History Main / WeightLossHorror

* The ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' book ''Say Cheese and Die Again!'' has this trope both PlayedStraight and [[InvertedTrope Inverted]]. The male protagonist and his female friend both fall victim to the evil camera, with a picture showing him as morbidly obese, and his female friend as a skeleton. He starts to gain weight involuntarily, she starts to lose it.

* PlayedForLaughs in ''WesternAnimation/AquaTeenHungerForce'' during one of [[MadScientist Dr. Weird's]] {{Cold Opening}}s, where he triumphantly declares he's lost weight!... Manually!... [[ChainsawGood With a chainsaw!]] Cut to (what is left of) his legs and lower body. He then declares he needs to lose another twenty pounds and goes to work again just as Steve decides he'd rather be anywhere else.

* ''Series/InsideNo9'': In [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/InsideNo9S4E6TemptingFate "Tempting Fate"]], Frank's wife Barbara was very overweight and felt a lot of self-consciousness and self-loathing about it. Even though Frank loved her just as she was, he wished for her to be thin so she would be happier. She ended up getting her wish...by dying of cancer, which caused her to fade away to a skeleton before dying.

* ''ComicBook/BatmanBlackAndWhite'' has the story "Fat City." A freak accident turns a puddle of grease into a sentient monster that kills people by sucking all of the fat from their bodies. While it at first only goes after larger individuals, it eventually starts attacking anyone it can find by crawling up through plumbing. Batman is only able to defeat the monster with help from "Gotham's fattest woman" Chloe Willow, who agrees to serve as LiveBait for the beast and eventually pulls a HeroicSacrifice to destroy it for good.

* 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 fat girl 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]].

* In the ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' episode "[[Recap/SmallvilleS01E07Craving Craving]]", bullied, overweight teen Jodi takes Kryptonite-laced vegetable 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.

* ''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 hyper-accelerates 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.

* A variation--definitely PlayedForLaughs--occurs in ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'' episode "The Diet." [[BumblingDad Richard]] can't seem to lose weight, so Gumball and Darwin help him exercise and eat more fruits and vegetables. He becomes more muscular as a result, but eventually, his good looks [[AcquiredSituationalNarcissism go to his head]] and he becomes obsessed with working out to get buffer.
PlayedForLaughs in ''WesternAnimation/AquaTeenHungerForce'' during one of [[MadScientist Dr. Weird's]] {{Cold Opening}}s, where he triumphantly declares he's lost weight!... Manually!... [[ChainsawGood With a chainsaw!]] Cut to (what is left of) his legs and lower body. He then declares he needs to lose another twenty pounds and goes to work again just as Steve decides he'd rather be anywhere else.

* In ''Film/XX'', the first segment, "The Box," is about a mother and son who encounter a mysterious man carrying a beautifully gift-wrapped box on the subway. The man lets the boy peek inside the box, which makes him completely lose the will to eat. Things get worse when he shares the secret of what he saw with his sister and father, who also stop eating upon hearing it. By the segment's end, they are all horrifically emaciated and eventually die offscreen.

* PlayedForLaughs in ''WesternAnimation/AquaTeenHungerForce'' during one of [[MadScientist Dr. Weird's]] {{Cold Opening}}s, where he triumphantly declares he's lost weight!... Manually!... [[ChainsawGood With a chainsaw!]] Cut to (what is left of) his legs and lower body. He then declares he needs to lose another twenty pounds and goes to work again just as Steve decides he'd rather be anywhere else.

* Creator/HGWells's ''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.

* In ''Literature/MyBestFriendsExorcism'', BigBeautifulWoman Margaret is obsessed with losing weight and constantly goes through fad diets. Gretchen - who is possessed by a demon - convinces here to try a new weight loss treatment that causes her to fade away to nothing and end up bed bound and near death. When Abby visits her, she realizes that the "normal" treatment Gretchen has given Margaret is actually [[spoiler:tapeworm eggs. She has been eating tapeworm this entire time, and it has hatched and grown inside her.]]

** In the short story ''Quitter's Inc.'', a guy signs up with the eponymous firm to help him quit smoking, only to learn that their methodology is basically 'we will torture, mutilate, and ultimately kill you and your family if you keep smoking.' He manages to give up smoking with only one infraction, but he gains weight during the process. His caseworker at the firm says that he should lose the weight quickly or else they'll return to the 'mutilating your family' thing. Later he bumps into the coworker that introduced him to the firm and finds out the firm wasn't kidding about that.

