Ambiguously Human / Western Animation

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Ambiguously Human in Western Animation.

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• Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers: Niko is probably human. Word of God says she is from a destroyed colony, but was taken in by the Circle of Thought. Still, it's never said if she's human or humanoid, given no other humans in-series have any psionic abilities like she does.
• Adventure Time:
  • Simon Petrikov, more commonly known as the Ice King, started as human but has been warped physically and mentally from centuries of exposure to an Artifact of Doom, and it isn't clear how much, if any, of his humanity remains. He's temporarily turned back human when his magic crown is deactivated by an Anti-Magic being, and eventually permanently restored to his human self in the last episode.
  • Marceline is a vampire now, but what she was before was not originally certain. We saw early on that her father was a demon, but all the powers she's exhibited are vampiric in nature, and what we see of her as a child show her to be an ordinary little girl, albeit with slightly pointed ears and greyish skin, which aren't unusual in modern-day Ooo. It's eventually clarified that she's half-human, half-demon, with her demon half allowing her to absorb the essence of the vampires she hunted as a teenager. She only became a vampire when one of her prey managed to bite her as he was dying.
  • In the episode "Susan Strong", Finn meets the eponymous character and initially thinks she's another human living with a lost colony of humans underground. At the end of the episode, it turns out these supposed humans are actually Fish People (their fins and scales were hidden beneath animal hats up until that point), although Susan herself is left ambiguous. This ambiguity is played up further in "Beautopia" when Susan allows Finn to feel inside her animal hat, although it's not revealed to the audience what he felt. It isn't until "Dark Purple" that it's confirmed that Susan is human (although she has cybernetic implants), and not until the "Islands" Story Arc that it's revealed she really is from a lost colony of humans, but suffered amnesia when she arrived on Ooo.
  • The episode "Be More" reveals Moe, the original creator of B-MO, who has apparently been alive since before humanity disappeared from the continent. When Finn excitedly asks if he's human, he replies "My skin is!" Currently he seems to be a Cyborg; he has several MO units visibly attached to his body that seemingly take the place of vital organs.
• Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Professor Dinglehoper Von Schlemmer has green skin, orange hair, and is the only character to be drawn with five fingers on each hand. It could be inferred that his odd appearance is the result of mutation, but it's never called into question. The only hint at his humanity is in the episode "Too Tall Tails", when Willian Le Duck asks, "Can this man be trusted?", And even then, it's possible "man" is being used loosely.
  • Even Dr. Robotnik is a bit suspicious, he's shown having eyes with black whites and red pupils. Most other humans in the series have normal eyes, so this is definitely not what a normal human looks like. His ancestors also have this feature, implying it to be genetic.
• The Amazing World of Gumball has various in-series media portraying live-action humans, but a few of the animated characters shown in person also appear to be human rather than Funny Animals. If there's any difference between the two besides appearance, it's not remotely addressed.
  • The students and staff of Richwood High (besides Sarah, who transferred out) clearly look human, but all of them and the school itself are considered far weirder than the non-human cast even in-universe. They specifically look like humans in a cartoon from the 1980s, with appropriately jerky, error-prone animation, and act like delusional Karate Kid-reject. Even stranger, the crowd members in the stadium are drawn as flat, ummoving cutouts because they actually are flat cutouts who never move. Then one figures out they can move, turning him into a three-dimensional person capable of regular movement, albeit still animated in jerky 2D.
  • Clare Cooper is a student of Elmore Junior High and essentially human-looking. However, her design is stylized enough to blend in with the rest of the student body, even sharing artistic elements common to regular characters like Fingerless Hands and a lack of nose. Her father is even more human-looking, as he has a nose and regular hair color. No one treats them as being out-of-the-ordinary.
  • Santa Claus looks like a stylized human (except when he had amnesia and looked more like a hairy Cartoon Creature), but he's traditionally been portrayed as a human, elf, or fairy. The show does not specify which. He also seems to actually live at the North Pole, while every other character lives inside of Elmore.
• Animaniacs:
  • Baloney the Dinosaur, an obvious (and unflattering) parody of Barney the Dinosaur, is the main character of a Show Within a Show. Although he's shown to have stitches and seams that suggest he's wearing a costume, his face moves like that of a living creature and there is no indication his changing back and forth from being a stuffed animal is a special effect. Since his appearances are mostly just to mock what he's based on, it's not specified if he is indeed a man in a costume that happens to have a very Expressive Mask or he really is some kind of magical dinosaur with an alternate plushie form.
