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"I'm overwhelmed."

— Anakin Skywalker, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

"This turn of events fills me with a profound sense of indifference."

—Unskippable

Mal: Fear is nothing to be ashamed of, Doctor.

Simon: This isn't fear. This is anger.

Mal: Well, kind of hard to tell one from the other, face like yours.

Simon: Well, I imagine if it were fear my eyes would be wider.

—Serenity

"A range of emotions from horror and despair to fury and triumph summed up by a single, slack-jawed facial expression."

A vague, wispy look of emptiness given by a character that's supposed to convey intense emotional shock, horror, or revelation, but really looks like they've been binging on every single narcotic known to man for their entire lives.

Trope named for a skit in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 where Mike Nelson attempts to guess the emotions portrayed by Kathy Ireland in Alien from L.A.; the correct answer for each was "Dull surprise!" It is also a meme in Transformers fandom, in reference to the art of Pat Lee.

The exact opposite of Feed Me. See also That Makes Me Feel Angry.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Kira in Gundam Seed Destiny sports this when Meer Campbell dies and everyone is crying and he just looks like he just smoked a bunch of pot.
  • Considering that Kira's cry is notorious for sounding like a dying horse, the viewers got off lucky.
• Takumi Fujiwara in Initial D gets to Ctrl Alt Del levels when his driving passion is awakened while watching his rival's perfomance during an illegal race.
• Prince Odysseus from Code Geass, to the point that his Fan Nickname is "Prince Valium".
  • His brother Prince Schneizel is just as bad
• Kyon, of the obligatory Suzumiya Haruhi reference, mentally criticizes Itsuki of this in the SOS Brigade movie. Strange in that since his normal persona is at least something of an act, and a pretty good one at that. Even Kyon has trouble figuring out what he really thinks about anything.
  • In Nyoron Churuya-san, everyone except Churuya and Ashakura have one same monochromic expression.
    • :3 nyoro~n...
• This happens a lot in Gantz. One the most obvious examples is this panel◊ from chapter 303.
• Done intentionally with Ichiro in Nerima Daikon Brothers—he's so calm and sedate that he reacts to almost everything with a blank, slack-jawed expression. Actually, it seems like most of the guys at the Host Club behave this way for some reason.

Comic Books

• Transformers fans have used this term to describe the emotions portrayed by the characters in any Dreamwave comics drawn by Pat Lee or anyone aping his style.
  • Also applicable to the low-quality Conspicuous CG in the Energon and Cybertron cartoons.
• During the Spider-Man story arc "The Other," an entire issue is devoted to Mary Jane's shock and grief at Peter's apparent death. Who did Marvel hire to draw this emotionally-charged issue? Pat Lee. Cue 20 pages of Mary Jane looking far more stoned than grief-stricken.
• Linkara mocks an issue of Uncanny X-Men (#423) for having Nightcrawler reveal a surprising bit of info and having all the characters react in shock... or rather a series of random emotions, none of which really make them seem all too stunned (one is even glaring boredly into space).

Film

• Fifty years ago, critics would probably be praising his "manly restraint" or some such, but it can be argued that actor Keanu Reeves has this in all of his movies, but it's most noticeable in The Matrix trilogy (which is apparently why the Wachowski Brothers hired him).
  • Try watching Bram Stokers Dracula, where Keanu's trying to conceal his Dull Surprise at the supernatural events around him AND keep up his painful Fake Brit accent.

