Follow TV Tropes

Following

Faceship

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/small_starship_mario.png
Well, at least you'll never lose it in a parking lot.

Mei Ling: [Meta Knight] also commands the Halberd, a flying battleship.
Snake: Mm, I've seen it. The bow looks like his mask. What kind of weirdo puts his face on the bow of a ship, anyway?
Snake's codec call regarding Meta Knight, Super Smash Bros. Brawl

So, your airship/spaceship/boat/car or other vehicle is already cool as it is. However, it seems to be missing something. How can you make it cooler? With your own self-image, of course!

A faceship is any vehicle or ship that has the likeness of a character's face or the entire character built on it, usually its pilot or Captain. Villains have a tendency to use these, either for the purpose of intimidation or due to their huge ego, but heroes can ride in these as well (see image at right for a hero's example). If the design isn't the owner's face real face but the design of their distinctive mask or helmet, it gets a bit more plausible, but it can make it less obvious which came first.

Alternately, instead of a face, the front will be a skull, for the extra intimidation factor.

Often overlaps with Cool Starship, Cool Airship, Cool Boat, or Cool Car. If the face has a mouth that can swallow things, it's a Mega-Maw Maneuver. Villainous versions overlap with Malevolent Mugshot. This is a Subtrope of Thememobile.


Examples

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga 
  • The ships of Shangri'La in Noein have the form of multi-faced floating statues.
  • Team Rocket's Meowth Balloon from Pokémon: The Series. Also, their Magikarp (originally a Gyarados) submarine.
  • In the Mazinger series:
    • Mazinger Z: Dr. Hell's Cool Ship s and Cool Airships often have a face built on them.
    • Great Mazinger: And so did Mykeros and Demonika, Mykene Empire Cool Airships and airborne carriers. Mykeros had multiple faces built along its entire perimeter in reality were gates to launch the Robeasts.
    • UFO Robo Grendizer: When Grendizer transformed into a Starship, his face appeared situated on the bow. Several Vegan Starships also had a face on the frontside.
  • While most of the Gunmen in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann are face-shaped, the Anti-Spirals have several spaceship models based on body parts, including faces. It is incredibly creepy. Chouginga Dai-Gurren also counts. It's essentially a huge transforming robot, which spends more of its screen-time as a giant ship. It's ship-form is basically the Space Battleship Yamato with a face slapped onto the front.
  • Subverted in Mobile Suit Gundam: the Falmel, Char Aznable's personal Musai-class cruiser, may have a bridge tower customized to be vaguely reminiscent of his helmet and mask, but it was already there before Char was given it by admiral Dozle Zabi, who has been seen commanding Zeon's fleet at Loum from either the Falmel itself or a cruiser with the same modification. The latter is explicitely the case in the retelling Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin: Dozle commanded the Battle of Loum from the Valkirye, a command modification that includes that bridge design, improved communication suite, and point defense, and later had the Falmel customized in the same way before assigning it to Char.
  • Benjamin Gundam V2 from SD Gundam World Heroes captains a ship that has a Gundam face at the bow. It can also transform into a submarine.

    Asian Animation 
  • Happy Heroes: The spaceship Big M. and Little M. are using right before they're sent falling to Planet Xing is designed to look like an imposing-looking helmet, with the front windows resembling eyes.

    Comic Books 
  • Angry Birds Comics: Game Play: The submarine in Operation Nautilus looks a little like a pig's head.
  • Batman: The Batmobile sometimes has his masked face on it. One time, The Joker decided he should have something like that and created the Jokermobile, which has his face on it.
  • The Blitzspear from Nemesis the Warlock — a reverse example, in that the Blitzspear appeared several episodes before Nemesis himself, and the artist decided that when Nemesis himself finally appeared, the face would be based off the car.
  • Superman:
    • In "Brainiac Rebirth", Brainiac rebuilds himself like a skeletal robot, and builds a ship which looks right like his skull, with Combat Tentacles attached to the base. "Superman: Brainiac" reintroduces his skull ship to the Post-Crisis continuity.
    • In Kingdom Come, Dr. Sivana's head appears in the form of a tentacled faceship similar to Brainiac's, slaughtering the Marvel Family in a movie sequence made to torture a grown-up Billy Batson into submission to Lex Luthor's will.
    • Power Girl (2009) has Vartox's Intergalactic Headship, shaped like his head.
  • From Transformers, Rodimus has one (which he dubs the "Rodpod") in Transformers: More than Meets the Eye. It's absolutely hideous, and the rest of the Lost Light crew loathes it (at one point Whirl vents by attacking it with a metal 2x4). Still, after the original is blown up they decide to build a new one anyway, and Rodimus admits that most people are pretty decent.
    Perceptor: We're not locking the Rodpod?
    Skids: Hopefully someone will steal it.
  • In Paperinik New Adventures the Evronian Sigil Spam of duck bills is applied even to starships, resulting in the front of their ships vaguely looking like an eyeless Evronian.
  • The Rat-Man (1989) comic strips in the Roland Rat Christmas Annuals reinvent the Ratmobile (which in the puppet shows is a bright pink Ford Anglia) as a racer shaped like Roland's head, with exhaust "whiskers" and a giant version of his omnipresent sunglasses as the windscreen.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW), Eggman's main flying fortress and production and distribution method of the Metal Virus was actually called "The Faceship". It would offload its payload by vomiting floods of the Metal Virus over towns and cities.

