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'''Sheldon''': No it isn't. But I suppose it does take courage to demonstrate that kind of commitment to soup.|'''[[The Big Bang Theory (TV)|The Big Bang Theory]]'''}}
 
A comedy trope that is definitely [[Truth in Television]] is when a character will have a tattoo (sometimes in an embarrassing location) with various unsavory features, such as being misspelled, the name of a former love interest, written in a language the wearer does not understand and [[My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels|not meaning what he thinks]] (Chinese characters are good for this), etcetera, [[Alcohol Induced Idiocy|sometimes the result of a drunken whim]]. However, this can also be used seriously as a version of [[Good Scars, Evil Scars]] where the tattoo is a representation of sin.
 
This is slowly becoming a [[Discredited Trope]], due to three main reasons:
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A [[Tattooed Crook]] may face this situation after going straight. This variation is far more likely to be [[Played for Drama]].
 
{{examples|Examples:}}
 
== Advertising ==
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* In ''Uncanny [[X-Men]]'', following Kitty Pryde's [[Heroic Sacrifice]], Colossus, mourning the woman he loved, got a tattoo of a heart with the name "Katya" (in the [[The Backwards R|Cyrillic alphabet]]) on his chest. Recently, she got better (but is still out of the action due to uncontrollable powers), so there has been some speculation regarding Kitty's inevitable reaction when she sees Colossus' ink.
** More recent shots of Piotr shirtless and unarmored don't show his tattoo. We never saw it removed; indeed after the arc where he got the tattoo, it was never shown again indicating that it might have been a henna or otherwise temporary tattoo.
* In one story in ''[[Sam and Max Freelance Police]]'', Max gets "[[What Do You Mean ItsIt's Not Awesome?|a tattoo of a snake eating a rat, with the caption 'Born to watch my snake eat a rat']]". He passes out mid-tattoo due to screaming about the needle and complains later that it 'doesn't even look like a snake. It looks like a candy cane', prompting Sam to deliver [[An Aesop]] about freedom of the individual and their inalienable right to get questionable body modifications, as long as it's their 'boneheaded choice'.
* Subverted in a recent ''Spider-Man'' story, in which Peter Parker's current girlfriend Carlie Cooper got drunk and considered getting a Green Goblin tattoo. She ended up getting a Spider-Man tattoo instead. {{spoiler|Although that may now be an embarrassing tattoo, seeing as how Carlie just dumped Peter (as of the end of [[Spider Island]]) for lying to her about his being Spider-Man!}}
 
