Uncanny Valley/Quotes

Oh my god... OH MY GOD, it's the invasion of the army of PLASTIC WHORES!

—Ebeeto, in his Angry Video Game Fag persona, on the Deal or No Deal video game

"If you see something that... looks human and isn't, you keep your eyes on it and you feel for your hatchet."

—Mr. Beaver, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

This new one's kinda creepy
Makes me shudder inside
With his idiot grin.
He's head-to-toe with muscles and they ripple and slide
Under translucent skin.

—Jonathan Coulton, "Todd the T-1000"

An eldar looked almost human from a distance: two arms, two legs, two eyes, a nose, but everything else was different. An eldar radiated wrongness, from its huge, liquid eyes to the many jointed, worm-like waving of its fingers. They were disgusting and unnerving, and Alaric hated them.

—Hammer of Daemons

It was impossible to point to any particular motion that was definitely non-human. Ransom had the sense of watching an imitation of living motions which had been very well studied and was technically correct: but somehow it lacked the master touch. And he was chilled with an inarticulate, night-nursery horror of the thing he had to deal with - the managed corpse, the bogey, the Un-man.

—Perelandra/Voyage to Venus

"If a commercial features children or animals doing things that children or animals are incapable of doing without the help of a computer, I'm almost certain to hate it."

—Scott Tobias on a common bane of watching Superbowl ads

"The more realistic CGI tries to make its characters, the more creepy and unreal they look. The human eye is nature’s finest bullshit detector."

—Steve Heisler's I Watched This On Purpose column on S1m0ne

Frank: You see, as artificial representations of humans become more and more realistic, they reach a point where they stop being endearing, and become creepy.
Tracy: Tell it to me in Star Wars.
Frank: Alright. We like R2-D2 and C-3PO.
Tracy: They're nice.
Frank: And up here, we have a real person like Han Solo.
Tracy: He acts like he doesn't care, but he does!
Frank: But down here we have a CGI Stormtrooper or Tom Hanks in The Polar Express.
Tracy: I'm scared! Get me out of there!

—30 Rock

"Very much funfair. There's nothing creepier than something that's supposed to look friendly and human, but doesn't manage either. Oh, dolls, they just shouldn't smile."

—Steven Moffat, about the Smilers

"You'd think I'd be into life-size, realistic robots, but that thing makes me wanna barf up my earlier energy drink into the one I'm currently drinking."

—Sci Fi Greg, Teen Girl Squad Issue 15

"I think Jack is trying to ramp up the “adorable”, but he instead drives full-force into the grotesque."

—Chick Dissection: The Devil's Night

"Oh dear God, have we entered the school of the damned here? Why are they all speaking in unison and what's with their eyes?!"

—Linkara, on the Tandy Computer Whiz Kids

"God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image, but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance."

—Frankenstein

The Uncanny Valley is the name given to the idea that as we build robots that look more and more like real people, the more we approach a point where we all say "oh God oh God what as wrong with that robot where did it all go wrong OH GOD"

—T Rex, Dinosaur Comics #848

"Seeing myself transformed into that... lurching, waxen nightmare... Do children really respond to this?"

—Andrew Ryan, describing an anamatronic puppet of himself for Rapture's Theme Park/museum, BioShock (series) II

"Oh my God, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOUR FACE?!!"

—Mr. Plinkett, RedLetterMedia

To see the snowman is to dislike the snowman. It doesn't look like a snowman, anyway. It looks like a cheap snowman suit. When it moves, it doesn't glide -- it walks, but without feet, like it's creeping on its torso. It has anorexic tree limbs for arms, which spin through 360 degrees when it's throwing snowballs. It has a big, wide mouth that moves as if masticating Gummi Bears. And it's this kid's dad.

—Roger Ebert's review of Jack Frost

"Get a hold of yourself. That wasn't a body, nor was it a mind or anything. It was just energy. I know that. But this sinking feeling in my stomach means I'm not truly convinced."

—Ed of Fullmetal Alchemist, expressing frustration that he can't get over those... things attached to Envy's true form.

"The entire film was created inside a computer. How does it look? Cool. Buildings, sets pieces, vehicles and aliens all look amazingly cool. People look really cool when they stand still and face away from us."

—The Self-Made Critic, on Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

"...while nothing in Tintin is quite as richly nightmarish as the waxen-faced corpse of Tom Hanks sauntering through The Polar Express or the kinky video game avatar of Angelina Jolie in Beowulf, it's still a bit eye-watering in places. Particularly in the beginning, before one has a chance to really get used to the sight of almost photorealistic people with comic book facial features, which we've never really had in the movies before, and Jesus Christ is it ever something the brain's not really equipped to deal with."

—Antagony and Ecstasy, on The Adventures of Tintin

"Whereas formerly, before the advent of machinery, the commonest article you could pick up had a life and warmth which gave it individual interest, now everything is turned out to such a perfection of deadness that one is driven to pick up and collect, in sheer desperation, the commonest rubbish still surviving from the earlier periods."

—Harold Speed, The Practice & Science of Drawing chapter VI: The Academic and Conventional

For my part, I prefer aliens that look alien. Then when they ritually eat their first-born, or turn arthropod halfway through their life-cycle, it isn’t so much of a shock. You expect it. Humanoid aliens, they’re trouble.

—envoy Lynne Christie, The Golden Witchbreed by Mary Gentle

Back to Uncanny Valley