The vision of a doll that the Wicked Toymaker Henry Stauf sees and recreates is what kicks off the storyline of The 7th Guest.
These are encountered as late-game enemies in Alice: Madness Returns. They are damn creepy, to say the least. They represent the children that Dr. Bumby has brainwashed and broken into child prostitutes.
Ambridge Mansion has a room full of dolls in it. In the second game, the dolls even lock you inside the room for a little while when they're just there staring at you. It's creepy as hell.
A heroic version of this appears in Boogeyman 2. It spends the game sitting motionless in its perpetually-rocking chair, and each night it warns you of the approaching boogeyman.
At one point in BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm, you discover an old, abandoned inn that has an attic room filled with broken sex dolls. They're harmless until you loot the nearby treasure chest, at which point they start giggling and attack. If you lose the battle, then Catie is transformed into one of them.
The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation has a ghost that takes the form of a sentient baby doll, whose cries can be heard from the corridors of an empty school. Trying to investigate the sound of crying, your attempts to follow the source will lead you into a playroom filled with blood and destroyed dolls... moments before the killer doll pounces onscreen and stabs you, cackling into the screen the whole time.
Calling has a room filled with bisque dolls. You not only get scared by those but you also get into that same room later in the game.
The Castlevania series has an animate man-size marionette with long-blond hair. It's lying around idly until the hero comes nearby. Then it giggles, twists its neck in a circle, and floats through the air with unnatural movement as if manipulated by invisible strings. There are also variations that emit electricity, said to be possessed by the ghosts of prisoners that died in the electric chair. Castlevania Chronicles has small dolls, the walking clowns and hover dolls, though you might find the voiced hover dolls adorable.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead has talking dolls as items. They're not much use except for taking their batteries or disassembling them for electronic components. Most of the dolls, when activated, say cute doll things, but they have a small chance of being creepy dolls that say things such as "Go kill yourself!", "Die for me!", or "Do you really need that much honey?".
Clock Tower: The First Fear has a room full of beat-up dolls. One gives you a key. After that, another will attack you.
Condemned 2: Bloodshot features an abandoned factory full of creepy baby dolls that run at you and explode. You can also pick them up and throw them like grenades. Ethan even pulls a pin out when he does this.
Dead Realm: This is one of the ghosts you can play as in the game.
Device 6 has many creepy dolls, some more important than others.
The Doll Shop: The dolls themselves. Although they are quite pretty, there's also something unsettling about them, and as well about how seriously the doll maker himself takes them.
Donkey Kong 64 features the Monster Clown jack-in-the-box Mad Jack as the third boss, although for many he's more remembered as That One Boss for the frustrations due to the camera angles than for being scary (unless the player was younger than about 7 or 8).
Dragon Quest X from Version 2 onwards introduces the Needleman monster linenote Consisting of the Needleman, Spike Head, Disfigurine, Dirty Doll, and Needle Bunny, the last of which is a rarefied variant, which are dolls that love to stick needles into their enemies. The same game also retroactively adds the Iron Maiden monster line from 5.1 onwards, though it's currently unknown if the Steel Sirens and Platinum Poppets will return.
Dragon Quest XI: The Iron Maidens and their Steel Sirens, Platinum Poppets, and Golden Girl relatives make their debut to the seriesnote At the time, since later versions of Dragon Quest X were under development., along with Dora-in-Grey, a villain in Mordegon's service that steals the souls of the people of Phnom Nonh to add to her masterpiece.
Dreamkiller have a stage where you assist a client remove his pedophobia. His fears manifest itself into gigantic, sentient, deformed dolls who attacks you on sight.
The second battle in EarthBound Beginnings is against a possessed doll which one of your sisters owns.
Emily Wants To Play has Emily's "friends", each with a different mechanic: Kiki is a Japanese porcelain doll who will kill you unless you look right at her, Mr. Tatters is a Monster Clown doll who will kill you if you move while he's looking at you, and Chester is a Demonic Dummy who will kill you if you linger in the same room as him for too long.
