Not necessarily a human snowman.
While snowman-making is one of the most fun activities of winter, it can also happen if a person gets caught up in the process of making the snowman, whether it be getting covered in snow via a snowball fight, a freak snowstorm, or outright just being the base for the snowman. This will often be Played for Laughs if the first character intentionally gets the other character stuck in the snowman as a cruel joke, or the target could easily be willing for it too. It also works for a convient disguise for the winter weather.
While most cases involve the classic snowball-based snowman, it’s also possible for one to be stuck inside a specially-shaped snow sculpture. And in some cases, multiple characters could make up the snowman too. Mobility and how free the target is tends to vary too, they could have their arms free, be able to waddle about, or they could be completely stuck as if they were frozen in ice.
In some cases, this can easily be caused by a Human Snowball situation, with all the snow gathered on a character making it easy to shape, or have multiple snowball trapped characters stacked onto one another.
Examples:
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Advertising
- In a commercial for Campbell's Soup a snowman comes in from the cold and has a bowl of hot soup. He melts, showing that he's actually a kid who got caught out in a blizzard.
- In this Aldi's Christmas advert advertising Mince Pies
, the snowman Sophie is building is implied have her brother inside when her father asks her where he is.
Asian Animation
- Lamput: At the end of "Snow", Specs Doc and Skinny Doc are each on the top of a snowy hill, with their hills right next to each other. The two decide to roll to the bottom of the hills as snowballs to catch up with Lamput, but when they collide they end up forming a snowman instead. Lamput comes back and places a carrot nose on the snowman's head.
Comic Books
- The X-Men's Iceman originally manifested his ice powers on his body in a snowy way (rather than an icy way), making him look like an live snowman. He also threw snowballs at his enemies. In the very first issue of X-Men, he even made up a face with coal and a carrot as a joke.
Comic Strips
- Happens twice in Garfield:
- Happens to Kenny in this◊ Dogs of C-Kennel strip.
- Happens to Roger in a FoxTrot strip when he gets caught in the middle of a snowball fight between the kids. Andy comments that she wishes the kids would stop using their father's good hat on their snowmen.
- Another time, Paige is seen angrily knocking bits off of a snowman and insulting it in a manner that leads Peter to ask her if she's pretending that it's Jason. The punchline then reveals that Jason is inside the snowman, and he pleads for Peter to help him.
- Calvin and Hobbes:
- One strip takes this trope to another level. It starts with Suzy building a snowman, then Calvin and Hobbes come incoming towards her on their sled and end up catching the snowman on the sled. In the snowman's place is Suzy with Calvin on her shoulders and Hobbes on his head.
- Another time, Calvin accidentally made evil "snow goons", and later destroyed them by going out at night and spraying them with the hose. When his dad comes out to bring him back inside, he slips on one of the patches of ice...
Calvin: Run, Hobbes! Dad's a snow goon too!
Films — Animation
- Happens to LeFou in Beauty and the Beast while waiting for Maurice to come back. When he and Belle arrive, he even has coal eyes, carrot nose and branches for arms.
- Donald Duck ends up in one of these at the end of the "Stuck On Christmas" segment of Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas.
Literature
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The cover for The Meltdown has Greg as one. In the book proper, Fregley is seen as one when Greg passes by him while walking to Rowley's house.
Fregley: Wanna finish "building" me?
- Done by Death in Hogfather to catch the Auditors by surprise, though he isn't strictly human to begin with.
- Played for Nightmare Fuel in a Judge Dee story where a corpse turns out to have been hidden inside a snowman.
Live-Action TV
- Played with in the Hogan's Heroes episode, "Everybody Loves a Snowman", in which Hogan and his men have to figure a way to smuggle out a downed flight crew while the Gestapo is in camp searching for them. They're temporarily relocated to a barrack that has no access to their tunnels, so the gang build a hollow snowman to hide the entrance of the new tunnel they're digging, though later, Schultz ends up catching a glimpse of one of the flyers slipping into the tunnel through the snowman.
Puppet Shows
- Sesame Street: One "Journey to Ernie" segment takes place in an arctic climate. Big Bird eventually finds Ernie hiding inside a snowman.
Video Games
- The ice spell in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest briefly makes its target (which may or may not be human) look like a snowman.
- Kirby:
- In Kirby's Dream Land 3, the intro cutscene for level 5, Iceberg, has Gooey accidentally trapped in one of the snowballs that Kirby and friends are using to build a snowman. Gooey's eyes and tongue poke through the snow and startle the rest of the group.
- In Kirby 64, when you combine the bomb and ice powers, Kirby takes a bomb on his head and covers himself and the bomb up with a snowman.
- Mario Party DS: In the minigame “Gusty Blizzard”, three characters have to resist a blizzard caused by one character, being covered in more snow the colder they get until they’re frozen into a snowman.
- In Metal Slug 3 and 4, getting hit by a Yeti's ice breath will turn the character into a snowman, making them unable to move for some time and become a sitting duck for the Yeti's bone club, though they can mash the buttons repeatedly to get out before then.
- The World of Mana franchise has a frozen status that looks like this.
- Monster Hunter 3 (Tri): From this game onward, the Monster Hunter games feature a status condition known as 'Snowman' caused by strong icy attacks that encases the player in a large snowball. They can still move around and dodge but cannot use their weapons or items until it wears off or is treated with a special cleansing item. If it hits their non-human companions (or the player when playing as a Prowler) it will turn them into a tiny snow animal instead.
- In Mortal Kombat 3, Sub-Zero's finishing Friendship is him building a snowman around him.
