Many of us have made a mistake, or two, at work at some point. A tiny typo? Not necessarily a big deal. A tiny typo permanently inked onto someone’s arm? Now that’s a totally different story.
When you’re a tattoo artist, there’s no such thing as Ctrl+Z. It’s a mix of art, precision and pressure. But sometimes even the steadiest hands go off the rails, with disastrous results.
Someone asked, “Tattoo artists, what was your biggest ‘oh sh*t’ moment while tattooing?” and some of the responses are so wild they might remain inked in your mind for a while to come. From one artist spelling “thirteen” as “thirirt,” to dramatic stories that involve clients passing out, and unexpected accidents… It’s enough to make you consider canceling your next tattoo appointment.
Bored Panda has put together a list of the top ones. Don’t forget to upvote your favorites.
#1
Obligatory not a tattoo artist, but I was the one getting the tattoo.
I paid for my brother and I to get tattoos. Mine says “my brother’s keeper” and his says “my sister’s protector” and I was going first. Guy puts the stencil on and has me check it out in the mirror. I was only paying attention to the size and placement. I sit down and I’m ready to go. Guy asked how many tats I have so I said 14. He asked if my brother was there for any of them and I said no so he starts messing with him and saying “not a very good protector then are you?” This is as he is about to put the needle on my arm. My brother suddenly jumps across me and says “whoa whoa whoa that’s the wrong tattoo” and we all look down. Sure enough, he had put the wrong stencil on me. Brother saved the day, earned his protector status and made the tattoo artist eat his words.
Image source: Pyr0technikz, stockscar
#2
One of my clients had some nerve damage in his arm, as I went over it his arm involuntary lifted up and started shaking aggressively back and forth. He almost hit me in the face, and he’s lucky I didn’t accidentally tattoo a huge line across his arm. It took several seconds for his arm to stop shaking, neither of us had experienced that before lol.
Image source: iovulca, Andrej Lišakov
#3
Biggest o-no moment wasn’t a misspelling, it was a faint. I was tattooing a guy’s shoulder blade, so he was sitting upright facing away from me. It wasn’t a big tattoo or anything, otherwise I usually lay people down for this, and it was busy, so just sit down and bang it out. Get about 1/3 into it, his skin goes clammy cold -big warning sign – so I start asking him if he’s okay, and of course, he wants to be all tough guy about it and assures me he’s fine. His face isn’t too pale, so I go to start another line. He stands straight up like the Manchurian candidate, and like that, he’s out. He tips forward away from me, I can’t grab him fast enough with a tattoo machine in one hand and his chair in my way, and he crashes face first like a plank of wood hitting the floor. The only thing this poor SOB had going for him was he had a baseball cap pulled low and the brim saved his face from hitting full force. Everybody saw this, the whole shop, the lobby full of people, they probably heard it outside. I’m shedding gloves and putting stuff down, and my client is twitching on the floor like a fried egg. We get to him, roll him on his side, and he starts coming to, first thing he says really loud, “mmmmmMMMM PANCAKES!” Everybody burst out laughing, and my client is still pretty out of it, so he’s coming to, on the floor, and everyone is doubled over in laughter. Took us a while to get him sorted and finally explain to him what happened. He had no explanation for the pancakes.
Image source: JVonDron, Jayson Hinrichsen
#4
Turning around after getting all my machines prepared and seeing my client rubbing one out.
I quickly asked, W*f are you doing?!? With the most shocked look on my face.
The client said, what? I needed to release some “Pressure” before being tattooed.
I just shook my head and pointed to the door.
Image source: Hami_509, Certified Tattoo Academy
#5
When I was getting my first tattoo, the artist was doing his thing and quickly turned around with the active machine in his hand and the clip cord got caught on my foot. This action ripped the machine from his hand and actually stuck him in the arm with the dirty needle he had been using on me. He was not happy. After a few questions about my medical and sexual history, he finished the tattoo. The funniest part is that the artist (strangely) didn’t have a single tattoo on his body before I walked in, and now he has a little dot on his arm.
Image source: Cusackjeff, Timur Weber
#6
Not a tattoo artist, but a friend of mine’s dog passed away so he wanted to get the dog’s name, plus “man’s best friend” inside a bone. The tattoo artist spelled the ‘e’ in “best” backwards and tried to fix it, but it made it worse. At one point during this session he says, “oh, hang on, let me put my glasses on so I can see better.” He also gave my friend the horrifying information that he can only tattoo while drunk. My idiot friend went back to the same guy for multiple tattoos.
