History BodyHorror / LiveACtionTV

* ''Series/{{House}}'': Virtually every PatientOfTheWeek will have some degree of body horror. Then comes the first episode of the eighth season, with [[spoiler:Cuddy's kissing the scar on House's leg]]. It's like a scene from a movie by Creator/DavidCronenberg -- though, actually, it is quite delightful.

* A few episodes of ''Series/MrMeaty'' have dealt with this. Often it's due to the poor quality of the fast-food restaurant's entrees. In the episode "Parkerina", Parker eats too many Ms. Meaty burgers and undergoes an ''American Werewolf In London''-style transformation into a girl. In another episode, Parker mooches off most of the other characters and then gets infected with ''a tapeworm'', "the ultimate moocher", ''[[spoiler:which is later eaten by a scientist who collects internal parasites.]]''

** One of Symmetric Al's targets in "My Better Half" just so happens to be Otto himself, due to his name being symmetrical. Without anyone even looking, he manages to take away the entire right half of the agent's body, leaving him screaming for quite a long time when Oprah shows him a mirror and gives him the bad news. It gets to such a point that Oprah bears witness to Otto eating soup with only half of his body, and [[EveryoneHasStandards is utterly disgusted by how surreal and weird it is.]]
** In "Flatastrophe", Otto folds a flattened Olive into the shape of a paper airplane, bending her limbs in ways that, even for [[ArtisticLicensePhysics this]] kind of a show, would be anatomically impossible and cause grievous injury to her in her regular three-dimensional form. By the time Otto is nearly done and folds her neck backwards, her face expression is frozen in a mix of pain and fear.
** At the end of "Puppet Show", Olive and Otto still have puppet hands despite being turned back into humans. When they find out, Olive orders Oscar and Oprah to "get glue, ''lots'' of glue!"
** In "Olive and Otto in Shmumberland", Orzack and Oprah work together to transport Shmumberman's body to the latter's office, and this conversation ensues.
--> '''Oprah''': Hmm. He's way lighter than I thought.
--> '''Orzack''': It's because his bones are made out of bendy straws.
--> '''Oprah''': Ugh, that's just gross.

* ''Series/The10thKingdom'': Wolf's change into his more feral form certainly ''looks'' like it is incredibly painful and horrible — though that may only be due to Wolf trying to resist it so mightily. If [[SpecialEffectsFailure the creators had had the proper budget]], we would have been treated to a transformation into a true Dire Wolf... which would likely have been both traumatic and nightmare-inducing. (The miniseries wasn't intended for children, after all — [[ShownTheirWork rather like the original Grimm fairytales which inspired it]].)

* ''Series/BeingHumanUK'': One of the main characters is a werewolf, and his transformation is lovingly described in the opening narration of Episode 2: during the process, he actually has a heart attack, and liver and kidney failure, as his internal organs change; and he eventually becomes unable to even scream as his vocal cords tear. As the narrator points out, while any other human would quickly die of shock, the werewolf is somehow kept alive and conscious for the whole thing. This eventually leads to [[spoiler: his death, when he deliberately forces himself to transform without the trigger of a full moon, in order to fight the vampires who've kidnapped his daughter. Unfortunately, as a result, he only partially transformed and got stuck midway through the process. The accelerated healing that would normally fix the major internal organ failure simply never kicks in]].
* ''Series/BigBadBeetleborgs'': "Buggin Out" is a satire of Creator/DavidCronenberg's remake of ''Film/TheFly1986''. Flabber brings a picture of a teleportation device to life, tests it, and a bug gets in the machine (a gnat-like monster named Kombat Gnat who has MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily and the ability to shrink). Flabber slowly changes into the bug thing just like Creator/JeffGoldblum in the movie. First, he starts off with CuteLittleFangs, then develops antennae, then [[MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily a whole row of razor-sharp teeth]] followed by a more bug-like torso and lobster-like claws for hands. He then ''bursts'' to reveal the gnat-like monster he's become. What's worse is that the kids have to fight him in order to turn him back to his normal happy phasm self.

