One of these characters is not like the others. Wait, what's that old guy doing in the back?
Azetbur: The Federation is no more than a homo sapiens only club.
General Chang: [to Spock] Present company excepted, of course.
General Chang: [to Spock] Present company excepted, of course.
When a work has an ordinary setting, your cast is going to be... well, ordinary. Your basic Five-Man Band, maybe with a Token Minority, or a Token Girl.
But when you're writing Speculative Fiction, you can make the cast as interesting as you want. Enter the Token Non-Human to spice things up. He (or she; this is a Unisex Trope) could be a Rubber-Forehead Alien, a Robot Buddy, a Funny Animal, a Civilized Animal, a Partially Civilized Animal, a Beast Man, or all of the above at once, but one thing is for sure. They aren't human.
Even Demi Humans like elves can count as examples of this trope.
A Token Non-Human is not the Team Pet — the team pet is, well, a pet that belongs to the team, but the Token Non-Human is a sapient being who stands on more-or-less equal footing with the humans.
Unlike other token what-have-yous, a Token Non-Human is not there to attract a Periphery Demographic. Probably. A Token Non-Human instead serves the purpose of exploring the possibility of other species with radically different natures from our own, incorporating beings with cool superhuman abilities, showing that the main cast is not practicing Fantastic Racism, and exploring the question What Measure Is a Non-Human?. If nothing else, the Token Non-Human can serve as the Amusing Alien for comic relief.
Because Most Writers Are Human (to our knowledge), you'll likely not see more than one protagonist who isn't human, hence the "Token" part of "Token Non-Human". In live-action works, this is often a matter of budget and practicality; human characters can be portrayed with human actors in regular outfits, whereas non-humans require elaborate costumes and/or special effects to depict them (unless they're Human Aliens). If there is more than one nonhuman character, you'll most likely see a cast full of nonhumans, with a Token Human.
Token Heroic Orc is this trope meeting Token Enemy Minority. See also Fantastic Sapient Species Tropes, and Not Quite Human. Compare and contrast Team Pet. Contrast Not Even Human. Inverse of Token Human and Unfazed Everyman. Supertrope to Token Robot.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The Guild of Bungo Stray Dogs has the Humanoid Abomination, Lovecraft.
- Mao from Darker than Black, who is a Body Surfer currently inhabiting a cat's body.
- The titular character of Doraemon is a blue cat robot from the future who currently lives in present-day Japan where sentient robots have not been invented yet.
- Piccolo, the 7'5" green-skinned Namekian in Dragon Ball. Downplayed, because the Saiyans are Human Aliens whose only distinguishing characteristic from humans are their tails (which are all cut off by the time the Frieza saga starts).
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Stardust Crusaders:
- Initially the group consists of five humans. When they arrive in Egypt they are joined by Sixth Ranger Iggy, a dog. Like any animal Stand users, his intelligence is close to human level.
- In the villanous side, it happens two times: in the Tarot Stand users there's Forever, an orangutan and from the Egyptian gods Stand users there's Pet Shop, a falcon. A third if you count the Egyptian god Stand Anubis, a sentient Stand without a user that's bound to a sword.
- Stone Ocean: The group is joined by Foo Fighters (or F.F. for short) while they are a sentient colony of plankton, they occupy the body of a dead inmate to pass off as human.
- Stardust Crusaders:
- In Lyrical Nanoha, if you look the non-human characters of the Riot Force 6 or Special Duty Section 6 with all section members together, they are the minority. But if you exclude all nameless characters, they are the majority in the latter section.
- In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, Vivio is the only known Inter-Middle participant who is not actually human. She's a Clone Jesus.
- Macross Delta: Despite both Walkure and Delta Squadron having a few Half-Human Hybrid members (Reina and Mirage), there are a few members who are not human at all.
- The main heroine Freyja Wion is the sole nonhuman member of Walkure, being a Windemerean (and the Token Heroic one at that).
- Chuck Mustang is the only nonhuman member of Delta Squadron, being a Ragnan. He is no longer the sole nonhuman as of Zettai Live, which has Bogue Con-Vaart, one of the Aerial Knights of Windemere, join up with Delta Squadron after his homeworld is taken over by Heimdall (by then, Windemere had pulled a Heel–Race Turn after the events of the original series).
