Ambiguously Human: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* Take a look at Nagato, Ryoko and Kimidori in the ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' series. They look human, except for their strange hair color ([[You Gotta Have Blue Hair|purple, blue and green respectively]]). They aren't humans. They're interfaces created by the Integrated Data Sentient Entity, mainly because the boss happens to be formless data that can't interact with us, only observe.

** Bear in mind that there are also normal humans (as far as we know) with [[You Gotta Have Blue Hair|odd hair colors]] in the series, so that's not a dead giveaway for identifying "interfaces" in disguise.

* If you do a screengrab of Beppo in ''[[Gankutsuou]]'' and then clone her skin tone in MS Paint or a similar program, it suddenly becomes noticeable that her skin is ''mauve''. Then you add in that manga!Beppo lacks nipples, in a canon that doesn't usually [[Barbie Doll Anatomy|eliminate those]]...

** Of course the said lack of nipples might also be intended as evidence of body-modification. It's strongly implied that Beppo is a pre-op [[Transsexualism|transsexual]].

* ''[[Soul Eater]]''; the only indication that Death the Kid is ''not'' a member of one of the 'verse's common races (Human/Weapon, witch) is his black-and-white striped hair. Unless you hurt or upset him enough that his Defence Mechanism Superpower/Super Mode kicks in.

* In ''[[Kyo Kara Maoh!]]'', there is ''literally no way'' to tell between demons and humans by looking at them. ([[Lampshaded]] in the anime when {{spoiler|Yuri's mother is disappointed her husband and children don't have wings}}. Pretty much the only difference between them is their aging process, so in order to see if someone is human or not you just have to lock them up for a decade or two. Or ask them.

* Arguably the Nations from ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]''. They all appear human, but live for ridiculously long amounts of time (China is 4,000 years old and, by [[Word of God]], immortal) and their physical age is tied to the military strength of the country they represent. Their "birth" consists of them randomly showing up in an area as a very small child, and most if not all of their family relations are [[Not Blood Siblings]]. Also, their physical wellbeing is directly affected by the status of their country (Spain is made ill by [[The Mafia]] in his country, Lichtenstein nearly starves to death when her country is in a depression, and Hungary is "freakishly strong" around the time when her country helped with the War of Austrian Succession)

 

* The Iron Queen in ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog (comics)|Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' was this at first. She looked like an [[Humans by Any Other Name|Overlander]], but was married to the Iron King, an ox. [[Word of God]] claimed she was a badger at the time. However, when Ian Flynn brought her back, he reversed this. The Queen is indeed human, and the titles are purely honorary.

** Additionally, there is also "Homo Supreme", a sort of super-mutant; the only known example is Mr. Immortal, who is theorized to have "evolved past death".

* Sometimes comics will have comic relief characters with tenuous-at-best ties to continuity - like Ambush Bug, 'Mazing Man, or Forbush Man - who have cartoonish bodies (oversized heads or feet, unnaturally thin limbs, no nose, etc.) but everyone they interact with is a normally proportioned human. Basically, they're [[gonk]]s. They're are assumed to be human because, well, what else would they be?

 

 

* The robotic Replicants from ''[[Blade Runner]]'' look entirely human except that they don't express empathy well. A psychological-reaction test is needed to identify one.

 

* ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' uses this trope very frequently, albeit (maybe) not intentionally. The author, [[Douglas Adams]], occasionally describes his alien creatures' appearance in detail, but most of the time he neglects to describe them altogether other than to say that they're not from the Earth. In fact, only one species (the Bartledanians in ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/Mostly Harmless|Mostly Harmless]]'') were ever described as looking exactly like humans, but since no one ever said ''how'' the other aliens ''aren't'' like humans, most of them were portrayed by ordinary actors in [[The Film of the Book|the film adaptation]] (pictured above).

** Ford and Zaphod (the two aliens in the picture) ''do'' look human, though. Ford is able to pass for one for fifteen years without difficulty, and while Zaphod normally has two heads and three arms, when the extras are absent he can attend a human party with nobody raising an eyebrow.

* [[Those Two Bad Guys]] of ''[[Neverwhere]]'', [[Mr. X and Mr Y|Mr Croup and Mr Vandemar]], are confirmed as nonhuman by Door, but we never find out what they are.

** This goes for essentially everyone in London Below: they mostly look like (extremely idiosyncratic) humans, but have a variety of never-explained super-powers, seem to have been down there for generations, and occasionally traffic with overtly non-human beings.

** [[Word of God]] from Sanderson is that the [[Fantasy Pantheon]] of his cosmology came from a world with humans, and so when they created their own worlds they used them as a template, but put their own spin on it. Also notable is the humans from ''[[Mistborn]]'', who are capable of surviving in a post-apocalyptic ash-choked wasteland that would certainly kill earth humans, though they don't ''look'' any different.

