Swedish artist Sandra "psychosandra" Holmbom pulls off some pretty remarkable optical illusions with makeup, but holy crap does this one take the cake — with an eldritch emphasis on "optical."

You're looking at a photograph of the frozen Charles River, taken this morning at 9:35 local time from the Mass Ave bridge connecting Cambridge to Boston. Call us crazy, but we couldn't help but notice the profile of a certain Master of Suspense taking shape in the cracks between the river's ice floes.

From an advertisement for Brown, Barnes & Bell (photographers in Liverpool, we presume) comes an optical illusion ca. 1890 that is half elephant man, half... well... something else. We don't want to spoil it. Check below the fold for the big reveal.

Because it's the weather system Texas deserves, etc.

The best optical illusions are often the ones we happen upon unintentionally, which is exactly what happened when redditor Liammm decided that water circling the drain of his sink would make for a nice photographic subject.

Photographer Todd Terwilliger calls this picture "Skull Flower," for reasons that should be obvious. Its resemblance to a human cranium is, of course, purely coincidental — yet the urge for our minds to register this plant as a piece of human anatomy is all but impossible to resist. But why?

In case you were psychically scarred by the now famous stingray photobomb, here's some pareidolia to soothe your mind. And now, a baby stingray from the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport Oregon set to music. Enjoy. [Via Arbroath]

Last year, a videographer from Neptune Canada spotted this odd creature floating deep under the northeastern Pacific Ocean off of Vancouver Island. Was Batman having a brave and bold adventure with The Atom in his new micro-Bat-bathyscape? Not exactly. This bobbing Bat-signal is a cilia-covered predatory cnidarian…

The Star Wars films have become such cultural touchstones that even the most arcane background minutiae are subjected to intense fan scrutiny.

In my eternal quest to find a massive optical illusion to rival the famous Face of Mars, we may have finally found a winner. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Elephant of Mars, as spotted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.