Ugly Cute - Television Tropes & Idioms

"The uglier you make it, the more they'll cry at the end."

- Character designer working on King Kong

There's Generic Cuteness, the Ridiculously Cute Critter, and the Moe Moe. And then there's these guys. Creatures who are, to put it kindly, less cute than other creatures.

OK, they're ugly. They look strange. Maybe they're deformed. They can even be monstrous.

However, they are also endearing, kind, and sweet. Maybe they retain a few Cute Critter traits. Maybe they're The Woobie. Maybe it is simply that their lovely personality overrides any disgust at their physical appearance.

In short, even though they should not be cute by any sense of the word they are anyway. Indeed, many times these characters are so ugly, they're cute.

Not to be confused with Grotesque Cute. Compare The Grotesque, Cute Monster Girl, Freaky Is Cool, and the nicer versions of Fluffy The Terrible. But see also What Measure Is A Non Cute and Beauty Equals Goodness as those tropes will probably, unfortunately, directly affect these characters. See Nightmare Valley for when character designers try for this kind of appeal and fail.

NOTE: Since there are so many Truth In Television examples of Ugly-Cute, we're going to focus on fictional characters only on this page. To confess your love for Batfish, Mudpuppies, Babboons, Frogmouths, and so on, head on over to the Troper Tales page.

Examples

Anime

Quite a few characters from One Piece would qualify, especially Usop and Brook.
Jinenji, a gigantic, bug-eyed, Quasimodo-esque hanyou from Inuyasha who, nonetheless, manages to be incredibly endearing.

Comic Books

Shuma-Gorath, a Captain Ersatz of Cthullu and one of Dr. Strange's minor foes is a huge, one-eyed squid thing that somehow manages to look huggably cute. His Marvel vs Capcom design shrinks him down to human-size and makes him look positively shy.

Film

One abbreviated word: E.T.
Slimer from Ghostbusters, even in his initial appearance in the film. The producers ran with it in everything spun-off from the film.
- In Extreme Ghostbusters, it appears he got hit with the adorably ugly stick a bit harder than normal...
For some, Chestbursters. Then again, everything is cute as a baby.
- Including the guck-spitting-up squidling Agent J delivers in Men In Black. Must be the big eyes and the very adorable tentacle-sucking.
King Kong was specifically designed around this.
As was Edward Scissorhands.
Say "Hi" to Baby Godzilla◊
- Sure, he's a horrible ancient monster with razor sharp fangs and horns, but those floppy ears make Baragon◊ simply adorable.
- King Seesar◊ who is an ugly/cute Shisa (A lion-dog creature from Okinawa folklore).

Literature

Where The Wild Things Are. Come to think of it, Maurice Sendak practically runs off this.
Quasimodo, especially in the Disney adaptation.
Gollum from Lord Of The Rings may not have a good personality, but he's just so pitiful.
Subjective Trope, but many Redwall fans think the villainous "vermin", who are supposed to be ugly and creepy, are cuter than the good "woodlanders".

Live Action TV

The nonhuman magical creatures such as Phineas the troblin from Power Rangers Mystic Force.

Tabletop Games

Eyeball beholderkin from Dungeons And Dragons. They have huge central eyes, magic-beam-shooting eyestalks, and fanged mouths like their larger, more dangerous relatives - and are about the size of large grapefruit.
Warhammer 40000 has a race of Orks who are so exaggerated and silly, some find them oddly adorable. Everyone else finds them Crazy Awesome.

Toys

The Ugly Dolls!
And Living Dead Dolls.
And Pussycat Dolls!

Video Games

Oddworld pretty much runs on this trope. Poor Abe.
Some of the baddies in Donkey Kong Country, particularly the Klaptraps with their cute little snaggle-teeth.

Web Comics

Several examples in The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob—Molly's pet Snookums is a space monster Bob calls a "tentacle bunny." Molly herself is a pretty weird-looking creature. Roofus the Robot would not be especially cute if not for his innocent personality; well, okay, the construction-worker cap built into his head is kind of cute. And Voluptua, even in her alien butterfly form, still manages to be very attractive.

Western Animation

Nibbler from Futurama has 3 eyes, fangs, walks like a monkey and only has one nostril. Leela still goes "Awwwww" when she first meets him. The animators were deliberately working with this trope.
Seeing as WALL-E is a rusty, dirty, trash compactor, he certainly qualifies.
- Pixar is good with this trope. See also the more esoteric looking characters in "Toy Story" and "A Bugs Life".
Blunk the gobliny thing in WITCH.
Lexington, Broadway, and Bronx, just to name three characters in Gargoyles.
Glen Keane absolutely had this in mind when designing Beast.
Stitch. Sometimes very cute. Sometimes very not cute.
The entire population of Halloweentown.
Rufus in Kim Possible. Look at this picture of Rufus◊ and then look at what his species ''actually'' looks like◊.
- Thanks for the Nightmare Fuel. Just what I needed.
  - Eh, This Troper still thinks the real ones are kinda cute.
Tootie, Vicky's sister and Timmy's admirer on The Fairly Oddparents, can be considered an animated version of Ugly Betty.