So Hideous, It's Terrifying

MY EYES!!!

Beauty Equals Goodness, right? Heroes need to be relatable, so they will usually look in the worst case like your average neighborhood's friends. On the other hand, villains have a wider range of archetypes to be portrayed with: moustache-twirling jerkasses in a black suit, femme fatales, hilariously thin or full-bodied crooks (often forming a duo), and so on and so forth. This distinction functions as the premise of most conflicts involving a nice-looking protagonist and a villain representing their dark side.

And then we have this [insert scary music]... thing.

It's a travesty of humanity, if it can be called human in the first place. It may be just very old or maybe it has fallen victim to a horrible curse, but the result is the same: both heroes and villains dread an encounter with the mother of all ugly faces. If it happens, expect them to panic or feeling extremely uncomfortable in their presence. And God forbid if these characters are romantically or even sexually attracted to the main lead. In some cases, even the writers lampshade their ugliness by offering the audience close-ups of what would otherwise qualify as Fanservice.

The typical traits of a character deep in the "SHIT-zone" are as follows:

1. The main cast or the community living in the same area of said character are aware of their ugliness and tend to avoid them as much as possible.

2. Both characters and writers lampshade their ugliness or joke about it (often as a form of Stealth Insult or Gross-Up Close-Up).

3. Their introduction scene (or basically every scene they appear in) has them doing something extremely gross or just body-revealing (i.e. bathing, shaving, and dressing).

4. Their sudden appearing in a crowded area causes people to panic or cover the eyes (or their children's). Sometimes, the crowd just remains silent out of shock before the panic sets in.

Despite the similar background, this trope is distinct from Brown Note Being. In the latter case, characters have actual harmful/unpleasant physical effects to the viewers (speaking of which, it also encompasses other senses such as touch and hearing), while this trope involves only the character's ugliness and the following reaction of the cast/audience.

A possible form of The Dreaded and a main source of Fan Disservice, Nightmare Fuel, and Nightmare Face (in the most serious examples). Unrelated to The Grotesque, because the ugliness is meant to scare or gross out characters and viewers alike. Given the popularity of tropes such as Brawn Hilda, Wicked Witch, and Gonky Femme, most examples involve women. A good portion of these characters count as villains, but secondary characters and good guys aren't unheard of. If the voices about their ugliness aren't true and said characters happen to be as at least an average-looking human/humanoid, the possible twist may include Gorgeous Gorgon and Cute Monster Girl (still, beware of double subversions!).

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Examples:

Films — Animation

• The Emperor's New Groove: the main villainess Yzma is known In-Universe as "scary beyond all reason" and she's so old Kuzco claims is living proof that dinosaurs once walked the Earth. Almost everyone agrees that she's extremely ugly and the fact she seems to believe herself beautiful doesn't help. Still, the writers don't spare the audience from watching her sleeping in her tent with night makeup and, more famously, lifting her skirt in front of the leads (it's to retrieve a hidden dagger, much to the heroes' relief).
• The Little Mermaid:
  • Ursula the Sea Witch. Ariel, her friends Sebastian and Flounder as well as the humans attending Eric's wedding during the climax cover their eyes or quiver in fear in her presence. Still, the animators don't miss the occasion of showing her shaking her buttocks, rubbing her back (including a zoom-in on her chest during her Villain Song) or applying mussel guts as a lipstick. Late in the movie, she gains control of the Trident and turns into a giant version of herself with fang-like teeth and an extremely deep voice. In a deleted scene, one of the sailors from the first draft of the song "Fathoms Below" describes her as "evil and ugly". Considering the contacts between merpeople and humans were still forbidden, this implies rumors of her ugliness were spread among seafarers long before the events of the movie.
  • Ursula's sister Morgana from the sequel isn't prettier either. Her arrival at Melody's baptism turns a sunny sky into a greenish fog in a split second and during said scene, all characters keep as much distance from her as possible. That being said, there's no scene where her ugliness is directly lampshaded (except for a quick gag with Eric's valet and a close-up mirroring her sister's). Later defied during her first meeting with Melody, probably because the latter was already aware of the existence of merpeople and naively saw the witch as a grandmother-like figure
• Shrek: Shrek exploits this trope at the beginning of the first movie to scare off ogre hunters and protect his privacy. The Allstar Smash Mouth sequence has him having a bath in a quagmire, having a shower with mud (with a clear shot of his buttocks) brushing his teeth with bug guts (the latter scene ending with his mirror cracking) and, finally, roaring at the villagers who wanted to kill him (with a close-up of his teeth and saliva). However, the trope is downplayed later in the movie and sequels because he finds a love interest with An Aesop about inner beauty, his best friends get along with him without any trace of fear (well, as long as Shrek doesn't lose it) and his ugliness is lampshaded only in gags and scenes where either his ogre physique or lifestyle are put in contrast with those of more attractive characters.

