History Main / BeforeAndAfterPictures

* A ''Magazines/{{MAD}}'' satire had a fat woman in a burlap sack dress in front of a hovel on a dirt road, then showed that she really had lost weight but posed her in front of the same background, plus she was starting to sink into the mud as she was still pretty hefty.

* Played for laughs in a local television commercial for a Louisville, Kentucky radio station. Before he began listening to that station, the protagonist was fat, sloppy, middle-aged, socially awkward, and stuck in a loser job. After, he became a wealthy, sexy young hunk, irresistible to women, all because of the radio station he listened to. They didn't even try to hide the fact that it was two entirely different men.[[/folder]]

[[quoteright:328:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/before_after_3.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:328:[[FountainOfYouth This product]] [[VeryFalseAdvertising will make you look years younger.]]]]

-->--'''Dara O'Briain''' on the subject in ''Honey, We're Killing the Kids''

||be standing up, but slouching, facing the camera straight-on, with the arms hanging down at the side, perhaps pushing out the belly.||be posed dramatically, flexing (or sucked in), with the body at an angle to the camera, or perhaps engaged in some sporting activity.||

* In the very first chapter of Girls Saurus, a hulking monster confesses her love to the title character only to beat him to a pulp when he recoils from the horror. Guess who he meets 1 month later after her diet? [[http://www.mangareader.net/1194-41831-34/girls-saurus/chapter-1.html]]

* ''Dilbert'':

** [[http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2005-11-19/ This one]] has Dogbert preparing a story about how engineering makes you sexier. He needs a completely new person for "after" pictures

* In one of WesternAnimation/DonaldDuck stories it was combined with InUniverse example of ViewersAreMorons - "before" was a duck (one of Donald's friends) while "after" was a human.
* In ''ComicBook/LoveAndRockets'', there is a scene where Maggie laments over getting too fat, telling that she turned herself into a "before" woman from the weight loss ads.

* Both ''PimpMyRide'' and ''Overhaulin''' used this to show the vehicle of the week before it was customized and after. In fact, ''Pimp My Ride'' had three episodes with two "before" pictures: one of the client's original car (which was then deemed unsuitable for pimping) and the car they replaced it with (which served as the "after" when the pimping was finished).

* An episode of ''TheFlintstones'' has Fred getting work as the "before" picture in one such ad. (When Wilma went to the company to complain about them embarrassing him, they saw a way to use it for their PR, and publically award him a thousand dollars [[DietEpisode if he could lose fifty pounds in a month]].)

* Abused when Turner, Inc. had the 1930's Fleischer {{Popeye}} cartoons retraced and colored. The end result animation was choppy and much of the old detail was lost - so when they showed off the new product, the "Before" footage was the ''new'' footage shown in black and white!

* An old ''[[TheHoneymooners Honeymooners]]'' sketch on ''The Jackie Gleason Show'' has Ralph winning a trip to Europe in a write-in contest sponsored by a diet food company, with the catch that he has to send in "before and after" photos of himself to prove he actually uses their product. He attempts to use Ed Norton as a stand-in for the "after" picture, with predictable lack of success.

* Referenced in a scene deleted from the episode "Krusty Gets Kancelled" from ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''. Krusty is informed by the network executives that his show is replaced by a hemorrhoid infomercial starring Claude Akins. Krusty asks to play "hemorrhoid sufferer number one" and starts acting out the role. The executives leave and Krusty desperately asks to be an after model, getting into that role as well.

When simply jiggering the photograph isn't enough, there are various other ways to make your product look more effective than reality can produce. Using two different models is common, but delves into OutrightLie.

-->--'''Dara O'Briain''' on the subject of ''Honey, We're Killing the Kids''

You've got a product that you want to sell. What better way to sell it than showing what a difference it has made to your clients! This is especially true of beauty or health-related products, where the change might be visible. Of course, the change should be made to look as dramatic as possible. And we're not talking about merely showing realistic change, this is advertising!

||have unstyled hair, typically flat, a bit frizzy.||have well-styled hair. If the subject is a woman, it may be significantly longer than it was in the before picture, or even [[EveryoneLovesBlondes dyed to a]] [[HeroesWantRedheads "sexier" color]].||

||be lit in the most unflattering way possible, often with a harsh toplight or sidelight. Alternately, lit too brightly, so the color is drained.||be lit like a glamor shot. (It's amazing what a single fill-in light and a hint of backlighting can accomplish.)||

||have orange, haggard, sun-damaged skin with noticeable tan lines.||have delicate, even natural skin colour.||

This sort of play is especially annoying to the scientifically-oriented-folks in the audience, because from a true comparison standpoint in science you would want the before and after pictures to be as close as possible - same lighting, same angle, same facial expression, same clothes. However the ad creators claim that this is CompletelyMissingThePoint because some people honestly ''do'' look at the pictures and think whatever it is being sold made this person happy and better. The scientifically-oriented folks are not really their target market anyway.

