A character is given oversized lips for humor, to mock European civilization's obsession with plump pouters, or simply to invoke a Gonk. Sometimes, this is done to mock a character for being vain or obsessed with cosmetic surgery, or to sexualize an otherwise unattractive character. If they appear on a female character, she's probably an Abhorrent Admirer obsessed with kissing or otherwise unsympathetic.
As a lot of illustrated media (particularly cartoons) do not render lips on characters, a character with large lips or a character who suddenly gains them as part of a gag can be kind of jarring, for humorous effect. Sometimes this can be explained in-universe as an exaggerated reaction to a Plot Allergy. Other times it's just an Art Shift done for comedy with no explanation, particularly in a Zany Cartoon.
When applied to black characters, this carries a cargo of Unfortunate Implications. Exaggerated, oversized lips are a key element of blackface, so having this trait appear on a black-coded character can come across as a Blackface-Style Caricature whether intentional or not. This was common in 1930s and '40s animated cartoons, which often used allusions to Minstrel Shows as a Parental Bonus. See also Ash Face for a similar gag.
Compare Gag Nose, Balloon Belly, and Inflating Body Gag. Not to be confused with Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, though the Trope Namer of that trope has these.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Dragon Ball Z: Semi-Perfect Cell appears to have unusually full lips; "unusual" in that his Imperfect and Perfect forms not only lack this trait, but they're weirdly human flesh-toned, to boot.
- Hoshin Engi: Used as a gag on a secondary character who's usually The Stoic: when Hiko Ko's sworn brothers are complaining about Seiki's too spicy cooking, said member says nothing but sports humongous, red swollen lips with a pained expression. Played straight later with gonky female Madonna, a morbidly obese ogress of a woman with giant lips.
- My Love Story!!: Takeo has exaggeratedly thick lips, and they're part of the reason why he's considered a Gonk by most girls. But Yamato and Ai find them sexy.
- Naruto and company suspect that Kakashi might have this; their Imagine Spot gives us the page image.
- Soban the ugly gang member from a rival school from Urusei Yatsura has massive lips that take up most of his face, when he tries to kiss Shinobu she’s afraid he will end up swallowing her.
Art
- Salvador Dalí's Mae West Lips Sofa.
◊
- Young Sick Bacchus: Downplayed. His lips are a shade of blue, clearly a symptom of whatever sickness he is suffering from.
Asian Animation
- Nana Moon: Among Moon Haven's wildlife are giant, bipedal fish with exaggeratedly large lips. The other characters run away from these fish whenever they see them because the fishes' only instinct is to chase down any other creature they see and use their lips to kiss them.
Comic Books
- In The Sanctuary Tree, a fat female police officer falls in love with Donald when she accidentally drinks a love potion. When she tries to kiss him, her lips are huge and red.
- Hildagaard Rail in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Mirage) story Sky Highway from issue #30 is a mutated German woman who has lips so big they take up most of the space on her face, going practically from ear to ear and forehead to chin. Otherwise, she's very well-endowed, with long legs and an hourglass figure. When Raphael attempts to leave Hilda, she grabs him by the tales of his bandana and gives him a giant kiss goodbye against his wishes. The lipstick mark she leaves on his face covers his entire beak.
Comic Strips
- In one Zits strip, Jeremy's lips swell up after he is stung by a bee while riding his bike. Cue the girls cursing how lucky he is and wondering whether they should take up beekeeping.
Fan Works
- Dragon Ball Z Abridged: When Piccolo sees Semi-Perfect Cell's unusually full lips (see the Anime & Manga folder above) for the first time, he doesn't exactly know how to react:
Piccolo: I'm kind of offended by his lips. Am I allowed to be offended by his lips?!
Krillin: Are you offended by Mr. Popo's lips?
Piccolo: Wait! Can we talk about that?!
Films — Animation
- All Dogs Go to Heaven: King Gator, the giant alligator that Charlie and Anne-Marie encounter in the New Orleans sewers, has massive lips. This is where the "Big Lipped" part of Big-Lipped Alligator Moment comes from.
Films — Live-Action
- Gremlins 2: The New Batch: The female gremlin has ridiculously large lips.
- The First Wives Club: Goldie Hawn's character gets an overdone collagen injection.
