Creepy Good

"My fear was now of another kind. I felt sure that the creature was what we called 'good,' but I wasn’t sure whether I liked 'goodness' so much as I had supposed. This is a very terrible experience. As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it is also dreadful?"

— Elwin Ransom, Perelandra

The good guys don't always have to be warm and cuddly, or even all that attractive for that matter. Sometimes, they're even downright scary.

This trope mostly applies to Friendly Neighborhood Vampires, Noble Demons, Uncanny Valley Girls, Benevolent Abominations, Angelic Abominations, etc. Nonhuman characters get this a lot, but it can also apply to full humans who unnerve allies and audience members with their methods or mannerisms. It can also follow a Heel–Face Turn, if the character switching to the side of good retains some moral ambiguity or monstrous traits. Psycho Sidekicks and good-guy (or at least harmless) versions of Stalker with a Crush can fall under this, as well.

Contrast Villain with Good Publicity, which is an inversion, Face–Monster Turn, in which a good character changes sides after becoming creepy, and Token Evil Teammate, where an evil or nominally evil (though not necessarily creepy) character works with the heroes without having a Heel–Face Turn. Creepy Awesome may also apply, especially in the case of particularly badass characters.

Compare Good is Not Nice, Good Is Not Soft, Face of a Thug, and Dark Is Not Evil, which are sister tropes, and the Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant, who is usually also Creepy Good (unless, of course, they're evil). If it's the main character who's Creepy Good, it's a case of Horrifying Hero or Terror Hero.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Angel Densetsu: Seiichirou Kitano. Face of a demon, heart of an angel.
• Attack on Titan:
  • The Rogue Titan that appeared during the Battle of Trost is utterly terrifying in both its appearance and fighting style, but it has no interest in attacking humans and instead runs around beating the crap out of the regular Titans. That's because the Rogue Titan is Eren Jaeger.
  • Armin ends up being one of these. He is the one aside from Erwin to come up with rather ruthless plans as first resorts. And it's hard to forget his rather creepy speech to try to unnerve Reiner and Bertholt who were trying to kidnap Eren, telling them about how they abandoned Annie and how the military was torturing her horribly with a rather creepy grin on his face. Even Eren seems disturbed by what he said.
• Berserk has the Skull Knight, a Mysterious Protector with glowing, bright red eyes who has a massive suit of skeleton armor with spikes, a sword that's also covered in spikes and serrations, and rides a supernatural Hellish Horse. Yet in terms of personality, he's a Knight in Shining Armor and the closest that the Berserk-verse has to a traditional Big Good.
• Black Clover:
  • Gordon Agrippa uses Poison Magic, looks like a goth, and creepily mumbles, but he's actually a super nice guy and aligned with the forces of good.
  • Nacht Faust is a devil host who wears a hooded cloak and uses Shadow Magic that can form creepily long arms, and is the Black Bulls' Vice Captain.
• Bleach:
  • Usually Played for Laughs with Captain Unohana, who is The Dreaded to everyone who threatens her ire. A smile from her sends chills down the spines of even the 11th Division. When she fights, she lets down her hair and transforms into Yachiru, a truly eerie, blood-powered Blood Knight who was the original Kenpachi of the 11th division.
  • Senjumaru Shutara, with her Creepily Long Arms, damn-near robotic levels of serenity, and penchant for mutilation, is so intimidating that even the creepy Mayuri is off-balanced by her.
  • Kisuke Urahara usually poses himself as an easygoing and friendly person... which may fool most until they learn about his previous jobs like his employment in the Soul Society's asylum and leading the Science Division, making incredible progress in area of artificial souls or he commits something incredibly disturbing like cutting Ichigo's soul from his body and to reawaken his shinigami powers, but putting him in a very real risk of becoming hollow .
• Cells at Work!: U-1146 and the rest of the Neutrophils/White Blood Cells are a bunch of nice guys devoted to protecting the body from pathogens... by ruthlessly slaughtering invasive germs on-sight. Although their job is important, a Running Gag is how disturbed the other cells are at just how enthusiastic the neutrophils are at their work and how quickly they switch from calm and friendly to violent and bloodthirsty. It doesn't help that they all have paper-white skin and creepy black eyes.
• Cyborg 009: In some continuities, such as the 1980 Legends of the Super Galaxy movie, Albert Heinrich (Cyborg 004) has a dark personality. Averted in the 2001 series, which softened his personality considerably.
• Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School: Seiko Kimura, a strange looking Mad Scientist with a weirdly tangled Anime Hair, always wearing a mask and talks in Creepy Monotone. She is also the Token Good Teammate of the Radicals, a Friend to All Living Things, a Combat Medic and was completely willing to help a girl that would be opposite to her side when she saw her arm bruised.
• Death Note:
  • L is a Hero Antagonist who has No Social Skills and Looks Like Cesare, and (although not above the use of torture, and shown to not actually care about justice), is the good guy.
  • L's two successors, Near and Mello, also qualify. Near is equally uncanny in appearance and somehow even more of an agoraphobic shut-in, while Mello attempts to fight Kira by becoming a ruthless mob boss, gaining burn marks along the way (and Word of God says he's the least evil of the three).
• Caiman from Dorohedoro is a large man with a reptilian head who has no qualms with brutally cutting up magic users in the hopes one of them happens to be the one who cursed his head. At the same time he's a very easygoing, goofy guy who just wants to learn about his identity and eat gyozas.
• Dr. STONE:
  • Whenever Senku's plans work out, he puts on a Nightmare Face and talks to himself. This, combined with his red eyes, makes him look just like a villain. Despite this, he's a good guy through and through, who wants nothing more than to restore humanity. This is often lampshaded by Kohaku.
  • Gen can't even plan a birthday party for a friend without going into some kind of "Evil Planning Mode," complete with Nightmare Face.
• Eyeshield 21: Hiruma has a positively devilish appearance, and looks like a bad guy, but he genuinely wants his team to win. It's lampshaded at one point: "So scary... and yet so reliable!"
• Fairy Tail:
  • Even after his Heel–Face Turn, Gajeel is one of the series' more brutal, bloodthirsty characters who jumps into a fray with a wicked grin and cackle, so it takes a while for his comrades to trust him (that, and he destroyed their guildhall and assaulted three of their most defenseless members earlier). This becomes most evident when Gajeel eats Rogue's shadow and gains his powers, giving him a downright nightmarish face that freaks out his friends, and a Badass Boast to remind Rogue just how terrifying he is.
  • Flare leaves a first impression with her limp gait, empty eyes, and a fixation on Lucy that almost reaches Stalker without a Crush levels. When she shows up after her Heel–Face Turn, she tells Lucy that she's never stopped stalking her since their last meeting. She's (probably...) just joking, but she still says it with the most unsettling look on her face◊.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • Alphonse (a disembodied soul bonded to a suit of armor) tends to scare people whenever they take off his helmet and find nobody inside the suit. But he's really an innocent kid who just wants his human body back. His sweet childlike voice removes a lot of the creepiness.
  • Van Hohenheim is a human Philosopher's Stone who draws his powers from the souls of sacrificed human beings. To be fair, he never wanted to become a Philosopher's Stone, and he has made peace with the souls who power his alchemy and knows each soul by name.
• Franken Fran:
  • The titular character, Franken Fran, is an unnaturally gifted surgeon and medical scientist who holds life above all else. She's also sewn together from multiple bodies, is often shown to add or remove limbs at her discretion, creates biological abominations and consigns people to a Fate Worse than Death all in pursuit of keeping everyone around her alive no matter the cost. She also happens to be the protagonist.
  • While many of the supporting cast also count, Adorea deserves special mention. She's an overall timid and kind woman covered from head to toe in bandages, but in one chapter it’s revealed that underneath those bandages, her 'face' consists of hundreds of tentacles she uses to extract and consume organs from human bodies, which she keeps alive and available inside her body for Franken Fran's surgeries.
• Goblin Slayer: The titled main character himself has a somewhat spooky appearance and there are times when other characters have equated him to looking like a living suit of armor or a walking undead knight. This also doesn't seem to help him with his reputation in the adventurers' guild as being some creepy weirdo with a goblin obsession. Fortunately, he doesn't seem to care about his image or reputation.
• In Gunslinger Girl, the cyborgs.
  Alphonso: It's just the thought of these little girls who can kill terrorists and speak three languages, and here they are singing Beethoven in the bitter cold. It's a shame they have to be cyborgs.
• Pluto in Heaven's Design Team has very different ideas of what counts as "cute" from her coworkers. This naturally leads to her designing most of the "creepy" animals. This design◊turns outto bea koala.
• Henkyou no Roukishi Bard Loen: The "Witch" has a habit of staring right into Bard Loen's face and speaking aggressively when he's not being polite enough, but is otherwise a Cool Old Lady who was a selfless herbologist in the past.
• Holoearth Chronicles Side:E ~Yamato Phantasia~: Kyubi has a 4-eyed mask, sharp teeth and intimidating demeanor, but is still one of the highest-ranking protectors of Yamato.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable:
  • Reimi Sugimoto. The ghost of a murdered teenager, who wanders a supernatural alley that normal people can't enter (and which also serves as the gateway to the afterlife), with her faithful, murdered dog by her side. However, other than being a ghost, she's just a friendly girl who helps people who find themselves lost in the alley, and who's just remaining in the world because she wants to see an end to the constant deaths perpetrated by her still-on-the-loose murderer.
  • There's Reimi's dog, Arnold. Not only is he also a ghost, but he still has blood dripping from the wound in his neck! That said, he still acts like any other dog would and helps Reimi force Kira to the afterlife.
  • Tonio Trussardi is one of the genuinely nicest people in the franchise and his Stand Pearl Jam is inoffensive and can only be benevolent. Said Stand involves creating food that can cause drastic improvements to one's body, such as fixing toothaches, soothing several stomach issues, even fixing bad vision, with his ultimate goal being to find a food that can cure terminal cancer. The creepy part comes in because this doesn't fix the existing body parts, it creates new body parts which then eject the old body part in spectacularly gory and Body Horror filled fashion ^note  and also, Tonio might have some mafia connections and browses the black market for illegal and endangered animal parts to cook with. It takes until the end of the mini-arc involving Tonio for Josuke to finally drop his guard and take his good nature at face value just because of how nightmarishly visceral the totally beneficial effects of Pearl Jam are.
  • Hayato Kawajiri also qualifies. Any kid who puts video cameras in his parents' bedroom (this was before he suspected his father had been replaced by an impostor, by the way) has to qualify as creepy. But he ended up being instrumental in both the search for Kira and the actual fight against him.
• The title character of Kaya-chan isn't scary is a kindergarten-aged psychic who's taken upon herself to protect others from predatory specters and other terrifying entities that would do horrible things to other children if left unchecked. Unfortunately, her gloomy demeanor and poor communication skills, coupled with the other kids being, well, kids and the teachers being unaware of the specters, means she's routinely misunderstood and feared, and her defensive measures get misinterpreted as malicious pranks. For instance, her taping up several peek-a-boo books so they can't be read, which upsets the kids, is actually to seal in a dangerous creature that attacks readers.
• Hallelujah in Mobile Suit Gundam 00, the other personality of Allelujah, is a psycho that'll do anything to stay alive and enjoys killing people. The others don't see much of him outside of battle, though.
• My Hero Academia has some:
  • Mezo Shoji is a six-armed 6'2'' foot tall hero-in-training. Between the fleshy membrane connecting the arms and his creepy mask (which a design book mentioned that he wears because his face put off people and was considered villainous) it would be hard to see him as good if he wasn't such a Gentle Giant.
  • Tokoyami Fumikage is a bird-headed Goth with a tendency to talk in a creepy way using overdramatic figures of speech and uses his powers to summon a giant shadow bird. He is, nonetheless, a hero-in-training.
  • Gang Orca is the 10th top hero. He is a gigantic Orca/human hybrid, whose disturbing looks got him voted 3rd place in a "heroes who look like villains" contest.
  • All Might, the Big Good of the series, who's drawn in heavy shadows with half his face obscured, Hidden Eyes and a gigantic perpetual grin that can make him look downright unsettling at first glance (and his more sickly civilian form barely even looks human.) None of this stops him from being widely beloved and accepted as a symbol of peace.
  • Hitoshi Shinso. His Quirk, Brainwashing, lets him manipulate people like puppets. All he has to do is ask someone a question, and if they reply, they get under his control (if he wants them to). Even in-universe people say that a Quirk like this is more fitting for a villain. However, Shinso only uses his Quirk for pranks (outside of serious fights) and admits he would never use it in a villainous way.
  • The first user of One For All had a somewhat creepy appearance, especially when given a look past his bangs. There was also a panel of him Laughing Mad while All Might was explaining the history of One For All. However, he possessed an unwavering sense of justice that drove him to oppose his villainous brother, All For One, even when he had no power himself. His laughter came from elation over realizing that the creation of One For All could eventually put a stop to his brother's evil, even though it would take several generations of users to nurture the power before All Might finally succeeded.
  • Ectoplasm is a nearly six foot tall guy whose head looks like a grinning black skull, but he’s one of the hero teachers.
  • Aizawa borderlines it when his hair starts floating and his eyes turn red as part of his quirk activating. Also he wears all black mostly.
• One Piece: A few Straw Hats are either creepy-looking or are morally gray characters who have killed people in the past, scaring others like Usopp, Nami, and Chopper. Despite this, they are considered part of the crew, and Luffy finds them cool than creepy.
  • Nico Robin was an assassin (and still doesn't have any problems with snapping the Mooks' necks), used to be The Dragon, frequently makes morbid comments about the current situation with a cheerful smile on her face, and has an inverted opinion of what's creepy and what's cute. Her power to grow body parts from any surface also adds to her creep factor.
  • Zoro is willing to chop his own feet off to join a fight and creeps others out with his sheer determination, willpower, and bloodlust, plus his monstrous strength.
  • Brook, despite actually having quite a polite and humorous disposition, is also creepy by default as a result of being a reanimated skeleton (though him asking every pretty young woman he meets if he can see her panties certainly doesn't help). Some of his powers also include being able to put himself back together, detach his soul from his body, and freeze his opponents with the ghostly chill of the underworld.
• Pokémon: The Series: Trainer Conway introduces himself to Dawn during DP's Tag Battle arc by sneaking up behind her with his Scary Shiny Glasses, which becomes his thing for the next few seasons. During the tournament itself, however, he proves himself a highly competent battler and, more importantly, a supportive partner for Dawn, using his Slowking to protect her Piplup. This stands in sharp contrast to the Teeth-Clenched Teamwork between Ash and Paul.
• Sailor Moon: Hotaru Tomoe is an innocent young girl who just happens to be the messiah of destruction. Sometimes her eyes even glow red. It doesn't help that she also happens to be part robot.
• Good may be a stretch, but Faust VIII from Shaman King remains on the side of good at least once he teams up with Yoh for the tournament. He previously surgically cut open Yoh's friend Manta while the latter was still conscious, earning him no good will from either initially, but he eventually becomes a trusted member of the team and is generally affable to those on his side.
• Dr. Franken Stein from Soul Eater. To put this into perspective, he routinely 'experiments on people' and told his partner he switched two of his toes when he was sleeping. He didn't; he was just screwing with him, but the fact that everyone found this a believable thing for him to have done says it all. At the same time, he's also one of the DWMA's most powerful and reliable members, right up until he goes insane.
• Yuuichi from Tomodachi Game Looks Like Cesare, has made a Slasher Smile and/or Psychotic Smirk more times than you can count on one hand, and is revealed to have murdered people in the past under unknown circumstances. He's also the hero of the series.
• The Way of the Househusband: Former gangster "Immortal" Tatsu may have given up his life of crime to be a devoted House Husband, but he's occasionally a Fish out of Water when it comes to civilian life in ways that are comically unsettling. Examples include cleaning house like he was "cleaning" a crime-scene, or offering to chop off his pinky finger for accidentally buying a second copy of a DVD set of his wife's favorite magical girl series.

