Token Non-Human



"Donkey: Hi, Princess! Princess Fiona: It talks! Shrek: Yeah, it's getting him to shut up that's the trick!"

- Shrek

When a work has an ordinary setting, your cast is going to be... well, ordinary. Your basic Five-Man Band, maybe with a Token Minority, or a Token Girl.

But when you're the author of Speculative Fiction, authors can make the cast as interesting as they want. Enter the Token Non-Human to spice things up. He (or she; this is a Unisex Trope) could be a Rubber Forehead Alien, a Robot Buddy, a Funny Animal, a Civilized Animal, a Partially-Civilized Animal, or all of the above at once, but one thing is for sure. They aren't human.

Even Demi-Humans like elves can count as examples of this trope.

A Token Non-Human is not the Team Pet — the team pet is, well, a pet that belongs to the team, but the Token Non-Human is a sapient being who stands on more-or-less equal footing with the humans.

Unlike other token what-have-yous, a token nonhuman is not there to attract a Periphery Demographic. Probably. A Token Non-Human instead serves the purpose of exploring the possibility of other species with radically different natures than our own, incorporating beings with cool superhuman abilities, showing that the main cast is not practicing Fantastic Racism, and exploring the question What Measure Is a Non-Human?. If nothing else, the Token Non-Human can serve as the Amusing Alien for comic relief.

Because Most Writers Are Human (to our knowledge), you'll likely not see more than one Main Character who isn't human, hence the "token" part of "Token Non-Human". If there is more than one nonhuman character, you'll most likely see a cast full of nonhumans, with a Token Human.

Token Heroic Orc is this trope meeting Token Enemy Minority. See also Fantastic Sapient Species Tropes, and Not Quite Human. Compare and contrast Team Pet. Contrast Not Even Human. Inverse of Token Human and Unfazed Everyman.

Anime and Manga

 * Mahou Sensei Negima has Chachamaru as the Token Non-Human of Ala Alba.
 * Sayo counts to a certain degree, too. Setsuna technically, though it doesn't come up much. Chachamaru is easily the best example, though.
 * Mao from Darker than Black

Fan Works

 * Thoroughly averted in The Symphony of the Sword cycle from Undocumented Features. There are multiple non-humans in the core cast to start with, and none of them are tokens.  Before you're more than a few installments in they include a Gamilon Princess, a Dantrovian, the child of a goddess and a mortal man, a human genetically engineered for a high-gravity world, a Robot Girl and a Siberian Tiger -- and if you include the secondary cast, there are even more.  Of course, being set in a vibrant, galaxy-wide interstellar civilization -- even one with a lot of worlds inhabited by humans -- means non-humans are always going to be more than tokens.

Film

 * Chewbacca in the Star Wars original trilogy, the droids aside.
 * Also, Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace. Of course...

Literature

 * Harry Potter:
 * Remus Lupin is the Marauders' Token Non-Human.
 * Among the modern day heroes, there's Hagrid, who's part giant.
 * Animorphs has Ax(imili-Esgarouth-Isthill), the only alien on the team. Unless you count Tobias, who got himself permanently morphed into a hawk early on.
 * Arguably, Oy in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series eventually graduates to this, at least by the time he participates in the "khef and water" ritual as an equal member of the ka-tet.

Live-Action TV

 * Star Trek:
 * Star Trek: The Original Series: Spock half qualifies, as he is half-human.
 * In Star Trek: The Next Generation, three out of the starring cast of seven or eight were non-human. While human-looking Troi was less obvious, both Worf and Data qualify as Token Non-Humans.
 * Averted by Deep Space Nine, which is set on a space station that's mainly made up of non-humans, and there are multiple aliens in the starring (Kira, Odo, Quark, Worf, both Daxes) and recurring cast. One could argue that Sisko, Bashir, and O'Brien were the show's Token Humans.
 * Star Trek: Voyager averts this trope as well, with Neelix, the holographic Doctor, Tuvok, Torres, Kes, and in later seasons former borg Seven of Nine. The nonhuman main cast slightly outnumber the human main cast members (Janeway, Chakotay, Paris, and Kim).
 * T'Pol and Phlox in Enterprise.
 * Doctor Who has the Doctor as this a lot of the time.
 * Though during Peter Davison's era this was inverted, with Tegan Jovanka serving as the token human in a TARDIS full of aliens
 * Teal'c from Stargate SG-1.
 * Subverted, averted, and inverted (possibly) in Stargate Atlantis - the Pegasus galaxy is full of humans, but almost none of the the non-Terran humans work for the Atlantis expedition, but then by the end of the pilot, the flagship exploration team adopts a non-Terran member.
 * Trip in Power Rangers Time Force.
 * Blake's 7 has Cally, an Auron with limited telepathic powers.
 * Though the cast contains several examples of not quite human characters, including the titular protagonist, Angel has Lorne as the only visibly demonic main character who is unable to alter his appearance in any way.

