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The elephants may be a bit much.
A completely nude character's naughty bits are blocked from the camera by a convenient prop or oddity of architecture, yet every other character in the scene gets an eyeful, usually resulting in either ogling and nosebleeds, or Squicks and grabs for the Brain Bleach. Sometimes used just out of cultural necessity, but it can be turned into a gag due to the increasing absurdity of the covering elements, as seen in the Austin Powers films. Even when technically played straight, overuse of this trope tends to break the audience's Willing Suspension Of Disbelief and effectively become a gag.
There's also a variant where the hidden part isn't really "naughty": for example, see the Full House episode "I'm Not D.J." where Stephanie gets her ears pierced for the first time. The actress who played her, Jodie Sweetin, had gotten her ears pierced years earlier but the in-show explanation was that the earlier earrings Stephanie wore were clip-ons despite them being obviously not.
Another common example is when a female character takes a bath. The bubbles will generally cover her naughty bits — somehow like a Modesty Bubble Bath or Modesty Foam Bath.
Bowdlerized is when the original footage is censored to allow normal viewing for a different audience, which contains some overlap with this.
For hidden faces, see The Faceless. For bedtime Peek A Boo techniques, see Modesty Bedsheet. Related to Godiva Hair and Hand Or Object Underwear. For cases in which an actress is pregnant but the character is not, see Hide Your Pregnancy.
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Examples
Anime and Manga
- Neon Genesis Evangelion plays with this trope in one episode. Shinji, panicked and shocked by discovering a penguin in the bathtub, confronts his new roommate Misato while he is still undressed. As he rants, his "naughty bits" are hidden by a beer can on the table in the foreground. During the conversation that ensues, Misato picks up the can, revealing that Shinji's modesty is still defended — by a much smaller container clearly labeled "toothpicks". Click here
 ◊ for image.
- In Rebuild 2.0., the above scene is repeated with Asuka instead of Shinji, and when Misato picks up the can this time, a smaller cup with a straw sits, blocking her. That still doesn't stop Shinji from seeing Asuka naked, whose reaction was...well, not good.
- There's another example in episode 5 when Shinji walks in on Rei just after she got out of the shower. After Shinji knocks her down and she drops her towel, a desk lamp in the foreground keeps her breasts obscured until she gets dressed.
- In the Rebuild version of this scene, Rei's nipples are clearly visible just before she gets up off the floor.
- Puni Puni Poemi has a scene with at least half a dozen naked women in a (tiny) Japanese communal tub, but no matter what camera angle is used, the one rubber duck in the tub with them is always blocking the naughty bits that would otherwise be visible.
- The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya, episode 9: Each time Haruhi undresses Mikuru, Yuki's books block the nudity. Also, Yuki only changes her book when Haruhi undresses Mikuru.
- In the series Marine Boy, the mermaid Neptina wears nothing; her breasts are concealed by her long hair, a technique also used in the Japanese animated version of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. It is perhaps worth noting that the mermaids in the Disney version were also originally intended to be unclad; this was only abandoned late in the pencil test stage of the feature's development.
- One Piece used this when some of the crew stole Franky's speedo in order to force him to join.
- Naruto's "Orioke no Jutsu" covers him/her up with clouds or some sort of mist. Results in Iruka-sensei getting a nosebleed.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann does this during its Hot Springs Episode. Kamina is covered by Boota hovering in between his legs, while Simon's drill key necklace inexplicably becomes about 7 times larger, while the chain triples in length so it can cover him. In fact, it looks less like "covering" and more like temporarily "becoming" said part.
- What's really funny is that the Sci-Fi channel broadcast still blurred the first shot of naked Kamina, presumably because you could still see his ass. This has the effect of making Boota's presence less obvious and it seems that that one shot originally showed his penis.
- It was actually Simon's drill. Not the small one on the necklace, but the actual tool he used in the first episode. This is a bit more obvious in the original, unedited episode (unaired on Japanese Television, even) where he used the drill to make a hole to the girl's side of the bath. The entire gratuitous flashback sequence was actually to replace a rather long, fanservice-y segment, involving a lot of Modesty Towels and some bait and switch. Oddly, it managed to show nothing (besides Gimmy's penis) the entire episode, so one is left to wonder why exactly the Japanese found it unairable.
- According to this interview, the scene where Kamina and Simon were trying to peek on the girls (specifically the fact that what they were doing is illegal) was what prevented them from airing it at the show's (child-friendly) time slot. Also, this all happened because the television station approved the episode without reading the script and waited until the animation stage to complain.
- Not to forget the prison fight episode. Towels that stood magically in place while in midair and risky angles covered by shadows might count, too.
