The funny thing is, when I first saw it, I thought it was like this:
The things in the back were sideways faces, and the bullet was being piloted by a winking, smiling face.
But even before
that, I saw a flying floorplan. The mouth was floor tiles over red carpet. What I can now see is the eye presented itself as a curved, bar-like table to me. Every other shiny highlight was actually furniture, and everything was done on top of tasteful black carpeting.
My friend once saw it as the severed head of a penis, black shark-themed condom still tenuously holding on. My mother thought it was the face of God, come down to smite Mario. She thought everything she saw was God, in the end.
Dear old grampa thought it was a Nazi scheme - Hitler, returned to life and piloting a black, hateful missile that could travel through television sets. He took out his ancient pistol and shot at the TV. He could still see Hitler's face, staring back at him in fury. My grandfather went mad. He pulled a decades-old grenade from his smoking jacket and blew himself and the TV to bits. At the funeral, my grandmother told me, "that thing" - meaning Banzai Bill - "is evil, a shapeshiftin' demon, who come to people in the worst form it can think of". Poor, poor grandmother.
When I finally replayed the game years from then, having been terrified of it my whole life, I suddenly realized the truth - it's nothing more than a goth orange wearing rollerskates, zooming towards our intrepid plumber-protagonist. Boy, did I feel silly!
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