I actually had to look up what “cosplay” was because I’m old and stupid, but once I did, I knew this article was going to be hilarious.
Get ready for great stories of the cringiest interactions cosplayers of AskReddit have experienced at events. Nerd alert!
1. Black Cat
Was cosplaying Black Cat from Spider-Man. It was a very tight and form fitting costume and I opted not to wear underwear because you could very clearly see the lines in the costume if I did. Had a guy come up behind me and unzip my suit , which wouldn’t have been so bad if the zipper didn’t go all the way down to the bottom of my ass. For about 10 seconds my pale back and ass was very much exposed.
2. Abducted
I WITNESSED a pedobear cosplay throw a little girl over his shoulder and run off. Little girl was fine but later told me and the group we’d been dancing with she didn’t know the guy. So that’s pretty….yeah..
3. First timer
So I went to my first con a few years ago…I wasn’t brave enough to dress up so I wanted to take pics etc. I saw a really amazing Doctor Who cosplay so I asked him for a hug and pic. He was really enthusiastic about it and we had a pic ready to go until I heard a gruff “hurry up other people want a hug too”, this large middle age lady in a tight ass tank top was giving us this glare.
Legit the cosplayer went from happy to miserable as soon as we took a pic. Like….holy cow the cosplayers arnt props, they’re people. Don’t demand physical contact you have to ask. He definitely didn’t give up a hug for her.
This year I’ll be doing a dress up cosplay and I hope that I’ll be fine.
4. The Hulk!
Cringey and hilarious:
So at my first con I was dressed as Silk Spectre II, comic book version. I was still using my cane because I was only a year out from my accident and this guy decides that obviously I’m his one true love or something and I’m not able to hustle away fast enough to escape easily. I lose him a few times but he keeps popping up hitting on me and making comments about how I should have been Silk Spectre I. This is at least two or three hours of this “Romeo” following me around.
Well, somehow I manage to lose him and I end up asking this beefy old dude if he minds that I take the unoccupied chair at his table since my hips and legs are acting up.
Half an hour later we’re chatting and having a good old time when my Romeo shows up.
Romeo looks at me.
Romeo looks at beefy old guy.
Beefy old guy looks at me and I guess I must look scared or creeped out or something because beefy old guy just stands up and leans real close to Romeo’s face and says “can I help you with something?”
Romeo fucks off.I eventually get up and walk away when the table gets busy. Glance at the banner above the table as I walk away.
Beefy Old Guy was Lou Ferrigno.
5. Flirty mom
I was cosplaying a popular children’s show character. Buster from Arthur. A mom tried flirting with me in front of her child after taking the photo. “Whatcha doing later? Wanna grab a coffee?”
The worst I’ve seen? This guy fully walks up to this girl and cups her breast. He wanted to see if they were real.
EDIT: Here is a video of pictures me and other people took of my cosplay
6. Have some cake
Had small cake pieces with me for friends, carried it in an open plastic box in my hands. In the tram to the convention I met an older lady, we started talking about my costume and why all these funny looking people are here for and so on. While I explained it to her she was suddenly looking for something in her handbag, pulled out a small plastic spoon and helped herself with my cake while listening to me.
I was too confused to say anything and let her finish, I even jumped out of the tram a station earlier because I was worried about more cake being eaten. Weird story but looking back now I should have offered her more, I don’t know what it takes to make you eat a stranger’s cake in a tram without asking first if you can have some.
7. Watching a grown man cry
Oh man, I worked at a hotel and convention center a few years ago. I was put on a security detail and had to walk around the event making sure folks weren’t fighting and doing stupid shit.
I witnessed a grown man break down and cry because his mom wouldn’t buy him this $700 action figure. He had to have been 26 at the least and he was on the floor rolling around, his mom trying to get him out of there quick.
8. “Good lord”
Can I be the cringe?
I cosplayed Naruto when I was 13 and a sasuke cosplayer who was 14 ‘made out’ with me — which was basically biting my mouth. It went semi-viral on youtube to the point where I was offered money.
I had forgotten about the video until that email, and then decimated my whole yt account when I was 15-16. Good lord, I was a horrible weeb. I have so many stories.
9. Flirting
Few years back my then-girlfriend was cosplaying Chell from portal at a con. It was mostly great, everyone and their mom wanted a photo with her. Except this one guy who decided to grill her on how much she really knew about portal. He was looking at her like he’d just found a unicorn, but she was pissed as hell that some stranger thought she needed to prove herself to him. I think he thought he was flirting.
