In Street Fighter Two what does Ryu say? (NSFW)

The upward punch?
Shoryuken

@ragingloli edit Yes that’s it.
1;32 It sounds like “Whore Mutant” to me. Maybe it is like a Laurel or Yanni thing?

@RedDeerGuy1 “Maybe it is like a Laurel or Yanni thing?”

Sort of. The Laurel/Yanny phenomenon is an aural illusion caused by a low quality sample and normal variations in frequency sensitivity among human beings (much like the dress illusion is caused by a washed-out photo and normal variations in chromatic adaptation among human beings).

But when Ryu says “shoryuken” (which, by the way, means “rising dragon fist”) and you hear “whore mutant,” it is because your brain is trying to force a recognizable pattern onto something foreign. “Shoryuken” is recognized as language, and gets shoehorned into familiar words to make sense of it.

The two phenomena are similar in that both rely on ambiguous sensory input, and both expose gaps in the heuristic devices our brains use when processing data. You probably wouldn’t hear “whore mutant” if the game’s sound quality were better, much like a clean audio file or a properly exposed photo wouldn’t lead to aural or optical illusions.

They are different, however, in that one is the result of the brain passing on incomplete data, while the other is the result of the brain trying to complete the data.