Rent A Clown (aka Batman: The Dark Knight)

Alright, so I heard about this one before but I wasn’t really following it. In all honesty, comics are not my thing. The Dark Knight opens July 18, 2008 and the hype machine is already kicked into high gear. The other day I came across WhySoSerious.com and when I went back to it today it was redirected to Rent-A-Clown, a site with the look and feel of the early days of the internet featuring eerie images of badly made up clowns for hire. I wish I had taken some screenshots of why so serious before it was changed, but who knew? Previously in this campaign were the sites IBelieveinHarveyDent.com and IBelieveinHarveyDentToo.com (not much there now hence no links).

Like I said, I haven’t been following this but apparently they’ve been setting up websites hidden with clues to lead fans to other sites or to view a trailer of the movie. According to Pink is the New Blog, at Comic Con “one lucky person received an interesting dollar bill which led to a website (whysoserious.com) which led to a game, which led to the first teaser trailer for the new movie. As soon as the site was discovered, rabid fans got to deciphering the clues which led to the final prize of the teaser trailer.”

*_{image via Banshee1013 on Flickr}

Fun stuff. If that’s what you’re into. Here’s what I noticed when I was looking at the source code for Rent A Clown, they had some text commented out:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAmHAHAHAHAHaAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHdAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHeAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAyHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAoHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAuHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHlAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHoAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAoHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAkHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA

If you look closely there are extra characters in between the HAHA’s in the hidden text. String them together and you get “made you look”. Clever. It must be fun working on this campaign. Whether or not the movie lives up the hype remains to be seen.

Here’s the trailer:

Stats:
PR0
Alexa N/A
Compete N/A
(Take into consideration the site was created July 29th so it’s one day old)

Screenshots after the jump.