Thank God they only come out when it's raining.
"Poogles may look cute and cuddly, but if you annoy them you may discover they have lots of razor sharp teeth!"
Some creatures are all around adorable. Others are hideous in every way. Most beings are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of cuteness to ugliness, however, and this can manifest in odd ways. For whatever reason, it's oddly common to have a creature that would be absolutely adorable... until they open their mouth.
Cute Creature, Creepy Mouth is when a being's design would be cute, except for the fact that their mouth is decidedly not. This usually comes in the form of the once-cute critter's mouth being weirdly shaped, opening far wider than it should, and/or having lots of freaky teeth. This may be done to hint that there is more to the creature than it seems, for comedy coming from the contrast between the creature's mouth and the rest of their body, or just to add to an alien atmosphere.
Compare: Butter Face (an attractive body with an ugly face), Cute Monster (where a monstrous entity has cute aspects), Killer Rabbit (in which something is very dangerous in contrast to its cute appearance), and Nightmare Face (for scary faces in general), Scary Teeth (for scary teeth in general).
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
Films — Animation
- Night Furies in How to Train Your Dragon have a fairly cute and cat-like body for a dragon, but their mouths are full of sharp, retractable teeth.
- The Madagascar short "The Madagascar Penguins in a Christmas Caper" has Mr. Chew, a tiny poodle with plenty of vicious-looking canine teeth.
Films — Live-Action
- Blade: Trinity features a vampiric pomeranian dog that looks normal... until its mouth splits open and it extends a tubular tongue with another mouth.
- The Sugarplum Fairy
in The Cabin in the Woods looks like a normal girl until she turns around and reveals her face is full of teeth.
- In Captain Marvel (2019), Goose, an alien pet, looks just like an ordinary housecat, until its head unfolds into a mass of four-meter long tentacles. It turns out to be an incredibly dangerous alien known as a Flerken, and both the Kree and the Skrulls are afraid of it for that reason.
- The Dark Crystal: Fizzgig looks like a gray ball of fur... that has a wide mouth with multiple rows of teeth.
- Evolution: One scene shows one of the aliens as a cute little pug. But when it opens its mouth, it reveals a scary vulture head inside.
- Hellboy II: The Golden Army: The Tooth Fairies appear to be cute little white insect creatures, but then they open up their mouths to reveal their numerous sharp teeth and eat their victims alive, starting with the teeth, as their name implies.
- Galaxy Quest: The childlike creatures at the Beryllium Sphere mines look cute and friendly, until they reveal that they have More Teeth than the Osmond Family. Lampshaded by Guy Fleegman, who was Genre Savvy enough to warn of exactly this outcome.
- In Mom and Dad Save the World, when Dick is dropped into the sewers, he encounters a pack of Lub-Lubs, cooing, mushroom-like critters with big beady eyes who appear to be smiling. He is so charmed that he nearly pets one. The Lub-Lubs are revealed to be carnivorous, and their real mouths are filled with sharp teeth, plus another mouth with the same sharp teeth.
- The Suicide Squad: King Shark finds a tank full of strange jellyfish-looking sea creatures called Clyrax in Jotunheim who he declares his "new dumb friends". When the tank bursts open from explosives rigged to the building going off, they're revealed to have rings of sharp teeth which they use to attack King Shark.
Literature
- A human example in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: Claire is a cute little girl, but on the back of her neck is a huge monster's mouth full of teeth, usually hidden by her hair.
Live-Action TV
- Doctor Who:
- The redesigned Cyber-mat seen in "Closing Time". The Doctor and Craig think it's cute until it opens its maw, revealing a mouth of razor-sharp fangs.
- The Pting in "The Tsuranga Conundrum" is a creature with a small, childlike stature and plenty of sharp teeth.
- Downplayed in Season 2 of Stranger Things when Dustin keeps a baby demogorgon. He seems to be the only character who finds the creature remotely cute; however, any potential there evaporates as soon as it opens its mouth.
- The Troop: The Hideocute in one episode is basically a classic Killer Rabbit, portrayed by an actual rabbit. When the main cast first see it, Hayley starts gushing over the sight of it... then she rightfully backtracks once its eyes turn red and it shows its mouthful of fangs.
Tabletop Games
- HoL: Wastits are small, teddy bear-like creatures... until they reveal "a maw of teeth the diameter of a whale's privates".
- Red Dragon Inn: One of the many hints towards Pooky, a familar that looks like a small white rabbit, decidedly isn't is the fact that he has a mouth full of sharp, yellowed teeth and green drool.
Video Games
- The Binding of Isaac: Chub's beady eyes and goofy smile make her as cute as a giant grubworm can be... but her charges reveal that her mouth is full of detailed, oddly human teeth.
- Happy Game: In the Child's second dream, if you ring a bell, a giant rabbit pops up. It is cute and brightly-colored, but then it opens its mouth unnaturally wide to devour a smaller rabbit alive, revealing a Lamprey Mouth and its true colors as a Hair-Raising Hare.
- The Pols Voice from The Legend of Zelda are small, hopping, bunny-looking creatures that are lacking in limbs and mouths. Phantom Hourglass reveals they do have mouths: large, leech-like ones on their undersides.
- Lobotomy Corporation: Punishing Bird is a tiny, innocent-looking bird with a red splotch on its stomach that can open up to reveal a massive red beak filled with serrated teeth. According to the game's lore, it appointed itself as the forest's executioner, but one day, someone said to it, "Your beak is so small. No one will find your punishment painful." This worried the Bird, so it developed a new mouth that could devour any creature in a single bite.
