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An art style in which characters are drawn with exaggeratedly long, thin torsos and limbs. This can look rather odd if animated. The term was coined in Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, although the term has also been picked up by the anime and manga fandom. Despite the floppy connotations of noodle-ness, character designs using this aesthetic frequently tend to be angular and pointy, especially around the joints (and, in anime and manga, possibly also the chins).
This tends to take one of two main forms:
- One step up from stick figures, where the torso has some thickness and heads and extremities have more realistic detail, but the arms and legs are essentially lines. This seems to be rather popular in gothic and emo art, and may apply to all the characters, or just one or two. Example: Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
- A style based on fashion illustration, where the characters are impossibly slender and long-limbed, but otherwise have more-or-less normal anatomy and musculature. Especially common in josei manga. More likely to apply to the entire cast (or at least the attractive characters). Often overlaps with bishounen and/or bishoujo. Example: Doumeki and Watanuki from ×××HOLiC.
Has nothing to do with incidents or implements. If you wanted a trope about characters whose limbs have the flexibility of noodles, that's Rubber Hose Limbs. Compare Nothing but Skin and Bones. Contrast with Puni Plush. Frequently paired with Creepy Long Fingers and/or Creepily Long Arms.
Examples:
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Everybody
Anime and Manga
- Naruto uses this trope on occasion, whenever something rather jarring (usually Played for Laughs) is revealed. Is coupled with Blank White Eyes, Quivering Eyes, and Facefault.
- K, to an extent, especially the more Bishounen-looking boys. Yahiro and Kuroh are straight examples. The women have flesh on them but are still impossibly leggy, and there are exceptions; more muscular, fat, or short men.
- Basso/ Natsume Ono seems
 ◊ to be◊ quite◊ fond◊ of◊ this◊.
- This style is most noticeable in CLAMP works Xxx Holic and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. Though not a style used in their earlier works, the stereotype has already set in, with these two being their most popular recent works. To a lesser extent, it's still there in their older stuff (e.g. Tokyo Babylon), which has occasionally been toned down due to the difficulty of animating. It's just closer to being in line with the rest of anime's skinny, skinny waifs. It also turns up in Code Geass, which is not terribly surprising, considering its characters were designed by CLAMP.
- The series that Sunrise did immediately after Code Geass, Mobile Suit Gundam 00, also has a decidedly noodly cast, this time designed by Yun Kouga (of Loveless fame).
- One Piece, though mostly just with women.
- Monkey D. Luffy is drawn in this style. Additionally, he has an elastic body, making him a noodle person on two levels. His noodliness seems to be inversely proportional to the seriousness of the scene. He has a much more defined shape and visible musculature whenever he's kicking butt, but in very comedic scenes he is so much of a noodle person that he doesn't always even have elbows or knees. However, Sanji is pretty much always a noodle man and Usopp is always a puppet/stick man (except recently when he got really fat, and then after the Time Skip where he got fairly muscular). As well as new crew member Brook, though only because he is only a skeleton now
- Justified (?) during the fight with Kalifa of CP 9. Her Awa Awa no Mi (Bubble Bubble Fruit) gave her the ability to "clean off" power. It also smooths out the curves of the target's body, making them look very noodle-like.
- Lupin III.
- Nana
- Almostevery◊ work of◊ Nakamura Asumiko. Really.
- Nabari No Ou: It doesn't start out this way, but gets considerably worse towards the later volumes.
- Special A. Good gods, just look at the legs.
- Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, especially the schoolgirls.
- Loveless
- This style was first popularized in anime by Leiji Matsumoto, though his more comedic characters are usually short and round.
- Mamoru Nagano also makes extensive use of it in his character designs. Even his Humongous Mecha designs are often quite spindly, most notably the Jagd Mirage from The Five Star Stories.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion. Most noticeable with Asuka and Rei in their plugsuits; just look at the torsos. Although not that that distracting on screen, these life size figures can be quite disturbing. There's also the Evas themselves◊. Their proportions are so slim, if their origin didn't let them ignore the laws of nature, they would be unable to stand.
- In Cowboy Bebop the heroes are all way skinnier then most shows would make them, the thickest is Jet, and it is most notable in Spike and Ed. A watsonian explanation could be the Bebop crew's chronic lack of food, and Spike's highly athletic lifestyle. The doylist reason is that many are expies taken from Lupin III, especially Spike with his long legs. Ed, having no previous incarnation, is the one who is pure noodle for noodle's sake.