Epic Battle Fantasy 5 has the Doll family of enemies, a set of crudely made Voodoo Dolls based on the playable characters and usually found in haunted areas. Reactions from the party upon first seeing them are... varied:
Matt: I-is that supposed to be me? Am I really that dirty? Natalie: Ugh, who would go through the trouble of making such a doll? Why does it have panties and breasts?!?! Lance: What's this? A little fascist doll? (Does it want to join my cause?) Anna: Ewwww, someone's made a voodoo doll of me? What have I done to deserve this? Let's kill it gently please.
Turned-out and dirty dolls in Epic Mickey, which you can do a spinning attack on for restorative items. They're even creepier than an eyeless Dumbo ride.
Fatal Frame cannot help but place them in every title.
The first game has a room filled with long-haired, creepy dolls with a little ghost girl wanting to 'play' with you.
Fatal Frame II takes this to the next level with the Dollmaker and the life-sized doll of his dead daughter, who was promptly possessed by an evil spirit and convinced her sister to murder her father. Now the pair of them wander around as shuffling ghosts, while the father controls his dolls and convinces them to kill you.
At the very beginning of the game, there's a doll in the mansion displayed in a nook. You can look at it through your camera; as you slowly walk towards it, will look up at you.
The attacking handmaiden ghosts who look like little geisha dolls that will kill you with their hammers and ghostly tricks each have their own room. Their choice of decoration? Dolls. A whole ton of them. Skewered on the walls.
A doll in Miku's room will grow hair throughout the game.
The room of Ayako, a Creepy Child, is littered with dolls and severed doll limbs with a creepy laugh as the background music. There is also a side quest to take pictures of dolls littered throughout the game. The downside is you after each one, a creepy image of a little girl alongside a creepy laugh plays to verify your picture was successfully taken.
Alma carries a doll around with her in First Encounter Assault Recon. The effect is not really all that childish, especially since she's covered in blood up to her ankles and typically surrounded by hellfire.
There's a junk item in Forum Warz, the Haunted Doll, but it doesn't really do anything... at least, nobody's seen it do anything. You can also wind up stuck with a Burnt Doll by pissing off a certain NPC.
Gaia Online has a "joint puppet" feature for avatars to use. If that doesn't fit this trope, then the livid-patchy "dead doll" option will.
Used very subtly in Half-Life 2. They're never in plain sight, but if you go out of your way to poke through the trash or explore the abandoned playgrounds, you can find normal children's dolls... in ruins. Missing an arm. Missing an eye. Covered in something black. Very creepy.
The attic of Boo Manor in Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak is filled with dolls with big staring eyes. Bijou thinks they're creepy and the mood isn't exactly lifted when it turns out that Spat is hiding among them while pretending to be a doll.
In Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, your character has the option of buying a teddy bear for your child in chapter three. And then it turns out that the fucking thing blinks and moves and your child will hold conversations with it.
In Haunt the House, one object that can be possessed is a doll. When the player character, a ghost, possesses it, the player can make it shriek.
Haunting Ground has a room full of it, and is, in fact, a puzzle. Doing this incorrectly will prompt spikes coming out of the dolls to give you a game over.
I Spy: Spooky Mansion has a wardrobe filled with nothing but dusty, antique dolls as a level where you are told a poem (like in the books) to find things. In the game, when you find an object that you are told to find, the object will become animated and then is checked off the list. In the wardrobe level, nearly every object you are told to find is a doll, and when found will move and talk with high-pitched voices and squeaky joints. Very creepy to a kid playing the game.
Ib not only has a creepy doll that follows Garry around and keeps on asking him to play with it in one scene, but also an entire room of creepy dolls that lock him inside and force him to "play" with them to find the key to the door before a giant version of them finishes crawling through the window. If he fails to find the key in time, Bad Things happen.
Illbleed has Cutie Marie/Cuty Mary, a cute little doll who challenges you to a series of deadly games in the "Killer Department Store" level.
In Kingdom Hearts III, several dolls in Toy Box find themselves possessed by Heartless. The most noticeable cases are Angelic Amber, a goth girl doll who becomes a boss upon being possessed, and Buzz Lightyear, who was possessed on Young Xehanort's orders.
