[quote=Hank]
Speaking of avatars and signatures, I still don't understand why people have avatars that are a cropped, smaller version of their signature (see Kuro, Toellner). What's the point of the avatar? You have the exact same, bigger, sometimes even animated picture in your signature. 
[/quote]

So that it matches.

Then again, if you want a matching set, you COULD just get a different avatar/sig of something belonging to the same movie, book or whatever so that it isn't repetitive. But when you only have one piece of art, you need to resort to getting a smaller/cropped version. Or you could just get a different set.