Mustache Vandalism

"Who puts a picture frame on a window?"

"We've all got a mission in life
We get into different ruts
Some are the cogs in the wheels
Others are just plain nuts
I'm just wild about Harry and Harry's wild about me!
Science is some folks' calling
Others pilot a ship
My mission in life, stated simply, is
A mustache on every lip!"

— Daffy Duck, "Daffy Doodles"

Some people just can't leave well enough alone, especially if it's a work of art with a face. Mustache Vandalism is when a character, if they see a picture of someone they don't like, and it's within reach, draws a mustache, beard, or both on the picture. Often played with by having the picture be an actual person (but oddly, the one doing the drawing won't notice until the drawing is complete). Another example is erasing the mustache on a picture of someone who has one.

Decorations can include mustaches, beards, devil horns/tail, blacked-out teeth, spiky hair or the arrow through the head. If they especially hate the person, it may be a Hitler-type mustache, accompanied by swastikas.

Generally a comedy trope, it can show the vandal to have carefree humor. Can also be used more seriously, to show mild dislike for someone. Compare Face Doodling, where this is done to a live person while they're asleep/unconscious. A milder sister trope to Dartboard of Hate and Stab the Picture.

A subtrope is when a fugitive defaces a "Wanted!" Poster in this manner to delay being recognised. This may be followed by the appearance of a not-quite-Identical Stranger who exactly resembles the defaced poster. Contrast Photo Doodle Recognition, in which altering a picture leads to recognition of someone whose actual appearance has been similarly altered.

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Examples:

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• In this Froot Loops commercial, Toucan Sam paints a picture of Yoshi for Mario, who in turn, paints a mustache on it.
• An ad bumper on The Hub had someone take out a yearbook of all the major characters featured in the shows on the network and deface each portrait with a mustache, only to pause when confronted with MC Bat Commander, who already has a drawn-on mustache and blacked-out tooth as part of his costume.
• In the 1980s, WNBC radio had a commercial where a poster of their top two personalities (Don Imus and Howard Stern) was defaced by people passing by, including old women and nuns.
• A 1990 Yellow Pages commercial (the one with the French polishers) shows a painting defaced this way.

Anime & Manga

• In one of the Chibitalia stories, Chibitaly does this to a portrait of young Austria. In a variation of this trope, the act was not intended to be malicious. Chibitaly simply wanted to paint something, but only had a paintbrush and a pot of ink. Austria himself is not pleased and, in the dub, even comments "That's just mean!"

Art

• Dada artist Marcel Duchamp's 1919 artwork "L.H.O.O.Q" is a postcard reproduction of da Vinci's "The Mona Lisa" with a hastily drawn mustache and goatee on her face. The title is a French pun for "she has a hot ass". Salvador Dalí also painted his own thin, upward mustache on a black and white copy of Mona Lisa, with a man's hands holding coins in place of her hands, calling it a "self-portrait".

Asian Animation

• Lamput: In the episode "The Split", Fat Doc and Slim Doc have an argument over them accidentally hitting each other trying to chase Lamput, and they go their separate ways. Later in the episode, a picture of Fat Doc and Slim Doc with the former having facial hair doodled on him can be seen in Slim Doc's house.

Comic Books

• In a Golden Age Batman story, Dick Grayson was randomly doodling mustaches on photos in the newspaper. Seeing one of Dick's doodles makes Batman realize that the thief he has been chasing is actually a European playboy with a fake mustache.
• In one Lucky Luke story, charlatan Dr. Doxey changes his name, shaves his moustache and beard, and has a new picture of him taken for his ads. However, a kid Doxey pissed off defaces the ad to the point it looks exactly like Doxey's old face, allowing Luke to recognize him.
• One issue of MAD inverted this trope. In Mexico a kid sneaks up to a poster of a politician who already has a huge bushy mustache and carefully cuts it out to make him look clean-shaven.
• Rocky: During a Swedish election season in the mid-2000's, Rocky and Rippo are walking through a park and comment on the various candidate posters, with Rocky pointing out the cliche of drawing a gap tooth on posters like the one they're looking at, only for Rippo to point out that this particular politician actually has a gap tooth in real life, and it's not a case of vandalism. Rocky decides that this is genius, and that said politician should grow a Hitler moustache and have devil horns attached to his forehead just to be one step ahead on any future would-be poster vandals.
• In one Simpsons Comics story, random posters around Springfield start showing up with moustaches drawn on them, and naturally El Barto is blamed. Bart is innocent of this particular crime, so he and Lisa try to track down the real culprit. It turns out to be Rod and Todd Flanders, who didn't realise they were doing anything wrong; they just wanted everybody to look as handsome as their dad.
• Raven does this to a sleeping Jinx on the 2019 Comic Day Freebie of Teen Titans Go!.
• Captain Haddock does this to a poster of Bianca Castafiore in a Tintin comic.

