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Ursula Vernon endorses fingerless gloves.
"Everyone was wearing fingerless gloves..."
—The Lonely Island, Boombox
Basically, a pair of gloves with their fingers cut off at varying lengths. The standard is cutting them at the second knuckle, but sometimes the entire finger is removed. Sometimes called half-gloves.
A character wearing such pair usually indicates:
- Badassitude, if they're black leather with studs and spikes (Badass Bikers, Ninjas, generic goons);
- Snobbery, if they're tan leather, black leather without studs or metalwork of any kind, or tan knit backs with leather palms (fingerless driving gloves);
- Poverty, if they are entirely knit with no leather — these are referred to as "Bum Gloves" in some regions of the U.S.;
- "Rough-and-ready"ness — the character is willing to jump straight into the action;
- That they look cool.
On a practical note, fingerless gloves combine the full tactile sensitivity of bare fingers with warmth and protection for the rest of the hand. As such they are common in cycling, sailing, martial-arts, weightlifting, and many other activities. Some people find they allow typing while reducing tendonitis and carpel-tunnel syndrome. They're also useful for archers, as they keep the bowstring from cutting into the fingers.
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Examples
Anime & Manga
- Rukia from Bleach can knock the "spirit" out of people with a magical fingerless glove◊.
- Ash Ketchum from Pokémon.
- Red, his counterpart in Pokémon Special, also wears them, but his have a story. He took them from Lieutenant Surge after beating him. They're insulated against electricity, and he uses them to handle Electric Pokémon safely.
- Ruby also wears them, although his dodn't have a story.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh! the duel gloves from Duelist Kingdom don't have fingers.
- Saint Seiya: Many of the female saints wore fingerless gloves. It gives a slightly creepy effect with those long fingernails.
- And, generally, every Cloth features them.
- Madlax wears them all the time.
- Kazuma from s-CRY-ed has one on his right hand. There are several theories on why he wears it, from hiding a deformity brought on by his alter, to protecting his hand from getting scraped by his metal alter, although most people think he does it because it looks cool.
- A common Barrier Jacket accessory in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Approximately half the cast sports them, including, but not limited to, post-Season 1 Nanoha, Signum, Hayate, and Subaru.
- Don't forget Domon Kasshu.
- Hikari from Digimon Adventure 02. Pure Rule Of Cool, because there's no other possible explanation. She's a sweet girl next door type.
- Gunsmith Cats: Bean Bandit uses a pair of Bullet proof gloves like these as his riding gear.
- Ginji and Juubei from Get Backers.
- The whole cast of Bakugan.
- Revy from Black Lagoon wears a pair.
- Worn frequently by members of Section Nine in Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex. In one scene, the Major uses a glove with large electrified metal attachments. That's right, a fingerless taser glove.
- In Kurokami, Kuro wears a pair on her hands and feet.
- Ling's two guards, Lam Fan/Ran Fan and Fu wear these in Fullmetal Alchemist.
- Kakashi from Naruto has a pair of the black leather variety, with metal plates on the backs, Zabuza also had a pair but his were elbow length and were of the knitted kind, didn't detract from his badassitude though, if anything they actually enhanced it. other wearers of fingerless gloves include Kankuro, Temari, and Sai
- Negima has Chachamaru occasionally wearing them after her Mid Season Upgrade.
- Spike of Cowbow Bebop. Like he needs to be any more bad-ass.
Comics
- The Punisher wears them.
- X-Men's Gambit wears gloves that are missing fingers, perhaps as a nod to his past as a thief. Also, his mutant ability to kinetically charge (i.e. blow up) objects depended on him touching the object. If he wore full gloves, he would only be able to blow up his gloves.
- Green Arrow uses one of these when he should be using special archery gloves.
- As does Marvel's Hawkeye, and most other archer superheroes. For the uninitiated, archery gloves are the exact opposite of these. They cover the tips of the bowstring fingers as far as the second knuckle on the palm side, but leave the rest of the hand exposed.
- To be fair, both superheroes have been active for years, and likely have super-calluses negating the need for archer's gloves.
- In the comics version of WITCH, the girls gain stronger versions of their powers in the "New Power" arc, thus, new costumes. All but Cornelia gain fingerless gloves as part of their new costumes (Cornelia has what could be consider normal gloves).
