Face Ship



""What kind of weirdo puts his face on the bow of a ship, anyway?""

- Solid Snake, talking with Mei Ling about Meta Knight and his Battleship Halberd in Super Smash Bros Brawl

So, your airship/spaceship/boat/car is already cool as it is. However, it seems to be missing something. How can you make it cooler? With your own self-image, of course! Make your vehicle a Face Ship.

A Face Ship is any vehicle or ship that has the likeness of a character's face or the entire character built on it, usually its pilot. Villains have a tendency to use these, either for the purpose of intimidation or due to their huge ego, but heroes can ride in these as well.

Often overlaps with Cool Spaceship, Cool Airship, Cool Boat, or Cool Car. Villainous versions overlap with Malevolent Mugshot. This is a Sub-Trope of Thememobile.

Anime and Manga

 * The ships of Shangri'La in Noein have the form of multi-faced floating statues.
 * Team Rocket's Meowth Balloon from Pokémon.
 * Which unforturnately did not return during the Best Wishes arc (it was replaced with a simple purple hot-air balloon with a Team Rocket "R" insignia on it). Fitting.
 * Also, their Magikarp (originally a Gyarados) submarine.
 * Mazinger Z: Dr. Hell's Cool Ship s and Cool Airships often have a face built on them.
 * Great Mazinger: And so did Mykeros and Demonika, Mykene Empire Cool Airships and airborne carriers. Mykeros had multiple faces built along its entire perimeter in reality were gates to launch the Robeasts.
 * UFO Robo Grendizer: When Grendizer transformed into a Starship, his face appeared situated on the bow. Several Vegan Starships also had a face on the frontside.
 * While most of the Gunmen in Gurren Lagann are face-shaped, the Anti-Spirals have several spaceship models based on body parts, including faces. It is incredibly creepy.

Comic Books

 * Brainiac's ship, with tentacles.
 * In Kingdom Come, Dr. Sivana's head appears in the form of a tentacled faceship similar to Brainiac's, slaughtering the Marvel Family in a movie sequence made to torture a grown-up Billy Batson into submission to Lex Luthor's will.
 * Batman's Batmobile sometimes has his masked face on it. One time, The Joker decided he should have something like that and created the Jokermobile, which has his face on it.
 * Vartox's Intergalactic Headship from the pages of Power Girl most certainly qualifies.

Film

 * Dr. Evil's sub from Goldmember
 * Megatron's tank mode from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen for some reason has his face on the front.
 * Note that's not some sort of likeness or image of his face--that's his actual robot-mode head covered in armor, it just winds up there because of how he transforms.
 * The "Pink Elephants on Parade" sequence from Dumbo ends with all of the pink elephants turning into various vehicles that look like them before finally exploding, never to be seen, heard, or mentioned again.
 * Hamm/The Evil Doctor Porkchop was briefly seen piloting a blimp shaped like him during the opening credits of Toy Story 3.
 * Also, the Toy Story Hot Wheels die-cast toyline, which comprises of cars shaped like various characters from this film series.
 * And the Disney Racers die-cast toyline, which is sold exclusively at the Disney Theme Parks.
 * The film Meet Dave is built around this trope-specifically Eddie Murphy's character who's a Faceship for a bunch of tiny aliens who look a lot like him.

Literature

 * Troy Rising: features a mobile asteroid with a Spartan head carved into its surface.]

Toys

 * The Mask got two in the toyline--the Mask-Mobile and the Mask Cycle. The first is notable for appearing in both the Animated Series and in Son of the Mask, and the second is a two-for-one Facemobile: its sidecar carries Milo, and has a replica of Milo's grimacing green Mask face on it. Both of these are justified examples of the trope, even for a toy--the Mask can customize an ordinary car or motorbike just by sitting on it!
 * Bionicle: The Toa Terrain Crawler's visage is very similar to the Kanohi Faxon worn by Hahli. Being that it's a living creature fitted to be used as a diving vehicle, it's more coincidental than anything.

