Unhinged uncommon. This was a top-down design where the designers knew they wanted a card with this name that, like Sex Appeal from Unglued, offered some bonus for females. Rather than just make it do nothing for guys however, the designers decided to give at least the opportunity for bonus. (Quick trivia note: why does the knight have flying? Check out the Pegasus parked at the meter in the background!)
Prophecy rare. A key element of the color pie is that certain abilities are very unlikely to show up in certain colors. But that doesn’t have to mean never. R&D looks for chances to stretch that from time to time by bleeding off-color abilities in combination with some effect that makes the bleed more appropriate to that color. In this case you have red reanimation that doesn’t feel completely out of flavor thanks to the card’s random nature.
Mirage rare. First printed prior to the Sixth Edition rule change that would eliminate interrupts as a spell type, this card was accidentally printed without the clause that the ability could be used as an interrupt. As written, the card wouldn’t have had an ability that worked, so Wizards had to issue a special errata for the card before it had even been released. In a screwy fluke of timing, once Six Edition was printed and interrupts were removed, the card’s original wording now worked perfectly fine, so it was printed the same word-for-word in every core set after that.
Ice Age common. This card’s art features a portrait of a former Magic distributor. Artist Douglas Shuler auctioned off the chance to be in the art of a Magic card for charity. The deal was that the winner of the auction would get a portrait on the next Magic commission Shuler got that would work well with a human subject.
