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Slasher Smile
(aka: Evil Grin)

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Slasher Smile (trope)
With a face like this, it's very easy to tell which side is in control.
"He is Bob, eager for fun. He wears a smile, everybody run."
Mike, Twin Peaks

What's the difference between a smile and a grin? The same difference between kissing and tasting.

In the animal kingdom, baring your teeth is a sign of aggression. In the case of humans — well, there's something very disconcerting about a smile that doesn't have an ounce of happiness in it. It's downright frightening when the smile is in anticipation of pain or death — yours, probably. Needless to say, the Slasher Smile does not inspire warmth in anyone who sees it.

The Slasher Smile is the Evil Counterpart of the Cheshire Cat Grin. In general, the difference is in the eyes of the character. If the eyes sparkle or are mischievously wicked, it's a Cheshire Cat Grin. If, however, the eyes are clearly crazy or malevolent, it's a Slasher Smile. If the grinning person is holding a knife or an axe or some other implement of painful and often bloody death, it's best to assume the worst.

While the Cheshire Cat Grin is a staple of The Trickster, generally one of the good guys, the Slasher Smile is the staple of the Ax-Crazy, unless said hero is a particularly dark or vicious Anti-Hero. Only expect to see a "nice" hero with a Slasher Smile if they've been possessed, are Brainwashed and Crazy, suffered a major Freak Out or if they've been taken over by their Superpowered Evil Side. Also, a devious Chessmaster or Magnificent Bastard is unlikely to look like this — it's too Obviously Evil, and they prefer the subtler Psychotic Smirk.

No, the Slasher Smile is more appropriate for The Dragon, the Mad Scientist, and most especially Serial Killers, but it can happen with any character who is gleefully violent and/or fits any "wild crazy person" stereotypes. Beings who hunt and eat victims we are supposed to identify with will also often have Slasher Smiles... in their case, it means "Hello, lunch!"

Some characters with a Slasher Smile wear the grin all the timein fact, it's physically impossible for them to move their face out of it. For many, this has the added worry of making it harder to tell what they're thinking or feeling, because their face betrays no expression beyond the smile. This can be especially tricky for a character with a Face of a Thug — even if the smile genuinely has no malice behind it, others will assume there is.

Not to be confused with a Glasgow Grin (although they sometimes overlap), and has nothing to do with the pleased smiles of Slash Fic fans upon the detection of impending Ho Yay. Hopefully.

Contrast Dissonant Serenity for a calm mood which isn't the slightest bit more reassuring, and also contrast Grin of Audacity and Grin of Rage. Sometimes paired with the Scary Teeth, or a Maniac Tongue. When the smile is merely creepy, it's The Un-Smile. May be part of the fear behind the Monster Clown. See also Technically a Smile.


Example subpages:

Other examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • In the Enzyte Commercials, Smilin' Bob has one of the most unnatural smiles ever seen in an advertisement. It's not MEANT to be a Slasher Smile, but still... BRRR!

    Card Games 

    Comic Strips 
  • The Far Side: A hiker encounters a bunch of little happy forest animals, but notices that they are all looking a bit too happy...
  • Pearls Before Swine: When Starbicks Coffee seizes Pig and Rat's house to set up a new coffee shop, one of the Starbicks guys gives an evil grin to Rat before kicking him and Pig out.
  • Both hosts of What's New? with Phil and Dixie do it at the end of MegagameTM 3-page mini arc — they had a good reason.
    The company representative: ...cute joke, eh? Eh? Eh? ...why aren't you laughing?

