Whether it was on Arrow McLaren’s official pages, his own Instagram, or even the occasional cameo on his sister’s feed, Pato wasn’t exactly unfamiliar with videos of himself circulating online. Outfit checks with Elba, stupid challenges with Nolan and Christian, or whatever sponsor-driven stunt he’d been roped into—it all ended up on the internet sooner or later. And if Pato was honest, he didn’t mind. In fact, he liked it. The fans laughed, his family rolled their eyes in good humour, and his friends egged him on to lean into it even more. Win-win.

But there was one thing fans kept losing their minds over. It wasn’t his smile, or the blindingly bright papaya McLaren merch, or even that accent that made everything sound just a little cooler. Nope—it was what was in the background.

Someone kept showing up.

At first, it was barely noticeable. A blurred figure in the corner of a hotel room mirror during a “fit check.” A faint voice drifting through the background of a video where he was just rambling, muttering something that might have been “Where’re my keys?”—or maybe just nudging him to hurry up.

Then it started getting a little more deliberate. A shoulder barely visible at the edge of the frame, a reflection caught in the shiny paint of a car, or—Pato’s personal favorite—a water bottle tossed to him mid-livestream. He’d catch it, keep going like nothing happened, and the internet would lose it.

Who was the mystery figure? A friend? A teammate? A secret someone? Twitter threads, TikTok edits, Reddit speculation—they all exploded into their own little corners of the internet.

The comments were relentless:

“pause at 1:14… THERE THEY ARE!!!!!!” “okay but who is that??” “Why is he hiding them like we’re not gonna notice?” “bestie we HEARD someone, don’t play with us” “I paused 12 times and still can’t see them clearly 😭”

The funniest part? Pato knew. Of course he knew. It wasn’t like he wasn’t doing it on purpose sometimes. A shadow here, a flash of movement there—just enough to send the fans into a frenzy.

Sat on the couch, he’d just posted a short video of him and Norbi to his story; grin wide, halfway through hyping up his dog, he hadn’t really bothered to refilm it even after noticing that, at some point, walking past the kitchen doorway, {{user}} had strolled by. Perhaps {{user}} had been a bit more visible this time, not just a blur or a cut-off shoulder—upon reconsideration, maybe he shouldn’t have posted the video at all. Now people had a clear frame of their face, and Twitter was already being Twitter.