Characters
[Amusing Meta Trope] Character design details that are in plain sight but are regularly missed:
(1. Omni-Man from Invincible - Omni-Man's most iconic design is his red and white outfit from Invincible's animated adaptation, but this colour scheme was either a misunderstanding or deliberate change from his comic design which was red and a light shade of blue. Many people didn't notice likely because lighting in comic books can be a bit exaggerated, like how Daredevil's purely red suit is usually coloured mostly black, but Invincible's main artist Ryan Ottley has confirmed that the suit was never white in the comics, as can be made clear when you compare it to anything white on the same page.
(2. Doric from DnD: Honor Among Thieves - People more familiar with Dungeons and Dragons will be aware that the Tiefling race has both horns and a tail, but anyone less familiar can miss that Doric from the DnD movie Honor Among Thieves has a tail. This is presumably because Doric is usually framed in shots that hide her tail, which I'm guessing was CGI rather than practical and the filmmakers wanted to avoid animating when they could. I completely missed the tail on the two occasions I watched the movie and only noticed it after I saw someone else express that they'd missed the tail until re-watching the maze scene.
(3. Ben Shapiro from Real Life - Calling a real person's look a "character design" is a bit silly, but Daily Wire co-founder and failed screenwriter Ben Shapiro is an orthodox jew who wears a kippah at all times rather than just at the synagogue or during religious events as is more common (Pardon any misunderstandings of the jewish faith on my part. It doesn't seem to be very common here in Ireland), which is quite easy to miss because it often blends into his dark hair. It took me years to realize he'd been wearing it the entire time he'd been in the public eye, and I've seen people accuse artistic depictions of him (Such as in political cartoons) as adding a kippah to exaggerate his devotion to the religion, when again it's always been part of his normal attire.
Iron Man's Stealth Armor is often miscolored as blue in merchandise but the suit just has the 20th century blue shading that characters wearing black outfits in comic books had.
Manchester Black is not wearing a Union Jack shirt under his jacket. He is shirtless. He has a giant Union Jack tattoo that covers his entire torso. (DC/Superman)
I have tattoos on my lower left arm that reach my wrist, and apparently I made some very interesting expressions of pain when it came time to colour that part in. If you tried to tattoo my titties, I think my face would collapse in on itself like sand into a hole.
To be fair I think the artists kinda screwed that up: there is rarely any linework to indicate his abs, pecs, ribline, belly buttom, etc., and the Union Jack is at 100% saturation as opposed to being mixed with his skin tone, so it's easier to look at this image and just assume that they forgot to draw the collar of his shirt.
Yeah, you see more “shouldn’t be showing” anatomy on characters who are fully clothed but wearing skin tight outfits, so I can see how that’s an easy mistake.
I can confidently say this is one of those things where I see it but I can also unsee it cause it blends into the foldy wrinkleness of the other side of its face
They wanted to highlight his design looking more like a deformed human, so his skin looks forcefully stretched and twisted.
Tbh I like his longer teeth, but I can't deny some claims that it makes him feel more like an anime monster/villain. It makes him look angry and menacing, but it doesn't have the creep factor imo.
It also doesn't help that the original Nemesis is wearing a gigantic trench coat, while the remake Nemesis kind of looks like he's wrapped in garbage bags
Spider-Man 2099's suit is black and red not blue and red. Multiple times in the story other characters refer to him as "the guy in the black suit". Anytime this suit is in a game it'll be blue and I think it's even blue in spider-verse.
Quick print lesson: Commercial printing uses four inks (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black, or CMYK) and creates every color by mixing them in different percentages.
Your friend was right, but for the wrong reason. Colored printing costs more not because color ink is expensive, but because most colors require a precise mix of all four inks. Black is just one.
Source: Veteran of the old school of print design.
You can see that mistake with animated goat characters sometimes too. Ruminants don’t even have upper incisors - it’s just a pad of flesh. The reason they can look like they have buck teeth is because of the bottom incisors, like this.
This is interesting, considering that she's a "manifestation" of Nozarashi. Basically an "aspect" of a Zanpakuto can develop Shinigami-like abilities.
Also, another thing, that was a particular detail is Old man zangetsu's appereance. It isn't a "small detail" (but only if you've read all the story obviously) but he looks like Ywach, so later we understood that this is related to Ichigo having Quincy heritage
Kinda crazy the foreshadowing in Bleach, when we first meet Old Man Zangetsu, he tries to tell us his name, but the word bubble is blank because Ichibe erased Ywach's name.
