History Main / UncannyValley

** ''Saturnine Night'' gives us a more "routine" example with Dr. Robot Hughes, a scientist whose lifelong goal is the creation of successful sex robots. His previous attempts were all ''terrible'' failures due to the Uncanny Valley. Only when a ''Qashmal'' guided him to an unconscious Galateid did he manage to create one that actually worked - and that was because [[CloningBlues he'd unwittingly created a clone]].

Turn this trope UpToEleven and you'll most likely have a HumanoidAbomination.

** It's brought up again in ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' as intentional on the developers' part for the [[MechaMook Motorized Patriot]], who was in fact based on a nightmare of Ken Levine's about the porcelain dolls his grandparents had when he was a child.

* The music video for Serj Tankian's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CxKA1uETxE Empty Walls]]" features the lead singer parading around a CircusOfFear with a bizarre, sociopathic look on his face, while various small children play happily... or, as some people have interpreted it, re-enact the War on Terror.

* In ''Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit'', the Uncanny Valley is invoked in Judge Doom as {{foreshadowing}}, [[spoiler:considering that he's actually an AxCrazy toon disguised as a human]]. He is at least half a head taller than any other character. His eyes are often hollow and he ''never'' blinks. Creator/ChristopherLloyd only blinked between takes or when his face was out of frame. Every smile is a SlasherSmile. He has a lot more strength than an average man. He is shown ripping the industrial dip barrel open with one hand. His skin is pale and lifeless. His vocal cadence is either too clipped or too drawn out to be normal. He talks, just, Like, THIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSS!

* The final boss of ''VideoGame/KirbyAndTheForgottenLand'', [[spoiler:Fecto Forgo]], looks a lot like a human embryo and has uncannily photorealistic and detailed eyes, which is especially apparent when they [[EyeAwaken dramatically open their eyes]] and [[spoiler:deliver their threat to consume everything]]. Their true form, [[spoiler:Fecto Elfilis]] has a similar effect -- while they have a humanoid, angelic design, they also have disproportionately large hands, CreepyLongFingers, and digitigrade legs, which adds to their appearance as an AngelicAbomination. Even further, as [[spoiler:Chaos Elfilis]], their eyes are sunken ''inward'' to give the effect of [[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou staring at the player.]] The effect is that they look otherworldly and just plain ''wrong'', since they are an invader not native to this world, and [[spoiler:plan on subsuming the entire planet for their own purposes]].

* The final boss of ''VideoGame/KirbyAndTheForgottenLand'', [[spoiler:Fecto Forgo]], looks a lot like a human embryo and has uncannily photorealistic and detailed eyes, which is especially apparent when they [[EyeAwaken dramatically open their eyes]] and [[spoiler:deliver their threat to consume everything]]. [[spoiler:Their true form as Fecto Elfilis]] also has this trait, as while they have a humanoid, angelic design, they also have disproportionately large hands, CreepyLongFingers, and digitigrade legs, which adds to their appearance as an AngelicAbomination. Both are clearly meant to look otherworldly and just plain ''wrong'', since they [[spoiler:are an invader not native to this world, and plan on subsuming the entire planet for their own purposes]].

* In ''Literature/{{Argo}}'', androids are usually designed to look like {{Funny Animal}}s to avoid this trope, so that humans would be less intimidated by them.

* ''WebOriginal/HamstersParadise'':

** The ever-loved, the original [[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-173 SCP-173]]. It... it's ''kinda'' vaguely humanoid... but that face. Staring at it is so hard, so awkward. You want to look away. You can't. You mustn't. [[spoiler: You did--SNAP!]]
** 106 is already bad enough, what with looking like the rotting carcass of an old man... but, somehow, when he was young, despite being much less putrid, and a lot more human-looking, he was [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/the-young-man much, much worse]].
** 2852, the idea of a hollow shell and some cicada matter patched together to look like a human... and succeeding is just horrifying, especially the eyes which apparently have no function, not to mention the adult baby talk that they apparently spew.
** SCP-096, with its gaunt, distorted face with blank, empty eyes, huge, gaping mouth and impossibly long, spindly limbs. What doesn't help is its incredibly human sounding, yet also very distorted sobs of anguish... and screams of pure, unbridled rage as it slaughters those unfortunate enough to look at it. The head of the squadron that initially found it refused to see an art piece done in its likeness due to being haunted enough by just the sound of it, not wanting to put a face to that awful, uncanny noise.

