100 Things to Do Before High School: CJ's doll freaks out her father. It has one eye missing. He especially dislikes the accompanying knife that the doll can hold.
Episode 12 of The Amanda Show has a skit called "Rock-a-Bye Ralph". A little girl (Amanda Bynes) can't sleep because of a thunderstorm, so her parents give her the eponymous toy — a smiling doll in pajamas that says cutesy bedtime phrases ("I love you! Time to go sleepy!"). While the girl thinks it's sweet at first, Rock-A-Bye Ralph refuses to shut up and endlessly blathers in his Sickeningly Sweet voice, driving her crazy and, paradoxically, keeping her awake even more. But no matter what she does — from ripping out his batteries to jamming him in a drawer to tossing him out the window — Ralph just keeps chattering. It looks as though the girl finally wins after calling her puppy to eat Ralph... that is, until the doll starts talking from the dog's stomach.
The episode "The Tale of the Dark Music" has a life-sized walking and talking doll, with a creepy perpetual grin, dressed in a cute blue party dress acting innocent and nice, when it really has evil intentions and wishes to lure the male lead of the episode into the dark cellar behind it.
The episode "The Tale of the Dollmaker" is essentially about a girl who is distraught over the disappearance of her friend. She finds a mysterious doll house whose front door matches one she uncovers behind wallpaper in the attic. Through the door, she finds her missing friend, who is slowly turning into a china doll. She herself almost turns into one as well.
The episode "The Tale of the Crimson Clown" has a young bratty boy learn a lesson when an evil clown doll comes to life and starts to terrorize him.
Heck, the intro sequence features one at around 00:12. This show really loves its creepy dolls.
Ashita, Mama ga Inai: Post's prospective foster parents have a room full of dolls that are about Post's height and dressed just like her. It's implied that they see Post as just another doll to add to their collection.
Bar Rescue: Royal Oaks, one of the decrepit bars, is littered with them, amongst other equally uncomfortable and offensive decor.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Drusilla has a plethora of these. Her favorite doll is named Miss Edith. ("Miss Edith speaks out of turn. She's a bad example and will have no cakes today.")
Criminal Minds: In "The Uncanny Valley", a female UnSub makes creepy dolls out of her victims, which she kidnaps, keeps chemically immobilized but conscious, dressed up and played tea party with until they die from lack of stimulation. In her defense, she doesn't intend to kill them and has a Freudian Excuse: her real, er, actual dolls (American Girls stand-ins) were a gift from her Psycho Psychologist dad after he molested her, then electroshocked her to make her forget, but when she saw him giving them to his latest victim, she snapped. The dolls themselves caused some creepiness: a costume and essay contest by the doll company accidentally revealed some disturbed little girls who accidentally stumbled onto an (actual) form of trauma therapy, with the UnSub among them.
In CSI's seventh season, the Miniature Killer places a picture of a creepy bisque doll in each of the crime scene miniatures. It turns out to be a symbol of her dead sister, or possibly of her.
One episode of CSI: NY has a murder in a doll hospital. The team ends up finding an important piece of evidence: a recording in a doll. To try and figure out how to activate it, they take off the doll's head, with all the wires hanging out of it, like veins and intestines. Then they turn it on, and it says in a semi-demonic voice: "My Name is Sophie."
Curb Your Enthusiasm: Susie's daughter Sammy has loads of these decorating her room.
Dark Shadows features an episode in which two children are turned into dolls.
An episode of Destination Truth has Josh and the group on the Island of The Dolls. One doll's eye actually opens up.
Doctor Who has the Doll Children from "Night Terrors", who sing nursery rhymes, laugh like children and can turn other people into more of them. They aren't as well-put-together as some of the examples here, either, which possibly makes it worse.
The seventh season of Face/Off has a design challenge based around making these; every artist has to pick a different type of doll and make it into a fantasy/horror creature. Creepy dolls have also been made in other episodes, including one that is both a doll and a clown.
An episode of Ghost Hunters has the team visit a woman who claims that her house is haunted. Among other things, she says that the ghost makes her doll "perform" for her (something like the face moving). The team records the doll but thankfully, nothing actually happens. One of the crew members is visibly relieved that he didn't have to witness anything.
