Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen

How did he get a barrel in the middle of nowhere?

Scott: Give us our clothes back, damn it!
Other Wormers: Please?!
Tina: Nice undies!

— Now and Then

How distressing: Having taken a brief moment to unwind, the hero, their friends, their lover(s) or some combination thereof decided to go Skinny Dipping. And, wouldn't ya know it, someone took off with their threads!

Various Naked People Are Funny antics ensue as they try to obtain new clothing (or improvise covering with leaves or other items) before the characters' nakedness is exposed to all the world. Usually results in Naked People Trapped Outside. The clothes thieves' motivation varies. The thief may be playing a prank; they may be poor and want the clothes; they may want the clothes for a disguise; or they may wish to see the swimmers in a state of undress. A variant is to have the clothes not be stolen per se, but rather blown away in the wind or a similar scenario.

This can also be played from the opposite perspective, where the main characters set out to steal other people's clothes in this manner. In either case, the thievery almost always works.

Note that in kid-friendly works, the victim will usually be left in a swimsuit or underwear.

Related to Outdoor Bath Peeping and Slippery Swimsuit. Can either be used for comedy or, most often if the character is female, for some Fanservice.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Black★Rock Shooter: In a flashback, Saya Irino saw Yuu Koutari walking about dripping wet in a swimsuit while several bullies laugh at her, heavily implying that the bullies stole her clothes.
• Ceres, Celestial Legend has this as the whole backstory - Goddess wants revenge because a guy stole her celestial clothes while she wasn't watching. Granted, her rage is understandable since she's stuck on Earth until she gets it back. The actual truth is an aversion, though ultimately tragic for both the goddess and the guy.
• Dragon Ball:
  • This happens to Goku in a filler episode. He chases the thief naked and manages to scare him into dropping Goku's clothes, but the thief escapes with the Dragon Radar.
  • Happens in the main storyline. When Vegeta returns to Bulma after a long period of training, she complains about the smell of sweat and bullies him into taking a shower, during which time she takes his soiled armor and replaces it with some tacky clothes, including a pink shirt with the words "BAD MAN" on the back. He rants about this, but wears the clothes for the rest of the day regardless.
• Played for Drama in Goblin Slayer. After a visit to a bathhouse in the capital, Priestess is devastated to find that her clothes have been stolen.
• In Inuyasha, Kagome's clothes are stolen by a monkey while she bathes. Technically she isn't naked (she's wearing a swim suit), but still acts as if she is, going so far as to hide in a bush when confronting the owner of the monkey for her clothes back.
• It is done to Lemnear in the first chapter to the Legend of Lemnear manga.
• In Love Hina the girls of Hinata House get their clothes stolen by a group of monkeys while in a hot spring.
• A variation happens in Miss Machiko in a number of episodes. The title character goes swimming or skinny dipping and gets her suit and/or clothes stolen by her students... sometimes while she is still wearing them.
• Semi-example in My-HiME, where the students go swimming, and someone steals the girls' underwear. Actually, monsters did it.
• A few filler villains in Naruto have their clothes stolen by the main cast to use in a scheme to see what was under Kakashi's mask, apparently because the villains never actually publicly showed up at the bath and the main cast assumed someone forgot them. Fortunately for the villains, they had extras.
• In Ranma ½, Ranma, who is currently stuck as a girl, spies Herb bathing in an onsen. Feeling particularly vindictive (Herb DID humiliate her in battle and locked her as a female), Ranma steals her clothes and taunts her about it. Cue the ki-bolt to the face.

Asian Animation

• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Joys of Seasons episode 58, Brother Tai doesn't go swimming but rather bathes in a hot spring. His suit of fur is still stolen by Wolffy when he's not paying attention so that Wolffy and Wolnie can use it for their Chinese New Year's lion.

Comic Books

• The cover◊ of the first comic of Brazilian character Bidu/Blu (which received a makeover◊ for his 50th anniversary).
• One Captain Marvel cover involves the titular Captain dressed in a rain barrel yelling and shaking his fist at a punk who's stolen his outfit. See page image.
• Happens to Fauna the Jungle Girl in the Cavewoman Color Special when she takes a Waterfall Shower and flying creatures steal her uniform. Her attempts to shoot down the creature with her uniform results in her accidentally vaporizing it.
• Condorito stole Din Djarin's armor as part of a tribute to Pedro Pascal.
• There's a subversion from ElfQuest, not actually involving swimming. Leetah and Nightfall enjoy an intimate nude dance, and while they're distracted Moonshade steals their clothes - so she can replace them with new ones and dancers were pleased that she did. In any case, the elves probably wouldn't be very embarrassed by nudity anyway, at least among their friends.
• Happens to Jonah in # 9 of the original series of Jonah Hex. Jonah is forced to chase the thief, and the theft turns out to a plot to lure him across the border into Mexico.
• A Little Annie Fanny comic originally published March 1982 had Macho Mitch and Horst the Jock steal Annie and Wanda Homefree's clothes while they were skinny dipping as part of a ploy to get the girls to kiss them naked underwater.
• A story from Brazilian comic book O Menino Maluquinho starts with the titular crazy boy deciding to swim at a park's fountain. While he's swimming, his clothes are swept away along with the garbage.
• One Le Petit Spirou short◊ has the girls stealing Spirou and Vertignasse's clothes as they are bathing in the river. They are able to escape some time later by stealing Abbott Langelusse's clothes (which they thought belonged to a scarecrow) while he was swimming elsewhere.
• In Rawhide Kid #49, the Masquerader spies Kid Colt cleaning himself in a river and takes the opportunity to steal the outlaw's clothes to use as another disguise. When he gets to Willow Flats he dresses up as Colt, robs the payroll express and shoots the town's sheriff, Joseph Clay, the Rawhide Kid's brother.