• The Room is practically a Trope Namer with Tommy Wiseau.
  Johnny: "Oh, HI, (fill in the name)!". (Endlessly. Even to a dog.)
• Selma Blair maintains this expression at all times in the film version of Hellboy and the sequel, though not so much in the latter. It works when her character is hooked to a thorazine drip, but other than that...
  • This troper had assumed she was supposed to be on medication to control her moods through all of the first film, just less of it. This would also explain why it's less prevalent in the second film.
• The film version of Pride and Prejudice had Matthew McFayden (Darcy) doing this whenever he was supposed to be feeling romantic. This is too bad, since he was pretty good in The Way We Live Now.
  • Mister Darcy has a consistent problem with this in various film versions of the book. The reason seems to be that in the book, he starts out disdainful and cold to the point of rudeness, and different actors struggle with how to play him so that he can be accepted by the audience in a romantic role despite coming off as a jerk less than an hour ago.
• Natalie Burke in the MST3K alumnus Warrwilf Werewolf. Altogether now: "Tis is ebsolutly fescinatung".
• Sterling Hayden in Suddenly.
• Nicolas Cage alternates between Dull Surprise and being a Large Ham. Usually switching at the wrong times.
• Alicia Silverstone in Batman And Robin.
• Thandie Newton in Mission Impossible II.
• Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth from Superman Returns
• Tim Roth in Little Odessa.
• I don't want to imagine the number of sedatives the cast of Death Bed: The Bed that Eats must have been on while making the movie. Witness this scene in which a man's hands get burned off and he doesn't seem to mind. I've seen bigger reactions to people losing their CAR KEYS!
  • Oh, my stomach. Ah, I'm being eaten alive.
• In the Twilight film, Bella certainly has a collection of such emotions◊.
  • Why don't her eyebrows move? WHY DON'T HER EYEBROWS MOVE?!
• Jason Statham has two distinct moods: Scowling while beating people up, and scowling while beating people up with his shirt off.
• Sofia Coppola in The Godfather Part III.
• Doctor. Holly. Goodhead. Really, my dear, if you're facing the end of humanity by toxic freaking nerve gas, would it kill you to at least sound kind of interested?!
  • Pretty much all of the Bond Girls during the Roger Moore era, with the possible exception of Maud Adams.
• Hayden Christensen in almost everything he's ever been in, but especially in the Star Wars prequels.
  • Me, a master, I'm overwhelmed.
• Christian Bale seems to have a variety of facial expressions comparable to a marble statue. It's well justified in Equilibrium, but in other movies his lack of emotion seems rather annoying. But hey, this troper likes him nevertheless.
  • Have you ever seen American Psycho?
    • See Nicholas Cage, above, for this kind of acting range.
• Intentionally invoked in Napoleon Dynamite.
• Dorothy Parker once said that Katherine Hepburn ran "the gamut of emotions, from A to B."
• Orlando Bloom. Although he'll probably strike a heroic pose at the same time, just to mix things up.
• Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter.
• Most people remember Arnold Schwarzenegger for playing an emotionless robot.
  • Or an emotionless (ex)soldier. Really, Schwarzenegger is the best when he can play a killing machine (either literally or figuratively). Honestly, you do not want to see him try to act emotions. Just remember Jingle All The Way, when he was supposed to play a loving dad who had to genuinely laugh with his kid. Or on second thought, don't remember that at all.
  • Also, when he isn't subdued (like in the two roles above or Conan The Barbarian), he has weird facial expressions (Kindergarten Cop), or overacts for the sake of it (Batman And Robin).
• Edward Burns in A Sound Of Thunder. Just check the pictures of this recap (who describes him as "only slightly less stiff than the fossilized bones of the dinosaurs they hunt").

