Creepy Doll

And there's a creepy doll
 That always follows you
 It's got a ruined eye
 That's always open

—Jonathan Coulton, "Creepy Doll"

There's something scary about dolls. It's probably because many of them fit squarely in Uncanny Valley territory. The blank gaze and unmoving stare reminds us too much viscerally of corpses, perhaps. This goes even more when the doll is damaged in some way, such as missing limbs or eyes, or having holes in its head.

Another way to do it is make it a clockwork toy (usually an organ-grinder's monkey with cymbals); something that moves on its own when someone winds the key, then not have it wound up for years, and have it click its cymbals in a haunted, mechanical rendition of Terrible Ticking.

In horror, dolls are often used as part of the scenery to help establish the mood, even providing a theme for The Doll Episode. They may even be the antagonist or be used by the antagonist. Despite how ridiculous a doll trying to kill people should be, it's still seen as quite frightening. A similar idea lies behind the Demonic Dummy and Scary Scarecrows.

Examples of Creepy Doll include:

Anime and Manga

  • There's one in Asuka's Mind Rape sequence.
    • The truly horrifying part is when the doll is hanging from the ceiling spinning on the end of a rope along with Asuka's mother, who has just committed suicide.
      • Scarier still were some of the scenes that were left in the director's cut of that episode. "Do you love me? Do you really love me?" "BUT YOU'RE LYING"
      • After piloting EVA 02, having half of her soul sucked out by it and going insane because of that, Asuka's mother Kyouko is seen holding the same doll in her arms and talking to it, believing it to be her daughter and refusing to acknowledge the real Asuka as her kid. Now you know where Asuka's hate of the "doll" word and concept comes.
    • Asuka possesses one, and even plays with it at one point in 2.0. Also, according to many, it's by far the creepiest thing to come out of anything Evangelion-related ever.
  • Boogie-Kun of Karin is a doll possessed by a serial killer that holds a knife in its hand. And later on Anju mentions that she collects other creepy dolls that all have interesting histories. She then asks Karin if she wants to hear about them but Karin quickly leaves in fear.
  • Episodes 11 and 12 of the Black Butler anime. Full stop.
    • The second opening of the second season has a scene where Grell Sutcliffe is holding a creepy doll version of Sebastian, which she kisses before placing it among doll versions of Ciel and Alois... which she then proceeds to drive her chainsaw through
  • Ghost Hunt has Minnie, a possessed doll.
  • Near from Death Note constantly plays with creepy toys and uses them to test his various theories.
    • Misa Amane wears an Elegant Gothic Lolita style dress in one instance, for when she was committing suicide after she thought Light died. Overall, the dress combined with her depressed facial expression and her dark make-up makes her look like a life-sized porcelain doll, to an eerie effect.
      • That scene mirrors an earlier scene where Misa, dressed the same and traveling through the same setting, sings a capella about her devotion and trust to Kira. Though the lyrics are optimistic, her tone, and doll-like dress, makes the scene still quite creepy.
  • In one episode of Mokke, a bunch of abandoned Hina dolls are possessing a bridge to try to get attention.
  • A creepy doll in traditional Japanese dress appears throughout Paprika. It starts out as a sort of dreamscape "avatar" of one character, but later takes on a life of its own.
  • The episode "Shingo's Innocent Love! A Sorrowful French Doll" in Sailor Moon is all about the Creepy Dolls.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure had a Stand called Ebony Devil, which was this.
  • An episode of Tactics featured a doll-maker and a house full of creepy dolls.
  • Suigintou, Barashuishou, and Kirakishou, the antagonist dolls from Rozen Maiden. Interestingly, Suigintou is considered the most attractive Rozen Maiden, at least physically, and Barasuishou is reasonably popular as well. Both have Woobie qualities that endear them to fans. Even Kirakishou comes off as somewhat sympathetic in her insanity as she gets more developed in the tales.
    • The rows of lifeless dolls in Enzu's shop definitely count. Compared to the living dolls, even Suigintou, they are way creepier.
  • In Yami no Matsuei part of Kazutaka Muraki's general state of madness stemmed from memories of his mother's enormous collection of porcelain dolls. It didn't help that the panels of the manga depicting the dolls copy-pasted four or five of them to horrible heights of creepiness.
  • Dolls are a recurring motif in the Count Cain series. One chapter featured a girl in a leg-cast who kidnapped other girls to turn their corpses into dolls.
  • Kämpfer has a line of stuffed animals that look like they committed Seppuku with their intestines sticking out, and two of their names translate to Suicide Tiger and Suicide Black Rabbit. These are FOR KIDS.
    • And the girl who looks the most girly of the characters has an entire room of them. And the main character is expected to sleep in there.
  • The first season of Shakugan no Shana had Friagne the Hunter, who, while he wasn't a doll himself, was way, way too attached to his Creepy Doll minion Marianne. The reason he's in town is so he can dissolve the city to give her real life.
  • Sorta the point for Hyde and Closer as dolls are used as curses to attack people. Even Hyde, the protagonist's doll, isn't exempt from this, heck it has a chainsaw sword in his zipper!
  • Yu-Gi-Oh GX had an episode where Jaden and his crew face a creepy doll come to life.
    • There's also the card Malice Doll of Demise, which serves as the figurehead for Jinzo/Psycho Shocker's deck. He even appears on the eyecatch.
      • And the "Rogue Doll" card.
  • In Slayers NEXT, one of the possible locations of the Clair Bible was a tower full of these.
    • Actually, the dolls were mostly harmless and people thought they were creepy due to a legend about the person who used to live there, a dollmaker who supposedly turned the girl he loved into a doll. Except for two of them, and one was a demon in the shape of the cutest doll of them all.
  • Road Kamelot from D Gray Man. As well as possessing a number of creepy dolls, she herself can transform into an extremely creepy doll.
  • The episode Raindrops from Witch Hunter Robin. A bunch of creepy dolls chanting "UNFORGIVABLE!" qualifies as some serious nightmare fuel.
  • The Zashiki-Warashi arc of Mononoke has a lot of these, representing aborted fetuses.
  • Gillen finds one of these in Monster, in relation to a serial killer he is examining.
  • Oniisama E: One of the rooms at Fukiko's summer house is full of creepy dolls and obsessively arranged items of memorabilia from the day she first met her crush Takehiko Henmi, which she has since kept completely unchanged for six years and forbids anyone else to enter.
    • Rei Asaka also keeps one. It's both one of the dolls seen in the OP and ED, as well as one of the two gifts that Fukiko gave her some time ago (The other being a gold bracelet). That doll becomes Nanako's Tragic Keepsake, though the circumstances vary: in the manga Rei gives it to Nanako before committing suicide, in the anime Fukiko gives it to Nanako after Rei's fatal accident.
  • Ginger Bread of Katekyo Hitman Reborn is a Creepy Child and a vice-captain of the Millefiore Family's eighth squad, the enemies of the main protagonists in the future. He is also known as the Magician's Doll, primarily due to his usage of similar looking dolls that are clothed in a wizard's hat and cape, and have stars in their eyes (like he does), to fight. In addition, he uses spiders, summoned by what he calls sorcery. He claims to have had a hand in the death of Colonnello. As such, Lal Mirch engages him in battle, but after he loses, it is revealed that she was only fighting one of his dolls.
    • One of the Six Funeral Wreaths, Daisy is the holder of the Sun Mare Ring. He has a rather uncanny appearance with scars on his face, dirty-looking hair, sunken eyes, and carries a creepy plushie in his hands.
  • One shows up in the first episode of Texhnolyze while Ichise has sex with a bizarre, bionically augmented woman.
  • Ghost Stories features a supernatural doll named Mary who stalks the main character Satsuki throughout episode 11. At the end of the episode the Mary doll also commands other dolls to gang up on Satsuki and attempt to kill her all while singing a song about how they plan to do so.
  • Pandora Hearts has Will of the Abyss's Creepy Doll form, a rabbit in a dress with black, bleeding pits for eyes.
    • The demonic doll that attacks Oz when he falls into the Abyss (anime only).
    • The doll that Break keeps on his shoulder.
    • The Will of the Abyss's Room Full of Crazy is full of these.
  • Amatsuki: The doll that Ginshu keeps his/her soul in, what with its high pitched voice and jerky movements.
  • Bleach: In his released form, Szayel has the ability to create a small voodoo doll that has his enemy's likeness. Any damage done to the dolls' internal organs, accessed by taking the doll apart (which doesn't happen to the original) removing the organs and then crushing them, is done to the original, debilitating them from the inside. The doll's exterior has some effect on the victim as well, as seen when Ishida felt Szayel scratch and flick his doll's face. And Szayel later makes a voodoo doll of Mayuri who is pretty creepy himself... but Mayuri is so Crazy Prepared that he manages to out gambit Szayel, as he had replaced his own organs with doll-like substitutes so Szayel's powers had no effect on him.
  • Mahou Sensei Negima: Chachazero, who doubles as a sort of evil peanut gallery.
  • In a Ranma ½ story, Ranma accidentally breaks a typical Japanese doll during a trip to a hot spring. The doll has magic powers, and it starts to plan her revenge by targeting Akane and switching bodies with her.
  • Episode 9 of Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru features a shop full of creepy dolls. And Elegant Gothic Lolita Ashley always seems to be carrying one around with her and uses them to attack people.
  • Vampire Princess Miyu: TV series/OAV- Matsukaze, a doll that Winter Royal Lady Reiha constantly carries around in her arms and seems to be there as a mouthpiece for Reiha's hate towards Miyu.
    • Also, this is the shinma Ranka's true form in the OAV. And she not only turns people into creepy dolls, but she does this to her love interest Kei. On Kei's own request, since he wants to be with her forever.
      • At the beginning of that same OAV, Miyu in a schoolgirl disguise passes by a toy store and sees a very pretty but creepy traditional doll, and says "You're frozen in time too, hmmm". That's foreshadowing of Miyu's true nature as a Shinma who's Older than she looks, having been turned into a Shinma at age 13 and given eternal youth at the same time.
        • In the TV series episode 19 "Love of the Dolls" "Ningyōshi no Koi" (人形師の恋)- the episode revolves around a doll-maker, who falls in love with one of her creations...and how things get very creepy from there on in
    • In the manga, there's another Shinma that pulls similar stuff on two of Miyu's school friends and a chubby Office Lady. His first victims were an antique shop owner and his son Takumi, whom he revived after they died in a fire caused by Miyu when she gave a Mercy Kill to Takumi's Shinma mother; then, he erased the two's memories and used them as his pawns.
  • Tsukiyo's doll Luna, from The World God Only Knows.
  • Some of the witches' minions in Puella Magi Madoka Magica counts, especially Oktavia's Clarissas during episode 10, which are simply Sayaka's loosely copies of her friend and love rival Hitomi, in horrid colors.
    • Also, the witch Charlotte looks like a stuffed doll with creepy eyes. Before evolving into a much bigger form and killing/eating Mami.
    • As well, Albertine, as revealed in the official PSP game, appears as a giant clown-like doll.
  • Otogi Matsuri: The giant, eight legged cat/spider demon Kenzoku is accompanied by numerous creepy-looking dolls who refer to it as "Go-shu-jin sama" (meaning "Master of the House"), and who mainly serve to find humans to become the demon's next meal.