    Fan Works 
  • Durothé displays a few of these at the climax of The Keys Stand Alone: The Hard World, which freaks the four out. After she leaves the scene, George points out that she described herself as “functional, not normal,” and that she just showed herself not being terribly normal.
  • Storm Hawks fanfic Come Little Children: The Sky Siren, leading children to their deaths through Mind-Control Music, smiles maliciously when she sees Grandfather unsuccessfully trying to save a child.
  • Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Besides Ghidorah's heads being known for pulling this expression every once in a while, a couple other characters also pull off this expression. After his Sanity Slippage, Alan Jonah at one point gives Monster X a "rictus grimace of a smile". As for the two-headed Monster X, Vivienne's head gives MaNi/Elder Brother a dangerous Slasher Smile during her Heroic Resolve.
  • Hetalia: Axis Powers fanfic Gankona, Unnachgiebig, Unità: The homophobe gave Italy a really scary one. The Bad Touch Trio gave some as well to showcase their pervertedness.
  • Child of the Storm has Doctor Strange pull one in the sequel when bearing down on his personal arch-nemesis, Sinister, who he's dedicated a very long time to tracking down and making suffer, combined with a Looming Silhouette of Rage and a purred peach of a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner.
    Hello, Nathaniel. Long time no see.
  • In the Jackie Chan Adventures fic Queen of All Oni, Jade gives one to her Jerkass former classmate Drew.
  • Let's Do The Caramelldansen plays it for laughs (presumably):
    "So Vexen smiled, and it was... a purely evil smile. A MANIACLY evil smile. Take every synonym for 'evil', put them before the word 'smile', and you may even get Vexen's smile. It's hard to comprehend how truly terrifying the smile was. But if Hitler and Big Brother had a child, and that child had a child with Satan, and that child had a child with the child of Voldemort and Darth Vader, and that child was to smile, it would probably the closest you could get to how awfully evil Vexen looked at that moment. (Sorry for that image, people) It could make a serial killer cry."
  • When the killer Drew is revealed in the Hannah Montana story I Didn't Sign Up For This, the first thing she does is shoot her accomplice with what is described as "a creepy smile" on her face.
  • In Frozen Hearts (Sakume), Prince Harken gets one as he's considering whipping his younger brother Hans.
  • In Manehattan's Lone Guardian, the deranged Illudere sports one of these after she picks up on one of Salamandra's heartsongs. The narration describes it as an ear-to-ear smile that leaves no doubt that she's never had serious dental work done.
  • The vocaloid fanfic Rotting Camellias often has Meiko flashing one of these.
  • In The Scaly Raptor, Claire manages to give "shark smiles" even before she becomes a T-rex, usually when she's about to make someone's life hell.
  • This Bites!:
    • Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine have these on Little Garden when they meet Cross alone.
    • Used frequently enough with Kureha that Cross compares her to the Grim Reaper no fewer than three times.
    • At the end of Chapter 19, Cross has this reaction after they leave Luffy behind to fight Crocodile...and the rest of the crew agrees to let him give out some spoilers about the upcoming battles.
    • Smoker, of all people, gives one in Chapter 23, after Hina becomes convinced that he, Tashigi, and Cross are right about the corruption in the people they follow and asks what he has in mind to fix it.
    • Sengoku gets a gold-plated, crazy-ass grin when, amidst all the chaos on Enies Lobby, Spandam idiotically reveals his plan to get control of Pluton and possibly overthrow the Five Elder Stars. The Fleet Admiral takes great pleasure in telling him to report to Marineford to receive "everything he has coming to him".
  • The Serial Killer Pinkamina from the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic blog Ask Pinkamina Diane Pie is well-known amongst the fandom for her smile. One Ask even involved specifically asking her to smile.
  • Outcry: When Nadalia smiles while attempting to harm someone she does so in a way that is described as grotesque, ugly, or wrong.
    Miss Militia: The thing wearing Annette Hebert's face smiled at her.
    The smile was... wrong. She'd seen many smiles in her life and could remember each with perfect clarity. She'd seen everything, from the genuine to the false, to the insane.
    This one was... wrong... off. It was as if the thing behind it was merely mimicking what it had seen as if it had forgotten how to even begin to make the expression and was unable to emulate what it had seen enough to overcome what it was trying to hide.
  • Samus' default smile in Rise from Darkness seems to be this. Later, after brutally killing an entire family, she breaks into a grin and starts laughing maniacally.
  • In Switcheroo AU, Spinel can give a particularly demented face when she tries to intimidate, doing so to scare Holly Blue Agate.
  • All Mixed Up!: Mariana Mag is quite fond of these. She gives one at the end of Chapter 4 when she realizes how she can get into Precinct 13579's Headquarters, and gives another one at the end of Chapter 7 just before blowing up her cardboard cutout of Oprah using her anagramming lifeline gadget.
  • A Certain Droll Hivemind: This is Abe Eiko's response when it becomes apparent that she and Misaka Yui are going to have to fight a bunch of armed Russian mercenaries. Yui, being an Expendable Clone with No Social Skills, does not understand why her smile is so freaky.
    We also did not like the way that Abe Eiko was still smiling. She had been smiling since she made her knives. It left me feeling quite uncomfortable, although the Network was not sure why. Smiling is generally viewed by society as a good expression. We would have preferred her to stop smiling.
  • In The Saga of Tanya the Firebender, Tanya does this a lot without realising it. When Zuko first met Tanya, his first thought was that she had the smile of a literal demon.
  • From The Fog: One alternate skin Herobrine may sport is their usual look, but with a wide grin encompassing one-fourth of the face.
  • In Chapter 3 of Harry's Letter From Hermione's Dad, Harry produces a smile at Snape that makes Muggle-borns think of slasher movies. Those present who are old enough to be familiar with Bellatrix Lestrange think that if she had a son the right age, that kind of expression would be what he'd wear. Snape backs down, even after being deliberately taunted by Harry.
  • The Dissonance of The Earthling Saiyan:
    • Kakarot's Sanity Slippage has resulted in him often having a grinning expression that other characters find creepy, especially when he's thinking about hurting or killing someone.
      Cell: Oh. That's the look of a mass murderer wanting to kill. You are a freak among your kind, aren't you?
    • Future Trunks is described as having a sinister and creepy smile when he's in his second Super Saiyan form. Other characters are scared of him when he's in that form because of it.
  • Pokemon: Outlaws: Zinnia weaponizes this along with several other types of facial and body language to scare the shit out of people.

