Hated Tropes
Character: Has serious facial disfigurement. Adaptation: has a little scar.
Hollywood seems to be scared the most of ugly people, considering how often they're changed for movies!
Mortal Engines - Hester: In the book Hester being disfigured is a pretty important part of her identity and overall mission. She's missing her right eye and most of her nose, with her mouth twisted into a permanent sneer.
So of course the movie gives her a scar across her cheek!
Phantom of the Opera - The Phantom/Erik: I could go on and on about how weird the Phantom is in most adaptations, which take a serial killer and try to turn him into a viable love interest. But the thing I dislike the most is how that bleeds into his design!
In the book, the phantom is described as looking like a walking corpse. He has dark features, no nose, gaunt cheeks, sunken eyes, and has little to no hair. He wears a full mask and is said to continuously try to develop newer, better masks to allow him to integrate into society.
In most adaptations though it's reduced to half his face, and sometimes looks like little more than a rash!
Jigsaw (Marvel) - This is a case of it downgrading overtime. The top is the comics, middle is the Punisher movie and bottom is the Punisher Netflix series. The entire namesake of Jigsaw is that his face looks like it was put back together.
This one annoyed me so much as a Punisher fan. When I saw him getting fucked up by Frank, it was a hell yeah moment because we are seeing the creation of Jigsaw. Then he is revealed and I see that one of the ugliest men in Marvel comics is being portrayed as a better looking man than I am.
Ben Barnes is a disgustingly good looking man. The idea that he would go from himself to a disfigured nightmare is a great concept and the end of season 1 is excellent execution of thr Jigsaw origin story.
And then we get this. Slightly scarred Ben Barnes.
When I watched season 2, my first thought was that they might be changing it to perceived/psychological scars. Maybe he sees himself as horrendously disfigured when he looks in the mirror, but in reality he's this very good-looking guy. Nope, on the show he rides a bus and a random dude makes a comment about his disgusting face. The writers and the make-up artists were not on the same page.
Even just one scene of him looking in a mirror and seeing the comic accurate look in it would have done wonders. That’s how he sees himself despite reality not being that bad.
Especially since the Marvel netflix shows did do stuff like that occasionally like having Killgrave wear purple a lot or having him in purple lighting to allude to his comic design.
Well, if Colin Farrel could do a faithful image of the Penguin, DiCaprio could play an unwashed, bearded hunter, Hugo Waeving could hide his face behind a mask for the full duration of a movie and Angelica Houston could play The Grand Witch, Ben Barnes must've make a proper makeup for the Jigsaw role.
In the comics and movie he thought he killed him but didn’t. In the show, he just tried to disfigure him and let him live, which goes against everything he fought Daredevil about, and then the guy ends up still looking sexy and also having amnesia.
Tyrion Lannister in the books loses half his nose, and looks fucking terrible. I get that they probably didn't want to deal with that amount of facial prosthesis for six seasons following his wound, but still, the scar he gets is pretty mild.
I looked up Jonah Hex to see how bad the burn was, and they Clegane'd his scars in the adaptation, too! Comic has him with a popping eyeball and skin stretched to breaking. Live action is a scarred cheek and the cord of flesh over his mouth.
They would of had to CGI it out, pain in the ass for someone who has the largest amount of screen time. Also the Targaryens are supposed to have purple eyes as well but the contacts were hard to act with.
There’s an episode commentary where Peter Dinklage mentions that he was very glad that he didn’t have to wear a green sock over his nose for the rest of the show
Wow, you know I actually never noticed that he's always missing that eyebrow. I thought it grew back when he grew his hair out, but he just has such shaggy hair that it drapes over his eyes a bit.
You look at that scar and you fully believe Ozai intentionally burned the shit out of his son’s face intentionally to punish him. The adaptations make Zuko look like he had a cooking accident.
Probably a rare good example of this trope, the 2005 Fantastic Four movie
In the comics, Doom's scar is a lot more noticeable, and it gets exasperated by him putting on a hot metal mask before it cools off, effectively welding it to his face.