Doll #1: "Go-shu-jin sama, here."
Doll #2: "Over here."
Doll #3: "The new offering is here."

  • The gynoids in |Ghost in The Shell: Innocence are modelled after Hans Bellmar's Uncanny Valley doll-sculptures, and are every bit as creepy. There's also the hacker Kim who lives in a (possibly virtual) giant dollhouse, and has his cybernetic body made to resemble a life-sized balljoint doll, and is more than eager to Lampshade his creepiness at every opportunity.
  • Helen ESP has a school mannequin that falls in love with is maker, and because she can't have him, decides to kill him, all the while knowing just how wrong her actions are.
  • Mina from Hell Girl, but we don't learn it for a while since she's a Third Person Person who manages to fool Hajime and Tsugumi with her speech patterns.
    • Invoked to great effect in an early episode. A Yamato Nadeshiko girl from an orphanage, Inori, is picked up by a dollmaker old woman named Kyogotsu, supposedly to marry her son... on the condition that she acts like a doll: she should only sit around, looking pretty and quiet, without even interacting with the family or her new husband. Naturally, poor Inori snaps after a while and, despite Hajime's warnings, she sends Mrs. Kyogotsu to Hell; fittingly, the upcoming scenes feature many of these dolls coming to life and attacking Mrs. Kyokotsu, then transforming her in a Creepy Doll before sending the old woman to Hell as Inori's revenge. Even the title of the episode lampshades it: it's Hanayome Ningyo, which means Bride Doll.
  • Anime film Unico in the Island of Magic by Osamu Tezuka, featured the main villain which embodies the creepy doll trope. the evil Lord Kuruku plans to turn all living creatures, animals and people alike, into "Living Puppets" and he himself is a puppet who was mistreated by his owners and discarded. He washed up at the edge of the world - where all unwanted "junk" ends up eventually - and was brought to life, determined to take revenge on the human race.
  • A major motif in Another. There's a dark and deserted doll store in the series' Town with a Dark Secret, where really really creepy ("laying in coffins, like corpses" creepy) are displayed, including one that looks eerily like Misaki, then there's the deal with her doll eye under her bandage. Also, in the anime, occasional flashes of dismembered sad eyed dolls dripping with Uncanny Valley-ness. Brrr.


