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And Your Reward Is Clothes
Real, un-Stripperific Pants: the best quest reward.
"I found the treasure of Melee Island and all I got was this stupid shirt."
— The Secret of Monkey Island

You finally beat the Big Bad and even The Man Behind The Man. After the credits roll and seeing you opened up New Game Plus, what do you get as a reward? Clothes. Yes, you did all that hard work and all you got was a lousy pair of pants! (And Solomon Grundy wants them!)

Lots of games today and in the past love to reward players for their hard work by offering new clothes for the playable characters to try out. Most of the time, the clothes are just for cosmetic purposes which may or may not appear in a rendered cut scene. However, there are some cases where new clothes can actually affect your performance in your next game, such as having more defense. Some clothes may also be a Shout Out to another game.

Related to Cosmetic Award where the rewards are purely for show. Also related to Virtual Paper Doll and Changing Clothes Is A Free Action.

Examples:

  • The second Penny Arcade game offered outfits to wear after completing certain tasks with in the game or unlocking achivements.
  • the X-box/PC game Fable relied on a morality system partially based on how badly you scared or impressed the villagers. You won the thief's clothing by completing a certain mission. People would run screaming if you were dressed in scary clothing, or throw themselves at your feet if you had "nice" clothing on. However, the "bad" clothes didn't work on the monsters.
  • The (currently) newest Xbox 360 Dashboard update, the preview of which was made available late July, with the public release on August 11th, gives Avatar "awardables" which you get by... getting achievements. Seems redundant.
  • Almost all of the Resident Evil games gave you clothes as your basic prize for beating the game. The 3rd game had two outfits that were a Shout Out to two of Capcom's other games, the first Resident Evil and Dino Crisis.
    • The PS 2 version of Resident Evil 4 went so far as to have the second unlocked outfit actually make losing Ashley impossible. She wore a suit of full plate armor - all fire and weapons would bounce off her, and enemies would pick her up, and promptly fall over, dropping her.
      • You also get an incredibly badass 30's mobster outfit for Leon. Well worth the time required to get it.
    • Resident Evil 5 gives you two additional outfits to use on the multiplayer modes for the two playable singleplayer characters - but they aren't actually Cosmetic Awards, as they all have different weapons and starting items. Also, Albert Wesker and Jill Valentine are unlockable as characters for multiplayer, who have two different suits and item loadouts.
  • The Anniversary and Legend versions of Tomb Raider had various outfits for players who completed the time trials. Anniversary's was mostly a Shout Out to past games, including one where you get to play as Lara's old polygonal model from the very first game, pointy boobs and all!
  • Super Mario Sunshine gave you a tropical shirt for beating the game, to go with the sunglasses you unlock earlier.
    • And the sunglasses actually darkens the screen a little.
  • The Elder Scrolls has a number of examples of this trope.
    • The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
      • As you progress through a Knightly Order's ranks, if you should join one, they award you with a piece of normal armor, completing a full set when you're done. Fortunately, there are other minor perks at different levels of promotion, and they also give you a house when you get to the highest level.
    • The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
      • As you progress through the Imperial Legion's ranks, if you should join them, they award you with a piece of armor, completing a full set when you're done.
      • For completing The Seven Trials of the Nerevarine, you get a symbolic ring. For each of the four Ashlander tribes that recognize you as the Nerevarine, they give you a piece of symbolic clothing. For each of the three Great Houses that recognize you as the Hortator, you get a piece of jewelery. Ultimately, these successes yield a gauntlet. Only some of the enchantments on this garb are considered useful.
      • After Caius Cosades is finished giving you quests for the Blades, before departing back to Cyrodiil, he gives you his enchanted clothing. Yes, apparently he did own a shirt, but doesn't wear it.
      • In an inversion, there is a piece of armor in the game that you shouldn't wear belonging to the policing force of the city Vivec.
      • To officially free Argonian and Khajiit slaves, you need to find the key for their enchanted shackles. You get to keep those shackles.
      • The game gives you a clothes reward for rescuing someone who might just be the avatar of a local deity. Like many other free garb it has relatively weak enchantments on it, so this is not as phony as it sounds. (?)
      • There's one quest that involves setting a group of ghosts to rest. Each ghost rewards you with a unique piece of equipment. In a sort of Deconstruction, one of these unique items is...a pair of soiled trousers.
    • Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
      • For completing the central plotline, the Council awards a custom suit of Imperial Dragonarmor, which is obsolete by that point in the game.
      • Oblivion also follows Morrowind's precedent for rewarding quest completions with trinkets and clothing of minor value and varying utility.
  • Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines features a series of 'mostly for fun' quests which reward you with girlie posters featuring some of the female characters from the game. The posters don't do anything ... they just sit there on the walls of your haven. And on the walls of your old haven if you've moved during the game. Hmmm...
  • Beating The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker unlocks the option to have Link keep the outfit he wears in the beginning of the game, rather than switching to his iconic green tunic early on.
  • In the Game Boy Color re-make of The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening, your reward for beating the optional Color Dungeon is a choice of either Red Clothes (boosts attack) or Blue Clothes (boosts defense). You can return to the dungeon anytime to swap colors (but you can never get the original Green Clothes back...).
  • Okami rewards players by giving them alternate canine forms for Amaterasu, which is mostly cosmetic. Just about any dog or wolf seen in the game is usable, as well as some alternate paint schemes for Ammy.
    • The most interesting of these is, perhaps, her 'Realistic 3D' skin, which makes Amaterasu stand out like a sore thumb in a world that looks like a japanese painting come to life.
  • In Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, there's a photo booth that lets you try on various costume items you find throughout the game, but you can't take the items out of the booth until you beat the game.
  • City Of Heroes and City Of Villains rewards a wide variety of successes, ranging from completing the original Task Forces to slaughtering a lot of Rikti with new clothes and different looks for weapons. These are considered the best rewards.
  • The Whyt mini-games in the DS remake of Final Fantasy IV reward you with new outfits for Whyt if you achieve 9,999 points on a particular game. Which outfit you get is dependent on whose game you beat (e.g. a Paladin outfit if you beat Cecil's game, etc).
  • Perhaps among the oldest example is the first Metroid game, where beating the game within a certain amount of time would net you a password which would allow you to play as Samus in a leotard.
    • An unlockable option in Metroid Prime allows you to play wearing the Fusion Suit from the game of the same title.
      • And you did have to beat the game in order to unlock it, in addition to having Metroid Fusion (though not necessarily beating it)
  • Metal Gear Solid gives you a tuxedo for beating the game twice, not to mention the bandanna and optic camo depending on which of the Multiple Endings you get to (though they are useful).
    • The cyborg Ninja would also get a different colored exoskeleton under the same conditions. In the Japanese Integral version, Meryl would wear Snake's Sneaking Suit.
    • The later games has their own set of rewards: Wigs for Raiden, new Camos for Big Boss, and Snake gets Altair's robe.
    • Certain items in the second game required collecting a specific number of dogtags, encouraging very thorough playthroughs to get every dogtag available on a difficulty level. To get some of the best items, you had to beat at least three or four different difficulty modes whilst getting a significant amount of the dogtags, which could only be attained by holding the normal guards (not those spawned by Alert events) up at gunpoint.
      • To be fair, however, almost all of these items are quite useful. The infinite ammo wig/bandanna do exactly what they say on the tin, and there are even infinite grip/infinite oxygen wigs. Plus the optical camo makes you utterly invisible to guards, which allows you to do some really cruel things to them. Such as running behind them, punching them, then running around behind them and punching them again when they turn around.
      • Additionally, Raiden and Snake would gain sunglasses which cycled depending on playthrough. Combining the orange sunglasses with Raiden's infinite ammo wig which turns his hair brown and gives him a decidedly hippy-esque look. Snake gets three pairs of sunglasses through the game - black ones in the Tanker chapter, mirrored ones as Pliskin, and blue ones (to contrast with Raiden's orange ones) when he comes back at the end. Combine the plastic blue ones with the Easter Egg which allows him to go clean-shaven at the end, and the result is notoriously funny-looking.
      • Don't forget Snake's Mind Screwingly hilarious bandanna in 2. "Infinite Ammo" indeed...
  • Halo 3 gives you different pieces of armour for beating the game on normal, heroic and legendary, getting achievements, and getting all the skulls. The armour pieces have no effect on gameplay, and are only available in competitive multiplayer.
    • The ultimate braging rights armor for Halo 3 is Recon. Originally, recon was only attainable through impressing Bungie somehow (for instance, the first person to post on youtube his character being killed by a traffic cone received it), and only a small amount were given out. With the September 2008 update to Halo 3, a new series of "Vidmaster" Achievements were added. Getting the four vidmaster achievements in Halo 3 (and three more in Halo: ODST) unlocks recon armor, though three of the achievements are very hard to get.
  • No More Heroes gives you an extra T-shirt for completeing the game plus unlocks more for you to buy if you play again.
  • Tales of Symphonia rewards you on many side-quests with titles that make the characters wear extra costumes- after completing the game you have the option of carrying over your titles, including the costumes. They're usually not good to wear in combat since unlike regular titles they don't give boosts to your stat raising, but outside of battle they can sometimes give some interesting responses- and as long as you switch out of them before you level up, they won't hurt you.