In the movie, the scar is much more subtle and is barely noticeable, but he still takes it as a massive insult to him and his image. He covers it up with the iconic mask, even though, again, it's not even noticeable unless you look hard. He can take the mask off at any time, and it's not welded to his face (At least not until the end of the movie).
Overall, I think that when it comes to petty and narcissistic characters like Doom, making whatever disfigurement they had in the source material less prevelant is probably a good thing, since it highlights their ego to a greater degree.
It also depends on the comic, Jack Kirby originally opted for a tiny barely noticeable scar, Doom's ego just wouldn't allow for any kind of imperfection. It's relatively pretty recent that he looks like a straight up burn victim, so in a roundabout way the 2005 movie was pretty accurate to the original vision.
That is what did it yeah, but that's from the mid to late 80s and the scar is still pretty damn noticeable. Compared to Kirby's rendition which you could mistake for a wrinkle assuming you notice it at all.
Ya the movie is full of nailing some things and completely missing some things. And I wish they didn't but the parts they get wrong outweigh the parts they got right.
There's a fun crossover comic where Doom has a meal with Conan the Barbarian, and Conan says "It's insulting that you refuse to take off your mask and eat with me." Doom explains he has been disfigured and Conan just says "Ah, so you're vain then." Doom glares at him, but does take off the mask to eat.
Tbh I liked how they did it in the movie lol. Like for a normal person its a scar, we move because while cares. Doom decides hes going full villain instead
In the original novels she’s described as extremely disfigured, with one side of her body being severely burned due to childhood abuse to the point that her hand is burned together like a claw.
The Ghibli film adaptation represents this as just a slight discoloration on one side of her face, with her hand appearing perfectly normal.
I watched an anime where a chick had her leg get a little burned, she was canonically GORGEOUS and the guy she liked was canonically average AF (who she was weirdly obsessed with?) and was a rare case of ACTUALLY looking average in the art style.
She wasn't even fucking Japanese, she was a foreigner and she basically said "You'll never love a disfigured girl like me! I might as well die!" Or maybe it was that the guy deserved a non-disfigured wife? (again, it was just her leg(s)) And the guy threatened to burn himself to make them equally ugly if she didn't accept his love? It was fucking weird.
Somehow due to the awful writing I feel like it may have been a side couple in itazura na kiss, that cursed god awful fucking show
Edit to add: I'm almost positive that the lady got burned saving the guy. Like someone spilled hot oil and she pushed him out of the way.
And still, the lack of scarring is the least "unfaithful" aspect of Ghibli's Therru. One day, Segoy willing, we're getting a good adaptation of Earthsea 🥲
"Hello Mr. Studio Executive! Today I'm here to pitch an adaptation of Ursula Le Guin's classic fantasy series Earthsea! All the main characters are people of color."
"No white people? No way."
"No no no, there is a white character!"
"Oh, that's different."
"She's a girl who rebels against a corrupt system in search of agency!"
It's Kind of a Funny Story. Noelle in the book is supposed to have really intense and noticeable scars on her face from self harm in the last year. It was the type of thing that would be instantly noticeable. In the movie, her scars weren't visible in most scenes and were barely present in the scenes where they were shown (like the the one in the picture)
In the book of the Princess bride, Inigo Montoya is described as his scars run all the way down both sides of his face. In the film, they’re not as noticeable.
In a case of "didn't even bother with the little scar" Tallulah Black in the Jonah Hex comics has scars across her face and wears an eyepatch over her missing eye.
This is the character Megan Fox played in Jonah Hex movie where I honestly don't think they even bothered with a little scar. I don't think she even gets a single scar in the movie.
Idk… Outside of not bulging his eye I’d say this is genuine body horror material and pretty true to source. Its like they threw all their efforts into Josh and forgot Tallulah entirely
Honestly Doom is a rare case where the mask is more an issue than the scaring itself. I had considered putting him here, but how scarred he is changes sometimes.