*** well it's explicitly stated in the third [[Mistborn]] book that The Lord Ruler screwed around with the genetics of the people of the Final Empire so they could survive.

** White Court Vampires' demon doesn't physically manifest, even though there are subtle physical changes when they draw on their demon

** Changelings; half-humans-half-Fae, are human unless they Choose to be Fae.

 

* Occurs frequently in ''[[Doctor Who]]'', as non-Earth stories would feature human-like characters as often as not, but would rarely indicate whether they were spare-faring humans or [[Human Aliens]]. Even the more expensive new series isn't bereft of it, as the passengers in "Voyage of the Damned" seem to be entirely human but come from other planets in a time before humans develop interstellar travel.

** The Fifth Doctor's companions Adric and Nyssa. Adric is a particularly interesting example: his people are supposedly from an Exo-Space planet called Terradon (hinted to be a Terran colony, due to its cultural parallels) who crashed on Alzarius in a starliner. Except they're not. They really evolved from Alzarian natives (spiders that incubate inside melons) via an intermediate race ([[Creature from the Black Lagoon|Gill-Man]] lookalikes) who mimicked humans to fill their niche aboard the starliner.

* ''[[Blake's 7]]'': Is Cally a [[Human Aliens|Human Alien telepath]] or from a race of humans who have artificially modified themselves to possess psionic gifts through cloning and genetic engineering? The series is confused on this issue. Dayna is also referred to as an "alien" at one point, but that may have been a legal as opposed to a biological definition: the implication being that she couldn't receive medical treatment on Earth because she wasn't an Earth citizen. In-universe, the common claim that all intelligent life originated on Earth is disputed, and several planets have "primitive" populations that may or may not have been descendants of colonists from Earth.

* ''Mr. Young'': Mrs. Byrne looks, behaves, and is treated like a human, but considering [[Really 700 Years Old|her age]] she's far too old to be any known species.

 

** The kings in ''[[Super Mario Bros 3]]'' all look human, so she's not that big an anomaly.

** The series also gives us the Shy Guys, a sort of "tribe" of little guys so shy that they never expose a single square inch of their bodies to anyone. They wear long cloaks, shoes, belts, masks and gloves, and when they lose their masks the first thing they do is run away while covering their faces. It's unlikely, given the Mushroom Kingdom's populace, that they actually ''are'' human, but their basic shape indicates that they are.

*** In one of the ''Mario Power Tennis'' endings a Shy Guy's mask falls off. He's turned away from the screen, so you can't see what's underneath the mask yourself, but poor Luigi can see it perfectly. Luigi immediately falls over, looking like he saw a ghost, trembling in fear as the Shy Guy walks past him. This seems to imply that the Shy Guys are [[Nightmare Face|anything]] [[Humanoid Abomination|but]] human.

* Mumbo the shaman and Gruntilda the witch in the ''[[Banjo-Kazooie]]'' series. Both of them have human forms, albeit with very strange skin color (bright pink and green, respectively), and Mumbo's face has been magically transformed into a skull-like mask, so there's no telling what he may have originally looked like. These two characters, [[All There in the Manual|says the manual,]] used to be magic partners, so they could be members of the same species. A [[Witch Species]], perhaps?

* ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'' series is really big on unconventional fantasy races, but for every Goron (rock people), Zora (fish people) and Deku (plant people), there are several others that look almost entirely like normal humans. There are the Hylians, including Link and Zelda, who are only different from humans in that they have longer ears and can learn to perform magic. There are Gerudos, like Ganondorf, who look like dark-skinned humans, but are different in that only one male child is born to them every hundred years. There are the Sheikah, who look no different from "normal". And this doesn't even bring all the races that were "transformed into other forms" into account, like the Garo, Ikana, and Twili.

** Related to the above are hermits. They're basically humans who get super-powers out of a strict training regimen. But there does seem to be some physiological changes, given that they act as [[Rare Candy]] to youkai...

*** It's also not clearly whether all hermits started out as human. The first hermit character introduced, Kasen Ibara, has many hints at being an oni instead.

* In the ''[[Shantae]]'' games, there's the heroine's enemy, Risky Boots. No explanation has ever been given for her violet skin and purple hair, but she seems little more than a [[Badass Normal]] pirate otherwise.

* Shizumaru Hisame from ''[[Samurai Shodown]]'' is an [[Amnesiac Hero]] who is shunned by his village, who think he is an oni or [[Yokai]] in disguise. Whether this is true or not has never been confirmed or debunked; seeing as some characters are indeed Yokai or some other sort of nonhuman, it is certainly possible. It's even possible he is [[Half-Human Hybrid| half-oni.]]

