This comes from back in April, so many of you may have already seen or heard about it. But for those who hadn’t heard of it or missed it such as myself, it’s a pretty cool little tip of the hat to Joss Whedon‘s prematurely canceled Firefly, which was ended by Fox eleven years ago now. (*sniff*) I’m getting a bit verklempt.

Anyway! As a master of the procrastinative arts, the TV shows on my DVR collect and build up faster than the genetically engineered offspring of Sonic the Hedgehog and The Flash goes potty. Adorable thing, really. And even poops little golden rings for some odd reason, so yeah…I suppose everyone is a winner.

One of the shows I attempted to catch up on a bit recently was Seth MacFarlane‘s very own Fox animated comedy American Dad! And in watching a late April episode titled “The Full Cognitive Redaction of Avery Bullock by the Coward Stan Smith” I noticed something that warmed my geek heart. A little model of the crew’s ship in Firefly, named Serenity, floating behind Roger the alien’s head.

You can check out the Easter Egg below.

After noticing the ship I knew there was no way in special hell that this nod to Firefly—tiny and shiny and subtle as it was—went unseen by others. But while it was seen by some, it appears that much fewer saw it than I had anticipated. Which would explain how it went this long without crossing my eyes one way or another.

Not too long ago we also saw Serenity showing up in the clouds, as well. Combined with the latest comic, well…I think it’s safe to declare Firefly is only mostly dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead, you know.

Here’s a screenshot of the Easter Egg. Click to go super sized!

NOTE: I had no idea what the other two ships were, but according to a friend one is Starscream from Transformers, and the other is possibly from Robotech.

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