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Watto you mean he's an antisemitic stereotype? It's not like he's a cap-wearing, big-nosed, cheating businessman with a bad accent and... and... Oy vey iz mir!
"What about Mace Windu?", you ask. "He's a totally perfect Jedi warrior." That's true, but I see your Mace Windu and raise you one Jar Jar Binks. Much like Watto embraces Jewish stereotypes of the crooked merchant, Jar Jar is a CGI explosion of outdated, foolish, broken English minstrel shows.

The Space Jew is an alien, monster, animal, or other nonhuman creature that embodies stereotypical aspects of a real-world racial, ethnic, or religious stereotype, whether Jewish, black, Asian, white, or whatever. Sometimes this trope is played intentionally, while other times it might simply be a subconscious or accidental move on the part of the authors.

Compare Fantastic Racism and Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?. Often overlaps with National Animal Stereotypes, when an animal that is traditionally associated with the country will be portrayed as a stereotypical person of that nation. It may also overlap with the Reptilian Conspiracy—though more overtly antisemitic versions of that theory try to "explain" why actual Jewish people are monstrous, whether because Jews are secretly reptilian themselves or because they're mere pawns of the actual reptilians.

Don't mix this trope up with Fantasy Counterpart Culture, which deals with fantasy/sci-fi cultures that stand in for real-life cultures but don't necessarily exhibit the stereotypes of whomever they are standing in for. Simply having a non-human character being racially or culturally-coded, even as being part of a historically oppressed or marginalized group, does not qualify for this trope unless they veer into heavily stereotypical territory. See also Unfortunate Implications.

Not to be confused with Space Amish, Space Cossacks, Space Romans, Space Elves, or actual JEWS IN SPACE! Actual religious practices in a non-Earth setting would be more in-line with Crystal Dragon Jesus than this.

Again: This trope is not about actual Jewish people in or from outer space!


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Gankutsuou: As part of the premise (The Count of Monte Cristo IN SPACE!), foreign characters like Ali, Haydée, etc. are aliens. The series uses the term "Eastern Space" for locations that were in Turkey/the Middle East in the novel, and the Carneval of Rome take place on the Moon. This somehow makes the story less racist than the original.
  • Gintama has the premise that rather than the Gunboat Diplomacy of history, Edo-era Japan experienced an Alien Invasion. Thus, actual aliens take the place of "nasty gaijin" in wielding disproportionate power over the country.
  • Momotaro's Sea Eagles and Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors are World War II propaganda cartoons in which an army of adorable talking animals stab, shoot, bayonet, and blow up demons, who are basically white people with horns. Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors also features three monkeys that are drawn to strongly resemble stereotypical African tribesmen, but they represent the Southeast Asia countries Japan is supposed to be leading.
  • One of the major reasons Beast Wars II will never be released in America is because the Jointron brothers are a hodgepodge of offensive Mexican stereotypes. They wear sombreros, speak Gratuitous Spanish, love to party, and are loud, dirty, and lazy. Oh, and they transform into bugs.
  • Space Battleship Yamato originally has the Gamilians fashioned after Europe, the White Comet Empire after America, and the Bolans after Soviet Russia. In the reboot Space Battleship Yamato 2199, Gamilans are so stereotypically German that they even have a space Austria - Zalts.
  • Voltes V: The Boazanian Empire is essentially 18th century Space France. A planet 14,000 light years away from Earth, the cruel nobles dress like French aristocrats and live lavishly, while the lower class are forced into slavery and endless labour. The Boazanian Empire aims to colonize the whole galaxy to keep the slave supply fresh, but in a shocking turn of events, the slaves, led by Gohl, rise up, in a rebellion that has heavy parallels to The French Revolution, aided by humans from Planet Earth and their Combining Mecha. The Pretty Boy Evil Prince antagonist also has a few similarities to Napoléon Bonaparte.

    Comic Books 
  • The Dominators, in DC Comics' Invasion! and subsequent appearances. Yellow skin, huge sharp teeth, bony clawed fingers, they resemble nothing so much as the Golden Age Yellow Claw except they have red circles on their foreheads.
  • In Fritz the Cat, crows stand in for black people and rats stand in for Chinese people. The former carries over into the two movies.
  • In Robert Asprin's Myth Adventures fantasy novels, the race of "deveels" are hard-bargaining master traders and look like traditional red-skinned hoofed devils. When Phil Foglio adapted the first tome in the series as a comic book, he tossed in a lot of Jewish references and got hit with enough complaints that he (sort of) apologized in a later issue.

    Fan Works 
  • Any character who has an unusual skin color is likely to be treated as being African American. Piccolo is the most prominent example, but any Namekian, Android 15, and Mr. Popo (who is literally black) also get in on it.
Dr. Briefs: Finally we're rid of all those dang n-
Bulma: DAD!
Dr. Briefs: I was going to say "Namekians".
Bulma: [Beat] No you weren't.
Dr. Briefs: No I wasn't.
  • Ultra Fast Pony portrays Fluttershy as a former slave with the vocal mannerisms of a Stepin Fetchit. She only listens to blues music, and insists that only other pegasi have P-word privileges. Oddly, the "pegasi as African Americans" metaphor isn't consistently applied to the rest of the cast: the other pegasus in the main cast, Rainbow Dash, is a Valley Girl instead.

