If you’re a fan of optical illusions, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve already seen this one. If you use your finger to cover up the gap between the two square tiles, you’ll discover that the colors of what remains are the same. Try it and you will start getting mad at your eyes and brain for tricking you this way.
Since it appears that light is shining on the upper segment, and the lower segment is in shadow, we think that the upper is naturally darker, and the lower is naturally lighter. But, as we can see, they are the same exact color.
Just an Average Brick Wall?
At first glance, this picture appears to be nothing more than a snapshot of a section of a brick wall. But if you look at it long enough, you might see that a small gray area the size of ash on the tip of a cigar is strangely out of place between two bricks.
Stare at it long enough, and you will see the entire cigar. It pops out at you and will not return to appearing to be a shadow between the bricks, no matter how long you gaze at it. If you’re still not seeing it, here’s the spoiler: the cigar is stuck in the bricks as if the brick wall is smoking it. No? Don’t worry. It took me two days too!
It Doesn't Matter How Much You Tilt Your Head
We know what you're thinking: two pictures of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. What could be the trick here? Something hiding among the columns? No, take another look. A long look. There aren't two different pictures here – they're the same picture.
The same exact picture. They're oriented the same, and neither of them is tilted. But how? Surely the one on the right is tilted farther? After careful inspection, no, it isn't. Our best guess is the picture on the left creates a new “starting point” for your vision of the one on the right, so it appears to tilt farther.
Those Tricky Grays
Here is another cool one for you. There is something about the color gray that can trick our brains. In this picture, the tiles labeled with the dots are actually the same color.
The relative darkness of the tiles around the lower dot tile tricks us into thinking it's a lighter color, but if you were to isolate the small sections, you'd see they're the same shade. Our brains are smart enough to understand shadow and light, but we can still be tricked. We wonder if this works with other colors or if it's only gray that will trip us up.
Three Parked Cars?
Aside from the weird motion blur, we just see three identical cars that go from smallest to biggest, right? Wrong, friend. You see, the cars are all the same size. You may scoff, you may laugh, but if you were to place them all in a row at the bottom of the image, they would all have the exact same height.
The trick here is the apparent slope of the road they're on, which makes us think the bigger cars are farther away and, thus, naturally, larger if our brains see them as the same size. In real life, maybe, but in the image, they're copies.