Nobody puts baby in a backseat with the wrong clothes.
While changing the location of a show, a character, usually female, is pushed for time and changes her clothes in the back seat of a moving car. You can definitely expect to see a shapely leg waving around behind the driver as tights are pulled on.
This may indicate that this character doesn't care about being seen nude or changing in public due to Ambiguous Innocence, she's a Shameless Fanservice Girl, or it's simply that she was forced to do this because she's in a hurry and wouldn't normally change so publicly.
Speaking of the driver, he will usually be male. The situation is often Played for Laughs as the changing character will generally caution the driver to watch the road instead of his passenger. Said driver will struggle to do so. May overlap with Watching the Reflection Undress if the driver uses the rearview mirror to sneak a peek.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Variant in a QuickChek commercial, in which a driver who's on his way to a sports event (where he's the coach) has to change his shirt in the front seat while stopping at one of the titular convenience stores for an oil change, only to see a woman in the car nearby staring at him. Later, at the game, it turns out her son is one of the other players, resulting in the following exchange:
Player: Coach, meet my mom.
Mom: Do you always change at QuickChek?
Coach: Just every three thousand miles.
Anime & Manga
- Ghost Talker's Daydream: One early scene has Misaki changing in the backseat while Kadotake is driving. When she accuses him of peeking, he turns to face her and vehemently denies it, which causes him to almost crash the car since he wasn't watching the road.
Comic Books
- Black Cat (Marvel Comics): In issue #1, after a Black-Tie Infiltration where Felicia had to wear a fancy black dress, she makes her escape from the event in a car driven by her henchmen. The ensuing Chase Scene has her changing out of the dress and into her Spy Catsuit uniform while in the backseat of the car.
Film — Animated
- Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo!: Daphne, as they flee in Elvira's car, suggests that she and Elvira swap outfits so that if the monsters go after Elvira for her celebrity status, they'll target Daphne instead. Elvira, oddly, buys it. In truth, it was actually Daphne pulling a non-lethal variant on Kill and Replace, and she'd done it before with Phyllis Diller.
Film — Live-Action
- 27 Dresses: The opening sees Jane hiring a cab for the whole night to shuttle between the two weddings she's bridesmaiding for on the same night. She tells the cabbie she'll dock his fare for every time he looks, and at the end of the night, she hands him less money than expected and says, "You know what you did." He nods as if that's fair.
- Bend It Like Beckham: After Jess's father agrees to let her slip out of her sister's wedding party to play in her football team's playoff game, she has to change out of her sari and into her uniform in the backseat of Tony's car. We aren't shown anything titillating, and Tony, who came out to her as gay earlier in the film, naturally doesn't pay any attention.
- The Cannonball Run: in the second movie, JJ and Victor get distracted seeing the shadows through the privacy screen of the "nuns" undressing in the backseat of their military limo, nearing going off the road multiple times.
- Dirty Dancing: After doing a dance performance, Johnny and Baby are seen driving back home, with her changing out of her fancy dress in the backseat of the car as he drives. This is because she is keeping her activities a secret from her family and doesn't want to be seen in such an exotic outfit by anyone who knows her. Johnny takes the opportunity to sneak a peek through the rear-view mirror as she changes.
- Friends with Benefits: To characterize Jamie as a big city girl who's always rushing, one of her introductory scenes is of her changing clothes in the backseat of a taxi while talking with her dad on the phone at the same time.
- Iron Man 2: During the climactic battle when Black Widow changes into her standard battle outfit in the back of the Stark Industries limo while "Happy" Hogan is driving. Happy naturally can't stop himself from glancing in the rearview mirror but stops do so when he almost hits another car.
- Played purely for comedy in Johnny Dangerously. Johnny, Lil, and an accomplice are escaping by car after busting Johnny out of prison, and the two men make a point of changing outfits and the car's color from the backseat (Lil had layered shelf paper over it for just that purpose), but every time they do, they somehow get immediately spotted and another APB goes out with a description matching their new disguise. They eventually wind up dressed as nuns and driving a getaway car covered in "duckies and bunnies", to the police dispatcher's incredulousness.
- Logan Lucky: While driving away after helping Joe escape prison, Mellie says she got some clothes for him since he can't stay in his obvious prison clothes without attracting attention. He starts changing in the backseat on the spot, though not before he gives her a mocking "No Peeking!" Request.
- Magnum Force has a variation where a prostitute takes a taxi and proceeds to stuff the money she's just earned in her bra and panties. Realising the cab driver is watching her, she pretends to flash him. Unfortunately the fanservice scene does a Mood Whiplash when her pimp turns up and murders her for trying to hide the money from him.
