In animation, it's fairly common for characters to be depicted differently from what you'd expect from real life (usually missing the little finger), especially from the anatomical point, mostly due to simplification of the human/animal figure represented. Sometimes though, one or more characters in particular on a show will be depicted in a way distinctive from the rest of the cast. Normally, they either:
- lack one prominent anatomical feature, especially the nose;
- or are depicted with more detail, having features that other members of the cast don't;
Of course, this trope applies only when one or a few characters among the whole cast of the show are depicted with less or more detail than the greatest part of the cast. After all, it's almost impossible to determine a norm if there is none to start with.
Related to Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: in many cartoons, only females have visible lips and eyelashes.
Super trope to the first type of The Noseless, sub-trope of Non-Standard Character Design and Animals Lack Attributes. Related to Invisible Anatomy.
Examples:
Characters lacking something:
Anime & Manga- In Doraemon, Nobita's mom is usually drawn with no toes. Averted on a few occasions, like in most of the 1979 anime, a few movies (like the 2006 remake of Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur or Stand by Me Doraemon) and a single episode of the 2005 anime.
- In fact, many mother/housewife characters in Fujiko Fujio works are usually drawn without toes.
- Krillin, of the Dragon Ball series, who doesn't feature a nose. (Lampshaded during the first Tournament Arc, when Krillin is losing a fight to a barbarian who uses his stench as a weapon - until Goku points out Krillin's lack of a nose)
- Lampshaded in an early episode of Pokémon: The Original Series. Team Rocket suffers under the stench that Erika's Gloom emanates, and Meowth panics, thinking that his nose has melted away, before he realizes, "Oh yeah, I forgot! The cartoonists never gave me a nose."
- Hata of Seitokai Yakuindomo normally has no nose. On rare occasions, she'll have one when viewed from the side.
- To emphasize his amorphous nature, Plastic Man has no toes. (Though presumably, Plas could extrude as many toes as he wished, if he wanted to).
- Cathy has no nose, but no one else in the comic shares this trait.
- Dilbert and Dogbert have no mouths (but the rest of the cast does). There were rare cases in the comics in which a mouth appears when Dilbert was shouting. In the cartoon series, it would only appear when they were speaking.
- Peanuts: Charlie Brown. Word of God says he has a full head of hair, if very fine short and blond. You'd never know it, would you?
Films — Animation
- In Turning Red this is downplayed. Auntie Chen's giant red panda form has no visible whiskers while almost everyone else's does.note
Films — Live-Action
- In the short film Badly Drawn Roy, Roy has no nose, four fingers, lacks detail and one hand is smaller than the other. At least some of this is due to intentional Stylistic Suck.
- Homestar Runner: Several characters don't have arms.
- Mandy from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy is the only character without a nose. Also Grim, but he's a skeleton anyway.
- The eponymous Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil is the only character who lacks a nose. He is also more Animesque than the rest of the cast.
- The Powerpuff Girls, who have no fingers (nor noses), even lampshaded once.
- The Simpsons:
- You can't tell where Bart, Lisa, and Maggie's forehead ends and hair begins, they all run together and are of the same color, and none of the other characters share this trait.
- The Simpson kids are "tow-headed"—which means very light, flaxen blonde, as confirmed by Chief Wiggum when he radios to the police station and describes Bart as such. Also, during a sight-gag about "realistic cartoons", where the family suddenly morphs into far more human-looking depictions of their characters, the Simpson kids are all seen to be very light blonde.
- Also, characters that have been in the show since the Tracy Ulman days (such as the Simpson family and Krusty the Clown) tend to have really huge eyeballs while everyone else's eyes are more or less normal sized.
- South Park: At first, little Ike Broflovski is the only one drawn having small beady eyes and a Pac-Man-like head which flaps up and down whenever he speaks. We later find out that rather than Ike being drawn special because he is much younger than anyone else, that Canadians (he is adopted) all look like that. It's unknown if this was planned from the start or something the creators added later, but it's likely the former, since Terrence and Philip had the same element from the start, and their accents marked them (poorly) as Canadian.
- Likewise, many of the children lack noses, whereas adults and, to some extent, older children have them.
- Characters introduced in later episodes tend to be more detailed due to the advancements in animation, while the older characters keep their simpler designs.
- Steven Universe:
- Most Gems lack eyebrows, except when they need them for expressions.
- Onion and his father Yellowtail both lack ears. Onion also lacks eyebrows.
- While gems almost never have visible ears, it seems to just be part of the show's art style not to draw ears when they're even partially obstructed (which generally applies to human women as well). However, the Rutile Twins have hair that goes straight up without showing ears, suggesting they literally don't have any.
- Omi of Xiaolin Showdown. No nose. (Also no hair, but then again, he is a monk.)
- A gag in Family Guy showed that the earrings on Lois' head are directly attached to the sides of them, as when her hair is brushed back there's nothing there.
Characters with something extra:
Films — Animation- South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut: The Mole is the only kid to have ears.
- Steven Universe: The Movie: Spinel is a unique mix of both of the above: she originally had eyelashes and no irises, but when she changed form the eyelashes disappeared and her eyes gained red irises. Her original form gains the latter's eyes briefly when she's angered.
Films — Live-Action
- Played for Laughs in The Naked Gun 33 ⅓ when Tanya is introduced. The camera shows her feet first, then slowly pans up her legs, which are unnaturally long, then past her knees to a second set of knees.
- The Order of the Stick: Only the elves and certain other creatures have ears; all humans lack them. One half-elf reveals his hybrid status by showing he has a single (pointed) ear.
- RWBY: Prior to Volume 7, the show didn't have the ability to give characters fingernails. As a result, only characters with painted nails had any fingernail definition. These characters were limited to Cinder (red nails), Emerald (pink nails), and Salem (black nails).
- The eponymous Blaze of Blaze and the Monster Machines is the only non-human character with visible irises; all the others have the standard Black Dot Pupils.
- In Gravity Falls, Sev'ral Timez are the only characters with visible irises.
- In The Simpsons, the only character with five fingers is God.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: SpongeBob and Sandy are two of the very few characters who have fingers instead of Fingerless Hands, though in Sandy's case that's simply because she's the only animal that does have fingers. Lampshaded on a few occasions.
- Steven Universe:
- The only characters with normally-visible eyelashes are Jasper, the four members of the Diamond Authority, and the Mystery Girl from "Last One Out of Beach City" (who is wearing dark eyeshadow).
- White Diamond is the only character with visible fingernails or toenails (which stick out especially because they're stark black against the rest of her glowing white body).
- A few characters have visible iris: The Diamonds, Jasper (as well as the "Skinny" Jasper in the Zoo), Sapphire, Holly Blue Agate, Nephrite, and a fair number of gem fusions. Bizarrely, Sugilite has five eyes, and the three from Garnet have irises, but the two from Amethyst don't.
