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There are many things that go bump in the night, secure in the knowledge that their unholy powers can trick the human eye into blindness, allowing them to live among and prey on humanity with impunity. But their supernatural (and at times inherently evil) nature means that no matter how complete the deception, they can never truly hide what they are. They may fool the mundane senses, but not the spiritual ones; inanimate objects, animals, children, The Empath or spiritually touched people can sense and see through the deception and cause a Glamour Failure. The Hunter and mundane heroes wise to these evil tells will be sure to use them to ferret out the villain; directors also love to work them into The Reveal when the creature's victim finally puts two and two together. More tragically, a hero under the effects of The Virus will usually have the full emotional impact of it sink in when she can't see her reflection.
These flaws in their façade are usually mixed and matched. So your mileage may vary depending on the critter:
- No reflection (Usually reserved for vampires and the soulless)
- Not appearing on film; digital cameras, voice recordings and telephone optional
- True reflection (Fae or other glamour users will usually reflect their true image)
- Animals hate and distrust them (See Evil Detecting Dog)
- Physical defect (Usually for Shapeshifters, Clones, Body Snatchers, or Chest Monsters). See Red Right Hand.
- Fairies and demons trying to pass for human were traditionally betrayed by their cloven hooves or tails, making this is one of The Oldest Ones In The Book.
- Anyone who is demonically possessed will usually grow tiny horns or slowly "mutate" to look like the demon possessing them.
- Mildly pronounced fangs (Not huge, but big enough for the Wolf Man and vampire to stand out. Compare Cute Little Fangs)
- Pointed Ears. A staple of vampires, fairies and Vulcans (though these last ones aren't evil, we promise). For vampires, it's presumably to mimic a bat's large ears... or it could be done to up the Ho Yay factor.
- No shadow (Usually ghosts and holograms will lack these)
- Shadow moves on its own (A staple of vampires and really nasty critters)
- Shadow shows their true form (Sometimes for shapeshifters)
- Silver burns (Silver has reputed anti-evil properties, so it’s fair game for most creepy crawlies)
- Sunlight burns/weakens (Not restricted to vampires, any strongly evil or supernatural creature will react to sunlight like a marshmallow in an oven)
- Holy objects burn/repel (Pretty basic, anything holy aligned will repel evil, may be culture specific and/or depend on having a pure heart)
Examples of Glaring Glamour Failure:
- Several villains on Are You Afraid Of The Dark?:
- The Tale of the Mystical Mirror: A woman who killed young girls in a ritual to keep herself eternally young and beautiful looked like an old hag (and so did her portraits) in mirrors. Hence why one girl wondered while visiting her house, "How can you be so vain and not have a mirror in your bathroom?"
- The Tale of the Captured Souls: A boy who stole people's youth to make him young forever looked like an old man in mirrors, pictures, and on video camera and was thus alarmingly camera shy.
- Webcomic example: The protagonist of Fox Tails
 , Keen Kotaru, possesses a so-far unexplained ability to see through the Glamours of the various animal-spirits that are otherwise maintaining a Masquerade in our world. His ability to thus notice the remaining animal features of transformed spirits is what drives the plot, and allows him to effectively fight the evil spirits...
- Video game example: In The Legend Of Zelda: A Link to the Past, you find a girl trapped in one of the dungeons who asks you to lead her out, but if you do so she tells you not to go out that way. You have to lead the "girl" into a room with bright sunlight coming in, which reveals her to be the boss Blind.
- Parodied on the US version of The Office. Jim is attacked by a bat and spends the rest of the episode faking vampire symptoms (garlic aversion, repulsion at Karen's cross, etc.) A dangerous game, knowing Dwight.
- In the Tabletop Games Changeling: The Lost, the Mask that disguises changelings as mortals always shows some small hint of their true nature and appearance. This gets worse as they become more powerful -- the most powerful, although still human in appearance, look decidedly off, and are unlikely to be able to go anywhere without drawing unwanted attention. Also, certain people can sometimes see through the Mask -- the insane, those who are high, very young children, people with certain forms of brain damage... it's not a sure thing, though. Furthermore, a changeling's shadow always shows hints of their true nature -- if you were turned into a mountain goat, your shadow's going to show horns.
