Surely, it must look atrocious.
It's an unsightly, hideous, revolting, ugly marking.
Something that no one wants to see.
It's an unsightly, hideous, revolting, ugly marking.
Something that no one wants to see.
Good Scars, Bad Scars, Red Scars, Blue Scars. Maybe it's a tiny little surgical scar or you're Covered with Scars. Every Scar Has a Story, but that doesn't mean you have to like looking at it.
While some think scars are rugged and are used as proof of how badass you are, in other cases, they are treated as a Mark of Shame. This is typically the reaction you get from both the scar-bearer and those around them. When Played for Drama, the scars are genuinely terrifying, having come from a traumatic or humiliating incident, and some of the story will revolve around them learning to cope with it. When Played for Laughs, the reactions are disproportionate to the outcome, people treated a mild scar as though it were a miscarriage of medical science.
When the scar is A Scar to Remember, then it qualifies as Punished with Ugly.
Sister Trope to Scary Stitches. Contrast Blemished Beauty. See also Scars Are Forever, Don't Look At Me.
In-Universe Examples Only. Please and thank you.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- Marvel Universe: Doctor Doom's origin story revolves around one of his failed devices (meant to allow him to talk to his mother's soul in Hell) blowing up right in his face, leading him to don his iconic mask and armor to cover up his now-hideous face. A later story revealed that the actual scarring, as seen in the page image, was merely on his left cheek; while noticeable, it wasn't exactly terrifying. However, Doom was such a perfectionist that he was still completely horrified, and traveled to Tibet where a temple of monks built him his suit of armor. He was in such a rush to cover up the shameful scar that he put on his iconic metal mask while it was still red-hot out of the forge, causing much more extensive Facial Horror.
Fan Works
- In Chapter 17 of Dragons, Butterflies, And Who Knows What Else?, the normally confident Mirabel starts to develop insecurities about her appearance when her burn scars start attracting one too many weird looks from her neighbors.
- Zigzagged in a back-story fan fic of CSI: NY, Windy City Romance Blues: The Ballad of Mac and Claire. In chapter 9, Mac tells his (then) future wife Claire the reason he always wears an undershirt is because his mother taught him to dress well, but it's really because his former girlfriend, Angela, was grossed out by the shrapnel scar on his chest from being injured during the Beirut barracks bombing while in the Marines and had made him keep his shirt on during sex. He subsequently tells Claire about the scar...but not about Angela's demand. Upon seeing it, Claire doesn't mind the scar.
Films — Live-Action
- Bend It Like Beckham has a scene where the lead character Jess is ashamed of wearing shorts in public due to having a large burn scar covering her thigh. The scar actually belongs to the actress, Parminder Nagra, and her agents were worried that it might preclude her from getting the part. Director Gurinder Chadha had no problem with the scar and wrote it into the script with Nagra's real story: she burned herself as child while trying to make beans on toast.
- The Dark Knight: Invoked by the Joker when he confronts Rachel Dawes at the party for Harvey Dent. As he approaches her, he says that she looks nervous and asks if it's because of his lip scars before grabbing her and giving one possible explanation for their origin.
- The titular Theatre Phantom from the 1943 adaptation of Phantom of The Opera received his horrifying disfigurement when he had etching acid thrown on his face when he was a publisher's assistant.
- Winslow from Phantom of the Paradise goes through one Hell of a Trauma Conga Line when his teeth are replaced with metal in a prison experiment and half of his face and his voice-box is burned with a record-press, forcing him to wear his mask to hide it. When we see his face at the end, half of his face is melted, his eye dead and useless.
- Parodied in Zoolander 2. After being injured during the Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good's collapse, Hansel wears a stylish mask to hide his disfigurement. When Derek asks to see it, confident that it isn't as bad as he thinks, we see that the "horror show" is just a faint less-than-an-inch-long scar on his cheekbone. Derek reacts like it's a freakish deformity.
Literature
- Harry Potter:
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: Discussed. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon call Harry's lightning bolt scar ugly, with Petunia once leaving his fringe while shaving the rest of his head just to hide the scar. Harry, however, thinks it makes him look interesting and it's the only thing he likes about his appearance growing up... at least until he finds out its dark origins and starts getting a lot of attention in the Wizarding World because of it.
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Following the Battle of the Tower, Bill Weasley has found himself the victim of Fenrir Greyback's bloodlust and his face was mutilated as a result. His mother Molly expresses this sentiment at his bedside, crying about how he was going to be married even as she tries to patch up the wounds. Bill's fiancee Fleur Delacour, however, completely disagrees and lays into Molly for thinking this way.
Fleur: You thought I would not weesh to marry him? Or per'aps, you hoped? What do I care how he looks? I am good-looking enough for both of us, I theenk! All these scars show is zat my husband is brave!
- Inverted in Komarr; Having taken an unscheduled dip in a pond, Miles Vorkosigan strips out of his wet jacket and shirt in a car, revealing to his female companion an extensive catalogue of surgical and battle scars, the results of a lifetime of medical treatments and years of combat experience. Although she is initially (mildly) shocked, more by the sheer number of them than by anything else, she pivots rapidly to finding them absolutely fascinating - and wondering to herself what scars he might have that she hasn't yet seen.