* ''{{Series/Chernobyl}}'': After exposure to the exploded reactor, poor Vasily Ignatenko goes from a young, handsome expectant father to a translucent, living rotting corpse, though his wife Lyudmilla [[TearJerker stays by his side to kiss and caress him until the very end]]. Engineer Leonid Toptunov looks like a mummy by the time he's interviewed by scientist Ulana Khomyuk, and they never even show Aleksandr Akimov's face — or, [[NothingIsScarier according to Khomyuk]], ''[[FacialHorror his lack of one]]''.

** [[TheNthDoctor Regeneration]] is actually used as this a couple of times — most apparently in the regeneration from the Fifth to the Sixth, where the Sixth Doctor is shown to react relatively realistically to the trauma of having [[CameBackWrong transformed into a completely different person with a much less stable brain that he doesn't feel belongs to him]], with this having long-term effects on his behaviour. The novelisation of the regeneration story goes into more detail about this and adds an anecdote about a Time Lord who regenerated into something so horrible all the Time Lords could do was put it out of its misery. The First Doctor's regeneration into the Second in the novelisation of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E3ThePowerOfTheDaleks "The Power of the Daleks"]] has Ben watching the Doctor [[PainfulTransformation painfully transform]], with attention paid to bones shifting and reforming and skin moving. And then, in the new series, the Tenth Doctor seems to feel this way about regeneration and finds it completely disturbing, possibly even worse than death.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E2MissionToTheUnknown "Mission to the Unknown"]] introduces us to the Varga plants. Used as watchdogs by the Daleks, these are giant ambulatory cacti with at least a basic animal-like intelligence. They hunt animals — any animals, including humans — and then shoot their spines into them. These spines carry a venom with unusual effects: the victim first becomes paranoid and psychotic, obsessed with killing; then, ''they transform into Varga plants themselves''. Even killing the host body does not arrest the transformation. ''Brrrrr.''
** Polly about to be surgically transformed into a {{Cyborg}} fish creature in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E5TheUnderwaterMenace "The Underwater Menace"]].
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E2TheArkInSpace "The Ark in Space"]], it's not the gigantic bugs; those look silly. It's what seems to be a man in a sleeping bag covered in green goo, and before that, the person ''turning'' into said bag of slop by melting bodyparts is worse than the [[MonsterOfTheWeek alien creature it turns into]]. "The Ark in Space" also has one of the show’s most famous cliffhangers, with Noah slowly removing his hand from his pocket to reveal he's being taken over by... [[SpecialEffectFailure green bubblewrap]]?
** The Master in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E3TheDeadlyAssassin "The Deadly Assassin"]] tried to regenerate [[CameBackWrong beyond his regeneration limit]]. He has become a rotted [[TechnicallyLivingZombie walking corpse]], in constant agonising pain, living only on [[ThePowerOfHate willpower and hatred]] as his body continues to disintegrate.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E2TheInvisibleEnemy "The Invisible Enemy"]] has a space parasite lay eggs in ''the Doctor's brain'' which begins to passively alter his behaviour, making him go vulnerable, confused and AxeCrazy. [[NightmareRetardant Less scary than it sounds, unfortunately.]]
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E6RevelationOfTheDaleks "Revelation of the Daleks"]] has one character [[spoiler:reduced to a living disembodied head with part of his brain exposed (and with additional bits of brain grafted on), inside a transparent Dalek and pleading for death, a wish eventually granted by ''his own daughter'']]. He has done absolutely nothing to deserve this.
** The creationist vicar in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS26E2GhostLight "Ghost Light"]] is slowly turned into an ape. Another example:

