Give us a kiss!
"I hate these aliens, they're so scary! Luckily, I can't see them! Something's covering my eyes but I can't quite figure out what it is!"
"Ewww! Talk about sucking face!"
— MAD parody of Alien: Resurrection
The Face Hugger, as the name implies, is a creature that preys on other species, usually humans, by attaching itself to their face. What it does to you from there depends on the creature and how it operates. Some take over your body or mind in some fashion. Some drain you of blood or Life Energy. Some eat your brains. Some transform you in horrific fashion. And some will give you a Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong.
In pretty much every case, this is Nightmare Fuel owing to our Primal Fear of something going for our eyes, and Orifice Invasion. See also Personal Space Invader. A creature that does this is frequently the larval form of a Xenomorph Xerox.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Played with in an Azumanga Daioh comic. After getting her hand bitten by Kamineko(again), Sasaki flails around and ends up hitting Kagura in the face with the cat. Kamineko latches onto Kagura's face and tries smiling innocently at Sasaki before getting tossed away by an annoyed Kagura.
Comic Books
- Starro the Conqueror in Justice League of America launches swarms of mind-control starfish that attach themselves to people's faces and turn them into obedient slaves.
Fan Works
Films — Animation
- G.I. Joe: The Movie: Pythona and Nemesis Enforcer use something like this. The former on a few Crimson Guards, and the latter on Sgt. Slaughter when rescuing Falcon from Serpentor while infiltrating the Terror Drome during an "extra rough training exercise".
- Wreck-It Ralph: Ralph finds his medal but accidentally hatches a Cy-Bug egg by stepping on it and the baby bug attacks Ralph's face, sending him on an escape shuttle that blasts them to Sugar Rush.
Films — Live-Action
- The Trope Namer and Trope Maker (if not Ur-Example) is the crab-like impregnator from the Alien films — shown in the picture above from the first film. These break out of egg-like structures and latch on for some time, implanting something in the victim's body before falling off and dying. The victim recovers and seems well for hours, until a xenomorph bursts through their chest. This is not the only way that xenomorphs reproduce, but it's common. Many later examples are homages.
- In Hellboy II: The Golden Army, after Price Nuada enters the auction house to take the crown piece, he throws a mysterious creature at the auctioneer, which latches itself to his face, killing him.
- Parodied in Kung Fu Wonder Child (a Taiwanese martial arts comedy) - the hero needs to finish a series of trials to complete his training, one which is battling a scorpion-spider hybrid
who can hug faces.
- Played for Laughs in Meg 2: The Trench. Lance is saying that Bioluminescence Is Cool when a large eel leaps out at him and starts chewing on his diving helmet with a Lamprey Mouth. As Lance goes into hysterics, one of the other divers just reaches up and plucks the eel off him.
- Octopussy: The title character keeps a poisonous blue-ring octopus in an aquarium. When James Bond smashes an assassin head-first into the aquarium, the octopus — instead of inflicting a lethal bite and then fleeing like any normal octopus — latches onto the screaming assassin's face and stays there.
Literature
- Obviously Alien books often have impregnators.
- In Alien: The Cold Forge a researcher who needs a sample of whatever the facehuggers put into peoples' bodies has her android assistant approach one, which latches on as usual. It tries to detach as it realizes that he's not organic and can't gestate a xenomorph, but he holds it in place, bites down on its ovipositor, and sucks its contents down to rest inert in his stomach as it flails and twitches.
- Crystal of Storms has an octopus-like critter called the Octobeast, who face-hugs humanoid victims into becoming their People Puppet serfs and vessels for egg incubation.
Live-Action TV
- Buffyverse: The giant spiders contained in the Box of Gavrok from Buffy the Vampire Slayer attach themselves to people's faces before killing them. The critters in "Bad Eggs" and "As You Were" are also reminiscent of face huggers, as are those on the Angel episodes "Soul Purpose" and "A Hole in the World".
- Doctor Who:
- The spider creatures from "Full Circle" have more than a hint of the Alien facehugger about them.
