History Main / FacelessMasses

* The backgound and ''foreground'' attendees of the Komiket-esque convention in the ''Manga/SayonaraZetsubouSensei'' anime are depicted as paper cut-outs on sticks. Not to mention that the background characters are often deliberately faceless, with a Katakana/Kanji character instead of an actual drawn face.

* In ''VideoGameDodgeThePrank'' in Stages such as 5, 8, and 16 the crowd is just a bunch of silhouettes.

* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' does this a lot, but the episode "Party Pooper Pants" establishes official names for many of the recurring background fish.

* While not faceless or detailless, the background audience in the film ''Film/SpaceJam'' is very cardboard. Even the reactions look more like pictures of the characters being waved than any actual real motion. And it's rather suspicious to see three Penelope Pussycats in one shot that's outside of Pepe Le Pew's fantasies.

* ''Anime/DiGiCharat'' [[LampshadeHanging hangs a lampshade]] on it by drawing its minor characters as literal finger puppets, [[ExagerratedTrope even when they're in the foreground.]]

* ''Anime/DiGiCharat'' [[LampshadeHanging hangs a lampshade]] on it by drawing its minor characters as literal finger puppets, ''[[ExagerratedTrope even when they're in the foreground.]]

* ''Anime/DiGiCharat'' [[LampshadeHanging hangs a lampshade]] on it by drawing its minor characters as literal finger puppets, ''[[ExagerratedTrope even when they're in the foreground.''

* ''Anime/DiGiCharat'' [[LampshadeHanging hangs a lampshade]] on it by drawing its minor characters as literal finger puppets, even when they're in the foreground.

* In the ''{{Manga/ARIA}}'' manga there is a variety in that extras usually still are have distinctive features, but that other Prima undines aside from the three main ones are drawn without faces.

* ''{{LightNovel/Durarara}}'' features gray, unmoving masses. When someone in a crowd becomes important, they become colored-in. In episode 11, [[spoiler:a wave of color washes over a crowd of hundreds as they are revealed to be Dollars members.]]

* In the anime version of the ''Anime/TheIdolmaster'', the audience in their final live is just a mashup of TwoDVisualsThreeDEffects.

* Noted in the Author's Notes in the ''Manga/MahouSenseiNegima'' manga, where he specifically points out what background elements were added digitally, and that digitally empty blobs in the background make a scene look crowded with much less time per drawn person, enabling much larger crowds.
* In ''Anime/MawaruPenguindrum'', the Faceless Masses take the form of the stylised figures commonly seen in road signs and public service announcements.

* Background characters in ''{{Anime/Mononoke}}'' are ''literally'' faceless. The exact specifics depend on the arc, but they'll have clothes, weird skin tones, and usually something... abstract instead of a face.

* ''Anime/SailorMoon'' uses this very noticeably in episodes where there is an audience of some sort. Due to the fact that the setting in this case is a darkened theater/auditorium, the FacelessMasses are depicted as shadowy silhouettes...but they also have weird white stereotypically-alien-like eyes. Rather scary, actually.
* ''{{Manga/Saiyuki}}'''s mangaka has a tendency to use variation on FacelessMasses where, while they having detailed costumes and mouths, has no visible eyes other than a vague shadow. All background characters and mooks would have this, even if the panel focuses on their face.

* ''{{Literature/Trapeze}}'', by the same director as ''Mononoke'' (mentioned above), also takes a very weird approach with faceless masses. Most of the minor background characters are depicted as ''literal'' cardboard cutouts, two-dimensional outlines that move by flailing around. There's even a scene where the cutouts turn into "normal" characters one by one, by paying attention to the protagonist.

* ''VideoGame/TouchDetective'' has them wearing really creepy Scream-like masks. Later subverted in the sequel, where while still FacelessMasses, they had a (flat) character and even (gasp!) names.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Persona 5}}'', non-important [=NPCs=] (those without speech bubbles above their heads) have blurry, smudged out faces that lack eyes or other facial features except for mouths. They also not solid and will disappear when the protagonist moves closer to them and reappear in some distances later.

* Somewhat averted in ''WesternAnimation/CloneHigh''; while traditional FacelessMasses are often used, recognizable historical figures are nearly always mixed in among them.

* During the first episode of ''Manga/HetaliaAxisPowers'' where all of the nation-tans are gathered in a meeting, at most two characters are rendered. All the rest around the table are like this.