Comic Books

  • One of V's targets in V for Vendetta has a huge doll collection. When V abducts the man, the punishment he devises for the ex-concentration camp official is to populate a mock concentration camp with the dolls, and send them all to the ovens. It successfully breaks the man's mind, and the effect on the reader of all those dolls burning is none too pleasant either...
  • "Scarface," the leering, knife-scored dummy that is an alter ego/tormentor of Batman villain The Ventriloquist. He's particularly horrifying in scenes where he isn't being operated and his mouth's not moving, but the psychotic Ventriloquist still imagines that the puppet is talking to him! An especially effective scene occurred in the animated "origin" episode "Read My Lips," where Batman - who is of course one of the smartest and most rational men on the planet - had to convince himself that the doll wasn't really alive.
  • It is revealed in her ongoing series that Zatanna has a deep-seated and crippling phobia towards puppets. Not voodoo dolls or wax effigies, those she can handle with no problem and occasionally uses herself, but normal, garden variety puppets. It all stems from an unpleasant experience in her childhood, but even now, as a grown woman and powerful superhero, her unease is nearly paralyzing. When she tried to guest-star on an episode of Sesame Street, reasoning that helping educate and entertain children was worth any sort of personal discomfort, she did not even make it through her scene before she vomited into an on-set trash can. She is currently in therapy to help her deal with this issue, averting There Are No Therapists.
  • In an issue of the revamped CREEPY comics there was a story called The Doll Lady. Needless to say, it was creepy.


Fan Works

  • In Aeon Natum Engel, the cultist suffers a nightmare, where she hears a sobbing of a little girl. When she reaches the source, she finds five dolls, a large one and four smaller ones, laying broken before the large one. And then the larger doll starts screaming while sinking into the void. It Makes Sense in Context. Too much sense.


Film

  • In Disney's The Princess and the Frog as Dr. Facilier is being dragged away by his "friends" some of them take the form of voodoo and rag dolls.
  • 9 has The Seamstress. It's basically a giant snake with a porcelain doll's head that grafts the corpse of 2 onto her tail and uses it to hypnotize 8 into submission, before sewing him inside her body and dragging 7 away and boasts numerous appendages just designed for slashing up the skins of the stitchpunks; thus rendering them immobilized.
  • Tourist Trap: The mannequins.
  • The Zuni Fetish Doll from Trilogy of Terror.
  • The razor-toothed killer dolls from the movie Barbarella.
  • The Clown Doll from |Poltergeist.
  • Profondo Rosso: the walking deformed doll.
  • The various dolls that the Other Mother makes in Coraline. All of the Other people invoke this themselves, with their creepy button eyes.
  • Chucky, from Childs Play.
    • There's also Tiff and Glenn from the same series. Though Glenn is somewhat of a subversion and Tiff is... Tiff.
  • All of the puppets from the Puppet Master franchise.
  • The Doll Master.
  • Reincarnation (aka Rinne) features one of the creepiest damn ones you may ever see.
  • Toy Story has one in the first film, although it's the face of a doll on top of metal spider legs. It's not exactly evil but it's still fearsome. The other toys can also be this way if they choose, as shown when they rebel against Sid.
    • Toy Story 3 has an even scarier doll in "Big Baby", as well as... the monkey.
  • The 1987 movie Dolls.
    • Parodied in that fake French commercial under the brand of "Dolls Klaus Barbie." In that time, Klaus Barbie was a former Nazi judged for crimes against humanity.
  • The opening of Titanic features a group of divers exploring the Titanic wreck. A few shots pan across some of the destroyed trinkets and other such former valuables scattered across the ocean floor. One shot reveals an eerie white face that resembles a child and for a moment you think it's a child's detached head, but it turns out to just be a lone face separated from a doll.
    • Based on a Real Life story. Bob Ballard on his first visit to the wreck by manned submersible encountered a disembodied doll's head just like the one in the Cameron film. The sub's crew of three hardened explorers freaked the hell out at this discovery.
  • The abandoned baby doll in Johanna's bassinet from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. It's decayed with age and probably smoke damage/mildew, and is damn scary. (This scene also serves as an Empathy Doll Shot for Johanna's current plight.)
  • Subverted in Pinnochio, a B-slasher film. The kid had a split personality which she projected onto her doll.
  • Black Devil Doll is a Blaxploitation slasher flick with a radical black activist being reincarnated as the eponymous doll.
  • How about Casey? Newt's doll in Aliens was the hollow plastic head that probably used to belong to a baby doll. The girl comforted it when she was nervous.
  • The... odd-looking... figurine from the horror movie parody Doom House. It haunts the protagonist by appearing wherever he goes.
  • The film version of Red Dragon has this, with the dolls of the murdered children. The Uncanny Valley effect of their eyes actually helps The Profiler figure out part of the Serial Killer's fantasy.
  • That harlequin doll that Jigsaw uses as his mouthpiece in the Saw movies.
  • In Shallow Grave there is a perfectly normal laughing doll. It still manages to get a hellishly creepy scene.
  • Freddy Krueger often decorates his victims' dreams with mutilated dollies, and is occasionally seen holding one by its legs or hair. A symbolic nod to his past killings of young children, which we never actually see on-screen.
  • Subverted in Summer School, where the male lead is seen slicing the head off a Raggedy Andy doll. This could've been creepy, had he not immediately offered the cloth head to his dog, whose favorite doll-head chew toy has been misplaced.
  • The titular carnival attraction in The Funhouse is filled with them.
  • Maniac's Frank Zito keeps various mannequins in his apartment as odd trophies that wear the clothes and scalps of his female victims. In the ending, he has a hallucination where they come to life and rip him into pieces.
  • In Film/Amusement there is a scene where a babysitter goes to bed in a room filled with creepy clown dolls. She is so disturbed that she complains on the phone to the parents of the kids she's watching, especially about one freaky life-sized clown doll sitting in a chair. The parents reply that there is no "big" doll. It turns out it's a killer in disguise, which the kids have for some reason let into the house because he said he wanted to play.
  • In the miniseries for The Tommyknockers, police officer Ruth has an entire collection of creepy dolls in her office. After she finds out what's going on with the town, the aliens make the dolls come "alive" and attack her, to prevent her from phoning for help. The scarecrow doll is especially scary.
  • The ventriloquist's dummy in the 1978 film, Magic.
  • Dead Silence is a good example of how creepy a doll can really be even when NOT possessed by evil spirits hell-bent on ripping out your tongue and making you into part of its collection.
  • In the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol, Tiny Tim is first seen gazing into a shop window with (authentic Victorian) mechanical toys - including a laughing-man doll that's pure nightmare fuel.
  • The Woman in Black just loves this trope. Everywhere you look in the spooky ole house, there's a doll on a shelf with a truly hideous face. Even the 'normal' kids at the start of the film are playing with some creepy dolls.


