History Main / DepthDeception

* ''VideoGame/{{Superliminal}}'' is a first-person puzzle game ''loaded'' with puzzles that depend on playing with perspective. The various puzzles are based around picking up items, whether near or far, and using the camera's perspective to "adjust" their size.

** Also in "Hurricane Neddy", when the folks want to help Ned rebuild his house, they end up doing a very poor job. One hallway looks normal from a distance, but due to forced perspective it is actually shorter and narrower than it looks.

** ''VideoGame/SuperMario3DLand'' encourages the use of the 3D effect in some sections. Without the 3D effect, forced perspective causes a block that appears to be part of the background may be in the foreground. There are subtle differences, but at first glance, you won't see it.

* Calvin of ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'' used this to surprise his father once; by making the top half of a snowman's head and a few "fingers", he made it look like a giant snowman was peering over a hill at him.

[[folder:Arts]]
* Taking advantage of this is a fairly popular form of modern art, like the page picture. [[http://www.rense.com/general67/street.htm Julian Beever]] is an English artist who is famous for his art on the pavements of England, France, Germany, USA, Australia and Belgium.
[[/folder]]

* Some of the Creator/AdultSwim AdBumpers feature "fake miniature" photography, described below in the Real Life folder.

* Many games for the UsefulNotes/Nintendo3DS use this in at least one instance, making using the 3D feature almost a necessity.

* Used in ''VideoGame/KidIcarusUprising'' in the Labyrinth of Deceit. The effect works remarkably well in full 3D.

* Nina Paley's ''Fetch'' does this repeatedly.

* [[http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20081226 This is not the moon]] in ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'', and is much much closer than it first seems.
* [[http://buttersafe.com/2007/07/26/depth-perception/ This]] ''Webcomic/{{Buttersafe}}'' comic.
* Played with in [[http://www.nerd-boy.net/nbbrowse.php?beg=41&end=50#48 this]] ''Nerd Boy'' comic.

* Frequently used in ''ComicStrip/ThePerryBibleFellowship''.
* [[http://www.dominic-deegan.com/view.php?date=2010-07-16 This strip]] of ''Webcomic/DominicDeegan''.

* [[http://vimeo.com/6782769 Chop Cup]]. Do not adjust your mind, there is a fault in reality.

* A good one in a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py0Q88s33L8 funny cats video]] (at the 1:00 mark), with a chessboard looking like it's in the foreground, while it's big and in the background.

* Several videos seem to show ghosts or other mysterious appearances that are in reality showing a bug crawling across the screen. See [[http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/070621_santafe_ghost.html this page]].
* Tilt-shift (or Perspective Correction) lenses, common on medium- and large-format cameras, can be used to make photos of large scenes [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_faking appear to be miniatures]].

* [[AbbeyRoadCrossing Abbey Road's iconic cover]] was remade on Perspective 3D Street art with ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'' characters at [[http://www.thehighdefinite.com/2012/01/abbey-road-x-peanuts/ Universal Studios Japan]].
* Since the human eye uses both eyes to create a 3D image, using the subtle difference between each eye's perspective, some people who are blind in one eye can't exercise proper depth perception and thus their daily routine could be littered with this trope.
* You don't even have to be half blind. Some people just don't have that kind of depth perception. People would still be able to see depth fine if they keep moving, though. Instead of seeing something at two different angles at the same time, you see it at different angles at different times. The principle works the same.
** The above is evidenced by [[http://youtu.be/Jd3-eiid-Uw this YouTube video]] showing head tracking with a Wii Remote. Because the objects move and obey where they should be in depth, you can get the perception that you're seeing a 3D video, even though it's from a 2D video (and this doesn't require a 3D screen either)
** And the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulfrich_effect Pulfrich Effect]], where viewing a scene moving horizontally with one eye covered with a dark lens causes that eye to lag. The amount of lag is enough that other eye sees a different enough perspective to trick the brain into seeing depth.

* It's been argued that reports of big cats roaming parts of the English countryside, the most famous being the "Beast of Bodmin", may just be normal-sized feral cats -- domestic moggies gone wild -- that look farther away than they really are. Magazine/ForteanTimes regularly combines such sightings and potential explanations for them.

** If we're going into astronomy, we might as well talk about quasars and their red shift. For decades, scientists were unsure whether these strange objects moving away from us were nearby and fairly faint, or as distant as the Hubble Law suggests and therefore brighter than anything else that we have ever experienced. It was only through gravitational lensing from distant galaxy superclusters that we found out just how far away these things really are.
** As for the Moon, the Apollo astronauts had trouble judging the sizes of distant objects because of the way light works in space. While binocular vision is great at short distances, it's relatively useless farther away. For farther objects, we take visual cues from the way air gradually absorbs and disperses light, making distant things look fainter. With no air on the moon, that effect doesn't exist. There is footage of Apollo 16 astronauts John Young and Charlie Duke bounding off to an apparently small nearby rock. And they keep hopping. And keep hopping. Until they're dwarfed by the gigantic rock that they're standing beside.
--->'''Duke:''' LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT ROCK!... [[CaptainObvious The closer I get to it, the bigger it is!]]
** Also, a star's apparent and absolute magnitudes. The ''apparent magnitude'' is how bright it appears in Earth's sky, while the ''absolute magnitude'' is how bright it actually ''is'', corrected for distance.[[note]] Basically, it's what its apparent magnitude would be at 10 parsecs (about 32.6 light-years) away from the star.[[/note]] Apparent magnitudes have been known (approximately) since ancient times; absolute magnitudes had to wait until the mid-1800s, when astronomers' equipment got good enough to measure the distance to stars.
** Constellations look like a lot of similar stars relatively near one another, but most are made up of somewhat dim stars that are coincidentally in the same general direction as much brighter stars much farther away.
* Similar to the jungle example, people who (unconsciously) use things like trees and buildings to judge relative distances often have trouble when placed in environments like the Arctic tundra or deserts; in the right conditions, hills which, to them, appear a short distance away may be many kilometers away, while an apparently distant range of hills could be a small mound a few hundred meters away.
** This sometimes leads hikers to suffer dehydration and exhaustion -- they may think their target destination is much closer than it really is.
** Also can be seen when admiring an island off the coast. How many people have thought, "I wonder how long it would take to swim out there?"
** In good visibility conditions, the coast of France is visible from the nearest landfall in England, around Dover and Folkestone on the Kent coast. Looking out over twenty-one miles of sea offers no visual cues and even large ships at sea appear closer than they are. This might explain why long-distance endurance swimmers might have got the idea -- "Hey, I could swim that!"