- The American broadcast dub of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z would sometimes censor the random nudity that wouldn't fly on cable TV. Sometimes it worked okay, such as putting in an additional tree in a forest scene or fluffing up an area of the flying nimbus. Other times it was just too painfully obvious, digital underwear usually sticking out the most (especially if the character moves around a lot in them).
- One of the Cartoon Network showings of DBZ had Gohan nekkid just after transforming back from a giant space monkey, being followed around by a cropped photo of a bonsai tree.
- Parodied with singular joy in Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu's Onsen Episode. It starts out subtly enough, with a peeping hole in the women's changing room being just out of focus of the girls' bits, or the logs in a fence being the right height to cover their breasts and crotch... but then you get increasingly absurd methods, like a ladybug flying from a nearby leaf, hands moving in synch with characters in the background, and ending up with Tessa slipping and falling spread-eagled on her rump, a rubber ducky covering her crotch from the camera.
- Happens on occasion in Mahou Sensei Negima, where characters will be covered by random objects like leaves, plants, hair and, in extreme cases, the shredded remains of their clothes.
- Done in one of the Code Geass picture books. Collectively taking a bath, it is quite apparent that Milly, Shirley, Kallen, and Nina can see each other's privates, but the artist angles it so limbs block the viewer's view.
- In Rurouni Kenshin, while Kenshin and co are at hotsprings, Kenshin has an epiphany. He races out to tell the two girls, still naked. A convenient bush stands in the way, and there are only above the waist shots of Kenshin once he breaks free of it...
- Creed from Black Cat has two of these. One is when he's in a rose bath daydreaming about Train, and his privates are covered by strategically placed rose petals. The other is when he's naked and having nanomachine treatment to make him immortal - the camera pans extremely low, but his crotch is blacked out by the shadow of some of the machinery.
- In Hunter X Hunter Chapter 158: "Reassembling Companions", page 09 does this with a shout bubble over Pedoclown's naughty bits; a panel cut-off on page 10, and page 11, which is probably NSFW, actually uses two frames with strategically placed speech bubbles to indicate that he just got an erection. Understandably, the two Cute Shotaro Boys who are our heroes are probably wishing that they'd stumbled upon Pedoclown when he wasn't bathing. Luckily for them, they're in a Shounen action series, and although
God Togashi-sensei gets away with more homoerotic subtext than all the other big-name mangaka in the genre combined, this troper doesn't think that even he would be able to include out-and-out Shotacon in his manga... yet.
- In Wild Act, volume 3, Yuniko's... lower half... is covered by a shovel. Ryu Eba doesn't see what we see, and we see quite a bit.
- Despite this being fairly common in Cutey Honey (just watch the intro), fanservice wasn't the focus of the original series. That's what New Cutey Honey was for.
- GITS:SAC 2nd Gig: The Major shows more than her usual skin when she's staying overnight in a Taiwanese hotel with a kid from the refugee gangs. She enters the room naked, covering her breasts with a towel draped over her shoulders, then when she slips into bed a ceiling cam view is obscured by the overhead lighting fixture.
- Oddly subverted in the somewhat obscure OVA My Dear Marie. There were times when this would happen to characters, such as one point where a character was sitting, and his head would block the view of another character's nipples. In the third episode, however, the titular Marie, a Robot Girl, was given the ability to dream and had this same scene. The camera was inexplicably moved a few inches to the left, giving full view of one of her nipples. Apparently nudity is okay as long as it's on robots.
- Kenichi The Mightiest Disciple does this sometimes, usually involving Shigure.
- Used in Wandaba Style's second episode. InnocentFanservice Robot Girl Kiku#8 is recharging her battery, but since she runs on solar power, and her "skin" is actual solar cells, she spends the scene naked, with Hanagata making efforts to keep the camera from seeing her naughty bits, mostly with his afro.
Comics
- Happens all the time in Italian comics Dylan Dog, Nathan Never and the like, which often feature staggeringly beautiful women. Breasts (with *gasp* nipples!) and butts (female and male) are shown but the genitals still need to be covered with strategically placed items, pieces of furniture, or (during showers, baths and similar) implausibly high splashes of water... especially hilarious since the rest of the water is often not splashing at all.
- This trope is used quite often in the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, much in thanks to the more realistic depictions of certain supervillains. It is almost always very well done and almost never distracting—it took me two read throughs to realize that the Hobgoblin was naked during his entire first appearance.
- For example, read through volume 4 (Legacy). Norman Osborn reveals himself—in many ways—to Peter Parker. A desk obscures his naughty bits. Peter Parker's backside is also obscured, in volume 6 (Venom) by the remnants of the Venom symbiote.