- In the Home Alone Licensed Game for the Sega Genesis, one of the homemade weapons Kevin can assemble is a snowball launcher, which temporarily turns Harry and Marv into this if he uses it on them.
- Saejima's "Essence of Snowman" Heat Move from Yakuza 5 has him throw a mook to the ground, roll him up in a giant snowball before slamming it atop another snowball, finishing with a carrot to the new snowman's face. You can then take the snowman's head off and bash people over the head with it.
Webcomics
- In The Bird Feeder #106, "Snow Bird," Floyd mistakes a snow covered Lewis for one of Josh's snow sculptures.
- Peanut hides himself in a snowman in order to surprise Grape in one Housepets! comic. Grape does not take it well.
Western Animation
- Alvin, Simon and Theodore end up doing one of these on an episode of Alvin and the Chipmunks.
- Angry Birds Toons: In "Joy to the Pigs", a minion pig is building a snowman when King Pig puts a stick of dynamite in it. When the dynamite explodes, the minion pig gets covered in snow, and the hat and scarf used for the original snowman land on the minion pig and make him look like a snowman.
- In one of the Chucklewood Critters holiday specials, Buttons and Rusty do one of these with Buttons on top of Rusty.
- Classic Disney Shorts:
- Happens to Donald Duck and his nephews in "Donald's Snow Fight". The nephews get covered in snow until they look like bowling pins, which Donald knocks down with a snow bowling ball. Donald gets not only snow but icicles dropped on him, making him look like a rhinoceros in a cage.
- In "Pluto's Christmas Tree", Pluto runs through a snowbank, and the snow he displaces is in the exact shape of himself, but with a longer body.
- Dora the Explorer: Done with Swiper 3 times.
- In "Rapido, Tico!" Dora, Boots, and Tico must successfully stop Swiper from swiping Boots's fire truck hat's on snowy mountain. After they succeed, Swiper rolls down in a Human Snowball and turns into this.
- In the very next episode, "A Present For Santa," Dora and Boots attempt to give Santa a present. On the way, Swiper (disguised as this) follows Dora and Boots, being careful to stop when Dora and Boots stop. Suspicious, they approach him, giving Swiper the chance to steal the present. He eventually gives it back after being told it was for Santa.
- In "Star Mountain," Dora and Boots attempt to reclaim the necklace that Swiper threw on top of Star Mountain. Before they can, Swiper (as this) comes on a snowboard to try to steal their rope. (strangley enough, his tail is also covered with snow.
- Looney Tunes:
- One Pepé Le Pew cartoon has Pepe fall in the show and emerge as a snowskunk, saying that he was the Abominable Snowman.
- "Odor of the Day" stars a skunk similar to Pepe, who makes his entrance covered in snow.
- Played with in "Snow Time for Comedy", when a dog falls down a hill and becomes a Human Snowball, which then takes the form of a giant dog.
- At the beginning of the cartoon "Weasel While You Work", Foghorn Leghorn rolls the sleeping Barnyard Dawg up into a snowman.
- In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode, "Winter Wrap-Up", after Twilight Sparkle fails at ice-skating, she crashes into Spike and Pinkie Pie, and the three of them wind up forming one of these.
- The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh:
- The episode "The Wishing Bear" had Pooh getting covered with a bunch of snow, which leads to him posing as a snowman that Piglet was trying to build.
- Another episode has Piglet running away and getting covered in snow. He crawls out from underneath, leaving a Piglet-shaped snowman that the others mistake for the actual Piglet and take inside. They become concerned when the snow Piglet melts into a puddle.
- Pingu: In Sledging, Pingu crashes into a snowman, and instead of destroying it or becoming a penguin snowball he gets trapped inside the snowman. To put it lightly, he does not enjoy it. (as evidenced by his squirming.)
- Robot Chicken: Some children are playing outside in the snow and building a snowman. When they're called inside to eat and deny knowledge of where a third kid went, one of the snowman's gloves falls off, revealing what is presumably said kid's dead hand.
- Grouchy in The Smurfs: A Christmas Carol becomes a Smurf snowman due to a snowball fight. Earlier, Brainy becomes one when Grouchy slams his door and dumps snow off the roof of his house.
- SpongeBob SquarePants
- In the episode "Prehibernation Week", two kids were making a sandman (because there's no snow underwater) and sing to it to see if it would come to life like Frosty. Just then SpongeBob snowboards through and crashes into the sandman. As the kids watch the sandman slide downhill, they wonder if they sang the song wrong.
- In another episode called "Snowball Effect", Squidward tried to hit Spongebob and Patrick with a snowball but missed. The boys declared it as war and pelted Squidward with a flurry of snowballs, covering in snow in a style of a snowman, followed by a hat.
- In the Tex Avery short "The Shooting of Dan McGoo", Wolfie enters a saloon as a living snowman. He then unzips the snow covering like it was a coat.
- In the Thomas & Friends episode, "Confused Coaches", when Spencer and Gordon rush past the Stationmaster, who is shoveling snow at Maron Station, they turn him into this.
- Total Drama: Shawn and Jasmine hit multiple snow piles while skiing down the mountain in "Lies, Cries, and One Big Prize". This matters not for Shawn, who's on her shoulders, but Jasmine reaches the mountain's foot encased in a frozen snowman. She can only escape because of her amazing strength.
- In the Wander over Yonder episode, "The Little Guy", Wander, Sylvia and Wesley do this to hide from Lord Hater, with Wesley on top, Wander in the middle, and Sylvia on the bottom.
