History Main / Dehumanization

* In the film ''Film/{{Casshern}}'', the concept of [[NoTrueScotsman "True Humans"]] appears; some ancestral race of superior beings who are entitled to treat baseline humans as disposable.

* In ''Anime/SuiseiNoGargantia'' this is the Galactic Alliance's rationale for their galactic war with The Hideauze (intelligent, space-dwelling squid-like creatures), and their harsh living conditions and governing of the human race. [[spoiler: It turns out later that the Galactic Alliance knew the Hideauze were once humans who changed themselves with genetic engineering to be able to live in the harsh conditions of space. This was hidden from lower ranking soldiers like Ledo. It's justified again later because the Hideauze are so far gone, and dangerous that they threaten the humans with extinction. If they don't fight it would be impossible to survive and still maintain their humanity, and society.]]
* In ''Franchise/OnePiece'', the [[SlaveBrand Hoof of the Soaring Dragon]] imprinted by [[AristocratsAreEvil the Celestial Dragons]] marks one "less than human".
* Both radical factions in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEED'' and ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEEDDestiny'' do this. The [[GattacaBabies Coordinator]] extremists hold themselves as a SuperiorSpecies, meant to lord it over the rest of humanity, while [[MugglePower Blue Cosmos]] insists that the Coordinators are an abomination that needs to be exterminated to preserve "our blue and pure world." Most of the series' {{Heel Face Turn}}s occur when a Natural or a Coordinator is given the chance to view the other side as human beings.
* ''Anime/CrossAnge'': A baby that rejects magic is an aberration, subject to forcible removal from society, a "Norma", not "human." This distinction is so well-taught to the aspiring heiress to the throne, she even clings to it for some time after, ahem, an abrupt career change.

** [[spoiler:Eldians are seen as "devils" by the rest of the world and are addressed as such to their faces. Injured enemy soldiers will even refuse help if it's offered to them by an Eldian. The Eldians who live on the island of Paradis (ie, the main characters[[note]]Except for Mikasa, who isn't an Eldian[[/note]]) have a reputation of being even ''worse''. Even non-Paradis Eldians hate them and see them as even less human than they are, despite being exactly the same race]].

** The title character deals with this during his childhood and early parts of the story, with many of the Leaf villagers treating him with contempt, seeing him as either nothing more than a vessel for the Nine-Tailed Fox, or as the Nine-Tailed Fox itself.

* ''ComicBook/RequiemVampireKnight''. Thurim, as part of his pre-battle speech to his fellow [[UsefulNotes/TheTeutonicKnights Teutonic Knights]] against the Lithuanian army, tells them the very word Slav means, well, slave.
* During the climatic confrontation in the ComicBook/XMen graphic novel ''God Loves, Man Kills'', Rev. Stryker points to Nightcrawler and exclaims:
-->'''Stryker:''' Human?! You dare call that... thing--'''HUMAN?!?'''
* When ComicBook/{{Morbius}} is captured by ComicBook/{{Hydra}} he is referred to as a "thing" and an "it" multiple times, likely because they only see him as a piece of equipment that can be used to achieve their goals.

* ''Fanfic/AbraxasHrodvitnon'': [[Characters/AbraxasHrodvitnon Ghidorah]] pulls a variation. It considers any of its heads that have detached from Ghidorah's main body and become autonomous creatures to be nothing more than "shed skins" or "shadows" which are inferior to Ghidorah, despite said shed skins retaining their personalities.
* ''Fanfic/ChildOfTheStorm'' explicitly has this as the root of [[spoiler: Sinister's]] MoreThanMindControl based control of [[spoiler: Maddie Pryor]] in the sequel, having raised her to believe that she was nothing more than a LivingWeapon, [[ArtificialHuman entirely artificial and created solely to do his bidding]]. While he has psychic triggers, until a long process of Gambit's helping her come to realise that she's more than just a weapon, topped off by Harry's faith in her ability to choose for herself - and more importantly, choose right - he doesn't actually need to use them.
* ''Fanfic/KingdomHeartsPsiTheSeekerOfDarkness'': In ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/14890610 Land of Oblivion]]'' Aqua is appalled when she sees Naminé's memories of how [=DiZ=] treated her and Xion: "''It'' is a Nobody. ''It'' cannot have wants, for those require feelings. ''It'' is not real, no more than ''you'' are.". However, Aqua is later shown to be not much better after she relives her battle with Vanitas and tells Kairi and Naminé "That ''thing'' was not a person!" Naminé reacts with TranquilFury at this, reminding her of what they just saw and asking if she wants to rephrase that. Aqua does gradually get better about this in later stories.