    Films — Animation 
  • Disney Animated Canon:
    • The five crows from Dumbo portray black people, especially the leader, Jim Crow, who was ironically voiced by the white Cliff Edwards (who also voiced Jiminy Cricket). As his name is never mentioned in the film, he was later, rather easily, renamed "Dandy Crow" to minimize controversy.
    • Lady and the Tramp features Si and Am, two Siamese cats who represent Yellow Peril stereotypes, speaking broken English and having slitlike eyes, and being pointlessly malicious towards Lady.
    • In The Aristocats, Scat Cat's gang of musical alleycats are speaking with a variety of accents, but the only one who gets into this territory is the Siamese cat (of course), who speaks broken English, plays the drums with chopsticks, and talks about fortune cookies.
    • Fantasia:
      • Sunflower the servant centaurette in the Pastoral Symphony segment is a donkey from the waist down and a black girl from the waist up. She's so badly stereotyped that she got Orwellian Retconned out of the 1969 re-release and all subsequent releases. There are also two zebra-based centaurettes who are black from the waist up, though their facial features are significantly less stereotypical. The other centaurs and centaurettes are horse-based and white (well, they have white features; they're an Amazing Technicolor Population) from the waist up. In addition, when the centaurs pair up romantically, each pair is a perfect color match. The "odd man out" centaur, a blue male, is dejected and lonely until his proper match, a blue female, appears.
      • In the Nutcracker Suite segment, red-capped mushrooms represent Chinese people in the "Chinese Dance," and thistles and orchids represent Russian dancers in the "Russian Dance."
    • The comical, jazz-singing, jive-talking monkeys from The Jungle Book (1967) are sometimes accused of being black stereotypes. Their desire to become "real humans" doesn't help matters much. Their orangutan leader, King Louie, was originally going to be voiced by Louis Armstrong to play him, but they were aware of the Unfortunate Implications that would've been seen in casting a black man in the role and cast Italian-American jazz singer Louis Prima instead. They also made sure that Louis was lighter-skinned than the actual human in the scene, Mowgli himself.
  • Don Bluth:
    • An American Tail uses mice and cats as stand-ins for, respectively, the oppressed (starting with the protagonist family, who are Russian Jewish mice) and their oppressors across various cultures in a way that doesn't really count as this trope, but the sequel, Fievel Goes West throws in some culturally-insensitive Native American mice. A later sequel has another group of Native mice belonging to the Lenape tribe.
    • The original Big Lipped Alligator from All Dogs Go to Heaven could be considered this for black people, given the bone through his nose, the deep-voiced jazz number, and... well... the big lips. He also apparently rules a tribe of sewer rats who resemble your stereotypical Hollywood Natives, wearing Skeletons in the Coat Closet and other tribal garb. His voice actor is an African American man named Ken Page, who went on to voice Oogie Boogie in The Nightmare Before Christmas a few years later.
  • DreamWorks Animation:
    • The bees in Bee Movie represent Jewish-American society, which isn't surprising, since the Jewish-American comedian Jerry Seinfeld voiced the lead and was also one of the writers and producers. The movie includes a Stealth Pun when Seinfeld's character mentions falling in love and another bee (played by Matthew Broderick, also of Jewish descent) responds: "Was she Beeish? Not a WASP! Your parents will kill you."
    • Earlier on, Antz used another "WASP" pun with Chip and Muffy, two New England-accented yellow jackets based on White Anglo-Saxon Protestant stereotypes.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The goblins in Harry Potter are squat creatures who run the banks, as in the source material. The films also give them long noses, leading to further comparisons with Jews. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them introduces Gnarlack, by far the most stereotypically Jewish-looking goblin, played by Jewish actor Ron Perlman to boot.
  • The Star Wars universe, being love-letters to films that didn't know any better, contains a few examples:
    • Watto, who originated in the prequel films, raised concerns about being a Jewish caricature via being a hook-nosed, penny-pinching merchant and slave owner. It doesn't help that Watto in the second film even wears a beard and black hat vaguely similar to a style favored by Hasidic (ultra-Orthodox) Jews (although there have been claims about him being modeled after stereotypes about Italians or Arabs). Perhaps to dissuade these accusations, Star Wars: The Clone Wars featured the king of Watto's species, who has a vaguely British accent and is depicted as a proud warrior despite his small stature.
    • The Star Wars prequel films also feature the Neimoidians — a race of slit-eyed, inscrutable, unscrupulous villain aliens who speak with a vaguely Asian accent, wear Qing Dynasty-inspired robes and hats, and threaten the galaxy with their trade routes and mass-production technology. Many English-speaking critics saw the race as a collection of Asian stereotypes. Interestingly, every localization of the film gives the species new accents. In Germany, for example, they got French accents, and in France, Italy, Spain, Latin America and the Czech Republic, they got Russian accents. They also have some similarity with The Greys in terms of design, who also have been accused of this trope.
    • The Jawas are thinly veiled Space Romani, collecting scrap equipment and being chased off by "regular people" who accuse them of theft and peddling inferior goods.
