"Unfortunately, something in the regenerating factor has caused a mutation resulting in what is, frankly, the most horrifying case of fibrodisplasia ossificans progressiva I've ever seen. It seems that after the latest regeneration, regrown muscle has hardened into new bone tissue and protrudes from the skin. The condition renders movement both difficult and painful, as subject can neither fully bend nor fully straighten some limbs without potentially breaking her own bones. It looks excruciating, and from the surveillance footage shows, it is."
Mariko about Monster X, Abraxas (Hrodvitnon)
But Nikolai, who lay there breathing with terrible difficulty, had had a strong, healthy body too. "And now that bent, hollow chest... with that awful rippling below his skin... and I not knowing what will become of me or wherefore..."
"It is... it is inside..." his brother's voice called elusively.
"What... what do you mean, inside?" Levin replied. "What is inside?"
Nikolai thrashed in the sheets; he was not awake, but talking from the depths of some consuming nightmare.
"It is inside me... deep inside... get it out... please... please, brother..."
"It is... it is inside..." his brother's voice called elusively.
"What... what do you mean, inside?" Levin replied. "What is inside?"
Nikolai thrashed in the sheets; he was not awake, but talking from the depths of some consuming nightmare.
"It is inside me... deep inside... get it out... please... please, brother..."
My fingers stretched out, elongating compared to the rest of my hands and arms. As they elongated, though, they slipped right out of the skin so that they became dry, white, bird-bone.
"Eeeewww!" Jake said, laughing in disgust. "That's something new!"
"Oh, man, I don't need to ever see that again!" I said.
Morphing is very unpredictable. It's not just this sort of gradual thing. It goes through phases. Sudden, bizarre, totally gross-looking stages. The bare bones thing was something new. And deeply, deeply not pretty.
"Eeeewww!" Jake said, laughing in disgust. "That's something new!"
"Oh, man, I don't need to ever see that again!" I said.
Morphing is very unpredictable. It's not just this sort of gradual thing. It goes through phases. Sudden, bizarre, totally gross-looking stages. The bare bones thing was something new. And deeply, deeply not pretty.
— Animorphs #20: The Discovery
"Gentlemen, behold! I have grafted a deer antler onto my groin!"
— Dr. Weird, Aqua Teen Hunger Force
And you look like the victim of a surgical crime
A little Darth Vader, a little Optimus Prime
You used to be "OK"
and I liked you that way
But I don't think that I like you "better"
No, I don't think that I like you "better"
A little Darth Vader, a little Optimus Prime
You used to be "OK"
and I liked you that way
But I don't think that I like you "better"
No, I don't think that I like you "better"
— Jonathan Coulton, "Better"
Fenn: [bubbling sound effects] What's... happening to my skin? What's happening to your face?!
Calcula: My face? I don't know... but my dear, sweet, clever, utterly brilliant son will...
Calcula: My face? I don't know... but my dear, sweet, clever, utterly brilliant son will...
[Toa Ignika] hurled the power of the Mask of Life at Icarax. Immediately, he sensed that the Makuta was not like other beings he had encountered. Icarax was armor and energy only, with no organic tissue anywhere in his body. Had it always been this way? Or had the Makuta once been something other than simply pure power housed in black armor?
Toa Ignika decided to find out.
Extending his power, he gave the Makuta a push back down the road of evolution. Swirling energy coalesced into solid matter; muscles and organs grew where they had not been for tens of thousands of years, but found no place to exist. The current generation of Makuta armor was designed to hold energy only, not organic tissue. As the old form struggled to replace the new, the pain was, to say the least, excrutiating. The sound that came from Icarax rebounced again and again off the walls of the mammoth cavern. For a moment, all the combatants were frozen in place, the battle halted by that sound.
No one could remember the last time they heard a Makuta scream.
Toa Ignika decided to find out.
Extending his power, he gave the Makuta a push back down the road of evolution. Swirling energy coalesced into solid matter; muscles and organs grew where they had not been for tens of thousands of years, but found no place to exist. The current generation of Makuta armor was designed to hold energy only, not organic tissue. As the old form struggled to replace the new, the pain was, to say the least, excrutiating. The sound that came from Icarax rebounced again and again off the walls of the mammoth cavern. For a moment, all the combatants were frozen in place, the battle halted by that sound.
No one could remember the last time they heard a Makuta scream.
— BIONICLE
When Picasso became bored of painting people, he started representing them as cubes and other abstract forms. The world called him a genius! I've spent my entire surgical career creating the same tired shapes, over and over again: the upturned nose, the cleft chin, the ample bosom. Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could do with a knife what that old Spaniard did with a brush?
— J. S. Steinman, BioShock
"Gears are turning in my head! And they hurt!"
"I want to sleep! But the noise of my lungs keeps me awake!"
"The gears are grinding my skin!"