-->"I ONCE ASKED A HUMAN SOLDIER WHY HE HARMED OTHER HUMANS. HE SAID THEY WERE NOT HUMAN BEINGS BUT [[DirtyCommunists FILTHY NEO-COMMUNIST SCUM]]. ARE WE ALLOWED TO HARM FILTHY NEO-COMMUNIST SCUM?"\\

"The Second Law of Robotics is: Do as we say, not as we do!"

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* In ''Film/BackToTheFuturePartIII'', when Marty and Doc are reading about "Mad Dog" Tannen, an old newspaper report indicates that he has killed twelve men, "not including [[TheSavageIndian Indians]] and [[YellowPeril Chinamen."]] Implying that Tannen's kill count is much higher, [[DeliberateValuesDissonance but "Chinamen" and "Indians" were often not thought of as human in the 1880s.]]
* ''Film/BladeRunner'': Replicants are said by Tyrell to not have emotions, making them more palatable for use as slave labor to purchasers. This is a lie. They rapidly develop emotions, but merely express them differently from normal humans. Replicants are therefore designed to die in four years before their emotions develop, to keep the narrative that they aren't human alive. Ironically, the Tyrell Corporation's motto is ''More Human Than Human''.
* This is the entire point of the anti-Semitic movie ''The Eternal Jew'' (1940). It was created by the Nazis in order to justify the FinalSolution to the German public.

* ''Film/GodzillaVsKong'': [[Characters/MonsterVerseHumans Maia Simmons]] doesn't have much respect or high regard or ''any'' fondness for [[Characters/MonsterVerseKingKong Kong]], prominently only derisively calling him "the monkey".
* The reason why the [[PlayingWithSyringes "researchers"]] of [[TheyWouldCutYouUp Unit 731]] are able to perform their [[TestedOnHumans experiments on their unwilling test subjects]] in the ''Film/MenBehindTheSun'' ExploitationFilm is because they are referred to as ''maruta,'' which translates as ''log'' from Japanese.
* In ''Film/MinorityReport'', Anderton says of the three Pre-Cogs "It's better if you don't think of them as human."

-->"Anyway, those weren't people, they were Jews."
* ''Film/TheProducers''
-->'''Leo Bloom:''' Actors are not animals! They're human beings!\\
'''Max Bialystock:''' They are? Have you ever eaten with one?

* In ''LightNovel/FateZero'', a serial killer of women and children finds that their "art" was incinerated and demolished by a third party, and cries to the heavens "Who could do this and still call themselves human?!" There are other places where this pops up.

** Used by Granny Weatherwax as her yardstick for evil, as seen in ''Literature/CarpeJugulum''. It also shows up in the main villains of the piece; the Count Von Magpyr and his "modern" vampires view people as little less than cattle and practice IndustrializedEvil on them in order to be "maximally efficient", while the Old Count was a sportsman who viewed the individuals who happened to enter his castle as challengers. Despite the Old Count being just as bad as the new Count in terms of bodycount, ultimately this distinction saves the Old Count from death because the nearby villagers treat him as "their monster"; someone who keeps them on their toes and respects the rules.

** ''Literature/{{Snuff}}'' {{Lampshades}} this idea using the goblins, a sentient human race, as exemplar for FantasticRacism. The goblins are viewed as animals and vermin, and it takes a real shift in attitudes to get them recognised as a sentient race deserving the same rights that are accorded to men, dwarfs and trolls. But any indignity can be inflicted on them, including torture and slavery.
* In ''Literature/TheForeverWar'', the soldiers are mentally conditioned to view the enemy Taurans as sub-human, by invoking false memories of Taurans burning cities, eating children, and raping women. The soldiers know the images are fake, as no-one has even ''seen'' a Tauran before their battle, but they still work to send them into a bloodthirsty frenzy, to the point that their mission to capture a Tauran fails because the soldiers slaughter them all.
* Played with in ''Literature/HaloHuntersInTheDark'': During the expedition several of Captain Richards's soldiers are lost. She realizes she hadn't even bothered to learn their names and quickly scans the nametags of the others, but finds it's easier to keep relaying battle orders if she doesn't register them as human. That said, Richards does genuinely care about her subordinates (on the other hand, she doesn't care much for her Sangheili allies, but she's professional enough to not let it interfere with the mission).