    • The Sand People/Tusken Raiders in the original trilogy come across as a violent caricature of desert-dwelling Bedouin-like groups, being low-tech, desert-dwelling nomads wearing robes and head coverings. Lucas apparently intended the species to resemble the depiction of American Indians in old Wild West movies through their violent behavior toward the more technologically advanced settlers. The females also wear papoose boards. Whether Lucas realized the Unfortunate Implications or not is anybody's guess. The Mandalorian, at least, manages to take steps towards correcting this by portraying the Tusken Raiders as more open to negotiations and showing the Mandalorian as sympathetic towards their apparent claim that they are Tatooine's true natives and everyone else is invading, while The Book of Boba Fett shows the species in a very sympathetic light, with their own code of honor and principles and no desire to mindlessly loot and plunder, rather than to live in accordance with their traditions. In Knights of the Old Republic the Player Character can even discuss their philosophy and history with a tribe leader, although asking any difficult questions will make them try to kill you.
    • Many critics accused Jar Jar Binks of resembling black caricatures in Minstrel Shows and early American cinema, highlighting his broken English, clumsiness, naivety, and shuffling gait, all typical traits of minstrel characters. Physically, he has large nostrils and his "lips" make up half of his face, both traits commonly exaggerated in black caricatures. The Gungan accent, which sounds vaguely Caribbean, doesn't help the issue, and his large floppy ears have been compared to dreadlocks. Jar-Jar's first lines in the prequels, "Me-sa your humble servant," call slavery and domestic servitude to mind. The character was voiced and motion-captured by black actor Ahmed Best, who denied any attempt to make Jar Jar a black caricature. Other Gungans aren't as buffoonish but maintain the same visual traits and accent.
    • Jabba the Hutt has been accused of embodying Asian and Middle Eastern stereotypes. He has slitted eyes, smokes a hookah, and has a harem. At one point, his design was even going to include a fez. However, later creators gave him and other Hutts Romanian-sounding surnames and The Mafiya vibes.
    • Sy Snootles, the lead singer in Jabba's band, was given many more Sassy Black Woman touches in the 1997 "special edition" of Return of the Jedi, including thick lips and a husky, semi-masculine voice.
    • Bib Fortuna, Jabba's Dragon, plays on white stereotypes, given he is an Evil Albino who enslaved two female members of his own species (who had different skin colours, due to Twi'Leks being an Amazing Technicolor Population) and putting them into Go-Go Enslavement.
    • Also in Return of the Jedi, Ewoks are an ursine version of Hollywood Natives. They even capture our heroes, carry Han and Luke on a spit with the intention of roasting them alive, and worship C-3PO as a god. After Leia convinces the tribe to leave the others alone, they join forces with the heroes against The Empire, at which point the Ewoks become more sympathetic and heroic Noble Savages.
    • In Rogue One, it turns out that the faction of the Rebel Alliance who the others shun as too extremist is based on a desert world with a reputation for religious fervor, that is the source of an important mineral that the Empire wants to seize. Subtle. That said, when the band first appeared in The Clone Wars they were transparent French Resistance stand-ins (sans accents).
  • The Transformers Film Series features a few robotic examples:
    • Jazz is a somewhat Jive Turkey Transformer, possibly in reference to Scatman Crothers, who was the original voice of the character in the cartoons. He's also the only Autobot who dies. According to at least one interview, Jazz was killed because he was the only Autobot in the movie who hadn't already died at least once. It's also been claimed that it was because Jazz is the third most popular character after Optimus and Bumblebee.
    • "The Twins," Skids and Mudflap, drew controversy for embodying a number of black stereotypes in their appearance and behavior. Michael Bay alternately claims that they were meant to mock wiggers or that there was no racial parodying going on at all.
  • In his review of Predator 2, Roger Ebert accused the alien's design, which includes tentacles that resemble dreadlocks, of encouraging the audience to connect its menace with fear of black men. It's rather interesting to note that the second film's hero is himself a black man, but it also includes a number of dreadlocked black crooks.
  • Played with in The Brother from Another Planet, in which an alien who looks like a black man escapes slavery on his own planet and tries to hide out in a black ghetto on Earth. When two of his species track him down, they of course look like white men, but it turns out that they consider the "brother" an inferior race not because of his skin color, but because he's got three toes.
  • The Gremlins in Gremlins have been accused of displaying negative stereotypical behaviour of African-Americans, particularly African-American teens. In one particular scene, unruly Gremlins take over a bar while wearing sunglasses and "street clothing," smoking, drinking, gambling, fighting, listening to wild music, engaging in prostitution, and breakdancing (although that was a Shout-Out to Film/Flashdance). Some critics accused the film of exploiting white fear of black culture invading white suburbia. Of course, the film also plays Black Dude Dies First straight, with the Gremlin Earl attacking the biology teacher Mr. Hanson. The Gremlins might be based on rowdy youths in general, rather than African-American teens in particular. The sequel, perhaps to dissuade these accusations, had the main antagonist known as the Brain Gremlin be portrayed as more of Affably Evil Non-Action Big Bad with a Mid-Atlantic accent.
  • In John Carter, the religious-fanatic Therns, who in the film are responsible for spurring on the war between Helium and Zodanga, have been accused of filling the stereotype of Jews as driving nations to fight each other. Important to note that this was not the case in the original novels, though they have their own Values Dissonance problems.
  • The Fireys in Labyrinth have Caribbean accents and the requisite laid-back attitude, singing a Hakuna Matata-esque number to coax the protagonist away from her quest during a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment.

