Menacing Mask

"Oink oink, bitch."

If you want to keep your identity a secret but you also want to give someone a good dose of Nightmare Fuel while doing it, these are the kinds of masks to go for. They're effective not just because of how much of the face they hide but also because they thrive on the Uncanny Valley effect. If these masks are not straight-up Halloween masks depicting monsters, they will depict humans that only barely pass as such because, well, faces aren't typically made of rubber and plastic.

Some versions of the plastic mask are transparent and have masculine features (Big eyebrows, facial hair, and larger features) or feminine features (eyeshadow, lipstick, blush, and smaller features). Sometimes, these masks are used to distinguish the bad boys and girls that wear them.

Some of these masks may not be scary by themselves. They may even look kinda goofy. At least they do until whoever's wearing them has a gun or a knife to your face. Then you look at them with a new perspective.

Masks of the plastic variety tend to just cover the face while the rubber kind will usually cover the entire head of the wearer. Though the plastic mask may sometimes be enhanced with a hood to conceal the hair.

Some masks like this have a resemblance to celebrities, political figures, and fictional characters while making them so inhuman looking that they will veer heavily into uncanny valley territory.

Closely related to Evil Mask (For masks that are not just creepy, but also have lives of their own that use the wearers for their own ends) and Malevolent Masked Men. Also see White Mask of Doom for white masks that have similar effects while mostly being featureless, Uncanny Valley which this trope is meant to deliberately invoke along with keeping identities hidden, Face-Design Shield for shields with unnerving facial designs, and Scary Impractical Armor for intimidating costumes that may include masks and are also not very intimidating when it comes to practical use.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Bleach: Whenever Ichigo goes into hollow mode, a skull-like mask with red markings manifests on his face. The mask can take multiple forms and cover varying amounts of his face depending on what hollow form he takes.
• Tobi/Obito's various masks in Naruto.
• Plunderer: Licht Bach wears a variety of Noh masks. Most notably, mask with a pale white face with red lips and a streak of red running down from one eye known as the "flash mask". A mask that represents Licht's self-loathing.

Comic Books

• Captain America: In Captain America's corner of the larger Marvel Universe, at least three villains stand out that use an iconic skull mask:
  • The Red Skull is a former Nazi high officer who, during World War II, wore a characteristic red skull mask to strike fear in his enemies. Later, the mask became his face after being disfigured by his own Death Dust.
  • Crossbones is one of Red Skull's underlings in "modern times". He wears a mask with a stylized white skull.
  • Taskmaster, another villain sometimes associated with the Red Skull, also wears a skull mask over his normal human face.
• Fantastic Four: Doctor Doom wears a silver metal mask. Doom started out as a foreign exchange student from Latveria studying advanced physics at an upstate New York university. A flawed experiment in his dorm room caused an explosion that left Doom with a long vertical gash in his face. Expelled from uni, Doom traveled to Tibet, where he studied mysticism, and forged his iconic mask with its perpetual scowl. His face is rarely seen without this mask.
• Spider-Man:
  • The Green Goblin is notorious for this thanks to his rubber, expressing, green mask in the likeness of a green-skinned goblin.
  • The Inner Demons are a gang of bodyguards under the control of villain Mr. Negative and wear silvery bluish Chinese masks.
• X-Men: Ogun is (supposedly) a long-lived samurai master who mentored Logan (before he was Wolverine) at one point. In "the modern era", he reappears in Japan to brainwash Logan's then-recent protégé, Kitty Pryde. During a mid-1980s story arc, he resurfaces, wearing a red Oni mask.

Films — Animated

• Satan appears in The Adventures of Mark Twain, living on a Baby Planet. He wears reddish armor, calls himself an "angel", and has no visible head. Instead, Satan holds an opera mask where his face should be. Initially, this mask isn't scary, but the longer Satan speaks to his guests, the more deformed and grotesque the mask becomes. Twain and company end up fleeing from him and his monstrous mask.
• Princess Mononoke: San wears a mask while conducting raids on Iron Town supply lines. Hers is roughly a youkai mask with crimson accents, evoking a "blood ghost" aesthetic. Understandable, since San is rather pretty, despite being a feral child.