Comic Strips

• Crabgrass: Krystal, Kevin's twin sister, does this to Kevin and Miles in this comic.
• Happened in 9 Chickweed Lane.
• Footrot Flats: Wal goes Skinny Dipping at the beach and Hunk and Spit Murphy come along and steal his clothes. He has to be rescued (after a fashion) by Cousin Cathy.
• Older Than Television: Happens in an issue of Little Nemo in Slumberland from 1908.
• The Phantom: There are at least two storylines that begin with the Phantom's clothes being stolen while he's swimming in a river. In both cases, the problem is not naked antics, but rather what the person who stole the clothes does while wearing them.
• U.S. Acres: Roy once took Lanolin's wool when she relaxed in the water in the May 1, 1988 strip. To get back at Roy, Lanolin then took his feathers.
• A variant in Pooch Café where Poncho visits a "nude beach" (dogs without their collars, being collarless in their world is the equivalent of being nude) and removes his collar. He gets his collar stolen by a bird and tries to get it back before he "gets a ticket for public indecency."

Fairy Tales

• "Puss in Boots": Puss claims this is what happens to his master, the "Marquis," when the King passes by. It's technically true—except that Puss stole the clothes, to hide the fact that his master is a commoner. Now the king thinks that he's a nobleman and supplies him with new clothes to fit that station.
• "The Swan Maiden" involves a human witness a group of cranes, swans, seals, porpoises, or other animals "undress" from their skins and turn into beautiful women bathing in a pond. The human will steal the skin of one of the women and only agree to give it back should she agree to marry him. Occasionally, the women are from the celestial realm and the human steals actual clothes rather than skin. Examples include heavenly nymphs, fairies or angels in East Asian and Southern Asian tales (e.g., bidadaris in Java, Indonesia, and apsaras in India), peris/paris in Arabic and Iranian tales, and goose/merganser/gull maidens in Inuit and Arctic tales.

Fan Works

• Back to the Frollo: While going for a swim, Frollo gets all his clothes (and his horse) stolen by a group of children led by an ex-lieutenant who wants to get back at Frollo for firing him. Frollo's cape is spared, however.
• Serendipitous Fate: After Marinette and Adrien go Skinny Dipping, Alya steals all of their clothes other then Adrien's jacket.

Film—Animated

• In the animated movie The Legend Of The North Wind, while Peiot takes a bath in a water barrel to cure his sea sickness, his sister Ane (who stowed away on board of the ship) steals his clothes so she sneak into the ships kitchen and get some food unnoticed. She returns them afterwards though.
• The Road to El Dorado: During the number "The Trail We Blaze", the heroes go skinny dipping and their clothes are stolen by monkeys.
• In Rugrats Go Wild!, Chuckie gets muddy and washes his clothes in the river. While he's bathing in his underwear, Donnie shows up, puts on Chuckie's clothes (including glasses) and leaves his own shorts behind for Chuckie to put on. They look similar enough that Donnie joins the other babies without them realizing what's happened, though they definitely notice that their friend isn't acting like his usual squeamish himself.