Image source: openequalsheavier, Lesia
#7
Friday the 13th we do a $20 tattoo special. I had been working for about 12 hours and I go to tattoo this girl. She gets Finn from adventure time and the word “thirteen.” As I’m tattooing the stencil starts to rub away and I realize I spelled “thirirt” and I stop and say out loud “oh no.” I tell the girl and she agrees to let me cover it with roses. The tattoo turned out pretty good, and she has been back several times since surprisingly. I just can’t believe I misspelled “thirteen” on Friday the 13th when I had been tattooing it on people all day. There’s another one coming up next week and I’m dreading it. There won’t be any words on the flash sheets this year.
Edit: this is a very common sale in shops all over the US
Edit no2: I did use a stencil but it was an underboob tattoo and she was quite sweaty so it began to rub away. I should have stopped then and markered it back on. I am a newer artist and I made mistakes here, but god I learned from them. Luckily she was very nice and still comes in all the time to get tattoos from me.
Image source: Iwanttobelieve691, fxquadro
#8
Older lady came in (mid 60s) shyly requested a humming bird on her mons venus. Halfway through the tattoo she looks down at me and asks if she can ask a question. I say “sure” she says, “can you tell I used to be a man? “
The oh was really in that until she said something, I would have had no idea.
Image source: TattooJerry, Tatiana Zanon
#9
A bloke I know got “Such is life” tattooed on his shin, but they spelled it “Sutch is life”
Such is life, I guess.
Image source: Hinxsey
#10
A friend of mine wanted to get the famous Caesar quote “Veni Vidi Vici” (I came, I saw, I conquered) tattooed on his upper back.
It turns out the tattoo artist put “Veni Vidi Viri”, which translates from Latin as: “I Came, I Saw, Men”. I was a nerd in high school and happened to take Latin as an elective, so I called it out when I saw it.
Turned out to be an easy fix.
Image source: ralam, Getty Images
#11
Ex gf got a tattoo on a whim. “Expect nothing, Accept everything” I was staring at it and it bugged me. Until I had the fun time of telling her that he wrote “Expect nothing, Except everything”.
Image source: badboystwo, Valeriia Miller
#12
I once “OH NO”ed when I legitimately thought I left a a burner on the stove on at home. The white hot panic on my customer’s face is forever emblazoned in my mind. Don’t worry though, I didn’t leave the stove on.
Image source: Father33, KWON JUNHO
#13
My friend went to a guy he knew that did tattoos as a hobby at his house. He wanted “UNFORGIVEN” tattooed down his forearm.
They decided to get drunk and pop some pills as he is getting the tattoo. My friend passes out. He wakes up a few hours later and looks over at the tattoo guy who is staring at the floor with a look of defeat on his face. “I messed up man” he says. My friend looks down at his new “UNFORIEN” forearm tattoo.
Image source: TheArtisticLemur, iam_os
#14
Not an artist, but I wanted to get a tattoo for my grandfather, but I wanted it to be a surprise. So I ask him, “hey pops could you sign your name on this paper”
Him being an undercover police officer for his entire life, signs a random name.
Me being 18 and ready to get another tattoo, don’t read the name, and now forever have some random persons name on me for life. Honestly I think it’s better than actually having his name because it makes a good bar story lol.
Image source: HowIsGarskiTaken, Peter Olexa
#15
Not an artist, the one receiving the tattoo.
There was a section of the tattoo where stripes were being put in. At one point, the tattoer and I both realized the stripes weren’t lined up properly and he looks up at me and exclaims “There’s a glitch in the matrix!”
He fixed it up so you can barely tell but if anything the imperfection and hilarity of that moment make it better.
Image source: atari_bigby, benjamin lehman
#16
My best friend is a sometimes tattoo artist and this happened back in 2004 I believe. A friend of ours wanted a tattoo for 9/11 and was getting the phrases “Never Forgive” and “Never Forget” on each arm. They were in this fancy old English lettering covering the full forearms. As he was finishing up the second arm someone said I think that they both say “Never Forgive”. It took a while and everyone kept looking at them. The font was really fancy so it tricked your mind but low and behold they were both the same. It wasn’t freehand there were stencils for both. We are still not sure how no one noticed till the end. To make matters worse the guy getting the tattoo was in a wheelchair as he was paralyzed from the waist down from a car accident. I thought he was gonna end him. I remember laughing so hard at the time. It was so messed up. The phrase was so ironic in the moment.
Image source: bigwig75, Alesia Kozik
#17
Tattoo artist misspelled the name that was going on my shoulder, underneath another piece that was already there.
