Body Horror/Real Life

"Damn, nature, you scary!"

- Family Guy

Warning: This page contains Squick and Paranoia Fuel. Brain Bleach is recommended.


 * Teratomas... just... teratomas. Think of a tumor, but composed of some of the fundamental parts of the human body, which includes bone, hair, and even teeth. Even worse, they sometimes contain brain, liver, and lung tissues, as well as half-formed legs, eyes and even HANDS.
 * Fossy jaw and its 'brother' Radium jaw. *deep shudder*
 * Necrosis. It has a variety of causes from spider and snake bites to poison and cancer.
 * This troper got to treat her mom's foot ulcers from Pyodermagangrenosa. (Look it up.) The scars looked like shark bites. Yup.
 * Look up the highly controversial "Morgellons disease". Symptoms include uncontrollable itching, skin lesions/general skin deterioration, fatigue, hair loss, organ failure, and most notably, a variety of strange materials extruding from the skin. These strange materials include lint-like fibers, sand-like granules, slimes, and glassy, plastic-like, or metallic shards or "plaques". Ugh. Worst of all, there are very few doctors who will take you seriously if you complain to them about this.
 * That's because it's only recently been termed a "disease", and these symptoms are used by patients with psychological problems who have delusions of parasitic infestation. It's still a very vague condition.
 * Elaborating on above: Patient scratches skin until it breaks; fibers from clothing become trapped in forming clot; patient concludes fibers emerged from skin. See the Wikipedia page on delusional parasitosis, specifically "matchbox sign." The good news is, Morgellons isn't caused by parasites or malfunctioning body chemistry causing your body to somehow manufacture artificial fibers... the bad news is, it's caused by malfunctioning brain chemistry giving you delusions of parasitic infestation disguising the root cause of what you're doing to your own body. Sweet dreams, kids!
 * Vaginal cosmetic surgery. Horror. Sheer horror.
 * Puberty, lived as a Transsexual teenager. Adolescence is traumatic enough without going through it the wrong way.
 * And even worse, there are some transsexual teenagers who are unable to do things like binding their breasts and stuffing their crotch (male) like in Boys Don't Cry or wear a stuffed bra and either bind the crotch or wear skirts to hide the bulge (female) so they could at least cope with the Body Horror until they could access hormones and surgery. Just think, there are thousands of teens in this situation who are going through the wrong kind of puberty and a great number of these can't use any of the coping mechanisms available for fear that they will be committed to mental hospitals, kicked out of their house, be rejected by their friends and family, or even be harmed/killed for what they are. Sweet dreams.
 * Fibrodysplasia ossificans progessiva is a disease that causes damaged tissue to turn to bone. Amongst other horrible things, this disease can be mistaken for simple cancer or fibrosis, which causes doctors to perform a biopsy, which in turn damages tissue and causes more bone growth. For similar reasons, this makes it impossible to remove the bone growth, at least without causing more bone growth.
 * Albert Sabin, who developed oral vaccine for polio, had a variety of this. He said the pain was so terrible that he wanted to die. When he was cured, he devoted the rest of his life to relieving pain, which he said should be the first goal of medical science.
 * This. A baby born without a brain or skull. [Warning!]
 * Anencephaly is a condition where the neural tube (that forms all of the central nervous system, that is the spinal cord and brain) fails to close properly at the head and the brain never develops fully as a result. Babies with this condition rarely make it to full term, and if they are born they die in a matter of days.
 * That's even worse. Think about it. That means it was living without a brain after being born. It's just... kinda sitting there, with the heart pumping to nothing in the head.
 * Is it weird that this troper was reminded of E.T when they looked at the picture?
 * The way severe smallpox used to manifest itself could count as "body horror" in and of itself, because of how the bumps formed and covered the body's entire surface. And much like its much more frail and wimpier cousin chickenpox (which was actually named because it was a "chicken", i.e. weaker, version of smallpox), the virus was more severe the older you were at the time of infection. Thankfully, smallpox has been pretty much eradicated throughout the world, though people in highly sensitive positions still get smallpox vaccinations in case the virus is used in germ warfare.
 * Myiasis A fly lays eggs in parts of your body, usually in the nose or ear. The eggs hatch, and you have hundreds of maggots eating you alive.
 * As someone who lives in a heavily fly-infested part of the country, thank you so much. I'm never watering my lawn again.
 * Fortunately, it's still much more common in animals than in humans. And treatable.
 * Cancer that has gone out of control before being discovered. Think of this: your body has started to rot before you die, and it was too late when you realized this. Now the only treatments available (if not too late) are just as horrible and invasive as the disease, with a high rate of mortality and probably less parts of your body. If you survive, you have to be careful because cancer can spread through your body...ANY part of it. There's a reason why everybody is always encouraging people to get periodical examination, people...
 * Even cancer that hasn't gone out of control yet can be pretty Body Horror-ish. Imagine having a mass of cells inside your body that grows uncontrollably, is programmed to never naturally die, can travel through your lymphatic system and take root in places other than where it appeared, and can only be stopped by surgically removing it, bombarding it with radiation or subjecting your entire body to rather poisonous drugs. Stuff of nightmares, it is.
 * The Russian street drug Krokodil, a poor-man's substitute for heroin, causes users to literally rot alive. Video link, click at your own risk.
 * It's called so because after a prolonged abuse the skin in the place of injection starts turning green and scaly.
