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Non-Standard Character Design
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Non-Standard Character Design (trope)
No, this wasn't done with Photoshop. It's just that this guy thinks he lives in a Hot-Blooded Shonen anime.

A character that looks strange in the context of their cartoon world. Often a result of Art Evolution, with earlier designs becoming The Artifact to a newer, more refined sensibility. It could be that a major character was designed independently and integrated without any changes. This could also be an intentional stylistic choice, indicating a discrepancy between the odd one out and the rest of their world.

Crossovers often result in this, with an attempt at fidelity to both art styles rather than going for Off-Model. It's especially noticeable when the characters are from different franchises, showcasing distinctive character designs from their respective source material. A Gonk often utilizes this, deviating from the style specifically for the purpose of looking ugly. Same could be applied to an Eldritch Abomination to emphasize how alien it is.

Compare Art Shift (when the art itself shifts in style temporarily), Art-Style Dissonance (where the art intentionally clashes with tone of a work), Art-Style Clash (when a work uses different art styles to highlight conflict or themes), Art-ernate Universe (where conflicting art-styles denote otherworldly origins), Masculine Lines, Feminine Curves (women tend to be drawn more realistically than men in many illustrated works), and Flashy Protagonists, Bland Extras (when the major characters look non-standard compared to the background characters). Cartoonish Companions, No Cartoon Fish, and Realistic Species, Cartoony Species are subtropes. Sometimes Evil Is Angular can result in this if there's a heavily skewed hero/villain character ratio.

Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Aburazaka from Ai Kora has a chubby-cheeked, excessively-stylized face that makes him look like a gag manga character. It contrasts not only with the relatively realistic faces of the rest of the cast, but also with his personality of a shameless pervert.
  • Armitage III: The Second-type androids, along with Naomi Armitage and Julian Moore, are designed and drawn in a traditional, big-eyed Anime style. The humans, D'anclaude, and the Third-type androids are designed in a more realistic style (and with more visibly European facial features).
  • Assassination Classroom: Koro-sensei and two of his Foils have different character designs than most of the cast. Koro-sensei himself is a comically drawn smiley-faced octopus monster. His Foils are more subtle examples due to being normal human beings. Gakuhou Asano, the Chairman of Kunugigaoka High School, is drawn in a more angular art style that emphasizes his status as a sociopathic Magnificent Bastard and opposing educational philosophy to Koro-sensei. Kotaro Yanagisawa, the true identity of Shiro and the one responsible for creating him, has snake-like eyes with white pupils that are missing their inner dot reflecting his personality as an amoral Smug Snake Mad Scientist who has zero regard for those around him.
  • Deliberately invoked with Attack on Titan's titans, who look much more photorealistic than the human characters.
  • Azumanga Daioh:
    • Kimura-sensei wears glasses and his eyes can not be seen even from the side.
    • Cats and cat plushies are drawn in the same abstract circular style.
  • The fusions in Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo are drawn in a much more serious style than the regular characters. When a fusion fails, it's drawn in a much crappier style than the regular characters.
  • Not unlike the South Park celebrities example, are the monkey and dog in Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan, who look like people with photographed heads.
  • In Cromartie High School, whenever Kamiyama encounters one of his former middle school classmates, they're always depicted in a simplistic cartoony style that contrast the series' semi-realistic style.
  • Honey’s teacher Miss Alphonne from Cutey Honey has a very odd appearance compared to everyone else, with her big head, shovel like jaw, facial hair, crooked teeth, one eye often depicted as being bigger than the other, and often is depicted noseless.
  • Darker than Black:
  • Digimon Adventure's Matt Ishida has catty eyes, in contrast to everyone else's oval eyes. ''Adventure 02's''Cody and Ken sport these too.
  • The D-Reaper of Digimon Tamers looks like nothing ever seen before (or after) in the whole franchise. This was to emphasize how the D-Reaper is neither human nor Digimon.
  • Most of the game characters in .hack//SIGN have standard Anime designs, except for "A-20", who appears in a couple of episodes and has a much more cartoony appearance and no visible nose. This looks especially strange when she's interacting with Mimiru. Of course this does lampshade the fact that the animated characters we're watching are actually supposed to be animated characters and not real people.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • Cell of Dragon Ball Z looks like something that crawled out of a Seinen series. He starts off with pink colored Hellish Pupils, then gains blue, then pink irises with black pupils in a similar vein to the Androids. He is by far the most detailed character to come out of the series. Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama regrets making Cell so detailed since he kept forgetting to draw his spots.
    • Dr. Wheelo from Dragon Ball Z: The World's Strongest is one of the most original looking villains, as most movie villains tends to be an Expy of another character. He is a giant brain in a jar, that turns out to be mounted on a giant, mechanical body, that is rather alien looking.
    • Dragon Ball Super:
      • Aside from his hairstyle, the Saiyan Cabba of Universe 6 physically looks quite different than just about every other Saiyan seen in the series. Despite his definite fighting prowess, he's almost completely devoid of muscle definition, far thinner the U7's Saiyans like Vegeta's brother Tarble, or Trunks and Goten who are human-hybrid children. Also notable is that his eyes are in a thin design similar to Android's 17 and 18 that, while have been seen on Saiyans in the past, were never before seen on a Super Saiyan.
      • Ribriane of Universe 2. Her design is quite different from Toriyama's usual style. She is drawn cuter with wide eyes in her human form. She wouldn't be out of place in HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!, which makes sense since she's an obvious homage to the Magical Girl genre.
      • Supreme Kai Pell of Universe 2 looks very unusual among the Supreme Kais, with his largely bald head and stocky build. One could have mistaken him for a God of Destruction if it wasn't for his clothing.
  • Hiruma from Eyeshield 21, with his fangs, claws, and spiky blonde Anime Hair looks very different from the more normally drawn members of the cast.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood delivers a very minor example; Ed, Al, Hohenheim and all other characters of Xerxian descent are drawn with a dark yellow outline to their hair which makes them appear to glow slightly. All other characters, even other blonds, have their hair outlined in black.
  • In Futaba-kun Change!, Principal Hiroin has a considerably more cartoonish look than all the characters, including a huge round head over a midget body.
  • Future Diary:
    • All of the diary owners are drawn in a style somewhere between typical anime and realistic. Eighth however... Eighth is four feet tall, and has a head nearly as large as the rest of her body, with eyes the size of dinner plates perched over a cat's mouth. Basically, she's drawn Super-Deformed in a series that doesn't use that style. Next to other characters, she can look utterly terrifying◊note 
    • There's also Deus Ex Machina, who is animated entirely with CG while everyone else is drawn in 2D.
  • Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Most characters have ordinary, fairly realistic proportions and appearances, so Koil Krasnov and the unnamed informant in "FABRICATE FOG" stand out. Koil Krasnov is a gigantic guy with a Right Hand of Doom, weirdly short legs, an exaggerated square jaw, and red eyeliner. The informant is a tiny guy with a huge forehead, dot-shaped eyebrows, and blue shadows under his eyes. His facial expressions are animated in a more cartoony manner than the other characters'.
  • It can look mighty weird when Elizabeth of Gintama is standing next to the rest of the cast.
  • The title character and his family members in Goodnight Punpun are drawn as simplistic birds on default. They're normal humans and the choice is stylistic. We occasionally see pieces of Punpun's real face, and later on he's drawn in different ways besides a bird, but that's his default.
  • Green vs. Red is a crossover of the entire franchise, if you can understand that. The OVA had the Lupin impersonators at the beginning are drawn to resemble all possible incarnations of the character and then some, including the Pink Jacket Lupin, a fat Lupin and Nabeshin.
  • Kohina from Gugure! Kokkuri-san has a markedly different style from her companions and other children, being stylized with rectangular eyes, no nose, and a very short, simplistic, round shape in her overall appearance. Her eyes are the only ones to feature square highlights and irises. She does, however, experience Art Shift during particularly emotional moments, such as when she's crying, or is extremely happy. During these moments, she becomes nearly twice her normal height to match that of her 10 year old classmates.
  • Gundam:
    • Gundam Build Divers Re:RISE: The main four's Gunpla are vastly different from each other, even more so that previous entries. Hiroto's Core Gundam is a smaller version of the RX-78-2 Gundam with stubby arms and legs. May's WoDom Pod is based off of the Walking Dome from ∀ Gundam, one of many strange designs created by the late futurist artist Syd Mead. Parviz's Valkylander is a Super-Deformed dragon that turns into a Gundlander version of the Astraea F. Kazami's Justice Knight is probably the closest to a normal Gunpla despite being a knight-themed Justice Gundam.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX: The mysterious Rose of Sharon is revealed to be the MAN-08 Elmeth. However, unlike the other Mobile Suits that have shown up in this series taking a much closer Neon Genesis Evangelion-like design, the Elmeth looks exactly like it did in the original anime. Since this machine came from an alternate universe, in context its design is Non-Standard. In the final battle, Shuji - whose goal is to kill the Lalah sleeping in the Rose of Sharon - summons the White Devil - the original RX-78-2 Gundam - to complete his goal. During the course of said battle, the White Devil goes One-Winged Angel by growing to giant size and becoming monochrome.
  • Haré+Guu:
    • There are birds that are drawn in a crude, primitive style.
    • Guu herself has more simplistic style than the rest of the cast, lacking fingers and toes in most situations, and moves with boneless flops.
  • Hayate the Combat Butler: Hinagiku Katsura is actually in a different, more...flowery style that is heavily reminiscent of Utena, which seems to be one of Hata-sensei's inspirations for her character and some elements of the plot. It's especially noticeable in her introductory chapter but as the art style for the series has become more of a mixture of Puni Plush and Noodle People her design has become more-or-less the same as everyone else's unless she's being focused on.
  • Hunter × Hunter has a lot of variation in its visual designs, but a few stand out even among the other characters. Chrollo Lucilfer, for example, has a more realistic design compared to most of the other characters, with just enough detail to make him look strangely unsettling.
  • The vice-principal that appears in episode 11 of Interviews with Monster Girls has a slightly more Westernized appearance than other characters.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
    • Jones, Bonham, Page, and Plant, the four zombies Straizo curb-stomps in Phantom Blood, have more notably monstrous designs compared to the mostly human designs of the rest of the zombies.
    • Golden Wind:
      • Guido Mista is the only character who has irises but lacks defined pupils.
      • While the series is no stranger to Gonks, they usually still look like otherwise normal humans, which causes Pesci and Carne to stand out as particularly extreme. Pesci, on top of his small, beady eyes, seems to lack a chin, making it hard to know where his neck ends and his head begins, and combined with his Anime Hair, it's easy to make comparisons to a pineapple. Carne, meanwhile, takes this up to eleven, as on top of being noticeably obese, he seems to lack a neck, nose, and ears, has a square shaped body and head, a tiny mouth, and pin-prick pupils.
      • While Diavolo's design is mostly nothing too out of place in JoJo, his eyes stand out for being done is a completely different style from the rest of the cast, only adding to the Ambiguously Human nature of the character.
  • Kaguya-sama: Love Is War:
    • In their later appearances, Kaguya (Moron) and Kaguya (Ice) take this in opposite directions. (Moron) becomes Super-Deformed with thicker outlines and less detail, while (Ice) becomes more realistic (particularly with her hair).
    • During Maki's trip to India, all the locals were drawn far more realistically than is standard for the series. Presumably, they're based off of people that the author met during his research trip.
  • The protagonist of Kasane has sharp teeth and giant, angular eyes that contrast with the normal manga-looking characters. She's supposed to be an unattractive looking girl.
  • Kill la Kill:
    • Kill la Kill is a series reminiscent of 80s anime, but Dr. Matoi and Soichiro Kiryuin look like they come respectively from a 70s series and an early 90s anime, with a wild case of Anime Hair. This is used to foreshadow that they are actually the same person.
    • The Mankanshoku family is noticeably more cartoony and drawn in a looser style than the rest of the other roughly-drawn characters.
    • Nui Harime has non-standard character animation. Nearly everyone moves in huge, over the top motions, but Nui is rarely ever shown moving from one position to the next (there's usually a cut signifying it) and when she does move, it's the cheapest looking movement imaginable. The result is a singularly unnerving character. The intention is to make it clear that she's on a different level than the other characters, her animations start getting more fluid as Ryuko gets stronger and fights her more evenly.
  • Kirby: Right Back at Ya!: NME Sales Guy is more humanoid than any other character, outside of his grey skin. Downplayed in that, during the last episode, it's revealed that he doesn't have legs, but instead the same feet that the rest of the characters have.
  • Daichi of Kotoura-san is drawn markedly different from the rest of the cast, being shorter, rounded, and with minimal facial features save his lips, usually drawn in a fish-like pursing. When he speaks seriously with Yuriko, he is drawn much more seriously and normally, complete with visible eyes.
  • Moguro Fukuzou, the titular character from The Laughing Salesman. Even within the cartoonish art style, Moguro still stands out among other characters, with his thin red lips, large head, pale skin, stout body, and his never-changing facial expression. This, of course, makes him even more unsettling.
  • Lucky Star's anime adaptation has Anime Tenchou and the rest of his co-workers, who are drawn in a very bold, sketchy action-series style, in contrast to the Puni Plush of everyone else. That's because Anime Tenchou didn't originate from Lucky Star, since he was created by Mobile Fighter G Gundam character designer Kazuhiko Shimamoto as the mascot of Animate and had his own OVA by Studio Gainax, long before he made appearances in other anime (as he's also appeared in Hayate the Combat Butler).
  • All the students of Midnight Horror School have black sclera in their eyes, except Onpoo, who has white sclera instead. Justified as her head is a black music note.
  • Soujirou Marui, father of the triplets in Mitsudomoe, is drawn with a much rougher art style and thicker outlines compared to everyone else. His face is also somewhat different from the rest of the cast, adult and child alike.
  • Kobayashi from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid has notably smaller irises then the rest of the cast.
  • In Mob Psycho 100, most characters will typically have very beady irises that look like dots, such as Mob, his parents, Tome, Dimple, and plenty of background characters. The rest will have slightly wider irises, like Reigen, Ritsu, Teru, and Ichi. However, Tsubomi stands out the most, because she's the only character so far with Big Anime Eyes.
    • When hitting a 100% Explosion, Mob undergoes an extended and dramatic Art Shift that starkly contrasts with the simpler, cartoonier designs of everyone around him.
  • In My Hero Academia, All Might has a character design and shading closer to American comic books than manga to emphasize that he is an American-style superhero. Midoriya also has small amounts of that American comic book hatching on him, perhaps symbolic of how Midoriya takes All Might as his role model for superheroics. Even less standard is All Might's true form, a scrawny man with aggressive, angular features, no visible lips, and sunken eyes with black sclera.
  • Naruto: Itachi's girlfriend Izumi is the first Uchiha shown not to have black or dark blue hair, with black eyes. She has brown hair and eyes.
  • Negative Positive Angler: Cosplay Otaku Girl Ice is normally drawn in a Puni Plush style which coupled with her teal blue hair and prominent lips makes her stand out among the cast. However, there are a few shots of her in the same style of the rest of the cast, such as when her various cosplays are shown.
  • Nichijou: Double Cheeseburgirl, Yuuko's Oddball Doppelgänger. Her face is unusually detailed compared to everyone else. While other characters may temporarily get more detailed during an Art Shift to convey their changing emotions, this is how Doublecheeseburgirl normally looks.
  • Fuusuke the main character from Ninku has a very cartoonish design compared to everyone else, with his oversized head, huge eyes, big ears, duckbill like lips, and tongue that usually hangs out of his mouth.
  • Noein had three different art styles for characters, two different lead artists plus CGI, that serve to distinguish who is from the past or a potential future.
  • No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular! has Ucchi and Futaki. While most of the cast have a traditional manga look, Ucchi has vertical-oval Black Bead Eyes and almost no facial details aside from her mouth. Futaki is even more cartoonish, with perfectly circular black eyes and a mouth that is almost always drawn as a small triangle. They've been nicknamed "The Emoji People" by Tomoko.
  • Medjed from Oh, Suddenly Egyptian God has two traits in his design that differs him from the other characters. He's the only character who isn't a Funny Animal, and his eyes are drawn differently compared to the rest, with a semi-realistic look.
  • One Piece:
    • The Admirals Akainu, Kizaru, and Aokiji, who, mostly because they are based on actual actors (Bunta Sugawara, Kunie Tanaka, and Yusaku Matsuda respectively), are drawn in a style more realistic than most others (especially Akainu). Post-Time Skip, new Admirals Fujitora and Ryokugyu join them; the former resembles actor Shintaro Katsu as Zatoichi and the latter resembles actor Yoshio Harada in his role as Gennai Aramaki in Roningai.
    • Caesar Clown's design is remarkably different from most of the characters in the series, to the point of many fans thinking he looks like somebody out of Naruto.
    • Mihawk's eyes. Aside from their color and hawk-like design (which earned him the name "Hawk Eye"), the most outstanding thing about them is actually just that they're Tsurime Eyes, which don't really show up in this series.
    • Cavendish, who's drawn as a Bishōnen, and has glinting eyes. That's a very, very uncommon trait for male characters in One Piece, not even for a Ridiculously Cute Critter like Chopper. It's usually reserved for female characters.
    • There are a handful of female characters who don't have glinting eyes. This includes characters such as Kokoro, Perona, Lola, Sweet Pea, and Monet.
    • Nico Robin looks more realistic than the rest of the Straw Hat Crew.
    • Diamante's eyes and nose look realistic, so he looks really strange with a Cheshire Cat Grin coupled with his Gag Lips.
    • Charlotte Katakuri looks like a super gritty, post-apocalyptic Badass Biker guy with the grim personality to match, seeming to have come straight out of Mad Max or something.
    • Kin'emon's wife, O-tsuru, looks like she stepped out of an Ukiyo-e drawing.
  • One-Punch Man: Saitama, the main character, is often drawn intentionally half-assed to reflect his similarly half-assed, uncaring attitude towards fights in general. This also reflects the art of ONE's original webcomic, which was similarly crude. Notably, he undergoes a one-man Art Shift when he gets anywhere near serious, joining the rest of the characters in art quality.
    • Tatsumaki also sometimes undergoes this Art Shift when she's being more bratty or childish than usual.
    • Black Sperm is given a similar treatment, looking crude and simple most of the time before gaining a disturbingly-detailed face and muscles in combat.
  • Almost all characters from PandoraHearts seem to be unrealistically good-looking, from the abandoned children who survives on the street until a head of a dukedom who is only an inch from being rotten… and then we have Isla Yura, a human form of abomination itself with a stick-like body and lunatic big eyes... definitely far below the standard of the characters’ appearance.
  • Paul's Miraculous Adventures: In contrast to almost everyone else's kid-friendly and cartoony designs, Belt Satan◊ is drawn in a much more sinister and serious manner. This is to emphasize his vile nature and the fact that there's nothing funny about him at all.
  • Penguindrum:
    • Tsubasa Yuuki stands out whenever she shows up. She's drawn in a '70s shoujo manga style, and is specifically modeled after Lady Oscar.
    • The penguins look more cartoonish than the human characters around them. The series shows realistic penguins on occasion just to draw a comparison with the usual group.
  • In Pocket Monsters, some of Red's Pokémon, most noticeably Clefairy, have much more cartoonish and expressive faces than other mons.
  • Pokémon the Series:
    • A minor example, but Nando has more realistically drawn eyes compared to the other characters, who have larger and more cartoony-looking eyes.
    • In Pokémon Heroes the museum curator Lorenzo looked more Western Animated, particularly in the eyes than the classic big anime eyes.◊
    • Cilan's Skintone Sclerae are even more noticeable than in the games.
    • The Charizard Kiawe inherited from his grandfather and the Stoutland that took care of Ash's Litten are both noticeably more ragged than normal ones, to indicate their age and experience.
    • Ash's Gengar has bright red eyes and is a lighter purple compared to how normal Gengar have more muted eyes and a darker purple. It makes it more closely resemble Gengar's colors in the core games.
  • Psycho Armor Govarian: Tongari, the crew's only Chinese character, is drawn like an offensive caricature of the race, with his yellow skin, bead "Asian" eyes, Blush Stickers and short stature. Keep in mind the Japanese characters look more traditionally "anime" and handsome.
  • The witches and their barriers from Puella Magi Madoka Magica are all animated in drastically, disturbingly different ways from the rest of the show. Each one has a unique style of animation, ranging from thick-line to shadow puppets.
  • The (live) humans in the School-Live! manga are done in the moe norm for Schoolgirl Series. The zombies are usually drawn in a much more realistic way.
  • Hata in Seitokai Yakuindomo is definitely the only one missing a visible nose in the entire cast and is the only one without glossy eyes. She is also rendered as a chibi more often.
  • The Seiyuu Cameos in Seiyu's Life! are drawn in a more realistic style.
  • Soul Eater:
    • The Flying Dutchman, who looks like some sort of deranged and villainous muppet.
    • Excalibur is drawn with very little detail, huge round eyes and an all-white color scheme, looking notably cartoonish among the other characters. Lampshaded by various characters across the series, most notably how he looks like he has googley eyes from a rainy day arts and crafts project.
  • Over Justice from Space Patrol Luluco is basically an Inferno Cop character transplanted in a setting based on Panty & Stocking's style (this series runs on Gainax and Trigger homages, unsurprisingly). As such, he's a heavily shaded, barely animated cardboard cutout... until he needs to get serious, anyway.
  • SPY×FAMILY:
    • Besides her unusual hair color, Anya's eyes are noticeably larger and more exaggerated compared to even the other child characters. Her eyes do slowly become less detailed as the manga goes on, with the focus instead switched towards giving her a number of exaggerated expressions.
    • Franky Franklin has a simplified design when compared with the other adult characters, having a squarish head, round eyes and black dot pupils, befitting his primary role as comic relief.
  • In Still Sick, Shimizu's boss is a portly man with a wide oval-shaped head, in contrast to the rest of the cast, who are drawn more realistically.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann:
    • Lordgenome is deliberately drawn in a sketch-heavy style, to highlight his role as the Big Bad. Later applied to Lordgenome's head and post-timeskip Simon.
    • The Anti-Spiral looks like a chalk drawing in animated form. This highlights not only his Big Bad status, but how utterly wrong he is.
    • The Anti-Spiral's standard battle mecha are distinctly computer-generated, and don't resemble a human being or animal in the slightest, unlike every previous mecha in the series. Even their codename, Mugann, means "faceless". Their battleships and subordinate units, Ashtanga, also look unusual in that they are like a bizarre mass of faces and shadow-arms and a bit more grim and realistically shaded, and overall completely unlike the Gunmen and Dai-Guns before.
  • The Earth-based characters and environments in Stitch & the Samurai are drawn in a realistic style, but Stitch maintains his cutesy Western-based looks. The other elements from the Lilo & Stitch franchise also stick close to its original art style.
  • Vinland Saga is a realistically-drawn series (with a few minor exceptions like Thorkell's hair going Super Saiyan). The Frank king, however, looks like Humpty Dumpty. A case of Early-Installment Weirdness in the manga due to him appearing in the very first chapter, however he stands out more in the anime due to the adaptation showing the events in a chronological order.
  • Downplayed in Wakako Zake. Wakako is drawn slightly differently from all other characters — mostly in her large oval eyes — though this is likely to make her immediately distinct from surrounding incidental characters.
  • This happened to Chiba from Wandering Son after her Art Evolution. She looked considerably more mature then most other characters from late elementary throughout middle school. It eventually leveled out in high school when everyone began aging.
  • Xabungle of Xabungle and the transformable landship Iron Gear's robot mode stick out like a sore thumb as humanoid robots in a world where nearly every other machine is of a BattleTech-ish Chicken Walker type. The Doylist reason is that they came from early drafts of the show, which was a more serious mecha series set in space.
  • The Duel Club from Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS consists of 6 members including Yusaku. Not two of them have the same art-style. This is possibly justified in that three of them are completely irrelevant side characters and Aoi is purposefully designed to look as generic as possible.

