History Main / RubberForeheadAliens

** Another LampshadeHanging occurs in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS07E14Chimera Chimera]]" in this conversation between two changelings, Odo and Laas:

** One interpretation of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S2E6TheEyeOfTheBeholder The Eye of the Beholder]]". [[spoiler:It's revealed at the end that the doctors' snoutlike noses and enlarged upper lips are the norm, while the seemingly beautiful patient is considered hideously deformed. She may be a {{Human Alien|s}} in a Rubber Forehead race.]]

** Lampshaded when the Bajoran Ro Laren, who has something of a chip on her shoulder, refers to herself as "the token bumpy-head" in one of the novels. Behind the scenes, Bajoran makeup was specifically designed to be minimal so that the actress who played Ro would remain attractive.

** There are some hilarious rubber-foreheaded aliens in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E19MrDingleTheStrong Mr. Dingle, the Strong]]" which feature one race as two guys stuck together with metal antennas on their heads and another race as children with painted mustaches partially inflated balloons on their head and two bug-like antennas. Thankfully, the episode was meant to be a comedy.

** One interpretation of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E42TheEyeOfTheBeholder The Eye of the Beholder]]". [[spoiler:It's revealed at the end that the doctors' snoutlike noses and enlarged upper lips are the norm, while the seemingly beautiful patient is considered hideously deformed. She may be a {{Human Alien|s}} in a Rubber Forehead race.]]
** There are some hilarious rubber-foreheaded aliens in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E55MrDingleTheStrong Mr. Dingle, the Strong]]" which feature one race as two guys stuck together with metal antennas on their heads and another race as children with painted mustaches partially inflated balloons on their head and two bug-like antennas. Thankfully, the episode was meant to be a comedy.
** The episode titled "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E64WillTheRealMartianPleaseStandUp Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?]]". The setting of this episode is a rural restaurant. During the 25-minute episode, we wonder which one among a group of people is the alien. It turns out, we were seeing the alien all along, and that there were two of them. One alien has an extra arm (this one is from Mars). The other one has a third eye (he's from Venus).

** The infamous "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan To Serve Man]]" features tall aliens with larger brains.

* The Saiyans in ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' are just humans with tails in appearance; that turn into giant monkeys during a full moon. ''Dragon Ball Z'' is ''very'' bad about this. There's even a whole race of "humans but skin is different color"; the Brench-seijin, which Jeice and Salza belong to. Most of the major races fall into this. Most prominent besides the Saiyans are the Namekians, who are green-skinned and fanged with antenna and long pointy ears, but otherwise resemble human men, and the Shinjin, who look like humans with long pointy ears and weird skin colors (e.g. red, green, purple).

** [[TheDarkChick Nebula]], Gamora's adoptive sister, an originally purple-skinned, bald alien woman, now a {{cyborg}} with extensive areas of blue grafted synthetic skin.

Creator/GeneRoddenberry gave more reasons for this in an interview once. Budget constraints aside, if you try to make aliens look completely alien, you'll firstly make them look ridiculous (cf. ''Series/DoctorWho''), and secondly make it doubly hard for the actor playing the alien to do anything mildly resembling acting. This has actually been isolated to extremely specific requirements: if an audience can't see an actor's ''eyes'' or ''mouth'', their ability to empathize with or emotionally invest in that character is significantly impaired. If they can see neither, it's difficult to empathize with them at all. This is one reason why {{mooks}}, especially SF mooks like the [[Series/BattlestarGalactica1978 Cylons]] or the [[Franchise/StarWars Imperial Stormtroopers]], are so often uniformed in [[FacelessGoons face-obscuring helmets]]. While not totally undoable with the post TOS ''Star Trek'' budget, the flamboyant and outlandish alien designs of ''Franchise/StarWars'' appeal to a more pulp SpaceOpera aesthetic from which ''Star Trek'' has historically chosen to distance itself, at least onscreen; the expanded universe of comics and novels is a different beast. Additionally, Roddenberry had always insisted that ''Franchise/StarTrek'' was [[MostWritersAreHuman about human issues]] and that the aliens are intended as vehicles for social commentary. This required aliens that may have been scientifically implausible (humanoid appearance, ability to communicate in English and emote like humans, etc) but easy for the human characters to interact with and the audience to relate to in the narrative. ''Trek'' fans may assume that the pure hard science fiction adventures and alien encounters occur offscreen(indeed, the animated shows tend to have even less humanoid aliens).

