Killer toy
Killer toy fiction often invokes ideas of companionship and the corruption of children, sometimes taking place in dysfunctional or single parent homes.
Nineteenth-century precursors to the killer toy include "The Sandman" (1816) by E. T. A. Hoffmann[1]: 199 and The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) by Carlo Collodi, both of which experimented with the idea of a puppet's identity becoming more humanlike.
[1]: 206 Ventriloquist dummies served as some of the earliest examples of unnatural toys in horror films,[2] being established with "Otto" in the musical drama The Great Gabbo (1929).
[3]: 57 The relationship between the ventriloquist and the dummy influenced later killer toy characters, even as they moved away from strictly psychological elements toward the supernatural.
[4] This portrayal was inspired by the advent of talking dolls like Chatty Cathy in the 1960s, which allowed for increased characterization and uncanniness of killer toys.
[7]: 134 [4][8]: 34 This incarnation of the killer doll incorporated many of the ideas that defined such characters, including the subversion of childhood innocence, the share of agency between the toy and a child, and the emergence of the occult into the living world.
[9][10][11] Saw (2004) modified the idea of the killer toy by portraying its ventriloquist dummy, Billy the Puppet, as a lifeless messenger used by the film's antagonist.
[1]: 199 [7]: 134 Freud posited that children do not make the same "distinction between the animate and the inanimate", while adults have an aversion to this blurring of living and non-living due to a repression of childlike ideas.
[5] Killer toy fiction that features artificial intelligence can invoke an additional sense of horror not present in stories based on occultism.
These stories reflect fears that are expressed in real-world discussions about artificial intelligence, providing a more plausible justification for the toy's behavior and creating a villain that could conceivably exist in the real world.
[1]: 203 In popular consciousness, killer toys may also be associated with other uncanny humanlike constructs, such as golems, mannequins, scarecrows, and statues.
[7]: 134 The image of the toy accentuates this theme, conflating the childish appearance of a doll with gratuitously violent and profane behavior.
[4] In these cases, the child character may develop an attachment to the toy,[1]: 196 reminiscent of real-life projection of children's identities onto dolls.
[3]: 55 Dummies also reinforce the elements of childhood found in killer toy fiction due to their small stature and the childlike behavior of sitting on the ventriloquist's lap.
