Spy x Family Episode 37 Easter Eggs: My Hero

‘Spy x Family’ Episode 37’s Easter Egg Hunt: How We Accidentally Turned a Schoolroom Scene Into a Forensic Anime Lab

I watched S2E37 of Spy x Family on release night—popcorn, tea, zero expectations—just happy to see Anya panic-scribble in class again. Five minutes in, I paused. Rewound. Zoomed in on the whiteboard behind her. That looping “A” with the exaggerated serif? That wasn’t standard Japanese katakana handwriting. It looked… suspiciously like the “A” from *My Hero Academia*’s opening title card. I screenshot it, tossed it into Discord, and typed: “Is this allowed?” It was the first crack in the dam.

What Actually Happened (in Chronological Chaos)

The hunt didn’t go viral—it *fractured*. Within 90 minutes of the episode airing (June 17, 2023), three separate Discord servers—@AnimeOCR, @AniList-Dev, and the gloriously unhinged @CloverWorksConspiracy—were running parallel investigations. No one coordinated. No one claimed leadership. We just all opened VS Code at the same time. Here’s what we found—and how:

• The Whiteboard Cipher: Using Tesseract 5.3 with a custom-trained katakana+Latin hybrid model (thanks to GitHub user @kana-ocr who’d fine-tuned it for *Bocchi the Rock!* merch scans), we extracted text from every classroom shot. Frame 428–432 revealed two lines: “KAMUI K. / CLASS 3-B” and “U.A. EXCHANGE PROGRAM — APPROVED”. Not subtle. But *U.A.*? In Eden Academy’s bureaucracy? That’s not a typo—that’s a wink.
• The Silhouette Stack: Someone uploaded a 1080p rip to ShotGrid, ran a scene-search API against AniList’s character database (via GraphQL query filtering by hair shape, color saturation, and silhouette contour variance), and matched three background students to Momo Yaoyorozu, Fuyumi Hasegawa, and… yes, even Minoru Mineta. Not full designs—just posture + hair + eyewear geometry. Mineta’s was just a slumped shoulder, a tuft of hair, and a single glint where his glasses would reflect light. We cheered. Then felt bad for cheering.
• The Textbook Marginalia: At 14:22, Anya flips open a civics textbook. OCR caught faint pencil scribbles in the margin: “Ochaco → gravity = ✅”, “Todoroki → ice/fire = ❓”, and “Class 1-A attendance: 20/20 (except Bakugo, lol)”. The “lol” was handwritten in English, not Japanese. That’s when we knew someone on staff was trolling us *on purpose*.

We logged 12 total cameos over 72 hours—not counting false positives (a “Shoto”-shaped cloud got debunked fast). Here’s the confirmed list:

Timestamp	Type	Reference	Tool Used
3:11	Whiteboard text	“U.A. Exchange Program” header	Tesseract + manual kanji validation
6:44	Background student	Momo’s hair + uniform lapel pin (U.A. crest)	ShotGrid + AniList GraphQL + contour matching
9:02	Textbook footnote	“Quirk Regulation Bill Draft v.2.1 — U.A. Legal Dept.”	Zoom + frame-by-frame OCR sweep
11:33	Chalk drawing	Crude sketch of Deku’s hero costume (no face, just green spandex + gloves)	Manual annotation + Discord voting (92% consensus)
14:22	Margin note	“Bakugo absent again. Explained as ‘explosive scheduling conflict’.”	Tesseract + regex search for “Bakugo|explosive”
17:55	Poster fragment	Corner of U.A. Sports Festival banner (“CLASS 1-A vs. 1-B”) visible behind bookshelf	Frame interpolation + edge detection (OpenCV)
20:18	Student ID badge	“FUYUMI H.” on lanyard, partially obscured	Super-resolution upscaling (Real-ESRGAN) + Tesseract
22:07	Desk engraving	“MIDORIYA” carved into wood grain (confirmed via lighting angle analysis)	Specular highlight mapping + contrast stretch
23:41	Chalk dust pattern	Accidental “ALL MIGHT” shape in airborne particles (debated; 55% acceptance)	Particle simulation overlay (custom PyGame script)
24:12	Backpack tag	“PROPERTY OF CLASS 1-A” stitched on red backpack strap	Manual zoom + thread-count verification
25:03	Teacher’s coffee mug	“BEST HERO PROFESSOR” with tiny Aizawa eye logo	High-res capture + logo DB cross-check
26:49	Final frame easter egg	“LOVE YOU, Loid” scrawled on chalkboard → “LOVE YOU, LOID & ALL MIGHT” when inverted in negative	Image inversion + OCR re-run

Did CloverWorks Confirm It?

No. Not officially. But here’s what *did* happen: On June 20, Studio CloverWorks posted a behind-the-scenes reel on Instagram showing animators laughing while sketching “a certain hero school’s mascot” onto a whiteboard prop. The caption read: “Some lessons stick longer than others. 😏” The emoji wasn’t winking. It was *winking with a slight quirk-induced shimmer*. That’s confirmation enough for me.

How This Compares to Other Cross-Franchise Nods

This wasn’t just fan service—it was *architectural*. *One Punch Man* S2 dropped a Saitama cameo in *Mob Psycho 100*’s background crowd (frame 18, ep 12), but it was static, single-frame, and required no tools beyond eagle eyes. *Dr. Stone* S3 hid Senku’s “Science Declaration” speech inside a radio broadcast’s audio waveform—clever, but inaccessible without spectral analysis software. *S2E37*’s references were *designed* to be found. They required layered toolchains, collaborative verification, and shared skepticism. They rewarded patience—not just passion. I still don’t know if Loid’s briefcase contains a spare pair of All Might’s gloves. But I do know that for 72 hours, a bunch of strangers treated anime like source code: parsing, debugging, and committing pull requests to collective understanding. And honestly? That’s way more heroic than any Quirk.