    Literature 
  • The 1940s Seetee series by Jack Williamson takes place in a Colonized Solar System. In the first novel the officers of a Guard cruiser seem to have been selected entirely on their resemblance to propaganda stereotypes—there's a "sly and stupid" Ukrainian from the Jovian Soviet, a shifty-looking Italian from the Martian Reich, and a sycophantic Japanese-Venusian with the requisite glasses and buck teeth.
  • Terry Pratchett's Discworld series frequently uses Fantasy Counterpart Cultures, but there are occasional examples of this trope detectable:
  • The Disc's dwarfs started out as a fairly positive parody of generic fantasy dwarfs — complete with a love of gold and rather touchy clannish attitudes, but honorable and reliable. Then, over the course of the series, their culture developed more and more parallels to real-world Jewish culture, notably a strong attachment to tradition; there were hints that Jewish readers spotted the parallels before the author did himself, ironically given that some older fantasies may have used dwarfs as hostile, antisemitic parodies of Judaism. Although the novels' view of dwarfs (and by the analogy, Judaism) remained essentially positive, their culture was shown to include a bigoted, fundamentalist element that has interesting resemblances to extreme ultra-orthodox Judaism.

    In later books, especially Raising Steam, the status of the bigoted traditionalist sect becomes more of an allegory for Islamic terrorism: these groups are so fervently convinced of their righteousness that they are willing to break their own rules and massively slaughter innocents, including their own people, to prevent their beliefs being overtaken by more moderate ones or their culture being influenced by a foreign power. There is an acknowledged threat of terrorism as a destabilizing force in the region, and this is only prevented because the rulers on the Disc have much cooler heads than some in real life, plus the Dwarfs ultimately have a central authority figure in the Low King, even if he doesn't have absolute power.
  • Trolls are occasionally - though not consistently - coded as black, which would be fine if they weren't also mostly Dumb Muscle who frequently clash with dwarves.
  • Battlefield Earth contained an effeminate, weak, but highly intelligent servant race of the evil Psychlos, known as the Chinko. This was probably intentional, as L. Ron Hubbard said that the main problem he had with China was that it had Chinese living there. Note that Hubbard used a different word here than "Chinese". In the film, they were called clinkos, but still had the exact same behavior and voice.
    • Though Hubbard probably wouldn't have known it, chinko is also the Japanese word for "(small) penis."
    • That Scientology uses the word "wog", dated but still offensive British slang for someone from the Indian subcontinent or for Arabs to refer to an unbeliever, might be another reflection of Hubbard's views on race.
  • Later in the novel, Hubbard introduces a race of interuniversal bankers that are apparently descended from sharks (or local equivalents). They were short, big-nosed, and thought of nothing but cash, going so far as to attempt to foreclose on the Earth after the humans free it from the Psychlos.
  • Deconstructed in Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream, a book presented as a work by a science fiction writer named Adolf Hitler, where the Always Chaotic Evil mutants are obvious stand-ins for Russians and/or other ethnic groups, with the worst of the lot clearly stand-ins for Jews. At the end of the book, a reviewer dismisses the idea that Hitler was writing about Jews — after all, no one would seriously believe that the notoriously anti-Semitic Russian communists are being controlled by Jews, right?
  • "Submicroscopic" by S.P. Meek and its sequel have three factions of aliens differentiated by skin color. One forms the heroes, one's a group of giant but stupid savages that constantly attack them, and one is technologically advanced but ethically stunted. Guess which corresponds to which colors? (Admittedly, one of the technologically advanced folk who had a grandparent from the heroic faction is portrayed as a Worthy Opponent, but the protagonist doesn't hesitate to kill him, saying that his death was saddening but necessary.
  • H. Beam Piper's Space Viking has the Gilgameshers, a mercantile people for whom haggling appears to be the planetary sport (one reviewer noted, "sadly, we are not given glimpses of the Gilgameshers accusing Trask of wanting to starve their wives and children"). It's specifically stated that they deserve admiration for having rebuilt a space-going civilization from the ground up, and "they had religious objections to violence, though they kept these within sensible limits, and were able and willing to fight with fanatical ferocity in defense." They are also noted for their "maze of dietary and other taboos in which they hid from others," which makes them generally disliked. Lampshaded when the remarks that "everyone was in favor of running out the Gilgameshers" reminds Trask of Hitler, who got into power in the First Century Pre-Atomic "because everyone was in favor of running out the Christians or the Moslems or the Albigensians or something."
  • Blackjack, Percy's winged horse and Sapient Steed from the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series has been accused of being an African-American caricature. He's a comical, dark-colored Jive Turkey, rescued from slavery, who constantly refers to Percy as "boss", and again, his name is Blackjack.
  • Tolkien's Legendarium: J. R. R. Tolkien's depiction of the dwarves is mostly a fairly benign (and fully intentional) Fantasy Counterpart Culture for the Jewish people, being dispossessed of their ancestral homeland, their prowess in war (inspired by the Old Testament), them being skilled artisans, and their continued use of their native language (which he overtly based on Semitic languages) outside of their homeland (which they actually get to reclaim in The Hobbit). It's the dwarves' love of gold and occasional bouts of greed-driven madness that pushes them into this trope, unfortunately.
  • Some readers have identified the Deep Ones of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" as "water negroes," and their interbreeding with humans is often seen as an allegory for miscegenation. More serious Lovecraft scholars have largely dismissed this as a fairly lazy and shallow reading of the story, however, since the Deep Ones are written as far more advanced and artistically inclined than humans are, almost to the point of being a Proud Scholar Race. If Lovecraft - who was undeniably a pretty racist guy - meant this story as some kind of white supremacist Author Tract, the final chapter in particular kind of ruined whatever point he would have been trying to make, since it ends with the main character happy to leave humanity and live with the Deep Ones under the sea. Therefore, a lot of readers see this story as more of a take on mermaid mythology. Although it is a horror story, so ending it with a Tomato in the Mirror twist is hardly proof that being a Deep One is a good thing...
  • The Winged Humanoids Je'arre in Wind and Sparks cycle. Many centuries ago they lived far south in a desert. Then some of them angered their god and were turned into soulless bloodthirsty Snake People, who drove the unmutated Je'arre away. They are excellent artisans and every ruler would like to have them as his subjects for a share of income. They are also obnoxious greedy merchants, which provoked many clashes. When the emperor offered them a disputed chunk of land for good and all, they gladly agreed, called it "The Promised Region" and quickly cleansed it of the Empire's enemies. By the end of the first novel, there's a strong chance of pogroms, because some Je'arre clans supported the invaders.note  Oh, and their noses are huge.
  • David Eddings:
  • The goblins in the Harry Potter books are squat creatures who run the banks, leading to comparisons with Jews. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows reveals that they believe everything made by goblins really belongs to them, even if humans may think they acquired it. They've historically been subject to discrimination and not allowed to carry wands, leading to several rebellions.
