Is it dangerous to remove the foil/plastic from inside the top case?

Yeah, I see your point. This is more a whim than anything else.

What if I recovered it? I just thought it would be cool to see the workings on the machine, like the old iMacs. What if I put a different color plastic and then covered that with some sort of foil?

@generalveers - if you need to make the system unique why don’t you just paint the shell? Slide it off an first give it a good clean using masking tape cover the Apple logo and spray paint it with some fun colors.

Trying to pop out the logo more than likely will distort the shell and not look good. Unless you have a good CNC cutter you just can’t get anything cut tight enough to replace it and look good.

Think of it this way one a glass or mug is cracked that’s really the end of it.

As I said best to leave it alone, if you took the foil EMI shielding off you should replace it.

Wanted to thank you for your thoughts/advice. I've been under the weather for a few days, hence taking so long to get back here.

As a point of clarification: This is an older mini (2011) that was given to me by a friend who upgraded, hence my willingness to take it apart and play around. I would never think of whimsically, randomly modding my actual working Mac like this! It was more that this fell into my lap and I just starting thinking, "What weirdness could I get up to with this?"

Painting the shell actually sounds pretty cool!

@generalveers - You can also make your system less Apple’ish too.

Get some car body filler and alter the cases shape! Make a bust of a hero of yours or something just off the wall. Just stick with the aluminum shell part in any case.

Have fun! Don’t forget to score the answer and accept it - Thanks!

I accepted the answer, but I'm not sure how I score it? I did click "yes" for "Was this answer helpful?" Sorry -- I'm new here.