Fur Is Clothing - Television Tropes & Idioms

Always a good idea to keep extra fur around...

In animation, sometimes a Funny Animal who doesn't appear to wear any clothing actually does; the fur that covers their bodies is actually a removable suit. This can be revealed in a few ways; perhaps a Non Fatal Explosion goes off, leaving our character in Ash Face and furless, with only Goofy Print Underwear on. Or, the character can remove their fur voluntarily by using a zipper that was never there before. It's almost always Played for Laughs. This can also provide a loophole around Non Humans Lack Attributes, hence the character will usually react in embarrassment after their fur has been removed.

There is a variant of this trope in which an animal character has pockets as part of his/her actual physiology. Those pockets are most commonly located on the thighs. Another variant involves animal lifting the fur or skin on his or her leg to reveal a sexy woman's leg.

Both variants can also work with feathers, or more rarely, scales and skin. Not to be confused with Pretty in Mink or Fur and Loathing, though any of those might be referenced for the sake of humor.

Compare Removable Shell for the shelled animal variant. Subtrope of Appropriate Animal Attire. See also Exposed Extraterrestrials and Fur Is Skin.

Examples:

Ren and Stimpy have revealed their fur to be nothing but a suit in a few different episodes, by unzipping to take a bath or go skinny dipping.
- In the episode "Sven Hoek", Ren unzips the front of his fur to urinate on the "Don't Whiz On The Electric Fence" board game Stimpy and Sven are playing.
Tom And Jerry has done this on a few occasions, with Tom either being shaven or being scared out of his fur, wearing nothing but Goofy Print Underwear. It happened particularly often in the later Chuck Jones shorts.
- In the short "Quiet Please", Spike the bulldog rolls up his arm fur like a sleeve, revealing an anchor tattoo, before running after Tom to pummel him.
- Spike also takes the fur of his upper body off like a shirt and places it over a puddle for Tom and Jerry to walk across in "The Truce Hurts". He wears a red undershirt beneath his fur.
- In Love That Pup, Spike warns Tom that if he messes with his son Tyke one more time, he'll skin Tom alive. Cue Jerry framing Tom for messing with Spike's son once again. In the final scene we see Spike, Tyke and Jerry sleeping on Tom's fur, while elsewhere Tom spies on them wearing nothing but red longjohns.
- When Tom runs over Mama Duck with a lawnmower in "Little Quacker", exposing her turquoise bra and bloomers, which she quickly covers with her now robe-like feathers.
In the Betty Boop episode "The Old Man of the Mountain", a bear removes the upper part of his fur as if it were a coat and places it over a puddle for Betty to walk across.
Digimon Adventure has a more serious example. Gabumon take his coat off to keep an unconscious Matt warm. When Matt wakes up Gabumon quickly grabs his coat and puts it back on. Followed by Matt saying "I didn't know you could do that."
In the Tex Avery short "Lonesome Lenny", Screwy Squirrel pours hair remover on Lenny the dog, leaving him naked save for a pair of boxers. He bashfully covers himself up and makes his way to a closet where he keeps extra dog suits.
- Avery's "Three Little Pigs" sequel "One Ham's Family", where the wolf, disguised as Santa Claus, is put through the wringer by a "bad widdle kid" pig, ends with the kid giving his mom a fur coat. She gushes "It's just what I've always wanted!" Enter the wolf, pink and naked from the neck down, a towel around his waist, grabbing it and saying "You and me both, sister!"
- One of Avery's shorts at Warner Bros., "Cross Country Detours", was a parody of a nature documentary, which at one point features a lizard shedding its skin. The lizard gets on its hind legs and begins to perform a striptease dance while it sheds its skin, a scene rotoscoped from footage of an actual stripper they brought into the animation studio.
Looney Tunes: In "All Fowled Up" when Foghorn Leghorn accidentally blows himself up with a firecracker, the feathers on the top half of his body get blown off and he holds up the bottom half like they're pants without a belt. The 'pants' slip a bit and we see his underwear - lavender with yellow polkadots.
"Fortunately, I keep my feathers numbered for just such an emergency."
- A similar gag happens at the end of the Leghorn short "Weasel Stop", when he and the weasel are run through a machine that removes their feathers/fur and bales it up like hay.
- In Robert McKimson's "A Peck o' Trouble", Dodsworth the cat gets caught in a retracting extension ladder; when his kitten assistant re-extends the ladder to free him, his fur "suit" is torn off, leaving him in yellow boxer shorts.
- Bob Clampett's "The Bashful Buzzard" has a scene where Beaky Buzzard attempts to snatch a sheep as he's flying past, resulting in his tearing her wool off and leaving her in a lavender slip. Red-faced, he averts his eyes while handing it back to her.
- In Bob Clampett's "The Wise-Quacking Duck", Daffy Duck prepares to get into the oven by performing a strip tease routine with his feathers. And, yes, he wears boxers.
- In the Daffy short "Thumb Fun", a car whizzes by Daffy as he's hitch-hiking, leaving him featherless and in his boxers.
An inversion occurs on Spongebob Squarepants. In one episode, Spongebob idolizes a sea cucumber named Kevin who is the leader of a jellyfishing club. In the end, the jellyfishers remove the hat from his head and places it on Spongebob, although the hat turns out to not be a hat at all. They just ripped off the top of his head.
- In one episode of Spongebob Squarepants, Sandy takes off her fur to shower. Plankton, who was stowed into her treedome, steals the fur and uses it to masquerade as her in order to steal the secret Krabby Patty formula, leaving with Sandy with the embarrasing experience of being furless in public.
One gag in Léonard le Génie had the cat stripped naked after the disciple catches him. He angrily asks for his "clothes" back and puts his fur back on before resuming the chase.
