The moire pattern in the thumbnail is pretty nice.
Hmm, not quite as bloated, especially in the nose, as he should be.
That's not a problem.
Just drawing the situation out, even roughly, is already an enormous step forwards from theatre of the mind, and is doing most of the heavy lifting here. It's also not "theatre of the mind," like the original poster is implying. It's a map, just one without grid-spaces or precise distances.
I like that this can be interpreted as implying that Heracles is a Disney villain.
This works for situations where exact positioning isn't too important. When want to have AoE spells, move speed, flanking, and battlefield control, it generally because difficult to ensure that the GM and the players have the same picture of the battlefield. Even just drawing it out roughly can help a lot, but pure theatre of the mind really works best when you only care about distance rather than relative positioning and complex battlefield conditions.
It did the moment Rogue Legacy came out and people who've never even heard of an actual roguelike described it as a roguelike.
Before I went to Paris, I thought the Eiffel Tower was just ugly.
I still think it's ugly, but now I know it also has a quite impressive physical presence when you're basically standing right under it that doesn't really come through in pictures. I still wouldn't want to live near it, though.
I have never played Hypnospace Outlaw, but it sounds like a solid maybe.
That's not really what this meme is talking about.
Almost all games are about mastery in some way, in which you use knowledge to progress, or to make progression easier, but the games listed have knowledge as progression itself, which is different. Imagine if simply knowing how to perform the right jump let you skip straight from the first chapter to the final climb up the mountain, and furthermore that the game expects you to do precisely that, and that's the kind of thing this meme is about.
Lots of knowledge-based progression, sure, but not "render the gameplay redundant" levels of knowledge-based progression. Still, I retract my statement that it shouldn't be on the list.
If your character's starting off at level one, they're really only getting started with adventuring. You can let that be reflected in their backstory.
If you want to play a badass, starting above level 1 is allowed, though probably not recommended for new players still learning the rules of whatever system you're playing.
As a 1e GM, I'd probably allow this, but I'd require you to take the Half-Dragon and Two-Headed templates and put you a few levels behind for it.
Some people really would say "nah, I'd live/I know how to do it safely, but I can't afford the fine."