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi has Robot Girl Chachamaru as the Token Non-Human of Ala Alba.
- Cute Ghost Girl Sayo counts to a certain degree, too. Then there's Half-Human Hybrid Setsuna. Technically. Though it doesn't come up much. Chachamaru is easily the best example, though.
- One Piece:
- For the Straw Hats: Tony Tony Chopper, a reindeer who ate the Hito Hito (Human-Human) Fruit, which gives him human-like intelligence and the ability to speak. He's so intelligent, in fact, that he serves as the crew's doctor.
- The Straw Hats gain a second one in the Whole Cake Island arc when Jimbei (a Fishman) joins. Jimbei being a Fishman on an (almost) all-human crew is actually an important plot point for him, since his dream is to improve relations between Fishmen and humans.
- Trafalgar Law's crew also has one: Bepo, a polar bear Mink who basically just looks like a talking polar bear. The rest of Law's crew appears to be made up of humans.
- For the Straw Hats: Tony Tony Chopper, a reindeer who ate the Hito Hito (Human-Human) Fruit, which gives him human-like intelligence and the ability to speak. He's so intelligent, in fact, that he serves as the crew's doctor.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion had Bebe, the only witch who befriended the girls and became part of the team as the mascot; and now she's human.
- Kyubey also counts being the Mentor Mascot.
- Umamusume: Cinderella Gray; Berno Light is the only support staff member of any racers' team across the franchise who is an umamusume herself rather than a human.
Asian Animation
- Happy Friends: The Supermen are human-like aliens rather than actual humans, but regardless, they have a Sixth Ranger on their team in the form of Planet Adeli native Kalo.
Comic Books
- Double Jumpers: In the world of the "Dungeon Lords 2" video game, the Player Characters are Kane, Sela, Mongo, Sebastian, and Pilfer. The first four are humans, while Pilfer is a goblin.
- Early in Runaways, despite several of the other characters having power, Human Alien Karolina Dean was the only one that wasn't remotely human. For a time she did angst over being an alien, to the point of letting a vampire feed on her.
- X-Men:
- As a biomechanical mutant from space, Warlock is both a Token Robot and Token Alien for The New Mutants.
- In X of Swords, the human mutants of Arakko have an uneasy peace with the demons of Ament. But these mutants are all unified in their hatred of Apocalypse and want revenge. The thing holding them back is a Trial by Combat involving prophesied swords. Since one of these swords is held by a huge demonic crocodile named Pogg Ur-Pogg, the first Horsemen hold their noses and try to bribe him into becoming one of their champions. He only takes the job when the Horsemen offer to take him to a new world for him to plunder.
Comic Strips
- In Peanuts, Snoopy and Woodstock are the only non-human characters among the main cast.
- Pugad Baboy is almost all humans except for Polgas, the talking dog. He's basically the series' mascot though, so definitely not just a token nonhuman. Very occasionally some (but not all or even most) other nonhuman animals will be depicted as talking with Polgas and the humans too though.
Fanfiction
- In Empathy, Oh is this to the rest of the Big Hero 9, as the only alien member of the team where the rest all come from Earth. Although, Baymax is a robot while Riley has empathic abilities.
- The Story of Apollo, Daphne and Luca: An Italian Tragedy: Luca is the only sea monster at Giulia's school in Genoa, which is primarily attended by human kids.
Films — Live-Action
- Star Wars:
- In the original trilogy, excepting the droids, there's Chewbacca, Han Solo's Wookiee co-pilot. He's one of the few alien characters who are even given a name in A New Hope. The Empire Strikes Back and especially Return of the Jedi show more, but Chewbacca remains the only nonhuman, non-droid member of the main cast.
- Jar Jar Binks, a gungan, in The Phantom Menace, succeeds Chewbacca as the only nonhuman in the main cast, though unlike the OT many background and minor characters are aliens in the prequels.
- K-2SO, a reprogrammed Imperial security droid in Rogue One.
- Among the bad guys, Supreme Leader Snoke is the only visible alien member of the First Order in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.