  • Voices, the second book in Annals of the Western Shore, has the Alds. Their culture is highly misogynistic and their occupation of Ansul is purely motivated by religious fundamentalism. Their homeland is in the desert. Also, their prayers involve touching their foreheads to the ground. Apart from the detail of being light-skinned, it's hard to think Le Guin wasn't drawing on stereotypes of Muslims (even if they do gain more depth than "sexist zealots" later).
  • The Witches—by Roald Dahl, who was growing more and more vocally antisemitic around the time he wrote this book—has the eponymous (incidentally all-female) Mage Species, whose conspiracy to wipe out children parallels antisemitic blood libel. Their identifying features include wigs (which some Orthodox Jewish women wear—though those real women do it to cover up their natural hair, while Dahl's witches do it to conceal their lack of natural hairnote ), toeless feet (possibly related to depictions of Jews with cloven hooves), and oversized nostrils (in keeping with the Sinister Schnoz as a staple of antisemitic caricatures). They also have unlimited financial power (courtesy of the Grand High Witch's money-printing machine). In the end, they get turned into mice by their own potion and massacred by hotel staff, an image uncomfortably similar to how antisemites (most infamously Those Wacky Nazis) love depicting Jews as vermin to be exterminated.
  • Zig-Zagged in "Asstro Xologists" 'verse by Olga Gromyko - Avshur have all the fashion sense, mannerisms and speech habits of the most stereotypical Jews (sans the long noses - they resemble those of bears)... because they're deliberately mimicking said stereotypes when conducting business in human dominated habitats - their xenopsychologists decided that would elicit the most desirable reaction from humans. When they want to talk seriously all stereotypical mannerisms evaporate instantly. That being said they're extremely greedy, ruthless and secretive when it comes to internal matters of their race, so they have a point. Although they had never lost their homeland (that happened to serpentoids) or been persecuted (they're one of the most prosperous and respected races, in fact) and have a generally benign code of honour.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Star Trek has a few of these:
    • The lumpen-nosed, big-eared, insatiably greedy Ferengi are seen by some as antisemitic characters, and their earliest appearances were also criticized as being Japanese stereotypes. According to Word of God, the Ferengi were meant to be strawmen for American capitalists and were compared to "Yankee Traders" in their first appearance. The name 'Ferengi' is derived from the word "firangi", which is the Hindi/Urdu term meaning "Westerners". In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which featured the most in-depth depiction of the Ferengi, four actors who played the most significant recurring Ferengi characters, Armin Shimerman, Max Grodenchik, Aron Eisenberg, and Wallace Shawn, were all Jewish, reinforcing the stereotype. The comparisons to Jewish stereotypes became more common after they were ditched as villains and became comic relief. For what it's worth, the staff writer who most enjoyed writing Ferengi episodes was Ira Steven Behr, a Jew.
    • The Klingons started out as obviously based upon Cold War stereotypes of Russians or Chinese. The original description for them in the script for their debut episode in Star Trek: The Original Series, "Errand of Mercy", describes them as "Oriental, hard-faced". Their original appearance includes pencil mustaches and a dark complexion. It came from John Colicos, who played the lead Klingon, Kor in the episode. Colicos envisioned his character as "Space Age Genghis Khan" and suggested this look to makeup artist Fred Phillips. It became the standard appearance for Klingons throughout the show. Starting with the TOS films, they began taking on a mishmash of Horny Vikings and samurai references and became a Proud Warrior Race.
    • The Orions have a tendency to be negative stereotypes of (Southern) Italians in space, being notorious for organised crime and, to a lesser extent, sexy women. Their most three-dimensional depiction, in Star Trek: Lower Decks reveals that Orions who aren't criminals are deeply wounded by the stereotype, although some play up to it to seem "cool".
    • Harry Mudd, in his Star Trek: The Original Series appearances, seems to be a derogatory stereotype of Irish Travellers, given his Irish accent, flamboyant dress sense, pierced ear, and dishonesty.
    • Kivas Fajo, from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Most Toys", is a greedy, amoral trader who specializes in collecting — by whatever means necessary — especially rare and precious items. Fajo was played by the very Jewish Saul Rubinek. This was the result of a last-minute recast after the original Jewish actor, David Rappaport, committed suicide.
    • The infamous TNG episode "Up the Long Ladder" has the Bringloidi, a group of settlers replete with Oireland stereotypes. They're all jovial rural bumpkins, all the men are drunken layabouts, and all the women are spitfire harridans, with accents so thick you could cut them with a knife. (Note that these are actually human colonists, so they're arguably less Space Oirish than Oirish In Space.) Colm Meaney was not happy about being in the episode, but couldn't do anything about it. Later, when cast in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, he had more influence (being part of the main cast) and point-blank refused to be in an episode with a stereotypical leprechaun, forcing the writers of "If Wishes Were Horses" to revise the character into Rumpelstiltskin.
    • In the even more infamous TNG episode "Code of Honor", the episode's Human Aliens were originally written as a run-of-the-mill Proud Warrior Race. However, the combination of an inexplicable choice to cast all black actors to play the aliens (nothing in the story required this) and a horribly racist director (he eventually got fired for treating said actors like shit, but only once the production was well under way) led to the society being portrayed as an absurd 1940s-era Darkest Africa tribal stereotype. Needless to say, everyone involved in TNG regards this episode as the most fetid of Old Shames.
  • Flash Gordon villain Ming the Merciless, an obvious Yellow Peril type villain. The film version in the '80s gave him a Race Lift with Swedish actor Max von Sydow, and since then, he's been white. In Defenders of the Earth and the '96 cartoon, he was green.
  • Doctor Who:
    • The Sensorites have a slight Orientalism vibe — inscrutable, all look the same, venerate elders, live in a 'forbidden city'.
    • "The Creature From the Pit" has a group of bandits in a Human Alien society who were modeled on a pastiche of Fagin from Oliver Twist, with no concern for how this was going to end up looking.
    • Loveable Rogue Sabalom Glitz from "The Mysterious Planet", "The Ultimate Foe", and "Dragonfire", who, aside from having the most Jewish-sounding pulp SF name imaginable, will do pretty much anything for money.
    • "The Unquiet Dead" featured an alien species called the Gelth who claimed to want to live on Earth as peaceful refugees but were actually plotting the genocide of humanity, which led some fans to accuse the episode of irresponsibly seeming to endorse actual contemporary fears about immigration.
    • In the episode "The Long Game", we learn that a consortium of bankers has been covertly manipulating the mass media to control Earth. This is more or less the plot of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. What makes this extra-strange (or something) is that we eventually learn that the Daleks were behind it the whole time. However, villains from pretty much every other profession in Britain have also been shown manipulating Earth folks' perceptions and/or trying to covertly take over. Bankers were just one among many, for a very, very, very Long Runner.
    • "The Zygon Invasion"/"The Zygon Inversion" unsubtly parallels Zygons living in secret on Earth with Muslims in Europe, with a terrorist minority promoting hostility to all of them. Although the episodes were intended to be overall anti-racist, some fans didn't like the implications (in particular the potential suggestion that immigrants were only welcome in society if they entirely gave up their previous culture and never showed any sign of being "different").

