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alt title(s): Nightmare Valley

If you see something that... looks human and isn't, you keep your eyes on it and you feel for your hatchet.
Mr. Beaver, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Frank: You see, as artificial representations of humans become more and more realistic, they reach a point where they stop being endearing, and become creepy.
Tracy: Tell it to me in Star Wars.
Frank: Alright. We like R2-D2 and C-3PO.
Tracy: They're nice.
Frank: And up here, we have a real person like Han Solo.
Tracy: He acts like he doesn't care, but he does!
Frank: But down here we have a CGI Storm Trooper or Tom Hanks in The Polar Express.
Tracy: I'm scared! Get me out of there!
30 Rock

Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970 once stated the more human a robot acted or looked, the more endearing it would be to a human being. For example, most lovable Robot Buddies look humanoid, but keep quirky and artistically mechanical affectations.

However, at some point, the likeness would seem too strong, and it would just come across as a very strange human being. At this point, the acceptance drops suddenly, changing to a powerful negative reaction.

When shown as a graph (see above), the acceptance on the Y axis and increasing X approaching human normal, there is a slow rise, then a sudden drop, then a sudden peak as "human normal" is reached. Masahiro Mori referred to this as the "uncanny valley".

Thus, things that look somewhat human, but are clearly not - such as C-3PO (in Star Wars) or a Golem - produce an accepting reaction, while things that are very nearly human, but just a little strange - such as a child's doll, a ventriloquist's dummy, or a clown - produce a negative response. Some say the very lowest point of the valley is the zombie, a living corpse. Others would say that zombies are just hella scary, and that slightly-not-right Pod People, for instance, are closer to the nadir.

The Uncanny Valley may be a deep, instinctual reaction; it steers humans, on an automatic level, away from humans who are dead, diseased, or deformed (which is often an indication of poor health). It may also alert "normal" people to the presence of mental problems which would render someone unfit for inclusion in a peer group. In that way, the theory goes, the Uncanny Valley is a protection against associating with sources of infection. Of course, backfires of such beneficial instincts might also have a large part in the development of racist sentiment.

This might explain why we like Ridiculously Human Robots, even if they don't make a lot of intuitive sense; they are just far enough out of the Uncanny Valley not to bother us.

This idea has recently been applied to CG effects. While it's become very easy for programs to simulate textures and skin tones, convincing movement and facial expressions aren't always as simple. This can produce an effect where the character comes off as a zombie, if a production company is going for a purely realistic human look.

Similarly, many cartoons nowadays prefer a simultaneously stylized yet simplified character design, versus the "realistic" look amongst some older cartoons. In the latter, it’s more obvious the budget just didn’t allow characters to move much.

Heavily rotoscoped characters often seem less "real" than more stylized animated characters, especially when they're in the same production - see the Fleischer Studios version of Gulliver's Travels for an example.

Compare Reality Is Unrealistic, where the poor impression comes less from being 'creepy' as from breaking existing conventions which audiences had come to expect. See also Off Model, Bishonen Line, No Flow In CGI, and Ugly Cute. And while you're at it, see What Measure Is A Non Cute as the scientific study of that trope gave birth to this one.

You'll notice that most the examples below have to do with inadvertently entering the Valley. This trope can also be used to purposefully make something creepy, where creepiness is called for. One such example are the masks worn by Malevolent Masked Men, or Uncanny Valley Makeup.

Examples

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