Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
 Those guys are so screwed...
"When a naked man is chasing a woman through an alley with a butcher's knife and a hard-on, I figure he isn't out collecting for the Red Cross." — Harry Callahan, explaining his reasons for gunning down an Attempted Rapist in Dirty Harry.
A character is on a killing spree, or it's the Big Bad's final battle with the hero. And the hero knows: we're ready to rock — we have donned our Powered Armor and won't even feel his Death Ray.
But what's that?
The villain is... NAKED?!
And instead of being silly or titillating it comes off as really, really scary. The nudity emphasizes brutality and aggression instead of being sexy. Evil is complex and so is evil nudity.
One part of the creepiness is obviously the thought about what might happen to someone who gets overpowered by a villain who already enjoys fighting/stalking them naked...
Then it means the villain doesn't care at all what people think about him. He left normal human behavior, like modesty and shame, behind him, or maybe he has an Übermensch-complex.
Nakedness can be associated with innocence and nature. The villain isn't really human, more like a predatory animal or a natural disaster, see the fifth variant of True Neutral.
Another part is that it seems reckless to go naked in the face of carnage or combat. It implies that the villain is so powerful he doesn't need armour.
Or, very creepy indeed, that bloodshed turns him on. In any event, the naked villain generally is a Badass Non-Coat.
See also Evil Is Sexy for villains who wear just enough...
Examples
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Lucy from Elfen Lied (above), who spends her first scene wearing nothing but a helmet, killing people left and right very messily.
- Diva in Blood Plus raped and killed Riku naked.
- Mamiko Kuri from Narutaru likes to go around naked and kills her rapists in this way in the manga.
- Knives does this a few times in Trigun and Trigun Maximum. Made even more disturbing by the connotations of twincesty rape at the end of the Trigun manga.
- Naraku from Inu Yasha. Also Mistress Centipede.
- The berserked defense program of the first Reinforce in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Since Reinforce wears black leather, this was probably the only way to make her dark side more evil-looking.
- Papillon's first rampage in Busou Renkin.
- The first time we meet Zodd, he's standing, butt-naked and knee-deep in the corpses of Hawk members.
- Crying Freeman, as part of its unintentionally hilarious portrayal of the criminal underworld. Apparently there is an unwritten rule among professional assassins that you cannot have a showdown without stripping first. There is a reason Cromartie Highschool copies its creator's overserious artstyle.
- Jo in Burst Angel. Though given her features, or lack thereof, it looks like she's wearing a nude bodysuit.
- The Chairman and the apparent daughter of Doctors Chiba and Tokita have a nude final confrontation at the end of Paprika. Mercifully, the former has Anime Anatomy.
- In Katekyo Hitman Reborn!, Ghost- who is the Big Bad Byakuran's trump card- walked onto a raging battlefield naked, scarring and stunning even his own allies into wide-eyed fear. Apparently, it wasn't his lack of clothes that got them horrified...
- In Saint Seiya, Seiya attacks Gemini Saga, which only destroys the Pope robe. Saga ends up naked, in the shadows. Yeah, he dons his armor a few seconds after, but seeing him naked in the shadows during these seconds is pretty intimidating.
- The Giant Naked Rei in End of Evangelion.
- The whole point of Angel Blade of course. Not that Hentai really needs a point.
Comics
- Mr. Zsasz from Batman usually uses a loincloth to show off his very many scars/tally marks, each of which represents one of his victims.
- Zarda in Supreme Power. After awakening from a centuries-long dormant state, she wandered into some Italian city, stole some clothes and killed everyone who got in her way (with a lance she broke off a statue, no less).
- The Amphibian, a mutant Wild Child who lives in the ocean and doesn't wear clothes, killed a man who shot at her after she saved his drowning girlfriend (he thought the Amphibian tried to kill her).
- Doc Spectrum's crystal once took control of him at night and had him confront one of his government superiors naked, because that's how he sleeps.
- Very oddly lampshaded in the last regular issue of Captain Carrot And His Amazing Zoo Crew, when Gorilla Grodd attacks Earth-C. Grodd looks exactly like he normally does in Flash comics: a realistically-drawn gorilla. To the cartoon animal population of Earth-C, though, it's a Full Frontal Assault and makes him all the more horrible.