    Films — Animation 
  • Budzo, the Big Bad of Adventures in Zambezia, sports a pretty chilling slasher smile throughout the movie, only losing it during his Disney Villain Death.
  • In the film adaptation of AKIRA, Tetsuo lets out a couple of rather creepy smiles, such as when he kills Yamagata.
  • Aladdin (1992, Disney): This is one of Jafar's favored expressions, and he gives a particularly terrifying one during the reprise of "Prince Ali".
  • In All Dogs Go to Heaven after Killer, currently trying to do everything he can to get Carface to spare his life, tells him he has a gun they can use to try and kill Charlie (for good) with, Carface breaks into a wide satanic version. Not just figuratively, either –- his face (presumably, we're seeing him from Killer's POV) actually proceeds to transform into an actual devil's.
  • Atlantis: The Lost Empire: When he goes into Villainous Breakdown mode, Rourke has a pretty awesome and crazy slasher smile when he tries to kill Milo with a fire axe. You can clearly tell the guy has gone batshit insane, especially after his attempt to steal the artifact had been ruined by Milo.
  • Gaston sports one at the start of his fight with the Beast in Beauty and the Beast (1991), and yet another after stabbing the Beast in the side.
  • The Monster Clown that appears in Toaster's dream sequence in The Brave Little Toaster has a big one glued to its face.
  • Even Hopper sports one in A Bug's Life, just as he’s about to crush Flik, only to be stopped by Atta.
  • Cinderella (1950): Downplayed in motive and expression for Lady Tremaine. When the Duke visits with the glass slipper, she locks Cinderella in her room. Just before she leaves, she has a smirk on her face.
  • Mrs. Tweedy is prone to those in Chicken Run, like before measuring Babs and later in the climax, when she thinks Ginger has been decapitated.
  • The Other Mother in Coraline does this, particularly towards the end of the movie.
  • In Frozen (2013), Hans has a villainous smile as he raises his sword to kill Elsa.
  • Ratigan of The Great Mouse Detective sports a huge one after he's convinced he's mauled Basil to death.
  • Scheck from Hey Arnold! The Movie sports one when he gloats about his true intentions of destroying Arnold and Gerald's neighborhood and then burns the document in front of them, which ultimately proved to be a big mistake due to his own surveillance cameras having recorded his crime.
  • Judge Claude Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney) flashes such a grin twice in the story. First when he tries to burn Esmeralda at the stake. Later, when he raises his sword to kill her and Quasimodo, because he believes that he's won. It's particularly notable because, up until those two times, the worst Frollo did was a Psychotic Smirk.
  • The Incredibles 1: The look on Syndrome's face when he abducts Jack-Jack.
  • In Inside Out, Jangles does this when he's woken up by Joy.
  • Nightwing briefly flashes a rather creepy one in Justice League Dark: Apokolips War after being revived by Damian, where Raven discovers to her horror about this when he turns around, discovering that the resurrection drove him mad.
  • Cera in The Land Before Time gives a pretty big slasher smile when she decides upon seeing what is apparently Sharptooth's corpse to use it as ramming practice. However, a few rams in, she soon discovers that Sharptooth was not quite as dead as she originally thought, and just barely managed to survive to tell the tale.
  • The Lion King (1994):
    • Ed the hyena (and to a much lesser extent, Shenzi, Banzai, and all of the other hyenas) actually gains this type of smile when the hyenas all kill Scar at the end.
    • Scar gives one himself to Zazu when he points out how unhappy Mufasa will be that he didn't show up for Simba's birth ceremony. After he tells him this (as well as forcing Scar to let a mouse, his lunch, escape), Scar sarcastically states "ooh, I quiver with FEAR!", flashing this smile when he says the last word, and then tries to eat Zazu, and he would, had Mufasa not showed up right at that moment.