Fan Works

• In An Aunt's Advice Harry draws pig features on some old photos of his cousin Dudley.
• In Colours Harry and Draco use crayons to doodle mustaches, glasses and other adornments on the portraits at Grimmauld Place.
• In Death is a Blessing, Harry gets so fed up with Mrs. Black's portrait that he draws a padlocked zipper over her mouth and uses wandless magic to make it a permanent part of the portrait.
• In Now and Forever when a drunk on a dare tried to draw a mustache on an animated statue of Harry, it grabbed him.
• In Pretty Kitty Fred and George drew a mustache on Mrs. Black's portrait and she screamed for two days until it was removed.

Film — Animated

• In The Simpsons Movie, Bart mustaches a "Wanted!" Poster of Homer - now it looks just like Guy Incognito, who gets beaten and arrested. Then he finds one for the entire family at a roadside convenience store, and vandalizes it so they won't be recognized. After they leave, another family enters, which looks exactly like the Simpsons, only with the features "added" by Bart. They are arrested on the spot.
• One of the memorabilia on this poster for Turning Red is a photo of Tyler with a mustache, glasses^note odd, considering that main characters Mei and Priya also wear glasses, and devil horns drawn on it with a blue marker.

Film — Live-Action

• In the Charlie Chaplin short film The Adventurer, Charlie plays an escaped convict. At one point he defaces his own wanted poster with a massive beard and moustache so that it looks just like The Heavy.
• In The Bad and the Beautiful, when the trio arrives at the Shields lot, Georgia draws a goofy mustache on the logo at the front gate. It's later revealed to be a Call-Back to when Shields drew a mustache on a picture of her father in an effort to snap her out of her grief and self-pity.
• In Bedknobs and Broomsticks Paul does this to a clay bust, then accessorizes it with a top hat. See it at 2:41 in this video.
• Catch Us If You Can: On one of the Meat for Go ads, someone has drawn glasses and a beard on model Dinah's face, which a worker has to clean off. Later, Dinah draws glasses, a mustache, and bad teeth on her own poster.
• One scene in Flubber has two chunks of Flubber fall into an inkpot, then paint a replica of the Mona Lisa on the desk. They finish it off by giving her a long thin mustache.
• One of the first Football Follies clip shows/specials featured this in the bumpers, done to stills of a player. One has a pre-defaced image, followed by it being 'shaved' off quickly!
• Played for laughs in King Kong (2005), when Carl Denham's vain leading man Bruce Baxter, not popular with either the film crew or the crew of the Venture, tacks up a bunch of his old posters in his stateroom. Returning with a movie magazine, he's horrified and angry to find out that Jimmy has scribbled goatees, glasses, scars, black eyes and buck teeth all over them... until he spots one poster with a thick black mustache. Not only does he admire it, but he grabs a comb and starts play-acting in the mirror to see if it would look good on-screen.
• As in the book (below), the film version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has Edmund drawing a mustache on the "statue" of a lion in the witch's courtyard. He later sports the mustache even after he's been brought back to life.
• The Little Rascals had an episode with Alfalfa as a crooner and Spanky as his agent. A big talent show is coming up and Butch pays Spanky a visit. As he and Spanky talk, Butch takes the picture Spanky has of himself and gives it a black eye and blacks out some of the teeth. The purpose of this is to intimidate him into getting Alfalfa to drop out of the contest, Butch heavily implying that he'll make Spanky look like the picture if he doesn't.
• After being sorely tempted by native girl Wednesday, Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. pulls out his picture of his fiance, Jane—only to find that the native girls have defaced it with a mustache and goatee (or maybe it's a Van Dyke?).
• Now You See It...: When angry at Danny, Allison spends her time defacing photos of him, giving him a mustache, goatee, and stupid glasses.
• In Problem Child 2, Junior, a little jealous of the attention his adoptive father is giving Annie Young, decides to deface her picture in this way. He's found by Trixie, her daughter who is equal to him in being bad, who sternly warns him "I wouldn't do that if I were you." When Junior doesn't listen, Trixie floors him, says "Next time, you'll listen to me," and then draws a mustache on him with his own marker.
• In Robot Jox, the protagonist has his poster vandalised this way (amongst others) for retiring after he's left traumatised when his Humongous Mecha crushes a stand full of spectators.
• The Leslie Nielsen movie Wrongfully Accused has a scene where the main character defaces his "Wanted!" Poster so no one will make the connection that it's him. Another character played by Nielsen inexplicably appears with the same features he drew on the picture, and is promptly arrested.

