History Main / NoFaceUnderTheMask

* In ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'', Alphonse Elric appears to be a large man wearing a medieval suit of plate armor, unless his faceplate is lifted or his helmet is knocked off, revealing ''empty space''. (Technically it's his soul, as it was bound to the armor when his body was consumed by a failed transmutation spell, but souls are invisible.)

* The page image (as of May 2020) is ComicBook/JusticeSocietyOfAmerica villain Johnny Sorrow. After being torn apart while being flung into AnotherDimension and remade by the EldritchAbomination that calls it home, he is an invisible, intangible specter while wearing his mask. When he removes it, he becomes solid and reveals an other-dimensional visage so incomprehensibly hideous that all but the most powerful (or blind, or insane) of living things will instantly die at the sight of it. The reader typically only sees a bright light. The one time that it was shown, it appeared to be a disgusting, incongruous mass of tentacles.
* This happened in ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes'' when Sensor Girl joined and Ultra Boy used his vision powers to see under her mask. [[spoiler:Sensor Girl is Projectra and the blank face was created with her illusion power.]]

* In Creator/FritzLeiber's ''Literature/FafhrdAndTheGrayMouser'' stories, Sheelba of the Eyeless Face wears a mask to conceal the fact that [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin he has no eyes in his face]] -- if memory serves, there's just a flat patch of skin where eye sockets ought to be. This doesn't seem to cause him any difficulty with vision, but then, he is a mighty wizard.

* Bo Cleevil is revelaed to be this near the end of the ''May Bird'' trilogy.

* Creator/MichaelMoorcock's ''The Queen of the Swords''. Literature/{{Corum}} uses the Hand of Kwyll to open the visor of Prince Gaynor the Damned.

* The Shy Guy Ghosts in ''VideoGame/LuigisMansion''.
* Doku in ''VideoGame/NinjaGaiden Black/Sigma''.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse1983'' featured such a villain.

* Bobbin Threadbare and the rest of the Weavers from ''VideoGame/{{Loom}}''.

* Slade of ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' loves it. In "Masks", Robin defeats him and removes the mask, revealing the communicator screen and [[ThisPageWillSelfDestruct the self-destruct timer]], since it was [[ActuallyADoombot actually a Sladebot]]. In the season four finale, Slade's mask is knocked off, [[spoiler:displaying a bare skull with a single blazing eye, as by that time he was TheUndead. He gets his human body restored later, but we don't get to see his normal face]].

* Dumb Donald was revealed to literally have no face once he removed his hat in the LiveActionAdaptation of ''Film/FatAlbert''.

* One [[ComicBook/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica JLA]] story had some AppliedPhlebotinum separate all the heroes and their secret identities into separate people, and the separated Batman had only the barest outline of a face under his cowl.

* In ''VideoGame/WorldOfHorror'', if you know the correct response when you first meet him, he takes his mask off to fight you, revealing he doesn't have a face.

* Downplayed in a ''ComicStrip/Garfield'' strip where Jon puts on an ugly mask to scare Garfield. Garfield, unphased, tries to unmask Jon, only to pull the masked head clean off Jon's torso, much to his shock. Jon then reveals he somehow managed to contort himself so his face was at belly-level, with the masked face just a fake-out.

* This happened in ''ComicBook/{{Legion of Super-Heroes}}'' when Sensor Girl joined and Ultra Boy used his vision powers to see under her mask. [[spoiler:Sensor Girl is Projectra and the blank face was created with her illusion power.]]

* In the "WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' episode "Mr. Saturday Knight," the Black Knight not only wears his helmet in the locker room, he ''shaves'' with it on; meaning he spreads shaving cream on the side of the helmet and shaves it off (and then curses under his breath when he cuts himself with the razor). Apparently, as with Man Ray above, his helmet is his head.

* In ''ComicBook/SnarfQuest'', Princess Penelope falls in love with Aveeare: not understanding that he is a robot and believing him to be knight in a suit of armour. At one point she sees him with visor up (as he is conducting repairs) and sees that he has no face, just circuitry which she interprets as a mass of scar tissue that has completely obliterated his facial features.