    • A few of the bonus outfits will (rarely) give the character a different weapon in battle. These weapons don't do anything to the character's current stats.
  • The HD successor to the Tales series, Tales Of Vesperia does largely the same thing albeit all the clothes are purely Cosmetic Awards.
  • Excite Truck gives you another skin for each truck if you race with it 10 times or get an S rank three times.
  • God Hand allows you to change your outfit to the ones used by the Devil Hand, Ryu from Street Fighter and the Camp Gay duo Q & A. You can also give Olivia a bunny outfit.
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door rewarded players that completed certain side quests by giving them badges that change Mario's colors to Luigi, Wario, or Waluigi if you combine the Wario and Luigi badges. While these are purely just for looks, one side quest actually requires the L Emblem badge to make someone think Mario is really Luigi since she's a huge fan of Luigi. After the quest, the real Luigi arrives, and gets chased off as an imposter.
  • God of War games give you the option of humiliating either Kratos or his enemies (depending on your viewpoint) by having him wear various crazy costumes, some of them being groanworthy puns of the games title, although at least the costumes themselves give you various gameplay changes. Examples involve Cod Of War (fish suit), Chef Of War (self-explainatory), Bubbles (surfer), Tycoonus (businessman), Dairy Bastard (cow suit) and a version of the outfit worn by the first game's Big Bad.
  • Final Fantasy X-2 actually revolves the whole gameplay around dresspheres, which are clothes with special powers that grants the party different attacks and stats. Getting new dresspheres is a reward worth getting and is a requirement, thus subverting the trope.
  • Parodied in Sluggy Freelance where the MMORPG "Years of Yarncraft" has underwear as the reward for completing the first quest. This actually becomes an important (in-game) plot point during a later, high-level raid.
    • To be fair, as Torg notes, he could really use underwear.
  • In the German RPG Drakensang (published augustus 2008, English version expected beginning of 2009) there is a place where you can find a false beard, a hawaii shirt and a paper bag (to put over a character's head). The beard can be used to give a dwarf character a beard again, who had shaven it off as a sign of his disgrace after allowing his former boss to be killed while he was a bodyguard for him
  • Most of the quests in Age Of Conan give items of clothing as a reward. In fairness, they do all grant bonuses to the character but it seems to be somewhat off-kilter for you to walk the length and breadth of a warzone gathering items to help put the dead to rest and then be rewarded with a blue leather gladiator skirt.
  • Finishing Goemon's Great Adventure with all 44 Entry Passes allows the player to purchase three alternate outfits for each character. Expect to pay out the nose for Yae's Fanservice-laden costumes, one of which being a Shout Out to fellow Konami franchise Tokimeki Memorial.
  • In Bujingai, you can unlock an outfit for the main character that makes him look like the *cough* actor he was modelled on. Given that the actor is Gackt, this makes for a cringingly strange look as your leather-pants-and-tight-shirt hero fights ancient Chinese technicolour baddies.
  • City Of Heroes, already with a huge variety of costume options, offers more costume parts as unlockable rewards for completing a variety of missions (such as the Toga for the Valentine's Day event, or the various Vanguard parts for dealing with the Rikti War Zone), to just hanging around long enough (Trenchcoats for 3rd month veteran reward, for example), and recently offered a set of costume parts as a $10.00 add-on.
  • "I found the treasure of Mêlée Island and all I got was this stupid T-shirt."
  • In Order Of The Stick after goblin archers killed the (illusion) heroes, the goblins changed to t-shirt that says:
    T-shirt caption: I killed a PC and all I got is this lousy t-shirt!
  • Completing the 72-hour Mode of Dead Rising unlocks "Infinity Mode", in which your health is always slowly dwindling, requiring you to hunt down other survivors and kill them for their food. A Dead Rising day is two real-time hours, and there are achievements for surviving 3, 5, and 7 days - so for the 7 day achievement, you have to play the game 14 HOURS STRAIGHT. The 5 day reward is an awesome and powerful laser sword, but the 7 day reward? Arthur from Ghosts N Goblins fame's boxers.
    • Dead Rising really likes giving you clothes. All the DLC released so far has been new outfits, and most of the achievements will unlock clothes related to them, like a Rambo outfit, a Special Forces outfit, a Convict Jumpsuit, a Pro Wrestler's outfit...
      • In the mobile phone version of Dead Rising, you can find various blue items - boots, helmet, pants, jacket, and gun - which unlocks the Blue Bomber outfit.