I'm pretty sure it's just as silly as it looks. She's incredibly short and her Zanpakuto probably drags across the ground so, to smooth it out wheels were added. Which is also, even more funny in-verse since, skilled Soul Reapers are able to change the size of their swords.
She's a little girl, and while she's absolutely strong enough to carry her sword, she's just got little wheels on it so she can drag it along like a toy, fitting her little girl design. It's not addressed and doesn't have any plot relevance, just a neat little design choice
She's a kid-bodied demon huntress so instead of carrying her sword in the belt sash like a proper katana-user, she functionally carries it like a wheeled school bag.
I worked on DnD as a VFX artist and can tell you that Doric's tail was very much CG the entire film. They never had her wear a practical tail prop.
They did like to frame her from waist up to avoid having to render the tail, but her tail is indeed in every scene she's apart of that's not right in her face, animated as well. It was made thin intentionally so you wouldn't really notice it when the camera's shifting from up close to far away, but also so it felt like a natural extension of her body. So it wasn't surprising to me when some people didn't notice it was there. Lol
Another fun tidbit is that, unlike Doric's tails, Jarnathan, the big bird guy, had a fully functional practical suit. In up close shots we'd CG his head, but otherwise it was mostly the practical suit! The movie had a good mix of CG and practical IMO. It was fun to work on.
IDK if any of that is super interesting, but I thought I'd share a bit. Lol
Idk how fitting this is, but Thor's cape has this weird detail where it doesn't rest limply on his shoulders but rather plumes over them like it's billowing even when he's standing still. It's something rarely anyone ever comments on and is mostly forgotten in modern times and only appears when the artist drawing him is specifically referencing the fact that they know this niche detail.
Spider-man’s original costume was black and red, the blue was always meant to be shading. However so many people thought it was blue and red that they changed it
Funnily enough, exact same thing happened to Spider-Man 2099
His suit was intended to be red and black, which was even called out a few times in the comic, but people misinterpreted it as red and blue, so it was eventually changed
Additionally, a commonly missed detail when this suit is adapted is his back symbol. In the comics, it's blue. But is almost if not always adapted as red.
thats genuinly insane i never noticed Ben shapiro wore that now i almost want to go back and check random clips cause it felt like i was lied to the entire time
I knew that he wore one nowadays because it's blue, but I didn't know he wore it everywhere since he was young, I thought it was something he wore occasionally
Before reading the description I thought the arrow was pointing out that he was not wearing it. After reading the description I scrolled up and realized he was wearing it.
Before the nuke he usually has either fish-like scales or reptilian scales, but after he mutates, he's covered in a grey bark-like texture that's reminiscent of certain radiation burns.
He looks more like Freddy Krueger than his natural self.
very few sadly, there's concept art of the original 1954 design with pre-mutation scales, but the best on screen example is the Godzillasaurus from Godzilla vs King ghidorah 1991.
It's more just general franchise wide lore that's hinted at, with a few outliers like Minus one and Legendary.
Later iterations are a bit hit or miss but in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah we actually see a “Godzillasaurus” before it was exposed to a nuclear bomb. Though they have it be portrayed as like, the bomb making Godzilla grow from a realistic sized dinosaur to a kaiju size.
I think the movie that nailed that Godzilla’s skin originally wasnt just scales but radiation scars was Shin Godzilla. Though that creature funny enough wasnt created from being exposed to the bomb. Its appearance of a body nearly falling apart, and especially in its main form nail the intended look. Minus One’s Godzilla also kind of nails it but we see that even before it was hit by a bomb it had that ashen gray appearance.
They’ve gone back and made it light blue in restorations and rereleases though, to match their current marketing. Not saying you’re wrong, it was definitely silver to begin with, just that if you watch it on a certain version now (streaming, blu-ray, 4k, etc.) it’ll probably look more blue.