  • Katie Ka-Boom's ability to transform into a monster when angered is meant to be a metaphor for either All Periods Are PMS or Bratty Teenage Daughter. However, in-universe, we are never given an explanation to what she is or why she actually has this ability. The comics reveal she has a cousin with the same monstrous power she does, showing it is at least hereditary.
• Archer is ostensibly human, but on a show that generally averts or deconstructs Amusing Injuries he's survived being shot 31 times, being in an explosion which Jakov claims no one could survive, getting mangled in a car crash, drinking broken glass, and being in the air vents for 2 days without water while the furnace was turned up to 90, most of which didn't even seem to cause him any pain. He's also almost impossibly strong, in one episode throwing a serving platter with enough force to draw blood and knock a man out and knock Edie Poovey out with one punch, something that even Barry, whose strength is explicitly superhuman, couldn't manage. He also displays the ability to talk to and understand animals, but whether he actually understands them or just jumps to conclusions is unclear.
• Mayor Torbo (whose name sounds Scandinavian) from The Bagel and Becky Show looks human, but has a green skin complexion, and gets around an ISO Standard Human Spaceship. The show says that he's alien, but it's unclear if he's a Human Alien, a Starfish Alien taking A Form You Are Comfortable With or just a human with some alien powers.
• The Batman:
  • Penguin's Bodyguard Babes the Kabuki Twins. While they, for the most part, look like costumed human women and have human names ("Gale" and "Peri"; though their names aren't used in-series), there is evidence that suggests that they are not human. They are mostly silent (what vocal noises they do make are unintelligible whispers), they are never seen without their masks and red catsuits, they have Wolverine Claws protruding from their hands instead of fingers, move strangely and survive things that humans probably can't. They are never outright stated to be human and some fans believe that they are either robots or mutant human-like birds.
  • Blask Mask as well. While he does speak and he has human-like hands, his "mask" cannot be removed, his voice has an artificial metallic sound, he has no fingerprints or any traceable DNA and his real name from the comics (Roman Sionis) is never used.
• Batman: The Animated Series: The Scarecrow started out on the show as a man clearly wearing a mask◊ as part of a scarecrow outfit and was seen unmasked numerous times. In The New Batman Adventures, the BTAS characters were redesigned, with Scarecrow receiving the most dramatic redesign◊, looking like a zombified preacher and was never seem out of costume. Even the producers aren't entirely sure whether he is wearing a costume.
• Batman Beyond has Shriek's lackey Ollie. He has pale skin, purple hair, pointed ears, and black sclera, but it isn't stated whether or not his unusual appearance is because he's an alien or if he's partaken in "splicing".
• The Librarian from the Big City Greens episode "Quiet Please" (a Whole-Plot Reference to A Quiet Place) is strangely snake-like in appearance, has superhuman speed and hearing, occasionally runs on all-fours, can crawl up walls like a spider, and never takes off her glasses. Which emote as if they were her eyes (and might very well be), which none of the other characters have. And while her green skin wouldn't raise too many eyebrows initially, given most of the character have pastel skin, she has a specific shade of green not present on most characters.
• Biker Mice from Mars has Lawrence Limburger's minions Dr. Karbunkle and Greasepit. Both of them look for the most part like humans, but the three-part episode "Once Upon a Time on Mars" reveals that they have aided their Plutarkian boss ever since he was still on Mars, which implies that they may be Human Aliens. The 2006 revival lampshades this in the episode "Once Upon a Time on Earth", where the Catatonian scientist Dr. Catorkian asks Karbunkle if he is human and Karbunkle replies with "Of course I am...I think."
• In Bonkers, it can be difficult to distinguish between human and toon since some of the human characters have bizarre or exaggerated appearances and the entire thing is animated, unlike its inspiration Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
• Buzz Lightyear of Star Command takes place in a galaxy full of all sorts of alien-looking races, most of which are identified by name if a significant enough character is a member. Buzz himself, however, is never specifically called "human", his home planet is never identified, and he never removes the purple "cloth" over the back of his head, even in civilian clothes — for all we know, it could actually be part of his head.
• CatDog has the ironically named Mr. Sunshine, a green-skinned humanoid with a tail who speaks in a slow, languid voice. The ambiguity of his species is lampshaded in one episode when Rancid Rabbit starts arresting everyone for not having "licenses". (Dog doesn't have a "dog license", Lola doesn't have a "bird license", etc.) When he captures Sunshine, he says, "You're under arrest for not having a... not having a... not having a license!"
