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Long Pants

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"Let's talk about your pants. Or your lack thereof. Daisy Dukes aside."

Homestar Runner: What are you talking about, Strong Bad? I wear long pants.
Strong Bad: Um... no, from what I can tell, you wear no pants and have blue soles glued to the bottoms of your feet.

A technique in which cartoonists illustrate a character in such a way that their pants and shoes are one and the same. In the most extreme cases, their entire outfit appears to be one article of clothing, with thin black lines being the only illusion of separation. Used to make the color patterns more uniform and to eliminate the hassle of drawing dividing details.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Code Geass has Lelouch's Zero costume, a flamboyant bodysuit with boots seamlessly integrated into the pants.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: During the Duelist Kingdom anime, Yugi's shoes and pants were often shown as one single item of clothing.
  • Fai D Flourite in Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-, his Boots and Pants in his normal clothing.
  • One Piece: Roronoa Zoro's most common outfit shows his boots and pants to be one seamlessly put together.
  • Both Roger and Dorothy from The Big O lack any clear delineation between their shoes and pants, a result of Roger's insistence on him and everyone in his employ wearing black clothes (even if Dorothy's outfit is more a really dark red).
  • Homura of Puella Magi Madoka Magica has a Magical Girl outfit with tights and shoes that blend together.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
    • The back of Jotaro's cap is missing, causing his hair to stand out in the back. The thing is, the line separating hat and hair is never drawn, whether it's in the manga, animated adaptations, or even video games. The author has said that this is because the cap is such an integral part of Jotaro's character design that it's practically a part of his body (and the number of times it comes off can be counted on a single hand). This becomes much more noticeable from Diamond is Unbreakable onward, as Jotaro switches from a black cap that matches hair to a white one that gradually turns dark the further back it is.
    • Some characters in later parts also wear pants that seamlessly connect to their shoes. But considering the series' Costume Porn, it's more likely a fashion choice rather than laziness on the author's part.
  • Ranma ½: Ukyō Kuonji's standard okonomiyaki cook/martial art outfit includes clingy black pants with integrated shoes, which might be inspired by some ninja outfits.
  • Trigun: it's very vague and hard to tell exactly what part of Vash's mess of leg belts is supposed to be his boots and which are supposed to be pants, and exactly how long they are. Every fanartist and cosplayer seems to have their own interpretation. In the manga his second costume is confirmed to have ankle length boots in a piece from an artbook showing him barefoot (though you would never be able to guess on your own), and certain shots in the anime (including the part in episode 23 where he takes his coat off) show that Vash wears chaps with blue pants underneath, but it's impossible to tell which part are the chaps and which part are the boots, and his other manga costumes and his movie costume have zero hints.

    Asian Animation 
  • Thanks to the lineless style in Lamput, the uniform that all the scientists wear appear as a full white jumpsuit. However, multiple episodes show that they're actually a separate top and bottom.

    Comic Books 
  • Grown men in Monica's Gang are often shown with their shoes blending in with their pants, possibly to be a time saver when drawing them. This was actually how Monica herself went from wearing shoes and socks in her first newspaper comic appearances to having featureless bare feet, which she had kept on to this day.
  • Many superheroes have costumes where the boots seamlessly blend in with the pants, often with the pants blending in with the shirt too as if the entire outfit is like an infant's pajamas. Storm and Archangel from the X-Men are particularly bad offenders. Spider-Man would be too, except we've actually seen him take off his costume shoes enough times to know they're separate.
  • The Smurfs' outfits are usually drawn this way.

    Comic Strips 
  • Arguably, Ziggy, though the parrot once said "I'm not the one not wearing pants".note  After repeated jokes by The Comics Curmudgeon and Pearls Before Swine, Ziggy hung a lampshade on this in late 2009, early 2010, in a brief arc where Ziggy "finds" his pants and a line is drawn separating his feet.

    Literature 
  • Dr. Seuss did this with many of his characters.
  • The illustrations in the children's book series Franny K. Stein show the title character's shoes blending seamlessly with her pants.

