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Once taboo, and a sign of rebellion, tattoos are now much more widely accepted. Body art has become hugely popular. But so too has tattoo remorse. A 2023 survey found that 1 in 4 Americans regret at least one of their tattoos. The poll also revealed that the most regrettable ink includes lettering or script tattoos, symbol tattoos, names, animal designs, and tribal tattoos. Sometimes it's the tattoo artist's fault. Other times the client is to blame. Either way, there's no shortage of shockingly bad tats out there.
“Epic Fail Tattoo’s” is a corner of the internet where bad body art goes to die. The Facebook page is a gallery of gloriously regrettable ink. And the community is united in their aim to shame the absolute worst tattoos ever to be etched on anyone's skin. The page invites its members to "add as many photos as you can of these blundering idiots attempting body art.”
Bored Panda picked the best of the worst, so you know what not to reference at your next trip to the tattoo studio. Keep scrolling for a hilarious but cringeworthy trip down terrible tattoo lane, and don't forget to upvote your favorites.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
FoxEcoLimaIndiaCharlieIndiAlfa 1 year ago
I wonder if the original tattooed guy knows that some other dude has their nipple tatted on themselves?
quentariel 1 year ago
Luckily the nipple is as poorly copied as the rest of the tattoo.
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olaff 422 1 year ago
Honestly, the original is kinda bad because that nipple is the only thing you see. Blood red in the middle of green and black is a poor choice.
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#2
Skogsrået 1 year ago
LoL covering a shîtty tattoo with another shîtty tattoo.
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Dog Mom to Zoe 1 year ago
I know tattoos are expensive but for the love of all good things, save and get 1 fabulous one instead of hoard of really bad ones.
#3
Jonny Man 1 year ago
Aslan when he sees exactly how bad the kids goofed up.
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Ben Affleck has reportedly become the latest celebrity to suffer from tattoo regret. The recently-divorced actor unveiled a massive, colorful phoenix on his back in 2015. He first claimed the tattoo was temporary, before later admitting that it had special meaning. His monstrosity ink has been making headlines since it was first spotted—ruffling the feathers of both his ex-wives.
Jennifer Garner addressed the phoenix ink during an interview with Vanity Fair. "You know what we would say in my hometown about that? 'Bless his heart," quipped Garner, before adding, "A phoenix rising from the ashes. Am I the ashes in this scenario? I take umbrage. I refuse to be the ashes."
#4
Subaru645 1 year ago
He is in a tattoo shop…is it a coverup? While he’s at it, coverup those knuckles
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She who must not be named 1 year ago
I thought it said The Oxford wife trust and I was wondering what kind of elusive club he was in 🤣😭
Sacred Panda 1 year ago
To get that tattoo in the first place tells nothing good about you, aaaand his knuckles...
Hidden Panda 10 months ago
I hope his knuckles look the way they do because he had a good talk afterwards with his artist
Randy Skretvedt 12 months ago
I see "In God We Trust." I hate tattoos but I don't see anything here spelled incorrectly.
#5
Beth Wheeler 1 year ago
Why in the hell would you want that on your face? Just looking at it makes he cringe from the pain.
Robert Beveridge 1 year ago
You know, the thing about facehuggers is that they come off after a couple of days...
Christian Golden 1 year ago
He can't wait to square up on someone and say, "What are you looking at?!?"
#6
wenchie 1 year ago
Bold of you to assume there was a template involved in this atrocity lol
Load More Replies... Jonny Man 1 year ago
"I'd like my tattoo to be my child's face staring down upon this church like a loving God." "On your budget, the best we can do is a blue Wojak." "Y'know what, I'll take it!"
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Just last week, Ben's big bird tattoo was in the news yet again. This time, after reports that Affleck finally planned to have it removed. Multiple outlets claim that his decision has angered his second ex-wife. “Jennifer Lopez furious because Ben Affleck has decided to do something she had been begging him to do for years,” reads one headline. “J Lo 'Seething' Ben Affleck is Planning to Finally Have Giant Back Tattoo Erased as Part of 'Divorce Makeover' – After Years of Her Begging Him to Get Inking Lazered Off,” states another.
