18 Images You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped (Part 9)

18 The Ancient One Awakens from His Long Slumber

It looks like three surfers are about to be devoured by a Lovecraftian sea monster or a horde of giant octopi. It just depends on how ridiculous the low-budget horror movie that it was taken from is.

Actually, that's just what a wave looks like when it's full of sunlight and enough seaweed to choke a sperm whale, and it's not all that uncommon. Of course, that just means that when the tentacled monsters do decide to attack, they'll blend right in with the seaweed until it's too late.

17 You Can Almost Hear Their Tiny Voices Singing "Whistle While You Work"

What looks like a screen cap from a CGI-heavy Super Bowl commercial is actually a real, not-manipulated photograph. And no, those aren't posed ant corpses with a bottle cap hot glued to their tiny hands, if that's what you think, Professor Coldheart. It's from a series of images that photographer Andrey Pavlov took outside his house, after studying and then making an art project out of a real live ant colony. He's a former set designer, which allowed him to make some pretty incredible sets for the ants to interact with in the most stereotypically industrious ways possible.

Seeing ants get things done at this scale is inspiring, but if you're anything like us, that sensation quickly turns to a sense of foreboding for the day when they finally decide to rise up and take humanity down.

16 The Invisible Man's Brief Stint as a Hockey Goon

Even knowing that it's not Photoshopped, it takes a few minutes to figure out what's going on in this photo from the Sports Illustrated archive. And judging from the amazed look on the face of the kid at the right edge of the photo, it wasn't any easier in person.

Unfortunately for Norway's hockey team, #55 Ole-Kristian Tollefsen does not possess Nightcrawler's ability to magically disappear out of a sticky situation. If you look at his left armpit, you can just see his hair peeking out where his head is being held down. We'd like to think the little ginger-haired kid was a fan of X-Men, and left the game telling his dad, "I know what I saw, OK?"

15 Van Gogh Didn't Even Need to Get Stoned Before Painting This

We're used to painters portraying the world around them with less and less photo-realistic precision, but it would appear that no one told the real world that it doesn't get to use artistic license, too. Australian photographer Ken Prior snapped the nearly visible brushstrokes in the above sky over Scotland. The photo is the result of a mysterious, as yet unclassified cloud type that's been showing up all over the United Kingdom and New Zealand, and wherever else Prior happens to have his camera pointed at the sky.

Meteorologists are calling them asperatus clouds, while people who aren't insecure about being confused with the weatherman are using the more straightforward Jacques Cousteau clouds. The names all focus on the fact that they make the sky look like an upside down ocean during a storm, although, looking at some of Prior's other shots, the only common thread is that they all look like the sky in Ghostbusters.

14 Don't Forget to Close Your Blinds Before Undressing on 10-Cent-Beer Night

It's hard to tell where the artist was going with this half-finished Photoshopped collage. Our first guess would probably be that he or she was planning to use the different elements of urban development to protest the gentrification of some Brooklyn neighborhood where people who make Photoshopped protest art live. Our 347th guess would be the truth: This is an unaltered photograph of Osaka Stadium.

It was converted into a housing showcase after Japanese baseball's Nankai Hawks moved to a better stadium and another Ali-Frazier rematch called the "'Shocka' in Osaka" failed to materialize. However, as the empty seats indicate, the many people who claimed they'd rather watch paint dry than Japanese baseball proved to be "just saying that."

13 The Most Ridiculous Use of the "Stretch" Tool Ever

Those legs aren't Photoshopped, nor are they stilts. The maned wolf just has really long, really skinny legs. We're not sure what the evolutionary advantage of being a living Disney cartoon might be. But we can't see that picture without imagining the corresponding male wolf smoking cigarettes in a derby cap and reminiscing about getting burned by the tramp with the legs that just wouldn't quit.

12 The Pea-tles? The Bea-nuts? We'll Let You Decide.

This Peanuts-themed Abbey Road cover re-creation was placed on a Japanese road to promote a new ride at Universal Studios Japan. While a road outside of a children's theme park probably isn't the safest place to be distracting drivers, Japanese people are probably used to seeing cartoon characters walking down the street by now. Besides, it's only an adorable bout with surrealism from the perfect angle. Anyone viewing it from above will wonder why Charlie Brown and friends are being sucked into one of the Ghostbusters' containment units.