 

* The eponymous character of ''[[Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name]].'' Despite the title, he is in fact theoretically a young man, but all of his [[True Companions]] are supernatural, [[The Nose Knows|vampires complain that he "smells dead"]], he goes to a medical school dropout when injured and there's a scar/wound on his chest of astounding, [[Normally I Would Be Dead Now]] proportions (which still has staples, which do not seem to impede his [[Genki Boy|usual enthusiasm]]). He's also strangely light, even for his short stature, and one character calls him a "hollowed-out shell" of a man. Some fans wonder if this is literal.

** He also claims to be 24, [[Younger Than He Looks|but looks about 14]], which is commented on in-universe. While it's entirely possible that he's just scrawny, one can't rule out the idea that his aging may be supernaturally stunted.

* Parodied in ''[[I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space]]'' wherein it is revealed that lesbians are this. A long and complex story is told off-screen to explain how come the protagonist doesn't have the lesbian antennae, nobody tries to explain when it turns out that lesbians exist in all other species also.

 

* ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'' has Starfire and Raven, a [[Human Alien|humanoid]] [[Innocent Aliens|innocent alien]] and a [[Half-Human Hybrid|demon-human hybrid,]] respectively. Both girls have humanoid proportions, though Starfire has orange skin and maroon hair, and Raven has purple hair and gray skin . They may not pass for human in [[Real Life|our world,]] but keep in mind that this is an [[Animesque]] series where an ''actual'' human has green skin, pointy ears, and [[Cute Little Fangs|fangs.]] (Of course, in the comics, that wasn't so before he acquired his shapeshifting powers. In fact, the green skin came first and fangs and pointy ears weren't so until ''much more recently.''

** Of course, then there's Cyborg, who [[Captain Obvious|is a cyborg.]] The only normal-human-looking main character is Robin.

* On ''[[CatDog]]'', there's [[Non-Indicative Name|Mr. Sunshine]], a green-skinned humanoid who speaks in a slow, languid voice. The ambiguity of his species is [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] in one episode when [[Jerkass|Rancid Rabbit]] starts arresting everyone for not having "licenses." (Dog doesn't have a "dog license," Lola doesn't have a "bird license, etc.) When he captures Sunshine, he says, "You're under arrest for not having a...not having a...not having a license!"

* V.V. Argost in ''[[The Secret Saturdays]]'' {{spoiler|is actually a Yeti}}.

* Finn of ''[[Adventure Time]]'' is explicitly human, to the point where "[[Species Surname|Finn the Human]]" is treated as his official full name/title. The show is filled with other humanoid creatures, however, with [[Amazing Technicolor Population|odd skin tones]] and generally weird traits that show them to be something else. (Heck, Finn's crush is ''made of bubblegum!'') Finn believes himself to be the [[Last of His Kind]], though whether or not this is true isn't certain, especially considering the [[Shrug of God]] towards Susan Strong's species.

** Further hints have been made that Susan Strong is human, and one other character has been confirmed as ''ex-''human: {{spoiler|the Ice King}}.

* There's some debate over whether Heloise on ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]'' is human. She and Jimmy are the only two human-shaped citizens of Miseryville, but given that only Jimmy is hinted to be a [[Fish Out of Water]], some fans wonder. With her occasionally slithering movements, one [[Epileptic Tree]] is that she's a naga (we never see her feet), though it has been shown she has two appendages under her dress.

* The Manji from the animated ''[[Jumanji (animation)|Jumanji]]'' series were a whole tribe of Ambiguously Human [[Malevolent Masked Men]]. One character outright questions if they are people when she first sees them, Alan replies simply that they are '[[Mathematician's Answer|Manji]]'. Basically, the giant masks that are treated as their faces are big enough that there could or could not be a humanoid head behind them. No one knows.

* ''[[Buzz Lightyear of Star Command]]'' takes place in a galaxy full of all sorts of alien-looking races, most of which are identified by name if a significant enough character is a member. Buzz himself, however, is never specifically called "human", his home planet is never identified, and he never removes the purple "cloth" over the back of his head, even in civilian clothes - for all we know, it could actually be part of his head.

** Also, Numbuh Infinity, Numbuh Vine, and Numbuh 74.239; at least canon-wise, it is not confirmed that they are aliens, although that ambiguity would be done away with if the info in the "The G KND Experiment" ever becomes canon.

* The Gangreen Gang from ''[[The Powerpuff Girls]]''. It's never specified if they're humanoid monsters or weird-looking teenage boys.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:This Might Be an Index]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Not Quite Human]]

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