The Grotesque: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

Don't expect any of that to allow [[Beauty Equals Goodness|someone this ugly to get a happy ending]], ''especially'' if they're female. Grotesques are universally tragic characters.

 

 

Not to be confused with mindless violence film ''Grotesque''.

** Arseface is also [[The Unintelligible]] and Lorrie Bobs is a one eyed girl due to her inbred family, and also has a visual disorder that makes her see everything as something else. They both are magnificent subversions of this trope: These two hideous beings are the only two truly decent human beings who wil [[Earn Your Happy Ending]] [[Dysfunction Junction|in pretty much all the cast]] (Jessie, Tulip and Cassidy have heavy [[Protagonist-Centered Morality]]): Arseface [[Rescue Romance|rescued Lorrie from some bullies]], and Lorrie’s visual disorder is a virtual rose colored glass (she seems Arseface as handsome) . In Preacher,[[An Aesop|everyone is a grotesque freak. Except the guy with an arse for a face and the one eyed girl]].

* Ephialtes from ''[[300]]''. Looks almost exactly like the Hunchback picture (top), showed the Spartan army the 'goats trail' that the Persians could use to flank them at the pass of Thermopylae, and asked to join the fight. King Leonidas's given reason for rejecting his aid is that his deformity makes him unable to form part of the Spartans' highly effective phalanx strategy ([[Fridge Logic|which is plausible up until the point]] where [[Hollywood Tactics|everyone immediately breaks ranks to leap into single combat]]). After being denied the right to fight alongside the Spartans, he went to Xerxes and told him of the goat pass and switched sides - which, one supposes, means [[Beauty Equals Goodness|his outer deformity eventually reflected his inner feelings of rejection and jealousy]]. That certainly fits with the ideology of [[Master Race|the Spartans]], who [[Truth in Television|did in real life]] kill any children that were born deformed.

* Vlad from [[Hack Slash]] plays with this trope, albeit with much less active persecution. (Except in Chicago, where, as the "Meat Man", he's blamed for a slasher's murders.) Most recurring characters get used to his appearance fairly quickly.

* Much of the first volume of [[Swamp Thing]] involves the [[Was Once a Man|"muck-encrusted mockery of a man"]] inspiring fear in most people, when he is a kind scientist who wanted to help end world hunger. For a long time, very few people treat him as anything but a monster even when he saves their lives.

** In ''[[Vampire: The Requiem]]'', they can still look butt ugly, but the "wrongness" about them is more of a floating quality not tied directly to appearance. One of them can be as pretty as a supermodel, but still disquiet people because they smell strongly of embalming fluid.

** ''Requiem'' also features the Carnival, a bloodline founded by "the Andalusan Mermaid", a circus freak who was saved from her sadistic owner by a passing vampire. Every last one of the Carnival is deformed in some way or another. The book discussing them specifically warns that they tend not to be as nice as traditional freaks were. Their clan of origin, for irony's sake, are [[The Beautiful Elite|the Daeva]].

 

== Video Games ==