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Clothing can be functional or ornamental. It can be distinctive, dramatic, or symbolic.

It can also kill you.

Killer Outfit is when a character dies as a direct result of the clothing they wear. Note that the clothing must be directly responsible (if an inanimate object can be described as responsible) for the death. If Bob is shot because he's disguised as one of the Big Bad's henchmen, that would be Mistaken Identity. If Bob dons the disguise, catches the hem of his longcoat in his spurs, and breaks his neck in the resulting fall, that's Killer Outfit.

Cape Snag is a specific subtrope. Any examples with capes/cloaks should go on that page, not this one.

Compare Fashion Hurts and Clothing Combat. Depending on the situation, the wearer might avoid death by Giving Them the Strip. This trope can overlap with Hoist by His Own Petard if the clothing was intended to protect the wearer.

This is a death trope — expect spoilers!


Examples:

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    Advertising 
  • For some unfathomable reason, an Australian optometrist chain (probably run by some DILWIDs) once ran a TV ad featuring a recreation of Isidora Duncan's death (see Real Life below) as part of a campaign to sell sunglasses.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Appare-Ranman!: Quite literally for TJ as he has a noose tied around his neck. This bites him in the ass when Gil grabs it during their fight.
  • In the first episode of Noir, Kirika grabs a mook's tie and snaps his neck with it by falling down a railing while holding it.

    Comic Books 
  • One of the early Action Comics issues, back in the days when it wasn't entirely Superman stories, had a short story of a criminal who suffered this when he tried to break out of prison by clinging to the underside of a truck. A pendant he was wearing got caught in a moving part and strangled him.
  • Batman:
    • One story from The Golden Age of Comic Books had Batman pursuing four escaped killers, sentenced to die by different means of execution in different states. Each dies in a way that mirrors the way they were due to be executed. The one sentenced to hang dies when his tie gets caught in a generator.
    • Another golden age story was about three outlaw brothers who all wore chainmail Bulletproof Vests. Two of them die as a result of the vests. One is knocked overboard and drowns when the vest drags him down, and the second is crushed when his vest is caught by the electromagnet in a scrapyard. (The third brother, who never wanted to be a criminal, suffers Redemption Equals Death when he removes his vest and uses it to patch a broken power line so a surgeon can finish an operation, only to be shot by a vengeful gang member.)
    • Another story had a criminal with a magnetized shard of metal lodged in his brain. He had to avoid close contact with metal in case it caused to shard to move and kill him. While escaping from Batman, he dashed into a crowd of theatregoers and snatched a top hat off one of them in an attempt to blend in and lose Batman. Unknown to him, the hat was a opera hat with a small spring inside to allow it to collapse. When he donned it, the spring caused the magnetic shard to move and killed him.
    • The villain Magpie leaves behind booby-trapped replicas of the items she steals. This has included a choker that slit the throat of the woman wearing it.
  • Judge Dredd: PJ Maybe's parents killed themselves during Necropolis with special pants that sort of serve the same function as a Cyanide Pill—coat them with water and they release a poison that kills the wearer. He then tricks a neighborhood boy into wearing them so he can take his place.
  • Rulah, Jungle Goddess: In "The Ice Beast" (Zoot Comics #10), an evil witch doctor and an American engineer join forces to bury the jungle beneath a blizzard. When Rulah shuts off the machine, the snow melts and the jungle is engulfed by a massive flood. The witch doctor drowns when he is dragged down by the heavy padded suit he was wearing to stave off the frigid cold of the blizzard.
  • The EC Comics story "Death Suited Him!" (Tales From the Crypt #22, Feb/March 1951) uses the urban legend about embalming fluid in a suit taken from a corpse (and worn by his murderer, so very much a Karmic Death).
  • In Weird Western Tales #17, Jonah Hex shoves a Hanging Judge off a cliff. However, rather than falling to her death, she suffers a Karmic Death when her scarf snags on a tree sticking out of the cliff and snaps her neck.
  • Wonder Woman Vol 1: It doesn't actually kill her, but after she and Steve Trevor led a successful Saturnian slave revolt the Saturnian slavers managed to poison Wonder Woman's boots while looking for revenge, which knocked her out and left her unconscious for at least a day.
  • Played for laughs in Ziggy Pig - Silly Seal Comics. When Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal finally meet in Latveria, Ziggy gives Silly a reunion gift — a Fantastic Four T-shirt.
    Silly: Never taking this off! Wearing this until the day I die!
    Ziggy: Heh, now yer gettin' the idea...