Literature

  • As mentioned before, the various dolls that the Other Mother makes in Coraline.
  • In Richard Matheson's short story Prey, a young woman is terrorized by an African Zuni warrior doll that she brings home as a gift for her boyfriend, and which subsequently comes to life. (The story was memorably adopted as part of the ABC TV movie Trilogy of Terror in the '70s.)
  • A Series of Unfortunate Events: Pretty Penny, a doll that Aunt Josephine gave Violet in The Wide Window.
    • Also the movie adaption of the first three books in the series has a creepy bobble head doll called "the littlest elf in the rearview window of Count Olaf's car.
  • In the Stephen King story The Sun Dog, a character thinks that a toy (not exactly a doll, but a stuffed panda, that talks) that her niece has is very creepy, and imagines that one day, it will say stuff like: "I think tonight after you're asleep, I'll strangle you to death" or "I have a knife".
    • He also wrote The Monkey, about a doll-like toy whose clanging on its cymbals signals someone's death. Even if you throw it away.
  • The Ragwitch takes this trope and absolutely runs with it. The titular Creepy Ragdoll is basically an Evil Overlord that takes over the body of the protagonist's sister, turning her into a half-human, half-cloth thing and forcing her to watch helplessly from inside as the Ragwitch resumes Her interrupted reign of terror.
  • In Elizabeth A. Lynn's The Silver Horse, a world of animate toys includes broken dolls who are very, very bitter about the wrongs committed upon them by careless children.
  • The action figure in the short story "Good Friends and Good Family" (scroll down) [dead link] by Desmond Warzel isn't particularly creepy at first, but it gets worse.
  • J.R. Lowell's Daughter Of Darkness is about Willie, a super-intelligent little rich girl who collects dolls—not the cute kind, either—from all over the world. The maid refuses to clean Willie's room because she feels like the dolls are "watching" her. She's right.
  • There's a short story (the title of which escapes this troper at the moment) about a girl who goes to stay with her aunt for a vacation. While there, she finds her aunt's old china doll, which is described as being very beautiful, except for its orange-ish, creepy eyes. When she keeps the doll in her room at night, she sees the eyes are glowing and freaks out. The doll becomes less creepy when we find out later why the eyes look the way they did - one of the doll's previous owners died in a fire and the doll, sitting on a mantleplace, had to watch. The orange coloring was the firey scene, replaying in her eyes. After the girl comforts the doll, the eyes turn to a normal grey color.
  • Terry Berger's The Haunted Dollhouse may have the dollhouse's owner turning into one of these.
  • The young woman in Robert Holdstock's Lavondyss has a good reason for making her masks and figurines, but the old caretaker thinks he's on to her. "There's dolls you play with, and dolls you pray with..."
  • In an 87th Precinct novel by Ed McBain, a doll has a recording of an actual murder in it.
  • The House of Dolls in Septimus Heap is filled with these, to the point that even the protagonists find it creepy.


Live Action TV

  • The Twilight Zone had Talky Tina, a surprisingly creepy and murderous doll.
    • "Talky Tina" was inspired by a real toy, "Chatty Cathy," a doll produced by Mattel beginning in 1959. June Foray, who provided the recorded voice Mattel used for Chatty Cathy, also provided CBS with the voice for Talky Tina.
    • This was parodied in The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror" with a killer talking Krusty doll. However, unlike Tina, someone had accidentally set it to "evil" instead of "good."
    • Also parodied in the Johnny Bravo episode "Little Talky Tabitha".
    • Ironically in the case of Talky Tina, the creepy doll is more of the good guy of the story, especially considering what a Jerkass Victim the guy she torments was to his wife and stepdaughter. At the end of the episode, Rod's closing statement says that while dolls can't really move or talk, children do pretend that they're friends and defenders.
    • There was also a creepy ventriloquist's dummy in the episode, "The Dummy" (which was arguably an inspiration for the 1978 Anthony Hopkins film, Magic.)
  • Psych had two creepy dolls in the episode "Tuesday the 17th"
    • The first doll was a paper mache' pinata of Rick Astley created by Shawn when he was a kid
    • The second was an exact replica of the Robert the Haunted Doll that was carried around by one of the characters.
    • One could also argue that the two wrestling dolls Shawn and Gus played with in "Let's Get Hairy" were creepy
  • A doll in Ghost Whisperer. To make things worse, the doll was disfigured and its clothes were torn and stained. Ugh!
  • Rod Serling must have been a fan of this trope, because Night Gallery had the episode, "The Doll" which had, you guessed it, a creepy doll that was actually part of a revenge curse.
  • Episode 12 of The Amanda Show had a skit called "Rock-a-bye-Ralph", in which a girl can't sleep so her parents give her a doll named Ralph. It's eerily similar to the Chucky doll, it talks very cheerily, and it won't shut up even after the girl feeds it to her dog. It still continues talking in its overly cheery voice from within the dog's stomach.
  • There were a few of these in Are You Afraid of the Dark?:
    • The episode "the tale of the dark music" had a life-sized walking and talking doll, with a creepy perpetual grin, dressed in a cute blue party dress acting innocent and nice, when it really had evil intentions and wished to lure the male lead in that episode into the dark cellar behind it.
    • The episode "the tale of the dollmaker" was essentially about a girl who is distraught over the disappearance of her friend. She finds a mysterious doll house whose front door matches one she uncovers behind wallpaper in the attic. Through the door, she finds her missing friend who is slowly turning into a china doll. She herself almost turns into one as well.
    • The episode "the tale of the crimson clown" had a young bratty boy learn a lesson when an evil clown doll came to life and started to terrorize him.
  • Sabrina the Teenage Witch had a creepy doll called Molly Dolly chase her around her home on a Halloween episode.
  • The X-Files episode "Chinga" (written by Stephen King) had a Creepy Doll that drove people to inflict harm on themselves ("Let's have fun!").
  • Dark Shadows featured an episode where two children are turned into dolls.
  • Once Upon a Time explained the backstory of Pinocchio and Jimminy Cricket; his parents were turned into two creepy dolls now owned by Rumpelstiltskin.
  • Curb Your Enthusiasm: Susie's daughter Sammy has loads of these decorating her room.
  • The incredibly creepy (at least, to a 12-year-old) 1985 BBC series Maelstrom featured lots of scary dolls in the darkened attic of an old log cabin.
  • Hidden camera show Scare Tactics has a collector of Creepy Dolls-one of which being his "mother"-as one of their favorite setups.
  • Power Rangers SPD. "I"m Cindy Sunshine, and I want to be your friend." Uh... no thanks. (Mind you, it's not the voice speaking through it - provided by a known character - but more the The Exorcist-like head-turning at one point.)
  • The doll that started off the merry cursed antique hunt of Friday the 13th: The Series even had a name: Vita. She talks, she kills, she has telekinetic powers!
  • Criminal Minds: A female UnSub made creepy dolls out of her victims, which she kidnapped, kept chemically immobilized but conscious, dressed up and played tea party with until they died from lack of stimulation. In her defense she didn't intend to kill them and had one hell of a Freudian Excuse: Her real, er, actual dolls (American Girls expies) were a gift from her abusive dad after he molested her then electroshocked her to make her forget (he was a psychiatrist), but when she saw him giving them to his latest victim she snapped.
    • The dolls themselves caused some creepiness: a costume and essay contest by the doll company accidentally revealed some disturbed little girls; it turns out they had accidentally stumbled onto an (actual) form of trauma therapy.
  • An episode of Ghost Hunters had the team visit a woman who claimed her house was haunted. Among other things, she said that the ghost made her doll "perform" for her (something like the face moving). The team recorded the doll, but thank God nothing actually happened. One of the crew members was visibly relieved he didn't have to witness anything.
    • An episode of "Destination Truth" had Josh and the group on the Island of The Dolls. A doll's eye actually opens up.
  • In an episode of Seinfeld, Susan had a doll that looked just like George's mother, Estelle. George couldn't sleep with it in the bed, and he kept imagining it talking to him in Estelle's voice. When Frank saw the doll at the end, he also imagined it talking to him in Estelle's voice, then strangled it and pulled its head off.
    • Also, when Jerry and Kramer switched apartments, one of the things that disturbed him the most was a ventriloquist dummy Kramer referred to as "Mr. Marbles."

