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For four seasons, Joe Port and Joe Wiseman, the creators of CBS’ Ghosts, have waited patiently for someone to notice. But apart from a Redditor or two, their winks at upcoming plot points every season went unnoticed. Until, like Rose McIver’s innkeeper Samantha, I briefly died, gained second sight, and noticed the eight, ghost-specific objects that change in each season’s main credits.

Watch Ghosts on Paramount+

(Actually, it was the framed Playbill cover in Season 4, because I helped facilitate those approvals when I was editor-in-chief.)

 “We thought it’d be fun to do an annual thing that changed slightly,” Wiseman tells Crafty shortly before the October 16 Season 5 premiere. “Part of it was that basically they told us we had five seconds for the main titles. When we were growing up, there were all these cool narrative songs, and we wanted to do something cool in five seconds.

 “We didn’t want to do it every episode. We worked on Just Shoot Me, where they would use interstitials of a magazine. And I remember we would always be like, ‘Oh gosh, we have to write the headlines on top of everything else.’ So we thought maybe it’d be less work if it was an every season thing.”

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Not that doing it once a season makes it a totally smooth ride. After all, Ghosts is a network sitcom that often tops out at 22 episodes a season, and there’s no way that Port and Wiseman have all of the plot points mapped out by the time they’re talking to graphic design firm Imaginary Forces for the credits.

 “Sometimes we take a leap of faith,” Port says. “We don’t have it totally figured out, but we’ll commit to doing it because it’s in the main titles now. Like Trevor’s money clip Season 1, we didn’t really know what that was gonna be yet, and then it turned out to be part of the Trevor’s pants episode.”

For the most part, the Easter eggs are coy teases about new wrinkles to the characters, like a stuffed dinosaur in the season Isaac first learns of their former existence or washing detergent for Hetty’s soon-to-be iconic fascination with that particular appliance. But Season 4 included an extra object.

 “Last season we had nine, which was a little Easter egg in itself,” Port says. “One was for when Jay became a ghost. Jay’s were the French fries.”

The biggest question hovering over the credits has been the same: Should the photo of Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar) and Samantha change? “ But my contention was that I think people just generally don’t change their photographs at home,” Port says. “I have pictures that I don’t even know why they’re up anymore… But also I just like eliminating decisions.”

To that end, are the cast members taking it upon themselves to suggest possible Easter eggs for their characters?

“ No, they don’t talk about it either. I don’t even know if they notice!” Port says with a laugh. “They’ve never mentioned the main titles to me. Have they mentioned them to you, Joe?”

“Nope,” Wiseman says, laughing. “My kids have never mentioned them to me, my wife [never has].”

With Season 5’s premiere now officially streaming on Paramount+, here’s this year’s main credits. Which ghost gets which Easter egg this season?

Joe Port and Joe Wiseman have worked together on Just Shoot Me, New Girl, and Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. I don’t even want to tell you what their go-to at craft services is, because it’s so unfair, but in the interest of Journalism: “ Poutine because we film in Montreal.  Every Friday is Poutine Friday, and it’s pretty glorious.”