Remember: they consider it rude to change the channel mid-sentence.
Clockwise from top left: a Securitron, Dr. Harley Sawyer, Lord Canti, and Karen.
Clockwise from top left: a Securitron, Dr. Harley Sawyer, Lord Canti, and Karen.
Retro: Hee hee, that thing around your eye makes you look like a panda bear!
Pandy: That retro TV on your head makes you look like an asshole.
An automaton, robot or droid with a television set for a head.
Say the technology for synthetic skin has not yet been perfected and you want to avoid the Uncanny Valley. Maybe you don't have much but some spare parts, dwindling funds and a TV at your disposal. Maybe it just looks cool. For whatever reason, this is a robot or other sentient being with a monitor onto which they project images or outright words that are often snarky responses to people interacting with them. Even in modern works it's almost always a CRT screen of some kind or another, unsurprisingly it's commonly found in Cassette Futurism or otherwise inconsistent settings.
Not to be confused with a sentient AI or a talking computer. This strictly applies to walking automatons.
Often speaks through a variant of Talking with Signs. Compare/contrast Surveillance Drone and The Blank. See also Screens Are Cameras, if they possess the television face, but no discernible sensory equipment with which to actually see. Characters with monitors for heads but otherwise aren't really considered "robotic" fall under Non-Human Head, although the two tropes are often blurred and it's not uncommon for media to leave it unclear which trope a character falls under.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Lord Canti of FLCL has an old-fashioned portable TV set for a head, with a grille serving as his "mouth" that he tries to eat curry with at one point. Kamon even calls him "TV Boy" and tries to pass him off as a walking TV to Ninamori.
Asian Animation
- Headmaster Tele of Happy Friends has a TV screen for a head.
- Popo from the Korean show TELEMONSTER is a robot with the ability to turn its mouth into a television screen which it has the ability to suck people into.
Comic Books
- The New 52 Earth 2 version of Robert Crane (the Golden Age Robotman) has a head comprising a transparent dome containing his brain, with a flatscreen computer monitor on the front.
- The people of Planet Robot from Brian K. Vaughan's Saga all have televisions for heads. How modern and decorative a TV head is denotes wealth, and may be a sort of Fantastic Caste System. Commoners like Dengo have very boxy heads with grainy monochrome displays. Nobles like Prince Robot IV, his wife, and their son have sleek heads with clear pictures in color. The leader, King Robot, has a flat screen TV for a head that is twice the height of the rest of his body.
- Smut Peddler Presents: Sex Machine:
- Excell from "Picnic" has a pink television with a black screen with a visible crack in it in lough of a head.
- CH-RL 3 in "Employee of the Month" has a screen instead of a face, typically using it to display pictures to emote.
- Played for horror in an issue of Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: In an alternate universe, the Functionist Council of Cybertron have replaced the usual means of empurata (surgical disfigurement) with a new one where the victim's head is replaced with a screen, which they "speak" through via displaying text. On occasion, it even plays pop-up ads. Eventually it transpires that the Council is watching people through these screens, and can communicate through them.
Fan Works
- Rocketship Voyager. While entering the Array, the crew of Voyager are stopped by a Tin-Can Robot whose blank faceplate turns out to be a Video Phone.
"I am Overlooker Zet of the Central Hierarchy of the Array," announced the face on the android phone.
Films — Animation
- Odyssey Into The Mind's Eye features characters with televisions for heads, although whether they are actually robots is up for debate.
- Ibor, Synonamess Botch's Giant Mook, in Twice Upon a Time. Unlike most other examples of this trope, it possesses little to no sentience, strictly following Botch's orders without question. Most of the time, it uses its screen to display clips from old movies or other cartoons reflecting some other character's emotional state.
- Wreck-It Ralph: The First-Person Shooter in Hero's Duty, which doesn't appear at all to the player but is visible as a TV Head Robot to game characters and does have a personality (although not a voice) when the player isn't controlling it.
Films — Live-Action
- The robot GERTY in the movie Moon has a screen displaying an emoji in lieu of a face.
- RoboCop 2
- A variation with Cain; after he's forcibly converted into Robocop 2, he has a screen that deploys from his body instead of being a constant feature.
- The first of the failed Robo prototypes
has a screen covered by a metal faceshield.
