Looking at research into this. Surprisingly, it seems there's been more research into this effect than towards defining creepiness in the first place. When I looked that up, the definition they provided seemed to cover the uncanny valley effect better than most theories specifically on that topic. They defined creepiness as the feeling caused by uncertainty of danger. Maybe we should reframe our thinking about the uncanny valley in light of this? And maybe we can define a creepiness supertrope that captures creepiness in a broader sense?
There's just something about the Sparkle Fairy's obviously CG wings that I find off-putting...
Lots of clean up needed. People seem to think this trope means "something I find creepy". Too many examples are of things aren't meant to be realistic at all or things that just plain don't make sense.
Rewrote the gaming paragraph because it ran off on a tangent about Eastern and Western gaming and generation gaps without actually coming back around to how this trope actually applies. I refocused it specifically on unique issues to the gaming medium when attempting to create more realistic graphics without actually passing judgement on the quality of the games themselves.
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Yeah the generation gap was the REASON for the uncanny valley, so I don't know why you had to change that to something that amounts to a rambling that makes zero points. There were hotlinks to examples that are common in fandoms as well. So yeah, good going.
Tried looking up Uncanny valley on google images. Not too bad. No really.
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I've been thinking about this trope, and I'm not putting this forward as a trope but an observation in human nature: I wonder if sometimes an argument or a viewpoint can be in the uncanny valley.
So often in the world you get two groups arguing over something which to an outside observer seems like almost exactly the same argument, but it turns out that the other group's argument is in uncanny valley area - "it's so much like the way we view things but it's NOT."
Just an observation.
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Obviously, the fear reaction to "very close but NOT" is instinctive, and this instinct is justified by the fact that, in nature, mimicry is invariably used for deception.
There are two types of mimicry. Plants and animals either disguise themselves as dangerous things to protect themselves or as friendly things to backstab unsuspecting victims. And since the perpetrator blows its cover by the stab, the attack has to be as fast, cruel and deadly as possible. This second case is what is reflected by the Valley.
As for the first case, it feeds our skepticism regarding things that tend to look overly dangerous hinting they are likely to hide severe weaknesses by this.
Edited by Vano
I wonder if this is why we are typically repulsed from thinking sexually about family members, such as siblings. They are so much like the kind of person you would be attracted to (After all, your parents fell for each other that way), but it's just freakish to even think about it.
I'm not sure why this was listed as an index only, so I changed it back to a trope. I don't really even see index to be listed.
I find the use of "moving corpse" on the graphic interesting, as UNMOVING corpses (such as what you see in the US during visitations or even in old Victorian-era "death pictures") also freak a lot of people out, for much the same reasons.
Not sure if I understand this correctly, but can this trope work from both sides? That is, if someone started with a photo of a real person and made some tweaks to it in Photoshop— just enough to make the subject look creepy to someone looking at the end result— that's the same trope, isn't it?
I'm asking because we have examples like the cover to Requiem For The Indifferent
◊, the latest Epica album. Bar code under the shoulder, tree branches growing out of the fingers, extreme pallor and rusty bolts in a bald, metallic-looking head... I think that counts as an invocation of the "less than human" type rather than the "not human enough" type that CGI failures and the like fall into.
Is it even possible for cell animation to fall into the category. Rotoscope animation makes scene, but anime is intentionally stylized & the look is too commonplace to be unsettling.
I found an article addressing this concept
while scanning the news for stories relating to psychology. I think it's worth checking out.
This trope applies to non-humans as well, correct, other than the robots and zombies mentioned? Like, say, a humanoid demon with just enough skeletal differences so as to unnerve people (like longer hands and fingers, a longer spine, a slightly differently-shaped skull [deeper jaw and longer tooth sockets to accomodate fangs], and elongated foot and anklebones)? Would this trope apply to something like that?
Kinda the same princible as with the Bishōnen Line...
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I changed some in the anime group due to the fact that One Piece is a really popular series to make porn of due to how attractive Nami, Robin, and Boa Hancock are and Rei is not Your Mileage May Vary as she was an important character in making the current otaku market with her sex appeal, and Gainax taking advantage of that by making thousands of different variations of her.
I think we can expand on the non-visual portions of this. A common way robots are made creepier in film is making them "glitch out," repeating words or phrases. They may have overly robotic speech, saying things like "initiating friendliness protocol." They could also miss social cues, speaking out of turn, switching topics entirely, or not responding to a human's questions. They also might just not react properly to their environment, staring dead into space. Any of these things can throw even the most human-looking replicant right back in the valley