"I'll take 'Who is an impostor?' for $500, Alex."
From gods to aliens to robots and beyond, there are always stories of non-humans disguising themselves as humans, maybe even ghosts pretending to be living versions of themselves.
Contrast Animal Disguise.
Sub-tropes:
- Changeling Tale: When fairy creatures pretend to be human infants, usually after abducting the real babies and switching places with them.
- Devil in Disguise: The Devil (or one of his minions) is hiding among humanity.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: When an inhuman being assumes the form of something familiar to humans in order to keep from creeping humans out. Often, the form they assume also looks human.
- God in Human Form: A deity pretends to be a mere mortal.
- Hugh Mann: A human disguise done badly.
- Humanshifting: Some shapeshifters are only able to change into humans from their natural form.
- Mobile-Suit Human: When a small creature is piloting a robotic vehicle that looks like a human.
- Replicant Snatching: When a robot steals the very hide of a human and wears it to cover its body.
- Skin-Tone Disguise: For the atypically-hued humanoids that need to pass as human.
- Technically Naked Shapeshifter: Shapeshifting into a human involves copying their clothes as well.
- They Look Like Us Now: When evil creatures figure out a way to look like humans.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Inuyasha:
- It is common for small yokai (kitsune, tanuki, kawauso, etc.) to be able to pretend to be human. However, it is implied that they can only sustain this transformation for a short time.
- In an early episode, we see a mantis yokai. She killed a human princess and brushed her skin over her own body to trap unsuspecting men.
- Many a Monster of the Week in Sailor Moon disguise themselves as a human until they transform to battle the Soldiers. More common in the earlier seasons (almost all the Youma do it).
- Wolves in Wolf's Rain have learned to project illusions that make them appear as humans in order to survive extinction. Rare humans (like Quent Yaden) can see through the illusion under certain conditions, while others must come into direct physical contact with the wolf to do so.
- The titular zombies of Zombie Land Saga use... makeup. Granted, it's a lot of makeup, since they're blue-green rotting corpses with sunken red eyes covered in scars and bandages without it, but it's somehow wildly effective; they comment on their surprisingly good looks, they're able to perform without arousing suspicion even when one of their members falls apart on stage, and the cop who's shot at Sakura twice completely fails to recognize her face to face in the third episode.
Asian Animation
- Satellite Girl and Milk Cow: When Kyung-chun demands to be changed back into a human, Merlin casts a spell that seems to do just that. However, KITSAT-1 finds a zipper on the back of his body and pulls on it, revealing that Merlin just gave him a human suit.
Comic Books
- Martian Manhunter is a shapeshifter who disguises himself as a human when not working with the Justice League, so that he may live on Earth among humans as one of them.
- Supergirl adopts a human name and identity after arriving on Earth, which she uses as her secret identity.
- While Superman was raised under the name Clark Kent and is a Human Alien, as an adult he refrains from using his powers in noticeable ways in public while being Clark Kent, in order to be able to keep living quietly as Kent with a job and family separate from Superman.
Comic Strips
- In Scary Gary, shape-shifter Sheila seems to use her shape-shifting powers mainly to look like various human women to increase her chances of getting a date.
Fan Works
- In Hakkōna
and Kaitō Kokoro, Kiku, a nekomataneko, can take on a human form in an attempt to blend in with other humans — not that his nekomataneko form is that different barring the cat ears and twin tails, though.
Films — Live-Action
- Avengers: Infinity War: Vision can phase into a human disguise over his normal synthezoid form. He loses the ability to do it when he gets skewered and gravely wounded by Corvus Glaive.
- Acme Products chairman from Looney Tunes: Back in Action has a hulking Hypercompetent Sidekick named Bob that seems human, until Bob encounters the Tazmanian Devil in the jungles of Africa. There, Bob unzips his Latex Perfection full-body disguise to reveal that he's a Tazmanian She-Devil. The two devils begin a whirlwind romance of kissing and fighting.