Literature

• In Adrian Mole:
  • The whole school is summoned before the headmaster when it is discovered that somebody drew a moustache on the portrait of Margaret Thatcher above the headmaster's desk, and wrote "three million unemployed" on her cleavage.
  • When a Conservative election candidate leaves his poster at the Mole household, Adrian draws horns on his head, and puts it up in the window.
• In the book The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, the Herdmans are shown drawing mustaches on illustrations of Jesus.
• In Castle Hangnail, after the Evil Sorceress traps one of her victims in a block of ice, one of her henchmen carves a mustache in the front of the ice block over the victim's face. Surprisingly not really played for laughs, since it's to demonstrate how little the henchmen care about the victims.
• Discworld: In Maskerade, Nanny Ogg kills some time by drawing mustaches on the Instructive Diagrams in one of Verence's books on "marital arts". It's hinted that Verence thereafter interprets the diagrams as requiring him and Magrat to wear false mustaches while having sex.
• In Emil and the Detectives, Emil is reluctant to approach the police and instead uses the help of other children. The reason is that a few weeks earlier he painted a beard and mustache on a statue, so he's afraid the police won't believe him.
• In Good Omens, it's mentioned that one of the late Witchfinders used to draw mustaches and spectacles on all the witches and demons in the Witchfinder Army's collection of demonological texts.
• Legendof Zagor have the protagonist exploring the long-abandoned halls of Castle Argent ever since the Bone Demon's takeover. The portraits of various noblemen and ladies were notably defaced by the orcs, with the women having 'staches scribbled on their faces.
• In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Edmund draws a mustache on a stone lion. It's portrayed as malicious rather than funny, since he knows that it used to be a real lion, and in fact, thinks it used to be Aslan.
• In a Sweet Valley Twins book, Jessica and Elizabeth become rivals when they run for class president. Elizabeth is the one to invoke this by ruining the posters Jessica has made for her campaign by drawing a mustache over all of her pictures. Although she's doing this in retaliation for Jessica taking her flyers and throwing them into the school fountain, Jessica actually didn't do that, so Elizabeth's actions end up looking especially malicious.
• In This Alien Shore, Playful Hacker Phoenix likes modifying Internet Ads so the models have mustaches.
• In Walt Disney's Words That Tell You About Things, Donald Duck dreams about the kind of duck he's glad he's not. One of his dreams depicts him as a spiteful practical joker who vandalizes a picture of Minnie by drawing a mustache on it.

