There are many ways to mislead someone. Red Herrings, Twist Villains, and Disney Deaths are just some of the methods.
However, for some creatures, deceiving people is so necessary that they actually gain a fake face on their body via evolution.
This fake face flair can be used in a variety of ways, such as scaring people, fooling enemies, or even just looking cool and interesting.
This trope is Truth in Television, as some animals in real life evolve to have fearsome face-like markings on their bodies to scare off predators.
Could be used for Luring in Prey. May be cause for a Perpetual Expression. Compare Not a Mask, Menacing Mask, Face-Design Shield, and Cool Mask. Contrast Expressive Mask. See also Flying Face for when the creature really is a living head or face.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Spirited Away: Implied with No-Face, who nominally has a white mask for a face. Given his name however (and the fact his mouth is located elsewhere) it is heavily implied the mask is just a ruse to lure in victims, and he is actually The Blank.
- The Keeper Wants to Build a Zoo in Another World, so He Tames Monsters: The left and right heads of Cerberi are fully functional, but the middle head is a decoy to expand their apparent field of vision and bite range. Ikuhara recognizes and exploits this to outmanoeuvre one.
Blogs
- Bridge Worms from the Slimyswampghost blog where Trevor Henderson posts his work have a fake face that covers their real, uglier face. The creature uses the false face to lure in any potential prey it finds.
Comic Books
- Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Search: The animals surrounding the Mother Of Faces home all have face-like patterns on their body due to her influence.
Literature
- Skulduggery Pleasant: In the first few books, Skulduggery Pleasant hides his skeletal face when dealing with mortals. After that, he arranges to have runes placed on his body that allows him to use a facade that creates a randomized face, allowing him to interact with mortals without them freaking out over him being a living skeleton.
- The Founding of Valdemar: The Dolls are Vrondi—air spirits drawn to truth—trapped in constructed bodies and made to serve the Evil Empire. To make them identifiable, people often decorate Dolls' bodies in various ways, including by making them artificial faces. The Dolls like this, seeing it as a token of affection, and this tradition continues until the end of Beyond when the heroes find a way to free the Vrondi from the Doll bodies.
Video Games
- Flight Rising: The Wicked Smile
and Vile Grin familiars — first released during the 2023 Night of the Nocturne event — resemble large moths with eye spots on their wings, in reference to some real-life variations of the trope. This is lampshaded in the tooltip for the Vile Grin:
Whoa! Best to give the flying face a wide berth - you have moths to hunt! - Genshin Impact: The Maguu Kenki boss is a robot built with a large front mask that obscures its body while it's in a dormant state. Once awakened, the large mask splits apart and is used for combat.
- Hollow Knight: Midwife is a mysterious resident of Deepnest and she has a happy-looking mask as her fake face. She will reveal her true aspect when she attempts to eat the Knight. There are no bad intentions though, it's a natural instinct.
- Home Safety Hotline: Some varieties of Hobb are stated to bear "false faces" in their entries. The art book clarifies this as the noses and smiles on some of the Hobbs being fake, though the eye-like slits on them are actually eyes. Additionally, their metamorphosed counterparts, the more malicious and deadly Boggarts, also have false faces that can be seen in their entry as well, with only their eyes being real facial features.
- Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards: The fight with Zero Two begins with it showing a fake happy face before it fades away, revealing its eyeball.
- Kirby Star Allies: The final boss Void Termina homages Zero Two's fake smiley face in its core form by having its expression change to laughter whenever it uses its needle attack. Its face also alternates between an eyeball akin to the Dark Matter or a face resembling Kirby's. Likewise for its stronger variants Void Soul and Void.
- Platypus Evolution: Merge Game: One platypus evolution stage, the Triplat, looks like your average three-headed long-necked platypus. However, the Platypedia states that only one of the three heads is intelligent and the other two are just mindless reservoirs of water.
Only one of the three heads is intelligent. The other two are actually wiggling reservoirs full of water.
- Pokémon has quite a few examples of this:
- Arbok has large marks on its wide torso that resemble a menacing face.
- Spinarak has a face with a blank expression on its back that resembles a face. In some episodes of the anime, the face can change to a happy or angry expression.
- Wobbuffet's true face and head is actually its tail, and the entire rest of its body is purely a disguise.
- Mantine has two large black markings on its back that resemble eyes.
- Its pre-evolution Mantyke has the same thing but also has a mouth-like marking below them that curves upward, resulting in the markings on Mantyke's back resembling a cute smiley face.
- Masquerain has a set of antennae with eyelike patterns.
- Cradily has large yellow spots on its head that trick a lot of people into thinking they're its eyes, and that its actual eyes sitting below them are just goofy-looking teeth.
- Dusknoir has markings on its chest and back that resemble eyes and a mouth. Oddly, while its real eye is located on its head, the front of its chest opens and acts like a functional mouth that it uses to carry spirits to the afterlife. The back mouth remains purely decorative.
- Mimikyu is famous for this trope. Envying the popularity of the franchise's mascot Pikachu, it crafted a costume resembling it, with scribbled-on eyes and a mouth. It is said that nobody who ever saw under Mimikyu's costume lived to tell the tale.
- Bellibolt has two large, bulbous white growths on either side of its forehead that look a lot like eyes. However, its eyes are actually two small white dots in between them.
- Providing the page image, Pecharunt's shell has two white dots that make it seem like it's making your average Deadpan Snarker face, but its true face (and head) are inside the shell.
Western Animation
- The Magic School Bus: In the episode "The Magic School Bus Butterfly and the Bog Beast", in order to scare off Janet, the students generate fearsome face-like markings on the bus's wings.
Real Life
- Many animals in real life do this for a variety of different reasons:
- Butterflies and moths are two of the most prominent examples, using a technique known as eyespot to make face-like markings on their wings, scaring away predators.
- Some wild feline species, such as servals, tigers, jungle cats, Geoffroy's cats, and pampas cats have white spots/bars (also called "occellus") behind their ears. It is possible that the occelli are to mimic eyes in order to discourage other animals from following them, and/or as a way for the animal's young to be able to find their parents when going through tall grass.
- Four-eyed butterflyfish are named for a large spot by their tail, which resembles an eye. Predators attempting to catch this fish may attempt to Go for the Eye, not realizing that they're actually attacking its tail as opposed to its more vulnerable front half, which allows the fish to escape more easily.
- Peacocks have spots resembling eyes in their plumage to attract mates; peahens prefer peacocks with more eye spots.
- Some species of pygmy owls have eye spots on the back of their heads, which can dissuade them from being attacked by predators who may think that the owl is staring directly at them.
- Butterflies and moths are two of the most prominent examples, using a technique known as eyespot
