Judging by what happened in “Grow Fast or Die Slow,” the season five premiere of HBO’s Silicon Valley, it seems Jimmy O. Yang‘s Jian Yang will have no trouble filling in the T.J. Miller-sized hole left by Erlich Bachman’s departure last year. Before anything of the sort could even happen, however, some eagle-eyed fans and critics of Mike Judge’s popular satire noticed a slight change to the show’s Sim City-esque title sequence. The assortment of real-life Silicon Valley companies like Oracle and Twitter were still there, but something was different about Facebook’s logo. Namely, it had been rewritten in Russian.
As first noticed by The Hollywood Reporter, the minds behind Silicon Valley‘s introduction had apparently decided to make a joke at the expense of the company’s ongoing Russian election meddling and Cambridge Analytica scandals:
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly apologized in public for massive “breach of trust,” and has even offered to testify before Congress. The latter wouldn’t be the first time a Facebook official has testified before a congressional committee regarding Russia alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election, though it would be a first regarding the increasingly worsening and publicized Cambridge Analytica scandal, which is related.
Aside from the intro’s minor Easter Egg, however, the Silicon Valley season five premiere itself did not contain any similar references to Facebook’s ongoing troubles.
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)