    Animation 
  • While the majority of the characters from Adventures of Captain Vrungel have exaggerated proportions mostly made up of circles, are very cartoony-looking, and are animated using paper-doll animation, the mob boss main antagonist, Chief, is almost always only shown with just the bottom half of his face, which is depicted as cel-animated lips and a cigar moving on top of a still painting rendered somewhat more realistically than the rest of the characters. This was done to hide his true identity as Archibald Dandy of the Yacht Club, and when the camera cuts from a close-up of his face to showing his full body, the design fits in with the rest of the cast.
  • Happy Friends: The pupils of Careful S.'s eyes are designed differently from the other Supermen of his team. His look more like real-life eyes, having an iris and a pupil, whereas the other Supermen have just a simple black pupil with a highlight inside.

    Comic Books 
  • Animorphs: Everyone in the graphic novels has black eyebrows except Mr. Chapman, whose eyebrows are the same colour as his hair.
  • Archie Comics: Almost everyone has Black Bead Eyes on default. Kevin's most noticeable feature are his baby blue eyes, which make him really stand out from the others. He had black eyes in his first appearance but was redesigned later.
  • Asterix: This is how you tell if a character in an Asterix comic is an Comic-Book Fantasy Casting version of a real person — fictional characters are quite clean and grotesque-looking, but caricatures are a lot more realistic and detailed. Compare Boneywasawarriorwayayix (who was modelled after the editor of the magazine Asterix was originally printed in, Pilote), Dubbleosix (a Sean Connery parody) and Spartakis (based on Kirk Douglas) to non-caricature characters like Fulliautomatix or Caligula Minus and the difference is obvious. This is occasionally really useful, since a lot of the "cameos" are French celebrities that no-one outside of France would identify.

    The exceptions are Tragicomix and (somewhat less so) Panacea, who aren't particularly based on any one person but are drawn much more photorealistically than the other characters, especially in closeup. Panacea is stylized enough to not look out of place with either Tragicomix or Obelix, but when we see Tragicomix and Asterix together it looks almost like a Crossover. Tragicomix is also the only adult male Gaulish or even Celtic character to lack a moustache, besides members of the tribe in The Big Fight who were forced to shave by their chief's Foreign Culture Fetish for Rome. When Tragicomix reappeared in Asterix and the Actress, he got a more stylized design based on how he looks in the Animated Adaptation Asterix Versus Caesar, making him look a lot less odd.
  • The Awesome Slapstick: Slapstick has an appearance akin to a Looney Tunes character in a world with more realistic designs. This is to highlight his powers, which makes him and him alone follow Cartoon Physics.
  • Black Panther: Used in Christopher Priest's run on Black Panther (1998). Future Panther (and his former companions Abner Little and Princess Zanda) are drawn in a distinctly Kirbyesqe style.◊ Other characters are drawn in a more modern style, highlighting how these three are in a very different world.
  • Bone: The Bone cousins are drawn in a simpler, more cartoony style than the other characters. Unlike the other characters they also obey cartoon physics, most notably in a scene where Phoney Bone tries to hide a partly eaten pie by shoving it into Fone Bone's mouth and Fone Bone's head assumes the shape of the pie, complete with missing segment. They are also the first characters shown — Thorn, the first human character, doesn't appear until chapter 2.
  • Cerebus the Aardvark: The aardvarks are drawn in a cartoony style, with liberal use of zip-a-tone. Everything else, especially as the art gets better, is much more realistic and hard-edged, and zip-a-tone is used nowhere else.
  • Disney Ducks Comic Universe: In the comic, The Quest for Kalevala, Don Rosa decided to draw Väinämöinen and Louhi with realistic human noses instead of the usual dog-noses reserved for supporting cast. In contrast, Elias Lönnrot, who is a historical character and not a character from Kalevala, is drawn with a dog-nose.
  • The Lion King: Tojo is a cub that appears in the comics, standing out among other cubs due to being one of the few lions with blue eyes.
  • Mélusine: Some monsters are drawn by guest artists and have a noticeably different style. (For example, one by Midam which looks like it just escaped from Kid Paddle.)
  • Memin Pinguin: The black Cuban-Mexican protagonist in the Mexican comic book series is drawn in a cartoony style while everyone else, including his three friends, is done in a far more realistic style.
  • Mortadelo y Filemón: Whenever real people (or Superman) show up, they're drawn with realistic faces, which contrasts with the usual characters looking cartoony. Then there's also the Crossover with El Capitan Trueno, where the Trueno characters get sometimes drawn in their original realistic style and sometimes look cartoony... and sometimes it's a mix... you can see why we don't like talking about that.
  • Shazam!: Characters designed by C.C. Beck (and Pete Constanza, working in Beck's style) generally tended to be much more cartoonish and simplified in appearance then those from Mac Raboy, Jack Binder, and other artists. Until the final issues of the 70's Shazam title, however, they were almost always drawn "on-model", particularly Billy with his classic Black Bead Eyes. The trend is most noticeable in the finely detailed work of Kurt Schaffenberger,◊ where Billy often looks bizarre and inhuman next to the realistic Freddy and Mary. When Don Newton took over as the main artist, he standardized Billy's look to match Mary and Freddy. Some non-DCU spin-off media (such as Batman: The Brave and the Bold) still use the Beck designs, even if the other characters are less cartoonish looking.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • The original Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) cast started standing out when the comic-only cast were introduced, many of which were taller, had more humanistic builds, and were more prone to having hair. Art Evolution made characters look even more out of place. It wasn't until around issue 160 or so that the character designs finally became consistent, firmly rooting themselves into designs following the style of the Sonic Adventure redesigns.
    • Nack, Bean, and Bark, whose designs are drawn in the "classic" style (i.e.: short and chubby) of the old games, look really out of place next to the modern designs of rest of the cast. This is because they never received any "modern" redesigns in the games due to never appearing in them, and the character designers never bothered updating the three themselves beyond giving them eye colors.
    • The SegaSonic design characters like Sonic, Tails, Amy, and Knuckles clash with the Canon Foreigner characters; most of the SatAM and Archie-original characters don't follow the design scheme of the Sega characters, the former due to being made in the 90's without Sega's input and the latter following the design conventions of SatAM, also without Sega's input. Thus we get characters with Furry Female Manesnote , more humanoid designs, fully dressed male characters and minimally dressed female characters. The Continuity Reboot redesigned several characters, most notably Sally and Antoine, to look more Sega-esque.
  • The SegaSonic characters in Sonic the Comic look almost nothing like everyone else. Fleetway original characters are usually drawn with more traditional humanoid proportions compared to the Sega ones.
  • The first X-Men/Star Trek crossover infamously used jarringly different arts styles for each set of characters. The crew of the Enterprise was portrayed rather realistically, with more muted colors, more shadowed faces, and so on. The X-Men got absurdly muscular or curvy proportions, proportionally larger eyes, brighter colors, and their clothing seemed to always have a metallic sheen on it.