Film—Live Action

• At the beginning of Against a Crooked Sky, Charlotte is bathing in a pond, and Sam steals her clothes and starts dressing up his pet calf, Callie, while she yells at him. He gives her her clothes back after he hears a neighbor approaching in a wagon.
• The Beastmaster: Dar has his ferrets take Kiri's clothes when she's bathing as part of a scheme to try seducing her.
• Beverly of Graustark: An unusual variation. Beverly is impersonating her cousin Oscar, the king—It Makes Sense in Context. Carlotta, who is in cahoots with the evil General Martanax, tries to get "Oscar" aside so "he" can be killed. Beverly suggests they go for a swim, Carlotta accepts—and while Carlotta is changing into a bathing suit Beverly steals her dress. She does this so she can dress up as a woman and dance with handsome Dantan, but it's a bad idea, as Carlotta figures out that the supposed King Oscar is a woman in drag.
• This happens to the male lead in Bringing Up Baby. While under the shower, his Manic Pixie Dream Girl Susan decides to remove his clothes and sent them to town for cleaning. Without any spare clothing the hero ends up doing an Unplanned Crossdressing.
• The Burmese Harp offers a relatively uncommon non-comic, non-sexual example of this trope. The monk who rescued a wounded Japanese soldier and nursed him back to health takes a bath in a river. The Japanese soldier promptly steals the monk's robes and disguises himself as a monk to avoid capture as a POW.
• In The Burning, Cropsy steals Karen's clothes while she and Eddy are Skinny Dipping. He scatters them in the woods and then kills her while she is collecting them.
• At the end of Camp Nowhere, Betty cons Walter into giving up his swimming trunks out of revenge for his spending the entire movie trying to get her to go skinny dipping.
• In Carry On Up the Jungle with the delicious Jacki Piper - June goes swimming with Ug the Jungle Boy and a gorilla steals her clothes.
• In Club Paradise, the natives of the island steal the guests' clothes while they are swimming naked at Devil's Hole. They end up trekking through the jungle to a hotel wearing towels, vines, and fruit.
• Ecstasy: Eva rides her mare to the lake to go swimming. Eva's mare trots away after hearing a stallion nearby. This is a problem for Eva, as she was swimming naked in the lake, and her clothes were on the horse.
• Terry, one of the female camp counselors in Friday the 13th Part 2, goes skinny dipping and her clothes are stolen by a male counselor.
• In Futtock's End, Hawk the butler firstly steals Carol's swimming costume, so she has to swim naked, and then follows her and steals her clothes while she's in the water.
• When this happens in The F Word courtesy of a pair of friends who left them with a sleeping bag on a remote beach, Wallace attempts to pass it off as a joke, but Chantry points out that it's not only dangerous in that they're wet and stranded on a cold night, but perilously close to sexual assault by forcing them to sleep naked together.
• In Hair, Claude and Sheila's clothes vanish after a swim in the lake. Cue the taxi screeching to a halt to let her in.
• The eponymous protagonist of Hardcore Henry resorts to this early in the film to replace his grubby and tattered hospital pyjamas, and beats the crap out of someone who tries to stop him because it's that kind of movie.
• I Love Trouble includes a bit in which Julia Roberts is exiting the lake when a group of boy scouts happen upon her and Nick Nolte. No clothes are stolen, but the only Modesty Towel she can get her hands on happens to be hiding behind Nolte. Still a little miffed from a previous argument the pair had had, Nolte proceeds to walk towards the boy scouts while ignoring Julia's surprised protests. Nick gets her to admit to secretly reading his novel, despite her professed uninterest in his writing, but Julia makes the mistake of mumbling how she'd expected more from the writing. As one might expect, the scene closes with an embarrassed Julia squealing in alarm as the boy scout's camera's are going off.
• In The Legend of Johnny Lingo, the older Tama threatens to steal Mahana's clothes while she's bathing. She agrees to talk to him, so he leaves the clothes for her to put on, and goes to a different place where they talk.
• A variation occurs in The Man from Kangaroo. When Muriel comes across her suitor John's clothes hanging out to dry while he goes swimming, she doesn't steal them, but instead ties them into knots as a prank.
• The protagonists of Now and Then do this as revenge on a group of boys who nailed them with Jello-filled water balloons earlier in the film.
• The Parent Trap: Annie and Hallie play a game of poker where the loser has to jump in the summer camp's lake completely naked. Annie loses and while she's in the water Hallie and her friends steal her clothes.
• Piggy: Sara goes to the town pool, hoping to be by herself. A trio of mean girls arrive at the pool and proceed to torment her, calling her "Piggy" and nearly drowning her with a pool skimmer. Finally they run away with her clothes and towel. Sara has to walk home wearing nothing but a very skimpy bikini.
• In the 1970 Swedish-German Pippi Longstocking movie Pippi on the Run, Pippi, Tommy and Annika go swimming, and some cows come along and eat Tommy and Annika's clothes, forcing them to dress in old sacks until they can get new ones. Pippi, however, escapes the trope entirely because she always goes swimming fully-clothed.
  • Reused in the 1988 American The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking.
• Planet of the Apes (1968). While the astronauts are skinny dipping in a lake, the primitive humans steal their clothes. This unfortunately makes them blend in with the primitive humans and causes them to be hunted down along with them when the intelligent apes show up. First Contact might have gone better if the ape hunting party ran into three talking humans in Space Clothes. On the other hand, they might have been killed on the spot.
• In Queens Logic, the guys in town for the wedding of one of their number go skinny-dipping in a public pool. The clothes are stolen by the women. The guys streak through the parking lot, but fortunately one of the guys' suitcases is in the trunk of the car.
• The John Cleese film Romance with a Double Bass is based on this trope.
• Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend: When the three soldiers take a swim in the river to clean up, bandits steal not only their clothes, but also their horses and all of their gear.
• In the 2007 St Trinians movie, the girls band together to effect this trope on new girl Annabelle Fritton as she showers, filming the resulting nekkid antics on hidden cameras and broadcasting it on YouTube.
  • Additionally, the previous St. Trinian's movie, The Wildcats of St. Trinian's features the girls tricking a spy in their ranks into stripping down for a swimming race so they can swipe her clothes, ditch her, and send a message to their victim's handlers.
• An early example can be found in Tarzan and His Mate (1934), where Cheeta steals Jane's costume when she reaches for it after her Skinny Dipping with Tarzan. She gets her dress back after a few moments of chasing.
  • In another Tarzan film, Tarzan's Revenge, Tarzan's monkey companion plays with Eleanor's clothes while she goes for a swim.
• The protagonist of Tol'able David loses his pants when his dog runs off with them.

