Pareidolia

thumb|Satellite photograph of a mesa in the Cydonia region of Mars, often called the "[[Face on Mars" and cited as evidence of extraterrestrial habitation]]Pareidolia (; ) is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one detects an object, pattern, or meaning where there is none. Pareidolia is a specific but common type of apophenia (the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things or ideas).

psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and analyzed

parapsychology recordings with anomolous haunting sounds investigated as spirit voices

Backmasking is a recording technique in which a message is recorded backward onto a track that is meant to be played forward. It is a deliberate process, whereas a message found through phonetic reversal may be unintentional.

Egyptian carvings misinterpreted as depicting helicopters

is a species of crab native to Japan, with a shell that bears a pattern resembling a human face – an example of the phenomenon of pareidolia – which is interpreted to be the face of an angry samurai, hence the nickname samurai crab. The crabs are named after the once powerful Taira clan which dominated medieval Japan, commonly known as the Heike. It is believed that these crabs are reincarnations of the Heike warriors defeated at the naval Battle of Dan-no-ura as told in The Tale of the Heike. While the crabs are edible, they are not eaten by most Japanese.

thumb|The Mona Lisa with DeepDream effect using VGG16 network trained on ImageNet

former building in Kaliningrad, Russia

non-psychotic disorder after a previous use of drugs

perception of a man’s face or figure in the moon

Mars crater

thumb|A Buddhabrot iterated to 20,000 times.|313x313px The Buddhabrot is the probability distribution over the trajectories of points that escape the Mandelbrot fractal. Its name reflects its pareidolic resemblance to classical depictions of Gautama Buddha, seated in a meditation pose with a forehead mark (tika), a traditional oval crown (ushnisha), and ringlet of hair.

Corystes cassivelaunus, the masked crab, helmet crab or sand crab, is a burrowing crab of the North Atlantic and North Sea from Portugal to Norway, which also occurs in the Mediterranean Sea. It may grow up to long (carapace length). The name "masked crab" derives from the patterns on the carapace which resemble a human face (a case of pareidolia), in a similar manner to heikegani. It is the only species in the genus Corystes.

pebble found by early humans, resembles a face

thumb|upright|The so-called "female" and "male" mandrakes, from a 1583 illustration thumb|The flowers of [[Mandragora officinarum]] thumb|A carved mandrake root, 16th or 17th century (Wellcome Collection)

perception or recognition of faces in something essentially different

American conspiracy website

painting by Giuseppe Arcimboldo

painting by Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Kettle perceived to resemble Adolf Hitler

Transvestigation (a portmanteau of transgender and investigation) is a conspiracy theory that asserts that many celebrities and other prominent individuals are transgender (or, conversely, that some openly transgender celebrities are cisgender). Proponents claim to be able to determine the assigned sex of individuals, primarily through photographic and video evidence. The methods used by "transvestigators" are subject to pareidolia and confirmation bias.

images seen by humans on the face of the Moon

vegetable that has grown into a shape not in line with its normal body plan

painting by Giuseppe Arcimboldo