Directories showing as files when browsing a Time Machine backup on Windows
When Time Machine makes a backup it only copies changed files and creates links to the older items. AFAIK these are not symlinks, but hardlinks. 

Sample output from Time Machine
23/06/2014 10:40:19.087 pm com.apple.backupd[12797]: Copied 4 items (33 bytes) from volume DeepThought. Linked 20.