Folklore

• This is also the purported origin of the phrase "the naked truth". Truth and Falsehood went swimming. Falsehood put on Truth's clothes. Truth refused to wear the clothes of Falsehood and went naked.
• There is a joke about a master thief and his apprentice. As a test of skill the master orders his student to climb a tree and steal some eggs from the nest without disturbing the hen. The guy undresses, and climbs the tree but the hen hears him and takes alarm. The master decides to show top class, undresses, climbs the tree and steals the eggs. When he climbs down, both his student and his clothes are gone.

Jokes

• Russian joke: during a UN session regarding the Arab–Israeli Conflict, the Israeli ambassador opens up with a story about the Prophet Abraham going for a swim only to come out and find his clothes stolen by Arabs. One of the Arab ambassadors protests that Arabs weren't around then to take Abraham's clothes. The Israeli ambassador agrees and starts the session with this point in mind.
• Two priests, walking along a road in a hot day, find a lake and decide to stop and bathe in there. Once they come out, they see a stray dog had stolen their cassocks. To make matters worse, they spot a group of elderly ladies coming down the road. Having nowhere to hide, they quickly put on their underpants, but one of them wears it on his head. After the ladies pass by, obviously flustered, one of the priests asks the other why he didn't cover his unmentionables. "I don't know about you", the other replied, "but I figured those ladies would recognize me if they saw my face."

Literature

• Birdalone, the heroine of The Water Of The Wondrous Isles by William Morris, has this happen to her near the beginning of the novel; she wanders the titular isles naked for about a third of the book afterwards.
• In the Romanian Amintiri din copilarie ("Childhood memories") novel, this happens to the main character when he goes swimming instead of doing his chores.
• In Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Angel of the Odd, the titular character goes in a river to drown himself, but a crow steals his underpants, so he gives chase before he can think of killing himself. He just ends up nearly falling to his death anyway.
• Ben and Me: In one of the stories Amos recounts, Ben goes swimming, claiming it's good for the health. Amos, who disdains swimming, stays on the bank. A dog runs away with Ben's hat and Ben, thinking Amos is still inside, runs after it to rescue him. Then a lot of people come by, see Ben's clothes and not the wearer, and assume he drowned, so they run off carrying the "evidence" with them. Eventually Ben comes back, and ultimately has to face everyone wearing only his swimsuit and coonskin hat.
• Robert E. Howard's Mountain Man character Breckenridge Elkins gets his clothes stolen, leading to a situation where he gets mistaken for a prizefighter.
• Discworld:
  • In the novel Men at Arms, Angua leaves her uniform in an alley while she snoops around in werewolf form. When she returns, she finds it's been stolen. Not the last time she's been caught in that position.
  • Werewolves take Vimes' clothes while he's in a hot spring in The Fifth Elephant. Though he still has his underwear on, it is not a nice situation to be in.
• Don Camillo has his clothes stolen in one of the stories in the first book; it nearly ends badly for him and the culprit (one of Peppone's men), because it's right after World War II and there are unexploded mines in the area. It gets adapted in the fourth live-action movie, in which the thief is a different character and Don Camillo gets a different revenge.
• Used dramatically in Mr. Pottermack's Oversight, a Dr. Thorndyke novel. An escaped convict steals a set of clothes he finds on the beach, leaving his own prison uniform behind, after noticing that they've been there some time and concluding that their owner won't be back for them. The dead body of the clothes' owner is washed ashore some time later, ravaged beyond recognition, and taken to be that of the convict.
• One Encyclopedia Brown story was Brown solving the case of who stole a boy's clothes, leaving him naked in the woods.
• Horatio Hornblower, novel Ship of the Line: Hornblower and his men go ashore, swim across a lake, and successfully destroy a French coaster. Upon returning, they find an angry woman has thrown all their clothing into the lake they crossed. When Hornblower boards the Sutherland again, he has to receive his salute naked.
• In Journey to the West, the seven spider ladies are bathing in a hot spring. Sun Wukong in the guise of a falcon steals their clothes, so they are forced to stay in the water until Zhu Bajie attacks them.
• In The Luck of Barry Lyndon, this is how the title character acquires the officer's clothing he uses to try and get out of fighting the war. Two gay officers have gone skinny-dipping and are too busy wrapped up in their own subplot to notice the thievery. We don't find out what happens to them.
• Ivan Bezdomny in The Master and Margarita chases Woland across Moscow and when he later shows up in his fellow writers' restaurant in underpants (and wielding an icon... long story), they don't take his story seriously, thinking that witnessing a death unhinged him. When he insists that wasn't a traffic accident and there's a murderer at large, he is restrained and spends the next several days in a madhouse.
• Patrick McManus, in one of his books, tells a story involving an over-zealous Boy Scout leader who not only goes skinny dipping, but does so in extremely cold water. The scouts accidentally steal his clothes while trying to steal the clothes of two bullies. The scoutmaster roars back into camp "wearing" only a bit shrubbery arranged around his privates, latches onto to the bullies, who he thinks are the culprits, and drags them away for a dunking. And of course, two of the troop's den mothers have shown up, and witness all of this.
• The Star Trek: The Original Series novel My Enemy, My Ally by Diane Duane has Kirk motivate Sulu to do some very creative combat maneuvers by threatening to tell a certain female lieutenant who swiped her clothing from poolside the month before.
• Die Wilden Huhner ("Wild Hens") by Cornelia Funke depicts a girl's clique (the eponimus "Hens") and their Escalating War with a boy's band, the Pygmies. At some point, the boys steal the girls' clothes while the latter take a shower in their backyard. This is Played for Laughs.

