Uncanny Valley Makeup

Some ladies wear Cover Girl, she wears Dutch Boy.

"Ronald Reagan is a triumph of the embalmer's art."

— Gore Vidal

Generally, people use cosmetics to make themselves more attractive. A little extra color or definition can make a world of difference. In the wrong hands, however, or taken too far, that dab of lipstick, powder, and paint can push a person straight into the Uncanny Valley. The human face disappears into the make-up, leaving something profoundly unnatural: a clown, a porcelain doll, or a something just plain grotesque.

This is disconcerting enough even if accidentally incurred in an honest effort to achieve perfection — if a character cultivates Uncanny Valley Makeup on purpose, like the semantic colors on a venomous snake, be on the alert for serious, premeditated creepiness.

Bonus points if the person is wearing an old fashioned Pimped-Out Dress, a frivolous multicolored outfit, or an all-black outfit. Or they may also dress in a skimpy outfit that was intended purely for Fanservice. Additional bonus points if worn by a Monster Clown, Sissy Villain, Creepy Crossdresser, Gonky Femme, or Uncanny Valley Girl. One relatively recent variant involves garishly obvious spray tans, which are likely to be worn by a Trumplica or residents of Joisey.

Depending on the circumstances this trope can be considered a good source of Nightmare Fuel or Fan Disservice.

See also Makeup Is Evil, Cosmetic Catastrophe, Impossibly Tacky Clothes, Excessive Evil Eyeshadow, Skin-Tone Disguise.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Samurai 7 (anime adaptation of Seven Samurai), Gorobei, Rikichi, and Heihachi are forced to dress in drag as part of an undercover mission. Gorobei and Rikichi sport laughably gaudy visages - Heihachi, however, makes for a very pretty lady.
• An example occurs in Ouran High School Host Club when the host club dresses as women to cheer up Haruhi. They wear makeup that is hilariously overdone, wigs, and gaudy dresses. Likewise, every production done by the Zuka club features a lot of this. Likely this is because most of the characters already look like that...
  • And it's actually lampshaded by the Host Club when they see Haruhi in it, claiming "IT'S TOO THICK!"
• In Tenchi in Tokyo, Ryoko applies makeup to herself by the pound. The result is her face looking so creepy and silly looking that her rival Princesses Ayeka all but pisses herself with laughter at the sight of it.
• Shortly after joining The Shinsengumi in Peacemaker Kurogane, Tetsunosuke gets jealous at Yamazaki Susumu, who does his spying work crossdressed as a beautiful woman. Tetsunosuke grabs a spare kimono and borrows Susumu's makeup box, ending up looking more like a Kabuki clown than a lady, to the horror of innocent bystanders.
• Ms. Chono in Yu-Gi-Oh! wears so much makeup, it may as well be a mask. After a run in with Yami Yugi, it breaks off like a porcelain mask.
  • In the manga, he causes it so she'll never be able to cover up her perpetually angry face. In the anime, she has to apply on thick amounts just to look normal, and any time she tries to act mean her face will crack.
• One Piece's Emporio Ivankov wears so much makeup it really is a mask. When he runs into a guy that throws acidic poison on his face he just peels off a layer of makeup and goes on with his business.
• In the Pokémon: The Original Series episode "Pokémon Fashion Flash", Misty receives a makeover from Team Rocket's fake salon that makes her face look clownlike and oddly decorated. Ash laughs his socks off over it.
• Done for laughs (though very slightly dramatic) in Eureka Seven when Eureka tries makeup.
• The Ganguro girls in Durarara!!. So much makeup...
• Ripple-chan from Anpanman is a living lipstick tube that loves to give the girls of Anpanland makeovers. Unfortunately, the dresses she gives them are a bit too flashy for everyday wear, and the makeup is this. However, at times, she can give an appropriate and beautiful amount of makeup with a less showy outfit (like she did with Dokinchan to make her look like a princess).

