That is very likely my FAVORITE photo of ZQ. It's disturbingly hot (the tongue) plus quite guffaw-worthy. It was also the episode where they finally debunked whether Sylar eats brains or not, which makes the picture even funnier.
And as I said before... People walking around painlessly with prop foreign objects sticking out of them is rather entertaining (for goodness sake, every few episodes of Angel has swords, 2x4s and rebars going through David Boreanaz like a pincushion--it gets hot after a while--that was probably the start of that disturbing fetish). ZQ has a faux kitchen knife sticking out of him there.
And yep, Gabriel's gift is the hunger to know how things work (hence the watches hobby leading to him figuring out how other people's powers work--and I think it's Chandra that tells him it's in the brain--and of course, he gets his drive to want to be "special" from his crazy mother). And when he tries to hang himself for killing his first victim, Noah and Elle interrupt and make him show what he does by making him a monster again. Easily the most interesting character on that show with one of the most well-developed character journeys.
The Sylar disguise becomes so comforting to him that even when he learns he can take powers by empathizing with people, when his identity starts getting messed up by the shape-shifting, he does the brain-slices simply because of it being Sylar's defining behavior.
IMO, there's a reason the writers of Heroes tend to focus on Sylar a lot. He's a sick sociopath with everyone manipulating him, but an interesting one.
Speaking of the Gabriel Gray/Sylar thing being like the evil version of Clark Kent/Superman (it's awesome that Gabriel looks a bit like Clark Kent), there's a fan video based on that aspect which is absolutely amazing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfTDs44-n5c
Star Trek 2009 did a double duty of not only turning me into a Spock fangirl (with a side of McCoy) new and old, but also a Sylar/Heroes fangirl via a delightful marathon.
Speaking of Trek, I just watched TMP and TFF last night. Starting TUC as we speak.