Comic Books

• Batman:
  • Some interpretations of Batman's membership in the Justice League are portrayed this way. Everyone has their seat at the table, and Batman's off in a corner being quiet (if you notice him at all). This crosses with his status as Crazy-Prepared. The rest of the League is creeped out that this guy has files on how to kill/maim/disable the rest of them. That, and being creepy is Batman's schtick.
  • Cassandra Cain's mask practically qualifies as Nightmare Fuel on its own, with soulless black pits for eyes, a stitched-over mouth, and a very skull-like appearance. She also has a tendency to appear out of nowhere, is eerily silent, and can stop someone's heart with a single blow. She's also one of the most compassionate, caring, and idealistic people on the planet.
  • The Creeper, adequately enough. The guy is so batshit loco that even the Joker considers him a lunatic! During The Creeper's origin story the villains were so unnerved by his makeshift attempt at a costume (mainly yellow body paint, a green and black striped Speedo, and a feather boa) that he just decided "what the hey" and ran with it; these days it depends on the writer whether he's actually crazy, has just been acting that way for so long it's become a habit, or simply thinks it's fun to creep everybody (including his fellow heroes) out.
• Doctor Strange: This varies with Doctor Strange. He often unnerves muggles and other superheroes without intending to. When he does try, he's frightening enough to un-hulk and completely alienate Red She-Hulk with a few whispered words. Depending on the Writer, the unsettling effect he has on others does not trouble him at all and is just another tool he can use to his best advantage; in other depictions it makes him unhappy and increases the burden of loneliness and isolation he carries as Sorcerer Supreme.
• Doom Patrol: Grant Morrison's version of the Doom Patrol, as the team consists of Robotman, a cyborg with severe body dysphoria caused by the loss of his human body and the crude senses of his machine one, Rebis, a bizarre fusion of man, woman and a negative energy spirit, and Crazy Jane, a woman with severe dissociative identity disorder, each of whom has its own superpower. They deal with surreal and insane threats to the world, and are even called creepy by Booster Gold.
• Ghost Rider: The Ghost Rider is a leather-clad biker from hell with a flaming skull for a head. He’s also a stalwart agent of good and a dedicated protector of the innocent, although occasionally you have to remember that Good is Not Nice.
• Iron Man: When Iron Man made his debut, he had an all gray suit of armor. A passerby mentioned how creepy he looked in such a dark color so he repainted the suit gold in order to avert this trope.
• The Legion Of Monsters: The Legion of Monsters, which is what it sounds like. Mostly they just try to protect their own kind from over-zealous monster hunters, but they're good people (and Morbius the Living Vampire is an occasional full-blown superhero).
• The Multiversity : Abin Sur, the Green Lantern of Earth-20 from Society of Super-Heroes: Conquerors of the Counter-World #1]]. He keeps his distance from the inhabitants of Earth because he's aware that he resembles the world's interpretation of Satan and doesn't want to freak anyone out. Doc Fate doesn't care what he looks like and considers him an ally.
• Spider-Man: In the early days, Spider-Man was often seen as creepy by many fellow heroes in the Marvel Universe, even as recently as The '90s, as seen when he and Nova fought the Tri-Sentinel in The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #351–352. Prominent reasons for this were his face-covering mask with giant menacing bug-eyes and his penchant for contorting himself in strange ways, his ability to cling to any surface, and his knack for showing up out of the blue, to say nothing of the fact that he is often a Hero with Bad Publicity. Also, while it isn't canon, even Wonder Woman mentioned he was creepy during his second Crossover with Superman.
• Transformers Windblade: Blackarachnia turns out to be this. Despite having a sinister appearance and reputation and being a recluse, she's actually an oracle who worked to bring peace and restore relations between Cybertron and the colonies.
• Venom: Eddie Brock (during his Anti-Hero days) and Flash Thompson when bonded to the Venom symbiote, since Venom is Spider-Man with Lovecraftian Superpowers. Toxin as well.
• X-Men:
  • In his early days, Wolverine was the creepy member of the X-Men. His berserk temper and willingness to kill often freaked out his teammates.
  • While he always had a bit of this thanks to his perpetual red glasses/visor, Cyclops really took over in his General of the Mutants phase during the Utopia era and after. Wolverine's temper was seen as perversely comforting, since what you saw was generally what you got. Scott, by contrast, was soft spoken, calm and controlled even when ragingly angry (given that the man is so good at emotional repression he simply repressed the Void in his head for a while, this is not surprising), and utterly ruthless, manipulating and ordering assassinations whenever he deemed it necessary. While he was doing all of this in an ultimately successful effort to prevent mutantkind going extinct, he profoundly disturbed the majority of his allies.
  • These days, Magik — a teleporting demonic sorceress who carries a hell dimension inside her head, and has more than once plunged teams of X-Men and parts of the world into hell — tends to occupy this role.

Fan Works

• In Abyssal Plain, Skitter comes off as this due to silent nature and creepy costume, along with her using her Swarm to talk for her. Victoria does try to be pleasant and polite to her despite this.
• The Gravekeeper in Age of Strife. He's a well-known defender of the innocent and gave Dia important warnings as to the role of Chaos, but he's also a crazy skull collector with a habit of appearing behind people un-announced.
• In Amazing Fantasy, Izuku is referred to as "the world's strangest Hero" as Spider-Man. His stunt where he climbs straight up a building after nearly getting hit by a car unnerves others enough to call in a Hero. Peter elicited similar reactions when he first started out and remains The Dreaded among common street crooks.
• Auntie Tia's Matchmaking Service: It's commented that Rose Bloom (Discord and Fluttershy's daughter) could be a very fearsome creature with her size and half-Draconequis appearance… if she hadn't inherited her mother's timid and kindly personality.
• Better Bones AU: Spottedleaf looks rather creepy and is associated with death with her design motifs of skulls and blighted leafs, and scares Smudge when he first sees her. However, she's a kind-hearted cat who's not evil at all.
• A Change of Pace: Taylor has the ability to teleport at the edge of vision silently, summon a Swarm of Rats, and has a creepy mask. She's also an independent hero.
• Camera Shy (Worm): Taylor is determined to be a hero. However, the nature of her costume and powers results in her being pants-wettingly terrifying by accident. Her assault on Uber and Leet's base is captured on video, and widely assumed to be a faked horror piece, as a faceless figure in a black ragged cloak constantly turns up when they open doors, or steps out from behind them, vanishing as soon as someone blinks or looks away; lights flicker and fail, objects fly off shelves of their own accord...
• Child of the Storm and its sequel, Ghosts of the Past, have a fair few. Prominent examples include:
  • Loki, post Heel–Face Turn, retains a capacity for astonishing and icy cold ruthlessness, including a willingness to use Cold-Blooded Torture and psychological warfare - in the sequel, he breaks Sabretooth with a few whispered words and an illusion or two.
  • Doctor Strange. He comes and goes as he pleases, often out of nowhere with absolutely no warning (usually right behind someone's left ear), disregarding all known laws of magic in the process, never lies, yet is almost never honest in ways that The Fair Folk would envy, and sometimes appears merely as a shadowy figure amongst a swirling cloak with a pair of Glowing Eyes staring out of the darkness. To top it all off, he seems to know everything. Due to his justified reputation as the Magnificent Bastard, and grand-master of the Batman Gambit, the very possibility of his involvement is Paranoia Fuel among good guys and bad guys alike - because once he's involved, you can never know for sure that you aren't doing exactly what he wants you to... In short, he is a profoundly unsettling man. Ghosts of the Past indicates that he carefully cultivates this reputation - and that it's made him cripplingly lonely.
  • Agent (later Director) Peter Wisdom a.k.a. Regulus Black of MI13 fits this trope to a T. He's a good guy, but he's also got a reputation for making "Inspector Javert look like Mother Teresa" and the rest of the British intelligence services don't trust him because they don't know anything about him - other than that his background is a total lie. He's also a member of the Trenchcoat Brigade, almost exclusively wears black and is The Unfettered, being entirely indifferent to both morality and the prospect of his own death when it comes to doing what needs to be done. And he will do anything that he feels needs to be done, as he makes very clear to Thor. Anything.
  • In a flashback, Harry Dresden notes this about himself; he's NBA tall, clad in a long black duster and carrying a staff that is six feet of solid oak, which makes for a very intimidating first impression. Also, there's the fact that he almost never meets anyone's eyes because of the whole Soulgaze thing - but only a very few ordinary people know that - and knows far too damn much. The ability to roast horrifying monsters from the netherworld is a mere courtesy detail at this point.
  • Harry Potter/Thorson is a good and kind person at heart. He'll do anything to protect his friends, even someone he barely knows. That last part is kind of the scary part. Then there's the occasionally echoing voice, the vast Psychic Powers, the utter indifference to horror, frightening insight, and a nasty case of PTSD that gets worse as time goes on. When he's pushed too far, this manifests as a cold rage, uncomfortably reminiscent of a young Magneto that makes it extremely clear that it is a very good thing that he's got people holding him in check
    • This gets exponentially worse after the Forever Red arc in Ghosts of the Past, which is best summed up as a brutal Trauma Conga Line. The short version is that he's captured, tortured, and transformed into the Winter Soldier's successor, the Red Son. He ends up snapping under the strain and becoming the Dark Phoenix. This has long-term effects on him; he moves with inhuman grace, the PTSD is a good deal worse, the unearthly presence is dialed up, and he's got a terrifying Hair-Trigger Temper. Oh, and if you smell wood smoke... run. He slowly improves, partly thanks to a chat with Cedric Diggory, but as he observes, he still scares most people witless.
• Cross Cases: From Harry Dresden's perspective, the Winchesters. Sam's aura feels "bloody" from all of the people and things he's had to kill over the years, he moves back and forth from "oversized puppy" to "cold deadly fighter" with ease, he's cagey, he has scary powers that border on the impossible in the Dresdenverse, and the things he does over the course of the story only make him scarier and scarier. Harry has trouble reconciling this quiet, cagey, apparently human guy with the fact that he kills things (and sometimes people) for a living, defaulting to thinking of him as a con artist (which he is). Once he's reunited with Dean, the brothers are quick to dehumanize Patterson, treating the situation as a witch hunt as they remorselessly hunt him down like an animal. Afterwards, the two laugh and banter like normal brothers who didn't just kill a man as they drive away with his body in the trunk of their stolen car.
• Izuku in Cursed Blood is a Necromancer with a Healing Factor, both traits he ruthlessly exploits in combat, such as allowing Bakugo to burn off most of his face just so he can land another punch on the boy. His main form of fighting is giving orders to his zombie familiar.
• Post-Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes in Infinite Coffee and Protection Detail. Barnes just wants to live his life free of HYDRA and protect Steve, and he even tries to abide by Thou Shalt Not Kill, which is not obligatory for heroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He even helps friendly old people with home repairs and Jerkass landlords. But his way of protecting Steve leaps over the boundary between Mysterious Protector and Stalker without a Crush, and while Barnes is a lot less lethal nowadays, he's still a highly-trained cyborg assassin with an abiding fondness for edged weapons.
• Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail:
  • Chloe Cerise is the main heroine, a sweet ten year old girl with red hair and a donut holer...who also happens to be a skilled writer and knowledgeable in demons from the Ars Goetia. She gets the ability to summon the demons of legend in Act 2 of her story and she knows their names and what they're capable of. She also loves reading and writing horror stories in general, something that got her relentlessly bullied at school before the Infinity Train came.
  • One of her partners, Lexi, is essentially a paper expy of Specter so he has the off-white hair, creepy blue eyes and sinister grin as the latter. But he's essentially a prince on a white horse for Chloe and capable of tearing shit up with his papers.
• The King Nobody Wanted: The Qohorik organization the Brave Companions of the Vow seem to be decent people from those we've met, but they are unabashedly worshippers of a god that accepts blood sacrifices and are prone to exceedingly cryptic and unsettling remarks.
• In The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (DragonRand100) The Happy Mask Salesman, like in Ocarina of Time's sequel- Majora's Mask, is creepy, mysterious and is among the most morally grey characters in the cast of characters. While he desires to see Ganondorf stopped and Majora contained his motivations could be seen as selfish and misguided. That said, he does work with the heroes at various points and does his part to assist with Link's mission to rescue Hyrule.
• Thanks To Her: Masha has a bizarre fascination with the human bones that pop-up all over Gravesfield, but the nevertheless a gentle soul.
• Life After Hayate notes that most Bureau servicemembers are frightened of the Wolkenritter to the point they'll go for a weapon or seek cover even though the Wolkenritter are on their side. They were the Bureau's nightmare scenario for nearly sixty years before. In one chapter, the mere presence of a Wolkenritter is enough to terrify a member of the Bureau's most wanted into surrendering. In another, after their owner is injured, they proceed to blow through Jail's first-generation combat cyborgs in seconds and might have killed them all if they'd had just a few moments longer.
• In Live a Hero (MHA), Izuku is Covered in Scars, a Psycho Knife Nut, an Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette and borderline schizophrenic due to being raised by the League of Villains. He's more remorseful about losing some of his knives than gouging out the Sludge Villain's eye and has learned how to climb nearly anything with only a pair of knives to help him. Despite all this, he genuinely wants to be a Hero and help others.
• Nobody Dies: Rei and her sisters. Everyone in the story reacts like they're the scariest things around (even the Angels are considered less threatening), what with the Stealth Hi/Bye, the kidnapping people through air vents, and general strangeness. Even the fans refer to this version of Rei as Terrifying!Rei. However, they're all good and kind at heart (even if they have possibly the most bizarre ways of showing it), and would do anything to protect those they care for.
• Ruby in Of Red Petals and Black Feathers, after having merged with Fiddlesticks when she was young, barely shows emotion, has the ability to induce fear in others (and just generally has an aura of creepiness even when she isn't using her powers), has trouble speaking (eventually revealed to be the result of brain damage caused by the merger), has No Social Skills, and has a crow that follows her around. Despite this, she is still a good person who wants to help others, dislikes bullies and criminals, and genuinely wants to be friends with people.
• In Operation: There Is No Operation, a Codename: Kids Next Door fanfic, V8 is this to the rest of the KND, being the local Exalted Torturer who works with them.
• Izuku in Oyasumi Midoriya fits this trope. He gives off an uncanny vibe, creeps out even the teachers, but generally wants to be a hero to help. Although it’s more One, Four, and Three (maybe) that are the nicer ones. The rest of his doppelgängers aren’t so friendly.
• Queen of the Swarm: Taylor's creations look like twisted nightmarish killers, while having affectionate, cuddly, and inquisitive personalities. The dissonance is deeply jarring for Director Piggot (especially with her traumatic experiences in Ellisburg), but Taylor insists on not judging them by appearances.
  Taylor: I don't make monsters, Director. Monsters are Jack Slash, Sophia Hess, Madison Clements. Monsters are Bakuda, Janice Blackwell, Gesellschaft. And they all look just like everybody else. Yes, my creatures are different, but just because they might look strange doesn't mean they're monsters!
• The Shadow Wars:
  • During the last third of the Shadow Wars, practically all the Changelings are allies of Equestria. The Ponies accept them as allies, but still find them creepy.
  • Ruby Gift is clearly a heroine from start to finish of her undeath, but she's a Wraith. She's repeatedly shown as being a friend to heroic protagonists, and in the end redeems her kin and leads them in an action that helps save the whole world at the cost of their own undead existences But she's still a Wraith, with an unnerving tendency to switch into her horrifying Death Aspect when something upsets her. The same goes for her mother Mitta Gift and her co-mother Three Leaf.
  • All of the Sunney Towne Wraiths, after their Heel–Face Turn.
• In Terminal Justice, a Harry Potter/Justice League of America crossover, Harry was interpreted as this by the League members a lot of the time, chiefly due to his gray morality and his ownership of a sword that could turn into a scythe and a motorcycle that could turn into a ghost horse.
• Yesterday Upon The Stair: Izuku has grown up seeing ghosts and helping them. His anxiety and desire to emulate All Might by smiling through the fear is rather unsettling. His ghost friends could also count, as all of them are dead and, while under emotional duress, will go back to looking how they did when they died.
• Frayed Edges: Michael is a disfigured, rotting zombie and Ennard is a horrific Mechanical Abomination that horrifically fused with him and lives inside of Michael. In spite of this, they're actually rather kind and friendly, if rather emotionally stunted.
• Lady Vidia in Seven Favours For Harry Potter is very much on Harry's side; she is beautiful and pleasant and loving... and being of The Fair Folk, she's also totally amoral by human standards and often comes across as having a strong predatory streak. In some scenes she can get directly creepy.