• Jungle Jitters, one of the Censored Eleven, features a village of African stereotypes, led by an elderly white woman. However, she lacks a nose and her face has a sort of bird-like look.
• Codename: Kids Next Door:
  • Quite a few characters (especially villains) have bizarre appearances and abilities but are never stated to be anything other than human. Then again, the show apparently takes place in a very strange Alternate Universe.
  • The original Grand Finale shows Numbuh 74.239 and Numbuh Infinity were agents for the Galactic Kids Next Door, an extraterrestrial organization, but doesn't specify if they're aliens themselves or one of a few human members. Years later, the GKND teaser would show the former at least was a plant alien in disguise.
• Dexter's Laboratory:
  • Major Glory, a Composite Character parody of Captain America and Superman appears human and the show's wiki claims he is human, but has Eye Beams, Super-Speed (demonstrated in a flashback in "Say Uncle Sam") and his father is Uncle Sam, the spirit of the United States, who seems to be Really 700 Years Old. Whether he actually is a Half-Human Hybrid in canon is never confirmed.
  • The Infraggable Krunk, a HULK MASH!-Up, appears human aside from his purple skin tone, but he doesn't have a human form to revert back to unlike Bruce Banner. Whether he really is human or a human-like species has not been confirmed by the creators.
  • Commander, a Captain Ersatz of Nick Fury from Marvel Comics who only appears in "Dial M For Monkey", appears human, but only ever appears inside a television and never in-person. In the episode "Huntor" he had said that his television set was about to be dropped into the lava rather than his human body; since the Commander indicated that he would die if that happened, it would seem to be true that he is an image projected by the television instead of a real human being. But that may have been a throwaway gag for the sake of one episode. Whether he really is human is not known.
• Drawn Together, much like Bonkers, is unclear about what the distinction is between cartoon humans and "regular" humans. Of the main characters, Captain Hero, Spanky, Wooldoor, and Ling-Ling are clearly not human; where Princess Clara, Foxxy, Xandir, and Toot lie is unclear. All of them look and are treated like humans, but all of them have special powers relating to what genre of cartoon they come from.
• There are suggestions that Mandy from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy might be more than the human child she appears to be. She's far more physically and mentally capable than the average kid, and her smiles have the power to distort reality. Also, she lacks a visible nose.
• Inspector Gadget: Dr. Claw is never shown on screen, only his gloved hands. Even then, we don't know if they're gloves or mechanical parts. While the live-action films and his toy show a human-looking man, the cartoon is more ambiguous, especially with the deep, guttural voice he speaks in. While other cartoons do show he has family, including a very human-looking nephew, this doesn't necessarily mean he is or was human.
• Ms. Bitters, the "skool"-teacher on Invader Zim. She looks like an old woman, yet she can hover, twist her body like a snake, pass through walls and is burned by the sun. She also has a Multiple-Choice Past, and none of these stories makes any sense. One of the creators is on record as saying she's non-human, but her exact nature is never exactly qualified.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: Daolong Wong appears to be a human chi sorcerer at first glance. However, it's established he's very old, older than uncle. Furthermore, an episode involving the astral projection shows that inside him are some kind of screaming ghost-like entities.
• There's some debate over whether Heloise on Jimmy Two-Shoes is human. She and Jimmy are the only two human-shaped citizens of Miseryville, but given that only Jimmy is hinted to be a Fish out of Water, some fans wonder. With her occasionally slithering movements, one popular Epileptic Tree is that she's a naga (we never see her feet), though it has been shown she has two appendages under her dress. Officially, Word of God is that she's "a bit of a shapeshifter", but even that's still kinda mysterious.
• The Manji from the animated Jumanji: The Animated Series series were a whole tribe of Ambiguously Human Malevolent Masked Men. One character outright questions if they are people when she first sees them, Alan replies simply that they are 'Manji'. The giant masks that are treated as their faces are big enough that there could or could not be a humanoid head behind them. No one knows.
• Kiff: Timmy Table, Table Town School’s anthropomorphic table mascot, who is never seen without their costume. The suit has eyeholes, through which a pair of eyes are visible, suggesting there is someone in the suit, though due to its design it’s unclear exactly how anyone could possibly wear it. Technically a case of “Ambiguously Anthropomorphic Animal”, as Kiff is set in a World of Funny Animals.