- In Promethean: the Created, Prometheans appear human, but other people can sense that there's something wrong about them on a deep, fundamental level. This feeling can build over time until the point where a lynch mob is forming. It gets worse when a Promethean uses their innate powers around another person, because then the glamour fails utterly and they can see the Promethean as a animated corpse.
- The Smallville version of Bizarro looks exactly like Clark unless he's weakened, in which case his face will briefly flicker into a broken-glass-ish looking form that calls to mind the earliest comic book versions of the character.
- The webnovel John Dies at the End tells the story of two college dropouts who discover and fight an otherworldly invasion after a chance run-in with a supernatural drug changes their perceptions forever. As a result, they see a lot of freaky stuff invisible to everyone else, but they also gain a lot of experience identifying subtle clues that ordinary people could notice if they paid attention. They learn mirrors can be used to circumvent certain illusions, religious symbols can be used to flush out and ward off evil, and household pets can be used to detect and identify paranormal beings. Look no further than the prologue for another good example.
- The tiger-like Rakshasa in Dungeons And Dragons are demonic shapeshifters (derived from Indian folklore) who can disguise themselves as any humanoid creature, with the caveat that their hands are always facing the wrong way on their wrists.
- The Rakshasa also appeared in Kolchak The Night Stalker. This variation could appear as someone its victim trusted and/or loved; it could be repelled by the Swastika, which was a sacred symbol long before Nazi Germany co-opted it. This version was the direct inspiration for the D&D version, being vulnerable to a blessed crossbow bolt.
- Dn D also brings us the 'Changelings' a sort of Doppleganger / Human hybrid who can appear like any sort of humanoid they wish. However, a true seeing spell will easily reveal their true form. For the record, they're grey, with gangly and slightly off proportion limbs, white eyes, and only the slightest indication of a nose and mouth. They also turn back if killed, of course.
- Infant changelings are also unable to maintain a fake appearance while asleep, returning to their true form. Theres also certain size and mass limitations for a changeling's tranformation.
- In Phantasy Star Online, in the Seabed area, there are robot enemies that are usually invisible. However, you can see their reflections in the water and reflective surfaces that are usually common throughout the area, making it possible to attack them. Also, using a lightning spell will short out the invisibility for some time.
- In the John Carpenter movie "They Live" (1988) aliens use a mind controlling satellite signal to appear human, to cloak themselves from the eyes of Mankind while they take over governments and corporations. A resistance movement forms when someone creates special sunglasses that can filter out the signal before it reaches the brain and allows the wearer to see the aliens as they truly are.
- The Shadow (1994) with Alec Baldwin as Lamont Cranston aka the mysterious Shadow, the titular character of this movie screen comic book adaption. His powers of deception, mind control and telekinesis are clearly psychic, the result of a Training From Hell by an ancient mysterious Asian mentor. Only two people can see through his hypnotic deception: his arch-enemy who has similar mental powers (and who can hide whole buildings from the eyes of passers-by), and the professor's blonde daughter who is a latent psychic herself and who catches a glimpse of The Shadow when she meets Cranston.
- In the Discworld novel Reaper Man, there's a scene where a child sees Death in his true form as a skeleton man, whereas Death is able to make adults see him as human (or they at least convince themselves they aren't seeing a skeleton).
- In Lords and Ladies, those who get close enough to the elves or who are wearing or carrying enough iron can see through the glamour they cast and notice that they look... well, alien. Dwarfs, trolls and animals (such as everyone's favourite sentient orang-utan, The Librarian) get this ability for free.
- In Nathaniel Hawthorne's story Feathertop, the title character is a scarecrow with a pumpkin for a head who, due to a witch's spell, is made to appear as an elegant nobleman. When he first goes into public, adults are praising him, but it's mentioned that a small child "keeps babbling about a pumpkin." Later, Feathertop sees himself in a mirror and realizes he's not human and can no longer live with himself.
- A heroic example: Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap can be seen as he really is by the very young and animals, and sometimes by the insane, psychics, or people whose brain patterns are similar to his own. This also applies to his friend Al, who appears as a hologram that is normally invisible to others than Sam.
- Although due to real life technical limitations, Al's hologramatic appearance sometimes casts shadows, his cigar smoke is affected by wind, his cigar smoke is visible despite the established rule that only things Al touches can be seen, etc.