- The Ghost of Christmas Future in Scrooged has only a TV monitor under its cowl, showing either static or a skull-like face.
Literature
- The Last Human (2019): SkD is a little robot with a TV screen for a face. It communicates by using emoticon images.
- TVs Friend by Taro Gomi is about a robot with a TV head.
- A tie-in novel for Scooby-Doo has the Monster of the Week be one of these.
Live-Action TV
- 790 from Lexx is a Meat-Sack Robot designed as a head with minimal moving parts whose face consists of three screens.
- Holly from Red Dwarf normally appears as just a face on a screen, but has on occasion moved around the ship in the form of a wheeled robot with a television screen for a head.
- Datas from Tensou Sentai Goseiger is pretty much an arcade machine with arms and legs. The screen is his face by default but can also show anything, such as communications, or whatever the Monster of the Week is up to once detected.
Music
- Louie Zong: Both Hello World and signal/noise feature a Waddling Head TV/monitor with stubby arms and legs.
Theater
- The American Idiot musical often has images of people with televisions for heads painted in the background.
Toys
- The reoccurring character of Tee Vee in various LEGO themes:
- Tee Vee first appeared in 2001 in the LEGO Alpha Team theme as a walking television set with legs, before becoming an automated submersible with a TV face in the following release wave. The final iteration of Tee Vee in Alpha Team though was in an android body losing the TV face.
- Tee Vee returned to Lego as "Seymour Tee Vee" in a 2020 Hidden Side set once again an updated take on its original 2001 form as a walking TV set with legs. A 2021 Ninjago set continues the Seymour Tee Vee design with two Wu Bots that are also walking TV sets with the same build style as Tee Vee.
Video Games
- The Drakel Freak enemy from AdventureQuest is a cyborg with a TV for its head, with an organic muzzle protruding from it.
- The Lord of Games from Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is essentially a tube TV wearing a royal cloak, with a game of Pong as his "face".
- Batman: Arkham Asylum: In one first-person area, at the end of a hallway is a Joker mannequin with a TV for a head. It's actually him.
- Telly from Chibi-Robo! is a Robot Buddy that takes his namesake from the fact that he is a tiny flying TV head.
- ROBO_Head of Cytus II has a computer monitor for a head.
- Vee from Dandy's World is a robot Toon and has a green TV for a head.
- Deltarune has Tenna, who has the body of a game show host, but a TV for a head. Justified, seeing as how he's the Dreemurr family's TV given anthropomorphic form via the Dark World.
- In The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, the penultimate boss has a TV set for a head, and the achievement for beating him is called "Smash Your TV".
- Lord Canti (mentioned in the Anime & Manga section) appears twice in the Epic Battle Fantasy series - first as the penultimate opponent in Brawl Royale, then as a summon for Natalie in Epic Battle Fantasy 1. He is replaced by an Expy named TV Boy in the Epic Battle Fantasy Collection versions of both games.
- Emet from Evolve has a screen for a face with several preset expressions and symbols that he switches between.
- Fallout: New Vegas: Securitrons, in appearance essentially a bulky TV on a uniwheel with added shoulder-boxes and attached grabbing/weapon arms. Some texts indicate the screens can show any sort of image, but all the ones seen has a face, with the face depending on their purpose (and which AI is currently running it). The majority broadcast the picture's bulb-nosed cop, or a soldier if the player takes certain actions, Victor has a stereotypical cowboy, Yes Man is a smiling face, Jane is a black-haired woman, Muggy is a cup of coffee with a face, the berserk Securitrons found in Big MT have A Trip to the Moon-style angry moon faces, and the damaged Big MT Securitrons have angry moon faces that are crossed out.
- One of the late-game enemies in Freedom Planet is a robot with a CRT monitor for a head. However, the screen is used only to display its Black Bead Eyes.
- Inscryption: P03 is a plot twist antagonist of Inscryption. It has a TV head/screen face, which can change its facial expressions.
- The enemies in Iron Brigade are the "Tubes", an army of killer TV-headed robots.
- Dr. Graaff from Iron Marines has a TV face on his torso. It also shows which personality and mode he's currently using — an angry red face for Assault Mode, and a happy green face for Assist Mode.
- Everyone in Job Simulator appears to be some kind of hovering computer monitor with a digital face on the screen and a coffee cup welded to the side.