Live Action TV

• Brandy does this to Martin in an episode of Benidorm.
• This is apparently a frequent problem for Chang on Community.
• The first-season episode of The Dukes of Hazzard "Deputy Dukes" starts the hijinks with this trope. Their "dates" steal their duds, so Bo and Luke end up trying to chase them in the General Lee au naturel. Naturally, they literally run into Sheriff Rosco (and his car), and he promptly arrests them on his usual variety of trumped-up charges. Then, he (very hesitantly) looks inside, sees their lack of attire, and (just as hesitantly) adds, "...in...decent...exposure."
  • Then in the season two episode "The Ghost of General Lee", two crooks inadvertently steal Bo and Luke's clothes (as they're skinny-dipping) when they steal the General. Again, this was just the opening scene.
• An Evening Shade episode had this happen to Burt Reynolds and two other men.
• Father Brown: At the end of "The Penitent Man", a filthy and soaking wet Flambeau comes across a pair of picnickers who are skinny dipping. Flambeau steals the man's clothes, and his car, as he escapes.
• The Fosters: In the Series Finale "Where The Heart Is", Stef and Lena disrobe on the beach next to a seaside resort to go Skinny Dipping thinking there's no one around early in the morning ... leading to Naked People Trapped Outside after an oblivious resort worker takes their robes during their Two-Person Pool Party.
• Game of Thrones. One of the Poke the Poodle offenses confessed by Tyrion Lannister, when he was actually supposed to be confessing to attempted murder.
  "When I was ten, I stole a robe from a serving girl, bathing in the river. She was forced to return naked and in tears. If I close my eyes I can still see her tits bouncing!"
• In an episode of Girls in Love, the girls take revenge on Magda's ex by doing this. They steal his togs while he is in the shower at the pool, and then remove all of his clothes from his locker.
• Happens plenty of times on Home and Away, including Ric's clothes stolen by Cassie in 2005 and Matthew's stolen by Ruby in 2008. The latter, which was filmed, ended up going viral.
• On an episode of The Love Boat, during the opening check-in scene, Dr. Bricker appears wearing only a raincoat and hat. It turns out a girl he met wanted to go skinny dipping. She then took off with his clothes, and he got the raincoat from a fisherman.
• Married... with Children: A girl offers to go skinny-dipping with Bud, and ends up running his underwear up the school's flagpole.
• M*A*S*H has several of them where someone gets their clothes stolen from the shower tent.
  • In an early episode, Hawkeye and Trapper make jokes about Radar. He says he can take a joke, then grabs their robes and walks out of the shower tent. On YouTube, the clip is called "You Don't Mess With Radar".
  • During an escalating prank war between Margaret and Hawkeye and B.J., Margaret steals the boys clothes while they are showering. Hawkeye and B.J. are forced to walk naked through the camp back to their tent, only to find it full of nurses waiting for them.
  • In the episode where Winchester is the only person in camp with access to newspapers and won't share them, someone stole his clothes but left one of his newspapers.
  • Winchester got it again in a later episode. Due to a drought, Col. Potter declared the camp's water supply to be used only for the wounded, but Charles is somehow remaining relatively clean and shaved through it all. Hawkeye and BJ follow him and find out he had his own personal supply of imported bottled water. They take his last bottle and his clothes.
• Mohawk Girls: In a variation, Bailey, Caitlin, Anna and Zoe go to a camp where they improvise themselves a nude mud bath. While doing so, some teenage boys they mockingly rejected take their clothes as revenge.
• Mr. Bean: A kid steals Mr Bean's swimming trunks and he's forced to somehow get back to the changing room without showing any of his private parts. Unfortunately, he fails just as a just as a group of schoolgirls come passing by.
• The Nutt House: A variant; while Norman is taking a shower, Ms. Frick takes the opportunity to throw all his clothes out the window. He steals a plastic-covered hanger from a laundry rack going past, which turns out to be a dress.
• In the Our Gang episode "Fightin' Fools", while the boys are swimming, their clothes aren't stolen, just soaked and then tied in knots by their rivals, rendering them unwearable.
  • In another, the kids steal the clothes of a man while he went swimming; the reason being that they believed that he was going to marry their beloved teacher Ms. Crabtree (and this being the 20s, teachers were required to be unmarried), and he would not be able to if he had no clothes. Turns out, he was actually her brother. Cue embarrassment. Her brother did eventually get clothes... women's clothes.
• A Seinfeld plot involved this having happened to George at one time.
• In the first episode of The Sleep Over Club TV series, the M and M's clothes are stolen by one of the girls after a swimming lesson. After they apparently take ages to change, the teacher makes the boys come out (after hearing them claim that they can't find their clothes), otherwise they will receive detention. They were forced to come out of the changing rooms using a float to cover their penises.
• The Summer I Turned Pretty: Belly, Taylor, Nicole and Gini are skinny dipping. When the latter two leave, Nicole and Gini steal their clothes due to Nicole's jealousy over a text Belly is sent from Conrad.
• Happens with the whole gang in the That '70s Show episode "Hyde Moves In".
• Three's Company: Jack is the victim who gets his clothes stolen. Larry is the culprit.

