Abnormal

Like every Pure Titan, an Abnormal wears the shape of an oversized nude human, sexless and masculine in build, walking upright except for the rare specimen that moves on all fours. Proportions are always wrong somewhere: a head too large, limbs too short, a frame twisted out of true. Enormous mouths dominate their faces, lined with teeth that are either uniformly flat, the common pattern, or uniformly sharp. A handful call the Colossus Titan to mind, and their sizes run from ordinary all the way to Rod Reiss's monster, which crawls along at double the Colossus Titan's height.

Unpredictability is the defining trait. Where an ordinary Titan devours the nearest human on sight, an Abnormal may pass over isolated soldiers entirely and charge a strategic point instead, which makes the type disproportionately destructive. Documented behaviors include fast walking, outright running, huge leaps, killing victims before eating them, and, rarest of all, human speech.

The Talking Titan bows before Ilse Langnar and addresses her as a subject of Ymir, and the Titan that was once Connie Springer's mother greets him with the words "welcome home." Both hint that some Abnormals retain fragments of thought or memory, seemingly surfacing at the sight of someone important to them. No explanation is ever given for why certain Titans become Abnormals while others do not.

The earliest recorded Abnormals are the Wall Titans, Eldians transformed by Karl Fritz, the 145th King, through the Founding Titan and ordered to harden into Paradis Island's three concentric Walls in 743. During Wall Maria's fall in 845, the Smiling Titan carrying Dina Fritz makes straight for the Yeager home and eats Carla in front of her son, the death that sets the entire story in motion. Five years on, the same Titan kills Hannes before Eren's awakened Coordinate power turns the surrounding Titans against it, and they tear it apart.

Abnormals surface in nearly every major battle. One snatches Thomas Wagner in its jaws at Trost and later falls to Eren's Titan form; another sprints for the district's rear gate, too fast for the elite guards, until Mikasa Ackerman opens its nape. On the 57th Expedition a charging specimen ignores the outer guard and bolts for the formation's center before Luke Siss and Dita Ness bring it down, while a spider-gaited quadruped is lured into a tree and knocked senseless. Rod Reiss becomes the most extreme case after drinking a Titan serum: a heat-shedding giant so massive it can only crawl, drawn toward the crowds of Orvud District and indifferent to concentrated cannon fire until Historia Reiss slays it.

When Eren and Zeke unlock the Founding Titan's full power, the hardening on the Walls dissolves and the Wall Titans march out in the Rumbling, wiping out eighty percent of humanity before Levi kills Zeke and severs Eren's control. Mikasa's killing of Eren ends the power of the Titans altogether, and every Titan, Abnormals included, reverts to human form; Connie's mother returns to him alive, while survivors lynch the restored Wall Titans in retaliation. The Nine Titans were once counted among the Abnormals before their true nature and identities came to light.