An Imgflip hero in my book, I did mention his username to the owner of Imgflip at the time. I'd like to think the three of us all had a hand in it.
From what I remember, support for opacity in templates was added shortly after support for 8 character color codes was added. Not sure if opacity gear icon settings for added images is related, it probably is though.
I saw this when I was a new user,
imgflip.com/i/195lmn Was kind of a holy grail I was searching for, for years, then certain memer cracked the puzzle open.