Fortunately, it was when he drew the name on my skin with a pen first and then he asked me to check it *before* he got started.
Image source: BradC, Allef Vinicius
#18
He asked for a 13 but they drew a 31.
Image source: _stayhuman, Pablo Merchán Montes
#19
Not the artist, but a recipient.
My artist and I were designing a chest piece involving Odin’s wolves, Geri and Freki. One would be on each pec facing outwards.
He sketched something up and sharpied the wolf on my right pec. A few hours in my artist stops, looks discerningly at the sketch, back at me, back to the sketch and says: “I did not draw nipples on the sketch…”.
I’m a little confused and my girlfriend at the time screeches, starts clapping and laughing and screams “HE’S BITING YOUR NIPPLE!!!” And sure enough, my artist had not taken consideration of anatomy and and now a wolf’s mouth was biting at my nipple.
What makes it so great is when my skin stretches lifting my arm and the wolf looks like it’s opening its mouth and closing it. I love it!
My tattoo artist and I went to the same art school for college and were really good friends. With the exception of one, he’s done all of my tattoos. I’ve gotten tons of compliments about the pieces I have that are more visible. I didn’t get mad when he tattooed a wolf biting my nipple because my sense of humor is, at times, askew and I think it’s hilarious.
Image source: BlakAcid
#20
I knew a guy who did really bad tattoos. The kind of guy who gives out tattoos for like $20 and bought a kit off Amazon with a small how-to booklet.
He sent me some pictures of his stuff trying to recruit me as a client. He posted new stuff every week and was so proud of it. I thought it was horrible though. He did a tattoo of a grim reaper that’s sythe was so crooked it was pretty much a half circle shape. The rest of the drawing was pretty bad too and it was ALL BLACK.
When I told him it looked bad he gave excuses as to what went wrong. He said he got high and that gave him jitters or something. Then other times he said he was drawing a picture his client drew. Doesn’t mean you can tattoo crooked lines.
Image source: JapaneseStudentHaru, Pablo Merchán Montes
#21
Not an artist…
I got a tattoo of the map of the world that I got at the end of a world trip. Heard an ow no half way thru…she accidentally starting drawing china. I specifically asked just for the outlining of the world and no countries but I had to accept it…weeks later I met a Chinese girl who is now my wife and mother of our kid. Tattoo artist must have know all along.
Image source: Tingbudong123, Curated Lifestyle
#22
“Philippians”.
Only thing I’ve ever misspelled in over 9 years of tattooing.
It’s the “Mississippi” of bible verses.
Image source: anon, Tony Rocket
#23
When the guy tattooing me asked another artist walking past “Is it I before E or…”.
Managed to save it, made it look better than it was supposed to, and touched up some other stuff around it.
Always, always, always double check spelling.
Image source: anon, Chang Hsien
#24
My cousin now has to call his wife Maranda by a new name. Her new name is Marnda. They both checked the tattoo outline before and said it looked just fine. I don’t think anyone noticed until a couple days after.
Image source: TheBadGuyBelow, LOGAN WEAVER | @LGNWVR
#25
Not a tattoo artist myself. But a friend of mine got drunk at a party a couple of years back. There was this dude with a tattoo machine at the party and my drunk friend either got talked into getting his first tattoo, or just thought it was a brilliant drunk idea, i’m not sure.
Anyways even in his drunk state of mind he figured he should atleast get a tattoo that he can cover up. So they decided that “face the facts” would be a rad tattoo on the side of his foot.
However when they were done the tattoo said “Face the face”. It’s still a running joke within our group and some friends of ours even named their band “Face the face”.
Image source: Fumar_mata
#26
Well there was this time when a guy had me tattoo his entire upper body below the neck with all sorts of very specific lines and dots and stuff along with the traditional skulls and angels decor. He brought in a drawing and said he’d spent weeks working on it. I remember because he had added random words like Cute Poison, Fitz and Percy on it as well.
I think the FBI or cops or something came to ask about him months later, but I don’t really remember.
Image source: Idarak
#27
Again, I was the one getting the tattoo and the artist had been adjusting the arm rest a few times before he began. The tattoo was going on the bicep. Just as he is about to start the arm rest collapses, (clearly was a piece of trash) causing him to accidentally tattoo a small dot much higher on my arm than he expected. We laughed it off, but I could tell he was worried as he insisted that’s never happened before. I told him to just leave it and begin the tattoo, but he insisted on moving the tattoo up to cover the mistake.
Image source: Pizzamonsters
#28
Because why not.
When I was 18 I saw the musical RENT on Broadway. It was an awesome, life changing experience.
