Glove Snap

I snap my glove and SCARE MYSELF!

"But if I weren't a scout, a doctor I would be! Bend down, touch your toes, this won't hurt a bit!"

— "If I were not a... scout", campfire song.

When the Mad Doctor or Medic is ready to "operate", this almost always includes shoving his hands into big latex gloves with a thrusting motion while tugging on the back of the glove with the other hand; then there's a loud snap at the end when the back of the glove is released. Usually done with the forearm facing upward, though downward-facing variations exist too. Pretty much a Mad Doctor and Medic staple, and also pretty common in cartoons. Usually meant to inspire fear or to startle; usually part of the Creepy Physical.

Compare Gloved Fist of Doom. Also see Ass Shove, which frequently uses this as a family-friendly suggestion. Not to be confused with the Glove Slap.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A rare non-clinical example happens in this French AIDS-awareness commercial.

Comic Books

• In one scene in The Superior Foes of Spider-Man, First-Person Smartass Boomerang describes The Chew Toy fellow villain Mirage as not talking despite undergoing lots of "probing" by more fearsome villains Chameleon and Owl. The illustration shows Chameleon clad in surgical garb and sporting a Slasher Smile as he snaps a glove (labeled "genuine latex") onto his wrist.

Comic Strips

• Dilbert has a comic in which Dilbert opens a package, and by doing so agrees to a full cavity search at any time. Enter woman with the glove snap.

Fan Works

• In the Super Power Beat Down match "The Joker & Harley Quinn vs. Deadpool & Domino", when Joker is about to finish off Deadpool with acid, he puts on rubber gloves and makes them snap.
  Joker: But don't worry, you're in good hands with Uncle Joker...
• In Sword Art Online Abridged, we hear this when Leafa takes Kirito to the "Fairport", a place where Alfheim Online's players pretend to run an airport, complete with customs officials, pretzel vendors, and security checkpoints. A later scene confirms that Kirito was subjected to a full cavity search.
  Kirito: Look, before we go any further, I need you to be straight with me — am I in for some additional screening over there? ...Leafa? [Leafa pushes him offscreen] Leafa, c'mon, answer me!
  Security Guard: [offscreen] Greetings! How are you folks doing today? Oooh, a Spriggan! [snap]

Films — Animation

• Chicken Run: In the first roll-call scene, Mrs Tweedy does this to intimidate the chickens.
• The town doctor does this at one point in Rango.
• The Mad Doctor in The Rescuers Down Under does this. "All right, girls, let's snap to it!" [snap] "Oh! That smarts..."
• Rio 2: When Nigel undergoes surgery, the surgeon does this.

Films — Live-Action

• A latex glove snap done by a fearsome large nurse in Armageddon (1998).
• Fletch: A proctologist does this before giving Fletch an examination, as shown here.
• Conspicuously missing in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle when the gynecologist, right before performing a vaginal exam, holds his hand up high enough for the patient, already in the stirrups, to see him put on his glove. As he brings his hand down and out of view, he slips the glove off and pockets it, so he can do the exam with his bare hand. He is a bad man.
• Implied in one scene in Kung Pow! Enter the Fist:
  Master Tang: As you know, I am a man of special needs. One of you will now receive... the Fist of Fury!
  [cut to students looking anxious]
  Master Tang: Prepare... the long rubber glove. [sound of latex snapping] Eeny... meeny... miney... moe... I wonder where... my glove will go...
• Polar: Mr. Blut is torturing the protagonist every day for four days, and does this with latex gloves in the opening montage that begins every torture session. As we see him applying skin cream to his hands on several occasions, it would make sense that he would look after his hands.
• Soul Plane: When searching someone who sets of the metal detector, TSA agent Shaniece orders the man to drop his pants and turn around while she snaps a glove on and shouts "cavity check!". A scream is heard.
• The infamous glove-snapping scene in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
• In Rush Hour 3, when the two protagonists are detained by security in a French airport:
  Carter: Can we go now?
  Detective: [glove snap] This will just take a moment.
  ["this" turns out to be a cavity search...]
  Lee: Oh, shit!
• Count Olaf does this in his herpetologist disguise in A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004).
• Undercover Brother: One of Mr. Feather's minions does this repeatedly, greatly to Mr. Feather's annoyance.
• Played for Laughs in Wayne's World when the Big Bad is being "searched for drugs".
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Judge Doom dramatically puts a rubber glove on his hand before putting a Toon shoe in "the Dip".

Literature

• The title character of Beautiful Bones: Sakurako's Investigation does this whenever she encounters a crime scene.

Live-Action TV

• Tony of NCIS, though it's more comedic than sinister.
• NCIS: Los Angeles has used this for comedic affect, even more so in that it's the Geek who does the snapping.
• In The X-Files, Mulder accuses Scully of enjoying doing this.