#7
LizzieBoredom 1 year ago
The tenses of lert: Prelert, Alert, Postlert, and Relert.
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#8
FoxEcoLimaIndiaCharlieIndiAlfa 1 year ago
This dude legit has a life-size Jesus head, that somehow kinda looks like the Joker? 🤔
#9
Jonny Man 1 year ago
"So like, we were getting stoned one day, and my kid brother draws this wicked a*s dinosaur and he's like 'this is the KING ALLOSAURUS, he's not a T-Rex because he has three fingers and that makes him ALLOSAURUS REX' and I was like 'DUUUUUUDE that's going on my skin little bro!'"
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Richard Iachetta 12 months ago
He should have saved up some money and then Paid a real tattoo artist to do the work
axle f 1 year ago
...I really would like to know....what on earth compelled this guy....I mean: this wasn't just a choice, this was a decision..
Affleck is not the first celebrity to roll around in the muddy waters of tattoo remorse. Megan Fox spoke of a "really bad one" she got when she was 13. It was apparently a dragon on her right butt cheek, which Fox referred to as an "a*s stamp." "I was in New York City and I thought it was a great idea,” said the actress. “It had a lot of meaning at the time but now it's hideous."
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#11
FoxEcoLimaIndiaCharlieIndiAlfa 1 year ago
Does Marilyn Manson now have a bindi or is that a mole or a freckle?
#12
Panda-sized Potato 1 year ago
Whatever that thing is, it broke the handle of the peace dagger, the weapon for peace.
Broadredpanda 1 year ago
If you can't draw a snake around a sword, you can't put this permanent s**t on a person
Mark Wahlberg removed all of his body art in the early 2000s, citing his kids as the reason. The actor said he didn’t want his children getting inked and had gotten rid of his own to lead by example. But there was another reason. Wahlberg was also apparently tired of sitting in a make-up chair for hours while on movie sets. “Putting makeup on and covering them up has always been a pain in the butt," he told the Today Show.
#13
FoxEcoLimaIndiaCharlieIndiAlfa 1 year ago
If you're a nurse and you need to get a tattoo to remind you what your job is and that you have patients to care for, you might want to look into retirement or something.
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Dragons Exist 1 year ago
Do tattoo artists normally have a straight-edge, or can they just freehand good? Either way, this person used neither
8dz4vgcwby 12 months ago
Don”t tell this guy all the sh1t we wrote on his back. He thinks it’s a battleship!
#15
Chris the Bobcat 1 year ago
This is why you don't get tattoos after midnight. Doesn't matter how amazing it is, it'll still just turn back into a pumpkin.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 1 year ago
Wow, I didn't even consider that it might be a pumpkin. I was fully convinced it was a red bell pepper XD
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Karl der Große 1 year ago (edited)
Maybe this guy's dad is a big, orange disaster. Has anybody seen Don Jr.'s arm?
Wide Awake at 3am 1 year ago
The spacing of the letters had me reading this as D. AD. *shudders*
A 2023 survey found that 1 in 4 people regret at least one of their tattoos. More than half of the respondents reported their regret did not fully sink in until at least two years after getting the tattoo, while 18% had immediate remorse. Nearly half of those surveyed said the tattoo they regret the most was one they got spontaneously. Not too surprising...
#17
Bob Brooce 1 year ago
This is a friend of mine, and that's *exactly* what his mom looked like.
Mrs. Dearly Regret 1 year ago
In fact it's not the worst tattoo of Marilyn I have ever seen, but that doesn't meen that it's a good one
#18
Gayngel SLResident 9 months ago (edited)
The negative space makes it look like an angry screaming mantis.
Some of the main reasons for tattoo regret are because the ink bearer is not happy with how the art looks, they simply no longer like it, they’re disappointed in the tattoo artist’s work, they’ve lost connection to the original meaning, or their tattoo has had a negative impact on professional opportunities.