- Darth Maul from The Phantom Menace was the only non-human true Sith in the theatrical films, though this isn't immediately obvious.
- Galaxy Quest: In-universe example is Dr. Lazarus, an expy of Mr. Spock from Star Trek, in the case of the Show Within a Show. In the movie itself, the Therbians in general and Laliari in particular became this in "Real Life" for the cast. Ironically Laliari will not play an alien after she chooses to stay on Earth and is added as a "human" character in the show.
Literature
- Harry Potter:
- Remus Lupin is the Marauders' Token Non-Human from a certain perspective; werewolves in the Potter Verse are essentially humans with a condition rather than a separate species.
- Among the modern-day heroes, there's Hagrid, who's half-giant.
- Firenze the centaur is the Token Non-Human of the Hogwarts faculty for a while.
- Animorphs has Ax(imili-Esgarouth-Isthill), the only alien on the team. Unless you count Tobias, who got himself permanently morphed into a hawk early on.
- Arguably, Oy in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series eventually graduates to this, at least by the time he participates in the "khef and water" ritual as an equal member of the ka-tet.
- Amanandrala "Grok" Grookonomonslf in Star Risk, Ltd. is the only alien member of the books' Five-Man Band.
- The Wheel of Time: Loial the Ogier is the only non-human among the major characters.
- Chrono Hustle has ERK-147, a maintenance bot.
- In Black Legion, the only non-humans (or post-humans, at least) are Dark Eldar Nefertari and daemon Gyre.
- After Doomsday. Ramri the bird-like alien is there because humans are still new to space exploration.
- In Eden (1959), the shipwrecked human crew more-or-less adopts one of the local inhabitants of the planet they are stranded on.
- Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: In Boyfriends and Other Minor Annoyances, the party of human-descended princesses are joined by a halfling thief, and halflings are named that due to being short, not due to being half-human, or at least nothing has contradicted that in the 7 stories after the first halfling.
- 100 Cupboards has the faerie Frank, who also tends to play the Older Sidekick among the human protagonists...though a few of the humans do have magical powers.
- Reign of the Seven Spellblades:
- Marco the troll acts as Katie's familiar and experimental subject in her research into interspecies communication, making him sort of the Team Pet of the Sword Roses despite being a fully sentient being in his own right.
- Khiirgi Albschuch is the only fully nonhuman Kimberly Magic Academy yet introduced: a full-blooded elf, she's ironically aligned to the conservative faction, which discriminates against most nonhumans.
Live-Action TV
- Though the cast contains several examples of not quite human characters, including the titular protagonist, Angel has Lorne as the only visibly demonic main character who is unable to alter his appearance in any way.
- Blake's 7 has Cally, an Auron with limited telepathic powers.
- Crusade has Dureena, the resident thief and for a while thought to be Last of Her Kind however a lost tribe of her people survived on a colony.
- Doctor Who: The Doctor is usually this to the TARDIS crew. Though during Peter Davison's era this was inverted, with Tegan Jovanka serving as the token human in a TARDIS full of Human Aliens.
- Grimm: Monroe and Rosalee, the two Wesen characters of the show. (Notice that Renard is actually half human and Adalind is not a Wesen for a while).
- Intergalactic: Candy is the one member of the main cast from another species, with the rest being human. She's from the Aurean galaxy and looks mostly human except for her very long, prehensile tongue.
- The Robot in Lost in Space is, well, a Robot living among humans.
- Also the Robot in Lost in Space (2018), counting also as alien as it was not made by humans.
- The Orville has three: Bortus the Moclan, Alara Kitan the Xelayan and Isaac the Kailon. A recurrent character voiced by Norm Macdonald is Yaphit, a gelatinous blob.
- Power Rangers:
- Power Rangers Zeo: The first alien ranger in a team of humans is Trey, the Gold Zeo Ranger, is the first example of an alien Ranger in a team of human earthlings in the series. However, he doesn't spend much time with the team and the role of Sixth Ranger was filled by Jason, the first Red Ranger of the series.
- Power Rangers Turbo: This season had two alien characters filling the position of Sixth Ranger, the Blue Senturion and the Phantom Ranger.
