The song opens and is intermittently accentuated with a backmasked sample of the band's 1979 song "Thick as Thieves".
Other mysteries explored in the series include Mount Weather, the number stations, backmasking on records, the secrets of Scientology, the true identities of The Residents, the initiation rites of the Freemasons and of college fraternities, anti-counterfeiting devices on money and documents, and the magic of David Copperfield.
The song begins with the backmasked Latin words "Annuit Cœptis, Novus Ordo Seclorum" ("God has favored our undertakings; a new order for the ages")—part of the Great Seal which encircles the pyramid on the back of the American dollar bill.
"Nature Trail to Hell" includes a deliberately-hidden backwards message that parodies the idea of satanic backmasking, the idea—perpetuated by alarmist groups in the early '80s—that rock bands were hiding Satanic messages in their songs.
On the song by Radiohead "Like Spinning Plates", Thom Yorke actually sings the first verse voiced and sounded out backwards, and then the final cut of the album studio version has that superimposed back-masked as the first verse of the song so it would be cognizant as being sung forward to the listener, albeit with unnatural intonation and inflection apparent in his voice.
This was Jeff Lynne's second tongue-in-cheek response to allegations of hidden Satanic messages in earlier Electric Light Orchestra LPs by Christian fundamentalists which led up to early 1980s American congressional hearings (a similar response had been made by Lynne on the Face the Music album, during the intro to the "Fire on High" track).