- Lena Hyena from Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Her full red colored lips have proven to be quite strong at times. When Eddie slams the door as Lena rushes over to give him a kiss, her puckered lips impale the door. Also, after catching him, Lena finally gives Eddie a big kiss on the cheek. The recoil from this kiss is strong enough to send Eddie flying several yards down the street.
- Played for Horror (and nasty laughs) in Leprechaun 3, where a slender, aging casino worker wishes for a more voluptuous body and the Leprechaun inflates some of her body parts until she bursts. Her lips, just before she dies, give a whole new meaning to "duckface".◊
Live-Action TV
- In Le cœur a ses raisons, super-botoxed Crystale Bouvier-Montgomery sports (among other) some impressive surgically-enhanced Gag Lips. At one point, she had them inflated even more, but they rapidly exploded at the end of the episode.
- Just Shoot Me!: Nina is invited to a talk show to talk about lipstick, but before she goes on, her peanut allergies act up after she eats some candy at the green room, giving her puffed-up lips and Elmuh Fudd Syndwome.
- There is a Russian series called "Odna za Vseh", meaning roughly "one woman who does everyone's job". Each episode consists of a string of short sketches, where the same actress plays a dozen vastly different roles. One of these is that of a millionaire's wife. Both she and her best friend have lips that look like they should be able to deflate them for storage.
- On Nick Arcade, landing on an enemy space in the Cape Cosmos board would result in Mikey being approached by the Smooch Aliens, a pair of round aliens with pigtails, cyclopic eyes, and big, red lips, who would give him slurpy kisses.
- Ultraman Dyna has the plant-based monster, Maricula, who inexplicably has gigantic, puffy, red human-like lips in kaiju form. Its as ridiculous as it sounds.
- Inverted in America's Next Top Model. Christina Murphy's lips were lambasted because they're thin and small.
Music
- The Rolling Stones' logo (complete with gag tongue).
Pinball
- Data East Pinball's Tales from the Crypt shows a ghoulish zombie on the playfield who has grossly exaggerated red, puffy lips.
Video Games
- Gaia Online has a ghost of a supermodel equipped with the wax lips items, suggesting she's hit the collagen a bit too hard.
- In McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure, the boss of the Pirate Ship Level is a pirate captain with giant lips, who has the fourth and final piece of the treasure map.
- The Squaresoft Famicom RPG The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was never released outside of Japan. If you're wondering why, it may have something to do with Jim, one of Tom's companions, being portrayed as an ungodly offensive caricature,◊ with a set of lips roughly half the size of his own head.
- Leaps from Kirby & the Amazing Mirror are enemies that have huge lips, with which they give Kirby a big kiss, which results in him being covered in lipstick, which he wipes off with handkerchief in disgust.
- The aptly named Lips enemies from the Dragon Quest series are slugs with huge lips.
- Hamm had these in the Japanese version of Bust a Groove. Combined that with his dark skin, it's no wonder why his design had been changed...
- Jynx and Smoochum from Pokémon qualify. Some of their powers are centered on their lips, such as their attacks that involve kissing, and the Pokédex describes Smoochum as exploring the world using their sensitive lips.
- Mind Your Manors, the stage leading to the second boss is sprinkled with floating, bright pink lipstick marks which will latch to the player if he touches them, slowing him up and hastening the rising of the perfume cloud. The boss herself is an invisible face (except for make up and earrings) attacking with floating lipstick marks.
Webcomics
- A constant mockery/Self-Deprecation point of Andrew Hussie, who has large, pursed lips
Western Animation
- In the Captain N: The Game Master episode entitled I Wish I Was a Wombatman a beautiful director's assistant who looked like a short pink octopus version of Dolly Parton had the hots for Simon Belmont. When she hugged him with four tentacles around his neck and arms she gave him a wink and extended her giant red lips in front of his for smooching. Simon didn't reciprocate. Eventually, the busomy babe chased after the object of her heart's desire offering to do his make-up. However, the only make-up she was interested in applying to his face was her lipstick during a make-out session.
- Johnny Test is told to test out his sisters' Lip Lozenge, designed to give fuller, kissable lips. It works too well, and causes his lips to grow until they're bigger than his head.