- In his Sin City graphic novel appearance, the Yellow Bastard is fully nude during his final fight with Hartigan.
- Miho may also qualify, as she prefers to run around in a very loose kimono. With shurikens stored on her nipples.
- Ultimate Spider-Man loves this trope, though it usually tends to be out of necessity or accidental—for example, Sandman can't turn his clothes into sand, and Electro and the Hobgoblin burn right through their clothes.
- If there isn't a heroic version of this trope, then Blade gets a reference. Its invoked accidentally when some vampires bust in on him sleeping in the nude. Naturally they crap themselves when he suddenly awakens. Backup comes, but naked Blade tears them to pieces too.
- In Secret Six, Catman spends an issues-spanning flashback running around naked (the better to show off his wicked cool scar) and expressing his displeasure towards the poachers that killed some lions. Seeing as this involves teaming up with the surviving lions and forcing the poachers to walk blindfolded through a field of their own traps, he is indeed scary enough to qualify for this trope.
- Played with in the Titans of Tomorrow arcs of Teen Titans, which features such such curiosities as Robin as a gun wielding Batman; Superboy as a Superman who calls Lex Luthor "Pa"; and Beast Boy as a feral, nudist Animal Man!
- Parodied in the "Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers". Back in the 1960's, when airline security was very casual, the Brothers take a plane trip with a carry-on bag full of marijuana. First a hijacker takes over the plane, then a second hijacker overpowers the first, then a third one takes over... eventually, Franklin strips naked and screams, "Take us back to Nashville or I will DESTROY US ALL with what I have in this bag!" (After they make it down safely, they turn down a TV interview, saying, "We gotta go get destroyed.")
- In The Umbrella Academy, Vanya is transformed into a nude White Violin.
- Dr. Manhattan is an unusual case. The nudity symbolizes his detachment from the human race, as well as emphasizing his utter invulnerability: nothing can hurt him, so why bother covering up? The only times he bothers to get dressed are at the request of others, and when he teleports to Mars, the first thing he leaves behind is the expensive suit.
Fan Works
- In stealth parody fanfic Batman: Nemesis Fight by Peter Chimaera, Catwoman pretends to have switched sides so she can have sex with Batman. But then she reveals "That was a trick. I am not good like I said. I am always evil!!" and fights Batman and Robin naked.
- In the Naruto fanfiction With Heart and Underwear of Fire, Itachi does this in order to fight Naruto's alter ego Boxer-sama.
- That actually sounds less idiotic than some of the filler episodes.
Films — Live Action
- Every Terminator, obviously.
- Pinbacker from Sunshine. Made worse as he's covered in 3rd degree burns.
- The space vampires from Lifeforce.
- Weir from Event Horizon, who shows up bald, scarred-up and freaky for the final showdown in the gravity chamber.
- The opening of The Sixth Sense. He was wearing stained briefs, which does not make the scene less disturbing.
- Heroic example: in Lethal Weapon 4, Riggs convinces Murtaugh to strip naked and run across the street to distract a baddie with a flamethrower. (And for the rest of the movie, mocks Murtaugh for it.)
- Played halfway in 28 Days Later. Cillian Murphy is shirtless during his brutal, blood-splattered rampage, but only because they'd already showed about five minutes of frontal nudity earlier in the film and probably couldn't get by with more. When the shirt comes off, the crazy switch snaps into the on position. And several of the Infected are completely naked as well, but the clothes might have just rotted off of them...
- In the climax of Blade Runner, Batty confronts Deckard wearing some sort of spandex bike-short... things, and howling like a wolf while making taunting sing-song rhymes.
- In the Dune Miniseries, Feyd seems to like to fight mostly naked.
- And let's not forget the David Lynch version of the film and Sting's blue loincloth-slash-codpiece... thing
 ◊ ...
- There's also Alia in Children Of Dune. To think, that could have been Alicia Witt. Grown up, you pervs!
- In Eastern Promises, Viggo Mortenson's Badass Nikolai Luzhin is attacked by two knife-wielding mobsters in a bathhouse. He's badly hurt, but you should see they other guys.
- Patrick Bateman from American Psycho will run after you naked with a chainsaw — provided you let him keep his tennis shoes on.
- The inhabitant of room 237 in the film version of The Shining.