Jerry: You gotta get rid of this thing! I keep thinking it's gonna come to life at night and kill me!

  • Supernatural: The episode "Playthings" is chock full of 'em.
  • One episode of CSI: NY had a murder in a doll hospital. They ended up finding an important piece of evidence: A recording in a doll. To try and figure out how to activate it, the take off the dolls head, with all the wires hanging out of it, like veins and intestines. Then they turn it on and it says in a semi-demonic voice "I'm Susie Secret."
  • Sesame Street: This creepy segment has nightmare inducing closeups of several dolls, accompanied by an extremely creepy march.
  • Tales from the Crypt: The episode "Strung Along" features a marionette puppeteer about to make a comeback and gets the help of a young animatronics engineer, but as he starts suspecting his wife of cheating on him, the doll seems to speak to him, indicating that he is starting to go crazy with stress. In the final act, the doll does attack his wife, though it turns out to be the work of the animatronics worker, as he and the wife had set up the whole thing to kill him. But when the police arrive, the two of them are dead as well, wires dangling from their limbs and leading up to the old man, now dressed up as his doll, grinning eerily from atop the bed. It's pretty freaky.
  • Invoked, in a way, on Mad Men: Sally is terrified of her baby brother because he was named after her deceased grandfather, whom she loved dearly, and he now sleeps in his bedroom. Betty tries to give her a barbie doll "from the baby" to make Sally like him, but she throws out in the front yard. Don makes the mistake of bringing the doll in and leaving it on Sally's nightstand, looking right at her. Cut to Sally screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night, staring at that doll in utter terror. Not creepy to the audience, but clearly damn creepy for the character.
  • Doctor Who has the Doll Children from "Night Terrors", who sing nursery rhymes, laugh like children and can turn you into one of them. They aren't as well-put-together as some of the examples here, either, which possibly makes it worse.
    • Two episodes later, a banquet hall is filled with living, laughing ventriloquist dummies. "Gottle o' geer! Gottle o' geer!"
  • Freaky dolls with frighteningly big eyes appear in several Toei tokusatsu series ranging from Uchuu Keiji Shaider to Gosei Sentai Dairanger. Probably the freakiest example is in Jikuu Senshi Spielban!
  • Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries: The episode "House on Possessed Hill" has Joe Hardy walking into a room of a cursed house...with a creepy-as-hell animated toy doll nodding its head in time to creepy tinkly music box chimes.
  • The River gives us this en mass in an episode based on La Isla de la Munecas (see Real Life section).
  • White Collar has El's parents restoring a doll that they think she loved as a girl and giving it to her as a birthday present. It appears to be a beggar girl with enormous black eyes in an elongated head. El had shoved it into a crawlspace because she hated it so much.
  • True Blood has one turn up in Bill's house, while Jessica and Hoyt are living there. The doll is so creepy, they give it to Arlene's baby, which attracts the ghost of a local witch.


Music

  • As you can see at the top of the page, Jonathan Coulton has a song about this very trope. In fact it's the Trope Namer.
  • Laura Branigan's song "Self Control" begins and ends with a shot of a rather creepy doll.
  • The video to the song "Technologic" by Daft Punk.
    • It should be. It's the anamatronic Chucky doll used in Childs Play (mentioned above) with its silicone skin removed.
  • The video to the song "Blue" by The Birthday Massacre.
  • There's a few of these in the P!nk video "Please Don't Leave Me" starting at 2:22. Notice all the dolls in the audience and then the close up on them. Brr...
  • The video to the song "Clown" by Korn has both Creepy Doll's and Monster Clown's. Not to mention a lot of insanity.
    • The MTV special editions for Issues had one of these.
  • The video to the song "He's My Thing" by Babes in Toyland, as well as some of the cover art for their albums.
  • Rasputina's "Gingerbread Coffin". Kids find an old doll and say a black mass around her. Despite the subject matter, neither the music nor the lyrics are at all eerie.
  • The Dresden Dolls have a song called "Coin Operated Boy" while not wholly about a doll, the boy is a life size puppet of sorts that ran by dropping a quarter into it's pay slot...
  • the video for Velvet Eden's "..And schism".
  • Elise from Sound Horizon's Märchen is an animated china doll that constantly compels the eponymous Märchen to enact revenge.
  • At least two PVs for Rin and Len's "Trick and Treat" contain creepy dolls. In the second example, Rin and Len turn out to be Miku's old dolls that she threw away in favor of a new Luka doll. At the end of the video, Len rips out her heart.
  • Another Vocaloid example: KAITO's "Heartbeat Clocktower", composed by mothy, is about a clockwork doll covered in burn marks who apparently needs (and inevitably gets) a human heart so that she can keep "living." Also mentioned is a theater populated by dolls who are the "vessels" of sin.


