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.

Chucky the killer doll from Child's Play
A man holds a ventriloquist dummy
Gabbo and his ventriloquist dummy Otto in The Great Gabbo (1929)
A chart lists increasingly realistic representations of humans that correlate with familiarity, where the familiarity dips shortly before reaching full realism and then rises against upon reaching full realism
The uncanny valley represents the combination of human and inhuman qualities that produces discomfort in a viewer.