- Metroid: Other M: Little Birdie is a small, cute creature that looks like a rabbit with chicken legs. However, it opens its mouth to reveal large, carnivorous teeth and a long, ravenous-looking tongue. To make things worse, it happens to be the larval form of Ridley, Samus' nemesis who just refuses to stay dead no matter how many times she kills him.
- The Oddworld series has the Fuzzles, which look like cute bouncing fuzzballs, but have a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth which they use to chomp on anybody who pisses them off.
- OFF: The Judge is a cute talking cat, with a jarringly large, creepy smile. It's even drawn with detailed teeth, unlike the rest of him.
- A few Pokémon:
- Gulpin and Swalot have an adorable puckered expression most of the time, but when their mouth opens it's revealed to take up 90% of their body.
- Mawile is a Cute Monster Girl with an intimidating pair of jaws attached to the back of its head.
- In Poppy Playtime the large Huggy-Wuggy statue in the center of the main room looks pretty cute at first. At least until he comes to life and starts trying to eat you. He displays a mouth with rows and rows of needlelike teeth during the game-over cutscene.
- Downplayed in Splatoon. The Inklings have fairly intimidating three-fanged mouths (technically squid beaks), but they are still overall very cute when they smile.
- Starbound: The Scaveran initially appears to be a rather regular bird, until it opens its beak, revealing that its bottom part splits into a pair of mandibles, and is capable of puking up blood to attack. As its bestiary entry puts it:
"The inside of its beak is a truly terrifying sight."
- The Hoppycats in Super Mario Bros. Wonder are fairly cute for the most part...until they reveal the retractable jagged teeth on their undersides, making them look rather off-putting, especially with the way their bodies bend. It gets even more off-putting when Mario and crew, turned into Hoppycats, display the teeth in the moments before they bounce off enemies...as if the Hoppycat's instincts have become their own.
Webcomics
- Daughter of the Lilies: Glow trolls look like smiling froggy lumps until they see food. Then those mouths turn out to take up much of the troll's body and be filled with oversized humanlike teeth.
- Gunnerkrigg Court: Saslamel's interpreter looks like a cute blue blob or water droplet, but when warning Kat about breaking contracts in the future, it displays a mouth full of long, sharp teeth.
Web Original
- Mortasheen
- The Gobblegeist has a mouth full of hideously sharp teeth, but the drawing at the end of its article shows that its face doesn't look that much different from a "Have a Nice Day" Smile when its mouth is closed.
- The Squeekaboo is a brightly colored mouse-like creature whose mischievous smile hides a ring of saw-like teeth.
- The Gobblegeist
- Neopets:
- Downplayed with the Poogle pet species. While still pretty cute, their sharp teeth do not look like they'd be on such a stubby, plush-like body.
- Meepits are a petpet species that look like pink gophers. But when they open their mouths, their faces get very distorted and barracuda-like◊. There's a reason they're considered The Dreaded...
Western Animation
- The ChubbChubbs!: The titular ChubbChubbs are fluffy hamster-like creatures with pig-like snouts. However, if they are infuriated, they will reveal that they have several rows of sharp teeth.
- One episode of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack has a cat that looks fairly normal... until the camera closes in to show that the cat has, among other things, a Lamprey Mouth with needle-like teeth.
- The Mighty B!: In the first episode, Portia's dog Precious opens her mouth and shows her teeth, which Anton St. Germain thinks she's a rat.
- The Owl House: In the first episode, Luz runs into a small fairy. After expressing relief that something seems like a normal fantasy creature, the fairy opens its mouth to reveal a freakishly oversized mouth full of disturbingly human like teeth.
- Spliced: The Wunny Sharbit looks like an adorable little bunny, until it opens its mouth to reveal rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth that whirl like a chainsaw.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: Shows up in "A Pal for Gary". One of the signs that there's something wrong with the seemingly cute, round pet Puffy Fluffy is that, when it growls, it proves to have shockingly long, razor sharp teeth. Eventually that mouth also reveals to have long, toothed, worm-like tubes that shoot out of it as well, but by the time they show up, Puffy Fluffy is a massive monster on a rampage, not a cute little ball.
- Total Drama: In "Search And Do Not Destroy", Bridgette's key is located next to a rabbit. It appears cute at first, but Bridgette climbs a tree in fear after it's revealed to have a big mouth and a vicious roar.
- Transformers: Prime: When they're passive, the Scraplets look adorable enough to give the Ewoks a run for their money. The moment they sense fresh metal, though, they open their mouths to reveal the spinning razor-teeth hidden inside and they're not so adorable anymore.
- One episode of The Trap Door had Berk fish out a small, cute orange creature from the titular trap door while trying to rescue Drutt. Both Berk and Boney agree the creature is "a little sweetheart" and "better looking than Drutt", until it opens its mouth and reveals some very large, sharp teeth.
Real Life
- The hognose snake◊ is one of the cutests snakes until they show how wide and gaping their mouths are◊.
- Penguins are adorable but they have fleshy spikes in their mouth, as they do not chew their prey and have to stop them from wiggling out.
- The sarcastic fringehead is a small species of fish found on the California coast. They look fairly nondescript when their mouths are closed, but their have special hinges in their jaws that allow their mouths to swing outward horizontally much wider than their heads when they open their mouths. They use their oversized mouths to intimidate rivals and scare off intruders in their territories.
- Hamsters and rabbits yawning.