    • Scar gets another one before he kills Mufasa. His expression provides the image for the Disney subsection of the Moral Event Horizon page.
  • Ursula of The Little Mermaid (1989) does this a few times during the final battle. Her alter-ego Vanessa even pulls one off when she throws a pin at a mirror with enough force to knock it back while gloating about her inevitable victory.
  • In The Lorax (2012), at the end of the Villain Song, "How Bad Can I Be", the Once-ler has one after shouting the last lyrics, "HOW BAD CAN THIS POSSIBLY BE?!"
  • Ay from Mr. Peabody & Sherman sports this when he drives his dagger on Penny's hand during the Ceremony.
  • The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie Boogie and Barrell have one constantly and Jack has one as his default.
  • NIMONA (2023): The punk, chaos-loving title character frequently sports a wide grin when she’s reveling in her destruction.
  • In Osmosis Jones, Thrax does this several times throughout the movie. Drix, of all people, gives a pretty good one as well when he plays the bad cop to Osmosis's good cop when they shake down an informant.
  • The Pebble and the Penguin: The Big Bad Drake constantly sports a Trollface-like smile.
  • Pinocchio (1940): The Coachman during his "They never come back as BOYS!" line.
  • In Quest for Camelot, Ruber sports these at times:
    • His very first scene makes him stand out from the rest of the knights.
    • When he is invading Juliana's home and when he blackmails her into helping him by threatening to kill her daughter, Kayley.
    • He has a crazy one throughout his song when he transforming his human henchmen into iron men with his potion.
    • When he is melding Excalibur onto his hand with the said potion.
    • He eventually has a creepy one, when he is cornering injured Arthur without mercy.
  • In Ratatouille
    • When Colette begins her mentorship of Linguini she flashes several during her monologue every time she asks him a question about the status of women in a haute cuisine restaurant.
    • Also, during Linguini's nightmare, there's Anton Ego's bone-chilling grin as he places an order for Linguini's heart roasted on a spit.
  • The sirens in Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas give Marina one of these.
  • In Sing 2, Jimmy Crystal sports one of these when he tries to murder Buster Moon the second time.
  • In the climactic battle of Superman vs. the Elite, Superman himself flashes a pants-shittingly terrifying one when confronting one of the members, and it's acompannied with literally blood-red eyes and a disturbing desire to kill. Worse is when you realize that it's George Newbern of all people nailing the completely pants-wettingly out-of-left-field unfettered brutality with chilling accuracy, almost as if Superman is deliberately becoming the brutal, white-haired, cold-blooded main villain of Final Fantasy VII, Sephiroth, who's Newbern's second most famous role next to the Man of Steel himself!
  • Rothbart from The Swan Princess gains one of these near the end after he transforms into The Great Animal for the second time.
  • Tom and Jerry: The Movie: The scene where Doctor Applecheeks steals the ice cream truck. The ice cream truck music manages to makes this much, much creepier.
  • Chef, the Big Bad of Trolls 1 does have a lot especially it's Terrifying.
  • The Twelve Tasks of Asterix: When Caesar tells the Senate that the protagonists will have to face the priestesses of the "Isle of Pleasure", he bursts into a fit of demonic laughter — accompanied by an equally demonic smile that sends his councillors (including Brutus) into a huddle, shivering.
  • In Wreck-It Ralph, King Candy/Turbo sports a particularly notable one, in all of his forms.
  • The Blue Meanies in Yellow Submarine have this expression pretty frequently.