Live-Action TV

• In Battlestar Galactica (2003), Kara Thrace gave her surrogate father Bill Adama a birthday card with a photo of herself, "proving" their relation by jokingly drawing a mustache and a pair of glasses on her own face.
• In an episode of Dad's Army, Pike gets mud on his hands and wipes it off on a nearby statue, taking the opportunity to give the statue a moustache and goatee in the process.
• In one episode of Frasier, Daphne casually suggests that Frasier grow a moustache, because there's a billboard of him that she's seen that has been defaced in that way, and she thinks it looks good.
• Full House: While riding the subway, the family notices an ad for Wake Up, San Francisco where someone has drawn a mustache (and a few missing teeth) on Danny.
• Grange Hill: The pupils use putty on a gallery of the teachers, giving Mr. Keating a moustache, and Mr. Baxter horns.
• Doctor House once enhanced a poster featuring his Jewish underling with hair parted on the right and a little square moustache◊. In front of said man (and his colleagues). Then asked him whether it was "Inappropriate? You know, because of the Jew thing..."
• In the opening intro to LazyTown, Trixie can be seen drawing a moustache on one of Mayor Meanswell's posters.
• In an episode of Lizzie McGuire, the cast gets issued their school yearbooks. Gordo rhetorically asks his friends what the first thing anyone does with their new yearbook is. Miranda and Lizzie say it's to draw a mustache on the gym teacher.
• Modern Family: After Phil sees one of the advertisements for his real estate agency defaced with a mustache drawn on his picture, he thinks he would look good with a mustache and decides to grow one.
• Power Rangers
  • Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers:
    • In the episode "Best Man for the Job", Tommy and Kimberly are candidates in an election for class president and thanks to a spell put on them by Rita, they become very competitive with each other. This includes one scene of Tommy drawing a moustache and glasses on one of Kimberly's posters and then deciding to "fix it" by putting one of his posters over it. Kimberly then gets back at him by changing the words "Vote for Tommy" on the poster to "Don't vote for Dummy."
    • The three-part episode "The Wedding" has a corrupted Alpha 5 make several modifications to Zordon, including giving him a mustache.
  • The Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue episode "In the Limelight" had Kelsey draw glasses, a beard, and a mustache on Dana's picture on a magazine cover.
• Radio Enfer: One episode begins with Carl claiming on the air that Mr. Giroux did this on a poster of Pamela Anderson. Hearing the teenager making this lie makes Giroux furious, even more so after learning that it was Carl himself who drew a mustache on said poster.
• The Rockford Files: In the first episode, Jim Rockford sees a beard and mustache penciled onto his ad in a phone-booth phone book. Annoyed, he erases it while conducting his conversation.
• Sesame Street featured a segment where Muppet cowboys compare a "Wanted!" Poster of Cookie Monster with the actual Cookie Monster. When their suspicion peaks, Cookie Monster distracts them long enough to draw a mustache on the poster. The cowboys notice the disparity, and apologize to Cookie Monster for suspecting him. Cookie Monster amiably tips his hat ... and lots of stolen cookies tumble out. [[Mayhem Ensues]].
• Shining Time Station: In "Bully for Mr. Conductor", JB King's nephew Buster was about to draw a mustache on one of the people in the mural wall, though Becky stops him and he decided not to after the ink of his marker dried up.
• In the Shoestring episode "Listen to Me", Eddie hears that a rapist and murderer had a mustache and glasses. He draws a mustache and glasses onto a police sketch in the newspaper to help identify the man.
• In one of the sketches in the British comedy series The Sketch Show, Ronni introduces her boyfriend Lee to Karen by showing her a picture of him, which has a red mustache, red glasses and red hair doodled over it. Karen asks her why she did that, but it turns out that's what Lee really looks like.
• In the The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "The Mind and the Matter," Archibald Beechcroft draws a mustache on a poster of a woman in a desperate attempt to amuse himself in a world where he has made all the people disappear.
• One episode of Young Dracula has the Count repeatedly draw on a picture of Ingrid. This backfires later in the episode when he summons her to be introduced to a suitor she has no interest in, only for her to show up with an extremely ugly face thanks to a Halloween makeup kit. In a panic, the Count pulls out a photo of her to show the suitor what she really looks like... only to discover it's the same one he kept drawing on, which doesn't look any better.

Magazines

• In one of Sergio Aragones' "A Mad Look At..." comics for MAD, a presidential candidate sees a poster of himself after being subjected to mustache vandalism. He then decides he actually would look good with a mustache, and grows one.
  • In another Aragones comic, a criminal sees his image on a "Wanted!" Poster, so he quickly goes home and puts on glasses and a fake mustache. However, some kid draws glasses and a mustache on the poster, so when the criminal goes out again, he's arrested.