Kingdom of Loathing has the Misfit Doll accessory. A normal doll with black hair, white skin, and hollow eye sockets. Adds Spooky damage (which is apparently generated by frightening the opponent) to attacks. Also has the Evil Teddy Bear and Cymbal Playing Monkey familiar and Killer Rag Doll and Creepy Marionette off-hands.
You can get a creepy clockwork monkey as a combat item. The item description is in the quotes page.
An update to Spookyraven Manor in May 2014 added a "creepy doll" monster to the Manor, as well as the quest reward "Elizabeth's Dollie".
West of Loathing has the evil talking doll Grace, who told her (late) owner to murder her family in a series of "tea parties" to keep the demonic Cows away. After burning the house down, Grace tells you to finish the "tea party" by giving her the goblet of blood in the basement... and then you remember that talking dolls haven't been invented yet.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land: Sillydillo has a bunch of dolls laying around their lair; they managed to create a fake Elfilin doll to lure Kirby in, and they have a bunch of fake Kirby dolls which they will try to throw at him throughout the fight.
In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, there's a little girl in Ikana Valley whose father lives in the wardrobe in the basement because he's slowly turning into a Gibdo. Later on, if you look inside his wardrobe, it's revealed that he had a mummified little doll resting in the corner. The skull kid also slightly fits this... especially with how Majora plays with him.
In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, when you meet the Great Fairy Queen, she takes the appearance of a child yet holds a doll that looks like a miniature Great Fairy, all of which look like grown adult women. The effect is rather unsettling, a fact not helped by the background music.
A creepy doll whose eyes move is part of the antique shop's decor in The Lost Crown: A Ghost-Hunting Adventure. Not exactly a doll, but this game also features a spooky, headless dressmaker's dummy that inexplicably appears in the bathroom each night, looking like an intruder in the dark.
In Martha Is Dead, marionettes are used to reenact Giulia’s abusive childhood. Giulia later appears as one when talking to herself.
In The Matrix: Path of Neo, there's creepy animatronic sex-dolls in Club Hell which giggle when a mook pushes them onto an electrified table.
Maze: Subject 360 has a number of them, including a disturbing mechanical baby doll that you have to assemble in order to complete a task and a room full of decrepit mannequins in contorted poses which are intended to represent previous subjects who supposedly escaped the maze.
The game menu in Mishap: An Accidental Haunting consists of signs held up by extremely creepy dolls in various states of disrepair. Similar dolls appear throughout the hidden object scenes.
In Monster Girl Quest, Gnome can be seen holding a mud doll, a marionette-like doll with hollow eye sockets. She created many of them, animated, to ease boredom. Gnome summons them during her battle to test Luka's strength. They're even creepier if you lose, in which case Gnome will have these dolls repeatedly rape Luka. There is also a Cursed Doll in the Haunted House side quest.
Mr. Hopp's Playhouse: The titular Mr. Hopp himself, a creepy rabbit doll who is the source of all troubles. And starting from the second game onwards, Mr. Hopp is accompanied by his friends, Miss Bo and Mr. Stripes, making them collectively known as "The Three Curses".
Mystery Case Files: One of the hidden-object search scenes in Return to Ravenhearst consists of dozens of creepy, damaged dolls arranged on shelves. In the sequel, Escape From Ravenhearst, you interact with dozens of creepy animatronic mannequins.
There are plenty of dolls lying around the house in Neverending Nightmares, where most of them are cracked or have creepy facial expressions. In a few blink-or-you-miss-it moments, they sometimes wink at the player. Ultimately, they're harmless unless you're on the Wayward Dreamer path, in which case they will disembowel you the chance they get.
The first boss of Stage 2 in Night Slashers is a duo consisting of an old man with a bell and a marionette who prevent the heroes from following the carriage. The marionette walks-or-dances around as if on strings, even though there are none. He sometimes throws his head to attack, laughs maniacally, and may temporarily fall apart if hit with a special move. He burns up upon defeat.