- The dreamcrabs in "Last Christmas" attach themselves to their victims' faces and slowly eat their brains, while trapping them in dreams. One of the crew even lampshades the situation as being right out of Alien, which is justified with The Reveal that one of them was actually watching the movie when the dreamcrabs put them into the dream.
The Doctor: There's a horror movie called Alien? That's really offensive. No wonder everyone keeps invading you.
- In "Revolution of the Daleks", Jack Harkness is planting explosives to blow up a building full of cloned Dalek mutants, when one of them crawls from its tank and leaps onto his face. Fortunately, he's able to wrench it off.
- The Mandalorian: Played for Laughs when the Child is tucking into a bowl of chowder, whereupon a small squid-like creature bursts from the bowl and latches onto his face.
Mando: [sternly] Don't play with your food. [pokes the squid with his knife, and the squid falls back into the bowl]
- Supergirl (2015): Supergirl is overpowered by a many-tentacled "Black Mercy" which attaches itself to her and violates her body and mind, feeding a hallucinogen into her bloodstream which causes her to have a delusion that she is still with her family on Krypton whilst her friends try to save her in the real world.
Tabletop Games
- The Face Sucker in Munchkin.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- Facebiter squigs bite... faces. The orks naturally find this hilarious, and often get in contests to see which will bite the other's face off first. The actual Xenomorph Xeroxes use an ovipositor to perform the Orifice Invasion instead.
- The Tyranids have a variant species of Ripper called a Cortex Leech. They leap onto a person's face then use a variety of pointed tendrils to penetrate the mouths, eyes, nose, ears, or any other available orifice and drive them into the brain, where they can then hijack the motor functions and turn them into drooling thralls to the Hive Mind.
- The Catachan Face Eater. On a planet with the ultimate reputation for Everything Trying to Kill You, this creature is probably the most feared predator.
Toys
- BIONICLE:
- The Krana utilized by the Bohrok combine this with Puppeteer Parasite: though normally they exist as a "driver" of sorts to the mechanical Bohrok, they can also latch onto a person's face and take control of their body.
- The Kratana, creatures resembling a cross between a Krana and a slug-like Kraata (hence the name), were engineered by the Order of Mata Nui latch onto the faces of people to show them visions of the past and future, to spare the Order's members from having to deliver exposition themselves.
- The Toa Inika possessed a benevolent version of these — unlike normal Toa, their Kanohi masks were organic, living creatures. Unlike the very similar Krana, however, their only interest was helping the Toa, mainly by teaching them how to properly use their powers. Although, their primary method of doing so was giving them nasty headaches whenever they did something wrong.
- There's also The Skull Spiders from the 2015 reboot.
Video Games
- Aliens: Dark Descent: Face Huggers are spawned once an Egg notices your squad (including being shot but not killed). If allowed to close to within range of their Deadly Lunge, a Face Hugger will instantly incapacitate one of your Marines. Unless you packed an Extraction Device, you'd best say "goodbye" to that soldier. Luckily, a clutch of Eggs can be quickly killed with the application of a grenade to the center of their formation.
- These feature in most Aliens vs. Predator games. In some games, they're a One-Hit Kill, in others, they can be fought off.
- Aliens vs. Predator (2010):
- Face Huggers are only a threat to the Human player character, Rookie. Instead of killing you instantly, they take you down to one health bar segment. If they attack you at one segment, it's game over.
- The Xenomorph PC, 6, has a game-wide secondary objective to incapacitate as many humans as it can. You're apparently being closely followed by a group of facehuggers, because there's always one nearby ready to struggle-snuggle their faces.
- Alien vs. Predator (Capcom): Face Huggers will attempt to grab on and drain health away. Smash the buttons to get them off.
- Aliens vs. Predator: Extinction: Facehuggers are the building-blocks of the Xenomorph economy (which is based around how many humans are currently gestating Chestbursters). They are spawned from Eggs, and possess the ability to 1-hit KO any non-robotic, non-Apesuit-wearing, non-xenomorph unit in the game (with the exception of upgraded Predator Brawlers, who can Offhand Backhand them out of the air). This is balanced by two factors: 1) they're melee fighters with low HP, and 2) they slowly die when not on Hivespace. There is also a late-game Praetorian-derived adult Xenomorph called the Carrier, who attacks by yeeting facehuggers at enemies. Furthermore, upgraded Drones have the ability to spit a globule of acid that converts enemy flesh into cysts full of a nutrient goo that, on top of semi-permanently making them easier to kill, makes Chestbursters grow up big and strong (denoted by red markings on their exoskeleton), so you want to facehug those enemies the most (and support your forces with Drones).
