Human disguise

A human disguise is a concept in mythology, religion, science fiction, and cartoon animations, where non-human beings (e.g. gods, angels, Satan, demons, monsters, robots, or aliens ) are disguised to look like human beings. The deception has been depicted in storylines as a means used to blend in with people, and in science fiction to raise questions about what it means to be human. The phrase is also used to ascribe inhuman characteristics to real people, as a suggestion that they are not as they appear to be.

In religion and mythology
In the the Old Testament apocryphal Book of Tobit, Raphael is an archangel who takes on human disguise and the name of Azarias. The Book of Genesis tells of three angels visiting Abraham in human disguise (Gen.18), and two visiting Lot in Sodom (Gen.19). St. Augustine and many Christian scholars agreed the devil could manipulate a person's senses to create illusions in the mind; fake human bodies would be made from particles of air, that seemed quite real to those who saw them.

Zeus's human disguises have been compared to Plato's use of communicating through alternate characters as a means to express that the "essential philosophical nature is divine rather than human" and "cannot be represented without some element of human "disguise". John Milton's poem Paradise Regained has Satan disguised as an old man.

Monsters like vampires and werewolves were purported to be able to take human form at certain times, and lore gave warnings of how to detect or drive away these seeming human beings. Various devils were said to appear in human form to offer tempting deals for one's soul. Stories also told of fairies and even mermaids walking in human form.

In literature
The gods "of whom the minstrels sang" in Homer's Iliad watched the "human spectacle" as partisans, and came down to Earth invisible or in human disguise to interfere, sometimes to protect their favorites from harm. They were sometimes hurt in conflicts.

The Changeover: a Supernatural Romance is a young adult novel by the New Zealand novelist Margaret Mahy that includes a character a vampiric lemur named Carmody Braque who masquerades as an antique dealer.

Aliens in science fiction
Aliens disguised in human form have been described in various works of science fiction.

Commonly the theme is used to stand in for alien infiltration during the Cold War. Jack Finney's 1955 novel The Body Snatchers, and the films made from it, involve aliens not only looking generally human, but replacing specific human beings, an intensely frightening prospect because one's own neighbors, friends, and family must now be suspected. It has been suggested that this conveyed the paranoia of the McCarthy era.

David Buxton's Avengers to Miami Vice discusses the use of human disguise in The Invaders. , suggesting that though it might at first glance appear to be an extratorestrial representation of the communist threat the show also picks up on deeper doubts regarding the American value system.

The theme of infiltration has continued to be popular into the 1980s. In the science fiction series V, the reptilian aliens wear human suits to pass as humans, trying to make them feel more comfortable around them. They Live deviated from the cold war fear of communists by having it's alien infiltrators be the capitalist elite, exploiting mindnumbed consumers whilst The Thing featured a more visceral biological horror, with an alien that would infect and duplicate hosts. In the 1982 British Sci-fi film Xtro, a father is abducted by an alien spaceship and an alien returns disguised as him. The alien rapes the man's wife and she gives birth to a fully grown man in what author Barbara Creed describes as being a primal "phantasy" where man is born fully grown and completely independent of its mother.

Recently New Frontier returned to the cold war theme, useing the character of the Martian Manhunter, "a shape-changing alien who adopts human disguise because he knows his alien form would scare people", to look back at cold war paranoia and fear of outsiders.

In Pandemic's 1950s themed Destroy All Humans video gameThe Furon character Crypto, a gray-skinned alien,  uses a holographic human disguise to infiltrate  suburban America. "In human form he cannot use weapons but is still able to use his mental powers to hurl objects and hypnotize people into becoming obedient slaves."

The mannerisms of aliens using human disguises are sometimes portrayed as awkward, indicating that the aliens are not comfortable in their false skin, for instance Vincent D'Onofrio's portrayal of an alien wearing a human suit in Men In Black.

The motives of aliens in human disguise are not always sinister: In Meet Dave : A group of aliens arrive in a spaceship shaped like a human being, and pilot it, to interact with the humans, without getting noticed. In Star Man, the alien appears in human form, explaining it was so "you not be a little bit jumpy." In the Men in Black movie and comic book, alien immigrants disguised as humans inhabit the Earth. The alien prince of the Arquillian Empire lives as a human being with a pet cat.

Galaxy Quest, Third Rock from the Sun and Meet Dave also use the meme. Third Rock from the Sun features a group of aliens, given human bodies, to observe aspects of human society.

An episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer incorporates a praying mantis in human disguise, posing as a substitute high school teacher that seduces her students before eating them. The mantis in disguise is used as a metaphor to suggest to younger viewers that being unprepared and rushing into becoming sexually active can result in being "devoured".

Criticism
Gary Westfahl wrote that a standard argument of Stanislaw Lem and other writers is that "science fiction writers, as human beings, are inherently incapable of imagining truly alien beings, meaning that all aliens in science fiction are nothing but disguised humans." Another author states that confidence in religious explanations for events has waned, conspiracy theories about small groups and hidden networks have gained a foothold. These imaginary cabals of humans and alien overseers disguised as humans, have been described by believers as influencing the direction of history. The Weekly World News supermarket tabloid got in on the concept with a story about tens of thousands of aliens infiltrating the highest levels of government, industry and academia.

Robots
In the movies Artifical Intelligence, and the Alien series, robots are made to look and act human. In The Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger played a cyborg that wore a human disguise.

Isaac Asimov considered humanoid robots (androids) in the novel Robots and Empire and the short stories "Evidence" and "The Tercentenary Incident", in which robots are crafted to fool people into believing that the robots are human. In Asimov's novella The Bicentennial Man, the robot Andrew gradually replaces his mechanical body with organic components, but only on the 200th anniversary of the start of his organic conversion, when he allows his positronic brain to "decay" and thus abandons his immortality, is he accepted as "human".

In the television series Star Trek: the Next Generation, the android Data's desire to become more human was used as an ongoing source of commentary on the human condition. (Data's positronic brain is a nod to Asimov's stories.) 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.

In the remade series Battlestar Galactica, robots known as the Cylons have evolved to be able to make bodies that appear quite human. When killed, they transfer their consciousness from one body to an identical model elsewhere. This seeming immortality, the uncertainty of who is really human and who is Cylon, and the love between characters who are revealed to be human or Cylon, are used for discussion of what it means to be human.

In cartoons
Human disguises are sometimes used in animation for cartoon characters. In a short story by Haitham Chehabi a human disguise is worn by Trix, a cartoon rabbit. In cartoons aliens are sometimes drawn in human disguise.

Outside fiction
Outside of fiction, a human disguise is used as a metaphor to describe a real person who is pretending to be something they are not. Former Kenyan Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta was described by a Kenyan judge as a "monster in human disguise". 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." [sic] The human disguise does not always carry negative connotations - in the US, a well regarded murder victim has been described as "an angel running round with a human suit on",  while Manoel de S. Antonio, (Bishop of Malacca between 1701 and 1723) was refered to as an "angel in human disguise" for his conversion of 10,000 people to Christianity.