* In the MindRape scene of ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'', the hooded demons that Asuka meets are like this.

* In ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'', True Assassin wears a white mask to conceal the fact that he doesn't have a face.

* Celty from ''LightNovel/{{Durarara}}'' wears a motorcycle helmet to conceal that she is a [[HeadlessHorseman dullahan]] and thus has no head.

* In the first albums of ''Comicbook/{{Lucifer}}'', Mazikeen chose to have a half-face and to wear a mask over the faceless half. Mortals assume she wears it for RuleOfCool or because of some mundane injury. TheReveal freaks out at least one human enough to make a ''really'' bad choice.

* Sort of happened during Franchise/{{Batman}}'s first encounter with ComicBook/{{Anarky}}. Batman took Anarky's mask off, only to see a flat white plastic surface underneath. [[spoiler:Anarky was just a teenager, so, underneath his cowl and mask, he wore a plastic mannequin part on top of his head to appear taller.]]

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* Creator/MichaelMoorcock's ''The Queen of the Swords''. Literature/{{Corum}} uses the Hand of Kwyll to open the visor of Prince Gaynor the Damned.
-->Corum stared at a youthful face which writhed as if composed of a million white worms. [[RedEyesTakeWarning Dead, red eyes]] peered from the face and all the horrors Corum had ever witnessed could not compare with the simple, tragic horror of that visage. He screamed and his scream blended with that of Prince Gaynor the Damned as the flesh of the face began to putrefy and change into a score of foul colours which gave off a more pungent stench than anything which had issued from the Chaos Pack itself.
* When the prince unmasks the stranger in the Red Death costume at his costume party in Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's "Literature/TheMasqueOfTheRedDeath", the costume is completely empty and falls to the ground, because the stranger was actually the personification of the plague.

* In Creator/FritzLeiber's ''Literature/FafhrdAndTheGrayMouser'' stories, Sheelba of the Eyeless Face wears a mask to conceal the fact that [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin he has no eyes in his face]] -- if memory serves, there's just a flat patch of skin where eye sockets ought to be. This doesn't seem to cause him any difficulty with vision, but then, he is a mighty wizard.

* Creator/ThomasLigotti uses this trope to drive home a rather unsettling point about identity in "The Greater Festival Of Masks". Variations on the theme also occur in "Masquerade Of A Dead Sword" and "The Last Feast Of Harlequin"; it is also used as a metaphor in several of his poems.
* SherlockHolmes give us "The Veiled Lodger", who is described as this:
--> ''It was horrible. No words can describe the framework of a face when the face itself is gone. Two living and beautiful brown eyes looking sadly out from that grisly ruin did but make the view more awful.''
* Bo Cleevil is revelaed to be this near the end of the ''May Bird'' trilogy.

* ''Literature/ReaperMan'' uses this trope when Death, as “Bill Door”, confronts the “new” Death who has arisen in his absence from duty. The old Death manifests as a skeleton, but at least it’s a ''human'' skeleton; this shows that he has some sympathy with humanity. The new Death is an immaterial spectre, and utterly inhuman.
* An iconic scene in ''Literature/TheInvisibleMan'' has the title character remove the bandages from his face to reveal that his face (and the rest of him) is indeed [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin completely invisible]]. Quite likely the TropeMaker.

* Stark of ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' has two-thirds of a normal humanoid face, while the other third is a shimmering golden energy mass with telepathic properties, normally hidden beneath a leather mask.

* Parodied in ''Webcomic/DarkLegacyComics''. In [[http://darklegacycomics.com/311.html one strip,]] two characters are busy unmasking "liars", thus ruining everyone's Halloween costumes. In the end, they "unmask" a pandaren by tearing of his real face. Since he doesn't have any face left under that "mask", well, ewwww....