Webcomic example: in Sabrina Online, Sabrina is apparently wearing pants that make her look like she's not wearing any pants, because it blends into her fur.
In the Popeye episode "Olive's Boithday Presink", Popeye grabs a bear by the wrist and punches it, leaving him with a bear fur coat in his hand.
Played with in a Nedroid comic; Reginald mocks Beartato for not dressing in layers like he did, then gets so involved in the rigamarole of taking off said layers that he barely notices when he's run out of clothes and starts taking off his skin.
Perry the Platypus from Phineas And Ferb is frequently like this. In one episode, Perry went to his lair via suction tubes and reveals Perry naked with his boxers.
This also happens to Lady Kluck from Walt Disney's Robin Hood, as a result of her being grabbed by the rear while charging at some rhino guards; thus exposing some pale purple and pale lilac polka dot printed bloomers, which shows that her feathers are her clothes.
Some Pokémon actually wear "clothing."
- This is actually a bit more sticky; some Pokémon are specifically stated as wearing clothing (such as the Power Limiter belt worn by Machoke or the belts that Sawk and Throh make themselves out of vines), but others, while looking like they wear clothing, are more ambiguous on whether or not they are clothing. One of the more famous examples of this is the debate over whether the "pants' Lucario wears are part of its fur or not.
- Also, what is a Gardevoir or a Gothitelle's dress supposed to be made from?
In the Tiny Toon Adventures Direct-to-Video movie Tiny Toon Adventures How I Spent My Vacation, Dizzy Devil is afraid to spin (like Tasmanian Devil) because he's shedding, and doesn't want to end up naked. Eventually he does spin and lose his fur, and spends the rest of the movie wearing a cardboard box and feeling ashamed for being naked.
In Conkers Bad Fur Day, Conker is a Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal, but in the parts of the game where he urinates there is an audible zip before and after he does so.
- In the Xbox remake Conker: Live and Reloaded, he's wearing shorts, so it makes more sense.
Happens near the beginning of Winnie the Pooh during the scene where Pooh is exercising in front of his mirror. When Pooh bends bown, a seam on his rear end (he's a stuffed bear) rips open, causing some stuffing (which is probably the stuffed animal equivalent of internal organs) to fall out. He eventually realizes this, and as a result, Pooh immediately sews his rear end back together again.
Wigs may technically count as Real Life example.
Originally, some of the colors from Neopets (such as Royal) would make one of the Pets wear clothing once they've been painted that color. However, when all of the Pets were redesigned in a way so they can be dressed in "actual" clothing, these colors may actually now count.
Is the green part of Coach Z's body supposed to be his skin or some sort of jumpsuit?
- He's got footies all right. Airthlete footies.
- Also, Homestar Runner's "pants", Strong Bad's "mask" and "boxing gloves", Marzipan's "dress", and so on, so forth.
In this My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic fancomic, the minor background character Lyra is revealed to follow this trope.
Inverted in the Toy Story series films, what appears to be Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Jessie, and the aliens' clothing is actually their "skin."
Almost Naked Animals takes this to its literal extreme. The entire cast has mostly-bare skin and underwear.
Inverted with the lawn ornaments' "hats" and "clothing" from Gnomeo and Juliet. This is most noticable during the scene where Tybalt smashes Benny's hat off his head.
One M&M's commercial has the green M&M piece changing clothes (her candy shell) and being caught naked (she is a chocolate chunk).
- Another commercial has the brown M&M clearing up a misunderstanding by explaining to some humans at a party that her shell is brown, so it only looks like she's naked.
As revealed in ''Tokyo Mater'', a car's paint actually serves as its clothing, so not wearing paint at all is considered to be the automobile equivalent of nudity.
Yakkity Yak's fur coat is taken literally.
Blackarachnia's helmet from Transformers Animated is actually revealed near the end of the episode "Predacons Rising" to be an actual helmet, unlike those of the other Transformers.
The Super Mario Bros cartoons actually portrayed Toad's mushroom cap as actually being a hat and not part of his body.
This trope is taken to its gory extreme in the PETA-made game Super Tanooki Skin 2D, which consists of a skinless tanooki chasing Mario around trying to get his fur back. It's as horrifying as it sounds.
The Classic Disney Short Working For Peanuts ended with Chip 'n Dale disguising themselves as albino chipmunks by covering their bodies with flour to hide from Donald Duck while at a zoo, but their disguises are ruined when the two both accidentally fall into water, washing off the flour on their lower bodies. The two chipmunks then make up for this by rubbing away some of the flour on their upper bodies to make them look like if they were wearing suspenders, therefore grabbing the tourists' attentions. When the zoo finally closes for the day, Dale celebrates by pulling on his "suspenders", leaving Chip dumbfounded.
- The 1929 Mickey Mouse short "Karnival Kid" features Mickey removing his ears and the top part of his skull as if it were a hat and bowing to Minnie. Later when Minnie pays for one of Mickey's hot dogs, she pulls back the fur on her leg to grab a coin, and Mickey sneaks a peek, blushing.
In the novel American Gods, Shadow hitches a ride with a fellow who tells a tall tale about a deer that literally jumped out of its skin to escape a hunter, then was given a replacement knitted by local women.
In a Krazy Kat strip, Krazy claims to be "complitley clothed in a garmint of fur"—as opposed to Ignatz Mouse, who's hairless and therefore "nude". (Krazy feels embarrassed for him and covers him with a cloth.)
In The Angry Beavers episode "Sans a Pelt," a mishap involving a magic trick left Norb and Dag with no fur except head fur...and needing to get back to the dam.

