Creepy Long Fingers

He is coming...

Characters and monsters (or both) have a little extra creepy added to them when they have longer-than-average fingers. They don't even have to be a foot long, the Uncanny Valley can make even just slightly longer fingers off-putting. This is one reason Femme Fatalons which lengthen the apparent size of fingers can invoke this effect, as can actual claws.

These characters are likely to use their big hands in expressive ways, whether subtle or overt, and comparisons to skeletons and spiders are common. They'll usually gesticulate with surgeon-like precision or herky-jerky motions. Outright inhuman creepy long fingers may have extra knuckles or Freddy Krueger style finger attachments that can double as weapons.

The one big drawback to using this trope in live-action media is that human actors are unlikely to be able to handle extra knuckles or delicate motions, which is why animatronics and CGI fare better. Actors with these finger extensions are usually limited in their range of hand motions, being unable to make a fist, wield guns or more generally grasp thin objects.

When villains, these characters enjoy making Sinister Scraping Sounds and Finger Licking Evil.

Often overlaps with the similar Creepily Long Arms. Goes well with the stretched-out physiques of Noodle People. Long fingernails are usually included as well.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• L from Death Note is drawn with these, as part of his creepy, Ugly Cute design.
• Commonly seen in 3×3 Eyes in the design of demons and other monsters, more often than not paired with Creepily Long Arms. Sometimes, perfectly normal-looking characters will suddenly sport longer fingers with claw-like nails when turning more demonic, as seen with Mme Huang's Yao Gui form, Yoko Ayanokoji/Hua She and with Shiva upon turning into Gui Yan Wang and losing control in Pai's memory of the event.

Comic Books

• Emily Carroll, creator of multiple horror comics including His Face All Red and the anthology Through the Woods, has a particular fondness for this trope. Some specific examples include:
  • At one point in His Face All Red, the brothers hunting the monster in the woods pass by a tree whose leaves look like the hands of women with long fingers.
  • In "Out of Skin" a woman living alone in the woods discovers a pit with at least half a dozen bodies in it. The next day, where the pit was a strange new tree is growing, with leaves like hands with disturbingly long fingers. This might be the same tree that the brothers noticed in "His Face All Red".
  • In "A Lady's Hands Are Cold" a young woman in an arranged marriage with a wealthy man discovers that her husband murdered his first wife and scattered pieces of her body all around the manor. When the second wife reassembles the body of the first, the hands of the undead first wife are very large, with unnaturally long fingers◊. The first wife soon after uses her hands to attempt to murder the second wife, and to actually murder her husband when he returns home from a hunt.
  • In "The Nesting Place", the parasite wearing Rebecca's skin can rearrange the human form to suit herself, including elongating her fingers◊.
  • Even the cover of Through the Woods includes artwork where the branches of trees are made to resemble a hand with long grasping fingers.
• Gotham Academy: Calamity combines this with wild long hair and long fingernails for a relatively uniform look across the many unfortunates she's possessed over the centuries.
• While it's a case of Depending on the Artist, the Dark Judges from Judge Dredd can be depicted with long fingers and oversized hands.

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): In this Godzilla MonsterVerse fanfiction, the Many in their initial humanoid forms have elongated fingers.
• A major antagonist of The Heart Trilogy, the rather skinny demon Fankil, has long fingers that remind various characters of the legs of an insect/spider. They serve to foreshadow him to be the new physician assigned to Kathryn in Vathvael.

Films — Animation

• Jafar from Aladdin has exaggeratedly long fingers to match his generally long, thin body. When he puts his hands on Jasmine's shoulders, his fingers look like spider legs wrapping around her.
• The true form of the Other Mother from Coraline had terrifyingly long spider-like hands that appeared to be made from sewing needles.
• The Nightmare Before Christmas:
  • Jack Skellington has long fingers that fit his creepily tall and skinny design.
  • The Creature Under the Stars has actual snakes for fingers.
• Pitch Black, the villain of Rise of the Guardians, has long, bony, pale-grey fingers.
• Zig Zag from The Thief and the Cobbler has long, thin fingers, accentuated by studded rings on each knuckle. And if that wasn't bizarre enough, he has six of them on each hand.