** In the short story ''Quitter's Inc.'', a guy signs up with the eponymous firm to help him quit smoking, only to learn that their methodology is basically 'we will torture, mutilate, and ultimately kill you and your family if you keep smoking.' He manages to survive this but gains weight during the process. A guy at the firm says that he should lose the weight quickly or else they'll return to the 'mutilating your family' thing. Later he bumps into the coworker that introduced him to the firm and finds out the firm wasn't kidding about that.

* ''Literature/{{Thinner}}'', by Creator/StephenKing: A fat lawyer is cursed by a gypsy to lose weight. As in, all of it.

* In ''ComicBook/XMen'', whoever is chosen as Famine in Apocalypse's Horsemen can cause people to become emaciated by touching them.

* 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.
* An old Marvel comic had a rich but fat man seeking quick ways to weight loss after his doctor informs him his health is at risk. He finds a mystic who has a potion that can help him lose weight, but he warns him it's untested. He pressures him into giving it anyway by threatening to seize the land his people are currently living on. When he takes it, he drastically loses weight and has to spend half his vast fortune constantly eating to keep from wasting away. The other half he spends desperately searching for the mystic for a cure, as he and his people have moved to parts unknown.

* 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]].

* In ''Literature/MyBestFriendsExorcism'', BigBeautifulWoman Margaret is obsessed with losing weight and constantly goes through fad diets. Gretchen - who is possessed by a demon - convinces here to try a new weight loss treatment that causes her to fade away to nothing and end up bed bound and near death. When Abby visits her, she realizes that the "normal" treatment Gretchen has given Margaret is actually [[spoiler:tapeworm eggs. She has been eating tapeworm this entire time, and it has hatched and grown inside her.]]

* In "The Iron Chancellor" by Creator/RobertSilverberg, a family purchases a RobotMaid to oversee their diet. It does its job a bit too well, so they try to adjust its programming and [[FromBadToWorse short something out]].

* The ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' book "Say Cheese and Die Again!" has this trope both PlayedStraight and [[InvertedTrope Inverted]]. The male protagonist and his female friend both fall victim to the evil camera, with a picture showing him as morbidly obese, and his female friend as a skeleton. He starts to gain weight involuntarily, she starts to lose it.
* ''Literature/TheTroop'': The monsters are [[spoiler:tapeworms]] that afflict their victims with monstrous, unstoppable, and insatiable hunger and cause them to lose weight rapidly even as they're eating whatever they can get their hands on. There's also a TakeThat implicit in that the experiment gone wrong is all a result of an attempt to find a new weight loss drug.

* 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 physical and mental (up-front but far from exclusively hallucinations) side effects. The last thing to happen is Tango challenging a customer who has [[DevilComplex come to believe he's the Devil]] to a psychic duel ("[[Film/{{Scanners}} SCAN ME]]!"), which ends in the man bleeding from the forehead and passing out.

* '''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''.]]

* In the ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' episode "[[Recap/SmallvilleS01E07Craving Craving]]", bullied, overweight teen Jodi takes Kryptonite vegetable 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/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 physical and mental (up-front but far from exclusively hallucinations) 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.

* 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]].

* In the ''[[{{Creator/ECComics}} Vault of Horror]]'' story “Dying to Lose Weight!”, a traveling doctor offers to help a town’s overweight residents through use of a special pill. It works *too* well - those who take the pill lose weight to the point of wasting away and dying. When the doctor returns to the town six months later and is chased into the mausoleum by its angered residents, he comes face to face with the thing that had killed his victims - a giant tapeworm.

* In the ‘’[[Creator/ECComics Vault of Horror]]’’ story “Dying to Lose Weight!”, a traveling doctor offers to help a town’s overweight residents through use of a special pill. It works *too* well - those who take the pill lose weight to the point of wasting away and dying. When the doctor returns to the town and is chased into the mausoleum by its angered residents, he comes face to face with the thing that had killed his victims - a giant tapeworm.

-->'''Sam O'Nella:''' Which makes me think; we should start a radical new fad diet where we just get people to mummify parts of their body. Like,\\

* In the ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' episode "Craving", bullied, overweight teen Jodi takes Kryptonite vegetable 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.