Films — Live-Action

• The Princess Bride: Threatened by Westley against Prince Humperdinck. He tells the Prince they'll fight "to the pain", saying he'll cut off the Prince's hands, feet, nose, and his eyes. But when Humperdinck assumes that they conclude with his ears...
  Westly: WRONG! Your ears you keep and I'll tell you why. So that every shriek of every child at seeing your hideousness will be yours to cherish. Every babe that weeps at your approach, every woman who cries out, "Dear God! What is that thing?" will echo in your perfect ears. That is what "to the pain" means. It means I leave you in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery forever.

Literature

• Red Dwarf: "Last Human" gives us the Snugiraffe, a Mix-and-Match Critter GELF which is described as one of the most repulsive beings to have ever existed since George Formby, to the point that even just looking at it will cause the observer to puke (or dry-retch in the case of holograms and mechanoids).

Live-Action TV

• The Brittas Empire: Colin. He's quite grimy and not the most pleasant to look at, and it doesn't help that one of his Running Gags involves the most disgusting things happening to him. One episode had a group of fleeing pool-goers try to get his autograph because they thought that he was the monster from A Nightmare on Elm Street, whilst another had him realize that this was the case when he is replaced for an exposive documentary on the centre with a more conventionally handsome actor because his appearance was too disgusting for TV, not helped by him remembering that his face was always being covered in the school plays he was in.
• In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Is There in Truth No Beauty" we have an alien race called the Medusans. The mere sight of one will drive a normal person mad, so they're described as "ugly." Even trained telepaths must wear special protective glasses to look at one. Conversely, one character disputes the application of the word "ugly", saying that it could be just as likely that the Medusans are too beautiful to look at or comprehend.

Myths & Religion

• Greek Mythology: Medusa and her sisters count as an Ur-Example. Early depictions of the Gorgon sisters portray them as masculine women with boar fangs, claws on each hand, and even bushy beards. Their ugliness combined with the petrifying powers of their gaze led to the gods banishing them to the edge of the world. Late Antiquity portrayals of the three Gorgons avert this trope by lessening their masculine traits to the point they eventually looked like maidens with snakes for hair.

Radio

• John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme: The head of the celestial design team is pretty horrified by the design of this new deep sea fish one of his team is working on, straight after being horribly dumped by his girlfriend, and wonders about the guy's overall mental health, what with the fish reproducing by the female luring a mate in, absorbing him into her body and reducing him to nothing more than a pair of testicles. Especially since it's such a dramatic departure from the puffins...

Tabletop Games

• Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition. The Unearthed Arcana supplement introduced the Comeliness ability score, which covered the attractiveness/beauty of a character. Having a negative Comeliness would cause a viewer to have strong negative reactions.
  • At -16 or less, a viewer would feel so repulsed and horrified that they could decide to destroy the ugly being outright.
  • At a score of -15 to -9, a viewer would feel disgust, insult them and act in a generally hostile manner.
  • If the score was from -8 to zero, a viewer would try to get away from them and act in a hostile/aggressive way if given any excuse.
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay:
  • Physical mutations with a grotesque or threatening appearance have a stacking "fear score". As a character is afflicted with more and more, they can become a Supernatural Fear Inducer or an outright Brown Note Being. The mutation "Hideous Appearance" jumps straight to the top of the scale.
  • Hag Witches' contact with spirits often causes them to look much older than they are, and they can live a very long time indeed. The most extreme cases are a Supernatural Fear Inducer.