"The professional impact of visible tattoos remains a concern for many with 3 in 4 people believing visible tattoos can negatively affect a person’s professional opportunities," noted the Advanced Dermatology study. And it seems not even the rich and famous are immune to job loss due to body art.
#19
Yellow dot 1 year ago
It looks like some numbers are hidden under the rose
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GrowingThruConcrete 1 year ago
"A growing number of Shiite Muslims ink themselves with religious and political symbols; among the more popular tattoos is '313,' the number of commanders Shiites believe will accompany their last imam, Mahdi, and Imam Ali, a cousin to the Prophet Muhammad." https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4835221,00.html
#20
Bron 1 year ago
The butterflies are good but yeah, the rest looks like a young kid’s colouring in
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Panda-sized Potato 1 year ago
It's a bad attempt to cover up. You can't just draw over it, particularly black.
#21
Child of the Stars 1 year ago
I've seen this one before. Iirc, it's the last meal he shared with his dad before his dad died.
Earonn - 12 months ago
Fair enough, though I would probably have chosen something more meaningful than a recipe. Damn, even the burger would have been better.
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mooshoflove 1 year ago
I think it's because it's showing insanely high costs.
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Adrian Perlman 10 months ago
as someone who works with a shocking number of these receipts for my job, i have to agree. this is easier to read than a lot of copies sent to me by clients
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Nitka Tsar 12 months ago
No, respect for his dead father. „Child of the stars“ just wrote that this is the last meal this person shared with their father, before he died.
Load More Replies...Until recently, comedian and actor Pete Davidson was a walking exhibition of body art. It was hard to find a space where he wasn't inked. But in 2020, Davidson revealed that he was embarking on a long-term journey to wipe his slate clean and would be removing over 100 tattoos, a process that was expected to be painful, time-consuming, and expensive.
Davidson’s reason for removing his body art boiled down to his career. He believed he'd land more roles. And much like Wahlberg, he was fed-up with the process of covering his tats with concealer every time he was cast in a movie. "I didn't think that they would put me in stuff — like the movie business. I thought after SNL, it's a wrap," he joked. “It takes like three hours — you have to get there three hours earlier to cover all your tattoos, because for some reason, people in movies, they don’t have them that much.”
#22
DelvianBlue 1 year ago
Honestly, I like this one. The execution is mediocre, but not bad compared to a lot of others here, and it has a sort of dark, sinister suggestion that what was meant to protect you is instead the thing that hurts you. The black rain in front of a red sun really draws that out.
#23
Bored Retsuko 1 year ago
A moon, I think. A shame, I'm sure she thought it would look beautiful.
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#24
Bob Brooce 1 year ago
If it's supposed to be a tattoo of the sin he died for this one is perfect.
Ruben Schelstraete 1 year ago
I suppose the person who he wanted to remember pulled through and did not die..
axle f 1 year ago
...hey, Pete Hegseth has one of them racist tats. His is bigger, naturally..
Nikole 1 year ago
I’d really like to be able to pretend that none of that is happening, but here we are… I’m reminded of the end of 1984 and how the future was a boot stomping on a human face. Hopefully it won’t be forever.
Load More Replies... Broadredpanda 1 year ago
The ribbon is so amateurish! It can be salvaged through. Not the worst tattoo though
On November 2, Davidson made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live (SNL), where he showed off his almost tattoo-less arms. He’d previously revealed that the tattoo removal process was painful and that “burning them off is worse than getting them.” The former SNL host also revealed that it took his skin a month to recover after each laser session.
All we can say is, "Ouch!" We hope that's enough inspiration for all you Pandas to think really hard—and plan—before your next trip to the tattoo parlor.
#25
Ruben Schelstraete 1 year ago
took me 5 minutes to see the shark and another 5 to see the boat
#26
Nikole 1 year ago
They look like a kid tried to make mommy’s tattoo “better”.
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BrunoVI 1 year ago
No it doesn't. In fact, it says VI whether upside down or not.