** Years later, in ''The King's Justice'', Loris tells Duncan [=McLain=], "I do have a care for your soul though--if Deryni even have souls, of course."
* In ''Literature/TheSorceresssOrc'', orcs are treated this way. People think of them as a sort of slightly more intelligent animal, even though they hire them as mercenaries. The moment when the protagonist decides to invite her orc bodyguard into her home because it is raining outside is a turning point in the story; she half expects him to vandalize her furniture, instead he asks intelligent questions about the security of the apartment.
* Done intentionally in ''Literature/TheTurnerDiaries''. The novel is centered around a group of [[VillainProtagonist Neo]] [[DesignatedHero Nazi]] [[WesternTerrorists terrorists]] trying to start a race war.
* In ''Literature/AncillaryJustice'', the captured enemies whose bodies are taken over by a spaceships AI are referred to as "units". [[spoiler: The protagonist, who is such an AI, is also treated as nonhuman, and seems to be okay with this; though it's hard to tell whether she's just resigned. She does show a preference for people who treat her like a person.]]
* ''Literature/MartinFierro'': This is a NarrativePoem about Martin Fierro, a {{Gaucho}} who is PressGanged into {{Conscription}} trying to SettlingTheFrontier, and is an accomplice (and later victim) of a FinalSolution. Martin Fierro denies various person’s status as "human" comparing them to animals.
** At Song III, he compares the Indians to ants, because they are the {{Determinator}} who are TheSleepless; to tortoises, because they are very [[MajorInjuryUnderreaction hard to kill]], to wild mares and to hawks (while the {{Gaucho}}s are the doves that flee of them).
** At Song V, he describes a ''"Gringo"'' Napolitan Immigrant as a Non- Christian. [[http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/nacionalismo-gauchesco-ante-el-inmigrado-italiano-el-anti-italianismo-del-gaucho-martin-fierro-causas-socioculturales-y-modalidades-estilisticas/html/43d20b02-a0f9-11e1-b1fb-00163ebf5e63_2.html This article (in Spanish) explains that for the Catholic]] {{Gaucho}}s, if you are not baptized, you are not a person but an animal. Also, Fierro {{Troll}}s the Gringo calling him "snake" and "lizard".
** At Song VI, Fierro calls the War Minister ''"Don Gansa"'' (''"Don Gander"'' or ''"Don Goose"''). His real name was Martin Ganzia, but Fierro calls him ''"Gansa"'' because its an animal with a reputation for stupidity.
** At Song VII, he insults a Black woman calling her ''"cow"''. He later [[{{Troll}} trolls]] her Black husband implying that he was created by the [[{{Demonization}} Devil, and when Fierro later kills him, he says he did to ''"leave one less devil in the world"'']]. When the Black woman cries about this, Fierro compares her with a wolf howling.
** At Song VIII, he calls a BitPartBadGuy ''"El terne"'', (the Calf). At the end of the song, Fierro kills him.
** At Song IX, he kills a lot of the soldiers of ''"La Partida"'' ({{Mooks}}) while calling them ''"dogs"'' and ''"sardines"''.

--> ''"Friends do not exist. The Fulcrum is not a school. [[FantasticSlur Grits]] are not children. Orogenes are not people. Weapons have no need of friends."''
* ''Literature/{{Ravensong}}'': As said in Chapter Fifteen, Stacey's Momma's thoughts towards the people of "white town":
--> "They aren't human," she had told Stacey a while back, categorically dismissing them all. Momma took a look around room at the streamers and doubts about the wisdom of sending Stacey out to learn to be like them took shape took shape. She shrugged. She would have to trust Stacey to understand her laws and hope-- hope that the Raven spirit that snapped behind Stacey's eyes would not be culled out of her by their inhumanity.

* ''Literature/BlackFleetCrisis'': The Yevetha view and refer to all other species uniformly as "vermin", treating them as such, i.e. they exterminate any within "their" home star cluster, as it's viewed as a contamination of the sacred All.