Comic Books

• Little Lotta tries on makeup to impress her boyfriend Gerald. She passed by her friend Little Dot on the street, and from what Dot sees of the makeup job, she thinks that Lotta has caught a fever and rushes away, telling her friend to get well soon.

Film — Live-Action

• In Batman (1989), the Joker wears makeup over his white skin that doesn't have the depth or shading of real skin and gives him a creepy mannequin look, not to mention the fact that his permanent grin-like disfigurement is still easily visible beneath it.
• In Beauty and the Beast (2017), the pre-transformation prince in the prologue has his face completely caked with powder and makeup and looks garish and creepy as a result. When he transforms back into a human at the end of the film sans makeup, he looks much better.

• In Daft Punk's Electroma, this is the unfortunate result of the main characters' attempt to Become Real Boys. The prosthetics might have even worked, were they not applied over Daft Punk's signature helmets, which made the faces way too large and obviously fake. Also, the bit where they melted under the heat of the sun really didn't help.
• In The Dark Knight, the Joker has his face painted in such a way to emphasis his Glasgow Grin and makes it appear that his makeup is peeling/dripping off.

• In John Carpenter's Escape from L.A., Bruce Campbell plays the Surgeon General of Beverly Hills, a man obsessed with achieving physical perfection through plastic surgery. The prosthetic makeup he wears for the part — sculpted cheekbones, a thinner nose, a squarer jaw, visible hairplugs — makes the character look more like an animated mannequin than anything else.
• As mentioned in Literature, Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games. The contrast between her and the residents of District 12 at the reaping scene is unsettling.
• The Mystery Man from David Lynch's Lost Highway has no eyebrows, as well as a fairly subtle combination of eyeshadow and lipstick that renders his face fairly... uncanny.

• In My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Toula's family is preparing her for her wedding, and they are in such a hurry that everyone pitches in to do her hair, makeup, and dress her. The end result is that she, in Toula's words, "looks like a snow beast".
• Not Okay: At least twice Danni wears extravagant eye makeup featuring graphic eyeliner in bright colors. Her manicure is also unusual; instead of having the tips of her nails painted white or cream, those tips are painted in bright colors, different for each finger.
• Divine in Pink Flamingos. Her character's charming personality isn't helping things, either...
• Pavi's faces in Repo! The Genetic Opera have a shade of this to them. It helps that they're skinned off of various women and hooked onto his face with clips. Features like eyebrows and lip color are pretty clearly redone in... post-production, as it were.
  • Blind Mag's makeup in her first appearance, too. It's partly because of her "Uh-Oh" Eyes, but the heavy eye-makeup and impossibly long fake lashes don't help matters. Subverted, though, in that Mag is one of only two good-hearted people in the entire movie, and the makeup is probably imposed on her- when she's viewed in flashback before she was lured by GeneCo, her eye makeup looks much more natural.
• In Shaolin Soccer, the hero's love interest tries getting a makeover to look prettier... but it fails spectacularly, with excessively heavy makeup and a huge '80s Hair wig.

• Near the end of shooting the original Star Wars movie, Mark Hamill suffered a car wreck. For the remaining pick-up shots, George Lucas used a body double. Less than 2 years later, they were filming The Star Wars Holiday Special. To hide Hamill's facial scars and to match his look from the original film as much as possible, they used a lot of makeup, and it's very noticeable in close up shots.
• The Joker in Suicide Squad (2016) uses this to emphasize his sociopathic Monster Clown look. What's particularly notable about him is his lack of eyebrows... but yet, unlike eyebrow-less animated characters, such as Pitch Black, Joker's face still moves as though he has eyebrows, which majorly creeps some viewers out.
• Your Make Up Is Running causes this trope in the railroad car scene of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Laura and Ronette's smeared and melting lipstick and eyeliner makes them look like terrified clowns, and the result adds to the horror of the scene.
• The Warriors. The very, er, colorful gang colors give it a camp quality in hindsight. The Furies, especially. Particularly because their glowering expressions never seem to change under the bright Day-Glo face paint.
• "Baby" Jane Hudson as an adult in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. Bette Davis suggested the idea she never washes her face, she just cakes new makeup on every day.
• Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, seeing as how he was intentionally meant to invoke Uncanny Valley (makeup was used to make his skin look unnaturally pale and flawless, and Christopher Lloyd avoided blinking when the camera was on him).
• The iconic Oompa-Loompas in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory have bizarre orange faces with white eyebrows.