    Music 
  • Because of how thin they are, it's ambiguous whether Hatsune Miku wears thigh high boots or ankle length boots with thigh high stockings. Even official figures and models are rather inconsistent.

    Toys 
  • Playmobil figures in their early days and LEGO minifigures with unprinted leg pieces, though several minifigures have dual-molded legs to imply boots or have printed detail to denote shoes.
  • Variant: My Little Pony does this with hooves, with legs being the same color all the way down to the bottom of their feet. Most male G1 ponies and all G2 ponies played with this, with distinctive hooves that were... still the same color as the rest of the pony. Every other iteration generally play this straight, though certain male ponies in Friendship Is Magic are exceptions.

    Video Games 
  • Doctor Neo Cortex from Crash Bandicoot wears these in certain games.
  • Friday Night Funkin': Daddy Dearest is drawn without any lines separating his shoes from his leather pants. Also, there aren't any lines separating Selever's pants from his high heels.
  • The Miis have this as the default when functioning as avatars on the Wii, Wii U, etc. Zig-zagged whenever they are used in an actual game: some titles maintain this (e.g. Wii Party), others give them defined clothing (e.g. Tomodachi Life), and still others forego giving them lower halves altogether in favor of making them float around (e.g. StreetPass Mii Plaza).
  • Any humanoid Pokémon that appears to be wearing "clothing".
  • Dr. Eggman from Sonic the Hedgehog in a majority of his appearances.
  • In The World Ends with You, Uzuki Yashiro's shirt has attached gloves. Given that trends and popularity are a major theme in the game, this is probably a fashion statement on her part more than the artists being lazy.

    Web Comics 
  • All of the characters on Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff appear to be wearing these.
  • Homestuck's infamous Pantskat (the result of identical colours for shirt and pants). Later on in the story, this gets referenced in a dramatic fashion, with Karkat's ancestor The Signless's Iconic Outfit being nothing but a cloak and a chest high pair of pants. Signless's Beforus counterpart Kankri wears long pants underneath his sweater.
  • In the furry comic Sabrina Online, the titular Sabrina (a skunk-girl) appears to be wearing no pants at all. Then a strip was released where her room-mate asked to borrow her pants; apparently Sabrina just likes wearing pants the same pattern as her fur that make her look like she's wearing no pants.
  • All of the characters The Word Weary have narrow black stalks that protrude from their hips. And everyone seems to be wearing solid black elf shoes.
  • Being stick figures, all the characters of The Order of the Stick used to have this, except for barefoot characters (Belkar had triangular hairy feet, and goblins had feet that basically just looked like hands). The first art upgrade gave Roy rather large boots (everyone else still had lines for feet), and the most recent one has given everyone fully drawn legs and feet, thus averting the trope.
    Merchant: You're wearing long pants?
    Haley: Yeah, I know. The way we're drawn makes it sort of hard to tell.
  • Stand Still, Stay Silent: The coloring of Emil's version of the Non-Uniform Uniform causes that look to happen both for his boots in regards to his pants and his gloves in regards to his jacket.

    Web Animation 
  • Homestar Runner:
    • The trope title comes from the Lampshade Hanging quote at the top, from the SBEmail "Long Pants".
    • The modern definition is played dead straight in Strong Bad's Cool Game 4 Attractive People, if you make Strong Bad wear "Homestar's Pants".
    • Strong Sad, who doesn't seem to wear any pants (or anything for that matter), is somewhat concerned about buying his favourite underwear ("the blue ones") back from an online auction.
    • Brought up with regard to Coach Z in the Strong Bad E-Mail "labor day", where Strong Bad asks him if his skin is green or if he's wearing a green bodysuit.
    • In the Strong Bad E-mail "senior prom" the title character attempts to use a prank device that "poofs away" everyone's pants... only to realize too late that thanks to this trope he's the only character who's indisputably wearing pants.
  • In Bonus Stage, Joel's pants/shoes are like this.