- Power Rangers in Space: This season featured the first alien to be part of the main team, instead of filling the position of Sixth Ranger, in the form of Andros, the Red Space Ranger, a Human Alien from the planet KO35. The team is later joined by Zhane, the Silver Ranger, who is also from KO35.
- Power Rangers Lost Galaxy: The Yellow Ranger Maya hails from the planet Mirinoi. Later on, Karone, the sister of the aforementioned Andros joins the team as the replacement Pink Ranger after Kendrix's (temporary) death.
- Power Rangers Time Force: The Green Ranger Trip is a Rubber-Forehead Alien from the planet Xybria and is the only alien among the team, as well as the only alien shown in the entire season. His alien status is brought up in the episode "Trip Takes A Stand" where he calls out the Sixth Ranger Eric's Fantastic Racism towards mutants.
- Power Rangers S.P.D.:
- The Shadow Ranger Anubis "Doggie" Cruger is a scaly, dog-like alien. All the other Rangers are humans from Earth.
- The evil A-Squad Rangers are mostly humans, with their Blue Ranger being the only alien among them.
- Power Rangers Operation Overdrive: Tyzonn is a Human Alien rescue worker from Mercuria who becomes the Sixth Ranger. The Red Ranger Mack is later revealed to be a Token Robot.
- Power Rangers RPM: Unlike most examples in the show, Dillon is a cyborg, not an alien.
- Power Rangers Megaforce originally had Robo Knight, a robot created by Gosei years ago to aid in the protection of Earth. Robo Knight serves as the team's Sixth Ranger until vanishing for the second half of the season. The role of the sixth Ranger is taken by Orion, an alien from a planet that was devastated by the villains.
- Power Rangers Beast Morphers: Steel is the Token Robot of the team, the only one of the Beast Bots who can take Ranger form.
- Power Rangers Dino Fury: The Red Ranger Zayto is an alien from the planet Rafkon. Similar to Andros from In Space, he is initially the only alien on the team until they are joined by a Sixth Ranger from the Red Ranger's planet. In a surprise twist, the Pink Ranger Amelia is also revealed to be from Rafkon. Meaning that for the first time in Power Rangers history, we have a team where half are from Earth and the other half are from another planet.
- Red Dwarf had the Cat. He can also be considered the Team Pet, as he was descended from Lister's cat Frankenstein, but let's count 3 million years of evolution to his credit.
- SeaQuest DSV had a dolphin that could talk.
- Teal'c from Stargate SG-1. An odd example in that Jaffa are genetically altered humans, and thus Teal'c—being played by the African American Christopher Judge—is also a Token Minority (specifically, a token Black character in a mostly White main cast).
- Subverted, averted, and inverted (possibly) in Stargate Atlantis — the Pegasus Galaxy is full of humans, but almost none of the non-Terran humans work for the Atlantis expedition, but then by the end of the pilot, the flagship exploration team adopts a non-Terran member.
- By the second season of Atlantis, the main team is split 50-50 between Earth humans and locals — Sheppard and McKay from Earth, and Teyla and Ronon from the Pegasus Galaxy. This stays for the rest of the series.
- Star Trek
- Star Trek: The Original Series: Spock half qualifies, as he is half-Vulcan and half-human.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: Three out of the starring cast of seven or eight were non-human. While the human-looking Deanna Troi (half-Betazoid, half-human) was less obvious, both Worf (Klingon) and Data (android) qualify as Token Non-Humans.
- Averted by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which is set on a space station that's mainly made up of non-humans, and there are multiple aliens in the starring (Kira, Odo, Quark, Worf, both Daxes) and recurring cast.
- Star Trek: Voyager averts this trope as well, with Neelix, the holographic Doctor, Tuvok, Torres, Kes, and in later seasons, former Borg Seven of Nine. The nonhuman main cast slightly outnumber the human main cast members (Janeway, Chakotay, Paris, and Kim).
- Seven is a strange borderline case since she was born as the human Annika Hanson, assimilated, and then severed from the Collective.