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{{quote| "Coach has [[Sesame Street|Big Bird]] on his butt!" }}
* An episode of ''[[ER (TV)|ER]]'' has a patient with a Ku Klux Klan tattoo: when he regains consciousness, he tells them he's renounced the KKK and keeps the tattoo to remind him of his past.
* ''[[GreysGrey's Anatomy (TV)|Greys Anatomy]]'' had a [[Patient of the Week]] who repeatedly asked to be treated by an another doctor. Eventually, he was forced to show his tattoo, which revealed that he's a neo-Nazi and did not want to be treated by the Asian, Jewish and/or black protagonists.
** What [[Fridge Logic|makes it weird]] is that never outright demands a white doctor, he just keeps asking for someone else when he keeps getting minority doctors. He's rather polite, if terse, about wanting someone different. And when his gigantic-ass tattoo (which he claims was a drunken mistake, [[Did Not Do the Research|even though it clearly would've taken several separate sessions to complete]]) is revealed, he says he didn't want Dr. Bailey, who is black, to see it because she "might take offense." Uh...isn't that kind of THE POINT of being a white supremacist?
** When the neo-Nazi/white supremacist needs surgery, Dr. Bailey, the spunky female black doctor has to operate on him. After she finishes, she decides that the skin around the cut is "jagged" and so she stitches the swastika back together as an S shape instead of the original swastika.
* Dr Kelso in ''[[Scrubs (TV)|Scrubs]]'' has "Johnny" tattooed on his buttock (While Johnny has "Bobby" tatooed on his). "He's an old [[Hello, Sailor!|sailor buddy, and if you went through what we did]], you'd understand."
* Roxie from ''[[Sabrina the Teenage Witch (TV)|Sabrina the Teenage Witch]]'' is revealed to have an "I Love Hanson" tattoo, that she got on a whim and wants removed.
* From ''[[Living With Fran]]'', Josh's girlfriend has a tattoo with Ryley's name. Subverted as she had several tattoos and considered her body a panel to tattoo other names (including Josh's).
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* In the ''[[That 70s Show]]'' episode "Eric's Drunken Tattoo", Eric wants to tattoo of Donna's name on his butt, but since he has [[Erudite Stoner|Leo]] to do it, he ends up with a picture of Woodstock from ''[[Peanuts]]''.
* In the ''[[The Big Bang Theory (TV)|The Big Bang Theory]]'' episode "The Adhesive Duck Deficiency", it's revealed that Penny has a Chinese character tattooed on her butt, which is supposed to mean "courage", but according to Sheldon, it actually means "soup".
* In ''[[I CarlyICarly (TV)|I Carly]]'', one of the characters had to get a tattoo of Sam's face after losing a bet. {{spoiler|It was fake, but he didn't know it until it was too late...}}
* In ''[[The Cosby Show]]'' Russell Huxtable was revealed to once had a tattoo done on his chest for Anna. Unfortunately, he had a cold at the time and so it was spelled 'Adda' who was Anna's chief rival. He had that removed but left a scar on his chest.
* In ''[[Grounded for Life]]'' Lily has a tattoo of a golden sprite on her lower back, with a banner reading "Dean", only discovered by his new boyfriend, Brad until months into their relationship. He gets over it, as Lily says that the tattoo means less than what she does, and it serves as a reminder that in the end, she chonse Brad over Dean... though the fact that the money Brad offered for getting it removed were meant to buy her an iPod, and once she heard about that, changed her mind about the removal.
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* ''[[True Life (TV)|True Life]]'' profiled people with these on the episode "I Hate My Tattoos". The first person was a former criminal who got his tattoos done while drunk by a friend (who wasn't a tattoo artist), and as a result not only were the tattoos all over his neck but they also looked like a child drew them. The second person had tattoos all over his body but was trying to get a white collar job. The third person tattooed her boyfriend's name on her arm and shortly afterwards they broke up.
* Defied in the Tru TV show ''[[All Worked Up]].'' Byran the process server had to deal with a tattoo artist who tattooed a man with Japanese kanji, only to wound up being a [[Foreign Cuss Word]], so the artist was going to be sued and first served by Byran. Rage would later ensue.
* In a [[Ripped Fromfrom the Headlines]] example, one of the minor cases on ''[[Crownies (TV)|Crownies]]'' involved a tattooist who tattooed a giant penis on a friend's back while they were both drunk.
* ''[[The Chasers War On Everything]]'': Chas attempts to make one side of his body look like Daniel Craig ([[It Makes Sense in Context]]) and gets a tattoo of a 'Japanese character' on his upper arm. He ends up with a tattoo of [[Hello Kitty]].
 
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* On ''[[American Dad (Animation)|American Dad]]'', Hayley has a tattoo of the Ghostbusters 2 logo on her chest (it was supposed to be a protest tattoo, but she smoked salvia while she chose a design).
** Actually that was just body paint.
* This short-lived FOX Family cartoon called ''[[Monster Farm]]'' (not to be confused with the anime series ''[[Monster Rancher]]'') had an episode where a goat/dragon-type creature (Goatasaurus Rex) resorts to blackmail in order to become leader of the farm. One of the secrets he threatens to reveal is that Dr. Woolly (a sheep mad scientist with a monster alter ego named Mr. Ewwwe) has a "risque tattoo" that can only be seen when he's sheared (this could also apply as a [[Noodle Incident]] since it's not known when, where, why, or how Dr. Woolly got the tattoo and a [[What Happened to The Mouse?]] moment as the tattoo is never mentioned again in the show's short run).
* An episode of the show ''[[Braceface]]'' has Sharon going behind her mom's back to get a Chinese character tattoo that allegedly means, "Freedom" (it actually means, "grapefruit.") In the same episode, Sharon's mom reveals that when she was young, she got a tattoo of a disco ball on her rear end (which she had to have removed when she realized it looked like a golf ball).
* Dean from ''[[Code Monkeys]]'' apparently has a dolphin tramp stamp (tattoo on the small of the back), but since the characters are rendered as 8-bit sprites, [[Take Our Word for It|you'll have to take our word on this one.]]
* In an episode of ''[[Family Guy]]'', [[Funny Animal|Brian]]'s fur falls out from the chemicals in the water, revealing that he supposedly has a [[Ziggy]] tattoo. He then embarrassingly admits that he used to like Ziggy.
* In an episode of ''[[The Fairly Odd Parents]]'', Timmy [[What Did I Do Last Night?|wakes up after a party]] to find he has the name of some girl he doesn't remember tattooed on his stomach. Later in the episode he finds the girl, who also had tattooed ''his'' name on ''her'' arm.
 
 
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