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Not now, honey, mommy's busy washing her shattered dreams... I mean, the *dishes*. He always smiled, and he always chuckled, but inside he did not notice anyone, did not care; it was his body that smiled, nodded and shook hands. Nothing touched his mind, which remained remote.
"I'm smiling right now...right?"
Everyone loves Purity Sue. They can't help it! She's practically perfect in every way. The Stepford Smiler is much like Purity Sue: she's bright, chipper, and an all-around pleasant person to be with.
It's all a lie, of course.
Usually female (though there are more and more males playing the role now), the Stepford Smiler is obsessed with projecting an image of wholesome happiness in order to be accepted by her peers. Tragically enough, they'd probably accept her for who she is regardless of her self-imposed Masquerade. Their flawlessly crafted façade hides a real person that's usually breaking like so much fine china in order to keep up the deception.
Heroines or show co-stars that are Stepford Smilers can either be played straight (they really are that shallow) or to gain viewer sympathy as they struggle to live up to their own impossible ideals. Villainesses like the Evil Matriarch who are Stepford Smilers are usually played one of two ways: it can either humanize them, much like the heroine, or it can accentuate their evil by contrasting it with their soullessness. Feminine pronouns are used throughout this trope because the Stepford Smiler is a traditionally female role, though there are many male examples too. Sometimes, they're even a couple.
These are the three main types of Stepford Smiler:
Type A: The character seems to be happy, cheerful, is always smiling and seems to live a perfect life, but inside she feels very sad and depressed.
Type B: The character seems to be kind and cheerful, but her true self is futile and hollow.
Type C: The smile hides a very unstable and crazy person.
The mask itself can also hide a terrible secret... there is nothing behind it. The void is either a result of using up so much energy pretending to be normal that nothing is left over, or because there was nothing there to begin with.
Scared yet? It gets worse.
If a Stepford Smiler smiles long enough without cracking, she can become the mask. Some Stepford Smilers buy into the dead Barbie smiles to such a degree that they care for nothing other than maintaining appearances, having money, making sure their hair is just right, and improving their social standing, all of which are pursued with equally Darwinian means. Essentially, they become the materialist opposite of the Nietzsche Wannabe.
Not every Housewife is a Stepford Smiler, obviously. They often encounter one as a nemesis instead, in a post- High School example of The Libby. Still, some readers describe any Housewife raising her own children as a Stepford Smiler on little if any evidence, bringing in the Unfortunate Implications about "staying at home = women being slaves of those evil men."
The Stepford Smiler gets its name from the book and later movies The Stepford Wives, about a village whose men conspire to create the Barbie perfect wife, all with similar eerie smiles.
See also: Comedic Sociopathy, The Cutie, Evil Matriarch, I Just Want To Be Normal, Mary Sue, Masquerade, Uncanny Valley Girl, Yandere. Contrast with: Nietzsche Wannabe, The Stoic, Yamato Nadeshiko. Opposite number to The Daria.
Female Examples
Anime and Manga
- Mima and Rumi in the animated movie Perfect Blue.
- Kaede in Shuffle.
- Many characters in Evangelion, the most notable ones being Asuka, Misato and Ritsuko.
- Kare Kano's lead female Yukino Miyazawa follows the sympathetic kind (and there's a good lot of jokes on it, too).
- Kasumi Tendo of Ranma 1/2 - though the fandom is divided over whether Kasumi is putting on a happy face for her family (because *somebody* has to) or that she really is that indestructibly upbeat.
- Kasumi is like this all the time, as seen when she was possessed by an evil spirit - it freaked out her family that she was still so upbeat throughout.
- It is strongly implied that Yoko Nakajima, the main character of The Twelve Kingdoms, starts out the series as a junior version of this in regards to her home and social life; she reveals later the fear that there was truly nothing inside.
- Masane from Witch Blade has this to a degree. After losing all her memories in the great quake, and even her old name all she had to build a new life was her daughter Rihoko. She is constantly saying that Rihoko is the only thing she has and aside from being her mom, there really isn't that much to Masane. Well until she activated the Witchblade and became an Action Mom. As the series progresses, she gets better.
- Tohru Honda from Fruits Basket is a genuinely kind and caring person, but has serious insecurities that she hides behind her smile and cheerful disposition to avoid troubling her friends.
- Digimon Tamers had a Stepford Smiler in training in Juri Katou. Early on, her main character traits are being cheerful and carrying around an alternatively cute and creepy puppet; later in the series, we find out that she never quite got over her biological mother's death, and everything went to crap as soon as the series' running "joke" happened: for non-fans, Leomon always dies, and this time, he just so happened to be Juri's Bond Creature.
- And then the D-Reaper forced Juri to relive the moment of Leomon's death over and over again, in an attempt to grow stronger on her despair.