Tabletop Games

The Scripture of the Maiden on the Shelf:
Once, there was a maiden...
...who sat on a child's shelf and watched the entire world.
Her eyes were made of glass,
And their pupils were red.
Her mouth was sewn on.
For years and years, she did not move.
Then, when necessary, she was gone, and the head of that child with her.
"Survival is control," she said.


Video Games

  • Alma carries a doll around with her in First Encounter Assault Recon. The effect is not really all that childish.
    • Especially since she's covered in blood up to her ankles and typically surrounded by hellfire.
  • In Majora's Mask, there's a little girl in Ikana Valley whose father lives in the wardrobe in the basement because he's slowly turning into a Gibdo. Later on, if you look inside his wardrobe it's revealed that he had a mummified little doll resting in the corner.
    • The skull kid sightly fits this... specially with how Majora plays with him.
    • In Wind Waker, when you meet the Great Fairy Queen. She takes the appearance of a child, yet holds a doll that looks like a miniature Great Fairy, all of which look like grown adult women. The effect is rather unsettling, a fact not helped by the background music.
  • The Brawl Doll, a boss from Wario World.
  • Fatal Frame cannot help but place them in every title.
    • The first game had a room filled with long haired, creepy dolls with a little ghost girl wanting to 'play' with you.
    • Fatal Frame 2 took that to the next level with the Dollmaker and the lifesized doll of his dead daughter, who was promptly possessed by an evil spirit and convinced her sister to murder her father. Now the pair of them wander around as shuffling ghosts, while the father controls his dolls and convinces them to kill you.
    • Fatal Frame 3. The attacking handmaiden ghosts who look like little geisha dolls that will kill you with their hammers and ghostly tricks each have their own room. Their choice of decoration? Dolls. A whole ton of them. Skewered on the walls. Looking at a doll in the mansion through your camera, as you slowly walk towards it, will look up at you. A doll in Miku's room hair will grow throughout the game.
    • Fatal Frame 4 takes the cake with Ayaka, a Creepy Child, whose room is littered with dolls and severed doll limbs with a creepy laugh as the BGM. There is also a sidequest to take pictures of dolls littered throughout the game. The downside is you after each one, a creepy image of a little girl alongside a creepy laugh plays to verify your picture was successfully taken.
  • Condemned 2 features an abandoned factory full of creepy baby dolls that run at you and explode. You can also pick them up and throw them like grenades. Ethan even pulls a pin out when he does this.
  • Calcobrina from Final Fantasy IV.

"Yip-ho-ho!"
"Guess who?"
"We're Calcobreana!"
"We're cute!"
"And scary!"
"We love to kill!"
"Let's take their heads!"