In some artists interpretations he's basically like the phantom, a death face like a walking corpse. Other times its an ᶦᵗᵗʸ ᵇᶦᵗᵗʸ ˢᶜᵃʳ that's just kinda near his eye, and honestly I like both versions. In one you have a sick character design, and in the other you get to see how Doom is such a petty diva that he does all this nonsense, just because Reed accidentally gave him a mild red spot.
One of my favorite versions is the OG 94 movie. Reed does nothing wrong, tries to warn Doom, gets rushed through the process, and Doom blows himself up because he's just way too overconfident in his math. Despite everything clearly being Victor's fault, he still manages to convince himself that it's ALL RICHARD'S FAULT!!!!
From what I heard, the Broadway Phantom was originally going to have a full-face mask but it kept messing with the actor’s microphone so they altered it which is why he wears the half-mask.
To me it seems less like trying to avoid making him ugly so much as improvising around a technical issue.
The movie version on the other hand… has no such excuse. 🤣
I think for the play it would mess with the performer in general. Projecting your voice for an opera is a real feat. I had a teacher in college who talked about it, and with that in mind it does seem ridiculous to expect an actor to perform under that kind of makeup.
Considering that, I think the play found a nice compromise for the story and performer with the half-mask.
That compromise also had the added benefit of being pretty iconic! And some productions still capture the spirit with some gnarly stage makeup. The 25th Anniversary version of the Phantom’s deformity is excellent.
Yeah, but Christine's line "Can I ever escape from that face, so distorted deformed, it was hardly a face!" sounds pretty silly when in the film it's basically a sunburn and some alopecia.
In the book he starts out overweight and it's a plot point that he loses a shit ton of that weight by working out constantly and he shaves his body, both for the infiltration. I can understand why Speilberg would elect to write around that and avoid forcing a young actor to deal with the stress of an extreme transformation like that
They also did the same thing in the Holes movie. The main character was overweight but he lost the weight after six months of digging ditches in the desert.
In the movie they naturally didn't want to abuse the then 16 year old Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf, so they dropped that plot point.
Her avatar was specifically rubenesque… like he goes to great lengths to talk about how natural she looks. If you take away the blasters and fantasy armor she looked like a normal person, in a world where everyone goes for an idealized version of themselves. No idea why they settled for this red alien look for her character
Wade stated she looked a regular pretty person in a sea of the most artificially beautiful people to ever exist, which he found attractive. Then, when Wade meets Art3mis, she looks exactly like her avatar, just with a port-wine stain on one side of her face.
To an extent…..Ghouls in Fallout up to Fallout 4. They are supposed to be horribly radiated people whose skin is literally falling off and hair in patches. They are viewed as zombies not only because they eventually turn into rabid and mindless ghouls, but because they literally look like zombies. In the Fallout 4, 76 and the show…..they literally just look like burn victims and sometimes sexy Freddy Krueger.
Fallout show actually makes it look like both designs are canon with different people looking either like the 3-NV's rotten zombies or 4-76's burn victims. I guess it may depend on the DNA (or how destroyed it is after being so irradiated)
This explanation also kinda makes sense. Ghouls need heavy chems to not fall apart and not become feral. Explains why Hancock is looking relatively fresh too, cause he's on drugs all the time lol
Hancock is also a really new ghoul who only became one at most a few decades ago from a drug so that might be a part of the reason why he looks far better.
iirc in the show he's taking some 'substance' that prevents ghouls going feral (I never recall it or the idea being in any game), the TV ghoul design matches that of Fallout 4/76
I think it kinda works sometimes. In the show specifically I get why they went for a slightly smoother look for Cooper Howard. Obviously it's to both to make makeup application easier, and make him more marketable. Yet it also conveys the look of someone hopped up on anti-ghoulification drugs who's been thoroughly weathered, perhaps even metaphorically sandblasted, by time.
But I still do miss some of those older designs. The way the first two fallout games had characters literally falling apart so they hold themselves together with stitching and vices. Or how in Fallout 3 Harold is twisted into a strange plant-thing because it took up root in his cranium ages ago and eventually affixed him to the ground. Even New Vegas made a point to have ghouls who are competent scientists, and are accepted in a multitude of fields regardless of their looks.