- In Just Dance 3, the coach for the song "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles is a humanoid man in a suit with an old-school television set with antenna for a head. During the song's chorus, the television briefly displays dances from the first Just Dance game.
- Metallic Child: Pan, one of Rona's friends aboard the Life Stream, has a screen that he uses to make eye expressions.
- In Narita Boy, most of the Living Programs which inhabit the Digital Kingdom resemble robots with 1980s-style computer monitors for heads.
- Monita, the host of Nintendo Land, has a computer monitor for her face. Her look is that of a modern flatscreen, and somewhat resembles a Wii U GamePad.
- Neon J. of No Straight Roads is a cyborg who has a sonar screen for a head from surviving grievous wounds in the Border Wars. Oddly enough, he's still capable of breathing despite having no visible nose or mouth, as seen when having a coughing fit after 1010's defeat.
- A variant in >OBSERVER_; when Dan Lazarski connects to the mind of the killer that stalked him through most of the game, one of the first things he sees is a group of people staring at him with boxy TVs for heads, all showing twitching human mouths in black-and-white.
- The dozens of Vidbots scattered throughout the first dream world of Obsidian. They appear nothing short of televisions on metal poles without any visible means of locomotion, but they can move anyway; their "faces" usually show just the nose and mouth of a human in black and white, some of them have buttons or spindly mechanical arms and hands depending on who does what, and none of them tolerate broken rules, not even the receptionist.
- ALT from pop'n music is a Robot Girl with an old computer monitor for a head. Normally her screen displays varying shades of blue or green, though it becomes half-purple-half-blight-of-broken-pixels under Zizz's influence.
- In the Ravenhearst game's numerous sequels, TV Head Mannequins are something of a signature gimmick of the Dalimar clan. Although none can walk on their own, some move about on track-wires and make gestures sufficient to qualify as "robots", not just odd TV-stands.
- Poppy Playtime: Dr. Harley Sawyer, the scientist responsible for the Bigger Bodies Initiative that turned Children into Living Toys and the Arc Villain of Chapter 4 "Safe Haven", uses an entire army of TV Head Robots as his Mecha-Mook army while he himself is a Brain in a Jar by that point as the other executives of Playtime Co were getting sick of his methods bringing more harm than good to the company and turned him into another experiment because he was still too useful to just kill. His original experiment form was actually planned to be a larger version of the robots he uses in the final game.
- Melanie from Regretevator is a TV-Head bunny who is cheerful but nervous. That being said, how robotic Melanie truly is remains unclear, as despite being able to be rebuilt, a conversation she can have with Prototype has the latter state that she has DNA, and thus is partially organic.
- In SOMA, Site Lambda includes a robot with a brain scan of Catherine Chun inside that uses a flat-screen monitor to communicate.
- Spelunky: In the sequel, we are introduced to Lise Project, which is a female robot with a big computer screen for a head. She normally displays a simple feminine face with eyelashes, but her head displays error signals when she is damaged or near the edge of a platform.
- Mr. Entertainment, host of Sprint Vector, has a monitor for a head that looks like a Raygun Gothic television. The image on it changes depending on what he's talking about.
- Nearly every robot in Stray has a monitor for a head, with a simple dots-and-lines face on their screen that can change to display symbols of their emotions or activities. One of the notable exceptions is Midtown's police force, the Peacekeepers, whose members opt for security cameras instead.
- Undertale:
- Mettaton is a big metal box on a wheel with a monitor that often shows a big "M". Then you flip his switch, and he becomes a humanoid.
- Though he's not really a robot, Photoshop Flowey has a TV for a head, which displays Flowey's crazed face, a real greyscaled human head, and the six human SOULs.
- Vs Hex Mod: Hex is a robot basketball player with a computer screen for a head, on which displays his face and even the arrows corresponding with his singing. The developer commentary states he runs on Windows 10, and you can even play games on him.
- Wrack has Exo's last mecha, a giant robot whose head is a computer screen displaying its controller's expressions... as an emoji. Be wary when this face (D-:<) comes up; it's about to release a difficult Ground Pound attack.
- Zompiercer: The robodog's "head" is a screen usually displaying a smiley face. If equipped with turrets, it switches to an angry face whenever a turret detects a zombie to shoot at.
Web Animation
- Deep Space Discounts: Bucket is a robot with this design, expressing themself by displaying words and images on their screen.