    Comic Strips 
  • In Spy vs. Spy, only the two main characters are drawn with the well-recognizable pointy noses. Any disguises they wear have to include a mask for this reason (and the masks somehow fit right over their noses).
  • In Dick Tracy, Dick and the rest of the police are drawn fairly realistically — but his relatives B.O. Plenty and Gravel Gertie are like Popeye characters. The crooks that Dick pursues are also freakish, but they're supposed to be freakish-looking in-universe.
  • Played for Laughs in Beetle Bailey once when Beetle appears in what turns out to be a Dream Sequence looking like a character from a superhero comic. Another time, a bunch of characters from other comics appear briefly, drawn as in the originals.
  • In Priscilla's Pop, Hollyhock has a simple head and face design unlike the other humans.
  • Peanuts:
    • By the mid 1950s, the characters have became more detailed while Charlie Brown still has the simple design he had from the start. Later, the other characters got simpler designs and this was no longer the case.
    • Lucy was drawn with much more realistic eyes, however she got the Black Bead Eyes like everyone else later but with marks.
    • A few of the minor characters were drawn with a sclera as part of their eyes as opposed to beady eyes that most of the characters have. These include Joe Agate, Truffles and Maynard.
  • Tillie the Toiler: Mac is drawn rather cartoony compared to the semi-realistic style of the comic.

    Fan Works 
  • The RWBY Loops has a few unique twists in comparison to the more general loops setting. For one, all loopers on Remnant activate in pairs, which is eventually explained as a result of their unique soul anatomy; for another, an early intervention by a hacker led to three nominally villainous individuals looping, alongside a pet dog and two teachers, which circumvented the usual way loopers were activated and had a number of consequences.
  • PostMU: Life's a Scream! has the sorority known as Exceeda Zeta, and its members consist of Laura Sharp note , Dot Pressler note , Colette Creouture note , Katy McCrea note , and Monnie Monstre note . They each stand out quite significantly from the other sororities/fraternities at Monsters University in that their designs are more detailed, unique, and (ironically) humanoid.
    • Katy and Monnie stand out in particular as they seem to be the only monsters at MU who wear pants.
    • Dot is also different from the other blob-like monsters, seeing as how she has a more realistically slim body complete with curves.

