- Today we're getting lost in the best
optical illusions of 2018.
- Let's talk about that.
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- Thank you for being your Mythical best.
And now, let's talk about illusions.
- Let's.
- Webster's Dictionary defines illusion as
something that deceives or misleads.
- Hm. - Or does it?
It does, and the good people over at Illusion of the Year
have just announced their annual list of
top optical illusions of the year so today
we're gonna feast our eyes on them.
- Yes, these optical illusions are created by
genius illusion makers from around the globe
and then whittled down to the best of the best,
and then voted on by the public,
so without further optical ado, it's time for--
♪ Let's get optical ♪
♪ Optical ♪
♪ I want to get optical ♪
♪ This illusion's optical ♪
All right we're gonna lead off with a few of
the runners up and then hit you with the top three
illusions of the year.
Our first runner up is a photo-based tilt illusion.
- Okay. - And it's called
just a tree in winter time.
Have a look.
- Just a tree. - It's just a tree
in wintertime, man.
Don't get so freaking excited.
- All right it's moving out. - As this zooms out,
Link, I want you to tell me,
how would you describe those lines?
- They're wonky.
Going down into the right, then down to--
- [Rhett] You would describe those as wonky lines.
- [Link] It looks like a Donkey Kong kind of, like, vew.
- You know what, Link, those lines are horizontal!
And parallel!
Let's show the next part, the reveal with the red line.
Watch this.
You can see, yes Link,
your eyes have deceived you, my friend.
Here's what's happening.
It appears as though-- - Pretty good.
- That the horizontal rows are angled because the size
of the photos increase and decrease a little bit
and also the background of that photo,
the earth and the ground is tilted a little bit,
so you carry the tilt throughout and it makes it look like
you've got wonkified stuff going on.
- I would call this borderline genius.
- Well and you know what, if you turn the volume up
a little bit, you can hear my uncle saying,
"If global warming is real, why is there snow in winter?"
- Good point, uncle.
Next runner up is called who's chasing whom,
now I got this one, I'm gonna present it to you,
but I'm gonna let the ingenious minds behind the illusion,
Ben Van Buren and Brian Scholl set it up for us.
- I love those guys.
- [Narrator] Ladies and gentlemen, this just in.
Godzilla and Mothra are fighting each other
in the streets of Tokyo.
- What!
(extended yelling)
Did he say?
(chuckling)
- He said the streets of-- - Oh, yeah.
- The T town. - T town.
- Actually there's no optical illusion here,
I just wanted to hear you-- - Oh that's okay.
I can be of service.
- Demonstrate your breath control.
- I could have gone for longer.
- No, I'm gonna pick up this clip from here,
and I want you to tell me as it's playing,
who is chasing whom, Mothra or Godzilla?
Who's doing the chasing?
Let's watch it.
- [Rhett] Blue is chasing red.
- [Link] That's Godzilla.
- Now red is chasing blue. - That's Mothra.
Please use Mothra and Godzilla, those terms--
- [Rhett] Godzilla's chasing Mothra.
Well, it was, it started as Mothra chasing Godzilla,
and then Godzilla said, uh-uh, and started chasing Mothra.
- And now I say uh-uh (laughs),
ain't none of that happening.
- Well of course 'cause it's an optical illusion.
- The red dot stayed completely stationary and the blue dot
was kinda circling around-- - BS!
- The only thing that changed was the background was moving.
- I don't believe it!
- The map behind it, well, watch it one more time.
Look at the red dot.
It doesn't move on the screen.
Just ignore the map.
- [Rhett] Oh you're right. - [Link] See that right there?
And I think what they're really saying,
this is proving a point.
Whenever red and blue think each one is winning in a race,
we're actually all just going nowhere.
- Oh.
So deep, Link.
All right, next is the once upon a time illusion.
- Ooh. - Let's see it.
(soft music)
Hm. - Okay, queen storms left
and right in front of her mirror.
- [Rhett] Yeah, that's what's happening, right?