• Voltar from League of Super Evil could easily be mistaken for a very short human in a costume, given that his teammates are definite humans. However, he never willingly takes off his helmet (even when he's bathing or changing clothes), which possesses large black eyes with glowing yellow pupils that are still there the few times his helmet is taken off by others (although he wears a Brown Bag Mask with eyeholes when this happens). This has led a few to speculate that, combined with his short stature and pale skin (seen whenever his suit is off), he may in fact be an alien.
• Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd of Looney Tunes are not necessarily easily identifiable as humans.
  • Same can be said about Bosko, although he was more of a Blackface-Style Caricature.
• Flip from The Loud House. The season five episode "Blinded By Science" reveals that while he looks human on the outside, he's not exactly human on the inside. He's got organs in the wrong spots and can't feel pain at times, not to mention he's able to withstand subzero temperatures. In "Any Given Sundae", he's established to have already grown a second set of wisdom teeth and as a teenager, he was able to spontaneously grow his mustache in anger. Also, according to "Flip This Flip", he sweats nacho cheese.
• Madeline: Marie from "Madeline's Christmas" somehow lets the relatives appear at the school despite a blizzard, and uses a strange, but apparently delicious, sort of porridge to cure Madeline's schoolmates, Dr. Cone, and the mouse of their colds. She appears human, and there don't seem to be any non-human humanoids in the series, but the angel decoration at the top of the Christmas tree resembles Marie, which has led to speculation that Marie is an angel. She could also be a human mage, as one of the books features a magician, but what she really is is left a mystery.
• Miss Frizzle from The Magic School Bus appears to be human, but has strange abilities and is heavily implied to be older than she looks. A common joke in the fandom is that she's a Time Lord.
• A lot of the cast of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack are bizarre-looking, but Captain K'nuckles really looks inhuman: his body is approximately popsicle-shaped and his head is blue-gray except the nose and torso, with the rest of his body parts being either wooden replacements. Despite this, he himself has said he's a human being.
• The Mega Babies are supposed to be humans, but they don’t really look like it. They are the only characters in the show to not have natural skin colors and have bizarre appearances that make them look like humanoid monsters or aliens.
• The witches from Meg and Mog are probably humans, except that their skin is perfectly white, while everybody else's is pink or brown.
• In Milo Murphy's Law, a Running Gag is that one of title character's teachers, Kyle Drako, is Ambiguously Vampiric — he's an Eerie Pale Skinned Brunet with a widow's peak, has a vaguely Eastern European accent, only goes in the sun with some sort of covering, etc. Chad is convinced that he's a vampire, though Melissa is skeptical.
• The New Adventures of Jonny Quest features Maximilian Dragna in "Warlord of the Sky." He has a very grotesque, almost reptilian appearance, with More Teeth than the Osmond Family, sagging face folds, no visible nose, solid green eyes with large lashes and a full head and beard of snow-white hair. Dr. Quest recognizes him, though, so he is a known figure. Possibly he is human but merely deformed or mutated in some way.
• The characters in Out There are human (by extension of background elements depicting humans and referring to humans as themselves) but they don't look too human at all, in fact most are fairly ambiguous in terms of species and the lead character Chad and his family look nothing like the others, instead being less ambiguous and looking more like very hairy rodents but still of indeterminate species and considered as part of the same species as the rest: "human".
• There are two distinct humanoid races on the Boiling Isles in The Owl House: Witches (which look near identical to humans save for their pointy ears) and Biped Demons (which tend to be a lot more monstrous in appearance). Boscha has a third eye and red skin, but is otherwise human looking in head and body, implying she could be a genetic offshoot of the former or some sort of hybrid.
  • There are two other examples regarding actual humans, but both are spoilers for the last quarter of Season 2:
    • Emperor Belos is in reality Philip Wittebane, a human who fashioned himself as a witch to eventually wipe out all life on the Boiling Isles as he is repulsed by witches due to his extreme religious views convincing him they're Always Chaotic Evil. Centuries of abusing magic and consuming Palismen has left him a Transhuman Abomination made of green sludge who can barely maintain a human form, and it's ambiguous whether anything actually human remains.
    • Hunter is a Grimwalker created as a Replacement Goldfish for what is heavily implied to be Belos' brother, making it unclear if he's a powerless witch or a human made to look like a witch.
• In Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures, most of the cast consists of either spheroid Pac-Man-like characters (called "Pac-Worlders") or ghosts. Ghoulasha the witch, however, looks like a regular human witch.