Films — Live-Action

• Most designs for the aliens from the Alien series give the extraterrestrial monsters long, clawed fingers. Some go so far as to make them more than a foot long.
• The titular entity in The Babadook, to the point where it's one of the thing's most distinguishing features. The film's page image says it all.
• Nina from Black Swan, whose fingers start becoming unnaturally long when she's experiencing her hallucination. This was done by extending Natalie Portman's fingers via CGI.
• In another vampire example, Barnabas Collins of Dark Shadows.
• In Dracula (1979), the eponymous vampire has some very claw-like movement with his hands, which makes them appear very long. Frank Langella's hands did not have prosthetics, though.
• The alien in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial has long fingers compared with the rest of him. Like most examples, ET is creepy-looking and ugly. Unlike most examples, he's benevolent, lovable, etc. Elliott sees through his creepy exterior to the lovable character inside.
• In Frankenstein (1910), the Monster has long fingers as part of his general unusual appearance.
• Jerry Dandridge from Fright Night (1985) had extra knuckles, giving him these.
• The werewolves from The Howling (1981) have long bony fingers tipped with claws, with Eddie's fingers particularly getting a focus shot during the Transformation Sequence.
• Orlok from Nosferatu has long grasping fingers that look particularly horrifying when seen in elongated shadows. Pictured above.
  • Nosferatu the Vampyre is based heavily on Nosferatu even though the main character is called Dracula. He looks like Nosferatu, down to the long fingers.
  • And anyone else who Looks Like Orlok.
• Pan's Labyrinth has both The Faun and The Pale Man, courtesy not of CGI, but rather the actor who portrayed them, Doug Jones. (see the real-life examples for more on him)
• Radu in Subspecies not only has long fingers, but he can also snap them off to create minions.
• The Bennnings-Thing in The Thing (1982) is also "creepy misformed fingers", but they're clearly playing off the horror this trope provides when his hands are revealed. The poster of the 2011 prequel also utilizes it.
• Kaiser Belial from Ultraman Zero: The Revenge of Belial. He also uses his fingers to brainwash his opponents.
• After removing her disguise in The Witches (1990), the Grand High Witch has fingers almost a foot long.
• Zack Snyder's Justice League: DeSaad, a servant of Darkseid, has four of them on each hand.

Literature

• Bored of the Rings, a parody of The Lord of the Rings. Boggies (hobbits) "have long, clever fingers of the sort one normally associates with hands that spend a good deal of time around the necks of small, furry animals and in other people's pockets..."
• In Dragaera, the goddess Verra has extra joints in her fingers, though this isn't what makes her creepy.
• Tedrin, the needle-symbiote-infected villain in Eden Green, enjoys lengthening his fingers into sharp points to creep out Eden.
• The patchwork man of The Fold has sewn together long fingers with seven joints.
• Galaxy of Fear:
  • The two Shi'ido are described as having abnormally long fingers while in their humanoid default forms. The Big Bad certainly has creepy aspects, and even Hoole starts off a little ambiguous.
  • Yuuzhan Vong shapers are sometimes presented this way, especially Nen Yim, who shows up more than once on book covers with her abnormally-long hands. For extra Mad Scientist cred, shapers' hands are implants (they chop off the originals in a religious ceremony) that are equipped with various tools such as blades, pincers, and exotic sensory apparatuses to help in their work.
• Harry Potter:
  • Lord Voldemort reborn is said to have long, thin fingers. His hands are compared to "giant pale spiders" several times in the series.
  • Goblins are also described this way (as are the similarly diminutive house-elves, though they're a mostly harmless Servant Race).
• Into the Drowning Deep: The mermaids that attack the crew of the Melusine have two extra joints on their fingers, plus claws. They look spindly but are strong enough to gouge metal.
• Mrs. Smith's Spy School For Girls: Double Cross: Abby describes The Ghost's fingers as very long and thin.
• The short story "The Moving Finger" from Nightmares & Dreamscapes involves a finger with many more knuckles than is usual, which appears in the protagonist's life with little explanation or justification and causes him to doubt his safe, rational view of the world.
• The Origin of Laughing Jack: Laughing Jack has grotesquely long black fingers which come close to scraping the floor as they dangle from his Creepily Long Arms. Besides grabbing people with the help of his size-shifting arms, they make quick work of puncturing holes in people's organs. ^note While likely part of his design in the first story as well, Jack's fingers are only made mentioned of in the origin story.
• Warrior Cats: The villain Tigerclaw has unusually long claws to add to his menacing appearance. It's one of the first things the main character notices about him.