- Asakura Ryoko from Suzumiya Haruhi fits this trope more or less. As she acts like a Purity Sue, she keeps a cute, caring and friendly appearance, even when she is about to stab you with her beloved combat knife, or when dying. Since she is an Artificial Human, unable to empathize with humans, it is very likely that it is just a fixed masquerade.
- It becomes especially disturbing when you consider that it's likely the only time only time she's really smiling is when she's trying to kill Kyon. She's also, arguably, a deconstruction of both the Stepford Smiler and the Purity Sue. How is it possible to never stop smiling for a moment? To have no understanding of what the expression means.
- It's plainly obvious that the overly optimistic and cheerful Kafuka Fuura from Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei is a Stepford Smiler. Even though she hides her traumatic past, some of her classmates are acutely aware of her mask and are mortally terrified of her. It doesn't help that she's secretly stalking Itoshiki-sensei by disguising herself as a college student who lives next door...
- Wakaba Shinohara in Revolutionary Girl Utena. Effervecently bubbly, energetic, and perky... until during the Black Rose Arc, we find that she deeply resents people who are special, having a rather low sense of self-worth herself.
- To say nothing of Anthy. She is initially presented as a demure, somewhat shy and even submissive girl, but by the end of the series it has been revealed that not only has she been living with an unimaginable amount of both physical and emotional pain, but she could even be considered the series' Big Bad.
- As of episode 6 of the second season, Ef A Tale Of Memories's Amamiya Yuuko. Complete with Broken Smile to the extreme.
- Orihime Inoue from Bleach is a very gentle, sweet girl as well as the local Genki Girl Barrier Warrior. Also has huge self-esteem problems, views herself as inferior to the Shinigami, feels troubled because she adores said Shinigami (and specially Rukia) and is in love with Ichigo. Cue to her almost having quite the breakdown in the Arrancar arc... and a full-blown one in the Hueco Mundo arc.
- After going through a long cutie-breaking, Aoi from Infinite Ryvius spends a couple of episodes acting this way before finally having a Heroic BSOD.
- Dawn from Pokemon, oddly enough, fits this trope. She fails at keeping it a secret though.
- Not odd at all. She lost a good 3 or so contests in a row before her self esteem broke,she seems to naturally have self esteem problems probably due to bullying as a child,and maybe her mothers wanting for her to be like her,and since she is a bubbly cutie who worries about her friends..Not at all odd.
- Mary Magdalene in Chrono Crusade almost constantly smiles, even though she's constantly having visions of the future and the past, some of them horrifying and violent. In fact, she has so many visions she has no memory of her childhood or even her name—except for a reoccurring vision of Chrono killing her with tears streaming down his face. She's even smiling when she dies.
- Mai Tokiha from Mai-HiME keeps a smile on her face almost constantly because she doesn't want to burden any of her friends with her personal problems, which include a dead mother and a sick younger brother.
- Kyouko Mogami from Skip Beat, due to having had an abusive, unpleasable mother, and later living in a ryokan where she picked the attitude of "clients shouldn't see you upset ever". Any time her real feelings and temper come to surface, she managed to put them back quickly, to no disturb the people around. Kyouko only breaks with this when she is properly informed that all her efforts will be not rewarded at all, and then realizes that living like she was constantly tending clients neither does her any good.
- There's also Takako Shimizu from Chobits, Shinbo and Hideki's cram school teacher. She always smiles and helps them out, but hides how her husband ignores her in favor of his persocom...
- Dita from Vandread was surrounded by people who were depressed often as a little girl. This, in turn, depressed her. She tried to cheer people up by acting as a ditzy cutie, it worked, so the habit stuck.
- In Sailor Moon Stars, Usagi/Moon slowly becomes one of these to hide her worry because Mamoru hasn't come in contact with her ever since he left to the USA. she thought he was working too hard, but unbeknownst to her, he was dead through Bus Crash.
- In the live-action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, a somewhat similar theme's explored when Usagi learns from Mamoru that her own negative emotions are empowering Metaria and helping bring about The End Of The World As We Know It, and so remakes herself into a Stepford Smiler. After Minako has died, Usagi tries to greet him with a teary-eyed, obviously fake smile, and when he tells her it's okay to cry now, she practically falls into his arms in tears.
- Seras Victoria from Hellsing. She's unnaturally cheerful and goofy for someone who's had all of her police partners killed, being nearly raped and killed by a vampire and then is actually turned into one. That's just the first volume/episode. Also her parents killed in front of her and her mother raped. In that order. The manga was a bit more subtle about this but the OVA series comes right out and says it.