* The British journalist John [=McCarthy=], after being imprisoned in Lebanon for several years, lost his depth perception (he had been chained to a radiator, in a tiny room, with a bag over his head). He only realized this after he had driven hundreds of miles to Wales for a holiday (well-earned, one thinks) shortly after his release, and noticed the "funny looking mountains" (actually valley sides, a few hundred meters away).
* An [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_room Ames room]] looks like a pretty normal room, except that one side is smaller but closer than the other. As a result, people, animals, or things moving around the room will appear to grow traveling in one direction and shrink traveling in the other. The aforementioned Tiny-Huge Island room in ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'' is an example of an Ames room.

%%* A hilarious incident in ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'' involving some Japanese investors, as well as a jet pack and a rat suit.

** In a Series 4 episode, Donna Noble sees a wasp hovering just outside the window, only it turns out to be a huge wasp far away but approaching very fast.

** In ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'', the room where you can enter Tiny Huge Island is a T-junction with a painting at the end of each hall, all of which ''appear'' to be the same size when you first enter: the one in the center is normal-sized and non-functional, the one on the left is actually slightly ''smaller'' than usual, and the one on the right is ''gigantic''. The two paintings that actually warp Mario are also set in hallways that use forced perspective, meaning that until you start walking toward one, the images all look the same size. Which is actually quite jarring when first seen. Walk towards the small one and it's MUCH closer to you than it should be, with the hall way going inwards. Walk towards the large one and you're gonna be walking a looooooooooong time.

[[folder:Anime & Manga]]

* ''Disney/TheLittleMermaid'': Scuttle sees Ariel through a spyglass from the wrong end, and shouts to her as if she were far away, even though she is actually a few inches in front of him. When she moves the spyglass away, Scuttle exclaims, "Whoa, what a swim!"

* Some of the Creator/AdultSwim AdBumpers feature "fake miniature" photography, described below in [[AC:Real Life]].

* Used ''extensively'' at [[Ride/DisneyThemeParks]].

* ''Superliminal'' is a first-person puzzle game ''loaded'' with puzzles that depend on playing with perspective. The various puzzles are based around picking up items, whether near or far, and using the camera's perspective to "adjust" their size.

* Used ''extensively'' at [[Ride/DisneyThemeParks Disneyland]].
** This is how the Matterhorn Bobsleds can achieve an impressively tall appearance even though it's actually shorter than Cinderella's Castle: The further up the mountain, the smaller the rocks and trees on it are. This is best demonstrated observing the climbers: Near the bottom, the trees are much taller than a human, but towards the top, they become shorter than the climbers.
** Cinderella's Castle has the stones, windows, etc. get smaller as they go up, so if you reasonably assume they're actually the same size, the castle appears significantly taller than it actually is.

'''Barney:''' Come on in! It's your master bedroom! ''(Ned shuts door)'' Ow! My nose!

* ''WesternAnimation/BobsBurgers'': In "The Land Ship", the citizens of [[ProductionNickname Seymour's Bay]] celebrate a momentous event in the town's history. During the War of 1812, the villagers managed to move the town's only sailing vessel onto the land, tricking a fleet of British troops which arrived that night into thinking the shore was further away than it was, tricking them into running their ships aground.

* ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros Brawl: The Subspace Emissary'': In the cutscene introducing [[{{VideoGame/Pikmin}} Captain Olimar]] and [[VideoGame/FZero Captain Falcon]], the ROB Olimar is fighting made to be huge so that it seems the Captain and his Pikmin are still only an inch tall. Then Captain Falcon shows up then punches out the giant robot.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* A SugarWiki/{{Funny Moment|s}} from the Italian comic ''ComicBook/{{Sturmtruppen}}'', as the sergeant is training the desert troops:

* A traffic reporter, reporting on a slowdown at a local vehicular tunnel, said it was due to a giant spider attacking cars at the entrance. A normal-sized spider had crawled onto the lens of the camera, and quite by chance gave the appearance of a giant spider attacking the cars, thus combining this trope with SugarWiki/FunnyMoments.

* In chapter 24 of ''Manga/DailyLifeWithMonsterGirl'', the harem believes main character Kimihito is doomed to die because of a dullahan's predictions. The final threat is a truck shown in extreme closeup, including the standard "Corner of a vehicle speeds into the frame before a collision" shot. It's actually a remote-controlled toy that comes up to his knee and the dullahan is just a young girl with an overactive imagination and a taste for melodrama.

* ''Superliminal'' is a first-person puzzle game ''loaded'' with puzzles that depend on playing with perspective.

* On ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'', Rick and the Smith family are locating a new planet after Earth is taken over by [[TheFederation the Galactic Federation]]. The first planet they go to looks normal-sized at first, but when they attempt to land on it it turns out that it's barely larger than their ship.

'''Scrooge:''' ...to bad it is just a mural.