Yeah you see this one. - Big Bad Wolf hounds
Red Riding Hood diagonally.
- [Rhett] It's a little bit like your red dot blue dot thing
but it's more exciting.
- [Link] Puss In Boots flies like the wind.
Oh yeah, flyin' like the wind.
- [Rhett] He's going in a figure eight.
It just seems so straightforward doesn't it?
Oh Cinderella. - Cinderella sweeps around
the fireplace. - Really it's just
Cinderella's head.
Let's be specific here. - Makes it creepy.
- So you believe all of those things that were being said
to you, right, as I did the first time I saw this.
- I was just reading them off the video.
- Now it seems like they're doing the things
that are described, but Link, they aren't.
They're all moving clockwise in the exact same
circular path.
Look, even Red Riding Hood, even the fox!
Even Cinderella's head.
They're all moving in exactly the same oval pattern.
- What!
- No, you can't do that. - I just can't.
- Don't, it hurts my feelings a little bit
that you even tried. - It actually,
I thought it would feel good but it felt dirty.
- Again, this is the same principle that your red blot,
red bot dot, blue dot--
- Godzilla and Mothra, man.
- Yeah it's basically frames of reference.
You see, we're just stupid humans.
You give us a frame of reference, we're like,
oh yeah, that's exactly what's happening.
We're not computers, people.
- I'm just pure,
and I like to give myself over to the illusion of reality.
- Well by the way, Netflix just ordered 36 more hours
of that video.
(Link chuckles)
Newsflash.
- All right let's move on to this next illusion
called the Dan swing papers.
- I love it when Dan swings.
- Sounds pretty exciting right?
Watch the video and I want you to tell me
how the crabs and other shapes are moving.
- Oh, crabs.
Where are the crabs?
Oh there they are. - Enter the crabs.
All right, what do you see?
- I see crabs--
♪ Going like this ♪
♪ But I've done this enough to know ♪
♪ They're not actually going like this ♪
♪ Going like this ♪
Tell me how it's happening.
♪ No they're not ♪
♪ They're not moving at all ♪
♪ We should do the whole show like this ♪
♪ It would be so fun ♪
♪ Entertaining ♪
- When does Dan swing?
- That's a good question.
Those are his papers, I think that's all it is.
- Okay.
- Pretty interesting.
This is something known as phenomenal phenomemon.
It is the interaction between luminance light
and the edges of static objects which creates
the illusion of motion of those objects.
So if you want a crab to dance,
all you gotta do is shine some light and turn it on and off.
- You can make a dead crab dance if you paint the edges
the right colors.
- Yeah the last time I saw crabs move like that
was when I got a physical.
- Oh.
TMI, Link.
All right, now we're gonna move on to the official winners.
- Oh, can we handle it, Rhett?
- Yeah, the official third place best optical illusion.
- Third place. - (chuckling) Of 2018.
It's called the worms eye view illusion.
Okay, don't read the text, it's gonna confuse you.
Which direction are those moving?
- [Link] From the head to the tail of the snake.
- [Rhett] Right, right, right, right.
And now, which direction are they moving now, Link?
- [Link] The opposite way, from the tail to the head.
Unless that's a weird snake where the tail and the head
are opposite of what I know to be tails and heads.
And now it's switching back and forth.
- [Rhett] Okay, Link, I hate to tell you--
- Gettin' pink and green. - But that weird snake
with a weird head that looks more like a worm's anus,
it's not, those are moving--
- You know the way to a woman's heart?
- Yep, through a worm's anus. - A worm's anus.
- I've been there, okay, I've been to a worm's anus
and I lived to tell about it.
But basically what is happening,
this was a little difficult to understand.
I had to read this a number of times.
- I'm sure I'll get it immediately.
- All that's happening is as this color changer
is moving back and forth, it's changing the brightness,
the relative brightness and darkness of the two colors
and the color that is more--
- Is this phenomenal phenomenon?
- Potentially.
The color that is more prominent is perceived
as the foreground color.