* The ''Anime/HimeChenOtogiChikkuIdolLilpri'' anime abuses this trope. Several mass gathering scenes are full of white or blue people blobs.

* During the first episode of ''Manga/AxisPowersHetalia'' where all of the nation-tans are gathered in a meeting, at most two characters are rendered. All the rest around the table are like this.

* ''Manga/KareKano'' did this frequently, where extras were often drawn as white silhouettes.

!!Examples

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* ''Manga/RoseOfVersailles'' has them, just grayed out instead of faceless.

* In the anime version of the ''Anime/TheIdolmaster'', the audience in their final live is just a mashup of ConspicuousCG.

%% Zero-Context Examples are not allowed and have been commented out.

* Frequently used by Juffs in her ''Disney/TheLionKing'' fancomic ''[[http://juffs.deviantart.com/gallery/30023681 The Untold Journey.]]'' Any character in the background or out in the distance will be drawn without eyes.

* This used to be a common trope in sport video games. The reason there was quite understandable: there's only so much memory on a cartridge/CD, and a minuscle amount of RAM and processor resources to draw amount of people at once, and nobody could fault the programmers for spending it on the main action and leaving the crowd as a bunch of cardboard cutouts (or just a flat texture which, more often than not, looked kinda like a pizza that someone stepped on). With the latest systems, however, this is no longer the case, and thus crowd animation is part of the criteria by which sports games are judged.

* The original Wii release of the ''[[VideoGame/GoldenEyeWii [=GoldenEye=]]]'' remake featured animated black silhouettes for the partygoers during the nightclub mission, which are apparently just a bunch of sprites due to the Wii's limited processing power. This would be later rectified in the ''Reloaded'' release for the [=PS3=] and Xbox 360.

* The crowds Eloise came across in ''[[Literature/{{Eloise}} Eloise In Hollywood]]'' are drawn as faceless grey blobs.

* This used to be a common trope in sport video games. The reason there was quite understandable: there's only so much memory on a cartridge/CD, and nobody could fault the programmers for spending it on the main action and leaving the crowd as a bunch of cardboard cutouts (or just a flat texture which, more often than not, looked kinda like a pizza that someone stepped on). With the latest systems, however, this is no longer the case, and thus crowd animation is part of the criteria by which sports games are judged.

* In ''Anime/AnneHappy'' every student others than the five main characters are drawn without face.

* ''{{Webcomic/Rain}}'' shows an abstractly-drawn crowd as the background of the [[http://rainlgbt.smackjeeves.com/comics/1426557/chapter-8-confrontation/ cover]] of Chapter 8.

* ''{{LightNovel/Durarara}}'' features gray, unmoving masses. When someone in a crowd becomes important, they become colored-in. This makes for a SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome in episode 11, when [[spoiler:a wave of color washes over a crowd of hundreds as they are revealed to be Dollars members.]]
* Done in the DatingSim episode of ''Anime/ExcelSaga''.

* ''Anime/NurseWitchKomugi'' [[LampshadeHanging hangs a lampshade]] on this trope in episode 5.

* Done in the first episode of ''Manga/SchoolLive'', where all but a few of Yuki's classmates are rendered as grey silhouettes. Justified in that [[FirstEpisodeSpoiler the end of the episode reveals they're in the middle of a]] ZombieApocalypse, [[WhamShot the classmates are all dead, and Yuki's just delusional]]. The classmates are grey silhouettes because Yuki can't remember what they actually look like.

* ''Anime/TheWallflower'' uses this extensively - the [[{{Bishonen}} bishonen boys']] adoring masses at the school look like a multi-armed, multi-headed cardboard cut-out. Later episodes do this on the ''main'' characters as well - to be fair, the manga it's based on does this too.

* Some Scenes in ''[[Anime/WataMote]]''

[[folder:Arts]]
* Antony Gormley's ''Field''.
[[/folder]]

* ''Anime/KirbyOfTheStars'' does this via filling out crowd scenes and the like with identical generic Cappies. Cappies who are actual named characters have various distinguishing details, such as clothing - the generic ones don't.

* In ''VideoGame/AbsoluteDespairGirls'' most adults are shown as [[PinkGirlBlueBoy blue or pink silhouettes depending on their gender]], while the Monokuma Kids wear identical male or female uniforms with Monokuma masks covering their faces.

* Some Scenes in ''Anime/WataMote''