- In November 9, Fallon has a lot of insecurities and negative feelings about her burn scars, which cover the left side of her body. They're a constant physical reminder of her traumatic near-death experience and she gets stared at for them. They've irrevocably changed her appearance and thrown a wrench in her dream of becoming an actor. She doesn't like going out wearing anything that could show the scars, including wearing long sleeves even when it's warm. She's also reluctant to let Ben - or any boy she's attracted to - see her undressed and thinks she could never be truly seen as attractive because of the scars. Ben tries to encourage her to not be ashamed or disgusted by her scars, insisting that he finds her beautiful and the scars show she's a survivor.
- A Song of Ice and Fire: When they were kids, Gregor Clegane pushed his younger brother, Sandor, into a fire for playing with his toys, which earned him a hideous burnt scar on the left side of his face. That incident made Sandor hate his older brother very much. Many people were intimidated by Sandor's appearance, believing that he was just like his sociopathic brother but Sandor doesn't like to be compared to him.
- Warrior Cats: Following the dog attack that killed Swiftpaw and left her with half a face, Brightheart struggled a lot with her self-esteem and was utterly repulsed the first time she saw her new reflection. It took Cloudtail's gentle encouragement and insistence that she's still beautiful to help her recover, and she still had moments of low confidence afterward anyway.
Live-Action TV
- Billy Russo gains his supervillain origin as Jigsaw and his multiple facial scars courtesy of Frank Castle in the Season 1 finale of The Punisher. Zigzagged, though, as in Season 2 they're generally treated as this trope (Billy even wears an extremely over-the-top mask to cover them in many situations), but in actual fact they're way less drastic than the injuries he sustained in the first season would lead you to expect. In the end he's still played by the extremely handsome Ben Barnes, and the scars don't really do anything to detract from that.
- In Werewolf, Janos Skorzeny's face around his missing eye is heavily scarred, mainly visible when he removes his eyepatch, which Eric uses as part of describing him as ugly more than once. Playfully subverted when a nurse tells Rogan he'll have some very attractive scars after he was nearly killed by a werewolf.
Roleplay
- Dino Attack RPG: After much attention was given to Talia Kaahs due to her stunning beauty, her face ends up mauled by a Mutant Raptor and becomes tarnished by hideous scars. Afterward, people tend to react to her scarred appearance with horror and fear, or sadness and pity.
Theatre
- Violet: The title character had her face badly disfigured by her father's axe as a child and spends the show traveling to meet a televangelist with supposed Healing Hands in order to fix it. She's goes through life with little self esteem, and is especially afraid she will never find love because of it. While the scar is mostly left up to the audience's imagination, the lyrics and characters' reactions imply the severity, and Violet is clearly traumatized from years of people shuddering, flinching away from, and even mocking her. However, she still finds people who love her for her and comes to terms with what happened.
Video Games
- A rather interesting and slightly amusing variant happens in Mortal Kombat 11. When the Black Dragon attacks the Special Forces base, both young and old Johnny Cage help out to hold them off. During the firefight, Young Johnny gets a bullet graze across the cheek, which then immediately affects Old Johnny as a faded scar of a bullet cut appears on the same cheek. Old Johnny is mildly freaked out by the time travel shenanigans at play, but Young Johnny on the other hand blows his stack, grabs a nearby riot shield and charges at the Black Dragons.
- The 2012 reboot of Twisted Metal's incarnation of Dollface was a psycho supermodel who actually murdered her competition. As if she wasn't volatile enough, she got into a car accident where the windshield shattered and the shards sliced her face. While she got relatively minor scars out of the accident, her insane dedication to perfection and already fragile psyche made her see the scars as pure Facial Horror* , needless to say she absolutely snapped. This led her to finding ways to try and heal her face, which ended up with her getting her namesake, a strange Doll mask that has since been stuck to her face.
Visual Novels
- In Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, the reason why Kyoko nearly never takes off her gloves is to conceal grotesque burn scars she got on her hands from an incident when she was a beginner detective.
- In Katawa Shoujo, Hanako has extensive burn scars covering the right side of her body, from her face down to her leg. Between the tragic circumstances in which she received them, and the teasing she received from other children about them, she has extremely low self-esteem about her appearance and hides her facial scars behind her hair.
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Zig-Zagged with Zuko's scar. Zuko's burn scar, which covers half his face, represents the shame of being beaten and banished by his own father for speaking out of turn, which leads to his burning desire to capture the Avatar and gain his father's approval. As such, when Katara offers to use the water from the Spirit Oasis to heal it, he considers it before being interrupted. However, women don't seem to be any less attracted to Zuko because of the scar, and a number of people actually connect with him over the scar as a sign of trauma from the war with the Fire Nation.
- In the What's New, Scooby-Doo? episode "Lights! Camera! Mayhem", it's revealed that the security guard Old Pete was actually the famous actor Rip Bannon, who allegedly died during a production accident and had since haunted that studio as the Faceless Phantom. He confesses that even if he survived, he felt too ashamed of the scar that he got from the accident that he had quit acting and had gone into hiding, hiding the (small and unnoticeable) scar under a fake beard.
