Visual Regression Tests (VRTs) are widely adopted as a mechanism for detecting unintended visual changes in user interfaces. By design, VRTs operate on rendered pixel output, and the prevailing assumption is that they catch stylistic regressions such as layout shifts, color mismatches, and font alterations. We conduct an empirical analysis of 307 pull requests (PRs) from 103 GitHub repositories that incorporate VRT results via Chromatic, comparing them against 299 PRs that contain image attachments but no VRT (Visual PRs). Quantitatively, VRT-PRs exhibit a 5.3% higher acceptance rate, a 3.8 times longer median resolution time, 10 times more discussion comments, and 1.75 to 4.5 times larger code changes than Visual PRs.

VRT results are typically shared around the midpoint of the review process, sustaining ongoing discussion rather than serving only as a final check. Through a card-sorting analysis of 189 VRT-flagged issues, we identify seven defect categories: Layout (39.7%), Appearance (27.5%), Color (14.8%), Text (9.5%), State (6.9%), Test (6.3%), and Image (4.2%). A substantial fraction of these detections correspond to functional defects whose visual symptoms reveal underlying problems, including undefined component state (13 cases), contents disappearance (17 cases across multiple categories), and visually imperceptible regressions (5 cases). We further document cases in which VRT detected visual regressions originating from code changes in seemingly unrelated files, exposing non-local effects that no targeted test would have been written to catch. These observations reposition VRT from a stylistic verification tool to a detection mechanism for the unintended consequences of code changes, with implications for how VRT should be integrated into the maintenance toolchain.