"I want to sleep! But the noise of my lungs keeps me awake!"
"The gears are grinding my skin!"
— Handyman, BioShock Infinite
"Manny... I don't feel that... well. It's... like I'm being beaten up u—underwater. I can feel bits of my brain... falling away like a wet cake."
— Bernard Black, Black Books
Those who receive the blessing of Nurgle’s Rot endure some of the most twisted and foul bodily depredation imaginable. Sores swell, pulse, and split open, spraying pus and maggots. Bruises appear in an instant from even the slightest contact, often times with no contact at all, turning the flesh purple, yellow, and black. Fingers, toes, ears, and lips rot away and fall off. Hip bones soften and break, forcing leg bones through rancid flesh. In particularly vicious cases, the eyes and tongue become fertile breeding grounds of flies or even an especially mischievous Nurgling or two. It is a misery to which no amount of description can ever possibly do justice.
— Black Crusade: The Tome of Decay
"Hello, Brian. It's been a bad day for us all, hasn't it?"
Jackson lurched forward, as if about to be sick, and coughed up a long, ragged snake. It dangled from his mouth like a particularly vile old school tie. The Vice-Chancellor's head hung uselessly, but the snake — new organ, whatever? — darted about, alert. There was an eye where its head should have been, blinking sideways.
Things began to push at Jackson's suit from the inside. Damp patches appeared. Gabrielle's head fell from his lap and rolled across the floor.
What had been Jackson stood up. His old flesh hung like a tramp's suit on the living skeleton of new growth. Feeble hands were pushing his clothes apart.
The cobra-necked eye looked at Brian, then at Monica. He could not read any expression in the thing.
Jackson lurched forward, as if about to be sick, and coughed up a long, ragged snake. It dangled from his mouth like a particularly vile old school tie. The Vice-Chancellor's head hung uselessly, but the snake — new organ, whatever? — darted about, alert. There was an eye where its head should have been, blinking sideways.
Things began to push at Jackson's suit from the inside. Damp patches appeared. Gabrielle's head fell from his lap and rolled across the floor.
What had been Jackson stood up. His old flesh hung like a tramp's suit on the living skeleton of new growth. Feeble hands were pushing his clothes apart.
The cobra-necked eye looked at Brian, then at Monica. He could not read any expression in the thing.
— Bloody Students, by Kim Newman
"He should have let me die. I hate him for what he's done to me. If he only knew what it's like, being like this... Like all quantities, horror has its ultimate, and I am that."
— the disembodied head of Jan Compton (played by Virginia Leith), The Brain That Wouldn't Die
"Hey, there's this guy down the hall in the burn center I'd like you to see. After you see this guy, you'll never want to come back in here again. Man, this guy is so burned, he's cooked! A fucking Big Mac, overdone! You know what I mean?"
— Orderly, The Burning
God hadn't looked out for Roy Benson, didn't matter how much he prayed or kept his hands to himself. His fingers were swollen and blackened, and his face was covered in dark tumors, red at the edges and black at the center. One masked the entire left half of his face, closing the eye to a slit and disfiguring his lips so that they turned up at one side in the semblance of a grin. Jerry could make out what was left of his teeth, barely held in place by his rotting gums, and his distorted tongue flicking in the cavern of his mouth. Black fluid flowed like oil from his nostrils and his ears and the corners of his mouth, pooling on his chin before dripping onto the floor. He said something, but Jerry couldn't understand what it was. All he knew was that Roy Benson was rotting away before him, and crying because he couldn't understand why this was happening to him.
— The Cancer Cowboy Rides, by John Connolly
Itchy skin, inflamed and peeling. Mouldering scabs, decaying, dribbling. That was how it started. Then bouquets of angry boils swelled tender and ripe. And bilious slime, dimly amber, curdled in jaundiced wounds. Rivers of putrid phlegm cascaded from scarlet sores as fractured bone ruptured rotting flesh. Crimson agony soaked into tattered clothing. Sullied body and soiled garment twisted and merged... a swirling mosaic of fused fresh and fabric. That was how it continued. Sidney Crumb is ill.
— Captain Britain: A Crooked World, "Sid's Story"
Boris Shcherbina: The divers, the firefighters, the men in the control room... What does the radiation do them, precisely?
Valery Legasov: At the level some of them were exposed? Ionizing radiation tears the cellular structure apart. Skin blisters, turns red, then black. This is followed by a latency period: the immediate effects subside, the patient appears to be recovering — healthy, even... but they aren't. This usually only lasts for a day or two.
Boris Shcherbina: Continue.
Valery Legasov: Then, uh, cellular damage begins to manifest: the bone marrow dies, the immune system fails, the organs and soft tissue begin to decompose, the arteries and veins spill open like sieves — to the point that you can't even administer morphine for the pain, which is... unimaginable. And then, in three days to three weeks, you're dead. That is what will happen to those boys.