A doll in Ghost Whisperer. To make things worse, the doll is disfigured, and its clothes are torn and stained. Ugh!
The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries: The episode "House on Possessed Hill" has Joe Hardy walking into a room of a cursed house... with a creepy animated toy doll nodding its head in time to creepy tinkly music box chimes.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphiaplays this trope for comedy: After Dennis leaves in the finale of season 12, Mac has apparently purchased a life size male Sex Doll and dressed it to resemble Dennis. Initially it creeps out everyone who encounters it, but over time the cast begin hallucinating conversations with it (the waitress eventually ends up sleeping with it). At the end of the episode, it briefly appears that the Gang have lost their minds, as the doll suddenly speaks and moves about. It's then revealed that Dennis was actually back; he tossed the doll out of sight and took its place because he wanted to gaslight the rest of the Gang.
In the episode "Multiple Plots" of The King of Queens, Doug delivers a package to a man who runs a doll hospital out of his home. While waiting, Doug picks up one of the dolls the guy is repairing. It says "Mommy!" — Doug utters a terrified "Oh, my God!" and throws the doll away.
Legends of Tomorrow: In "Hell No, Dolly!", the Legends find themselves fighting against the spirit of a serial killer known as Mike the Spike, who possesses dolls to murder his victims.
Legion: In "Chapter 22", when Charles Xavier opens Gabrielle's box, he finds a scary-looking doll◊ which is the miniature version of the Shadow King's guise as the World's Angriest Boy in the World◊ from Season 1. Charles is a bit creeped out by the toy's appearance (the eerie, discordant soundtrack reflects his discomfort), and he quickly closes the lid.
Lucha Underground: Between Seasons 3 and 4, RickyMundo visited the Island of the Dolls and returned with Rosa the Doll, who ups the ante with a healthy dose of Demonic Possession. At the end of Season 4, Rosa possesses Taya Mundo and proclaims herself a god.
Mad Men: Sally is terrified of her baby brother because he was named after her deceased grandfather, whom she loved dearly, and he now sleeps in his bedroom. Betty tries to give her a barbie doll "from the baby" to make Sally like him, but she throws out in the front yard. Don makes the mistake of bringing the doll in and leaving it on Sally's nightstand, looking right at her. Cut to Sally screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night, staring at that doll in utter terror. Not creepy to the audience, but clearly damn creepy for the character.
The incredibly creepy (at least, to a 12-year-old) 1985 BBC series Maelstrom features lots of scary dolls in the darkened attic of an old log cabin.
The belly speaker's puppet from "Belly Speaker" is very disturbing. The fact that it is manufactured to look like its owner, complete with differently colored eyes, adds to the creepiness factor.
In "Me, Myself and Murdoch", the constables find a rag doll without an eye in a Creepy Basement., buried with a chopped-up skeleton.
In "Murdoch in Toyland", Detective Murdoch is taunted by a series of dolls with recorded messages as a part of Criminal Mind Games scheme. Quoth Inspector Brackenried: "I know it's supposed to be adorable, but to me it just looks bloody creepy."
In "Friday the 13th 1901", Julia gets locked in a cold storage cellar and finds a childish drawing and a doll, which triggers her memories of James Gillies (who kidnapped her and buried her alive). She is later reminded of this again when going over Gillies' case file and looking at a photo of one of the dolls.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 has the Tickle-Me Carlo Lombardi doll that Crow makes while watching The She-Creature. There's nothing supernatural about it, but it is incredibly creepy, with a distinctly Evil Laugh and a vaguely threatening advertising pitch ("Tickle-Me Carlo Lombardi doesn't like to be disappointed."). That's before Crow reveals he made it sticky and things get much worse. Even he eventually decides it's too creepy to be marketable.
Night Gallery has the episode "The Doll", in which (you guessed it) a creepy doll is actually part of a revenge curse.
Once Upon a Time explains the backstory of Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket; his parents were turned into two creepy dolls now owned by Rumpelstiltskin.
Prudence from One Big Happy has a pair of creepy marionettes that she used to entertain children with at a hospital. Marionettes just happen to be Luke's fear. She hangs the puppets above their bed.