In Octopath Traveler II, a boy in Gravell has a StUfFeD tOy in his inventory (yes, it's capitalized that way, as opposed to the regular Stuffed Toy items that many child NPCs have) that has "Won't you play with me?" as its description. Throné and Partitio can't Steal or Purchase it from him, and since he disappears at night, Agnea can't Entreat it from him, either. Using any of the information-gathering Path Actions on the boy reveals that he's very anxious, and he tells all of his worries to the StUfFeD tOy to make himself feel better... which wouldn't be too bad, if not for the fact that his profile also states that the toy steals his soul away at night to keep him from worrying so much.
OFF has the Secretaries, who resemble baby dolls. They're huge, they hit crazy hard(with math equations, oddly enough), they're creepy, they show up in zones devoid of all life, and they get even uglier as the game goes on. They're also good for EXP grinding, if you're careful.
Ōkami has some of these in the Sunken Ship dungeon. They aren't exactly creepy on their own right, but combined with the surroundings, occasional chest-monsters and the sound world that at first makes them seem like they're laughing at you, we can't really blame you if you feel like Power Slashing them, just to be sure.
Onimusha: Warlords has Ayame, a demonic, Ax-Crazy Genma-doll which will randomly appear in the castle and will try to slash you to pieces with her gigantic claws.
Fiendish puppets and dolls will appear hidden in some chests in Onimusha 3: Demon Siege. They'll leave behind the object they're guarding when defeated.
Twilight Town in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is populated by Twilighters, green creatures resembling shadowy dolls with visible stitching and glowing yellow eyes. Fortunately, it's the game's Halloween Town and they're the ones in need of rescuing.
Vivien in Phantasmat 4: The Dread of Oakville has an entire set of shelves of grotesque wooden dolls which can move by themselves.
One of the treasures in Pikmin 2 is the head of a creepy baby doll called "The Silencer". In the Japanese version, it is worth 666 Pokos (changed to 670 in the international releases) and its eyelids blink if it's moved around.
Pokémon has Banette. Its Dex entry states that it was a doll that came to life as a Pokémon after being abandoned by a child. Mr. Mime also counts, due to its heavily puppet-like design and intentionally invoking the Uncanny Valley, and being part Fairy-type.
The titular Poppy has massive human-looking eyes, an ability to hold conversations with children, and a strange insistence that she's a real girl. When you find her in the trailer, she doesn't move, but her eyes move just enough to show that they're tracking you. In the game itself, you find her in a glass case asleep. Opening it wakes her up, upon which she seems to express gratitude. It's strongly implied that she was once an employee of the toy company that made the dolls and underwent Brain Uploading so that she could live forever.
The game's first major antagonist, Huggy Wuggy, counts to a lesser degree. He's the larger-than-life-sized version of another popular line of dolls, some of which you can find strewn around in the room he first appears in. One of them has black eyes and a physically deformed appearance.
The Puppetshow series is made of creepy dolls. Creepy mechanical dolls ranging from naked sexless automatons to a baby doll head mounted on a giant spider body.
In Rakion, the Mage's small stature and white mask that sports a stitched-up mouth evokes the image of a living creepy doll.
First with Resident Evil – Code: Veronica (and its remake level in Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles), in which you travel through a house of dolls, filled with zombies, bats, Bandersnatches, little dolls and a giant suspended doll, all of which are modeled after the game's main antagonist Alexia Ashford. Plus, there is also the music, which the remake makes even worse.
There's also the Resident Evil 4 prototype, which features Leon going through a castle owned by Umbrella (at least we assume) that is... weirdly enough haunted with hook-wielding ghost demonic dolls and tentacles in a black mist. It's as if he made a wrong turn at Raccoon City and went to Silent Hill. (Damn, would it have been scary.)
Resident Evil Village has Lady Donna Beneviento and her puppet, Angie, who during her section of the game has Ethan have to find Angie in a game of hide and seek with several other puppets and stab her. Not finding her in time will have the other puppets Zerg Rush him. Once she goes down, Ethan has also killed Beneviento as well, reducing her to dust and taking her crystal.
One made to look like the game's protagonist spooks the player out near the beginning. It makes an appearance later on, but its plot-significance is small. What makes this doll even creepier is the fact that it was created specifically to be slapped around and beaten by a character that hates Jennifer that much.
