I saw Agahnim exactly as you did when I played Zelda 3. I think it happened to a lot of people.
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For me, one of the most confusing:
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You can't see the dagger in that picture, making it harder to see what's going on.
I don't know if I'm correct here, but I always thought it looked like a generic humanoid animal (a rat, or a dog or something like that) carrying a dagger or a short sword that runs towards you.
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Ah, so I was not too far off. The in-game sprite looks a lot less evil than the drawing though.
And weapon(s): EXP drain... I did not know that. I just thought they did some minor damage.
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When I was young, when I saw Kain's back sprite from Final Fantasy IV in SNES version, I thought that he was fat and he has spiky armor like if you sliced flail to half and attached it to his back. If you look at his back (2nd one), you can see circle and that is the spot where chain once was.
I know I need help.
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From a distance, a creepy little girl tilting her head.
Up close...the best I can describe it is some sort of moon-snail lying on its back. :/
...What is it?
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Ooooh, I see the dancer now. Pretty~. :D
(Should have done it in the first place, but I clicked on your profile to see the full version. ...I forgot I could do that and was only looking at the tiny version here in the forum, which is probably why I saw the snail-thing. XD )
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I always thought it was a woman stretching out her arms, with the wind blowing at her back.
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I can't think of a gaming example off the top of my head, but for a long time I always thought the Batman logo from the 1989 film was a set of cartoony golden teeth. It always struck me as odd that they would use a mouth with golden teeth as Batman's logo... when all of a sudden one day I was like.... OOOOOHHHHHHHHH!
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This happens to me when I see something correctly, but there's a different "can't unsee" version
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Not a sprite but my favourite "once you see you can't unsee" is Goldeneye.
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Grahf from Xenogears. Is he a slack-jawed robot? I don't understand. I can't see what is supposed to be portrayed here. It looks like nothing. What can't I see?
http://lparchive.org/Xenogears-(by-The-Dark-Id)/Update%2051/12-grahf.jpg
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I think he's just a guy wearing a helmet. His nose is unprotected, apart from a piece of cloth hanging down, but there are some narrow cheek guards on the helmet
edit
That bit I thought was a piece of cloth seem to just be another piece of metal with a different colour. That's just me going by some larger pictures I found when googling his name.
edit 2 Some people have had some interesting interpretations of the picture ;)
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Yes, that's EXACTLY what I am seeing the picture as.
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I can't really tell either but his dog is cute. xD
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Har! The 'wrong' Agahnim illustration looks like a Kids Next Door character.
Anyway, I can't think of any sprites I've been wrong about, but I know for sure there are some. I'll post them if I remember.
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Classic here. I thought that Mario hits blocks with his head xD
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I always thought the StarCraft Marine was a giant bipedal fly.
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i actually always thought it;s a smile not a husk in a peon :DDD
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Interesting topic. Pretty sure there were a lot of them for me (mostly from NES games), but can't remember any exact one at the moment.
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Hah, the Zelda thing really looks the way you thought it was! :D
I remember, back in the days, seeing things in a wrong way and realizing, after some years, the correct way to look at them! But unfortunately I don't remember which ones :(
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The Lightning spell icon from Ultima Online. It's a cloud with several lightning bolts, but all I see is a mushroom cloud.
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Back in the days (in NES era), I thought that Shy-Guy from Super Mario 2 is a little locomotive with feet. (－‸ლ)
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This is a nice thread. =)
I think I may have an example as well. This guy from Dragon Quest/Warrior Monsters:
For me he always kinda looked like a golduck from Pokemon until one day I realized that his belly muscles are not his face and that there's actually a neck and a head above them. xD
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I just stumbled upon this picture and realized... I've been seeing Agahnim (Zelda: A Link to the past) wrong all these years. I always thought he was some guy with a big mouth and a goofy haircut covering his eyes, and did not think much more about it... but nope, that's not what he is (I was not particularly old when I first played the game...)
Another one my younger self could not see the right way was the Peon from Warcraft 2 (but which adult me can see the correct way). Here's a small picture. Imagine the left tusk being a mouth, and the left ear being a green horn. That was what my young self thought it looked like (it made it look like some evil lizard thing rather than an unhappy orc).
Any sprites from older games and such that you got all wrong (or still get all wrong, despite knowing better?)
And of course, 3 small (and probably not very good) giveaways
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