I remember going to see a friend (a cs grad) and he had BonziBuddy installed on his computer. I asked what it did and he couldn't give me a coherent answer. Then at one point he pressed BonziBuddy to "leave" and the bear dived into the screen and disappeared into a little dot. I asked him what happened expecting a tech laden answer and he said "it went in there" and pointed to where the dot/portal had been.
This odd conversation has always stuck in my mind about the power a little bit of graphics and animation can do to distract users from a bit of code's true intent.