Scary Scarecrows

aka: Scary Scarecrow

"There really is nothing to be afraid of," they told one another. "After all, what could a doll do? He's just a sack of straw, it's not possible!"

"Where your eyes don't go a filthy scarecrow waves its broomstick arms
And does a parody of each unconscious thing you do
When you turn around to look it's gone behind you
On its face it's wearing your confused expression
Where your eyes don't go."

— They Might Be Giants, Where Your Eyes Don't Go

Scarecrows do more than scaring crows: humans often aren't fond of them either. The fact that they look like corpses propped up, or the vaguely Christ-like looks, or the fact that they're meant to be human but don't look very human at all. A pumpkin head usually makes a great varnish for that "evil smile" and the desperate need for unnerving, blackened eyes. Expect one to be covered in stitches. As such, scarecrows are brilliant Nightmare Fuel fodder, so fiction is littered with examples of scarecrows, some only scary, some reasonably vengeful, and if luck's out the window the protagonist has to deal with an evil one.

Their humanoid appearance means that having a person looking like a scarecrow, imprisoned, dead, or hiding, gives extra creepiness. Compare Creepy Doll and Sackhead Slasher, where a (usually) live body wears a burlap mask which can make them resemble a scarecrow and draws on similar fears. Japanese scarecrows (kakashi) may sport a henohenomoheji face, which depending on context may be silly or eerie.

That all said, plenty of scarecrows are friendly. It largely depends on the intended audience. For every horror movie featuring killer scarecrows, there's a children's book in which scarecrows are a human's best friend right after dogs. After all, think of a fictional scarecrow and chances are you're thinking of that guy from Land of Oz.

See also Lost in the Maize, the natural environment of scary scarecrows, and Sinister Scythe, their common weapon of choice. Other Gardening-Variety Weapons may show up as well, but machinery is relatively rare, possibly because scarecrows have an air of old timey-ness to them. The more supernatural, the more likely they're able to command Creepy Crows or indulge in I Know What You Fear. Kill It with Fire is usually the way to go if a scarecrow needs to be gotten rid of.

---

Examples of scary scarecrows:

Anime and Manga

• A scarecrow Desertrian was featured in a episode of HeartCatch Pretty Cure!. It was created with the wiltering Heart Flower of a young woman wracked with guilt over her decision of leaving the family farm to get married at the city.
  • In episode 11 of HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!, the Saiark is a scarecrow. Ironically enough, the mother of one of the main girls in this season narrated a work where a scarecrow was one of the main characters.
• The story "Scarecrows" from the Junji Ito Kyoufu Manga Collection uses scarecrows in two ways:
  • A father mourning over his recently deceased daughter is enraged when her fiance shows up at her grave. He holds the fiance responsible for her death and in his fury picks up a scarecrow some children had left behind when they were done playing with it. He plants it on his daughter's grave, explaining that the fiance is vermin and that scarecrows keep vermin away.
  • This leads to the village discovering that by setting up scarecrows at the cemetery, the scarecrows will take on the appearance of the person whose grave they're planted on. If they're uprooted, they revert back to their cloth-like state. The scarecrows cannot talk, but they have a subtle capacity to facial expressions, which is enough for those who want to see their loved ones again. One murdered boy's scarecrow's stare causes his nervous murderer to trip and be impaled, while the dead daughter's scarecrow may or may not have killed her fiance. Both the means and the why are left undisclosed.
• Basil Hawkins from One Piece ate the Straw-Straw Fruit, which gives him the power to control straw as well as Hollywood Voodoo. One of the powers of the fruit lets him turn into a giant monster made of straw with long nails at the end of his fingers.

Card Games

• The Magic: The Gathering set Shadowmoor introduced a veritable plethora of animated scarecrow monsters, from the lowly Heap Doll to the mighty Reaper King, and more have been released since. The default classification of scarecrows is Artifact Creatures of the subtype Scarecrow. Their behavioral range is on the dangerous side of neutral, but there's a few, like the aforementioned Heap Doll, that are helpful.

Comic Books

• Batman and Ghost Rider both had separate villains called the Scarecrow. The Marvel version sometimes fights Spider-Man as well. As for the DC version, during the events of Blackest Night, he was deputised by the Sinestro Corps, thus acknowledging him, in Batman's absence, as the scariest entity on the planet. The Batman version has also been adapted in the film Batman Begins (played by Cillian Murphy), the video game Batman: Arkham Asylum, and various animated TV series. Dr. Crane even serves as the page image for Arkham Asylum's Nightmare Fuel page and got worse for Batman: Arkham Knight. "Scarecrow: Year One" reveals that Jonathan Crane's abusive grandmother would take the suit from the scarecrow, pour a potion on it, and make Jonathan wear the suit while locked in a ruined aviary so he'd be mobbed by crows.
• "The Burning", published in House of Mystery #206, features Adam Strat, who wakes up with no clue who he is in the care of the witch Meg. All she tells him, aside from his name, is that outside the farmers are burning the fields and that if she hadn't intervened, he'd have burned along. Nonetheless, he hates her and repays Meg's kindness by handing her to the townfolk to buy his place among them. She is burned, but not before telling Adam he'll now know the truth. Adam is then transported back to the day he was saved, finding himself an immobile scarecrow while the flames creep closer and there's no Meg to save him.
• Nightmares in Oz has a scythe-wielding scarecrow and its bat-like minions murdering people camping in an area that was cursed by a witch, though the twist ending reveals that they were the overzealous guards of an old post which, once destroyed by the protagonists in an attempt to banish them, allows the witch's ghost to break free from her magical imprisonment.
• A supernatural gang of robbers are the main antagonists in the Suske en Wiske album "De Maffe Maniak".^note "The Mad Maniac" When their leader died, he cursed his men to become voddenventen (rag guys), tattered-looking Bedsheet Ghosts. They guard their castle by pretending to be scarecrows along the paths leading to it. Their weaponry consists of blunderbusses loaded with rag balls, which upon impact temporarily change the targets face into a rag ball, which gives them the appearance of scarecrows. For the duration, the victims become very strong and very hostile. The voddenventen are undone when de Zwarte Madam withdraws from her deal with them, taking the magic that sustained them with her.
• Lord Pumpkin from The Ultraverse is a scarecrow with a pumpkin head and a magic candle inside who hails from another dimension called Godwheel. He was created by the court magician to be the prince's playmate. The sadistic prince tormented him until Pumpkin retaliated with murder. Then he staged a coup, took over the throne, grew bored, and came to Earth to be a mob boss. Lord Pumpkin ended up killed a few times, but as long as a seed from his pumpkin head survives, he can be reborn, although he needs his candle to be complete. Some rebirths leave him a Plant Person, while at other times he manages to gain a scarecrow's straw body again.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: The gremlins take inspiration from humans to create their own scarecrow, meant to scare off humans while the gremlins steal parts to try to repair their stolen spaceship, by stuffing the body of one of the giant Ytirflirk aliens that had enslaved them and putting it on wheels.
• Wynonna Earp battles a demonic wheat scarecrow in "Blood is the Harvest".

Comic Strips

• In Conchy, Bug complains that people don't believe he is now a vegetarian instead of a cannibal. Conchy points out that his scarecrow might be sending the wrong message. Said scarecrow has a human skull on it.

Fan Works

• In the Invader Zim fic The Corn Maze, the scarecrows set up across the titular tourist trap take on a distinctly disturbing air once Dib, Gaz, and Zim find themselves suddenly unable to leave the place. This only gets worse when they realize that many of the scarecrows contain the bodies of people who previously disappeared in the maze, at which point the scarecrows come to life and start chasing them. And then there's the specific scarecrow at the center of the maze which acts as an avatar for the demon which is responsible for all this.

Folklore

• The kunekune is a creature from Japanese Urban Legends with some similarities to scarecrows. It is a white, wriggling shape that sticks out above the fields on warm days. One of the proposed origins of the urban legend is that someone mistook a scarecrow for what became known as the kunekune.

Film — Animation

• Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo!: The villain of the movie is one of these. Justified, since the identity of this scarecrow is the Scarecrow, Jonathan Crane. Like, from Batman.