Music

• The pose of the nurse on the cover of blink-182's album Enema of the State.

Tabletop Games

• One of the miniatures for Malifaux's resident Mad Scientist Dr. Douglas McMourning is posed mid-glove snap.

Video Games

• Some marketing material for Black Closet features Elsa tugging at the base of her white gloves in a way clearly meant to reference this trope.
• In The Simpsons Game, right after Cletus gets abducted for study, one of the alien mooks does this with his tentacle before following him.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • The Medic does it◊ with his Syringe gun taunts.
    "Anuhza successful procedure!"
    "Woops! Zat was not medicine."
    "Did zat sting? Sorry!"
    "Zat vas doctor-assisted homicide!"
  • He also does it in the Meet the Medic video, before he and the Heavy return to the battlefield. Notably, what he had been doing previously — open thoracic cavity surgery to implant an ÜberCharge module — he did without benefit of gloves.

Web Animation

• In the My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Friendship Games short "The Science of Magic", it is downplayed, but Sunset does indeed snap a latex glove on her hand while explaining the experiments she has planned. While the gesture isn't too threatening, Applejack doesn't look overly confident.
• In one Red vs. Blue PSA, Simmons and Grif go on vacation while Sarge and Caboose are off camping. Grif twice invokes the wrath of the cavity search at travel security and we hear this just as the scene cuts away.

Webcomics

• The Handbook of Heroes: In "Guild Charter", the adventurer guild happens to have a mandatory annual alignment detection rule. While the guild attendant is putting on a magic white glove, Fighter and Thief (who are not exactly good-aligned) are seen fleeing in the background.
  Alt-Text: Don't worry. They disinfect the rubber glove of alignment detection between uses.
• In Narbonic, during the Professor Madblood and the Lovelace Affair storyline, Helen has quite a mad-sciencey one.
• The second strip of Schlock Mercenary, seen here. (The threat of the expected exam is subverted, if only because Schlock points out he lacks the necessary anatomy.)
• In Skin Horse, Remy gets an ideal glove snap after dramatically opening his collection of scalpels.

Web Videos

• In this spoof of an Apple advertisement, Mac decides to slip on a glove while PC is frozen. He is interrupted before he can do anything.
• Masculinity is so fragile it should be only touched while wearing velvet gloves.
• 5 Second Films: An interesting variant in this short, in which the Glove Snap is the Ass Shove.
• Lazy Game Reviews: Clint Basinger happily does this in his review of Life and Death, cosplaying as a surgeon himself thanks to the mask and latex gloves that come in the game box.

Western Animation

• All Hail King Julien:
  • In "Empty is the Head", Mort puts up a rubber glove on his head, complete with glove snap, to give suspicious lemurs a security search. Later when a group of lemurs starts to ask too much questions he snaps his glove again and winks at them suggesting they should shut up.
  • At the ending of "Julien 2.0", when everyone believes that King Julien has died, Mort puts on some gloves and decides to stay with his body but is dragged away.
• This happens a couple times in American Dad!:
  • One early episode has Stan being overly paranoid about some new neighbors of Iranian (but born American) decent, and holds a block party in order to please Francine as well. When Bob Memari bends down to look into the soda cooler, Stan puts on the glove, and Bob notices.
    Stan: What? It's a quirk, indulge me.
  • It become a Running Gag in another episode when Roger constantly puts one on in order to offer someone else a hand job.
• In Family Guy, Peter Griffin's doctor does this just before giving him a prostate exam.
• Dr. Drakken definitely does this in Kim Possible.
• In an episode of The Loud House, Lincoln and his father have to go through the airport in their underwear after losing a bet. Three TSA agents then run up to them saying they broke about ten rules, then do this while saying they need to "talk" to them.
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "House Worming", after Prickles the worm and his residents start living in SpongeBob's head and it gets him fired from his work, he meets Plankton who agrees to get rid of the worms in exchange of a deed (getting the Krabby Patty secret formula, of course). SpongeBob agrees and Plankton pulls on a large glove that snaps to somehow fit his little stubby arms (that have no visible digits or fingers, mind you) before making a lousy joke and entering inside SpongeBob's head... only to get the living daylights battered and beaten out of him by the worms and is left crippled and gives up on the extermination, telling SpongeBob that he's on his own to get rid of the worms.
• Cyborg does this once in Teen Titans (2003), on Beast Boy's suggestion that they "check for batteries" in Robin to see if he's a robotic duplicate. He also sticks up one finger. Naturally, Robin's terrified and screams out that he's real.

Real Life

• During the 2008 American presidential campaign, Mitt Romney had the spectacularly bad luck/judgment to have this picture◊ taken of him.

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