Film

• Abominable:
  • Buddy's demeanor and appearance in his first scene are that of an archetypal Creepy Gas-Station Attendant. Still, he seems sincere in expressing sorrow about the death of Preston's wife and joins in an attempt to hunt down the dangerous Yeti that's terrorizing the area.
  • Ziegler states that he's only accompanying the other men hunting the yeti for an excuse to kill something and is a bit too fond of talking about Darwin Awards. However, he does show a more caring and compassionate side when he finds a wounded Karen in the monster's cave.
• Bishop in Aliens is a humanoid android with few facial expressions beyond staring and a creepy, even monotone. And from the events of the first film, it's assumed that his presence and aim is not necessarily to ensure the safety of the human crew. He turns out to be one of the most vital crew members, by fixing the external transmitter and remotely piloting the ship at enormous personal risk and rescuing the survivors at the last moment.
• Arrival: The heptapods are huge, completely alien creatures that do not speak English, or even a language humanity recognizes as language when spoken. They show up on Earth and as humans try to communicate with them, people also start to worry about what they're doing and what they want. Turns out, the heptapods have arrived to give their language, and their way of thinking/perceiving time, as a gift to humanity because the heptapods have seen that humanity will help them 3000 years in the future.
• Downplayed with Manolo in The Book of Life. He's a skeleton for half of the movie, but he's more cute, than scary.
• The Thin Man from the Charlie's Angels movies — while he is clearly all kinds of creepy, by the second movie it turns out he is actually a good guy, attempting to save the life of a child under the Witness Protection Program, and is rather infatuated with Dylan, Drew Barrymore's character.
• Encanto: Before we meet Bruno, much of what we hear about him paints him in an eerie or even sinister light. Once Mirabel encounters him, it becomes clear that he's a Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold.
• The Pigeon Lady in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Her appearance terrifies Kevin at first, like most of the city locals, but he warms up to her after she gets his foot unstuck from a pile of rocks. He even goes on to apologize for being scared of her, and chooses to give her the second turtle dove after she saves him from Harry and Marv.
• In many of the film adaptations of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Quasimodo is hideously deformed and socially inept, which makes him deeply unsettling to other characters. However, he shows himself to be heroic by protecting Esmeralda, defending Notre Dame, and giving Frollo his just desserts.
• Elise Warner from Insidious is a old woman with Psychic Powers who talks about demonic spirits and otherworldly planes of existence from first-hand experience, but she's also very much a force for good and puts her life on the line again and again to help protect those less spiritually-gifted from malicious entities.
• Mowgli, being Truer to the Text, turns Kaa into this. She is a wise teacher and protector, but she's also a huge, terrifying python.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe: Mantis from the Guardians of the Galaxy series is a humanoid bug lady with the power of tele-empathy. Because of her appearance, various characters call her ugly and when Peter Parker sees her, he fearfully begs her "not to put [her] eggs in [him]". However, she is a genuinely nice, if socially awkward, character who tries to warn the heroes that they are in danger in Vol. 2, and she becomes a major member of the team by the end of the movie.
• Most of the characters of The Nightmare Before Christmas. The people of Halloween Town aren't evil (except for Oogie Boogie, who's ostracized by the rest of the townsfolk), but they're scary both by nature and because it's their job. They do nearly ruin Christmas, but out of lack of understanding rather than malice, and Jack eventually has a My God, What Have I Done? moment and sets things right.
• Cameron Vale in Scanners is a seemingly-psychopathic drifter with terrifying psychic powers who talks in a Creepy Monotone and has little-to-no personality or outside interests beyond the main plot. The basic undercurrent of his character is that he's fighting the evil psychics because it's slightly more interesting than staring at the wall.
• The Secret of NIMH:
  • The Great Owl is terrifying, but also helpful.
  • Similarly, Brutus' initial appearance when Mrs. Brisby meets him is scary, but when she runs into Mr. Ages, he just dismissively clarifies Brutus is just a regular guard that Brisby had the misfortune of meeting when he was on-duty and without Ages to speak on her behalf.
  • Nicodemus establishes himself as this in the film's opening scene: he appears to be using magic to write in his journal, his hands are shivelled and warty, he has claws that are both sharp and long, and his eyes are glowing yellow. But his every movement and every word out of his mouth is gentle, and thoughout the film he makes it clear he wants to help Mrs. Brisby save her home and family.
• Meg in The Undead, who is a hideous witch but devoted to good and an ally of the heroic knight Pendragon.

