Cross Your Eyes To See Him!

Richard Borwick discovered another phenomenal optical illusion this morning. Sure, we’ve seen the effect in action couple of times before, but then again – how often do you come across incredibly original optical illusions? Not often I guess… Still, what I’ve found so great about his discovery is how innocent it looks at first glance. Almost as if there was no evidence of the hidden illusion it holds… But wait! What if you blurred your vision just for a second? Go cross-eyed, blur your stare or simply step few feet back from your monitor. Now what you see? It has to be magic, right? Just when you’re done, be sure to share his identity…

130 Replies to “Cross Your Eyes To See Him!”

  1. Stepped about 4 feet back and could see him, but couldn’t identify him. My vision is quite bad so it looked like a blurred man.

    1. Turn your head left and right continously with your eyes on the image, better than crossing them, I think.

  2. I wish you would have a “solution” page where, it we don’t get it we can go to find out what it is we aren’t seeing.

    I only see lines in this illusion. I couldn’t figure out what the comic tree was, and numerous others.

    Very frustrating.

    1. Hey Christine,

      you should be able to see the solutions inside the comments, more often than not they contain images, links and text solutions by our fans! for example, in this pots TomT has added the picture you should be able to see…

    2. hey, i just wanted to tell you about the comic tree one. If you look at the leaves on the tree, they form the moustache and hair of the guy on the left and the twigs make up his face. I hope this helps!

  3. Same here, had trouble…then stepped about 4 feet back and the figure becomes much more evident, but could not identify who it is…I know it’s silly, but my first impression was that it looks like Dr. Smith from TV’s Lost in Space.

    1. I have it on widget too, now that it’s on this site, and I can see it clearly. The original I saw had the instruction “shake your head”, which Vurdlak wisely deleted, as I shook my head to see the image until I was quite sick. Now I notice that I can see the image clearly if I look at it from a long way away (from my kitchen to my study), but the larger it is the more obscure.

  4. Could be Neil Patrick Harris, but it could also be country singer Randy Travis, or maybe 100,000 other people.

  5. It could be NPG, or it could be JFK, or any number of people. I’m with Christine and Scarlett: Who is it supposed to be?

  6. I think it’s Doogie. I saw him if I squinted my eyes. When you say blur or look cross-eyed I was thinking stereogram.

  7. A male bust in a suit, shape of the head resembles Abraham Lincoln but it’s just a hunch, nothing sure. Just blurring is not very helpful – it’s the changing of visin from clear to blurry back and forth that enables to see the picture for a short moment. In small enough pictures you can see the outlines of a man without blurring your eyes, but it’s too small and blurry to recognize this way.

  8. Its definitely the guy from “How I met your mother”, although I never watched it, but I’ve seen the ad like a 1000 times.

  9. well.. it seems a man, very good illusion, but can’t recognise hime.

    When i read comments, the background seems to be moving.. it’s a very good optical illusion, but now i feel like i have to puke..

  10. Once I stepped back, could see it a bit clearer. First person that came to mind was Rick Astley… Is this a rickroll? =P

  11. Doesn’t look like NPH to me, looks like Connery as bond, but every time I try to look more carefully to see who it is my eyes focus and I can’t see it again.

  12. I couldn’t make him out until I put the wrong glasses on. Is he the brother of Charlie from ‘Two and a Half Men’?

  13. The image appears also if you drag the mouse pointer from right to left over the picture, and follow the pointer with your eyes.

  14. Shrink the image right down and the figure becomes reasonably clear.

    I can’t actually recognise him. Perhaps Feynman?

  15. Held it at arms length (I have long arms) does look like Neil Patrick Harris for lack of better visage, illusion is clear at a distance, will pop right at you. Not like those bogus illusions that only 6 people can see.

  16. when I’m focusing the image, I think I saw someone behind the image..seems like a guy, but I’m not sure coz i’ts blur…hmm…

  17. When i get down my head to pick up my pen,then i just see the screen and seen him….and he is neil patrick harris…..

  18. Works better if you zoom the browser window out.

    I got the impression that it was supposed to be Neil Patric Harris too, but I’m not sure.

  19. It’s either Hamilton Burger from Perry Mason or the waiter in Magical Mystery Tour that keeps piling the spaghetti on the fat woman’s plate, I’m not sure. Maybe another hit will make it clearer…

  20. This is the photo from the official Barney Stinson Facebook page. The illusion, when seen, looks exactly like that.

    [img]https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2980/210/33/68816265924/n68816265924_2110164_4082370.jpg[/img]

  21. It’s mos def NPH. TonyT’s pic is right on. I saw it most easily when looking at the pic from askew. DON’T look at it directly in front of your screen. Move to the side, or angle your monitor up or down. ANYWHERE but straight on.

  22. The illusion also works well if you just drag the window around your screen. I was able to view the man from 12-18 inches away from my monitor. Nice illusion.

  23. It looks like NPH, if you tilt your screen top away from you at about a 45 degree angle, you don’t have to squint or look cross-eyed and it comes through really clear.

  24. Very Strange!!!
    With my glasses off I can see the illusion… but not well enough to tell who it was (it did look a bit like Maxwell Smart though).
    With my glasses on the illusion vanishes.
    A DOUBLE ILLUSION so to speak.

  25. The truth is, you would only guess Neil Patrick Harris if you know who Neil Patrick Harris is!

    I have never heard of him :-(

    So it was a bit anoying

  26. I can’t see him, leaning the screen back seems to work a little… not much more than when its in icon view…

    I thought it was Doogie Howser
    But like I said I can’t really see it.

  27. Yeah forget about… its like those blots that were famous a decade ago… took me all day no really all day… about half the day was spent looking at it with my sister, and sometimes mom pointing out different things in the picture… so I could mentally draw it… final about five minutes before supper I seen it… the first and last time, it hangs now where I walk by (facing, than taking a corner) at least five times a day, I still don’t see it… I try every once and a while…

    This type is just not my game.

  28. Who is he? Oh well, the artist did this by darkening some of the white lines to create the picture. Eh… now I’m trying to do something like this. XD

  29. took another look and it does look like it’s Neil Patrick Harris…but I’m going for Rick Astley.

    1. The key is in the white spaces – there’s an almost imperceptible grey tone among them. Try to copy the picture to a paint/photo editor and turn the black bars to white. BTW, you get better perception when viewing from ~30 degrees from any of it sides.

  30. Obviously Barney from HIMYM. From the episode where Robin tries to get a bad picture and it always ends up like this

  31. I am an older guy and wear readers. The only way I could see it was to back up with my readers on and it came through clearly!

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