- Another example is the Clone Saga arc, where both Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy appear totally nude, with smoke covering Gwen's breasts and nether regions, and a Peter Parker clone's hand covering Mary Jane's.
- An interesting aversion is Electro, who, every time he appears naked, nothing obscures...anything.
- Between the sex scenes, bondage, and titular heroine's catastrophically delicate super-suit, Empowered gives this trope a massive workout. We
once twice see Ninjette take off her top to reveal shuriken pasties on her (admittedly almost indistinguishable from a boy's) chest.
- In Batman and the Outsiders #3, Batgirl casually walks into the kitchen nude in front of two lesbians. The orange juice she takes out of the refrigerator prevents the reader from seeing anything except her butt, which is kept partially in shadow but still quite visible.
- Tarot Witch Of The Black Rose has full-frontal nudity for almost all of its female characters, but Jon (the one male comic character who gets molested more often than Kon-El) gets increasingly strange and improbable means of hiding his penis, topping off with having a lilypad laid over it, and a frog sitting on top of it. The Double Standard is not lost on the readers.
- Comics in general do this all the time with strategically placed word balloons.
- Mostly averted in Watchmen. We see full frontal shots of naked Dr. Manhattan several times.
- Batman Confidential #18 may set some kind of record for this trope as it features an issue long fight between Batgirl and Catwoman in a nudist club with masks being the only item of clothing either of them is wearing. The artist, Kevin Maguire, continually manages to cover up everyone’s naughty bits, with a raised hand here, a well positioned turn, and my favorite, a bowl of fruit — in particular, a pear — to cover Barbara's butt.
- Parodied in the comic strip Bloom County: After Opus the Penguin got a nose-job, the results were concealed from the reader for about a week by a series of increasingly improbably placed household objects.
- Bloom County once did an entire week with all the characters naked (purportedly as a ratings grab) and covered in this fashion. The last strip has Milo standing behind a potted flower, ordering Opus to remove his bow-tie; when he does so, the flower stretches across the panel to cover up his neck.
- Happens in Zits when Jeremy is home alone and decides to march around the living room naked.
- An infamous She Hulk cover when John Byrne was in charge. She's naked but everything is obscured by the motion of a skipping rope.
- That's actually shown to be a subversion within the book itself, where she's still skipping rope, and then stops, showing herself to be wearing a halter top and a pair of pants.
- In an early issue of The Incredible Hulk, Betty Ross is transformed into the Harpy sans culottes, with shadows hiding her breasts and genitals; when she changes back into human form—in midair, high above the ground—the subsequent splash page shows her wearing a brown bath towel. (This ignited a discussion on the letters page as to whether the ComicsCode ban on nudity was necessary or appropriate.)
- Cloud, a sentient cloud that could assume either male or female human form, used little cloud puffs to cover the genital and (in female form) breast areas, although it wasn't clear as to whether those parts of his/her anatomy were actually formed or just left nebulous.
- Used as a gag in this Beetle Bailey strip.
Films
- As mentioned before, Austin Powers. Twice in a single film, with gusto.
- Not to mention the entire opening sequence of Austin Powers — The Spy Who Shagged Me.
- Played straight in Daniel Craig's wonderful nude scene in the first Tomb Raider movie, in which he paces back and forth behind a table that just covers up his modesty.
- Lampshaded in the pre-Soccer Stephen Chow film, Look Out, Officer! (released post-Soccer on American DVD as The Shaolin Idiot). Ordered by a doctor to disrobe for a physical examination, Chow's character, Hsing, runs around the room rearranging items on shelves and tables seemingly at random, finally citing "decency" as his reason. When the doctor points out that he can still see Hsing, Hsing points out at the audience and replies, "But they can't." And sure enough, throughout the following scene, Hsing's lower extremities are hidden at every angle by one of the items he'd placed.
- The titular character of 2007's CG-animated Beowulf fights the monster Grendel in the altogether, with his goods blocked from view by his leg, a sword and a table, among other things.
- In Eyes Wide Shut, many obscuring props, and even some digitally generated characters, were deliberately added into the movie's nude scenes in post-production so as to avoid the dreaded X-rating (which, in practice, would have made the movie borderline pornography) and bump the film back into an R-rating.
- In The Little Mermaid, Ariel is left mostly naked after her transformation into a human. She's on the shore, wearing nothing but her seashell brassiere and Godiva Hair, and the audience never sees anything but her legs and upper body until she finally gets dressed. However, her three (male) best friends, a crab, a seagull and a fish, are with her all the time and presumably see everything. (When her father Triton transforms her into a human at the end of the movie, he also gives her a sparkling dress to wear.)