* In [[https://www.awkwardzombie.com/comic/headcanon this]] ''Webcomic/AwkwardZombie'' page, Wolf and Dark Pit speculate about what [[Franchise/{{Metroid}} Dark Samus]] looks like under her helmet, only to find out that there's nothing there.
* ''Webcomic/{{Flipside}}'': TheArchmage Qtalda is a child-sized figure whose clothing completely hides her body; her face is covered in bandages and a headdress. This lets her escape an [[NoOneCouldSurviveThat apparently lethal]] disintegration spell. It's unclear what she does have for a body other than that it's tangible and leaves footprints.
* ''Webcomic/LatchkeyKingdom'': Willa [[http://latchkeykingdom.thecomicseries.com/comics/477 wakes up trapped]] in a jellyflesh bodysuit that won't come off, and covers her mouth. But when her friend Debbie [[http://latchkeykingdom.thecomicseries.com/comics/480 uses electricity]] to shock the suit off, it turns out [[http://latchkeykingdom.thecomicseries.com/comics/481 there's nothing underneath]]: The jellyflesh construct has duplicated Willa's identity before being [[http://latchkeykingdom.thecomicseries.com/comics/490 driven off]].

* ''Roleplay/RubyQuest'' has Ace, who constantly wears a WhiteMaskOfDoom. Beneath it, [[spoiler: his "face" is a writhing mass of tentacles or possibly worms]].

%%* Perils of Penelope Pitstop 2900 (a futuristic version of The Perils of Penelope Pitstop) has H.C. 2000(a robot version of the former) in the same outfit as his human may years ago, when Penelope Pitstop IV unmaskes this robot, it's just metal.
* Hexadecimal of ''WesternAnimation/{{Reboot}}''. When Bob removes her mask in one episode, there's nothing there but a hole with a bright white light pouring out if it, and she nearly explodes, which would've taken all of Mainframe with her. This does open up a bit of FridgeLogic as to how she keeps changing masks all the time without this recurring, though...

* At the end of ''Literature/MoonOverSoho'' [[spoiler:Lesley takes off her surgical mask and Peter's reaction is that the scars and wreckage left from Punch's possession of her means that what is left no longer qualifies as a face]].

* In the Website/RapNews video on 2012, this is how Anonymous is represented: when the main speaker takes off their Fuy Fawkes mask, nothing is underneath.[[note]]As in, [[NothingIsScarier the figure’s head is completely transparent.]][[/note]]

* ''Literature/ReaperMan'' uses this trope when Death, as “Bill Door,” confronts the “new” Death who has arisen in his absence from duty. The old Death manifests as a skeleton, but at least it’s a ''human'' skeleton; this shows that he has some sympathy with humanity. The new Death is an immaterial spectre, and utterly inhuman.

* ComicBook/JusticeSocietyOfAmerica villain Johnny Sorrow is an intangible specter while wearing his mask. When he removes it, he becomes solid and reveals an other-dimensional visage so incomprehensibly hideous that all but the most powerful (or blind, or insane) of living things will instantly die at the sight of it. The one time that it was shown, it appeared to be a disgusting, incongruous mass of tentacles.

* The page image (as of May 2020) is Johnny Sorrow. After being remade by an EldritchAbomination, it's not that he doesn't ''have'' a face so much as YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm. It's such a BrownNote that for most people, seeing him unmasked results in instant death. The reader typically only sees a bright light.

* ''Webcomic/LatchkeyKingdom'': Willa wakes up trapped in a jellyflesh bodysuit that won't come off, and covers her mouth. But when her friends use electricity to shock the suit off, it turns out there's nothing underneath: The jellyflesh construct has duplicated Willa's identity and become autonomous.

* ''Discworld/ReaperMan'' uses this trope when Death, as “Bill Door,” confronts the “new” Death who has arisen in his absence from duty. The old Death manifests as a skeleton, but at least it’s a ''human'' skeleton; this shows that he has some sympathy with humanity. The new Death is an immaterial spectre, and utterly inhuman.

* In [[http://awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=051319 this]] ''Webcomic/AwkwardZombie'' page, Wolf and Dark Pit speculate about what [[Franchise/{{Metroid}} Dark Samus]] looks like under her helmet, only to find out that there's nothing there.

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* When the prince unmasks the stranger at his costume party in Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's "Literature/TheMasqueOfTheRedDeath", the costume is completely empty.

* In ''Literature/TheMasqueOfTheRedDeath'', when the mysterious stranger at a masque ball takes his mask off, there is nothing beneath it, because he's the personification of the Red Death plague.