Line #25 Main/ScarsAreUgly


1	[[quoteright:350:[[ComicBook/FantasticFour https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/doctordoom1.jpeg]]]]
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3
4	->''Surely, it must look atrocious.\
5	It's an unsightly, hideous, revolting, ''ugly'' marking.\
6	Something that no one wants to see.''
7	-->-- ''Fanfic/DragonsButterfliesAndWhoKnowsWhatElse'', [[Recap/DragonsButterfliesAndWhoKnowsWhatElseChapter17 Chapter 17]]
8
9	[[GoodScarsEvilScars Good Scars, Bad Scars]], Red Scars, Blue Scars. Maybe it's a tiny little surgical scar or you're CoveredWithScars. EveryScarHasAStory, but that doesn't mean you have to like looking at it.
10
11	While some think scars are rugged and are used as proof of how badass you are, in other cases, they are treated as a MarkOfShame. This is typically the reaction you get from both the scar-bearer and those around them. When PlayedForDrama, the scars are genuinely terrifying, having come from a traumatic or humiliating incident, and some of the story will revolve around them learning to cope with it. When PlayedForLaughs, [[MinorInjuryOverreaction the reactions are disproportionate to the outcome]], people treated a mild scar as though it were [[FacialHorror a miscarriage of medical science]].
12
13	When the scar is AScarToRemember, then it qualifies as PunishedWithUgly.
14
15	SisterTrope to ScaryStitches. Contrast BlemishedBeauty. See also ScarsAreForever, DontLookAtMe.
16
17	Administrivia/InUniverseExamplesOnly. Please and thank you.
18
19	----
20	!!Examples:
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22	[[foldercontrol]]
23
24	[[folder:Anime & Maaga]]
25	* Referred to in ''Anime/{{Penguindrum}}''. [[spoiler:Yuri Tokikago was once [[GoodScarsEvilScars heavily scarred]] thanks to [[AbusiveParents the physical abuse]] that she got from her MadArtist father, and often was seen covered in bandages. Out of all the people that know about her scars, only Momoka Oginome wasn't either shocked or repulsed and still found Yuri to be beautiful no matter what.]]
26	* ''Manga/{{Trigun}}'': Meryl and Millie accidentally walk in on Vash with his shirt off, and shockingly learn that his entire body is CoveredWithScars due to his ActualPacifist lifestyle. He laments that it's not the kind of thing he wants girls to see, as he believes it would scare them, but Meryl [[{{Tsundere}} sheepishly disagrees]].
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28	[[/folder]]
29
30	[[folder:Comic Books]]
31	* ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'': [[Characters/MarvelComicsDoctorDoom Doctor Doom]]'s origin story revolves around one of his failed devices (meant to allow him to talk to his mother's soul in {{Hell}}) blowing up right in his face, leading him to don his iconic mask and armor to cover up his now-hideous face. A later story revealed that the actual scarring, as seen in the page image, was merely on his left cheek; while noticeable, it wasn't exactly terrifying. However, Doom was such a perfectionist that he was still completely horrified, and traveled to Tibet where a temple of monks built him his suit of armor. He was in such a rush to cover up the shameful scar that he put on his iconic metal mask ''while it was still red-hot out of the forge'', causing much more extensive FacialHorror.
32	[[/folder]]
33
34	[[folder:Fan Works]]
35	* In [[Recap/DragonsButterfliesAndWhoKnowsWhatElseChapter17 Chapter 17]] of ''Fanfic/DragonsButterfliesAndWhoKnowsWhatElse'', the normally confident Mirabel starts to develop insecurities about her appearance when her burn scars start attracting one too many weird looks from her neighbors.
36	* ''Fanfic/{{HERZ}}'': Asuka thinks she is an ugly freak due to her scars and that nobody would love her. Shinji assures her that she is beautiful and that he loves her.