Films — Live-Action

• Alice, Sweet Alice: Alice and Mrs. Tredoni wear the feminine version of the clear plastic mask with a yellow raincoat. Alice even has a collection of them that add to her Creepy Child persona.
• Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon: The titular character wears a plastic pale mask with an exaggeratedly large, thin mouth and wide eye holes that have dark spaces under them. The mask also comes with scraggly dirty blonde hair.
• Curtains: The killer wears a rubber mask with long red hair depicting a wrinkled, elderly woman.
• The Dark Knight: At the beginning of the movie, the Joker and his gang don rubber clown masks to rob a bank. In a homage to The Killing, the Joker wears the same clown mask worn in the earlier film.
• Deadly Circuit: Catherine and Madeline wear plastic masks with the likeness of Snow White during their robbery spree.
• Drive (2011): The Driver puts on a latex mask in the likeness of a bald, old man before killing El Nino. Why he wears it is one of the film's hotly debated points.
• Even Lambs Have Teeth: The Pastor, who decides to visit a sex slave ring and rapes the girls, is distinguished by the extremely creepy pig mask he wears.
• Four Flies on Grey Velvet: Roberto's harasser wears a rubber doll-like mask in the likeness of a blonde boy.
• The Friends of Eddie Coyle: The Scalise gang wear masculine clear plastic masks during the first robbery. They then wear rubber middle-aged men masks during the second robbery. Averted in the third robbery, when they wear ski masks.
• The Friday the 13th series has one of the most iconic examples of this trope in the form of Jason's hockey mask, which has become practically synonymous with the slasher villain archetype since it first appeared.
• Fun with Dick and Jane:
  • In The Remake, one of the robberies featured in the montage scene shows Dick and Jane robbing a Chinese restaurant while wearing full-head rubber masks of Bill and Hilary Clinton. Played for Laughs when the clerks don't treat them with any suspicion and actually seem to happily welcome them until they pull the guns out and aim them.
  • Later in the movie, the bank Dick is in the process of robbing happens to also be the target of a couple of robbers wearing rubber Bill and Hilary masks covering their faces rather than their heads. After they're apprehended, they are revealed to be Oz and Debbie.
• Gone in 60 Seconds (2000): Randall, Sara, and Kip briefly wear transparent plastic masks during a car theft.
• Happy Death Day: The killer wears a plastic baby face mask based on the school mascot combined with a black hoodie.
• Jawbreaker: Julie, Courtney, and Marcie wear the make-up wearing variety of clear plastic masks along with black hoodies to abduct Elizabeth from her room as a birthday prank. A prank that goes horrifically wrong when Elizabeth ends up choking on the jawbreaker used to gag her.
• Julia 2008: After the titular character is hired by Elena to abduct her son from his grandfather's care, Elena provides Julia with a black plastic mask having the features of a human face and nothing else. After Julia puts it on and demonstrates it to Elena, she is so unnerved by it that it's enough to make her change her mind and want to get a different mask, but Julia quickly leaves and decides to use the mask anyway after Elena tries to get her to pray with her.
  Elena: It's like death. White's better. That's going to frighten Tom. It frightens me. Now I have to change it! I-I have to change that and— Pray with me. Pray with me now.
  Julia: I don't pray.
• The Killing: Johnny Clay wears a rubber clown mask when he and his also-masked gang rob a racetrack at the film's climax.
• Ms. 45: Thana's first rapist wears a masculine version of a transparent mask that just covers his upper face.
• The Nest Of The Cuckoo Birds: A blonde, naked woman wearing a transparent plastic mask attacks Johnson with a knife in the Everglades. He manages to get away from her before he encounters her again in the inn (now wearing clothes) before she falls onto a meat hook and accidentally kills herself. She is then revealed to be the mother character.
• The Purge: The teenagers who break into the Sandins' house during the Purge wear creepy rubber masks with Slasher Smiles.
• Return to Oz: Many of the Wheelers are masked when they first appear, making them doubly frightening, especially the one who first confronts Dorothy.
• The killers in the Saw franchise wear sinister pig masks with blood and pus running from the eyes whenever capturing people. As a bonus point, a pig squeal-like screech usually plays during such scenes.
• In Scream, the masked killer wears a white ghost-like Halloween mask with hollowed-out eyes, a pained expression, and a perpetually open mouth hole. The killer's name is given as Ghostface, probably due to the mask they wear.
• Set It Off: Stoney, Cleo, and TT wear transparent plastic masks over their faces during the final robbery that prove effective at distorting them to the point of hardly being recognisable. Somewhat of a Paper-Thin Disguise however, since they don't bother covering their rather distinctive hairstyles.
• In Smiley, there is supposedly an urban legend about a serial killer called Smiley McGee that wears the smiley emoticon on their face: a fleshy-looking, distorted smiley icon. Subverted when the movie reveals that it is acutally a group of individuals who decide to psychologically torment Ashley, the protagonist. Then double subverted when there is in fact a real Smiley McGee on the loose.
• Spider-Man: A gang of armored truck robbers wear transparent plastic masks in one scene. Then, of course, there's the Green Goblin's menacingly grinning visage his mask presents.
• Spider-Man: Homecoming: Subverted during a bank robbery scene involving a gang of robbers with cartoonish plastic masks based on the comic versions of the Avengers that are a little too cartoonish to be intimidating. Not helped by Spider-Man quipping at them.
• Sugar & Spice: The A squad cheerleading group wear rubber Betty Doll masks during the robbery with the exception of Lucy who joins the group later with a rubber Nixon Mask. It doesn't help keep their identities hidden against Lisa who happens to be in the store during the robbery and recognizes them based on the pyramid stunt they perform to reach a CCTV camera to spray paint it.
• The Strangers: Dollface and Pin Up Girl wear plastic masks depicting women's faces while Dollface's mask is less realistic and resembles something closer to an actual doll than Pin Up Girl's. The Man in the Mask does not wear a plastic or rubber mask. Instead, he has a white sack over his head.
• In Thor: The Dark World, the Dark Elves are malevolent enemies of Asgard wanting to plunge the universe into darkness who, save for the main antagonist Malekith and Kurse, wear expressionless white porcelain masks.
• The Town: In the first heist, the robbers wear hoods and rubber dark skull masks that feature discolored teeth. Later in the film, they wear matching nun costumes with rubber masks in the likeness of wrinkled women.
• Villains: Mickey and Jules rob a gas station wearing a rubber pigeon mask and a rubber unicorn mask. The masks themselves are not that intimidating, but Jules swinging a crowbar around and Mickey pointing a gun at the clerk's face are enough to make the clerk faint from shock.