* The Gems in ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'' generally look like human [[OneGenderRace women]] except for their [[AmazingTechnicolorPopulation skin tones]], hair colors, [[ImprobableHairstyle hairstyle]], and having a gemstone embedded somewhere in their bodies. That said, their figures are often drawn more exaggerated than humans, and the series increasingly shows types of gems [[HumanoidAliens that are still humanoid but with blatantly inhuman features]] (Nephrite is a {{Cyclops}} whose gem functions as an eye; Sapphires, Aquamarines, and Rutiles are TheNoseless; many types are inhumanly large or small), and that's before getting into [[FusionDance gem fusions]] which are generally larger, frequently possess ExtraEyes and [[MultiArmedAndDangerous limbs]], and sometimes only partially humanoid. Technically, their gemstones is their HeartDrive and ''actual'' form, while their bodies are a HardLight projection, so they can actually shape-shift at will as a result, meaning their normal shapes are preferred forms than anything else.

* The Atlantines in ''ComicStrip/DanDare'' are human but with blue skin and a visible lump on the forehead. A nice subversion [[spoiler:later reveals that they are descendants of people kidnapped from Earth aeons ago, and their differences from Earth people are adaptations that evolved to enable them to survive on Venus]].

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* Not an alien [[AmbiguouslyHuman (as far as we know)]], but The Brow from ''Dick Tracy'' (both [[ComicStrip/DickTracy the comic strip]] and - briefly - the 1990 Creator/WarrenBeatty [[Film/DickTracy film]]) certainly had an unusual forehead.
[[/folder]]

** In ''[[ComicBook/Supergirl1982 Supergirl (Volume 2)]]'' issue #21, Characters/{{Superman|TheCharacter}} and Characters/{{Supergirl|TheCharacter}} come upon the Seeders, basically humanoid but with pink skin, blue-hair and vaguely-feline features.

* The Czarnians (''ComicBook/{{Lobo}}'''s species) were (or just barely ''are'', since Lobo is [[LastOfHisKind the last one]]) basically human except for red eyes, pale gray skin, and ''huge'' EightiesHair (usually black).

* ''LightNovel/CatPlanetCuties'' features LittleBitBeastly aliens like the Catians (cats) and Dogisians (dogs). Hilariously, the Catians originally called their home planet Earth and referred to themselves as Earthlings -- they changed the name of their planet and species to Catia out of courtesy. A race of bunny girls is also briefly mentioned.

* Except for Yaliph (a sentient blop) most aliens we've seen until now in ''Series/TheOrville'' are rubber-forehead; this include the rigged-headed Moclans and the Xelayans that only have PointyEars and some marks over the eyebrows (probably in order to let Lt. Kitan to be an [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe Alien Space Babe]]).

** The episode titled "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up". The setting of this episode is a rural restaurant. During the 25 minute episode, we wonder which one among a group of people is the alien. It turns out, we were seeing the alien all along, and that there were two of them. One alien has an extra arm (this one is from Mars). The other one has a third eye (he's from Venus).
** There are some hilarious rubber headed aliens in "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" which feature one race as two guys stuck together with metal antennas on their heads and another race as children with painted mustaches partially inflated balloons on their head and two bug-like antennas. Thankfully that episode was meant to be a comedy.
** The infamous "To Serve Man" featured tall aliens with larger brains.
** One interpretation of "Eye of the Beholder". [[spoiler: It's revealed at the end that the doctors' snoutlike noses and enlarged upper lips are the norm, while the seemingly beautiful patient is considered hideously deformed. She may be a {{Human Alien|s}} in a Rubber Forehead race.]]