Valery Legasov: At the level some of them were exposed? Ionizing radiation tears the cellular structure apart. Skin blisters, turns red, then black. This is followed by a latency period: the immediate effects subside, the patient appears to be recovering — healthy, even... but they aren't. This usually only lasts for a day or two.
Boris Shcherbina: Continue.
Valery Legasov: Then, uh, cellular damage begins to manifest: the bone marrow dies, the immune system fails, the organs and soft tissue begin to decompose, the arteries and veins spill open like sieves — to the point that you can't even administer morphine for the pain, which is... unimaginable. And then, in three days to three weeks, you're dead. That is what will happen to those boys.
"My ailment is a parasite, Gusano Coco Cervello. This Worm is endemic throughout both Melanesia & Polynesia, but has been known to science only these last ten years. It breeds in the stinking canals of Batavia, doubtless the port of my own infection. Ingested, it voyages through the host's blood vessels to the brain's cerebellum anterior. (Hence my migraines and dizziness.) Ensconced in the brain, it enters a gestation phase. 'You are a realist, Adam,' Henry told me, 'so your pills shall be unsugared. Once the Parasite's larva hatch, the victim's brain becomes a maggoty cauliflower. Putrescent gasses cause the ear-drums and eyeballs to protrude until they pop, releasing a cloud of Gusano Coco spores.'"
— Adam Ewing,note Cloud Atlas
It had come to meet him, and it was still alive after a fashion. Whether it had crawled or whether it had been dragged by any external force, Ammi could not say; but the death had been at it. Everything had happened in the last half-hour, but collapse, greying, and disintegration were already far advanced. There was a horrible brittleness, and dry fragments were scaling off. Ammi could not touch it, but looked horrifiedly into the distorted parody that had been a face. "What was it, Nahum — what was it?" he whispered, and the cleft, bulging lips were just able to crackle out a final answer.
"Here you have the final stage of the bloodfly infection. This patient is 37 years of age, and was a school headmistress before her unfortunate encounter with a large nest in her deceased uncle’s greenhouse. Note the lesions on her face and arms, and the larval swellings throughout the body.
But what the drawings cannot show you is her demeanor before death; the most striking symptom of progressed infection is the protective attitude demonstrated towards the nest. This tells us, even prior to autopsy, that larvae, or their byproducts, have infected the intention center of the victim’s brain."
But what the drawings cannot show you is her demeanor before death; the most striking symptom of progressed infection is the protective attitude demonstrated towards the nest. This tells us, even prior to autopsy, that larvae, or their byproducts, have infected the intention center of the victim’s brain."
— A lecture by Dr. Alexandria Hypatia, Dishonored 2
Doctor: Her DNA's been rewritten. Every strand corrupted and reshaped... she's no longer human. Just a shell with a human appearance.
Graham: Is she going to live, Doc?
Doctor: There's nothing of her to live. It's like she's been erased.
Graham: Is she going to live, Doc?
Doctor: There's nothing of her to live. It's like she's been erased.
Doctor: Okay, whatever shape you want to take, that's fine. You can do whatever you want. I just want to say it's very nice to meet you. I'm the Doctor, this is Donna.
Donna: So are they.
Doctor: If you can just get those bodies to calm down, we can talk. That'll be nice, don't you think?
Donna: They're looking at us like food!
Not-Doctor: Food is interesting, because once I sort out the arms... [gets his arm to a normal-looking length] then I have a problem with the [jaw distends horrifically to the point of touching the floor] jaaaaaaaaaaw. [returns his jaw to normal]
Not-Donna: It's the knees. How many knees?
Not-Doctor: Two.
Not-Donna: Two in total, or two on each leg?
Donna: So are they.
Doctor: If you can just get those bodies to calm down, we can talk. That'll be nice, don't you think?
Donna: They're looking at us like food!
Not-Doctor: Food is interesting, because once I sort out the arms... [gets his arm to a normal-looking length] then I have a problem with the [jaw distends horrifically to the point of touching the floor] jaaaaaaaaaaw. [returns his jaw to normal]
Not-Donna: It's the knees. How many knees?
Not-Doctor: Two.
Not-Donna: Two in total, or two on each leg?
"It was fascinating to watch those tentacles grow out of your eyes."
— Neloth, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
As the parasite works its tendrils farther into its host, the host begins physically changing. Organs start to shut down, made unnecessary as the parasite becomes the only thing keeping the host "alive".
Hosts in the advanced stages look very much like walking corpses. Their skin takes on a deathly pallor as their hearts stop pumping blood, their eyes become glassy and sunken, and their movements become slower and less coordinated. Most horrifying of all, their skin bulges as the parasite writhes visibly beneath the surface...