    Films — Animation 
  • Aladdin: While everyone else is drawn with curves, Jafar is drawn with straight lines and is much thinner than the rest of the cast.
  • Alice in Wonderland: The White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the Cheshire Cat, and the other residents of Wonderland are cartoony, while the main character, Alice, her older sister, and Dinah the kitten are semi-realistic. This is most noticeable with Alice and the Mad Hatter. Justified as Wonderland is much wackier than the "real world" of the movie.
  • Atlantis: The Lost Empire:
    • Kidagakash, for some reason, despite being an Atlantean, actually looks more like a white woman with tanned skin and white hair. At the same time, the other Atlanteans (including her father, King Kashekhim Nedakh) have more ethnic designs. She is the only character in the film to have blue eyes, something no one else in the movie has. Her fingers have rounded tips, while the males have square-tipped fingers, the other females also have similarly-drawn fingers (Audrey has squared fingers because of her tomboyish nature. In contrast, Helga has claw-like fingers to fit her role as The Dragon).
    • Speaking of Helga, her animation is considerably much more fluid than the rest of the cast. This may be due to her supervising animator being from France.
  • The Bad Guys (2022): All human characters have round heads, and their limbs and bodies are proportional. By contrast, Cuddles, Professor Marmalade's human assistant, looks ultimately wrong. His body is large and brick-shaped, with long, thin limbs and a cylindrical head.
  • Beauty and the Beast (1991): LeFou, Maurice, and the human versions of the talking furniture are far toonier-looking than the rest of the human cast.
  • The Bohrok in BIONICLE: Mask of Light are more-or-less faithful representations of the original LEGO models, in a movie where every other character has been redesigned to look more organic and less like buildable action figures. They were actually the first characters to be designed for the movie and ended up having a mere cameo frozen in ice. The fire drones in the second movie, due to reusing the bodies of the Bohrok, stand out in the same fashion.
  • Cars:
    • All of the characters' eyes are drawn on their windshields. In Cars 2, a background sales car has, for some reason, her eyes on her headlights instead, thus looking like she wandered out of the set of A Car's Life: Sparky's Big Adventure. They probably made her look like that because she's selling headlights.
    • The Hero Lightning McQueen has a unique design compared to most other stock cars — specifically, his hood area is squished in a little, and the sides are raised up slightly, his spoiler is bigger with rounded edges and curves in at the center, and his back bumper is completely yellow instead of having a yellow double stripe (a tradition in NASCAR given to racers in their rookie seasons). This sets him apart from the others.
  • Coco:
    • All the residents of the Land of the Dead have crude skeleton appearances that look almost the same, but Ernesto de la Cruz looks very much like he did when he was alive. This is a clue to that he's not what he seems.
    • Héctor is the only skeleton with rusty yellow bones, barefoot, and wears rags. This shows he's being forgotten, and once he is remembered once again by the Riveras, his bones revert to white, he gains a pair of shoes, and his clothes are as good as new.
  • Disney Princess:
    • Rapunzel, unlike all the other Disney Princesses before her, is animated using CGI instead of cel animation, so she often looks very strange when they are all in a group. It also explained why she had to be redesigned when greenlighted into the franchise to blend in with the other princesses. The first few waves of Rapunzel merch that used 2D images tended to be...creepy◊, due to being paint-overs of the 3D models. It was self-evident in the group pictures, where the rest of the Princesses' big, anime-style eyes look tiny compared to Rapunzel's soulless dinner plates. However, Disney seemed to have realized this as her official redesign◊ fits in perfectly now. Unusually, Tangled was originally meant to look traditionally animated (such as with Paperman), so plenty of very early promotional images and especially concept art have her looking Disney Princess typical instead of the uncannier version early merchandise went with.
    • Cinderella and Snow White look somewhat less stylized than the later princesses. This is because Snow White was rotoscoped in her film, and Cinderella was drawn with a more realistic face than other princesses.
    • Aurora from Sleeping Beauty (1959) is the only Princess with an unnatural eye color. She has purple eyes.
  • The Anglerfish from Finding Nemo is the only realistically-drawn animal to appear in the entire film.
  • In Frozen (2013), Iduna and her daughters have slightly almond eyes and a slightly different skin tone than other characters. This is expanded upon in Frozen II with the reveal that Iduna is from a tribe of Fantasy Counterpart Culture Sami called the Northuldra.
  • Watch The Great Mouse Detective. Unlike ALL other "mice," Professor Ratigan has five fingers. This is justified because, in the film, at least, he is a rat.
  • In the 1939 Max Fleischer film Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver is drawn more realistically (thanks to Rotoscoping) than the more cartoony Lilliputians. Except the two love interests Lilliputians, Prince David and Princess Glory, who are also rotoscoped, wrecking the otherwise nicely stylistic contrast.
  • In Gummibär: The Yummy Gummy Search for Santa, the Gummy Bear looks out of place alongside his friends, Harry, Kala, and Vampiro.
  • How to Train Your Dragon:
    • Toothless's design is less cartoony than the other dragons. He was always meant to stand out characterwise by being of the rarest and most intelligent dragon species.
    • How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World: The Light Fury is noticeably more typically feminine than all the other female dragons shown so far. Part of it is due to being a species closely related to Night Furies.
  • Inside Out 2:
    • Bloofy and his assistant Pouchy are from an in-universe 2D preschool cartoon. Accordingly, he's a 2D character with a simple character design and limited animation. He is drawn on fours to sixes and not moving if he doesn't have to, contrasting with Pixar's characteristic detailed, high-quality 3D CG.
    • Lance Slashblade is from a Fighting Game Riley played. Accordingly, he is rendered with a relatively low polygon count and at a lower resolution than anyone around him (including Bloofy and Pouchy, who are just as HD as their surroundings), based on video games of the 7th or 8th generations, and with a character design inspired by that of Tetsuya Nomura. He also has to jump and walk animations mimicking those of lower-budget video games, going airborne instantaneously while jumping, and having a walk cycle that doesn't match his movement speed. He can only turn on right angles as if controlled via a D-pad.
  • The LEGO Movie:
    • Whilst most of the other main characters are your standard LEGO minifigs or human, Princess Uni-Kitty is a cat/unicorn made entirely out of bricks, with an Animesque face being printed on a brick.
    • Emmet and Benny have Black Bead Eyes reminiscent of the early generations of minifigs, while the other major characters have reflections in their eyes.
    • Metal Beard is built much more like a BIONICLE or Hero Factory figure than something from a traditional set.
    • Vitruvius is a minor offender here: Almost all non-licensed characters have yellow skin, and a few non-humans (e.g., the vampire) have non-human skin tones. Vitruvius owns the Magical Negro trope by having brown skin, which is rare on non-licensed minifigs. His staff wasn't an actual LEGO piece but rather a partially-eaten lollipop. His appearance in actual LEGO sets naturally averts that, giving him a staff made from a LEGO bar and jewel piece.
  • Leo: Most humans are designed with semi-realistic proportions, except the kindergarteners, who have giant, spherical heads with massive fish eyes on the sides of their heads and round teeth. It's lampshaded when a slideshow shows some of the older kids as they looked in kindergarten, immediately followed by how they look now.
    Principal Spahn: Isn't that something, how they've grown?
  • The Lion King (1994):
    • The song "I Just Can't Wait to be King" features weirdly colored animals, in contrast to the more-or-less realistic colors of the film. Though this may be considered an Art Shift typical of a Disney Acid Sequence.
    • The animals in the "Circle of Life" opening (and occasionally seen in the background) are all drawn realistically, despite the main and supporting cast being far more cartoony. This is best shown by comparing the meerkats from the beginning of the movie◊ to the far more cartoonish Timon◊. Timon is supposed to be a comic relief character so it's somewhat justified, though his family in the third film are also cartoony like him.
  • Madagascar:
    • Melman the giraffe looks more cartoonish-looking than the realistically-drawn giraffes that inhabit Africa in Escape 2 Africa.
    • Sonya, the bear from the third movie, looks far more realistic than the other cartoonish animals.
    • In Penguins of Madagascar, Dave is much more anthropomorphic than the other octopi.
  • In the Jetlag Productions movie Magic Gift of the Snowman, most of the characters have cute anime-esque designs except for the villain Charlatan, who has bulging bug eyes, wrinkled skin, a bony face, long crooked teeth, and claw-like hands.
  • In The Man from Button Willow, most of the characters look like they came from a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, save for the main character Justin Eagle who looks more realistic because he was rotoscoped.
  • Every character in Chuck Jones' Mowgli's Brothers has a very stylized look to them except for Tabaqui, the jackal who looks like a stoned quadrupedal Wile Coyote with sickly green colored fur.
  • From My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks, the humanized Diamond Dogs would look less out-of-place in a Gorillaz clip than in an Equestria Girls movie.
  • Nutcracker Fantasy: All of the characters are stop-motion puppets except for the Queen of Time, who is a live-action actor shown to be much bigger than the other characters and wears a mask over her eyes to make them look doll-like.
  • Peter Pan (1953):
    • Tiger Lily is drawn realistically as opposed to the more "Cleveland Indians"-looking Native Americans featured in the film.
    • Peter has Pointy Ears while the other humans don't.
  • Pinocchio (1940): The Blue Fairy is the only realistically-drawn character in the entire film because she was rotoscoped.
  • The title character of Pocahontas had her appearance based on her voice actress, Irene Bedard, and while the rest of her tribe are portrayed relatively closely to how they would have looked in real life, she sticks out like a sore thumb. Even among the Disney Princesses, she's stylistically different, drawn with smaller, realistically sized eyes and lankier limbs.
  • In The Princess and the Frog, while all of the other characters are drawn realistically and tend to be somewhat fleshy, Dr. Facilier is unusually tall and Noodle People thin.
  • In Ringing Bell, a cute, adorable little lamb becomes a monstrous ram that looks nothing like what he did as a kid or any other sheep in the movie. It's justified because of how he lived.
  • In The Secret Life of Pets 2, Daisy the Shih Tzu has a far more realistic appearance than all the other characters from the same movie.
  • Fiona's human form in Shrek stands out against other humans in the franchise. She is an Ink-Suit Actor of her voice actress, Cameron Diaz. Future humans (including her parents) are less hyper-realistic looking and more stylized.
  • Spider-Man: Spider-Verse:
    • Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: As befitting the multiverse concept, three of the alternate Spider-People are animated very differently from the other characters:
      • Spider-Man Noir has an entirely black-and-white color scheme that makes him look like he's in a dimly-lit street, even in bright daylight. Also, while every character is rendered at least partially with Ben-Day dots, they're evident on Noir.
      • Peni Parker is much more Animesque than the rest of the cast, right down to the large eyes and exaggerated expressions. She's even rendered in a pseudo-"2D" style, despite being in a CGI film.
      • Spider-Ham's uniqueness isn't just because he's a pignote ; he's rendered to look like he almost walked straight out of a Looney Tunes cartoon, right down to the "2D" look and bouncy animation. Notably, he's also treated as an animated character in-universe.
    • The sequel, Across the Spider-Verse, having many more Spider-People (and some others) from different universes than the last one, has plenty of characters who are uniquely animated:
      • Hobie Brown / Spider-Punk, fitting in with his punk anarchist nature, has an overall design making him look as though he's made of newspaper clippings that resemble both something from a punk rock album cover and something from an Underground comic book, which constantly shift both shape and color, like a living animated collage. He's also animated on threes rather than other Spider-People's ones or Miles's twos.
      • Ben Reilly / Scarlet Spider's design stands out by incorporating the drawing and inking style of Tom Lyle, one of the artists who worked on 90's comic book The Clone Saga, as well as the artist responsible for his iconic blue hoodie and red spandex outfit.
      • The LEGO Spider-Man (and his entire universe) are done in CGI animated to resemble stop motion, just like The LEGO Movie.
      • Spider-Man from the 1967 cartoon is drawn in 2D and is complete with Limited Animation, fitting for a character from a cheap 1960s television cartoon.
      • Insomniac Spider-Man is realistically shaded and textured, and animated on ones rather than twos, to match the look of the games he comes from.
      • Peter Parker from The Spectacular Spider-Man animated show has a much bigger and more angular head and flatter feet compared to other characters, given that he's from a show from completely different art style.
      • Non-Spider-Person example: The Spot, in the beginning of the film, is a blank, featureless humanoid with inky black spots all over his body. Looking closer at his design you can see he's literally a blank character design, as you can clearly see thin sketch lines on his body. His spots he creates are also comparable to ink blots spilled on a page. Later in the film, when he powers up and becomes a Transhuman Abomination, that inkiness spreads all over his body, making him look like a living black scribble.
      • Another villainous example: The alternate-universe Vulture who Gwen, Miguel, and Jess fight in the beginning of the film is animated to resemble a Leonardo Da Vinci sketch brought to life, including only being coloured in shades of brown. Gwen even asks if he's made of parchment.
  • In The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, all of the CGI models of the characters in their superhero forms look like their cartoon counterparts... except for Sandy Cheeks, who looks like an actual squirrel.
  • In Teen Titans Go! See Space Jam, the Nerdlucks have far more detailed and complex designs than the Titans.
  • The Fairy Prince's pet bumblebee, Buzzby from Thumbelina is for some reason drawn very realistically compared to the otherwise cartoonish-looking animals that appear in the film. The human and fairy characters are also drawn differently from all of the animal characters (aside from the aforementioned Buzzby).
  • Up: Dug's design is a little more cutesy and more consistent with the other cartoony-looking characters than the rest of the more photorealistic-looking dogs, especially in the eyes. This is used to easily distinguish Dug as a good dog from the rest of the Mook canines the Big Bad uses.
  • King Candy from Wreck-It Ralph looks more Disney-esque and cartoony (a la Ralph and Fix-It Felix Jr.) compared to the Super-Deformed and Animesque characters of Sugar Rush. This is actually Foreshadowing that King Candy isn't who he says he is. Also happens all through the movie, whenever characters from different video games appear next to each other. The scenes between the cartoony Fix-It Felix Jr. and the more realistically designed Sgt. Calhoun are probably the most notable.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Unusually for a highbrow live-action film, Akira Kurosawa's Ran includes two characters (Lord Ichimonji Hidetora and Lady Kaede) who are set apart by their Noh-inspired costume and makeup.
  • The villains in the French film Immortel are realistic CGI — all other characters are played by live actors.
  • Pacific Rim:
    • Most of the Jaegers are somewhat humanoid, except Crimson Typhoon — who has three arms and digitigrade legs — and Cherno Alpha — who has something that looks like a nuclear cooling tower in place of a standard head.
    • In regards to the Kaiju, Onibaba sticks out like a sore thumb due to its crustacean body and four, centaurian legs as opposed to the bipedal, semi-reptilian Kaiju in the film.
  • A portion of the robots introduced in Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen seemed to have been experiments in out-there character design (specifically Demolishor/Scavenger, the Arcee triplets and Rampage, none of whom had real legs, though the Rampage toy could also turn into a centaur), especially since the later films went back to more traditional-looking and often exceedingly humanlike robot bodies.
  • Most of the title creatures in Gremlins have the same basic appearance but with different markings, skin coloring, and eye colors, but George, Lenny, and Daffy from Gremlins 2: The New Batch look much more cartoonish compared to the others with George being very fat and having big lips, Lenny being tall and skinny with prominent buck teeth and a dopey expression, and Daffy having googly eyes, a beak-like mouth, and three yellow hairs on his head.
  • Zilla is the only kaiju in Godzilla: Final Wars to be portrayed entirely by CGI. Every other monster in the film is portrayed using practical effects. This was a nod to how Godzilla (1998) heavily relied on digital effects to depict Godzilla.
  • In Team America: World Police, Trey Parker and Matt Stone intentionally made Kim Jong-il shorter and fatter than the other puppets, with more exaggerated facial features with his jagged teeth and sagging cheeks.
  • In The Howling, the werewolves have scraggly fur, long muzzles, long pointed ears, and long clawed hands. However, when Karen White becomes a werewolf at the end, she looks like a female Wookie from Star Wars. This is because Dee Wallace requested to have her werewolf form be beautiful and feminine.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2020): Longclaw has a less stylized, more proportionate design compared to other anthropomorphic animals in the film series (who are as stubby as ever), resembling a human-sized talking owl in native garb. She would have stood out less in the film's original version, where Sonic had a more realistic design. Still, when he was redesigned to avoid the Unintentional Uncanny Valley, Longclaw went unchanged.
  • Most of the Whos from How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) have exaggerated, somewhat grotesque, animalistic appearances, except Martha May Whovier and Cindy Lou Who, who look normal.