• While Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero features a lot of oddball creatures, every human character is recognizably human. Except Rippen, who has greenish skin and red eyes. Phyllis also once claimed to be over a thousand years old. As it turns out, Rippen is from a different dimension and Phyllis is some sort of a Cosmic Entity.
• Peppa Pig has Mr. Potato and a few of what appear to be other talking fruit and vegetables. But are they really Anthropomorphic Food or are they animals in costumes? They could also be humans in costumes, but the only two known humans on the show are the Queen and Santa.
• The Pirates of Dark Water took place on "the alien world of Mer" which was populated by many nonhuman humanoid creatures, as well as a more common type of ambiguous human (or Human Aliens?) with distinct slanted eyes. What species the Pirate Lord Bloth belonged to was similarly ambiguous, considering his immense size, blue skin, and unusual facial features. Most of Bloth's pirate crew was similarly humanoid but probably not human, though ambiguous cases like Konk and Mantis did exist.
• The Powerpuff Girls:
  • The titular characters. They were created in a lab, have superpowers, and have no noses, fingers, or toes. Their big eyes are odd but apparently normal humans can have them too. According to The Powerpuff Girls (2016) Soft Reboot, the girls are at least eight but still look five, implying they age slowly.
  • The Gangreen Gang all have lime-green skin, and three of the five have other physical anomalies (most alarmingly, sweeping away Billy's bangs shows he is a cyclops). It's never specified it they're humanoid monsters, mutants, or just weird-looking teenage boys.
  • Sedusa looks human except for the Prehensile Hair and a nearly invisible nose, though it's never said whether or not she is.
• Primal (2019): The coven that Spear and Fang briefly encounter during season one. They're all very short with grey skin and rather ugly appearances. They also disappear when Spear hits them, assuming that he did hit them and they didn't just teleport before impact.
• The Color Kids in Rainbow Brite look like human children at first glance but are actually tiny when compared to a normal ten year old like Bryan. They also have unusual hair colors and similarly unusual names like "Red Butler" and "Shy Violet". There are no adults supervising them and there are some implications they're Older Than They Look. Rainbow Brite herself was originally a human orphan named "Wisp" who saved the kingdom and became "Rainbow Brite", but it's unknown if the other children are of similar origin or if they're native to the land.
• The title characters of Rainbow Rangers have surreal hair colors, which match their eyes, and magic powers. Not to mention they're not from Earth.
• Rainbow Butterfly Unicorn Kitty has Ryan O'Brian, a character who is a Leprechaun and identified as such In-Universe, but he is human-sized with green skin and not the traditional small-sized helium-voiced type, although he has abilities that a leprechaun normally has in addition to human abilities (except for the Jackass Genie behavior of a leprechaun). But he doesn't have the weakness to wrought iron, and it's questionable whether he's really human, or a Half-Human Hybrid but this is never stated in the show itself, and for all intents and purposes, he's treated as a leprechaun.
• The Real Ghostbusters: In "Nobody Comes to Lupusville", pretty much any resident of the eponymous Lupusville who is neither a vampire nor a werewolf is this — most of them are either ridiculously small, or big, leaving it unclear whether they're just oddly-sized humans, or dwarfs and giants.
• Regular Show has Muscle Man and Starla. They look more humanoid than anyone else in the regular cast (possibly except for Eileen, who has been identified as a mole), but they have got green skin and pink eyes and also possess abilities that are practically superhuman as they can lift and destroy objects no human possibly could despite being overweight, can communicate and hear each other from over a mile away and Muscle Man can flex his pectorals long enough to send anyone (except for Starla) into a hypnotic trance.
  • Pops has a human-like appearance, but a lollipop-like shape. He's eventually revealed to be an alien.
• Ruby Gloom is the most human-like character in a cast consisting otherwise of monsters and creepy creatures. However, her abnormally pale white skin has led some to doubt if she really is a Token Human. A popular fan theory points to her love of sewing and what look like stitches under her eyes as proof that she might in fact be some kind of sentient ragdoll, but the series never confirms this.
  • Misery from the same series is equally puzzling. She is the second most human-like character in the series, but has unusual, grey, corpse-like skin and is implied to be Older Than They Look or even Really 700 Years Old on several occasions. Popular fanon states that she's a banshee, but nothing in the series ever confirms this.
• Rugrats: Overlapping with Or Was It a Dream? in "Chuckie's Wonderful Life" — Chuckie sees what life would be like if he wasn't born, with his guardian angel showing him, and he appears to wake up, only to see what looks like the guardian angel outside. If it wasn't a dream, then this was indeed the guardian angel, but if it was one, it was just a coincidentally similar-looking human.