Load More Replies... #27
LakotaWolf (she/her) 1 year ago
I'm also impressed the word is spelled correctly. In an article about "epic fail" tattoos, I kind of expected it to say "tworlorght" or something XD
Load More Replies... FoxEcoLimaIndiaCharlieIndiAlfa 1 year ago
I've never seen Twilight or got into the hype of it all. Partly because of the crazy super fans like this.
#28
Richard Iachetta 12 months ago
he forgot the rest "Live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse" It's from the book Knock on any door
MAKtheknife 1 year ago
"Lie fast, die young, have a good looking corpse." Came from a book whose title I forgot.
#29
FoxEcoLimaIndiaCharlieIndiAlfa 1 year ago
Am I missing something? I don't think this is an epic fail of a tattoo.
She who must not be named 1 year ago
The design isn't bad, it's just super common nowadays but the tattoo artist should be banned. The actual work is terrible, looks like a child drew it on. I hope they didn't pay too much for this, maybe it was a trainee artist.
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#30
#31
Beth Wheeler 1 year ago
This one is actually cool, it has really good details unlike some of the others.
#32
#33
ॐBoyGanesh 1 year ago (edited)
Don’t ask how I know this, but… pāwn shops typically have three gold circles handing from a bar as their symbol (representing byzant coins; connected to the Medici bankers) or a diamond like the one above. The most common name for pāwn shops is “Loyalty” an there are more than one chain of shops in the US with that name and diamond dunno what that says about the tattoo other than how utterly classy it is. /s (I collect vintage guitars, so scour pāwn shops for them. Also, yes, P A W N is censored)
#34
Elladine DesIsles 1 year ago
I've seen some very unfortunate Tinkerbell tattoos that I am now trying not to imagine combined with this one.
#35
Blue Bunny of Happiness 1 year ago
Tattoo artist should have gone to Specsavers (I use artist in the loosest possible sense of the word)
FoxEcoLimaIndiaCharlieIndiAlfa 1 year ago
I don't even know what that says, Jesus Gusto? I think this tat takes away from her beautiful chest.
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#38
WindySwede 1 year ago
Well, whan a eagle and a tiger loves each other very much... but also 5-cute-gri...lipart.jpg 
(though here the father is a lion)
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#45
Robert Beveridge 1 year ago
Needs A LOT of retouching--it's been there a long time or it's recipient is a tanning fiend--but there's, no reason it couldn't look great with some tlc
Robert Beveridge 1 year ago
Damn it phone, don't autocorrect "its". Dammit BP, allow us to edit comments on the mobile app.
Load More Replies... #46
Na Schi 1 year ago
Oh good that you identified the rifle. I thought it was a cyclops-cyber-dog, which happens to be placed under the deer.
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#47
Tagzwoelf 1 year ago
I see...your decision to not to go to school didn't stop you from getting this tattoo
#49
A Strike 1 year ago
The irony is not lost on me that I snort laughed at this on accident.
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#50
Beth Wheeler 1 year ago
The one on the left is closer to the pic than the one on the right. Very pretty
#51
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#54
Robert Beveridge 1 year ago
She seeks to cure what's deep inside, frightened of this thing that she's become
Bob Brooce 1 year ago
Is she really short, or is that way too high for the world's worst tramp stamp?
Karl der Große 1 year ago
I think she got drunk and started spouting racist c**p, so somebody gave her this tattoo a surprise gift when she passed out.
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Libstak 1 year ago
This is photoshopped, the print does not follow the grooves on his chest at all.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 1 year ago
I think that's why they showed us the facebook comments XD
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#60
Šimon Špaček 1 year ago
So, what is the story behind this one? I sense lost bet or forgot to tell his buddies that he cannot come one too many times or something like that.
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#64
Bored Seagull 1 year ago
England. The "Euro" in "Euro Winners 2016" refers to the European Football Championship 2016. Back then, England didn't win the Championship, as they lost against underdog Iceland in the first round of the knockout stage.