    Literature 
  • The title character of Clifford the Big Red Dog, in both the books and the two cartoon adaptations, is the only character in the series with visible sclerae. Averted in the 2021 movie.
  • In the Franklin books, most bird characters, such as Goose and Mr. Owl, are anthropomorphic, complete with Feather Fingers. The only exception is Hawk, who is a realistically-drawn red-tailed hawk.
  • For some reason, the eponymous character of The Little Engine That Could has her face drawn on her funnel instead of the smokebox, unlike all the other locomotives in the book. Averted in the film adaptation, however, where the "Shiny New Engine"'s face is drawn on his cockpit, the "Broken Down Engine"'s and the "Big Strong Engine"'s faces are both drawn on their smokeboxes, and the "Rusty Old Engine"'s face is also drawn on his funnel.
  • In Magical Girl Raising Project, Snow White is the most traditionally Magical Girl-looking out of the magical girls. This is because she's a magical girl fangirl who aspires to be the best magical girl possible.
  • Mr. Messy from the Mr. Men series has no outline; he's just a bunch of scribbles with eyes and a mouth. Also, Mr. Sneeze has visible irises as opposed to the Black Bead Eyes every other character has. This could be a case of Early-Installment Weirdness, as his book was only the fifth in the series.
  • The art style of Precious Moments figurines and other media uses large heads, rounded faces, and teardrop-shaped Puppy-Dog Eyes, on both adults and children. In the Precious Moments Storybook Bible, the only two humans not depicted this way are adult Moses and adult Jesus, who are drawn much more realistically.
  • In Rainbow Magic, Flora the Fancy Dress Fairy has green and blue hair, making her the only fairy with a naturally occuring unnatural hair colour (some other fairies, such as Frankie and Layla, have unnatural hair colours, but their hair is dyed).
  • Tatu and Patu: Veera has green almond-shaped eyes, while every other character has black-and-white Sphere Eyes.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer generally focused on the vampires who were humans with a reptilian true face, but would also spend a bit more effort to make full-body suits for really crazy designs. On a few occasions, they would blend the styles that resulted in just odd-looking for the usual standards of the show, like the Loan Shark, who had a literal shark head with flippers for hands but dressed in a regular suit.
  • LazyTown: Ziggy looks much cartoonier than other puppets. On the other hand, they have rather bulgy eyes and more realistic proportions. Ziggy has small, beady eyes and a bigger head than the rest.
  • Power Rangers and Super Sentai sometimes have non-standard designs within their own sub-franchise, but due to the Frankenslation of the two may mix designs between different series.
    • Due to trying to make them unique and special, the Sixth Ranger of any given series will have some additions not present on the original team. The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers Green Ranger, the Trope Namer, had a golden chest armor. It's the same with the White Ranger in season two and the Gold Ranger in Power Rangers Zeo. The Phantom Ranger in Power Rangers Turbo took a side character from the Sentai with an interesting heavily armored design and elevated them to be the sixth ranger, contrasting the normal spandex uniforms of the main team. Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue created the Titanium Ranger when the original Sentai opted out of that trope for that series, and the design didn't match the original team.
    • Lord Zedd had no hint of the "single-eye" designs that were the trademark of the Dairanger monsters he used.
    • Furio from Power Rangers Lost Galaxy was an unadapted Denji Sentai Megaranger villain (specifically was recycled from the One-Winged Angel form of the Big Bad Dr. Hinelar), he doesn't match either the insectoid motif that the other American-original villains of the season had, or the four disparate groupings of the Gingaman-based villains.
    • The most notable example of this was Sledge, whose rough, green-and-grey design contrasts with the much more colorful Kyoryuger-based villains.
    • Scrozzle's design leans less towards the monsters of Go-Busters and moreso towards that of Go-Onger/RPM, more specifically his human-like face and hodge-podge armor. And since Scrozzle's master turns out to be RPM's villain reborn, this is a bit of foreshadowing.
  • In Star Trek the Starfleet ship designs hold to a fairly consistent pattern, specifically a saucer section, usually a secondary hull, with either two or four warp nacelles supported by pylons elevated away from the ship. A few ship designs ended up skewing away from this for one reason or another (several background ships across the franchise do break this pattern, if only to show greater fleet variety, but rarely placed in the foreground).
    • The Grand Finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation showed a future Enterprise with a third nacelle planted into the middle of the stardrive section. Being a quick modification to an existing model in a one-off episode, little was really said about it. In addition, other cosmetic additions were made to the saucer section (a long underslung phaser weapon and what looks like sensor pylons near the bridge) that took away the traditional clean saucer design.
    • The Defiant of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was said to be a unique design In-Universe. There is only a hint of a saucer, but it has very small nacelles seemingly clamped to the main ship rather than protruding away. The concept was that of a cheaply produced warship with a minimal profile, making it harder to hit in battle. The class had a lot of potential but violated some Starfleet safety standards to be operational.
    • The Discovery of Star Trek: Discovery has an overly large secondary hull and cut-out sections of the saucer. The nacelles are also bolted directly to the secondary hull rather than having separate pylons.
  • Ultra Series: A few monsters/Ultras have designs very far removed from most things in the franchise aesthetically speaking.
    • Ultraseven: Alien Wild is the only alien or monster in the series, which is depicted with a full-body suit that doesn't cover the actor's face. Seven himself has an inversion of what would become the traditional color scheme, being red with silver accents, and lacks the Color Timer, instead having the Beam Lamp on his forehead flash when running out of time.
    • Ultraman Leo:Ultraman King is the only good-aligned Ultra with red eyes.
    • Ultraman: Towards the Future: Ultraman Great is the sole Ultra whose suit is made of spandex instead of rubber, creating some rather obvious folds and creases when he moves. The white parts of his suit are much brighter than his comrades, a trait that shows up in all his future appearances (even during cameos).
    • Ultraman: The Ultimate Hero: Ultraman Powered has blue eyes, which changes colour as he transforms.
    • Ultraman: The Next: As the first installment of Project N works meant to reboot the franchise from scratch, its titular Ultraman (sometimes called The Next) has a very, very different design to past Ultras, looking much more organic and with many vessel-like red lines on his body.
    • Ultraman Nexus: As the evolved form of The Next, Nexus maintains a very distinct design from past Ultras, having no real resemblance to any beyond the original one. Kuutura, Lord of the Dead, resembles little the usual fare of Ultra Series Kaiju even more than any other Space Beast, looking like a swelling mass of flesh with screaming faces that wouldn't be out of place in a David Cronenberg film.
    • Ultraman Ginga: Ultraman Victory is one of the few Ultras with a non-circular Color Timer, instead having a V-shaped one.
    • Ultraman X: X has an X-shaped Color Timer instead of the usual circular one. He also has many cybernetic parts on his body, which no other Ultra has.
    • Ultraman Geed: Geed has curved triangles for eyes, and his Color Timer is shaped like the Ultra Capsules he frequently uses during his transformations.
    • Ultraman Taiga: Ultraman Titas differs from most Ultras by having a muscular body instead of a slim one like other Ultras, as well as having silver shoulder pads, gloves, and boots with red/black coloration unlike the rest of the U40 Ultras, this is due to him being the son of 2 members of the Heller Army who was sent to U40 to have a good life.
    • Ultraman Z: Ultraman Z is the only Ultra with crystal-like textures on his eyes. Like Victory and X he also has a non-circular color timer instead having a Z letter.
  • VR Troopers has this in spades, thanks to taking three different shows from the Metal Heroes franchise and stitching them together. None of the three Troopers have any unifying elements (or appear onscreen together outside bits of US-exclusive footage); the same thing goes for Grimlord's various henchmen (especially since in the first season, he's got about four different categories of underlings who congregate in his dungeon).

    Manhua 
  • In Cyber Weapon Z, all the fighters in the Shaolin temple wear the same garments, except Rosaland. It may be because she's not officially part of the program. Another case is Bu-Kang who fills in for the role of the Plucky Comic Relief and is earmarked that way by looking like Krillin.

    Music Videos 
  • CrazyCod: The King from "Keep Your Head Up, King" is shown as a wriggly blobbish shape, compared to other shapes being standard and very plain, to show he's unique.
  • The video for "Be Faithful" by Fatman Scoop mostly features characters who are floating heads with detached hands and feet. However, the stripper is the only one with a torso or limbs.
  • Cherry, lead singer of the animated band Studio Killers is CG animated, while the rest of the band and other characters are all 2D.

    Puppet Shows 
  • The Muppet Show: The Swedish Chef and Dr. Teeth are the only Muppet characters with human hands since they're required to pick up and manipulate objects and convincingly play the piano, respectively.
  • The characters of Potter Puppet Pals are naturally hand puppets. Except for Neville, who's a butternut squash (not a potato, learn your vegetables) on a stick, and Cedric Diggory, who is a face drawn on a foot.