Music

• The first two lines of Morrissey's "Everyday Is Like Sunday":
  Trudging slowly over wet sand
  Back to the bench where your clothes were stolen
• The summer camp song "Once I Went in Swimming."
  Dove into the water
  Just like Pharaoh's daughter
  Dove into the Nile.
  Someone saw me there
  And stole my underwear
  And left me with a smile.
• Russian band Otava Yo perform "Girls Coming Back From A Pilgrimage", in which the religious devotions of the ladies are thwarted by a stiflingly hot day. They elect to go for a swim in the River Don. While they are swimming, Ignashya the thief comes along and steals their clothes. It falls to Vasilisa The Extremely Annoyed to chase him, beat him soundly, and get the clothes back.

Myths & Religion

• Hindu Mythology: Krishna, as a teenager, used to steal the clothes of milkmaids while they were bathing.

Professional Wrestling

• In 2002, Chris Jericho and Christian got their gym bags (containing their clothes) stolen by The Dudley Boys. Jericho and Christian spend most of the night wearing only towels and trying to find something to wear. Later, the Dudleys come out to the ring with the bags and toss their clothes into the crowd. If that wasn't enough, Spike Dudley then ripped their towels off.
• In a real life perspective, CIMA of all people reminds an incident happened when he was training in Mexico, before entering the Toryumon dojo. Supposedly, he was in the showers when someone stole his bag with all his clothes and footwear. He had to walk to his remote apartment wearing only sandals and a towel.
• Kurt Angle once emerged from a tanning bed to find his clothes gone. He spent most of the episode running around in a thong and beating up passerby until Jim Cornette handed him a robe. The thief was eventually revealed to be Samoa Joe, to goad Angle into a match with his titles on the line.

