17 Images You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped (Part 14)
It's time again for another installment of our most popular feature, in which we find the most fake-looking shit on the Internet and explain that it's totally real. In case you missed the previous installments, here are links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, the gritty reboot that doesn't acknowledge the previous installments, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, and 13. Or you can just start with this one. You won't be confused or anything.
Sexy Stephen Colbert
ThreatDown: Your erection.
It may be hard for your brain to make sense out of this picture. Is it Stephen Colbert's mother at a boat show? A bobble head manufacturing error? An awesome geneticist trying to create the most American American possible? The inside of Bill O'Reilly's head when he's trying to finish?
It's actually a cosplayer at Monsterpalooza. And it's pretty amazing how in a convention center filled with mangled zombie corpses and stage blood, she managed to be the creepiest using only a rubber mask and most of her boobs.
The only way that guy would be more creeped out is if she chose a Bill O'Reilly mask.
The Colbert mask, perfect for any night out in the Uncanny Valley, was made by Landon Meier. He creates weirdly realistic masks, and like many lunatics, he specializes in screaming baby heads. The inside of his workshop looks like the trophy room of a toddler Predator. If you're good at unseeing that which cannot be, visit his website. If you don't have time, let us quote the text of the front page in its entirety: "PRESENTING LANDON MEIER'S AWARD-WINNING BABY HEADS." Which award, you ask? None, other than the coveted "Worst Place To Die" ribbon from Covered in Spiders Quarterly.
This is his "Happy Baby." Murder makes him happy.
Snake Through the Face!
"Dude, you got something on your nose."
This is a perfect example of why you don't go down on Medusa. And for the last five years, it's been the top selling motivational poster for snakes.
The backstory of the photo is as simple as you can imagine. This man, Snake Manu, puts fucking snakes through his sinus cavity. And from this picture, it's hard to tell which of them is more upset about that. He claims this amazing feat involves dampening the pain with advanced yoga techniques, but you should never trust a man who gives advice on how to jam a snake through your face.
Application "Nature" Has Encountered a Fatal Exception Error
"Goddammit, I just got rid of the Blue Sky of Death."
The last thing you want to see in the sky is an error message, especially now that science is 85 percent sure that The Matrix is real. If we're all living in a computer simulation, we at least want to know that shit isn't running on freaking Windows 8.
That is, however, an untouched photo of a real sky and a real tree -- if you had been standing in that spot, this is what you'd have seen. The photo was taken in Odessa, Ukraine when a digital billboard malfunctioned, projecting a Windows error into the fog and temporarily convincing who knows how many passing motorists that somebody was going to have to go out into space and reboot God.
A Monster Appears!
"Try using that choker collar now, bitch."
Awww, it looks like someone is taking their '80s creature movie prop for a walk! It looks like a dog raised by giant pistons. This dog is almost certainly revenge for an ancient mummy's remains being disturbed. Its owner must have seen it and said, "I'm going to name you How Can You Be and What God Would Allow You, Jr.!" The American Kennel Club lists this breed simply as the Sanskrit character for "fear diarrhea."
This is an actual dog with something called Baboon Dog Syndrome. It's a condition, found rarely in dogs, foxes, and wolves, most easily described as missing half a spine. The genetic explanation behind it is a bit more complicated, but from our understanding, it happens when one of a dog's parents is a swarming pile of baboons sent from space to punish dogs.
"I need a service dog to lick my nuts."
MechaClown
He is his own joy buzzer.
This is one of those photoshops where you can tell the creator was trying to make a point, but you can't quite figure out what it is. Utility companies are a bunch of clowns? Or electricity is a ... clown? Did Banksy make this shit?
This is a real tower carrying real power lines, which probably doesn't answer even a fraction of your questions about it. But it turns out that Hungary just wanted to class up (or down, depending on your perspective) their industrial infrastructure. In Russia, there are ones shaped like people. And while it makes perfect sense to try to turn this stuff into less of an eyesore, we're not sure turning the whole thing into a giant mechanized lightning clown was the answer. Also: try looking at it without imagining the base of the tower is its enormous penis.
