Spitting Image: Because you can't spell "satire" without a lot of a's.
- The grotesque faces of many of these puppets. To put it mildly, they look like what would happen if The Muppets had a REALLY bad trip. To make matters worse, as the seasons progressed the puppeteers were able to make them appear more lifelike, with eyes blinking and sometimes letting real humans stick a puppet head on their own body, making it all cross dangerously into the Uncanny Valley territory. Some noteworthy examples include:
- Margaret Thatcher's puppet. Every season her face became uglier and creepier. There was even one short sketch where an absolutely horrifying Thatcher alien appears out of nowhere and pierces a scientist's face, then stares at the camera with a Nightmare Face.
- The puppet of Kenneth Williams, especially that large nose and gigantic teeth.
- The shark teeth of both Caspar Weinberger's and Enoch Powell's puppets.
- The psychopathic look of Jimmy Savile's puppet, which has only become Harsher in Hindsight.
- Jeremy Beadle's puppet, what with its uncanny stare and grin.
- The final sketch of the first season, where the sun sets and various puppets of politicians and dictators pass by, set to a special version of The Police's "Every Breath You Take", sung by Sting himself! What makes this scene so disturbing is that the sun sets as if a nuclear war has taken place and everything on Earth is dead. Made especially chilling by the face of the Grim Reaper appearing in close-up near the end of the song.
- There was a sketch where Ronald Reagan is in the White House and hears that Thatcher told him: "You can launch those missiles over my dead body." Reagan, missing the point, says: "Ah, good ol' Maggie. I can always count on her.", whereupon he pushes the button for world destruction with the words "Goodbye, world!"
- In the first season Norman Tebbitt's puppet puts Robin Day's hand in a blender!
- Most disturbing aspect: after a while certain real life celebrities eerily started to sound and look like their puppet caricatures.
- In some ways,
the Chernobyl episode. Though there is a scene missing in this specific compilation. In the original broadcast where the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse talk about how they wish this "was all over", Ronald Reagan comes out of the darkness and laughs: "Not long now, guys." This implies that he will soon nuke the rest of the world into smithereens. For some reason the uploader didn't include this part. Here's the full episode... - This image of Reagan and a truly frightening looking Ayatollah Khomeini.
- This Chiclets commercial done by the show, it's one of the rare times they actually use a variation of expressive faces for the puppets, and in this case it's anger... right up close to the camera.
- In the 2020 revival, Dominic Cummings is one nasty piece of work, depicted as an erratically moving creep with a large head, Thin Chin of Sin and Sinister Schnoz who is supposedly a disguised alien from a planet called Epsilon 5. It gets more disturbing when Cummings keeps asking Boris Johnson about eating his infant son and his head grotesquely pulsates while he stares at his would be prey, salivating.
- When Dominic leaves, he "takes back" all the things he put into Johnson's head by sucking them out of his ear through his index finger. Commenters found Johnson's eyes bulging out in the process to be unsettling.
- When Dominic leaves, he "takes back" all the things he put into Johnson's head by sucking them out of his ear through his index finger. Commenters found Johnson's eyes bulging out
- A sketch in the revival has Boris Johnson's Cabinet trying to summon up the spirit of Winston Churchill on Halloween for advice on Covid, but instead he is possessed by Thatcher. The rest of the Cabinet responds by sacrificing Matt Hancock.