37	* Zigzagged in a back-story fan fic of ''Series/{{CSINY}}'', ''Windy City Romance Blues: The Ballad of Mac and Claire''. In chapter 9, Mac tells his (then) future wife Claire the reason he always wears an undershirt is because his mother taught him to dress well, but it's really because his former girlfriend, Angela, was grossed out by the shrapnel scar on his chest from being injured during the Beirut barracks bombing while in the Marines and had made him keep his shirt on during sex. He subsequently tells Claire about the scar...but not about Angela's demand. Upon seeing it, Claire doesn't mind the scar.
38	[[/folder]]
39
40	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
41	* ''Film/BendItLikeBeckham'' has a scene where the lead character Jess is ashamed of wearing shorts in public due to having a large burn scar covering her thigh. The scar actually belongs to the actress, Parminder Nagra, and her agents were worried that it might preclude her from getting the part. Director Gurinder Chadha had no problem with the scar and wrote it into the script with Nagra's real story: she burned herself as child while trying to make beans on toast.
42	* ''Film/TheDarkKnight'': {{Invoked\|Trope}} by the Joker when he confronts Rachel Dawes at the party for Harvey Dent. As he approaches her, he says that she looks nervous and asks if it's because of his [[GlasgowGrin lip scars]] before grabbing her and giving [[MultipleChoicePast one possible explanation]] for their origin.
43	* The titular TheatrePhantom from the 1943 adaptation of ''Film/{{Phantom of The Opera\|1943}}'' received his horrifying disfigurement when he had etching acid thrown on his face when he was a publisher's assistant.
44	* Winslow from ''Film/PhantomOfTheParadise'' goes through one ''Hell'' of a TraumaCongaLine when his teeth are replaced with metal in a prison experiment and half of his face and his voice-box is burned with a record-press, forcing him to wear his mask to hide it. [[spoiler:When we see his face at the end, half of his face is melted, his eye dead and useless]].
45	* Parodied in ''Film/Zoolander2''. After being injured during [[HappyEndingOverride the Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good's collapse]], Hansel wears a stylish mask to hide his disfigurement. When Derek asks to see it, confident that it isn't as bad as he thinks, we see that the "horror show" is just a faint less-than-an-inch-long scar on his cheekbone. Derek reacts like it's a freakish deformity.
46	[[/folder]]
47
48	[[folder:Literature]]
49	* ''Literature/AnitaBlake'': Asher hates his scars. Anita has no problem with them, especially in sexual situations. They're "just another texture to play with" or something along those lines.
50	* Cira of ''Literature/ABrothersPrice'' has an [[GoodScarsEvilScars obviously scarred face]] and is otherwise CoveredWithScars. When Jerin first sees her he thinks the scars give her otherwise plain face character. Later she confesses her belief that she's repulsive thanks to said scars. Her lover refused to touch her after she was scarred. Jerin feels differently. [[spoiler:Good thing, too, since she turns out to be one of his wives under her real identity, Princess Halley.]]
51	* In Dennis Lehane's ''Literature/DarknessTakeMyHand'', protagonist/narrator Patrick Kenzie has a scar across his stomach from when his abusive father pressed a hot iron onto him; his girlfriend says she "loves" it because it's a constant reminder that Patrick turned out different from his father.
52	* ''Literature/HarryPotter'':
53	** ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePhilosophersStone'': Discussed. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon call Harry's lightning bolt scar ugly, with Petunia once leaving his fringe while shaving the rest of his head just to hide the scar. Harry, however, thinks it makes him look interesting and it's the only thing he likes about his appearance growing up... at least until he finds out its dark origins and starts getting a lot of attention in the Wizarding World because of it.
54	** ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheHalfBloodPrince'': Following the Battle of the Tower, Bill Weasley has found himself the victim of [[AxeCrazy Fenrir Greyback]]'s bloodlust and his face was mutilated as a result. His mother Molly expresses this sentiment at his bedside, crying about how he was going to be married even as she tries to patch up the wounds. Bill's fiancee Fleur Delacour, however, completely disagrees and lays into Molly for thinking this way.