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E2TheEndOfTheWorld "The End of the World"]] introduces Lady Cassandra O'Brien.Δ17, the last pure human in her time. However, she's maintained her [[FantasticRacism "pureness"]] by going through [[CosmeticHorror many rounds of plastic surgery]], the result being a BrainInAJar hooked up to a skin-trampoline with two eyes and a mouth stretched across a metal frame that needs to be moisturized frequently.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E7TheIdiotsLantern "The Idiot's Lantern"]]: [[MonsterOfTheWeek The Wire]] ''pulls people's faces from their bodies''. You actually see people walking around with smooth skin where their face used to be. [[spoiler:''This happens to Rose.'']]
** The Abzorbaloff's process of absorbing people in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E10LoveAndMonsters "Love & Monsters"]] is both scary and disgusting. There's also a Creator/HarlanEllison-esque [[spoiler:pavement-person]]. Interestingly, the Abzorbaloff was designed by a 9-year-old who won a contest. Watching that episode makes one wonder if the 9-year-old was allowed to watch it.[[note]]He was, and he was disappointed. His design was for the creature to be the size of a double-decker bus.[[/note]]
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E6TheLazarusExperiment "The Lazarus Experiment"]], this is how Professor Lazarus discovers his experiment wasn't 100% successful.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E12TheSoundOfDrums "The Sound of Drums"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E13LastOfTheTimeLords "Last of the Time Lords"]]:
*** The Toclafane, blade-wielding metallic spheres, are revealed to be [[spoiler:mutilated humans from the year 100 trillion. After attempting to find the fabled [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E11Utopia "Utopia"]] (a supposed oasis in the dying universe) and finding only darkness, they went insane and ''slowly cannibalized their own bodies''.]]

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E1PartnersInCrime "Partners in Crime"]]: [[spoiler:The monsters are the Adipose, creatures born from human fat that, in times of emergency, convert all matter in a human's body to achieve birth, effectively killing them. And they're ''[[http://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Adipose adorable]]''.]]
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E3PlanetOfTheOod "Planet of the Ood"]]: [[spoiler:The bad guy turns into an Ood. The sequence has him ''peeling off his skin'' shortly followed by him ''spewing up a piece of his own brain!'']] Talk about trauma. On top of that, it was a [[spoiler:KarmicTransformation]].
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E9ForestOfTheDead "Forest of the Dead"]]: [[spoiler:When Donna encounters Miss Evangelista in the virtual reality, she's wearing a veil. As Donna finds out when she eventually yanks it off, Miss Evangelista's BrainUploading suffered a glitch that didn't just turn her into a genius, it warped her face like a Picasso painting.]]
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E12TheStolenEarth "The Stolen Earth"]]: [[spoiler:Davros]] reveals just how he created his [[spoiler:new Dalek empire]]... by opening his jacket, where we get a ''lovely'' shot of the inside of his chest and see ''his still-beating heart.''
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E16TheWatersOfMars "The Waters of Mars"]]: The people infected by the Flood gain bloated, ruptured skin around their mouths which constantly seeps water, dead white eyes and black teeth.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E4TheTimeOfAngels "The Time of Angels"]] reveals that the image of a Weeping Angel becomes an Angel itself. You know how your retina forms images in the back of your eye? Absolutely played for horror.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E12ThePandoricaOpens "The Pandorica Opens"]]: Creator/StevenMoffat introduces the [[BlatantLies not-at-all terrifying]] concept of [[spoiler:a zombie Cyberman, whose various disconnected body parts can all move and function in nefarious ways. First, there's the chopped-off arm which can fire its weapon, play dead, and electrocute the Doctor, then there's the severed head, which moves around on the wires protruding from the neck, using them to ensnare Amy — and then, after the desiccated skull falls out, it tries to snatch up Amy's own head as a replacement. Oh, and then the Cyberman reassembles itself.]]
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E10JourneyToTheCentreOfTheTARDIS "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS"]]: The main cast is chased throughout the episode by humanoid zombie creatures that are completely charred and burned all over, which are revealed to be [[spoiler: future versions of the main cast that were burned alive by the Eye of Harmony,]] who then proceed to run around the TARDIS, [[spoiler: chasing their past selves,]] in blind pain. It is also worth noting that two of the zombie creatures are [[https://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/doctor-who-journey-to-the-centre-of-the-tardis-promo-pics-30-570x321.jpg fused together at the sides]], and another one has its [[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/809155189415346209/823682497728610365/unknown.png right hand fused to its face]]--covering it completely.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E11TheCrimsonHorror "The Crimson Horror"]]: There's a series of corpses that turn up petrified and bright red. Turns out, it's [[spoiler:caused by a poison secreted by a prehistoric parasite, which a crazy old lady has been letting latch onto her chest in a nightmarish symbiotic relationship.]] This all goes up a notch in the horror department when [[spoiler:it turns out that the ''Doctor'' underwent the process some time prior and, thanks to his Time Lord biology, ended up alive, red, and half-petrified. When he's discovered, he's only able to gasp horribly and shuffle around like a zombie.]] And there's also the matter of poor Ada and her incredibly scarred, raw face [[spoiler:which was also caused by the venom]].
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E5TimeHeist "Time Heist"]]:

