People claim Forrest Gump was photographed behind Queen Elizabeth II during visit to London train station

‘I refuse to believe it’s not him’

People think they spotted Forrest Gump behind the Queen at train station (Getty Images)

Royal fans are expressing their amusement after a recent photo of Queen Elizabeth II appeared to show Tom Hanks’ famous character Forrest Gump standing behind the royal.

On Tuesday, the 96-year-old monarch made a surprise visit to Paddington Station for the unveiling of a new train line named in her honour.

For the occasion, the Queen opted for a bright yellow wool coat and dress by Stewart Parvin, which she accssorised with a Rachel Trevor Morgan hat in the same shade of yellow and a black handbag.

While the monarch’s attendance at the event was a surprise in itself, as it was not guaranteed that she would attend, royal fans also spotted another surprise attendee in a photo taken during the train line unveiling.

In a photo shared by Valentine Low, a royal correspondent for The Times of London, on Tuesday, the Queen could be seen standing with a number of other attendees at the event. As many people have since pointed out, one of these attendees, who could be seen poking his head out from behind an elevator bank, shared a large resemblance to Hanks’ character from the 1994 film.

“Forrest Gump peering around the corner…” one person tweeted along with the photo, while another, referencing an iconic line from the movie, wrote: “‘Run Forrest, Run!’”

Someone else tagged Hanks in the comments under the photo, writing: “@TomHanks is that you?”

On Twitter, where the photo has since gone viral, one person shared two close-up shots of the individual in the background. “I had to zoom right in to check if this was Forrest Gump,” they wrote along with the photos, with the tweet receiving more than 287,000 likes.

The resemblance also sparked additional jokes about the Gump look alike and lines from the film, with one person writing: “Mama always said meeting the Queen was like a box of chocolates.”

Someone else joked that they were “still not sure” that the individual photographed behind the Queen in the picture wasn’t Hanks’ character, while another person said: “Hear me out. Are we sure it isn’t?”

While Hanks wasn’t in attendance at the train station, he has previously met the monarch, as he recalled during a 2011 appearance on The Graham Norton Show that he and his wife Rita Wilson were once invited to join Queen Elizabeth II and Barack Obama at Buckingham Palace for an “informal meeting”.

During the interview, Hanks joked that he wasn’t sure why he had been invited to the meeting, with the actor questioning whether he had won a golden ticket like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

“I was with the Queen and the president just last week. For an American, I kept trying to figure out: ‘Why am I here? How did this happen? Did I win a ticket? Is this Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?’” he said, according to Digital Spy.

At the time, Hanks also shared details about his conversation with the Queen, revealing that he and the monarch bonded over a love of theatre.

“I talked [to the Queen] about doing Shakespeare. That was how I got my start in the United States and we compared notes on that. She said: ‘We love to go to the theatre!’ That was my moment with Her Majesty,” he said.