* In ''Series/TwentyFour: Redemption'' a bunch of ChildSoldiers are being trained to kill by presenting them with a trussed up enemy and denying his humanity, calling him a "cockroach" and having them [[BattleChant chant]] "Kill the cockroach!"
* In ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|1978}}'' the Cylons were originally supposed to be aliens. They were changed because executives thought that "killing sentient robots" was more child-friendly than "killing aliens". Basically, trading one issue of dehumanizing with another.

** And let's not forget the Daleks.
--->'''Dalek Sec: [[AC:This is not war -- This is pest control!]]'''
* The Reavers in ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' are a race of insane people who have been poisoned during an experiment on live human subjects. In effect they are the sci-fi equivalent of undead beings and the reason they are dehumanized is because they are in fact physically dehumanized.
* Discussed frequently in ''Series/GameOfThrones'' in relation to slaves and slavery, particularly among Daenerys' inner court, who will respond by any allowances she makes for former slaveholders by pointing out that the slaveholders will exploit and pervert Dany's kindness, since they still don't see former slaves as people.
** Slavery is technically illegal in the Seven Kingdoms, but [[KickTheSonOfABitch none of the locals particularly minded]] when Ramsay Bolton turned hated traitor Theon Greyjoy into his [[TheIgor "creature"]]. Part of the dehumanisation process involved giving Theon a humiliating slave name ("Reek"), mutilating his body so that he and the people around would see him as a freak, locking him in dog cages and not allowing him to bathe or eat human food. The process worked so effectively that almost everybody he interacted with actively started talking and treating him as non-human and Theon responded to his sister's rescue attempt by biting her arm (in the same way a cornered dog would) and running back in the dog cage. This is partly because he's been tricked previously by Ramsay into thinking he was being rescued, after which the worst was done.
** Grey Worm and the members of the Unsullied were given the names of vermin--and new ones every morning, allowing for no sense of identity--by their former slavers to remind them that they were not human. When Daenerys freed them, [[AppropriatedAppelation they retained their slave names to demonstrate how proud they were to be associated with Daenerys and the slave rebellion]]. Grey Worm says his is a lucky name because he had it the day of his liberation.

* ''Series/JessicaJones'': In his conversation with Jessica at the end of "[[Recap/JessicaJones2015S1E5AKATheSandwichSavedMe The Sandwich Saved Me]]", Kilgrave refers to Malcolm only as "the junkie". Bear in mind, Malcolm is only a junkie because Kilgrave used his powers to ''force'' him to touch drugs.
* Several episodes of ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' played this straight, but the episode "Hearts and Minds" [[SubvertedTrope subverts]] it by having the "bugs" turn out to be humans from a rival corporation; the soldiers had been [[BrainwashedAndCrazy drugged to see the enemy as disgusting aliens]] so that they would [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman feel fewer qualms]] about killing them. The soldiers from the rival corporation were similarly drugged.
* This is how the witch hunters see the witches in season three of ''Series/AmericanHorrorStory'', to the point that they actively murder girls they suspect of witchcraft.
** In season two, there is also Doctor Hans Gruber, a former nazi scientist, who thinks this way about jews, prostitutes, and mental patients, and has no problem subjecting them to horrifying medical experiments.
** In season four, two grifters show up at a freakshow in the hopes of murdering the performers so that they can sell them to a museum of natural curiosities, excusing their behaviour by explaining that - due to their deformities- their lives weren't worthwhile anyhow. People in the nearby town also tend to talk about the performers as inhuman, to the point that one of the characters cries tears of gratitude because the doctor who identified she had a terminal medical condition talked to her respectfully. The "freaks" also find it unsettlingly easy to murder cops, based on similar logic.
* In season two of the gothic horror series ''Series/HemlockGrove'' the mad doctor convinces a physically deformed, but very intelligent and sweet-natured, teenage girl to transfer her memories into the body of a physically attractive clone/test tube person, and then to commit physician-assisted suicide of her "old body", even though she still retained all her memories and had not changed in any way when her memories were copied. It's very clear from the storyline that both girls were very human, and that the act of copying the memories onto the test-tube girl also meant wiping her brain and essentially killing her, but the doctor uses the third girl (who has the body grown in the test tube and the memories and emotions of the physically deformed girl) as evidence that no actual people would be harmed during the procedure, since the two dead girls lacked personhood. [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext It was even weirder than it sounds]], because the deformed girl was not only one of the most prominent characters, but also one of the most consistently moral and likable people on the show, and there was no way the audience would interpret the scene as anything other than suicide or murder. Slightly justified, because she was extremely depressed and it would [[DeathSeeker may have been looking for a way to kill herself without hurting her loved ones]] and had a history of being treated like an inhuman monster by the people in the surrounding township. In this series, Roma are occasionally described as dogs or similarly dehumanized.
* ''Series/OrangeIsTheNewBlack''. Caputo, trying to toughen up Fischer, tells her to not think of the prisoners as human beings in one episode.
* Discussed occasionally on ''Series/{{Bones}}'' where either someone is upset with Brennan for treating remains as anthropological curiosities instead of as former people, or conversely Brennan giving advice to think of the former people as remains in order to suppress the emotions of (for example) autopsying a friend.