- Himawari Kunogi from xxxHOLiC is a lovely schoolgirl best described as concentrated cute. She later reveals she suffers a curse that makes her a magnet for tragedies, and everyone around her dies horrible deaths or at least suffers terrible accidents, ever since she was a little child. And she tells this story with a smile on her face. Sniffff. ;-;
Comic Books
- When fans fell in love with Mary Jane Watson, many writers attempted to reconcile her "devil may care" party girl image from her first couple of years of existence by revealing that her party girl facade was something she came up with to cover up her screwed up homelife, which included a physically and mentally abusive father.
- The Smiler from Transmetropolitan of course. He's the psycho type.
Film
- Well... The Stepford Wives obviously.
- Just about... scratch that, every character in the movie Pleasantville is a Stepford Smiler, what with it being a 1950s sitcom world made real. Subverted later on when the teens zapped into Pleasantville start spreading new thoughts and emotions, causing the townsfolk to literally gain color, and with it, depth.
- Gina McKee plays a particularly creepy variant of this in Mirrormask.
Black Queen: Because...what?
Guard: This is not a home to Mr. Grumpy.
Black Queen: That's right!
- The Chumscrubber is essentially about an entire suburb full of Stepford Smilers.
- In Tim Burton's adaptation of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Violet Beauregard's mom has definite Stepford vibes, especially regarding her perfectionist coaching of her daughter.
- Child star Darla Dimple of Cats Don't Dance maintains a facade of being sweet and adorable. Heaven help you if she's angry at you when it breaks.
- Carolyn Burnham from American Beauty is a prime example of this trope, subscribing to the adage, "In order to be successful, one must project an image of success at all times."
- Katherine in Cruel Intentions pretends to be an upstanding junior-league type schoolgirl, when in reality she's an oversexed, scheming coke fiend who takes out her frustrations on her fellow female classmates by way of convincing them to become whores and ruin their reputations as a result.
- Asami Yamazaki in Audition. The male protagonist Aoyama is instantly smitten with her beauty and demureness, and ignores his friend's comments on how there's something wrong about her. She turns out to be a victim of childhood abuse and an Ax Crazy murderer, which would be a spoiler if not for the DVD cover and trailer showing her wielding a syringe. The climactic scene is made all the creepier by her perky voice and grin ("Deeper, deeper!").
- Serial Mom. This troper has been afraid to wear white shoes after Labor Day ever since.
- The Other Mother in Coraline. Along with those button eyes... brr...
- Subverted with the town of Spectre in Big Fish. While it's a perfect, pleasant town that almost no one wants to ever leave, it's not sinister in any way. It's just nice.
Literature
- On the heroic side, Leitha from Eddings's The Redemption Of Althalus — she pretends to be cheerful and witty, but is secretly neurotic, insecure, and self-hating.
- Petunia Dursley from the Harry Potter novels is a fine example of the sort who is her mask.
- However, "Deathly Hallows" suggests that her mask developed as the means to deal with her jealousy over her younger, "perfect" sister Lily getting magic and not herself.
- William Sleator's Others See Us has Annelise, who is well loved by everyone, including her cousin Jared, until he gains telepathy and realizes she's a Stepford Smiler of the worst sort. At one point he visits her mental landscape, it's an infinite sun-parched desert with her face as the huge sun, and the only other feature is a gigantic mirror, reflecting her face.
- C.S. Lewis' short story "The Shoddy Lands" also has its protagonist experience a telepathic vision of a Stepford Smiler's mental landscape.
- The Goddess Media from American Gods by Neil Gaiman was like this in her true form. As the humanoid manifestation of The Media, when she wasn't possessing characters on television she was described as looking like the sickeningly sweet hostess one of those morning shows filmed in a fake living room.
- Countess Rostov from War And Peace is very much like this except when she's talking with her daughters. Pierre Bezukhov's wife Hélène would be a subversion in that she goes from having no role in society except being beautiful (and smiling a lot) to one of the eminent hostesses on the Moscow and St. Petersburg scene after getting married.
- Part of the reason Will Navidson moved his family into the titular house in House Of Leaves was to get closer to his family, including his Stepford Smiler wife, Karen Green.
- Lilith de Tempscire from Discworld is a variant of a Stepford Smiler. In Lilith's mind, life should be just like a storybook. As the witch in charge, politically, in the city of Genua, she likes things to be the way people expect them to be—i.e., cooks should be fat and jolly and bustle a great deal, innkeepers should have big red faces, toymakers should whistle and sing the whole day long and tell amusing stories to children, etc. And woe betide anyone who doesn't live up to Lilith's expectations; she makes certain that they suffer for it. To quote the book Witches Abroad, "Lilith held up a mirror to Life, and chopped off the bits of Life that didn't fit."
Live Action TV
- Most characters in Twin Peaks live this trope - it is one of the key fascinations of David Lynch and common in his work. The key theme of the Twin Peaks show is taking a dreamy, perfect small rural town with white picket fences and exposing the hypocrisy, instability and literal evil that underlies it everywhere. Shades of grey abound.