    Tabletop Games 
  • BattleTech:
    • It had a hefty dose of this due to Early-Installment Weirdness. About two dozen of the game's earliest BattleMech designs were licensed from Japanese studios (such as Robotech), whose thin and generally more graceful lines stood in stark contrast with the boxy, Walking Tank-style American original designs. The difference became magnified as the game adopted the chunky American aesthetic entirely. However, a legal fustercluck caused the designs to be dropped for almost a decade before being redesigned; they still look gangly, but not to the hilarious degree of the original designs.
    • There's also the very unusual Solaris: The Game World designs. They don't have the straightforward and functional war-machine look of most Battlemech designs, being more heavily decorated, detailed, stylized, and sometimes a bit bulbous. The reason for this is that, in a strange twist of fate, some of these designs are Studio Nue redraws of Battlemechs—many of which are designs based on Studio Nue's own Super Dimension Fortress Macross series! This leads to the somewhat surreal situation where the Battletech Colossus is the Japanese art for the Battletech Marauder because the Battletech Marauder artwork was originally a Zentradi Officer Pod in Japan.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • Due to the general shift of Daemon Engines having a more organic look (to emphasize their living nature), the Defiler now looks very out of place when compared to its brethren (due to its very boxy and mechanical design) as it was designed before the aesthetic was set. For a long while, it was also the only example of a Daemon Engine, so this only became a problem when the newer codex introduced no less than 3 new Daemon Engines (and later, they were joined by the Lord of Skulls Apocalypse unit).
    • As it was one of the first titans ever produced, the Lucius Pattern Warhound suffers from a similar problem as the Defiler; namely, it was boxy and much more mechanical looking than the more rounded, dog-headed Mars Pattern Warhound. Functionally, the two are identical, but the aesthetic set by the Mars Pattern Warhound would later influence the design of the Reaver Titan and the (much smaller) Imperial Knight Titans. While a Lucius Pattern Reaver was produced, it was an epic scale (a 40k scale one was never made), and thus, the Lucius pattern remains the odd one out in the imperial lineup of Titans. This is made all the more evident as the Lucius Warhound is much more easily scratch-built than any others (due to its blocky nature), so most people will more likely own one than the Mars pattern variants.
    • While the Leagues of Votann tend towards a very clean and practical aesthetic mixed with Industrialized Evil, their resident psychic, the Grimnir, instead veers heavily towards Wizard Classic.

    Toys 
  • LEGO:
    • Tim from LEGO Time Cruisers and the Indians from the old Wild West sets are some of the few original LEGO Minifig characters to have noses.
    • Certain characters in licensed LEGO Themes, such as the casts of SpongeBob SquarePants, The Simpsons, and the alien characters in Star Wars, have uniquely molded headpieces, which at times look odd on the standard Minifigure bodies and alongside other, typically designed minifig characters. Certain characters, such as Scooby-Doo, Gollum, and the Angry Birds, have such nonhuman bodies that the standard minifigure template won't do for them, and as such have unique molds with prints that make it almost look like they hopped straight out of whatever film or show they came from.
  • BIONICLE:
    • The original Pohatu figure was the only one with an inverted torso, so he had a kicking action, whereas the other Toa swung their arms. This carries over to his first Nuva form. He was also the first Bionicle with an accessory, a Systems rock that acted as a soccer ball.
    • Besides the playsets, Tarakava is the only Bionicle set to use System bricks extensively in their brick-built midsection.
    • Whereas most Bionicle beings have tribal-looking masks, robotic faces, or animalistic heads, the Piraka have organic faces made of rubber and bear big, toothy, cartoony grins. The Toa Inika stand out in the same fashion, having rubber masks and actual mouth openings, sans Matoro and Kongunote . In-Universe, this is due to the unique transformation of the Inika by the Red Star turning their masks into organic ones.
    • The Voya Nui Resistance Team, being a squad of deformed Matoran, each has at least one oddity in their design, such as Velika's uniquely built arms or Dalu's larger limb pieces. Still, none stand out like Kazi, who uses a forearm piece for his body, while the other five all have foot pieces for theirs, giving them significant hunches. He also lacks the usual headpiece; his mask is mounted on a piece typically used for hands, and his legs are different pieces that lack hip articulation.
    • The titan set Axonn had an unmodified canister set body and individual fingers made from Matoran limbs. His short body, which looked like a Toa with more ornate armor, cartoonishly huge feet, and equally significant Four-Fingered Hands stood out among other titan characters, which were taller and more evenly proportioned.
    • The Barraki sets were the first wave of canister sets without a uniform build, but Ehlek, Pridak, and Takadox stood out for their slim bodies that used no specific torso piece. Pridak in particular is the only canister set with waist articulation.
    • Several of the titans from the 2007 line:
      • Gadunka and Maxilos had custom-designed bodies. Maxilos, being a fully robotic character in a world of Biomechanical Lifeforms, had a hollow body with more articulation than most sets, and Gadunka, being an enlarged Rahi, had a huge head on a squat body made from three Toa torso pieces and a Matoran body piece arranged triangularly.
      • While not as many, Hydraxon has individual fingers similar to Axonn, this time made from a minifig arm piece common in the playsets and "LEGO Exo-Force" and the small claw/tooth piece as the fingernails.
      • Lesovikk is the only Toa to use the light-up Piraka eye/brain piece instead of the usual Toa piece.
    • Ironically, Mata Nui himself, the character whose biology the franchise title alludes to, stands apart from other characters with his large, flat, filled-in, rectangular surfaces resembling a classic gray retro-style robot (a la a blockier The Iron Giant), very unlike the often oddly proportioned, lean, colorful, detail-heavy ("greebly") cyborg designs the franchise became known for. It makes sense as Mata Nui's original body was not made into a toy and therefore did not need to look compatible with LEGO pieces. However, he would not seem too out of place among the post-2011 LEGO action figure sets that introduced bulkier, flatter armor surfaces and more robust limbs.
    • Whereas most of the sets from the reboot represent a natural progression of the standard action figure template, the Lord of Skull Spiders is instead a throwback to the franchise's Technic origins: it's built entirely around a play gimmick and has next to no proper articulation. It also has a printed-on face instead of a sculpt or a build, making it look more cartoonish than any other figure.
  • Mr. Game & Watch's amiibo is two-dimensional (accurately reflecting the character) and, more unusually, has several poses that can be swapped out.
  • Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls:
    • Milky Way and her little sister are the only characters with stars in their eyes.
    • Mars is portrayed as an alien instead of being human.
  • Transformers:
    • Transformers: Generation 1
      • The original line was cobbled together from multiple unrelated lines. Ironhide and Ratchet's toys were originally more of mobile bases and, therefore, didn't have heads, infamously receiving heavy redesigns to make them look anything like the other characters. Optimus Prime was a Mini-Mecha, and the toy had a slot to include a small human pilot. Megatron, Soundwave, and other Decepticons were toys designed to look like real-world human items, which required them to Sizeshift to match the size of the truck and jet robots next to them. Bumblebee and the other Autobot Mini-Cars transformed into small, out-of-scale vehicles with Super-Deformed proportions. But no amount of redesigning could make Sky Lynx, which has two separate bodies, neither of which have humanoid forms (a space shuttle and its platform that turn into a bird-thing and a lynx), which can combine into a single robot that looks vaguely like a four-legged dragon, look normal. Even odder, he's not a combiner - he has two bodies that share a mind. Explanations for why he's like this are generally along the lines of "Sky Lynx is weird."
      • The Autobot Mini-Cassettes Grand Slam and Raindance. There have been Transformers that look more robotic than others, and some whose robot modes are animals instead of humanoids, but how many Transformers do you know whose "true" forms are vehicles? And they're not non-sentient drones, either — they have personalities like any other Transformer!
    • Some toys are designed for one line but end up being held back for production or timing reasons and, in worst-case situations, are being paired entirely with a separate line. The Supreme Class Optimus Primal toy was made for Beast Machines (and was the design model used for the show, two smaller toys were released that looked less and less like he was on the show) but ended up being released for the Transformers: Robots in Disguise line, where he was not in the show. There were no other heroic animal-form characters in the toyline.
  • Kaya from the American Girls Collection was a departure from the doll line's trademark toothy smile out of respect for the Nez Perce tribe she belonged to, though her face mold is no longer exclusive to just her with the introduction of Logan Everett, American Girl's first and so far only boy doll.note 
  • Gogo's Crazy Bones: While most Gogos have a front and a back, GoodyBaddy is a double-sided Gogo with faces on both his front and back. Due to this design, GoodyBaddy also lacks the Magic Box stamp that every other Gogo has to ensure they aren't a bootleg, which might confuse some people into thinking the real GoodyBaddy figure is a bootleg.
  • Squishmallows: Jingles the Cat's tail has stuffing inside, curves around to their front, and is sewn on as to be unmovable. All other cats have unstuffed shorter tails only sewn onto the plush toy in the back.