    Radio 
  • The titular characters of The Space Gypsy Adventures are practically anthropomorphic fox versions of Roma in space. And the name of the show contains a racial slur for Roma people, so there you go.

    Tabletop Games 
  • The Star Wreck Role-Playing Game lampshades this:
    The Ferrets are a disgusting culture who look like chimpanzees made up as Prince Charles. They dress in scarves, gold jewelry, vests, and caftans, and often act as travelling thieves, peddlers, or money-lenders. The PR department of the Ferret Corporation is quick to point out that they have no connection with any possible stereotypes of any ancient Earth cultures. None whatsoever. The very idea is insulting. Then they will try to cheat you out of your money, the little bastards.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • Aside from being the "Predators of the 40k Universe", the Kroot are heavily based on stereotypical Native Americans in looks, to the point that one of their legendary chief's name translates to "Sitting Krootox". Being of a lower-than-average technology level (albeit still possessing technology from firearms to FTL travel) doesn't make things better. They also play on the belief once prevalent in many tribal cultures (most famously the Iroquois) that eating a defeated enemy allows you to absorb their strength. Their Bizarre Alien Biology lets the Kroot absorb DNA from their meals into their own genetic code.
    "Together, we will eat them all!"
  • Warhammer: The Beastmen, according to Word of God, are based on how Roman writers who didn't show them as Noble Savages portrayed Germanic tribes: a horde of stupid, smelly, civilization-hating thugs who wanted to tear down Rome for no real reason.
  • Werewolf: The Apocalypse features a variety of werewolf tribes that players had to select from, relating to the ethnic stereotypes of their homelands. Just to drive the point totally home, they have powers relating to those stereotypes. So the Irish Fianna have powers relating to drinking, the Shadow Lords (both Japanese and Eastern European, somehow) are ruthless, deceptive, and power-hungry, and the Bone Gnawers (ghetto-dwellers, including African-Americans) are poor and despised. The World of Darkness explains this by asserting that mythological creatures are the origin of various racial and ethnic stereotypes.

