Follow TV Tropes

Following

Too Many Mouths
aka: Extra Mouths

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/yogg_saron_by_unidcolor.jpg
Yogg-Saron is every dentist's worst nightmare.

Sahjhan: You'll get your money.
Arnie: I've heard that one before. You know, I've got mouths to feed. Plus a family. Some of them have mouths, too.
Angel

In the same way that having extra eyes in unusual places can be unnerving, a creature with extra mouths can also be horrific, in a different way. The mouth is the organ of consumption, so a creature can be given extra mouths to show that it is a ravenous, hungry monstrosity. A massive paunch and lack of other sensory organs will create the image of an organism with no intelligence or purpose other than to eat.

To enhance the effect of the mouths, they may be equipped with More Teeth than the Osmond Family, or alternatively, might be gross and wide orifices with a thick tongue and smacking lips.

But there are many other ways to add mouths, and many places. They can be obvious or discreet, even hidden. They may even have special properties or powers. Their owner can be an Eldritch Abomination or a seemingly-normal human, or anything in between.

Sometimes the extra mouths will be able to speak separately, which probably isn't very useful for communicating, but allow Magical Incantations to be performed several at once.

A Super-Trope to Belly Mouth, Vagina Dentata, Nested Mouths. Sub-Trope to both Monster Mouth and Spare Body Parts. Compare Two-Faced and Multiple Head Case, contrast No Mouth.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Alternate Reality Games 
  • Several flowers in Omega Mart's floral department have mouths in the center of their blossoms if they don't have eyes where they don't belong.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Deidara in Naruto has mouths on his palms. They appear to be the result of the Stone Village's kinjutsu, which allows him to infuse chakra into molding clay. By combining this with his Explosion release, he can make explosive clay sculptures of various shapes and sizes. He also has a massive sealed mouth on his chest; feeding clay to that turns his own body into a powerful explosive.
  • In Slayers, Copy Rezo has two extra mouths, which is explained in the novels as being a result of also being a chimera (he's a hybrid of Rezo-clone and Mazoku). These mouths are used to utter incantations, though, not to eat or bite. The location of them differs.
  • Vampire Hunter D: The title character has some sort of parasite that manifests as a face in the palm of his left hand, which has strange, undefined magical powers, most notably the ability to suck in large amounts of material or magical energy at will, which can be used to nullify spells and revive D if he gets killed. It has a mind of its own and can talk to D.
  • In the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, the true forms of Father and Pride are shadow tentacle monsters made up of eyes and mouths. Gluttony can also go One-Winged Angel, opening his fake Gate of Truth in the form of one large mouth down the middle that spits a beam that teleports anything into his "stomach".
  • In Tokyo Ghoul, Noro and Eto both have kagune with mouths growing out of them. Eto's kagune mouths are capable of speech, and tend to engage in random chatter while she's terrorizing her victims. After devouring Eto's kakuja, Kaneki develops kagune with the same properties.
  • As you might expect, some of the monsters in Berserk are designed in this direction.
  • Zygarde Complete Forme from Pokémon: The Series has a functioning mouth at the end of each of its four wings, tail and body (think Belly Mouth, only slightly higher).
  • Jujutsu Kaisen:

    Asian Animation 
  • In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Joys of Seasons episode 70, Paddi comes back from his work with no grass and makes up the excuse that it was eaten by a mountain ghost with, among other features, two mouths. Sure enough, the mountain ghost the goats encounter later on does have two mouths - one on the front of its head and one on the back.

    Card Games 
  • The All-Devouring Oni in Magic: The Gathering's Kamigawa storyline was this taken to its logical extreme: a swarming cloud of mouths with dagger-like teeth.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!:
    • Slifer the Sky Dragon, from both the card game and the anime, has two mouths.
    • Jawsman has mouths all over its body, with both hands and one of its feet also being mouths. One of those hands is a hammerhead shark-like head, with the only eyes on its body.
  • One of the Garbage Pail Kids, Mickey Mouths, has mouths all over his body.