Film — Live-Action

• Cillian Murphy appears Dr. Jonathan Crane; AKA Scarecrow in Batman Begins. His resemblence to an actual scarecrow is downplayed, being limited to a creepy burlap mask he sometimes wears when interacting with his patients.
  Would you like to see my mask?
• Among the many horror movie monsters unleashed at the climax of The Cabin in the Woods are a troupe of animate scarecrows, who notably grab one of the Controllers and tear him apart with blades before his grenade goes off and blows them into straw.
• In Captain Clegg, there are some rather eerie, if mundane, scarecrows all around town. The smugglers actually hide inside them to keep their eyes out for the law. The film is a loose adaptation of Doctor Syn ("The Scarecrow") (see below under Literature), with the scarecrow motif present but greatly downplayed from the source material.
• Eli in Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest turns his former foster father into an undead scarecrow, so that he has someone guarding his evil bible.
• Dark Night of the Scarecrow has some of these. Screenwriter J.D. Feigelson is actually credited with creating the "killer scarecrow" horror subgenre.
• In Dead Birds, the gang encounter an unsettlingly lifelike scarecrow in the cornfield. It is later revealed that the scarecrow is actually Hollister; strung up as punishment for his crimes. Later, Clyde is transformed into a similar scarecrow.
• In the prologue of Headless Horseman, the Confederate private walks past a scarecrow only to stop and realize it is the headless body of the scout. Later, Headless poses as a scarecrow to terrify the teens. Doc questions why there is a scarecrow in the middle of a forest. When he turns around, the scarecrow pole is empty.
• The monster in Husk is the spirit of a murdered farm boy whose body was strung up as a scarecrow. He now murders travellers and turns their bodies into scarecrows, and can leap between the scarecrows.
• The Creeper disguises himself as a scarecrow twice: once at the cat lady's house in Jeepers Creepers and at the start of Jeepers Creepers 2.
• Hollywood Voodoo-practitioner Dr. Kananga had installed creepy scarecrows around San Monique in Live and Let Die. The locals were made to believe that evil spirits resided within them, when in reality the scarecrows housed video cameras and guns. Rosie Carver is killed by one of these.
• The 1995 horror film Night of the Scarecrow has one that's possessed by the spirit of an evil warlock.
• Planet of the Apes: Just before leaving the Forbidden Zone, the three astronauts find several things that could be scarecrows, but might in fact be human corpses that were strung up by the apes long ago. Whatever they are, they're the first indicator that this mysterious planet they've landed on has intelligent life on it.
• Rise of the Scarecrows: The monsters of the movie are a trio of undead scarecrows who murder anyone they come across.
• Return of the Scarecrow: The town has a local legend of a scarecrow that murders anyone who trespasses upon a witch cemetery out in the woods. Virgil and Wyatt decide to dress up as it to scare a bunch of campers, but get separated, and Virgil meets the real one (which he thinks is Wyatt getting into character).
• Every entry of the Scarecrow trilogy features a different killer scarecrow per a set formula. The scarecrow always looks like a stitched-up corpse and for the first two movies mains on dual-wielding sickles. It comes to life by being nearby a dying person and there's always cross imagery involved. The second movie makes a reference to Priapus.
  • In Scarecrow (2002), Lester Dwervick is bullied by the entire town and eventually strangled in a cornfield. Lester had run there to see the scarecrow, which he envied for its carefree existence. The scarecrow becomes possessed by Lester's vengeful spirit and goes on a killing spree. He is destroyed when the Final Girl sets him on fire. However, for Twist I, it seems that she's now possessed by Lester's spirit. However, for Twist II, the movie is a story told by another character, Mitch, to two youths out in the cornfield. Once finished, he calls for Lester, causing the scarecrow to come and kill the others while he and Mitch laugh.
  • In Scarecrow Slayer, Caleb has been waiting for 35 years for the scarecrow that killed his father to come back to life so he can have his revenge. One night, buddies Dave and Karl try to steal the scarecrow, triggering Caleb to shoot Dave. He dies as the scarecrow falls on top of him and comes to possess the straw body. Karl stays by his side out of loyalty, even when Dave starts killing people. This loyalty ends when Dave sets out to turn his girlfriend Mary into a scarecrow to be with him. Feeling betrayed, Karl attacks Dave, but gets killed and possesses the scarecrow Dave made for Mary. The two scarecrows fight, resulting in Karl being knocked into a shredder and Dave being killed when Mary bazookas him out of existence.
  • In Scarecrow Gone Wild, Sam is tied up to a scarecrow and left for hours when a diabetic attack of his is mistaken for aggression. He doesn't die, but slips into a coma, which is enough for the scarecrow to come to life and go after his tormentors. Meanwhile, Sam's friend Jack finds him and takes him to a nearby hospital. There, he tries to awaken Sam with a Magical Defibrillator, both to save him and to end the scarecrow. It doesn't work, but by using the defibrillator on the scarecrow when it arrives in search of more victims, Sam is properly revived. What no one realizes until later is that now the scarecrow possesses Sam. The scarecrow in human form takes on Jack and tries to possess him instead when Sam's body is dying, so Jack impales himself on a crucifix to end the terror.
• The scarecrow from the Syfy Channel Original Movie Scarecrow is a being entirely made of twigs with a penchant for pulling the Ghostly Gape and crawling up places.
• See also the Cult Classic Scarecrows, in which a bunch of robbers find themselves in a rural area where a family of Satan worshipper have turned themselves into living scarecrows.
• Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark samples stories from all three of the original books, so the iconic Harold appears and he's just as terrifying as ever. The scene where he stalks and kills Tommy, turning him into a scarecrow is one of the film's best (and scariest).
• As a Shout-Out to the episode "The Frickert Fracas", in Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster Mystery Inc. recalls investigating a scarecrow that was terrorizing Old Man Frickert's farm. The scarecrow attacked the group inside the barn, which Shaggy accidentally blew up and burned down. It is not known if the scarecrow was a man in disguise or supernatural nor is it known how or even if the scarecrow got out of the barn.
• The opening scene of Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow sees Peter Van Garret and his son Dirk travel at night by coach. While passing a cornfield, Peter spots a pumpkin-headed scarecrow with his arms raised menacingly. He's disturbed, but can't dwell on it when something attacks and beheads Dirk. Peter flees into the cornfield where he bumps into the scarecrow for a Cat Scare. Then the actual supernatural threat shows up and beheads him, staining the scarecrow's pumpkin head with his blood.
• One of these is responsible for the Zombie Apocalypse in Zombie Bloodbath 2: Rage of the Undead.

Gamebooks

• Fighting Fantasy occasionally has hostile scarecrows as enemies, who appears in farm settings, notably the Bauer's farm in Howl of the Werewolf and Tom's farm in Dead of Night. They're however rubbish fighters who goes down with just a few sword slashes.

Literature

• Halloween Rain, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer tie-in novel, states that rain on Halloween turns scarecrows into homicidal monsters.
• In Captain Crokus, the scarecrow turns out to be the Big Bad, who wants to kill all house pets, replace them with mechanical copies and brainwash children into zombie-like state.
• In the short story "Crewe" by Walter de la Mare, a servant is Driven to Suicide but returns in the form of a scarecrow.
• The Discworld spin-off Nanny Ogg's Cookbook says "There's something scary about scarecrows in any case. I know that's their job, but I mean scarier than that. They're not exactly people but they're not exactly just ... stuff. Or maybe it's those cut-out eyes." This is particularly the case with Unlucky Charlie, a target at the Witch Trials who has a habit of unexpectedly popping up in people's gardens. He doesn't appear to be malevolent, but he's very creepy, and people who've stayed up to see how he actually moves have been very quiet ever since, especially around straw.
• Reverend Doctor Christopher Syn in Doctor Syn ("The Scarecrow") became The Scarecrow when he went to rescue a group of smugglers. To keep his involvement with them a secret, he took a scarecrow's clothes to disguise himself with. It was a bonus that the costume made him look intimidating and he's kept it ever since.
• One of The Dresden Files books involved horror movie monsters coming to life thanks to Fetches, Faeries that feed on fear, taking their form; the biggest and baddest, Eldest Fetch, was a scarecrow that was over 14 feet tall - and he didn't just take the form of a scarecrow. He was the embodiment of human fear of the icon of the Scarecrow, though he could take other forms. As long as you're afraid of any of a fetch, they can brush off magic like it isn't there. However, if you aren't, if you're too tired, or too angry, then as more than one found, you're at Harry Dresden's complete lack of mercy (with a little help from the Summer Lady).
• Eric Morse's unpublished fifth Friday the 13th novel would've had Jason's spirit possess a scarecrow that someone had stuck an old hockey mask of his on.
• In The Gardener and the Scarecrow by Dot Meharry, a gardener fashions a scarecrow in his own image to keep the birds away. He deems it a "very scary scarecrow!"
• Goosebumps:
  • The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight, where the protagonist and her brother visit their grandparents' farm, only to come face-to-face with a dozen of these, brought to life by a somewhat psychopathic farmhand nearby. The spell that brought them to life is reversed at the end, but then the farmhand accidentally brings a bear pelt to life...
  • "The Scarecrow", a short story about three kids who discover a mysterious scarecrow set up in front of an abandoned house has got articles of clothing they all want. Two of the kids take things off the scarecrow, but strange things start happening to them, leaving the third kid scared something will happen to her while trying to fight back the temptation of taking the scarecrow's gloves for herself. It turns out it was all a prank set up by the other two kids, but that doesn't explain why the scarecrow is suddenly smiling at the end.
• The Hardy Boys: The Hardy Boys Ghost Stories spinoff contains a short story, "The Walking Scarecrow", which centers on the brothers meeting a seemingly living scarecrow that's intent on scaring them away from the abandoned farmhouse they ended up camping out in after their car breaks down and they enter the house to try, unsuccessfully, and find a phone. It turns out the scarecrow was out to save their lives, as the house is struck by lightning and burns down shortly after it lures them back outside.
• The short story "Know All" by Paul Jennings features a scarecrow coming to life after being dressed in a cursed tightrope walker's outfit. The story was adapted into an episode of Round the Twist by the same name.
• Nightmares & Dreamscapes: The original cover depicts a scarecrow planted on the white marking in the middle of a road. It wears a Castle Rock Rockets baseball jersey in reference to Castle Rock, a recurring setting in Stephen King's works that also is featured in Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Other than that, the scarecrow has no connection to the book's contents and so it has no significance beyond being eerie.
• The children's book The Night the Scarecrow Walked plays with the trope. The child characters see the scarecrow in his stubbled field and think he is sad and lonely, so they wish he could walk out of the field. On Halloween night they go to show him their jack o'lantern, only for him to come to life and leave his pole to walk toward them. They naturally flee in terror. The next day when they go to investigate, he is gone; they encounter a man wearing his clothes, but while rather unattractive (and apparently only able to caw like a crow) he is neither very scary nor does he do any harm to them.
• The Scarecrows by Robert Westall are supernatural manifestations created from the murder on a miller by his wife and her lover during the war. In the 1980s, they are reawakened by Simon Wood, who has recently moved to a neighboring house. His relationship with his family is bad, because while he idolizes his dead father, his mother has remarried and even his sister likes the new guy. It's these negative emotions that bring about the three scarecrows, which ever so slowly proceed to close in on his new home. The situation forces Simon to come to terms with his new life as the only means to send back the scarecrows.
• "Harold" in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones. Two farmers make a scarecrow they name "Harold", after a neighbor they both hate. They use it as a punching bag and call it names. It comes to life and skins one of the farmers. The illustration, shown above, is what makes it a scary scarecrow.
• Secret Histories: The Drood family has scarecrows as one of the many defenses of their estate. It turns out they're actually the bodies (and souls) of the family's enemies, held between life and death, preserved and stuffed with straw, to animate and defend the house in times of need. If you listen in on the right frequency you can hear them screaming.
• In Shadows Fall, the animated scarecrow Jack Fetch is the intimidating, unstoppable minion of Old Father Time, who sends Jack to wreck havoc on the invading Warriors of the Cross. He can't speak, but is strong enough to tip over a tank, and swiftly regenerates if burned, cut to pieces, or even blown up.
• The Three Investigators: Book #29 is The Mystery of the Sinister Scarecrow. The eponymous scarecrow is a costume worn by several people to terrorize Miss Radford, inspired by Radford expressing her dislike of scarecrows to explain why she didn't want to watch The Wizard of Oz.
• Multiple instances in Welkin Weasels. In the first book the weasels have to cross a field of hostile sapient scarecrows, which they do by using mirrors to make the scarecrows scare themselves. In the third book, they sail to "Scareman Bay", and discover that a "scareman" is a living scarecrow in the shape of a wolf, made to scare humans away.