- The Men in Black movies (and cartoon) make prominent use of this trope. Extraterrestrial immigrants live on Earth, hiding in plain sight by disguising themselves as humans (typically by wearing rubber skins or robotic suits). Also, an evil Bug alien somehow accomplishes this by murdering a farmer and stealing his skin.
- Our Friend Power 5:
- When the turtles want to fit in on Earth, they try to disguise themselves as humans. Unfortunately, the only human they saw up to that point was Dalgeun dressed like a jiangshi... It works much better later on, when they meet normal humans, allowing Yesular to blend in as an ordinary Korean woman.
- The two main Shark Gang members turn themselves into human men, only with both of them having noticeable facial hair, similar to Shark himself.
- In Toomorrow, the aliens walk among humans wearing skinsuits with Latex Perfection masks.
- In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Toon who really killed Marvin Acme turns out to be Judge Doom, who wears a rubber suit to disguise himself as a human. We never get to see what he really looks like — other than his ever-shifting red eyes, which he normally hides by fitting a pair of glass ones into the eyeholes of his rubber mask.
Literature
- The Murderbot Diaries: The titular Cyborg goes undercover as a human when it's freed from the company that created it. Since it was mass-produced as a Faceless Goon, this consists of a long-sleeved shirt to hide its Arm Cannons and data port, plus an Auto-Doc session to tweak its build just enough that it won't match the profile on computer sensors. However, it takes some coaching from a sentient spaceship before it's able to avoid Uncanny Valley.
- "Spell My Name with an S": The numerologist is actually an Energy Being trying to prove a bet. They created The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday just to present the idea of Dr Zebatinsky changing his name to Dr Sebatinsky.
- Sunshine: Vampires have an Undeathly Pallor and a powerful Uncanny Valley effect, but Constantine is somehow able to look like a normal human in front of The Men in Black. Since he can turn it on on cue and it makes him distinctly shorter, it appears to be a supernatural ability.
- "Through the Gates of the Silver Key": When preparing to return to Earth, Carter creates a loose costume and waxen mask with which to disguise Zkauba's alien body from human sight until he might be able to separate himself from their accidental fusion. In the climax, it is revealed that "Swami Chandraputra" is in fact this disguised self, and that beneath his baggy clothing and bearded mask there is still the alien body in which Carter's mind resides.
- Ukiah Oregon: The aliens are actually The Virus, but they arrived on Earth in the bodies of aliens. The last remaining original invader (referred to as Hex), is a Not Quite Human alien who uses heavy clothes and similar to disguise his differences when necessary.
- Yumi and the Nightmare Painter: Hoid used lightweaving to give Design some sort of three-dimensional disguise; apparently the specifics are complicated, but the short version is that it acts like she's made of flesh.
Live-Action TV
- The main characters from 3rd Rock from the Sun are Human Aliens that pose as a human family.
- Doctor Who:
- As first seen in "Aliens of London"/"World War Three", the Slitheen kill humans and use their skin as a disguise.
- In "The End of Time", two normal-looking scientists turn out to be green cactus people disguised with a "shimmer".
- Daleks can disguise themselves as humans, using their bodies as "puppets". It's convincing until the eyestalk bursts through the forehead.
- The Good Place: In order to secretly torture the four humans whom they live with, the demons give themselves human skins so the humans don't notice anything odd.
- Ice Fantasy: After Ka Suo and Shi have to leave the Ice Tribe in a hurry, they quickly realize that their white hair and blue eyes draw too much attention among the mortals. Consequently, both magically change their appearance to a more human one, with dark hair and brown eyes.
- Interview with the Vampire (2022): For reasons unknown, the vampire Armand pretends to be Rashid, the human personal assistant of Louis, whenever he's in Daniel's presence, even going through the trouble of putting on brown contact lenses to hide his orange vampire eyes and wearing gloves to conceal his vampire fingernails. He drops the disguise at the end of Season 1.
- The Outer Limits (1995): In "Starcrossed", Michael Ryan discovers that Teresita Arboleda, a waitress at his coffee beer Heaven, is a Hing in disguise.