- In the 2007 Beowulf film, after listening to the Queen preform a song, Beowulf begins casually stripping naked in front of her. When questioned about it, he tells her that because Grendel is naked he will fight him naked. Her reaction is priceless. He then goes on to... battling Grendel naked as the day he was born. The various tricks they pulled to hide his penis was the funniest part of that movie.
- Heroic inversion in X-Men Origins: Wolverine when Weapon X turns on his creators.
- A blink-and-you-miss-it scene in Cthulhu. As the apocalypse begins we see people stripping off their clothes and/or rioting as the protagonists drive down the road; one of them is armed with an assault rifle (the soccer mum who opens up on them with an MP5 moments later is fully clothed though).
Literature
- Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.
- Zabulon from Night Watch in the first part. One Magic Pants-less shift to dragon form and one spell expiration later, he's still swinging at the agents of the Night Watch, trying to get them to break the truce.
- Discworld's The Fifth Elephant has a literary example in Angua's older brother Wolfgang. Wolfgang has the Übermensch-complex in spades, and an assumption that humans are inferior to Werewolves. He does wear clothes on occasion, such as when attending public events, but when fighting or at home he's always naked.
- A rare heroic example is in, of all things, a Star Wars Expanded Universe novel: Shatterpoint. Mace Windu is cornered by some Mooks in what is effectively a locker room... who notice to their slight shock that, unlike most people would when confronted naked, he doesn't even flinch. Or maybe they're just intimidated.
- A female example is done in the Shanna series.
- A Dark Tower example: Eddie Dean's Heroic BSOD in The Drawing of the Three involved shooting the hell out of the office of a mob boss while nude. Roland compliments him later on his courage; apparently, it's hard to be a badass while naked.
- Another Stephen King instance: one of the more frightening "phone crazies" Clay encounters at the start of Cell is nude except for sneakers and is using car radio antennae as weapons.
- In Stone of Tears, Kahlan leads a midnight raid on an enemy camp, full of formerly D'Haran soldiers, with her own forces (herself included) naked and painted white, to represent ghosts of an old tribe (which tended to fight naked and aroused) who scared the bejeezus out of D'Harans.
- A number of WildChildren, such as Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book and Nanga in Jungle-Born (1924) by John Eyton, fight battles with villainous animals while naked.
- In Silence of the Lambs, serial killer Buffalo Bill enjoys hunting his victims naked in his darkened basement, and does so when going after the hero, Clarice Starling.
- A heroic example occurs in Realms of the Gods, where Daine goes after Ozorne in eagle form. This trope comes into play when she changes back to a human: her clothes don't change with her.
- In the novel Nightfall (based on Isaac Asimov's short story), when the titular climax occurs, many people are driven mad and civilization is turn upside down. After the climax, one of the characters narrowly avoids an encounter with a feralized man who hunts other people for food and who wears nothing but a belt in which he keeps his many knives.
- Used for comedic suspense in Jim Butcher's Storm Front. Called out of the shower by an escalating series of unexpected guests, Harry Dresden winds up naked in a situation that just keeps getting worse.
- This seems to be a common trope in the Dresden books. Fool Moon features a female werewolf who distracts a carful of cops by dancing in the altogether ("Men are foolish. They will stare at anything female and naked"), two nude witches, and another wolf-girl who seems curiously unable to keep her shirt on. In all fairness, though, lots of dudes get bare in this book, too. Lots of nekkid all 'round.
- Subverted in the third Dresden book, Grave Peril. This time, when Dresden winds up naked - in a vampire court's laundry room - he puts on a pair of smiley face boxer shorts before going into battle. An insane vampire-groupie, however, remains unclad.
Live Action TV
- The Tattooed Man from Carnivale, to whom the recaps on Television Without Pity refer as Creepy Ugly Naked Tattooed Guy.
- Tooms (a mutant character in two episodes of The X-Files season 1) crawls into people's houses, through ducts and plumbing and such, naked. (It was the actor's idea — he realized it was creepier.)
- In an episode of Malcolm in the Middle, the cadets at the military school are preparing for a survivalism exercise. Each brags to the next about how few supplies he's taking with him (thermal blanket/hatchet/matches/water tablets, thermal blanket/knife/flint, blanket/knife, etc). Badass cadet Stanley walks in, wearing nothing but camo body paint. "Right, let's do this."
