It's not so much a weird observation as me being wildly ignorant, but I was browsing the Bomberman Wiki, and the article on Peace Town from Bomberman Quest mentioned a dog outside the library. A dog? I don't remember any dog...
You mean, this is a dog?
Well, okay, now that I've zoomed in on it for the first time in my life, I can tell what it's meant to be straight away. It's a cute dog resting its head on its paws! But for the longest time...
I seriously thought it was some abstract creature with a big shell and a blobby Kirby-like body, similar to Coney from Party Edition.The pixel defining its ear being the mouth, the nose forming the arm, and somehow interpreting its entire read end as a shell. (In my defence, the only living creatures represented by background graphics are the dog and Kepo, and the manual claimed the latter was a statue, so...)