Historical Ugliness Update

Left: Gerhard Klopfer in real life.
Right: Gerhard Klopfer in Conspiracy.

Popular entertainment tends to update the looks of Historical Domain Characters to their cultural standard of beauty for the audience to enjoy. But that's not always the case. Inversely, entertainment works will make some historical figures more ugly than they actually were, often inviting repulse and even mockery from the audience. It's often done for historical figures that are seen to be villains, exaggerating their physical imperfections and repulsive manners beyond anything considered to be fair or even normal-looking. This is common for tyrants, who are often portrayed in enemy propaganda as either squat and comical (to make them appear harmless) or demonic and imposing (to make them evil personified).

It doesn't necessarily apply to just historical villains, though. Sometimes, historical figures typically seen in a positive light are depicted as less attractive than they actually were, often with a moral message to never judge a person by their looks. Sometimes, it's to make them more relatable to the audience, playing up their vulnerabilities with their physical appearance. But most often, the historical figures in question could be so gorgeous that no one could ever live up to their likeness, and thus the actors to play them are chosen by their Ability over Appearance.

Can sometimes overlap with Historical Villain Upgrade, though ugliness and villainy are not always mutually inclusive. For the inversion, see Historical Beauty Update. See Adaptational Ugliness when this applies to derivative works.

See Historical Relationship Overhaul for other changes a Historical Domain Character may receive.

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Examples:

Art

• The "heretic pharaoh" Akhenaten was depicted in painting and sculpture of his own time as having abnormal features like an elongated face, a large flabby belly, and unusually wide hips for a man. This image of him was so ubiquitous that it was once assumed to be based on what he really looked like; however, examination of what is generally believed to be his mummy indicates that he was far more normal-looking than the art of him would imply. Most Egyptologists now believe that the art isn't meant to show Akhenaten as he actually looked; rather, these are more likely stylized portrayals influenced by Atenism, the religion he promoted.

Comic Books

• Borgia by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Milo Manara: King Charles VIII of France is presented as a hunchbacked midget in the vein of Richard III. This is the least of the historical liberties the comic takes, such as Charles dying in a volcanic eruption, Lucrezia bearing a son with the heads of both her brother and father, and da Vinci's flying machines working as intended and used in Cesare Borgia's campaigns.

Films — Animation

• Anastasia: While Rasputin wasn't usually considered to be an attractive man in real life (though he must have been doing something right considering his reputation), he was certainly not the bony figure with warts and long clawed nails from the movie. And keep in mind, the animated Rasputin looks like this even before he sold his soul to get his revenge on the Romanov royal family.
• Pocahontas: A rare image of the real Governor Ratcliffe shows an average-looking Englishman with a well-kempt beard and soft mustache. Disney's Ratcliffe is an ugly, obese man who has a dastardly handlebar mustache and tiny goatee to balance out John Smith's Historical Beauty Update.

