The Man in the Moon

Deface of the Moon!

"There liveth none under the sunne, that knows what to make of the man in the moone."

—Endymion, John Lyly.

The sister trope to The Face of the Sun, The Man in the Moon is that old conception of the Moon as possessing a face, most often a male one. The moon is often an aged but benevolent figure who stands over the Earth, granting it natural bounty or serving as the destination for young adventurers. This trope, while at least Older Than Feudalism, is nowadays mostly only seen in quirky video games and animated children's media.

This conception, incidentally, is primarily Western. East Asian cultures, such as that of Japan, tend to see the Moon as having a rabbit on its face, rather than possessing human features.

Also, as the Moon appears to be flipped in the Southern Hemisphere (because people in the Southern Hemisphere are effectively standing upside down relative to the Northern Hemisphere), the traditional Man In The Moon is upside down and quite hard to discern.

Bears little to no relation to Weird Moon. See Moon Rabbit for the version more popular in East Asian cultures.

Examples of The Man in the Moon include:

Western Examples

Advertising

• A man with a crescent moon for a head wearing Cool Shades was once part of the side characters for McDonalds.

British Comics

• A 1940s text story from The Beano was titled The Boy who bossed the Man in the Moon.

Film

• The Moon from A Trip to the Moon (pictured), providing the Ur Example in film.
• Appears during the 'Your Song' sequence in Moulin Rouge and sings with the voice of Placido Domingo.
• Tweedledum during "The Walrus and the Carpenter" segment of Alice in Wonderland.
• The Moon in The Nightmare Before Christmas for some reason has Oogie Boogie's face on it!
• The Genie at the end of Aladdin. "Made you look!"

Folklore

• Medieval Christian tradition holds that the man in the Moon is Cain, who was forever doomed to circle the Earth. This is referenced in Dante Alighieri's Inferno and Paradiso.
• Similarly, a Talmudic tradition holds that the face of Jacob is engraved upon the Moon.

Literature

• From an old Nursery Rhyme:

The man in the moon
Came down too soon
To ask his way to Norwich.
He went by the south
And burnt his mouth
While eating cold plum porridge

• • J. R. R. Tolkien based one of his poems on this one. He also put the Man In The Moon in his poem based on "Hey diddle-diddle, the cat and the fiddle." In Middle-earth the moon-ship is steered by a male Maia.

Live Action TV

• The Moon, complete with face, is a character in The Mighty Boosh.
• Dorothy Jane in The Torkelsons often sat on her windowsill and talked to the Man in the Moon.
• Luna from Bear in the Big Blue House. Bear and Luna often meet on Bear's balcony and Bear tells her what he has done during the day and they sing the "Goodbye Song".

Music

• Referenced in the Shinedown song "Second Chance":

I just saw Hayley's comet she waved
Said why you always running in place
Even the man in the moon disappeared
Somewhere in the stratosphere

• The Erasure song "Man In The Moon" portrays him as a benevolent, smiling figure.
• The video for The Smashing Pumpkins' song "Tonight, Tonight", largely an homage to A Trip to the Moon, of course features a face in the moon.
• A stanza of Well Done Liar or Martin Said To His Man, one of a whole genre's worth of British nonsense songs describing a man telling tall tales to his friends while drunk, includes the words:

I saw the man in the moon
Clothed in St Peter's Shoon...

Myth and Legend

• In Polish legends, a wizard Twardowski (pronounced Tvardovsky) is said to have got stranded on the moon after his last ditch attempt to get out of a literal Deal with the Devil .

Newspaper Comics

• Referenced in Calvin and Hobbes -

Calvin: "I saw the man in the moon tonight."
Calvin's Dad:(not paying attention) "Mmm."
Calvin: "I didn't know the moon made faces."
Calvin's Dad:(still not paying attention) "That's phases."

• Happens in the Scamp newspaper strip. It even says hi to the dogs, but rather than seeing the face everyone else sees, Tramp sees Lady's face and realizes he's been away from home far too late.

Tabletop Games

• In Warhammer Fantasy Battle one of the moons sometimes really has a face, especially when full. Justified since it is made entirely of Green Rocks.

Theater

• Referenced in A Midsummer Night's Dream; in the Show Within a Show, Starveling plays Moonlight, who is represented by a man with a lantern, dog and bush, which was the common conception of The Man in the Moon at the time. Spectators wonder if he should be inside his lantern, which also stands for the moon's light.

Western Animation

• Futurama had the Mascot of Luna Park, to whom Bender shoves a beer bottle in his eye in a reference to the A Trip to the Moon ur-example.
• Family Guy 's episode "The Griffin Family History" had Peter in the role of an ancestor working in Hollywood in the 1920's, and in one film, he looks through the telescope at the Man In The Moon.
• Inspector Gadget consistently had a happy face on the moon, and one episode's plot revolved around MAD changing it to their logo.
• Ruby Gloom's seemingly ever-present moon has a vaguely feminine face. Apart from singing the opening theme, it rarely does more than sit in the sky and look cheerful and somewhat out-of-place.
• "That's right, The Moon!"
• The Moon in The Amazing World of Gumball.
• My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic featured the Mare in the Moon; this one is more Sealed Evil in a Can.

Non-Western Examples

Anime and Manga

• The moon in Soul Eater, which just isn't as nightmare-inducing as the one hovering above Termina because it doesn't threaten to fall on Death City or wherever. But it's just as creepy.
• In Lagann-Hen, the Anti-Spiral appears in the moon right before Nia undergoes her Face Heel Turn. Also note that this was right before Simon and Nia kissed.
• Gainax again: in Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt one enemy tries to make the Man in the Moon sneeze by shooting a blimp, propelled with the force of a thousand nosebleeds, into its nose and... Well, it's a Widget Series, so let's leave it at that!

Myth and Legend

• In the mythology of the Haida in northwest America, The Man in the Moon is a boy gathering wood taken up into space as a punishment for disrespect.
• The Chinese have a Man. Either he used to live on the sun, but switched places with his two sisters when they got tired of men on Earth admiring their beauty every night; or he's stuck up there chopping trees for all eternity because he somehow offended the gods—accounts differ. Then there's a Rabbit pounding elixirs, and a Lady (she ate the pills of immortality meant for both her and her husband to prevent him from becoming an immortal tyrant) in the Moon, all from separate folktales.
• In yet another Chinese myth, the Sun is a lovestruck (but ugly) male chasing after the Moon, a beautiful but haughty female.
• One foolish old Maori woman got angry at the moon and called it a "cooked head," a grave insult that may refer to cannibalism. The moon abducted her and now she's stuck up there forever.

Video Games

• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask has a nightmare inducing face on its falling moon.
• Kirby has Mr. Bright; to distinguish him from his partner Mr. Shine, he is depicted as having a crescent moon-shaped face.
• The Pokémon Lunatone invokes this trope, and it is similarly crescent-shaped. It appears in Sapphire; its counterpart in Ruby is Solrock.

Web Comics

• In Our Little Adventure, it even comments on the adventure.