Film — Live-Action
"What were you expecting? A monster?"
—The Machine, 8mm
"This is my costume. I'm a homicidal maniac. They look just like everyone else."
—Wednesday Addams, The Addams Family, naming the trope
"Sorry I'm late. Work was murder."
— Norman Osborn, Spider-Man
Charlie: Don't look at me like that, neighbor. It's just me, Charlie.
Barton: I hear it's Mundt. "Madman Mundt".
"Charlie": Jesus, people can be cruel. If it's not my build, it's my personality.
Barton: I hear it's Mundt. "Madman Mundt".
"Charlie": Jesus, people can be cruel. If it's not my build, it's my personality.
"I have no idea what I'm going to do. I'm so deeply puzzled. I've done terrible things, I've killed three people. Really, I don't consider myself a terrible man—no more than others....I'm sure it comes as no great surprise to you when I say that there are little corners in everyone which were better off left alone; sicknesses, weaknesses, which should never be exposed. But that's your stock in trade, isn't it? a man's weakness? And I was never really fully aware of mine. Until you brought them out."
—Peter Cable, Klute
Eleanor Whitman: [on an assassin] He doesn't look like much.
Louis Salinger: I think that's the idea.
Louis Salinger: I think that's the idea.
"Even serial killers live next door to somebody. Tough pill to swallow, I know, but it's true. If I've learned anything, it's that people hardly ever let you know who they really are. Just past the manicured lawns and friendly waves, inside any house, even the one next door, anything could be happening and you'd never know. And that's the thing about this place, it all might seem normal and routine, but the truth is the suburbs are where the craziest shit happens. You never know what might be coming around the corner."
—Davey Armstrong, Summer of '84
"Until they pop, they look like regular people, so no one except us knows they're monsters inside."
—Proctor, R.I.P.D.
"Don't get too cocky my boy. No matter how good you are don't ever let them see you coming. That's the gaffe my friend. You gotta keep yourself small. Innocuous. Be the little guy. You know, the nerd, the leper, shit-kickin' surfer. Look at me; Underestimated from day one. You'd never think I was a master of the universe, now would ya? I'm the hand up Mona Lisa's skirt. I'm a surprise, Kevin. They don't see me coming: that's what you're missing."
—John Milton, The Devil's Advocate
Literature
Polly: The girl we met? But she didn't look like [a werewolf]!
Vimes: Well, they don't, usually. Right up until the moment when they do, if you see what I mean.
Vimes: Well, they don't, usually. Right up until the moment when they do, if you see what I mean.
As far as looks go, Richard Drakh is average in almost every way. He's neither short nor tall, neither thin nor fat, not particularly handsome or ugly or plain. His hair is medium brown, his eyes don't draw attention and he wears an understated suit that doesn't look especially cheap or expensive. Put him on a London train, and he'd disappear without a ripple. In the stories, the greatest Dark mages are always terrifying to look at, tall or striking and monstrous or all three at once. Richard was none of those things - in fact, Vihaela looked the part of a Dark master mage far more than he did. Yet it was Vihaela who obeyed Richard, not the other way around, and Richard struck far more fear into me than she ever could.
And what do you think they would look like? Like mad Fuhrers with forelocks and shoe-polish moustaches, heil-ing all over the place? Like red devils or demons, or the dragon that floats on its stinking reptile wings? ... I think most of them would look like ordinary accountants. Little mind-men with graphs and flow-charts and electronic calculators, all ready to start maximizing the kill ratios so that next time they could perhaps kill twenty or thirty million instead of only six.
—Weiskopf, Apt Pupil
The captain of the pirate train did not wear a greatcoat in which lived polecats & weasels. He did not have a beard woven with smouldering twists of gunpowder to surround himself with a stench & demonic aura. He did not cock a tricorn hat or have handprints in blood on his shirt. He did not dangle a necklace of bones & flesh-scraps. All these were things of which Sham had heard, ways in which railsea pirates spread the terror on which they relied. This man wore large glasses. He had what Sham would, had circumstances been otherwise, have said was a kind face.
"He looked so ordinary. Thinning gray-brown hair. A little bit of a paunch. Wire-rim glasses. Medium-blue eyes."
"But that's the thing with Controllers: They look like anyone. They are anyone."
"But that's the thing with Controllers: They look like anyone. They are anyone."
—Cassie, Animorphs, "The Sickness"
In fairy tales, witches always wear silly black hats and black cloaks, and they ride on broomsticks. But this is not a fairy tale. This is about real witches. The most important thing you should know about real witches is this. Listen very carefully. Never forget what is coming next: Real witches dress in ordinary clothes and look very much like ordinary women. They live in ordinary houses and work in 'ordinary jobs. That is why they are so hard to catch.
A witch, you must understand, does not knock children on the head or stick knives into them or shoot them with a pistol. People who do those things get caught by the police. A witch never gets caught.
Live-Action TV
"Camouflage is nature's craftiest trick."
"One thing about being a cabbie, you always know a nice quiet spot for a murder. I'm surprised more of us don't branch out."
—Jefferson Hope, Sherlock ("A Study in Pink")
"A clean-cut guy in a suit; no one looks too close."
—Jim Brass, CSI ("identity Crisis")
(English accent) "On the contrary, Major, many a psychotic killer would would appear to be quite normal. You see, you can never suspect that underneath that calm exterior there lies the heart of a maniac." (normal voice) Happens to be true, by the way.