- In his civilian identity, Rorschach from Watchmen wears the hobo variety of these. Green ones, specifically.
Films
- Movie version of Sweeney Todd. Everyone wears them except Johanna.
- John Bender of The Breakfast Club wears them, cause he's just badass like that.
- Watts in Some Kind of Wonderful.
- Jiminy Cricket wears bum gloves at the beginning of Pinocchio. Honest John and Gideon also wear them.
- Padmé Amidala wears the black leather kind in Attack of the Clones, along with that sexy black dress.
- The Basher in Ocean's 11 wears them as part of his quasi-Dickensian get up.
- Von Remus and Adeodatus from Damnatus wear them as part of their custom uniforms, just in case you were in any doubt about their badassery.
- Terminator Salvation: Marcus, John Connor, Kyle Reese and numerous other Resistance members all wear fingerless gloves at some point.
Literature
- Lieutenant Blouse from Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment gets a pair named after him.
- Bob Crachit wears these in some adaptations of A Christmas Carol as he's working in a cold office, but still needs his fingers free.
- In The Lonely Winds books, Nails wears fingerless gloves with big silver spikes mounted on them.
- Fagin from Oliver Twist.
- It's mentioned in ''The Krytos Trap that traditional Twi'lek warrior garb includes a bandoleer, leggings, a Loin Cloth, and fingerless gloves. Wedge puts on a modified version when trying to convince them to help.
Live Action TV
- Liza in Beakmans World always wore cut-offs. (That would be the assistant they decided not to show in the recent syndicated cycle...)
- Frohike of The Lone Gunmen.
- Lister from Red Dwarf wears the black leather variety in Series V, VI and VII.
- Gene Hunt and his fingerless leather driving gloves. He's just that badass.
- Mitchell from Being Human - wooly ones. Not sure why.
- In real life, it's because the set of their flat was apparently freezing and Aidan Turner wanted to pile on as many layers as possible. In-universe? While Mitchell's the kind of vampire who can go out in the sunlight he's still sensitive to it, so, he piles on as many layers as possible. Also, Rule Of Cool.
- The First Doctor (as played by Richard Hurndall) wore them throughout the twentieth anniversary Doctor Who story "The Five Doctors" - despite never actually wearing them in the 1960s (as played by William Hartnell). The behind-the-scenes explanation for this was that the First Doctor wore a distinctive jewelled ring and the production team had been unable to locate a suitable prop before filming.
Music
Real Life
- There's actually a word for it in France : mitaines. However it's rather a feminine accessory and an old-fashioned type of glove, though it's beginning to come back into fashion. It's stereotypically the kind of wool-based clothes grandmothers knit for their grandchildren. Badass enough for you ?
- Fingerless gloves apparently made with a fair amount of either Lycra or Spandex are generally available among needlework supplies, and do offer good hand/wrist support when doing delicate work for an extended period.
- If a guitarist is playing outdoors (at a music festival for example), fingerless gloves are practical ways to keep one's hands warm while still retaining the ability to play as the cloth would get caught on the strings if they were to wear regular gloves.
- Any gloves used for shooting will have at least 1 finger cut out.
- In marching bands, clarinets will often be played with fingerless gloves, if gloves are worn at all, because of the mechanics of the instrument needing bare fingers, unlike most other woodwinds.
- While the coolness of fingerless gloves in generally played straight in fiction, Japan also considers them a common piece of otaku fashion...probably because of said fiction.
- Studded leather fingerless gloves are also very popular with the metalhead community; often worn with studded wristbands and other spiky clothing.
Tabletop Games
- The Draconomicon supplement to the 3rd edition of Dungeons & Dragons stated that dragon's gloves don't have fingers to allow for their claws.
Video Games
- I'm pretty sure I'm indestructible. I'm pretty sure you're not.
- Geo Stelar and Sonia Strumm from Mega Man Star Force.
- Also Vent, Aile, Grey and Ashe from Mega Man ZX.
- Invoked with Zero in his Mega Man Zero form. He's a robot, but his hands are black with white fingers. Might actually be gloves of a sort, as most Reploids usually have fabric over their joints to keep out dirt.