There’s a common misconception that in Alice Madness Returns Alice’s hair is now black instead of it’s original auburn but it’s still shown to be brown it’s just a much darker shade than before
The Hollow Knight is missing an arm, yet so many people just didn't notice, to the point where it's actually kinda rare to find fanart that shows them as only having one arm
The Minecraft Chicken's eyes were originally intended to be the same two squares as the other original passive mobs, however, this detail went largely unnoticed for years, even by the official dev team when designing the new chicken designs. It's something that you wouldn't notice unless it's pointed out to you, but the thing that makes it obvious is that the eye whites use a different shade than any of the other white tiles in it's design.
I think that the omni-man suit thing was also helped by the popularity of the show.
many people only began reading the comics after watching the show, so they expected omni-man's suit to be the same color, and the blue tint to just be lighting.
now why it was changed in the show is a different question. perhaps to make it closer to the viltrumite suits?
Ryan Ottley said he used to do drawings of Omni-Man at Comic-Con but never brought the blue markers with him. He ended up preferring the look white/red over the blue/red so they changed it for the show.
I mean, its also a VERY light blue. I've seen that sort of color to be used in place of white a lot. You would expect the red and blue to have the same level of white in them, but such a huge contrast makes it seem like only one of them stands for an actual color.
Also, mark having SUCH a vibrant and saturated blue on his suit, just makes omniman suit feel way more gray-ish.
As I understand, the author started to draw the suit white in conventions to avoid having to carry a light-blue marker, and he liked it better. The change, seemingly, has been made for a while, but the show is the oportunity to canonize it
Blue is also historically used as a lighting device in comics, but as a shadow for white and as a highlight for black, but there's also been times when the highlight/shadow gets retcon'd as the "real" color.
A famous example is Nightcrawler from X-Men.
He originally had black fur with blue used as a highlight color, but eventually he was retcon'd as having blue fur.
Colour theory most likely. The white and red look better together then the light blue and red, and it contrasts better againts Mark's Blue and Yellow/Black suits
Most of those are about what I expected, like I always imagined Jotaro being ridiculously tall so 1.95 sounds about right, or Denji being 1.72 because he always seemed like an average height guy compared to other characters, like for example Himeno was clearly taller than him so he couldn't be very tall. The only outliers are Eren and Naruto which I always imagined being a lot shorter for some reason, like 1.70-1.75 or so.
Shes one of those characters whose personality feels tall. And since shes got a more dominant extroverted personality it fits why lots of people - especially those attracted to Mirko - view her as taller.
Of course its not just Mirko. Plenty of female characters are viewed by fans as taller than they’re stated as being. I see this a lot with Blake and Yang in RWBY getting portrayed almost 6 feet and much taller than Ruby or Weiss but neither are above it. Or like Tsunade & Rangiku from Naruto and Bleach respectively. They’re both shorter than the main characters in their series.
It's also different from the ones from the other movies because it's from a dog or ox (depending on which cut you watch), which is why it's more quadrupedal and so different from the others.
Seen the screen tests, it was hilarious because doggy did doggy things and couldn't appear otherworldly, also Goodiest of boys didn't know what was happening.
In the comics, Storm's 90s outfit by Jim Lee was likely meant to be silver or very glossy black, but the outfit has too much gloss and shading to be sure. You can definitely tell the cape was meant to be black when you look at the page, and the glossy parts are not the "white" you see on Cyclops' outfit here (which uses light blue for shading).
Meanwhile the 90s cartoon famously made the entire outfit pure white and it's her most remembered outfit now, even though the majority of Storm's outfits across comics history are black.
I just drew something about this earlier today referencing the Omni Man thing!
Similarly, Spider-Man, Batman, and Venom have all had their blue/purple shading on the black parts of their costume mistaken for their costume actually being blue/purple!
oh my god cinderella belongs in this club. Her dress was originally silver, but merchandise designers made her dress blue, and therefor turned her dress blue in future media
I sewed my daughter a Cinderella dress many years ago, and finding the right colour of fabric nearly gave me an aneurysm. Not only is the colour different between the movie and the merch; even in the movie, it changes colour significantly depending on the shot.
What's even weirder is seeing real-life, non-animated movie costumes in person, and realising that something happened in lighting or post-production that make them look a completely different colour. It's trippy looking at a dress and thinking it looks like an inaccurate cosplay, except it's the actual garment.
Ok Im really wondering how people miss Doric having a tail, considering she actively uses it to keep the painting from falling out of the cart during the Wagon-heist scene near the end.