- An attempt to stop a Zombie Apocalypse in one episode of Adventure Time instead created a formula that inflated the zombies' lips.
- In an episode of Hercules: The Animated Series, Pain and Panic are sent to stop Icarus from kissing Cassandra (because that would violate her deal with Hades). One thing they try is to give him ridiculously large lips in an attempt to embarrass him out of kissing her. Instead, it just primes him up all the more.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy: This happens to Kanker Sisters whenever they're about to savagely kiss the Eds against their will, which leaving the boy's faces leaving them covered in kiss marks at the end of the episode.
- How the Kankers get their lips to grow varies from episode to episode. Sometimes they are seen putting on lipstick to make their lips fuller before they kiss the Eds. However, most of the time, they only have to pucker to make their giant red lips appear.
- A Running Gag in The Fairly OddParents! episode "The Big Fairy Share Scare!" involves Timmy, Chloe and their fairies taking "duck lips" selfies. Soon, Cosmo starts poofing actual duck bills on them.
- Oblina from Aaahh!!! Real Monsters is a monster with giant lips. In the episode, "The Lips Have It", Oblina loses her lips and a girl named Lucy finds them and uses them to become a supermodel.
- The Simpsons: In the episode "The Way We Was", Marge takes a taxi home from her senior prom after her date with Artie Ziff got too handsy at Make-Out Point. The taxi driver asks who's going to pay, and Marge angrily tells him to send the bill to "Baron von Kiss-A-Lot". Cut to a European castle where a man with enormous lips gets the bill and demands to know "Who's the wise guy?"
- SpongeBob SquarePants: Sandy has to battle her way through Karate Island in order to save SpongeBob. One of the mini-bosses, called Lip Service, she has to fight uses her lips as weapons. Sandy defeats her by drying her lips with a hair dryer until they are get cracked and fall off her face.
- Teen Titans (2003): In one episode, Robin is forced to take Killer Moth's Bratty Teenage Daughter Kitty to her prom, or else he will let his swarm of mutant moths overrun the city. During the evening, Kitty attempts to kiss Robin, who now tells her his teammates captured her father and stopped his plan. Kitty reveals that she has the device that will release the moths. Believing that Robin now has no other choice but to let her kiss him, Kitty begins to pucker up, causing her lips to become fuller and red. In the next shot, her lips, as well as her face, become even more toony and gag-looking. Thankfully, Robin blocks the kiss with his finger, causing her lips to revert back to normal.
- Total Drama:
- As almost every single contestant in "One Flu over the Cuckoos" thinks they're succumbing to a deadly disease, they worsen their own symptoms by imagination or touch. Justin's lips itch, so he scratches until they're red and swollen and no longer in proportion to his face.
- In "Food Fright", Duncan's lips get caught in a mouse trap hidden inside the stack of pancakes he must munch through. It leaves him with swollen, red lips that look like he's wearing lipstick.
- Uncle Grandpa once helped a girl get bigger lips so her "duckface" selfies can get more likes. Eventually, her lips are so big she gets mistaken for a duck and ducks start following her around.
- Gorgeous Gal in the Woody Woodpecker cartoon A Fine Feathered Frenzy. Since she is a bird there is a lipstick outline around her beak that can be viewed during a close-up. When she puckers up her lips are like a human's lips for comedic effect. At one point Gorgeous Gal appears in a bath and playfully blows bubbles at Woody and her lips are about the size of his face. Another time she rushes to kiss him with the full force of her lips and misses, kissing the wall. The lipstick mark she leaves on the wall is almost the size of Woody's entire body. Soon after that, she spots him while she is on a couch wearing a red low cut red dress, says "Hi baby," closes her eyes and gives him a giant sized duck face inviting him to kiss her. Woody doesn't smooch her enormous puckered lips and runs. Whenever Gorgeous Gal does manage to kiss Woody her lips are shown to be much bigger than the Woodpecker's as well.
- God Rocks!: Butter Blossom has exaggeratedly large pink lips and tends to use her mouth to kiss Carb.
Other
- The infamous "Duckface" is an unintentional example. It is done by girls and sometimes boys by puckering their lips to make them look more attractive, but overdoing it, the result looking something like a duck's bill. It's become almost a Running Gag on sites like Facebook.
