grotesque characters
Distorted fictional beings
Grotesque characters are figures in art or literature marked by distortion, exaggeration, or the blending of incompatible elements—human with animal, comic with horrific, beautiful with repulsive.
The term originated with ornamental art featuring fantastical hybrid creatures.
In fiction, grotesque characters often embody physical deformity or moral corruption rendered with dark humor: Dickens populated his novels with grotesque characters.
The grotesque unsettles by making the familiar strange.
- madmanDangerously unstable person
- mad scientistDeranged researcher archetype
- mutantGenetically altered organism
- deformityAbnormal body structure
- hunchbackSpinal deformity causing stooping
misfit · freak show · chimera · neurotic · sociopath · dark triad · caricature · ogre · gargoyle · trickster · golem · monstrosity · cyclops · Quasimodo · delusional · villain · comic book villain · sadist
- ExpressionismEdvard Munch, The Scream, Der Blaue Reiter, German Expressionism, woodcuts
- Southern LiteratureWilliam Faulkner, Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Harper Lee, Tennessee Williams
- FelliniLa Dolce Vita, Casanova, Roma
grotesque, grotesquely, grotesqueness, grotesquerie, grotesquery, grotto, grottoes, grottos, character