It never ends.

While looking through my Super Mario Land review today, I noticed this line:

(turtles explode shortly after jumping on them rather than leaving a shell to kick)

Since I know what I'm talking about, I read over that countless times with no confusion. But I just realized today that if you do NOT know what I'm talking about, you might think the turtles are jumping or something. Read it like, "turtles explode shortly after jumping". Now, the next two words might, if you know enough about videogames, clue you in to what I'm talking about, and you'll realize that "jumping on them" is a gerund phrase refering to the act of Mario jumping on the turtles. Or you still might think the turtles are jumping, and have no idea what "them" refers to.

I could rephrase the sentence as "turtles explode, shortly after being jumped on, rather than leaving a shell to kick". I actually almost kind of like the loose grammar of the original version, because I think my natural writing tends to be too formal or pedantic, and the rephrased version re-enforces that (probably because of the passive voice, though "turtles explode, shortly after Mario jumps on them, rather than leaving a shell to kick" or "turtles explode, shortly after you jump on them, rather than leaving a shell to kick", sound too wordy to me). On the plus side, it has exactly the number of syllables as the original, so it doesn't alter the writing's rhythm too much.