    Manhwa 

    Music 
  • Michael Jackson turns to the camera with cat eyes and a creepy smile at the end of his "Thriller" music video.
  • One of the detective's other selves in the music video for Blind Guardian's "Another Stranger Me." The band's singer also has a Slasher Smile at one point.
  • "The Guy," the mascot of the metal band Disturbed, is always depicted with this (always.)
  • Danny Elfman practically made a living doing this in the '70s and '80s. There's hardly any Oingo Boingo music video (or film, for that matter) in which he doesn't spend a few seconds scaring the living crap out of the audience. Overly obnoxious talk show hosts occasionally got the silent treatment from him, combined with a trademark psychotic grin. The worst, or possibly the best example, has got to be the music video for "Little Girls", wherein the slasher smile goes on for the entire video and makes Danny look like he's in searing pain. See it here
    • As he's aged, the smile lines around his mouth have become deeply etched enough to make this possibly his default smile.
  • And then there's... well, everyone but the band in the video for Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun".
  • Pustulus Maximus pulls one of these in the music video for GWAR's "I'll Be Your Monster".
  • In The Birthday Massacre's song Happy Birthday ( 3 guesses as to what it's about), there are the lines:
    • I think my friend said, "Don't forget the video." / I think my friend said, "Don't forget to smile."
  • Motörhead has a song about this trope called "Smiling Like a Killer."
    "Go to bed, lock the door,
    don't look in the mirror,
    what if I was right behind you,
    SMILING LIKE A KILLER?"
  • The more disturbing of the Vocaloid music videos feature this, such as the chainsaw-happy "nurse" and the demented victims in the "Dark Woods Circus" series (you can even see a disembodied Slasher Smile behind the flap of the circus tent), and Miku in "Circle you" right before she cleaves you in half with a machete, at the moment when you least expect it. it will most likely catch you off guard.
  • Aphex Twin fits this trope to a T. He really loves to paste his creepy grin on everything from album covers to music videos. One of the most notable appearances of his face is spectrograph at the end of "Equation" — an Easter Egg which is cool and disturbing at the same time.
  • Technical thrash metal band Coroner has a song entitled "Grin (Nails Hurt)" off the aptly titled "Grin" album, which itself features a pretty sadistic grin.
    Nails in my brain, all that's left just
    Grin
    Grin 'til I lose
    Until I lose myself
  • The video for David Bowie's "Valentine's Day" consists of just about nothing but David playing guitar while making a Slasher Smile at the camera.
  • Annie Lennox has an unexpected one at the very end of the music video for Little Bird
  • La Camilla from Army of Lovers displays a rather frightening one in the video for "Obsession" as she's rolling her fellow bandmate down the hall in a wheelchair. And later, while cutting his head open.
  • Then-prime minister Tony Blair is depicted with such a smile in a hidden booklet included with early pressings of Radiohead's Kid A. It's every bit as unsettling as it sounds.
  • The album art for Poets of the Fall's Twilight Theater gives us Hamartia, the Monster Clown jester who finds perverse humour and joy in others' disastrous errors. No wonder he's smiling.
  • The music video for The Lonely Island's "Threw It on the Ground" features Elijah Wood giving a hilariously creepy grin as he and Ryan Reynolds pin the narrator down and fire a tazer into his anus repeatedly. The guy definitely earned it, but it's still a strange experience to see this kind of expression on Frodo Baggins.
  • Brent Smith of Shinedown unleashes a blink-and-you-miss slasher smile in the band's video for "Devil." It's surprisingly creepy.
  • The sharks' smiles in Baby Shark become slasher smiles when they go hunting and we see them behind the children.
  • Siobhan Fahey's default expression throughout the music video for "Stay" by Shakespears Sister - It's a Concept Video where she's meant to portray a sinister (if unconventionally glamorous and sparkly) version of The Grim Reaper.

