A film franchise about killer robots impersonating humans will inevitably lurch into this.
- Some people have said that they found the Terminator in the first movie The Terminator creepy. Look closely and he doesn't look normal, and there's something funny about his eyes before he damages one. The reason his eyes look funny is that he's lost his eyebrows, which were singed off in an explosion that occurred when Reese shot a fuel tank near a car. James Cameron had Arnie's face sprayed with Vaseline to deliberately invoke this trope and make it appear that something wasn't quite right about his skin, but that you wouldn't consciously know what.
- In the first film Reese mentions a never-shown T-600 model that had rubber skin. He also states they were easily spotted, one assumes because of this trope. When we do get to see the actual T-600s in Salvation, they are in fact creepy simply because their rubber masks are so crude and lifelike, yet they are humanoid in appearance and mannerisms.
- The T-1000 fits this trope for most of his screentime in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. In the 'making of' documentary, James Cameron mentions he cast Robert Patrick because "he moves like a cat". The T-800 visually scans everything, but the T-1000 is much more tactile, because it can morph into anything it physically touches. In the scene where he talks to John's foster parents and again when he arrives at the mental hospital to ask the night nurse to see Sarah Connor, he behaves like a normal person (even smiling in a natural way in the former scene), but still puts out a subtly menacing vibe. If you watch the T-1000 carefully, you'll notice that except for when he's speaking, he doesn't breathe. Being a more advanced terminator and remaining more true to James Cameron's original idea of the terminator as an under-the-radar infiltrator (he disguises himself as a cop for crying out loud), it's expected that he could more accurately mimic a human posture, mannerisms and demeanor, but still do so in such a way that there was still something "off" and spooky about him.
- Also invoked in-universe in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, when the T-800 peels the skin off his arm to make sure he has Dyson's full attention.
- Done again in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines with CGI used to erase any trace of the Terminators blinking when they get hit in the face or fire their weapons.
- Also, when the T-X is growling and struggling to get to John, the last remaining metallic skin of hers slides up to her head to give her a rather horrific face. The way that her shiny face barely clings onto her robotic face as she is screaming with rage is quite unsettling and a bit reminiscent.
- This was also used to great effect with the CGI T-800 cameo in Terminator Salvation. The way the inherently imperfect CGI drove Arnold's face right into the Uncanny Valley made the T-800 look like a genuinely creepy soulless killing machine again.
- Think about what it must be like in universe for the Resistance. The Terminators are designed to infiltrate human outposts or hideouts to kill specific targets (like officers), or to whole-sale slaughter EVERYTHING in their path. KNOWING this, the Resistance has gone to great lengths to detect them, relying mainly on dogs (they can hear and smell the 'machine' bits in the endos that the humans can't). Although, considering that most of the people in those hideouts are on the verge of starvation or mental breakdown. Even the Resistance members appear malnourished (look at Kyle Reese in both the first film, and Salvation), this is where the T-800s stand out. They have the muscle tone of someone who's been lifting weights and eating a lot to build mass (unintentional when first filmed, as Arnold was a body builder before going into acting, but in universe is a result of the needed muscle mass to conceal the endoskeleton), and has a cold, calculating expression, and the movements are not fluid, but deliberate and repetitive. For these reasons alone, Skynet sends its terminators in wearing cloaks so as to conceal those features... But to look into the eyes of a machine that is bent on exterminating you... that alone is unsettling.