** Tangentially used by the Imperial Guardman's Uplifting Primer. Of course their foes ''aren't'' human, but it still makes them out to be inferior to the basic human, and doesn't hesitate to make up "facts" like Tau being descended from bovines and stampeding at loud noises and orks being easy to defeat in close combat. An updated edition features Tau sympathizers which it claims are easily recognizable as degenerate subhumans (other than a tendency to wear braids and sometimes paint themselves blue, they're no less healthy that the regular humans), reminiscent of Nazi sub-racial distinctions.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Bioshock}}'', citizens of the laissez-faire capitalist gulch of Rapture are taught that the poor and lower classes are "parasites".
* ''VideoGame/DiscoElysium:'' You meet The Deserter, an old Communist who is very bitter about the violent suppression of the violent revolution. After talking about the bombardment, he says "The bourgeoisie is not human."
* In ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine'', [[spoiler:Walker gets ''less'' dehumanizing as the story progresses. He starts with neutral, technical, professional expressions, distancing himself from what he's doing and making it seem like something simple and clean. "Target confirmed." "Tango down." By the end of the story, he's relying on moral condemnation and sheer spite to keep him going: "GOT THE FUCKER!" "AND STAY DOWN!". He's not removing targets anymore, he's killing people.]]
* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1'' [[spoiler: has a true BigBad who considers the people of Bionis merely part of the cycle of life and death, a vehicle for his continued existence as a god.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark''

** One memorable Cartman quote from the episode "Die Hippie Die" was "Hey! They are not people, they're hippies!" and later uses a DrillTank on them. The entire episode treats hippies like an exponentially-growing termite invasion.
** Then there's the homeless episode, where the head of homeless studies treats the homeless as an infestation of undead. [[note]]Unfortunately, he's not completely wrong - something has caused the local population of lower-class people to demand money and ''only'' money, without taking the time to eat or drink between demands, even when ''they're staring down the gun of riled survivors''.[[/note]]
* ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse''

* In ''WesternAnimation/ThePrinceOfEgypt'', Moses spends the majority of his childhood ignoring the plight of the Hebrews who slave for Egypt. However, when he discovers that he himself is actually Hebrew, and that his father the Pharaoh ordered the wide-scale death of Hebrew children, he can no longer ignore his morals.
-->'''Pharaoh Seti:''' Moses, sometimes for the greater good, sacrifices must be made.\\
'''Moses:''' Sacrifices?\\
'''Pharaoh Seti:''' Oh, my son... they were only slaves.
* The song "Savages" from ''WesternAnimation/{{Pocahontas}}'' has both the English colonisers and the Native Americans declare one another as evil and inhuman as they psyche themselves up for conflict.
-->''They're savages, savages\\
Barely even human''

* WhatMeasureIsANonhuman: A group of sapient species is treated not as human because they're not technically humans.

[[quoteright:350:[[ComicBook/{{Breakdowns}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/portrait_of_the_artist.jpg]]]]

-> ''"Falm... my friend... I would have you understand. I know now, as I look down at what I have wrought here, that were I to think upon what I have done... [[FinalSolution what I have *truly* done]]... I would be struck mad. A deed such as this... the anguish would overwhelm, destroy me. So, First Officer Falm, it must be that there *are* no innocents in Agarheim... no mothers, no children, no *people.* Only traitors. Vile, cunning traitors, who deserve no less than the full brunt of our most Holy King's wrath. Do you understand this?"''