Live-Action TV

• Are You Afraid of the Dark?, "The Tale of the Silent Servant": Two kids staying at a farm find a magic scarecrow who takes everything they say literally, i.e. the boy says he'd "like to kill" his cousin for taking his baseball glove.
• Doctor Who
  • "Human Nature" and the sequel episode "The Family of Blood" contain animate scarecrows attacking people. They move in a jerky way that's either scary or goofy depending on taste. What's genuinely scary is the episode's ending, where the Doctor punishes the villainous Family of Blood by giving them exactly what they wanted: immortality, in the worst way possible. One of them ends up made into a living scarecrow, damned to watch the fields of Britain forever. Beware the Nice Ones indeed.
  • In "Village of the Angels" the Doctor's companions notice a scarecrow that wasn't there a moment ago. Then it appears even closer to them and they realise it's actually a Weeping Angel.
• As a Red Herring Twist, the episode "Harvest" of Endeavour sets up the expectation that the murder that occurred five years prior was a countryside Human Sacrifice. The opening shot that lingers on a lone scarecrow is the first hint in that direction. As it turns out, the scarecrow is just a scarecrow, though one that wears the victim's jacket, which offers several clues as to what happened to him.
• The cursed antique in the episode "Scarecrow" of Friday the 13th: The Series is, unsurprisingly, a leather-masked killer scarecrow. It comes to life when a picture of a living person is pinned to its jacket, upon which it seeks out said person to end the "living" part. Its MO is to behead people with a scythe and three kills a year ensures a bountiful harvest to its owner. The scarecrow came into the possession of Marge Longacre, who recognized its power and began using the scarecrow as a tool of murder. Marge is killed when a framed picture of hers lands on the scarecrow and doesn't slide off until it has beheaded her. Micki and Ryan take the scarecrow back home, wondering whatever happened to all the heads it took.^note This is a compromising in-joke, because each member of the staff had another idea for what should've happened to the heads.
• Gotham: In "The Scarecrow", Jonathan Crane is injected with a massive dose of his father's fear 'vaccine'. It causes him to hallucinate a demonic scarecrow. This becomes his greatest fear and the effects of the serum cause him to see it coming for him perpetually.
• The Haunting Hour: In "Scarecrow", a young farmer named Jenny has trouble ridding her crops of crows, so she buys a scarecrow from a mysterious salesman. Jenny soon discovers that the scarecrow is behind a chain of mysterious disappearances. When she and her brother look into these disappearances, the scarecrow comes after her. Then it turns out the salesman who sold her the scarecrow ''is the scarecrow''.
• Horrible Histories' Pachacuti song:
  If you were a rival chief, we'd kill you first, and then,
  We'd stuff you like a scarecrow, but one for scaring men!
• The League of Gentlemen: A man is trapped and posed as a scarecrow by a vengeful farmer for sleeping with his wife. At one point the Denton Twins are talking to the scarecrow when the head falls off revealing the bound and gagged man. He tells them he's been tied up and asks them to help him, which they already knew. They then put his gag back in his mouth and replace his head saying they want to stay friends.
• Midsomer Murders: In "The Scarecrow Murders", the bodies of the Victims of the Week are dressed up and posed as scarecrows and placed among the scarecrows on display the village's scarecrow festival.
• Murder, She Wrote: In "Murder, Plain and Simple", the Victim of the Week is strung up as a scarecrow in the middle of a field.
• "Hearts of Darkness" of One Foot in the Grave has a notably dark ending, in which Victor takes revenge on the abusive staff of a nursing home by encasing their feet in cement and disguising them as scarecrows in a field. Their cries for help go unheard.
• A hostile scarecrow poses a threat in the episode "Revival" of Ravenswood. It first manifests in Remy's dreams and later attacks her and her friends in the real world.
• In "Who Done It" of The Singing Detective, Marlow recalls the scarecrow he spotted during a train ride when he was little. It creeped him out for reasons unknown to him, and he imagined it to have Undeathly Pallor, stringy hair, and Monochromatic Eyes as well as to sing "After You've Gone" for him. Until present day, he's been having nightmares about the scarecrow visiting him from time to time. With some help, he puzzles together the source of his terror: the scarecrow reminded him of his truly terrifying and abusive homeroom teacher.
• Supernatural features a Town with a Dark Secret in the episode "Scarecrow". The townsfolk practice Human Sacrifice to appease a Norse god called a Vanir, which inhabits an effigy resembling a scarecrow. In return, their town is granted prosperity. Sam and Dean destroy it by torching the god's sacred tree.
• An episode of Tales from the Crypt called "Four-Sided Triangle" has shades of this. An abused girl living at a farm is constantly mistreated by the couple living there and the man lusts after her. After she hits her head in an 'escape attempt'' she seems to fall in love with the scarecrow in the field and goes out to visit it every night, and they believe she has gone crazy, making sure she will never leave. However, one night, the Scarecrow actually DOES come to life - because the farmer was hiding inside it in order to play on her madness and have sex with her. Too bad she had planned it and killed both of them.

Music

• The narrator in Beck's "Scarecrow" refers to himself as a scarecrow so pointless that it's "only scaring himself". Whether the titular scarecrow is to be taken literally^note Beck has stated he imagines robot swampbillies when singing the song. or a figure of speech for a human down on his luck is up for interpretation.
• Unpleasant scarecrow imagery is used to tie the descriptions in Ministry's "Scarecrow" together, such as "Arms outstretched for those who cannot see", "Crucified and left in isolation", and "Eyeless stares invite this whole damnation".
• "Seven" by Boondox is about a Magical Seventh Son who as the Skarecrow murders people who enter his woods.
• The setting of the album Danger Days: True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys by My Chemical Romance is a post-apocalyptic Crapsack World. The main threat comes from Better Living Industries, whose elite agents are called Scarecrows and possibly are humans-turned-cyborgs. They command the Draculoids, are expected to keep a steady kill count, and are to avoid any emotional baggage that might intervene with their job.
• The narrator of "Scarecrow" by Siouxsie and the Banshees relays how they sneak out at night to converse with a straw scarecrow. The narrator inadvertently hints that the relationship is all in their head and that the scarecrow is an ordinary scarecrow. This is something their friends have been telling them, which the angered narrator plans to murder them for.

Professional Wrestling

• Bray Wyatt was accompanied by some during his WrestleMania 31 entrance.

Tabletop Games

• Champions: Enemies: The Internal File includes a villain called Pumpkin Jack. Pumpkin Jack is a demon lord trapped on Earth (based on the legend of Stingy Jack) who looks like a scarecrow with a jack-o-lantern for a head.
• Deadlands includes living scarecrows as monsters.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The scarecrow monster has been a recurrent creature throughout the game's editions, debuting in the 1st Edition Fiend Folio. Hags and other evil magic-users build them as guardians, binding evil spirits within ordinary scarecrows to bring them to life. The same spirits also grant scarecrows the ability to cause those who look into their eyes to become paralyzed with fear.
  • In Ravenloft, evil spirits sometimes animate the scarecrows of vengeful farmers. What makes these scarecrows especially scary are the curse they're carrying, making the player characters' flesh irresistible to insects.
• GURPS has a horror supplement called "Creatures of the Night" that introduces the Jackstraws. They are immobile creatures constructed of once-living material (straw, wood, cotton, etc.) who can use magic and become more intelligent the more human they look. They are pathological liars and therefore enemies of the untruth-allergic Tattlers, a sort of Snake People.
• The Skinsaw Murders, the second volume of Pathfinder's Rise of the Runelords adventure path, featured an encounter in a cornfield where ghoul-bitten villagers had been strung up as scarecrows by the ghouls to "ripen." When the party shows up, some "scarecrows" have turned, some are still human, and others are normal everyday scarecrows.
  • Scarecrows as monsters are included in the 1st Edition's Bestiary 2. They're basically just magically animated versions of standard scarecrows, but their touch fills victims with uncontrollable terror while their gaze hypnotizes others into standing in place while the scarecrow tears them apart.

