Fan Disservice

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"The human body is a beautiful thing. Most of the time. Ew."

— Guybrush Threepwood, Escape from Monkey Island

The Evil Twin of Fanservice from another dimension, possibly with a goatee (especially if female). Fan Disservice looks like regular garden variety Fanservice, except that the creators intentionally use the circumstances around it to make the scene outright creepy, disgusting and/or just plain ridiculous. Corpses in sexy poses, dialogue that adds Mood Dissonance, seeing someone naked who you really wouldn't want to see naked... there's a hundred and one ways that titillation can transform into horror. Just think of how many Slasher Movies have Fanservice Extras meet their demise by way of Sex Signals Death.

Note that it often seems that film schools grind this into their students, as far too many movies intercut sex scenes with scenes of violence or squick, to truly rub in our faces the polarity of beauty and horror. Of course, the directors just want to be artists (that, or they're puritanical types who are obsessed with portraying sex in the most negative light possible). But sometimes it's implemented in a funny way, so the director can just mess with you.

Of course, Fan Disservice and Fanservice are not mutually exclusive. As Rule 36 states: If it exists, there's a fetish for it. Therefore, all Fan Disservice is considered Fanservice by somebody out there. Also, due to Troper Demographics, there are many examples linked elsewhere on the wiki which are listed as disservice solely because they involve naked men. Male nudity by itself is not Fan Disservice; there are people attracted to men; Mr. Fanservice as a trope wouldn't exist otherwise. Some Drag Queens are often subject to this trope, though this at least has a chance of being intentional on the performer's part if mocking sexiness is part of their drag. (See also Unsettling Gender-Reveal.)

Also, it's pretty important to state that not all Fan Disservice is 100% tied into graphic squick. Context can also be vital into separating Fanservice from Fan Disservice; for example you can have a very gorgeous person in diverse states of undress and the visuals are technically pleasant to the eye, but the circumstances that led him or her to be like that can come from Break the Cutie, Break the Haughty, a Trauma Conga Line, No Yay, a horrendously Unequal Pairing, Rape as Drama, etc. Therefore, neither the most artistic and perfect drawing style nor the most tasteful angle shots can make this particular scene/shot enjoyable — you're too busy feeling sorry for the protagonist and/or desiring the perpetrator's head on a pike instead. Alternately, the character is an Ax-Crazy psycho launching a bloody Full-Frontal Assault. A gorgeous Mr./Ms. Fanservice with a particularly cruel personality is simultaneously Fan Disservice. Fan Disservice frequently overlaps with Nightmare Fuel and Nausea Fuel.

This trope can often overlap with Naked People Are Funny — as often as not, naked people are funny precisely because of Fan Disservice. Can be paired with Psychosexual Horror.

Note: This trope is for sexy things deliberately placed in disturbing contexts that make them intentionally unsexy. Examples that are unintentional belong in Fetish Retardant.

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Example subpages:

• Anime & Manga
• Comic Books
• Fan Works
• Films — Live-Action
• Literature
• Live-Action TV
  • 1000 Ways to Die
• Music
• Video Games
• Visual Novels
• Webcomics
• Web Original
• Western Animation

Other examples:

Advertising

• This ad for billboard space is built on this trope. Buy this space, or else a rather frumpy-looking, obese, hairy man strips naked!
• A Finnish ad for Fixus car services. There's an old guy with two beautiful daughters, but the daughters talk with their father's voice.
• The [adult swim] bumper "Love Party" spoofs fanservice-laden anime by showing a pair of unattractive male nerds in suggestive poses.
• The 2016 Super Bowl ad for Snickers has Willem Dafoe in a white dress doing a Marilyn Maneuver.

Arts

• Hieronymus Bosch, especially in his religious/cautionary works.
• Gustave Doré, all too often.
• Henry Fuseli, best known for The Nightmare◊.
• Francisco de Goya, especially with the mental and physical health problems he experienced towards the end of his life.
• Carolee Schneemann's Interior Scroll, a performance piece where she reads from a scroll literally pulled from her vagina.
• Luciano Garbati's sculpture Medusa With the Head of Perseus. A woman with a very beautiful, fully nude body, holding the man's head she just cut off.
• While some of Gabriel Grün's paintings fall prey to eroticism, there are others that purposefully subvert this through a mix of Body Horror and general surrealness.
  • La Pequeña Peluda features a vaguely androgynous figure with long red hair that drapes not unlike Sandro Botticelli The Birth of Venus. The hair on their head is cut fairly short, with the drapery flowing from their armpits and pubes.
  • La Pequeña Aracné features a woman with three sets of legs, the curvature of her buttocks molding into two other bottoms that connect with the four extra legs.
  • Metamorphosis into Gruyere Cheese features a nude woman who's body is covered with holes that evoke swiss cheese.
  • Tacto (Touch) features a bald, nude woman absolutely covered in spare nipples.
  • Arache features a hairless woman with exposed breasts and genitals with four arms and four legs. If that doesn't turn you off, her disapproving gaze staring right at the viewer will.