Literature

• Bridget Jones' Diary:
  • Bridget goes out partying with a "friend" who is always able to bring down her self-esteem with cutting remarks and ends up convinced that she is horribly prematurely aging. As a result, the next time she goes out she spends ages applying lots and lots of makeup, to the point that when she arrives her friend Tom tells her she looks like Barbara Cartland.
  • In the sequel, she goes out to a fancy dinner with Mark Darcy and, in a hurry as ever, makes up in the cab on the way there. She can't work out why everyone at the party is looking at her strangely, til Mark sends her to the ladies' room and she finds that, in the dark, she confused plum eyeshadow with rouge...
• In Bridge of Birds, this is apparently the standard of beauty - among the many, many preparations Li Kao claims a beautiful woman makes every morning are "checks to make sure that her makeup has hardened into an immovable mask" and "looks into the mirror for any visible sign of humanity, and is relieved to find none".
• In A Clockwork Orange, the sociopathic culture of the young is partly indicated by the crazy way they dress and the insane makeup the girls are described as wearing:
  These sharps were dressed in the heighth of fashion too, with purple and green and orange wigs on their gullivers, and make-up to match (rainbows round the glazzies, that is, and the rot painted very wide).
• Queen Beatrix of Counselors and Kings is already a Cloudcuckoolander with an often disturbing Lack of Empathy, but the whole effect is not helped by her habit of wearing white wigs, heavy white makeup, and thick eyeshadow, lending her the appearance of an automaton or a reanimated corpse (and behind her back, it's often gossiped that she's forgotten she isn't one of those options). In the third book, she's explicitly noted to look both younger and more beautiful without her makeup though even that is an illusion.
• Discworld: In Wyrd Sisters, Magrat goes overboard on powder and mascara when going out to rescue Nanny Ogg from the Duke's dungeons, and is described as looking like "two flies that had crashed into a sugar bowl". She also leaves a guard tempted to make a sign to "ward off the evil eyeshadow".
• In the Goosebumps book The Haunted School, Tommy's classmate Talia is bullied because she wears a huge amount of makeup that makes her look unnatural and even creepy (they are only twelve years old.) It turns out that she escaped from the colorless world and is completely gray from head to foot, so she uses the makeup to hide her real appearance.
• Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games. She wears technicolor wigs, but then you find out the whole Capitol wants to look like this.
• In A Series of Unfortunate Events, Count Olaf has a group of henchmen that help do his bidding. In his group, there are two women, with white powder all over their faces, and they are never depicted without the face powder.
• In the later part of Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, Pilate's granddaughter Hagar goes and buys makeup along with new clothes in the hope of impressing Milkman Dead so that he would find her attractive again. However, on her way home, her clothes and cosmetics get ruined in the rain, as her bags tear, so by the time Hagar returns home and tries all that stuff on, Pilate and her daughter Reba could see that her new clothes are ruined and her makeup is now so smeary that it makes Hagar cry until she catches a fever.