- Then again, why would three non-mammals be even remotely interested in seeing boobies?
- The Jackie Chan movie The Accidental Spy has one of that actor's usual combat sequences running, then fighting, then running some more, then fighting some more, all the while stark naked in the middle of a Turkish street bazaar. The entire scene is lengthy, and is an unending combination of this and Hand Or Object Underwear with extra credit to the film editors for keeping it clean with near-impossible difficulty.
- In Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit, right after Wallace has had the Were-Rabbit curse lifted, and woken up (so he is now stark naked), Gromit gives Wallace a box to wear. Naturally, the box reads "May Contain Nuts".
- The Mel Brooks film Robin Hood: Men in Tights does this in the scene with Maid Marian in the bath. Her hair covers her breasts, leaving the shape obvious to the viewer, but hiding anything more.
- Subverted in A Clockwork Orange. When Alex is being checked in to the prison, he is stark naked with a box in front of the camera at groin level... then they remove the box.
- According to the DVD commentary on The Incredible Hulk, Eric Bana was going to be covered by strategically placed objects during his fight with the Hulk Dogs, but upon realising the result was like Austin Powers they went for his Amazing Stretching Pants instead.
- A Shot in the Dark invokes the trope when Inspector Clouseau visits a nudist colony to question a suspect.
- One of the Scary Movies had the president naked in front of the UN. Long story. He is censored by several heads and a man's arm. However, it turns squickworthy when he stands in front of a flagpole, bends over (still in front of the flagpole) to look at a machine, and very suggestively starts to go lower (with his ass still right in front of the flagpole). All while talking about "loose flabby pink things". Brain Bleach please?
- In the film of Starship Troopers there is a mixed sex shower. As the camera pans around we see naked young men and women showering, chatting and walking about. But somehow a bit of plumbing always manages to be between the camera and any nipples or genitals.
- Naked Leeloo in The Fifth Element in a tube before her 'bandages' get applied.
- The film adaptation of Stephen King's Autopsy Room Four avoids showing the protagonist's groin, despite the fact that it's an important plot point (A paralysed man is mistaken for dead and is about to be cut open for his autopsy, when the startled female doctor realises he has an erection). The dialogue used to imply what's happening is quite funny though.
- This is common in depictions of Adam and Eve in children's Bible story books. Along with Godiva Hair for Eve.
- On the covers of the Xanth books, when they depict nude characters (such as female centaurs, who don't wear clothes) they're strategically posed so some part of the scenery or a body part covers the naughty bits.
Live Action TV
- Power Rangers regularly engages in the "non-naughty" variant: Jason David Frank was not allowed to wear short-sleeved shirts in Power Rangers Dino Thunder, though he regularly wore tank tops in earlier seasons. The reason? He'd gotten several tattoos on his arms in the intervening years. Likewise, one of the actors on Power Rangers SPD always wears gloves to cover a tattoo on his hand. Superheroes aren't allowed to have tattoos.
- SPD's original version, Dekaranger, used this one a lot too, especially since the Pink Ranger loved taking baths, requiring very, very lucky groupings of bubbles. (In one episode, this was played with a bit by having the new, male addition to the team cheat her out of her bathtime, whereupon the same bubbles covered his same areas.)
- Aversion: The Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) clearly had a snake tattoo on his arm which showed up from time to time. There was no way to defend the Third Doctor's having this, nor did the writers even try. (Although some rather desperate fanon claims it's a Time Lord prison-brand, marking him as an exile.)
- There was a particularly humourous example by Mr Bean, the titular character being naked in a hotel, had an "exit" sign covering his buttocks in a scene where he was on his stomach.
- In the new Doctor Who, after a pair of (parody) robot TV show hosts hit Captain Jack Harkness with a defabricator ray, which does just what it says on the tin, his naughty bits are concealed from the camera by a strategically placed... TV camera. When the robots confirm that he is, indeed, naked in front of millions of viewers, he announces, "Ladies, your viewing figures just went up."
- JAG has an example of the bubbles version.
- The Bill had a nude model's genitalia covered by a bit of wood from an artist's easel.
- Ea, the main character of the Japanese made-for-TV drama Invisible Girl Ea, is found nude by the main male character, and she stays that way pretty much the entire series. Partially justified as clothing (or anything touching her skin) causes her invisibility superpower to malfunction. Regardless, no effort is made to conceal her nudity, outside some clever camera work and the occasional lens flare blocking things that are too much even for late-night Japanese TV — which, apparently, isn't much.