Web Video

• Don't Hug Me I'm Scared: "This is the story of Michael, the Ugliest boy in town. Ugly and weak, they called him a freak, so he lived on his own underground. He lived all alone underground. He lived all alone underground."

Western Animation

• Ben 10: Ben's alien form Toepick, introduced in Omniverse, has this as a power. Its face is hidden behind a caged helmet and anyone who sees it goes completely white in horror. This includes Psyphon, former Dragon to series Big Bad Vilgax. According to Derrick J. Wyatt there are creatures Toepick is unable to scare such as Dagon and Ma Vreedle; the latter being because she's "seen worse". In fact, she can make TOEPICK afraid of HER. Paradox is also unaffected by Toepick's face because he's Seen It All. While Toepick can't scare beings that lack emotions like drones or robots? His face can still trigger a defensive reaction within them.
• The Emperor's New School. Continuing with the trend of portraying Yzma as ugly beyond all reason, we have this exchange:
  Yzma: But first I need to polish up my resume. How do you spell "Gorgeous"?
  Kronk: [Beat] Yeah, you don't spell that with a, uh, clear conscience.
  • In another episode, Kuzco and Kronk turn themselves into girls, and thoroughly avert Attractive Bent-Gender. Each one is boasting and preening about how they're the most attractive, only for the official record keeper to interrupt, saying it has absolutely nothing to do with his official duties, but he feels obligated to point out that the duo are the most hideous girls he's ever seen.
• In Family Guy, Meg is treated by her family, and even random people around her, as if she is some hideously deformed freak, even though her appearance could be described as merely plain-looking at the least. In one episode, when Lois takes her clothes shopping, Meg comes out of the dressing room wearing clothes not too dissimilar looking from her regular outfit, and it so horrifies the saleswoman that she douses herself in gasoline and sets herself on fire, right before jumping through a glass window. This is further reinforced in the episode "Road to the Multiverse", where her Disney-esque form bears an uncanny resemblance to Ursula (tentacles included), unlike the much more friendly-looking versions of her family members.
• Gravity Falls:
  • Grunkle Stan is often subject to this in Season 1 on account of being a fat, old man on a kids show. Downplayed, since he was quite a looker as a young man and Took a Level in Badass by Season 2:
    • In "Headhunters", after walking into a room full of wax figures, Dipper points out one that doesn't look as lifelike as the others. It turns out to be Grunkle Stan, who scares the kids and Soos out of the room even after they realize it's him.
    • In "Summerween", after spending the episode trying to scare a couple of bratty half-pints with fake blood and jump scares, he finally ends up scaring them unintentionally... by showing them his (almost) naked body.
  • Toby Determined also has moments of this, with multiple characters calling him ugly.
  Mabel: What a horrible mask!
  Toby: That's just my face! This is a mask. (Puts on a mask)
  Soos: Oh yeah, that's actually better.
• The Simpsons: downplayed in the case of Marge's sisters Patty and Selma. Although most of the citizens of Springfield agree that Marge's sisters are ugly and their gags involve a lot of fan disservice (for instance, they are the first thing which came to Homer's mind when he needed to Think Unsexy Thoughts), their looks (usually) don't scare or deeply disturb bystanders. Conversely, both have their share of romantic relationships with one or more men (including Hans the Moleman).
• The Smurfs (1981): The evil Wizard Nemesis introduced in season 8 used to be very handsome. But after he attempted to steal an artifact that would have caused grave problems for the world, he was cursed to have an ugly and incredibly deformed appearance; have his outer appearance match his inner self. Anytime Nemesis removes his hood, those who look upon his hideous face (which we, the viewers thankfully never see) are stricken with uncontrollable terror; Nemesis has weaponized this. The sole exception is Clockwork Smurf, who is immune thanks to his heart of gold.
• South Park: Played for Laughs and zigzagged with "Ugly Bob", a Canadian who is considered to be so ugly that he is told by Terrence and Phillip to keep a paper bag on his head at all times, and eventually becomes so ugly that his face can turn a horrifying monster to stone. However, when his face is shown, he just looks like any other Canadian, and he heads off to America at one point because Americans are incapable of seeing his apparent ugliness.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Discussed in "Something Smells". SpongeBob thinks everyone has been avoiding him because they find him too ugly, but it's actually because his breath is awful.

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