These celebrities are really hard to recognize by their SNL portraits

When I was in high school I would stay home every Saturday night (that’s what happens when you have no car/friends) and watch Saturday Night Live. It was the show’s golden age of Tina Fey/Amy Poehler/Will Ferrell/Maya Rudolph/Fred Armisen/Seth Meyers/Rachel Dratch/Horatio Sanz/Everyone good. I loved the sketches, I loved the music when I was cool enough to recognize the popular band playing, but most of all I LOVED the glamorous head shots of the hosts and musical guests. No matter how quirky or silly or weird the photo, the celeb in question always had the GLOWIEST skin, the most flawless complexion with nary a wrinkle or under eye circle.

Then I grew up and I learned that Santa Claus/the Tooth Fairy/the Easter Bunny don’t exist and that Photoshop does. That led me to deduce that SNL probably Photoshops the BEJEEZUS out of those portraits and no human’s skin looks that perfect unless that human is five days old. It’s not the most surprising thing in the world. Those portraits that appear before of after commercials appear Warhol-esque, they pop with pop, and reveal the chameleon-like nature of the host. But it is bizarre—how much they appear to alter images of celebrities so they’re particularly hard to decipher out of context.

Recently, Iggy Azalea, who was the musical guest last month, blasted the show for Photoshopping her face. She wrote on Instagram, “I loved the promo pictures but I wish they hadn’t photoshopped all my moles off my face (hey, I like those things!!)”

This is what Azalea really looks like:

And this is what she looks like in SNL-O-Vision:

Of course, Azalea is by no means alone when it comes to being turned into a hard to decipher famous human by the SNL headshot team. Check out Jennifer Lawrence, who is rendered virtually unrecognizable by digital retouching:

Seriously, the reason I know that’s JLaw is because Google told me so, otherwise I would have no clue.

And just in case you think SNL’s photoshopping team just has it out for the ladies, rest assured, they’re very much equal opportunity retouchers over there, just check out what they did to Jon Hamm’s face when he guested. It’s like SNL doesn’t understand that the more five o’clock shadow and under eye circles you let Hamm have THE HOTTER YOU LET HIM BE.

Can you guess who this is? It’s Miley Cyrus, don’t feel bad if you couldn’t figure it out, this game is basically impossible unless you let Google help.

And that one? That’s Tina Fey. But again, no hard feelings if you were stumped.

Charlize Theron! Crazy, right?.

SNL also managed to turn Jim Parsons into an Elijah Wood doppelganger.

If you squint your eyes and think really, really hard about Pitch Perfect you can almost tell that this is Anna Kendrick.

.It’s not that we don’t love disco queen Anne Hathaway, it’s just a look we’d never, ever seen before.

Brittany Snow? Christina Aguilera? Nope, that’s Christina Applegate.

This, you guys, is Channing Tatum. Believe it.

This one took a lot of Googling. Lady Gaga might even have had to do some Googling too.

Here’s a hint, this same comedienne was a few shots up holding a guitar.

Look, it’s not like all this general retouching is the biggest mark in SNL’s book. It’s just bizarre for a comedy show to feature stills that are as weirdly altered as those in a high fashion magazine.

Images , via