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Clown fish 1 year ago
Done in 2017 a year after they lost! Lol that's something but I wouldn't call it miss placed optimism
Load More Replies... #65
Robert Beveridge 1 year ago
Only god can loge me? I'd be willing to bet a kindly season ticket holder could prove you wrong...
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Robert Beveridge 1 year ago
Every time I watch Prince of Darkness from now on and we get to the Amazing Grace scene, this will be in my head
#70
Beth Wheeler 1 year ago
That's hideous, what's it gonna look like after she has the baby of this is a real tattoo?
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Karl der Große 1 year ago
It's upside-down Greek. "Agape" is love, I studied Greek for a few year, but I don't know what "autrotheis" means. Did I read that first letter wrong?
BrunoVI 1 year ago
"Respect mah autrotheis". No, seriously, i suspect the first letter is a lamda, which makes it lutrotheis? I only know a little Greek from theology and biology, but I suspect it's related to Lutrotes, which means "redeemer," or "liberator," probably referencing Christ. Certainly wouldn't seem to be a bad tattoo.
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#80
olaff 422 1 year ago
Not really. It just better have been cheap. There's categories of bad tattoos.
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What do you think ?
Millawi 1 year ago
I just wouldn't make a tattoo.. as good as it might turn out, I would eventually get tired of looking at it.
censorshipsucks 1 year ago
hmm I have only one out of like 20 that I regret. Naturally, my first one.
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The Doom Song 1 year ago
This is why you should always get tattoos PROFESSIONALLY done people!
Bob Brooce 1 year ago
Most of these are professionally done, but after getting a quote for $1000 and then choosing the guy that will do it for $300.
Load More Replies... olaff 422 1 year ago
As someone who has spent good money on good tattoos, I am always tired of people with bad tattoos talking to me about tattoos.
Breadcrumb. 1 year ago
I've seen good and bad tattoos on the same body though.
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Liz The Biz 1 year ago
I know someone who, very recently, went abroad on holiday and had a holiday romance that he thought was serious. He got her name tattooed on his wrist. They had a row and she dumped him. Now he wears a huge bracelet around his wrist.
Apatheist Account2 1 year ago
Never got one, never will until "DNR" becomes a good idea (although hopefully it will be legally assistable before then).
Richard Iachetta 12 months ago
If I were to get a tattoo the first thing I would do would be to take the art or picture I wanted tattooed on me and ask the artist to reproduce it. Then I would have a bit of an idea of hid talent level. If the artist said "No" or wanted me to pay for it I walk out the door
Katchen 10 months ago
If you’re asking them to perform work, you should pay for that work.
Load More Replies... Millawi 1 year ago
I just wouldn't make a tattoo.. as good as it might turn out, I would eventually get tired of looking at it.
censorshipsucks 1 year ago
hmm I have only one out of like 20 that I regret. Naturally, my first one.
Load More Replies... The Doom Song 1 year ago
This is why you should always get tattoos PROFESSIONALLY done people!
Bob Brooce 1 year ago
Most of these are professionally done, but after getting a quote for $1000 and then choosing the guy that will do it for $300.
Load More Replies... olaff 422 1 year ago
As someone who has spent good money on good tattoos, I am always tired of people with bad tattoos talking to me about tattoos.
Breadcrumb. 1 year ago
I've seen good and bad tattoos on the same body though.
Load More Replies... Liz The Biz 1 year ago
I know someone who, very recently, went abroad on holiday and had a holiday romance that he thought was serious. He got her name tattooed on his wrist. They had a row and she dumped him. Now he wears a huge bracelet around his wrist.
Apatheist Account2 1 year ago
Never got one, never will until "DNR" becomes a good idea (although hopefully it will be legally assistable before then).
Richard Iachetta 12 months ago
If I were to get a tattoo the first thing I would do would be to take the art or picture I wanted tattooed on me and ask the artist to reproduce it. Then I would have a bit of an idea of hid talent level. If the artist said "No" or wanted me to pay for it I walk out the door
Katchen 10 months ago
If you’re asking them to perform work, you should pay for that work.
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