Music

• The cover to Devo's outtake compilation Something Else For Everybody is pretty much just a pseudo-vandalized version of the artwork to their album Something For Everybody. The original cover photo is a woman with her eyes closed, about to bite into a candy shaped like the band's trademark "energy dome" hats - the Something Else For Everybody art adds the word "Else" and an arrow above the title and the band's signatures, and also blacks out one of the woman's teeth and adds a black pupil to one of her closed eyes.
• In Lee Ann Womack's "I'll Think of a Reason Later," the narrator confesses to "[drawing] horns and [blacking] out a tooth" on her ex's fiancée in a wedding announcement.
  Childish? Yes, but she made such a thin little target...
• "By the Monument" by Maxïmo Park implies it:
  Defacing pictures of famous people on the train...
• "Your Tattoo" by Sammy Kershaw has the narrator pondering what to do with a tattoo of his now-ex-lover and referencing this trope:
  Oh, it won't wash off or fade away
  And I'm stuck with you till my dying day
  It's just a picture of a girl in her birthday suit
  With her cowboy hat and her cowboy boots
  I can go to the man and have him erase
  Or have him put a mustache on your face
  What am I gonna do with your tattoo?

Newspaper Comics

• Played With in one B.C. strip. A character encounters a campaign poster for a bearded caveman, so he vandalizes it by erasing the beard.
• In Calvin and Hobbes, Hobbes likes to do this to Calvin's comic books.
  • Calvin's scheme to avoid getting attacked by Hobbes when he comes home by putting a dummy of himself in front of the door backfires, with Hobbes inviting the dummy inside and locking the real Calvin out. Calvin then overhears Hobbes asking the dummy: "May I draw mustaches on all the superheroes? I may? Oh joy!"
  • In another strip, Calvin is trying to convince his mom to stop Hobbes from reading his comic books:
    Mom: Well, you should learn to share. I don't think Hobbes will hurt them.
    Calvin: Are you kidding?! He drew a mustache and glasses on every picture of Nuke-Man last issue! In pen!
    Mom: Why don't you go play outside, Calvin.
• In one For Better or for Worse strip, Michael draws moustaches and black teeth on every person in a magazine Elly brought home, which infuriates her since she wanted to keep it forever due to it containing a poem she published.
• Garfield:
  • Garfield does this to a picture of Jon◊, and when Jon demands Garfield fix it, Garfield draws a mustache on Jon's face as well.
  • In another strip (September 29, 1999), Garfield proudly proclaims "I just finished drawing a mustache on every picture of Jon in the house!" The next panel sees Jon stick his mustachioed head in:
    Jon: I just drew a mustache on my face!
    Garfield: Troublemaker!
• Parodied in the Swedish satire comic Rocky. One strip, published during the national elections of 2006, had Rocky talk about how people have been vandalizing election posters the same way for almost a century, pointing out the poster of the party leader of Moderaterna (the Swedish conservative party) with a gap tooth, only for his friend to point out that said politician actually HAS a gap in his front teeth. Rocky finds this amazing, and says the guy should grow a Hitler moustache, get a swastika forehead tattoo and get devil horn implants too to get a leg up on any would-be vandals.

Professional Wrestling

• The reDRagon poster was mysteriously scribbled on and the Michael Elgin picture Mandy Leon kept in the locker she used for Inside Ring of Honor gained a new mustache when it was taken over and renamed Story Time With Adam Cole.

Radio

• In one of his monologues on My Word!, Frank Muir speculates on whether various artworks only achieved greatness by accident. One of his suggestions is that "The Laughing Cavalier" would have been exhibited as clean-shaven if Hals hadn't left it against the wall of a tube station while he bought his ticket.

Stand-Up Comedy

• In his Tinselworm show, Bill Bailey combines this with Incredibly Lame Fun.
  Knock knock.
  Don't say "knock knock", just knock! What's all this "knock knock" business?
  I'm just trying to leaven the mundanity of your day.
  Well, don't try to leaven the mundanity of my day! If I want my mundanity leavened, I'll do what I always do.
  What's that?
  I will draw a moustache at random on the TV with a marker pen, and wait for that glorious yet fleeting moment when Jeremy Paxman becomes General Kitchener.

Tabletop Games

• A card in the On The Edge collectible card game only worked if you permanently defaced it in this fashion... ruining its resale value.