    Mythology & Folklore 

    Pinball 

    Podcasts 

    Professional Wrestling 
  • Randy Orton doesn't smile often, but when he does...
  • Batista could be like this as well, both as a face and as a heel.
  • Kane too. Bonus points for not needing to smile to look scary.
  • Beth Phoenix is the rare Diva who is able to smile evilly without making it look the least bit sexy.
  • Chris Benoit. Throughout most of his career, he tried to keep his missing tooth hidden behind his lips, but WWE bookers decided to have him accentuate it with a slasher smile.
  • Madison Rayne, even when giving a genuinely friendly smile, looks really unnerving.
  • So far in NXT, a slasher smile seems to be Asuka's trademark. During her NXT contract signing, she was interrupted and teased by Emma and Dana Brooke, and just before she walked backstage she turned around and smiled so creepily it scared them both into silence. She followed up by getting a bit of an ass-kicking from Billie Kay in her debut match — then after Billie mocked her, she smiled and proceeded to hurt her.
  • Eddie Dennis is the master of this. He's usually smiling when he appears on NXT UK, but with how toothy it is and the fact that it never quite reaches his eyes, it comes off more like an animal about to attack you.
  • Vince McMahon would give one whenever he was hamming it up and about to fire somebody.
  • Mick Foley during his Hell In The Cell match with The Undertaker at King Of The Ring 1998 started smiling at one point. What brings it into creepy territory is he did it after having been both thrown off the side and through the cell, the latter of which knocked him out, and knocked a tooth through the roof of his mouth, sending it out his nose.