    Fairy tales 
  • In the version of Snow White recorded by The Brothers Grimm, the wicked queen first tries to kill her beautiful step-daughter with a corset laced tightly enough to suffocate. When that fails, she tries a poisonous hair comb.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • As part of the Trauma Conga Line in the "Mondo Condo" segment of Amazon Women on the Moon, Arsenio Hall is almost strangled when his tie gets caught in the garbage disposal.
  • The obscure 1973 movie Arnold has Roddy McDowall's character killed by a suit that shrinks and strangles him (and possibly dismembers him— the investigating constable describes the body as "...sort of like a jigsaw puzzle, you might say!"— though we don't see that). An odd little fansite for the film has some stills of the death scene in question.
  • Deep Red has this with jewelry rather than with clothes: the murderer is killed when her necklace gets stuck in a moving elevator, which beheads them.
  • Derailed (2002): After separating the locomotive from the remainder of the train, Jacques kills Cole by knotting Cole's necktie to the door of the carriage; causing him to be beheaded as the locomotive accelerates away.
  • In Elizabeth, one of Elizabeth's ladies-in-waiting dies after she tries on a poisoned silk dress that was intended for the queen.
  • In the movie Happy Birthday to Me, Etienne is killed when the killer feeds his long scarf into the running rear wheel of the dirt bike he is working on, strangling him.
  • Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: While fighting Indiana Jones, the Giant Mook's sash is caught in the rock crusher and he's pulled to his doom.
  • In Law Abiding Citizen, one of the characters mentioned that Clyde Shelton can kill anyone he wants, any time he wants. The example he uses is how Clyde managed to kill some terrorist hiding in a bunker, completely locked away from the word in a totally secure environment.
    One time we're tasking this tricky target. I mean, we're using cruise missiles and predators and we even had a B-2 bomber flatten this guy's villa with a JDAM. All right? We're burning up millions in ordnance and we're getting nowhere with this guy. So we call Clyde and we ask him to solve our problem. Clyde develops a Kevlar thread with a high-tech ratchet made of carbon fiber put in a necktie. Two days later, Mrs. Bad Guy comes home, finds Mr. Bad Guy dead on the bathroom tile, choked to death.
  • In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Eddie Valiant interrogates R.K. Maroon by putting his tie in a film projector and continues running it until Maroon tells him what he wants to hear.
  • In Wonka, Larry Chucklesworth almost strangles himself when his necktie get caught in the mangle during the "Scrub Scrub" musical number.

