Basic Trope: A member of an alien species finds the physical appearance of humans repulsive.
- Straight: A Humanoid Alien expresses disgust upon seeing what a human looks like.
- Exaggerated: A Starfish Alien sees humanity as an Eldritch Abomination, being driven to insanity just by seeing them.
- Downplayed: A Rubber-Forehead Alien gets a little weirded out after being shown the appearance of a human, but doesn't act outright disgusted.
- Justified:
- The aliens, due to having Bizarre Alien Biology, have a different standard of beauty than we do.
- Human abundance of exposed skin makes humans look infected with a disfiguring contagious disease akin to mange. Even knowing that isn't the case doesn't make human's appearance much less gross to them. The aliens normally have scale or fur covering.
- Inverted:
- Mars Needs Women.
- Humans are the ones who find aliens ugly.
- Subverted:
- At first, it seems the alien doesn't like humans for being humans, but it turns out the alien's actually disgusted at the food they eat. Other than that, the alien's totally cool with them.
- Aliens with large muzzles seem to be disturbed by any romantic interactions between humans and react to romantic advances with revulsion. The few exceptions are treated as disgusting perverts. It turns out that humans with their flatter faces strongly resemble young children of their species - they actually find humans cute but it brings along a lot of mental baggage.
- Double Subverted: ...but it becomes enough of a pet peeve that it distorts the alien's perception of humanity as a whole, thus making the entire human race a trigger of disgust for the alien.
- Parodied: A blind alien race claims we are hideous despite having similar dimensions.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: No aliens act disgusted when they see a human's appearance.
- Enforced: The creators had to find a way to show how different the aliens are to us.
- Lampshaded: "Dammit. I knew I should have left the alien-dating to Gunko. He barely looks like a human, so he might finally have a shot."
- Invoked: "Sorry, lady, you're not my type. Which is, y'know, non-human."
- Exploited: Normally, on Earth, Alice couldn't go out late at night by herself without having to worry about losers trying to take advantage of her. But she's part of a landing party of humans on a world whose natives think she's too ugly for that, so she's the one who goes out to collect anything the crew might need at any time of day. She revels in her newfound freedom.
- Defied: Alien Bob falls in love with Alice and refuses to let her humanity get in the way of his feelings, even though she's not exactly sexy to him.
- Discussed: "Hey, have you ever wondered if we look as ugly to the aliens as they look to us?"
- Conversed: "Charles, this isn't Star Trek. D'niinad isn't into human dudes, and you're not Captain Kirk, so she's not about to change her mind just for you."
- Implied: Bob, The Casanova alien at the space bar, has been out on lots of dates with women, but never once with a human woman despite many human women trying to ask him out. He never says why, but it's obvious to all the other barflies.
- Deconstructed: Humans being found ugly leads to them suffering from What Measure Is a Non-Human? in reverse. Aliens can barely stand to be around them and even those who find attempts to purge humanity wrong can't really rally many to such an uncharismatic cause.
- Reconstructed: ???
- Played For Drama: Human Alice is stuck on another world whose residents find her repulsive, leaving her feeling quite lonely.
- Played For Laughs: ...or she becomes an Abhorrent Admirer oblivious to the very fact that she is not their type. Their many attempts to escape her presence never stop her from trying.
Back to Humans Are Ugly.