• Samurai Jack:
  • There are several people who have rather unnatural skin colors like blue or grey, but whether they are aliens who resemble humans or humans with different skin color due to the thousands of years of interacting with aliens in unclear. The first three citizens Jack meets, Homeslice, Cole Lampkin and Brobot, seem human enough that Jack isn't set off by their appearances. This was before he encountered the less human-looking denizens of the future and realized he was sent through time.
  • The blind archers that Jack encountered early in his journey look remarkable off when they are freed from their curse. They have necks as long as their torsos and lack ears on their extremely round heads. Even in Season 5, which is set 50 years later, they live with a race not that different from them and haven't aged.
  • The Cult of Aku appear human, at least the seven daughters, but they are never seen unmasked. The High Priestess likely was human before she drank a sample of Aku's essence and gave birth to her daughters.
• V.V. Argost in The Secret Saturdays, who is actually a Yeti.
• The Simpsons:
  • Krusty the Clown leaves a lot of fans guessing. This ambiguity was evident in the very beginning, in the Tracey Ullman shorts, when Bart insists that Krusty is a "real" clown and not "just a guy in clown makeup." In the episode "Krusty Gets Busted", we see him out of makeup and with normal-sized feet, and in the episode that informs us of his Jewish heritage, Krusty has a perfectly human father and is clearly human (if somewhat weird-looking) as a little boy. So, case closed, right? Think again. The subsequent episode "Homer's Triple Bypass" has Krusty pointing to his face and saying "This ain't makeup!", though he also claims it's the result of multiple heart attacks. In the episode "Bart the Fink", Bart and Lisa find him hiding out as a "normal" man with yellow skin named "Rory B. Bellows"... who doesn't just have white skin under yellow face makeup, his clown nose and blue hair are also real! On the other hand, Krusty's (biological) daughter Sophie is undeniably human (albeit with clown-like hair), as is Sophie's (single) mother. It's really hard to square all this. Perhaps Krusty was adopted, and his "father" made him up to look like a human boy. And maybe Sophie is some other man's daughter after all.
  • On the subject of Krusty, there's also "Handsome Pete", a little person with a head that looks like a distorted version of Krusty's clown face, who was used as a one-off gag.
  • Krusty's rival Gabbo (from the "Krusty Gets Kancelled" episode) is another creature who is hard to categorize. He can move about independently of the ventriloquist he's supposedly a dummy to, and appears to have a personality completely distinct from the ventriloquist as well — even to the point that the ventriloquist can't control what he does. Yes, he has pale, waxy skin and hinge-lines on his jaws — but those could just be makeup. And he is very small — but he could just have dwarfism. On the other hand, his lips flap up and down in a very inhuman manner and a newspaper announces that he's having a "real-boy operation." Just what is he?
  • Charles Montgomery Burns. It's pretty suspicious that he can take a bullet in the chest from a gun fired by Maggie Simpson and survive, especially considering his age and body type (he's unnaturally skinny). He also brags about his "strong, sharp teeth" and threatens to "club [people] and eat their bones"... and in the episode that had him dating Marge's mother, when she tells him "You are the Devil himself!", Burns becomes very angry and defensive ("What?! Who told you—") before realizing that she's speaking metaphorically.
  • In the episode "The Sweetest Apu", Manjula Nahasapeemapetilon considers divorcing her adulterous husband and goes to see a very bizarre lawyer with bug eyes and elf-like facial features. Sure, he looks perfectly human if you're far away or looking at him from behind. But he acts so crazy and evil that he makes Manjula ill at ease, and she remarks that he reminds her of legends of demented monkey-men from her native India. As she is leaving his office, the lawyer bellows in a booming voice: "WHEN WILL YOU HUMANS LEARN?!" — but it's a pretty easy voice to fake, so it could be the lawyer is just a very weird-looking, very psychopathic human.
  • The old, green-skinned Chinese man who sells Homer the cursed Krusty doll in "Treehouse of Horror III". It's possible that he's wearing green makeup, but... why?
  • Homer himself. "The Call of the Simpsons" has Homer get plastered in mud, which results in him being mistaken for Bigfoot. He is taken in for scientific examination, and after cleaning of the mud and a series of extensive studies, the conclusion is that he may or may not be human.
