Long Neck

One way of making a character look bizarre or comedic is to give him a long neck. He/she/it can be born with it as due to some strange birth defect. Or when the character is anthropomorphic and has a long neck because of his real life animal counterparts like giraffes, geese, swans, brontosauruses, snakes, tortoises,...

In comedic stories a long neck is usually stretched out by accident. The neck is either fully erect and only able to rise and down or it can be bended into all kinds of shapes like a snake. Long necked characters are usually able to oversee things from great distances. Or when swimming, he is able to use his neck as a periscope. Disadvantages of this condition are that the character's neck will frequently be tied in knots or bump against lower objects or people.

Also a frightening type of Body Horror in horror movies, because it is such an unusual sight. On the other hand: to women it is sometimes seen as a sign of beauty.

Examples of Long Neck include:

Art

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_with_the_Long_Neck by Italian renaissance painter Parmigianino.

Comics

• In the Suske en Wiske album "De Stalen Bloempot" Lambik's neck is stretched out like a snake due to an accident.
• Petatje stretches the villain's neck in the Nero album "De Negen Peperbollen".
• In De Kiekeboes album "De Pili-Pili Pillen" Balthazar's neck stretches to enormous heights due to a strange medicine.
• Mortadelo Y Filemon:In "Las embajadas chifladas", at the final chapter Filemón got his neck elongated to a point where it was about half a meter long, and had to hide it inside his shirt. Much later, once everyone thought his neck had gone back to normal, he used it to make everyone think that Mortadelo was a snake charmer, revealing it while Mortadelo played the flute. And at the end of the story, he and Mortadelo got tied with a bomb near them. What did Filemón did? He used his neck to take the bomb with his teeth and threw it to the Big Bad.

Literature

• The Brothers Grimm story The Six Servants has a character with a very long neck who's able to see things from enormous distance. In the fairy tale attraction park De Efteling he is named Langnek ("Long neck") and has a statue of him in the park. His neck rises and lowers and he is one of the mascots of the park.

Film

• E.T. is able to make his neck longer. He usually does this when he is frightened, but near the end when he has to say goodbye to Elliott's older brother he does this too.
• In The Phantom Menace one of the Council Members has a very long neck.
• One of the many alterations that happens to Goldie Hawn's character in Death Becomes Her.

Western Animation

• Also characteristic for many characters in Tex Avery's universe.
• The Simpsons In the Treehouse of Horror X episode Bart is able to stretch out his body parts, including his neck.
• Inspector Gadget was able to stretch his neck to great lengths.
• In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Run Away Runway", Candace becomes a model because she's got a naturally long neck that goes with the high collar on a fashion designer's newest outfit.

Real Life

• Many animals have long necks, probably inspiring this trope: geese, swans, giraffes, flamingos, storks, ostriches, llamas, tortoises, turtles,...
  • Many dinosaurs as well: brontosaurus, diplodocus, apathosaurus,...
• In Africa women of the South Ndebele tribe traditionally wear many rings around their necks. Little girls are given one ring on top of the other each year until their necks actually resemble that of a giraffe's. Nowadays they simply continue this tradition for tourists, but if they would remove the rings their necks would immediately collapse so they are forced to wear them forever.
• Certain tribes in Burma have this tradition as well.
• Rapist Chester Malott
• Not really a real life thing, but there was no television section. There's a Romanian t.v. show about a character named Ratafak Plachta. It's disturbing.