    Web Animation 
  • In The Legend of Zelda: The Light of Courage, Ganon has a very decent, almost professional-level model, which makes the blatant Stylistic Suck of every other character stand out even more than they already do.
  • Parodied in Battle for Circle, where everyone is named Circle and is shaped like circles... except Circle with a Mole, who has a mole on his face (and later eyebrows).
  • The title character of Blockhead is rather simplistic and cartoonish, while all other characters are drawn in a comparatively more realistic style.
  • Homestar Runner:
    • Crack Stuntman is the only character to exist in the "real world" of the main characters who look normal. He is also drawn in the style of the cartoon he voice acts for rather than the style of the main characters.
    • In an April Fools' Day cartoon, all the characters are replaced by "revamped for the '90s" versions of themselves with black outlines and exaggerated jagged edges, except Homsar who doesn't change. The final scene shows all the characters together, with Homsar clashing with the rest.
    • In Teen Girl Squad Issue #11, So-And-So's manager at the Shirt Folding Store has her hair, eyes, mouth, and feet taken from clipped-out magazine pictures of a real-life person (Mary-Kate Olsen, to be precise).
  • The Whites, in comparison to the Proles, in Lucky Day Forever. This trope is used to show that the Whites are entirely inhuman.
  • Happy Tree Friends:
    • Lumpy is taller than the rest and is one of the few characters to lack a heart-shaped nose. In addition, his hands don't turn mitten-esque like the other animals, and he has simple Black Dot Pupils rather than the traditional Pie-Eyed pupils. Furthermore, his popsicle stick head and bulbous nose stick out amongst the rounded, oval-esque faces of the other characters.
    • Sniffles, to a lesser extent. While he has the large oval head, Pie-Eyed pupils, and short stature of most characters, he also lacks the standard heart nose and buck teeth. Instead, he has a trunk-like snout with his mouth at the tip.
  • The countries in Polandball usually take the form of spheres with their nation's flag emblazoned. However, several of them break this mold. Poland itself has its flag upside-down (a reference to the attempts on Drawball to flip the flag upside down), Israel is a tesseract rather than a sphere (because of Jewish Physics), Nepal is the actual flag with teeth added, Singapore is a triangle, and Kazakhstan and the Reichtangle are rectangles.
  • In Mario Brothers, all character sprites are from the original Super Mario Bros except for the Toads, whose sprites are from Super Mario Bros. 2 and have a slightly different art style (most notably, being outlined in blue while no other sprites have outlines). This is likely due to Toad's only sprite in the original game not lending itself well to all the action required by the Toads in this series.
  • All the Doctors in the mashed spoof Time Traveller Boyfriend are drawn in a cute Moe style except for the Fourth, who is drawn as a Gonk. His dialogue is all in capital letters as well.
  • Most characters in Senpai Club are drawn in a cute, animesque style. The aforementioned "senpai" are drawn in a much more simplistic style with sharp angles but are still treated as drop dead gorgeous.
  • In The Grossery Gang 2017 Christmas episode, the guest character PukieHurlC, being a parody of YouTube toy reviewer CookieSwirlC's logo, has eyes with green sclera, large black pupils, and white highlights, instead of the standard Grossery white sclera with a black pupil dot for an eye. She also has six eyelashes per eye, rather than three like the other female Grosseries.
  • SMG4:
    • While everyone else's is either an edited Super Mario 64 character model or ragdolls that are contorted and positioned to look as ridiculous as possible, Meggy and other Inklings are animated using Henry's Animation Tool, resulting in unusually smooth, flowing animation compared to the rest of the cast.
    • The Genesis Arc introduces SMG1, SMG2 and SMG0. The former two look like an amalgamation of shapes akin to Super Paper Mario rather than something recognisable or humanoid like other original characters, and the latter’s model is far, FAR more detailed, gory and realistic than the cartoonish designs of the rest of the cast. All three of these are justified, as they all hailed from alternate universes.
  • Meta Runner contains Theo, who is more cartoonish in design than the rest of the cast, who look more realistically animated. Justified as he is from a Video Game.
  • Dreamscape: While it follows the same template as all the other human characters, there are a few differences in Melinda's design compared to others. Her chin and nose are vastly different, and her limbs are much skinnier.
  • Rooster Teeth Animated Adventures: Everyone has simple dots for eyes except for Geoff◊, who has significantly larger eyes with visible lids and pupils. This is apparently because his model was created early on and never "fixed" to match the others for consistency.
  • In Chikn Nuggit all of the main characters are animals designed in chibi-esque style. So when Bezel is introduced, he immediately stands out, being a tall humanoid in a purple and cyan suit with a clock for a head. His appearance gets lampshaded a few times by Fwench Fwy, who complains about them not picking a more fitting form to blend in as they did.

    Webcomics 
  • Cursed Princess Club: Princess Gwendolyn is drawn differently from all of her siblings, who resemble pretty anime girls (even her brother Jamie). By contrast, Gwen's irises are much smaller, and her rigid-looking face is drawn with more lines, which reflects the fact that her appearance is often described as that of a witch. She looks like she's from a different story genre than her family. This gets lampshaded in-story when the club members see a portrait of Gwen with her family (where she had been drawn to look even more frightening and out-of-place than usual) and wonder why she looks nothing like the rest of them.
  • The fortune teller from Blue Moon Blossom stands out for being based on a Blob Monster rather than any real-world animals/animal groups (even stylized ones), being colored with a grainy violet-blue-green gradient instead of a single flat color, and having a star pattern apparently right on their body, assuming that isn't supposed to be clothing- the art style is so minimalist it's hard to tell.
  • In Experimental Comic Kotone, the author had difficulty drawing a convincing middle-aged father... so he based Laika's dad on a character from The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy, making him stand out next everyone else, who are drawn in a simplified Moe style.
  • In Fite!, Mutali was originally designed to look very out-of-place compared to the rest of the characters, but the author changed his mind and switched to a character design in a style more like the others. Original, final.
  • Gharsena, the Big Bad of Garanos, is the only character drawn without any light reflections in her eyes.
  • In Overcompensating, Andrew Hussie is portrayed in a pixelated style with animated fidgeting reminiscent of the art for his webcomic MS Paint Adventures.
  • General Protection Fault has most of its characters given simple designs. Some secondary characters, however, look vastly more realistic. It can be quite jarring to see two characters like Trudy (Blank White Eyes, No Mouth, generally cartoony design) and Dr. Not (a far more detailed and human-looking woman) side by side, especially since both are meant to be attractive women. Compare and contrast.
  • Brawl in the Family typically uses a simple cartoon style, but it's fond of characters suddenly becoming hyperdetailed for a gag, such as Dedede's father being a photorealistic penguin. The Grand Finale Story Arc Meet Me at Final Destination features characters suddenly and noticeably (including in universe) changing appearance briefly.
  • The ninjas recently introduced into The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! have been revealed to be pretty detailed manga-style characters beneath their masks, in contrast to the western toony style of everyone else in the comic.
  • The Humanoid Steelswarm except Roach takes on a hyper-realistic look in comic #46 of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Game Gusto Fan Comic.
  • Homestuck:
    • Andrew Hussie's Author Avatar is the only character who is drawn with a "guardian"-esque base yet has visible eyes (which are completely white despite white eyes usually meaning the character is dead, the avatar does die but that's not until much later in the story) and lacks an outline. He is also drawn with orange-ish skin, whereas every other human who isn't a celebrity or part of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff is drawn blank white.
    • Dad Egbert is the only character shown with a nose in the "default" art style; even the other Guardians are drawn without noses, but they do have other visible facial features. The same applies for his counterpart across the Scratch, Dad Crocker.
  • Not all countries of Polandball are balls:
    • The US is often drawn as a large blob - due to the "Americans are fat" stereotype.
    • Kazakhstan is a brick - due to an old Polandball in-joke.
    • Israel is a hypercube - due to Jewish physics.
      • The Russian Jewish Autonomous Oblast is also often drawn as one. Despite barely any Jews living there nowadays.
    • Bermuda and Singapore are triangles - due to having triangles associated with them.
    • Chile is a rectangular snake - due to the shape of the country
    • Venice (both the city and historical republic) is an octopus - due to the unique shape of its flag
    • Countries/states with triangular gaps in their flags (such as Nepal and Ohio) have teeth-filled mouths and are known as "Saurs" or "Rawrs" - Again due to how their flags are shaped.
    • There are also non-countryball characters such as the Reichtanglenote  and the Omsk Birdnote  which also doesn't follow the standard ball formula.
  • In Something*Positive, Kestrel, who was originally the main character of Queen of Wands, retains her green eyes, even though other S*P characters have no visible irises.
  • Roommates has one character, who the fans dubbed the Scribble Person because (s)he looks like an ever-changing collection of scribbles/words in a vaguely humanoid shape. (S)he is the Story.
  • The Story of Anima has Pocket and the bandit leader, who have long snouts and digitigrade legs in contrast to the shorter-muzzled, more humanoid Beastkin.
  • Taito from Consolers sticks out a bit compared to the rest of the cast with her Black Bead Eyes and yellow Blush Stickers.
  • In Stand Still, Stay Silent, the manifestation of a dead Christian priest encountered in a world where Christianity has fallen out of practice is drawn more realistically than any other character. The difference can be seen on this page.
  • You could try to list examples from Tower of God, mainly characters who are drawn more sketchily and less realistically than most... but the list would get too long. Eventually, you'd realise there's no single "normal" style in this comic, and even many of the relatively normal-looking characters are drawn in subtly different styles from each other.
  • In the earliest Redac stories, the simplistic art style lacked visible ears and noses. As a result, characters like Grandpa (who got huge ears) or Il and Myself (who got different kinds of Gag Noses) stood out.
  • Katamari: While all of the members of the Royal Family have Black Bead Eyes, Opeo's eyes are vertical and are thinner than the rest of his cousins, who have rounder, wider and thicker eyes.
  • Yumi's Cells: The cells in a person's brain are typically chibis on the plump side, but Daeyong's cells are realistically proportioned and muscular. Soonrok's cells are primarily normal except for his Naughty Cell and Tongue Cell, which are like Daeyong's.
  • Schlock Mercenary has three humans (in a multi-species cast) with non-standard designsnote :
    • While most humans have the usual skin colors, Ceeta has purple skin. She's a member of a new sub-group and her skin allows for photosynthesis.
    • Karl and Kaff Tagon have eyes that appear joined together over their respective noses, versus the standard distinct eyes that everyone else has.

    Web Videos 
  • BUTCHY KID VIDEOS: Most of the monsters are portrayed by people in costumes, but the "giant spiders" seen in a few videos are Halloween props on strings.
  • Greenskull AI: The "LEGO Insanity" video mostly stars standard LEGO minifigures. But the end features some rock ghost that looks nothing like a LEGO product.
  • Party Crashers:
  • In seasons 1-3 of Within Lapenko, most of the characters with speaking lines are played by Anton Lapenko, an actor with a moustache that he seldom conceals, not even to play female characters. In this show, two characters stand out in appearance: Natella Strelnikova (the moustache is hidden as a reference to Cesar Romero) and the false lady (the only character with speaking lines played by a woman).

 
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Video Example(s):

Invasion of the Bunny Snatcher

The Looney Tunes are disappearing and being replaced by pale stereotypically poorly-animated automatons without any of the wit or anarchy that made them so beloved in the first place. This was completely intentional on the filmmakers' part.

Example of:
Stylistic Suck

Gloomius Maximus

Mr (Ant) Tenna'...

Meito Anisawa

Fancy Pants

Ryoma Hoshi

Gwimbly

Spider-Punk

Mineta's Charac...

Lord of Lightning

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Invasion of the Bunny Snatcher

The Looney Tunes are disappearing and being replaced by pale stereotypically poorly-animated automatons without any of the wit or anarchy that made them so beloved in the first place. This was completely intentional on the filmmakers' part.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (35 votes)

Example of:

Main / StylisticSuck

Media sources:

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Invasion of the...

Gloomius Maximus

Mr (Ant) Tenna'...

Meito Anisawa

Fancy Pants

Ryoma Hoshi

Gwimbly

Spider-Punk

Mineta's Charac...

Lord of Lightning