10. Robbing the cradle
I was cosplaying as Red X from Teen Titans and I had this 16 year old girl dressed as Raven follow me around and try and get me to kiss her all day long. I was 20 at the time.
11. Glomping
I was dressed as Edward Elric, friend was dressed as Envy from FMA. The show was still super popular back then and ‘glomping’ was a thing. Some girl ran up behind me at top speed and jumped on my back (and I’m tall, not short like Ed), and bashed me into a table and brought me to my knees. It was horribly embarrassing, and painful.
12. Karaoke fail
Some girl asks me to sing a duet in the karaoke room which I agree to. 30 seconds in and I realize that it’s some anime song that is sung in Japanese, and it’s 8 minutes long.
Longest and most cringiest 8 minutes of my life while butchering the Japanese language in front of an audience.
13. Explicit fan art
At Anime Matsuri last month, I was crossplaying as Prompto with my friend as Noctis. A much younger Noctis cosplayer (they looked to be about 13-14, whereas we’re in our mid-twenties) came up to us and said their Prompto really wanted to meet us. We followed this Noctis cosplayer over to their group of friends, introduced ourselves to the other Prompto, took some selfies, had some laughs.
Apparently, the kids felt super comfortable around us, because they then proceeded to pull out their sketchbooks and show us the explicit fan art they’d drawn while loudly describing each pornographic scene in detail. Needless to say, my friend and I exchanged a look of abject horror and hightailed it out of there, torn between feeling utterly skeevy and biting down the urge to call their mothers.
Obviously, there are kids who wander into the NSFW side of fandom. (I’m sure we all had our instances of saying we were 18+ when prompted to on AFF.net, LJ, etc. back in the day). But to have literal children showing me the porn they drew in real life was positively jarring.
14. Acting out
I have a friend who cosplayed a Homestuck character back in 2012. I can’t remember which, but I know it was a troll. Anyway, the author of the comic was present at the convention so the fans were out in droves; and rabid too.
So we’re walking around and she keeps getting attacked by a bunch of kids who can’t be older than 14. We’re 18/19 so we obviously nope out asap. People hit her with prop weapons, come up and try to tackle her, ask for kisses, flirt, and one even tried feeling her up. This all culminates with some bozo dressed like a juggalo hitting her over the head with a bowling pin and breaking the horns she had made for the event.
Needless to say she’s furious and excuses herself to the bathroom. A few minutes later she’s back; having dumped her horns, jacket, contacts, and wiped the face paint off. We spent the rest of the day in a foul mood. The next day we heard that a bunch of Homestuck graffiti had been found in the surrounding area and the convention had to move hotels next year.
Oh, and Deadpools. They’re all awful.
15. Sociopath
I worked with a guy who claimed that the Deadpool’s character background was based on him personally and his military career.
Had plenty of pictures of himself cosplaying as Deadpool and would proudly tell anyone who listened that he was a medically-diagnosed sociopath.Which is about the only one of his stories I could believe.
Spent a lot of time attempting to be witty in a dry and dark manner. Just came across as incredibly insensitive (i.e. offensive without comic timing) and often downright psychotic.
16. Photo ops
Went with a Comic Con with my girlfriend, who was dressed as Black Canary (I was Green Arrow). Naturally some people asked for pictures of us/with us, alright cool no big deal. What was weird were the amount of guys that wanted a picture of just her. One guy even came up, asked if he could take a picture with us, and after we agreed, he handed me the camera. Oh, ok, I see what this is.
But the cringiest moment was this one guy, maybe 20 years older than us. He asked for a picture of her, was used to it at this point so it’s whatever, then proceeds to spend a good sixty seconds taking the photo. I don’t know if he was taking multiple photos or trying to get the perfect boob pic or what, but ain’t no way it takes you a full minute to take a single photo on a cell phone. Still, the day was super fun, and hopefully we get a chance to go back in the future.
17. Stabbed by the mask
I cosplayed as skull kid last year. Idk in american comic con,but in my country there are a lot of ppl with signs like «free hugs» and sometimes they do it without asking.
If this wasnt cringy already, since i 3d printed the mask the pointy ends were…well,very pointy.
