Same Face Syndrome

About

Same Face Syndrome refers to a tendency of certain artists to draw their characters with the same faces instead of experimenting with diversity in their facial features. Discussions about Same Face Syndrome grew more prominent after the release of Disney's Frozen in 2013, with many viewers commenting on the similarities between the film's two leads and Rapunzel from Disney's Tangled. The art in various animes and games like Genshin Impact has also been accused of having Same Face Syndrome. The Sims players often comment on their tendency to create Sims with Same Face Syndrome as well.

Origin

Some early mentions of "Same Face Syndrome" can be found on messageboards from 2011^[1][2] with a definition being posted to Urban Dictionary^[3] on February 24th, 2013 by charleychibi that read, "An artist who has Same Face Syndrome repeatedly draws the same face on every character they draw" (seen below).

The release of the Disney movie Frozen in November 2013 spurred more conversations about Same Face Syndrome, with Tumblr^[4] user Turbomun making a viral post discussing the phenomenon titled, "Sameface Syndrome and other stories" on March 18th, 2014. The post gathered over 30,000 notes in ten years (seen below, left).

Wordpress blog Theepierrot^[5] made a similar observation on October 10th, 2014 (seen below, right).

Spread

Sometime in 2015, Tumblr^[6] user palidoozy-art made a post with recommendations for how artists could avoid "Same Face Syndrome," gathering over 5,000 notes in nine years (seen below).

On July 24th, 2020, Redditor^[7] /u/Lola101_ posted a joke about Sims players and their tendency to give their Sims the same face. The post gathered over 11,000 upvotes in three years (seen below, left). On November 26th, 2023, X^[8] user @SexyGayVampire made a post that read, "Still crazy how Disney managed to same-face-syndrome a dragon like this just looks like Elsa's fursona," gathering over 100,000 likes in a day (seen below, right).

Search Interest

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External References