The Rose Princess also appears to be one. It turns out that was just a stand-in for when the real one was ill.
Marionetta, the third boss or more specifically the guardian of Obsidian Mansion in Rune Factory 4, has a description of "An old doll. Spookier than you can imagine" for a reason.
Each game in the Shadow Hearts series has a dungeon called the Doll House, which is the home to a demonically possessed doll. In the first game, the spirit possessing the doll is not quite as scary as the doll itself, which sits in the middle of an extremely disturbing room, on a rocking horse, creaking slowly back and forth. In the second game, there's a similar dungeon, meant for a character who has a doll of his own. Not quite as scary as the first, but still quite a bit disturbing, given that there are dolls all over the house watching you... In the third game, there are dolls all over the place, and the scariness comes from what you have to do to them — plucking out their eyes.
Shut Eye: This is one of the toys that stalks you each night. It usually starts appearing by the door.
Silent Hill 2 features the Mannequin, a monster made of two shiny plasticine women's lower torsos stacked on top of one another. It possibly symbolizes the main character's objectification of women.
Silent Hill: Origins features Ariel, appearing as a doll that can either break your neck in the air... or run around on its hands to kill you.
Silent Hill: Homecoming, however, cranks it up even further with Scarlet, a giant, elongated mannequin with porcelain armor that, when blown off, reveals that there's inexplicably flesh and muscle beneath it. Add this to the fact that it came out of a pool of Doc Finch's blood and the One-Woman Wail creating Soundtrack Dissonance... it is easily the most frightening monster in the entire game. Finding out what and why Scarlett is doesn't help. Not that you probably hadn't figured it out by now anyway...
Silent Hill 3 also contains a slightly more traditional example in the form of the dolls Stanley leaves behind for Heather in the hospital. The protagonist originally thinks of the doll as another child's and is disgusted when she finds out it's supposed to be for her. In his last journal entry, the doll is torn to pieces. Creepy... Then there's the dolls in the Otherworld Hillside Center. One's in a wheelchair, while another — only a few feet away — is held by a humanoid... thing, suspended over a hole. Symbolism?
Silent Hill: Downpour has the aptly named Dolls, which resemble (very creepy-looking) sex dolls. They summon shadows to attack Murphy, preferring to stand (almost) stone-still while they do so.
If you're not careful whilst downloading custom content for The Sims 3, you can unknowingly download a doll that will slow down your game loading times and crash your games.
That's probably Dexter the Bear, a stuffed bear that gives you the ability to kill other sims with either a knife, a poker, or a hammer. The hammer lets you kill toddlers too, which gives way to the creepy toddler behaviors... that is, when Dexter works properly and doesn't crash the game.
In summer of 2010, there was also a custom content girl doll in a dress that attached itself like a virus to any uploaded content you created. It got onto the official exchange and caused a number of crashed games before people found it.
For actual creepy dolls rather than bugged ones, we have the Imaginary Friend doll from the Generations expansion pack, which is generally agreed to be extremely creepy, and is delivered in the mail most of the time when your sims have a baby, and to make matters worse, if you let your toddlers play with the thing it will evolve into an animated thing with a creepy walk that follows your sim kids around everywhere. Also, the developers went out of their way to make the thing hard to get rid of, you can't even blow it up in an explosion.
Your child will constantly play with it, ignoring their needs and their homework, along with constantly being interrupted when you tell them to do something. On top of that, if you take the doll away and leave it out, it will act like a gnome, which disappear in the night to show up elsewhere, often turning on TVs and stereos, or just poofing up beside a bed to stare at the occupant.
In episode 1 of Song of Horror, the final leg of the game involves a puzzle of a dollhouse with five dolls that need to be placed in the correct rooms. Four of them are normal toys, but the fifth is a hideous gangly ball of rags in a vaguely humanoid shape found clogging a toilet like someone was desperate to get rid of it. The second part of the puzzle applies this to all of the dolls: in the equivalent rooms of the mansion where you put the dolls in the dollhouse, desiccated corpses appear, and the room where the ugly doll was placed is taken by the Presence, which will instakill you if you try to enter.
