I'm not exactly sure what happened here.

When I scroll across the river to enter level 3 I collide with the tektite and am bounced into the armos statue when I enter the dungeon door something happens....

Yup, that is well known, i do not know the reason why it occurs, but happens when touching Armos at times.

I have seen this too. I know mathguy86 has gotten it, IIRC he knows how.

The specific cause is having two different palette changes called on the same frame. In this case, a palette change is called on the frame an Armos goes live and moves and another is called by entering a dungeon staircase.

and that causes the sprites to swap with something I recently loaded like the old woman by the river I assume?

Sprites are sorted a certain way in the ROM and the sprites are called based on if you are in a dungeon or overworld. So it's calling the overworld sprites instead of dungeon sprites.

ah ok that makes sense thanks Eunos!

I had my suspicions that Brandon's cart was possessed, and now it's summoning overworld sprites to the underworld? Possession confirmed! Haha

Seriously though, is there a log anywhere with all the known bugs/glitches? I bombed a manhandla earlier and got 3/4 of its appendages. I could have sworn the thing was way slower than it should have been. I easily killed the last one with the sword.

Manhandla gains one speed up stat on every frame that an appendage dies. If you kill three of them on the same frame he only gets one speed up.

wow thats an awesome bit of knowledge thank you!