9 years after it aired, fans discover a Dr Who episode absolutely copy-pasted a Skyrim dragon PNG from a wiki for some background VFX

Human beings are incredible at recognising patterns—which is an evolutionary reflex. See, we're hunter-gatherers, so being able to recognise the pattern of an edible plant against the pattern of an inedible one could mean the difference between life and death. Well, at least, it used to. Now we sit around and play videogames.

But those instincts are still kicking up there in our noggins, as proven by user guiltyassassin56 on the r/Skyrim subreddit who, almost a decade after it was released, matched a random background prop in a short scene of a Dr Who episode—season 10, episode 1 to be specific—to a random JPEG of a Skyrim skeleton.

Skyrim Dragon Skeleton in Doctor Who S10 Ep1 ‘The Pilot’ from r/skyrim

Well, I say "random", it's actually the image for the Skeletal Dragon on the Elder Scrolls Fandom wiki and, coincidentally, the first image result I got when searching "skeletal dragon" on Google. Whether that was true nine years ago is anybody's guess, since the episode was released in 2017. Just to be sure it was from here, I double-checked and the dates do, at least, line up: The page was made way back in 2011.

Now, you might be a skeptic. You might say "Harvey, they look similar, but where's the proof they're really the same?" Well, here's an overlay from user Lee993 of the tail that's pretty compelling:

Comment from r/skyrim

But as a journalist, it's my job to be super-duper certain. So I went ahead, rolled my sleeves up, opened Clip Studio Paint, and got to transforming, producing this .gif. When I posted it to our work Slack as further proof, my colleague Joshua Wolens stated: "a deep part of me needs the X-Files theme to play over this".

I didn't get as perfect of a line-up as Lee993, but the exact positioning of the head, ribs, blown-out chest cavity and wing pretty much cinches it.

This isn't super uncommon for VFX artists in TV series—it's not even uncommon for videogames. Back in 2024, War Thunder accidentally released official art with the debris of the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster copy-pasted in the background. Which is a little worse than a beleaguered VFX artist on their nth cup of coffee trying to find a monster skeleton for a background shot.

Still, it's a good reminder that we were the apex predators of the animal kingdom, able to see patterns anywhere—it's just, y'know. Now we use it for nerd trivia instead of life-or-death herb selection. How far we've come.