55	--->'''Fleur''': You thought I would not weesh to marry him? Or per'aps, you ''hoped?'' What do I care how he looks? I am good-looking enough for both of us, I theenk! ''All these scars show is zat my husband is brave!''
56	* Inverted in ''{{Literature/Komarr}};'' Having taken an unscheduled dip in a pond, Miles Vorkosigan strips out of his wet jacket and shirt in a car, revealing to his female companion an extensive catalogue of surgical and battle scars, the results of a lifetime of medical treatments and years of combat experience. Although she is initially (mildly) shocked, more by the sheer number of them than by anything else, she pivots ''rapidly'' to finding them absolutely fascinating - and wondering to herself what scars he might have that she hasn't yet seen.
57	* In ''Literature/November9'', Fallon has a lot of insecurities and negative feelings about her burn scars, which cover the left side of her body. They're a constant physical reminder of her traumatic near-death experience and she gets stared at for them. They've irrevocably changed her appearance and thrown a wrench in her dream of becoming an actor. She doesn't like going out wearing anything that could show the scars, including wearing long sleeves even when it's warm. She's also reluctant to let [[LoveInterest Ben]] - or any boy she's attracted to - see her undressed and thinks she could never be truly seen as attractive because of the scars. Ben tries to encourage her to not be ashamed or disgusted by her scars, insisting that he finds her beautiful and the scars show she's a survivor.
58	* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'': When they were kids, Gregor Clegane pushed his younger brother, Sandor, into a fire [[DisproportionateRetribution for playing with his toys]], which earned him a hideous burnt scar on the left side of his face. That incident made Sandor hate his older brother very much. Many people were intimidated by Sandor's appearance, believing that he was just like his sociopathic brother but Sandor doesn't like to be compared to him.
59	* ''Literature/WarriorCats'': Following the dog attack that killed Swiftpaw and left her with half a face, Brightheart struggled a lot with her self-esteem and was utterly repulsed the first time she saw her new reflection. It took Cloudtail's gentle encouragement and insistence that she's still beautiful to help her recover, and she still had moments of low confidence afterward anyway.
60	* ''Literature/WickedLovely'': Niall thinks that his excessive scarring is unattractive. Leslie (and the {{fangirl}}s) disagree with him.
61	[[/folder]]
62
63	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
64	In ''Series/BeingHumanUK'', George and Nina bond over their shared self-image problems -- in Nina's case, she has horrible burns on her abdomen from an unexplained incident in her past.
65	* Billy Russo gains his supervillain origin as Jigsaw and his multiple facial scars courtesy of Frank Castle in the Season 1 finale of ''[[Series/ThePunisher2017 The Punisher]]''. {{Zigzagged}}, though, as in Season 2 they're generally ''treated'' as this trope (Billy even wears an extremely over-the-top mask to cover them in many situations), but in actual fact they're way less drastic than the injuries he sustained in the first season would lead you to expect. In the end he's still played by the extremely handsome Creator/BenBarnes, and the scars don't really do anything to detract from that.
66	* In ''[[Series/Werewolf1987 Werewolf]]'', Janos Skorzeny's face around his missing eye is heavily scarred, mainly visible when he removes his eyepatch, which Eric uses as part of describing him as ugly more than once. Playfully subverted when a nurse tells Rogan he'll have some very ''attractive'' scars after he was nearly killed by a werewolf.
67	[[/folder]]
68
69	[[folder:Roleplay]]
70	* ''Roleplay/DinoAttackRPG'': After much attention was given to Talia Kaahs due to her stunning beauty, her face ends up mauled by a Mutant Raptor and becomes tarnished by hideous scars. Afterward, people tend to react to her scarred appearance with horror and fear, or sadness and pity.