  • One episode strongly suggests that Hans Moleman belongs to a subterranean race of Mole Men. Hans himself has a habit of surviving the various mishaps that apparently kill him, like being rammed off the road by Homer or having an ether-intoxicated Mister Burns drill into his skull.
  • "Allen Wrench" from the episode "Eight Misbehavin'" is either a human employee of SHØP in a bizarre, physically improbable and needlessly elaborate wrench mascot costume, or, as he claims in confidence to Bart, an enslaved alien who needs tungsten to live. He may have been just messing with Bart in retaliation for poking at his costume and annoying him at work.
• Skysurfer Strike Force: It's never stated whether Cerina is a Bio-Borg like her father and the rest of the villains, or just the Token Human. She lacks any non-human features and any combat she does requires skill in hand-to-hand with no power or abilities whatsoever.
• Smiling Friends features a lot of Art-Style Clash in its character designs, with characters that look like realistically drawn humans and characters that are humanoid but have simplified cartoony looks with various nonhuman elements to their design (lack of noses, Black Bead Eyes, brightly-colored skin, etc). It's noted that the latter category is a separate class of beings called "critters", but the line where humans end and critters begin is pretty loose. Mr. Boss is a particularly notable one: he has a gigantic head, one scene shows him breastfeeding a child despite being apparently male, and he's a major Cloudcuckoolander on top of that. Whether he's an unusual human, a realistic critter, something in between, or something else entirely isn't really elaborated on.
• SpongeBob SquarePants
  • Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy look human, breathe underwater, speak to animals, and are implicitly really small compared to other humans because they're similar in size to the small sea creatures that live in Bikini Bottom (though Mermaid Man does have a Shrink Ray, the inconsistent scale of the Bikini Bottomites compared to humans doesn't help). They don't look like Neptune and the other merpeople either (despite Mermaid Man's name), nor do they resemble Atlanteans. Not helping matters is the fact that the two have no clear origin story.
  • Man Ray, a member of their Rogues Gallery, raises even more questions. Much about his anatomy appears human, but the costume he's wearing doesn't allow any glimpse of what's underneath. He's bigger than Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, but not as large as any of the confirmed humans. Perhaps the biggest point of contention is his head. It looks like a mask, but is very expressive. At the end of his debut episode, he was able to remove it entirely without any ill effects, showing he had No Face Under the Mask, and leaving it unclear as to whether it's his real head.
• Steven Universe:
  • The title character is explicitly a Half-Human Hybrid between human and Gem, but how human or non-human that makes him is uncertain. He mostly seems like a regular flesh and blood human with his mother's gem in his stomach, but he can shapeshift and fuse. "So Many Birthdays" shows that his physical age is somewhat dependent on his state of mind and not just his actual chronological age, with Word of God confirming that his effectively makes him immortal. Early on, he seems no more physically able than an average human child, but as the show progresses he displays Super-Strength and Super-Toughness with increasing frequency — and it's not clear when that started. And he can use gem Magitek, which is explicitly impossible for non-Gems, but again it isn't certain whether that's him or "just" his mother's gem. The Season 5 finale shows that pulling out his gem will separate his gem and human halves. His human half acts the same, but weakens and will probably die soon if not reunited. His gem half, which still looks and sounds like Steven, is physically fine, but seems emotionless, amoral, and completely focused on combining back together.
  • Onion acts and looks extremely strange (he seems to have no ears for starters), which causes Steven to question if he's human, as seen in the page quote. Onion's humanity appears to be confirmed when he shows Steven a graphic video of Vidalia giving birth to him in "Onion Friend", but Steven is still unsure, and places Onion into a category of his own in "Reunited". ("Dearly beloved gems, humans, lions big and small, living gourds, Onion...").Onion also doesn't visibly age, keeping his appearance after the Time Skip when other young characters hadn't, which the show's creator refused to explain, which only added to the recurring meme in the fandom is that Onion is some kind of superpowerful alien or supernatural being.
  • Lars Barriga was born a normal human, but died on Homeworld early in Season 5 and was revived by Steven in a process that gave him Lion's pink coloring and powers. By extension, it can probably be assumed that Lion was once a normal lion who died but was revived by Rose Quartz. Word of God says that Lars has all the same powers as Lion (even if he hasn't found out how to use them), and while the two are not outright immortal, they will age very slowly compared to other members of their respective species. Whether or not Lars can still be considered human at all is debatable.
• Superjail!:
  • The Warden most definitely looks human, but has magical powers and, according to the two-parter Season 1 finale "Time Police", is Older Than They Look.