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS38E1E2Spyfall "Spyfall"]]: The [=MI6=] agent [[DeathInTheClouds attacked on a plane]] at the beginning turns out to have had her DNA scrambled to the point of becoming a brain-dead HumanoidAbomination. Judging by the Doctor's description of what happened to this poor woman, she's lucky she's unconscious. And this happened to ''all'' of the attacked spies.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS38E6Praxeus "Praxeus"]]: Creatures under the effects of an advanced Praxeus infection develop white scale-like growths across their skin. And it is ''creepy''-looking.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS38E8TheHauntingOfVillaDiodati "The Haunting of Villa Diodati"]]: The [[spoiler:Lone Cyberman]] manages to up the body horror, even by [[spoiler:Cyberman]] standards, to a pretty high level. It primarily accomplishes this by [[spoiler:looking only partially put together, with its mask only partially covering its face, as a good chunk of its left side is clearly unfinished, showing human parts.]]
* ''Series/EmeraldCity'': In [[Recap/EmeraldCityS1E4ScienceAndMagic "Science and Magic"]], [[spoiler:when poor Jack is brought back to life, he wakes up on an operating table and finds that much of his body has been replaced by metal and clockwork]].

* ''Series/{{Firefly}}'': Meet the Reavers, a race of insane cannibal space pirates who all have horrific scars, torn-out patches of flesh, and shards of metal jammed into their faces.
** Even worse, it's revealed that Reavers do this to themselves!

** People get infected with a bioweapon that turns them into spiny rampaging monsters.
*** In the fourth season, some of the same people ''volunteer'' to be infected with the same bioweapon as part of their cult's {{transhuman}} beliefs.

** And in the second season, ex-soldiers are injected with a compound that, when activated by radio frequency, painfully crystalizes their tissue and turns them into bombs.

* ''[[Franchise/ASongOfIceAndFire Game of Thrones]]'' universe:
** ''Series/GameOfThrones'':
*** Rhaego's unseen body is claimed to be ''greatly'' deformed.
*** The disease greyscale causes flesh to calcify and crack, eventually expanding to organs and causing insanity and death.
** ''Series/HouseOfTheDragon'':
*** Craghas Drahar aka "The Crabfeeder" is (or was) afflicted by greyscale.
*** The last days of the life of King Viserys are not kind to him with the leprosy-like decay afflicting his body. He's practically a walking skeleton with skin barely attached, there's a hole where his right cheek once was, his teeth are rotten and one of his eye sockets is empty. It gets to the point where he wears a golden mask on half of his face to conceal the horrific sight.

* ''Series/H2OJustAddWater'': Emma once cut herself on a piece of strange coral, which infected her with a disease that caused her to mutate into a sea monster. At first, it just affects her mermaid form, turning her scales white and causing them to grow in places they don't belong, but it isn't long before her human form starts growing gills and webbing. By the time the others find her, she's wheezing horribly and her skin looks like its sloughing off.
* ''{{Series/Heroes}}'':
** In one of his trademark [[IdiotBall genius moves]], Mohinder injects himself with a serum that he believes will give him superpowers without testing it. It does, in fact, give him superpowers, but the cost is that he begins to turn into a half-insect monster. At the end of Volume 3, a reversal serum washes over him [[AssPull curing the mutations but leaving the superstrength.]]
*** The character of Mohinder is kind of a CaptainErsatz of Creator/JeffGoldblum's character in ''Film/TheFly1986''.