    Comic Books 
  • The Sandman (1989):
    • The Corinthian has mouths where his eyes should be.
    • There's also Azazel, a demon who looks like a black hole in space with many mouths and eyes, and Choronzon, who has two mouths stacked on top of each other.
  • Spider-Man: Morlun has glowing suckers on his palms, comparable to ones Morbius was given in Spider-Man: The Animated Series.
  • X-Men: Choir, an obscure student at the Xavier School, has a ring of mouths around her neck that enable her to throw her voice.
  • Zatanna: Everyday Magic: Constantine grows a mouth in his palm, thanks to Evil Sorceress Nimue cursing him, which actually involved her biting into his palm during sex (he just thought she was kinky at first). It marks him as a Human Sacrifice to a demon,and he has to seek Zatanna's help in removing it.

    Fanfiction 

    Film — Animation 
  • In Wendell & Wild, hellmaidens such as Kat are women marked by a demonic teddy bear to have the image of a skeletal mouth and nostrils on their hands. These mouths might talk under certain situations, such as the hellmaiden swearing allegiance to their personal demons.

    Film — Live-Action 

    Gamebooks 
  • Sorcery!: The Slime Eater, as illustrated on the original cover for Kharé — Cityport of Traps, is a Cephalothorax monster with a huge maw, and smaller mouths on the tip of each finger.

    Literature 
  • Cthulhu Mythos: In Ramsay Campbell's stories, when the Great Old One Y'golonac possesses a human body, the body has mouths in its palms.
  • Deeplight: The tranformed Jelt has an extra Lamprey Mouth on its back.
  • The Demonata has Artery, one of Lord Loss's familiar demons, who has mouths in his palms, with very sharp teeth in them.
  • Expedition: The gigantic creatures called sea striders have mouths in the bottoms of their feet, allowing them to gulp down mouthfuls of the Amoebic Sea just by walking about.
  • Great Ship: The harum-sacrum have two mouths, one on top of the other. One is connected to their lungs and is used for breathing and talking, while the other links to the digestive system. They aren't particularly evil, but do have a reputation for believing in might makes right.
  • Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: Claire Densmore has a backmouth — a second mouth on the back of her head. It's armed with teeth sharper than those in her normal mouth.
  • The Scholomance: The maw-mouth Blob Monster is covered with the stolen eyes and mouths of everyone it's absorbed. Worse, the victims might still be self-aware; when El fights it, she gets the feeling that the mouths are trying to speak to her.
  • Short and Shivery: The were-hyena antagonist of "Brother and Sister" has a second mouth on the back of his head in his human form, as the brother of the title discovers while watching him.
  • Star Trek Novel 'Verse: Betelgeusians have two mouths; a beak-like one for speaking with, and a toothy one for eating with. As might be apparent from the description, they're not intended to be frightening or disgusting, just alien.
  • Tasakeru: Stalker the Soulsnatcher has a mouth on his palm that he uses to extract the souls of his victims.
  • The Tripods: The alien Masters have two mouths, one above the other. The upper mouth is used for breathing and speaking, while the lower one is for drinking and eating.
  • Turn Coat: The horde of demonic entities conjured up by Binder appear roughly human-like, but have mouths in both palms that drool disgusting, caustic saliva.

    Live-Action TV 

    Myths & Religion 
  • In Aztec Mythology, the primordial Eldritch Abomination Cipactli had mouths at every joint.
  • The Youkai Futaguchi Onna (two-mouthed woman) appears as a normal woman with a huge, constantly hungry mouth on the back of her head. Usually, the normal mouth rarely eats, while the other one often gorges itself on anything in sight and can use the hair as tentacles.

    Podcasts 
  • In The Hidden Almanac, the dark god beneath the garden most closely resembles a pile of corpses with numerous mouths in random places, which sing and speak in unison (although Mord points out the true appearance is a lot more horrible than that description allows).

