Human guise
[10] In the borderlands between religion, myth, and literature, Dunn in his study of the concept of incarnation notes that Greek gods appeared disguised as humans in Ovid's legend of Baucis and Philemon.
"[16] Child and Colles summarize: "The angels in the Old Testament were known to be messengers of God, sent to do his will, usually invisible and mysterious, but sometimes coming without wings in the guise of men.
"[17] St. Augustine and Christian scholars of that age agreed that the Devil could manipulate a person's senses to create illusions in the mind, constructing from particles of air fake human bodies that seemed quite real to those who saw them.
Changelings are often described in Western European folklore as a type of legendary creature, left in place of a human infant, for a variety of reasons.
[22] In native American myths "the sun, moon, and morning star seem free to take human form and roam the earth, seeking love and other adventures.
[31] Selkie, seals which can shed their skin and turn into humans,[32] appear in Faroese, Icelandic, Irish, and Scottish mythology, as well as in myths of the Chinook people, and are the premise of the film The Secret of Roan Inish.
Roland Mushat Frye discusses a common iconographic tradition of Satanic disguise as a "falsus frater, as an old Franciscan friar, or as a hermit, often with a rosary, as Botticelli represented him in his Sistine Chapel frescoes".
[39] The various incarnations of Star Trek had numerous aliens capable of impersonating humans, for example the Salt Vampire of "The Man Trap", Trelane the Squire of Gothos, the Organians in "Errand of Mercy", the re-created historical combatants in "The Savage Curtain", among others from the original series; the Changelings (Odo's people) in Deep Space Nine; and the Suliban in Enterprise.
David Buxton's From The Avengers to Miami Vice discusses the use of human disguise in The Invaders,[40] suggesting that though it might at first glance appear to be an extraterrestrial representation of the communist threat the show also picks up on deeper doubts regarding the American value-system.
In their human forms, witches have unnatural eyes, which flash ice and fire, and also they have long felinstic claws which they disguise with gloves.
video game, the Furon character Crypto, a gray-skinned alien, uses a holographic human disguise to infiltrate suburban United States.
An episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer incorporates a praying mantis in human disguise, posing as a substitute high-school teacher who seduces her students before eating them.
The mantis in disguise serves as a metaphor to suggest to younger viewers that rushing unprepared into sexual activity can result in being "devoured".
A particularly notable and riveting form of human disguise appears in Larry Niven's Ringworld, specifically in the minor religion practiced by the Kdaptists, a religious order of Kzin who believe that the pinnacle of creation is not Kzin but man, and adopt a mask of human skin during prayer to attempt to trick God into thinking they are His children.
[51][52] Possibly the first human automaton was Talos — a man of made of bronze — who defended the isle of Crete from any invaders, with archaeological evidence dating from to c.400 BCE at least.
[53] In the 2010 Metroid game, the antagonist is a cyborg named Madeline Bergman who has been raised by the governing Galactic Federation and has effectively been kept in imprisonment on a derelict space vessel, thus making her gradually loathe humans.
An earlier pilot-film by Star Trek's creator Gene Roddenberry, The Questor Tapes, had featured an android left on 20th-century Earth as the last of a series of advanced alien technology, with the same subtext.
The three-season return of the USS Enterprise captain in Star Trek: Picard further explored the nature of androids and societal integration, especially throughout the first season as its main theme.
and its film adaption Blade Runner, the replicants are biological robots indistinguishable from humans except by specialised testing of their empathic reactions.
[55] As those androids are manufactured exclusively for off-world colonies on Mars and are illegal on Earth they attempt to disguise as human to evade their killing by special police operatives.
Similarly in the remade series Battlestar Galactica, robots known as the Cylons have evolved the ability to make bodies that appear quite human.
[60] Doug Parker, chairman of US Airways, was described as a "Klingon in a human disguise", after he "vaporized much of what was left of USAirways in Pittsburgh."
