History Main / GrotesqueGallery

* Creator/FranciscoDeGoya: In his later work the faces of the people on the paintings and drawings look more sinister and grotesque, almost animalistic. This are his infamous ''Art/BlackPaintings'' and were produced when he was suffering mental health issues and going deaf.

* Creator/FranciscoDeGoya: In his later work the faces of the people on the paintings and drawings look more sinister and grotesque, almost animalistic.

Sister Trope of {{Gonk}}. Contrast UglyCute, in which a character is considered ''cute'' despite its conventionally "ugly" characteristics. See also UncannyValley, where a repulsive reaction is the result of a character looking just a bit "off", and NonstandardCharacterDesign, which is a tool that may be used to create denizens of the Grotesque Gallery.

* Many viewers find the [[LittlePeopleAreSurreal Oompa-Loompas]] in ''Film/WillyWonkaAndTheChocolateFactory'' to be rather unsettling. Their [[UncannyValleyMakeup freaky orange skin]] doesn't help matters, at any rate.

* Australian children in the early 90s were treated to the program ''Mulligrubs'', [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WW1-N9Q5KA as seen here.]] The main character/presenter was a garishly made-up, disembodied human face on a gray background, which spoke directly to the viewer in BabyTalk despite obviously being an adult woman's voice [[UncannyValley creepily distorted]] by AutoTune.

* Music/BasementJaxx's "Where's Your Head At" is an upbeat-sounding dance song, but the video has monkeys [[UncannyValley with human faces]] who, after playing guitars a bit, chase a man through a science lab, tearing through safety nets, before the man is captured in a {{Mad Scientist}}'s experiment, where people have their heads switched with animals.

* Rankin-Bass' animated version of ''WesternAnimation/TheHobbit'' is a notorious case of going for characters that are so ugly they're cute and... [[UncannyValley failing. Badly]].

* Creator/TimBurton's ''The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories'' has a whole array of weird characters who are kids with strange abilities or deformities, such as Stain Boy (whose only superpower is to leave a nasty stain), the girl who turned into a bed, the pincushion queen and Jimmy the hideous penguin boy. (It's telling that Burton showed Danny [=DeVito=] his illustration of Jimmy to give the actor an idea of how they would be approaching the character of The Penguin in ''Batman Returns''.)

* The toenail fungus monsters in those [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h1O7-r7Wrw Lamisil ads]]! You know, the ones that [[{{Squick}} zealously peeled up people's toenails and dove headlong into the nail beds]]?

* Some of Creator/HieronymusBosch's paintings might be considered this, such as [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_Carrying_the_Cross_(Bosch,_1515%E2%80%9316) his painting of Christ Carrying The Cross]].

* The infamous painting ''Grotesque Old Woman'' by Quentin Matsys: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_Duchess#mediaviewer/File:Quentin_Matsys_-_A_Grotesque_old_woman.jpg]]. She seems more like an orc or troll caricature than a human.

* Lena Hyena in ''ComicStrip/LilAbner'', whose face is so ugly that it drives people mad. Al Capp avoided actually depicting Lena in the strip because it was funnier to leave her features to the imagination. He eventually held a contest to see if anyone could draw someone as ugly as he'd described Lena as being. Basil Wolverton (mentioned below) [[http://www.toonopedia.com/lena.htm won it]].

** The comics by Basil Wolverton often featured grotesque people, like his iconic parody of ''Life Magazine'' [[http://graphicallyinclined.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/mad-11-cover.jpg]]

** Pictured above are the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTc3PsW5ghQ Martians]]. They have creeped out quite some toddlers over the decades, because their mouths move in a weird fashion, they are accompanied by weird music, appear out of nowwhere and just say "yip yip" all the time while staring at otherwise normal objects.

* Australian children in the early 90s were treated to the program ''Mulligrubs'', [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WW1-N9Q5KA as seen here]]. The main character/presenter was a garishly made-up, disembodied human face on a gray background, which spoke directly to the viewer in BabyTalk despite obviously being an adult woman's voice [[UncannyValley creepily distorted]] by AutoTune.

Characters belonging to the Grotesque Gallery can serve a variety of purposes. Some of the more common intentional uses include [[BeautyEqualsGoodness using the creatures' ugliness as a signifier that they're malicious or untrustworthy]], completely subverting that idea by [[TheGrotesque giving the ugly creatures hearts of gold]], showcasing [[NuclearNasty the effects of a magical or environmental catastrophe]], or simply showing that [[StarfishAliens the creatures are completely outside of what we consider the natural order]].

** Pictured above are the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTc3PsW5ghQ Martians]] ([[FanNickname aka Yip-Yip Aliens]]). They have creeped out quite some toddlers over the decades, because their mouths move in a weird fashion, they are accompanied by weird music, appear out of nowwhere and just say "yip yip" all the time while staring at otherwise normal objects.

It's a secret so poorly kept, it's scarcely a secret at all: modern media doesn't like dealing in ugliness. Much of the time, even characters that are supposedly "ugly" are [[HollywoodBeautyStandards barely distinguishable from their "attractive" counterparts]]. This is why tropes like the {{Gonk}} carry such significance: in a work where nobody can really be called unattractive, a genuinely ''ugly'' character stands out so much more, to the point that they feel more like an oddity exhibit than a character.