I am a shameless fan of Kevin Smith and while some of his more recent efforts have been less than spectacular, his Askewniverse Jersey films just speak to me. I just love them.

Of course next to the original Clerks, Mallrats was an amazing film. There is a repeated scene that we keep coming back to in the film which shows Ethan Suplee’s character Willam struggling to see the hidden image in “Magic Eye” stereographic image posters – which were insanely popular at the time.

Willam becomes increasingly agitated as people walk up to the poster and sharing how they see the hidden sailboat in seconds, which of course he cannot see.

See the clip where he’s trying to see the sailboat here. (Sorry guys, they’ve disabled embedding for this clip for some strange reason!)

Well it turns out it wasn’t a sailboat at all! The Magic Eye image used in the film actually reveals some simple geometic shapes but for one reason or another they decided to say the hidden image was a sailboat.

By reverse engineering the visual trick that makes these Magic Eye posters work, a clever Youtuber named SlightlyMentholated uses a screen capture from the film and Photoshop to reveal the hidden picture.

Of course, if you are good at focusing “beyond the image” and seeing these Magic Eye posters, you can see the Mallrats Sailboat for yourself!

Did you see it?