It reminds me of the Van Halen brown M&Ms story.

In the contract for a Van Halen concert, there was a line telling organizers that there should be a bowl of M&Ms, with all the brown candies removed. Otherwise the show would be cancelled at full price.

Even though it sounds just like another eccentricity from celebrities, the idea was that if brown M&Ms are present, it meant that organizers didn't read the papers, which also contained safety-critical points.

I have a reference to this in my CV ("watching out for brown M&Ms" in the "Outside of work" section). So far nobody has asked about it

Here's the snopes article on it, with a great example at the end from when the contract wasn't followed:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brown-out/

I put a picture of “this is Sparta” in my portfolio. So far, no company has asked me about it. But if they did, they’d get extra preference from me, since they actually looked at my work.

I remember seeing that in a portfolio when I was reviewing candidates and thought you might not be serious about the job or that you made a mistake, which highlighted you as a risk. As such you did not make our preferred candidate list.

Hehe. I’m fine with that outcome. I think it’s a good filter for companies that are too stringent. Humor is an important metric in work-life balance.

There are plenty of jobs. Once we run into another recession, maybe I’ll put on a suit.

The legend is that this explains the scene in Buckaroo Banzai that includes a watermelon in a hydraulic press. It was added to see if anyone at the studio was paying attention, nobody noticed it, and they left it in anyway.