Live Action TV

• Kristen Kreuk's Lana Lang in Smallville. From finding out she's pregnant, to finding out about Clark's superpowers, to overwhelming joy, to anger and so on and so on. (Her other expression is the eye-roll-and-vague-smile combo.) Except in the earlier seasons, when she would make a face like a squirrel instead.
• Zooey Deschanel in Tin Man and The Happening.
  • If you think about it: Zooey Deschanel.
    • This culminated in her role as the title character of 500 Days Of Summer, where her emotionally mute acting style worked great as an emotionally dead character to explain why the main character, obviously hoping she'd be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, had such a terrible relationship with her.
• Ashley Scott in Jericho. Sometimes she tries to cover this up by holding her hands over her blank face. With mixed success - many times this has simply ended up looking like she's sniffing her fingers, not a major improvement.
• Ghost Whisperer. Watching Jennifer Love Hewitt do this has been the source of many a Narmy moment. It really doesn't help that they end about half the scenes with a nice big close up of her so desperately struggling to make a facial expression, any facial expression.
  • What with it being Jennifer Love Hewitt, try and guess what the other half of the scenes had a close up of.
• Anna Torv in Fringe. Particularly, teeth-grindingly noticeable considering that she shares scenes with one of the Largest Hams known to mankind, which is sure to emphasize any poor attempts at more subtle expressions in others. She's gotten a bit better with it though.
  • She finds out her boyfriend is a double agent, then sees him get killed, then he packs his suitcase and moves into her brain. Later she finds out that she was a Tyke Bomb guinea pig in Walter and William Bell's drug experiments. If she had a normal emotional range it would be a miracle.
• Milo Ventimiglia, who currently plays Peter in Heroes. Does do a lip curl.
  • It's glaringly obvious when he's in a scene with someone who can actually act (Jack Coleman, Cristine Rose, Christopher Eccleston, Zachary Quinto, David Anders, the list goes on and on...).
• Often turns up as part of the Stylistic Suck that forms Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. Liz in particular seems susceptible to it:
  "That's strange. That cat just told me to leave."

Video Games

• Shadow Of Destiny has fairly limited facial animations, so most of the characters look like this at some point, but Eike spends virtually the entire game in a state of Dull Surprise. It doesn't help that his English voice is fairly monotone.
• Silent Hill characters have this tendency given the limitations in the graphics; many fans consider the 4th game's protagonist Henry Townsend to be the worst offender.
• The limited engine of Deus Ex, combined with acting that ranged from ridiculously over-the-top (and borderline racist) to the flattest line readings imaginable lead to Dull Surprise in more than a few situations. Yes, the Agent-Smith-alike was too unemotional in the points of the game where he was supposed to be cool and collected.
  • What a shame...he was a good man...what a rotten way to die.
• Several of the bad endings in the original School Days game end with Makoto staring blankly at whatever gruesome scene has just happened before him.
• Despite being an expert at Parrot Exposition, Solid Snake (of Metal Gear) is usually expressive enough with his face and body to avoid this even with graphics limitations - except in Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, which had really freakishly awful facial expressions. Snake's gormless, changeless expression in that game is referred to by fans as 'Mildly-Annoyed Confusion', and combined with his mindless repetition of things that other people say, and with his 180 IQ which is repeatedly mentioned in the manual and never demonstrated in the canon ever, it hits legendary levels.
• The main character in Knights Of The Old Republic always looks sort of mildly interested in dialogue mode, complete with nodding or raising an eyebrow occasionally, which works for much of the time but not when something dramatic is going on.

Web Comics

• Ctrl Alt Del: The internet term "B^U" can also be used to describe the lack of facial expression (everyone usually looks tired and at least slightly slack-jawed) as well as everyone looking really similar.

Porn

• Most porn "actors" suffer from this in their non-sexual scenes. You wouldn't think anyone could accomplish this in literary porn, but by God, they've found a way: SD40ka's characters' dialogue only becomes comprehensible when read as Bad Bad Acting or a Creepy Monotone. Somehow even the act of suddenly vomiting in reaction to getting suddenly, coldly cheated-on and dumped is still utterly devoid of emotion.
  • Hell, even during sex scenes they can suffer from this. Honestly some actors look more bored than in bliss.
    • Seeing how there's a bunch of people watching while one of them is telling you what to do, I would say it's kinda boring. Just another day at the office.
    • Not to mention that the sexual scenarios, positions and techniques they use — some of which would be quite exotic for most couples outside of porn — are so commonplace in the industry as to be borderline cliche.
  • They probably are bored. Scripted sex? Oooh boy.
  • Most notable for me would be Sasha Grey in some random porn where she's a schoolgirl sneaking into her teacher's house to steal the answers to some test. Except she's in the wrong house, and she gets caught. Cue her saying "Holy shit." in such a dull surprise way, I laughed uncontrollably for the next six or seven minutes.

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