Twitter users reckon they spotted Forrest Gump in the background of a recent photo of the Queen - and it’s pretty hard to unsee one you see it yourself.
On Tuesday (17 May), The Times journalist Valentine Low shared a snap of the Queen at Paddington Station in London, where she unveiled a plaque and officially opened the brand-new Elizabeth line.
Sharing the photo on Twitter, royal correspondent Low wrote: "The Queen, looking good in yellow," but it was actually a man in the background who drew more attention from fellow Twitter users after they spotted his likeness to Forrest Gump.
In the 1994 flick, Forrest Gump, played by Tom Hanks, did indeed find himself in the background of all kinds of historical moments, including meeting John F. Kennedy and inspiring the lyrics to John Lennon’s Imagine, but now it seems the fictional character has turned his hand to time travel so he can pose behind the Queen.
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Many Twitter users did a double take after spying the man, with one person writing: “Forrest Gump peering around the corner…”
Another said: “Forrest Gump did some serious time traveling to appear in this photo that was taken Tuesday, of Queen Elizabeth II.”
Someone else wrote: “And they said Forrest Gump was not real. Although he should have had frosty white hair at this point in his life.”
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While others tagged in Hank’s official Twitter account so he didn’t miss out on the joke.
The photo was also shared by another Twitter user who wrote: “I had to zoom right in to check if this was Forrest Gump.”
That post quickly went viral, racking up more than 300,000 likes and 1,500 replies.
Speaking to HuffPost, the poster of the viral comparison tweet @skillsmcgill - who did not want to share their real name - said: “I just noticed the image of someone furtively lurking at the back and zoomed it to see what was going on there.
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“Lo and behold ‘Forrest’ is looking back at me and it instantly just appeared as a still from some time hopping deleted scene from the film.”
They added: “It really is rather lovely to imagine being some way responsible for making many people smile, that seems quite important right now, more than ever.”
I wonder what Tom Hanks would make of all this.
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Claire Reid