    Literature 
  • In Adrian Mole, Bert Baxter finally died one day short of his 104th birthday, in an accident involving a dressing gown cord, and a stairlift.
  • In Angels of Music, Rollo wears a Badass Longcoat lined with dozens of knives so he always has a blade close to hand. He dies when Erik grabs the coat and pulls it tight around him; causing him to be stabbed by dozens of his own knives.
  • In The Dresden Files, Nicodemus wears the Iscariot's Noose like a necktie. The Noose's power makes Nicodemus Nigh-Invulnerable against everything... except the Noose itself. Harry nearly manages to strangle him to death with it. Nicodemus has a healthy respect and/or fear of Harry Dresden from that point forward.
  • Mentioned in The Elenium as the reason why the Genidian Knights wear chainmail instead of the other Orders' traditional plate armor: Thalesia has a lot of rivers, and plate is much harder to get out of when you're drowning. When an old preceptor tried to order them to align with the other Orders, the Genidians threw him, in his plate, and another knight, in chainmail, both into a river. The latter swam to the surface. The former didn't. They then elected a smarter preceptor.
  • Serge Storms: Florida Roadkill, a man is murdered by fashion. His girlfriend drugs him, slips a pair of tight jeans onto him, and then carefully soaks and dries out the pants until the fabric shrinks to the point where it cuts off all blood circulation below his waist.
  • Matthew Hawkwood: Combined with Death by Materialism in Rapscallion. Hawkwood tells Morgan that he will let him escape, provided he can swim for it. Hawkwood then shoves him off the side of the ship; knowing full well that he is wearing a waistcoat with a fortune in gold sovereigns sewn into the lining. Morgan sinks like a stone.
  • Averted (so far) and lampshaded by Victarion Greyjoy in A Song of Ice and Fire. He is fully aware that fighting sea battles in full plate is Tempting Fate but finds nothing unreasonable about it. After all, he is a faithful of the sea god (the baptism of his religion is getting drowned unconscious and then resuscitated) and he would be no true warrior if he feared going under. So far his plate has served him better than the lighter garments did to his enemies.
  • In Tomorrow Town, Mal-K drowns when a too-powerful bathroom waterpick is jabbed into his too-watertight spacesuit and his helmet fills with water.
  • Young Sherlock Holmes: In Red Leech, Grivens is killed while fighting Sherlock in the engine room of a steamship. His coat snags on the cams of a gear and he is dragged into the workings where he is Ground by Gears.
  • The Zombie Survival Guide advises against wearing baggy clothing or having long hair when dealing with zombies, since both of these give the zombie a greater area to grab you.