- One episode of NUMB3RS had a perp trying to escape by stealing a car from two young women, dressed only in a towel. By the time the cops catch up, the towel is on the ground and the girls are taking turns Groin Attacking him.
- Marbod Whitefalcon (in Yulia Latynina's One Hundred Fields) once took over a castle from inside almost singlehandedly and wearing nothing but his sword; justified in that he was taken prisoner and stripped of all his possessions previously, and didn't have the time to get dressed to preserve the element of surprise after escaping. This whole scene (and the fact that Marbod celebrated by laughing maniacally and eating a chicken while still naked and surrounded by hideously disfigured fresh corpses) still freaked out the Earthman who happened to be in his retinue very much.
- During the pilot for The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron beats the hell out of several men while completely stark naked.
- Mock The Week: The round was Wheel of News and the subject was "Burglary". Andy Parsons contribution was to admit to sleeping nude as a tactic should he be burgled, as it would be more intimidating than confronting the burglar in "Paisley pyjamas". At the other end of the scale he said the idea could be improved by confronting the burglar wearing a gimp—mask and saying "I'm so glad you came!"
- In Dollhouse, the first time we ever see Alpha, although he's not attacking anyone, he is naked. Then the camera pans to show us a dead woman and blood all over the floor, implying this trope.
- The La Femme Nikita episode "War" begins with Nikita in the shower when several Red Cell agents come to kill her. She stalks and dispatches them while still nude.
Mythology
- Enkidu fought Gilgamesh naked. After the fight, they became... friends. This makes this trope is Older Than Dirt.
- They wrestled. Before the invention of spandex and in a desert climate, it only makes sense for them to have done it naked.
New Media
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40000 has a few examples of naked or nearly-naked combatants, including the Fetish Fuel of the Sisters Repentia, the Nightmare Fuel of the Arco-flagellants, and the Sealed Evil In A Human Can of the daemonhosts.
- Ciaphas Cain fights a Slaaneshi cultist who sports leather thigh-high boots, gloves, and face mask... and that's about it.
- It's implied that Cain fights several cultists in a similar state throughout The Traitor's Hand. Then again, as followers of Slaanesh, public streaking is the least of their offenses...
- Heshon, the Lost Atlantean Goddess of the Wilds from the RPG Scion, is described as an attractive, naked wild woman with bird talons.
- The members of clan Gangrel usually aren't keen on wearing any clothes.
Theater
Video Games
- A boast for most missions has the player doing the mission in nothing but their skivvies in Fable. This also extends to the personal shield spell, as you fail the boast if you activate it.
- Teenage Alma in First Encounter Assault Recon
- The most disturbing part about her being naked is that in Project Origin, she is trying to rape you!
- Mentioned but not shown in Jade Empire: one of the Black Whirlwind's exploits before joining your party was singlehandedly storming an enemy fortress "piss-drunk, buck naked and screaming like a maniac" in his words.
- It's heavily implied (or outright stated) that this worked because the soldiers thought he was crazy.
- Pigsy, the criminally insane, chainsaw-wielding maniac from Manhunt. Don't worry, he isn't nude... he's wearing the decapitated head of a pig.
- The Shade class in Anarchy Online was added to the game during it's first expansion. All classes in AO get a class specific type of armor. The Shades'? Their class specific armor is nanite laced tattoo ink. In other words, Shades in their class armor fight essentially naked covered in magic bodypaint. Anime Anatomy abounds.
- The Diseased in Penumbra (although they are heavily mutated by that point).
- Governor Vicus Cassus from Clive Barker's Jericho, who doesn't wear a stitch of clothing. This is made worse by his extreme obesity, and the fact that his stomach is slit open vertically (which he uses to help him attack — he pulls his stomach open and spews the contents of his intestines at the protagonists).
- Alexia Ashford from Resident Evil: Code - Veronica, when she mutates. She is completely naked, with monstrously large veins covering her lady bits.
- The Werewolves in the Morrowind expansion Bloodmoon would attack the player while naked. This wouldn't have been an issue if they didn't attack you while human.
- Although Kratos from the God of War series never appears entirely naked, during the design phase the developers realised that he became more primal and aggressive in appearance when drawn with less armour (and less hair).
- It is up to debate what, if anything, Seth of IV is wearing. Some assume he's outright naked.