- Subverted by Naked Snake who only has gloves with no index or middle fingers.
- Also, most likely in Naked Snake's style, Liquid Ocelot sports a pair of fingerless gloves that only cover his pinky and ring fingers.
- Similarly, Dante Sparda, in the fourth game (In the third he has normal fingerless gloves, and normal gloves in the first).
- Not to mention Dante's brother Vergil.
- The assassins in Assassins Creed wear fingerless gloves over slightly fingerless hands.
- In Atelier Iris 2 The Azoth Of Destiny, Fee wears fingerless gloves.
- In Kingdom of Loathing, one sidequest is to obtain some fingerless gloves.
- They appear a lot in STALKER.
- Faith from Mirrors Edge wears a glove like that on her right hand. Justified, since she needs all the agility she can muster (yes, that includes fingers) but also needs a way to protect her palms e.g. during long rope slides (do not try that trick at home without gloves).
- Wario in Wario Ware.
- Orphen from Orphen Scion of Sorcery wears them. (Zap.◊)
- Lara Croft frequently wears these.
- Sora from Kingdom Hearts wears these. Given Nomura's typical character designs, this is probably due to the Rule Of Cool more than anything.
- Yuri Lowell from Tales of Vesperia has one on his right hand.
- Possibly practical. His later ones have nasty-looking spikes on them, and several of his moves involve punching an enemy.
- Senel Coolige also sports a pair.
- Most of the party in Talesof Phantasia wear them.
- The disk-shooter glove used by Jade in Beyond Good and Evil is designed like this.
- A few characters from Variable Geo, not only do they wear fingerless gloves, but also toeless/heeless boots as well.
- Grand Theft Auto IV: Niko wears them in screenshots and on the CD itself, but you cannot find them anywhere in the game. Hilariously, this was one of the most common fan complaints about the game.
- The fingerless gloves ARE in the games' code. With a little tweaking, one can get the fingerless gloves on the PC.
- Fingerless gloves are one of many costume options in City of Heroes.
- Just about every NPC in City of Heroes who doesn't have full gloves or gauntlets has fingerless gloves. Street punks, mutants, hardened mercenaries, evil magic clowns — Paragon City apparently has a strict "no bare hands" dress code.
- They're also an option in Rock Band.
- This makes some sense, as playing a guitar while wearing gloves over the fingers somewhat kills the sound quality.
- The Heavy Weapons Guy from Team Fortress 2.
- The Sniper as well, but only wears one on his left hand.
- Practically every other character in the Resident Evil series.
- RE0 — Rebecca Chambers;
- RE1 — Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Barry Burton, Albert Wesker, Joseph Frost;
- RE2 — Leon S. Kennedy, Claire Redfield;
- RE3 — Carlos Oliveira, Nicholai Ginovaef, Mikhail Victor, Nemesis;
- RE4 — Ada Wong, Jack Krauser, the Merchant;
- RE5 — Sheva Alomar.
- Adrian Shepard of Half-Life: Opposing Force wears as such. With a gasmask. Of course, we're not going into the hows and whys.
- I can't remember for certain, but i'm pretty sure the resistance members in Half-Life 2 wear them, at least the Frohman model does.
- Kishima Kouma in Kagetsu Tohya. He's the guy who killed Shiki's father when the Tohno family attacked. He's described as the perfect blend of demon and human blood. Since he's so badass, despite having inverted he remains rather rational.
- Haken Browning from Endless Frontier has these. Ironically, despite him being a Badass, he gets MOCKED for these, albeit by a Bratty Half Pint villain.
- Crash Bandicoot always wears these.
- Basch in Final Fantasy XII.
- Many characters in Fighting Games. Ryu and Ken are some of the most prominent.
Web Comics
Web Original
Western Animation
- Sokka of Avatar the Last Airbender wears fingerless gloves for practical reasons, mostly so he can catch his boomerang without cutting his hand while still having the dexterity to use it. He's also just cool like that.
- Mai also wears some badass fingerless gloves.
- Code Lyoko: Ulrich has this as part of his Lyoko outfit from the start. So do Yumi, Aelita and William with their new avatars in Season 4.
- Speedy gets to wear these in Teen Titans. Partially to serve as an arm protector (he is an archer after all) and partially because they look cool.
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