Literature

• Black Jewels:
  • Janelle Angelline. She's a Friend to All Living Things who saved the world from centuries of oppression. She is also Witch, which means that she's terrifyingly powerful and as much a sentient anthropomorphic manifestation of the hopes and dreams of all intelligent beings as she is a human woman - and both her power level and her not-entirely-human nature tend to unnerve people.
  • Friendly and heroic Black Widows qualify for this trope. Their ability to heal the mind is certainly beneficent, especially in setting as fond of Break the Cutie and Trauma Conga Lines as the world of Black Jewels, but their mastery of poisons and illusions has given the caste a scary reputation.
• The three spirits from A Christmas Carol each qualify, as their role is to scare Scrooge straight. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is the best example, looking like the Grim Reaper and never saying a word but providing the final step for Scrooge's Heel–Face Turn.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Willy Wonka is the world's greatest candymaker and Fun Personified. He is also The Wonka, a Mad Scientist, and a Nightmare Fetishist whose factory is a Crapsaccharine World and False Utopia — should one not heed his warnings about what should and shouldn't be touched, absurd-yet-dreadful fates are in store, and he'll have No Sympathy. He's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, even an Anti-Hero, but he and his world are presented as fundamentally good and wonderful, especially when contrasted to the dreary, unfair outside world that is often easy on the bad and hard on the good. And his strange way of thinking is what's made him the success story he is (to the point that he's named a trope). His creepy-good nature becomes more obvious in adaptations, particularly the 1971 film and the 2013 stage musical (in the latter, the character's introductory song "It Must Be Believed to Be Seen" is a Welcoming Song/"I Am Great!" Song, but stylistically owes a lot to the Villain Song trope).
• "Cool Air": Dr. Muñoz frightens people with his Uncanny Valley appearance and is technically undead, but is an excellent doctor and quite happy to treat people in need.
• The Dark is Rising has... well, the Light as a whole. Being an impersonal and inhuman force of Good that make a policy of I Did What I Had to Do/the ends justify the means, the agents of the Light often come off as this to normal humans.
  John: Those men who know anything about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun. At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else. You are like fanatics. Your masters, at any rate. At the center of the Light there is a cold white flame, just as at the center of the Dark there is a great black pit bottomless as the Universe.
• Discworld:
  • The Igors are (usually) good guys, but tend to creep out a lot of people, due to their Mix-and-Match Man prowess. Also, there preference for appearing right behind you when you call for them. No matter where you are.
  • Carrot gives off this impression to some, if only because they're unable to tell if his seeming pure-heartedness is genuine, or an incredibly convincing ruse to get what he needs.
  • You don't get much creepier than a seven foot tall skeleton in a hooded black robe yet DEATH is unmistakably on our side.
    • His granddaughter Susan as well. She started out as Creepy Neutral, and was rather cold and cynical. She has since become something of a Friend to All Children, taking jobs as a much-loved governess and school teacher, as kids have no trouble accepting her strange abilities. She still tends to freak out adults a little, as she hangs out as a bar for undead patrons, and her hair has an unsettling tendency to rearrange itself. (And she's still cold and cynical.)
• The Dreamblood Duology: The Gatherers are Dream Weaver priests of Hananja charged with ushering the dying into the afterlife — which usually means sneaking into their target's house, creating a beautiful Dying Dream for them, and severing their soul's link to their body. Even Hananja's faithful tend to be creeped out by this, not least because the Gatherers are both implacable and utterly compassionate — and because Gathering doubles as a method of execution. To the rival Kisuati, they're The Dreaded.
• The titular detective of The Dresden Files seems pretty normal to most readers as the story is told from his (snarky, pop-cultural) perspective, but in stories told by other characters he can very much seem this - a six and a half foot tall, frequently unshaven, duster-wearing man wielding a staff and muttering strange words whilst refusing to meet anyone's eyes is not someone most people would be comfortable around.
• Edgedancer (a novella of The Stormlight Archive): Arclo calls himself "a friend of Radiants" and gives Lift some help, but he's also a Hive Mind made of dozens of scuttling insects, and introduces himself to Lift in the middle of the night, in a dark alley, having killed two of Nale's acolytes with astonishing ease.
• Spirit Mages and mediums in Elemental Masters, whose powers specialize in dealing with ghosts, but who focus on constructive activities like dealing with haunts and helping restless spirits find closure.
• Misha, the ghost boy in The Farwalkers Quest, fits. Ghosts aren't very common in the world, and he can only really communicate with the protagonist in her dreams, during which she sees his true form.
• Flay in Gormenghast is a tall, skinny, gloomy old hermit (and played in the 2000 adaptation by none other than Christopher Lee), but proves to be a valuable ally to the heroes.
• Harry Potter:
  • Luna Lovegood is a mild version of this, in that she spouts horrific conspiracy theories and seems to be attuned to whole levels of magic the other characters can't access. She even gets stuck with the nickname "Loony Lovegood" because everyone else thinks she's crazy. Some consider it a good thing that the movie left out the huge portraits of her friends she painted on her bedroom ceiling that were linked with chains made of the word "friends".
  • Harry's godfather Sirius Black. He's a falsely convicted Fantastic Terrorist who, immediately after escaping Azkaban, attempts to commit one of the very murders for which he was sentenced. (The man Sirius tries to kill, who wasn't even dead in the first place, was the one who framed Sirius in the first place and was behind all the other murders Sirius allegedly committed.) He takes two forms: either an Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette who Looks Like Cesare and first appears in ragged prison garb, or a huge black dog that's often identified as a death omen. He lives in a creepy old house he inherited from his Dark Wizard ancestors, with house-elf heads mounted on the walls (though not by choice; he hates his old home). He once attempted to play a Deadly Prank on Severus Snape, and at the time the story takes place, Sirius doesn't show much regret for this incident. He sometimes seems a bit off his rocker due to his family's history of mental illness (not helped by the aristocratic inbreeding they got up to) and to the Trauma Conga Line he's endured. And yes, he's a good guy.
  • Severus Snape likes to hang out in the dark and creepy dungeons and potion laboratories, enjoys bullying helpless students such as Neville, and is frequently compared to an oversized bat in appearance — and it's not clear that he's a good guy (albeit a Nominal Hero) until the very end of the series.
• Need, in Heralds of Valdemar, is introduced as a magic sword which compels its wielder to rush to protect and avenge victimized women - often driving said wielder with pain and a pulling sensation to ride or run for miles to find them. It also possesses some wielders at times, relegating them to passengers in their own bodies. In return Need heals and protects them and those they care about. The Heralds setting is pragmatic enough that being made to rush to the aid of strangers who may not "deserve it" is a pain and a danger, making being Need's bearer a case of Blessed with Suck to some characters. Eventually, Need 'wakes' and is revealed to be an ancient mage spirit bound to the blade she made, who keeps secrets and always has her own agenda. Some characters remain suspicious of her, with Elspeth disliking her psychic presence and Firesong noting that he's always uncomfortable talking to something without eyes or a face, but she's shown to have only the best intentions and may in fact be an angel.
  There had been such a feeling of power when Need had responded to her — a feeling of controlled strength, held back, the way a mastiff would handle a newborn chick.
• In the Inheritance Cycle, Elva is an infant with violet eyes and an adult's voice in a child's body, which scares many adults. She is (ostensibly) on the good side, but she isn't above using her power of knowing what someone's future pain is, someone's fears, or hopes for manipulation of powerful people for her own benefit.
• The Jungle Book has Kaa, an enormous rock python. He's at least 100 years old, one of the strongest animals in the jungle, and has hypnotic powers, which he uses to make prey walk right into his mouth. He's a helpful mentor to Mowgli (who, notably, is Immune to Mind Control) and saves his life several times. Nevertheless, it's not hard to see why he gets Adaptational Villainy in some versions, most famously the 1967 Disney film
• The Last Adventure of Constance Verity: According to Connie, Dracula is a good guy "once you get past the creep vibe." She even procured an Artifact of Doom that turns people into vampires from him after slaying his Robot Me.
• The Laundry Files has Angleton, Bob's boss, the head of Counter-Subversion. Angleton never seems to age (there are pictures of him dating back to the Second World War, not looking a day younger), has a terrifying level of knowledge of Lovecraftian magic, and once punished a pair of scheming subordinates whose attempt at playing office politics ended up with a body count by shrinking down their heads and putting them on a Newton's Cradle on his desk; it's implied that they're still alive. Yet despite all of this, Angleton is one of the good guys. In The Fuller Memorandum, we learn his true identity: a Humanoid Abomination summoned into the body of a convicted murderer, who has voluntarily taken on the values and the ideals of an Englishman, serving the Laundry with inhuman loyalty and dedication.
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • Strider. Until his true identity as Aragorn is revealed he's noted as being remarkably suspicious looking. Sam actually says that if he was evil he'd probably look better. Soon after that Aragorn laments that people don't usually look past his face and he doesn't have a lot of friends.
• The Lost Fleet: Beyond The Frontier: The Spider-Wolves are the friendly first alien species humanity encounters. They have fancy egg shaped ships that make engineers drool, code that makes programmers drool, and send an escort for a long dead human from the early experiments with FTL travel who ended up their space back to Earth for burial. The humans are humbled, sure that they would not have resisted the urge to crack open the pod and dissect the body if the reverse had happened. They also, as the name implies, look like an unholy cross between spiders and wolves, which grosses out the humans so much that all face to face interactions are in environmental suit (the disgust is speculated to be mutual).
• Monster of the Month Club: Goblin, the October Selection. A trenchcoat-wearing werewolf-like monster, she gives Rilla the creeps, but is good at heart.
• Much Ado About Grubstake: Morgan the geologist is a dark-clad man with a long scar, who is very surly, silent, and secretive. He got the scar as a baby living on the streets, he only wears black because he's color-blind, and he is a compassionate man who supports his orphanage and wants to keep his boss from cheating anyone.
• Nightside: Razor Eddie, "Punk God of the Straight Razor", is described as "an extremely disturbing agent of good. The forces of good didn't get a say in the matter". Fair enough, since he's a reformed — but not retired — Serial Killer who targets those who threaten children and the homeless and has been known to leave buildings soaked in blood but conspicuously absent of corpses.
• Ann Leckie's The Raven Tower: The Myriad is a good friend to some of her fellow Old Gods and an honest ally to her mortal worshipers... luckily for them, since she prefers to manifest through vast clouds of mosquitoes.
• In The Red Abbey Chronicles, the crone aspect of the goddess. This aspect is associated with death, among other things, and therefore creepy, but is actually rather benevolent.
• In The Saga Of Billy, Atella is the goddess of Peace and War, one of the most unilateraly benevolent and level-headed deities of Erenner. She is also a woman with her boots dripping in blood, the lower part of her white skirt perpetually stained by gore, and her open eyelids revealing dark and empty sockets, as her eyes are bound to her weapons by a parasitic fleshy substance.
• More than one Shivers (M. D. Spenser) book features a creepy character who later turns out to be either benign or harmless. Notably, the second book "A Ghastly Shade of Green" has Snake-Eyes, a creepy, one-eyed hermit who talks with a sneer in his voice, is never seen without his trusty machete, and claims to "eat kids", freaking out the kid protagonist, Jason. The book's entire first half deliberately misleads Jason (and the reader) that Snake-Eyes is stalking Jason's family, having killed Jason's pet puppy by strangling the animal with a leaf... but when Jason was unexpectedly lost in the forest, Snake-Eyes suddenly shows up and saves Jason's life in a Stab the Scorpion moment by slicing apart a poisonous snake behind the boy. Turns out Snake-Eyes is a good man, it's the forest which is alive and wants to eliminate Jason and his family because of his mother trying to convert the place into a fertilizer plant - in fact Snake-Eyes gets another Big Damn Heroes moment saving the protagonists when the killer plants tries to swallow everyone.
• The eponymous character of the Skulduggery Pleasant series. Sure, he's personable, hilarious, and has an Awesome Ego. That does not get rid of the fact that he is a walking skeleton. And that's not even going into his extreme anger issues and the details of his Dark and Troubled Past.
• The Scholomance: Galadriel 'El' Higgins is the daughter of the legendary healer and near-saint Gwen Higgins and has picked up in full measure her mother's well of compassion, inability to tolerate unjust situations, and gut-level desire to help others. She stinks of Black Magic, commands enough destructive power to readily level mountains, has an encyclopedic array of spells meant to kill/maim/torture on scales from artistically intimate to army-tier wholesale imbedded in her brain (picking up additions with a careless glance), and must conciously avoid drawing magical strength from the lives of those nearby. Atop all this El is unusually tall, distinctly ripped, and has a default range of expression that involves some combination of glaring and scowling.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Subverted by Roose Bolton. In spite of being a creepy man from a house famed for skinning its enemies alive, he's on the side of our hero, the just and honorable Robb Stark. When Robb is wondering who to let lead his vanguard, his mother tells him that Roose is the kind of guy that will see him to victory. Robb admits that Roose scares him. Eventually it's revealed that Roose is actually much more interested in usurping Robb than leading his armies, and does a major Face–Heel Turn.
  • Tyrion Lannister is described as a deformed hunchback who gets worse as the series goes on. Still, he's one of the few genuinely good characters in the story who wants to be loved and accepted more than anything else.
• Tsun-Tsun TzimTzum has Blindness, who is never seen out of their bizarre suit of armour (which includes a helmet shaped like a horse's head with antlers, with no visible openings to see through) and has unsettling habits like carrying on multiple conversations at once. They're still thoroughly heroic and a major ally to the good guys.
• By the end of the Venus Prime series, Sparta has altered her own body so drastically that she no longer needs clothes, produces mucous from her armpits, and speaks in a Starfish Language. Her still human companions find her disturbing, even as she works to protect them from Nemo.
• By the era of Wax and Wayne, Marsh is no longer Brainwashed and Crazy, and is working for the good of the world. He's also an unnaturally tall man with railroad spikes pounded in both his eyes commonly believed to be Death Himself due to all the murders he committed under Ruin's orders. When he needs to have a discreet conversation with Marasi at the end of Alloy of Law, he lures her to an alleyway, and deadens all her emotions to stop her from panicking. She is keenly aware that if she could feel anything, she'd be terrified.
• Worm: The Undersiders are more "doing their best" than outright heroes, but they do genuinely end up on the side of trying to help people more often than hurt them. Their powers include Sensory Deprivation, controlling other people bodies, psychologically destroying people with their secret flaws and concerns and Lovecraftian Dog monsters. The main character Taylor notes that her power (controlling bugs) is impossible to use in a way that isn't at least slightly horrifying, as anyone being swarmed with bugs is probably about to start screaming horribly. Even people who are outright Heroes in the setting have powers that are pretty terrifying. Body Horror elements, either in how they're used or the effect, are very common, and it's noted several times that if they were villains, many of the heroes powers would be outright terrifying.
  • The sequel, Ward contains several more examples, most of whom are actually more unambiguously good than the characters of Worm. One heroine (who was a more minor character in Worm) is a face with a mass of super-strong tentacles for a body; another does her good deeds by means of omnipresent surveillance; and another transforms into various horrifying forms to do his heroing.