  • While plenty of quests in World of Warcraft give armor as rewards, there are some that award clothing items that have no practical in-game value. Most of these are effectively Cosmetic Awards, although you may also get experience and/or gold alongside. There is even a quest that involves going back in time just so you can get a nice hat. Ahem, Nice Hat.
    • Some players take this a step further and deliberately hoard clothing items so they can roleplay or just show off. Furthering this, many of the holiday events in the game have special currencies that can be gathered and traded for items of no practical value, including clothing (and some of these are required for in-game achievements). The tailoring profession also has a small subcategory devoted to sewing shirts.
  • The different sets of lvl 20 (the max) armor in Guild Wars have mostly cosmetic differences from each other, but the hardest to acquire and most expensive items are cool looking armors (some requiring things like beating the campaigns, doing well in challenge missions, or completing the Bonus Levelof Hell)
  • In zOMG!, there are five basic quest rewards: Gold, Null Fragments, Recipes, Charge Orbs, and (rarely) Rings. Rings offer new skills for you to use, and orbs are used to level up. Gold is Gaia's currency, and can be used to purchase game items from other players, or cosmetic items from shops. (Rings aren't sold at shops, and the other game items are Cash Only if you don't earn them in the game). However, Null Fragments and recipes (in addition to most monster drops) are used for Item Crafting, which can be used to make various cosmetic items for your avatar. However, part of the fun of Gaia Online lies in making your character look and act exactly how you want it; recipes are actually highly sought after.
    • Null Fragments have long since been removed as quest rewards, since they used to be of limited quantity for players, thus meaning that the number of recipes one could make was also limited. The game was changed so that Null Frags could be traded in for orbs or rings as incentive for players to pawn them off, but apparently that option has also been recently removed.
  • In Devil May Cry 3, the player is rewarded for completing the game with... less clothes. The option to play Dante shirtless for the whole game is unlocked.
    • The second game also had alternate costumes that were actually based on real brand name clothing designed by Diesel.
      • Then there was the legendary dark knight costume, complete with monocle and demonic shadow, from the first game...but you also got infinite devil trigger, which was a damn good reward.
  • Beating Clock Tower 3 will give you a key to a locked wardrobe from the first area of the game. Unlock it to find...you guess it...clothes. To make things more interesting, the US and Japanese versions of the game have different outfits from each other.
  • Haunting Ground will usually give you clothes when you unlock a specific ending. You're given at least one costume near the end of the game (the patient gown) and Hewie can receive a "plushie dog" costume from beating Hard mode. Most of the outfits have special abilities: the plushie dog makes Hewie completely invincible, the brown/black fur costume makes him more aggressive and prone to attack Fiona but increases his attack/knockdown power by a great deal. Fiona's mascot (frog) costume allows her to use her backstep command without losing stamina. The "Illegal in some states" outfit gives her a whip, which has a wider range than her normal kick (the whip replaces the kick). Arguably, her best costume is the Texas Cowgirl, which when worn, causes her to panic much less often, possibly even more than the accessories you can equip her with. Add in a revolver that deals massive damage to enemies (even if it takes a few seconds to prepare) and unlimited ammo and the game suddenly becomes a lot less scary.
  • In Jak 3, after helping to save the world multiple times, Daxter is free to name any reward from the nigh omnipotent Precursors. He asks for pants. God he missed pants. His girlfriend gets a matching pair.
    • And to top it all off, when the player collects all 600 of the extremely well hidden Precursor Orbs, their ultimate reward is essentially a palette swap on Jak's clothes.
  • In Advance Wars Dual Strike, leveling a character high enough will unlock an alternate costume for that character.
  • All over the place in Pokemon Battle Revolution; wins under various circumstances will give you new clothing articles, trainer titles, and other cosmetic rewards. And after clearing every Colosseum in the game, the trope becomes literal when you can win the species-themed outfits of some Colosseum leaders by defeating them again.
  • The SSX series of snowboarding games rewards the player with new board skins and outfits for winning events. The outfits are purely cosmetic but the boards do affect gameplay, with different board types geared towards racing or tricks and boards earned later in the game generally having higher stats. This was changed for SSX 3, where the races reward the player with money and stat points which he can then spend on buying new outfits and reskinning or statting up his board, as well as various other treats like concept art and new background music tracks.
  • It was inevitable for The World Ends With You to avert this trope, given that clothing determines your characters' stats. The item dropped by the Bonus Boss may be an outright inversion, as while it doesn't change Neku's appearance he still gets a massive stat boost from wearing it.
    • Well, finishing the game unlocks new clothes to buy, based on the looks of the characters.