- Star Trek: Enterprise has T'Pol (Vulcan) and Dr. Phlox (Denobulan). This is a Justified Trope as humans are still new to interstellar exploration, so they need aliens to advise them (and it's implied by the Vulcans, to keep them on a leash).
- Saru (Kelpien) in Star Trek: Discovery regarding the main characters, some recurrent alien characters can be seen among the crew.
- Star Trek: Picard: By the end of "Absolute Candor", Elnor (a Romulan) is the sole non-human member of Picard's ragtag crew.
- Multiple characters in Super Sentai are aliens or other non-human beings in otherwise human teams.
- Sion from Mirai Sentai Timeranger is a Human Alien and the last survivor from the planet Humard.
- Doggie Kruger in Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger is an alien from the planet Anubis who looks like an anthropomorphic dog.
- Hikaru, the Sixth Ranger of Mahou Sentai Magiranger is more or less the equivalent of an angel. Later on, it is revealed that the father of the main team is also an angel.
- Tensou Sentai Goseiger has a rather strange example. In this case, the entire team is not human, but rather a race of human-looking angels. But their Sixth Ranger is from the same race as their mecha are and therefore does not possess a human form. So in this case, it's a Token Non-Human looking being in a team of human-looking beings.
- Beet J. Stag in Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters is an AI-driven android and not one able to blend in with humans, as his appearance and mannerisms clearly betray he is a manmade construct.
- Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger: The Mentor Torin is a defector from the Deboth Army and later joins the team as the second Kyoryu Silver.
- Ressha Sentai ToQger: Sixth Ranger Akira is a Shadow with human form who joins the heroes.
- Kaitou Sentai Lupinranger VS Keisatsu Sentai Patranger: Sixth Ranger (to both teams) Noël Takao is later revealed to be from another dimension, unlike the rest of the cast who are regular humans.
- Avataro Sentai Donbrothers: The Hero Taro Momoi is one of the last survivors of the Don Clan, a race of humanoids that live in a dimension based on human thoughts. The team's Nōto rivals, hailing from the same dimension, eventually join the team towards the end.
- Supernatural:
- In Season 3, the demon Ruby shows up and joins Sam and Dean for a few adventures, even though Dean does not trust her. She's also the Token Evil Teammate.
- Season 5 sees the angel Castiel joining Team Free Will, making him the only nonhuman along with Sam, Dean, and their surrogate father Bobby.
- For a while in Season 7, Bobby sticks around as a ghost and is the boys' only ally at this point.
- Later seasons see more non-human allies move in and out of the story. The demon Meg foists herself on the brothers for a few episodes, though she is only occasionally the only supernatural being on the team since Castiel is often on the team as well. This also happens when Crowley joins the action, and later, Jack.
Video Games
- Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark: Optional Party Member Bzaro is the only nonhuman story character, and thus also uses a very different job system based on copying the powers of fought monsters.
- Final Fantasy has a history of this:
- Final Fantasy IV: FuSoYa, the 11th-Hour Ranger, is a Lunarian. The Hero Cecil himself is half-Lunarian, born of a Lunarian father and a human mother.
- Final Fantasy VI: Mog and Umaro. Possibly Gogo as well, who is The Faceless wrapped in robes. VI has a large enough cast size for three to still be token. Four if you count the fact that Terra is a Half-Human Hybrid.
- Final Fantasy VII: Red XIII. Possibly Cait Sith as well, although it's controlled by a human. Though as the two interact in Dirge of Cerberus, at least some Cait Sith models are sentient.
- Final Fantasy IX: Inverted, as the game only has a token human or two. The only one that is clearly human is Steiner; the others include a tailed Genome (Zidane), human-like summonersnote (Garnet & Eiko), a Black Magenote (Vivi), a Burmecian (Freya), a Qu (Quina) and a blue-skinned man who might be human (Amarant).
- Final Fantasy X: Kimahri, who is a member of the Ronso race.
- Final Fantasy XII: Fran. Somewhat obvious here, as Ivalice is replete with sentient nonhuman races (Viera, Moogle, Bangaa, Seeq, Aegyl, etc.). but Fran is the only one such among the protagonists.