    Tabletop Games 

    Theatre 

    Toys 

    Visual Novels 
  • Ace Attorney:
  • Corpse Party has several. There's possessed Ayumi, Kizami, Sachiko, and the shadowy creature at the end of Chapter One (if it catches you)... who turns out to be Sachiko's mother.
  • Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: Kazuichi Soda's default expression is a big, toothy grin with shark-sharp teeth and Kubrick-esque eyes. However, he is far from a slasher villain; instead, he is more cowardly and perverted.
  • Quite a few characters is Dies Irae are prone to pull these kinds of smiles. Wilhelm, Rusalka and Schreiber are among those who pull these the most.
  • The dragon in Dra+Koi has a Slasher Smile as her default smile. The protagonist kind of hates it, even in the good ending.
  • Gilgamesh of Fate/stay night shows off a particularly disturbing one of these after making the Holy Grail manifest in the U.B.W. story route. For a 'yippee, destruction and fire!' variant, watch the activation of his best Noble Phantasm.
  • Higurashi: When They Cry: Everyone has them by the dozens. The real culprit, though, has a perpetually blank appearance, which is even creepier in contrast. Until she wins, that is.
  • In Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, Clover has one in the Axe Ending.
  • Kotonoha, in the one of the bad endings of School Days. The one where she kills Sekai, more specifically.
  • Spirit Hunter: NG:
    • One of Seiji's common expressions. His normally soft eyes sharpen into pinpricks as he takes on a wicked smile, revealing his true personality.
    • Sekai also gets one in another of the bad endings when she kills Kotonoha.
  • In Tavern Talk, Iniko sometimes pulls a creepy grin and stare and wields a knife out of nowhere when they're feeling devious.
  • Umineko: When They Cry:

    Web Animation 

    Web Originals 

    Web Videos 
  • American High Digital: When the students show their true colors in "When Students Are Kind To The Substitute", some focus is put on Hyde doing an uncomfortably wide grin.
  • Dr. Glaucomflecken: The graduating medical student's hallucination/anthropomorphic representation of intern year has one. For context, intern year (a.k.a. the first year of medical residency) is universally regarded as the most difficult and demanding part of medical education.

    Other 
  • Many of the images on Encyclopedia Dramatica's "DO IT FAGGOT" page can either be examples of Slasher Smiles or Cheshire Cat Grins.
  • In Norse Mythology, Loki was often depicted with one of these (in some versions, due to a bet gone wrong). Loki often had scars on his entire lip as well.
  • Smile.dog's nightmarish grin is like this.
  • The urban legend of The Grinning Man, told as an event that coincided with the Mothman sightings in West Virginia during the 1960s. Some artistic renderings can be a little unsettling.
    • The last one... Is that Voldemort?
    • That last image may be Nightmare Retardant. It's an edited photo of the cockmongler.
      • It's only Nightmare Retardant if you actually knew who the cockmongler was beforehand. Otherwise?
  • Death is usually seen as a skeleton (with some accessories, like a scythe). Ironically, a human skull seems to "smile" all the time.
  • The devil overlooking Dante and Virgil in Hell doesn't seem to have lips and has teeth that look more like razor-like fangs. This leaves him with a permanent and threatening grin as he sees a man bite into the throat of another.
  • This one terrifying 1881 cartoon from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper featuring Charles Guiteau, the assassin of then-United States president James Garfield (no relation to that Franchise/Garfield).