Video Games

• AdventureQuest has the Hayu and Skrow enemies. A Hayu is a magically animated scarecrow, while the Skrow combines a normal scarecrow with undead elements.
• Bound by Blades have it's first boss and the first Ilcyon spawn fought, a Training Dummy scarecrow possessed by the Ilcyon who suddenly comes to life and can spam green energy bolts.
• The Castlevania series has scarecrows high in the gruesome scale: they're hopping pikes with impaled corpses.
• Somewhere between scarecrows and pumpkin people are the Fir Bolg in City of Heroes. They inhabit the Croatoa area among all kinds of supernatural nastiness and appear everywhere else for the annual Halloween event.
• The titular Daisy from Daisys Farm is an evil sack-headed scarecrow possibly with a human body. She implies she has Psychic Powers and has her victims either collect mindfruit for her or she somehow uses them in the process of making mindfruit.
• The Darkest Dungeon DLC The Colour of Madness centers around alien crystals that can infect and overtake organic material. The meteor that the crystals originate from crashed into a farm. Scarecrows are made out of organic materials. Therefore, it's not a surprise that you have to battle animated scarecrows while exploring the farm.
• In Darkwood, if you run a genocide route by murdering every major and minor NPC in the game then achieve the “Bliss Ending,” the surviving inhabitants of the woods begin to setup wooden crosses adorning a coat, hat, and three dead crows missing their beaks throughout the forest. All to try and ward off “the scarecrow who lurks in the trees,” believing the Protagonist to have been one due to the coat he wore after taking it from an actual scarecrow.
• Dead Head Fred: Living scarecrows are causing trouble on Harper's Farm by hiding among the maize and murdering everything they can. Fred has to get past the farm to get to his own, so he has to help out Harper by killing some of the living scarecrows. Sam Spade also gives him a wearable scarecrow head if Fred brings him five heads. The scarecrow head allows him to generate crows and use them as ammunition. It also grants immunity to fire and if on fire the crows will also be on fire and do more damage.
• In Devil May Cry 4, Scarecrows animated by the swarms of demonic insects inside them serve as the game's standard demon fodder. They are equipped with a blade on either a leg or arm, and are shown killing a bunch of helpless civilians in the opening cutscene of Mission 2. Later in the game, you'll encounter larger variants called Mega Scarecrows which have multiple blades embedded into them and can perform a rolling attack.
• Starting Stage 17 of Energy Breaker, scarecrows show up as enemies. They're made of white cloth and well-stuffed. Their method of attack is to jump and bodyslam into their target.
• Among the apparitions created by Alma in F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate are the scarecrows. They appear as upper torsos with lean arms ending in Wolverine Claws and a cloth-like face set in a Ghostly Gape with a skewered mouth. They may have legs, but those are never seen because scarecrows reside in black pools from which they emerge only to drag victims into. Steve Chen is killed by the first scarecrow encountered.
• One of the spirits in Ghost Master is the ghost of a murder of crows that take the form of a talking scarecrow.
• Harvestmen, Haunted Harvesters, Haunted Scarecrows are enemies found in Grim Dawn at the Rotting Croplands, the Gruesome Harvest, and the Conflagration. They are armed with Wolverine Claws and resistant to Sleep and Fear. There are also four Hero versions that may show up to make life that much more difficult for the adventurer: Nemedian, Effigus, Asper, and Crowfiend. The latter two can summon ravens while Effigus can summon the insectoid Infestor.
• Scarecrows are late game enemies in Izuna. Considering that they can cut your earned XP in half at will, they are scary indeed.
• The champion Fiddlesticks from League of Legends has several different legends doing the rounds about it, earning it titles such as "Harbinger of Doom" and "The Ancient Fear", but in any case the conclusion is that it is a sackcloth and scrap metal demon that embodies fear itself. It can mimic the last words of its victims to torment or mislead prey. In-game, its skills include deploying a lantern and standing in a T-pose to mimic a real scarecrow, summoning a swarm of magic crows to shred everything around it, passively afflicting people with dread, and slashing about with a scythe.
• There's a scarecrow UMA in Little King's Story who commands the meloncholies. Its looks mirror those of the protagonist, Corobo, and fittingly the scarecrow is named Korobokle (Korobokkuru). This is emphasized foreshadowing, because Corobo's own name isn't similar to "korobokkuru" by accident. Korobokle is first encountered at the Melon Patch, where it looks like a bloody war has already been fought given all the uprooted and smashed melons lying about. If approached, Korobokle summons the meloncholies to protect him. Korobokle himself shoots a triple beam, but can't move and it's specifically the meloncholies that make the battle a tough one.
• Evil scarecrows inhabit the Scarecrow Fields in MediEvil. They're among the hardest enemies to kill courtesy of their vicious Spin Attack. They also have the ability to release a small murder of crows from their coats that will gang up on the target. In fact, the recommended method to deal with the scarecrows and their unsettling Evil Laugh is to run faster.
• There is an eerie scarecrow with a pulsating red light inside its eye socket at the entrance of the titular carnival in Mystery Case Files: Fate's Carnival. When the detective gives it a heart, it hisses at them and opens its mouth to reveal a mutoscope reel. The scarecrow is later burned when it is hit by lightning.
• Night Creatures: One of the bosses, Pumpkinhead, rolls into the scene as just a pumpkin and then grows an immobile body on the spot. His strategy is to regenerate his head over and over and roll it towards the protagonist. It's possible for the head to break and spawn several tiny jack o'lanterns that jump around. Pumpkinhead is invulnerable to all attacks but getting hit by the oil lamp, which is an insta-kill. Defeating Pumpkinhead unlocks the owl form.
• Scarecrows are enemies in the Haunted Valley area of Painkiller: Overdose. Their main attack comes from a scythe that's tied to their arms and sticks through their torso. They can also spin swiftly in a circle to generate a tornado to send Garner's way.
• In Pineview Drive, there is a creepy scarecrow in the back garden of the property. During the later parts of the game it moves around the estate. A dlc update added a Slender-style game with the scarecrow hunting you.
• Pokémon has Cacturne, a scarecrow-like cactus creature which lives for thousands of years, has sand for blood, and eats humans.
• Downplayed in Rising Zan: The Samurai Gunman, which has animated, flying strawmen as summonable enemies, who tries to skewer Zan with an extendable nail built in their chests. However they're the first and weakest variety of enemies in the game, getting killed with a single slash (justified, you're using a katana and they're, uh, straw) and they're only dangerous when attacking in droves.
• In Salt and Sanctuary, the player will encounter a strange scarecrow multiple times across the island making foreboding threats about the world kneeling before it, usually while next to a heaped pile of dead bodies. It eventually is revealed that the scarecrow is the avatar of the Nameless God, the Big Bad behind the horrific monstrosities on the island.
• The very premise of the old PC game, Scarecrow Slaughter. You're exploring a dark, spooky, abandoned barn, filled with killer scarecrows that attacks you on sight.
• The Secret World features numerous scarecrows as enemies, although they usually look like tough humanoids with a burlap sack over their heads. Some of them hang on their posts but jump down and engage any character that comes too close.
• Shantae: A common monster. The most basic just swipe at Shantae.
  • In Shantae (2002), they ambush Shantae when she walks past a cornfield.
  • In Shantae: Risky's Revenge, they gain variations that breath out poison mist or throw pumpkin bombs.
• You play as a heroic chainsaw-wielding animated scarecrow in Splatter Master. In the backstory, you are accidentally a regular scarecrow who's granted life after an Evil Wizard cast his spell on the populace, and you then set out on a quest to avenge your owners by slaughtering the forces of darkness that stood in your way.
• There's some in the cemetery in Vermillion Watch: Fleshbound. Not supernatural, though — the group using the supposedly-abandoned cemetery as a base of operations set them up to keep people away.
• Wizard101: These are a type of enemy. It turns out that these are just lesser copies of the original, The Lord of Night, The King of Dread, The Herald of Death. He is summoned for one of the most powerful death spells.
• In World of Warcraft, there are several murderous scarecrows in the farmland area in Westfall, as well as in Northrend, though the latter aren't dangerous, they are just crop harvesters. You do reprogram them to fight off The Undead though. There is also a scarecrow boss in one encounter based off The Wizard of Oz, along with bosses based on the other characters.
• The titular Zardy of Zardy's Maze is the game's Big Bad. He's the leader of a legion of vicious scarecrows called Pumpkin Jacks, which will attempt to murder the player on sight. Although Zardy and his minions might be Weakened by the Light, it doesn't stop them from being threatening in the least, and trying to survive Zardy's corn maze is a Nintendo Hard challenge not meant for the foolhardy.
  • He's not quite so scary when he appears in his very own Game Mod of Friday Night Funkin', though. The original Zardy is a murderous horror game villain, while the Zardy in V.S Zardy - Foolhardy simply wants the Boyfriend to stop blaring loud music in his corn field. This does not diminish Zardy's challenge factor in the slightest.

Visual Novels

• In Hatoful Boyfriend, a creepy scarecrow mecha with more than a passing resemblance to Pyramid Head shows up to terrorize the characters in the Bad Boys Love route. It's made even creepier when you take into account that said characters are birds, and then it's taken to new heights of creepy when it's revealed that the scarecrow's head contains the brain of the murdered heroine.

