Weird moment this week in the first episode of a new ABC series, entitled “Flash Forward.”

It’s a semi-opaque, high-production-values “Lost”-like show with apparent layers of mystery, etc., revolving around everyone on the planet losing consciousness at the same time, and being out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds.

And during that blackout period … everyone sees visions that, apparently, are a look ahead in time to April 29,  2010.

So what does this have to do with Kobe Bryant of the Lakers?

Just this:

Throughout the one-hour debut episode … not a single real-life person is named or referred to.  With one prominent exception.

Kobe Bryant.

While actors as FBI agents are asking each other “what did you see” in their “flash forward” … the top guy in the L.A. office says he saw a story in a newspaper about how Kobe Bryant tore a ligament in his knee and was out for the season.

I was watching, and when the line was uttered, I did one of those aural double-takes. “Did they just say what I thought they said?” And asked someone else to corroborate. “Yep. The guy said Kobe would blow out his knee.”

So, not only is Kobe the only real person named in the entire episode … he is said to have suffered a deeply serious injury (presumably) the day before, April 28.

Anyway, it struck me as an odd thing when I first heard it, and it was almost a throwaway line … but it stuck with me.

Why Kobe? Why something so dire as a blown-out knee? Why would the show’s writers/producers single out Kobe for that kind of prediction?

Athletes are superstitious guys. And I guarantee you that 1) Kobe knows about this and 2) he’s going to think about it.

He also will be asked about it, and he will laugh it off and deny it bugs him. But it will bother him, and he will think about it all season.

(Turns out, the Lakers’ regular season will be over on April 14, and may not even have a game on April 28 — though presumably Kobe could get hurt in a practice session during the first round of the playoffs.)

Anyway, it was weird, and very much out of place. It seemed as if someone inside the show was trying to mess with Kobe’s mind. And remember, this show is about seeing into the future, and seeing things that will happen.

How to explain it?

There is the small chance that it was random. Thrown in there by people who didn’t think it mattered.  I don’t believe this, however.

Others have suggested that one of the show’s creators, David S. Goyer, who hales from Ann Arbor, Mich., is a big Detroit Pistons fan … and was rolling that line out there in the hope that it will happen — or at least annoy Kobe Bryant. This sounds far more plausible.

Maybe this guy thought it would be funny. It wasn’t. It was more like sticking pins into a Kobe doll.  If I were Kobe, I’d have been on the phone to ABC on Friday, asking why he had been singled out, and asking them to, please, leave him out of their forecasts for future bad news.