Literature

• Discussed in The Famous Five book Five Go To Smuggler's Top: the creepy servant Block has a face that never shows any expression at all, and, as Anne says, it might even be a wax mask.
• In The Haunted Mask, Carly Beth purchased the titular mask that attaches to her face and changes her personality.
• One of the books on which the King Rollo episodes were based has King Rollo, Queen Gwen, and the Magician making masks to scare Cook with. She gets her own back soon after they all take off their masks.
  Cook: Take off those horrible masks, and come and get your lunch.
  King Rollo: But... we aren't wearing masks!
  Cook: HA HA HA! Just a little joke!
• The Marvelous Land of Oz: Jack Pumpkinhead, the man which Tip builds out of wood and with a pumpkin head to scare Mombi. A face with a huge smile is carved into the head. Later, when Jack is brought to life, he is a melancholic character, and his fixed smile makes him all the more creepy to others. (This example might not strictly be a mask, but is about a fixed expression.)
• In The Masque of the Red Death, by Edgar Allan Poe, nobleman Prospero holds a masquerade ball. At midnight, a mysterious reveller appears, wearing a "corpse-like mask" resembling "the countenance of a stiffened corpse". It was the Red Death itself.
• In the Carl Reiner picture book "Tell Me a Scary Story, But Too Scary", the young Carl sees a creepy thing in the basement. His new neighbor, Mr. Neewohall took the thing upstairs. He gets scared by a frightening monster which turned out to be Mr. Neewohall in a creepy rubber mask.
• Inverted in The Witches. The Grand High Witch wears a mask to disguise herself as a pretty young lady and to hide her extremely ugly real face.

