rear its (ugly) head

 Inevitably Sax Rohmer was a regular target. When the show became a national institution, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan liked to josh each other in telegrams and letters written in character. Secombe to Milligan, 11 March 1957: ‘I see that Sax has reared his ugly head stop remember all men eat but few men chu stop’

我看Sax在興風作浪惹麻煩。記住，他可是不食人間煙火的*。

* 解釋文字遊戲：The Language of Jokes: Analyzing Verbal Play

rear its head

rear its (ugly) head
to become a problem that has to be dealt with It was in the 1970s that the problem of violent soccer fans first rearedits head in Britain.
See also: head, rear
Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2003. Reproduced with permission.