30 Funny Pictures Of "Random Pareidolia," Where Your Brain Thinks It Sees Faces In Inanimate Objects

Apparently everyone sees faces in random objects

Kylin

• Published in Funny
• June 17, 2023

I think it’s innate human nature to form a pack bond with anything. Part of that seems to come from our ability to imagine faces or other human-like characteristics where they don’t actually exist.

Take, for example, the front bumper of a car. The fender would be its mouth, headlights for eyes, and maybe a hood ornament for a nose.

I recently learned there’s an actual name for the psychological phenomenon of seeing faces or other meaningful imagery in random places or patterns: pareidolia. In layman's terms, it’s our brain's way of seeing or creating a new image out of randomness, which usually is simplified to people seeing faces in objects where there isn't one.

Pareidolia comes from the Greek words pará, meaning beside, alongside, or instead of, and eídōlon, meaning image, form, or shape. Pareidolia is a type of apophenia, which is a term describing the tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things.

This fun bit of information was inspired by the Twitter account Random Paréidolia, which is dedicated to this very specific occurrence. Continue scrolling to view thirty of our favorite amusing examples of pareidolia we collected from the entertaining Random Paréidolia Twitter account.

1. Grouchy Typewriter

2. Whatever it is, it looks happy

3. Canned choir

4. The horrors they've witnessed

5. MFW someone doesn't wash their hands in a public restroom

6. Wanda and Cosmo ain't slick!

We're on to you, fairies

7. An onion ready to make you cry

Soon

8. I feel the same about laundry

9. I've never felt so similar to a chair

Everything is just ugh

10. How people made do before Facetime

11. Happiest side table

It's just happy to be useful

12. One looks surprised, the other suspicious

13. Who is she?

Who??

14. Happy birb face

15. Not sure what the fixture is, but it's cringing

Identical expression

16. When home is just as happy to see you

Home sweet home

17. Forget the sorting hat, we got a discerning traffic cone

18. Giving Homestar Runner vibes

I can do it! I can do it 9 times!

19. A shocking home by the sea

20. Happy face even if they aren't facing towards you

21. Flower skull

22. Disapproving traffic sign

23. Hummingbird orchid

24. Scared peppers

25. Flirty dessert

*winkwink*

26. Angry mop giving us Cad Bane looks

The similarities are uncanny tbh

27. Holy bruise

28. Shifty looking warehouse

Same vibes

29. Mildly horrifying

30. Skeletal oven

One of my favorite parts of pareidolia is that it’s a well-established experience throughout history. There are famous occurrences like in 1977 with the perceived image of Jesus Christ on a flour tortilla or in 2004 with another perceived image of Jesus Christ, this time on a grilled cheese.

Remarkably, pareidolia has been documented as far back as the 1600s, when Leonardo da Vinci wrote in A Treatise on Painting, describing pareidolia as an artistic device: 

“Look at walls splashed with a number of stains or stones of various mixed colors. If you have to invent some scenes, you can see there resemblances to a number of landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, great plains, valleys, and hills in various ways. Also, you can see various battles and lively postures of strange figures, expressions on faces, costumes, and an infinite number of things, which you can reduce to good integrated form.”

What’s your favorite instance of pareidolia that you’ve experienced? Let us know in the comments section below!

Kylin