[[quoteright:325:[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Worf2375.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:325:This is the forehead that defeated countless enemies and charmed numerous women, [[TheWorfEffect but also got smacked down a lot]].]]

The next step past Rubber Forehead Aliens (catlike or buglike or lizardlike aliens that can still sit in chairs and hold weapons) is HumanoidAliens, possibly overlapping with {{Intelligent Gerbil}}s. Contrast with StarfishAliens. The UncannyValley can result if your RF Alien looks a little ''too'' human. Possible sister trope to BizarreAlienLimbs, if the make-up crew opts for weird rubber hands instead of facial appliances. A definite sister is PaletteSwappedAlienFood, where alien food looks like oddly-colored human food.

* ''LightNovel/CrestOfTheStars'': The Abh were distinguished by their blue hair though some of them also had pointy ears. This one ''does'' get justified, though, in that the Abh are in fact ''genetically altered humans'', who even call their stellar nation the "Humankind Empire Abh" (or a variant, [[SpellMyNameWithAnS depending on how you translate it]]); the Abh see themselves as humans with a few different traits, while their (non-modded) enemies tend to see them as vile aliens, wholly different from humanity. One of the narrative thrusts of the work is examining just how human they really are - or aren't.

* In the ''VideoGame/StarOcean'' games, Nedians and Expellians are identical to humans, while Roakians all have tails (and there are "Lesser Fellpool" who are more similar to cats, including [[CatGirl cat ears]]. Interestingly, Roddick makes sure the Earthlings know that they're related to cats rather than monkeys, seeming to indicate that they descended from them. The third game introduced a bunch more alien species, some of which are humanoid dolphins, dwarves and such, others of which look practically identical to humans.

* In ''VideoGame/PokemonUltraSunAndUltraMoon'', the people of Ultra Megalopolis are [[AnotherDimension extradimensional]] humans with blue skin, who Hau outright refers to as aliens.

Creator/GeneRoddenberry gave more reasons for this in an interview once. Budget constraints aside, if you try to make aliens look completely alien, you'll firstly make them look ridiculous (cf. ''Series/DoctorWho''), and secondly make it doubly hard for the actor playing the alien to do anything mildly resembling acting. This has actually been isolated to extremely specific requirements: if an audience can't see an actor's ''eyes'' or ''mouth'', their ability to empathize with or emotionally invest in that character is significantly impaired. If they can see neither, it's difficult to empathize with them at all. This is one reason why {{mooks}}, especially SF mooks like the [[Series/BattlestarGalactica1978 Cylons]] or the [[Franchise/StarWars Imperial Stormtroopers]], are so often uniformed in [[FacelessGoons face-obscuring helmets]]. While not totally undoable with the post TOS ''Star Trek'' budget, the flamboyant and outlandish alien designs of ''Franchise/StarWars'' appeal to a more pulp SpaceOpera aesthetic from which ''Star Trek'' has historically chosen to distance itself, at least onscreen; the expanded universe of comics and novels is a different beast. Additionally, Roddenberry had always insisted that ''Franchise/StarTrek'' was about human issues and that the aliens are intended as vehicles for social commentary. This required aliens that may have been scientifically implausible (humanoid appearance, ability to communicate in English and emote like humans, etc) but easy for the human characters to interact with and the audience to relate to in the narrative. Trek fans may assume that the pure hard science fiction adventures and alien encounters occur offscreen(indeed, the animated shows tend to have even less humanoid aliens).

* ''Film/TheManWhoFellToEarth'': Thomas Newton's true form has catlike eyes and lacks hair, fingernails, etc.

* In Walter Tevis' original novel ''Film/TheManWhoFellToEarth'', Thomas Newton is described as having albino-white, curly hair, fair, hairless skin, pale blue eyes, thin and long fingers, and an "elfin"-looking face with wide, "boyish"-looking eyes; but he only have four toes on each feet, no appendix and no wisdom tooth, and a more well-built respiratory system that makes him "impossible ... to develop hiccups".