retro-computing

Ok. I hope it does not get closed because I have this curiosity since 25 years and I would love to understand the trick. In the commodore 64 the border was not addressable by the 6569 VIC. All you could do was to draw pixels in the central area, the one where the cursor moved. The border was always uniform, although you could change its color with poke 53280,color if i remember correctly. Nevertheless I clearly remember games intros where the border was featured with graphics, like it was fully addressable. I tried to understand how it worked but never got to the point. legends say it was a