  • Silent Hill seems to LOVE these:
    • Silent Hill 2 features the Mannequin, a monster made out of two shiny plasticine womens' lower torsos stacked on top of one another. Possibly symbolizes the main character's objectification of women.
    • Silent Hill Origins features Ariel, appearing as a doll that can either break your neck in the air... or run around on its hands to kill you.
    • Silent Hill Homecoming, however, cranks it up to Eleven with Scarlet. A giant, elongated mannequin with porcelain armor that, when blown off, reveals that there's inexplicably flesh and muscle beneath it. Add this to the fact that it came out of a pool of Doc Finch's blood and the One-Woman Wail creating Soundtrack Dissonance... it is EASILY the most frightening monster in the entire game. Finding out WHAT and WHY Scarlett is doesn't help. Not that you probably hadn't figured it out by now anyway...
    • Silent Hill 3 also contains a slightly more traditional Creepy Doll in the form of the dolls Stanley leaves behind for Heather in the hospital. It's interesting to note that the protagonist originally thinks of the doll as another child's, and is disgusted when she finds out it's supposed to be for her. On his last journal entry, the doll is torn to pieces. Creepy...
      • And there's the dolls in the Otherworld Hillside Center. One's in a wheelchair, while another- only a few feet away- is held by a humanoid...thing, suspended over a hole. Symbolism?
    • And of course, Silent Hill 4 has Walter Sullivan's doll, which if picked up, haunts Henry's room permanently, making it impossible to get the best ending.
    • The Robbie the Rabbit Doll pointing at YOU when you look in a certain hole.
  • Vagrant Story's Quicksilver and Shrieker enemies.
  • Clock Tower: The First Fear has a room full of beat up dolls. One gives you a key. After that, another will attack you.
  • If you're not careful whilst downloading custom content for The Sims 3, you can unknowingly download a doll that will slow down your game loading times and crash your games.
    • That's probably Dexter The Bear, a stuffed Bear that gives you the ability to kill other sims with either a knife, a poker, or a hammer. The hammer lets you kill toddlers too, which gives way to the creepy toddler behaviors. That is, when Dexter worked properly and didn't crash the game.
    • In summer 2010 there was also a custom content girl doll in a dress that attached itself like a virus to any uploaded content you created. It got onto the official exchange and caused a number of crashed games before people found it.
  • Each game in the Shadow Hearts series has a dungeon called the Doll House, which is the home to a demonically possessed doll. In the first game, the spirit possessing the doll is not quite as scary as the doll itself, which sits in the middle of an extremely disturbing room, on a rocking horse, creaking slowly back and forth. In the second game, there's a similar dungeon, meant for a character who has a doll of his own. Not quite as scary as the first, but still quite a bit disturbing, given that there are dolls all over the house watching you... In the third game, there are dolls all over the place, and the scariness comes from what you have to do to them - plucking out their eyes.
  • The PC kid's game I Spy: Spooky Mansion has a wardrobe filled with nothing but dusty, antique dolls as a level where you were told a poem (like in the books) to find things. In the game, when you found an object you were told to find, the object would become animated and then the object was checked off the list. In the wardrobe level, nearly every object you were told to find was a doll, and when found would move and talk with high-pitched voices and squeaky joints. Very creepy to a kid playing the game.
  • Gaia Online has a "joint puppet" feature for avatars to use. If that doesn't fit this trope, then the livid-patchy "dead doll" option will.
  • Subverted in Touhou with the character Medicine, a doll youkai, master of poison. Subverted because the character is not really creepy... being a loli, like all the others.
    • Played straight in that she does hate humans and is of the very few instances a character is canonically NOT friendly.
    • Averted with Alice Margatroid's adorable dolls. Granted, they're (almost) all inanimate. (We aren't sure about Shanghai.)
      • Ironically, Alice herself has been described as creepy.
    • Hina Kagiyama is head of the Nagashi-bin doll army, which is entirely cursed with misfortune. It's possibly a subversion, though, since the idea is to ensure the misfortune doesn't affect anyone else.
  • There is a mod in Unreal Tournament called Unreal4Ever, which has a doll for a weapon. When used, the doll skips around a map making doll-like noises, until an unlucky victim comes too close and detonates the doll, causing a nuclear explosion. Just imagine being chased by a seemingly harmless doll that's really out to kill you.
  • Tails Doll, from Sonic R. Can you feel the sunshine?
  • Castlevania series has an animate man-size marionette with long-blond hair. It's lying around idly until the hero comes nearby. Then it giggles, twists its neck in a circle, and floats through the air with unnatural movement as if manipulated by invisible strings. There are also variations that emit electricity, said to be possessed by the ghosts of prisoners that died in the electric chair. Chronicle has small dolls, the walking clowns and hover dolls, though you might find the voiced hover dolls adorable.
  • In Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, your character has the option of buying a teddy bear for your child in chapter three. And then it turns out that the fucking thing blinks and moves and your child will hold conversations with it.
  • Used very subtly in Half-Life 2. They're never in plain sight, but if you go out of your way to poke through the trash or explore the abandoned playgrounds, you can find normal children's dolls... in ruins. Missing an arm. Missing an EYE. Covered in something black. Very creepy.
  • One of the hidden-object search scenes in Return to Ravenhearst consists of dozens of creepy, damaged dolls arranged on shelves.
    • In the sequel, Escape From Ravenhearst, you interact with dozens of creepy animatronic mannequins.
  • Onimusha has Ayame, a demonic, Ax Crazy Genma-doll which will randomly appear in the castle and will try to slash you to pieces with her gigantic claws. Also fiendish puppets and dolls will appear hidden in some chests in Onimusha 3. They'll leave behind the object they're guarding when defeated.
  • A creepy doll whose eyes move is part of the antique shop's decor in The Lost Crown: A Ghost-Hunting Adventure. Not exactly a doll, but this game also features a spooky, headless dressmaker's dummy that inexplicably appears in the bathroom each night, looking like an intruder in the dark.
  • Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots has the thoroughly creepy Psycho Mantis and Sorrow dolls as unlockable weapons.
  • Kingdom of Loathing has the Misfit Doll accessory. Basically a normal doll with black hair, white skin, and hollow eye sockets. Adds Spooky damage (which is apparently generated by frightening the opponent) to attacks. Also has the Evil Teddy Bear and Cymbal Playing Monkey familiar and Killer Rag Doll and Creepy Marionette off-hands.
    • You can get a creepy clockwork monkey as a combat item. The item description is in the quotes page.
  • There's a junk item in Forum Warz, the Haunted Doll, but it doesn't really do anything... At least, nobody's seen it do anything.
    • You can also wind up stuck with a Burnt Doll by pissing off a certain NPC.
  • Resident Evil had a few moments with creepy dolls:
    • First with Code Veronica (and its remake level in Darkside Chronicles) in which you travel through a house of dolls, filled with Zombies, Bats, Bandersnatches, oh and least I forget, little dolls and a giant suspended doll, all of which are modeled after the games main antagonist Alexia Ashford. Plus there is also the music, and gets its worse in the games remake in Darkside Chronicles.
    • And there was also the Resident Evil 4 prototype, which featured Leon going through a castle owned by Umbrella (at least we assume) that is... weirdly enough haunted with hook-wielding ghost demonic dolls and tentacles in a black mist. It was as if he made a wrong turn at Raccoon City and went to Silent Hill. (Damn it would have been scary.)
  • Haunting Ground has a room full of it, and is, in fact, a puzzle. Doing this incorrectly will prompt spikes coming out of the dolls to give you a game over.
  • Okami has some of these in the Sunken Ship dungeon. They aren't exactly creepy on their own right, but combined with the surroundings, occasional chest-monsters and the sound world that at first makes them seem like they're laughing at you, we can't really blame you if you feel like Power Slashing them, just to be sure.
  • One made to look like the game's protagonist spooks the player out near the beginning of Rule of Rose. It makes an appearance later on, but its plot-significance is small.
    • The Rose Princess also appears to be one. It turns out that was just a stand-in for when the real one was ill.
  • Torned out and dirty dolls in Epic Mickey, which you can do a spinning attack on for restorative items. They're even creepier than an eyeless Dumbo ride.
  • The second battle in EarthBound Zero is against a possessed doll which one of your sisters owns.
  • These are encountered as late-game enemies in Alice: Madness Returns. They are damn creepy, to say the least. They represent the children that Dr. Bumby has brainwashed and broken into child prostitutes.
  • In Monster Girl Quest, Gnome can be seen holding a mud doll, a marionette-like doll with hollow eye sockets. She created many of them, animated, to ease boredom. Gnome summons them during her battle to test Luka's strength. They're even creepier if you lose, for Gnome will have these dolls repeatedly rape Luka. There is also a Cursed Doll in the Haunted House sidequest.
  • Ib not only has a creepy doll that follows Garry around and keeps on asking him to play with it in one scene, but also an entire room of creepy dolls that lock him inside and force him to "play" with them to find the key to the door before a giant version of them finishes crawling through the window. If he fails to find the key in time, Bad Things happen.


Web Original & Webcomics

"[I'm] not so lonely that I wanna go to sleep and have THAT lurking over me when I wake up. And you know he'll, like, imprint on one of us or some shit--knowing your luck, E, he'll imprint on Cleo, and he'll just sit on her pillow all night, rocking back and forth."
And we all shudder together. It's a nice feeling, sisterly solidarity.

  • Silent Hill: Promise has a terrifying kewpie doll.
  • Fred Finds A Creepy Doll: an officially licensed Fred doll, which he thinks is a voodoo doll of him. And then it starts talking...
  • Inverted in Order of the Stick, where Goth undead-phile Tsukiko keeps a doll of Xykon (who is creepy) in her bedroom. The doll, in contrast to the actual Xykon, is a cuddly plush toy.
  • In Marble Hornets, the Slender Man doll Jay finds in an abandoned house may or may not count, but the baby doll in totheark's "Indicator" video definitely does.
  • In Frankie and Stein, there's SUTURE tm [dead link] , this little doll "stitched together out of love, respect for your elders, and the remains of other stuffed toys."
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series, Creepy Child Rebecca has a teddy bear that speaks in a demonic voice, worships Satan, and makes death threats to the other characters.
  • Chad Vader has Baby Cookie who seems to be trying to the creepiest of creepy dolls. She wears nothing but booties and a zorro mask while making her chosen minion play, dance and kill.
  • Any of Salad Fingers three finger puppets can be this. To elaborate, Hubert Cumberdale can become human-sized, gain red eyes, and scream for no apparent reason, as well as randomly turn into a black liquid that burns at the touch. Marjory Stewart-Baxter jealously watches Salad Fingers have a picnic with a little girl through the window. Jeremy Fisher can also become human-sized, stores a weird green fluid in his plugged-up mouth, and can suddenly transform into a second Salad Fingers to get eaten alive by the first.
  • Homestuck has Lil' Cal, who appears completely inanimate, if nightmarishly designed... as long as you're looking at him. When you're not looking, he moves around on his own. He's also the ectobiological father of The Dragon, and the ectobiological grandfather of the Bigger Bad. Its implied they inherited their disposition from Cal, although for obvious reasons we can't tell for sure.
  • Doctor Steel makes several of these.
  • Tina's muñeca para el Dia de los Muertos looks outright hideous! Its true nature (assuming it is in fact more than a decoration for the Day of the Dead) has yet to be revealed, although given Tina's backstory, it is easy to develop some theories about this.
  • BitmapWorld has a storyline that parodies the Jonathan Coulton song, but then swerves off into Edgar Allan Poe territory. It begins here.
  • Eerie Cuties has Blair, a girl doll possessed by a male spirit. Rather stupid and very, very perverted one, at that. Though he's annoying rather than creepy and ends up as a Chew Toy—sometimes literally.
  • In Minion Comics the protagonists have Tur-Tor - a stuffed turtle with drugged-out eyes that plays tapes of gangster rap songs about children committing domestic violence.
  • Desert Bus for Hope had a creepy doll which was actually named Creepy Doll.