Webcomics

• The Scarecrow in Goth Oz has black scleras, red irises, spiky orange hair, a scar on his face and Slasher Smile on top of him having no problem with his Lust Object being in range of the shotgun he's pointing at a talking tree.
• Amira from Merchant Band was imprisoned in a cabin surrounded by straw doll scarecrows covered in curses. The curses made the scarecrows alive and capable of flight. Boss and his companions figured that out only when they already were at the cabin's door and, surrounded, could only find safety inside.
• In The Seer, Big Bad Zalgo sends a female scarecrow by the name of Scarecrow to capture the protagonist. She turns out to be more sympathetic than one would initially expect and joins the hero's side later. Doesn't change the fact that she was a Yandere who murdered her crush's girlfriend and then didn't understand why he'd be upset.

Web Original

• SCP Foundation: SCP-3998 is a burnt, mutilated corpse strung up and fashioned into a crude scarecrow that burns people to death if they have ever committed Domestic Abuse.
• In Tales of MU, a phantasmal and possibly demonic scarecrow menaces Mackenzie in the campus labyrinth, and gifts her with a pitchfork that turns out to be demonically possessed.
• In jeftoon01's Twisted Princess series, Cinderella is portrayed as a scarecrow with button eyes, straw hair and a terrifying stitched-up smile. How she got that way is left to the imagination, but commenters (and at least one fanfic author) seem to concur that it happened as a result of breaking her deal with the Fairy Godmother and not getting home before midnight.
• Unwanted Houseguest: Episode 26 of "TRUE Scary Stories," a Halloween Episode, features one put out in the yard with a bowl of candy for Trick or Treaters. The homeowner was probably hiding inside the Scarecrow.

Western Animation

• The Adventures of Puss in Boots: Puss tries to create a scarecrow in his own image as a means of scaring off thieves, but it ends up severely terrifying orphan Toby instead.
• One of the nastiest evils in Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers was a Forgotten Superweapon that took on the appearance of a scarecrow in the episode "Scarecrow". The Scarecrow murdered many and managed to brainwash half the Tarkonian court. Worse, the thing wasn't even killed when it was lit on fire! It just ran into the darkness — laughing.
• Batman: The Animated Series kept changing their design for The Scarecrow; his initial appearance wasn't so scary at all, but he got progressively more ghoulish. Their final depiction of him doesn't look all that Scarecrow-y, but looks very much like a corpse, and has a broken noose around his neck. The noose was so popular that many subsequent versions of the Scarecrow have it, including the one played by Cillian Murphy in Batman Begins and the freaky gas-mask-faced Scarecrow of the Arkham Asylum game. Possibly a reference to the first volume of The Sandman (1989), which features a cameo by Dr. Crane, sans costume, pretending to hang himself in an attempt to scare the guards at Arkham.
• Camp Lakebottom: In "The Ghost in the Mower", the campers summon up a ghostly groundskeeper called the Grim Keeper to take care of their overgrown soccer field. The Grim Keeper manifests in the form of a scary scarecrow.
• The framing device of Curbside had Heckle and Jeckle trying to host their talk show while being cursed by a scarecrow left on their doorstep that eventually becomes gigantic and tries to eat them.
• In the Drawn Together episode "Unrestrainable Trainable", circumstances cause Wooldoor to look stereotypically Jewish. When the ever-pleasant Clara spots him, she's distraught her "jewcrow" didn't work. Said "jewcrow" looks like a restaurant host holding out his hand and carrying a sign reading "tips, please".
• In the Family Guy episode "No Meals on Wheels", Peter creates a "scarejew", a scarecrow in the shape of Adolf Hitler. He scares Mort Goldman away from his house with it.
• In the Columbia Cartoons The Fox and the Crow short "Way Down Yonder in the Corn", the fox tries to keep the crow out of his garden by hiring a scarecrow because he's read that crows are allergic to scarecrows. The crow, indeed creeped out by scarecrows, dresses up to get hired himself. The crow eats all the produce as soon as the fox leaves and thereafter tricks him into getting access to his house to consume the food storage. The fox doesn't realize the scarecrow was a crow until the radio tells him so. Aware that the crow is afraid of scarecrows, the fox tries to scare him to death by dressing up as an axe-wielding scarecrow himself. In the end, they make up because the short's almost over and they've been a good comedy duo.
• In Generator Rex, the villain John Scarecrow is a dangerous and sadistic shapeshifter EVO who specializes in Shapeshifter Guilt Trips, turning Rex and his friends against each other.
• A crow has made a scarecrow its residence in the Looney Tunes short "Corn Plastered". He's written a song about it that mocks the idea that a crow would ever be scared of a scarecrow and that he'd sooner die laughing than be inconvenienced any other way.
• A revenge-powered scarecrow was the Monster of the Week in "Night of the Scarecrow" of Martin Mystery. In the 18th century, his owners, the Fermiers, were forced from their farm and retaliated by using a talisman to curse the farm to not tolerate any owner but their descendants. The curse brought the scarecrow to life, which had Weather Manipulation and could drain the life of people, animals, and plants alike. In present times, the protagonists try to end the curse by destroying the talisman, but it fails. Plan B is to destroy the eviction deed so that the farm would default back to the Fermiers. To the scarecrow's horror, this ends the curse and thus him.
• In The Mighty Heroes episode "The Scarecrow", lightning hits a scarecrow. Not only does it bring it to life, but the charge is powerful enough that the scarecrow gains the ability to bring straw to life. It makes itself haystack henchmen and terrorizes the countryside. The Mighty Heroes can't defeat the straw army at first because they're strong, big, and punches go right through them. The team only barely escapes being mowed down by a combine harvester, but comes back with renewed determination. Strong Man and Tornado Man join forces to create a powerful gust that blows the haystacks apart and the scarecrows' filling away. This ends the lot of them.
• There is one in "Night of the Living Scarecrow", the pilot episode of Mona the Vampire. Played with and subverted in that the supposed scarecrow was actually the caretaker of the church, but then a second hat is discovered. This leaves the possibility that there really is a living scarecrow out and about.
• A scarecrow is one of the forms inhabited by the eponymous villain in The New Adventures of Superman episode "The Mysterious Mr Mist".
• Pinkalicious & Peterrific: "Berry Scary" involves Pinkalicious, Rafael, Peter, and Frida make a scarecrow to scare some birds away. However, once they make it scary enough, they end up being utterly terrified by it and at one point, an evil laugh can be heard offscreen.
• In the Popeye short "I'll Never Crow Again", Popeye tries to save Olive's vegetable garden by setting up a scarecrow. One crow just takes the fancy clothes for himself, which humors Olive. Next, Popeye plays for scarecrow himself, earning him nothing but two tomatoes to the face and more of Olive's laughter. Desperate, Popeye tries to shoot the crows, but he's such a terrible shot he hits everything but them. Olive's amusement knows no bounds, nor does Popeye's anger. He angrily grabs her and stations her as a scarecrow with some straw for added effect. This, finally, scares away the crows.
• Scarecrow and Crow are the main adversaries of Jasper of the Puppetoons series, starring in such shorts as "Jasper and the Beanstalk", "Jasper Goes Hunting", "Jasper's Minstrels", "Jasper and the Watermelons", and "Jasper and the Haunted House".
• In the Regular Show episode "Terror Tales of the Park III" (in the short "Jacked-Up Jack-o-Lantern"), Muscle Man tells a story in which he and his friends are chased by a pumpkin-headed scarecrow, who wants revenge after they killed his wife (also a pumpkin scarecrow).
• Several incarnations of Scooby-Doo had Mystery Inc. facing a criminal who utilised the sinister scarecrow image, either by disguising themselves as such or otherwise.
  • The New Scooby-Doo Movies episode "The Frickert Fracas" had Simon Shakey disguise himself as a scarecrow to sneak around Maude Fracket's farm and steal a secret formula. He isn't terribly scary and the gang spends most of the episode chasing him.
  • The What's New, Scooby-Doo? episode "A Scooby-Doo Halloween" had Velma Dinkley's cousin Marcy, who was not one to to cramp her style by doing her own dirty work try to ruin Halloween by terrorizing everyone with an army of scarecrow robots.
  • The half-hour Halloween special Scooby-Doo! and the Spooky Scarecrow had the gang visit a town called Cobb Corner to attend the Halloween festival before having to deal with a fearsome scarecrow named Cornfield Clem.
  • In the Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! episode "Eating Crow", two rival farmers antagonized each other while disguised as living scarecrows.
• Parodied in "Weekend at Burnsie's" of The Simpsons. Marge creates a pumpkin-headed scarecrow to get rid of a murder of crows attacking her garden. The scarecrow is scary enough that even Homer is terrified when he returns home that night. Thinking he's dealing with a real monster, Homer destroys it with a bat and subsequently becomes a god to the crows. This contrasts an earlier joke when Marge only had the cross-style post set up for the scarecrow to rest on. It attracted Flanders and his sons to come pray in her garden.
• Lord Pumpkin was a part of the cast of the shortlived Ultra Force animated series.
• Watership Down. In "The Shadow of Efrafa", Kehaar tries to frighten off the pursing Efrafans by hiding under the hat of a scarecrow and speaking like there's a man standing there. It works until the hat falls off.

---

Examples of friendly scarecrows:

Advertising

• Chipotle's The Scarecrow short features a dystopian city in which Crow Foods controls the food supply with mechanized efficiency. Scarecrows, all unhappy, work for the company under strict guidance of robot crows. One scarecrow, who lives just outside of the City of Plenty, tries to rebel by growing his own produce and selling this "true food" as an alternative to Crow Foods' semi-junk food. The short was accompanied by a game in which the aforementioned scarecrow is the protagonist and has to smuggle proper ingredients to shops, save animals from the city, and grow pesticide-free produce. Once Scarecrow Food fully runs Crow Foods out of town, the player can get a free burrito at Chipotle.
• Clownor and Clownix from the Festiva collection of Spacix protect the grain and do so by standing in the midst of the fields in T-pose.
• In 2000, Weetabix aired a commercial narrating the fall and recovery of a scarecrow. A sickly scarecrow is harrassed by crows and kicked out by the farmer for not doing his job. He is found by another farmer, brought home, and fed whole grains. With this nourishing diet, the happy scarecrow flourishes like a plant and regains the energy to chase after crows.