- Some sources have been spreading rumors that the BB Corps of Metal Gear Solid 4 were originally supposed to be completely naked beneath their cybernetic appendages.
- When you fight Fontaine in Bioshock, he is completely naked, although he has the genital anatomy of a Ken doll.
- The titular ninja from Nikujin, and his enemies too!
- The B&Bs from Metal Gear Solid 4 are all very beautiful women with exceedingly messed-up minds wearing skin-tight suits underneath their power armor; they shed the power armor once it is destroyed and slowly walk towards Snake, arms outstretched, as the sounds of gunfire, screams and other disturbing noises are heard. If they touch you, they hug you to death and pour their mental damage into you. They're beautiful, but the disturbing content makes it this trope, not Fanservice. The B&Bs qualify for this trope even moreso when you consider that originally Kojima wanted them to be naked during this assault, but couldn't pull it off without making the game Adults Only.
- The primary antagonist ghost from Fatal Frame 3 is topless, and unlike most videogame entries, does not have Godiva Hair. (Being a ghost, however, she's not exactly easy to see clearly anyway, though, so they get around that, plus the fact that her body is entirely covered with blue tattoos makes it harder to distinguish anything naughty.) She's also terrifying.
- Something like this, though it's the hero: Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark starts out with the player character having to fight a drow assassin as naked as the game allows after she steals all their gear.
Web Comics
- Seems to be a recurring element in the (extremely NSFW) webcomic Electric Retard, probably because the ax crazies in question have a tendency to rape and/or defecate on their victims. Plus it would be difficult to find clothes that would fit Giant Naked Hitler.
- Drip, from Jack. Not especially surprising, as he's the local personification of the sin of Lust, and a serial rapist and murderer in life. Very, very much squick.
- This Something Positive example.
- Nesuko from The Adventures of Boschen and Nesuko likes to fight (and generally live life) naked.
Western Animation
- Brock Sampson in The Venture Brothers once went on a naked rampage while fighting off Phantom Limb's goons.
- Played for laughs in an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants where Plankton switches places with Mr. Krabbs thanks to a reality-altering device. Plankton wears the pants at the Krusty Krab, and Krabbs takes his place trying to steal the formula — butt naked.
- The Flesh from the Kablam! short "Action League Now!" is "super strong, yet super naked." However, unlike most other characters who fall under this trope, he's not insane or villanous so much as heroic and goofy.
Real Life
- The Celts would sometimes charge into battle naked, upping the ante by painting themselves blue.
- And charge into battle sporting an erection.
- Many Proud Warrior Race Guy tribes and groups, such as the Goths and Viking Berserkers, went into battle nude or nearly so. The reasons may have had a practical basis (when hygiene was limited, dirty clothing could get pushed into wounds and greatly increase the chance of infection), but for the most part it was just traditional. It was possibly also either from religious connotation, such as proving that a deity would protect them, or to simply shock the hell out of the other side and scare the crap out of them from their sheer insanity.
- Various Greek heroes were often depicted naked in art, to display their heroic proportions. (By the way, that's not a double-entendre. Greeks thought large genitals were unattractive. They wanted to show off a muscular body.) Some military historians claim that the Greeks also fought naked except for their armor because clothes would give their enemies something to grab.
- And of course, the Ancient Olympics were all-naked.
- Said historians should probably have tried wearing armor without padding underneath before making such claims. The results are quite painful.
- There is a video of a man on PCP, totally butt-naked leaping onto a cop car. In full view of the camera. It's on TruTV.
- And early episode of COPS had officers having to deal with a large, bald, sweaty naked man. They remarked how it is a bit hard to get a grip.
- During the brutal Liberian civil wars, many fighting bands took to wearing strange outfits to instill fear in the enemy. One particularly gruesome bunch were called "The Butt Naked Brigade," and lead by "General Butt Naked." Their whimsical name belies the horrifying atrocities they committed.
- If Marco Polo is to be trusted, the warriors of India used to go into battle carrying a spear and a shield and stark naked.
- Since Ozzy Osbourne sleeps nude, when he came across a burglar on a trip to the fridge in the middle of the night... Well — no prizes for guessing what happened next.
- Damn, I was sort of hoping Ozzy would have bitten off his head.
|
|
