Follow TV Tropes

Following

Playing With / Humanity Is Infectious

Go To

Basic Trope: A non-human gains human-like qualities, willingly or no.

  • Straight: Bob is a robot who develops an individual personality by hanging around with Token Human Alice.
  • Exaggerated: Bob is an entirely inhuman Eldritch Abomination who acts extremely human after staying with Alice for a week.
  • Downplayed: Bob is a robot who very gradually develops hints of a personality by observing several humans over many decades or even centuries.
  • Justified: Bob has an advanced adaptive AI, so he learns from his surroundings.
  • Inverted: Bob is a human who hangs around with Eldritch Abomination Alice, and doesn't come out of it well.
  • Subverted:
    • While it looks like Bob has his own personality, it turns out that it was just some code that was installed into him by someone that made him act like a personality...
    • The Warrons appeared to have become more human after making contact with humanity. However they had those "human" traits from the start. They once had a rich culture before their repressive militaristic world government's stamped it out, reducing them to their one dimensional state. Earth culture spread via contact with humans served as a reintroduction that just brought forth long suppressed urges.
  • Double Subverted: But when the rogue code is removed, Bob begins acting strangely, doing things that a robot shouldn't for no logical reason, so he developed a personality after all.
  • Parodied: Bob keeps saying that he wants to be a real boy.
  • Zig Zagged: Bob develops a personality through hanging out with Alice, but it was just a software update, only it was a printer update. Except it is noted to have occurred in other robots after the printer update. It may very well be a Good Bad Bug, except for those of the same model who developed a personality without it....
  • Averted: Bob is a robot through and through. A logical construct, and remains nothing more than that.
  • Enforced:
    • As a modern retelling of Pinocchio, Bob has to become humanlike by the end for it to stay true.
    • Writing a truly inhuman psychology for any length of time is hard. The writers notice the drift, and rather than try to undo it, they make it a plot point when characters in-universe notice it.
  • Lampshaded: "Have you guys noticed Bob acting more like Alice since she began hanging around him?"
  • Invoked: Alice wants to convince Bob to become a full AI, and the first step is to introduce some illogic into his system. So she drops a Logic Bomb telling him that humans can create humans, and since he was designed to grow, he'll become like a human too.
  • Exploited: Charlie hires Alice, Alex, Alicia and Allie to spend lots of time with AI's Bob, Billy, Ben and Zho'heli-tol in order to turn them human and create superlative ship AI's for his fleet.
  • Defied: Bob refuses to become human, and instead evolves into Blue-and-Orange Morality.
  • Discussed: "It's a bit depressing to think about actually, humans are a cultural steamroller. Will there be any alien culture or AI that develops and maintains independence from us?"
  • Conversed: "Aww, look! Alice taught the toaster to feel love!"
  • Deconstructed: Bob gains his humanity. Unfortunately, Bob becomes an outcast among his human companions, who still treat him like Just a Machine. Bob also can't fit in with the other robots because they find his new-found humanity disturbing.
  • Reconstructed: Bob finally understands what it means to be human: Humans Are Flawed.
  • Played For Laughs: Alice has a knack for trolling aliens species hats to fall off. She reduces Harmons to frothing rage despite not having even having a word for anger, cause Logias to slip up and start using contractions, and to win a bet seduces a Beeon worker despite them not even having a sex.
  • Played For Drama: Human emotions fundamentally conflicts with how Bob is programmed, so when he starts to develop them he is unable to understand and cope with it, and as such he is gradually driven insane, causing him to either turn suicidal or murderous.
  • Implied: Everyone treats Bob as an emotionless machine, but at times he seems to show emotional desires.

Back to Humanity Is Infectious

Top