Can't help but wonder if this is one of those things quietly known to the few, and now new to the many.

Who would have thought 1337 talk from the 90's would be actually involved in something like this, and not already filtered out.

Possibly, though there are regularly available jailbreaks against the major models in various states of working.

The leetspeak and specific TV show seem like a bizarre combination of ideas, though the layered / meta approach is commonly used in jailbreaks.

The subreddit on gpt jailbreaks is quite active: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTJailbreak

Note, there are reports of users having accounts shut down for repeated jailbreak attempts.