Live-Action TV

• In American Horror Story: Cult, the members of Kai's cult wear terrifying masks each time they kill someone, each vastly different, although most of them are based on clowns and at least some of the masks hinting at the identity of the wearer.
  • Kai Anderson is the three-faced clown with exaggeratedly long noses. Kai himself is a manipulative, two-faced person with a bit of a fixation on his phallus.
  • Winter Anderson, who's a little more enigmatic than the rest, is the clown with the jigsaw puzzle pattern on her mask.
  • Meadow is the BDSM-themed ballgag clown.
  • Harrison is the clown with the holes pattern mask, just like the holes in his beehives.
  • The clown with the red pentagram on her mask and the arms protruding out of her head resembling horns/antlers is Beverly. She also wears a printed shirt like the one Beverly does.
  • Ivy is the elephant-masked clown.
  • The blonde clown filming the murder in episode 5 is RJ, Beverly's cameraman.
  • The clown with the exposed brain is Detective Samuels.
• Birds of Prey (2002): A gang of robbers in "Primal Scream" wear rubber animal masks as they rob a nightclub at gunpoint.
• Breaking the Magician's Code: Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed: The Masked Magician, who specialises in revealing the secrets of well-known illusions, wears a full-face mask to hide his identity, which is often referred to as "that spooky mask". This often does make the more dangerous illusions seem even more sinister.
• CSI: NY: "Uncertainty Rules." On an introverted young man's 21st birthday, he is held at gunpoint by his two best friends who are wearing rubber clown masks with spiked red hair, pointed teeth, and evil grins. ^note The gun turns out to be a realistic-looking water pistol filled with vodka, and they're there to force him to go out on the town for once.
• The Flash (1990): The Black Rose gang in "Tina, Is That You?" wear the feminine version of the clear mask cut at the bottom to cover just the top half of their faces along with black veils to enhance the disguise.
• Discussed in the very first episode of Money Heist, during the scene that follows the title sequence. The heisters wear plastic Salvador Dalí masks that don't really appear to be visually menacing. Rio is not impressed by them and asks why they couldn't have more intimidating masks. In response, Berlin points a gun in his face while he wears his, telling him it does not matter what kind of mask it is as long as you have a gun. As other robbers join in the discussion, Denver interjects by saying that a children's mascot mask like one of Mickey Mouse would make an armed criminal look far more dangerous, due to the contrasting juxtaposition between children's mascots and weaponry.
• Nikita: In the pilot episode, Alex and Nikita rob a pharmacy while wearing rubber masks of a rabbit and a pig. Cartoonish masks that are eerie by themselves and especially intimidating when combined with the black clothing and shotguns they wield.
• Nip/Tuck:
  • The Carver wears a pale white mask with blankly staring human-like eyes, blushed cheeks, and red lips giving the appearance of a woman.
  • While murdering Briggite Reinholdt, Theodora "Teddy" Rowe wears a latex mask that makes her look malformed and inhuman especially when she talks since the mouth of the mask moves along with her actual mouth behind it. Complete with close-ups of her eyes as they peer through the holes and the masked mouth.
• In The Punisher (2017), Jigsaw had his men, along with himself, wear masks to terrify their victims during their robberies.
• Riverdale: The Snuff Film actors in The Auteur's videos wear plastic masks depicting the comic versions of the characters.
• Scream: The TV Series: The killer wears a plastic mask similar to the Ghostface mask except appearing a little more melted and human. It's actually a mask based on the mask Brandon James wore to hide his deformities and prevent infections.
• Starsky & Hutch: In "Photo Finish" the White Witch wears a rubber mask depicting a woman's face along with a black bandanna to cover her hair.
• Stranger Things: Kali's gang wear plastic Halloween-style masks. Including El after she briefly joins them.