Hosts in the advanced stages look very much like walking corpses. Their skin takes on a deathly pallor as their hearts stop pumping blood, their eyes become glassy and sunken, and their movements become slower and less coordinated. Most horrifying of all, their skin bulges as the parasite writhes visibly beneath the surface...
— "Under The Skin — Apocalypse", The End of the World: Zombie Apocalypse
Harold: ...I'm not sure I want to be a giant tree anymore. Well, truth be told it's Herbert that's the tree. He sorta just took over, you know? Probably to get back at me for calling him Herbert all the time. His name's really Bob. I think it's funny when I call him Herbert, though.
The Lone Warrior: So you're trapped in there, inside this Herbert... I mean Bob... thing?
Harold: Well, I suppose you could look at it that way. See, Bob used to ride around on top of my head, sunk his roots right in there, ya know? Well, eventually he got bigger than me, and then I pretty much ended up inside.
The Lone Warrior: So you're trapped in there, inside this Herbert... I mean Bob... thing?
Harold: Well, I suppose you could look at it that way. See, Bob used to ride around on top of my head, sunk his roots right in there, ya know? Well, eventually he got bigger than me, and then I pretty much ended up inside.
Seth Brundle: A fly... got into the transmitter pod with me that first time when I was alone. Uh, the computer... got confused — there weren't supposed to be two separate genetic patterns — and it decided to, uh... splice us together. It mated us, me and the fly. We hadn't even been properly introduced. My... teleporter turned into a gene splicer... and a very good one. Now I'm not Seth Brundle anymore. I'm the offspring of, um, Brundle and housefly.
Veronica Quaife: Oh, God. Oh, God, Seth... what'll happen?
Seth Brundle: I think it's showing itself as a bizarre form of cancer. General cellular chaos and revolution. I'm, uh... just gonna to disintegrate — in a novel way, no doubt. And then I'll die. And then it will be over.
Veronica Quaife: Oh, God. Oh, God, Seth... what'll happen?
Seth Brundle: I think it's showing itself as a bizarre form of cancer. General cellular chaos and revolution. I'm, uh... just gonna to disintegrate — in a novel way, no doubt. And then I'll die. And then it will be over.
Walter Bishop: Ah. Epidermal blistering. Tissue necrosis. Symptomatic of cytotoxins. Could you get a sample of this pus please, Peter?
Peter Bishop: I always get the good jobs.
Broyles: [about the victim] According to her co-workers, when she left for lunch, she was perfectly fine. She hadn't mentioned any signs of illness. That was about two hours before the 911 call.
John Potash: Uh, I was considering that these are contact burns from some sort of synthetic chemical.
Walter Bishop: No, these aren't chemical burns. They look more like malignant tumors.
Peter Bishop: I always get the good jobs.
Broyles: [about the victim] According to her co-workers, when she left for lunch, she was perfectly fine. She hadn't mentioned any signs of illness. That was about two hours before the 911 call.
John Potash: Uh, I was considering that these are contact burns from some sort of synthetic chemical.
Walter Bishop: No, these aren't chemical burns. They look more like malignant tumors.
Ser Jorah: They say the child was...
Mirri Maz Duur: Monstrous. Twisted. I drew him forth myself. He was scaled like a lizard, blind, with the stub of a tail and small leather wings like the wings of a bat. When I touched him, the flesh sloughed off the bone, and inside he was full of graveworms and the stink of corruption. He had been dead for years.
Daenerys: My son was alive and strong when Ser Jorah carried me into this tent. I could feel him kicking, fighting to be born.
Mirri Maz Duur: That may be as it may be, yet the creature that came forth from your womb was as I said. Death was in that tent, Khaleesi.
Mirri Maz Duur: Monstrous. Twisted. I drew him forth myself. He was scaled like a lizard, blind, with the stub of a tail and small leather wings like the wings of a bat. When I touched him, the flesh sloughed off the bone, and inside he was full of graveworms and the stink of corruption. He had been dead for years.
Daenerys: My son was alive and strong when Ser Jorah carried me into this tent. I could feel him kicking, fighting to be born.
Mirri Maz Duur: That may be as it may be, yet the creature that came forth from your womb was as I said. Death was in that tent, Khaleesi.
"The disease begins as a rash. The afflicted flesh stiffens, calcifies, and cracks, and assumes the disease's nominal hue. Victims are graciously spared pain, as the disease dulls sensation in the infected limbs. But the disease is insidious and slowly it creeps over the skin and into the organs. Once the infection reaches the brain, feral madness replaces humanity and the transformation to a stone man is complete."
— Qyburn, Game of Thrones, "History and Lore of Westeros: Greyscale and the Stone Men"
"Oh, wow! That's a great offer. How 'bout instead, I shuffle the functions of every hole in your face?"