- Many, many characters in Desperate Housewives — but Bree stands out as the most Stepfordish.
- Julia McNamara from nip/tuck is half Stepford Smiler and half Defrosting Ice Queen. You have to have a little sympathy for the woman, as she has been keeping her son's paternity secret from both his natural father and assumed father. Unfortunately, her eternal struggle over "Sean or Christian?" just annoys most people.
- Betty Draper from Mad Men could be used as a textbook example; she's playing the role of '50s wife and mother so perfectly that her impending nervous breakdown seems like a surprise even to her.
- Keeping Up Appearances is basically a long look at one woman's failing attempts to maintain the mask. Hilarity Ensues.
- Celia from Weeds, then later Nancy.
- Barb Ballantine, the 'perfect' mom from The Mommies showed signs of this trait.
- Amy Poehler's impression of Hillary Clinton on Saturday Night Live seems to draw a good deal of inspiration from this trope.
- One of Tara's split personalities in The United States Of Tara is a "perfect 50's housewife who's secretly filled with seething rage", according to the press releases.
Theater
- Mrs. Lovett in the play Sweeney Todd. She is cheerful and kindly, but has no problems whatsoever chopping up human bodies nor really with Sweeney's killing, and she is really only interested in improving her social standing. While not necessarily hollow, she certainly doesn't give a lot of moral considerations to her actions.
- In the musical How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, Rosemary is a Stepford Smiler in training.
- All four main characters in the Sondheim musical Follies are Stepford Smilers of one sort or another. Their masks do fall eventually, and the comparison to their younger counterparts in Flashbacks becomes painful: back then, they had a reason to smile — at least, they thought they did. (It says something that Desperate Housewives gets many of its episode titles from musical numbers in Follies.)
- Amanda from Tennessee William's "The Glass Menagerie" possibly qualifies, though she's most interested in living her ideal life vicariously through her children.
Video Games
- Psychonauts features both a female and male example. Crystal and Clem are two seemingly cheerful and enthusiastic campers who like to root their fellow campers on (especially Raz)... and also harbor suicidal tendencies. Most of this is Played For Laughs: "I feel so stupid for throwing myself off the roof!" "Why did you throw yourself off the roof?" "Because the poison didn't work, duh!"
- A more depressing version is Milla, a perpetually cheerful party girl who hides the fact that she worked at an orphanage that burned down, killing all inside. As if that wasn't enough, she also wound up psychically hearing their screams for help as they died. Interpretations vary with the player with some seeing her as someone who's coped with the trauma in her past. Word Of God says it's the latter, and that "locking up" nightmares is a perfectly healthy way of dealing with that level of trauma.
- Sagiri from Suikoden V was trained to be this kind of character, a ruthless killer with a permanent smile on her face. By the time you meet her she's mostly rehabilitated, however she still finds herself unable to adopt any other expression.
- Colette from Tales Of Symphonia is a Stepford Smiler, always having a smile on her face, even as she starts to lose her humanity and later on starts slowly turning into a Cruxis Crystal while trying as hard as she can to keep it a secret from everybody.
- Shiki from The World Ends With You has this as she tries to pretend to be her bubbly best friend because she feels the real her is worthless.
- In Fire Emblem 7, the Cleric Serra is a mix of Genki Girl and Rich Bitch who acts like a princess... but truly is an orphan dropped at a small, miserable Ostian convent by an Etrurian clan in danger of being wiped away. Her parents never came back for her and she was badly traumatised by their abandonement. Get her to support with people like Hector or Lucius to get more details.
- Tsukihime (the game, at least) has Kohaku.
- Also analyzes the concept a bit. Along the lines of "Isn't having the same expression all the time the same as being completely expressionless?"
- She's all three types, really. Depression leads to mask leads to thinking of herself as a doll and being hollow and finally in order to have a reason to live she turns into a type 3 by plotting against the Tohno's while admitting she doesn't really hold a grudge, but that it's what a 'real' person would do, right?
- Perhaps Midna of The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess qualifies; for the first part of the game, she's almost always cackling with amusement and smugly going about her own plan, but later reveals how torn up she is that she, as the titular princess, fled her people after being turned into her imp form by Zant, and how touched she was watching Link and Zelda's self-sacrificing ways.
- Fallout 3 features a whole town of Stepford Smilers, well-groomed but down-to-earth, assured Anandale is the best little town, that their blessed country will protect them from the commies, and that all is right with the world. But for such normal folk, they sure are preternaturally alert to a Master Sneak peeking into their basement...