Soul Hackers features the shop "Robot Haus" which normally sells these. It is run by a creepy old lady who talks as if the dolls were alive, and when you show her the GUNP, she sells suspicious items to you such as water that attracts demons and Molotov Cocktails.
The 2010 remake of Splatterhouse has the boss of Phase 2, aptly titled "The Doll that Bled". This doll has the both the powers of telekinesis and the ability to form fleshy masses of tentacles. It combines these abilities in its boss fight to create a massive golem out of flesh and furniture, which it uses as an armored shell while fighting Rick.
In Stardew Valley, if you turn your children into doves with the shrine at the Witch's House, an Ancient Doll will appear on TV on Fall 26. After this, the same doll will appear and attack you whenever you visit the Witch's House.
"You've brought this upon yourself... now I'm free... Hee hee hee!"
Near the beginning of Strange Cases 4: The Faces of Vengeance, the main character discovers a doll of herself hanging — literally — inside an old fridge. When touched, the head falls off. Also, since the game is set in an abandoned mall, it gets a lot of mileage out of old mannequins in various disturbing poses. After solving a particular puzzle involving three child mannequins and a plastic birthday cake, she comments "It looks like someone is turning seven — if he was human and not a creepy doll."
String Tyrant has life-sized versions of these as the most common enemy type.
The eponymous Talking Tattletail doll from Tattletail seems like an annoying but harmless Faux Furby that the Kid Hero can't wait until Christmas to open. Then it starts getting out of the box on its own, and other weird things start to happen. Then you meet Mama Tattletail, who doesn't like to see its child upset...
Touhou Project has gotten in on this trope with a few character designs.
Alice Margatroid has a veritable army of dolls at her disposal, otherwise-innocuous toys armed with swords, lances or straight razors, some of which are even packed with gunpowder. Fan works usually portray them as cute, but with spellcard names like "Eerily Luminous Shanghai Dolls" and "Hanged Hourai Dolls" it's easy to go the other route. Alice herself is often described as slightly creepy, what with her habit of holding one-sided conversations with her dolls, and then there's the fan art that gives her doll joints or otherwise implies that she's just a larger puppet...
Medicine Melancholy, an abandoned doll left in a field of poisonous flowers for so long that she became a youkai, is one of the creepiest characters in the series. She has a murderous grudge against humanity, rambles to herself about her toxins' effects and talks to her victims about how wonderful it is that they'll soon die surrounded by poison. Simply touching Medicine is dangerous, she can manipulate her poisons to control her victims, and she even attempted to poison the Human Village on one occasion. Other than all that, she looks like a cute little girl.
The curse goddess Hina Kagiyama is a subversion — she collects Nagashi-bina dolls, whose purpose is to be filled with the misfortune of the user, but she does this to drain away that misfortune and ensure that it doesn't affect anyone else. She's actually pretty friendly, it's just that she's soaked up so much misfortune this way that simply being around her can be dangerous.
Trenches (2021): You can find these. In fact, one of the first puzzles in the game is to follow the sounds of babies crying to discarded dolls in the trenches and picking them up.
There is a mod in Unreal Tournament called Unreal4Ever which has a doll for a weapon. When used, the doll skips around a map making doll-like noises, until an unlucky victim comes too close and detonates the doll, causing a nuclear explosion. Just imagine being chased by a seemingly harmless doll that's really out to kill you.
Wario World: Brawl Doll, the boss of Horror Manor, is an evil baby doll with a putto-like appearance, having big blue eyes, angel wings, and a star-shaped halo. In the cutscene before the battle, it does an Exorcist Head while laughing sinisterly.
Witchkin: One of the titular characters is an eyeless, hairless doll in a tattered dress.
Witch Hunter Izana: Verand's personal maid, Elvira is a person sized one. She is drawn less humanly than the rest of the characters to reinforce this. The player characters can of course get turned into them as well.
In Zombies Ate My Neighbors, one of the recurring enemies is Tommy the Evil Doll. These little terrors pop out of crates with a spine-tingling "MWHA HA HA HA HA HA!" Then they chase you while throwing axes. Even once they have burst into flames, they still chase you. And they never stop respawning.
