s rings on its way to collide with Earth (S10E21, 2:20); however, Saturn has also been called the dark or black sun. Clark says, dressed in his plaid shirt and leaning on the symbolic checkerboard fence, “I feel like very time I do something right I do something wrong” (S10E1, 39:29), which reflects the dualistic cosmology of the show.
“Enjoy the show.” Brainiac as Milton Fine says that humans will devolve back into animals if deprived of technology, When he releases a virus that disrupts electricity, communications, and other infrastructure, he says “Enjoy the show” (S5E22, 27:00). The disruption causes “havoc and panic” (S5E22, 28:09).
“Watching a movie:” At 40:36 of S10E20, Lois says “I can’t just sit and watch a movie and eat ice cream when at that very moment you could be saving five people.” Alicia, when remembering her behaviour in S3 Episode 14 Obsession, says “it’s like watching a movie. Like it wasn’t even really me” (S4E11, 9:34). When two young men see an impact blast and one moves toward the obvious danger, the other says “Don’t you ever watch movies?” (S6E6, 1:35) Watching a movie, or at least preparing to watch one, is Lana’s favourite childhood memory of her parents (S1E7, 24:10); watching a movie with a projector is a favourite date experience for Clark and Lana (S1E7, 42:17) and Jimmy and Chloe (S6E20, 00:32). Reality can quickly intrude, however, in the form of an attempt on someone’s life; Rachel is attacked with a sabotaged car in one of two attacks on a movie set (S7E5, 2:46), and Lana is attacked twice in the transition from movie to reality (S7E5, Action, 31:03, and S6E20, Noir, 2:2
. The comic book version of Warrior Angel’s girlfriend gets in over her head in trying to expose the darkness of Devilicus and is fatally shot, an event which Ben, a fan in Action (S7E5, 17:19) tries to duplicate. To Lionel, “movie night” would mean watching a festival of incriminating footage of Lex assembled by Lana (S7E11, 11:1
. The best dinner and a movie night experience Chloe gets with Clark is eating a cheeseburger combo while he listens to police radio for the next crime in progress (S8E6, 3:5
. Lois compiles a set of shark movies (S9E5, 7:03) to watch with Clark to occupy her time while she waits for Oliver to call (S9E5, 13:53).
“Renegade:” Victor Stone is given his cyborg enhancements by what Lex calls a “renegade experiment” (S5E15, 30:43). “Renegade cops” (S5E11, DVD chapter 1 title) try to force disclosure of an extraterrestrial threat that includes Brainiac. Davis Bloome helps Oliver outside his job and is referred to as a “renegade paramedic” in S8E3 at 36:53. At the beginning of S1E3, Whitney initially disobeys his coach’s instructions to throw a blind pass in the rain, then follows orders and wins the game as the song Renegade Fighter by Zed plays. The coach is a fire starter as alluded to in the song lyrics and also goes beyond the bounds of proper professional behaviour because he helps his players cheat on their exams.
Evergreen: Rail cars with the shipping company’s name on them appear in the background of scenes with immortal people in them which are related to police corruption and impersonation. There is an Evergreen car visible when Pete and Clark pull up to the shed where the sheriff who framed Jonathan shot a bullet from the gun he put in Jonathan’s hand (S2E13, 13:1
. Marcus Becker is played by Peter Wingfield, who played Methos, the oldest immortal alien in the Highlander series, who at one time was one of a group called the Four Horsemen, one of whom was named Kronos. Becker works at a club called Kronos (S4E16, 19:54), a front for illegal activities, and steals from Lex and abducts the Lane sisters while dressed as a police officer in front of a train with Evergreen rail cars, after which Clark investigates and finds Lex (S4E16, 25:51). The name also appears twice on a map of Chicago, used to represent Metropolis, with a pop-up label showing a crime in progress. When Clark takes care of the crime and street and avenue names become visible beneath it (S9E15, 00:25), one of them is Sullivan Street (Chloe’s last name is Sullivan) and the other is Evergreen Avenue (Chloe and Oliver at 2:00 register at the Scottish bed and breakfast under the couple alias of Green). By implication, the name appears on the edited Chicago map as Washington, the name of a president in an area with several such names, but also the name of the evergreen state. Green is used throughout the series to show alienation, such as when a core element of someone’s identity is removed, when someone changes identity, or when someone goes through an identity crisis, seeks identifying documentation (such as a “green card”), adopts alien (“green”) technology, is ridiculed for believing in “little green men,” is disguised, possessed, compromised or hypnotized, is jealous, envious, affected by kryptonite, spreads or contracts disease, lies, or dies. Someone whose identity changes over and over in multiple ways might be considered evergreen. Lois uses the term “green” twice when discussing funding for Jonathan’s political campaign (S5E10, 37:24, S5E11, 36:04); the second time is after Jonathan says he’s no longer the same man because he took Lionel’s money. He resolves to pay the money back, which might make him temporarily green rather than evergreen.
Air Q: This is the gesture of drawing a capital Q in the air with the right index finger while speaking the word “secretive,” made in S4E6 at 21:41 by Lionel in Clark’s body to Clark in Lionel’s body, while discussing the idea that true power is wielded in secret. Each of them is a composite person at this point, a metaphorical square peg in a round hole like the straight line drawn across the oval, occupying an unfamiliar body, and claiming to possess or possessing more power than he appears to have.
Q and q: Don Whitehead, one of the commentators in the voice over version of S10E1 in the features section of the Season 10 Disc 1, mentions the number system for the Lex clones culminating with Lex zero or Lex null (23:40). However, the diagonal straight line for a null sign should run from the upper right to the lower left of the O shape, while in S10E21-22 at 46:50, the line runs from the upper left to the lower right, more like an extended version of the line in the letter Q. A side view of a planet with a ring around it, such as the symbol of the Daily Planet newspaper, has much the same look, as does the planet Saturn, which is the Roman name for the Canaanite El. Lex Luthor’s election as President in 2018 (S10E21-22, 1:21:51), an impossible year to be elected President in the literal sense, might be symbolic in that 18 is an apocalyptic number (6+6+6), but it could also symbolize that Lex is a Q combination of presidents, the average of the elections of 2016 and 2020. Lana (S4E15, 14:43) talks to Clark about walking around with a huge secret and having something inside of her that’s much more powerful after receiving the spirit of her witch ancestor and her transformation tattoo, a representation of the symbol on the transformation stone that created the Qs (composite selves) of Clark in Lionel and Lionel in Clark. The capital Q might be thought of as a coital symbol of putting one person or thing inside another, like the power symbol for turning on a computer. The transformation symbol is a set of two wavy lines with circles on them that could be viewed when rotated or reflected as various lower case letters including b, p, d, g, and q (S4E1, 46:59). When she grinds the ingredients to make what could be thought of as the triple Q potion that will allow Lois and Chloe to be inhabited by her fellow witches, Countess Margaret Isobel Thoreaux in Lana makes a Q shape with the mortar and pestle (S4E8, 7:27). Chloe also carries someone powerful inside her, culminating in her loss of memory and possession by Brainiac; at 11:37 of S8E9, she says “Pretty soon there isn’t going to be any ‘I, Chloe,’ just an ‘I, Q.’” At 17:37 she says when Clark asks her if she remembers Brainiac, “People used to call me that when I was a kid.” A Q (Queen Industries) chip is part of a kryptonite bomb shown at 8:28 of S8E14 before the kryptonite is absorbed into Lana’s suit, described as a highly experimental bioweapon at 00:58.