Western Animation

Lenny: Baby Button Eyes! What are you doing possessed at this hour?


Real Life

  • Robert the Haunted Doll is a doll on display at the Fort East Martello Museum. It is the former doll of painter and author Robert Eugene Otto. When he was a child, Otto was given the doll as a gift from a servant who, according legend, used black magic to curse it. Through the years, family members reported hearing Otto speaking to the doll, and hearing a strange, inhuman voice answering back. They also reported that the doll seemed, at times, to move. People who visit the doll where it currently resides sometimes claim the doll moves and that, if they want to photograph it, they need permission first otherwise their cameras don't work.
    • Even worse is the fact that the doll's owner's wife (who hated the thing...like everyone else) apparently starting haunting their old house. Robert's old room, to be exact. This Travel Channel clip insinuates that she has no choice in the matter. Oh, also, Robert ages, apparently. His hair's gone white and he's got liver spots now...
    • Related to Robert The Haunted Doll is Annabelle the Haunted Doll. Possibly even more terrifying than the former, this Raggedy Anne doll was first owned by a woman by the name of Donna, whose mother purchased the doll from a hobby store in the 1970s. She and her roommate were cool with having the doll at first... until freaky things started happening in their apartment, where the doll not only supposedly moved on its own, but also wrote messages. When a medium was consulted, she said that the doll was being inhabited by the harmless spirit of a girl named Annabelle who died on the property, and Donna and her roommate felt compassion for the spirit. However, Annabelle the Doll was not what she seemed as she reportedly violently attacked one of Donna friends. After two incidents, the famous paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren were consulted, and eventually came to the conclusion that the doll was being haunted not by the spirit of a little girl, but of a demon. The doll was eventually relocated to the Warren Occult Museum in Moodus, Connecticut, where it is reported that the doll still moves and growls at visitors on occasion from behind its glass case.
  • One thing that can make dolls really creepy in real life is the fact that kids aren't gentle with toys. If you ever see a doll in a kid's playroom, stuffed uncomfortably in a toy box, or in the middle of a toy pile, often getting "crushed" under other, heavier-looking toys, and still having that smile, it becomes a quick way to convince anybody to clean that room.
  • How about this commercial for Play Station 3?
  • The Struts fashion doll line. Toy ponies with big come-hither eyes that can be dressed up Barbie-style. No, really.
  • The Doll Face video features a doll face on a jack in the box type contraption that mimics images on the tv screen trying to find the perfect visage for itself. The worst part is the fact that the thing is apparently sentient, and it falls very very deep into the Uncanny Valley once it paints its face with makeup to give it such a healthy glow that it resembles a human face.
    • This might help, although it does increase the tear-jerker quality. If nothing else, the song is amazing.
    • If it makes you feel any better, it is a human actress' face on the doll.
  • When author H. Rider Haggard was a boy, his nanny used to own a creepy doll called "She-who-must-be-obeyed" which she used to get him to behave. This was at least partly the inspiration for his novel She.
  • Surrealist artist Hans Bellmer combined this trope with lolis for maximum creepiness. His dolls inspired the Silent Hill 2 Mannequins. See a Not-Safe-For-Work-Or-Sanity photograph.
    • Allegedly, he developed his "thing" for ball-jointed dolls after meeting his 15-year-old niece. Thankfully he felt his feelings for her weren't appropriate and switched to the "poupee" (puppet) instead. It Got Worse after his wife died.
  • It's Baby Laugh'a'Lot!
  • This Youtube user lampshades this trope to its fullest.
  • Some ball-jointed doll owners embrace this to the fullest. Onegreyelephant's doll mods are something between art objects and Eldritch Abominations... and still more than a little cute.
  • Any doll that has a function (most commonly crying) and being given to someone without being warned about it will cause distress and alarm in the unsuspecting recipient.
  • Then there's that ghost story...Dolly one step, dolly two step, Dolly's gonna get you...Don't tell me you weren't scared of that as a kid!
  • A lot of people find the Doll Room in House on the Rock to be hard to get through.
  • Aaron Spelling's mansion had a room especially built to house a huge doll collection; unfortunately the kids it was intended for found it to be a little creepy.
  • The marionettes used in the OP of the Chilean Soap Opera "Los Titeres". Brrrrr!
  • Clown dolls.
  • It's taken this long to mention "The Hands Resist Him" (more commonly known as the "Haunted eBay Painting")? This troper was 14 when she researched this painting, and she still feared supernatural retribution.
  • Truth in Television moment about these things, it turns out according to one "study" we perceive what is alive and what is inanimate by the look of the face and eyes more then anything else, so now we know the human truth..dolls are just freaky soulless things!
  • Who the Hell in Japan came up with this horrifyingly creepy Woody toy?!
  • "My Buddy, My Buddy...wherever I go, he goes..."
  • The Island of the Dolls (“La Isla de la Munecas”) south of Mexico City. Featuring trees decorated with hundreds of mutilated dolls.
  • Mattel's Saucy doll. The website is appropriate. Look at that face.
  • Deliberately invoked by Imezco with their Living Dead Dolls, and BeGoth's Bleeding Edge dolls-these are dolls that take the idea of Creepy Dolls and run with it. Living Dead Dolls come in coffin-shaped boxes and have dates of death, while the Bleeding Edge dolls are pierced and have odd eyes. Not surprisingly, both of these kinds of dolls are very popular with Goths.
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