* {{Demonization}}: making something seem despicable like a demon or monster in spite of what it really is.

-->''They're savages, savages

[[caption-width-right:350:"Breakdowns: Portrait of an Artist as a Young %@?*!", by Creator/ArtSpiegelman]]

** Used by Granny Weatherwax as her yardstick for evil, as seen in ''Literature/CarpeJugulum''. It also shows up in the main villains of the piece; the Count Von Magpyr and his "modern" vampires view people as little less than cattle and practice IndustrializedEvil on them in order to be "maximally efficient", while the Old Count was a sportsman who viewed ''the individuals who happened to enter his castle'' as challengers. Despite the Old Count being just as bad as the new Count in terms of bodycount, ultimately this distinction saves the Old Count from FinalDeath because the nearby villagers treat him as "their monster"; someone who keeps them on their toes and respects the rules.

* In ''Series/TwentyFour: Redemption'' a bunch of ChildSoldiers are being trained to kill by presenting them with a trussed up enemy and denying his humanity, calling him a "cockroach" and having them [[BattleChant chant]] "Kill the cockroach!"
* The Reavers in ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' are a race of insane people who have been poisoned during an experiment on live human subjects. In effect they are the sci-fi equivalent of undead beings and the reason they are dehumanized is because they are in fact physically dehumanized.
* Several episodes of ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' played this straight, but the episode "Hearts and Minds" [[SubvertedTrope subverts]] it by having the "bugs" turn out to be humans from a rival corporation; the soldiers had been [[BrainwashedAndCrazy drugged to see the enemy as disgusting aliens]] so that they would [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman feel fewer qualms]] about killing them. The soldiers from the rival corporation were similarly drugged.

* ''Series/OrangeIsTheNewBlack''. Caputo, trying to toughen up Fischer, tells her to not think of the prisoners as human beings in one episode.
* Discussed occasionally on ''Series/{{Bones}}'' where either someone is upset with Brennan for treating remains as anthropological curiosities instead of as former people, or conversely Brennan giving advice to think of the former people as remains in order to suppress the emotions of (for example) autopsying a friend.

* ''VideoGame/{{Xenoblade}}'' [[spoiler: has a true BigBad who considers the people of Bionis merely part of the cycle of life and death, a vehicle for his continued existence as a god.]]

* 'Literature/MartinFierro'': This is a NarrativePoem about Martin Fierro, a {{Gaucho}} who is PressGanged into {{Conscription}} trying to SettlingTheFrontier, and is an accomplice (and later victim) of a FinalSolution. Martin Fierro denies various person’s status as "human” comparing them to animals.
** At Song III, he compares the Indians to ants, because they are the {{Determinator}} who are TheSleepless; to tortoises, because they are very [[MajorInjuryUnderreaction hard to kill]], to wild mared and to hawks (while the {{Gaucho}}s are the doves that flee of them).

* In ''Literature/TheFifthSeason'', people born with the FunctionalMagic of orogeny are formally classified as non-human and are enslaved by the Fulcrum to serve TheEmpire as HumanWeapons.

--> "They aren't human," she had told Stacey a while back, categorically dismissing them all. Momma took a look around room at the streamers and doubts about the wisdom of sending Stacey out to learn to be like them took shape took shape. She shrugged. She would have to trust Stacey to understand her laws and hope-hope that the Raven spirit that snapped behind Stacey's eyes would not be culled out of her by their inhumanity.

->'''Granny Weatherwax:''' Sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is.\\
'''Mightily Oats:''' It's a lot more complicated than that--\\
'''Granny Weatherwax:''' No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts.\\
'''Mightily Oats:''' Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes--\\
'''Granny Weatherwax:''' But they START with thinking about people as things.
-->-- ''Literature/CarpeJugulum''

* In ''Literature/TheFifthSeason'', people born with the FunctionalMagic of orogeny are formally classified as non-human and are enslaved by the Fulcrum to serve TheEmpire.

** One memorable Cartman quote from the episode "Die Hippie Die" was "Hey! They are not people, they're hippies!" and later uses a DrillTank on them. The entire episode treats hippies like an exponentially-growing termite invasion .