Live-Action TV

• Are You Afraid of the Dark?:
  • In the episode "The Tale Of The Many Faces" a struggling model named Emma visits a strange woman named Madame Visage who gives her some powder that apparently helps her get a modeling job. The powder didn't really do anything, considering that Emma was pretty to begin with. (It does seem to almost hypnotize those around her, who will drop everything to mention how pretty she is.) However, it's revealed that Madame Visage is a Vain Sorceress and the face powder has properties that keeps girls' faces looking younger and the skin smooth. She wants the faces to be in peak condition so that she can steal them and use them as her own face as a way to keep herself looking younger.
  • Another episode called "The Tale Of The Mystical Mirror" features another Vain Sorceress named Mrs. Valenti who hires only in her words "beauties" to work in her clothing boutique and she is later revealed to regularly kill young girls in a ritual to keep herself eternally young and beautiful while she was actually centuries old. She gives her employees a compact filled with makeup, and she makes sure to keep her "youthful" face covered with so much makeup that her face looks like its made of plastic and she appears rather Stepford Smiler-ish.
• Endora of Bewitched wears far too much makeup, especially for a woman her age.
• Doctor Who:
  • The makeup worn by the Sisterhood of Karn.
  • Worn as part of Gallifreyan formal wear in "The Deadly Assassin" — a whitish lipstick, pearlized white powder on the brows and cheekbones. Notably, more sympathetic characters are not shown wearing it.
  • Used as literally as possible in "The Robots of Death", where everyone, male and female, wears makeup to make their faces resemble the Raygun Gothic robots of the setting — beings that cause Uncanny Valley in-universe. In particular, a delusional man who identifies with robots paints his face to more closely resemble the stylised faces of the robots — literally using makeup to make himself resemble a being that causes an in-universe uncanny valley effect.
  • Helen A imposes this on all the citizens of Terra Alpha as part of her Stepford Smiler dictatorship in "The Happiness Patrol".
  • Done intentionally with the actresses playing the Weeping Angels, to make them look really creepy. It works.
  • "The Time of the Doctor": Tasha Lem wears stylized makeup, most prominently including a raccoon-like stripe across her eyes, that emphasizes how detached she seems.
• Mimi Bobeck (played by Kathy Kinney) from The Drew Carey Show frequently wore more makeup than was necessary healthy for the proper brain functioning of those around her.
  • Taken up a notch when special guest star Tammy Faye Bakker would play Mimi's mother, Tammy Bobeck, for two episodes.
  • This was a running gag for a long, long time. One episode had her recovering from skin damage to her face and unable to wear makeup. Instead, she covered her face with a fan until she could get sat down and set up a small projector to shine strongly colored light on her face to replicate the effect of her normal makeup.
  • Another episode had a follow-up to the earlier "Mini Mimi" gag where the woman she hired for the prank reveals that she kept the look afterward because it gave her Mimi's Kavorka Man powers.
  • And of course, the cherry on this joke sundae is that the one time we see Mimi actually do makeup for another person, she does a very tasteful and restrained job. And of course, what department in the store did she first apply for? Cosmetics.

• Goodbye My Princess: The empress's make-up is off-putting by modern standards. Her shaved-off and painted-on eyebrows are especially odd. Truth in Television, though; that style of make-up was common in the Tang dynasty.
• In How I Met Your Mother, the makeup that makes Barney look fat (possibly just Ted's imagination, we'll never know) is positively horrifying. Just take a look◊.
• The IT Crowd has one character who Roy says puts on so much makeup that when he breaks up with her will be like breaking up with The Joker. They show her and his description seems accurate, especially when she starts crying and her makeup gets smeared.
• In LazyTown, the two main heroes are played by human actors and most of the other characters by rubber puppets — the antagonist, Robbie Rotten, is designed in such a way that watching him leaves the primal parts of your brain wondering which of those two things he is. On an intellectual level he's obviously a human in heavy makeup, but that makeup gives him the rubbery look of the puppet characters even despite the expressiveness of his face.
• The League of Gentlemen has Papa Lazarou. His face really is black and white like a minstrel, and he has to paint over it with makeup to appear normal. Well as normal as a demonic, polygamist blackface minstrel who runs a Circus of Fear, can look anyway. Papa learned the makeup skills to cover his minstrel face from his various wives.
• Cruella De Ville as portrayed on Once Upon a Time has this. It is revealed in a flashback that the result of exposure to magic ink painted her face with overdone makeup and caused her blonder hair to become black and white. It Makes Sense in Context.
• Toddlers & Tiaras: The excessive makeup that includes heavy eyeshadow, unnatural blush, fake lashes, and fake tan is especially unsettling since the girls of the show don't pass from the age of 10. This, combined with Age-Inappropriate Dress is the reason why many people criticize the show and many others watch it due to morbid curiosity.