Video Games

 * Final Fantasy has a history of this:
 * Final Fantasy VI: Mog and Umaro. Possibly Gogo as well. VI has a large enough cast size for three to still be token.
 * Final Fantasy VII: Red XIII. Possibly Cait-Sith as well, although it's controlled by a human.
 * Though as the two interact in Dirge of Cerberus, at least some Cait Sith models are sentient.
 * Final Fantasy IX: Nearly half the party, making them not really "token" at all.
 * The only one that is clearly human is Steiner. The other include a tailed Genome (Zidane), human-like summoners (Garnet & Eiko), a Black Mage (Vivi), a Burmecian (Freya), a Qu (Quina) and a blue-skinned man who might be human (Amarant).
 * Final Fantasy X: Kimahri.
 * Final Fantasy XII: Fran. Somewhat obvious here, as Ivalice is replete with sentient nonhuman races (Viera, Moogle, Bangaa, Seeq, Aegyl etc.). but Fran is the only one such among the protagonists.
 * Final Fantasy XIII: This trope is averted for the first time since Final Fantasy VIII. Or subverted if you look at it from another way: the game could be the first in the series to have no (technically) human playable characters, as everyone in the party becomes a L'Cie. Which means in the first two chapters of the game
 * Ne'ban in Unreal II the Awakening, while the rest of the main cast is human he is, apparently, an intelligent parasite living in a jelly like alien, housed in a robotic suit.
 * Harukanaru Toki no Naka de franchise:
 * The original game: Abe no Yasuaki (Artificial Human);
 * Haruka 2: Abe no Yasutsugu (Artificial Human again);
 * Haruka 3: Ridvan (from the Oni Clan) and Hakuryuu (the depowered human form of the Dragon-God).
 * Odium has Jan Kurtas/Medusa, the only Humanoid Abomination victim of the Viral Transformation who didn't go murderously insane. He's special in that he cannot carry weapons, instead using his mutant abilities. He also happens to be immune to tranquilizing and doesn't need to increase his Accuracy stat since all his abilities are treated as melee attacks (and thus have a 100% accuracy).
 * Golden Axe has Gilius the dwarf together with the male and female human heroes, and the sci-fi based Spiritual Successor Alien Storm has Scooter the robot.

Web Comics

 * In Good Ship Chronicles, Mike is literally a token alien, hired only to fill a quota; consequentially, he serves no real purpose on the ship.
 * For the first 500-some strips, the central mercenary crew in Schlock Mercenary had only one nonhuman—the titular Schlock. But that ended in 2002.
 * Schlock Mercenary is generally pretty good about averting this trope, even prior to the hiring spree on Ghanj-Rho. The first two months see the introduction of not only the eponymous ball of amorphous violence, but Flib Sh'vuu, communications slug/squid with a cool flying chair; Ennesby, a viral AI that used to be a boy band; Ch'vorthq who was genetically tailored to be the perfect ambassador . All of whom are, or become part of Tagon's Toughs, although Sh'vuu doesn't really get much of plot and character development thrown at him.
 * Carson the muskrat from Dork Tower.
 * The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob has Molly the Peanut Butter Monster.
 * El Goonish Shive has Grace Sciuridae who is a Tulougol Seyunolu (Greater Chimera).
 * Legostar Galactica gives us T.A.G. (Token Alien Guy) who only puts up with being called T.A.G. because of his Embarrassing First Name and lack of a last name, although the cast quickly expanded to include numerous aliens, robots, and the likes, including a air-breathing giant squid and a Deep One
 * Jareth in the main cast of the Mega Crossover fancomic Roommates. He is interpreted as a fae or at least someone with much fae blood.

Western Animation

 * Bender is the token robot of Futurama and Zoidberg is the token alien.
 * And Leela is the token mutant. The only fully human characters in the delivery crew are the Martian, the 160+ year old man, the human popsicle from a thousand years in the past, the bureaucrat, the janitor... actually, the main cast is mostly full-on humans.
 * Men in Black: The Series has The Twins as the Token Aliens of MIB. In the fourth season, sci-fi affirmative action causes MIB to hire an alien field agent and alien scientist.
 * Inverted in the Teen Titans television adaption, where Robin is the token "regular" human, though he's still the most adept of the Titans.

Film

 * Dr. Delbert Doppler and Captain Amelia from Treasure Planet

Live-Action TV

 * Red Dwarf had The Cat. Arguably, he could also be construed as Team Pet, as he was descended from Lister's cat Frankenstein, but let's count 3 million years of evolution to his credit.
 * SeaQuest DSV had a dolphin that could talk.

Video Games

 * In Marvel vs. Capcom 3, we have Felicia (she's a fur-covered Catgirl), but she's honestly more Girl than Cat. The trope is played its straightest, however, with the announcement of Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 and the inclusion of Rocket Racoon.

Web Comics

 * Melodia from Drowtales.

Western Animation

 * Lieutenant M'Ress, a member of the Enterprise bridge crew in Star Trek: The Animated Series.
 * Mirage from the Aladdin series. In the words of The Nostalgia Chick, "Why does she have a cat head... who cares?"
 * Super Why! has Alphapig, who is part of an otherwise human quartet of heroes.