Anime & Manga

• Howl's Moving Castle. Sophie is a little edgy of the scarecrow at first. She's certain he's magical in some way and she's already had bad experiences with magic. By the end the scarecrow has becomes a member of the True Companions and turns out to be an enchanted Prince. Sophie's kiss breaks the spell, and he's able to go back home so he can help finish the war.
• The Morose Mononokean: In Chapters 21 and 22 and Episode 10, Ashiya and Abeno help a one-eyed scarecrow yokai who is stuck in a mud- and smoke-covered potato-field. The yokai, Nobou, is stuck in a phantasmagoria of the day his friend, a regular scarecrow, died. A passerby had thrown a cigarette into the field, which caused a fire. Nobou tried to carry his friend to safety, but had to abandon him to save himself. He thinks his friend's resentment causes the smoke and mud, but Abeno corrects him it's his own guilt and that he can't send him to the underworld if Nobou doesn't first free himself. Learning this and having Ashiya and Abeno for emotional support, Nobou makes peace with what happened and moves on. The mud and smoke likewise disappear.
• Naruto has Team Seven's sensei, Kakashi, whose name means "scarecrow".
• One appears in The Nightmare Before Christmas: Zero's Journey. Jack asks them if they've seen Zero and gets a shrug in response.
• The Black Magician of the Forest is a fairy tale book owned by Ruka in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds. When she is taken over by the Duel Dragon's miasma, she lives out the book's story. She takes the role of the Old Lady and envisions Rua as the Broken Scarecrow who, through team work, outwit and defeat an evil wizard. In return for mercy, the wizard tells the scarecrow to bathe in sunrise's sunlight to become the human prince he used to be once more. Thereafter, the former scarecrow hugs the old lady to undo the curse of old age she had upon herself, leading to a Happily Ever After.

Audiobooks

• In the Woody Woodpecker audiobook "Woody Woodpecker and the Scarecrow", Woody befriends a scarecrow because he likes wood, which scarecrows among other materials are made of. Also, as a woodpecker, he's not scared of a scarecrow. It turns out the scarecrow needs help because he's ineffective and worried that the farmer will throw him out. To buy time, Woody paints himself black to look like a crow and to pretend to be frightened by the scarecrow when the farmer drops by. Next, he arranges for the other scarecrows in the neighborhood to come to the scarecrow's aid to show him how its done and to give the crows a fright that turns them white and discourages them from coming back any time soon.

Card Games

• Swift Scarecrow is a machine-type card in Yu-Gi-Oh!. It's effectively a robot scarecrow.

Comic Books

• In the Bizu story "Le chevalier Potage", the titular Potage Knight is half scarecrow and half snowman. His mother, the scarecrow, sought shelter with a snowman one harsh winter and the two fell in love during that time. The had a son, but come spring and the snowman melted away. The scarecrow raised her son, who didn't have his father's Achilles' Heel, alone, and he grew up to be an honorable man. He inherited his mother's pumpkin head and his father's carrot nose, earning him the nickname of The Soup Knight.
• In the My Little Pony comic "Shabby Scarecrow", the ponies give their scarecrow friend Turnip Top new clothes so he won't be too cold to do his job. Majesty even grants him the ability to walk around, as long as there are no mortals around, so he can more efficiently protect the crops.
• The Straw Man by Marvel Comics is an extra–dimensional demonic being that protects Earth from other demonic beings. He normally lives in his own dimension but can manifest here through a painting. His main adversary is Kalumai, whose plots he has foiled many times. He was also one of the seven Fear Lords for a time, but he betrayed them to Daredevil and Doctor Strange when his co-demons sought to subjugate humanity through fear. During this time, he took on a human disguise as the host of "Horror TV" cable network. His chosen name was Skirra Corvus, "Skirra" being Old Norse for "Scare" and "Corvus" being Latin for "Crow".
• In "The Scarecrow Walks!", published in Strange Tales #81, the elderly Smiths are evicted from their farm so the mortgage holder can sell it to the government for nuclear testing. With nowhere to go, they have to leave behind their beloved scarecrow. It is thus in harm's way when the nuclear testing occurs, which not only brings it to life but also makes it several stories tall. It seeks out the man who evicted the Smiths to claim the money, which is readily handed over to the giant scarecrow. It then tracks its former masters, growing smaller as the days pass, until it locates them and leaves them the money while they sleep. It then follows them to their new farm, where it happily loses the last of its life.
• X-Mickey has an interdimensional sorcerer named Mow that is capable of bringing puppets to life. Three centuries ago, he enchanted the scarecrows from Gothic Hill to be his minions, but was defeated and trapped in another dimension afterwards. The scarecrows disappeared as well, so when Mow returns to Earth in the present he tries to make replacements. Mickey destroys his staff before the new scarecrows reach the quality of the old. As it turns out, Mow's original scarecrows had gone into hiding as the new population of Gothic Hill. They're happy that Mow's been defeated once more.

Comic Strips

• Odmedod the Scarecrow^note "Hodmedod" is one of the many words found in Great Britain for scarecrows. has been part of the Rupert Bear cast since "Rupert and Odmedod". In "Rupert and the Old Hat", he confesses to Rupert that he's lonely and would like to make friends with the birds, but they don't like him. Coincidentally, Rupert has a broken cuckoo clock at home and is looking for a new nest for the wooden bird, Ticktock, inside. Odmedod's just perfect and the scarecrow and clock cuckoo become companions.

Eastern Animation

• In the short "Pugalo" ("Scarecrow"), a bucket-headed scarecrow is miserable and lonely. He has a crush on a Venus de Milo copy standing in the park, but he refrains from approaching her. The crows try to be on friendly terms with him, but he rejects their company. One night, he wishes upon a shooting star for company and his wish is seemingly granted when a beautiful white hare enters the garden. The scarecrow is smitten and offers her all the carrots she wants. For days, she returns, dances with him, laughs with him, flirts with him, and fills her belly with carrots. The scarecrow, whose happiness is so intense his wooden frame grows leaves, doesn't notice he's being used until one day she returns with her entire colony and they raze the carrot field. And even then it doesn't fully hit him until the next day, when she doesn't return to him and he spots her dancing with another scarecrow in the neighboring coleslaw field. The scarecrow collapses, staying in place all up until winter when it forms the foundation for a snowman.

Films — Animation

• Jack Skellington of The Nightmare Before Christmas first appears dressed as a pumpkinheaded-scarecrow. He sets himself on fire to burn away the costume.
• The Scarecrow is a loose adaptation of "Feathertop". Miss Beebee, a witch, brings her scarecrow to life to have company. When she has to flee, she leaves him behind with a feather that when he puts it on his hat turns him into the human Feathertop. He can only gain permanent humanity if he's willing to give his life for another. Feathertop sets out to help the workhouse inmate Polly and the orphans in her care by winning a dance contest and giving them the prize money to buy their freedom. The one problem is that the workhouse owner, Count Grisham, wants to marry Polly and isn't willing to let her go. Feathertop and Polly find out that Grisham intends to kill her if he can't have her and flee along with the orphans. However, Grisham is one step ahead and has had the bridge out of town sabotaged. Feathertop climbs underneath the bridge to hold the frame together until the others are across. He fails to climb back up and plummets to his death, but in doing so he fulfills the condition of Miss Beebee's spell and rather than dying becomes a human permanently.
• Jack Scarecrow from Spookley the Square Pumpkin is the Team Dad of the farm crops and dwellers. He is grounded and patient, which earns him his authority.