- Played with in FateStayNight. Tohsaka pretends to be a wonderful honor student, kind and good at everything. However, underneath that is someone selfish who can't get up in the morning and gets angry easily. But that's a bit of a jerkass facade because under that is a genuinely kind person who thinks that they need to be a heartless jerk like magi are supposed to be. And under that is an immensely guilty layer over Sakura because while she doesn't know much about the Matou family, she knows they're not nice people. She simply underestimates how much. This final layer is finally uncovered in HF instead of merely being hinted at.
- In the second game of Ar Tonelico, this is Luca's defining feature. Becoming The Mask is the goal of her path, but she is very unpopular among many players who feel she hit a Moral Event Horizon somewhere along the line.
Webcomics
- Erika in Megatokyo, while currently a Deadpan Snarker as well as a Badass Action Girl, was a voice actress and Idol Singer in her day, and still can't bear the thought of her fans thinking of her as anything but upbeat and bubbly. Dom calls her out on it by showing that even in the midst of a rampage of rabid fans and excessive taunting by him, she feels a need to keep her smile going.
Web Original
Western Animation
- Lois in the Christmas Episode of Family Guy tries mightily to salvage Christmas despite her family's efforts to the contrary, climaxing in a nervous breakdown over missing wash towels and an epic freakout.
- That might be a Take That or Shout Out to a Simpsons Christmas episode wherein all they're left with is a washcloth, which Marge uses to play keep-away with the family.
- The brainwashed Joo Dees (shares acronym with Jane Doe) from Avatar The Last Airbender. Mentally, they're practical Stepford Wives.
- Bloberta Puffington, Orel's mother from Moral Orel, exemplifies the psychotic version of this trope. "Ah, yarn... yarn... yarn ! YARN ! YAAARRRNNN— ... Welcome home, dear !"
- Hell, everyone in Moralville, who as a whole are more concerned with the appearance of faith then actually following it. A few get better. Most, probably, do not. The fact that this is based on the creator's childhood experiences is depressing.
- Marge Simpson of The Simpsons has repeatedly been portrayed this way, commenting on bottling up her feelings and staying with Homer "no matter what" after he does something truly horrible. Lisa has pointed this out on at least one occasion. This has become more and more relevant as the show has descendent into unrepentant farce, to the point that one episode even has Marge admitting that she only stays with Homer for appearances sake, due to the fact that everyone else in Springfield is single, divorced, or in a marriage hit by marital infidelity and as such, the entire town consider Homer and Marge's marriage to be roaring success in comparison.
- Hey Arnold: Helga's older sister Olga is a Type A version of this. She looks perfect on first glance, being very good at academics, music, has a personality many consider pleasant, and is considered very beautiful. However, with enough pressure this facade of perfection can crack revealing a young woman that's dangerously neurotic and melodramatic due to having to live up to her parents' constant attention and enormously high standards. In Olga's own words: "[Helga,] You're lucky to not have them [their parents] all over you!"
Real Life
- Martha Stewart's reaction to cookie monster's unscripted voraciousness in his guest appearance on Martha Stewart Living show signs of her being a Stepford Smiler.
- You think that's the best example of Martha's crazy? She once threatened a van full of people with a shotgun for getting lost, and pulling up into her driveway. And this was before she went to jail.
- This troper is surprised Sarah Palin hasn't been brought up, pregnant daughter and all...
- Maybe because it's time to give Ms. Palin a little respite for a change.
Other
Male Examples
Anime and Manga
- The villainous Sojirou Seta, The Dragon of Rurouni Kenshin's best known story arc, also fits here — a cheerful young person who's capable of incredible violence because he has no soul or conscience behind the mask. (Or at least that's what he thinks.)
- Ichimaru Gin of Bleach hides a cruel and sadistic personality behind a set of perpetually closed eyes and a dumb grin.
- You Takami from Deadman Wonderland seems to be one of the friendlier people in the prison/themepark, but he's not above stealing the antidote for Ganta's poison, taking someone's entire ear for their earring, selling out ditzy possible Dark Action Girl Shiro to the guards, and killing his own father, although the last part was because he thought he was protecting his sister. Then again he doubted that his dad could've really raped her so one wonders exactly what kind of person You was before being imprisoned.
- Intrepid Reporter Wolfgang Grimmer, from Monster, a rare male version of the mask as the only personality. The fact that sometimes he snaps in a Hulk-like killer alterego with no memories afterwards doesn't help his case, although he pleads childhood abuse and unethical assassin training.
- Fay from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle has traits of the Stepford Smiler, though by the time the series Grows The Beard/Jumped the Shark this has begun to crack and continues to do so as more and more time passes.
- Chichiri from Fushigi Yuugi has a literal mask that helps him pull off the goofy, care-free smile; it's a significant plot-point when he takes it off to relay his tragic backstory.
- Yuki Sohma from Fruits Basket is so terrified of being rejected by his peers that he uses his numerous skills (martial arts, good looks, charisma, etc.) to hide the inferiority complex that Parental Abandonment and Akito's Mind Rape gave him.
