History Main / WeightLossHorror

* In an issue of the Italian horror comic ''ComicBook/DylanDog'' a demon is trying to do good, but [[HeroWithAnFInGood not being familiar with the concept]] he keeps bungling up, with [[NightmareFuel horrific consequences]]. For one of his "good deeds" he sends some magic diet pills to a FatGirl who [[WeightWoe wishes to be thin]]. She loses weight near-instantly and gets the figure of a supermodel, but when she wakes up the following day she's wasted to little more than a skeleton. And that's when [[spoiler:[[FromBadToWorse the flesh-eating bugs who've been "slimming her down" from the inside]] break through her skin and devour the rest of her]].
* Similar circumstances occur in Dead High Yearbook where a teenage girl takes an herbal supplement to lose weight but becomes skeletally thin. Eventually her body bursts into a giant tapeworm that devours the muscle bound form of a schoolmate who suffered similarly horrific results from a muscle building supplement.

* In the ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' skit "Jimmy Tango's Fat Busters", Creator/JimCarrey plays the eponymous infomercial host, whose method of losing dozens of pounds in days involves a combination of a suit of heat beads and crystal meth, the "Riding the Snake" method, and leaves all three testimonials alternately celebrating their massive weight loss and reporting extreme mental side effects. The last thing to happen is Tango challenging a customer who has come to believe he's the Devil to psychic duel ("SCAN ME!"), which ends in the man bleeding from the forehead and passing out.

* Creator/HGWells ' 'The Truth About Pyecraft'': A very fat man takes a potion to lose weight. And he does -- but he doesn't actually become thinner. He just weighs less until he's floating up into the air like a large balloon.

[[folder: Comic Books]]

[[folder: Literature]]

[[folder: Live Action TV]]
* In the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E1PartnersInCrime Partners in Crime]]", Adipose Industries produces a special pill that makes your fat walk away: literally, it turns body fat into a little creature called "adipose" that looks like an anthropomorphic marshmallow, which then leaves the host's body while they're asleep. Being awake while this is going on may cause the company to convert ''everything'' into Adipose as a way of [[HeKnowsTooMuch keeping a trade secret ''secret'']].
* ''Series/TheFortyFourHundred'': In "Weight of the World", Trent Appelbaum, a salesman who disappeared in 1989, discovers that his saliva is a catalyst for weight loss after his loan shark Dmitri Kazar lost 75 pounds within 48 hours of drinking from Trent's beer bottle. Dmitri then brings his wife Celeste to him so that she can lose weight. After she and Trent drink from the same water bottle, Celeste loses 23 pounds just as quickly. Trent sees the business potential in his ability as it could be used to wipe out obesity. Drandix Laboratories agrees to pay him $40 million for exclusive access to his ability. However, the Kazars both die of starvation. NTAC determines that there is a protein in Trent's saliva that hyperacclerates a person's metabolism, stimulating the brain to produce epinephrine and break down fat cells. As such, exposure to the saliva caused the Kazar to burn calories faster than they could take them in and they starved to death in spite of the fact that they were eating everything that they could get their hands on.

[[folder: Newspaper Comics]]
* In the French comic ''Melusine'', the titular witch hypnotizes an obese man into losing weight. She drops by his home a while later to see how he's doing... and finds that his wife is hiding his toolbox, he's cut off his legs and is trying to bite off his fingers while mumbling a MadnessMantra [[GoneHorriblyRight about losing weight]].
* ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}'' has had nightmares of these, such as slipping down a sewer drain or being reduced to just a skeleton. He would then proceed to gorge on lasagna to avoid letting these nightmares come true.

[[folder: Video Games]]
* A PlayedForLaughs example is Bob from ''VideoGame/{{Tekken}}'' series, an {{acrofatic}} character that likes his overweight status. However, in his ''Tekken 6'' ending, after all the effort to win the King of Iron Fist Tournament, he suddenly lost 150 pounds, becoming slim, which was a shock for him. Bob thinks his weight loss was a curse to him, losing also his strength and speed gained with the training that made him fat. First being a cameo, later this becomes a separate character in ''Tag Tournament 2'' as "Slim Bob".
* '''NOT''' played for laughs in ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption2''. [[spoiler:The player is treated to gradually watching the tall, broad-shouldered and tough-as-nails cowboy Arthur Morgan gradually waste away to nothing from tuberculosis, a bacterial infection that was a death sentence for anyone who contracted it in 1899. It's actually possible for him to become more underweight than the game ''normally allows''.]]

[[folder: Western Animation]]
* Used in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/FreakyStories''. A woman buys a new mysterious diet pill in preparation for a beauty contest, on the condition that she must not drink water for the duration of the diet. The diet pill was actually filled with several tiny sponges, and when she breaks and drinks gallons of water, they cause her to bloat uncontrollably.
* PlayedForLaughs in the [[Creator/ColumbiaCartoons UPA]] short "The Rise of Duton Lang", where the eponymous portly chemist [[ProfessorGuineaPig starts taking a weight-loss additive of his own invention]] after an embarrassing incident at an awards ceremony. The compound does cause him to lose weight... but not volume. ''And'' it works so well that when Lang stops taking the stuff he ''still'' loses weight, and eventually becomes lighter-than-air and floats away, never to be heard from again.
[[/folder]]

* In the French comic ''Melusine'', the titular witch hypnotizes an obese man into losing weight. She drops by his home a while later to see how he's doing... and finds that his wife is hiding his toolbox, he's cut off his legs and is trying to bite off his fingers while mumbling a MadnessMantra about losing weight.

