"You should see the other guy."
In fiction, many creepy things need to have something unnerving about them, without going into outright gore or Scenery Gorn. The solution? Stitch it up! Stitches often carry unsettling implications, such as the notion that the being or object stitched together was never meant to be reassembled, or was cobbled together from different sources not meant to be combined; the idea that they resemble or close nasty scars; and that their conspicuous appearance connotes shoddy, off-putting repair, or merely looks out of place and strange when used stylistically.
This trope is often used in depictions of Frankenstein's Monster, but it's not exclusive. Many a Sackhead Slasher will also have some prominent crude stitching on his sack.
Compare Good Scars, Evil Scars, Glasgow Grin, Scars Are Ugly and Mouth Stitched Shut, which occasionally overlaps.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Black Butler features a crudely-made doll of Sebastian with obvious stitches.
- Mahito from Jujutsu Kaisen has multiple stitches on his face and body, getting called "Patchwork Man", which mark him as a cursed spirit in spite of his humanoid appearance.
- Junji Ito has featured these in the Junji Ito Kyoufu Manga Collection's adaptation of Frankenstein for the monsters, and in the one-shot story "Army of One" (printed with Remina), about mass murders resulting in stitched-together corpses.
- Dabi from My Hero Academia has his burnt patches of skin pulled together by surgical stitches and piercings. Talk about creepy.
- One Piece: Baroque Works Saga main villain and one of the 7 Warlords, Crocodile, has a stitched scar going across his face that alludes to a crocodile's teeth.
- Dr. Franken Stein from Soul Eater has several visible stitches on his face and on his clothing, an obvious callback to his namesake's creation. He turns out to be Creepy Good, though his first appearance deliberately plays up his creepiness for the protagonists as much as possible.
- Some of the characters in Zombie Land Saga have plainly visible stitches on their skin. Junko in particular has a literal patchwork of skin colors.
Comic Books
- Batman
- The Scarecrow is often shown with a stitched-together outfit, and sometimes his burlap mask is included.
- The Dollmaker stitches together human skin in horrifying ways, including a mask and tapestries.
- The Flash: Rag Doll in his modern appearance is made to look like a demented rag doll, with yarn-like hair, button eyes, and plenty of stitches all around his body.
- Judge Dredd: As part of their cadaverish nature, the uniforms of the Dark Judges are held together by crude stitches rather than the zippers on the regular Judges.
- Ghost Rider: Marvel Comics' Scarecrow also has these.
- The Punisher: Jigsaw, the closest thing the Punisher has to an Arch-Nemesis, was originally a handsome mobster named Billy 'The Beaut' Russo until he had a run-in with Frank Castle. Castle left him alive to send a message to organized crime after knocking him through a glass windowpane, an act that reduces Russo's face to a jigsaw puzzle-like mess of scars.
- Simon Dark, a heroic Frankenstein's Monster in The DCU, has visible scars on his face, and presumably elsewhere.
Fan Works
- Fan interpretations of the Tails Doll from Sonic R will often emphasize the stitches on its body for horror.
Film — Animated
- 9 invokes this, being set in a grim universe populated by rag doll "stitchpunks" and featuring a sewing-themed threat, the Seamstress.
- In Coraline, the Other Wybie's mouth is stitched into a forced smile. The sewing thread used for the button eyes of the Other World's denizens also counts.
- It's subtle, but Emily's wedding dress from Corpse Bride is haphazardly sewn back together.
- Frank from Hotel Transylvania has stitches all over his body. These apparently don't hold well, as he mails his disassembled parts to the Hotel, and falls apart after an extra-high dive into the pool.
- The Nightmare Before Christmas
- Sally is a Frankenstein-inspired rag doll whose skin and dress are made of stitched-together cloth. She takes advantage of this by undoing these stitches to detach her limbs and let them act independently.
- Oogie Boogie, the antagonist, also displays these. He's a walking burlap sack with prominent stitches along his sides and above his mouth.
- While it's not the case, Jack Skellington's mouth can be mistaken for these, to the point where the Collector's Edition DVD cover mistakenly portrays it as such.
Film — Live-Action
- In Batman Returns, Catwoman has a costume that is roughly stitched together from random torn pieces of PVC, symbolizing the unstable nature of her new persona after her old self was destroyed by trauma... as well as allowing for sexy Clothing Damage when the stitches start to fail.
- In Batman Begins, the Scarecrow wears a gruesome burlap mask whose stitches broadly resemble a distorted face. Characters dosed with his fear toxin often hallucinate the stitches as writhing maggots.
- In Bride of Chucky the titular killer doll is revived after getting his body and face stitched back together, giving him a new iconic look that carries on in the following Child's Play movies.
- In Dead Birds, Clyde finds a creepy ragdoll with stitching that makes it look like the eyes and mouth have been sewn shut. This turns out to be Foreshadowing as Clyde is eventually strung up as a Scary Scarecrow with his eyes and mouth stitched shut.
- Frankenstein (1931) gives us the most famous and popular example, with its portrayal of the Monster.
- Sergio from The Last Circus finally becomes ugly on the inside and out after getting severely mutilated to the face. It gets worse in the ending when he puts on makeup to fully become the Monster Clown he is.