- Souichirou Arima from Kare Kano is, at the beginning, as much of a Stepford Smiler as his girlfriend Yukino is. Except that while Yukino does it out of obsession with her own image and is a bit of a Butt Monkey for that, Arima does it to prove himself a worthy person after hearing his relatives wonder if his parents' bad traits may be passed on to him even after they left him to be adopted by his uncle and aunt after years of neglect, and also because of the abuse doled on him by his birth mother.
- Trigun's Vash the Stampede combines this with Obfuscating Stupidity so that nobody realizes just how dangerous he is, or what horrific memories and experiences he lives with every day. In the whole series, only Nicholas D. Wolfwood is able to see right through Vash's act - in his first episode, Nicholas shares some food with a pair of hungry children while Vash watches, then tells Vash that he looks good with a real smile on his face, not the fake one he's been showing.
- Manga!Millie, who's dumbfounded by this, eventually compares Vash's fake smile with the grey colour you obtain when you mix paints of all colours.
- Nicholas D. Wolfwood himself thrives on this trope, although it's clear almost from the beginning he is a dark, conflicted, and potentially angsty character.
- And let's not forget that in the manga, young Knives managed to hide his feelings of agony and murderous hatred from Vash and Rem by having fun with them just as usual, making crepes while smiling and laughing, claiming to go all 'business as usual' because he had to go on with his life etc.
- Cho Hakkai from Saiyuki qualifies, as he smiles constantly even while fighting, despite his angsty past which includes but is not limited to killing over 1000 demons to rescue his lover Kanan (who is really his twin sister), then watching Kanan kill herself with his sword because she was raped and impregnated by a demon, then to top it off, becoming a demon himself. Whew. His companions note that whenever he actually does stop smiling and looks angry, it's extremely scary.
- Shuusuke Fuji of The Prince Of Tennis was a bit like this due to the problems with his younger brother Yuuta that caused him to bear a huge guilt. He starts acting more genuinely cheerful when he and Yuuta patch their relationship.
- In Tokyo Mew Mew, Masaya Aoyama is revealed to be one of these, keeping up his "perfect" mask to hide the fact that he hates all of humanity. Ironically, most of the fandom seems to ignore this, taking his Smiler-ness as both his true personality and an excuse to pair Ichigo up with someone else.
- Koizumi Itsuki from Suzumiya Haruhi always keeps a constant smile and a cheerful attitude, regardless of how much is Haruhi casting upon the Universe. Granted, he's still mostly sane and calm, but his Stepfordness always creeps Kyon out to no end. But when his smile disappears... you better start fearing the worst!
- At points in the novel it's made pretty clear that Itsuki's finding it difficult to keep smiling, such as in volume 9 he's been unable to sleep well for a lengthy period of time due to constant closed space activity, appearing exhausted and using a rather forced version of the usual grin, which falls off if he isn't concentrating. What is he really thinking? Who knows, it's the one thing he doesn't really talk about. Probably.
- Both male and female Contractors in Darker Than Black qualify and while sociopathic rather than psychopathic like Dexter are much like him personality wise and feel bad about this to varying degrees. One, a British spy code-named November 11 might be the best fit, as he's very much The Charmer, unfailingly friendly and polite but in a way that's so calm it's unsettling. Admittedly, he and other contractors are generally open about being this way.
- Ivan/Russia from Axis Powers Hetalia was at first a not 100% stable but pleasant nation. The Bloody Sunday incident in 1905 finally makes him snap and become a Yandere. It says in the manga that while he's always smiling, his eyes are not.
- Alfred/America is usually portrayed as this in fanworks, although according to canon he really is that happy/dense.
- Yon-soo/South Korea is also portrayed as one in darker fanworks as well.
- Tohma Seguchi of Gravitation initially seems to be a polite, mild-mannered man until he shows other characters just how far he's willing to go to protect his brother-in-law Yuki, which includes pushing a man in front of a car and making Yuki break up with Shuichi by threatening to hurt Shuichi if he didn't do so. All while smiling calmly. He stops smiling for more than one panel only when he's in full-on Yandere mode.
- In Death Note, Light Yagami is Type C to his family and friends, and....anyone but his victims, and Ryuk. He has an image of being absolutely perfect and absolutely content, but he's bored to the extent that it seems a good idea to commit mass-murder on an epic scale and style himself as a God.
- The lead... no, all of the Code: Breakers, seeing as they're super-powered Ax Crazies put to good use by the government (or something).
- Kaito Kuroba/Kaitou KID from Detective Conan thrives on his use of "Poker Face", an important skill taught to him by his father when he was young. Kaito's poker face (both as Kaito and KID) is pretty much always some variation of a smirk, and he rarely lets it drop even when things go wrong.