* ''Series/{{House}}'': Virtually every patient of the week will have some degree of body horror.
** And then comes the eighth season first episode, where [[spoiler: Cuddy's kissing the scar on House's leg.]] It was like a scene from a movie by Creator/DavidCronenberg. Though, actually, it was quite delightful.
* ''Humanology'': This science documentary series shows TruthInTelevision examples and attempts to treat them, such as face transplantations or an Indonesian man whose limbs were completely coated in giant warts.

*** "This might tickle a bit." Yeah, no kidding, Decade. ''Gaagh!''
** ''Film/ShinKamenRiderPrologue'' defines creepy when it comes to Kamen Rider (THE FIRST and THE NEXT pick up the torch). His transformation includes a third eye emerging from his forehead and his lower jaw splitting in half.

* ''{{Series/Salem}}'':

** We later see how the witches are controlling her — there's a snake in her stomach.

* ''Series/SixFeetUnder'' used this a LOT. After all, this IS a show about morticians, and they spend a lot of time talking about and performing embalmings. There are a LOT of really unpleasant things that happen with a body in the first few days after death that a mortician has to deal with to make it look and smell nice for the funeral.

* ''Series/TheTerror'': In the finale, we see [[spoiler: the remains of the party led by Lt. Edward Little, as discovered by Capt. Crozier and Silna; Lt. Little has gold chains ''sewn into the skin of his face'']]. Not only is this [[NothingIsScarier never explained]], it's also allegedly how one of the bodies was found in real life.
* ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'': The BloodierAndGorier adult SpinOff of ''Series/DoctorWho'', it dials this trope up at times.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': In "The Hellgramite Method", Dr. Eugene Murrich infects Miley Judson with a Hellgramite worm in order to help him overcome his [[TheAlcoholic alcoholism]]. The worm takes up residence in Miley's stomach and absorbs all the alcohol that he drinks. Dr. Murrich offers Miley a choice: he can either continue drinking and allow the worm to remain active or he can stop drinking and suffer extremely painful withdrawals in order to render the worm dormant. Miley [[GoingColdTurkey goes cold turkey]] and almost succumbs to the terrible pain caused by the starving worm moving around in his stomach but he sticks it out and finally achieves sobriety.

* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'': Occasionally shows up. Often it's in the demons, but once in a while, human types are seen too.
** One example are the fish monsters in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS2E20GoFish Go Fish]]", who are [[spoiler:members of the swim team,]] altered by chemicals. Eventually, they tear their old skin away to reveal the monster underneath.
** Mohra Demon blood has regenerative powers, which was being sold to injured humans. As a result of magic being gone in Season 9, the blood has a nasty side effect of causing unstoppable cell regeneration. Those exposed to it started to grow giant tumors all over their bodies that wouldn't stop growing.
** When Warren Mears is brought back in Season 8, he's still without skin. It goes FromBadToWorse when Buffy destroys the Seed of Wonder, wiping out magic and negating the spells holding Warren together, causing him to collapse into a pile of gore.

* ''Series/TalesFromTheCrypt'': Not surprisingly, this show utilizes this trope in many of its episodes. In "Ear Today, Gone Tomorrow," a partially-deaf criminal gains the auditory system of an owl through a surgical transplant--[[spoiler:only to then develop other owlish features, including an ''Exorcist''-style swiveling head, feathers, and a beak. When he grows the beak, his face ''cracks open'' like porcelain and the beak ''bursts out of his skin.'']] It's as unpleasant as it sounds.
** In the comic this episode is based on the man gets the auditory system of a bat instead of an owl. Now imagine what would have happened to him if they went with that one instead of the owl. It really depends on the type of bat though.

* ''Series/{{Being Human|UK}}'': One of the main characters is a werewolf, and his transformation is lovingly described in the opening narration of Episode 2: during the process, he actually has a heart attack, and liver and kidney failure, as his internal organs change; and he eventually becomes unable to even scream as his vocal cords tear. As the narrator points out, while any other human would quickly die of shock, the werewolf is somehow kept alive and conscious for the whole thing. This eventually leads to [[spoiler: his death, when he deliberately forces himself to transform without the trigger of a full moon, in order to fight the vampires who've kidnapped his daughter. Unfortunately, as a result, he only partially transformed and got stuck midway through the process. The normal accelerated-healing that would normally fix the major internal organ failure simply never kicks in]].