- Godwin Baxter in Poor Things is a Mad Scientist a spectacular set of scary stitches, courtesy of his father, who was even madder.
- Sam from Trick 'r Treat wears a stitched-up burlap mask with visible seams.
- Young Frankenstein parodies this element of the Monster, and as such, the stitched-up scars are replaced with zippers.
Literature
- The Igors in the Discworld believe in advertising: whilst it is pointed out that they have ointments that can eliminate scar tissue in fifteen minutes, in the main they prefer to advertise their status as surgeons of last resort by wearing lots of visible scars and stitches with pride. Their distaff side, the Igorinas, are the ones who tend to actually use the scar cream. However, every Igorina will subtly advertise her Igor nature with a single, subdued and discreet, stitched scar somewhere on her face or visible body. It's like having a discreet membership tattoo.
Newspaper Comics
- The Far Side parodies this, with one strip showing the Monster being created by a Granny Classic using a sewing machine.
Theater
- Most theater productions of Arsenic and Old Lace will give Jonathan stitches on his face to help drive the idea that he's had plastic surgery on his face and now "he looks like Boris Karloff". The script does not call for stitches, merely saying he looks like Karloff, whom modern audiences will likely know best for his role as Frankenstein's Monster. The original production had the benefit of actually having Karloff himself playing Jonathan.
Toys
- Beanie Baby Frankenteddy is made to look like a greenish bear with multiple pieces of fabric making up his body. Since he had several color variations, the fake stitches on his body also vary, but each version has a few scattered around his body.
- Lalaloopsy doll Scraps Stitched 'N Sewn has a few on her skirt and skin in reference to the famous Monster.
- Many of LEGO's minifigures of the Monster have these, but the first three versions use more amusing methods to close the forehead.
- LEGO minifigures of the Batman Scarecrow have all featured these, but his 2016 Batman: The Animated Series variant takes it up a notch.
- Monster High characters Frankie Stein, her sister Alivia Stein, and Hoodude Voodoo naturally use these.
- The Once Upon A Zombie line of zombified fairytale princess dolls features stitching in place of more serious gore.
- Playmobil has made several zombie/Frankenstein's monster figures whose face and clothes are stitched together.
- A line of bizarrely cute plush toys called the Animazombs, zombified animals with gruesome body-part separation features, has these on each of the animals, and Samuel the meerkat's largest line of stitches hides a zipper that allows you to remove his intestines.
Video Games
- Shelly de Killer from Ace Attorney has stitches going straight down the center of his face.
- All Alone With Mannie: Mannie has stitches all over her body, and is an Axe-Crazy murderer after your blood.
- While Scarecrow initially goes with his usual burlap mask in Batman: Arkham Asylum, by the time he returns in Batman: Arkham Knight he has stitched his mask into his face, causing him to look like a zombie.
- Junior and Deaddy from CarnEvil, two Frankensteins Monsters, are both haphazardly stitched together. It's one of the most horrifying things about Junior, considering that he's an Enfante Terrible. Fortunately, the Body Horror isn't quite as strong for Deaddy, since he's a Killer Teddy Bear.
- Seam in Deltarune is a worn and torn stuffed animal with stitches all over their face, a button eye (with their other one seemingly missing), and patches. Despite this, they are friendly, if cynical.
- Fear & Hunger: Termina: Stitches is an unique enemy haphazardly stitched together in several parts of her body, and dying against her causes her to sew you to a bunch of corpses in homage to The Human Centipede. The worst part? This is what has become of Elise von Dutch, Daan's late wife.
- Bubba and Porkpatch in Five Nights at Freddy's World, Frankenstein's Monster-like bosses that resemble Freddy Fazbear and a pig, respectively, are stitched together from multiple pieces of cloth.
- Heroes of the Storm has the appropriately-named Stitches, a brutish monster who features these all over his body.
- Imp Poes in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, while invisible to humans, look like creepy stitched-up rag dolls wielding scythes when their true form is seen.
- The Nightmare in Metroid Fusion wears a mask/helmet designed to look like the mouth is stitched shut
◊ and generally the scariest boss in the game barring the SA-X.
- The titular antagonists, the Hoodlums, of Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc.
- Slurpers in Silent Hill 3 are stitched and laced together on their limbs and outfits.
- No-Face, the driver of Crazy 8, in Twisted Metal: Black had his eyelids and mouth crudely stitched shut by a Back-Alley Doctor. Understandably, he wants Revenge.
Web Animation
- Homestar Runner toon "I Killed Pom Pom" shows Pom Pom being (temporarily) popped. A possible scenario is shown with a zombie Pom Pom returning, with the many pieces of his inflatable body being crudely stitched together.
Webcomics
- Stitches from Ruby Quest is a bear who has been stitched back together.
Western Animation
- Freakazoid! villain Candle Jack has stitches all over his body and his mouth.
Other
- Spirit Halloween:
- The Evil Rag Doll looks like a real doll but is covered in stitches and scars.
- The Deady Bear and Deady Teddy props also feature some stitches on their bodies.