- Final Fantasy XIII: This trope is averted for the first time since Final Fantasy VIII. Or subverted if you look at it from another way: the game could be the first in the series to have no (technically) human playable characters, as everyone in the party becomes a l'Cie. Which means in the first two chapters of the game Vanille is the Token Non-Human in the group...
- Final Fantasy XIII-2: Played straight, inverted, or averted, depending on how you're counting and who you're using. Your battle party consists of the two of them and a non-human in your chosen Paradigm Pack monster. If you have the DLC episodes, you can acquire Sazh, two forms of Lightning, Amodar, Nabaat, and arguably Snow (depending on how you count l'Cie) as Paradigm Pack "monsters", and thereby have no non-humans. However, you can set up to three Paradigm Pack monsters that switch out as the situation demands, and you still have the ones that aren't assigned to your Paradigm Pack, so it could be argued that Serah and Noel are the two token humans travelling with tens or hundreds of monsters.
- Final Fantasy XVI: Clive's pet wolf Torgal is considered a party member mechanically, and proves perfectly capable of keeping up with a party of Dominants. He even turns out to have his own Super Mode, being a rare frost wolf from the Northern Territories that has magical powers awakened from his proximity to various Dominants. A fine hound, indeed.
- Ne'ban in Unreal II: The Awakening, while the rest of the main cast is human he is, apparently, an intelligent parasite living in a jelly-like alien, housed in a robotic suit.
- Harukanaru Toki no Naka de franchise:
- The original game: Abe no Yasuaki (Artificial Human).
- Haruka 2: Abe no Yasutsugu (Artificial Human again).
- Haruka 3: Ridvan (from the Oni Clan) and Hakuryuu (the depowered human form of the Dragon-God).
- Odium has Jan Kurtas/Medusa, the only Humanoid Abomination victim of the Viral Transformation who didn't go murderously insane. For now. Though this can be avoided by refusing to go to a certain optional place. He's special in that he cannot carry weapons, instead using his mutant abilities. He also happens to be immune to tranquilizing and doesn't need to increase his Accuracy stat since all his abilities are treated as melee attacks (and thus have a 100% accuracy).
- Gene Troopers zig-zags this trope with Al, the team's sole alien who's a member of The Grays. However, the characters include the genetically-modified human Johanssen (the player hero), ex-human cyborg Trigger, and the Human Alien "e-vamp" Keysha, the token alien doesn't seem so token after all.
- Golden Axe has Gilius the dwarf together with the male and female human heroes, and the sci-fi based Spiritual Successor Alien Storm has Scooter the robot.
- Drago from Golden Force is the only member of the titular force who's a Draconic Humanoid, while everyone else are humans.
- The later Persona games have a non-human character, mostly used to address something along the lines of What Measure Is a Non-Human?.
- Persona 3 has Koromaru, who's a (very intelligent) dog, plus the Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapon Aigis, who gradually becomes more human over time. Persona 3 FES and Persona 4 Arena also introduces Aigis's two "sisters" Metis and Labrys.
- Persona 4 has Teddie, a mysterious entity native to the TV world resembling a cute mascot suit. Teddie himself laments that he's not sure what he is, and is sad that he can't join the rest of the Investigation Team in the real world. It is eventually revealed that he was a shadow that developed a personality out of a desire to be loved, and over the course of the story he gains both a Persona and a human body, effectively becoming a real person.
- Persona 5 has Morgana, a talking cat-like creature the protagonists meet in Kamoshida's Palace, who turns into an ordinary cat in the real world (with the exception of the fact that he can still talk to people who have talked to him in the Metaverse). Like Teddie, Morgana has no memories of his past but is convinced he was a human whose form was distorted by the Metaverse and joins the protagonists after they promise to help him find a way to restore his true form. Before the final dungeon it's revealed that Morgana is actually an embodiment of humanity's hope, created by Igor to gather those who can oppose Yaldabaoth.
- In the Mass Effect series, most of Shepard's crew are human, but typically feature about two or three aliens.
- Among teammates it's averted in Mass Effect 1. The human squad members are actually outnumbered 2:1 by the aliens.
- In the second game, we are introduced to Legion and EDI as the token robot and Normandy AI respectively.