Live-Action TV

• The demon from the Charmed (1998) episode "Kill Billie, Vol. 1" had these, along with Femme Fatalons.
• Stranger Things: Vecna's corpse-like appearance is made even creepier by his unnaturally long fingers, which her wraps around his victims' heads before violently killing them.
• Supernatural: The Shtriga in particular has fingers that look more like twigs on a tree branch in its true form, which it uses to open its child victims' bedroom windows at night. There's also H.H. Holmes, whose ghost pushes his fingers through air vent slats at the sight of his haunting.
• The X-Files: Eugene Victor Tooms from the episodes "Squeeze" and "Tooms" can elongate his body, including fingers, which he demonstrates when squeezing himself through a chimney into someone's house to murder them. Bonus points for the creepily long fingerprints.

Music

• ASP has them when impersonating his concept albums Big Bad, the Black Butterfly, for example on the covers of "Aus der Tiefe" and "Weltunter".
• The music video for RadicalFace's "Holy Branches" features mysterious, black-cloaked, white-masked entities with long, stiff fingers.
• The music video for tool's "Prison Sex" features a nightmarish black Lean and Mean humanoid... Thing... With really long thin fingers.

Tabletop Games

• The Magic: The Gathering card Rag Man shows a hooded figure with an abnormally long arm and just-as-abnormally-long fingers.

Toys

• Quickstrike from Beast Wars, as each of his fingers turned into entire scorpion legs when he was in beast mode.
  • Paleotrex from the War for Cybertron: Kingdom toyline, along with his repaints and retools Skellivore, Trans-Mutate and Spindle all have oversized hands, on account of their hands becoming their beast mode feet. And on Creepily Long Arms to boot.

Video Games

• From Battleborn, Beatrix's left cyborg arm has skeletal ceramic fingers.
• The titular monsters in the Boogeyman games sport some. Though, in the former's case, it's more Creepy Long Fingernails.
• Some subspecies (like Stalkers◊) of the Necromorphs from Dead Space have elongated, clawed fingers along with the rest of their mutations.
• In The Elder Scrolls series, this is a trait of Scamps, the weakest and smallest known form of lesser Daedra. Their long fingers end with claws which serve as their primary weapon.
• Ultimecia inhabiting Edea's body in Final Fantasy VIII has either this or Femme Fatalons covered by long-fingered gloves, it's hard to tell. When we see normal Edea in her normal outfit, the camera doesn't pay any extra attention to her hands.
• The Marionette from Five Nights at Freddy's 2 has long, talon-like fingers. Nightmarionne from Five Nights at Freddy's 4's DLC has such long fingers that they may as well be Combat Tentacles.
• The Longest Journey has several, even Abnaxus, who is one of the good guys.
• Onmyōji (2016): Just look at Ibaraki-dōji's hand (he only has one hand, by the way). He's a good guy, though.
• The Leapers in Remember Me have creepy long fingers.
• The slug-man from Halflight, who extends his hands at you and your kid brother in a vision. You can tell he's not human because of how unnaturally long his fingers are.
• Valve kinda loves this trope, just look at the Witch from Left 4 Dead or headcrab zombies from Half-Life. The absolute king is Half-Life's the Nihilanth, whose fingers are at least three meters long and about as long as his torso.