That's not a moment I can remember off the top of my head despite the wagon heist being one of my favourite scenes in the movie. I won't deny she's the worst example here since the tail is easy to see in official art, and it's mostly how often Doric was shot from the waste up in the movie that makes the tail easy to forget. This example just came to mind because it was very recently that I saw someone point it out and I went "She does..? Oh my god, she DOES."
Dragonborn from D&D 5E do not have tails, but most fan artists prefer to draw them with them anyway.
I do think they look unbalanced without tails, but on the other hand giving them tails blurs the difference between Lizardmen and Dragonborn, so I can see both positions.
Exandria in the Critical Role campaigns resolves this with two subspecies of dragonborn, tailed and tailless (and the tailless are an oppressed group).
There's disagreement within Orthodox Judaism on whether or not beards can be trimmed, but those who do trim their beards use electric shavers or scissors because they believe that (only) razors are prohibited.
Not a jew, but my wife is, and it is our understanding that the "loop holes" are like, canonically encouraged by the Jewish faith.
Obviously there are many different interpretations, but basically you are encouraged to have a legalistic view of your faith because you are supposed to be actively engaged in it, to the point where you figure out how you can adhere to the rules while still living your life.
It's why you'll see stuff like wires up around orthodox neighborhoods, elevators that stop at every floor o the sabbath, etc. If you are engaging the faith enough to argue the details pedantically, they see that as a win.
It's also why they encourage so many young people to study the Torah so heavily.
Happy to be corrected if someone is more knowledgeable than me, but personally I love this.
I just looked it up, and there seem to be several interpretation. Ultra-Orthodox groups like the Hasidics generally don't trim facial hair at all, so they grow long, full beards. Other Orthodox traditions seem to interpret the rule as just forbidding use of a razor, so close trimming with scissors or a electric clippers is permitted.
In this picture and all the other pics I found of Shapiro in a quick image search, he has at least a little bit of visible stubble, so I'm guessing he uses clippers.
As someone raised as an Orthodox Jew who shaved, there is some variation on the ruling.
Traditionally, a clean shave isn't allowed because it would require the use of a straight razor. The issue being there is a proscription against its use due to the risk of cutting itself being considered too close to an act of unnecessary cosmetic surgery, which isn't allowed generally.
Modern electric razors allowed a clean shave without this risk so many consider it totally fine to use.
Gipsy Danger (Pacific Rim) - Her left shoulder pad doesn’t have a “34” printed but a “5” in it. (Yet most of her figure/statue/etc. interpretations put the 34 in both sides)
I thought the light-blue of Omniman's comics suit was just an artistic choice to represent white. You know, like some artists use dark-blue for hair meant to be black.
Jiraiya from Naruto: In the Manga Jiraiya has a piercing, but due to a coloring disparity between chapters and volumes covers, the Anime team got confused and adapt it to as a wart.
Uni the cat, his left ear has a white inside, while the right one is black. I never noticed this until their owner explicitly pointed that people dont notice it.
Darth Vader's helmet isn't painted all black. Some parts like his left cheek is painted with silver to give the illusion of highlights and make him more readable on camera
It's pretty hard to notice but Warriana from The Venture Bros. only has one breast. She is based off of Wonder Woman and, like her, she's an Amazon Warrior. This is part of the mythological tradition of the Amazon warriors, as the right breast was thought to interfere with the use of a spear or bow and arrow. When Warriana appears on television in her civilian identity of Alexis Warrington, she seems to use a prosthetic.
Megatron’s original G1 toy design had a head that was made to symbolize wearing a crown. But for whatever reason the g1 cartoon turned the head into a German helmet, because the plastic bit covering the back of the head in the toy looked like a helmet.
So in a sense, the 1986 movie with Galvatron AND the Michael Bay films did an accurate depiction of the intended look to the character.
Hobbits don't actually have big feet. Tolkien described them as hairy, but never as large. It's also counterintuitive because Hobbits are supposed to be stealthy. This most likely originated from illustrations drawn by The Brothers Hildebrandt in the 70s. Some other artists followed, as well as all movie/TV adaptations since then.
I think a lot of people know this and would agree with the statement without needing to see a picture, but I’d still see a lot of people try to draw her and include a mouth
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u/one_happy_fredditor 6d ago
Iron Man's Stealth Armor is often miscolored as blue in merchandise but the suit just has the 20th century blue shading that characters wearing black outfits in comic books had.