TV Head Robot
Exactly What It Says on the Tin. An automaton, robot or droid with a television set for a head.
Say the technology for synthetic skin has not yet been perfected and you want to avoid the Uncanny Valley. Maybe you don't have much but some spare parts, dwindling funds and a TV at your disposal. Maybe it just looks cool. For whatever reason, this is a robot or other sentient being with a monitor onto which they project images or outright words that are often snarky responses to people interacting with them.
Not to be confused with a sentient AI or a talking computer. This strictly applies to walking automatons.
Often speaks through a variant of Talking with Signs. Compare/contrast Surveillance Drone and The Blank.
Examples of TV Head Robot include:
Anime and Manga
- Lord Canti of FLCL
- Dead Leaves has Retro, who may not be all robot.
- The Block bots from Pokémon: Destiny Deoxys.
Comic Books
- Several of the Spider-Slayers have this, including the first.
- Telly, the "son" of Tank and Booga, in Tank Girl.
- Arguably, Arnim Zola could qualify. His face is displayed on a screen in his chest.
Film
- RoboCop 2's Big Bad, Cain.
- The Walking TV from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, of course.
- Ibor, Synonamess Botch's Giant Mook, in Twice Upon a Time.
- TV from The Brave Little Toaster, who apparantly has a short, balding man for a face.
Live Action TV
- Sheldon of The Big Bang Theory tries to become one of these, controlled from his bedroom, to avoid sickness, danger, etc.
- iTeacher from Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide.
- 790 from Lexx, whose head mostly consists of three screens.
Video Games
- Batman: Arkham Asylum: In one first-person area, at the end of a hallway is a Joker mannequin with a TV for a head. Aversion, because it's actually him.
- In Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, the pentultimate boss has a TV set for a head, and the achievement for beating him is "Smash Your TV".
- Fallout: New Vegas Securitrons
- Everyone (except maybe player character) in Mondo Medicals and Mondo Agency fits this trope.
- The Bruiser from Doom: Resurrection of Evil has a TV mouth.
- The Squarians in Level Up.
- The Drakel Freak enemy from Adventure Quest is a cyborg with a TV for its head, with an organic muzzle protruding from it.
- One of Metalhead's costumes in Guitar Hero III is one.
- The Shrinks, an as-of-yet unused subset of robots in the Oddworld franchise consist of a floating orb, flatscreen with a mudokon face, and a number of surgical tools. Appeared in the "Guardian Angel" Easter Egg clip.
Web Comics
- Rice Boy has T.O.E., a bit of an unusual example. Instead of pictures drawn by the author, he projects scenes from movies and television shows much more like, well, an actual TV. He also smokes.
- The TV cat in the Dresden Codak Story Arc Dark Science. As of yet, the nature of this creature (robot? cyborg??) isn't clear, though.
Western Animation
- Transformers Animated has Tutor Bot, a direct Shout-Out to Lord Canti. Wreck-Gar's head was specifically designed to resemble a TV, due to the fact that G1 Junkions were obsessed with Earth TV programming.
- ReBoot brings us Mike the TV. He's also a Cephalothorax — his head is also his torso.
- In Hanna-Barbera's The Little Rascals episode "Science Fair and Foul", Buckwheat's home-built robot has a TV set for its head.
- Karen from SpongeBob SquarePants.
Real Life
- Multiple manufacturers market "telepresence robots" which use an iPad or other tablet mounted at eye level to display a live image of the person remotely controlling the robot.