  • Most of the WWE Smackdown vs Raw games unlock alternate outfits for your wrestlers after you beat Season Mode or Road to Wrestle Mania mode. Sometimes cheat codes can be used too.
  • Mario Kart Wii has Mii Outfit A and B, which changes the looks of your Mii when you race as one. Outfit A gives you a jumpsuit look while Outfit B gives you the Mario shirt and overalls combo if the Mii is male, or a dress in the style of Princess Peach if the Mii is female.
  • The Force Unleashed has the Sith Stalker armor (Dark Side ending), Ceremonial Jedi Robes (Light Side ending) and over a dozen others sold as DLC.
  • In Kingdom Of Loathing, shirts are the most exotic kind of reward. The population in general, being stick figures, aren't aware that they even have a torso, with the exception of those few adventurers who have trained in Torso Awaregness(it's gnomish), and such training is only available on New Game Plus (after at least one ascension.) Only then will adventurers be able to recognize garb that covers anything between the neck and the legs when it appears.
    • Also Hardcore and Bad Moon ascensions are rewarded with clothing, accessories and weapons. Hardcore ascensions from all classes yields a full Stainless Steel suit, Bad Moon with Brimstone, both valuable as status symbols and for stat bonuses.
      • Not to mention Oxygenarian Hardcore, which rewards you with Plexiglass items.
  • Many Tales games, such as Tales Of The Abyss, have special "titles" which alter characters' appearances. The titles are not entirely Cosmetic Awards, but their effects aren't all that noticeable.
  • Wild ARMs 5 contains special clothes that alter characters' appearances... they vary between being powerful and useless. Most of them are only obtainable by spending special coins rather than normal ones.
  • Dragon Quest VIII has some armor that changes appearance; Jessica in particular gets to be dolled up in various ways to show off her obvious assets. Her best and worst outfits both change her character model.
  • Rogue Galaxy also allows you to collect costumes for your characters; they give an extremely minor boost to defense.
  • Whenever you enter Prestige Mode in Call Of Duty 4 (resetting your level to 1 and re-locking all the weapons, mods, perks, etc. you unlocked by leveling up, starting a new game in online play), you get a new type of badge to show your elite status. Additionally, completing all of the Marksman and Expert challenges for a given weapon unlocks a gold version of that weapon that, other than the gold finish, is no different from the normal version (the exception being the Desert Eagle; the Gold Desert Eagle is unlocked at level 55, the maximum level and the level at which Prestige Mode is unlocked).
  • Bubble Symphony aka Bubble Bobble II: gives a code after defeating the True Final Boss after getting all Plot Coupons in Super Mode that lets the player start playing as humans instead of bubble dragons. Unfortunately, wind-up toys can still kill them. Good thing they have straws to blow their bubbles through.
    • Bub and Bob's human form animations (also as seen in the Attract Mode cutscene) are a Shout Out to their appearances in an earlier game, Rainbow Islands.
  • Starting from Silent Hill 3, you could earn alternate costumes for yourself (or, in game 4's case, your romantic interest) that doesn't do anything except in a few cases:
    • Heather gets a wand that turns her into a Magical Girl, complete with Transformation Sequence.
    • Travis can earn the Sprinter (allows him to run without tiring), Fireman (giving him an unbreakable ax), Ambassador (giving him a bitchin' ray gun), and Stalker (gives him night vision goggles) outfits.
  • After completing certain achievements and gaining enough reward points in Uncharted Drakes Fortune the player is able to change Nate's outfits at will, which include a baseball jersey, a t-shirt emblazoned with the Naughty Dog logo, and the wetsuit that we see Drake wearing at the very beginning of the game. The wetsuit is arguably Fan Service (at least this female troper thinks so).
  • In Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, beating the game will have Banjo wear a tuxedo, while Kazooie settles on a necktie. You can see some footage of this in action here (no ending spoilers though, so don't worry).
  • La Mulana is one of the most evil examples of this. Beating the Bonus Level Of Hell (which is particularly hard both to unlock and to beat) gets you a picture of the main character in different clothes. Mind-scarring ones.
  • Bully features a wide number of in game tasks and errands whose only reward is clothes, the majority of which don't do anything. One errand early requires you to find pills for a homeless man; your reward for completion is a cool looking but useless black cowboy hat. Lockers that can be broken into in the school frequently hide clothing items. Taking all the pictures for the school yearbook unlocks the Black Ninja costume, which causes prefects to not notice certain minor rules infractions when worn. Getting all the clothing items in the game is required for 100% completion. The missions and classes added in Bully: Scholarship Edition for the Wii and X-Box 360 mostly just reward you with new clothing items.
