Face Of A Thug / Literature

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• Mangiafuoco (the name means Fire-eater) in The Adventures of Pinocchio is described as ugly and terrifying, but is not as bad as his appearance implies. He wanted to burn Pinocchio for (accidentally) ruining his show, but felt compassion for Pinocchio when the latter cried for his father, sparing him. Later, he spared all the puppets and gave Pinocchio five gold coins for his father.
• Keith Gandor◊ from Baccano! may as well be carrying a neon sign reading "I am in The Mafia. Fear me," given his appearance... Okay, so he is in the Mafia, but more of the honor-bound Noble Demon Neighborhood-Friendly Gangsters variety. The Light Novels describe his face as "the face of a man who, no matter how you looked at him, didn't seem as though he did proper business."
• The Belgariad: The Guile Hero Silk has a remarkably untrustworthy face that draws frequent comparisons to rats. He still manages to act as one of his country's best spies and becomes a wildly successful merchant prince, but complains that if he'd had a more honest face, he would have been able to own the world. However, while Silk is a nice guy and definitely a hero his concept of morality on the subject of "things that belong to other people" is somewhat flexible, so this may not be an example of the trope in the purest sense.
• Beware of Chicken: Spirit Beast pig Chun Ke looks the most feral of the Fa Ram Spirit Beasts, with shaggy blood-red fur, enormous tusks, and three huge scars across his face. He is also by far the friendliest of the denizens of Fa Ram, and one of the kindest.
• Cradle Series: Lindon, one of the nicest people in a world of assholes where Moral Myopia and Might Makes Right is the order of the day, is big, broad-shouldered, with a rough face that always looks like he's scowling. This has gotten him in trouble a lot. Despite being unfailingly polite to everyone he meets, people just think he's mocking them and jump straight to violence. Unfortunately for him, the problem only gets worse as he ascends through the hierarchy of sacred artists and collects one Power-Upgrading Deformation after another through a combination of desperation, pragmatism, and bad luck. By the later books, he's practically a Humanoid Abomination in appearance and has serious difficulty convincing strangers not to attack him or (more often) run away in terror.
• A Deal with a Demon: In The Dragon's Bride, Sol looks like a fearsome, brutish dragon man monster but is actually a rather caring husband, family man, and king to his people.
• Discworld has Captain - later Commander - Sam Vimes, who grew up on the streets, had an extremely limited education (which he is very conscious of), and was part of a gang before joining the Watch. He generally looks rumpled, badly shaven, bad-tempered, and badly in need of a drink (which he can't have, as a former alcoholic). He is usually drawn by official artists as looking either like an older Clint Eastwood or Pete Postlethwaite, and one character notes that he has hands like a bag of walnuts. During a time-travelling incident, a young Havelock Vetinari - a notably good reader of people - explicitly refers to him as a thug who thinks with his muscles... then adds in astonishment that at every single moment he's overruling them.
• Mildmay the Fox, from Doctrine of Labyrinths by Sarah Monette. He is a former assassin, but he's not nearly as thuggish as most people assume.
• Doomsday Book has Father Roche, a rough-looking, burly man who is nevertheless a meek and patient Good Shepherd. The fact that the "cutthroat" that the delirious main character saw in the forest was actually Roche is a major revelation late in the story.
• The Dresden Files:
  • "Cujo" Hendricks, chief enforcer to mob boss John Marcone, looks like a brute who beats people up for money, and does... but only because that's his job; he's naturally inclined more to talk things out. Left to his own devices he's much happier reading up for his philosophy degree.
  • Harry gets hit with this as well. He's tall, like professional basketball player tall, and has a long face that tends to be bruised and battered due to the unfriendly characters he encounters in the books. He also likes to wear an ankle-length leather duster in all weather. He went to a friend's family reunion at a park, and within seconds was asked to leave because he was scaring people. Later in the series, guards at a high-class function hesitate about letting him in even though he's in a tuxedo on the grounds that in him "they recognised one of their own kind, one who was taller and had better scars than they did." Other people, especially in the earlier novels, also comment that he doesn't look all that bright, which he plays up when it suits his purposes.