— Frasier Crane, remembering his old lines from Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, Frasier, "Give Him the Chair!"
Carver: Everyone is capable of murder under the right circumstances.
Ellie: No. Most people have a moral compass.
Carver: Compasses break.
Ellie: No. Most people have a moral compass.
Carver: Compasses break.
"Your genuinely dangerous individuals — they almost never look crazy. They don't have any weird tattoos, they don't have any weird stitches on their face, funny-shaped heads. They are NOT predictable."
— Walker, Masters of Horror
Music
"You listen to these people talk, or you see them, they look so regular. What does a serial killer look like? He don't look like anything. He looks like you. You could be living next door to one. If I lived next door to you, you could be."
—Eminem, explaining this trope's prevalence in Relapse
Tabletop Games
Sad to say, it's all too often pretty hard to pick a Drone out from a crowd of modern office workers. Some would even consider the Weaver-bound the ideal modern citizen...
— Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Book Of The Weaver
Brain Eaters look just like anyone else. They could be anywhere. Anytime.
—Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Freak Legion: A Player's Guide To Fomori
A small man took power in the Old Country, a small man who might have seemed most unassuming if you met him casually in a cafe. He, like us, was easy to underestimate. When we saw him for the first time, we feared him, not knowing why. We counseled our brethren among the clans to keep well away from this man and his circle, for their hands dripped with blood yet to be shed, and their eyes were lit with a madness that we could not rein in. And when the tanks rolled forth and the slaughter trains began to run, we cried out in terror, afraid that his fever, a fever with the power of a demigod, would catch us all alight.
—Vampire: The Masquerade - Clanbook: Malkavian (Revised)
Theatre
Every now and then
The country goes a little wrong
Every now and then
A madman's bound to come along
The country goes a little wrong
Every now and then
A madman's bound to come along
—"Ballad of Booth", Assassins
Perhaps today you gave a nod
To Sweeney Todd
The demon barber of Fleet Street
To Sweeney Todd
The demon barber of Fleet Street
Sweeney waits in the parlor hall
Sweeney leans on the office wall
No one can help, nothing can hide you—
Isn't that Sweeney there beside you?
Sweeney leans on the office wall
No one can help, nothing can hide you—
Isn't that Sweeney there beside you?
—"Epilogue", Sweeney Todd
Web Animation
"Hello, whoever you are. You just found a cassette tape hidden in my bedroom. Isn't that strange? A man like William Afton, someone so simple and plain, hiding a cassette tape. Why would he be hiding anything? I’m sure that, if you’re from around here, you’ve heard of the somewhat recent happenings with Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Three cases of one, one case of two. All of that adding up to the 'five missing children of Freddy's.' That was me. I'll elaborate on that later."
Web Original
Some people in the world you just don't fuck with. Unfortunately you can't always tell who those people are until it's too late and such was the case with Marvin Heemeyer. He lived in a little town in Colorado with a population of about 500. He was a welder and owned a muffler repair shop and, presumably for a while, he was a totally non-sinister individual who never even considered doing anything crazy like building a massive, nearly indestructible machine of terror. For a while.
Apparently, the guy who recently murdered nine innocent people at Umpqua Community College in Oregon had the audacity to leave behind lots of written complaints at the site of his killing spree. They were mostly about not having a girlfriend, and about feeling that everybody else was crazy...this is basically the opening of Richard III by William Shakespeare.
Web Video
"If they wanted real horror in previous films, this past version of Freddy is the most effective. There's something about Englund in normal, almost twee suburban clothes talking softly to a little girl that is far more chilling than the rubber prosthetic and Christmas sweater. Ironic that the scariest version of Kruger appears alongside the silliest and most affable version, but there it is."
"'Why she wouldn't even harm a fly.' And that's what makes serial killers and other forms of human monsters such as spree killers, terrorists, gangsters and dictators so scary. Because when you get to know one of them or even look at a picture of them you indeed wouldn't think that they're capable of harming a fly, less kill one or more human beings."
Real Life
What is remarkable, even chilling, is that the face behind the demonic image is that of ordinary people; ordinary people that form a human arsenal of living bombs secretly awaiting their turn.
—Dan Setton, Suicide Bombers: Secrets of the Shaheed (1997)
"I'm nobody. I'm a tramp, a bum, a hobo. I'm a boxcar and a jug of wine, and a straight razor if you get too close to me."
"He would walk me out to my car at two in the morning when my shift was over, and he'd say 'Ann, please lock your doors, I don't want anything bad to happen to you on the way home.' Well, I'd just been locked up with probably the most dangerous man in the western states."
—Ann Rule on Ted Bundy
"The idea that I'm a homosexual thrill killer, that I stroll down the streets and stalk young boys and slaughter them... Hell, if you could see my schedule, my work schedule, you knew damn well that I was never out there."
—John Wayne Gacy
"He fooled everyone. He fooled me... he fooled his probation officer, his attorney, the police...He had bodies in the next room when the police were standing in his outer room."
—Lionel Dahmer, father of Jeffrey Dahmer
He looked like Mr Ordinary. He had a suit on, he had steel-rimmed spectacles... in the context of what he'd done, he was frighteningly normal.
—Peter Jay on Dennis Nilsen