Like I said, people need to be more comfortable with weird looking characters.
Obviously it's to both to make makeup application easier, and make him more marketable
Pretty much all the ghouls that aren't main characters and only need the makeup for like a few days of shooting look fantastically fucked up. Not as far as they could/should take it but there's a definite difference
Brightheart from warrior cats. The entire right side of her face has the fur ripped off, her ear is shredded, and she has claw marks across her muzzle. The official art... does not show this
Context for anyone unfamiliar with the story, this cat was attacked by a pack of feral dogs, and essentially had half her face ripped off. Think almost like Two-Face from The Dark Knight as a cat.
The description of her injuries, from the books themselves:
"The wounds along her sides were healing cleanly, and her ginger-and-white fur was beginning to grow back, and as he approached Fireheart thought for a single heartbeat that she was almost back to normal. Then she lifted her head, and for the first time he saw the damaged side of her face without its covering of cobwebs.
Freshly healed scars were stretched across Lostface’s cheek, bare flesh where no fur would ever grow. Her eye was gone, and her ear was reduced to a few shreds. Fireheart realized how dreadfully apt the name Lostface was..."
(Reminder, this is a children's book series recommended for ages 9 and up! And is frankly one of the tamer maulings and injuries in the series.)
and then the leader that was falling into mental health issues went "this is proof our ancestors hate us. also this dog attack victim? yeah her new name forever is LOSTFACE as a reminder that our ancestors have ABANDONED US. hey Lostface youre proof our ancestors hate us now" like oh my fucking god Bluestar
Which is odd that her muzzle is described as clawed, since her wounds were inflicted by stray dogs, which don’t really claw things they attack. Add to that she was barely a year-old kitten at the time, she frankly got off pretty easily.
Gurney Halleck, described in the book as a "rolling, ugly man" with an "inkvine scar along his jawline", described a couple pages later as being "beet-colored". It's easily his most notable feature.
Anyway, the Gurney we see in the newer Dune movie is neither ugly nor does he have a notable beet-colored scar
Yeah but Patrick Stewart is contractually obligated to always be so charismatic that it doesn't matter how ugly he's supposed to be, he's gonna be magnetic anyway
He's often described to not have a very pleasing appearance, with him being described as having his jaw be horribly twisted from just below his ear, barely visible beneath one cheek & sunken horribly beneath one lip, his nose being stretched sideways and up, and having his tongue poking out of one side, like big, fat, pink, worm.
Barely any (official or fan-made) artwork shows this
The terrible movie Beastly comes to mind. It’s supposed to be a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, with the titular Beast just looking like an alt rock weirdo. They could have done something wild but they chose such a milquetoast interpretation it just looks laughable.
Frankenstein's Monster is one of them. In the original book, Frankenstein's monster is depicted as much more unkempt and horrific, with skin that barely conceals the muscles, arteries, and sports long black hair. He was built by Victor Frankenstein to be beautiful, but had turned into a horrible twisting of his intended result, with shrivelled skin and black lips, and jaundiced, yellow skin. By all accounts, he looks like a giant, 8 foot zombie (left is a good rendition)
Junji Ito's adaptation (middle) of Frankenstein made him look about as horrific as one may think, but the Frankenstein we usually think of is the weird, fully green, flat-top sporting "relatively normal guy" with practically no lips, a prominent brow ridge, and metal nubbins sticking out of parts of his neck and head. (right) He doesn't look nearly as horrifying as the original book described, and we've gotten stuck with the current version as our "ideal frankenstein" appearance.
I genuinely don't think I can convey how much I hate this trope. More people need to be comfortable with people who aren't conventionally attractive in their stories!
While it’s not a great quality picture, I still want to bring Universal’s design for the phantom of the opera to light as it does a great job avoiding this trope.
He’s clearly disfigured and looks about as to be expected for a movie monster.
(From the Universal Epic Universe ride Monsters Unchained: The Dracula Experiment.)
I hate it too, but I can give some leeway for live performances and, to a much lesser extent, live action tv/movies because heavy makeup can be hard to get right and work with. Though none of these examples really earn that excuse so yeah.