• Simon from Durarara!! is a friendly, peaceful and intelligent sushi tout. He is also a seven-foot-tall Scary Black Man that tends to scare off passers-by with his mere presence. Interestingly enough, the really dangerous guy in the novels, Shizuo, is a slim blond Bishōnen, and so unfortunate people sometimes underestimate him and are crushed by flying vending machines.
• The Elenium's Sparhawk is like this, from his stern demeanor, his enormous size and strength, and the nose his childhood friend broke in their youth. It's suggested that he was no looker at the best of times, but his broken nose is said to twist his face and make him appear ugly and cruel. But, despite this, and the black enameled armor his order wears, he is one of the most noble around.
• Sousuke Sagara from Full Metal Panic! is shown to have such an intense, intimidatingly scary face that it scares off anyone who approaches him or Kaname. It happens mostly for comedic effect, and he's shown to actually be very attractive when he lightens up a bit. On the other hand, Sousuke is extremely violent by nature (due to being raised by resistance fighters and all that). He's just highly professional about it rather than being a thug.
• Kodaka Hasegawa from Haganai not only has the Face of a Thug, but he's also half-English, so people think his naturally blond hair is bleached, delinquent-style, since he otherwise has Japanese features. As a result, he has no real friends and people are constantly picking fights with him.
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: Draco wants to traverse the Forbidden Forest with Fang because the dog looks huge and intimidating but is horrified to discover that appearances are only skin deep and the huge dog is just a lovable coward.
• In The Iliad and The Odyssey, several people refer to Odysseus himself as having "the face of a brute," and recount their surprise when he turns out to be a Genius Bruiser Guile Hero.
• In Infinite Jest, the massive, glowering, square-headed Don Gately is normally a shy, decent fellow who'd prefer to live a quiet life. His addictions, though, lead him to be employed as muscle for a local gangster. His understanding boss reserves Don for jobs that don't require much in the way of sadism, either letting his gigantic presence do the intimidation for him, or using him to efficiently wipe the floor with somebody whose multiple chances have run out.
• Into The Broken Lands: The mage-crafted Human Weapon Nonee has grey, craggy, exaggerated features that verge on Gonkish. She has a gentle, caring personality, but it takes some acclimation for people not to feel threatened by her smile.
• This is the way Ian Fleming originally envisioned James Bond. The very first chapter in Casino Royale describes his face while sleeping as "a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal, and cold."
  • In The Spy Who Loved Me, the viewpoint character is Vivienne Michel, a hotel employee who gets captured by thugs who plan to rape and murder her before burning the hotel down for an Insurance Fraud scam. She is saved when James Bond shows up asking for a room, but she at first assumes he is a partner to the thugs because of his looks.
  • In Octopussy and The Living Daylights, Bond makes his first appearance in "Octopussy" standing in Major Smythe's house. Smythe immediately realizes that his crimes have been found out simply by how cold and serious Bond looks when laying eyes upon him.
• A rare female example in Lone Huntress. Lisa is a few inches shy of seven feet in height, has the musculature of a professional wrestler, and the Glowing Eyes don't help. Underneath it all she's an Emotional Bruiser with a Dark and Troubled Past and a determination not to let other children go through what she and her siblings endured.
• The Lord of the Rings: Frodo decides to trust Strider in spite of his appearance, saying that an agent of the Enemy would "look fairer, and feel fouler" — something of an Informed Attribute because every servant of Sauron that we do meet throughout the story looks hideously monstrous.
• Katarina in My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! is convinced that she has a villain's face, particularly her eyes. She thinks they look harsh and cold, but people tend to be confused when she actually says it. They think she looks a little intense at worst and the manga adaptation shows that her eye color comes across looking more like Innocent Blue Eyes than anything. Her face would look about perfect as a villain's since she was literally designed to be one, but if she doesn't glare at people her extremely good nature and complete cluelessness totally overrides any issues with her features. She does intentionally use this trope when defending Maria against her bullies (twice), however, and proves to be quite effective.