- Lampshaded in Mass Effect 3, where Garrus refers to himself as Shepard's "token Turian friend".
- In Miku Monogatari: Yume to Taisetsu na Mono, the only non-human playable character in the game is Tako Luka, a pink octopus with human face.
- New Legends have the supporting character, Boo, who's a Human-Demon Hybrid and the only non-human member of the La Résistance. And on the side of good despite his menacing appearance. He actually lampshades it when you first meet him in a prison.
"Do you think I would be in this foul prison if I were full blooded?"
- In Beyond the Beyond, every character that can join your party is a human, save for the summoner Tont, who is basically an amorphous blob of goo.
- The Outfoxies: Every member of the cast is human except for Dweeb, a chimpanzee.
- Overwatch has a diverse cast of characters, but of the 21 original heroes, there were only three non-humans. Bastion and Zenyatta were the Omnic representatives (basically sentient robots), while Winston is a hyper-intelligent gorilla. Since launch, they've added Orisa and Echo, other Omnics, and Wrecking Ball, a mech piloted by a non-speaking (yet intelligent) hamster, but there are still six times the amount of humans compared to non-humans.
- Sonny: In the 2017 Continuity Reboot, Sonny is the only party member to be a zombie — everyone else is human.
- Blanka in Street Fighter II was originally supposed to be just a Tarzan Expy, the decision to make him have green skin has because Capcom though there were "too many humans" among the selectable fighters.
- Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark has Bzaro, a member of the insectoid Bzil race, as the only nonhuman with plot importancenote that the player can recruit into their party.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic inverts the normal Star Wars pattern. Among the companions for each player class, humans are usually outnumbered by aliens and droids, even more so if the player character is nonhuman also (and given the plethora of races to choose from, this is true more often than not).
- The playable characters in Super Mario 64 DS consist of three men (Mario, Luigi, and Wario) and Yoshi, a dinosaur-ish thing. Yoshi also plays differently from the others; he can't hold objects in his hands or break brick blocks.
- Turovero: The Celestial Tower has three human party members, Sigurd, Ruby and Edric, and only one elf, Leilia. During the final chapter, the angel Amitiel joins the party, either alongside or replacing Leilia.
- The Xenoblade Chronicles series features Nopons, which are egg-shaped, rodent-like creatures with wings on their heads, which they use as arms. Every game in the series has at least one Nopon that at least travels with main gang. Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 have Riki and Tora respectively, who act as main party members. The Future Connected expansion for the first game also has Riki’s kids Nene and Kino, who are also core party members. Xenoblade Chronicles X has Tatsu, who, despite not being a main party member, always accompanies the main gang. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has Riku and Manana, who, like Tatsu, always accompany the main characters despite not being main party members themselves. However, unlike Tatsu, they will fight alongside the main characters on occasion.
Web Animation
- Faunus in RWBY are a minority race on Remnant and Menagerie (the primary Faunus settlement) lacks a Huntsman Academy of its own like the four kingdoms. As a result, every Huntsman team that has appeared in the series has either been composed completely of humans, or has a single Faunus member (Blake from Team RWBY being the most prominent example). This even extends to other groups, like the inner circles of both Ozpin and Salem.
Webcomics
- Uma Quipleure, a cow-like alien from Everyday Heroes.
- In Good Ship Chronicles, Mike is literally a token alien, hired only to fill a quota; consequentially, he serves no real purpose on the ship.
- For the first 500-some strips, the central mercenary crew in Schlock Mercenary had only one nonhuman — the titular Schlock. But that ended in 2002.
- Schlock Mercenary is generally pretty good about averting this trope, even prior to the hiring spree on Ghanj-Rho. The first two months see the introduction of not only the eponymous ball of amorphous violence but Flib Sh'vuu, communications slug/squid with a cool flying chair; Ennesby, a viral AI that used to be a boy band; Ch'vorthq who was genetically tailored to be the perfect ambassador that explodes. All of whom are, or become part of Tagon's Toughs, although Sh'vuu doesn't really get much of plot and character development thrown at him.
- Carson the muskrat from Dork Tower.