- Since author Kaoru Shintani once worked as an assistant to Leiji Matsumoto, the characters of Area 88 tend to be rail-thin. Especially noticeable with women and Saki and Shin.
- The characters of the lesser-known mangaka, Hakase Mizuki. Just look at some of them! Half of them must be walking on stilts.
- Humans in Digimon.
- Star Driver, likely taking influence from CLAMP.
- Revolutionary Girl Utena
- Ouran High School Host Club
- Mohiro Kitoh usually draws his characters like this.
- The Sailor Moon girls when drawn by Naoko Takeuchi.
- The female characters of Space Battleship Yamato/Star Blazers. Starsha in particular looks impossibly gawky in an elegant sort of way.
- Durarara!!
- Claymore: all the Claymores, and many of the other characters who aren't specifically meant to be fat or hugely-muscled.
- Kouta Hirano of Hellsing does something like this; his characters tend to be very streched. Unlike most examples of this trope, however, his thick-lined, angular style still give limbs a lot of weight despite their elongated proportions.
- The drawings of Hajime No Ippo evolved into a variation of this over time: during fights, the characters have a muscular torso but impossibly thin limbs. Especially glaring during the fight between Itagaki and Saeki, or in Mashiba's later fights.
- Most human characters in Pokemon (at least the anime).
Art
Comic Books
- Jhonen Vasquez as said above, utilizes noodle people. This is especially evident in his comics Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Squee!, and I Feel Sick. It's less noticeable in Invader Zim, where most of the characters are either children or very short, but it can be seen at times when adults appear. Apparently Happy Noodle Boy himself doesn't count.
- Hell, Jhonen himself is pretty close to a Real Life example.
- Most of the Sonic the Hedgehog characters. Ash Mongoose is probably the most extreme in this regard.
- Foo Swee Chin (a.k.a. FSc) art style consist of this. As seen in Nightmares And Fairy Tales and her own comic MuZz.
Film
Music
- The Gorillaz, excluding Russell and child-Noodle. It's most noticeable with 2D and adult/teen Noodle (who's aptly named).
Tabletop Games
Video Games
- Somewhat with the Mudokons of Oddworld.
- A good majority of the characters in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, including the eponymous character himself, especially after Sonic Adventure.
- All but the grossly obese characters from Tim Schafer's Psychonauts look like this, most notably Raz's dad. Hell, even the fat people have really noodly limbs.
- Most of the slim characters in Bayonetta; the main exception is Luka, and only because of layers of clothing obscuring his body.
- Thinner Miis count, when their limbs are visible.
- Everyone in The Dishwasher, including the title protagonist. The incredible amount of violence in the game, in addition to the monochrome art style, certainly is evocative of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.
- The World Ends With You uses this style. The characters aren't just stylistically thin, but wiry with a bit of muscle tone.
Web Comics
Western Animation
- Tim Burton used such a style for the puppets in The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. He also draws like this, judging by his various storyboards.
- Ćon Flux, big time. The long limbs and large chests of the characters in the show were perhaps due to the action being set on a planet, not very Earthlike, with low gravity and thin air. Admittedly, that's probably an Epileptic Tree, but a petit mal one.
- Monster Buster Club: Everyone, excluding the fat people, pretty much define this trope. Just look at them.
- The normal human characters in Courage the Cowardly Dog.
- Classic Disney characters like Goofy (especially Goofy) and Mickey Mouse.
- All the characters in Class of 3000 exhibit this due to the "no straight lines allowed" art style, but Sunny Bridges and Philly Phil in particular.
- Most characters on Codename Kids Next Door, even the overweight ones.
- Most characters on Pepper Ann.
- Darn near everyone in TRON: Uprising.
- Invader Zim
- The general art style Adventure Time, though there are exceptions.
- Jake takes it Up to Eleven. Being able to change shape at will, he often moves his limbs in ways that imply he has no bones whatsoever.
Individual characters
Anime and Manga
- Rem and Ryuk, two of the Shinigami from Death Note kinda look like this, especially compared to the human characters.
- Alan Gabriel in The Big O.
- Yoite (and Miharu, sort of) in Nabari No Ou.
- Nnoitra Gilga of Bleach.
- Megumi Shimizu from Shiki. Actually, most Shiki characters, exceptions being two of the nurses.
