"We Were Like 'Oh'": 30 Tattoos That Artists Found Pretty Uncomfortable To Create

I’m not a tattoo artist, but this is good...

I went into a tattoo parlor to do some human trafficking education. The owner was very receptive. As I was showing him the tags used by the human traffickers active in our area, he became visibly uncomfortable and started calling over his artists. It turns out that they had done dozens of one of these tattoos. They thought it was a fad. When I asked if any of the women to whom they had applied these tattoos came into the shop alone, the owner turned white as a sheet. And started crying. He has been branding slaves and he never knew it.

Edited to add: Please stop asking me to post images of the brands. If a human trafficker finds out that their brand has been made public, they will cut or burn it off their victims. And then rebrand them.

I was flipping through my tattoo artist's portfolio as I was waiting for him to get set up to do the massive tribal piece on my arm. I got bad tribal a while back, and, since it was pretty much unfixable as it was, the only solution was to go over it with a bigger tribal piece.

Anyway, I'm flipping through, and turn the page to an ultra-realistic black and grey portrait of Hitler on this guys ribs. I almost drop the book.

"Hey (artist's name)! What the f**k is up with this? You actually did this?"

"Well, that's from my shop out in (rural area about two hours away). It's a little different out there."

"Yeah, but... I mean you tattoo Nazis?"

"That's a long-time client, and yeah he's a Nazi douche, but he tips well. Anyway, the joke's on him, 'cause that's not Hitler."

"What do you mean? It's clearly Hitler."

"Look closer."

"I'm not seeing it."

"It's Charlie Chaplin. Did you really think I'd tattoo Hitler on someone?"

And, yeah. It was Charlie Chaplin.

My friend is a tattoo artist and a guy came in wanting a KKK tattoo. So the very heavily muscled black tattoo artist came out like "you're gonna be in my station." The guy shuffled out of the shop very awkwardly.

Couple came in to get their names tattooed on each other, I hate doing those but I inform them about the risks etc. She was getting hers across the lower back, his on the stomach. I start with the guy, big dude too, large piece once I'm done she says something like: "now deal with this m**********r!" Slaps hims "This'll teach you to cheat on me with my best friend!" And hastily makes her way out of the shop.

It wasn’t so much the tattoo, but rather the customer. He was a very strange older guy, and out of 7 artists in the shop, only one could tolerate working on him. He came in sometimes days in a row, and normally we don’t recommend getting multiple tattoos so quickly, but with this guy it was like, f**k it.

He came in one time for a semi truck with ‘kicking a*s and eating pussy’ written on the back window. A few days later he came in to get ‘alone and beating it’ - completely unaware of the irony. Now whenever someone’s going through some s**t I get to say “sometimes you’re kicking a*s and eating pussy and sometimes you’re alone and beating it.”.

I worked in a tattoo shop for many years, and I gotta say, we all had a good sense of humor, but one that stands out to me as being extra hilarious, was an older (gay) gentleman, who got a HUGE violin on his back (like from his buttcrack to the back of his neck. We of course asked why he chose that, and he said “my partner plays violin, and he wanted to be able to ‘play’ me from behind” and we were like “oh”

Also, when he got to the lower part of the tattoo (near the but) he stood up, and revealed that he was wearing break away pants and proceeded to sit butt a*s naked for the rest of the tattoo. The artist doing it was soooo uncomfortable but the rest of us were dying from laughter. Great day. I miss working there sometimes.

"HATE LOVE" on the knuckles. I said no, said he would regret it and so on. He got mad at me and started calling me names. Instead of screaming back, my "f**k you" was that I agreed to do the tattoo.

Tattoo artist here.

I recently had a man come in and ask about getting a name covered that was placed right above his genitals. He brought a drawing in of a tribal dragon that he did himself. After explaining that his drawing really wouldn’t work for the area or the cover up he said, “I guess that spot wasn’t a great place to put my daughters name huh?” After a really awkward few moments he left.

I didn’t end up covering it and haven’t seen him since.

Not an artist (though I do have a lot of ink) Dated a girl once with numbers tattoo'd on her wrist. As it was highly unlikely she had been in a concentration camp, I asked her for the story. It was her social security number, apparently her mother had this done to both her and her brother in case (and I quote) "they find your body but the head's been cut off and they need to identify you".

Yeah that family was a little messed up.

Oh and it was pretty sloppy, like prison level, so considering that and the fact that it would have been done on children, it wasn't likely done at a professional shop.

Not me, but my tattoo artist.
When I went to him for my first tattoo, I made small talk and asked him this same question. He had a stripper come in and ask for a star tattooed on her a*****e with cursive script on it saying “I’m a star”.
While he was tattooing her, his wife and 7 year old son surprised him with lunch, as a stripper kneeled face down a*s up, holding her a*s cheeks apart, getting her a*****e tattooed. Apparently both the wife and young lady were very chill with the situation, but my artist didn’t like having to explain why daddy was “putting his art in her butt”.