Films — Live-Action

• 300: Both the film and the comic book it was based on portray Ephialtes, who would betray the Spartans to Xerxes and the Persians, as physically deformed. Greek historian Herodotus only states that Ephialtes wanted a great reward from the Persians for betraying Greece, and makes no mention of deformities.
• Assassin's Creed: Queen Isabella of Castile is given a fearsome appearance with Facial Markings and looking rather emaciated. No historical records or portrayals ever depict her like this — if anything she looked like what a normal queen would look like.
• Bernie: The real Bernie Tiede was taller, fitter, and arguably more handsome than Jack Black.
• Conspiracy: Gerhard Klopfer, who was perfectly ordinary-looking◊ in real life, is played by an obese, unpleasant-looking actor◊.
• Downfall: While the film portrays the Nazis as human beings (albeit terrible human beings), some of the Nazi officials' looks are less glamorous than their real-life counterparts:
  • Joseph Goebbels has more pronounced Villainous Cheekbones than his real-life counterpart, making him look more like a creepy, skeletal figure with soulless eyes.
  • Alfred Jodl's depiction as a fairly overweight and bald general is at odds with his real-life counterpart, who still had hair on his sides and was rather thin. However, he lacks distinct wrinkles on his face, making him appear much younger than the real Jodl.
  • Martin Bormann is balder and more plain-looking than his real counterpart. Also, the real Bormann was 44 years old during the events of the film; here, he is played by an actor who was 56 when the movie was made, making him look older than he really was.
  • The real Ernst-Robert Grawitz was slim and even handsome-looking based on the photographs. The film's Grawitz is depicted as an overweight man with balding, greying hair.
• Elizabeth:
  • Mary Tudor is portrayed as fat, whereas in real life, she was a rail-thin waif who made even the svelte Elizabeth look plump. The likely historical source of this portrayal is her infamous "phantom pregnancy" where her thin abdomen expanded to give the impression that she was pregnant.
  • Sir William Cecil is aged up considerably and looks far more weathered compared to portraits of him made at the time (in reality he was almost exactly 13 years her senior; Richard Attenborough was nearly 46 years Cate Blanchett's).
• The Grey Zone: Josef Mengele is portrayed as a balding middle-aged man. In real life, he was quite good-looking and he would've been in his early 30s at the time this movie takes place. His nickname "The Angel of Death" was a direct reference to his inner (lack of) morality clashing with his outward appearance. This makes it difficult even for history buffs to identify him, since he only appears in person once and isn't addressed by name (and no, Mengele wasn't the only Mad Doctor in Auschwitz). He isn't identified until Muhsfeldt makes a passing reference to Mengele much later.
• The Private Life of Henry VIII portrays the titular king as a fat, lustful slob with Jabba Table Manners. While the real King Henry VIII is famous for his obesity, most historians believe this was the result of a jousting injury he suffered in 1536, rather than a result of overeating; indeed, contemporary records say that he was very fastidious and unusually obsessed with personal hygiene.
• The Social Network: Aside from the Race Lift, the actor who played◊ Divya Narendra doesn't have anything near his chiseled features in real◊ life◊.
• True Story: Based on a True Story about the Odd Friendship between a disgraced, globe-trotting New York Times journalist and The Sociopath who pretended to be him while he was hiding out in Mexico after killing his wife and three young children. The real-life pair are both fit white guys in their thirties who do look rather alike; in the film the sociopath is played by James Franco while the journalist is played by Jonah Hill.

Live-Action TV

• invoked Horrible Histories (both the original series and the Continuity Reboot) did this to Henry VIII, although it was Played for Laughs, and the ugliness went beyond physical factors like obesity; he was turned into a Fat Slob and he showed a distinct lack of interest in hygiene. He was also portrayed as an obese idiot and very Camp as well, even though the show is noted for avoiding taking liberties with historical accuracy in the interests of making it easier to understand. The fact they added banners at the bottom of the screen with Rattus stating that truth was stranger than fiction or the iconic image helped.
• Legends of Tomorrow: While he isn’t ugly, the actor playing John F. Kennedy is much less handsome than the real JFK.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): Episodes featuring Adolf Hitler often depict the dictator as physically unattractive as possible.
  • When Arthur Castle (played by Luther Adler) is transformed into Hitler in "The Man in the Bottle", the only thing that changed for Castle is that he now sports a toothbrush mustache and a hair comb (along with Hitler's uniform), making Hitler look like an obese man akin to Goering.
  • In "He's Alive", he's played by Curt Conway, who has a squat face and visible wrinkles, unlike the actual dictator, which is jarring when he stands in front of a poster featuring the real-life Hitler.

Theatre

• Richard III by William Shakespeare. The relatively normal-looking Richard was turned into a palsied, foul hunchback. But Shakespeare was writing the play for the royalty descended from those who defeated Richard. In the 1995 movie (where he's played by Ian McKellen) he also is made to look a great deal like Adolf Hitler, not surprising as the film is set in a vaguely 1930s Dieselpunk setting and the House of York is shown quite consciously modeling itself on the National Front (British Nazi sympathizers in the '30s).
• Cyrano de Bergerac: Portraits of Cyrano suggest that he did have a big nose, but it wasn't nearly large enough to justify to an audience all the fuss Cyrano makes about it. So, this Historical Domain Character must look much worse in theater/movies than he actually did in real life for the play to make sense.

Western Animation

• Multiple clone characters from Clone High look uglier than their original counterparts. Genghis Khan is overweight and gonkish and Nostradamus is similarly overweight with pimples, bad teeth, and dirty fingernails. This is especially true with Marie Curie, who is physically deformed due to radiation.
• Histeria!:
  • Napoléon Bonaparte's supposed short stature is exaggerated to the point that he's barely the height of a small child, complete with child-like proportions, making him immature both figuratively and literally.
  • Adolf Hitler in the "World War II" is given a Big Red Devil makeover, complete with horns, sharp teeth, and a demonic voice, likely to make up for the fact the show can't really dive into details of why Hitler was evil.
  • Hideki Tojo in the aforementioned episode is given a racist Japanese caricature that was prevalent in Wartime Cartoons back in the day,^note To be fair, that caricature was based on his real-life appearance, albeit heavily exaggerated. with the addition of a pointy, thin mustache that the real Tojo did not have.

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