Select one or two fellow Dopers who use an avatar on this site—the more obscure the image, the better. (No picking yourself!) Then show off your smarts by identifying the subject of the image. Or alternatively, come up with a humorous misinterpretation of it.
@Frodo uses an image of Frodo Baggins from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I, a 1990 role-playing computer game by Interplay. This I know because I used to play the game incessantly, though it was too difficult for my seventh-grade self, and I never succeeded in making it out of the Shire.
@Northern_Piper is clearly a green sperm whale receiving acupuncture.
For a long time I thought @ParallelLines’ avatar was that of a campfire, but it’s actually the face of some hideous frog-like creature with Yosemite Sam eyebrows.
Heh. I have mentioned what/who it is in a couple of threads, most recently the Cat Avatar one I believe, but it is certainly somewhat obscure. I’ll give a hint if you don’t want to look up other threads: the eyebrows are actual flame!
My favorite identified avatars are of course, @Johnny_Bravo, although it could be some weird triangle torso alien from Planet HairGel9.
My next semi-obscure identification would be @silenus, with their OotS “Thing in Darkness”.
My favorite mis-identified avatar is @Northern_Piper, although I belong to the mutant hummingbird/mosquito hybrid faction.
Exactly!, it was the first thing that came to mind when avatars were enabled, I played the game incessantly too, but I was 15, (and reading LOTR more or less at the same time).
I had trouble moving pass Rivendel, but because you needed the game manual (I had adquired the game through thorougly argentinian means and thus did not have the manual) to see what they were saying when they asked “Are you going to carry the ring Y/N?”, and didn’t know I had to press “Y”. (the game just said “read paragraph xx in page xy”)
I finally solved the puzzle by pressing each key in sucession until the game let me continue the Quest, thankfully the Y letter is before the N in QUERTY keyboards.
I appreciate @Shoeless’ avatar, which is the cover from Joe Jackson’s Look Sharp album. You have to both know the album and know who Shoeless Joe Jackson is to understand the significance.
How about all the avatars that are actually famous people? Sometimes it’s hard to tell since they are so small, but off the top of my head I think I’ve identified:
Can confirm it’s Hunter S. Thompson, one of my friends in Facebook has the same avatar and I always get confused when I see @Whack-a-Mole’s posts: “What’s Horacio doing in the Straight Dope?”
It’s a student piece, and a bit of a joke on his part. Drawing skeletons was standard art practice (and still is - my daughter’s doing them in her art classes now). The cigarette, however, is not.