It’s always weird seeing someone without their mustache. Remember when Alex Trebek shaved his? The mustache had somehow bridged the nose with the mouth into one single unit for so long that the discovery of not just an upper lip but also a heretofore undiscovered expanse of flesh resting between them forced you to completely reevaluate your perception of his face. How was that there the whole time, unnoticed? The new region belongs to neither nose nor mouth, rendering both uncomfortably distant. Recently, using all the might and creativity that modern computer-generated imagery can muster, the team behind Justice League showed just how uncanny that hairless valley can be, digitally removing Henry Caville’s mustache and failing to make that expanse of skin seem any less weird, even though we already know what Henry Caville looks like without a mustache.
There’s nothing weird about a mustache. There’s nothing weird about not having a mustache. But the moment of removal is a sort of strange body horror that is not to be visited upon lightly.
You have been warned.
This deeply, profoundly cursed image is actually the work of @yourfavisbald2, an account devoted to the removal of hair from video game and anime characters. (We do not want to know what happened to the original @yourfavisbald.) Here, for example, is McCree from Overwatch:
Here is a completely hairless Sonic The Hedgehog:
Here’s some anime girl:
You get the idea. Still, none of these images possess quite the occult power of shaved Mario, an icon of family-friendly entertainment who has never not had a mustache before. Because the internet was a mistake, the physical particulars of Mario’s body have come under increasing scrutiny in the past year or so. First came the revelation in Super Mario Odyssey that Mario had nipples; then one academic uncovered an ancient, officially canon text that revealed the long-sought existence of Mario’s penis. More recently, promotional imagery for the upcoming Mario Tennis Aces has revealed a slight bulge in Luigi’s pants, which Tumblr users extrapolated from to produce startlingly vivid data.
And now, we know what Mario would look like without a mustache. Gaze upon his smiling, hairless face, and despair.