    Live-Action TV 
  • 1000 Ways to Die:
    • #55: Cardiac A-Breast: A horny woman shows off her brand-spanking new metal-lined bra at a party in the hopes of getting a date. Not a good idea when there's a lightning storm in the area...
    • #143: Bad Laps: A former drill sergeant teaching swimming to plus-sized women cranks up the pool's temperature and promises to turn it back down if any of the students can outrace him. He succeeds in beating the students, but dies of hyperthermia due to his wetsuit trapping his body heat.
    • #146: Belly'd Up: An aspiring belly dancer practicing for an upcoming contest gets her scarf caught on a ceiling fan and accidentally hangs herself.
    • #147: Splat-Formed: We go back to that dangerous era known as the 1970s, where a coke dealer hits the disco and does some lines. He trips over his platform shoes and slices his jugular on a pointy end of his male symbol necklace, bleeding out quickly due to an accelerated heart rate from cocaine.
    • #284: Hang Dunked: In the 1980s, a bullying basketball player pulls off a slam dunk and hangs from the rim for a moment, putting his head through the hoop to rub it in. He inadvertently hangs himself on the rim by his chunky, hip-hop necklace.
    • #313: Rolled Death: A new bride has her head ripped off when her bridal veil snags in the wire wheels of the vintage open convertible she is riding in.
    • #319: Domin-A-Dead: A virgin hires a dominatrix who makes him wear a latex suit and ball gag. The man discovers he has a latex allergy, but can't say anything due to the ball gag and the dominatrix thinks his groaning is from him enjoying it. He eventually succumbs to anaphylaxis.
    • #328: Treadkilled: An overweight Peeping Tom spies on his good-looking neighbor while running on a treadmill. He accidentally cranks up the speed, falls, and gets his hoodie's drawstrings caught in the treadmill, choking him.
    • #330: Paper or Spastic: A Jerkass grocery store shopper (suffering from "Little Emperor's Syndrome" as she was an only child in a Chinese family and was spoiled rotten) throws a tantrum when the clerk and manager tells her that they don't take checks for purchases. When they finally relent, the scarf she planned on shoplifting gets stuck in the checkout conveyor belt and strangles her.
    • #331: Wet Dream: A coke fiend from The '80s celebrates New Year's 1986 by doing lines, dressing in drag, and having sex with several women. He awakes to find himself half-naked, smeared in make-up, and cuffed to a waterbed. In a panic, he punctures the waterbed with his stilettos. He drowns when he can't keep his head above water.
    • #366: Strang-Girled: A cheating wife swipes her husband's neck massager for herself. The massager catches on her necklace and strangles her.
    • #578: Corset Killed Him: An arrogant, vain ballroom dancer who gained weight from eating doughnuts uses a corset to make himself thin. He ends up tying the corset so tight that it breaks his ribs and punctures his heart.
    • #606: Wet Dream: A man with a deep love of fish constructs a fish suit out of waterbed material. Excited, he puts it on as he runs to a lake to test it out. Unfortunately, excess heat builds up in his body since he couldn't sweat with the suit on, resulting in a fatal heat stroke.
    • #612: Gone Green: A rich socialite named Sharon throws a St. Patrick's Day party and plans to show off the $3,000 antique green dress she shoplifted, which contains Paris Green dye (a poisonous dye containing a chemical called copper acetoarsenite, common in rat poison). During the raucous party, everyone gets drunk and hurls champagne all over Sharon and her dress. In the morning, while everyone wakes up with severe hangovers, Sharon wakes up to find that she's been dyed green, then vomits green slime, and finally dies of organ failure from the dye seeping into her skin.
    • #614: Dead on Arrival: A drug runner (who eerily looks like Russell Brand) tries to sneak LSD through an airport by soaking his tie-dyed shirt in it. His perspiration causes the acid to get absorbed into his system, enough to fry his brain, but not before rambling and making a scene at airport security.
    • #726: Dough!!!: A pervert baker who's been sexually harassing a coworker challenges her to swallow a spoonful of cinnamon (the infamous "cinnamon challenge"): if she can do it, he'll stop harassing her, but if she can't, then she has to go on a date with him. She coughs it back up in his face, causing him to stumble towards a dough mixer. His tie gets caught in the machine, and his head is pulled into the mixer's blades and crushed.
  • Zig-Zagged in Canada's Worst Driver (and presumably the other series) when it comes to shoes: Several drivers have played it straight with high-heeled shoes, they're taught to avert it, and some drivers have defied it when they say (correctly) that wearing high-heels robs them of their pedal control. In fact, in Season Eight, Cam Wooley explained that if wedge-shaped shoes are considered a contributing factor in an accident, the driver can be charged for that.
    • Shoes as a cause of car wrecks was busted on MythBusters; Jamie and Adam noticed a two-second reduction in their reaction times when wearing high heels or wedges, but had no problem completing their test course. But neither of them is exactly an "average driver" these days.
  • In Criminal Minds, the modus operandi of the UnSub in one episode was to sew his victims into nicotine-laced dresses and wait for them to die.
  • This trope and an urban legend based on it were used in an episode of CSI: NY. The first victim was a bride on her wedding day. It turned out that she had bought her wedding gown used, and it was severely contaminated with formaldehyde. (The gown's original owner had been buried in it, and then dug up so the gown could be stolen for resale.) The episode ends with Mac interrupting another wedding to save the groom from suffering the same fate from his suit.
  • In General and I, Bai Ping Ting attempts to kill Chu Bei Jie by soaking one of his outfits in poison.
  • Chris narrowly averts this trope twice in The Goes Wrong Show:
    • In "The Spirit of Christmas", during his solo number as Mr. Snowman, a spin move causes his scarf to be caught in a toy-making machine, which nearly consumes him. Fortunately, he slips out of his costume right before it's engulfed, leaving him in his underwear for the rest of the play.
    • In "The Pilot (not the pilot)", his tie gets caught in the crank mechanism of the phone he's calling a warning into. His next line delivery ends up sounding constricted until Sandra could cut him free.
  • Discussed in an episode of Home Improvement. Tim, who usually wore a tie as part of his wardrobe on his Show Within a Show Tool Time, went tieless in an episode in which a lathe was being used - mentioning they had received letters from viewers about it. Tim being Tim, he instead gets his untucked shirt snagged in the lathe and torn off him, immediately after warning against wearing loose clothing around a lathe.
  • Jonathan Creek: Used as a murder weapon in "The Coonskin Cap". The killer rigs a policewoman's protective vest with an airbag that he can inflate remotely. When he does so, it constricts her chest to the point where it cannot expand for her to breathe and she asphyxiates. He then deflates the bag and it looks as if she has been strangled while alone in an empty locked room.
  • Midsomer Murders:
    • In "Till Death Do Us Part," Laurel Newman, the first Victim of the Week, is tortured by being held on the bed on her front and having her corset being pulled too tightly. This causes massive internal bleeding when a broken rib punctured her spleen.
    • In "Dressed to Kill", Lois Springfield, the first Victim of the Week, is murdered by being dressed in a corset that is then tightened to the point where she cannot breathe.
  • In one episode of Monk, a woman got strangled in an elevator, when her scarf got caught in the closing door ...supposedly. She was strangled in the elevator before, and the accomplice of the murderer appeared as her double.
    • In "Mr. Monk Meets His Dad," Ben Glaser starts to cut Kenneth Woods' tie loose when it gets caught in a running semi engine, then stops. (The two were co-owners of the same trucking company, and had just found evidence that Ben was defrauding the company by buying used parts and pocketing the difference.) Ben ultimately kicks Kenneth's feet out from under him, just to be on the safe side.
  • Mythbusters: The build team looked into the story of a person being killed when the jeans he (or she) is trying to shrink skin-tight cut off blood circulation. After six hours, Grant was showing no sign of impaired blood flow.
  • In one episode of NewsRadio, the action revolves around a person who had just died from having a tie snagged in a copier.
  • New Tricks: In "Dark Chocolate'', Gerry is almost killed when his sleeve snags on a Conveyor Belt o' Doom in the chocolate factory and it starts to drag him into a chopping machine. He manages to escape by taking off his jacket.
  • On Orphan Black, Aynsley is strangled when her scarf catches in a garbage disposal.
  • Supernatural: In "My Heart Will Go On," Anne Witting is strangled to death by a scarf caught in a copy machine.
  • The Twilight Zone (1959): The episode "What You Need" has it twice. The little man has a case that gives a person what they will need in the near future, and his ability is proven when he gives a gambler a pair of scissors, which narrowly averts this trope when his scarf gets caught in an elevator. Played deadly straight later when said gambler tries to kill the peddler, only to be tripped up by the new pair of shoes the peddler gives him, which leaves him to be killed by a speeding car. The shoes, you see, were what the peddler needed to escape.