* In an episode of ''RockyAndBullwinkle'', Bullwinkle is told by an acting coach (Boris in disguise) to change his image to appear in a movie and he holds up two pictures, a cleaned-up spiff and a dirtied-up beatnik. Boris reminds him that the spiff is the "before" picture ("You mean he looks like this on purpose?").

* Creator/AlfredHitchcock was known for making a [[CreatorCameo cameo]] appearance in each of his films. His 1944 film ''Film/{{Lifeboat}}'', however, posed a challenge: the entire story took place on a small lifeboat adrift in the middle of the Atlantic, so there was no logical or natural way for Hitch to pop up...until somebody hit on the brilliant idea of having him appear in a [[http://the.hitchcock.zone/files/gallery/org/6785.jpg fake newspaper ad]] for a fictional weight-loss drug called "Reduco".

* Creator/AlfredHitchcock was known for making a [[CreatorCameo cameo]] appearance in each of his films. His 1944 film ''Film/{{Lifeboat}}'', however, posed a challenge: the entire story took place on a small lifeboat adrift in the middle of the Atlantic, so there was no logical or natural way for Hitch to pop up...until somebody hit on the brilliant idea of having him appear in a [[http://www.empireonline.com/images/features/hitchcock-cameos/Lifeboat.jpg fake newspaper ad]] for a fictional weight-loss drug called "Reduco".

This sort of play is especially annoying to the scientifically-oriented-folks in the audience, because from a true comparison standpoint in science you would want the before and after pictures to be as close as possible - same lighting, same angle, same facial expression, same clothes. However the ad creators claim that this is CompletelyMissingThePoint because some people honestly ''do'' look at the pictures and think whatever it is being sold made this person happy and better. The scientifically-oriented folks are not really [[ViewersAreMorons their target market]] anyway.

* In an early episode of ''SpongeBobSquarePants,'' SpongeBob is watching a commercial for a product called Anchor Arms. (Rubber gloves that could be inflated to give the appearance of big muscles.) The shark in the commercial is pretty ripped, but he holds up a picture of a [[GeekPhysique skinny]] {{Nerd}}y shark, saying he used to look like that. (It's heavily implied that the nerdy shark in the picture is actually a different shark than the one hawking the product.)

* In the {{pilot}} of ''UglyBetty'', Amanda's first words to Betty were "Hi, are you 'the before'?" When Betty looked confused, she added "'Before and after'? The photo shoot?"
* A variant in ''SonsOfAnarchy'', in which Jax, the BadassBiker AntiHero, finds a guy posing on Jax's bike while his girlfriend struggles with the camera. Jax volunteers to help and takes the picture. "That's the before." You can probably guess [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown what happens next]].

* An episode of ''TheFlintstones'' has Fred getting work as the "before" picture in one such ad.

* In one of JayLeno's ''Headlines'' books, there's a picture where obviously the layout person lost a part of the clipart model's hand as the ad was being assembled (this was before computer layouts), leading Leno to remark "Of course the plan made her lose weight! ''They cut off her hand''!"

[[folder:/Professional Wrestling]]

* Creator/AlfredHitchcock was known for making a [[CreatorCameo cameo]] appearance in each of his films. His 1944 film ''Lifeboat'', however, posed a challenge: the entire story took place on a small lifeboat adrift in the middle of the Atlantic, so there was no logical or natural way for Hitch to pop up...until somebody hit on the brilliant idea of having him appear in a [[http://www.empireonline.com/images/features/hitchcock-cameos/Lifeboat.jpg fake newspaper ad]] for a fictional weight-loss drug called "Reduco".

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* In the very first chapter of Girls Saurus, a hulking monster confesses her love to the title character only to beat him to a pulp when he recoils from the horror. Guess who he meets 1 month later after her diet? [[http://www.mangareader.net/1194-41831-34/girls-saurus/chapter-1.html]]
[[/folder]]

||[[NerdGlasses Wearing ugly eyeglasses]]||[[TheGlassesComeOff No eyeglasses]]! (When the ad had nothing to do with vision correction)||