Comedy

• Comedian Jeff Foxworthy mentions this in his stand-up, overlapping with Be Careful What You Wish For.
  "I figured it was God getting even with me for wanting to see women naked. 'Hey, you wanna see naked women, huh? Here's your grandma!' AAH!"

Comic Strips

• Garfield: The program "Santa's Summer Vacation" that Garfield is watching in the August 17, 2023 strip has Santa Claus eliciting shock and displeasure from Garfield due to his outfit of choice.
  Garfield: That man should NOT wear a swimsuit!
• Pearls Before Swine: One of the most horrifying sights in existence: Stephan Pastis in the nude.

Films — Animation

• Aladdin: Jasmine is pretty sexy in her red slave outfit, but then there's the part where she kisses Jafar, which is met with disgust by the other characters due to the fact that she's his prisoner and she is SIGNIFICANTLY younger than him. Even Iago is disgusted.
• Coraline loves this:
  • First there's the street play in the Other World. The main performers are two fat old ladies, who are completely naked save for some skimpy swimsuits... emphasis on skimpy.
  • When the Other Mother transforms, much of her chest becomes clearly visible, but she's so hideous otherwise that you don't even want to see it.
  • Even before then, when Coraline first meets the Other Mother. She's kind, kinda witty, and unbelievably hot for someone still wearing trousers and a turtleneck jumper. The Hartman Hips help. What pushes it into Fan Disservice is that you can tell something is off about her. The button eyes are one thing, but she smiles too widely, seems too eager to be around Coraline. She's dissonantly calm and cheerful up until Coraline starts outright rejecting her. A great example of Fan Disservice not being from Body Horror but being more subtle and creepy.
• Played for Laughs in The Emperor's New Groove. This trope applies to pretty much every moment that ancient villainess Yzma is on the screen, but in particular when she starts to hike up her dress, causing Pacha and Kuzco to scream in terror. They're relieved when it turns out she was just going for the knife strapped to her thigh.
• Felidae is a noir film and, as with many, it has a sex scene in it. The problem is that they're completely non-anthropomorphic cats who make a lot of noise. It also doesn't help that, narrative-wise, this occurs not soon after Francis finds his first love interest Felicity beheaded.
• The Incredibles: The bonus video "Incredi-blunders!" features technical goofs and short scenes that were made simply because the animators were goofing around. This includes things like Mr. Incredible walking around naked (with Pixellation to censor his behind) and Syndrome licking Mirage, who smiles in return.
• The Little Mermaid (1989): As noted elsewhere on this very wiki, Ursula is probably the first Disney villain to shake her moneymakers for the camera. Given that Ursula is a fat and incredibly skanky octopus woman, the proper reaction is some horrible mixture of yuck and laughter.
  "And don't underestimate the importance of... BODY LANGUAGE!"
• Ruber's shirtless minions from Quest for Camelot.

Game Shows

• Taskmaster:
  • Rhod Gilbert got his hands on a "sexy" photo of Greg Davies in a budgie-smuggler◊, which he delighted in showing as much as humanly possible.
  • Not to be outdone, Liza Tarbuck infamously forced Alex to drop his pants and sit, bare-ass, in a cake, as part of a task to "tell the Taskmaster you love him." Despite Alex's outright pained moan while doing so, he does recommend trying it at least once... but suggests you get the right kind of chair so you won't be "open" like he was.

Jokes

• A woman is talking to her husband:
  Wife: Chaim, don't you think we should buy some curtains for our windows?
  Husband: No; what for, Sarah?
  Wife: Chaim, do you really want the neighbor on the opposite side to see me showering?
  Husband: Sarah, if he ever sees you showering, he'll be the one buying curtains.
  • A variant after the husband takes up nude bodybuilding:
  Wife: Dear, close the curtains when you do that, I don't want the neighbors thinking I only married you for your money!
• Two men who own a nightclub are wondering why business has been steadily declining through the years. Is it the food? No, the food's still good. Is it the music? No, we have a great band. Is it the drinks? No, the drinks are fine. Finally one of them wonders if it might be the topless waitresses. The second man says, "Nah, it couldn't be them. They're the same gals who have worked for us since we opened in 1950."
  • There is a Soviet variant which has girls who are all party members since 1930^note In USSR, political reliability was often the defining factor at the expense of everything else.

