Uncanny Valley Girl - Television Tropes & Idioms

She's cute. Beautiful, in fact. Friendly and popular. She's the head of the class in terms of looks, money and everything that counts for her approval rating, but she's not the Alpha Bitch, even if she has a Girl Posse or the entire grade on her side. One of Those Two Guys might have a crush on her, even though he never gets anywhere. She's the perfect girl...

...except there's something not quite human about her, and she's secretly out for your blood.

The Uncanny Valley Girl is smarter than she lets on, and puts on a very convincing persona that's made the class adore her. It's the high school girl version of Villain with Good Publicity, except the publicity is good enough that nobody, not even The Hero, knows she's the villain — or anything other than normal. Not until she comes at you with a sharp object, that is.

Compare Yandere, Cute and Psycho, Stepford Smiler, Living with the Villain, Dark Magical Girl. Contrast Alpha Bitch, Fallen Princess, Loners Are Freaks.

Note that the name comes from Uncanny Valley, not Valley Girl.

Examples

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Anime

Ajimu Najimi of Medaka Box looks like a sweet angel and Too Good for This Sinful Earth, but it turns out she views people as indistinguishable from furniture and only seeks for a way to entertain herself.
Ryoko Asakura of Suzumiya Haruhi—the Uncanny Valley Girl. She keeps up her charming persona and amazing smile even while trying to gut Kyon.
"You think it's a... joke? Huh. You don't wanna die? You don't want me to kill you?"
- As of the tenth novel, Kimidori Emiri has revealed herself to be every bit as apathetic towards human suffering as Ryoko.
In Shin Mazinger Zero three beautiful, tall, ponytailed, blonde triplet girls called Gamia Q1, Q2 and Q3 transferred to Kouji's high school. Given that they were gorgeous and friendly, even if they behaved in a strange fashion and looked a tad weird, all boys in class started to quickly slobber at them. In reality they were three androids (appeared for first time in the Mazinger Z original manga and Mazinkaiser) sent to assassin Kouji Kabuto. Seemingly Kouji bought their masquerade, but shortly after he suggested them dropping their act, and he revealed that he had suspected it all along.
Mio Hio from D.N.Angel fits this to, like, a really creepy T! She's an American Expy, even has one of Those Two Guys when she's after the other to either kill him or bind his Superpowered Alter Ego Phantom Thief. Death Equals Redemption, which is, like, a drag.
The Vampire Princess Miyu OAV give us a schoolgirl named Ranka. She's pale, beautiful, elegant, sweet tempered and ensnared the heart of the local Chick Magnet... she's also a Shinma that transforms people into dolls. Her guy knows it and loves her that way.
- To a certain degree, Miyu herself counts when she poses as a schoolgirl to fit better in the human crowd.
- Did we forget how Chisato Inoue became one of these after her Shinma awakening and her Face Heel Turn? Brrrrr...
From Mai-HiME, there's Miyu Greer's adorable little charge/soulmate, Alyssa Searrs, the Golden Angel of the School Choir.
Johan Liebert from Monster decides to pull a stint as an Uncanny Valley Boy in volumes 6 through 9, when he starts attending University of Munich as part of a plan to get at Hans Georg Schuwald and puts up a front of the most mind-bogglingly perfect human being in existence. When Schuwald is finally confronted with the possibility that his new student secretary is a psychotic bastard that's probably planning to kill him, Schuwald isn't even the least bit surprised. Why? Because he was so damn perfect that he just had to be evil.
The mysterious transfer student in Saitama Chainsaw Shoujo seems pretty unfazed when she encounters the blood-drenched, murderous protagonist... complete with giggling and smirking while throwing her "boyfriend" towards Fumio's chainsaw.
Haruna Niekawa from Durarara!! Though it's mainly due to her being possessed by a Yandere Living Weapon.
Ryuuko Kounuma from Wolfen Crest. She seems nice enough, is rather charming and carefree... Except she is completely psychotic underneath. Having spent several years under the sexual abuse coming from her dad and her pimp, she deals with it by having sex with lots of men and ruin their lives ruined afterwards, to an insane extent. She doesn't fit the Emotionless description, though, as she's pretty much Ax Crazy.

Comic Books

In X-Men, the seductive Foxx turns out to be the shapeshifter Mystique trying to seduce Gambit away from Rogue. A similar plot occurred in X-Men Evolution, when Rogue's friend Risty Wilde turns out to be Mystique spying on/stalking her adoptive daughter.

