Grotesque Cute



"(Tomo returns from a full throttle run around school in a cute cat costume)

Chiyo: Where did you go, Tomo?

Tomo: Advertising. I was sprinkling cuteness all over school.

Yomi: Topped off with a nice heavy dash of scary."

- Azumanga Daioh

"...and he kept stabbing them, again and again... He's a halfling, he's supposed to be jolly... Why isn't he jolly? WHY ISN'T HE JOLLY???"

- Belkar's Conscience, Order of the Stick

Generic Cuteness is taken for granted. You have all manner of strange things depicted as cute. But way past the vampire loli, you have the deliberately over-the-top depictions, where Sickeningly Sweet saccharine cuteness is depicted with wild, graphic violence.

For obvious reasons, these situations are more common in shows dabbling in satire.

See also: Enfant Terrible, Killer Rabbit, Girl With Psycho Weapon, Cute Monster Girl, Art Style Dissonance. Can be a pretty deep well of Nightmare Fuel. Based on the same principle as Fan Disservice.

Compare with Kawaisa.

Not to be confused with Ugly Cute or finding Joseph Merrick intensely lovable (see What Measure Is a Non-Cute?).

Anime/Manga

 * Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan
 * Excel Saga
 * Elfen Lied


 * Road Kamelot in D Gray Man certainly qualifies. She looks no more than twelve - yet in one of her first appearances she stabs the main character's eye with a candle, then licks the blood off afterwards.
 * Doubt - if you read later on... Grotesque cuteness indeed.
 * Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni
 * Cat Soup and related animations.
 * Black Lagoon's Creepy Twins, Hansel and Gretel.
 * Dai Mahou Touge
 * Naru Taru, once the Mood Whiplash kicks in. Things keep getting worse from there.
 * The main School Days series was already infamous for its bloody finale... And then comes the Magical Heart Kokoro-chan OVA, with the eponymous loli helping pilot a giant Hello Kitty, chainsaw-wielding Combining Mecha, ripping apart the enemy and drowning the city in a sea of blood. Yeah...
 * The giant milk-bleeding stuffed animals in Akira.
 * Karakuridouji Ultimo has elements of this. Especially with characters like Ultimo, Mizho, and Hana.
 * Franken Fran veers back and forth between this and Nightmare Fuel.
 * Many of the creations by Henmaru Machino, where Hentai and extreme sexual pathology meets Kawaii.
 * The manga Death Panda by the notorious Gorn artist Uziga Waita.
 * The theme park from the Mad Pierrot episode of Cowboy Bebop uses this a lot. Some scenes of the destruction of cutesy park mascots, and their use as weapons, are Nightmare Fuel.
 * Mirai Nikki, mainly thanks to a certain Yuno Gasai...
 * Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Third episode.
 * The same scene in the manga version is even worse.

Comic Books

 * Roman Dirge's comic book Lenore the Cute Little Dead Girl is Exactly What It Says On the Tin.
 * Max in Sam and Max Freelance Police -- threatening cruel and unusual punishments while extolling his own "marketability".
 * Marvel Zombies Returns 1 has Zombie Spidey in a world that is like a late 60's- early 70's Spider Man comic. Everything's so happy UNTIL SPIDEY RIPS OUT KRAVENS THOAT WITH HIS TEETH!!
 * Everyone (except Zombie Spidey and Sandman) ends up infected and killed or just eaten alive.
 * It was awesome (give it a crown ;) ).

Fanfiction
"The Littlest Cancer Patient with mutated hands and teeth fit for tearing through raw meat was making low, growly sounds. She was also poking at her dairy products in dainty, neat motions. It was kind of adorable... in a freakish, disgusting way. Was there a word for that? Grotesque cute? Ugdorable?"
 * Mentioned by name in the Left 4 Dead chapter of Puella Magi Madoka Magica in regarding Charlotte, the Witch that Mami more or less adopts.

Film

 * Batman Returns. Psycho clowns, rocket-mounted penguins, PVC bodysuits covered in weird stitches, Danny Devito's makeup, and.... Christopher Walken.
 * There's a certain element of this to V in V for Vendetta. Round, pink cheeks; Eyes Always Shut; huge smile; little upturned nose (at least in the comics); silky, shoulder-length hair... and he kills people with his bare hands!
 * The weasels of the Quirky Miniboss Squad in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, especially the appropriately-named Psycho. Despite his disturbing mannerisms and glee in killing ("Time to kill the raaa-biit ... heehee!"), a surprising number of the fans think he's adorable.

Literature

 * In Dean Koontz' book, Brother Odd, the title character encounters a animal who is the epitome of mindless cuteness. Mindless, in that it literally has no mind or soul and is therefore profoundly disturbing rather than cute.

Live Action TV

 * The suicidally depressed giant teddy bear in the Supernatural episode "Wishing Well".
 * The puppets in the Angel episode "Smile Time".