Fur Pockets Variant Examples:

Bugs Bunny from Looney Tunes was often portrayed with "pockets" on his furry thighs, that he'd keep his hands in or pull carrots out of.
In an episode of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, Spike the dragon is suddenly given a pocket in his scales, which he pulls a gemstone out of◊.
- As with the dragons from Dragon Tales.
In "Road to the Pilot", Stewie notices Brian has body pockets and thinks it's "so cute".
Marsupials can be a Real Life example of this, though in fiction they are often unrealistically shown carrying a wide variety of anything in their pockets.
- See Kangaroo Pouch Ride.

Fur Used to Show Some Leg:

At one point, Slappy from Animaniacs is shown lifting her leg fur, doing a sexy leg reveal. Walter Wolf does this once as well, with the same results.
Slappy: What can I say, I'm watching my figure. Somebody has to. *lifts her fur to show some leg*
Played with in an episode of The Pink Panther Show; Pink Shows Some Leg (and a stripy sock) while hitch-hiking ... and then seems to remember that fur isn't clothing and howls in pain clutching his leg.
Woody Woodpecker does this in one picture while in drag. The leg "she" shows Wally Walrus is shaven, shapely and gorgeous. The other, which he shows us, is scabby, hairy, and gross.
The aforementioned Mickey Mouse short "Karnival Kid" has Minnie doing this.