    Theater 
  • Richard Wagner is often accused of this, with entire books dedicated to finding anti-Semitic stereotypes in his operas. Most Wagner scholars today would agree that Klingsor from Parsifal was intended as this trope. Other Wagner villains considered to be Space Jews are the Nibelungs (dwarfs who mine gold underground and are led by the Big Bad), specifically Alberich and Mime, from Der Ring des Nibelungen, though the evidence there is considerably weaker and it's less widely accepted. The Nazis considered Alberich's son, Hagen, who impales Siegfried in the back to retrieve the ring in Götterdämmerung, as a personification of Jews, while they considered Siegfried as a pure Aryan-blooded hero. They also loved his music, and Wagner was admittedly antisemitic.

    Urban Legends 

    Video Games 
  • In Mass Effect:
    • The Volus are a race of short, weak, and nasally speaking people who live as a "client race" amongst the taller, more militaristic Turians. The Turians allow the Volus to run their finances and commerce in exchange for protection. This is all pretty analogous to the way Jews were viewed in early Christian and Muslim cultures. Several Volus are quite shady, feeding into the stereotype of greedy Jewish bankers and crooked merchants.
    • The Quarian are Space Muslims: they roam in caravans, they wear headscarves, and their main representative in the game has a Muslim name, Tali.
  • Master of Orion II features the Gnolams, a race of spacefaring traders whose insidiousness, obsession with money, visage, and gesturing all hit way too close to home... They were also short of stature with big noses and wore little skullcaps. Moreover, of the various species' "hero lieutenants" the player can hire, the Gnolam example was named "ZOG", which may or may not have been intended as a reference to a delusional Anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. The name was changed in a patch. Even their racial music theme is based on Chassidic dance.
  • Escape Velocity Nova has a side quest about mercenaries from New Ireland, a planet full of Irish colonists, that includes every Oireland stereotype imaginable, as well as some severe Unfortunate Implications when the mercenaries explain why they're so good at guerrilla warfare. The game's creators seem not to have intended any of this to be offensive, as the player's character goes on at length about how much he admires Irish culture.
  • In Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura, gnomes have large noses, tend to be wealthy bankers and statesmen, and were involved in a giant morally depraved conspiracy for personal gain. This might even be intentional: it's set in the equivalent of the 19th century, and reads rather like a novel from that time when pinning such things on the Jews would have been perfectly acceptable.
  • The Gerudo from The Legend of Zelda series are an overtly Bedouin-inspired culture combined with Amazon Brigade and a dash of Romani influences. They are nearly all female yet patriarchal, dark-skinned thieves who live in the desert, are considered lower than the Hylians who are "chosen by the gods", and they use a moon as their symbol (later changed into a stylised cobra head). Later games in the series have tried to rectify this with a more positive portrayal of the Gerudo, being treated equally by others and, even when they don't let males into their hometown, it's not due to any misandristic reasons and they still treat men they find while travelling with great respect.
  • Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Selkies, despite their Celtic name, are clearly a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to the Romani. They're also portrayed by the other races as completely untrustworthy thieves, and when you visit a Selkie town at one point the locals will quietly pickpocket you if you're not a fellow Selkie. If you play as the one you can get a letter from your mother urging you to steal everything that's not nailed down.
  • Minecraft features the Villagers, large-nosed merchants protected by Golems.
  • Pokémon: Jynx was accused of being a caricature of a black woman with its pitch-black skin, huge lips, and name-evoking voodoo. The truth is a bit more complicated. It's mostly based on the Yamanba from Japanese folklore, but its appearance is partially inspired by Swarthy Pete, a Moorish servant of Saint Nicholas who is often depicted in European Christmas stuff as a blackface caricature (claims that is was based on the overly tanned "Ganguro" fashion don't hold water, as it was virtually unknown when the game was in production). In any event, it was eventually made purple to deflect criticism.
  • Touhou Project's kappa are mostly intended as a Homage to the satirical novel Kappa, but the end result is weirdly similar to Jewish stereotypes. They're portrayed as dishonest businessmen who live as an enclave among the more powerful Tengu, and have acute engineering skills but are quick to complain and bad at working in groups. Due to their traditionally monstrous traits being toned down, they're also short and trade in their usual beaks and head-bowls for distinctive caps.
  • The Khajiit in most games from The Elder Scrolls borrow heavily from the Romani (or rather, the stereotypes attached to them). They travel in caravans, are often perceived as being heavily involved in thievery (In Skyrim this is played straight, the head of all Khajiit caravans is a fence for the Thieves' guild), are often discriminated against by whatever native species whose land they are in, and tend to be poor. Their accents often are based on what is generally a stereotypical Romani accent. In the words of Lindsay Ellis, "They are Romani - they are cat Romani". The Elder Scrolls Online somewhat subverts this by having an expansion set in the Khajiit homeland of Elsweir, allowing their culture to be depicted more complex and under a different light.
  • The Gek in No Man's Sky are short, greedy merchants with sometimes literal beaks.
  • Hogwarts Legacy: As with the source material, the Goblins are big-nosed bankers, about as obvious a Jewish stereotype as you can get. They've historically been subject to discrimination and not allowed to carry wands, leading to several rebellions; the game's plot centers around one of those uprisings. There is also an in-game item resembling a shofar, whose Flavor Text states that goblins used it "during the 1612 goblin rebellion to rally troops and annoy wizards"—1612 being the same year there was a pogrom against Jews in Frankfurt, Germany in real life.