I elected to get the logo tattooed on my ribs. 13 years later, I don’t regret getting a tattoo *about* the musical, I just regret what I got.
Image source: Galiphile
#29
Not a tattoo artist, but when I went to get a tattoo when I was 18 I found out I was allergic to either the ink or the metal in the needle. Because the artist does the first line, stopped and said OK, it’s gonna feel like that and then the next thing was OH NO! I stared breaking out in hives from the line he did across my chest, down my arm, up my face, one of my eyes swelled shut. He ended up calling 911 because we didn’t know what was going on.
Image source: probably_another1
#30
I woke up in the middle of the night, sat up, and said “oh no” as I suddenly realized that 47 in Roman numerals is NOT written out “XXXXVII”.. which is what I tattooed on someone earlier that week. I am usually really strict about my client, and usually also a coworker spell checking EVERYTHING, even if I’m 100% sure already. This dude have me a lot of trust and neither of us thought anything about it when I had the design printed out. I emailed him the next morning apologizing, offered him a cover up or free work (I tattooed him before and we talked about more plans in the future.) He didn’t even mind, and came back several more times for other stuff.
Image source: kingtooth
#31
Not a tattoo artist but I witnessed a friend (who does good work and has owned his own shop for 15+ years) make the rookie mistake of tattooing a logo backwards. The strange thing was, I don’t think the guy really noticed before he left?
Whatever, it was a PORSCHE logo. He would have regretted it either way.
Image source: TheRealUnicornSalad
#32
My tattoo artist accidentally did a line in a completed part of the sleeve he was finishing. he immediately got out all the colors and redid the completed part (it was the fletching of and arrow, so it wasn’t a huge section) and it ended up looking even better than it did before. i really didn’t mind, i considered my arm a piece of his art, kind of like i had the idea and left the end up to him.
Image source: nichole_w_lewis
#33
Been tattooing 14 years and just had this happen for the first time a few weeks ago. Guy is laying facedown on a massage table with arms to his sides. I’m working on his shoulder blade when the cord of my machine gets caught in his fingers. While I was making quick shading movements it snags and rips the machine from my hand. It’s now running on its own bouncing on the table by itself and tattooing him in the ribs! I let him know all those extra marks were free tattoos. We both had a good laugh and hopefully they aren’t deep enough to stay.
Image source: paulberkeytattoo
#34
Luckily, I haven’t had any oh no moments in my career, but a coworker of mine had a pretty good one last year.
His client was getting a black and grey bear on the ribs with script around it that reads “sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you”. The artist is a lefty so he starts from the left side and gets to a point where he’s already tattooed most of the script except for the last two words. As I’m looking over his shoulder, he and I both realize that there’s an S missing at the end of “eat.”
Luckily, without alarming his client, an S was added and his client was spared appearing as a bear eating Comrade from the Motherland with a tattoo that read “sometimes you eat the bear, sometime the bear eat you.”
Personally, I would have enjoyed the latter spelling but to each their own.
Image source: t0nyage
#35
Not a tattoo artist.
My buddy and I were getting tattoos. My buddy decides to get an italian flag. As the tattooist is starting the coloring of the flag, i notice that he is starting with the wrong color. He is starting with red. The italian flag is green/white/red. I jump up and tell them. They both just say “nah, it’s the right way”. My friend, who is italian-american and getting a tattoo of the italian flag, even agrees with him. I just sat there in amazement. Anyways, he got a reversed tattoo of the italian flag.
Image source: TheHamLord
#36
Girl I dated had a Yin/Yang sign (original I know), it was two non-traditional colours (edgy, I know), but she said she had intended it to be the opposite (pink on the left, purple on the right instead of vice-versa) but the artist had the paper she drew it on upside down.
*Yin != Ying, thanks for the correction.
Image source: billbapapa
#37
Not an artist but i heard an artist literally say “oh no” while he was doing one of my tattoos. i literally felt time slow to a crawl, and my head flew around to see what happened without even realizing i was doing it. turns out he just knocked over the little cup of ink and had to get a new one. tattoo turned out great!
Image source: kbyyru
#38
Knew a guy back in the day that came over when scratcher friend was doing cheapies, he wanted ” bad religion”, got ” bad religon” . Saw him a few years later and he went with entire arm solid black as a cover up, he wasn’t a smart man.
Image source: dankerstrain
#39
I was thinking about getting a tattoo of a neck on my neck so when a strangler tries to have a go at me he grabs my tattoo neck instead of my real one.
Image source: zerg_rush_lol, Jayson Hinrichsen
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