Manhwa

• Killing Stalking hits the readers with this trope almost from the beginning:
  • The first chapter has a half-naked Bum masturbating over Sangwoo. This isn't shown to titillate, but to showcase his obsession; plus, it happens in the middle of a flashback that explains how he became a Stalker with a Crush and includes an Attempted Rape situation that he was subjected to when in the army.
  • In the same chapter, Bum gets inside Sangwoo's house... then finds his basement... and an almost naked, Bound and Gagged, blindfolded and bruised young woman. Few later, he wakes up after being beaten and sees the poor woman...'s corpse. It gets even worse when Sangwoo gropes the corpse's bare breast.
  • The story has quite a few instances where the handsome Sangwoo is down to his skivvies, walking around in his underwear and showing off his chiseled physique. Most these scenes are accompanied by his victims being tortured in his Creepy Basement, him splattered with blood, or him psychologically scaring the crap out of Bum.
• From Rebirth, Deshwitat has a sparring match with an ancient, bearded Wicked Cultured vampire. During the battle, said ancient vampire (in a bout of humor) transforms himself into a hot young half-dressed woman to throw him off. Deshwitat, baffled and enraged, orders him to change back. He certainly does, but only his head, leaving the rest of it the same.

Pro Wrestling

• Two words that strike fear and terror into even the most jaded Pro Wrestling fan's gonads: Mae Young.
  • The 2000 Royal Rumble "Miss Rumble" bikini contest. Hot women in bikinis, often getting skimpier per woman. The last bonus entrant... Mae Young. A woman in her 80s. She then promptly attempts to kiss Jerry Lawler and ends up baring her breasts. DVD version of this was unfortunately very poorly censored.
  • WWE had a thing called "Divas Undressed" in which the Divas paraded around in skimpy outfits. It was aired at 1 in the morning and they decided the event needed WWE style "comedy". So we got Mae Young again. And for good measure, Rico in a pineapple bra.
  • The Bra and Panties Gauntlet match at "New Year's Revolution 2006" had her come out and perform a full striptease in front of the crowd.
• Whenever Rikishi was setting up to deliver a stinkface to his opponent, the camera would always zoom in on his gigantic, cottage cheese butt cheeks.
• The Katie Vick angle. Triple H brings up Katie Vick during a feud with Kane, a supposed incident where Kane was in love with a cheerleader named Katie Vick, but then she died, and he promptly had sex with her corpse. The low point of this angle was a supposed "video" Triple H produced of Kane committing the act—-it was Triple H in a Kane mask, climbing into a coffin with a cheerleader mannequin, pretending to have sex. Ended with Triple H reaching over towards her head, grabbing a handful of spaghetti with sauce and throwing it at the camera, proclaiming that he "screwed her [brains] out".
• "Big" Dick Johnson. Or, as he was known before he was named on-screen (and his counterpart in TNA was actually named), Big Fat Naked Oily Guy. Yes, it's as bad it sounds.
• Tha Weedman of Juggalo Championship Wrestling smokes as much as his name implies and blows his smoke into the crowd. This usually counts as a Cheap Pop, as many ICP fans do happen to be stoners but for non-smokers, it's this trope.
• Big Daddy V (aka Mabel, aka King Mabel, aka Viscera)'s standard attire consisted of a singlet. This doesn't sound too out of the ordinary, but remember that he was billed at 500 lbs. The singlet did a job of showing off his huge man boobs. This didn't go unnoticed by, and grossed out, a lot of smarks.
• If you are dipping into Japanese pro wrestling, don't forget watching matches of Otoko Sakari and W-1's Ryota Hama. They have a... bizarre beauty.
• Dramatic Dream Team: Suguru Miyatake and Takayuki Ueki bra and panty from bubble match, unless two hairy guys in that situation is your thing.
• Daffney Unger was once involved in a match where she opened a lockbox that said she had to perform a striptease in the middle of the ring. While she's not unattractive, there is something inherently skeevy about someone being forced to strip or be fired. This is presumably the reason Lacey Von Erich interrupted and tried to do it herself.
• Is Mickie James sexy? Hell yeah. Is she sexy when she's all wet? Most definitely. How about when she's wet from having punch dumped on her, right after being assaulted and humiliated by LayCool? Tear Jerker instead.
• A straight example turned into a subversion in Christy Hemme's first night on Raw. Trish Stratus announced that she would have her first match: a bra and panties handicap match. She, Gail Kim and Molly Holly proceeded to restrain Christy and strip her to her underwear. Christy was left terrified in the ring afterwards...until she realised she had no problem showing off her body and turned it into an Insult Backfire.
• In a chant of "Fix Your Wedgie" broke out among the female fans during one of Queen Aminata's Premier Championship Wrestling matches. Aminata's response was to pull her trunks up further and sit on the barricade right in front of a woman's face...

