33 Terrible Tattoos That Can Only Represent Regret

I’ve never been good at art in general, so it seems hard to fathom how somebody can become confident enough in their abilities to permanently put an image on other people’s skin.

They always say that practice makes perfect and that everyone has to start somewhere, but helping budding tattoo artists practice seems like a fairly high-risk proposition. Still, some people can do it so well that these learning experiences must have happened.

So as we look at the gallery of shocking tattoos that we’re about to see, I guess they poor souls who wear them can take solace in the contributions they’re making someone’s education.

We hope, anyway.

If you know what we’re even supposed to be looking at here, you have a more keen eye than I do.

The best guess I’ve heard is that it’s a demon whispering in this guy’s here, but it could just as easily be Gollum or Dobby from the looks of things.

If it weren’t for that angel in the middle, this would actually be a decent enough tattoo.

Unfortunately, we can neither ignore the fact that the angel’s hands look like raisins, nor the fact that it looks like someone recently punched them in the face.

I’m sure the makers of Monster energy drink find it flattering when people get tattoos of their logo, but probably not in this case.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think anyone who sees this tattoo is going to buy the “I’m just a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan” excuse.

This tiger almost looks good, but those eyes make it seem like someone’s pressing its face against a window.

Not only, but it has the odd side effect of making it seem incredibly smug about its predicament.

“Heh, I guess you can open the window before you stick your head out of it. Conformist…”

Sometimes, it’s clear the customer had an interesting concept for a tattoo that somebody utterly failed to execute.

At the same time, it’s hard to call anything “clear” about this tattoo. It seems like the Grim Reaper holding Jesus, but that’s just an educated guess.

Somebody probably should’ve showed the artist what a deer looks like before they attempted this.

Instead, we have one that looks vaguely annoyed after somebody dropped a cartoon safe on its head.

One can only imagine how bad the original tattoo was if this was the cover-up.

If whoever uploaded this image hadn’t helpfully informed us that it’s supposed to be a skull, we’d have quite a mystery on our hands.

They may have been making a compass, but the tattooist obviously got lost along the way.

Actually making sure the letters are facing the right way was a good start, but the fact that it looks like it’s melting probably wasn’t intentional.

The person who made this claims to have never had an unhappy customer, which seems a little hard to believe.

I suppose it’s not impossible that the mind behind this one wanted it to look like something they would’ve sketched in their math book in third grade, but it’s pretty unlikely.

It’s a little hard to take someone’s wise words to heart when we’re struggling to make them out.

Remember, folks: Always dream without ufear and zove without zimits. I can’t stress enough that there should be no zimits to your zove.

I have a friend who’s actually quite afraid of sloths and this tattoo makes it a lot easier to see why.

It takes a special kind of “talent” to make what should be a pretty adorable animal into some kind of nightmare ghoul.

I’m guessing they started with the mug and the tip of the tentacle and everything went downhill from there.

I can see how the concept might be hard to draw, but it’s clear that things aren’t working out when it starts to look like somebody grew mushrooms on a fruit roll-up.

The concept is pretty cool here, but it’s hard to ignore how distracting these Shrek-like masks are.

I know Shrek is love and Shrek is life, but that really doesn’t seem like the imagery this person was trying to invoke.

I’m sure this is supposed to show how badass America is, but it accidentally carries another message.

Namely, that you shouldn’t punch the ground really hard or you might end up breaking your hand in several places like Mr. Warhammer here.

It’s a good thing somebody spelled out that this is supposed to be Artorias the Abyss Walker from Dark Souls.

Otherwise, I don’t think I ever would’ve figured out what I’m looking at here.

My best guess would’ve been a very angry rooster who decked himself out in armor before he and his wolf buddy went to war.

It seems like the artist bit off a little more than they could chew on this one.

From the way these tentacles seem to change halfway through their creation to the fact that it’s not really clear how the octopus is interacting with the clock, there appeared to be a point where they started panicking.

As far as we can tell, this is supposed to be the solar system but it’s a little hard to tell what those bizarre domes around each planet are supposed to be.

You’ll also notice that earth is weirdly absent from the wreath that presumably surrounds it, but that’s probably because the artist wanted to wait until the infection around Venus went away.

Somebody explained what this tattoo is supposed to be, but it still leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

Apparently, this is Michael Jordan depicted as a skateboarding rat, but your guess is as good as mine when it comes to what those concepts have to do with each other.

This looks like it was scribbled on in black sharpie.

Apparently, this wasn’t even free-handed. They transferred a drawing first, which usually results in a better

Is that supposed to be lips?

The text isn’t that bad, though “Beautiful” looks weird not filled in, but the…shape…isn’t good.

It looks like an ugly coffee bean. Or a clam. Or, you know, a different part of female anatomy.

Somehow, Marilyn ended up looking like a man.

This tattoo “artist” really needs to work on their basic human anatomy and shading, because the shadows just make the weird features worse. Like, she doesn’t have an Adam’s apple, she has neck balls.

Jesus feels very attacked right now.

This is almost cute, except that the drawing doesn’t feel stylized so much as just plan bad. And the coloring is really rough too.

Though I might take childish kiddie-art Jesus over this option.

Heavy Metal Jesus doesn’t appreciate being confused for a White Walker. Because before I read the description for this one, I thought the overly-dark character was the Night King.

Thomas the Cthulhu?

Why does this octopus have a face straight out of Thomas the Tank Engine?

Though, I think it may actually be a sextapus, because those definitely look like bunny ears.

These people realize tattoos are permanent, right?

This guy tried to tattoo himself in a mirror. I don’t even know what he was trying to make it look like, but it’s safe to say that he failed.

What is happening with this hand?

Like, if the thumb is where I think it is, the pinky is huge and so is the ring finger. And then you have a nubbin and a super short index finger. I’d insist on a refund.

If you’re going to try for a pun, at least don’t be lazy about it.

This “beer belly” looks like what an underage deadbeat doodles in their math notebook during after school detention.

Vault Boy from the Fallout series usually looks much better than this.

Besides the wonky face and oddly large hands, why does it look like it was colored in with dried out Crayola markers found in the bottom of a knapsack?

For a 19-month-old, they’ve got some decent tattoo skills.

Because an infant making this sounds more likely than a professional. The heels look like hooves and there are only four toes on each “foot”.

At least it was free?

I guess it’s true when they say that you get what you paid for. I know it’s incomplete, but I’m not sure there’s much that could improve it.

It’s pretty rare that a tattoo fails because of research skills rather than artistry, but that’s what we have on our hands here.

Freddie Mercury and AC/DC certainly made their impacts on the music world, but I don’t recall them teaming up like some kind of rock n’ roll Avengers.

What the actual eff?

I’m not sure what’s scarier: those insane eyes or the lump of flesh I’m assuming is supposed to be the child’s fist.

It’s a bad sign when the most common response to your tattoo is, “You should probably see a doctor about that.”

It appears that she was trying to go for a leopard spot look here, but it just looks like an unfortunate skin condition at first glance.