    Western Animation 
  • The Fairly OddParents! is quite fond drawing short characters, such as children or fairies, with shoes the same as their pants. However, tall characters like Vicky the Babysitter also expressed the design. One episode hung a lampshade on this.
    Timmy: Time to get out of bed, get dressed, put on my shoes... [looks down at feet] Whatever!
  • The Professor, Rock Bottom and Poindexter from Joe Oriolo Felix the Cat wear these.
  • Get Ed: The majority of the characters are either depicted with no legs (robotic butler Crouch and hologram Kora) or wearing a futuristic suit that combines shoes and pants into one or has large, fat-ankled boots (with the pants tucked in, of course). In fact, the only character who had ankles was Ol' Skool.
  • Home Movies: The art style makes it seem that just about everyone wears jumpsuits, which goes as far as to cover their fingertips. They acknowledge it at one point when a scene in Brendon's room shows his dirty jumpsuits strewn on the floor, finger/foot covers and all, and all the same shade of blue.
  • My Little Pony: Most incarnations of the franchise use a variation of this where the equine characters' hooves blend seamlessly with the rest of their legs, which consist of a single smooth color from top to bottom with no visible lines dividing the hoof from fur-covered skin. The only exceptions to this are certain large stallions in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, who have hooves separated from the rest of their legs by a fringe of short hair and colored in a different shade from their coat, and all characters in My Little Pony: A New Generation, where all ponies have clearly defined hooves.
  • The Simpsons: The three main kids have hair that seamlessly blends into their head. This has been self-parodied a few times.
  • The Marvelous Misadventuresof Flapjack: Flapjack wears pants that match very well with his shoes.
  • Danger Mouse: Since DM's jumpsuit is the same colour as his fur, it's not immediately obvious that he isn't just wearing a belt and a Chest Insignia. One instance of lampshading occurred when Penfold was being used to draw out aliens who attack pant cuffs. DM had to point out that his own trousers had no cuffs, which Penfold admitted he had never noticed before.
  • Dexter's Laboratory: Dexter has legs so short that his boots go all the way up to his Labcoat of Science and Medicine. His father, however, unquestionably follows this trope (at least in the third and fourth seasons).
  • Making Fiends: Everybody is a single color and has no lines for socks or shoes, though they all have Long Sleeves. Girls (and the male teacher, for some reason, though he may be a real case of long pants) look like they wear dresses or muumuus on top, and boys wear baggy shorts.
  • Camp Lazlo: The main trio appear to be wearing black long pants. Most of the other campers are simply not wearing pants at all — except that one episode where EVERYONE wears pants to justify being pants'd by Edward.
  • Rocko's Modern Life: Heffer's mother's green pants is like that in some later episodes.
  • Rock, Paper, Scissors: Scissors wears shoes that blend in with his black pants.
  • Totally Spies!: The main characters' suits may look like they have built-in boots, but both Alex and Clover have been shown without a boot in some circumstance or another, showing it's a separate piece.note 
  • Harvey Beaks: Foo is a Zig-Zagged example. Sometimes he has shoes, and sometimes his feet are covered via his pants.
  • Steven Universe:
    • A number of characters (including Amethyst, Ruby, Bismuth, and Mr. Smiley) have very short feet on thick legs, resembling pig hoofs. Consequently, their shoes look like socks that are distinct from their pants/legs only in color, not outline. Onion's shoes don't even have that much distinctions from his pants. Steven points the latter out in "Onion Gang", jokingly suggesting that Onion should takes his shoes off but doesn't know how. In "Doug Out", they even get torn near the bottom, and the exposed part of Onion's foot is shoe-shaped.
    • It's unclear if Jasper wears boots and tight pants or if those are just patterns on Future Spandex like Peridot and Garnet wear.
  • OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: Lord Boxman has shoes that blend into his pants. Interestingly, Depending on the Artist, his shoes switch between being flats and having a slight heel.


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