Video Games

• The Elder Scrolls
  • In a sidequest in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind this happens to a miner in Gnisis when a rival steals his pants. He'll reward you if you get them back for him.
  • You can do this to some bathing hunters in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. They'll attack if they catch you, though.
• The player does this to some Mooks in Final Fantasy X-2 to steal their uniforms.
• When you arrive in Medieval times in Future Wars, one of the first things you have to do is wait for a skinnydipper to come by and take his clothes so you can blend in.
• In Heist: The Crime of the Century the Classy Cat-Burglar protagonist "borrows" a cruise ship waiter's uniform while the owner's busy frolicking with a woman in a swimming pool.
• In the screensaver adventures of Johnny Castaway, he bathes near his island, while his clothes hang on a stick, when a seagull steals them. He simply decides not to come out until the scene refreshes.
• The mission to unlock Gorilla Girl in LEGO Marvel's Avengers has you retrieving her clothes after somebody decided to hide them as a joke. Being an E-rated game, we don't get to see any nudity as she remains in her gorilla form the whole time (which, oddly enough, is wearing clothes).
• Ōkami presents a twist: The bather is preparing to be a Human Sacrifice, and Ammy needs the clothes for a plan to save her.
• Possibly in a nod to historical accuracy, this is one of the first things to do in Rome Pathway To Power. The main character, a slave, needs to disguise himself with a citizen's toga in order to interact with people and buy things, and the only way to get one is by stealing it from some poor guy in the baths.
• In the text adventure Shadows Of Mordor, when Frodo and Sam are looking for Orc clothes with which to disguise themselves, one possibility is to steal the clothes left by some Orcs who have gone swimming. It doesn't work, though.
• Shantae: Shantae's Character Blog at one point chronicled the events of Shantae trying to cover herself after somebody stole her clothes while she was swimming. It turned out that Bolo buried Shantae's clothes because he saw them lying on the ground and thought she had melted.
• In Shin Megami Tensei II, if you avoid the lawful part you have to steal a bathing Fury's robe, since wearing it will mask your alignment and allow you to pass the Cherubs guarding the entrance to Eden. If you later on return it (a lengthy detour at this point), she will be thankful that you "found" her "lost" clothes and raise each of your stats by one.
• In The Sims 3: Late Night, Sims can go skinny dipping and have their clothes stolen by other Sims.
• Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley: One quest has you helping out Ninny the Invisible Child, whose clothes were stolen by the mischievous Stinky while she was out swimming. Stinky tried to argue Ninny doesn't need clothes because she's invisible, but Ninny complains that being an Invisible Streaker is very cold and uncomfortable, leading her to ask Snufkin for help getting her clothes back.
• In Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People: Homestar Ruiner, part of the solution to a puzzle involves having Strong Bad steal Homestar's clothes while he's in the shower, forcing Homestar to run home naked.
• In Sunless Sea, when you visit the Empire of Hands, the Monkey Foundling will generally turn up and steal all your clothes when you take a dip, ultimately leaving you with one sock. Because Naked People Are Funny, when you return to your crew equipped with said sock, your Terror will actually drop several points.

Webcomics

• In Alice, the title character and her friends Dot and Joanne go skinny-dipping, putting all their clothes in a plastic bag, which a dog then carries off in its mouth. They share a large cardboard box in order to get to their respective homes. Dot and Joanne, but not Alice, make it indoors undetected.
• Gabby once tried holding Charby's clothes hostage to talk to him by sitting on them while he was swimming in Charby the Vampirate. His attempt to scare her away was a bit too successful and he ended up burning his clothes rather than put them back on.
• Happened to Kea when she was a child in Devils Cake.
• In the first gratuitous shower scene of Freefall, a raccoon swipes Florence's towel while she's washing.
• In a Penny and Aggie flashback, teenage Lynda takes two friends skinny-dipping in order to teach them to celebrate their bodies, free of the "repressive male patriarchy." Her lesson backfires when Rob and Henry steal their clothes, whereupon one friend fears she'll "turn lesbo" after spending too much time naked with girls, while the other is turned on by the possibility that Rob was checking out her breasts.
• In Serpamia Flare, Cain has his clothes stolen by monkeys while he's bathing in a hot spring. He eventually gets them back, but not before chasing them while naked and having his party members sympathetic to him, which understandably annoys Cain.
• A variation in The Legacy of Dominic Deegan: Snout visits a Mongreltown public shower to wash up after getting covered in garbage, but after finishing he finds his clothes aren't at the pickup. As Mongreltown has shades of being a Wretched Hive, the apathetic staff take no responsibility for the missing (though admittedly patchwork and valueless) clothing and won't even leave him the dignity of his loaned Modesty Towel, forcing him to walk the streets with only his diary for cover for a bit.