- Bajorans, Klingons, Romulans, Vulcans, (with a little bit of plastic surgery and perhaps a haircut) and Trill (bit of makeup to hide the spots) can do this in Star Trek.
Magazine
- The MAD comic "National Gorilla Suit Day" is an Overly Long Gag about various people revealing that they are actually Killer Gorillas wearing human suits.
- Super-Science Fiction: The February 1959 issue has an inversion, where a woman has a green-skinned alien suit halfway on.
Multiple Media
- Lilo & Stitch:
- Jumba and Pleakley are two aliens living with Lilo and Nani Pelekai in their Hawaiian home. Both of them blend in by wearing some rather poor disguises (only just sets of human clothing — female in Pleakley's case) that somehow fool most people.
- Similarly, Lilo's "pet" alien creature Stitch gets by through claims of being a "dog" despite looking nothing like one, and even he disguises himself as a human boy at times in Lilo & Stitch: The Series.
- In the second episode of the Chinese animated series Stitch & Ai, Stitch also disguises himself as his new human friend in that series Wang Ai Ling by putting on a lot of face and body covering clothes in order to trick her aunt Daiyu, which prevented Ai from being taken to the city for the time being.
Video Games
- EXTRAPOWER: Giant Fist The devil Coma disguises herself as a human doctor to aid her infiltration.
Web Animation
- Helluva Boss: Demons from Hell that travel to the living world are required to disguise themselves as humans so they don't break the masquerade. Hellhounds, succubi and demon royalty are all shown to be capable of transforming into humans with their magic. Imps, who have no magic of their own, have to resort to conventional disguises.
Webcomics
- The many supernatural creatures living in Kellwood forest in Charby the Vampirate rarely bother with proper disguises beyond sunglasses when traveling into the nearby human city due to the super strength Perception Filter on the place. When Charby and Mye invite Yiska into town with them she insists they disguise themselves as human first although Mye points out that it's not really necessary.
- To many humans, Michealis in Clinic of Horrors appears to be human himself. His true form, as seen by Bianca, is actually that of an Eldritch Abomination blob of flesh.
Web Videos
- A common scenario in 7-Second Riddles involves finding aliens in disguise as humans. They will inevitably give themselves away somehow, simply by doing things humans cannot like glowing, sporting Extra Eyes, or displaying some sort of superpower.
Western Animation
- The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo: The episode "Ship of Ghouls" has a ghost impersonate a human travel agent as well as a human ship captain named Captain Ferguson. For the former, he simply makes his body more opaque. For the latter, he wears a lifelike mask.
- Roger of American Dad! always dresses up as a human in public to keep people from realizing he's an alien.
- Zim of Invader Zim, uses this when he arrives on earth. However, he only uses human-like eye coverings and a wig while he retains his green skin, which Dib Membrane is the only one who notices.
- Tiny Toon Adventures:
- In the short "The Year Book Star" (part of "Toon Physics"), Babs and Plucky compete against each other to see who can star in the most photos of the school yearbook, with the loser having to suffer the humiliation of the winner's choice. During the official count-off, the two appear to have tied, until it is revealed that a human boy wearing an orange hat appeared in the background of every photo either of them was in, causing him to win easily. The Boy in the Orange Hat then reveals himself to be Buster Bunny in a latex mask and suit, who entered the competition to teach Babs and Plucky not to compete to win a bet, but all this does is prompt Babs and Plucky to beat him up as the short irises out.
- In the episode "Thirteensomething", Babs wishes she could audition for the titular Show Within a Show, and Buster dares her to. Knowing that the casting office only hires humans, Babs disguises herself as a human and changes her name to "Babs Bunawalskioversmith". Unlike Buster's disguise in "The Year Book Star", Babs is able to pass for human simply by covering her ears. The fact that her face is covered in fur doesn't quite go unnoticed: "You really should get a wax, dear. You have a lot of facial hair!"