- Nuns on the Run: Done as a scene change gag. At one point Brian Hope and Charlie McManus take a taxi back into London whilst they're still both in disguise as nuns. The two use the offscreen ride to ditch the outfits, leading to the scene cutting to them arriving and the taxi driver's utter bewilderment when they get out.
- At one point in The Princess Diaries, Mia does this in the backseat of the car driven by her chauffeur Joe. Played for slapstick as part of the Running Gag of her being a Cute Clumsy Girl, with San Francisco's hilly terrain not helping matters.
Joe: I've never put on pantyhose, but it sounds dangerous.
- Pulp Fiction: Gender-Inverted Trope. Bruce Willis's character, Butch, who just came from fighting in a boxing match, changes clothes in the back of a cab with the female driver eye-balling him in the rear-view mirror.
- Smokey and the Bandit: In the third film, the hitchhiker Snowman picks up decides to change in the backseat, but questions him if he's going to perv on her. He swears he won't, but it is obvious that he does. This is different from the first movie, when the future Frog does change out of her wedding dress in the Trans Am but does it while in the front passenger seat.
- X-Men: First Class: Played With. Agent Moira McTaggart needs to infiltrate the Hellfire Club, but the CIA didn't really have any plans for how to get her inside. Noticing a bunch of scantily-clad women marching in a line inside as part of the entertainment, Moira quickly strips down and dashes out of the backseat of the car to fall in line, allowing her to get inside without anyone questioning it.
Literature
- The Clique: Kristen comes to Massie's car dressed in "ugly" and dull clothes. In the backseat, she pulls them off to reveal something shorter and more fashionable. Massie can't believe that Kristen's parents are this strict since she is Spoiled Rotten on her own.
- In the second Wearing the Cape novel Hope and Jackie are in the back of a limo when they are called to duty. They change in the back, and finish adjusting their clothes when they get out, which leads to all sorts of media speculation.
Live-Action TV
- Chuck: In "Versus the Wookiee", Sarah needs to change out of her mission outfit and into the uniform for her cover job at the Weinerlicious, and as she's already late, she does so in the back seat as Chuck drives her there. Chuck's gaze is drawn by the view in the rearview mirror until Casey covers it.
Casey: Eyes front, soldier.
- Frasier: Roz is changing clothes in the backseat of Frasier's car. A police officer has him pulled over. It turns into Not What It Looks Like when the officer sees Roz in the backseat, her jeans around her ankles.
- Fringe: In "Olivia," Olivia escapes the facility where she's being held and swims to New York, where she takes a cab driver named Henry hostage and forces him to get her clothes. She then changes out of her Embarrassing Hospital Gown in his backseat, to his discomfort.
- Home Improvement: Tim and Jill get lost in a snowstorm while driving to a wedding, forcing Jill to change into her dress in the backseat. Tim gets Distracted by the Sexy (despite Jill being royally pissed that he ignored her directions) and almost swerves off the road.
- The Lois & Clark episode "Dead Lois Walking" actually has a rare front seat example of the trope: After Clark breaks Lois out of prison as Superman, we have a shot of Lois in the front passenger seat of Clark's car changing out of her prison uniform and into regular clothes.
- Mr. Bean: In the episode where Bean is late for a dentist appointment, he does this while driving. More specifically, he bends over the front seat to get his pants on while keeping his feet on the steering wheel and placing a brick on the gas pedal.
- The Professionals: Parodied in "Blood Sports" when Bodie attempts to change in the backseat but can't because Doyle Drives Like Crazy and Bodie keeps getting thrown back-and-forth.
- Rizzoli & Isles: Maura complains frequently about Jane's habit of "undressing and driving".
- Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (2022 TV adaptation):
- Frankie leaves the hospital where Bobby is recovering and gets changed in the back of a car driven by her family's long-suffering chauffeur. Unfortunately for Bobby, the clothes she changed out of were "borrowed" from him. As Frankie gets changed, she calmly admonishes the chauffeur for consulting the rearview more often than necessary.
- Gender-Inverted Trope later. After Bobby leaves the hospital still in his scrubs, Frankie gives him a lift so the two can properly discuss matters. He takes the opportunity to change back into his clothes in the backseat, whilst Frankie (now in the front) gives him more than a casual glance in the rear-view mirror. This does not escape the attention of the same chauffeur, with her calmly but sheepishly telling him to "do as I say, not as I do."
- The Wire: Gender-Inverted Trope. After Avon Barksdale gets out of jail, Stringer Bell and Shamrock pick him up and bring him new clothes, too. As they drive away from the jail, we see Avon tossing his old clothes out the window of the moving car.
Western Animation
- Implied in DC Showcase: Green Arrow. Green Arrow apologizes for being late while intervening in an assassination attempt on Perdita, princess or rather queen of Vlatava. He then quips, "But you try changing clothes in a hybrid!"