11 Skiing Back Down Is the Easy Part

OK, neither the scenery nor the guy look real in this one, but that's a real stuntman walking up the wire of a cable car that runs from the bottom to the top of Zugspitze Mountain in southern Bavaria. He completed the 9,000-foot climb for world record consideration by Guinness in the category of "longest and highest wire walk above sea level without a balancing pole." And for good measure, he did it without a freaking safety harness, which begs the question: Are there Guinness World Records groupies, and what mind-blowing version of sex have they invented to make a man do something like this:

10 And Then God Said Unto Them, "Any Chance We Could Get Some Furniture in Here? Or Even Just a Bush?"

It turns out that with carefully controlled conditions, you can create an actual indoor cloud. Artist Berndnaut Smilde creates the clouds with a fog machine and then carefully monitors the temperature and humidity of the room to get his artificial cloud to hang there long enough to snap a picture. We have to assume he couldn't get it to last long enough to bring his stoned friends in and start commanding them to run his errands in a deep booming voice.

9 When the Ents Get Tired, They Just Sit Right Down ...

These trees can be found in the so-called Crooked Forest, in Poland, all of their trunks inexplicably bowing to the north. Adding to the weirdness, nobody knows how they got that way. Experts are certain that some human intervention had to be involved, but when World War II happened, the reasons for shaping the trees that way were lost. While some of the more boring theories involve creating bent wood for the ribs of boat hulls, an especially powerful fart coming from the south side has not been ruled out.

8 We Hope You Didn't Pay Much for That Fake Bag, Dude ...

These bags by Jump from Paper look like giant stickers, but as you can see from the 360-degree animation on their site, these are real bags that you can store stuff in. Finally, someone's made a purse for the man on the go who wants to look like he splits time between our world of three dimensions and a brightly colored two-dimensional illustration.

7 How Batman Was Actually Conceived

OK, that doesn't even look sophisticated enough to be Photoshopped. But we've got bad news for anyone who didn't realize that bats come in "flying wolf" sizes. It may look like someone put a child's Batman costume on their dog in the service of some unholy cross-section of furry and bondage fetishes, and after you know the truth, you will wish it was.

That's a giant golden-crowned flying fox, one of the largest (not the largest? Come on, nature!) of what are known as mega bats. Not the most scientific name for giant bats, but there's not a lot of time for cleverness when you're slowly backing away from the thing you're naming, trying to locate the nearest exit without averting your eyes.

It boasts a nearly 6-foot wingspan, which we should probably point out is more than big enough to wrap you in its leathery embrace and make your scream disappear, along with any memory of your existence.

6 If Hunter S. Thompson Took Acid in Modern Day Las Vegas

This fever dream of a hallucination is in reality a photo of a giant float in a carnival parade in Rio de Janiero. It would be easy to question why those chorus girls are being fed to the henna tattooed head of Mr. Freeze, but we prefer to respect other cultures. The picture was taken at something called the Sambadrome, which perfectly combines the glamour and terrifying apocalyptic terror on display, and which we have to assume the dancers misheard as "The Samba Dome" when agreeing to the gig.

5 Crop Circles Aren't as Technically Impressive, But at Least They Don't Melt

You might wonder what's so remarkable about this image until you realize that the little dot in the upper right hand corner is a guy who just did all of that with his feet. Artist Simon Beck creates these gigantic snow sculptures by walking around with snow shoes on.

4 It'd Be Impolite to Point Out His Walking Stick is a Toothpick

Earlier this year, the world of inexplicably tiny people was shaken to its little core when 72-year-old Chandra Bahadur Dangi was discovered in Nepal. One full inch shorter than the man who was previously thought to be the world's smallest, Guinness also declared him the shortest man ever.

There's been no controversy as of yet, but the previous shortest man ever only lived to age 40, and the next shortest living man is only 18, while Dangi is in his prime as a stooped old man. If his title is contested, a no-holds-barred wrestling match will be held in a shoe box (if we have any say in the matter).

3 The Pop-Tart Rainbow Cat Does a Flyover

You no longer need three kinds of drugs and a couple Pink Floyd records to see something like this spanning the sky. The Global Rainbow is an art project, which recently visited London to celebrate the upcoming Olympics. When reached for comment, the double rainbow guy wept openly for a few minutes, and then his head exploded.

2 Mom ... Jimmy Keeps Tagging My Side of the Bed!

If they ever attempt an Odd Couple reboot starring Busta Rhymes and Martha Stewart, the set has already been created. This photo is of a real room in a French hotel, which offers the world's best or worst night's sleep, depending on which side of your body you sleep on.

1 David Lynch: Cat Whisperer

This real two-faced cat is called a Janus cat after the Roman god who looked both forward and back. His deformity is caused by a gene named sonic hedgehog, after science apparently realized stoned college kids would be the cat's most appreciative audience.

Now here are 17 MORE images you won't believe aren't Photoshopped ...

For more photos too unbelievable to be real, check out 10 Photos Capturing Moments of Spontaneous Badassery and 18 Old-Timey Photos You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped.

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