— Bill Cipher, Gravity Falls, "Weirdmageddon"
"Subject: Karl Ruprecht Kroenen. Born in Munich, 1897. Suffered from a masochistic compulsion commonly known as 'surgical addiction'. Both eyelids surgically removed, along with his upper and lower lip, making speech impossible. The blood in his veins dried up decades ago. Only dust remains. Four broken vertebrae. A steel rod inserted into his pelvis kept him upright... what horrible will could keep such a creature as this alive?"
— Professor Trevor Bruttenholm, Hellboy (2004)
Imagine you wake up one day to find out there's something different in your world, not an external event, but something about yourself that is not how it's supposed to be — something that wasn't there before. It starts out like a rash, a lump, or an irregular growth; it's worrisome, but you think to yourself it will probably leave. After a while, the unfamiliar visitor starts demanding your attention: the discomfort increases, and its appearance worsens. You try to conceal it, or even get rid of it, but you start understanding — it's not going away. It can't leave. It's a part of you, a threat spreading throughout your body, bruising your skin and swelling your insides, denaturing your being. An intimate nightmare with no exit, deforming and twisting you until you become something you don't even recognize, taking away parts of who you are and making you worry about what you might lose next. Body horror lives in this kind of fear: the destruction of one's body.
"Now, Dib, let's see what you look like with all your organs ON THE OUTSIDE!"
— Zim experimenting on Dib, Invader Zim
"I'm just a lonesome old hobo, ain't got no money, ain't got no home, but I got me one thing: I got a disease that's eating me up. My skin's cracking open, my teeth are falling out, and you know what? I can feel myself turning bad like an apple that's going soft, I can feel it happening, eating from the inside to the out, eating, eating, eating me."
— Eddie Kaspbrak imagining the hobo's perspective, It
"This might tickle."
— Tsukasa Kadoya's catchphrase for when he activates a Final Form Ride, Kamen Rider Decade
"D-D-D-Double opened up! I can see inside Double!"
— Narumi Akiko, in response Double's Xtreme Form, Kamen Rider Double
Tatl: That doesn't hurt, does it?
Link: I just had my entire DNA rewritten. What do you think?
Link: I just had my entire DNA rewritten. What do you think?
— The Legend of Zelda: The Abridged Series (adamwestlapdog version)
The Qlippothic Sphere of Life is growth gone horribly wrong. It embodies cancerous growth and parasitism. The fecundity it encourages is vibrantly sick, pregnant with half-formed monstrosities and self-strangling over-abundance. Qlippothic Life magics are the magics of plague and parasite, and they feed on true Life magics the way a tick draws blood from its host.
— Mage: The Ascension — The Book of Madness
Garrus: One of my detainees started bleeding profusely during the interview. We offered to patch him up and he got frantic, freaked out. I ordered a full exam to find out what was going on. Our medics found incisions all over his body — some of them fresh. That was our big break. These people weren't just Dr. Saleon's employees: they were test tubes. Walking, living test tubes.
Shepard: He was growing parts inside these people?!
Garrus: Exactly. He cloned their organs right inside their own bodies, then he harvested them and sold them off. Most of the victims were poor; he'd pay them each a small percentage of the sales, but only if the organs were good. Sometimes an organ wouldn't grow properly, so he'd just leave it in them. Most of them were a mess — but only on the inside, hidden so no one could see it.
Shepard: He was growing parts inside these people?!
Garrus: Exactly. He cloned their organs right inside their own bodies, then he harvested them and sold them off. Most of the victims were poor; he'd pay them each a small percentage of the sales, but only if the organs were good. Sometimes an organ wouldn't grow properly, so he'd just leave it in them. Most of them were a mess — but only on the inside, hidden so no one could see it.
...And the asshole said to him, "It's you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we don't need you around here anymore. I can talk and eat and shit.
After that, he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole's tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over and the whole head would have amputated spontaneous — (did you know there is a condition occurs in parts of Africa and only among Negroes where the little toe amputates spontaneously?) — except for the eyes, you dig. That's one thing the asshole couldn't do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn't give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while, you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab's eye on the end of a stalk.
After that, he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole's tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over and the whole head would have amputated spontaneous — (did you know there is a condition occurs in parts of Africa and only among Negroes where the little toe amputates spontaneously?) — except for the eyes, you dig. That's one thing the asshole couldn't do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn't give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while, you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab's eye on the end of a stalk.
This poor unfortunate had a tire blow at something way over the speed limit on an open but empty field. By the time anybody else came along, gremlins had scuttled away with his unconscious body and begun repairing it. They dug out the fragments of his splintered ribs, kept his heart beating with bits of an old alarm clock and gave him a solid metal chassis underneath his chest. He didn't do much more than moan and squirm a little, though, so they began to look for other problems. Ultimately, they replaced his entire trunk with plastic and rubber, and replaced his clumsy digestive system with a processing plant for simple diesel. The characters might discover the Gremlin Victim dying by the side of the road, desperate for fuel, or they might be sent to rescue him when he doesn't arrive somewhere as planned. Of course, he's not long for the world after the gremlins finish with him...