  • Completing an especially long setlist in Rock Band will earn a band millions of fans, but as far as material gains go, just $20 and a t-shirt.
  • The Ratchet And Clank games generally don't reward you directly with new skins. Instead, you accumulate various bits and pieces, such as stars or titanium bolts. These generally have exactly one use: new skins. That said, Ratchet defeating half the game in a tuxedo is pretty badass.
  • Finishing Gungrave: Overdose with all three protagonists will allow you to turn on the option for "Alternate Character". Rocketbilly Redcadillac gets a Garino Corsione skin and Juji Kabane gets a Bunji Kugashira skin. Hilarious in that playing the game with these equipped has the characters yelling the lines they used during their respective boss battles when attacking. And as for the original hero Beyond the Grave, he will wear his badass purple cowboy suit (complete with his Nice Hat) from the original game.
  • The Warriors has an extra difficulty called Unleash the Fury if you get 100% completion on Hard. Unleash the Fury is the hardest difficulty level and all of your Warriors are dressed up as the Baseball Furies. This leads to a hilarious and somewhat disturbing encounter on level 16 where you'd normally meet the Baseball Furies and instead, you fight mass armies of Warrior clones!
  • The Fatal Frame series typically has certain costumes unlocked when beating a game on certain difficulties. The third game requires MULTIPLE plays on certain difficulties to unlock them all.
  • Finishing Drakengard 2 rewards the player with equippable Orbs which will change the main characters' appearances on subsequent playthroughs. Urick can be played without his mask, Nowe in peasant garb, etc.
  • Upon completion of the main game, Samanosuke in Onimusha is granted a giant panda suit, with such features as a head that flips back and a large flower in place of his Ogre Gauntlet. Completing the game with an S ranking will unlock a less hilarious (but still cute) alternate costume for his ninja sidekick Kaede as well.
    • In Dawn of Dreams, some of your characters can get Street Fighter costumes! Tenkai on the other hand, can get the rockin' costume worn by Sieg, the main character of Chaos Legion.
  • Kingdom Hearts II has forms.
    • Hell, Sora's clothing is actually an important plot point, even Lamp Shading the fact that Sora had outgrown his original clothing from the previous game.
    • The clothes reward is justified. You will usually get more powerful when putting them on. What did you expect? Your weapons of choice are long keys.
  • Need For Speed Underground features a large amount of possible car customization, ranging from performance upgrades (which affect your gameplay) and cosmetic changes (which don't do shit). The way one earns these upgrades is through winning races. The only problem is that all you earn for a large portion of the beginning of the game is decals. And more decals. Luckily the sequel fixes this.
    • Actually, Underground 2 was the only game that sort of fixed it: you need visual upgrades to increase your street cool rating and get more races. Then in Most Wanted the only thing visual upgrades do is enable you to tweak your aerodynamics, which has very little effect offline (and online everyone uses the untuneable bonus car anyway) and you can do that whether you get a bodykit, a huge spoiler wing or a tiny little spoiler that looks like it came as a factory option with the Sport Edition of your car. Also, painting your car reduces police attention... making it harder to complete the police challenges until you vandalise the place again. And they still cost money. Enough to add up to a new car later on. So nobody does it. Pro Street takes the (ahem) realistic route of having almost every visual upgrade make a performance difference, but often fails to tell you what the difference really is. Bodykits reduce weight... or maybe they sometimes increase weight, it seems to depend on the car. Then you get to change the shape of your bodykit parts, which according to the ingame graphs increases downforce AND reduces drag. This can't be right, but nobody knows what it really does. And again, offline it doesn't matter and online there is a much better alternative for fiddling with aerodynamics: sideswiping the other bastard into a wall so he loses 10 seconds and you win regardless.
  • GRID is a racing semi-simulation, so you cannot visually tune your car and your visual options are limited to car colours and sponsor stickers. However, do not get carried away with changing your paint until it is juuuust right. Due to a mysterious bug/feature, changing your paint or washing your car causes its durability to go down until you make it dirty again! So much for simulation.
  • Open world offroad racing game FUEL relied too much on player vanity. The entire point of the open world seems to be to make the player go out and track down car wrecks which resulted in new clothes and vehicle paintjobs. However, the world is gigantic, to the tune of tens of thousands of km
, and driving for half an hour to find some crashed motorbike with a slightly different pattern on the fuel tank was considered a waste of time by most players. So the open world was considered useless and the game died a quick death on the market.
  • Killing ten bucks with the same weapon in Deer Hunter unlocks the gold version of that weapon, which... is precisely the same, but look at the shiny! Also good for showing off in online matches.