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 
  • Parodied by The Onion here, where a self-help guru encourages people to fight stress by envisioning it as a greedy, hook-nosed race of fantasy creatures.

    Western Animation 
  • The South Park episode "Cancelled" features a literal version in a race of aliens known as the Joozians, a Planet of Hats people characterized by their gigantic noses, wealth, and control of the intergalactic entertainment business. Kyle, the Jewish kid, also happens to be the only human in the group who likes their cuisine.
  • Squidbillies, rather obviously, is about squids who display hillbilly stereotypes.
  • Futurama has a few intentional examples, played for comedy:
    • The Native Martians are obvious analogues to Native Americans. They sold their home planet for a bead (which, it turns out, is a giant diamond) and are forced into small reservations; their clothing and speech are based on old Western film clichés.
    • Zoidberg and his Decapodian species are based on Ashkenazi American Jews. They speak with a thick Yiddish accent, use many Yiddishisms in their speech, and display a number of Jewish stereotypes, such as complaining and being fussy over money. Zoidberg's name is a play on common Jewish names ending in -berg. His profession, a doctor, is also stereotypically Jewish. Likewise, his uncle, Harold Zoid, is an old Borscht Belt-style performer who removed the -berg, just as many Jewish actors hide their heritage when taking stage names. Zoidberg himself is a play on the classic Yiddish concept of the mooching "schnorrer".
    • The Cygnoids are Space Italian-Americans and display some stereotypical Italian-American behavior. Things get a little ironic when a family of Cygnoids open a pizza shop and show a comical level of ignorance about human cuisine and physiology.
    • The Sun people in the video game are meant to be a parallel to Mesoamerican civilizations, right down to the Sun worship, alien sacrifice, and villainous deities.
    • The mer-people in "The Deep South" are based on stereotypes of people in the southeastern U.S., mainly shown in their exaggerated accents and standard redneck-style behavior. This is justified in that they are the descendants of human residents of "The Lost City of Atlanta", which was removed from the American mainland and transported offshore to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean until it sank to the bottom of the ocean. When called out on how there's no way that humans could have evolved into mer-people in less than a thousand years, the rapid evolution is blamed on the Coca-Cola bottling plant.
  • Tripping the Rift pretty much runs on Refuge in Audacity and this is pretty much the least offensive thing about the show, but there's at least two species of purple-skinned alien (or possibly sub-species of the same species) that have a lot in common with humans of African ancestry. One is for all intents and purposes basically a typical basketball player (only with chainsaws) and the other looks like 1940s cartoons of black people. Especially "Natives" as opposed to black characters who were born in America.
  • Fantastic Max has an episode where the characters run into a group of thieving, flamboyant, swarthy (but in the end, helpful) alien con artists that literally refer to themselves as "Space Gypsies".
  • The two titular gophers of the "Go Go Gophers" segments of Underdog are portrayed as stereotyped Native Americans.
  • Family Guy:
    • For the Star Wars special Blue Harvest, the creators wanted to make all the Jawas into Jewas, hence the only speaking Jawa being Mort Goldman, but were prevented from doing so.
    • The ethnically Japanese version of Brian Griffin the dog in the "Road to the Multiverse" episode of Family Guy, who has almond-shaped eyes rather than round eyes like the normal version of him.
  • Yo-Yo Bear from the Yogi Bear episode, "Yogi's Pest Guest" is Okinawan and embodies Japanese stereotypes, like being a martial artist.
  • The Simpsons had a Halloween Episode where Bart gets a golem. Naturally, he comes off as stereotypically Jewish (including lots of nagging guilt about Bart using him to kill people). They eventually make him a wife out of Play-Doh; she's played by Fran Drescher.
  • Much like the Disney movies in the animated film section above, Disney's TV cartoons also use their fair share of ethnic stereotypes:
    • Yellow Peril Siamese cats make yet another appearance in Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers. Some of the other Yellow Peril cats don't have the Siamese point pattern.
    • Earlier on, Disney actually averted the "Siamese cat = Asian" stereotype for once with Milton the cat, who appeared in the animated short "Plutopia" alongside Pluto the Pup. Another appearance featuring Milton, in "Puss Cafe," featured him with another non-stereotyped Siamese cat named Richard. And this was during The '50s, no less.
    • The "Jiminy Cricket's Encyclopedia" segment of The Mickey Mouse Club features yet another non-stereotyped Siamese cat, but this one has a more realistic pattern and more the same build as the stereotyped Si and Am.
    • The pandas from the TaleSpin episode "Last Horizons" are Chinese stereotypes, so much so that the episode was taken out of circulation and only showed up again when the show was released on DVD.
  • Discussed in a Robot Chicken sketch featuring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, in which the media paints them as being racially biased after they use excessive force on Shredder and the Foot Clan.
    Reporter: Do the Ninja Turtles hate Asians?
    Leonardo: Hate Asians? We are Asian!
    Michelangelo: Asian? We're Italian, dude.
    Splinter: You're fucking turtles!

Alternative Title(s): Stereotypes In Space, Animal Ethnic Stereotypes

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