- Done terrifyingly in The Enigma Of Amigara Fault. What makes it scary? The art style is very realistic, meaning that the characters actually look like that, and they started out normal-looking.
- Meito Anisawa and his assitant are ironic examples, being the only ones in an otherwise plush-like world.
- Crona from Soul Eater.
- A lot of people start looking like this when they give into Madness. A good example is Maka's second battle with Crona. When she starts using Madness to tune into Crona's soul, she begins to be drawn much more loosely, with her joints seeming to bend in impossible ways in the same way Crona's do on a regular basis.
Comic Books
- The Sandman: Dream of the Endless. And his servant/librarian/confidant Lucien is even taller than him. About half the other Endless - Desire, Death, and Delirium, specifically - fall into this at least in some illustrations.
- Fantastic Four: Reed Richards, Rubber Man extraordinaire, whose power very often manifests itself in a very noodly manner.
- Mercury of the Metal Men. Justified in that he is a robot. In fact, he loses his noodliness when the team got remoulded into human forms in a retool late into their original run.
Comics
- Spike, Snoopy's brother from Peanuts.
Film
- The Na'Vi. They're basically 12-foot-tall, hairless blue bipedal lemurs.
- The original "zombie" in [REC]. The actor is Javier Botet, and he is that tall and lanky because of Marfan syndrome. The rest were just well applied makeup and great acting.
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has Mike Teavee. While it's implied in the book and the 1970 movie, the 2005 movie actually show how "skinny" he ended up (at 5:20 in the video). Also, Charlie himself in the Game Boy Advance game.
- Coraline has several examples. The titular character is as thin as a rod, but several other characters, like Wybie and her father, are squat and rotund. The Other Mother starts out with the (nice) legs of Coraline's real mother but gradually turns into a grotesque spider-like creature. Then there's Bobinski, who is quite fat but has absurdly spindly limbs, the exact opposite of what you'd expect from someone so agile.
- Close Encounters Of The Third Kind The first alien out the door is spidery, raises his long arms in greeting... and is never seen again. The reason is because that particular alien was a separately-filmed marionette and the incredibly bright lights behind were required to hide the strings. Putting it in with everything else was beyond 1970's technology.
Literature
- In Michael Chabon's Gentleman Of The Road, one of the protagonists, Zelikman, is described as looking like a "slight, thin-shanked fellow" and a "scarecrow".
- In Harry Potter, Ron, Percy, and Arthur are all described as tall, gangly, and quite thin. Ron probably loses most of his noodle status after the fifth book, though.
- Melissa Marr's Faery Court series features the Scrimshaw Sisters, faeries who are very tall and appear to be literally skin and bones.
Live Action TV
Video Games
- Waluigi of Super Mario Bros
- The Tall Man of the Chzo Mythos. Couple this with his extreme height, speed and strength, and he's pretty efficient Nightmare Fuel.
- You can create your very own Noodle Rocker in Rock Band just by setting the weight slider to minimum in the character creator. It'll give even the shortest characters skinny little stick-limbs, although only the ones who're also tall get the full Noodle Person effect.
- This isn't really possible anymore in Rock Band 3; the character creator was overhauled to be more detailed and realistic, so the characters can't be quite as skinny as they were in the previous games. Also, all the men have fairly bulky shoulders and upper torsos even if they're at the minimum for weight and muscle, although the female characters can still be quite twiglike.
- I. M. Meen is very gangly. All the better to dance around and sing about clever children, I suppose.
- The Grey Jacks in Resistance are giant spindly aliens; the Grims somewhat fill this role in the sequel.
- Miror B. of Pokemon Colosseum fame. He's by far the thinnest character seen in a Pokémon game, and is about two heads taller than the main character. The thinness of his arms/legs/body makes his absolutely massive afro even more comical.
- Pretty much all of the player characters in more recent versions qualify as well. Brendan from Generation III, Lucas from Generation IV, and Hilda from Generation V are particularly scrawny-looking.
- Katy Kat in Parappa The Rapper: Her torso is only about twice as wide as her tail.
- While most of the characters of Disgaea are on the thin side, Valvatorez may very well be made of pipe cleaners.
- Yoyo in Jet Set Radio Future has very thin arms and legs.
Web Animation
Web Comics
- Anna in Anders Loves Maria, contrasting with the more realistic build of the other characters.
Web Original
Western Animation
Real Life
- Underweight people, or people with the "ectomorphic" body type, can look like this.
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