[[folder:Other]]
* A famous quote by Creator/AlfredHitchcock:
-->''"I was once quoted as saying that actors are cattle. My actor friends know I would never be capable of such a thoughtless, rude and unfeeling remark, that I would never call them cattle. What I probably said was that actors should be treated like cattle."''[[note]][[http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/08/01/all-actors-are-cattle/ He actually did say "actors are cattle" on several occasions]].[[/note]]
[[/folder]]

** At Song III, he compares the Indians to ants, because they are the {{Determinator}} who are TheSleepless; to tortoises, because [[IAintGotTimeToBleed they are]] very [[MajorInjuryUnderreaction hard to kill]], to wild mared and to hawks (while the {{Gaucho}}s are the doves that flee of them).

* In ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'', the title character deals with this during his childhood and early parts of the story, with many of the Leaf villagers treating him with contempt, seeing him as either nothing more than a vessel for the Nine-Tailed Fox, or as the Nine-Tailed Fox itself.

-->"I ONCE ASKED A HUMAN SOLDIER WHY HE HARMED OTHER HUMANS. HE SAID THEY WERE NOT HUMAN BEINGS BUT FILTHY NEO-COMMUNIST SCUM. ARE WE ALLOWED TO HARM FILTHY NEO-COMMUNIST SCUM?"\\

* In ''Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space'', robots are being taught to be ThreeLawsCompliant, but one robot suggests that this trope can be used to get around the "Don't harm humans" rule.

* A famous quote by Creator/AlfredHitchcock:
-->''"I was once quoted as saying that actors are cattle. My actor friends know I would never be capable of such a thoughtless, rude and unfeeling remark, that I would never call them cattle. What I probably said was that actors should be treated like cattle."''[[note]][[http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/08/01/all-actors-are-cattle/ He actually did say "actors are cattle" on several occasions]].[[/note]]

* The movie ''Film/{{Frailty}}'' involves a father psychologically torturing his son until he agrees to help him [[AnAxeToGrind gruesomely murder]] (seemingly) everyday people the father believes are actually demons. The tension in the film centered around whether the son could be conditioned to see his father's victims as inhuman, and whether the father's assessment was accurate or not.

* The reason why the [[PlayingWithSyringes "researchers"]] of [[TheyWouldCutYouUp Unit 731]] are able to perform their [[TestedOnHumans experiments on their unwilling test subjects]] in the ''Film/MenBehindTheSun'' ExploitationFilm is because they are referred to as ''maruta,'' which translates as ''log'' from Japanese.
* In ''Film/BackToTheFuturePartIII'', when Marty and Doc are reading about "Mad Dog" Tannen, an old newspaper report indicates that he has killed twelve men, "not including [[TheSavageIndian Indians]] and [[YellowPeril Chinamen."]] Implying that Tannen's kill count is much higher, [[DeliberateValuesDissonance but "Chinamen" and "Indians" were often not thought of as human in the 1880s.]]

-->-- ''Discworld/CarpeJugulum''

** Used by Granny Weatherwax as her yardstick for evil, as seen in ''Discworld/CarpeJugulum''. It also shows up in the main villains of the piece; the Count Von Magpyr and his "modern" vampires view people as little less than cattle and practice IndustrializedEvil on them in order to be "maximally efficient", while the Old Count was a sportsman who viewed ''the individuals who happened to enter his castle'' as challengers. Despite the Old Count being just as bad as the new Count in terms of bodycount, ultimately this distinction saves the Old Count from FinalDeath because the nearby villagers treat him as "their monster"; someone who keeps them on their toes and respects the rules.
** In ''Discworld/MonstrousRegiment'', this topic is discussed repeatedly. The protagonist makes a particularly vivid reflection that the literal straw men they stab in training do not serve the purpose of training them in combat (they are soft, and don't fight back) but in making them forget that, unlike them, a human, when stabbed, will bleed, and cry, and more than straw might fall from their wounds.
** ''Discworld/{{Snuff}}'' {{Lampshades}} this idea using the goblins, a sentient human race, as exemplar for FantasticRacism. The goblins are viewed as animals and vermin, and it takes a real shift in attitudes to get them recognised as a sentient race deserving the same rights that are accorded to men, dwarfs and trolls. But any indignity can be inflicted on them, including torture and slavery.