- Aliens vs. Predator (2010):
- The Bone Leeches of Blood II: The Chosen play with this in a way. They cover up your view but actually burrow into your chest using their tail.
- Chaos Break have the lowest-level infected species, which resembles the classic facehugger, having a spider-like frontal body with a long tail and attacking by leaping and clinging on the player. Though it doesn't have acid for blood and can be stomped to death after shooting it a few times.
- The Lifters and Diamond Claws from the Descent series behave similarly. While most of the other robots shoot at you, these enemies ram into your ship and inflict damage with their reinforced claws. The E-Bandits use a similar point-blank attack, only they drain your ship's energy instead of your shields.
- Don't Starve: The Slurpers. They take up the head slot of the character's inventory, dropping whatever is there. When attached, they provide light and slowly drain the character's hunger.
- Duke Nukem 3D: The Protozoid Slimer, who provides Interface Screw while jumping at Duke's face.
- Headcrabs from the Half-Life saga, which latch on to peoples' faces and mutate them into Technically Living Zombies in a process so gruesome they die if the headcrab is removed.
- Kong: Survivor Instinct has the Skullspawns, the infant offspring of Skullcrawlers, a tiny facehugger-esque creature crawling on forelimbs before trying to latch on any unsuspecting human's face. A dossier you retrieves claims they can "strip all flesh from an adult human in under a minute".
- Metroids, although more often than not they latch onto the whole head.
- Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy: The Aura Beasts come of nowhere and wrap around Nick's face. Oh, and the only way to see them coming is using the psi draining Aura Vision.
- Space Quest:
- In Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon, at Fester Blatz's World O' Wonders on Phleebhut, the postcard for Achoron shows a face hugger hugging somebody's face.
- In Space Quest V: The Next Mutation, Spike, the acid-squirting face hugger, later dubbed Spikette, spawns lots of little face huggers. The manual shows the design team being inspired by an Alien face hugger model.
- In Space Quest VI: Roger Wilco in the Spinal Frontier, when examining the ship in shuttle bay, the narrator claims the ship is "probably carrying a half-dozen miniature face-hugging saliva-dripping face-eating exo-skeletal alien piranha things."
- Brainsuckers from X-COM: Apocalypse, which are used as ammunition by certain aliens in addition to appearing on their own. Replacing a person's brain is their entire purpose; They don't even have a digestive system.
Web Animation
- Sonic for Hire: In Season 5, Sonic and Tails are sent by General Pepper to terminate aliens. Tails is attacked by multiple face huggers, then finds ALF hatching the eggs before killing him.
Webcomics
- Cross Time Café: Sam Starfall pulls one of these off in an early strip. Hortmage finds it irritating and, maybe, disgusting.
- Played for Laughs in The Cyantian Chronicles: Campus Safari when Chrome's miniwhip Aurla does a good impression of one.
- Edward's monster in Monster Pulse. It helps that it's actually his face.
- In Savestate, Rick is subjected to this by Ness, much to his irritation and, apparently, Nicole's amusement.
- In Zero Percent Discount, a Banana Peel turns into a facehugger.
Western Animation
- Rick and Morty:
- The primary focus of "Promortyus", and spoofed with The Glorzo. It's discussed how they don't have much technological development for a sapient species because they blindly kill their hosts laying eggs. Summer convinces them to hold off on doing that so they can advance their technology, reverse engineering that of all the ships which crashland onto their asteroid.
- In an advertisement for Alien: Covenant, Rick and Morty head to a space cruiser after intercepting a distress call. Moments after arriving, Rick is attacked by a face-hugger that immediately dies as a result of the drugs and alcohol Rick had in his stomach.
Real Life
- Penicillidia are a wingless fly that latches onto bats' faces to drink their blood, and never let go except to lay a single larva on the cave walls.