Literature

• Nanny Ogg's Cookbook from the Discworld series. "Unlucky Charlie" is a once-ordinary scarecrow formerly used for target practice by witches in the Lancre Witch Trials. It absorbed so much magic that Charlie now appears and disappears all across the kingdom, though no-one ever sees him move. He's not malevolent, but does demand privacy and respect. Give him those and your harvest will be excellent even if you've not planted anything.
• The unfortunate protagonist of "Feathertop" is a scarecrow made and brought to life by the witch Mother Rigby. He was meant to be a normal scarecrow, but Rigby likes her creation so much that she gives him her Hell-powered pipe to make him alive and look human. She also gives him a magic cane that is to lead him wherever he needs to go and, for her own sense of accomplishment, sends him out to woo Polly Gookin. Feathertop and Polly fancy each other, but the dream falls apart when Feathertop's reflection reveals his true scarecrow self. Distraught, Feathertop returns home and throws away the pipe to end himself. Mother Rigby respects his choice and puts him in her garden as he was meant to.
• The scarecrow from Howl's Moving Castle is scary, but ends up not actually being evil.
• In The Lonely Scarecrow by Tim Preston, a scarecrow is lonely because all that shares the field with him are animals and they won't come near him and his scary face. When the snow of winter turns him into a snowman, the animals don't realize it's the scarecrow and come near to play. The scarecrow is happy and gets to stay happy when, as spring melts the snow and reveals his scarecrow self, the animals realise they don't have to fear him.
• The Madman: His Parables and Poems by Kahlil Gibran contains the parable "The Scarecrow". The narrator mentions a conversation with a scarecrow about the joys of scaring. A year later, the scarecrow has become a philosopher and lets two crows build a nest under his hat.
• The Dinky Duck short "The Timid Scarecrow" was adapted into a Mighty Mouse book titled "Mighty Mouse and the Scared Scarecrow" (also released as "Mighty Mouse and the Scarecrow"). In it, Dinky too tries to help the unavailing scarecrow fend off the crows, but in this version Mighty Mouse comes to their rescue. He has the two hide while he dresses up like the scarecrow. He gives the crows a good beating, which they think comes from the scarecrow so that from then on they are afraid of him. The scarecrow happily resumes his job now that he's protected by a reputation.
• Oz series:
  • The Scarecrow from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, probably the most famous friendly scarecrow.
  • A close second would be Jack Pumpkinhead, who first appears in the second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz, and who is a clumsy, childlike naif.
• Maria Gripe's Pappa Pellerin's Daughter features an orphan girl named Loella who seeks emotional support from an old (and non-living) scarecrow, the aforementioned "Pappa Pellerin" as she goes through her Coming of Age Story.
• The scarecrow in The Scarecrow by Beth Ferry raises a crow chick that fell out of its nest. It has to leave when winter comes, but returns in spring and builds its nest in the scarecrow's overalls. The scarecrow is very happy to have company again.
• Down in Spring Valley in The Scarecrow and His Servant, Carlo Pandolfo makes a turnip-headed scarecrow to alleviate his worries. Lightning strikes it soon after, bringing it to life. The scarecrow wants to go on a journey and so hires the orphan boy Jack as his Beleaguered Assistant to make things pleasant and help him where his lack of life experience could cause trouble. Along the way, the scarecrow is taught to make friends with birds, becomes an army captain, and has a romance with a broom.
• In The Scarecrow's Hat by Ken Brown, a chicken swaps various items until she has a walking stick she can swap with the scarecrow for its hat, which the chicken wants to build a nest out of. The scarecrow wants a walking stick to rest its arms on, because it's grown very tired of keeping them sideways for so many years.
• In The Scarecrows' Wedding, scarecrow colleagues Betty O'Barley and Harry O'Hay agree to marry and ask around on the farm for the stuff they need for the ceremony. They acquire everything except the pink flowers, which Harry offers to pick on his own. Circumstances make this fetch quest one that takes several days and the missing scarecrow doesn't go unnoticed by the farmer. He replaces Harry with a new one, Reginald Rake, who fancies himself a smoker but only succeeds in causing a fire. Harry returns with the flowers kept fresh in a pail and uses the water to stop the fire. Then he and Betty finally get married.
• The title character of Worzel Gummidge is a scarecrow and happily married to another scarecrow named Earthy Mangold. They live on Scatterbrook Farm and were made by a mysterious man through unknown means. The premise of the books is Worzel's friendship with the human children John and Susan, who came by during the school holidays. Only they know that Worzel is alive, so if he causes trouble, they get the blame. The rest of Worzel's friends are constructs like him, such as his Aunt Sally, a fairground doll, and the Living Figurehead Saucy Nancy.

Live-Action TV

• The Round the Twist episode "Know All" is an adaptation of the short story "Know All" by Paul Jennings. It features scarecrows in two ways:
  • The Twists find a chest filled with costumes, which only much later they learn are from a circus of which all members have perished in an accident. Intrigued by the find, they each dress up and find themselves bestowed with the talents and characteristics of the original owners. For fun, they dress up their scarecrow in a clown's outfit. This causes it to come alive and, being empty beforehand, to strongly take to the love the clown had for the other clown, who wore the costume Linda is wearing. She feels terrorized until her family gets her to take off the costume. The scarecrow is heartbroken, but Tony, who'd been the Fortune Teller, already arranged for a mannequin to be available to dress up instead. She comes alive too and happily reunites with her love. As both the scarecrow and the mannequin steadily become human-like due to the costumes, they decide to join the circus.
  • A subplot involves some Americans trying to acquire the lighthouse. They witness the madly laughing scarecrow and are too frightened to force the Twists out. Harold wants to sell them some farmland instead, but as there's a (regular) scarecrow present, the terrified buyers leave mid-sales pitch.

Music

• Three gyrating scarecrows bound to their cross-style post play a role in the surreal music video for "Blackstar" by David Bowie. The music video is meant to be left to interpretation, but the director has clarified that any messianic symbolism is not intentional.
• "Black Crow King" by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds is sung from the perspective of the Black Crow King, the "keeper of the nodding corn" until the townsfolk come to the fields and make him the "keeper of the trodden corn". As the weather turns bad and both humans and crows retreat, the Black Crow King is left the "keeper of the forgotten corn".
• The first act of magic the Farm Boy performs in the music video of "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" by The Offspring when he gets a magical guitar is to animate a scarecrow.

Religion and Mythology

• The Japanese knowledge deity Kuebiko is a scarecrow, who despite being stuck to one place knows everything. His earliest mention occurs in the Kojiki in regards to the myth of Ōkuninushi. When Ōkuninushi was at Cape Miho in Izumo, a small god arrived in a boat. Kuebiko was asked to identify this god and revealed that he was Sukuna-bikona, a scion of the goddess Kami-musubi.
• While not a scarecrow, the Sennentuntschi is occasionally described as being put together in a way that resembles a scarecrow's construction. She's a doll who takes vengeance on the men that abused her.

Tabletop Games

• Changeling: The Lost features the Scarecrow Ministry, a noble order of the Autumn Court that creates (or reinforces) urban legends so that mortals stay away from the places where the really bad stuff goes down. As part of their membership, they receive masks that can instill phobias in those who look at them.

Toys

• Scarecrow is a plushie (knitting pattern) created by Alan Dart. His name is a pun, as he's not a real scarecrow, but rather a farmer crow.

Video Games

• Scarecrow from Code Name: S.T.E.A.M is a pumpkin-headed scarecrow with bird-like feet. His head is filled with hay and needles and he's hinted to be the same scarecrow from the Oz stories. He's one of S.T.E.A.M.'s most valued agents and armed with the Pumpkin Stunner. This gun stuns foes and properly charged can unleash the special attack, Trick or Treat, which fires healing candy and landmines.
• Birdy from Conker's Bad Fur Day shows up in Hungover and at Poo Mountain as the tutorial guide. He's a heavy drinker, not unlike Conker.
• Nohemon from Digimon is a Puppet Digimon. At first glance, it resembles a William Tell-inspired scarecrow with a plush crow on its right arm, but the crow actually is its true form. It's name is a reference to the henohenomoheji face.
• Scarecrows are monster-type demons in Disgaea. Like all demons, they can be both good and evil, and work both for your party or against it.
• Played for laughs in The Elder Scrolls Online's Clockwork City DLC. In one of the quests, you team up with some talking crows who charge you with defeating a terrifying creature called "The Motionless Guardian".... which ends up being a not-scary-at-all scarecrow that you simply knock over.
• Folklore for the PlayStation 3 has a half-life (a sort of imaginary friend/spirit) named Scarecrow who accompanies the heroine, Ellen on her journey through the Netherworld. He's rather whimsical and charming that is until it turns out that he's been using Ellen to get him to the Netherworld core so he could absorb all of humanities sorrow; though it was only to fulfill the wish Ellen made as a child, that is to create a world without fear or hatred.
• Slasher Smile-sporting scarecrow skins and accessories were introduced to Fortnite in 2018. The set is sunflower-themed and includes the (female) Straw Ops outfit, the (male) Hay Man outfit, the Hay Nest backpack, the Birdhovel backpack, the Field Wrath glider, and the Harvester harvesting tool.
• Among Beëlzeblob's minions in Gast is a scarecrow. It's one of the minions Gast can choose to help instead of kill. Killing it is done by setting it on fire. Helping it is done by finding a soul for its body. As luck would have it, another minion is a ghost who wants a body. Gast can introduce them, upon which they fuse and the scarecrow's clothes turn white. Like all others who are helped, the new being leaves immediately.
• The protagonist of Haymakers is Lottie, a sack-headed scarecrow armed with a hitchfork. Her hitchfork allows her to hitch onto objects and enemies.
• The Legend of Kyrandia: Zanthia makes a scarecrow come to life in Hand of Fate, causing his owner to pursue him through the fields. He is later seen relaxing at the pirate bar, at least until a fight breaks out.
• Living scarecrows occasionally show up in The Legend of Zelda.
  • In Ocarina of Time, there's the music-loving Bonooru and Pierre at Lake Hylia. Child Link can compose a tune for Bonooru and repeat it as Adult Link to befriend him. During the seven-year gap, Pierre has gone off wandering the land. Bonooru arranges that wherever Link plays their tune, Pierre will show up. This is useful, because he serves as a grappling point for the hookshot where there may otherwise not be a grappling point.
  • Only Pierre shows up in Majora's Mask. He hangs around at the trading post and teaches Link how to adjust the Song of Time to speed up or slow down time. Link can also compose a tune for him to summon him with as grappling point for the hookshot where there may otherwise not be a grappling point. Pierre also offers to dance the night away with Link whenever spoken to, which time-skips to the next dawn. By the time of the final day, however, he leaves town to hide from the moon.
• Lu Ye Xian Zong is an unlicensed The Wizard of Oz game for the Famicom. The scarecrow is a playable character once he's encountered at the end of the first level. He is armed with a hoe.
• Maize: The Red Queen has been bringing scarecrows to life in hopes one can serve as the maize people's champion. Many were too stupid, but the protagonist is the exception. While he completes her tasks, the others are kept entertained in an underground dance hall.
• In the chapter "Frozen Cliffs" of Nihilumbra, the Void-born blob Born comes across a scarecrow. Eager for a place in the world, Born takes on its shape and maintains it for the rest of the story.
• There's a scarecrow at stop #39 on the overworld map of Point Blank Adventures. It sometimes moves.
• Among the secondary sidekicks to choose from in Pocky & Rocky 2 is Scarecrow (Tobimaru in Japanese, which means "Jumper"). He thinks highly of himself, his looks in particular, and he attacks by throwing sickles that like boomerangs return to him. With magic, he can be transformed into a pogo stick.
• pop'n music 18 Sengoku Retsuden: Scarecrow is a rebellious scarecrow with a henohenomoheji-style face. Two like-minded scarecrows act as his backup dancers. In reference to his henohenomoheji-eyes, his birthday is on September 9th (9-9). If he misses, crows land around and he has to wave extra hard to chase them away. If he loses, it seems he returns to a lifeless state.
• Skellman from Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? and its sequel is a living signpost with a skull as head. They singsong at the start of each game, conveying amusement at the Prinnies' predicament, and afterwards they or a legion of lookalikes show up all throughout the levels to show the chosen Prinny which way to go.
• Redungeon: Creep-a-Crow is a scarecrow character with a watermelon head. His special ability is to literally scare all the enemies on the screen away from him. He's also constantly pogo-jumping, and so is able to automatically cross one-tile gaps, and doesn't get slowed down by the tiles covered in spiderwebs.
• Kakashi the Scarecrow is one of Tingle's companions in Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love. Based on the Scarecrow of Oz fame, he's not too bright and on the lookout for intelligence. As the smallest of Tingle's crew, he fits into small spaces.
• Splatter Master: The wizard Jagodd turns objects to life and hands them and animals massive power in return for their loyalty to him. All join, except for one scarecrow who belongs to an elderly couple that takes exceptional care of their farm. When Jagodd's forces injure them, he sets out to reclaim the village. His first major opponent, encountered on the farm, is a huge humanoid crow. When finally he defeats Jagodd, the scarecrow becomes a mere object once more because the wizard's influence is gone. However, if the life stone is obtained during the adventure, its power causes the scarecrow to become a human boy. He happily reunites with the elderly couple to live happily ever after, though it's implied some malicious energy remains with him.
• Toonstruck features a friendly "carecrow" who, as per its name, takes care of the birds instead of scaring them away. He does, however, transform into your usual scary scarecrow when Nefarious' Malevolator zaps him.