- Robo-san from Robo-san and Wan-chan has a television set for a head, on which is displayed the wide dots that serve as his eyes.
- The TV Men from the Skibidi Toilet Series are sharply dressed robots/cyborgs who have television sets for their heads, from which they can emit purple or orange light to hypnotize or immolate their enemies. Out of combat, their screens show static, which changes to a "c:" smiley to congratulate their allies.
- SMG4: Hal Monitor. Though, it isn't made 100% clear if he's a robot or not since he dies in water and is able to be hacked, but is also implied to use the bathroom in "If Mario Was In Friday Night Funkin' 2" (but this was likely just a random gag).
- Another example is Mr. Puzzles, the Big Bad of the PUZZLEVISION saga. In his case though, his Villain Song during the PUZZLEVISION movie reveals that he was once an ordinary human whose obsession with TV lead him to replace his head with that of a TV set.
Webcomics
- The Objectheads in Pilot have electronic devices in place of heads. When it comes to what it is, they run the gamut; Some have old, box televisions, some have flatscreens, while others have phones. Jerry, while not an Objecthead, has a monochrome display instead of a face. It displays a question mark most of the time, but can display other things as well.
- The Property of Hate's RGB is, if not an actual robot, at least a TV-Headed... Something. His head is an actual TV, by the way, and can be used to watch cartoons, although his consciousness sort of disconnects while this is happening.
- In R.A.M. the Robot there's a couple gags where characters use robot heads to play video games or watch movies.
- Rice Boy has The One Electronic (T.O.E.). Instead of pictures drawn by the author, he projects scenes from movies and television shows much more like, well, an actual TV. He also smokes.
- Artificial Idiocy's Alvin is this.
Western Animation
- Arthur:
- In the episode "Nicked By a Name", Brain gives his friends empowering nicknames, but when they start making fun of each other's nicknames, Brain and the others start dishing out mean ones. Buster's "mean" nickname is "Antenna Ears" (as he is a rabbit with literal rabbit ears). Brain has a nightmare where he is trapped in a room with his friends as literal versions of their "mean" nicknames; Buster AKA "Antenna Ears" is Buster's body with exposed wiring and a television monitor for a head, in which the "original" Buster is trapped inside.
- In "Buster Gets Real", an Imagine Spot shows Arthur and Bionic Bunny sneaking past a guard with a TV for a head to get further into a television studio.
- D'nerd from The Bots Master, whose head resembles a computer monitor that displays a yellow face with eyes approximating Nerd Glasses. It's demonstrated in the show's opening that he can display different images on his face-screen.
- In Hanna-Barbera's The Little Rascals episode "Science Fair and Foul", Buckwheat's home-built robot has a TV set for its head.
- Mars Express: A slightly more futuristic version: hologram head robots. Carlos and many other human personality backup robots have a human-proportioned mechanical body with a hologram of their head projected above them.
- ReBoot brings us Mike the TV, whose screen is both his head and torso.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: Karen, Plankton's "computer-wife", alternates between being a stationary computer and an old computer monitor placed on a thin pole attached to a base with wheels and arms. One episode has her and Plankton going through a rough patch in their relationship and Plankton upgrades to a newer, curvier computer bot with a sleeker monitor.
- Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! has TV Monster, a robot built with a TV screen. It's used by the Skeleton King for communication while he's in the Citadel of Bone.
- Transformers: Animated:
- Tutor Bot has a screen for a head that he uses for lectures, a direct Shout-Out to Lord Canti.
- Wreck-Gar's head was specifically designed to resemble a TV set, playing off how the G1 Junkions were obsessed with Earth TV programming.
- The Venture Bros.: Dr. Venture builds G.U.A.R.D.O. to handle security while Brock is away. The hulking robot has a monitor for a head, which displays the (nebbish and non-threatening) face of Dr. Venture himself.
- We Bare Bears: In "Icy Nights II", Ice Bear's nemesis Barry the Bro-grammer has an army of Mecha-Mooks with smart-phones for heads that emote by displaying various emoji. Near the end of the episode, Ice Bear and his old friend Yana encounter a much larger version with a tablet computer for a head.
- Hazbin Hotel: has Vox, a major antagonist and one of the many overlords of Hell, whose head is a flat-screen TV.