    Fan Works 
  • A Crown of Stars: The HMS Asuka Langley Sohryu is a moon-sized starship. It has a 1000 kilometre tall picture of Asuka painted on its hulk, wearing her plug-suit.

    Films — Animated 
  • The "Pink Elephants on Parade" sequence from Dumbo ends with all of the pink elephants turning into various vehicles that look like them before finally exploding, never to be seen, heard, or mentioned again.
  • The Super Mario Bros. Movie: The Shy Guys and Shifit take Luigi to Bowser in a Shy Guy-shaped hot air balloon; the balloon itself is the hood, while the basket is the mask.
  • Hamm/The Evil Doctor Porkchop was briefly seen piloting a blimp shaped like him during the opening credits of Toy Story 3.
    • Also, the Toy Story Hot Wheels die-cast toyline, which comprises of cars shaped like various characters from this film series.
    • And the Disney Racers die-cast toyline, which is sold exclusively at the Disney Theme Parks.

    Films — Live-Action 

    Literature 
  • Troy Rising: features a mobile asteroid with a Spartan head carved into its surface.
  • The crab-like Prador that inhabit Neal Asher's The Polity universe feature this trope by shaping their ships roughly in their own image, a slightly flattened pear.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The masks worn by Kamen Rider Den-O's various forms also adorn the cars of the DenLiner train.

    Tabletop Games 

    Toys 
  • The Mask got two in the toyline — the Mask-Mobile and the Mask Cycle. The first is notable for appearing in both the animated series and in Son of the Mask, and the second is a two-for-one Facemobile: its sidecar carries Milo, and has a replica of Milo's grimacing green Mask face on it. Both of these are justified examples of the trope, even for a toy—the Mask can customize an ordinary car or motorbike just by sitting on it!
  • BIONICLE: The Toa Terrain Crawler's visage is very similar to the Kanohi Faxon worn by Hahli. Being that it's a living creature fitted to be used as a diving vehicle, it's more coincidental than anything.
  • Hot Wheels has a line of Star Wars themed vehicles, some of which seem to be characters' heads or faces turned into cars.

    Video Games 
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • The Trope Namer is Starship Mario, a spaceship/planetoid from Super Mario Galaxy 2, where Lubba comments that it's less like a spaceship and more like a faceship.
    • In New Super Mario Bros. Wii, the airship that Bowser Jr. and the Koopalings ride has Bowser's face as the figurehead.
    • In New Super Mario Bros. U, the Koopalings all have airships that each have their individual faces on them. Bowser's airship from NSMBW also returns as their mothership.
  • The Battleship Halberd has its captain Meta Knight's mask on it. Which is lampshaded by Solid Snake and Mei Ling in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
  • Saints Row: The Third has the "Gatmobile", which is a big ol' van with a Gat head for a front end, usually ridden by a Saints mascot wearing a large Gat mask. It's not unique (although you'll probably think it is) and it's implied to be one of the parts of the Saints turning into pop-culture icons. Oh, and it doubles as the most durable vehicle that isn't a Tank, and as a result, doesn't cause mass panic when it's driven.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Snake encounters Liquid Ocelot's base of operations, Outer Haven, which for strange reasons, has the faces of Solidus Snake, Liquid Snake, Solid Snake and Big Boss on it that resemble Mt. Rushmore.
  • Neptunia V has a really strange one; Keiji Inafune's face on a plane.
  • Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik from Sonic the Hedgehog series makes plenty of ships that have his face on it, most notably the Death Egg.
  • The Huge Spaceship in LittleBigPlanet 2 looks like the Enterprise with Sackboy's head.
  • In the opening stage of Star Fox: Assault, Andrew (the nephew of the late Emperor Andross) transforms his flagship into a gigantic replica of his head as a homage to the final battle of Star Fox 64, where you fought Andross (who was nothing more than a giant disembodied head and hands).
  • The Gangplank Galleon from Donkey Kong Country has King K. Rool's head as the figurehead. Furthermore, his airship, the Flying Krock, has a cockpit shaped like a crocodile head.
  • Metroid: Samus Aran's Gunship throughout its various incarnations usually seems to be designed with Samus' helmet at the front. Granted, it's not really her face, just the helmet that she wears.
  • General Skun-ka'pe's ship in Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse looks like the head of a gorilla. The mouth opens to reveal the hatch, and the tongue is the ramp/escalator.
  • The Stinkowing (a fighter jet shaped like Stinkoman's mask) from Stinkoman 20X6.
  • While Ganon himself doesn't appear in it, the Demon Train of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (a Cool Train with a human face on the front) looks so much like him it has been nicknamed the Ganontrain.
  • BustCzar/Head Zeppelin from Heavy Weapon, a face-blimp that fires out missiles and drops bombs.
  • Charon, the ship that guides damned souls to Hell in Dante's Inferno, has a giant talking head as the figurehead.
  • The race of Lingon in Fig Hunter Universe uses spaceships shaped like their heads.
  • Several of the historical Cooper family vehicles from Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves have stylized Cooper faces in the design, notably the autogyro.
  • In the StreetPass Mii Plaza game Mii Force, the Gold Bone Gang's entire fleet apparently has this motif, with all of the skull-faced opponents piloting a ship with a skull on it somewhere (including, yes, on their mothership).
  • Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time has a Facestation with the Nefarious Space Station, shaped like Dr. Nefarious' head.
  • While it's not your head, in a World of Warcraft dungeon you can get a flying helicopter mount of Mimiron's Head, a flying mechanical gnome head.
  • Semi-example in Armikrog. Tommynaut's spacecraft has eyes and spiky hair that make it look like a head, and there is even a monogrammed T on the forehead, but it doesn't really resemble his head.
  • Seafolk Village, the only major settlement in Pokémon Sun and Moon's Poni Island. Apart from the Pokémon Center, all the villagers live in boats that are shaped like various Pokémon: Wailord (a restaurant), Huntail, Whiscash, Magikarp and, of all things, Steelixnote .
  • Krapton supervillain Rictus from Anachronox commands a large spaceship called KSC Grimacer whose bow is adorned with a giant grimace that can swallow little hapless shuttles. The doors inside the ship are adorned with the exact same visage.
  • Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom features the Zippelin, a giant airship decked with a gaudy oversized bust of the guy who made it, Zip Vector. Everyone (except Zip) agrees that flying around in something with a giant golden head on the bow is not only embarrassing, but also impractical due to weight and aerodynamics. Thus, Bracken resolves to ditch the head and turn the Zippelin into a regular Cool Airship.
  • Fuga: Melodies of Steel: Most of the Berman Army's tanks have triangular dog ears placed on top of them, which are often situated behind a main gun, giving said main gun the impression of a dog's snout and the top of the tank overall the impression of a dog's head. The Goldschakal boss tank and Lanzierer mooks take this one step further by how they already have a "snout" on their tower areas, separate from their main guns.