Video Games

• In Andy Volcano Andy's grandfather drew various accessories such as glasses and a bra on a couple of native statues.
• In Baldur's Gate III the Player Character has the option to vandalize a portrait of githyanki queen Vlaakith in this manner, annoying Token Evil Teammate Lae'zel and prompting a horrified young man to try and clean it up before the Inquisitor notices.
• In Baten Kaitos, a woman's expensive portrait is vandalized this way.
• One mission in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! is given by Pickle, to draw mustaches on all the wanted posters of himself.
• In the Glider PRO CD house "Art Museum," you can draw a mustache, goatee and glasses on a self-portrait of Peter Paul Rubens—for points!
• Jetpack Joyride 2: One of the monitors at the beginning of Legitimate Research stages has a portrait of Barry with a mustache and horns sloppily painted on it.
• In Just Cause 2, you can do this to billboards of Baby Panay.
• In LEGO City Undercover, crime boss Vinnie Pappalardo is attacked by a rival gang. One of the things the gang does besides trash the place is draw mustaches on the portraits of Vinnie's mother. Turns out they had to pay the artist to leave the mustache off.
• In Mystery Case Files 21: The Harbinger Marge's diary includes a photo of Aisling with devil horns and a mustache drawn on it.
• In Neighbours From Hell drawing a mustache and devil horns on a portrait with a marker is one of the pranks you can play on Rottweiler.
• An Easter Egg in Pokémon Crystal has the player discover some graffiti in the Celadon apartment building and doodle a mustache on it.
• In Punch-Out!! Wii, Aran Ryan's introduction video has him doodling a moustache on a poster of Little Mac.
• The Room: The Game. If you go into rooms when you aren't supposed to you can see weird things happening, like Mark drawing a mustache on Johnny's picture.
• Throughout Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, Bentley keeps a photo of his girlfriend Penelope on his binocucom. After the events of Episode 4, the photo is vandalized with a mustache and devil horns to signal Bentley's newfound hatred of Penelope when they break up following her Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome.
• In SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, you can earn a sock in Squidward's house by destroying everything, including painting a mustache on one of his portraits.
  Squidward: (after SpongeBob draws the mustache) Hey!
• In World of Warcraft, the world quest "Loa Your Standards" in Dazar'alor involves you putting mustaches on the Raptari druids' idols of their loa, Gonk.

Visual Art

• The dada artist Marcel Duchamp modified a copy of the Mona Lisa this way and gave it the title "L.H.O.O.Q." (this is a phonetic rendering of "Elle a chaud au cul", meaning "she's a nymphomaniac"). Duchamp later created a sequel, "L.H.O.O.Q. shaved", which is a Mona Lisa without a moustache and beard drawn on it.
• A NYC subway vandal has developed a more creative variation: defacing posters with a curvy moustache made out of the word "moustache".

Web Comics

• Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal (2022): One of Ziggy's schemes is to dress up as Spider-Ham and deface a giant poster of The Avengers in the middle of Times Square.

Web Videos

• The Lizzie Bennet Diaries: Charlotte is Lizzie's best friend and the diaries start as their mutual project. Charlotte is responsible for the editing. Occasionally she "hijacks" the videos with funny subtitles, drawings or voice-overs. In one episode, she draws devil's horns, eyebrows, and an evil goatee on Lizzie's face. Picture.◊