My regular tattoo artist and friend messaged me one day that she tattooed a penis. I instantly had so many questions! She explained how in this long story about him getting semi hard when she put the stencil on then going totally limp the second the needle hit his penis and how she had to stretch it out with her free hand while tattooing. Finally I asked what he got. Thor's hammer. I laughed so hard. At least it was funny.

My coworker brother in law also has a d**k tattoo. When he gets erect it says Ta Da!

Moral of the story if you're gonna get a d**k tattoo at least make it funny.

My tattoo artist told me of a tattoo he did around the edges of a strippers b-hole saying”one ring to rule them all”. I remember him mentioning how bummed he was that she didn’t allow him to photograph it for his portfolio.

I'm not a tattoo artist, but I briefly dated a guy who was. He had a handful of stories of folks who made him uncomfortable, but the one that sticks out the most is the elderly dominatrix.

She came in, told him what she wanted: a tattoo of a sexy lady with a paddle doing one of those physically impossible romance novel poses. She wanted it huge and she wanted it on her back.

The entire time, she told him about all the dungeons she went to and how much she loved hurting boys and how pretty he was and that he should visit her sometime. And he was trying very hard to be like, "THAT'S NICE I WORK BETTER WHEN YOU'RE NOT TALKING, THOUGH.".

I'm not a tattoo artist but I worked as a receptionist for 6 years in a popular local studio. I'm quite talkative and friendly so I liked to chat to the clients while they were waiting for the artist to set up. A late 40 something year old conservative looking woman came in wearing her work skirt and blazer. I signed her in and got her to complete the consent form and asked what she was having, she just replied "oh some text on my lower back". I replied that was cool and then showed her into the room where the artist was working. I could hear the artist and client deciding on placement and that she wanted the tattoo low enough on her back so that her daughter wouldn't see it as it was private. So it's pretty much just above her butt crack. Fair enough I thought.
Afterwards I asked the artist what she had. The woman had the words "a**l s**t" tattooed in thick black script. No wonder she didn't want her daughter to see it!

She came back a few months later to have "woo whore" tattooed on the front...

Not a tattoo artist but I asked the guy who gave me my first tattoo this same question and his response was:

[sigh]

“I’m not proud of this but I used to work next door to a strip club and a stripper wanted zebra stripes in her vagina. Notice I didn’t say ‘on’ or ‘above’. *IN* her vagina. I kept telling her the same things over and over. The skin there is NOT meant for that. Not only will it not look good AT ALL, it will fade VERY quickly. And it will f*****g hurt worse than anything you’ve ever experienced. But she kept upping the price more and more very time I said no. So eventually I just said f**k it and basically just annihilated this stripper’s vagina with some zebra stripes. I would’ve felt weirder about it but I’m a guy who’s tattooed about fifty penises in his life so there’s that.”.

My long time artist (he’s done at least a dozen on me) had a woman come in and ask for her husband’s d**k imprint to be tattooed on her tongue.

She was politely sent away.

Ok so I’m not a tattoo artist myself, but my Dad is, and I’ve heard his stories. When he was young and inexperienced, someone asked him to tattoo a rat tail coming out of her vagina. When he asked why, she said she wanted to tell people that “her pussy ate it.”.

When I had only been tattooing for around 2 years, some old guy got the initials D.N.R, said it was his wife’s initials.
Shortly after he was done, he told me it legit was “do not resuscitate “. I felt horrible as f**k about it. A while ago on here, a year ago maybe, a similar discussion was going on. Some resistors cleared it up however and said that paramedics would still do CPR etc in the event regardless of the tattoo.. still, felt fairly horrid about it. I never knew at the time.

I’ve done a lot of weird s**t over the years. One time I tattooed a woman’s a*s with a mans name, later found out it wasn’t her husbands name and they both wanted another mans name there so it made him feel like he was f*****g someone else’s wife. I get role play but that’s being dedicated lol.

Wife's friend is a tattoo artist. She said her most memorable was a young woman who came in and wanted Johnny tattooed on her chest because she loved her boyfriend so much. Said boyfriend showed up at the tattoo parlor after she finished so she could show off the new tat, they ended up getting in a huge fight and he broke up with her.

Couple months later, girl comes back in with a different dude for another tattoo. Says to the artist, "this is my boyfriend, Johnny!".

I was asked by a research lab to tattoo 3 hamsters that were identical. Like a little symbol on two of them, so each could be distinguished. I wasn’t sure if it was real or not, as the interaction was over the phone.
I tattooed a couple of real characters over the years, including one guy who kept getting the same tattoo over and over again (a tiger head) and eventually just got little dots to fill in around them all, and another guy who got vertical and horizontal lines on various body parts to make himself appear larger. He talked about getting additional teeth implanted so he could process food more efficiently, and wanted me to be his disciple.