- Kaworu Nagisa from Neon Genesis Evangelion seems to fit this trope as well. He's always smiling, but in reality, he just wants the world's end. It Got Better for a while, but shortly after, It Got Worse.
- Also, Ryouji Kaji, who was smiling calmly in the very moment he was shot to death
- Oz Vessalius from Pandora Hearts determined to keep perky and optimistic no matter what life throws at him. Said life keeping a good record by hurling issues of Parental Hate, Tick Tock of Death, and being Barrier Lad. Seeing that Oz still smiles, apparently life needs to try harder
- Oh so many people in Code Geass. Lelouch Lamperouge and Suzaku Kururugi, to start. Lelouch is a Type B (seems kind and cheery, but is hollow and futile inside), at least intially, and Suzaku becomes a Type A (seems kind and cheery, but feels sad and depressed) over the course of the series.
- In Katekyo Hitman Reborn, the Big Bad of the TYL arc, Byakuran, is a Stepford Smiler who currently has shown no other expression other than his smile.
- Arguably, Naruto himself, he doesn't let it burden him too much, however.
Film
Comic Books
- Ken in The Sandman collection, The Doll House. He lives with a woman named Barbie, and while she has depth that is later revealed, he's a creepy Bateman-esque living Ken Doll.
- Boss Smiley from World's End is, as one can deduce from his name, an exaggerated example.
- In Transmetropolitan, one of the presidential candidates is known as 'The Smiler', and is shown as willing to kill just about anyone, including his wife, to improve his ratings.
Commercials
- That creepy Bob fellow in those commercials for Enzyte's "natural male enhancement". If you can't quite seem to figure out just what he's smiling about from the Double Entendre laden narration, give it time.
- That is not a smile. That is a rictus of agony from unceasing pain. The eyes implore the viewer for the merciful release of sweet death.
- The King from the Burger King advertisements is a particularly disturbing example (it could be that he's wearing an actual mask though...).
Live Action TV
- The android Ted from Buffy The Vampire Slayer was obsessed with reliving his creator's idea of a 1950s dream marriage, albeit with the aid of narcotics. (Though an android, he's chauvinistic enough to qualify.)
- Spike himself also falls within this stereotype; despite all of his posturing as far as being a murderous bad-ass vampire, with the body-count to back up his swaggering, the dude is still the horribly insecure, momma's boy nerd who writes crappy poetry who overcompensates for his nerdiness by acting like a big time vampire. This was most notably shown in his origin episode, which contrasted Spike's boastful tales of past exploits with flashbacks that reveal how lame he used to be, right down to revealing that his nickname "William the Bloody" actually referred to his "bloody awful poetry".
- A pair of Pagan gods in an episode of Supernatural. One was the traditional female Stepford Smiler, the other was the male variant.
- If you know what's going to happen next, Dean comes off as a version of this trope in the supposed lighter moments. Whether it's the Daddy Issues or Survivor Guilt or his impending death/suicide, he loves to pretend that everything is perfect when it's really, really not.
- Dexter. On the surface, he comes of as a well-adjusted and funny, if somewhat morbid blood spater expert (and even his more morbid tendencies can be explained by having to work with corpses on a regular basis). On the inside, though, he's empty.
- More accurately, he thinks he's empty, which is a fairly common pathological trait among serial killers due to any number of dissociative mood disorders linked to their psychosis that suppress extreme emotions such as anger. The emotions are there, and they're expressed externally (say... with an axe) but not felt internally. Dexter Morgan seems to actually be relatively well-adjusted, comparatively, at least until he comes up on a room completely soaked in blood, but as a psychopath I think we can call him an Unreliable Narrator.
- Nobori Taiga from Kamen Rider Kiva: Friendly, polite and nice to his old friends, but secretly working to destroy humankind.
- Pretty much every male cast member of "The Shield" fit this description. But most notably, there are Curtis "Lem" Lemansky (popular police officer and all around good guy who has ZERO self-esteem and basically serves as a doormat for his "best friends" on the Strike Team, leading to crippling ulcers, a mini-nervous breakdown, committing criminal acts that ultimately lead to his arrest, death, and ultimately denounced as a monster), Shane Vendrell (who loves his family to the extent that he murdered his best friend/partner rather than risk having him turn states evidence against them, but basically murders his pregnant wife and toddler son rather than risk having Vic Mackey reveal to his children the sins committed by his father), Police Captain turned City Councilman and Mayoral Hopeful David Acaveda (affable but somewhat slimey boss who is into rough sex, arranged the murder of a man who raped him, strained relationship with his wife after being told by her that she would have preferred him being killed to him being raped, willingness to work with the Mexican Mafia and use their blackmail files of prominent people to further his career), Ronnie Gardocki (lovable nerd who's darkness manifests itself in full force in season seven, by way of the lengths he was willing to go to see Shane Vendrell murdered as payback for Shane killing Detective Lemansky), and John Kavanaugh (brilliant and decorated Internal Affairs police officer who's devotion to law and order hides the fact that he cruelly divorced his mentally unstable wife the moment she became an annoyance to him).