— New World of Darkness — Midnight Roads
The highprince's entire chest had collapsed inward. There was no sign of ribs or internal organs. Instead, a large violet crystal pulsed inside his chest cavity, overgrown with dark veins. If he'd been wearing a uniform or padding beneath the armor, it had been consumed.
Scraps of skin and fur and feathers swung as he moved; tiny limbs clutched; eyes rolled from obscure niches; antlers and protrusions of bone jutted precariously; feelers twitched and mouths glistened. Many-coloured skeins of skin collided. A cloven hoof thumped gently against the wood floor. Tides of flesh washed against each other in violent currents. Muscles tethered by alien tendons to alien bones worked together in uneasy truce, in slow, tense motion. Scales gleamed. Fins quivered. Wings fluttered brokenly. Insect claws folded and unfolded.
Lin backed away, stumbling, feeling her terrified way away from his slow advance. Her chitinous headbody was twitching neurotically. She shook.
Mr. Motley paced towards her like a hunter. "So," he said, from one of the grinning human mouths. "Which do you think is my best side?"
Lin backed away, stumbling, feeling her terrified way away from his slow advance. Her chitinous headbody was twitching neurotically. She shook.
Mr. Motley paced towards her like a hunter. "So," he said, from one of the grinning human mouths. "Which do you think is my best side?"
"If you need to go to the bathroom after this next series of tests, please let a test associate know, because in all likelihood whatever comes out of you is going to be coal. Only temporary, so do not worry. If it persists for a week, though, start worrying and come see us, because that's not supposed to happen."
— Cave Johnson, Portal 2
"If you've cut yourself at all in the course of these tests, you might have noticed that your blood is pure gasoline. That's normal. We've been shooting you with an invisible laser that's supposed to turn blood into gasoline, so all that means is it's working."
— Cave Johnson again, Portal 2
"We're working on a little teleportation experiment. Now this doesn't work with all skin types, so try to remember which skin is yours, and if it doesn't teleport along with you, we'll do what we can to sew you right back into it."
— Cave Johnson has a bit of a thing with this trope, Portal 2
Some say that when the Nuclear Promethean's disfigurements show, he has no skin. Or maybe what skin he has is red and sloughing off from eternal sunburn. Some say that he breathes radioactive fire. One account tells of bleeding eyeballs; another tells of bleeding pores, the whole surface of the body so slick with hemorrhaged blood that it could be used to contaminate objects and spread radiation sickness like a plague. Other tales tell of him leaving behind irradiated clumps of skin. Descriptions of huge tumors abound, enormous lesions and growths that spread, turning into fleshy armor or sometimes extra limbs, which sometimes grow faces and limbs of their own before detaching and walking away.
"And what's stopping us from, I dunno, fusing to the suit once we reach the other side or some kind of other bodily horror crap happening to us?"
— Yang Xiao Long, Chapter 24 of Remnant Inferis: DOOM
"I'm writing to tell you that I've finished examining your X-rays. Those dark areas in your cranium are fungus-like structures that seem to be related to mold. The hallucinations and noises you said you've been hearing may be related to these growths.
If your symptoms are due to a fungal parasite, it must be removed before it's too late. I don't mean to scare you, but I am seriously concerned for your health."
If your symptoms are due to a fungal parasite, it must be removed before it's too late. I don't mean to scare you, but I am seriously concerned for your health."
— Crawford Lang, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
"My entire body feels hot and itchy and I'm sweating all the time now. I scratched the swelling on my arm and a piece of rotten flesh just dropped off. What the hell's happening to me?"
— A portion of the Keeper's diary, Resident Evil (Remake)
"Writing this, I look at the men in what remains of the encampment. With each breath of Zhidkov's, a swarm of flies briefly stirs, disturbed by the movement of his rotting flesh. Ivakin's flesh has begun to split as the tumors begin to erupt from within. Even those few who have escaped with body fully intact have had their nerves utterly shattered. Toropov stares at the sun all day. Saltykov insists that he is merely a gear in some infernal machine."
— Dr. Jean Durand on the effects of the weapons
he and Dr. Nemes produced, SCP Foundation: Smothering Dreams
he and Dr. Nemes produced, SCP Foundation: Smothering Dreams"SCP-790-01's left eyeball fell out this morning; a brief dissection showed that not only had the optic nerve been completely dissolved, but the eye itself was empty except for blood. We tried to take a sample, but the damn stuff animated too quickly, escaping the labs and rejoining the SCP-790's main body before we could stop it. I honestly don't think 790-01's going to live much longer — the only thing holding him together is his own blood, and that's because it's trying to eat him."