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • The Gibbering Mouther is an amorphous aberration covered in mouths and eyeballs, capable of spewing streams of acid, turning the ground around it to a fluid morass, draining blood with its bite attack, and hitting everyone nearby with a confusion effect thanks to its constant insane gibbering.
    • Dalmosh is a unique evil outsider that looks like a gargantuan humanoid with one gaping maw and a lumpen body covered in spiked scars. Every time an attack deals at least twenty points of damage, the injury tears into a new mouth that can immediately bite back at his attacker.
  • Call of Cthulhu:
    • Dreamlands. The Maws of Pandemonium spell causes the victim's body to sprout a red-lipped mouth that gibbers and moans as it drains the victim's magic points. When the victim loses consciousness, the mouth falls silent, but starts howling again two to 12 hours later.
    • When the Great Old One Y'golonac possesses a human body, the body has mouths in its palms the same as in the original Ramsay Campbell stories.
    • Aku-Shin Kage, one of the masks of Nyarlathotep. Dressed in the traditional armor of a samurai, where its face should be is covered in mouths instead.
  • A common mutation among the daemons and followers of Chaos in Warhammer, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000. A classic variant of the Great Unclean One, Greater Daemon of Nurgle, has a giant mouth in its stomach as well as the regular one on its face (and quite often one on the end of its tongue, or of each of its tongues, too. Occasionally on the tips of its fingers, or elsewhere). Flamers of Tzeentch have many gibbering mouths about their bizarre fungoid anatomy, all of them leaking warpfire.

    Video Games 
  • Spore: The creature creator allows many mouths to be affixed to a given creature. The abilities provided by mouths don't stack so the main reason for this trope is aesthetics. There is one practical application for multiple mouths with omnivores. They have one mouth with the highest Bite rating and one mouth with the highest Sing rating. Placing both types on the creature gives them both abilities at max level. An example is seen here with this creation. This creature has mouths and faces all over its body (tail, belly, legs, feet, etc...). Strangely, its main head is on one of its feet. As the creature evolves, some heads die, including its original small human head (which was killed by its own feet), but more form, including its torso’s head, which is actually located on what was once the belly (Cephalothorax). Mouths can also detach and form their own creatures.
  • Total War: Warhammer: Chaos Dragons have fang-lined mouths on their shoulders.
  • World of Warcraft: Yogg-Saron, "The Beast with a Thousand Maws", has mouths in place of his nostrils, eyes, and other places where you wouldn't expect an orifice (this creature even provides the image of this page). Those are just the ones you can see.
  • Dante's Inferno: The monsters, appropriately called Gluttons and appearing in the circle of Gluttony, have mouths for hands. The boss of Gluttony, Cerberus, is a giant toad-like creature with three worm-like tongues, all decorated with extra mouths.
  • Diablo III:
    • Belial has two mouths, one on each side of its head.
    • Ghom has four; one on his face, one on each of his shoulders, and an enormous one across his belly.
    • Diablo, once resurrected, has an extra mouth in each of its shoulders.
  • Dread Templar has a Giant Spider boss, the Spider Queen, who has mouths on her face, thorax, abdomen, and extra mouths on the shoulders of all her eight appendages.
  • In Feed The Nine Mouthed Baby, the titular baby has nine mouths.
  • Several of the bosses in Final Fantasy Legend III have extra mouths, with the most excessive example being Guha who's nothing but mouths.
  • Pokémon:
    • Mawile is based on the Futakuchi-Onna (see above) and has an extra giant mouth as one of its horns. Mega Mawile gets two of these.
    • Hydreigon has a mouth where it normally would have one, with heads at the ends of each arm which have their own mouths too. They each apparently have the appetites of a normal Pokémon.
    • Guzzlord has a mouth at the back of its throat. It seems to either be a portal to another realm or a case of Alien Geometries, as this second mouth is on the inside back of the creature but it has no hole in its back.
  • Futakuchi-onna herself appears in Onmyoji
  • Triface in Final Fantasy VIII has two large mouth-like appendages on its shoulders. They can bite and spit poison as though they were actual mouths, though only the central mouth can digest food.
  • One of the many possible forms of the Void Walker from Nexus Clash is a human figure covered head to toe in fanged, whispering mouths. Worse when one considers that the Void Walker can't possibly have enough jawbones for them all.
  • Chattur'gha in Eternal Darkness refers to its "many mouths" when it talks about how it will destroy Ulyaoth.
  • Digital Devil Saga: Some of the demon forms have multiple mouths, like Agni's two heads, or Prithvi's breast-mouths.
  • Star Control: The Umgah are gelatinous pink blobs with mouths, eyes, and tentacles randomly scattered around. What's more, they did this to themselves; there's no way of knowing what they look like naturally.
  • In early versions of The Sapling, it was common for animals to evolve multiple different mouth types in sandbox mode so they could eat everything. While this can still be done, the Fight and Flight update rendered it Awesome, but Impractical due to the introduction of body part based pregnancy times.