Video Games

 * The Trope Namer is Starship Mario, a spaceship/planetoid from Super Mario Galaxy 2, where Lubba comments that it's more like a faceship.
 * In New Super Mario Bros Wii, the airship that Bowser Jr. and the Koopalings ride has Bowser's face as the figurehead.
 * The Battleship Halberd has its captain Meta Knight's face on it. Which is lampshaded by Solid Snake and Mei Ling in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
 * Technically, it's not his face, but his mask, and the captain is Captain Vul...
 * Neptunia V has a really strange one; Keiji Inafune's face on a plane.
 * Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik makes plenty of ships that have his face on it, most notably the Death Egg.
 * He's just taking after his grandfather, though, as seen in Sonic Adventure 2.
 * The Huge Spaceship in Little Big Planet 2 looks like the Enterprise with Sackboy's head.
 * In the opening stage of Star Fox Assault, Andrew (the nephew of the late Emperor Andross) transforms his flagship into a gigantic replica of his head as a homage to the final battle of Star Fox 64, where you fought Andross (who was nothing more than a giant disembodied head and hands)
 * The Gang Plank Galleon from Donkey Kong Country has King K. Rool's head as the figurehead. Furthermore, his airship, the Flying Krock, has a cockpit shaped like a crocodile head.
 * Samus Aran's Gunship throughout its various incarnations usually seems to be designed with Samus' helmet at the front. Granted, it's not really her face, just the helmet that she wears.
 * General Skun-ka'pe's ship in Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse looks like the head of a gorilla. The mouth opens to reveal the hatch, and the tongue is the ramp/escalator.
 * The Stinkowing (a fighter jet shaped like Stinkoman's mask) from Stinkoman 20 X 6.
 * While Ganon himself doesn't appear in it, the Demon Train of Spirit Tracks (a Cool Train with a human face on the front) looks so much like him it has been nicknamed the Ganontrain.
 * BustCzar/Head Zeppelin from Heavy Weapon, a face-blimp that fires out missiles and drops bombs.
 * Charon, the ship that guides damned souls to Hell in Dantes Inferno, has a giant talking head as the figurehead.
 * Likewise the King of Red Lions in The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker.
 * The entire race of Lingon in Fighunter Universe uses spaceships shaped like their heads.

Western Animation

 * An very obtuse example in a short on MTV's Liquid Television, called Space War, that was done to appear like a 6th graders board doodling of an alien invasion shows the aliens mothership to be a 400 mile tall version of the classic image of what most Westerners think as god's face.
 * The Petercopter and Hindenpeter in Family Guy has Peter Griffin's head at the front.
 * In the Classic Disney Short The Autograph Hound, Greta Garbo arrives at a movie studio in a limo that has her face on front.
 * In Phineas and Ferb, Dr Doofenshmirtz has a monster truck, among other vehicles, shaped like him. Also, Professor Poofenplotz from "Isabella and the Temple of Sap" has her "Me-Mobile", a Spider Tank shaped like her head.
 * Phineas and Ferb themselves get in on the action with hot air balloons in their own likenesses.
 * Megatron did this twice. First, in Beast Wars, he molded a Vok craft into his face for a few minutes. Then, in Beast Machines, he built a transforming ship with his face permanently on it.
 * In Transformers Prime, Megatron has his face peek out from his Cybertronian jet alt-mode.
 * The Larrymobile from Veggie Tales, which basically looks like Larry Boy laying on his back with his plunger-ears serving as the back wheels and two more plungers seving as the front wheels located where his legs (if he had such, since Larry Boy doesn't have legs) would be.
 * But how is he able to drive it if he doesn't have any arms?
 * One episode of Static Shock had The Joker and his henchmen drive around in a firetruck shaped like his face terrorizing people.
 * One episode of Cyberchase had The Hacker and his cronies Buzz and Delete enter a race with a large sinister-looking green car with The Hacker's face on the front.

Real Life

 * Bob Hope had custom car builder George Barris make a golf cart in his likeness.