— Dr. Spelter on SCP-790, SCP Foundation
, SCP Foundation"It started with stomach spasms that felt like writhing lamprey nests hatching in his belly. Then, Joe could hear the hag-fish singing in the crushing depths, even when he pretended he could not, even when the Q-tips snapped in half in his bloody ears. Madness bubbled in his brain like the bends. Then pale flesh. Then barnacle sores and wriggling growths and sea cucumber discharges. Now Joe feels the itch and burn as different species of coral battle for primacy of his chest, spitting up their digestive enzymes in time-lapse warfare. Something scuttles out of one body cavity, to be eaten by something hiding in another.
And though the seagulls hear a thousand stories, all Joe can hear is 'Draug-draug-draug-draug-draug!'"
And though the seagulls hear a thousand stories, all Joe can hear is 'Draug-draug-draug-draug-draug!'"
— The Buzzing, The Secret World
"I've done it, Kevin! I've successfully gene-spliced this chipmunk with a piece of provolone cheese!"
— Dr. Alphonse Mephesto, South Park
"Enterprise. What we got back didn't live long... fortunately."
— A transporter officer, Star Trek: The Motion Picture
"Her eyes will hatch soon. But until then, she wants to work."
— On the Gall-Eyed Engineer, Sunless Sea
"Timothy, as you can plainly see, is suffering from a marked excess of dermis. In other words, too much skin. His internal organs are similarly affected; heart, liver, lungs, intestines, what have you, all stretched to near-bursting. This accounts for the marked bulging of his torso. We keep Timmy in a constant state of complete sedation and hooked up to heart-lung machine. It's the only way his body can continue to operate in its present form.
I see most of you don't recognize poor Timothy, but you've no doubt heard of his exploits under his nom de superplume, the musclebound, nine-feet toil fuchsia force of nature known as The Humongous. In pre-Flux days, Mr. Tibbetts was a mild-mannered accountant with suppressed anger issues. Ordinarily, this would have presented no real worry, but the Flux physically externalized his rage, expanding his body mass into the indestructible, grunting horrorhero we all love. The thing is, when the rage ultimately subsides and escapes his body like air from a deflating balloon, what is left is a distorted, enlarged mass of muscle tissue and skin draped over a skeletal structure too puny and frail to handle it."
I see most of you don't recognize poor Timothy, but you've no doubt heard of his exploits under his nom de superplume, the musclebound, nine-feet toil fuchsia force of nature known as The Humongous. In pre-Flux days, Mr. Tibbetts was a mild-mannered accountant with suppressed anger issues. Ordinarily, this would have presented no real worry, but the Flux physically externalized his rage, expanding his body mass into the indestructible, grunting horrorhero we all love. The thing is, when the rage ultimately subsides and escapes his body like air from a deflating balloon, what is left is a distorted, enlarged mass of muscle tissue and skin draped over a skeletal structure too puny and frail to handle it."
— SÜPER, by Corey Redekop
"And then there were the people who went six months in its presence. The first team, you see, it never occurred to them that they were breathing in spores. I should show you photos. I think I have them on a memory stick in the bag somewhere. When they cut old Massey open, they found three mycoprotein heads growing in his stomachs, like doll's heads carved out of toadstools."
— Reddin, Supergod
I remember seeing myself splayed across the floor of the kennel, a chimera split along a hundred seams, taking communion with a handful of dogs. Crimson tendrils writhed on the floor. Half-formed iterations sprouted from my flanks, the shapes of dogs and things not seen before on this world, haphazard morphologies half-remembered by parts of a part.
"Real newborns aren't clean-looking gurgling bundles of cuteness. Real newborns are covered in mucus, blood, amniotic fluid, and other bodily substances, up to and including fecal matter. There is a chance they could be covered in a peach fuzz-like substance called lanugo (a remnant of when our ancestors were a lot hairier than we are now; most fetuses lose it before birth, but obviously, a few don't). They may also be covered in a waxy substance called vernix caseosum, which is basically just congealed skin oils, dead cells, and lanugo. Their skin will usually have a red hue to it as well and look somewhat "wrinkly", especially if they are considerably premature. On top of all this, most newborns have noticeably misshapen heads from the birth process, since their skulls aren't yet closed and their bones are very flexible. To say nothing of the placenta that should be popping out with the babe. Even newborns that have been cleaned up and are a couple days old are generally Ugly Cute at best. It's been said that all newborn babies look like Winston Churchill."