Tabletop Games

 * The titular Mons in Pokethulhu are cute. Eldritch Abominations, granted, but cute Eldritch Abominations. They'll also attack you and try to devour your soul if you're not careful.
 * In Mortasheen, this is invoked by the Schmeep, who is completely adorable, and is meant to heal your party. Of coruse, it does this by cheerfully letting itself be eaten alive. Word of God says it was based on the Schmoo.

Video Games
"She wrenches open the lid of a nearby sarcophagus, and countless articles of stationery, toiletries, and household goods with her face on them pour out. My god, she's everywhere! Aargh!"
 * Portal turrets are a combination of this, More Dakka and Psychopathic Manchild.
 * "Dispensing product."
 * Peggle Extreme, a demo of the Pop Cap game included with The Orange Box, features Peggle's lovable unicorn mascot Bjorn being eaten by a headcrab.
 * Child Alma from First Encounter Assault Recon.
 * SD Snatcher, despite the Super Deformed characters, is just as gory as the original Snatcher. There's something strangely beautiful about seeing an adorable chibi with his head grotesquely twisted off.
 * The player characters in the Playstation Network game Fat Princess are adorable chibi fighters, wizards, and such... who bleed copiously when injured or killed.
 * Freeware game Yume Nikki has this in spades.
 * Meowcenaries
 * Cannon Fodder is a(n in)famous example--it's the trope namer for War Has Never Been So Much Fun, but it also attempts to avert Do Not Do This Cool Thing, with bloody results.
 * Robbie the Rabbit, the mascot of the Silent Hill Amusement Park is a pink bunny wearing a blue overall whose most prominent feature is the blood-stained mess on his mouth and clothes. Heather from the third game says that "it is more creepy than it is cute". Coming from a girl who has deadpan snarked her way throught the eponymous town, without batting an eye to the overall gory insanity around her, this says a lot.
 * Conkers Bad Fur Day and Conker Live and Reloaded.
 * The Chubbchubbs.
 * Gloomy Bear
 * American McGee's Grimm seems to have taken this direction in its art design.
 * Skull Panda.
 * Dahlia Hawthorne in Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations is extremely cute and beautiful, even with pure white butterflies flitting about her. However,
 * PETA's Cooking Mama ripoff. The cute jingly music doesn't make it any less hilariously Narmful.
 * Same goes for their Super Mario Bros Kentucky Fried Cruelty game. For that matter, probably anything they market to children.
 * I'm pretty sure an adorable little orange flower brutally splattering his enemies when he jumps on them counts.
 * Both of The Behemoth's games, Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers.
 * Dan Paladin's artstyle in general. See Dad 'n Me.
 * The Creeper from Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. Flowers are pretty. Which makes a bio-weapon that makes flowers sprout from underneath and fatally turn you into a floral display in a most painful manner all the more disturbing.
 * Fairytale Fights.
 * Kingdom of Loathings Iiti Kitty, a mummified Hello Kitty.


 * In the Kingdom of Loathing universe, seals aren't adorable fuzzy flopping creatures as in real life; they're hideous, shambling, bloodsucking monstrosities that happen to look like adorable fuzzy flopping creatures, one of which looks more like a mutated leech than any land mammal. That said, one familiar you can acquire as a Seal Clubber is an Adorable Seal Larva, which intersperses descriptions of it sucking the blood from your opponent and bursting into an enemy's corpse so it can regurgitate a healing fluid into your body with gushing about how adorable the thing is.
 * Considering how cartoony the characters in the Metal Slug series are, some of them die in fairly bloody ways.

Web Comics
""It only takes seven pounds of pressure to break a human skull... FROM THE INSIDE. Kisses now!""
 * Nanas Everyday Life, has the art style of a manga for little children; plays the mental, emotional, physical and sexual abuse of an undersged girl for laughs. Very dark laughs. Until it stops being funny.
 * This Something Positive strip.
 * If you think that's bad, try this one..
 * And of course the Little Blue Thing, aka Fluffmodeus. He's like an '80s cartoon character who Care-Bear-Stared a little too long into the abyss...