Man, Tree Graphics Used to Suck
The world's pickiest termites only dine at the top of the food chain.
This must be from some Nintendo 64 RPG that no one remembers. Ugh, how did our video games ever live like this?
These squared off, low-res graphics are actually real-life trees in Schonbrunn, Austria. They are pruned in an unnaturally perfect straight line using this machine:
... presumably in an effort to comfort young children who are confused and upset to learn that real nature doesn't look like Minecraft. The result was surely hundreds of emergency room visits from toddlers trying to hack those trees down with their bare hands.
Schindler's List Infinite
"One bridge leads to Terabithia. The others, to fiery death. Choose wisely."
This is a sneak peek at the gritty reboot of Rainbow Brite in which a broken population struggles in a world devastated by Murky Dismal's war on color. Coming next summer, Rainbow Brite must lead her fellow teens from the sadness mines to freedom. Featuring the voice of Vin Diesel.
Unfortunately, that isn't happening. Yet. The good news is that all these people took a bath together. This is a photo from Kumbh Mela, a Hindu pilgrimage during which 100,000,000 people spiritually cleanse themselves in the river. That's not a typo -- one hundred million. The endless series of pontoon bridges is how they addressed the traffic problems with washing that much sin off of nine figures worth of human beings.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Boner
Is he strong?
Listen chum
He's got radioactive cum
It's a beautiful day, and Peter Parker has decided to take his throbbing erection for a wall crawl. You can only wrestle so many men in skintight leotards before your boner decides everyone must be waiting on him. Seriously, though; how funny would it be if someone really made a twenty-foot bonered Spider-Man statue?
No wait, that's real? They did!?
"THWIIIIIP!!!"
They really did. In 2013, sculptor Eunsuk Yoo erected this erection outside a shopping mall in South Korea. And not a shopping mall for adult magazines and butt stuff -- an ordinary, bring-your-kids shopping mall. Over the course of a year, people started noticing the gigantic looming cock, and the complaints came pouring in. And like all erections, it can only hear so many complaints before it gets taken down.
Normally, a Spider-Man penis speaks for itself, but Eunsuk was happy to explain his work after it was removed. He said he wanted to "apply the natural physical phenomenon to a superhero to depict what's natural in the morning without lies." In his mind, Eunsuk was finally exposing the world of superhero morning wood, and society wasn't ready for it. This is officially the most fun we've ever had talking about art.
Invasion of the Balconies
This is not a Magic Eye. There, we just saved you ten years of your life.
This looks like a clumsy graphic artist went crazy with the clone tool. Aside from intergalactic senators, who could possibly need this many balconies? It's like something you'd store humans in if you were, we don't know, using their collective metabolism to power a virtual reality program.
This insane, Escheresque structure is actually the facade of the largest building in Southeast Asia, the State Tower in Bangkok. It has 68 floors, each with apparently one million neoclassical balconies each. It's a staggering, silly number of balconies, but the fact that Jackie Chan hasn't filmed a scene where he has to race to the bottom of them carrying the world's most expensive wedding cake is the most absurd thing about it.
They're a little dirty, but you would be too if you jutted out over an infinite sea of certain death.
No Color Allowed Inside City Limits
The amount of tears being shed by old Native American chiefs could fill an ocean.
This looks like someone's camera decided to stop capturing color 25 percent of the way into the photo. It couldn't possibly be a city populated by people with actual human lungs, could it?
This is the beautiful city of Almaty, the former capital of Khazakhstan, and this is what it looks like when it's not being destroyed by massive earthquakes. It lost its bid to host the winter Olympics, possibly because it's more of a gas chamber than a ski resort. Look at at that gray cloud of death. That's beyond poisonous levels of toxic. At this point, Almaty citizens are just adding smoky flavor to their meat to make the local wolves happy.
Wildebeest Party
They apparently never evolved the ability to catch stage divers.
At first glance, this seems like just another sweet painting of a wildebeest landing his finishing move off the top rope. Your wall is already covered in these. But did you know there are 87 cowboys hidden inside it? Try to find them all!