    Real Life 
  • Actor Jack Black can be seen with these in a wide number of photos.
  • The "literally smiling from ear to ear" disfigurement smile as evidenced by characters such as Kakihara in Ichi the Killer, Gwynplaine (of the aforementioned The Man Who Laughs), and The Dark Knight's Joker is commonly referred to as a "Glasgow smile" and is not a terribly uncommon humiliation injury by gangs. The actor Tommy Flanagannote  sports one of these courtesy of being jumped outside a pub in his younger days.
    • In Japan, legends abound of the kuchisake-onna (口裂け女), a female onryou with a surgical mask to conceal it and who is hellbent on returning the favor to every male she accosts around sundown.
  • Jack Nicholson.
    • "Heeeeeeere's Johnny!" (that tends to happen when you play those roles).
    • With new Joker brand I get a grin again and again and again.
  • Lon Chaney was a master of this both in and out of makeup.
  • Michael Fassbender. There's a reason everyone on the Internet thinks he's a shark.
    • Smiling too widely is a good way to unsettle a fencing opponent.
  • Pittsburgh Steeler receiver Hines Ward is known for two things. The first is blocks so vicious and they made a new rule to try to keep him from hurting people. The second is almost always smiling. No matter how hard he gets hit, or how hard he hits someone, he gets up smiling like a lunatic.
  • Cult leader and sexual deviant David Berg's slasher smile never seemed to leave his face. Makes you shudder and want to punch him at the same time.
  • Marlon Brando, as seen here. (He looks like he might have been told by the makeup artist to grin so that the artist knows which facial wrinkles to highlight. Still looks freaky.)
  • Joe Biden smiles a lot: a nice smile, on the whole. But in this smile, as he explains why we have the Geneva Convention,note  there's nothing but pure distilled rage. And Nightmare Fuel.
    To protect my son in the military. That's why we have these treaties.
  • Shirley Phelps tends to wear this expression during interviews.
  • Actor John Astin often sports one of these in his various roles. For example, take a look at the unnerving grin he's wearing during his credit close-up in The Addams Family theme song.
    • Supposedly, he first perfected it while living in a rough area, when he found that coming across as unnerving and somewhat Ax-Crazy made people leave him alone, and it then became his trademark as an actor.
  • Andrew Kehoe was reportedly seen wearing one of these while heading toward Bath School, half of which he had blown up with dynamite minutes earlier, killing 38 people (mostly kids). Shortly thereafter, he blew up his car, killing himself and four others.
  • UFC Heavyweight Champion Fabricio Werdum often makes a goofy face at the camera that has become memetic. It involves a large, bizarre, Joker-like smile that makes him look insane. He's even worn shirts with himself making the smile.
  • David Bowie could produce one when he was in the right mood.
  • Satoshi Uematsu, suspected of stabbing 19 severely disabled people to death in a Japanese care home, has one of these in virtually every photo of him, both before and after the rampage.
  • Alligators and crocodiles often appear to have a permanent one, though, in reality, this is just how their mouths are shaped. Gators, however, look less threatening since they have an overbite, in contrast to crocs which have both their upper and lower teeth interlock with each other forming a toothy grin.
  • Averted with wolves, which is one of the reasons our two species get along fairly well. Granted, the phrase "wolf grin" exists for a reason. Their smiles don't always look happy, but anything resembling a smile from a wolf can at least be read as non-aggression.
  • Played straight and inverted with chimpanzees. Any facial gesture from a chimp that shows teeth is at best a warning sign, whether it's a smile or otherwise, even if it is a happy-looking smile.
  • Considering how violent dolphins are, their smile could be considered one, even if it is just the way their jaw is shaped.
  • Monitor Lizards often 'gape' for a very long time, holding their mouth open in a way that looks like a massive grin, which is sinister when you realise they can kill a human with a single bite.
  • Autistic people have a hard time reading neurotypical social and facial cues, so many autistics often have to practice grinning to avoid it looking like a slasher smile.
  • Italian actor George Eastman (no, not that one) is a master at the slasher smile from his numerous villain and exploitation film roles throughout his career.
  • Ad voiceover artist Mona Abboud recorded a song called "The Pretty Little Dolly", which she was invited to perform on The Tonight Show as Johnny Carson's guest. While her expression starts off shy and sweet, as the song veers off Letter to Santa Road and onto Psychopath Boulevard, Abboud's smile slowly morphs into a pretty unsettling Slasher Smile.
  • Nia Vardalos of My Big Fat Greek Wedding fame has naturally "angry eyebrows" shaped in a way that make her look perpetually pissed off, despite the fact that she's a really sweet, funny, and kind lady. She tends to smile a lot but her angry eyebrows make her smile look aggressive, despite the warmth behind it, making her an unintentional example of this.
  • During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian troops painted long, thin smiles on the fronts of US-donated M142 HIMARS rocket artillery systems, acknowledging a popular internet meme.


Alternative Title(s): Evil Grin

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Mr. World

New God of Globalization, and leader of the New Gods. He knows everything about every person, and tends to leave destruction in his wake.

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