    Western Animation 
  • A very obtuse example in a short on MTV's Liquid Television, called "Space War", that was done to appear like a 6th grader's board doodling of an alien invasion shows the alien's mothership to be a 400 mile tall version of the classic image of what most Westerners think as god's face.
  • The Petercopter and Hindenpeter in Family Guy has Peter Griffin's head at the front. Peter actually has multiple vehicles with his likeness, and they always crash. Also, in an Imagine Spot teaser, Stewie is an intergalactic fighter pilot tasked with destroying a huge Death Star-esque station that is essentially a 3D model of Peter's head. In reality, he's playing with a toy fighter ship and jabbing it into the side of Peter's head as he yells "Got you! Got you!".
  • In the Classic Disney Short The Autograph Hound, Greta Garbo arrives at a movie studio in a limo that has her face on front.
  • In Phineas and Ferb:
    • Agent P's hovercar is platypus-shaped.
    • Dr Doofenshmirtz has a monster truck, among other vehicles, shaped like him.
    • Professor Poofenplotz from "Isabella and the Temple of Sap" has her "Me-Mobile", a Spider Tank shaped like her head. "Bee Story" reveals that Poofenplotz also has a "Myself-icopter."
    • Phineas and Ferb themselves get in on the action with hot-air balloons in their own likenesses in "Last Train to Bustville", and a space station shaped like Phineas' head in Phineas and Ferb: Mission Marvel.
  • Megatron did this twice. First, in Beast Wars, he molded a Vok craft into his face for a few minutes. Then, in Beast Machines, he built a transforming ship with his face permanently on it.
  • The Larrymobile from VeggieTales, which basically looks like Larry Boy laying on his back with his plunger-ears serving as the back wheels and two more plungers seving as the front wheels located where his legs (if he had such, since Larry Boy doesn't have legs) would be.
  • One episode of Static Shock had The Joker and his henchmen drive around in a firetruck shaped like his face terrorizing people.
  • One episode of Cyberchase had The Hacker and his cronies Buzz and Delete enter a race with a large sinister-looking green car with The Hacker's face on the front.
  • The Looney Tunes Show: Daffy's car is a parade float shaped like himself.
  • A few of Megabyte's vehicles from Reboot
  • The Thunderquack from Darkwing Duck.
  • Lord Hater's skull-shaped ship from Wander over Yonder. And his ill-fated H.A.T.E.R.V. vehicle from "The New Toy" had his face at the front.

    Real Life 

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Top

The Petercopter

Peter's private helicopter is decorated with his eyes and hair.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (19 votes)

Example of:

Main / Faceship

Media sources:

Report