 * Kiki playing with No Content from Sluggy Freelance: it gets bloody quick.
 * Ursula Vernon's Little Creature.
 * Charby the Vampirate is described as an ultra-violent Saturday morning cartoon, with adorable characters who will occasionally eviscerate or suffocate their many victims, brutally, with no Gory Discretion Shot. The combo is especially obvious with Mye, the zombie girl who smells sweet despite 315 years of decay, not to mention the unhealed slit in her chest where she got a sweet heart transplant. Her Evil Eye are bubblegum pink.
 * Mye isn't decaying,(she is a traditional zombie, not a Hollywood/Romero zombie)the sweet smell is candle wax and gummy bears, two things she spends a lot of time with. And her brother's eyes are pink, too!
 * Perry Bible Fellowship. Where to even begin?
 * Erfworld pretty much runs off this, with the incredibly cute and adorable-looking, child-like midgets engaged in brutal, unending wars for no real, discernible reason.
 * Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong.
 * Double Happiness
 * Arcturus Winrock from Suicide for Hire is downright ADORABLE with those big Puppy Dog Eyes of his but he DOES have a dark side to him.....
 * Drow Tales presents the amaceing Mili'ani!
 * The Unspeakable Vault of Doom is a Lighter and Softer look at the Cthulhu Mythos--for instance, its cartoonishly-drawn "Cthulhoo" says "yum yum" every time he eats an unfortunate cultist. But it's still the Cthulhu Mythos, and the gore factor actually goes up compared to Lovecraft's work. It'd be Mood Whiplash if the death and dismemberment weren't so heavily integrated into the comic alongside the silliness.
 * Nepeta Leijon from Homestuck qualifies for this. She's a Moe Catgirl who kills wild animals for food with her Wolverine Claws.
 * The other Trolls do as well, albeit to a lesser extent. This seems to be a fact of which they are both aware and proud, given that they decide to call themselves "Team Adorabloodthirsty."
 * Heck, Homestuck in general qualifies. It starts off simply being about a kid who is celebrating his thirteenth birthday by playing a new game. Then the game turns out to cause The End of the World As We Know It and summon monsters wearing jester hats to torment the protagonist, and it only gets worse from there on out. It becomes more clear later on, with Jack Noir, a children's show's characters   and comic relief character Gamzee.
 * The diaries of Vriska's ancestor suggest that this is not only normal, but expected and encouraged of trolls of Gamzee's rank; in troll society, such traits are considered the mark of strong leadership skills.
 * In an attempt to tone down the violence and make the strip more viewer friendly (or so we are told), Kagerou brings us "cute chibi blood".
 * Order of the Stick: The stick figure art makes everything look much cuter than it would in a more realistic style. And yet you still get characters like Xykon and Belkar and quite a bit of violence. In particular, Tsukiko sleeps with an adorable Xykon plushie, and Belkar is a fuzzy-footed halfling of chibi proportions who gleefully stabs everyone who crosses him or has something he wants.
 * Sonichu unintentionally falls into this. It looks a lot like something your seven year old child would draw, with creatures that are a combination of Sonic the Hedgehog and Pokémon, with an Author Avatar that is the mayor of the town and cartoon-y villains. However, it features graphic sex scenes and true to this trope, scenes where a bunch of Internet trolls are tortured to death, including one getting drilled in the groin by a little girl.

Web Original

 * Ruby Quest is more or less about taking some cute animal people and then breaking them physically and mentally in horrible, horrible ways.
 * Two Words: Junko Mizuno.
 * Moe Cthulhu Mythos creatures.
 * The video for Of Montreal's Wraith Pinned to the Mist (and other games). Good God. (And yes, this is the song that inspired their Outback Steakhouse jingle.)
 * This is pretty much the entire design philosophy for all the monsters in Mortasheen, and the author's list of favorite monsters shows a definite personal preference for that style.
 * And do not forget the same artist's literal Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book, which has a calvacde of horrifying things, all drawn in a cutesy, cartoonish style. Some samples for you.
 * Serenity Rose, in its currently ongoing second issue, makes the entire plot revolve around this.
 * Giant Microbes.
 * Hangry and Angry
 * Disney's Evangelion
 * Childrin R Skary Adorable children? Check. Copious amounts of blood and gore? Oh, you better believe it!
 * Little Pink, Little Pink Beaaaaaar!
 * Happy Tree Friends
 * The Sugar Zombie Apocalypse known as "Meow".
 * Safe Seth of The Flash Tub is pretty Adorkable, and then come his antics...
 * Ask Pinkamina Diane Pie Take the idea of a serial killer Pinkie Pie and roll with it.

Western Animation
""Pud'n, have you ever heard of tough love?""
 * Bambi Meets Godzilla.
 * The Happy Tree Friends, Retarded Animal Babies, anything by David Firth.
 * Elmyra Duff from Tiny Toon Adventures
 * South Park's "Woodland Critter Christmas".
 * The baby goldfinches that in A Bugs Life. It's not gory, but pretty gross.
 * Drawn Together, with the characters Strawberry Sweetcake and Ling Ling.
 * The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy once had an episode entitled "Wishbones" in which a skull granted people's wishes, with results of varying degrees of misfortune. Pud'n's wish was that he had a little talking bunny that always loved him. Although the bunny wasn't THAT cute, it proceeded to chase Pud'n around, beating him and trying to murder him multiple times, ending with HALF OF HIS FACE BLOWN OFF OF HIS HEAD IN DETAIL WITH THE WORDS "Sometimes love hurts, Pud'n, and I love you....to deeeaaaattthhh...." as he hopped towards Pud'n slowly. Oh, and this is a children's show.


 * The Itchy and Scratchy Show in The Simpsons.