- Not to mention Vic Mackey, who's stepford smile hides a monster that all others pale in comparision to. So it says something that in the end, Vic loses EVERYTHING in the finale including his "good" name but ends up in the final scene of the series, putting on a stepford smile and walking into the darkness, as far as not letting his karmatic final fate as a glorified temp desk worker with the Feds slow him down.
- Spoofed somewhat in season six of 24; after the father of one of Jack's unlucky girlfriends lampshades in graphic detail how bad things always befall Jack's loved ones, to the point of outright telling Jack that he's cursed and that he would never never be allowed near his daughter again as a result, Jack spends the last moments of the season breaking into the father's house and holding a gun on him, while ranting incoherently about how he's not cursed and ordering the guy to take back what he said.
- House makes a big show of being sarcastic and cynical, but it's been shown several times that he's just as insecure as anyone else.
Web Comics
- Skids of Boy Meets Boy is mostly genuinely cheerful. But when things start to get him down, he simply pretends to be even more cheerful. This is extraordinarily creepy.
Web Original
- In Survival Of The Fittest, former gamer Warren Pace gives himself a complete image makeover to fit in with the football team due to his perceived images of jocks.
- V3's Amanda Redder, in order to keep up the image of Team Mom, is constantly optimistic, despite being haunted by the fact that she may soon have to kill her friends in order to survive.
Video Games
- Zelos from Tales Of Symphonia is arguably a Stepford Smiler, as he struggles to hide a truly twisted past behind a mask of frivolity and promiscuity. At one point he talks about his past to the main character, then laughs it off as a lie. Whether he's lying or telling the truth is left to the viewer.
- Another example is Jade Curtiss from Tales Of The Abyss. He does it due to being The Stoic, and to mask the fact that he Accidentally killed his teacher. Plus, it helps a Deadpan Snarker to keep a straight face.
- Forde from Fire Emblem 8. He states in one of his supports that he acts cheerful and relaxed mostly to keep his friends and companions happy in the middle of the war.
- Creepy Child Chris from The King Of Fighters fits this trope very well, as he's almost a modern version of the aforementioned Soujirou. Always with a smile in his face, even when killing random people. The fact that he's the Big Bad's host doesn't help, either.
Literature
- Patrick Bateman in the book and later film American Psycho. In fact, everyone in American Psycho is like this, but he's the only one who has anything underneath — the others are of the 'there was nothing there to begin with' type, whereas he is only just deep enough to know that he is essentially superficial.
- Ciaphas Cain is supposed to be a fearless Imperial commissar who is willing to lay down his life to destroy the enemies of the God-Emperor of Mankind. He isn't, although that doesn't stop him from accidentally bumbling into Crowning Moments of Awesome time and again.
- Discworld serial killer Carcer is deceptively cheerful and innocent-looking, with his smile catching people off gaurd...until they look in his eyes and see the madness behind the mask.
- From The King in Yellow: "I wear no mask."
- Todd Bowden from Stephen King's Apt Pupil maintains the image of a cheery all-American golden boy even while he's blackmailing the neighborhood Nazi-in-hiding into telling gruesome concentration camp stories. It's all downhill from there.
- Mr. Happy was like that at, at least the start of "Mr. Men A Christmas Carol" to help and keep Mr. Mean, happy. Ironically, this book was made shorty before "The Mr. Men Show" came on air...
- Ton Phanan, though we don't really get to see it until late. He's a Deadly Doctor, a Deadpan Snarker, caustic and funny and able to put aside the sarcasm in the right moments. He also feels that the cybernetics he started to get after almost being killed couldn't replace his future, which died.
Fanfiction
Music
- Mr. Smiley from the Mustard Plug song of the same name is a variation of the classic smiley-face badge thing. A Type C - he goes nuts and kills his entire family.
- Nick Cave's Good Son.
Western Animation
- Mr. Happy from "The Mr. Men Show" is the example of the sympathetic kind. While in the books, he was nearly always happy, in this show's version, there's been times, when he tends to hide other emotions behind a smile to keep other people's spirits up. There's been episodes to show that like "Lake", "Canned Goods", "Collecting", "Music", "Ships" and others.
- The Bloopers Guy from Robot Chicken puts on an enthuthiastic and chipper act, but considering he tries to commit suicide after every show, there is something wrong with him.
Mixed-Gender Examples
- Paul and Mary Bland of Eating Raoul are probably the world's most upbeat and together conservative couple ever, even as they descend into theft, murder and cannibalism.
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