Slow-Loading Internet Image

When someone is browsing the Internet for a date, or finally gets the picture of that sweet person they've been talking to in the chatbox. When the picture loads, it loads from the bottom up (instead of normal from the top down loading). You see beautiful long legs, nice clothes, long hair etc. The person looking at it will comment in excitement until they see the face and realize their dreamgirl turns out to be a lot less desirable. They are either ugly, a relative or someone they really hate.

Real slow loading internet images tend to load top-down, although the slow upwards loading can be Truth in Television: uncompressed Windows bitmap (.bmp) files will do the slow upwards load. Being uncompressed, they can be hundreds of times larger than an equivalent compressed image, and for some reason, are stored bottom-up. However, BMP files are almost never used on the Internet (and in fact, forbidden on standards-compliant web pages).

Can also apply to various other things. But the key is the Slow-Loading Internet Image promising something sweet but getting a twist when done loading. The loading can also occur horizontal, basically any way the show wants it to make the scene funny/exciting.

Something of a Discredited Trope in light of just how much Technology Marches On; most internet connections these days are more than capable of handling adequately-sized images. A modern (well, more modern) equivalent is slow or malfunctioning video buffering, which is still very much an issue for most.

Compare Screamer Prank.

Advertising

 * Was used in a newspaper advert for a UK internet provider, showing a screen with the top of the image loaded (appearing to be a pair of female buttocks) and then contrasting it with their allegedly faster image loading, in which it was revealed to be a photo of two bald men standing close together.
 * A Swedish ISP used this to promote their faster service. In their ad, a girl just met a guy over the internet, so she tries going to his website to get an idea of what he looks like just before going out to their first date. The page's main image of the guy loads so slowly that it's only reached his beautiful eyes before she has to leave, but it's clear that he's a handsome guy. Once she gets out the door, the picture finishes, and it's revealed that the beautiful eyes belong to a wall poster, while the page's owner (the guy she's dating) is the morbidly obese slob sitting on the couch under it.

Live Action TV

 * The IT Crowd did this offscreen with a photograph of Roy's new online girlfriend, with Moss and Roy commenting on each new feature of her face as the slow-loading image revealed it. It does load downwards, and the slowness is lampshaded with a mention that there's something wrong with the network and everyone's back to "pre-broadband speeds".
 * "Do you remember this? You'd be up all night and see like, eight women"
 * Used in Queer as Folk (the UK version): Stuart clicks on the online profile of a guy on a gay dating site. All we see is half of the guy's body (you can guess which half) and the picture hasn't even fully loaded before Stuart is out of the room, off to find the guy...
 * A video variation: In The Big Bang Theory, Leonard and Priya are communicating through teleconferencing and are attempting to have a long-distance intimate date. Leonard takes off his clothes, but when Priya starts to take off hers, the signal freezes just as she's taking off her bra.

Newspaper Comics

 * Dean from Liberty Meadows encounters this convenient censorship dilemma while downloading pornography.

Web Animation

 * Sauron at the end of the One Ring To Rule Them All 2 flash cartoon is loading a picture of Arwen, first showing her face and then loading down to see two round parts of her body that turn out to be her knees. "I need to get broadband."

Web Comics

 * An April Fool's day comic on the webcomic Sluggy Freelance made good use of this trope here.
 * Used to good effect in this Ghastly's Ghastly Comic. That image is not work-safe, due to nudity. Consider yourself warned.
 * Famously averted with VG Cats' flash-animated anniversary special - a mistake in the programming caused it to load in the wrong direction.
 * Discussed in this Xkcd comic.
 * While there's no punchline, and the image is non-pornographic and just a Garfield comic, the spirit is certainly there in this Square Root of Minus Garfield strip.

Western Animation

 * In The Simpsons, Comic Book Guy is seen downloading a nude image of Captain Janeway. Just as it gets revealing, a popup for Homer's internet service appears, leading Comic Book Guy to remark "Hmm... the Internet King. Perhaps he can provide faster nudity."
 * However, it did load from the top down.
 * In the first Webisode of The Critic, Jay brags about "coming at you at the speed of light!" Pull back to show his legs still downloading.
 * Used in Monkey Dust, when a pervert was trying to get an image to masturbate to, but it turned out that the young girl he was talking to had just sent a picture of her pet rabbit.

Real Life

 * While most computer graphic formats are stored top-down, the uncompressed Windows bitmap format, while rare on the net due to its size, is in fact, stored bottom-up by default. The large filesize will also make it quite slow to load even on broadband connections. Perhaps Magical Computers require Windows Bitmap files.
 * It also means producers can use Windows Bitmap files on a slow device or connection to induce slow-loading images when the plot requires one.
 * Truth in Television: a handful shock sites have images that appear innocuous as they're loading, but are really disturbing when completed. Many of them include unexpected nakedness, just to give you an idea. Another common trick is attractive naked people with genitals that don't match their top halves.
 * More Truth in Television: Dial-up. Enough said.
 * The late Richard Jeni once joked about loading pornography on dial-up: "All right, all right, good boobs, all right, come on- PENIS! Oh, God!"
 * On a less shocking level, it was frustrating in the early days of dialup when a large image of a woman would slooooly looooad uuuuup and the file would freeze up right before the breasts were shown.
 * Can happen today with images with resolutions far larger than the average monitor or even TV. And can be faked with animated GIFs, although if seen in a browser with a different icon the discerning will be able to catch on.