They're actually continuing to move in the same direction
the entire time but basically, just changing
which one's dark and which one's light causes your brain to,
you always perceive the more prominent one
to be in the foreground. - Okay.
- Because you're a human, and just like all of us,
you're an idiot who can be easily manipulated.
That's basically all these wizards of illusions,
that's what you should call your frickin' contest,
by the way. - Wizards of Illusions.
WereAllIdiots.com.
- We probably, we'd probably come to it in person
if you called it the Wizards of Illusions.
But I will say that this illusion does not work on me
personally because I don't see snake color.
- That's good, Rhett.
All right, I got the second best optical illusion of 2018.
It's called movement illusion with a twist.
- What? - Let's watch it.
Okay, Rhett, describe what you see.
- [Rhett] Some stuff moving up and to the right.
- [Link] Okay and now when the background starts moving,
what do you see, what about this same image?
- [Rhett] It's all moving to the right.
- [Link] It's starting to drift to the right.
It's not though. - It's drifting.
- [Link] Now here's a new one, what's happening to this one
as it moves to the top?
- [Rhett] It's like a fountain of urine,
going up and expanding.
- [Link] Okay, and then when they flip half of it,
now what starts to happen?
What do you see? - A headache.
(crew laughs)
- [Link] But you see sort of a 3D image right,
and then, you should start to see it
spiraling around itself. - Oh oh oh oh!
- [Link] You see that?
Oh yeah.
- [Rhett] Oh oh, yep.
- It's 3D and it's spiraling.
(Rhett moans lowly) It's not, it's not 3D.
- Giant double helix. - It's not spiraling.
Don't get worked up.
I can tell you're getting worked up.
Don't do it. - I wanna believe, man.
I wanna believe the illusions, wizards.
- You may know this illusion by its original name,
Windows 95 screensaver.
- (chuckles) Yes.
Spent a lot of time staring at that.
- That was second place, y'all.
Windows still relevant.
- Are you (chuckles), you just made it relevant.
Are you super excited, as excited as I am
about the top optical illusion--
- I don't know if I can take it.
- Of the year? - I don't know if
I can handle it.
- I present triply ambiguous object,
which is also how Freddy Mercury refers to himself.
- Okay.
- [Rhett] Okay so you see this--
- [Link] Three different interpretations
when it is seen from three viewpoints.
- [Rhett] Yeah, right now it just looks like
a standard little 3D object, but whoa,
look in the mirror man, looks totally different.
How's that possible?
See where the flag is, it doesn't make sense?
How can it be there?
How can that flag be on two different things?
- [Link] Is that a real mirror?
- [Rhett] Whoa, look at that, there's another one
and it's crazy, it looks so different!
Yes, Link, that is the same object,
and those are just mirrors in the background.
Now we saw-- - Looks like a drawing.
Oh it's real, there's a hand!
Oh crap! - Look at that, look at that.
Look at that, Neal. - What!
- [Rhett] Look at that, look at it, look at it.
- I saw this last year when we did this in 2017!
- Now, yes, you are correctly remembering that we saw
a similar illusion that worked in the same way.
Basically this is a 2D picture and it's placed
on a horizontal surface and then when seen from
slanted perspectives that the mirrors create,
you have to line this up perfectly with the camera.
- Of course. - So that the mirrors
and the cameras-- - Lots of work.
- And your eyes all work together.
Those parallel lines appear vertical and then you perceive
these three different structures and then, ha,
when you put that flag pole on there.
- Ha! - Gives you the illusion
of gravity so it bolsters the illusion even further.
That's the thing you guys don't understand is this year,
they put a flag on it. (crew laughs)
And if everybody had have known the secret,
if we had have gone and told all the wizards the secret
that if you wanna bolster your illusion,
just put a flag on it, we wouldn't have had to wait
to 2018 to see something this phenomenal.
- But you know, when it comes to illusion wizardry,
there are no winners and losers.
We're all just idiots.
- (laughs) That's right.
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