Webcomics

• Girl Genius: The Dreen, which manage to creep out even other monsters, have long pointed fingers about the same length as their forearms.
• Goblins: Mr. Fingers is a living incarnation of this trope. That's all he is, fingers, and you don't want him anywhere near you.
• Wurr: The toes on Sinjal's front paws are long, boney and human-like — one of the guard dogs outright calls it creepy and unnatural. Flashbacks show that he used to have long, skeletal toes on his rear paws as well.

Web Original

• Salad Fingers makes very creepy use of his long, green, bony fingers.
• The Slender Man Mythos: The Slender Man, when given arms and hands, is sometimes shown with these. Though that brings up the question of if they're fingers at all, or just its Combat Tentacles taking the appearance of fingers...

Western Animation

• The Lizard King from 3-2-1 Penguins! reveals his long, bony fingers to Michelle to show her that he has a good chance of winning the game of Squid-Tac-Toad.
• Chip and Skip from Camp Lazlo claims that Leaky Lake contains the bodies of dead outlaws, whose fingernails are still growing. Apparently, they can get so long that they will reach out and grab your boat.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: Amongst the Demon Sorcerers, Tso Lan has bony-looking hands with clawed fingers, and he at one point tries slashing Jackie and Jade with them.
• Aurra Sing in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Along with chalk-white skin, a bald head with a single tail of hair, and an antenna protruding from that same bald head. This is a natural trait for Palliduvans (aside from being half-human, her species is unknown in Legends).
• Transformers:
  • Several Decepticons in Transformers: Prime, especially Starscream and Soundwave. Starscream in particular has shown his are long and sharp enough to function as makeshift blades, which are very useful for stabbing through other Cybertronians.
  • Obsidian from Beast Machines has what looks like bundles of wires for fingers. His toy meanwhile doesn't even have hands.

Real Life

• The aye-aye◊ (Daubentonia madagascariensis), a species of lemur, is notable for its long, spindly fingers. And as if just having long fingers isn't creepy enough, the middle finger is especially long and thin, and it even has a ball-and-socket joint much like a human shoulder. Even the way they use it is creepy — they insert their finger into a hole in a tree and then lick off the bugs that crawl onto it. The aye-aye's long fingers have given it a reputation as being bad luck; it is said that if an aye-aye were to point its middle finger at you, a horrible death will follow (granted there is an element of truth to this; the aye-aye's middle finger certainly ends up causing its prey a horrible death). Sadly, this has also led to its species being endangered, as people have been known to kill aye-ayes due to this superstition.
• Bats. Their wings are actually made up of extremely elongated fingers, which nowadays are all but unrecognizable from what they once were. On a less extreme level, the now-extinct pterosaurs had wings supported by elongated pinkie fingers.
• Marfan Syndrome is a genetic disorder of the connective tissue characterized by exceptional tallness and long limbs, including very long thin fingers.
• Arachnodactyly, or "spider fingers", is pretty much this very trope in real-life, and a symptom of several medical conditions, notably the aforementioned Marfan syndrome.
• Likewise, eunuchs castrated before puberty were documented to develop long fingers, along with Creepily Long Arms (and legs) and a Creepy High-Pitched Voice, as they grew up. Eunuchs have often been characterized as sinister throughout history, though that has at least as much to do with their powerful positions behind the scenes in various monarchies as it does with their physical features.
• Actor Doug Jones has built a career on combining his extreme flexibility, long limbs and fingers, and mastery of both Body Language and intense character acting to become a Man of a Thousand Faces, and a darling of special effects artists. His hand gestures in particular border on the surreal: a single graceful ripple or jerky Marionette Motion of his fingers can replace pages worth of characterization and hours worth of makeup.
• Older Than Dirt: There was a family of tiny, birdlike dinosaurs called Scansoriopterygids that had very long fingers. The purpose of these fingers was the subject of debate for a long time; most thought they were used the same way aye-ayes use their fingers, while others believed they were used for climbing. Yi qi, a scansorioptrygid discovered in 2015, suggests that they were used for something else entirely...

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