Looking at the photos from 1976, 1998, and 2001, they all feature this certain "Face on Mars". This "face" is just a rumor, because it's not actually a face! It's a landform! The landform is a Martian mesa or butte that is common around the planet Cydonia. The shadows formed around the mesa makes it appear as if it's actually a real life Egyptian head.

Judging by the ways the conspiacy theorists said it might be an evidence that life exists on Mars, and saying NASA is hiding it is just wrong. The theorists still don't have enough evidence to prove it is a real life face, and that it was created by aliens. NASA actually does research, not them (using fake facts), and that NASA would never do such a thing.

Yes, the face did appear on television, books, magazines, a movie, and haunted a checkout line for 25 years, but this doesn't mean it is a real face. The later photos (1998, 2001) would look different than the 1976 one because it (the mesa) changed too much, and that it was revealed in a JPL web site in 1998 that it was indeed a natural landform, and it reminded fellow Chief Scientist Jim Garvin of a natural butte that takes the shape of a lava dome in the Snake River Plain in Idaho. In conclusion, it's a landform, not a face after all.