  • In Runescape, a lot of random event and seasonal quests give clothes as a reward. For example, the Halloween event gives you a Grim Reaper hood.
  • Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, and Warriors Orochi unlocks different outfits for the characters as they advance in levels; most of these are callbacks to previous titles.
  • Rock Band 2 has special outfits - four of them, one for each major genre - which are unlocked by completing the aptly-named Impossible Instrument Challenges.
  • Silent Hill 3 has tons of secret outfits unlocked with cheat codes. Most of them were intended to be both promotion and Product Placement — websites announcing cheat codes for Silent Hill 3 that unlock a tee of, for example, Gamespy or the 13ème Rue TV channel — but the rest included other items ranging from an incredibly badass set of camo tee and pants that came with tattoos, white hair, silver lipstick and a cut on Heather's cheek, to a magical key that turned Heather into a Magical Girl pastiche.
  • Real life example: the immortal I went to X and all I got was this stupid t-shirt.
  • Acquring Battle Trophies in Star Ocean: Til the End of Time nets you alternate costumes for the characters in game, but are only used in battle.
  • This is the entire point of Final Fantasy XI. Players (usually of Damage-Dealing classes) even go as far as to say Gear > Skill.
  • The original Myst: Uru has clothing scattered around that you can add to your wardrobe as a reward for exploring, along with a new shirt as one of the rewards for completing the game. The other expansions also feature scattered clothing.
  • The Pets expansion pack for The Sims 2 featured various collars and fur patterns as unlockable rewards if your pet got a promotion.
  • Upon completing Dead Space you are informed that a new Military Suit has been unlocked for your next playthrough.
  • In King's Quest VI, after Alexander helps the Beast by finding him a hot servant chick who will love him, he gets two rewards: a silver-lined magic mirror which reflects the truth to the viewer, and... Beauty's old clothes. Granted, you need the m to beat the game (whichever of the Multiple Endings you choose), but still. Magic mirror vs. rags. Let down.
  • .hack did this in the manga. You solve a puzzle, beat a monster... and are rewarded with schoolgirl and maid outfits.
  • In the Klonoa Wii remake, Klonoa gains three additional outfits upon completion of the game: his original "collar and trousers" outfit, his Klonoa 2 outfit, and his summer wear.
  • Burnout Paradise awards you with new cars as you progress through the game. When you finally complete every single race, you get... gold paint.
  • The Ace Combat series does this, the second playthrough of the storyline adds Aces to each map, usually a distance away from the main objective, requiring you to risk failing the mission in order to shoot them down. Once you do, the extra paint scheme for the Ace's fighter type is unlocked.
    • Also includes Continuity Nods to older games in the series, such as the SU-37s "Yellow Squadron" scheme from Ace Combat 4 in newer games.
  • Beating Iji on Extreme mode unlocks an alternate costume.
  • In the Ar Tonelico games, clearing levels of a Reyvateil's Cosmosphere will give her new clothes. Subverted in that they're all useful as the Reyvateils actually get bonuses from wearing these clothes, along with a few bits of interaction you'd never get if you didn't have them wear those, not to mention, they're easy on the eyes.
  • Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has this as well; upon getting 100% completion, you gain a t-shirt which proclaims I got 100% completion on Vice City and all I got was this shirt. Admittedly, you also get infinite ammo and 3 bodyguards, but still...
  • In Grand Theft Auto IV, if you kill Playboy X, you get his rooftop studio pad. If you change clothes there, you'll discover that at that location and at that location only, you can switch to the outfit of Claude from Grand Theft Auto III.
  • Some Dance Dance Revolution games gave your characters new outfits as you unlocked more songs. Super Nova 2 gave all the characters new outfits from their first one, while Hottest Party 2 awarded the dancers with their HP 2 outfit as well as their HP 1 outfit.
  • In the flash game, Battlegrounds 2, beating the game results in several new outfits (and the option to go bald) over the original boring three.
  • Shadow Hearts Covenant had alternate costumes for the three female party members, as rewards for endgame sidequests. Anastasia had an orange kimono, Lucia had a bridal dress, and Karin had... this so-called "Dating Outfit"◊. So Yeah. There were also two accessories in both this and the first Shadow Hearts, Black Silk Panties and Cotton Underpants, that would in fact give these characters said colored underwear.
  • Recently Team Fortress 2 has recently started randomly dropping hats. At such a disgustingly low drop rate, most players learned early that the only practical way to get a hat was simply to idle in a game while not at your PC. Eventually, someone discovered a way to join a server and idle without having to waste CPU time loading the game. When Valve decided to make this against the rules (after about 4 months without a peep), they gave angelic hats to people who didn't use the program. Wordof God says that most players recieved Halo Hats, but Wordof God 's own play statistics disagree.