When some weeb hugged me without asking for it they usually got stabbed by the mask and laughted in an uncomfortable way and ended the hug as soon as possible
18. Creeper
I dressed as Rose Quartz from Steven Universe and a neckbeard type guy sort of dressed as a character from the same show approached me by coming up right behind me and said “Rose my waifu” while I was talking to a vendor. He had the greasiest hair I have ever seen and really bad B.O. He asked for a pic and I said ok and then he asked to pose with me kissing his cheek and I said no. He got upset and said that I had to because he loved Rose blah blah blah and I didn’t lnow how to disengage. Funnily enough a Pearl cosplayer intervened and told him to beat it.
19. “Fuck that guy”
I was dressed as mermaid man from Spongebob. I went up to a table to buy a poster, and the guy was like, “hey, there’s barnacle boy here!” I said “where?” Because I saw no barnacle boy at the con yet. He said “…you!” And everyone laughed because they didn’t realize I was not barnacle boy and they thought I forgot what my costume was. Fuck that guy I’m mermaid man
20. Rocky Horror
I cosplayed Frank N Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show at a comic con about a year ago. I had a lot of pleasant interactions with other cosplayers during the day, lots of “ooh I love that movie!”, “hey do the Time Warp!” sort of conversations. A few people hit on me (I’m a woman in fishnets and a corset at a comic con…that was expected). Nothing to weird or uncomfortable.
And then there was this one dude and his friend. They kept following me around, talking to me about weirdly personal topics, and getting far too handsy. Eventually I started to get nervous, so I excused myself to the bathroom. I just wanted to distance myself from them a little. As I go to leave, the guy goes “Wait, before you go, can I get a picture?” Okay. Fine. Just take a photo then leave me alone.
So the guy grabs me, picks me up, throws me over his shoulder so my ass is sticking up in the air (in fishnets and bikini bottoms) and his buddy takes a picture. Then he drops me back on the ground, and the two guys take off. It all happened in about ten seconds so I barely had time to react. Some guy dressed as Deadpool helped me up and walked me to the security booth to report the guys, but nothing ever came of it. So weird, cringey, and terrifying.
I don’t cosplay Frank anymore.
21. “A day from nerd hell”
Oh man! Myself and a few friends occasionally go to local cons just to hang out, drink, and buy some merch. But I’ll never forget a local con in early fall of 2008.
We usually never went in cosplay but Gurren Lagann was still in a fever pitch of popularity at the time and one of my friends was really big on it and went dressed as Kamina while the rest of us still went in regular clothes. (It is worth noting that said particular friend is a decent looking 6 foot 4 fellow and was training for marathon running at the time so he pulled off a pretty damn good Kamina.)
It turned into a day from nerd hell! From the moment we walked into the main hall he was assault in nearly every manor by girl and guy alike. Tons of people wanted pictures with him or of him posing. Endless pictures. And countless times random girls (and a couple guys) would run out of nowhere and jump onto him. Which resulted more often then not him nearly dragged to the ground by these random attackers. I can actually still to this day remember one girl screaming “Kamina-san! I love you!” as she flung herself at my friend.
He did his damnedest to be nice/friendly for pictures while the rest of us spent more time acting as impromptu body guards for him then enjoying the convention.
Needless to say he doesn’t care much to cosplay these days.
22. Did you?
I cosplayed as Haru from the anime Free, and somebody came up to me and asked to, and I quote, put my bishie cock in her.
23. Stealth pics
I had a guy take “stealth” pictures of my feet. It was super obvious by how close he was to me, how he paused whenever I paused, and the way his camera was angled and how he held it. I got security to talk to him and turns out he was taking pics of other girls’ feet too.
There was another time when a guy asked for a picture with me and when posing he literally cupped my butt with his hand, I was too shocked/scared to say anything but nowadays I wouldn’t let that happen.
24. Threesome?
My girlfriend and I do Cosmo and Wanda from the Fairly Oddparents. Pretty simple cosplays and I was super excited. The gf gets nervous in large crowds so we stayed on the outskirts of the crowd for the most part- a lot of people asked for photos and we had a pretty good time. During the end of the day the gf is getting tired and so we relax in a chair- she sat in my lap since the chair was small- in the lobby of the hotel.
Classic neckbeard comes up to us and makes it very clear that he is interested in a threesome and propositions us, even though we state multiple times that we are in an exclusive monogamous relationship. After denying his offers multiple times and him not getting the hint, I fake a call from a friend and claim that “oh- our Timmy cosplayer is looking for us- we have to go” and we promptly found a new place to relax on the other side of the con.
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