71	[[/folder]]
72
73	[[folder:Theatre]]
74	* ''Theatre/{{Violet}}'': The title character had her face badly disfigured by her father's axe as a child and spends the show traveling to meet a televangelist with supposed HealingHands in order to fix it. She's goes through life with little self esteem, and is especially afraid she will never find love because of it. While the scar is mostly left up to the audience's imagination, the lyrics and characters' reactions imply the severity, and Violet is clearly traumatized from years of people shuddering, flinching away from, and even mocking her. However, she still finds people who love her for her and comes to terms with what happened.
75	[[/folder]]
76
77	[[folder:Video Games]]
78	* A rather interesting and slightly amusing variant happens in ''VideoGame/MortalKombat11''. When the Black Dragon attacks the Special Forces base, both young and old Johnny Cage help out to hold them off. During the firefight, Young Johnny gets a bullet graze across the cheek, which then immediately affects Old Johnny as a faded scar of a bullet cut appears on the same cheek. Old Johnny is mildly freaked out by the time travel shenanigans at play, but Young Johnny on the other hand blows his stack, grabs a nearby riot shield and charges at the Black Dragons.
79	* The 2012 {{reboot}} of ''VideoGame/TwistedMetal'''s incarnation of Dollface was a psycho supermodel who actually murdered her competition. As if she wasn't volatile enough, she got into a car accident where the windshield shattered and the shards sliced her face. While she got relatively minor scars out of the accident, her insane dedication to perfection and already fragile psyche made her see the scars as pure FacialHorror[[labelnote:*]](imagining that half of her face was flayed open)[[/labelnote]], needless to say she absolutely snapped. This led her to finding ways to try and heal her face, which ended up with her getting her namesake, a strange Doll mask that has since been stuck to her face.
80	[[/folder]]
81
82	[[folder:Visual Novels]]
83	* In ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaTriggerHappyHavoc'', the reason why Kyoko nearly never takes off her gloves is to conceal grotesque burn scars she got on her hands from an incident when she was a beginner detective.
84	* In ''VisualNovel/KatawaShoujo'', [[ShrinkingViolet Hanako]] has extensive burn scars covering the right side of her body, from her face down to her leg. Between the tragic circumstances in which she received them, and the teasing she received from other children about them, she has ''extremely'' low self-esteem about her appearance and hides her facial scars [[HidingBehindYourBangs behind her hair]].
85	[[/folder]]
86
87	[[folder:Webcomics]]
88	* Subverted in ''I'm the Grim Reaper''. Scarlet at one point apologizes for letting Chase see her scars, prompting him to immediately take off his shirt and show his own scar, stating that it means a lot to him because Scarlet is the only reason it wasn't lethal. In both cases, one person is blushing due to the, well, shirtlessness of the other, and barely paying attention to the scars.
89	[[/folder]]
90
91	[[folder:Western Animation]]
92	* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': ZigZagged with Zuko's scar. Zuko's burn scar, which covers half his face, represents the shame of being beaten and banished by his own father for speaking out of turn, which leads to his burning desire to capture the Avatar and gain his father's approval. As such, when Katara offers to use the water from the Spirit Oasis to heal it, he considers it before being interrupted. However, women don't seem to be any less attracted to Zuko because of the scar, and a number of people actually connect with him over the scar as a sign of trauma from the war with the Fire Nation.
93	* In the ''WesternAnimation/WhatsNewScoobyDoo'' episode "[[Recap/WhatsNewScoobyDooS1E12LightsCameraMayhem Lights! Camera! Mayhem]]", it's revealed that the security guard Old Pete was actually the famous actor Rip Bannon, who allegedly died during a production accident and had since haunted that studio as the Faceless Phantom. He confesses that even if he survived, he felt too ashamed of the scar that he got from the accident that he had quit acting and had gone into hiding, hiding the (small and unnoticeable) scar under a fake beard.
94	[[/folder]]

Context Main / ScarsAreUgly