** In "DNA Mad Scientist", Aeryn Sun was slowly transformed into some weird human/Pilot mix. And that's just in the first season...
** In "Natural Election", a space-travelling plant infests [[LivingShip Moya]], and by extension, her symbiotic pilot. Pilot is found unconscious, with black creepers spilling out of his mouth, wrapping around his arms and over his console. ''And then he wakes up... and starts screaming!''
** Another episode set aside to test how loud Lani Tupu can scream- "Green-Eyed Monster", in which Crais is tortured by Talyn through their cybernetic link: as a result, horrible lesions and wounds open on Crais' body. And judging by the fact that he spent a full minute screaming for someone to kill him, it hurt.
** The [[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/farscape/images/7/7e/Fento.jpg Plokavian judges]] in "The Ugly Truth" appear to be suffering from an extremely painful-looking disease that involves open sores, sagging flesh, and oozing bodily fluids. It gets worse when you look at the materials produced on it in the ''Farscape'' RPG:

** "Twice Shy" introduces an EmotionEater with a feeding process that leaves [[http://www.farscapeworld.com/gallery/10414/10414-005.jpg unpleasantly necrotic wounds]] that [[http://www.farscapeworld.com/gallery/10414/10414-124.jpg eventually kill]] [[http://www.farscapeworld.com/gallery/10414/10414-128.jpg the victim.]] A few background examples appear to actually ''[[TheBlank erase]]'' the victim's face.
** Over the course of Scorpius' wormhole project, several test pilots are melted after flying through an unstable wormhole: in most examples, we don't see the process actually occur. However, in the episode "Incubator," one researcher manages to bring her ship safely through the wormhole, only to discover that the shields she used only delayed tissue liquefaction. [[http://www.themakeupgallery.org.uk/fantasy/alien/far/linfer.htm Before and After shots readily available.]]

* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'':
** Injuries and illnesses to Changeling characters play up the body horror trope. For instance, the Founders afflict Odo with a life-threatening infection in order to force him to return to the Great Link for judgment. Not only does the infection make it difficult for Odo to maintain solid form, but it also makes his humanoid form look diseased.

** In "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS02E23Crossover Crossover]]", while in the Mirror Universe, Bashir shoots Mirror Odo with a phaser, causing the Changeling to [[LudicrousGibs messily explode]].

** In "Genesis" everyone in the Enterprise was [[EvolutionaryLevels devolving into some variety of lower life form.]]
** In "Identity Crisis", Geordi turns into an alien creature.
** "Conspiracy" was full of body horror.

** In "Scorpion" Harry Kim gets bitch-slapped by an alien from Species 8472. Alien cells in the wound begin to infest and transform Harry's body, covering his face in strange tendrils. Fortunately, the Doctor is able to cure the infection... except for a solitary tendril up Harry's nose. Or so B'Elanna claims.
** And in "Threshold", Paris and Captain Janeway end up evolving into salamanders after breaching Warp 10.
** Then there are the Vidiians, an entire species affected with a disease that causes hideous bodily rotting and requires them to rely on mass-scale organ theft to stay alive. Their appearances feature such things as a Vidiian using a gun that teleports Neelix's lungs out of his body, or a Vidiian surgeon slicing the face off of a RedShirt and grafting it to his own to try and get closer to B'Elanna.
** "Course: Oblivion" sees the crew begin to suffer from a strange illness. They soon discover that they, their belongings, and even the ship itself are all in fact merely malleable life forms which encountered the real Voyager and its inhabitants during one of their past adventures, replicating them so perfectly that they assumed their very identities. Radiation poisoning from their warp core causes them all to degrade back into a liquid state, their bodies literally melting over time as they become grotesque mockeries of their former selves. The ship's own disintegration is almost as horrific in its own right as it literally falls apart, going from a sleek starship to a shifting, gooey mess before finally becoming a nondescript cloud of particles in space.
** Nicely inverted when the crew capture Borg drone Seven of Nine, who used to be a human female called Annika Hansen. When the crew first start removing her cybernetic implants she reacts according to this trope, as the thought of becoming human again is abhorrent to her.

