Misleading Thumbnails refer to a genre of internet images that appear to be something completely different—often something provocative or bizarre—when viewed as a small thumbnail, only to reveal an innocent reality when clicked. This phenomenon gained significant traction on platforms like Reddit, specifically within the r/misleadingthumbnails community founded in 2013. The humor relies on the brain's tendency to fill in gaps and misinterpret shapes or shadows based on low-resolution previews. These memes are widely used to play pranks on unsuspecting users or to celebrate accidental optical illusions that occur in everyday photography, highlighting how perspective can completely change the context of an image.