http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RubberForeheadAliens

This is the forehead that defeated countless enemies and charmed numerous women, but also got smacked down a lot



And wear it on my real head

Everybody wants prosthetic

Foreheads on their real heads" They Might Be Giants, "We Want a Rock" , "We Want a Rock" "I'd buy a big prosthetic foreheadAnd wear it on my real headEverybody wants prostheticForeheads on their real heads"

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The tendency for several sci-fi alien species to merely be one or two facial features away from humanity.

Sometimes they're not even that far away. They look totally human and sound human. In some cases, this may well be a disguise or A Form You Are Comfortable With, but in others this appears to be their natural appearance. See Human Aliens.

You'd think that alien species would be radically different — insectoids, three-legged wombats, giant cats, etc. — but animal-cruelty laws tend to discourage fitting animals with prosthetics, and the effects budget only allows for latex and makeup, so we get humans with brow ridges, humans with extra nostrils, humans with Pointy Ears, humans with bony protrusions, and so on. (Of course, the makers of Star Wars found a way around this by building and operating startlingly lifelike puppets, making Humanoid Aliens and Starfish Aliens possible.) One odd consequence of this, however, is that in the Federation Council scenes in the Star Trek movies, you often see very strange, non-humanoid (or only partly humanoid) aliens, because the movies have the necessary additional budget for them. These additional races are, of course, never seen in the TV series at all.

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Gene Roddenberry gave more reasons for this in an interview once. Budget constraints aside, if you try to make aliens look completely alien, you'll firstly make them look ridiculous (cf. Doctor Who), and secondly make it doubly hard for the actor playing the alien to do anything mildly resembling acting. This has actually been isolated to extremely specific requirements: if an audience can't see an actor's eyes or mouth, their ability to empathize with or emotionally invest in that character is significantly impaired. This is one reason why mooks, especially SF mooks like the Cylons or the Imperial Stormtroopers, are so often uniformed in face-obscuring helmets. While not totally undoable with the post TOS Star Trek budget, the flamboyant and outlandish alien designs of Star Wars appeal to a more pulp Space Opera aesthetic from which Star Trek has historically chosen to distance itself, at least onscreen; the expanded universe of comics and novels is a different beast. Additionally, Roddenberry had always insisted that Star Trek was about human issues and that the aliens are intended as vehicles for social commentary. This required aliens that may have been scientifically implausible (humanoid appearance, ability to communicate in English and emote like humans, etc) but easy for the human characters to interact with and the audience to relate to in the narrative. Trek fans may assume that the pure hard SF adventures and alien encounters occur offscreen.

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The anime equivalent is the alien with Pointy Ears, colorful facial markings, chromatic skin tones (sometimes hair too, if Humans are restricted to normal colors), or cutesy animal-like traits.

Rubber foreheads also tend to be paired up with Humans Are White for some reason, likely the fact that back in the 60s/70s it was easier to get a black, Latino, or Asian actor on TV by gluing something to their heads and claiming that they were raceless otherworldly beings instead. You will virtually never see a Caucasian-coloured Klingon, which means that the makeup department actually has to do a lot more work when a white actor plays one.

Another more scientific explanation of this is the theory that most advanced alien species will look roughly similar to humans due to the soap bubble theory that our physical layout is the most efficient one for an oxygen-breathing carbon-based life form. Indeed, Star Trek eventually stated that all of the human-like species in their universe originated from a common ancestor species that seeded life on other planets to encourage similar evolutionary roots, with an image of the ancestors being generally lacking in any notable features themselves.

The next step past Rubber Forehead Aliens (catlike or buglike or lizardlike aliens that can still sit in chairs and hold weapons) is Humanoid Aliens, possibly overlapping with Intelligent Gerbils. Contrast with Starfish Aliens. The Uncanny Valley can result if your RF Alien looks a little too human. Possible sister trope to Bizarre Alien Limbs, if the make-up crew opts for weird rubber hands instead of facial appliances.

Examples:

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Advertising

In UK advertising, the Tefal Eggheads.

Anime and Manga

Comic Books

Comic Strips

The Atlantines in Dan Dare are human but with blue skin and a visible lump on the forehead. A nice subversion later reveals that they are actually human: the descendents of people kidnapped from Earth aeons ago, and their differences from Earth people are adaptations that evolved to enable them to survive on Venus.

Fan Works

Lampshaded slightly in A Changed World, based on Star Trek Online. Dr. Warragul Wirrpanda, USS Bajor's chief medical officer and a human, tells a time-shifted Bajoran that "the only significant difference between you and a female of my species is some uterine quirks. Now, Bolians, those are a real challenge."

Films — Live-Action

Literature

Live-Action TV

Newspaper Comics

Pinball

Featured among the various aliens in Big Bang Bar.

The alien leaders in Firepower are orange-skinned humanoids with oversized wrinkled foreheads.

Averted in Asteroid Annie and the Aliens — none of the aliens look close to human, and the closest ones are clearly Humanoid Aliens.

Tabletop Games

Video Games

Webcomics

Web Originals

The "Alienoids" of the Garnet and Gure short, Holiday Quickie-Toon resemble cheesy black-and-white style spacemen with over-long eyebrows.

resemble cheesy black-and-white style spacemen with over-long eyebrows. In the Homestar Runner episode "buried", Strong Bad unearths what he believes to be an alien artifact. He states that the earth was colonized by extraterrestrials, and that it explains "why all beings look the same except for slight differences of our foreheads!"

Due to non-professional special effects and costumes, Noah Antwiler (from The Spoony Experiment) portraying Terl from Battlefield Earth in some episodes of Channel Awesome's review shows and the fourth year anniversary To Boldly Flee looks much more human than the version portrayed by John Travolta. It also means most "rubberhead" effects could not be recreated. However, it's still clearly a Psychlo.

Earthling Cinema series of fictional reviews is hosted by alien Garax Wormuloid, who is just the creator with eyebrows significantly wider than his head.

Western Animation