Western Animation

• In The Amazing World of Gumball episode "The Painting", Gumball and Darwin draw a mustache on Miss Simian's portrait in Principal Brown's office as he's lecturing their parents on how to be a better influence on their sister, Anaïs.
• Two wanted posters of Bugs Bunny in Fresh Hare are defaced with graffiti, most likely by Bugs himself. One poster has a fake mustache and tongue sticking out, while the other has Bugs looking like Adolf Hitler.
• In Central Park, Season 1 "Hot Oven", after reading Bitsy's letter in the newspaper, Paige draws one on the small, cartoon Bitsy. She and Owen then proceed to further vandalize the small figure.
• Danny Phantom:
  • In episode "Fanning the Flames", Sam draws things on a giant cardboard cut out of Ember McClain.
  • The first thing Technus does as soon as he's freed from Danny's old game of Doomed is to open a paint program with a picture of Danny's crush Paulina and draw a mustache and massive glasses on her. When he gets transferred to Tucker's PDA, he does the exact same thing to Tucker's copy of Paulina's picture.
  • Later, once Technus beams himself into the mainframe of the Fenton RV, he does the exact same to a picture of Jack Fenton.
• The DC Super Hero Girls (2019) short "#AdBlockers" has Oliver Queen vandalize a poster of Zatanna's magic show by drawing an eyepatch and mustache over Zatanna's picture and writing that people should see his show instead, with Zatanna subsequently retaliating by vandalizing one of Queen's posters so that he appears to have zits and writing on the poster that his show is cancelled due to bad acne.
• Droopy:
  • The short "Señor Droopy", the main character's Berserk Button is activated when the bull he is fighting defaces the picture of a beautiful Spanish woman he is holding (Mexican actress Lina Romay) with a moustache.
  • The gag appears in "One Droopy Knight", where a dragon defaces a picture of the princess Droopy wants to marry.
• The Fairly OddParents! episode "Playdate of Doom" shows several drawings of Poof in Foop's cell, some of which have a mustache and goatee drawn on them.
• Parodied in Family Guy episode "Love Thy Trophy". Peter ransacks his neighbors' houses to find their supposedly stolen trophy and draws mustaches on their family portraits...except Cleveland, who already has a mustache. Peter erases it with a pencil instead.
• This is the 'crime' committed in the Fillmore! episode "Masterstroke of Malevolence". Fillmore and Third must discover the identity of the vandal before the ink dries so the restorer can identify the brand of marker used and save the portrait. It wasn't actually vandalism, despite one student who used to do this kind of thing regularly, it was the original artist adding a detail his patron demanded he left out.
• Subverted in Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Clowns are the new mustaches.
• In the Harvey Street Kids episode "The Great Brain Robbery", a flashback shows Melvin doing this to the Harvey Girls' Horn-A-Corn dolls, then the girls themselves.
• Jem:
  • "The Music Awards, Part 2" has Pizzazz hang-gliding and using a laser gun to vandalize a billboard of Jem by burning a mustache onto Jem's face.
  • In the second part of the two-part episode "The Jem Jam", Techrat can be seen drawing a mustache on a computer monitor depicting Pizzazz's face during the musical number "Gimme a Gimmick".
• Looney Tunes:
  • The cartoon "Daffy Doodles" has Daffy Duck as the vandalizing "Mustache Fiend" and Porky Pig as a policeman trying to catch him. When Daffy finally gets arrested at the end of the cartoon (but let off by a jury of mustached Jerry Colonna look-alikes), Daffy tearfully repents and promises he'll never draw another mustache..."I'm doin' beards now!"
  • Porky gets hit with a Visual Pun in the form of a "handlebar mustache".
  • In "Fresh Hare", a wanted poster of Bugs Bunny gets the Hitler treatment, most likely by Bugs himself.
• Mr Krbec and his Animals: Two unruly boys who are visiting Castle Kulikov with their father attempt to draw a pair of glasses on Duke Ruprecht's painting. Ghost Ruprecht is not amused and starts to haunt them with gusto. They totally had it coming.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "One Bad Apple," Babs Seed does this to the Cutie Mark Crusaders during the musical portion of the episode.
  • In "A Bird in the Hoof", Philomena sneaks around drawing mustaches on a "Wanted!" Poster that Celestia's guards put up.
• In the title sequence of Phineas and Ferb, the title characters draw a mustache on what looks like a painting of Candace, until she pops her head out of the picture frame to yell at Phineas. The use of this trope is the result of Early-Installment Weirdness, though. Phineas was intended to be a lot brattier than the Nice Guy everyman he eventually became, leaving this part of the opening rather odd in hindsight.
  • The trope is later taken to its extreme in "Perry the Actorpus", where Dr. Doofenshmirtz invents a Mustache-inator, a device that grows a real, thick mustache on any person (or object) it hits.