Podcasts

• Malevolent gives us two, the first is a pallid mask worn by a mysterious gunman in the first episode, which is described as featureless with slits for the eyes but no mouth, made of a thin stone or heavy plaster with sharp cut corners. Said mask makes a comeback as a part of the uniform worn by members of the Cult of the King in Yellow, and Arthur ends up taking one. It turns out the mask allows one to see things that mortal eyes normally cannot, which comes in handy on multiple occasions. The second is the gasmask worn by Kellin Holeman, a violent, unhinged man who has killed at least once before and almost kills Arthur, before being killed himself.

Tabletop Games

• In Yu-Gi-Oh!, the Mask archetype has a heavy focus on the mask motif. Its members are all the "Fiend" Monster-type (Akuma or Demon, in the original), and are aligned with the DARK attribute. The "Mask" Spell Cards and Trap Cards are also depicted as evil-looking.

Theatre

• This is often averted in theatre by actors wearing masks that only cover part of the face, or having the actors carry the mask rather than wearing it. Many characters do this in a theatrical production of His Dark Materials.

Toys

• BIONICLE: Every Makuta character has an evil-looking Mask of Power (and the mask's powers are often evil as well). In the case of the Phantoka, they have sharp, vampiric teeth, and the Mistika look like monstrous insects.