    Visual Novels 
  • In Spirit Hunter: NG, what marks a person as a participant in Kakuya's game are the extra mouths that appear on their body. Because of his heightened spiritual prowess, Akira is able to hear the jumbled words that the mouths spew. It's because of this distinctive mark that Akira is clued in on two other victims of Kakuya.

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 
  • Goodbye Strangers: The cenderexy has multiple mouths stacked on top of each other. Cutting it open reveals it has extra mouths under its skin that have teeth, which the regular mouths don't have. The calidrinx has the same trait, though only has one external mouth.
  • This photoshopped face, combined with Extra Eyes.
  • Heroes Save the World: One of the characters, Simon Martin, is able to see how someone is able to die by touching them. His first attempt at this gives him a vision of what he later refers to as "Giger trees," some of which are suffering from this.
  • In Day of the Choosing, "All the Rest" has millions of tiny mouths inside of its fleshy, cavernous body.
  • Zalgo is described as a being with seven mouths. While six of them speak in differing languages, the seventh one is destined to eventually open and sing a song that will cause The End of the World as We Know It.
  • Critical Role has the Laughing Hand, an undead abomination that, when slashed, grows a new mouth complete with teeth wherever it is injured.

    Western Animation 
  • Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The president of the galaxy has two mouths, one atop the other. Her whole race has this trait, but she's the most frequently seen.
  • Galaxy High: Gilda Gossip, a gossipy alien, had multiple mouths growing out of antennae on her head.
  • Hercules: The Animated Series: There are several monsters that have more than one head. One of which is the Hydra, which appears in the movie. The three heads even have a conversation at one point.
    Hercules: Phil, I need a sword! Find me a sword!
    Phil: Kid, the last thing you used to defeat the Hydra is a sword. You got enough mouths to feed already!
  • Jackie Chan Adventures: Daolon Wong gains round, Lamprey Mouths on his palms whenever he starts chanting to absorb Chi.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?", a recurring trait among the nightmare monsters is the presence of multiple mouths — the living cakes have one on every tier, while the living houses possess mouths scattered around their bodies where they previously had doors or windows.
  • One of the many Recurring Extras in The Owl House is a purple Illusion Track student with an extra mouth on top of their head whose tongue hangs down in front of their face in place of bangs.
  • Steven Universe:
    • Garnet, Pearl and Amethyst's fused form Alexandrite has a second mouth that opens at the base of her chin.
    • Another fusion, Obsidian, the fusion of all the Crystal Gems, has a second mouth atop her head full of lava.
  • Teen Titans (2003): In "Fear, Itself", the monster that Raven created with her mind has mouths all over its body.

    Real Life 
  • Mistaken for played straight in one case: The Cambrian sea creature Hallucigenia was first reconstructed with seven tentacles on its back, each bearing a small, beak-like mouth. But as Science Marches On, it turned out that said tentacles were actually paired legs and the beaks their claws. Up to date, there was still no Hallucigenia fossil found that shows where the creature's mouth was really located.
  • Coral colonies can either be regarded as Conjoined Twins, or a single vast, gestalt organism with Too Many Mouths.
  • A hunter killed a deformed cougar with teeth growing out of the top of its head. This went viral.

Alternative Title(s): Extra Mouths

Top