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000:
  • Slaanesh, the Chaos god of desire, excess, decadence, beauty, pleasure, love, lust, and this trope. Its lesser demons, Daemonettes, exemplify this trope as well as the inverse and many of its servants eventually become both through the "blessings" of Chaos mutations.
  • The spin-off Blood Bowl has this too. All races have cheerleaders. Now, for their own race, this is no problem at all. When it comes to Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, Humans, Mutants, Orcs, Ogres, and the Undead, all intermingling, however... Pass the Brain Bleach. Averted (perhaps thankfully) by the PC game; the Orcs have drummers, the Lizardmen have Skinks with football rattles, and the Nurgle devotees actually just look like they have a full coat of green body paint and small horns on their heads.
  • The Bloodwrack Medusa model in Warhammer has exposed breasts... and sculpted blood pouring from every orifice. If you read its background, it gets even more disturbing: this is the fate it suffers, but also what it is doing to anyone who happens to look at it.
• Exalted: Sulumor, aka Hellnun, is the most heavily sexualised Infernal Exalted, being a gorgeous woman in a sort of stripper-nun outfit. How could her being topless be anything other than sexy? Simple. The picture of Sulumor topless in the Infernals book is demonstrating a Malfeas Charm that allows you to render yourself immune to disease for a while by self-inducing horrible supernatural radiation sickness, complete with tumoriffic skin. It's really, really, really not sexy.
• Pathfinder has Urgathoa, the goddess of Undeath, as one of the core deities. From the waist up she is a beautiful, buxom, and raven-haired (though also red-eyed) woman. But once you get below that...◊
• Played for Laughs in Pokéthulhu. Thulhu have four moves: Injure, Dodge, Trap and Frighten. Series mascot Pikathulhu's Trap ability is "Adorable Pose"; its Frighten ability is "Adorable CHEESECAKE Pose" (and it's actually reasonably effective, particularly against enemies weak to Fungous moves).

Web Animation

• Lunch Lady Belinda is a walking example of this trope in The Most Popular Girls in School, In-Universe and Out. She's caused numerous people to puke their guts out at the sight of her in a cheerleading uniform that exposes her lower parts.
• Happy Tree Friends: Just about all instances where Disco Bear is shirtless or wears nothing but a leopard-skin thong. This is even shown as disservice to other Tree Friends, as seen in "Sea What I Found", where even Pop is mortified by the sight of Disco Bear showing more skin than usual.
• Homestar Runner:
  • In the short Somber Vacation, Strong Sad ends up with an embarrassing tan line that looks like he's wearing a bikini top. To top it off, he even shows a postcard of himself lying on the beach smiling, and yes, he is sporting the tan line.
  • Then, there's Coach Z imagining his butt in "Decemberween Short Shorts". Matt Chapman noted in the DVD commentary that he originally made Coach Z's buttcheeks big, round and pulsating, to his friends' disgust.
  • Plus, for more of Coach Z you wish you hadn't seen, there's an easter egg for the Costume Commercial short of him wearing the Authentic "Marzipan" Costume (a purple bikini complete with cat ears and a devil tail).
  • The Poopsmith's costume for the 2015 Halloween Episode "The House That Gave Sucky Tricks" is Sting as Feyd-Rautha in Dune (1984), which means the Poopsmith goes around wearing nothing but a skimpy blue codpiece for the whole cartoon
    Strong Bad: I WILL KILL HIM! ...If he doesn't put on some more clothes. Eugh, molded plastic panties...
• In Da Amazin OT Advenchr episode 22, a Freeze-Frame Bonus shows Lite wearing Curly Brace's panties.
• In Salad Fingers episode four, the titular character appears shirtless and appears to have an orgasm. However, he's green, emaciated, hairy, and creepy as hell.
• Who Needs Science? is a Take That! to fundies who criticize science while unwittingly benefiting from scientific advances. It does so with a Captain Ersatz Becky Fischer answering trivia questions about the Bible and losing any possessions that were improved by a particular scientific discovery. At 2:52, she loses all her possessions with polyurethane in them... which includes her spandex pants.
• Nyan~ Neko Sugar Girls is full of this. From Pretty Boy Hitoshi to Raku and her huge chest and scenes such as the girls going underwear shopping, this would make for a very fanservice bait series... If it wasn't for the incredibly ugly, poorly done animesque MS Paint art-style. If the lack of any sort of model doesn't kill it then the ear-piercing voices will. Luckily the series is an ironic Stealth Parody so at least all of this is intentional.
• Sugoi Quest For Kokoro has a lot of bouncing breasts and panty shots, but the art is so intentionally terrible that the fanservice is meant to be funny rather than titillating.
• Sonic Shorts, possibly inspired by Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, makes a Running Gag out of Eggman weaponizing his Fan Disservice against Sonic. The most popular version of this is a shirtless Eggman working out like a Chippendale dancer, prominently showing his undulating belly. This is often captioned with "YOU KNOW YOU LOVE IT!"

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