• T.H. White's The Once and Future King depicts Lancelot as this, being described as deformed and simian. You'd expect him to be some kind of craven monster or a victim of Adaptational Villainy, but he's actually every bit as noble-hearted as your traditional Lancelot. As far as he's concerned, life dealt him a crappy hand and he's going to make the most of it.
• Lucas Davenport from John Sandford's Prey novels has a scar across his face from a rogue fish hook accident and, later, a tracheotomy scar on his neck. While being a well-known cop and the main character of a long-running detective novel series, pretty much everyone agrees that he looks like a thug or tough guy. Of course, that often works to his personal advantage.
• In The Record of Unusual Creatures, Y'zaks has a thug-like face. This combined with an exceptionally strong physique makes everyone in the southern suburb (where the cast lives) terrified when they first meet him, to the point of cashiers would automatically open the cash register when he walks into a store, assuming he is a robber. A few veterans even formed a neighborhood watch to keep an eye on him. This gets even worse when he is walking along with his daughter Y'lizabet, as the police assumed he is a child kidnapper. Of course once everyone gets to know him they figure out that he is a very kind person, and he often helps out his neighbors.
• Sam the Cat: Detective: In The Maltese kitten, Sam initially views Slasher as nothing more than a weathered, swaggering, hot-tempered alley cat, and Jimmy as a hulking brute. Then he sees Jimmy laugh off some damage Slasher caused to the merchandise in Jimmy's store and nuzzle the cat's cheek while Slasher looks up at him adoringly.
• Archmaester Marwyn from A Song of Ice and Fire:
  "Marwyn wore a chain of many metals around his bull’s neck. Save for that, he looked more like a dockside thug than a maester. His head was too big for his body, and the way it thrust forward from his shoulders, together with that slab of jaw, made him look as if he were about to tear off someone’s head."
• Star Wars Legends: Keets Freely, a member of the Erased resistance group, is mistaken for a professional criminal the first time he meets a POV character.
• Ryuuji from Toradora!. It's genetic, apparently (his Disappeared Dad actually was a thug employed by the Yakuza). He's really a Nice Guy: kind, caring and enjoys doing housework (especially cleaning), and is constantly explaining to people that no, he is not going to beat you up and shake you down just for looking at him funny. His looks and personality are made to contrast Taiga, who is very short and cute, but is actually ferociously violent.
• In Vicious, Mitch Turner is a sweet, intelligent guy who has the bad luck of looking like a criminal, being huge and physically imposing, and having grown up in a rough neighborhood. He's also phenomenally unlucky, leading to everyone assuming he's a bad guy. Even when he decides Then Let Me Be Evil, he's never truly malicious, nor does he commit crimes where anyone would be physically hurt.
• At one point in the Vorkosigan Saga, Miles Vorkosigan notes how his father Count Aral Vorkosigan, whom he loves and idolizes, has the sort of scarred face, heavy brow, jawline, etc. that were it not for the keen intelligence in his eyes would make him everyone's image of a Standard Issue Military Dictator.
• The Witcher:
  • Geralt is described like this in the books. He somehow manages to get all the girls anyway. On the other hand, not too hard to believe.
  • Sigismund Dijkstra is described as looking like a sleepy, sloppy dimwit. Which is exactly how he wants it. Beneath his piggish looks, he's scarily capable as Redania's spymaster and advisor to its previous king, a farseeing ruler should there be a need to be one, and can intimidate Isengrim Faoiltiarna with his presence alone. He's also quite cultured, at some point mentioning that he wanted to play the title character in a production of the Witcher-verse version of Hamlet but could only get the part of a halbardier.
• Wolf Hall: Thomas Cromwell actually is a former thug, being a brawling youth and a cutthroat mercenary as a young man. The older Cromwell wants to leave this past behind and is a charming and erudite man who is a loving father and husband and strives to be the opposite of his own abusive drunk of a father. Consequently, he's stung by a comment that he looks like a killer, and after his family sees Holbein's portrait of him, in which he looks particularly frightening, he brings up the comment to his son and is disappointed to learn that everyone had long thought he had the face of a killer. However, Cromwell undermines himself, since despite his unease with his appearance and past, he frequently bullies others and uses his thuggish reputation to get results.

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