- Seras Victoria from the Hellsing anime burns herself with silver in the second episode.
- Subverted in the Ghost in the Shell: 2nd Gig episode "Trans Parent", in which Batou is convinced that a young girl can see through his thermoptic camouflage somehow. He's wrong - she's blind.
- The wolves in Wolf's Rain use some kind of glamour to appear human, but humans can occasionally see through it. There are also a couple of instances where the wolves look human but cast wolf shadows, though this only happens when humans aren't looking.
- In Errant Story, the Elven Rangers who move around the world of men in search of 'Errants' (half-elves who frequently become psychotic) often uses glamours to disguise their elven nature. At one point, however, a young child can see through it, though her mother dismisses it...
- In DMFA, the Cubi all possess powerful shape-shifting abilities, which obviously comes in handy for many things. However, they all have a single 'marking' on them that they cannot change - and which also shows what clan they belong to. If you manage to spot such a mark, and happen to know what they mean, you'll both know that you're actually facing a Cubi - and whether it's the kind that feasts on pain, terror and suffering, or the kind that feeds on lust, joy and happiness. Very handy for determining what your next response should be, really.
- An interesting example is Mrs. Vashti, AKA 'Spell Syrin', one of the teachers of PS238, and a former superhero. Rather than bother with official clothes, she just walks around in her spandex-tastic superhero outfit all the time, and uses Glamers to appear demurely-dressed to others. The reader, however, usually sees her as she really is, and a couple of mystically talented students have also demonstrated the ability to see through it. More interestingly, when mirrors appear, they show us what she appears like to others, in a direct inversion of the classic 'The mirror tells the truth' cases above.
- In the Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant no shapeshifter can change their eyes, which may be highly unnatural in color. On that basis, occasional Glamour Failure is not that surprising.
- On The Little Mermaid, Ursula, in the guise of a beautiful woman named Vanessa, is found out when Scuttle sees her true form reflected in a mirror.
- In the X Men movies, Mystique's shapeshifting isn't quite perfect. Her eyes flare yellow if she loses her concentration, for example, and she can't quite mimic the smell of others (making her particularly vulnerable to Wolverine's sense of smell).
- The Count Of Monte Cristo in Gankutsuou appears blurry and out-of-focus in photographs, and his voice cannot be heard in audio recordings.
- In the Tabletop Game Exalted, the Lunar Exalted are shapeshifters extraordinaire, but each one possesses a single animal feature - its Tell - that remains consistent regardless of what form it takes. The Tell is usually fairly subtle, such as an oddly-colored patch of hair or strange-looking eyes, but it does allow anyone who knows what he's looking for to identify the Lunar.
- In the Warhammer 40000 universe, daemonhosts (a daemon sealed in the body of a human by means of occult rituals and symbols) generally resemble the person whose body they're possessing, but with distinct physical changes that identify them for what they are. For example, in the final Eisenhorn novel Hereticus, Inquisitor Eisenhorn notes that while the daemon Cherubael has made all the usual physical alterations to its host body - small horns, glossy golden skin, blank eyes, and claws - the daemonhost still bears a chilling resemblance to his old friend Godwyn Fischig.
- Another WH40k example: in the Gaunts Ghosts novel Ghostmaker, an Eldar Farseer is manipulating the memories and perceptions of the Tanith First and Only, making them believe that they are back on their doomed homeworld, fighting for its survival. The illusion isn't perfect, however, as several characters get the sense that something is wrong, and eventually the glamour fails entirely when mildly psychic teenager Brin Milo looks at a disguised Eldar warrior through the appropriately-named "Mad" Larkin's sniper scope, revealing that the tall, thin "Tanith" with white and red hair is in fact a Dire Avenger Aspect Warrior.
- In Robert Blake's story "Shadow from the Steeple", which is a sequel to H.P Lovecraft's "Haunter in the Dark", the protagonists confronts the man he believes to be posessed by the god Nyarlatotep, noting that his skin has turned darker. The man explains this has been caused by exposure to radiation (he was a nuclear physicist), but when the protagonists doesn't believe him, he turns off the lights, causing his entire body to glow with unnatural light, and causing the protagonists to die of heart attack.
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