Web Animation

• In "Bad Scare Day" of Monster High, a scarecrow student with a sack head gets the staples across his mouth ripped out by Frankie's magnetic field. This is his only appearance.
• The titular Nomad in Nomad of Nowhere is a benevolent animated scarecrow who was created to protect a young witch on the run. He can bring non-animated objects to life and while he doesn't like hurting people, his magic can have destructive side effects and when pushed too far he is as terrifying as the rumors around him make him out to be.

Webcomics

• In Solstoria a friendly scarecrow is a farm spirit that was made by the main character.
• The Berserkers Daughter: All Jerkass scarecrows seem to do all day is think up new ways to get kids in trouble.

Western Animation

• The Babaloos: In one episode in the second season, the Babaloos come across a sentient scarecrow who's in danger of being replaced by his farmer because he's not scary enough. They help with that... by giving him new clothes that make him look straight out of a horror movie (complete with fake bloodstains). (Although how this is supposed to make him scarier to crows is unknown, as is how the farmer reacted the next morning when he got up and saw what his scarecrow suddenly looked like.)
• Betty Boop:
  • In "Hallowe'en Party", the outdoors get too cold for a scarecrow named Scary, but for Halloween at least he's invited to Betty's party. He is the first guest to arrive and after warming up he helps to decorate her home. Unlike most animated scarecrows of this era, Scary does not have a face, but he has eyes inside the straw of his head.
  • In "The Scared Crows", Betty protects her garden from aggressive crows with a scarecrow. One crow bumps into a tree, which makes Betty take pity and nurse them back to health in her house. As soon as she's gone, it opens the window for the other crows to come raid the food storage. Betty quickly takes the scarecrow from its post and dons the oversized outfit herself to personally deal with the pests, who flee white-stricken.
• Bob the Builder: Spud is a cloth-headed scarecrow with a parsnip nose. He is well-meaning, but not very smart and in need of moral guidance, which often causes trouble to his friends. Lofty used to be afraid of Spud, but Lofty is afraid of a lot of things. In the episode "Spud and Squawk", Spud ends up in a Friendly Rivalry with the crow Squawk.
• In the Columbia Cartoons short "Crop Chasers", a farmer hires two scarecrows after a mob of crows steal all his crops. The duo thinks it'll be an easy job, but the crows are vicious and solely entertained by their new foes. The scarecrows give up soon after, yet in the crows' mirth, a chick falls into the well. It's at risk of drowning, so the scarecrows jump in to save it. The murder is grateful and returns the stolen goods, ensuring the scarecrows get to keep their jobs.
• Comi Color Cartoons:
  • "Jack Frost": Just before Old Man Winter arrives, the grizzly bear cub meets a scatting, Cab Calloway-inspired scarecrow, who warns him with his song. The cub laughs it off, but then a cold wind flows in, freezing the scarecrow and covering him with snow until he looks like a snowman.
• "Little Boy Blue": A dancing scarecrow befriends Little Boy Blue and Little Bo-Peep. When a wolf stalks by and steals one of Bo-Peep's sheep, it is the scarecrow who fights with the wolf to get the sheep back.
• The Courage the Cowardly Dog episode "Night of the Scarecrow," plays with this trope. The Bagges find a scarecrow who tries his damndest to be a straight example (he mostly comes off as a Knight Templar), but he just isn't scary, so they convince him to be a hay ride driver instead.
• During the "My, What a Happy Day" segment of "Mickey and the Beanstalk", a murder of crows and a scarecrow sing along in harmony.
• In the Merrie Melodies short "I Wish I Had Wings", a chick breaks into the vegetable garden. While he dines, the peg-legged scarecrow gets up and comes after him. The chick sets it on fire, leaving only the wooden frame that subsequently runs off.
• A family of stuffed cloth scarecrows are the protagonists of the Merrie Melodies short "I'd Love to Take Orders from You". The father has a job protecting the maize from animals, crows in particular, and he's raising his son to be a good scarecrow one day too. The boy, who fancies himself an intimidating scarecrow already, sets out early the next morning to earn himself a few scares. Small animals are frightened of him, but an actual crows proves too big and vengeful. By then his parents have awakened and gone looking for him, and his father arrives timely to scare the rapidly paling crow away himself.
• In Magic Adventures of Mumfie, Mumfie's friend, caretaker and the resident Smart Guy is a benevolent animate scarecrow named Scarecrow.
• The two pups of the MGM short "Two Little Pups" harrass a chicken. The chicken accidentally gets tangled up in the clothes of a scarecrow and the ghostlike result scares the pups away until the chicken frees herself.
• Odmedod the Scarecrow^note "Hodmedod" is one of the many words found in Great Britain for scarecrows. appeared in two episodes of the 1990s animated adaptation of Rupert Bear, namely "Rupert and the Clock Cuckoo" and "Rupert and the Wool Gatherers". "Rupert and the Clock Cuckoo" is based on "Rupert and the Old Hat" and therefore tells about how Odmedod and the clock cuckoo Ticktock become companions. The original strip version of "Rupert and the Wool Gatherers" did not feature Odmedod, but rather Bill Badger. In the episode, Odmedod helps Rupert defeat a duo of wool thieves. The men are initially startled to encounter a living scarecrow, but because he doesn't pose a threat they treat him as anyone else that gets in their way.
• In the Silly Symphonies short "Autumn", a scarecrow which is just clothes is used by the crows the same way a tree is used by squirrels: they store their food inside and hide in it from the cold. The food is stolen from the squirrels.
• Three instances of living scarecrows occur in the Terrytoons shorts:
  • In "Keep 'em Growing", the animals and one scarecrow take over all the farmwork the men who've gone off to fight in World War II had to abandon. The scarecrow flies up and mows the hay with his outstretched arms.
  • Dinky is friends with the scarecrow guarding the maize in "The Timid Scarecrow". This particular scarecrow is terrified of the vicious and mocking crows, which Dinky fruitlessly attempts to remedy by stuffing the scarecrow with more straw to give him more muscle. The other farm fowl put the scarecrow with the trash when again maize gets stolen by the crows and Dinky is made to stand guard until they get a new scarecrow. The crows easily overpower the duckling, but this invigorates the scarecrow to come to his one friend's aid. Once he's beaten up all the crows, the farm fowl accept him back and reward him with new clothes.
  • In "What Happens at Night", the local wildlife organizes a party at the windmill for everyone. This includes a rooster-shaped weather vane and a scarecrow. The weather vane has trouble waking the scarecrow up, so it enlists the help of fireflies to assure his attendance. Both the weather vane and the scarecrow fly over to the mill, where the scarecrow joins forces with two spiders to give a faux puppet performance. After that, it's time for dancing until dawn, when both the weather vane and the scarecrow have to return to their places.

---

Both depictions at once:

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes: Simultaneously played straight and averted in Season 5 episode 6, where Sweet S. meets a scarecrow boy. The scarecrow is quite pleasant and gladly accepts Sweet S.'s food despite its awful taste, only saying he likes it so as not to hurt her feelings. Later on, after Sweet S. discovers he had been faking liking her food, the scarecrow is greeted by Big M., who is able to turn him into a monster who attacks the city and fights the Supermen when they go into action to stop him.

Webcomics

• Twistwood Tales: While Strawberry Soo the Scarecrow Girl is quite nice and friendly, her having incredibly large extremities tends to scare more than crows.

---