* In the [[Creator/ColumbiaCartoons UPA]] short "The Rise of Duton Lang", the eponymous portly chemist starts taking a weight-loss additive of his own invention after an embarrassing incident at an awards ceremony. The compound does cause him to lose weight... but not mass. ''And'' it works so well that when Lang stops taking the stuff he ''still'' loses weight, and eventually becomes lighter-than-air and floats away, never to be heard from again.

* One of ''Series/TheFortyFourHundred'' comes back to be accosted by the gangster he owed money to before he was abducted. The gangster takes a bite of the sandwich the man was eating and subsequently loses a lot of weight. It turns out the man's ability is to create an enzyme in his saliva which accelerates a person's metabolism. The gangster then gets his wife to eat something the man was eating and she too loses a lot of weight. However, it later turns out that the enzyme causes their metabolism to speed up to the point where they're burning calories faster than they can take them in. The gangster and his wife both end up starving to death despite eating a big meal.

* In the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E1PartnersInCrime Partners in Crime]]", Adipose Industries produces a special pill that makes your fat walk away: literally, it turns body fat into a little creature called "adipose" that looks like an anthropomorphic marshmallow, which then leaves the host's body. Consuming too many adipose pills may destroy a human's body completely.

* ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}'' has had nightmares of these, such as slipping down a sewer drain or being reduced to just a skeleton. He would then proceed to gorge himself to avoid letting these nightmares come true.

* '''NOT''' played for laughs in ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption''. [[spoiler:The player is treated to gradually watching the tall, broad-shouldered and tough-as-nails cowboy Arthur Morgan gradually waste away to nothing from tuberculosis, a bacterial infection that was a death sentence for anyone who contracted it in 1899. It's actually possible for him to become more underweight than the game ''normally allows''.]]

[[quoteright:350:[[Literature/{{Thinner}} http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thinner.jpg]]]]

This trope is for works in which weight loss [[GoneHorriblyWrong goes horribly wrong]] (or, even worse, [[GoneHorriblyRight horribly right]]). Maybe the characters lose too much weight and are in danger of disappearing altogether. Maybe they unwittingly sign themselves up for a weight-loss service with overly restrictive (read: lethal) penalties. Maybe the diet is magical and [[PoweredByAForsakenChild requires the sacrificing of children]]. Really nasty examples may overlap with BodyHorror, and self-inflicted magical ones might cross over with BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor.

[[quoteright:350:[[Film/{{Thinner}} http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thinner.jpg]]]]

* In the ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' episode "Craving", bullied, overweight teen Amy takes Kryptonite shakes in order to lose weight. The pounds melt off and she starts to get positive attention from her classmates. She is overjoyed until she realizes the weight loss will not stop. She eats everything in sight trying to keep weight on. When regular food no longer works, she moves to freshly killed raw meat and then to sucking all the fat and marrow out of other humans, the only thing that seems to sate the hunger. Unfortunately, it also kills them.

* In the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "Partners in Crime", Adipose Industries produces a special pill that makes your fat walk away: literally, it turns body fat into a little creature called "adipose" that looks like an anthropomorphic marshmallow, which then leaves the host's body. Consuming too many adipose pills may destroy a human's body completely.

* A PlayedForLaughs example is Bob from ''VideoGame/{{Tekken}}'' series, an {{acrofatic}} character that likes his overweight status. However, in his ''Tekken 6'' ending', after all the effort to win the King of Iron Fist Tournament, he suddenly lost 150 pounds, becoming slim, which was a shock for him. Bob thinks his weight loss was a curse to him, losing also his strength and speed gained with the training that made him fat. First being a cameo, later this becomes a separate character in ''Tag Tournament 2'' as "Slim Bob".

[[/folder]]

This trope is for works in which weight loss [[GoneHorriblyWrong goes horribly wrong]]. Maybe the characters lose too much weight and are in danger of disappearing altogether. Maybe they unwittingly sign themselves up for a weight-loss service with overly restrictive (read: lethal) penalties. Maybe the diet is magical and [[PoweredByAForsakenChild requires the sacrificing of children]]. Really nasty examples may overlap with BodyHorror, and self-inflicted magical ones might cross over with BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor.

This trope is for works in which weight loss [[GoneHorriblyWrong goes horribly wrong]]. Maybe the characters lose too much weight and are in danger of disappearing altogether. Maybe they unwittingly sign themselves up for a weight-loss service with overly restrictive penalties. Maybe the diet is magical and [[PoweredByAForsakenChild requires the sacrificing of children]]. Really nasty examples may overlap with BodyHorror, and self-inflicted magical ones might cross over with BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life]]
* While there is some debate as to what exactly the motive for anorexia and other eating disorders is, many usually do involve an attempt to lose weight and can be very detrimental to one's health.

Maybe a character doesn't like his current shape and decides he's going to drop those pesky pounds if it kills him. Maybe he meets an unusual stranger on the street with slimming abilities. The point is, he loses weight.

* In the French comic '''Melusine'', the titular witch hypnotizes an obese man into losing weight. She drops by his home a while later to see how he's doing... and finds that his wife is hiding his toolbox, he's cut off his legs and is trying to bite off his fingers while mumbling a MadnessMantra about losing weight.