Power Rangers S.P.D.: "I'm Cindy Sunshine, and I want to be your friend." Uh... no thanks. (It's not the voice speaking through it — provided by a known character — but more the Exorcist Head at one point that makes it creepy.)
Psych: Two creepy dolls appear in the episode "Tuesday the 17th". The first doll is a papier mâché pinata of Rick Astley created by Shawn when he was a kid. The second is an exact replica of Robert the Haunted Doll that is carried around by one of the characters.
Psychoville has Freddy Fruitcake, Joy's Replacement Goldfish for the real baby she lost to cot death. It's unclear whether or not there may be a spark of life in Freddy.
The River gives us this en mass in an episode based on La Isla de la Munecas (see Real Life section).
Scare Tactics (2003) has a collector of creepy dolls — one of which being his "mother" — as one of their favorite setups.
Seinfeld: In one episode, Susan has a doll that looks just like George's mother, Estelle. George can't sleep with it in the bed, and he keeps imagining it talking to him in Estelle's voice. Meanwhile, Susan keeps insisting that it looks nothing like Estelle and that George is being ridiculous. When Frank sees the doll at the end of the episode, he also imagins it talking to him in Estelle's voice, then strangles it and pulls its head off.
In the animated segment "The Toothpaste March", the marching toothpaste tubes pass by several creepy dolls, including a Victorian girl doll, a Nutcracker, a nightmarish teddy bear, and a Raggedy Andy doll unsettlingly reclining in a corner.
Shining Time Station used to have these brief skits in which the jukebox has puppets that play music. Let's just say that the puppets are... horrifying and leave it at that.
"The first time I bought Lisa a doll, she said she felt no real connection to it, like there was a sheet of glass between her and the doll. With My Little Stepchildren, she no longer feels forced to change that."
Tales from the Crypt: The episode "Strung Along" features a marionette puppeteer about to make a comeback and gets the help of a young animatronics engineer, but as he starts suspecting his wife of cheating on him, the doll seems to speak to him, indicating that he is starting to go crazy with stress. In the final act, the doll does attack his wife, though it turns out to be the work of the animatronics worker, as he and the wife had set up the whole thing to kill him. But when the police arrive, the two of them are dead as well, wires dangling from their limbs and leading up to the old man, now dressed up as his doll, grinning eerily from atop the bed. It's pretty freaky.
Kamen Rider OOO has Kiyo-chan, the bald, white-suited doll belonging to Dr. Maki. It originally belonged to his older sister, who he killed in a fire. It has a rather unsettling habit of moving apparently on its own.
Tower Prep: Senor Guapo appears as one of these during Gabe's dreams.
True Blood has one turn up in Bill's house, while Jessica and Hoyt are living there. The doll is so creepy, they give it to Arlene's baby, which attracts the ghost of a local witch.
The Twilight Zone (1959) has Talky Tina from "Living Doll", a surprisingly creepy and murderous doll. Ironically, Talky Tina is more of the good guy of the story, since her "victim" is a bitter, angry man taking out vague feelings of inadequacy on his wife and stepdaughter. Though she does end on a rather menacing note to the wife, saying "You'd better be nice to me" as the poor woman stares in horror at her husband's body. At the end of the episode, Rod's closing statement says that while dolls can't really move or talk, children do pretend that they're friends and defenders. "Talky Tina" was inspired by a real toy, "Chatty Cathy", a doll produced by Mattel beginning in 1959. June Foray, who provided the recorded voice Mattel used for Chatty Cathy, also provided CBS with the voice for Talky Tina.
White Collar has El's parents restoring a doll that they think she loved as a girl and giving it to her as a birthday present. It appears to be a beggar girl with enormous black eyes in an elongated head. El had shoved it into a crawlspace because she hated it so much.
In "Born Again", Michelle's therapist sometimes leaves Michelle alone in her office with a doll, and Michelle disfigures every doll by tearing off an arm and gouging out an eye. She shows Mulder an entire shelf of these dolls. It's even more disturbing when we learn why Michelle is doing this: she's the reincarnation of a murder victim and is re-enacting the post-mortem mutilation that had been done to his body.
"Chinga" has one which drives people to inflict harm on themselves ("Let's have fun!").
features one at around 00:12. This show really loves its creepy dolls.
