Odyssey rare. Designed by Jon Finkel, winner of the 2000 Invitational, Shadowmage Infiltrator combines a black evasion ability with the (then solely) blue Ophidian ability ??? a potent combination. During Odyssey development, it was realized that another card in the file ??? also costed at 
Planar Chaos uncommon. The design version of Shivan Meteor dealt 20 damage, fully double the previous printed damage record held by Urza???s Rage and Searing Wind. The decision was made to play around in the space between 10 and 20, saving the big two-oh for (perhaps) another day. And maybe, just maybe, somebody on the Development team had a soft spot for Autochthon Wurm.
Judgment common. Although the race/class model did not yet exist, the Aven were concepted as a race of sentient birds, and therefore it made sense that each of them would have a ???job??? type in addition to Bird ??? any of Soldier, Wizard, and/or Cleric. The Nantuko were similar in being a race of mostly Insect Druids, with the occasional Insect Shade, Insect Spirit, or Zombie Insect thrown in.
Mirage rare. From Nevinyrral???s Disk to Jayemdae Tome, early Magic names were riddled with word plays and hidden references. The most common and robust of these was the anagram, with such golden examples as Sol Grail (???gorillas???) and Wyluli Wolf (???Wyluli??? scrambles as ???Lily Wu,??? the name of Richard Garfield???s wife). The character Mangara was named as a parody of this trend ??? as an anagram of ???anagram.???
Coldsnap uncommon. Lightning Storm breaks several major “rules” at once. In addition to being the only spell with an activated ability, it’s one of only twenty cards whose Oracle text refers to the stack - and of those, it’s one of only seven to do so outside reminder text. Of those, only two were originally printed that way (along with Mirari and Radiate, which were retemplated along the way).
Planar Chaos rare. Although it was obvious that an alternate-reality Akroma would be a fun and splashy addition to Planar Chaos, and equally obvious that the new version should sport an equally ridiculous salad of abilities as the first one, there were several iterations of the exact abilities involved. At one point she had flash and split second, but when flash was removed, split second no longer seemed like a good fit. It was replaced with “can’t be countered,” and morph was added later in the process.
Limited Edition Alpha common. Although edged out by Stone Rain (and, say, the basic lands) for total number of times reprinted ??? and eventually supplanted in the core set by Naturalize ??? Disenchant has nonetheless appeared in six expansions and every core set up through Seventh Edition, as well as in promo versions, starter products, and boxed sets. Its place on the Time Spiral timeshifted sheet will keep this longtime staple in Extended into the next decade.
Legends uncommon. Legends uncommons were divided into Uncommon A and Uncommon B, and due to printing problems, only one set of uncommons appeared in any given box (yes, box) of Legends. Because one set of uncommons contained a number of cards that were very popular at the time ??? Storm Seeker, Spirit Link, and the patently insane Mana Drain ??? opening boxes of Legends was a case (so to speak) of feast or famine.
Tempest uncommon. Flavor text is most often used to add flavor to the card it’s on and fill out details about the setting in which it appears. Sometimes, more frequently in previous storylines than current ones, flavor text has been used to drive home an important moment in the story. The flavor text from Propaganda packs a lot of substance into a small amount of text.
Limited Edition Alpha common. Fog was tied for many years for the title of shortest card title in Magic, and even now there are only 16 cards in Magic with three-letter names (half of which are split cards, silver-bordered, or both). Unglued, of course, presented an opportunity to make an even shorter title, Ow, and Unhinged could not resist trumping that with _____, a card with no title at all.
