but that tail rotor appears to be pointed a bit backwards - is that a new design to get some thrust from it, or an imagment of my figmentation?
The first prototype was wrecked in a ground accident. Although the prototypes were built with a wide-span, low-mounted symmetrical tailfin, flight control problems led to refitting the second machine with of a distinctive new tail assembly, with the tailfin canted to the left by 20 degrees and an inverted-gull asymmetric tailplane mounted on the right. This change was used in production S-80s.
Believe you fellows are talking about two different things.
AC seems to be talking about rotating the plane of the tail rotor about the vertical axis (looks like that to me as well, but I suspect it may be barrel distortion from a very wide-angle lens, especially since the tail rotor is a tractor), while
pohm1 seems to be talking about rotating the plane of the tail rotor about the longitudinal axis (which has been done in a number of helicopters since the S-80 / CH-53E).
Most of the large pilots of helicopters with whom I am acquainted tend to complain they are unable to visually observe their chord width or stiffness without a mirror.