You may have recently discovered this after hours of careful scrutiny, but there are no hidden cowboys. You're looking at an untouched photograph taken by Bonnie Cheung. And since it's ridiculously amazing, it came out on top in the 2014 Sony World Photography Awards. And as of press time, that wildebeest still holds the Intercontinental Championship belt.
Spaceboat Returning to the Stars
Note: Spaceboat died on the way back to its home planet.
Oh, this? It's just a flying boat. No big deal to you and us. As for the deep cosmos, rejoice, for Spaceboat returns to you.
This photo was taken at the Scottish Open, and it's a good example of what happens when your camera's white balance is off. It's sadly only an ordinary boat in ordinary water. It's a disappointingly simple explanation, but the dark blue is sand and the light blue is water. However, if you truly believe ... Spaceboat will always be there for you.
Gingerbread Mega City One
The Jellybean Zord was in the shop.
What a strangely realistic model of a gigantic gingerbread house towering over a city. It couldn't be real, right? After all, who would have any need for a 12-story gingerbread house? Two hundred orphans lost in the woods? A startup orphan-eating company?
It turns out that tourists love staying inside candy-colored buildings modeled after Christmas decorations. This is an actual hotel in the Netherlands. It was made by stacking together almost 70 houses to create what looks like an office tower for storybook witches. It was designed by architect Wilfried van Winden after he was too slow in shouting, "Wait, wait! You're building some shit my daughter made out of cookies! The real plans are here!"
Color and B&W to Star in Epic Crossover Event
The "History in Color" guy sure has gotten lazy.
What is this? Did Oz scientists discover a portal to Kansas?
There's no color manipulation going on here -- this photo was taken near the summit of Mount Ontake in Japan after a sudden volcano eruption coated the countryside in ash. It's such an otherworldly effect, like you're looking at a scale model of the world that nobody has had a chance to paint yet.
But has successfully managed to set on fire.
Neptune's Quilt
And whoever's sleeping under it clearly has morning wood.
Wait, so those grid lines they have on globes are actually real? Well, shit, that probably makes it easier to figure out where you are. Do the states really have their names printed on them in giant letters, too?
Those photos of perfectly square waves is from Isle de Rhe in France, and if you're looking for a simple explanation for how it happens, don't bother. Waves normally travel with the wind, and getting the effect you see here requires an extremely specific set of circumstances in which the wind shifts direction while the waves keep coming from another direction. And in case you're wondering, yes: trying to sail or swim in these cross-wave conditions will ruin your shit.
"Can You Photoshop This For Me to Add Some Flames and Shit? Yeah, Just Put Fire Everywhere. I SAID EVERYWHERE."
"Yo, check out that hot piece of ass."
If this isn't a photoshop, then it sure the hell must be staged, like maybe for an album cover or something. Everything in the photo has a nonsense logic that can't exist in our world. Why is this guy so okay with his ass being on fire? Why is nobody stepping in to help? Who is the sick bastard who saw this and decided to snap a photo instead of coming to his aid?
We can't actually answer most of those -- we know that it's a photo from the protests in the Ukraine earlier this year, but the caption of the photo on The Atlantic website is simply, "A pro-European integration protester catches fire during clashes in Kiev." Yep, he sure does.
Just an Ordinary Silver Surfer Drawing
Finally, an excuse to post some nudes.
Why would someone include this ordinary drawing of the Silver Surfer in an article about photographs? Unless ... no. No, come on.
That's right -- if you look closely, you'll see that Silver Surfer has fingernails, eyelashes, and a panty line. This is a goddamn painted human person.
It was done by a woman named Cris Alex, who clearly wields the Power Cosmic in her body paint. From the ink lines to the dick basket glimmer, the attention to detail is amazing. You could be standing next to this real human while all your senses tell you it's a cardboard cutout, like some kind of reverse Kristen Stewart. And now try to imagine if that cardboard cutout suddenly sprung to life:
The fear is only amplified by the lip line suddenly turning into an old-timey pervert mustache.
For more images too crazy to be real, check out 9 Insane Animal Scenes You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped and 13 Old-Timey Photos You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped .
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