— TV Tropes, from Three-Month-Old Newborn, explaining exactly why most people are revolted at the sight of newborns and babies
"Diseased. Filthy, diseased, crawling things. Plagued with the infection of flesh. Disgusting. Dirty. Diseased. Weeping sores. Slice them away. Slice their bodies away before they are lost in the meat. No. Don't touch the meat. Let them boil in their prisons. Don't touch them, the filthy, crawling creatures. Keep away from them. They share their infection. They think they have carved out their cancer, but it grows. It grows in them. It waits until Gehenna to eat their flesh. To consume the corrupted, stinking meat.
CAN'T THEY SEE?"
CAN'T THEY SEE?"
"It is done. Hear me, Children of Adam. I command—"
The Arch-Usurper's voice chokes off in a gurgle. His body twitches, swells and churns as eyes, mouths, tentacles and other organs erupt from his flesh and sink back in again. Amid all the changes, he laughs a deep, ugly laugh. The characters cannot move; they cannot sense their own bodies in their millionfold view of the world. "Be of me," the Tremere-Thing says, and the characters see the flesh of millions of people ripple and flow in response. Kindred, kine and other, their skin splits apart to release a large, slimy, chitinous creature — part insect, part reptile and all nightmare; characters may recognize it as the Horrid Form of Vicissitude. Some mortals and supernatural part-humans resist the worldwide contagion, but they are a small minority. [...]
The Tzimisce Antediluvian has made its masterstroke. All is Tzimisce.
The Arch-Usurper's voice chokes off in a gurgle. His body twitches, swells and churns as eyes, mouths, tentacles and other organs erupt from his flesh and sink back in again. Amid all the changes, he laughs a deep, ugly laugh. The characters cannot move; they cannot sense their own bodies in their millionfold view of the world. "Be of me," the Tremere-Thing says, and the characters see the flesh of millions of people ripple and flow in response. Kindred, kine and other, their skin splits apart to release a large, slimy, chitinous creature — part insect, part reptile and all nightmare; characters may recognize it as the Horrid Form of Vicissitude. Some mortals and supernatural part-humans resist the worldwide contagion, but they are a small minority. [...]
The Tzimisce Antediluvian has made its masterstroke. All is Tzimisce.
— Vampire: The Masquerade — Gehenna
"Why are his eyes mouths?!"
— Vinny, Vinesauce (while corrupting The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time)
"Of the original four dozen, over seventy-five percent are dead now. Out of the ten that are left, I doubt that three will survive the night. One of the blacks, Donald Crane, is in particularly bad condition. He is delirious all the time and imagines he is in Trenchtown, Jamaica. He has started to develop four extra nipples, and his generative organs have atrophied. Strangely, there are no clear patterns emerging as to which group succumbs quickest. If anything, the women are slightly more resistant than the men, especially the black women. Rita Boyd, the lesbian, died at tea-time. During the autopsy, we found four tiny vestigial fingers forming within the calf of her leg."
— Delia Surridge, V for Vendetta
"The shimmering legions come for us, and we must dance to the beat of their drums. The spell-men of the Great Changer throw their will into the sky, and the air crackles with light and colour. We are lost! Why can't you see? He will melt my shape like he did his soldiers. He will give me fingers instead of legs and teeth instead of eyes. He'll steal my soul and make me giggle his rhymes, and I'll be counted as one of his, because Sigmar won't want me then. No one will want me then."
— Warhammer — Liber Chaotica
A warrior that is visited by too many gifts of the Dark Gods will eventually succumb to madness and mutation. His altered physique will reach a point where reason can no longer sustain it, and he will wail and scream in anguish as his flesh ripples, sprouts and writhes, undergoing the most profound and final of changes. Some unfortunates burst open like fleshy flowers, bloat like week-old corpses, or find tentacles and hairy arms that end in twisted mockeries of their own faces emerging from every orifice. Some grow into distended caricatures of beasts, with the heads of insects and predators pushing out from their chests and shoulders. Others find their rapidly-swelling flesh covered in blisters and buboes that burst open to reveal great bloodshot eyes, horror and panic writ large in every one. Truly the beasts known as Chaos Spawn have a thousand faces and forms. The only thing that unites them is the repugnance of their new flesh.
— Warhammer: Warriors of Chaos Army Book (7th edition)
"Now, as the pencil-pushers of our ranks might have forgotten, the Custodian body is a [crack] malleable thing. [pop] Thus, by fracturing some bones [crack] and ssssss— [pop] severing some fibre, we are able to [snap] compress our bodies [pop] and travel wherever we must..."
— Whammudes crawling into a pipe, If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device
"It was bad. She took Glory Girl with her, you know. When Gallant died, Vista saw the body. When Aegis was mashed to a literal pulp by Leviathan, to the point that he couldn't function anymore, when he died, despite his power? I got to see the remains to verify for myself. But Victoria Dallon was still alive and they didn't let us see. A select few adults and family members got to see her, they carted her off to a parahuman asylum and none of the rest of us got to say goodbye, because the end result was that fucked up."''
— Clockblocker, Worm