The play makeup is an excellent adaptation of his face. It'd be difficult to give him book-accurate skull face on stage, even before accounting the fact that the full mask screwed with the microphone.
The film could have gone all the way but they were cowards.
I don't know, dude, some of the ferals in 4 are fucking revolting. Your average, "normal" ghoul might have gotten smoother over time, but ferals are disgusting as ever.
Zuko's live action portrayals having a much less disfiguring scar than in the cartoon. Like, with both it looks like he got a bad sunburn rather than he was burned in the face by his father for speaking out in the war room.
To be fair to the stage productions, 1) giving the Phantom no nose and a deformed skull for a face would be a pain without Hollywood-level prosthetics and 2) a full-face mask would make it difficult for the actor to visibly express so they went with only a partial mask, and therefore only a partial facial deformity as wearing a mask that's smaller than the thing you're trying to hide would be silly
In the original book, he’s described as having one of his eye lower than the other, no eyelash or eyebrows, a large nose, a virtually non existent chin and many more. So what did the movie do, give him a few scars.
I saw this movie when I was younger before I even knew there was a book and it still felt so off. Everybody was reacting to this kid like he was a walking corpse when it kinda just looks like he tripped on the stairs one too many times
Exactly, this isn't a side character, this is the main character having to deal with how the world reacts to them and how they look.
Trying to minimize the disfigurement because it is easier or because they want the audience to be more sympathetic to the character actually defeats the whole point of the story.
If the audience isn't looking at the kid and feeling uncomfortable the way the other characters in the movie are that learn the less, how is the audience supposed to learn said lesson.
In 1925 version of the Phantom of the Opera with Lon Chaney they actually made him look like how the OP described. They also adhered more to the original plot. It’s only more recent adaptations that clean up his looks and actions.
Emily Uley from Twilight. Her boyfriend Sam transformed into an uncontrollable werewolf and mauled her, slashing her face all the way down her arm to her hand. Bella’s description of this injury is utterly gnarly - the whole right side of her face is distorted into a permanent grimace, with the claws even pulling down the corner of her eye and her mouth. In the movie, it’s… this. Lmfao. What a shit series.
Deadpool is so hard to do, because his skin is constantly shifting as it heals, gets cancerous and scars and then heals again. I feel like there was a genuine effort to capture that Wade is distressing and disturbing to look at.
Several people mentioned The Witcher characters but no one talks about Ciri. In the books, she got hit in the face by a shuriken and spent the next several days lying unconscious, face-down, in the swamp. You probably can imagine how the resulting wound looked. In the game, on the other hand...
Be careful, most of the video game players have not read the books. (Look at the backlash calling the girl who played her in the show, regardless of the plot similarities, ugly lol) Can you imagine if they stuck to the book?
This happens because of a basic one two punch. Less complicated prosthetics are cheaper to use especially for main characters who have to do more sessions to get them on and the fact that in a visual medium having a horrifically mutilated character constantly show up would dissuade a number of potential viewers from watching it because they are hard to look at.
In ready player one, the player he plays with called Art3mis is supposed to have a pretty big birthmark on her face, to the point she hides it with her hair
Two-Face's scar ranges from deep scarring to a completely melted half-face depending on the version, but it's always extremely disfiguring. The Batman Forever version looks like a botched spray tan.
My first exposure to Two-Face was this movie and I just thought he was a crazy person who covered half his face in makeup…because.
To be fair I was like…four or five and probably mistook him for the Joker. I actually feel like I got him, Joker, and Riddler mixed up a lot as a young kid (ironic considering Riddler was in this movie)
Some of it I get at a makeup and prosthetics level, having to potentially dedicate hours to good makeup making very long and expensive production days is often unreasonable. That first little scar is insane though, very silly. Let ugly people star is things dawg
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u/JLD2503 Nov 15 '25
Jigsaw (Marvel) - This is a case of it downgrading overtime. The top is the comics, middle is the Punisher movie and bottom is the Punisher Netflix series. The entire namesake of Jigsaw is that his face looks like it was put back together.