* charcoalman on Website/DeviantArt has made many [=SCPs=] fall into the Uncanny Valley. But his depiction of the Yule Man is his most well known by far. [[https://www.deviantart.com/charcoalman/art/SCP-4666-It-Never-Sleeps-840082763]]
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLy-AwdCOmI I Feel Fantastic]] (also known as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T09iknuzDlw Fantastic Hey Hey Hey]]). It's a video of an animatronic woman singing an off-putting song, made all the more creepy by the low quality camera and how jerky and inhuman her movements and voice are. Just in case you're feeling extra brave, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6TdRD3moBk you can watch the entire 16 minute video it was sourced from]].
* Someone had the idea to feed the "Screaming Frog" video into Google's Deep Dream neural net software. The results? After what seems like what would take countless iterations, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JSrKS6KUWE this.]] [[EyesDoNotBelongThere The frog's eyes pop up and disappear all over its body,]] it's sprouting some sort of tentacle-toe things all over the lower half of its body, and the video itself occasionally morphs into different things for an instant, such as a car or a dog. Now, keep in mind that Deep Dream is meant to look like a human dream. And not after our sleeping brains distill it into a form we can understand, for these are the pure memories of this neural net. And if that turned a relatively harmless frog video into [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos Frog-Sothoth]], then [[YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm the real forms of our own dreams would be truly maddening.]]

* ''WebOriginal/{{Mortasheen}}'': [[https://bogleech.com/mortasheen/lester.htm Lester the Manbogey]] is a bio-construct designed to spy on and study colonies of humans by blending in as a human itself. However, it's noted to have a 100% failure rate; even human newborns can immediately tell that Lester is an imposter. Lester's creators are baffled how, since other races can't tell it apart from a real human.
* ''Franchise/TheSlenderManMythos'': The central HumanoidAbomination is an abnormally tall guy with [[TheBlank no face or hair]] that wears a business suit. He apparently can't talk, and he walks in a very stiff manner, often with his arms out in front of him. He can also teleport anywhere he wants. [[ParanoiaFuel Like inside your house]]. The [[MultiArmedAndDangerous tentacles]] are a bit off-kilter, as well.

* ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' plays with this. To the people of the New England Commonwealth, the Institute's 1st- and 2nd-generation Synths, which look like {{SkeleBot|9000}}s and {{Murderous Mannequin}}s respectively, are pure Nightmare Fuel because of their uncanniness. 3rd-generation Synths, which can [[ArtificialHuman pass for human]], are pure ParanoiaFuel. But potential companion Nick Valentine averts Uncanny Valley, since he's a discarded prototype with obviously fake "skin" and enough wear and tear to have his robot parts showing. As a result, he looks (and acts) human enough to be reassuring, but still obviously a robot instead of an infiltrator, and so is tolerated in Diamond City and even able to work as a private investigator.

* Both games in the [[VideoGame/GadgetPastAsFuture Gadget]] series, ''Invention, Travel, and Adventure'' and ''Past As Future''. Every character but one is locked into a single, vacant facial expression with limited body motions, never moving their legs, with what little movement they can convey being stiff. Special mention goes to a character only known as [[CreepyChild "the boy"]], who is able to float in the air while standing completely still in a straight line. ''Past As Future'' was a remake of ''Invention, Travel, and Adventure'', so the character models are somewhat more detailed and have a little more capability to move, but not by much. According to WordOfGod, this was a creative choice that was leaned into and brought about by the technological limitations of the time, in order to show that the characters in this setting, a bleak dictatorship in a world possibly on the brink of destruction, deliberately keep themselves [[TheStoic stoic]] so as to avoid judgement from the government and hide their true motives. The one character to avert their intentional DullSurprise is Paulo Orlovsky, the dictator of the series who is creepy in his own way because he's a PerpetualSmiler.