- The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! has Molly the Peanut Butter Monster.
- El Goonish Shive has Grace Sciuridae, a human-alien-alien-squirrel hybrid and the only non-human member of the main cast. She is a Voluntary Shapeshifter though, and usually looks like a normal human.
- Full Frontal Nerdity:
- Shawn is functionally this, since he's only ever appeared via a little white webcam. Even when the gang are out and not playing games, they take the webcam with them. The webcam was even dressed up in cosplay once.
- Emma is a demon that Lewis summoned who became part of the main cast. Downplayed since she isn't interested in role-playing games and rarely appears in RPG-based strips, which are the majority of the comic.
- Legostar Galactica gives us T.A.G. (Token Alien Guy) who only puts up with being called T.A.G. because of his Embarrassing First Name and lack of a last name, although the cast quickly expanded to include numerous aliens, robots, and the likes, including an air-breathing giant squid and a Deep One
- Rak Wraithraiser from Tower of God. Egomaniac Hunter, Big Guy, Blood Knight, giant freaking alligator.
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- Freefall thoroughly inverts this, as most of the plot is driven by non-humans. For the protagonists, Florence is a Bowman's Wolf, Sam Starfall is a sqid from a planet that doesn't even have space travel (he snuck onboard a human ship that made landfall and embarked on adventure from there), and Helix is a robot, as are most of the rest of their circle of friends. The only humans that are thoroughly on their side are Florence's boyfriend Winston and her friend Niomi; everyone else is a circumstantial ally at best (though that's mostly Sam's fault).
- In Crimson Knights Itham is the only one of the four main heroes who isn't a human, being an earthfair.
Western Animation
- Aladdin: The Series has several non-human members of the team: the Genie (a Genie), Iago (a parrot), Abu (a monkey), and the flying carpet.
- BoJack Horseman: In Diane's family, a literal Black Sheep functions as this.
- Family Guy: Brian Griffin, a Talking Dog, is the only non-human member of the main cast. While he's (literally) the Team Pet of the Griffins, acting like a real dog a lot of the time, he's also generally treated like a human being; from owning a car to dating human women.
- Futurama: Ultimately, Dr. Zoidberg is the only alien member of the Planet Express crew, which creates conflict when he has to act as a doctor for his human/humanoid co-workers despite knowing nothing about human anatomy. Leela was thought to be an alien early on but turned out to be a human mutant instead.
- Inside Job (2021) has Myc Celium, a mushroom-like intelligent organism and part of the main cast. Glenn Dolphman is a less straight example, having formerly been human and presently being a half-human Artificial Hybrid.
- Men in Black: The Series has the Twins as the Token Aliens of MIB. In the fourth season, sci-fi affirmative action causes MIB to hire an alien field agent and alien scientist.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has a Token Non-Equine: Spike, the baby dragon.
- The title character of Oswaldo is an anthropomorphic penguin in an otherwise entirely human cast.
- On the Punky Brewster cartoon, Glomer is a non-traditional example while Punky's dog Brandon is more traditional.
- Slimer the Ghost in The Real Ghostbusters.
- Scooby-Doo, the canine mascot of Mystery Inc. who happens to be the star of the series. As a Speech-Impaired Animal, he's more than just the Team Pet.
- Star Trek:
- Star Trek: The Animated Series didn't have to deal with elaborate makeup, so it managed to get away from this trope with Lt. M'Ress and Lt. Arex being part of the bridge crew.
- Star Trek: Lower Decks: Tendi the Orion girl among the four main members of the cast who are all on the lower decks (at least until T'lyn the Vulcan joins at the end of Season 3). Amongs the senior staff there's also a Bajoran security chief and a Caitan medical chief.
- Star Trek: Prodigy kind of averted, all main characters are aliens, the closest thing is Janeway's hologram who is the hologram of a human.
- Super Why! has Alpha-Pig, who is part of an otherwise human quartet of Super Readers.
- Xavier: Renegade Angel is a Fallen Angel in a world of humans.
- Voltron: Legendary Defender initially has Allura and Coran as the resident aliens of Team Voltron, until it is revealed that Keith is actually Galran.