    • In a bit of a backlash, the angelic hat itself is an aversion to this trope. Wearing a Halo Hat is a sure-fire way to get you mocked, unhelped, kicked or banned on a lot of servers.
  • Guitar Hero 5 has challenges on every gig in Career Mode. the exact list of unlocks for completing said challenges are cheats (which you can actually use to aid in other challenges, oddly enough), Extra Options (most of which seem to be designed to make things harder), Instrument parts (from the sponsor challenges), alternate costumes (for the premade characters), Costume parts (for created characters), ONE venue to play in quickplay, and in three or four specific instances of non-celebrity characters (celebrity characters are just unlocked by clearing the marked gig they show up in). notice how song unlocks aren't in that list. also note that the platinum challenges are hard and the diamond challenges are borderline impossible without cheats On Expert (don't even try on Hard or below).
  • Both played straight and (slightly) subverted in MMORPG Mabinogi; with many different styles and designs of clothing and accessories available both as purchases in stores, and as drops from bosses and quasi-bosses. All items of clothing have the exact same stats, with the exception of durability. Subverted somewhat in that most of the dropped versions have enchantments which grant some boosts (or reductions) to certain player stats; although the enchants are typically extracted and applied to other equipment. Played straight with others, in that they're different only in having a very rare colour combination, or are unavailable in NPC shops.
    • Played even more straight with limited-duration special-event quests. Rewards are often clothing or accessories which are completely useless for actual gameplay, as they are purely cosmetic with no useful stats or abilities at all, and cannot be repaired, cannot be traded to other players, or both. If they are useful, they are simply rare colour variants of commonly available styles as noted above. Made particularly annoying by the fact that many of these quests are either Nintendo Hard, or require excessive amounts of grinding.
  • Fictional example: The god-awful Eroge the protagonist and his friend make in Welcome To The NHK includes a end-choise where you can choose which outfit the lead girl wears next time around, including a skimpy sea-shell bikini.
  • Done regularly in Animal Crossing, where your neighbors will reward you for going on a wild goose chase to find their camera with items (including clothes). They'll also give you clothes for free once in a while.
  • Persona 3 FES has several sets of party-member outfits, ranging from summer clothes to french maid costumes, that are mostly earned by completing Elizabeth's requests. All of them have decent defense stats, and, as Junpei puts it when you tell him to equip one of the outfits...
    Junpei: "Dude, you want me to run around Tartarus in my swimming trunks? ...that's AWESOME!"
    • Unfortunately the girls don't share this sentiment and just think your abusing your power as leader.
  • This is what happens in Backyard Skateboarding. You get T-shirts for beating the game.
  • In Dark Cloud 2, completing challenge objectives on a floor of a dungeon will reward you with medals. These challenges range from only damaging enemies with a specific weapon type, not healing, a time attack goal, performing well in the Spheda/fishing mini-games, etc. Take these to the Mayor of Palm Brinks after recruiting him, and you can spend them on specialty clothing that isn't available any other way (save for some of the boots, which can be invented), or Name Change Tickets which let you rename not your characters, but one of your weapons.
    • The clothing itself is for nothing more than aesthetic appeal. These all show up during cutscenes, which can turn heartfelt moments and epic sword fights alike into a bit of a Narm if Monica is in a Stripperific fur bikini and Max is a clown.
    • The Name Change Tickets, however, can be made into a Game Breaker - Rename one of your weapons into the exact spelling and casing of another weapon, and it turns into that weapon with it's minimum stats. This means that you can use those 40 medals to turn a cheap wrench into an ultimate weapon that will be extremely powerful up until the end of the game. With enough diligence to finish the challenges for medals, it's possible to have LEGEND or Grade Zero by Chapter 2 by this method. Of course, this is never hinted at in the game in any way.
  • Played straight (and for comedic effect) in the second Knights of the Old Republic. Exile wakes up in his/her underwear and has to brawl through Peragus Station. Both Kreia and Atton will snark about your state of undress. One of your "rewards" is a miners' uniform in your size.
  • Chibi-Robo!! has a number of different costumes Chibi can unlock by doing the sidequests (and in one case dying enough). But they all do different things, and poses. The Pajamas allow you to switch between day & night. The Ghost Costume scares people. Frog & Tao costumes let you talk to... Frogs & Tao. And then there's the Super Chibi-Robo "suit" (actually just a medal on his chest), which you can get for reaching the top happiness rank, giving you an infinite battery. But most will probably get this by beating the game...where you get an infinite battery as a plot point.

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