You didn't know what to make of the Fake Animalarians.
but you can only do it once, unless you stay up way, way past your bedtime.
what is a Fake Animalarian? FAYK ann-im-ull-AIR-ee-yun
Fake Animalarians look like toy animals, but they're really weird looking! (They aren't very good toys, either.)
Fake Animalarians are dimensional entities that resemble Animalarians, but appear to be missing something. They dwell within the Animalarian Zoo, and form as a byproduct of the Animalarian's shift between dimensions. Like regular Animalarians, Fake Animalarians are holographic and intangible; unlike their fully dimensional counterparts, their behaviour is completely passive and indifferent, and when they move, they do so with a slight and tesselating "smear". Their divergence from regular Animalarians is more than just cosmetic; lacking one of their full counterparts' dimensions, Fake Animalarians are unable to leave the Zoo.
Fake Animalarians relate to the idea of incomplete abstractions, and the recognition of absense. Although a drawing of a cat does not look "incomplete" when it is missing the cutaneous marginal pouch of the ears, it might appear "uncanny" without eyes, or with a smooth space instead of a muzzle.
Yeah, they're sort of strange. They don't really have any personality or "presence" to me, sort of like a toy that isn't anthropomorphized. Sometimes you might look at a rabbit-shaped bucket, but you really only see it as a bucket. You're not ignoring the character shape; it is simply not perceived as anthropomorphic.
So, the Fake Animalarians show up as a byproduct between the zoetrope "flipbook" effect, and the fixed stabilty of the Animalarian's body within the Animalarian zoo. Uhmm, I don't know that they can ever leave the presence of the Animalarians.
Huh. I said that word too many times. "Animalarian". Now it sounds funny.
They might just be a phenomenal effect, or they might play some role in anchoring the Animalarians to their home dimension during their intersection with the lower planes. I only really saw them once; everything since has been extrapolated from that initial encounter.