Western Animation

• This happened in the Adventures of the Gummi Bears episode "Friar Tum", to a trio of monks that were taking a little swim in a nearby lake. The troll trio that the Gummis had outsmarted several times in the past were the ones who stole the monks' robes to disguise themselves.
• The Camp Lazlo short "Nudist Camp" had this happen when Lazlo took Lumpus' uniform while he was bathing in the lake.
• Cow and Chicken: In episode "P.E.", Chicken, Flem and Earl became Junior High students. While they were having a shower after P.E. classes, some bullies stole their clothes. To compound the problem, the only place in school where gym towels were offered was the cafeteria.
• Dudley Do-Right is a victim to this in one episode thanks to Snidely Whiplash. He's not able to get his clothes back for some time so he's only able to walk around once his beard has grown to cover his whole body.
• An old "We'll be back" bumper for Ed, Edd n Eddy involves the Kanker Sisters stealing the Eds' clothes while they swim, and they end up using the Cartoon Network logo to hide their shame.
  Announcer (Frank Welker): These Kanker girls have got a real mean streak in them. And speaking of streak, it's a long run home from that pond, boys! The Eds will be right back.
  Announcer (Tom Clark): Ed, Edd n' Eddy will return as soon as their clothes too. I told you boys the first rule of Skinny Dipping - Don't do it!
• Not quite clothes as most of the characters don't wear any, but in the Little Dogs on the Prairie episode "Stealing" Gilroy steals Scout's bandanna while he's gone swimming.
• The Little Lulu Show episode, "Five Little Babies", had the boys get their clothes stolen by Lulu and Annie while they were swimming, as revenge for a prank that they played on Lulu earlier.
  • In a different episode, the girls went to an island in the middle of a lake, and the boys (minus the one left in charge of guarding their clothes) swam there to play another prank. Unfortunately, the boy guarding the clothes found a row boat and decided to go there to give them the clothes. He got caught by the girls, who used the clothes as leverage.
• In the The Loud House episode, "Pasture Bedtime", when Lincoln, Clyde, Rusty, and Zach go to Girl Jordan's party, Lincoln and Clyde choose to swim in the pool, but because they didn't bring any bathing suits, they strip down to their underwear. Their clothes later get stolen and eventually torn to pieces by a dog.
• In The Real Ghostbusters episode "Surely You Joust", Peter, Egon, Winston, and Ray steal armor from some skinny dipping ghost knights to use as disguises.
• A Robot Chicken sketch has a book on tape about a unicorn who steals the clothes from two children as they go swimming. The unicorn then persuades the reader to take off their clothes.
• This happened to Jack in a bizarre episode of Samurai Jack, appropriately named "Jack is Naked". Hilarity ensues as he keeps finding new ridiculous costumes to wear, but loses those as well.
• The Sanjay and Craig episode, "Laked Nake". Sanjay's swim suit gets stolen while he's in the lake.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Simple Simpson", while the power plant employees were showering, Mr. Burns has sold their clothes again. Needless to say, like every other jerkass in Springfield before him, this earns Burns a Pie in the Face from Homer/Pie-Man!
    Homer/Pie-Man: I've run out of pie-related puns!
• In Tiny Toon Adventures, this happened to Hamton when he went skinny dipping in Montana Max's pool in "A Bacon Strip" (part of "The Acme Acres Zone").
• In the Wacky Races episode "Beat the Clock to Yellow Rock", a group of bear cubs steal the Ant Hill Mob's clothes while they're swimming in their underwear.
• In The Wild Thornberrys episode "You Otter Know", Donnie takes off with Debbie's clothes when she's bathing in the natural hot springs, leading her to chase after him in her sports bra and towel.

Real Life

• There is a popular (and likely apocryphal) story that America's first female reporter, Anne Royall, came across John Quincy Adams while he was skinny-dipping in the Potomac River and sat on his clothes until he agreed to an interview.
  • There was another story in which said president had his clothes stolen while he was skinny-dipping and he had to ask a passerby to run to the White House and bring him back another outfit.
  • Note that nobody disputes that Adams skinny-dipped in the Potomac; this is well known to have been part of his routine. What's in dispute is the clothes being stolen part.
• Thieves were a big problem at the Roman baths for exactly this reason. Not because the Romans were as paranoid about nudity as we are, but because clothes were a lot more expensive back then. Even a simple laborer's tunic cost a decent amount, and the gods help any Roman who hadn't been able to ditch his toga at home before heading to the baths.^note A toga was a semicircle of wool about 4-6 meters in diameter, so the garment was overall somewhere between 6 and 10 square meters of wool. A modern three-piece suit uses only about 4 square meters of wool. While much of the price of a suit is in the design and workmanship of designing a well-fitting suit, while a toga was pretty simple from a design perspective, the wool itself was a lot more expensive back then. Also, much as a modern suit is worn over a basic button-down shirt (which if bought from a fashionable supplier can easily cost ten times as much as a mass-market shirt of similar overall design), the toga was worn over a tunic (which if well-made would cost significantly more than a laborer's), and nothing kept the bathhouse thieves from stealing the tunic along with the toga. At least many baths offered to sell cheap robes (at ridiculously inflated prices) to bathers whose clothes were stolen. (And perhaps not surprisingly, many of those baths also had thieves on their payroll....)
• Before George Washington was ever a president, a revolutionary, or even a lieutenant in the French and Indian War, there is a record of a court proceeding against a girl who stole his clothing (or at least his belongings) while he was swimming on a trip.
• There is a story in America's Dumbest Criminals of a businesswoman who, after a long summer drive, decided to skinny-dip in a river to cool off. While swimming some men arrived at the river and blocked the route to her clothes. Too embarrassed to head for said clothes, she jumped in her car, sped home, and was pulled over by an officer who was shortly quite embarrassed himself.
• In World War 2, an officer of the 509th Composite Group on Tinian Island (the group who flew the atomic bombing missions) and his nurse girlfriend went skinny dipping and found their clothes stolen when they got out, forcing them to walk a mile back to the main base, in the nude. It was assumed that a mischievous Japanese soldier had stolen the clothes, but in his 2012 memoir My True Course, Theodore Van Kirk of the Enola Gay revealed that he had been the one who stole them.
• A 1922 news article: FARMER ENDS 'BATH' PARTY AT MIDNIGHT: Likes Nature, But Prefers to Sleep; Clothing of 40 is Confiscated.
• This happened to the Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leader Alexander Gauland while he was bathing in a lake.

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