Music

• The Music video for Fall Out Boy's America's Suitehearts features Pete Wentz in some freak facepaint that makes him look like he has a large smiling black mouth full of teeth.
• Emilie Autumn has some sort of creepy porcelain doll/french aristocrat look going on.
• From the world of 90's Visual Kei, ex-Lareine bassist Emiru. Any grown man who can have a little girl as a stage persona and get away with it definitely has a place here, especially if that stage persona has a distinct air of Creepy Child about it, what with it's twisting off a doll's head (3:27-3:35) whilst looking blankly into the camera amongst other things.
• Most of Lady Gaga's music videos, including "Born This Way." The protruding horns/cheekbones, flesh colored eyebrows and this little ensemble.◊
• Vocaloid has Matryoshka. It's either this or something else.
• Every Robert Palmer video featured a group of models made up to look like emotionless mannequins.
  • Word of God was that Palmer did not find that look attractive, and was bemused at his female fans showing at concerts trying to look like the models in the videos.
• Nicki Minaj looks like an IMVU character in the video for Super Bass, especially the eyelashes.
• Kesha: "We R Who We R".
  • Her make-up usually alternates between this and just plain dirty.
• Joan Jett's album cover for Bad Reputation◊.
• David Bowie's more exotic looks tend to fall into this territory: consider Ziggy Stardust, the Pierrot clown in the "Ashes to Ashes" video, and the characters in the 1. Outside booklet. When he did some self-parody as the British Rock Star Screamin' Lord Byron in the Short Film Jazzin' for Blue Jean, he made sure that "Mr. Screamin'" used such makeup too, with full-face, metallic makeup complete with painted-on shadows that give him the look of a living painting.
• Klaus Nomi employed this as part of his alien persona.
• Taco's version of Puttin' on the Ritz uses enough lipstick, eye liner and shadowed eyebrows to make his face look a bit off.
• Gary Numan, with his "android from outer space" persona similar to the aforementioned Klaus Nomi, most prominently sported this look during his Tubeway Army and early solo years.

Radio

• An audio example in Big Finish Doctor Who's "Jubilee" - Miriam insists that the purpose of women is to cover themselves in makeup and look colorful for the men. She herself is convinced she's really ugly and that looking 'like a sow rolled in cosmetics' is the best that she can hope for.

Video Games

• The Great Fairies from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Combined with their Noblewoman's Laugh, it's kinda hard to notice they're on your side at first.
• Tarohne from Dragon Age II with that godawful white lipstick.
• Eikichi Mishina, the Dreadful Musician and kei groupie from Persona 2. This is something of an Invoked Trope, as Eikichi's traditionalist father is hostile to his son wearing makeup. This forces Eikichi to disguise himself under a blanket of hair dye and makeup, and completely ditch his glam persona while at home.

• Baby Jane Splicers in the BioShock series look like they've taken makeup lessons from the Joker circa The Dark Knight. Not helping are the crisscrossed scars.
• Darlene the Psychopath from Dead Rising 3, who combines this trope with the female version of Fat Bastard and Villainous Glutton.
• The Wellies from We Happy Few wear white makeup to make it look like they're smiling. It works, sort of, but it's more a case of Technically a Smile. The Bobbies have it worse, they have a downright Slasher Smile.