Live-Action TV

• Zigzagged with The Addams Family. In the original comic strips, they're just plain creepy, while the series could be the codifier for this trope. The films lean more towards the creepy than the good, especially regarding Wednesday, but still qualify.
• Arrow:
  • The titular vigilante is fighting for justice, but relies heavily on scaring the crap out of bad guys to get information from them, especially when you compare him to more people-friendly superheroes like the Flash and Supergirl. His willingness to kill in the first season (before he adopts and mostly sticks to a Thou Shalt Not Kill policy) doesn't help his reputation.
  • Season 5 introduces Ragman, an eerie figure who speaks with a Voice of the Legion and tends to announce his presence to the bad guys by hiding in the shadows and then using his rag suit's Combat Tentacles to drag some helpless Mooks into the darkness like a horror movie villain. The fact that he's bulletproof may add to this, as the criminals of Star City are used to Badass Normal vigilantes who at least bother to duck when shot at, while Ragman can flat-out ignore the bullets. When not suited up, however, he's one of the kinder, more emotionally adept members of Team Arrow (aside from his Roaring Rampage of Revenge in his debut episode).
• Linder from The Bridge (US) is on the side of the angels (working in a homeless shelter and moonlighting by smuggling abused women over the Mexican border into the US), but is undeniably creepy (speaking in a low Creepy Monotone, acting fidgety when asked too many questions about what he does, and showing a willingness to hurt people that get in his way). His associate Bob (who runs a safehouse for the women rescued) is a bit more charismatic, but apparently has a very Dark and Troubled Past (he used to be a drug addict, and he apparently assaulted someone using a dirtbike in Tulsa).
• Played for Laughs in Brooklyn Nine-Nine with Detective Boyle, who is a good-hearted, friendly and likeable man who only wants to please, but nevertheless has No Social Skills or internal filter and at times seems determined to express himself in the creepiest ways possible.
• Certain guest characters in Criminal Minds. The tattoo artist the team consults about the dead killer's body art in "...A Thousand Words" is a seedy Nightmare Fetishist, but he also provides the team valuable information and insight even after they reject his request to see the body in person.
• Doctor Who:
  • The Doctor generally acts affably and charmingly, but we are constantly reminded that they are an alien with a system of morality which only partially overlaps with human conceptions of good and bad. They seem to be rather a fan of the human way of doing things, even if no instinctive capability for it themselves exists — which is the primary reason for taking Companions in the new series. Some of the incarnations are particularly terrifying, such as the First, who looks and acts like a Mad Scientist and does not seem to care about other people at all; the Fourth, who has strange bulging eyes and cares exclusively about his own freedom; the Sixth, who borders on Monster Clown; the Seventh, a Machiavellian Chessmaster who uses a thin veneer of bumbling-fool to use everyone around him as pawns; and the Tenth, who appears to be a dashing romantic but is at heart unspeakably ruthless. Several characters mention being instinctively afraid of the Ninth Doctor, with Rose even saying at one point that she found him scarier on first meeting than her first encounter with a Dalek. The Twelfth Doctor is pretty much a reconstruction of this trope. Clara goes from being doted on by an appeasing old man with a handsome face to being pestered by a glowering, ruthless pragmatist with a paranoid streak. It takes her until the ending of "Mummy on the Orient Express", eight episodes after his regeneration, for her to understand that he genuinely means to help as many people as possible with limited resources and isn't being a jerk for the sake of it. By the end of his tenure, he's arguably the kindest Doctor of all. The short story "Baby Sleepy Face" describes him, as seen through the eyes of twin kids, with "...and he looked both terrifying and kind, all at the same time."
  • Several companions fit this mould, too.
    • Turlough is an alien political exile coerced into attempting to assassinate the Doctor, who the Doctor's other companion Tegan distrusts. Even post-Heel–Face Turn, he still comes off as secretive and off-putting.
    • Handles is the scooped-out head of a Cyberman who the Eleventh Doctor likes to talk to when there are no humans around.
  • A number of monsters end up being this, such as the Ood and (as revealed in "The Time of the Doctor") most of the Silence.
    • "The Sensorites" introduces us to a race of aliens who use psychic Mind Rape as a weapon and uses a closeup of a hideous Sensorite against the glass of the spaceship as its first Cliffhanger, but they turn out to be a rather sweet, vulnerable species who really just want the humans to leave them alone.
    • The Rills from "Galaxy 4" are fanged, ammonia-breathing monsters with booming voices and hand claws that look like a cross between Jabba the Hutt and Satan's pet angler fish. They're also sweet, hospitable, and eternally forgiving even after both the brutish Drahvins and the misguided TARDIS crew repeatedly attack them and their robots.
    • The Fish People in "The Underwater Menace" horrify Polly, but it soon turns out that they're actually just human survivors of shipwrecks who were surgically converted to work as slaves by the Atlanteans. They aren't bad people and are persuaded very easily to go on strike in order to help defeat the Mad Scientist trying to blow up the earth For the Evulz.
  • A few Daleks have made a Heel–Face Turn, but the result is still never pleasant: Dalek Sec's human-hybrid form is a cyclopean head with a distended brain stuck messily on top of a human body, Dalek Caan emerges from the Time War as a Mad Oracle whose case has been smashed open to leave his inner mutant on full display, and Rusty is a violently unhinged Anti-Hero who settles out as a "good" guy mostly because he directs his trademark Dalek murderous hatred principally at other Daleks.
  • Mr. Razor from "World Enough and Time" is a creepy old man, dresses like a hobo and is just a bit too okay with all of the patients in the hospital being converted into Cybermen. Nevertheless, he befriends Bill and keeps her company for the ten years she spends in the hospital. At the end of the episode, this is horrifically averted, as Razor turns out to be The Master in disguise, luring Bill into her own Cyber-conversion mere hours before the Doctor arrives to save her, then teaming up with Missy to capture and attempt to kill the Doctor.
• Dr. Henry Morgan of Forever (2014) is described as creepy by several people in the pilot. He works as a medical examiner, which he describes at one point as "I dismember dead bodies for a living." He can read personal details about people's lives, living or dead, at a glance. According to his resume, his last job before going to medical school (in Guam) was working as a grave-digger. When a warrant is served to search his home because he withheld information about a mass-murder, he's found to have a hidden basement laboratory (which he pronounces with emphasis on the second syllable, like a movie Mad Scientist) containing body parts (excusable since he's an ME), "torture devices" ("All those are for sex.") and poisons. When questioned, he seems completely unperturbed, stating casually which poison he'd have used instead and agreeing that their suspicions of him are quite reasonable — before poking a great big hole in their theory. It's unclear whether knowing that he's been alive since the 18th century and can't seem to stay dead would help their impression of him any. He's also an Actual Pacifist who has worked as a doctor for a couple hundred years and is quite ready to put himself in danger if it spares someone else.
• Season 5 of Grimm features Eve, who is one of Hadrian's Wall's most effective agents, devoted to fighting the wesen supremacist group Black Claw, and seems to have a particular...affection for protagonist Nick Burkhart. She's also emotionless, a Torture Technician, a hexenbiest (not at all the cuddliest wesen species), and an alternate personality of Nick's ex-fiancee Juliette who had her personality altered somehow into working for HW after her Face–Heel Turn in the previous season.
• Will Graham in Hannibal is somewhat off-putting in how he interacts with others (other human beings at least, he's better with dogs), has serious psychological issues, and has an almost supernatural knack for empathizing with serial killers and mentally reconstructing violent crimes.
• Det. Frank Pembleton from Homicide: Life on the Street. He can be downright sinister when interrogating a suspect and frequently goes to uncomfortable, at times almost sexual territory while doing so, but he's a fundamentally good if unpleasant man.
• Det. Goren in Law & Order: Criminal Intent: He's One Head Taller, can Break Them by Talking like a pro thanks to his Army Intelligence profiler training, and has issues being The Un-Favourite of his mother because his father was a serial killer, though he didn't know that. Also, the only person who seems to understand him is a female serial killer.
• Leverage:
  • Parker. She has her own way of looking at things that makes her come off as weird to everyone else, including her team. During a lesson on persuasion, she "convinced" Eliot to eat an orange by telling him that she put a razor blade in his apple. He had to tear it apart just to make sure she was lying. She continues this in Leverage: Redemption:
    Parker: Past Parker is dead. She dies every second, over and over. Future Parker never arrives. She's suspended in time, forever.
    Breanna: Sometimes you forget how her brain works, then [explosion noise].
  • Nate. In "The Order 23 Job", he comes up with a plan to convince The Mark that's in danger of being exposed to a deadly virus, and his nose starts bleeding as a result of his stress, shocking Parker into thinking that Nate made it happen with his mind. This tendency seems to come out more when he stops drinking:
    Nate: I mean, if you have a body in the trunk of your car, you're gonna drive under the speed limit, right?
    Parker: You know, when you're sober your metaphors get even creepier.
• Glen Bishop has off-putting behavior in the early seasons of Mad Men, but his intentions have largely been benign and in the latter seasons has proven to be the most decent person in Sally's life.
• NCIS:
  • Abby, the series Perky Goth, especially when she takes a case as Serious Business.
  • And Ducky, the Creepy Mortician. A gentleman, to be sure, but his habit of Talking to the Dead and his fascination with different forms of criminal insanity can be off-putting.
• Beecher from Oz is one of the few genuinely moral and compassionate inmates in Oz; it just so happens that he's also a vengeful berserker who once bit off a guy's dick.
• Person of Interest:
  • Finch can find out everything there is to know about someone's personal life and will show off that knowledge in many offhand ways, has surveillance on everyone he's in contact with, and is impossible to pin down or find anything about. His Creepy Monotone and penchant for Spock Speak add to the unsettling image.
  • The Machine, the series' Big Good. It's everywhere but nowhere. It's always watching and sees everything. It can predict and change the future. Its only voice is recorded snippets of various people's speech that sounds like an audio Cut-and-Paste Note. People who get too close to learning about its existence tend to be Killed to Uphold the Masquerade.^note This is not its will, but that of some of its misguided agents.
• Psych introduces us to Mary Lightly (it's a family name), a geeky, clingy psychologist who speaks in Creepy Monotone and has No Social Skills. He appears in a few episodes to help the protagonists track the recurring villains Yin and Yang, with whom he might be a little obsessed. Main hero Shawn Spencer suspects that Mary is Yin since he knows so much about the two murdering fiends; these suspicions are allayed when Yin kills Mary during the season 4 finale.
• The title characters from Sapphire and Steel. It's explicitly stated a couple of times that they aren't human. What they are is never explained, but the pair (particularly Steel) verge on the Humanoid Abomination with their chilly personalities, unconvincing attempts to connect to humans, and tendency to Shoot the Dog.
• Sesame Street: In the first season, the Beautiful Day Monster was like this. He had a rather scary appearance, but was generally curious and well-meaning, even though he often ended up (unintentionally) scaring other Muppets away. Several other minor/one-off first season Muppet monsters were like this too.
• Sherlock Holmes:
  • Sherlock, from the show of the same name, is an Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette Nightmare Fetishist with No Social Skills and Mad Scientist tendencies. He fights crime! Fortunately, John isn't squeamish.
  • To a lesser extent, Sherlock Holmes in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson as well, particularly in the first episode. He's friendlier than Cumberbatch's Holmes, but retains the mad scientist streak (keeping a human eyeball in a glass of water in the sitting room — really, Sherlock?) and there's enough mysterious weirdness about him that, early in their acquaintance, Watson believes that his new flatmate is a secret criminal mastermind.
  • Similarly, the Jeremy Brett version is aristocratic, pallid, and condescending, even bordering on snappish. Also, his depiction doesn't gloss over the character's drug addiction, or pass off Sherlock's sexism as Fair for Its Day. He's shown to care about helping his clients, but genuinely dislikes the attention that might come with it.
• Siren (2018): Ryn is a loyal, loving person but due to having very different mannerisms to average humans she can come off as quite unsettling among them from her facial expressions and tone.
• Smallville: When Brainiac 5 first appears in "Homecoming", he starts off by performing some of his trademark Mind Rape. The fact that he keeps his Creepy Monotone doesn't help matters, and Clark immediately demands that he leave everyone alone the moment he comes in.
• Tyler in V (1983) is a rough-and-tumble former CIA agent assisting, training and arming his fellow rebels against the visitors. Proving that Good Is Not Soft, he can go from plain "creepy" to outright terrifying.
• The X-Files: The episode "Revelations" has the boy who has been suffering from stigmata being abducted by a creepy man with vaguely demonic features (played by Michael Berryman), who is revealed midway through the episode to be acting as the boy's guardian angel. After he dies fighting the real villain Scully even notes how during the autopsy his body shows no signs of decomposition, a characteristic described as that of a saint.

Myths & Religion

• Norse Mythology:
  • The god Odin is the god of death, war-frenzy, and battle, and will even betray and cheat his way to dominance. But he mostly does it to prevent the Aesir and the world from being destroyed by the jotnar. He is also venerated by the Norse not only for being the warrior-king of the Aesir gods and the patron of warriors, but also for giving life to the first humans and providing humanity with knowledge, poetry, and the runes; and he is also the god of healing and the outcasts.
  • Hel, the jotunn goddess of the dead and domain of the underworld of Helheim, is hideous and frightening, as those who do not die in battle end up in her cold realm. But in some interpretations, she is a kind goddess who takes care of those souls well.
• The Bible:
  • There's a serious reason why angels always say "Be not afraid!" to mortals before trying to say anything else. While many of them do embody The Theme Park Version of angels that they are usually shown as, a few of the angels were downright eldritch in their appearance, and other celestial beings like the four creatures. Some biblical descriptions of angels are similar to what today would be perceived by the public as a UFO sighting.
  • God Himself also qualifies. He is an unstoppable and completely unfathomable being whose true name is said to cause insanity if you ever said it. If angered enough He will conjure monstrous plagues that can make an empire fall to their knees... All to help His people who had been suffering under cruel masters who had tried to commit genocide. Among other awe-inspiring deeds from destroying a dark decadent city to sparing a corrupt city that could still be redeemed; God is terrifying, but He still has humanity's back.
• "Fierce deities" in Buddhism have very intimidating appearances and attributes, but they put their destructive energies towards fighting evil and battling obstacles to enlightenment.
• In Hinduism, the goddess Kali may be frightening, with her wrathful appearance and association with death, but she destroys the forces of evil and protects the innocent. She also purifies them from their sins and guides them to righteousness and the liberation of their souls. Likewise, her consort Shiva also appears as Rudra, Bhairava, and other terrifying forms, as the god of destruction. He also protects the good from evil and their temptations.

Podcasts

• Binary Break has Sophie's partner Capmon. She's cheerful and protective, and also loves decomposing plant life and creepy bugs. Her "charming little home" is a rotting log in the middle of the Witch Woods. And when she digivolves into Fenumon, she becomes a Creepy Doll with mushrooms growing out of her.
• The Magnus Archives: The archivist remarks that he is more disturbed by having "Michael", an Ambiguously Human something who saves one of his assistants from infestation, as a potential ally than as an enemy.
• The Jade Regent Campaign from RPGMP3 features a character called Misty the Succubus. Misty is a bubbly, bouncy, charmingly naïve teenage girl with talents that make her invaluable to the team. She also happens to be a demonic Succubus from the deepest pits of the Abyss, who enjoys long walks on the beaches by the lakes of fire and brimstone, and occasionally starts singing while disemboweling people with her claws. She's really a very nice person, once you get to know her.
• Welcome to Night Vale:
  • Cecil Palmer comes off as this, given his calm and deadpan narration of the horrifying events that routinely occur around town, as well as his cheerful endorsement of the maniacal City Council and the Sheriff's Secret Police.
  • Almost any citizen of Night Vale, no matter how kind and affable, will drift into this trope occasionally. A number of quite creepy characters seemed almost certainly malevolent at first, only to turn out to be good many episodes later.

Pro Wrestling

• Lestat The Vampire Warrior Gangrel...whatever you know him as, he is affable almost to the point of being friendly, but he still has legit fangs. His teeth are longer than Edge, who himself has abnormally long teeth.
• Crossed with Dark Is Not Evil: Despite his overall creepiness, Boogeyman definitely seemed to be a force of good in his own, weird way.
• As a face, Kane's nicer actions would remind you he is still a severely deranged, emotionally unstable nutcase. This was often played for laughs, like when he tried to help a child at WWF New York win at a claw game. Unable to win the conventional way, Kane's solution was to punch through the glass and start grabbing the prizes, handing them to the suprised kid, then storming off.

Roleplay

• Honorable Hogwarts loves this trope. Jason, Aldous, Lena, Mandos, and Abel are just the main-character examples. And considering the site's aggressively gray morality, more characters will likely be introduced who fit this trope later on.