• The Powerpuff Girls (2016): "Man Up 3: The Good, The Bad and the Manly" has the villain Man Boy planting mustaches on everything and everyone with a special cannon. When Bubbles gets hit, her mustache drives her power-crazy, even rendering Man Boy into a simpering wuss.
• In the Quack Pack episode "Ready, Aim...Duck!", Donald taunts the Claw while he's in his cell by drawing glasses and facial hair on the Claw's wanted poster.
• An episode of Recess has Principal Prickly do this to his own picture while subject to Hypno Fool (and thinking he's a six-year-old child). At the end of the episode he gets distracted by it (thinking he looks pretty good with a goatee) and forgets to punish the cast.
• Scooby-Doo and Shaggy have done this many times, usually with the "painting/statue coming to life" variation.
• A very rare example of an unintentional version of this trope: "Trude und ihr Tier" (in Die Sendung mit der Maus). Selfsame animal (think a two-meter ALF) simulates being busy and scribbles around in a fashion calendar or such without realizing what he does.
• The Simpsons:
  • When Springfield Elementary is snowed in and the kids take over, Milhouse draws mustaches on a bunch of portraits of former presidents, but is clueless about what to do when he reaches William Howard Taft, who already had one◊.
  • Happens in the episode "American History X-cellent".
• The Smurfs (1981):
  • In episode "Every Picture Smurfs A Story", Painter fixes up a picture of the artist Maestro (who turns out to be trapped in a portrait prison) by painting a mustache on him.
  • Played straight in "Tattle-Tail Smurfs", when Brainy shows up with a copy of Quotations Of Brainy Smurf that has his face image defaced with a moustache...and Painter is seen holding a paintbrush behind his back.
  • The Gingerbread Smurfs from the eponymous episode painted mustaches on the Smurfs, including Smurfette.
• In the Sonic Boom episode "Spacemageddonocalypse", Dr. Eggman takes Orbot and Cubot to his secret underground bunker, where he finds the place vandalized by them. He orders them to clean it up, including wiping a mustache off of a picture of him. Since Eggman already has a mustache, he gives us this line:
  Eggman: And get that mustache off my mustache!
• Tom and Jerry:
  • The cartoon "Touché, Pussy Cat!" shows Nibbles using an artist brush to paint a caricature of Tom on a wall. When Nibbles realizes that Tom is glaring at him, Nibbles paints spectacles and a mustache on Tom's face.
  • In "The Lonesome Mouse", Jerry draws a Hitler mustache on a picture of Tom before spitting at it. Unsurprisingly, this scene often gets cut from reruns.
  • In the 1975 short "The Supercape Caper", one of the villains, who is called the Mustache, gleefully draws mustaches on posters everywhere, but is caught after he marks up the face of a live policeman.
• Total Drama:
  • When Heather gives her vote in "No Pain, No Game", she holds up a photo of Eva on which she's drawn devil horns and a goatee with a red pen.
  • Upon learning the truth behind Trent's obsession with the number 9 in "Aftermath I: Trent's Descent", Bridgette brings up a digital photo of Gwen and doodles shocked eyebrows and tear-filled eyes onto it with a light pen to illustrate how Gwen'll feel when she hears the true story.
  • While discussing the Final Three in "Aftermath IV: Hawaiian Style", Geoff draws doodles on their digital headshots with a light pen. The soft Cody is adorned with pigtails and lipstick. The devious Alejandro gets devil horns, a toothed grin, and nose hair long enough to flow in the wind. And longterm pain-in-the-read Heather receives a vampire makeover complete with dripping fans, outlined eyes and eyebrows, and a High Collar of Doom.
  • In "The Obsta-Kill Course", one camper, who can only be Alejandro, votes for Mal by handing in a photo of him marked in red with devil horns, a goatee, a mustache, and an extra set of eyebrows to make him look angry.
  • Courtney draws herself up a chart on how to deal with the remaining competition she has in "Sundae Muddy Sundae". She draws Mike and Zoey as is, but with red pen she adds horns, a goatee, and nose hair to Gwen's drawing and a rat's tail to Scott's drawing.
• On T.U.F.F. Puppy, after breaking out of prison, Kitty's Evil Twin Katty swears revenge on her and attempts to vandalize a photo of the two of them, but ends up drawing a mustache, goatee, and glasses on herself instead of Kitty.
• Ugly Americans: In the episode "Better Off Undead", Leonard is shown defacing a "Wanted!" Poster of him. Having Mark wanting him drawn and quartered is quite an achievement...even for Leonard.
• The Wander over Yonder episode “The Little Guy” shows the Watchdogs being briefed on capturing Wander and Sylvia. Complete with their Wanted Posters being defaced with spikes, sharp teeth, devil horns, and a mustache/goatee.

Real Life

• Lower execs of a German food chain did this to interns as an "initiation ritual". Giant scandal ensues. See here.
• Australian Councillor Ryan Murphy noticed someone had drawn sunglasses and a mustache on one of his signs, and apparently thought it was an improvement.
• Ditto for this real estate agent.

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