Film

In Basic Instinct, Sharon Stone's character Catherine Tramell is this. She is a beautiful, wealthy rock star but embodies this trope with her fondness for ice picks
Alice from Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. She looks like a hot blonde who can't keep her hands off Sam, but she's actually a Decepticon who's after the Allspark info in Sam's brain.
Liz in The Hole.
Marybeth from The Faculty.
Gwen in Sky High.
Jennifer's Body.
Asami in Audition seems like the girl of your dreams. However, when she asks you to love only her, she means it.

Literature

Tammy manages to conceal the fact that she's the high priestess of a cult trying to bring about the end of the world, and the one responsible for the plague of zombies in "Gil's All Fright Diner" , despite that the townsfolk (as well as the drifter two main characters) are VERY experienced with the supernatural. This may be because she uses her great female beauty to distract and manipulate all males in the book. The fact that she only has one cultist to aid her (her would-be boyfriend) and is a teenager probably doesn't hurt, either.
In Percy Jackson and the Olympians book 4, Percy starts off the book by meeting Kelli and Tammi, two beautiful cheerleaders. They later turn out to be monsters concealed by the Mist, and they try to kill Percy. Oh, and they're also part of Kronos' army.
In the Uglies series, the "Specials" are essentially this: Tally describes them as being very beautiful, but a mean, threatening kind of pretty.

Live Action TV

Subverted on Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide with May, June, and Julie, the "Stepford Schoolgirls". Moze becomes convinced that the three girls are robots, but they're not; there's a perfectly logical (read: badly executed) explanation for everything.
Kuroki Mio in Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.
Debbie Berwick (self-described Cupcake Queen of the Universe) in Phil of the Future is an evil robot. But until the "Halloween" episode, only Pim seems to see it.
Ingrid from Young Dracula, though it takes a major Weirdness Censor on the part of everyone else not to notice.
Darla from Buffy makes her introduction as one of these in the first episode.

Video Games

In an old text game you met a woman whose figure was described, to begin with, as "impossible" or "implausible". And you could sleep with her if you wanted, but then she turned out to be a monster that fed on Life Energy and you get a Non Standard Game Over.
Tsukihime, a stand-out Visual Novel, can feature more than one of these depending on the route you take. The stand-out example, however, is Kohaku. On first appearance she's the one ray of cheerful Meido-shaped sunshine in an otherwise cold and unwelcoming Big Fancy House; but delve into the Far Side routes, and when you see her real smile... eep.
Orianna, the Lady of Clockwork from League of Legends is an example of a girl who approaches the Uncanny Valley from the other side. A clockwork-powered automaton in the shape of a beautiful girl, Orianna was created as a Replacement Goldfish by a genius clockmaker who never got over the death of his daughter. Unfortunately his creation ended up as something described as a "clockwork killing machine". While Orianna could never be mistaken for a human, she believes herself to be alive and tries her best to act in a manner she perceives as "normal"- except she has a very skewed perception of what "normal" is. As a result she's described as being far more creepy than the League's other robot, who doesn't even look SLIGHTLY human beyond his basic shape.
This thing seemed dead inside. It seemed like an automaton, trying to act like as if it was alive. The effect was unsettling.
It's not that she didn't have facial expressions � they were just wrong. There was something in everything she did that was just a little bit off, off enough to be just this side of completely alien.

Web Comics

You wouldn't believe it from how she acts around the other protagonists (so it's not exactly a straight example), but from the perspective of her schoolmates, Mell Kelly of Narbonic would probably count as one of these, since when she's at college she puts up a fa�ade of quiet sweetness, as seen in the "Mell Expelled" storyline.

Western Animation

In the episode of W.I.T.C.H. "T is for Trauma", Big Bad Nerissa disguises herself as the beautiful Stacie, showing up at Sheffield Institute in order to lure the heroines' boyfriends away and to spy on them. In addition to being beautiful, she uses a spell to make every guy in school completely crazy for her (except Will's boyfriend Matt, who was immune because Nerissa had already messed with him).
Invader Zim could be seen as a subversion of that trope, except that he's not a girl. Tak (who is a girl) is a somewhat straighter example.
In The Oblongs, Milo gets a crush on an alien who infiltrates not only his school but also the Debbies' clique, despite her Paper-Thin Disguise.
As mentioned, Risty aka Mystique in X-Men: Evolution.
In Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, Elena Validus becomes this after the Hive infected her and turned her into a Yandere for Ben.