Tabletop Games

• Call of Cthulhu: Investigators who somehow manage to survive multiple or even just one adventure tend to have varying shades of this, since they tend to have serious mental issues, know or have seen things man was not meant to know, and might even have the ability to use some mind-bending and reality-warping magic.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Eberron:
    • Aereni culture is steeped in the trappings of death. Some houses have themselves alchemically "mummified" before their time; others tattoo themselves with skulls or wear skeletal armour. Their main religion, the Undying Court, leans toward Neutral Good, and the house that's most known for being mummified is one of the most loyal to the Court.
    • Some of the dwarf clans of Mroranon are willing to wield daelkyr symbiotes in their war, and a few are even born as ruinbound dwarves, with a mutant symbiote intrinsically part of their biology. They're no better or worse than anyone else (although there is a possibility that the clans in question may be becoming corrupted in some way by the daelkyr).
    • While the Blood of Vol often seems evil, with its heavy use of undead and its scorn for the gods, most of its tenets are neutral at worst or even lean toward good; the cleric with the blood-drop symbol on her shield, who ritually donates blood to a vampire or a mummy on a regular basis, might have chosen her faith due to the tenet that goes, "Stand with those you care for; all we have is this life, and each other."
  • Flumphs are aberrations — alien beings with no place in the world's ecology — feed parasitically on mental energies, and resemble floating jellyfish monsters with acid-producing tentacles and the ability to vent jets of nauseatingly smelly gas. They're also wise, moral and benevolent beings, and some of the very few friendly faces adventurers can meet in the dark beneath the world.
• Sentinels of the Multiverse: Omnitron-X is a version of Omnitron who has been programmed with the capacity for empathy, and immediately travelled back in time to fight his precursor versions, making him a hero...but he's still got a face dominated by a single glowing red eye, his frame is inhuman and somewhat skeletal (especially in his Omnitron-U version, which has him half-rebuilt by Unity with whatever was handy), and he doesn't quite get humans, tending towards the Straw Vulcan side, so he doesn't see why humans don't, for example, seek out the most eugenically appropriate partners for breeding (even if he'd never try and force it on anyone).
• Warhammer:
  • The Knights of Morr fight in deathly silence, worship the god of the dead, and are the subject of dark rumor and boogeyman myths across the Empire. Despite this, they're steadfast defenders of the Empire and welcome on any battlefield they join.
  • Amethyst Wizards wield death magic and lean heavily into the "Grim Reaper" aesthetic with their Black Cloaks, combat scythes, and Skeletons in the Coat Closet. However, they're implacable foes of Black Magic and Necromancy and take a zero-tolerance stance against any sign of The Dark Side among their order.
  • The Lizardmen play up the Reptiles Are Abhorrent trope... but they are also the one faction that most consistently opposes Chaos.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Eldar Harlequins are Monster Clown Dance Battler Ninjas, with horrifying weapons that can explode you in an instant or turn you into a drooling imbecile, wear grinning masks that reflect your deepest terrors and serve a god who is, for all intents and purposes, The Joker. They are also the best line of defense against both Chaos (servants of the gods of rape, murder, mutation, and disease) and the Necrons (former rulers of the galaxy returning to wage a genocidal purge of the current residents). Being Warhammer 40K, "good" is very much relative.
  • The Legion of the Damned are a chapter of undead Space Marines, constantly shrouded in ghostly flames and fighting in complete, utter silence. They are about as much "good" as it can get in 40K, given that they are mostly sighted fighting either forces of Chaos or other supernatural foes.
• Warhammer: Age of Sigmar:
  • The Sylvaneth are a race of Plant People who are described in the lore as noble spirits, defenders of life, and absolutely good (albeit with some Blue-and-Orange Morality compared to other races), and are on the main armies of the Grand Alliance Of Order. They also have undeniably the scariest looking models of all the Order Factions, with branch-like claws, rictus grins on their wooden faces, and Glowing Eyes of Doom. Tree-revenants look like scowling ghosts emerging from wooden bodies, with twisted branches emerging out of their backs like blades. This does not apply to Spite-revenants, who are every bit as terrifying as they look, and are outcast from sylvaneth society under normal circumstances.
  • The Anvils of Heldenhammer are one the many sub-groups of the Stormcast Eternals, mortal heroes plucked from death to become angelic warriors against evil. Unlike other Stormcast, though, who were taken in the midst of their Dying Moment of Awesome, the Anvils were ancient heroes who had been in the afterlife for centuries or more when they were called. Consequently, they have a unique connection with death, and are the ones most often called on to fight the undead. They make their bases in Shyish, the Realm of Death, revere the ancient death gods that resisted Nagash's conquest of the various afterlives, and decorate their armor in creepy skull motifs and black paint. They're a bit grim, but as noble and heroic as they were in life.
• Vampire: The Masquerade: Clan Malkavian is known for being creepy Mad Oracles. Clan Nosferatu is known for being ugly as sin. But while few vampires could really be considered to be good guys, those two clans are known for some of the fewest clearly evil acts, especially compared to the much more ordinary-seeming Ventrue or (especially) Tremere.
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Other Gaia Garou find the Uktena tribe unsettling because of their strange gifts, love of secret knowledge, and close study of the Wyrm.
• Changeling: The Dreaming: Seelie Sluagh are this by definition. Sluagh are spies, psy-ops experts, fear masters, et. al.; creepy and disturbing is their primary stock in trade and all Seelie fae are some flavour of good.

Toys

• Onua from the BIONICLE series, at least in his first incarnation. He's a hunchback, his body is completely black, he lives underground, he has gigantic bladed claws for hands, and like all other Toa he wears a mask that completely obscures his face, but his mask looks like Jason Voorhees'. This is not made any better in his Toa Nuva form, in which he ditches the big claws for chainsaws. And through the series the poor guy is one of the most helpful, useful, and friendly characters. Seriously, though, in some of the promotional art he looks like a monster that's about to attack Tahu.