 * Guinea worms. If you drink any water from a river or stream in certain parts of Africa, you can swallow guinea worm larvae which will literally hatch and grow inside your body. Guinea worms love to pop out of the skin, mostly at extremities, when they grow large enough. The only treatment is to very, very slowly pull the worms out. This is very painful and can take days. Luckily efforts by health groups has almost eradicated guinea worm except for parts of Africa.
 * The Zaire ebolavirus. Basically, you get debilitating headaches, followed by vomiting and a sever rash. Finally, you'll start to bleed from most of your orifices before your skin turns to "Rice Pudding". For an added bonus, your body basically melts away a few hours after death.
 * Abscesses. The only ones worse that the ones that get bigger and bigger and bigger are the ones that don't, because they rupture and spew putrid toxic pus.
 * This guy.
 * This guy, too.
 * While Merrick is a perfect physical example of this trope, his actual life story reads like a giant Crowning Moment of Heartwarming after a certain point. Merrick spent a great deal of time as a circus freak, and when the practice was ultimately outlawed in Europe, he, after having been robbed of his last £50 by a shady manager, would eventually be taken in by a man who had desired to study his condition more closely, Frederick Treves. Rather than treating Merrick as a specimen, he worked to care for the man as a permanent resident of London Hospital. Merrick's case would be spread largely through the actions of Treves and the hospital director, and the resulting outpouring of support from all over London gave him a surprisingly vibrant life, even with the tragic circumstances of his death - due to his deformities, he couldn't sleep lying down because the weight of his head would suffocate him - but he tried to do so anyway, and it would be what claimed his life.
 * Tasmanian Devils are currently severely threatened with extinction by something called Devil Facial Tumor Disease. Essentially, it's contagious cancer, and, as the name implies, the tumors mostly grow on their faces. The results are not pretty.
 * The reason this particular cancer affects primarily the face is directly related to the manner of contagion. Contagious agents that cause cancer have been known for decades (specifically, there are viruses that cause cancer). In this case, however, it's the cancer itself that's transferred. Because Tasmanian Devils bite each other pretty much whenever they meet, and the cells of this cancer are transmissible by bite...
 * This, at least, is one Body Horror that most tropers will have survived. (But doesn't it remind you of Alien in some vaguely disturbing way?)
 * Harlequin-type Ichthyosis. Most of these babies don't live more than 2 weeks. (WARNING: View images in first link at your own risk!).
 * If you have a vivid imagination, don't look at the second link either.
 * The Surinam toad. Taking a bad habit in humans and making it worse, it cracks its bones as a mating call. Even worse: it gives live birth. By the dozens. To fully formed froglets. Who grew from conception to froglet and emerge through pimples in the female's back. This is what the Pokémon Seismitoad is based off of.
 * Thanks for making an apparently awesome-looking Pokemon seem like Nausea Fuel (runs to bathroom).
 * Speaking of Pokemon, silicone is not just for titties anymore...
 * Iniencephaly. Wiki article.
 * It's a baby with a deflated-looking head.
 * Necrotizing fasciitis, also known by the cheerful name of flesh-eating virus. This disease does exactly what it sounds like--it causes your flesh to putrefy and rot, while it's still on you. Yum.
 * Parasitic fungi in the genus Cordyceps essentially hijack the host's nervous system, forcing it to climb to the highest point they can, where they cling until they die. The best part comes afterwards, when mushrooms sprout from the insect's head, scattering the spores on the wind in search of their next host.
 * What's especially fun to learn after that is that humans often eat those same species of Cordyceps and also use it to make anti-rejection drugs like Neoral.
 * Cracked.com's 6 Insane Last Resort Surgeries That Actually Worked is about medically created, beneficial body horror. On the surface of it, yes, sewing someone's hand to their leg, growing a jaw on their back, or implanting a tooth in their eye and creating a raw-meat looking eye substitute is all pretty horrifying. But the fact is that they're better off, or will be once the process is finished.
 * The Black Plague. Various white swellings that change color, puking blood, a high fever, and the desire to fall asleep...yeah.
 * Orf, a viral disease that sheep and goats get, forms crusty scabs on their muzzle and lips. It can even be spread to humans.
 * It's also known as "Hoof and Mouth Disease". If left unchecked, it can infect the entire head, and it can survive for six months in soil.
 * Leprosy. Besides the obvious, imagine having your limbs, even your head, being loose enough to literally fall off your body.
 * Cymothoa exigua is a parasitic crustacean which hosts in specific fish species. The crustacean enters the fish through the gills, and lives in its mouth. When there, Cymothoa exigua uses its claws to deprive the fish tongue from blood, causing its atrophy. When the tongue is fully atrophied, Cymothoa exigua replaces it.
 * Open cardiac massage. How could anything with the term 'massage' in it possibly be bad? Well, its the last thing ER doctors or OR surgeons do to try to save your life if you go into cardiac arrest from a traumatic cause, like being shot. Basically they cut you in half front to back to midway from the front to your spine, and then spread you open, and reach directly into your thoracic (chest) cavity and literally squeeze your heart in an attempt to get it to beat. When air is pushed down into your lungs, inflate outside your body. Sometimes it works.
 * Cylindroma, a.k.a. turban tumor syndrome. Imagine horrible, bright red, bulb-like tumors covering your scalp. EEEEEEK.
 * Google Cyclopia. It's essentially a malformation that leaves the face with only one eye, a la the cyclops of mythology. Babies born with it usually do not survive.
 * Epidermodysplasia verruciformis and the most famous guy who has it, the "Treeman".
 * Face-eating bony tumors (like the Tasmanian Devils further up the page)like those suffered by at least two people profiled on TV, a guy from somewhere in Russia and a boy named Novemtree from Indonesia. Imagine your entire face basically being one big tumor because several large ones have taken it over. Yeah.