Basic Trope: A race of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens believes that humans (or other alien races) are little more than animals, not sentient beings like they are.
- Straight: The Greys abduct Alice and Bob for extensive and invasive medical examinations and experiments.
- Exaggerated:
- The Greys annihilate the entire population of Earth, so they can take it over for whatever purpose(s) they wanted it for.
- Alice and Bob are taken to a holding pen with lots of other humans, where they are fed foodstuffs that will get them to fatten up a bit and injected with some type of growth hormone or similar substance, all the while with very little room to move around. They are later slaughtered, butchered, and served on the aliens' homeworld.
- Mars Needs Women
- The Greys gleefully hunt humans for sport.
- Downplayed: Alice and Bob are taken aboard the ship, and flown to the aliens' homeworld, where they are kept as slaves.
- Justified: The Greys believe that they are superior, because they have superior technology, or use Blue-and-Orange Morality.
- Inverted:
- A bunch of astronauts from Earth go and conquer Greyvia, and treat the survivors as slaves.
- Benevolent Alien Invasion
- The Greys treat one another badly in some way. (For example, one gender is preferred over another.)
- Subverted:
- The Greys convince Alice and Bob that humanity needs them, and/or that they are the ones responsible for teaching humans about civilization.
- The Greys have this attitude when they first make contact with humans, but quickly change their tune once they realize how fast we develop, how tough we are, how unique we are, or what utter bastards we are.
- Double Subverted:
- They still see humans as inferior and stupid.
- We Come in Peace — Shoot to Kill
- Parodied: The Greys quite literally treat humans like dogs- Alice and Bob are given collars to wear, are walked everyday, fed out of a bowl, and forced to play fetch.
- Zig Zagged: The Greys treat some humans or other alien races well, are indifferent to others and treat still others poorly.
- Averted:
- The Greys don't hurt humans.
- Absent Aliens
- Alien Non-Interference Clause
- Enforced: An Author Tract about the way humans treat animals and/or each other.
- Lampshaded: "You don't want to know what those aliens did to us."
- Invoked:
- The Greys happen upon planet Earth, and observe strange creatures that kind of look like them, but have vastly inferior technology and/or societal practices. They assume that these must be less evolved than they are.
- The Greys decide their economy needs more slave labor, but have laws against enslaving sentients. So they rewrite the laws defining sentience in such a way that humans no longer qualify as intelligent beings.
- Exploited: The leader of The Greys tells his/her/its underlings to conquer as many other planets as possible, so they can expand their empire.
- Defied:
- The Greys treat Alice and Bob, as well as any other humans they encounter, with respect and dignity. They want to form peaceful relations with Earth, for trade, protection, etc.
- They at first see themselves as superior, but humans are able to say "Screw You, Space Elves!" and avoid being conquered.
- Discussed: "The animals eat the grass, the people eat the animals, and then we eat the people."
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: The Greys are very cruel to those they see as inferior; given their supreme arrogance regarding their own capabilities, this is pretty much everyone. This attitude earns them a lot of enemies and very few friends, and since they're not nearly as tough and smart as they think they are, within a few centuries it's very, very hard to find a Grey anywhere in the galaxy.
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