Video Games

• Alpha Protocol has the mysterious organization known as G22. They're classified as a terrorist organization by the international community, their Faceless Goons wear Red and Black and Evil All Over uniforms with voice-changers that give them a Creepy Monotone, and nobody knows who they are or what they want. However, if befriended, their leader Albatross explains that their goal is to prevent global strife and maintain the status quo. It's heavily implied that they're The Remnant of a previous iteration of Alpha Protocol, putting them on the same side as Agent Thorton unless he decides otherwise.
• Most of the twisted Wonderland characters who are still on Alice's side in American McGee's Alice and Alice: Madness Returns. Few characters have managed to dodge the physical effects of Alice's mental instability, but she has some very loyal allies nonetheless. Special mention goes to the Cheshire Cat: he now sports a deep voice, skeletal appearance, Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness / Supernatural Gold Eyes, dark markings that accentuate just how insane he looks, and a Slasher Smile. The marketing for the first game featured him prominently (frequently with blood spattered all over his teeth), as an example for just how nightmarish the game is. He also retains the maddening habit of withholding information and speaking in riddles, making him a frustrating character for both Alice and the player. Despite all of this, he remains one of Alice's most reliable and devoted companions, and he tries to steer her back towards sanity as best he can.
• From Ar tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel: Even after Soma makes a Heel–Face Turn and start helping the heroes, she's still creepy, due in no small part to her spectacular Slasher Smile. Her Limit Break in particular is disturbing. It helps that she's a Monster Clown.
• A surprising number of characters in Bloodborne qualify for this, to the point where it's nearly a theme.
  • The messengers are extremely creepy looking, resembling emaciated fetus corpses, but genuinely want to help the hunters. Similarily, the Doll dips headfirst into the Uncanny Valley, yet is only there to help.
  • Every Hunter ally is this to some degree. Djura, if you can befriend him, is one of the few kind-hearted souls in Yharnam, Eileen may wear a plague doctor's outfit, but she's heroic, and Gehrman really wants the best for you, even giving you an easy way out of the dream.
  • The Oedon Chapel Dweller is arguably the single most kind-hearted soul in Yharnam. He looks like a dried-up corpse, and laughs creepily at odd times, but he still offers sanctuary to anyone who needs it, stating that he just wants to help people.
  • Simon in the DLC is another hunter, dressed in rags and questioning the hunter's mission. He is the only friendly face you'll see for the entire DLC, and his goal is entirely noble.
• The doll in Boogeyman 2 spends the game sitting still in a perpetually rocking chair, and is the one to warn you to protect yourself from the boogeyman night after night.
• Control has an entity (or possibly a group of entities) called The Board, an ambiguously Benevolent Abomination represented by an upside-down black pyramid in a white plane that ostensibly serves as the highest authority of The Oldest House and the Federal Bureau of Control. Their intentions are vague, they communicate through a very confusing, at-times contradictory form of multiple-choice speaking, and it's strongly implied that their partnership with humans has less to do with mutual agreement and more that it simply betters their own agenda, which exists beyond human comprehension. With all that said, however, their shared goals are broad enough that their willingness to cooperate is sincere, and they ultimately work in the best interest of helping and protecting Jesse and the Bureau at large.
  • Ahti is another good example. He is a weird, seemingly half-crazed old janitor who insists that the Director of the FBC is his assistant, mumbles in Finnish, interacts with other people's internal monologues and yells at the resident Eldritch Abomination like an old man telling the kids to get off his lawn. However, he is never anything except supportive and complimentary of Jesse's efforts, even expressing approval when Jesse sees through his fibs, and helps Jesse past significant obstacles.
• In Cookie Clicker, it eventually turns out that the true form of Santa Claus is a twisted, be-tentacled creature; however, judging by the news feed and the wonderful benefits he gives the player, he's still the genuinely benevolent being he always appeared to be.
• Darkest Dungeon: The Abomination is a meek and kind man with the unfortunate ability to turn into a vicious and terrifying monster.
• Destiny and Destiny 2 have Eris Morn, a former Guardian who took part in a failed raid to kill the Hive God, Crota. She lost her Ghost, her Light, and her eyes in the Hellmouth, but she was able to survive by taking the eyes from an Acolyte, giving her three green eyes that glow through the blindfold she wears. Now she fights against the Hive and other enemies of the City using her knowledge of Hive magic and Darkness-based powers like Stasis.
• The Diablo series:
  • Diablo II allows the player to incarnate a Necromancer who uses bone-based spells, summons skeletons and golems made of blood, can use poison-based attacks, and has a liking for dark comments, but is otherwise a good guy.
    • In fact, the game's lore says that, among the magic users, necromancers are the least susceptible to demonic corruption. They don't fear death and they are only interested in balance rather than power for its own sake so the demons don't really have anything to tempt them with.
  • Diablo III introduces, as a player character, the Witch Doctor, who, in addition to summoning creatures such as spiders, poisonous frogs, or zombie dogs and bears, is a Nightmare Fetishist. Despite this he is portrayed as one of the nicest characters among the playable classes.
• In a Low Chaos run of Dishonored, Corvo becomes one of these. He wears a creepy skull-like mask, can possess people and summon swarms of devouring rats, and eliminates his enemies with terrifying ease. He also acts as a kind and protective father figure to Emily, avoids unnecessary violence (even being able to complete the game without killing anyone), and is willing to go out of his way to help his friends. The later games make it clear the Low Chaos route is the the canon one, with him even sparing Daud when it was clear he was sorry for his hand in the Empress’ death and Dunwall going to hell.
• Dragon Age:
  • Morrigan from Dragon Age: Origins. She's a snarky Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette Lady of Black Magic who views love as incompatible with her Darwinist outlook on life. She also happens to know fifteen different poisons that grow in the Kocari Wilds.
  • Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening:
    • The Messenger, one of the Disciples of the Architect, he's a sapient Darkspawn, that depending on the player's choices can actively aid the player in the final battle and if allowed to leave afterwards will become a Mysterious Protector, helping out random travelers on the road, albeit accidentally tainting a few of them.
    • Justice is an spirit inhabiting a decayed corpse. He also happens to be noble, just and genuinely looking to help mortals. However, by the start of Dragon Age II, he has changed.
  • Anders can be this himself at times in Dragon Age II, even without Justice's help. It is all but outright stated that Anders is practically obsessed with a romanced Hawke, even before the romance officially kickstarts. If in a rivalmance with Hawke he can make the remark, "I swear! I don't know whether to kiss you or kill you!". In another scene he can also say, "Why is it you can say nothing without making me want to wring your neck?". And then, in any romance, he can always make the extremely disturbing statement, "I would drown us in blood to keep you safe."
  • Cole from Dragon Age: Inquisition is the newest addition to this trope. He looks like a bedraggled scarecrow dressed in rags, with bangs and glazed, feverish eyes. He is a spirit-like entity capable of sensing pain and often repeats people's thoughts out loud whether they want him to or not. However, he genuinely wants to help people and will go out of his way to do so, even if his deeds will not be remembered.
• The Queen's advisors in Enclave have body concealing red robes, gold masks and speak in Black Speech, also at the end of the Dark campaign after Vatar wins an army wearing the same colors as the advisors begins invading, suspicious, isn't it?
• Goldmask from Elden Ring looks like a lanky obsidian-skinned essicated corpse that only wears a golden mask and a Chainmail Bikini, and also never speaks and barely even moves. Despite this, he's widely considered a saint and prophet of the Golden Order and a person with immense wisdom. The ending associated with him is also potentially one of the most positive: Realizing that the flaw of the Golden Order is that it's led by gods that are 'no less fickle than men'. He sacrifices himself to create the Mending Rune of Perfect Order which will render the Golden Order an atheistic concept above the gods, and prevent another tragedy like the Shattering from ever happening again. It's also the only ending where the Erdtree returns to its golden splendor, rather than turn silver or destroyed.
• Mantorok in Eternal Darkness: An Eldritch Abomination that has coexisted relatively peacefully with humans for millennia, and is certainly better than the other three Eldritch Abominations you encounter.
• EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: Gradius is firmly on the side of the heroes. He's also an alien parasite that has assimilated an innocent boy named Hans, and is now deathly pale with hard chitin and veins covering his body, blood oozing down his face, and attacks by stabbing his hand into his foes to a spray of blood. Ghastly. He hunts down and destroys other bem for the sake of his beloved Flamberge, and comments that perhaps he's already diferent enough from the other bem.
• Nick Valentine of Fallout 4 is a Hard Boiled Detective who also is an old-model synth, with eerie glowing yellow eyes and most of his skin off-colour or falling off entirely exposing the mechanical parts underneath. It all comes together to make him look like a zombie with prosthetics. He's also one of the nicest people in the whole Commonwealth.
• Two of Takkar's allies in Far Cry Primal qualify as this.
  • Sayla the Gatherer is implicitly Hearing Voices (or more precisely, screams) due to the trauma of seeing the Udam kill her family. To that extent, she's disturbingly eager to kill Udam, and every one she kills, she takes his ear to wear on her necklace.
  • Tensay the Shaman is a raspy-voiced skinny black man with one dilated pupil, wearing a wolf-skin hood that he never takes off, along with Tribal Face Paint, has No Sense of Personal Space, and feeds Takkar creepy vision-inducing blood potions containing large lumps of human meat and eyes.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening:
  • It's hard to get much creepier than Henry without blazing right on past any semblance of hero territory. He's dangerously unhinged and seems to have no concept of human empathy or morality, and his in-game profile notes him as cruel and having a gruesome lack of mercy on the battlefield... all while being disarmingly optimistic. He's almost never seen without a cheerful smile and often displays a surprisingly sweet and affectionate demeanor with his friends... right up until he offers to do things like murder their own side's leader in order to start the most chaotic and bloody war in history if doing so would make a friend feel better. The kicker? He genuinely doesn't understand how that could possibly be wrong if the end result was a friend being happy. The other kicker? He didn't start like this, but became the incarnation of the trope after a Dark and Troubled Past that includes Parental Neglect, a dead Only Friend, and either an Orphanage of Fear or a Boarding School of Horrors... all before he was in his teens. And it takes Henry quite a while to start realising that violence isn't the way to solve all stuff.
  • Tharja, too. Mostly comes off as a deranged Stalker with a Crush who only joined the good guys because of her fascination with the protagonist (and also because they appeared to be the side with the better chance of victory), and similar to Henry and violence, her solution to almost anything is to put a curse on someone. Noire's unpaired ending suggests that she might have become a bit more stable in the end, though.
• Five Nights at Freddy's: The animatronics are an example of this trope. Although they're prone to being downright terrifying between being practically the definition of uncanny valley and being the ghosts of dead children using the suits as second bodies, the animatronics are actually trying to stop any potential criminal from harming another child. In Five Nights at Freddy's 3, the hidden minigames show that the Marionette is the Big Good, but nevertheless creepy.
• Itward from Fran Bow definitely qualifies. He's a tall skeleton in a top hat and waistcoat, but he's also one of the friendliest characters in the game. He is also very sweet to the titular character and her cat, Mr. Midnight.
• Guilty Gear:
  • Faust is a freakishly tall, demented, sometimes Ax-Crazy Deadly Doctor who wears a Brown Bag Mask... and yet is still indisputably good. He dedicates his life and medical skills to saving people as repentance for being a serial killer.
  • Raven is a brutal, unkillable Combat Sadomasochist who wears a Black Cloak and fights with claws (that he licks) and reality bending dark magic. But when he's not in a fight he's very gentle and philosophical, at one point having a conversation with Jack-O about his constant weariness and how he's Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life. He's also working for That Man to try and better the world, not to harm it. His likes and dislikes section on his profile state that he enjoys seeing people pursue their dreams and desires, while despising those who cannot feel love.
• Killer Instinct (2013) introduced Hisako, a vengeful Japanese spirit; however, rather than seeking to punish the living as a whole, her revenge is targeted at Ultratech and its agents and creations in the tournament, for disturbing her grave. Given the company's long list of sins, this pretty well puts her on the side of "good".
• League of Legends has Yorick, the Shepherd of Souls, a very-clearly-undead monk with power over undeath native to The Shadow Isles and an overall grim demeanor... yet he's also pretty unambiguously a hero who seeks to rid the isles and its damned of their curse, and is among the only few of the isles willing to do so.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Twilight Princess:
    • Midna. She spends most of the game either as a creepy imp covered in strange markings, or as a Living Shadow. At one point in the game, she uses the Fused Shadows to transform into a borderline Eldritch Abomination. She possesses strange powers of darkness, and acts mysterious and disagreeable. But she's definitely on the side of good.
    • Link himself, who has the power to transform into a wolf with dark powers.
    • The Hero's Shade takes the form of a golden wolf in the mortal world to hide his real one, a Stalfos with one glowing eye and a rusted armor, and in their first encounter, he attacks Link at full strength. However, it was not to kill him, but to show Link that he needs his lessons in swordsmanship, which he gives over the course of the game.
  • The cursed family from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: they live in a dark creepy house and look like spiders, but they're harmless and will even reward you for breaking the curse.
  • And in the direct sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, we have the Happy Mask Salesman. Good? Most definitely, considering that he's the one who set you out on the quest to save the world. Human? Arguable at best... In fact, he'd be less creepy if it ever turned out that he wasn't human. At the very least it would explain why he is so creepy.
  • Batreaux from Skyward Sword is a type of bat-demon who lives in a creepy old shack beneath a graveyard, and also he's best buddies with a little girl. The whole questline associated with him is all about helping him turn human so he can safely befriend the residents of Skyloft instead of terrifying them with his very presence. ^note Despite not being evil himself, his demon form also apparently emanates some kind of evil aura, as once you turn him human, monsters no will no longer appear in Skyloft and night and the Remlits will no longer go feral.
  • Kilton from Breath of the Wild is a strange, squat-looking man with grey skin, fang-like tattoos around his mouth, clawed gloves, and a shop called "Fang and Bone" where he shares his fascination with monsters by selling various monster-themed wares. But he still runs his business to help Link fight monsters, acknowledging that they need to be killed however obsessed he may be with them.
    • From the same game, there's the Sheikah Monks. They're (circa) 10,000-year-old mummies possessing supernatural abilities speaking only in eerily ethereal moans that can be heard throughout their respective shrines (and sometimes beyond) and are implied to not be as immobile as we're lead to believe. However, they're firmly on the side of good as they reward Link with means of boosting his abilities and offer a treasure or two in their trials.
• In Majesty, players can build a temple to Krypta, Goddess of Death and recruit her Priestesses to defend the kingdom. They are not evil. They wear blood-red robes, black makeup, they summon and ensorcell the undead, and walk around with names like "Sister Lifesbane", but they aren't evil. In fact, the Priestess' Tale on the game's website shows that they have a rather egalitarian view (death coming for everyone equally) and despising the perversions of Krypta's work that necromancers perform.
• Emil in NieR. He might have transformed into a skeleton with an unsettling grin and destructive powers, but he is still just a sweet kid. Grimoire Weiss also qualifies: he looks like knock-off Necronomicon, uses Blood Magic, has an impressive Evil Laugh and ego the size of a planet. Despite this, Weiss is unwaveringly loyal and genuinely cares about his friends under all his snark.
• Off: The Judge is a cat with a twisted, cheek-splitting, everpresent Cheshire Cat Grin. Despite his offputting apperance, he's a friendly aid to the Batter, and by the end turns out to be the only one left to stand up to him.
• The Persona series has Igor, a balding, unnaturally thin hunchback with bulging bloodshot eyes, a long, hooked nose, and a Cheshire Cat Grin that borders on a Slasher Smile. Despite this frightening appearance, he's one of the most benevolent figures in the franchise, serving as a kind and encouraging Spirit Advisor to the protagonists.
  • This is played with in Persona 5, where it turns out that the Igor you've been dealing with for most of the game is actually the Big Bad posing as Igor. In addition to Igor's usual appearance, he has some additional creep factor added in like a much deeper voice and a more harsh style of speaking, as well as shaping the Velvet Room into the form of a prison.
• In Pillars of Eternity, a possible recruitable party member is Grieving Mother, a eerily pale-skinned, dark-haired woman with piercing eyes. She has a Dark and Troubled Past as a midwife during a curse where children keep being born without souls and she hides her identity behind a Perception Filter that makes her look like a forgettable old peasant woman to nearly everybody, and she never tells anyone her real name. She also happens to be perhaps the most compassionate and morally upright person in the party besides Kana Rua.
• Planescape: Torment:
  • The Nameless One. Even if played as the nicest and noblest person ever, he will still be a corpse-like man covered by horrible scars.
  • Also Morte, who despite being a floating skull who's a damned soul from the Pillar of Skulls in hell is the only party member who's actually good aligned.
• Sabrina from Pokémon, up until the Pokémon Gold and Silver remakes where her design was made more casual. She's possibly the most powerful psychic human in the games, has a whip in her original appearance, has red eyes, and her official art doesn't◊ help◊ her case◊. She is however a nice, if stoic, woman who is a Reluctant Warrior.
  • On the other side of the Fourth Wall, there's Missingno/'M. Despite causing all sorts of glitches just by encountering them, (including corrupting the player's Hall of Fame data) it also has the incredibly useful side-effect of duplicating the item in the sixth slot of the bag. Many rare candies and Master Balls have been copied via this.
• Reverse: 1999 has a few physicians who are very unnerving despite their genuine dedication to healing others.
  • First, there is Balloon Party. Word Salad name aside, she's an incredibly unsettling, deathly pale woman who dresses and acts incredibly childishly, and has a mysterious magical affliction that lets her create balloons inside her body and release them by coughing. These balloons seem to be organic in nature, with blood vessels, skeletal systems, fully-formed organs like eyes, stomachs, and hearts, but they're primarily used to heal all manner of afflictions, especially for child patients. However, these balloons can also violently explode and afflict terrible injuries when Balloon Party wants them to, usually when she's punishing "bad" adults who abuse children or other evildoers.
  • Later, in patch 1.2, we have Tooth Fairy. She is a school physician for the SPDM, primarily treating the young children's teeth but also treating other injuries and illnesses. She is also quite responsible, calm, and reliable, the most level-headed and helpful person in a crisis. The creepiness comes with how she does this for arcanist patients: feeding them tooth fairies, living critters that strongly object to being Eaten Alive (or cooked, if the patient is especially reluctant to eat them raw).
• Resident Evil Village has The Duke, an extremely mysterious and extremely large merchant who constantly appears in random places to do business with Ethan, offering to exchange with him useful, if suspicious goods in an unflinchingly polite, almost wise and "knowing" voice. He constantly tiptoes between being comical and unnerving as it's never made clear what his intentions are (or even what he actually is), but the supplies and upgrades he sells to Ethan are immensely important to his mission, he repeatedly offers genuinely useful advice and guidance, and he ends up helping Ethan reach the final boss fight at the very end of the game seemingly just out of the goodness of his heart.
• Shin Megami Tensei V has Gustave. He's a shriveled-up looking, constantly grinning goblin with a Money Fetish, but he's nothing but helpful to the Nahobino.
• Skylanders has shades of this for some of his members. Most notably, the ones classified as "Undead", including Chop Chop, a skeleton knight; Ghost Roaster, a ghost who has the habit to eat other spirits; Hex, an undead elven Necromancer with bone-based spells and a taste for grim lines; and Cynder, a redeemed Black Dragon who despite being portrayed as a nice character is known to still creep out some of her teammates.
• The Terror Mask of the Splatterhouse series. It is an Artifact of Doom giving its user super-strength (and in the remake, a Lovecraftian Superpower) and enjoys watching everything die. But nonetheless it helps Rick save his kidnapped girlfriend. But subverted in the third game, where it was Evil All Along.
• Stellaris has Necrophage empires, which are Our Vampires Are Different Necrocracy Recycled In Space. Depending on their Ethics and Civics, they can end up as Democratic Crusaders, Federation Builders, Peaceful Traders...
• Cappy in Super Mario Odyssey is a red-eyed ghost with the creepy ability to possess hats and transfer the wearer's control to whatever the hat lands on. He is also Mario's primary ally and power-up, like F.L.U.D.D. or Luma, and is helping Mario so he can save his sister Tiara.
• Tales of the Abyss: The setting's foremost retired Mad Scientist and widely believed to be a Necromancer, Jade Curtiss can definitely pull this off when he wants to, although he spends most his time as a Deadpan Snarker.
• Tattletail has the titular toys, surprisingly enough. They only want to defeat their "Mama", and genuinely want to befriend the protagonist.

Web Animation

• If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device: The show's portrayal of Cegorach is as eerie and sinister as one would expect for the god of alien Monster Clowns that are feared even by the most vile and dangerous among those same aliens. And yet, all his acts so far have been on the side of good, or at least against the worst sides: Tricking the C'Tan into destroying most of their own, violently and decisively evicting Ahriman and his warband from the Black Library (after messing with them for a bit), and the most debatable act, which is planning to destroy the Flesh Eaters, is mostly an act of revenge for his followers' demise (and mockery) and pointed at one of the most psychotic loyalist warbands of the Imperium who often tear apart their own civilians. He even allows the Custodians to enter the Black Library, though fittingly for the trope not without scaring them to actual tears first. In a setting like Warhammer 40000's, he's one of the closest things there is to a good guy, but he is still an utter terror even if he's on your side.
• Magical Border Patrol: Jake Harrier is a teenager corrrupted by powerful magic into a greyskinned, dark eyed monster, but he's actually genuinely helpful.
• Powerful spirit and Posthumous Character Tlaloc in No Evil. Pictures of him show him to be a skeletal frog creature, and people who liked him admit that he wasn't the most sociable, but he gave his life to end the fighting over the Tezcatlipoca Mirror and left a Secret Test of Character to make sure that whoever claimed his magical tuning fork was ethical enough to carry it. (And hey, he couldn't have known that part of the mirror would try to put the entire world to sleep after it was broken.)
• Epithet Erased: Rick Shades's powers are heavy on black lightning, and his over-the-top yet weird and unsettling persona, complete with total inability to phrase anything in a way that isn't faintly terrifying makes him disconcerting to spend time with. He's also a genuinely noble person who throws himself in front of a magic blast to protect Molly, almost dying in the process, and the black lightning is a manifestation of The Power of Friendship.