** In "Skin" and "Nightshifter", we see that shapeshifters have [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin shed their skin]] (by ''ripping it off'') in order to change shape, which includes teeth, hair, and other fun things. But the shapeshifters get PlayedForLaughs (until the end) in [[spoiler:"Monster Movie"]].

** "Something Borrowed" centred around Gwen's [[spoiler:pregnancy with an alien "baby" and her attempts to hide this from her wedding guests, while escaping from the alien mother who wanted to tear her apart to reclaim the child.]]
** "Sleeper": the sleeper agents' right arm has a sort of implant in it which can turn into a huge blade. [[spoiler:This happens to one of the sleepers while she's in her husband's arms. The result is pretty horrifying.]]
** "Fragments": Owen's fiancée appears to have (very)-early onset Alzheimer's. Then it starts to look like a brain tumour. [[spoiler:It turns out to be an alien in her brain. She dies minutes later.]]
** Season 3, ''[[Series/TorchwoodChildrenOfEarth Children of Earth]]'', features the 456 aliens. They use human children as [[spoiler:living drugs, a process that stunts the children's growth and leaves them thin, hairless and immobile, but conscious the entire time.]]

* ''Series/TheXFiles'' does this at least once every season; it's also at the center of TheMovie's plot.

* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'': Injuries and illnesses to Changeling characters play up the body horror trope. For instance, the Founders afflict Odo with a life-threatening infection in order to force him to return to the Great Link for judgment. Not only does the infection make it difficult for Odo to maintain solid form, but it also makes his humanoid form look diseased.
** When Garak tortures Odo using a device that prevents him from regenerating, Odo's appearance becomes horrific.

** While in the Mirror Universe, Bashir shoots Mirror!Odo with a phaser, causing the Changeling to [[LudicrousGibs messily explode]].

* ''Series/TheTenthKingdom'': Wolf's change into his more feral form certainly ''looks'' like it is incredibly painful and horrible — though that may only be due to Wolf trying to resist it so mightily. If [[SpecialEffectsFailure the creators had had the proper budget]], we would have been treated to a transformation into a true Dire Wolf... which would likely have been both traumatic and nightmare-inducing. (The miniseries wasn't intended for children, after all — [[ShownTheirWork rather like the original Grimm fairytales which inspired it]].)

* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1963'': In "The Architects of Fear", a man is surgically turned into a nasty-looking alien to give [[UsefulNotes/ColdWar the superpowers of Earth]] a common enemy in the form of a faked invasion.

** "Quality of Mercy" involved a young female POW in an intergalactic conflict, who is subjected to painful and horrifying surgery with the intent to transform her into an alien. [[spoiler:She is '''already''' an alien, and is in fact used as a spy to gather information from her human cell mate]].
** In "The Joining", after Captain Miles Davidow injects himself with the DNA of an indigenous [[UsefulNotes/{{Venus}} Venusian]] lifeform, he begins to grow duplicate, though initially deformed and unfinished, body parts such as a hand and a torso. It is an extremely painful process.

* ''Series/TheXFiles'' did this at least once every season, plus it was at the center of TheMovie's plot.
** One episode involved a man who could control the cancer that he had in ''all'' his organs and tissues (by eating other people's tumors). He used the cancer cells to generate a new body when his old one became too diseased to function. This particular being could also detect any cancer in anyone, and accurately and precisely describe the type, location, size, disease status, and detailed prognosis of the person, apparently by sight alone. He could also create a new body (and apparently control both bodies simultaneously) at will (provided he had enough material, at least), and could (and did, at least twice) kill off one body as a decoy.

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E1PartnersInCrime "Partners in Crime"]]: [[spoiler:The monsters are the Adipose, creatures born from human fat that, in times of emergency, convert all matter in a human's body to achieve birth, effectively killing them. And they're ''[[http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Adipose adorable]]''.]]

* ''Series/GameOfThrones'':
** The disease greyscale causes flesh to calcify and crack, eventually expanding to organs and causing insanity and death.
** Rhaego's unseen body is claimed to be ''greatly'' deformed.