    Myths & Religion 
  • Putting this solidly into Older Than Feudalism, we have the death of Heracles. After the centaur Nessus tried to kidnap Deianira, he survived long enough to assure Deianira that if Heracles' attention ever wandered, Nessus' blood would act as a love charm. Different myths differ on whether he gave Deianira his bloodstained tunic, or if he told her to save his blood and put it on one of Heracles' tunics. The end result is the same in both versions: because Nessus' blood was poisoned by the still-potent hydra blood that Heracles had used on his arrows, Heracles died an agonizing death upon putting the tunic on.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Many if not all fantasy role-playing games include "cursed" armor/clothing that can be this, but one of the purer examples (in that it's an item that has no reason for existing other than to screw with the players) is the Cloak of Poisonousness (despite the name, any item of clothing could potentially bear the enchantment), from Dungeons & Dragons. In a nod to the Heracles myth, the description of the item in the first edition rulebook noted that DMs could, at their option, have such a cloak bear a small label reading "Nessus Shirt Company" that would only become visible after the cloak killed somebody.

    Theatre 
  • Medea killed her ex-husband's new wife this way: she sent her a poisoned dress who caught on fire when she wore it. The dress is so murderous, it killed two people: the poor wearer and the wearer's father, who tried to suffocate the flames and got engulfed in them instead.

    Video Games 

    Web Original 
  • Flagrante of Gaia Online died because a sequin from one of his suits broke off into his bloodstream, leading to sepsis.