Video Games

• In Clock Tower II: The Struggle Within, one of the antagonists does wear a red Oni mask. This is justified: in the original Japanese version, the events of the game happen in Osaka, Japan. When the game got localized to the West, the setting was moved to California and the characters' names were Westernized while keeping the Japanese trappings.
• In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind's Tribunal expansion, Almalexia dons one when she confronts the Nerevarine in the Clockwork City at the end of the main quest. It's known as her "war mask" and is made of the same greenish-bronze material as her Cool Crown. It has two long tusks attached and the face is scowling like a Rage Helm. Most depictions of her, such as the frescoes throughout Tribunal Temple sites, show her wearing it.
• In Fatal Frame, the Himuro Family Master wore a featureless "Mask of Reflection" before the event known as the Calamity, when the ritual failed. His mask then began to look more demonic, and he eventually killed everyone in Himuro Mansion, and lastly himself.
• Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse: Masks are one of the prominent motifs of the game. Some instances include:
  • Shigeto Haibara, director of the Haibara Hospital, wore a golden/yellow mask with a pained expression during the failed ritual (in the game's backstory).
  • Souya Yomotsuki, protagonist Ruka Minazuki's father, also becomes a ghost after the failed ritual. When he is encountered through the game, he is seen with a scary mask and attacks with masks.
  • Finally, the method to create the titular "Mask of the Lunar Eclipse": among other things, it involves removing the face of a person who has Bloomed (an in-game physical condition that affects the face).
• In Ghost of Tsushima, as part of his transformation from an honourable-to-a-fault Samurai to a pragmatic Samurai Shinobi, hero Jin Sakai can wear a special Clan Sakai mask shaped like a growling demon's mouth which covers the lower half of his face, leaving his eyes visible in a Death Glare.
• The Valkyries introduced in God of War (PS4) wear full face-concealing helmets complete with creepy metal masks.
• In God of War Ragnarök, the Light Elf soldiers are enemies who try to kill anyone who they consider to be a threat to their dominance over the Light of Alfheim and all wear white masks that obscure their faces and accentuate their eerie appearance.
• Hotline Miami: The 50 Blessings operatives are provided with rubber animal masks before receiving coded instructions over the answering machine to embark on assassination missions against Russian Mob targets. The reasoning for these specific kinds of masks is revealed in Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number when The Colonel who (likely) started the 50 Blessings organization skins the face of a panther and wears it over his face as a mask before he delivers this Motive Rant speech to his unit.
  The Colonel: Do you see this? ... Can you see my face? This is my true nature! You see, don't you? This is who I am! This is who we all are. We're animals! ... There's no denying it! A bunch of goddamn animals! They're sending us out to slaughter or be slaughtered... And here we sit until they tell us what to do, and how to do it! No will of our own, just mindless obedience! We don't even know why we're fighting now, do we? All we know is that deep down, somewhere in there, we enjoy it. Destruction and violence... it's just part of our nature.
• Played with in Hugo's House of Horrors, in that Hugo has to find a mask, and wear it, to become inconspicuous among a group of very ugly and creepy dinner guests. If he fails to do this, the butler recognises him as an interloper and chops his head off.
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask:
  • The Garo's Mask is a hood-like apparel of a dirty brown-gray colour, and its sprite shows two large shining eyes against a black void. The mask is first introduced as a prize from the Gorman Brothers, and it is needed to access Ikana Canyon. Its other purpose, however, comes into play when Link reaches Ikana's Canyon: the dead spirits of the Garo Ninjas rise from the grave and fight Link, if he is still wearing it. The mask can also be used to bypass the zombie-like ReDeads in Ikana's Castle.
  • Link acquires a powerful item should he find all 20 wearable masks and trade them with the Moon Children: the Fierce Deity Mask. Its in-game description states that it has "dark powers", and can only be used in boss rooms, such is its power.
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, there are two masks from the Happy Mask Shop subquest: the Skull Mask and the Spooky Mask.
  • The Skull Mask does resemble a skull, but from a fictional creature with horns.
  • The Spooky Mask deliberately invokes scared reactions from people, and its recipient is the boy at Kakariko Graveyard that look up to gravekeeper Dampé.
• PAYDAY: The Heist: The heisters wear plastic clown masks as their default disguise. These masks can also be swapped with many other masks fulfilling this trope.
• Spider-Man (PS4): The Inner Demons, as their name implies, wear black-and-white Chinese opera masks shaped like fanged, horned demons' faces, which partially contributes to their nightmarish reputations.
• In the Splatterhouse franchise, the protagonist, Rick, wears a white hockey mask in the first game — a very obvious nod to killer Jason Voorhees which they had to change to a blood red colour when the game came to the West. In the third game, the mask appears more organic-looking, almost skeletal or cranium-like. The mask is actually sentient and is eventually revealed to be the Big Bad in the third game.
• Twisted Metal: In the 2012 reboot of the series, Needles Kane, who is a recurring character, has started wearing a creepy clown mask instead of the makeup he's used in previous games.

Web Videos

• During the Game Grumps Let's Play of Dead Rising 3, Danny dresses up in a red devil mask and declares that he's the "Whap Goblin". He proceeds to run around hitting zombies with a big stick.

Western Animation

• Martin Mystery: Martin is abducted by kidnappers in "Journey into Terrorland". After he manages to cut his way through the sack, he sees that they are wearing cartoonish plastic monster masks (Frankenstein's monster, a fish monster, and a mummy) over their faces that they take off and reveal themselves to be Java, Billy, and Diana. M.O.M (who seems to be wearing a mask depicting a domino-masked, horned vampire) is driving the getaway van as she explains to Martin that his abduction is part of his surprise for a trip to Terrorland, something he is immediately enthused about.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man: The Green Goblin's expressive rubber mask in the likeness of a goblin with green skin, as usual. The trope also extends to his mooks, who wear rubber pumpkin head jack-o-lantern-style masks. The female mooks even wear pink ribbons on the pumpkin stem, seemingly just to highlight that they're girls.

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