  • Although Lord Stingray appears to be a normal human man beneath the costume (the fact he never removes his Expressive Mask aside), Christy Karacas teased fans with the remark: "Who says he's even human?"
• Members of the Galactic Guardian Group in Sym-Bionic Titan look human and are based in Earth, but have technology much more advanced and aesthetically different than anyone's else from earth. Their technology and one of their high-ranking member's fighting style are revealed to be Gallalunan. At the very least their actual leader, the mysterious figure Solomon talks to, is from Gallaluna (and may be Lance's Disappeared Dad who went into a spacewarp).
• The Federation in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) has fairly human looking members such as General Blanque and Lonae, but the fact Earth is a low technology backwater and not even aware of the Federation is actually a plot point. Maybe the aliens who experimented on Agent Bishop decided to clone up a race of humans from his DNA.
• Teen Titans (2003):
  • Jinx for all intentions looks human, however she has pink hair, pink eyes, and grey skin and how she has her bad luck powers is unexplained.
  • It's uncertain whether Killer Moth is wearing a costume or has actually somehow mutated into a human/moth hybrid. He has a completely human-looking daughter, so he was probably human at some point (assuming she's his biological child, of course). In the comics and in one of the animated Batman series, he is both: formerly an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain who merely dressed as a moth, he was mutated (by Deal with the Devil in the comics, by the Penguin's chemical weapons in the series) into a gigantic humanoid moth with a taste for human flesh.
  • Kitten's ex-boyfriend Fang is a teenager with a spider for a head. Not a spider's head, an entire giant spider for a head on an otherwise human body. How exactly this happened and whether he is a human or something else entirely is left unanswered.
• Uncle Grandpa looks human and is the most humanoid of the main characters, yet frequently demonstrates powers that make no sense for a human to have and which other humans on the show don't have, claims in one episode to be older than Mr. Gus, who has been around since before humans evolved, and "Space Emperor" shows that there is at least one alien who looks identical to him aside from the colour of his moustache. "Christmas Special" confirms that he's the same species as Santa Claus, which doesn't really help.
• The Venture Bros.:
  • Red Death has blood-red skin, glowing yellow eyes, and a Skull for a Head. Obviously, he's not fully human now, but whether he ever was a human and if there's any humanity left in him is decidedly ambiguous. His age is also rather odd, in that he's said to be quite old (having been an active villain for well over twenty years by the time of the series), but he has a young wife and a daughter in grade school. Whatever's the deal with him, it's apparently genetic, since his daughter looks just like him.
  • Doctor Henry Killinger certainly looks like a tubby middle-aged guy wearing a black outfit and a facemask, but he has undefined—yet clearly immense—supernatural and magical powers. It's never been defined what he is; Doctor Orpheus's attempts to figure him out only earned him a Psychic Nosebleed for his troubles. "All This and Gargantua-2" suggests him to be some variety of higher power, and that he has brothers who take the names of Greek wind deities, but that's about it.
• In Villainous, Flug seems mostly human (although the paper bag over his head does leave a little bit of wiggle room), 5.0.5. is a genetically engineered bear, and Black Hat appears to be some sort of Humanoid Abomination. The ambiguous one is Dementia, the fourth character: she appears human, but can crawl on walls like a gecko and a blueprint of her is shown briefly at one point.
• Princess Demurra and Brad Starlight from Wander over Yonder are clearly Disney Prince/ss parodies. But their lack of noses and Dremurra's exceedingly exaggerative traits make it hard to tell if it's the show's style or alien anatomy; considering that every race is a unique looking alien and Hater, a skeleton, has a hole for a nose.
• In The Wizard of Oz (1933), the titular wizard has Pointy Ears and magical powers. It's never explained that he is from America like Dorothy, thus making it ambiguous whether he's a normal human or a member of an Oz-specific Human Subspecies.
• All the fairies from Winx Club. Is hard to tell if they're only humans with magical powers or, as their butterfly wings suggest, an entirely different species (still with enough genetic affinity to sire half-bloods like Roxy). the doubts only goes further when we meet Arcadia, the very first fairy of the magical dimension, which looking is even less human.
• Xavier: Renegade Angel: Xavier's parents look and act like humans, but their son is a Cartoon Creature.
• Young Justice (2010): This iteration of Mercy Graves is a Cyborg, and it's not clear just how much of her is human. She takes far more damage than the average human, never says a single word, and follows Lex Luthor with little to no emotion. On the other hand, she does bleed.

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