Webcomics

• Awful Hospital: Since almost everything in the comic is some degree of creepy because of Author Appeal, this applies to anyone on Fern's side. This is taken farther by the fact that most of the few conventionally cute characters are evil.
• Deep Rise: Cao, hands down, is one of few all-loving Evilutionary Biologist in media. She and her species are notorious for causing horror and inhumanity across the ages, but by Act III she's the Messianic Archetype, building enough orphanages and hospitals to get statues of her tentacle-self erected across the continent as a symbol of hope. She resorts to disturbing-but-understandable practices when the situation demands it, such as batman-style fighting during a war and mass-lobotomy when a colony goes spontaneously insane.
• Demonseed Redux: Mama Baga is a rather spooky, brash lady with nothing but good intentions.
• Agatha of Girl Genius can definitely give off very creepy vibes, and does so with more frequency as her tale proceeds. She boasts an impressive Evil Laugh and can be disturbingly ruthless when the situation calls for it (especially when she's in her Madness Place), but is a fundamentally good person even at her worst.
• Goblins: Kin the Yuan-ti, who escapes a mook by creeping him out and then scaring him into dropping the leash that keeps her under Mind Control.
• Gunnerkrigg Court:
  • Psychopomps peacefully escort the newly dead into the hereafter, but tend to look like humanoid or animalistic abominations. Two psychopomps have to enlist human help with a child ghost because the boy took one look at them and ran away.
  • Zimmy is a possible Humanoid Abomination, mentally and emotionally unstable, oozes black gunk from her eyes and has a violent temper, but is brave, loyal and good. Kat is also becoming this, as she is one of the most consistently kind-hearted, helpful and compassionate characters in the series, but regularly terrifies people who can see into the ether due to the horrifying appearance of her spirit form.
• From League of Super Redundant Heroes, we have Spank the gimp superhero. He's definitely a good guy, but good luck getting a good night's sleep after meeting him.
• Lovely Lovecraft: The Night Gaunts and ghouls are frightening to look at, but they aid Howard and work with Randolph Carter.
• Mieruko-chan: In chapter 11, Miko brings her friend Hana to a local shrine in the hopes of exorcising the latest monstrous spirit attracted to Hana's "life aura" (which only Miko can see). Miko ends up attracting what are apparently the gods of the shrine... and while they handily (and gruesomely) dispatch the monster, they take the form of creatures just as terrifying, and one of them gives Miko a cryptic message before they dissipate: "Three times."
• Spookybot, a.k.a. Yay Newfriend, from Questionable Content is/are a powerful AI of unknown origins who introduced themselves with the words "You know that adage about how androids dream of electric sheep? We're what wakes them up screaming." They followed this up by easily helping Bubbles with a problem that Station (the most powerful AI previously known to the cast) considered hopeless and offered encouragement and emotional support for dealing with the aftermath. They are also generally weird in both appearance and speech pattern, rather high-handed, and downright brutal toward enemies. As Bubbles put it in describing their power and alien-ness:
  Bubbles: If the spectrum of artificial intelligence is a coral reef system, that being is an Architeuthis lurking in the deep water beyond.
• Jisu Han of Return to Player has an aura from being a Celestial Slayer that makes everyone nervous if she has it active. It has made non-Players faint and monsters run away. She's also quite willing to kill the bad guys, and one Celestial Slayer ability activates by her looking at blood.
• Schlock Mercenary:
  • Sergeant Schlock:
    Dr. Bunnigus: You're creepy. I'm glad you're on our side.
  • Lota ("Of The Apocalypse") may be the most reasonable AI around, but his quirks and choice of mechanical avatars don't exactly help him to win the trust of people.
• Rodney R Rodney: Upon meeting him, people immediately assume he's a bad person. He is actually a very nice person.
• Stand Still, Stay Silent: The sentinel mage guarding a very dangerous area has a flock of Animal Eye Spy seagulls that will collectively stare at visitors and mob anyone trying to enter the area without checking in. His system of keeping track of whether people who enter the dangerous area are still alive consists of items that magically bleed up upon their death. He has a Wall of Weapons, the social skills one can expect from someone who spends most of their time alone with many birds, and an obligation to tell visitors about various dangers of the area. Still a nice guy who will use the advance warning his seagulls give him to have tea ready for you upon your arrival.
• In Wapsi Square, Shelly's conscience tends to appear as a creepy little girl, so even though she is unambiguously good, she tends to frighten people encountering her for the first time.
• The Weekly Roll has Torvald, a necromancing dwarf who's violently opposed to taxation, possibly a necrophile, definitely a grave robber and, at the same time, one of the most mentally stable and cordial of the main characters.

Web Videos

• Critical Role:
  • Caduceus Clay has shades of this. While normally a pretty jovial guy, and one of the most unambiguously good characters in the Mighty Nein, his first act when meeting the party was to offer them tea grown from the graves that his family has tended for generations. Coupled with his unusual upbringing, his staff filled with flesh eating beetles, and how comfortable he is discussing death, even his friends can occasionally find him a bit off-putting. He occasionally leans into this on purpose as well — when he's genuinely angry or just wants to be left alone, he'll use Thaumaturgy to turn his eyes pitch black.
  • Campaign 3 gives us Laudna, a Hollow One with unnaturally large black eyes, straggly black hair with a white streak, a bony frame, and deathly pale skin. She keeps a dead rat with a bird skull tied to her belt, and her mannerisms and body language come off as very unnerving. In addition, she can assume a Form of Dread that warps her body in horrifying ways, complete with black ichor dripping from her fingers, eyes, and mouth. She's also quite chipper and friendly, loves children, and is shown to be very empathetic and supportive. In particular, she's highly attentive to the easily overwhelmed Imogen, including comforting her after her frequent nightmares.
• Matthew McCleskey plays as this in "Stardew Valley After You Read the Wiki". He's using wiki knowledge to give the NPCs their favorite gifts, but between his bloodshot eyes and Kubrick Stare he comes across as unsettling.
  Matthew: I know everything about you!
• The Nostalgia Critic is an all-human Tragic Hero, but different parts of his personality have been explicitly compared to HIM from The Powerpuff Girls, Baby-Doll from Batman: The Animated Series and Elsa from Splice.

Western Animation

• In Adventure Time, Marceline is a vampire with terrifying shapeshifting abilities but she is still an ally, though Jake is still terrified of her.
• Mort from All Hail King Julien, for a given value of good. He's a violently insane, immortal soul-sucking Eldritch Abomination who terrifies everyone around him, but he's firmly on King Julien's side due to his obsessive love for him and his feet.
• Amphibia:
  • Maddie Flour is a Creepy Child who practices the dark arts... for the purpose of helping people.
  • Valeriana, an elderly salamander witch, turns out to be a member of an ancient order dedicated to protecting the world of Amphibia from evil.
• Ben 10 occasionally has this. Several of Ben's alien forms are downright creepy: Wildmutt is a savage-looking beast with no eyes and impressive fangs; Ripjaws looks like a mermaid merged with a deep-sea angler fish with More Teeth than the Osmond Family; Big Chill is a skeletal-looking insect with a ghastly voice, ghost-like powers, and Grim Reaper-esque cape-wings; Swampfire and Wildvine are Plant Aliens with disturbing vine abilities; and three aliens Ben acquired (Snare-oh, Blitzwolfer, and Frankenstrike) are based on classic horror monsters. Ben remained a good guy while using all of these forms. That said, he has no problem taking advantage on his alien forms' creepiness to scare his opponents...
• Data 7 from Cyber Six, being a fierce-looking black panther, is this. He's actually quite friendly, and some of his interactions with Julian are down-right adorable.
• The Ghost Wolf from Kiff is a truly horrifying-looking ghostly wolf whose main job is helping lost children get to safety.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Princess Luna, who, aside from turning into Nightmare Moon, and having a hoodie made of bats, is a kind, just ruler. She's also quite willing to use her Dream Walker and Dream Weaver powers to give even young foals Nightmare Sequences if it means teaching them a valuable lesson.
  • Zecora the Zebra was ostracized and feared by almost all of Ponyville, wears a face-concealing cloak that makes her eyes look like they glow, lives in the middle of the Everfree Forest (home to countless dangerous critters and plants, and host to strange supernatural phenomena) in a hut covered with grimacing masks and sinister knickknacks, and speaks in cryptic, eerie rhymes. When they decided to actually talk to her, they found out she is nothing but a good samaritan who is willing to make plenty of effort to help anypony out.
  • Post Heel–Face Turn Discord manages to be this, being a gnarled serpentine mess of mismatched animal parts. At least to the extent he can be considered "good", but he's trying at least.
  • In "Maud Pie", this is how Pinkie Pie's friends see her sister Maud after they get past her stoic and serious exterior.
  • The Tree of Harmony, the ultimate source of the heroes' villain-busting magic, the best defense against the overgrowth of the chaotic and destructive Everfree Forest, and the intelligence that directs the heroes to solve major friendship problems throughout Equestria, also happens to think the best way to encourage friendships is through terrifying and (seemingly) life-threatening Face Your Fears tests, communicates through an Uncanny Valley hologram, and (in a show where nearly every bad guy is either reformed, imprisoned, or escapes) straight-up gruesomely kills six villains in one shot.
• The Owl House:
  • As the name implies, abomination magic is perhaps the most obviously sinister magical discipline in the Boiling Isles, consisting of summoning hideous, tormented-looking slime-golems to do your bidding. That said, the most prominent user of abomination magic in the series is Amity, who -despite starting off as a bully- ultimately proves to be an absolute sweetheart in addition to being the main character's girlfriend all without ever changing her skillset.
  • There's also Darius, leader of the abomination coven, who can use its magic to create weaponry and transform himself into a large slime monster. Despite coming off as villainous initially, it turns out that he's a surprisingly good father figure to Hunter and he's also one of the Coven heads trying to stop Emperor Belos.
• On Over the Garden Wall, Auntie Whispers, who is mistaken for a villain before it turns out that her actions had a good cause.
• The unnamed boss from Smiling Friends looks very unsettling and has a lot of off-putting mannerisms. However, he's also a Benevolent Boss who runs a company devoted to making its clients happy. Part of the thing that is fun about him is just how nice he is compared to how unsettling and creepy his behavior and looks are.
• South Park episode "Insheeption": Freddy Krueger, of horror film fame, turns out to be a family man and a former government agent, who specialized in dreamscape operations. He did kill those teenagers, but it was done for the sake of national security, and it was the reason he left the service. He ends up saving the day.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: Pops up rather frequently.
  • In "Much Ado About Boimler":
    • The Edosian in charge of the Osler comes off more like a creepy, evil prison warden than a captain of a medical transport. But it turns out that he was actually taking his mutated passengers to an idyllic planet for treatment after all, and he admits that he could have done a much better job communicating with his passengers than he did. His Evil Laugh is just the way he sounds, not an indicator of malicious intent.
    • The Osler itself is an all-black starship with Sinister Geometry that emerges from an unfriendly-looking Negative Space Wedgie. It's really just a transport on a long multiple-stop journey to the Farm.
    • The Dog has shapeshifting that borders on Body Horror, but is otherwise mostly harmless, and is especially kind-hearted and loving towards Tendi.
  • CPO Lars Lundy lets off an unusual vibe that Boimler finds creepy, but when Lundy invites him to model for his figure drawing class (saying they've been looking for a "skeletal boy" like him), Boimler comes out of it feeling much better about Lundy than before.
  • The Framing Device of "Veritas" is all about how the lower deckers think they have been imprisoned by aliens and put on trial to testify against their commanding officers for some kind of offense. Only at the end do they realize that it's actually supposed to be a celebration in their honor for successfully rescuing one of their leaders. The dark, creepy atmosphere (which is deliberately reminiscent of the Klingon courtrooms seen in Star Trek VI and Enterprise) was just the ensigns misreading the cultural signals of this species they know nothing about.
• Star Wars Rebels: Lothwolves are this, as they are extremely large and intimidating wolves, who also happen to be sensitive to The Force and are drawn to Jedi.
• Steven Universe: The Crystal Gems defend humanity and the planet Earth with all their might. Doesn't stop them from being a bit... well... off-putting.
  • Garnet is eight feet tall, super strong, rarely shows emotion, and tends to disregard any sense of tact. And underneath her Cool Shades she has three eyes.
  • Alexandrite has two mouths, six arms, is two stories tall, and has a tendency to argue with herself.
  • Rose Quartz would seem the most personable of the Gems - nine feet tall, yes, but beautiful, open, and sweet. But in "We Need to Talk," she reveals that she doesn't really understand how people work, at all, which casts her affection for humanity into a creepy light.
  • The Cluster is a Frankensteinian amalgamation of thousands of Gem Shards forcefully fused together, and if they ever fully take form it WILL destroy the planet. The shards also came from Crystal Gems, who still want to protect the planet any way they can.
• Teen Titans (2003): All of the other four members of the team find Raven unsettling to some degree. Also, their enemy Dr. Light is absolutely terrified of her. With good reason. After all, she sucked him into tentacly darkness.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): Minor recurring character Brick Bradley, otherwise known as a mutant called Bugman, seems like a textbook abomination due to accidentally merging himself with insects and he must get angry to willingly transform into this state. However, he is also a well-meaning superhero admired by Michelangelo and other New Yorkers, plus he has a thing for the turtles' ally April O'Neil.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): The merpeople from "Sons of the Silent Age" are a fairly civilized race who are just trying to be left alone while protecting their own. Still they look pretty creepy when they're angry and have several scenes of ominously following the heroes during their rafting trip.
• In Trollhunters, when Claire realizes that the statues in the Hero's Forge are essentially past Trollhunters' corpses, she states that it's the most heroic thing she has ever seen.

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