    Western Animation 
  • In the Classic Disney Short "How to Have an Accident at Work", Donald Duck gets dragged through an industrial hole punch by his tie and suffers Amusing Injuries that would have been fatal had he not been an animated character.
  • The episode of Hey Arnold! called "Headless Cabbie" was about the eponymous legend of a horse drawn carriage driver being loaned a scarf from a woman passenger looking for her missing dog. Later, hearing a dog's barking, she begins urging him to drive faster and faster through a dark and foggy forested path until his scarf inevitably snags on a tree branch, getting his whole head snatched off.
  • Steele from Balto narrowly averts this trope at the end of the movie: originally, after Balto safely arrives in Nome with the diptheria medicine and thus exposing Steele's crimes, instead of simply just being branded as an outcast and still be alive before immediately vanishing from the story altogether like in the actual movie, Steele was going to attack and kill Balto one last time while the other dogs defend him, but in the process Balto gets out of the way and Steele is knocked into a lever used to open a coal bin, resulting in Steele's collar getting snagged onto the lever. Steele tries to attack Balto again, but this results in the lever being pulled forward, opening the coal hatch below and Steele's collar to start wrapping tightly around his neck and severely choking him in the process, until finally a huge pile of burning hot coal is dropped onto the evil dog, singeing and crushing him simultaneously, with the weight of all that coal finally sending Steele to his death in the coal chute below, leaving behind only just his collar, still stuck to the lever that ultimately killed him.

    Real Life 
  • Dancer Isadora Duncan died when her long silk scarf caught in the rear wheel and axle of the car she was riding in, breaking her neck.
  • Several Darwin Awards have been won with the help of Killer Outfits.
    • One burglar, while trying to break into a store via a window in the roof, caught his sweater and accidentally hanged himself.
    • Two Darwin Award winners killed themselves by wearing ridiculously high heels - one by trying to drive a car in them, the other simply by falling over and smashing her skull on the pavement.
  • Cracked featured an article on various fashion trends throughout history that have killed people.
  • This is why auto mechanics NEVER wear a necktie at work. Many of them will also call their office-bound boss's tie a noose.
  • Office machine repairmen often don't wear ties (or wear clip-ons) from concern that it could catch in the machine they're working on.
  • In Canada, police and security guards, if their uniforms include ties, are legally required to wear clip-ons specifically to avert this trope.
  • A belly dancer accidentally hung herself after throwing her scarf into the air, which got caught in a ceiling fan.
  • At least one lady was killed thanks to her lovely green dress, dyed with arsenic.
  • According to some fan sites, this trope was averted with the Fourth Doctor's trademark scarf. The original scarf wrapped snugly around Tom Baker's neck. The switch to a loosely-wrapped scarf supposedly happened after the original scarf snagged on a set piece and almost choked Baker. He did break his collarbone as a result of tripping on the scarf at one point.
  • Yermak Timofeyevich, the Russian Cossack explorer and military leader, drowned in a river because of his heavy plated mail armor (a special gift from the tsar for conquering Western Siberia).
  • Ptolemy XIII, husband (and brother) of Cleopatra VII, drowned following the Battle of the Nile, attempting to swim across the Nile in full armour. Accounts vary on whether he was attempting to flee or seeking to negotiate.
  • Some hospitals have mandated that doctors not wear full length sleeves or ties while seeing patients. Not only can they come into contact with contaminated fluids or surfaces and carry the pathogens to the next patient, but ties make good handholds should a patient turn violent.
  • Most industrial workplaces that involve heavy machinery will have strict rules about clothing. Ties, sleeves, loose-fitting shirts, dangly jewelry (or any jewelry) - there are a lot of seemingly innocuous items that can seriously ruin your day, and everyone else's, if they get caught in a machine.
  • Many high school/secondary school dress codes require a tie for the male teachers, except those that work in the shops/Industrial Arts (I.A.) departments, where ties become dangerous.

 
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Corset Killed Him

A vain ballroom dancer puts on a corset to cover up his fat gut. Unfortunately, his corset was too tight, and he dies when a broken rib punctures his lung.

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