Web Animation

• Manga Soprano:
  • The girl who makes a fool of me "Your makeup is terrible" → Then I removed my makeup.... (sic): Kanade comes to a singles party wearing too much makeup. The story's antagonist Yoshiko mocks her for it to the point of pouring a drink on her.
  • A woman who is a snobbish self-torturer who changes her attitude in front of men.... (sic): Junko attends work wearing heavy makeup, which makes the viewer wonder how come the workers fall for her cutesy facade.
  • In high school → no makeup allowed; as an adult → told that makeup is common sense (sic): Kanade comes to school with heavy, misapplied makeup when going to school, unaware of the new teacher's ban on makeup. Years later after being called out, she stopped wearing it until the same teacher, who became director of the company she works at tells her to use makeup like the other female employees. She comes back the next day with even worse makeup than before, which causes the other employees to laugh at her.

Webcomics

• Homestuck's "Trickster Mode" (normal on the left, Trickster'd on the right) can make characters colorful, invincible, and insane.
• The Big Bad of Sluggy Freelance 'GOFOTRON' arc, Zorgon Gola, is difficult for most of his subordinates to face, except Lord Grater:
  Zorgon Gola: Are you staring at my lips?
  Lord Grater: Yeah. Do they hurt? Did a bee sting you?

Web Original

• YouTuber Catie Wayne first rose to prominence with her original "character", Boxxy, a parody of the "scene" internet subculture. She later filmed a makeup tutorial on how to achieve Boxxy's deranged chic.
  "What's important to remember about this step is that if you're not any good at it, that's okay because Boxxy isn't either."
• Unwanted Houseguest: The gaunt, pals appearance of the Houseguest always looks just a bit off.

Western Animation

• Hey Arnold!
  • At least two episodes feature Helga's older sister Olga break down crying so much that her makeup runs down her face and it looks like she's crying black tears.
  • Another episode has Helga give herself a makeover, in order to make herself look more girly for Rhonda's party. When her mother opens the bathroom door and sees the finished product she gasps and faints, causing Helga to say "Maybe I should've gone a bit lighter on the eye shadow."
• In the Ruby-Spears Mega Man cartoon, a cosmetics robot looked like this to begin with. When Mega gave her a bad facial it got even worse.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Seen in "Sonic Rainboom" when Rarity lets her new wings go to her head. She enters the Best Young Fliers' Competition herself wearing heavy make-up and a Pimped-Out Dress.
  • Also done in "Brotherhooves Social" as part of Big Macintosh's "Orchard Blossom" disguise.
• All of the female characters in The Problem Solverz have brightly colored eyeshadow and facial markings.
• The Ghost and Molly McGee: In “A Period Piece”, Molly feels left out because her friends Libby and Andrea have both had their first periods, and thinks that they’re maturing without her. In an attempt to seem more grown-up, she gives herself a makeover with an online makeup tutorial. However, when she reveals herself to the other girls, they scream in fright at her-less-than perfect makeup job.
• One late episode of The Powerpuff Girls (1998) had the Villain of the Week, "Mask Scara," fly around giving horribly trashy makeovers to everyone in Townsville as well as some of the billboards. Not as uncanny when it's supposed to be funny, but still really, really ugly. In fact, according to her backstory, she used to be CEO of a cosmetics company that promoted a look like this, and it was a fad for a while, but she thought it would last more than it did, and after the fad became passé she was out of business.
• Bob's Burgers: In "Bad Tina" Tina falls in with Tammy, the new girl at school, who insists on makeovers. She puts a lot of makeup on the two of them in the girl's room - when they step outside, the Pesto twins see them and yell "AAAAH! Bathroom clowns!"
• In Barbie and the Secret Door, the Big Bad, Malucia, wears a lot of makeup. Her lipstick in particular looks very creepy since she's a little girl.
• The 12-year old Power Trio in As Told by Ginger try to look glamorous in one episode by wearing makeup they made themselves, as Ginger's mom thinks she's too young for makeup and doesn't let her wear any. The fact that they have no prior experience in applying makeup is made very clear.

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