- Firefly uses this quite a bit; River's out-of-the-box scene in the pilot episode, Saffron showing up naked in Mal's bunk in "Our Mrs. Reynolds", and Mal himself strutting about in the cargo bay stark naked at the end of "Trash".
- The Serenity: Better Days comic miniseries also played with this. When River kicks an enemy soldier in the teeth without looking at him, the angle of the panel would have shown a clear shot up her dress... if it weren't for the kicked soldier's hand flying up to block the view.
- Doesn't River wear bike shorts under her dresses/skirts anyways? Or was that just in "Safe"?
- An interesting variation of this pops up in the pilot when River climbs out of the box. Though you don't see anything from the first few shots, the camera then switches to a far-off, wide-angle shot of the entire bay that shows River very clearly, in which nothing is covering her up, but the camera is so far off that you can't see anything distinct about her.
- In the Eureka first-season episode "Purple Haze," Taggart is running around the woods au naturel (his phrase) under the influence of an intoxicant. Somehow there's always a conveniently placed branch between his hips and the camera, full of leaves larger than those of any tree native to the Pacific Northwest.
- Happens to Fargo in a later episode when he was showering at GD and a man eating blob crawled out the drain, Fargo panics and runs staight into the crowded main hall ad barrows a couple of brief cases for this trope.
- James Doohan of Star Trek fame lost a finger when he took part in D-Day as a Canadian infantryman. During most of his career he and his directors took pains to not show the missing finger, despite the fact that as an engineer on Star Trek, at least, it wouldn't be a stretch for a man who spends most of his time around machines to have lost a digit at some point.
- Ah, but then they'd have to explain why they hadn't just fixed it with 23th century medical technology.
- You can see it in the TNG episode "Relics", where he appears, especially in the holodeck scene.
- Many other episodes in TNG also featured nudity, with several methods.
- Q had his junk blocked by an actor standing in the camera's line of sight.
- According to the producers, he was meant to be wearing a small, er, "pouch" to cover himself during that scene. After several takes where it appeared in shot, he just filmed the scene while naked.
- Lwaxana Troi would have discretion shots of the neck up. This was used on Seven of Nine several times.
- Picard would show his butt, and have
5 lights FOUR LIGHTS cast shadows preventing anything from being seen.
- Similarly, Gary Burghoff's withered left hand was concealed throughout M*A*S*H.
- Subverted in Armstrong & Miller's first appearance of their sketch Nude Practice. All the props were "off-target". This could have been a genuine mistake as it was never repeated in following sketches, and, during the sketch, you could see the cameraman trying to position the camera in the "correct" position, but Alexander Armstrong was moving with the camera, possibly thinking he was still covered.
- In the series premiere of Stargate SG-1, a kidnapped USAF sergeant is stripped naked and evaluated as a Goa'uld host; she gets this treatment rather unsubtly as she's hauled all over the room. After she's rejected, Daniel Jackson's wife is similarly appraised... and then this trope gets utterly averted. Full frontal nudity is already extremely unusual in a scene filmed for American television, but the contrast with the first scene made it downright shocking in this case.
- The production team have made it clear that they regret this scene (it was forced on them by Executive Meddling) — it will be altered when they do a do-over of this episode, starting from scratch with the original footage.
- Stargate SG-1 was originally aired on Showtime which allowed for the full-frontal nudity, which also appears in the DVD, but all airings of "Children of the Gods" on regular TV (mostly Sci Fi channel) have that bit (or those bits, if you prefer) edited out.
- Not in Australia, they don't.
- A non-naughty version occurs in the first couple of episodes of the fourth season of Stargate Atlantis. Between season three and four, Jason Momoa got a tattoo on his left forearm and since the first episode of season four carried on directly from the end of the last episode of season three, he spent the episode first wearing a bandage on the arm (the character had been injured) and then a long sleeve coat. A few episodes later, we finally see him "acquire" the tattoo, eliminating the need for this trope.
- An episode of New Tricks has this with a nudist chopping logs.
- The CSI episode "4x4" involves Sara and Greg forced into a shower due to a potential exposure to hazardous materials/disease. The camera spends a lot of time on closeups of their face and feet.
- Wilson's face in Home Improvement.
- NCIS has bodies on an examination table fully undressed, but with a lamp casting overly bright highlights on the body's no-no region.
- If they're female, their chest cavity is open.
- In How I Met Your Mother, we've seen all the main characters (except Robin) partially naked. Especially in the aptly named episode "Naked Man".
- Forever Knight. In a point-of-view shot, vampire detective Nick Knight raises his badge just in time to block our view of a stripper's below-the-neck-area as she turns to face him. This scene was used in the opening title sequence for the series, for obvious reasons.
- In the Chuck episode Chuck versus the Beefcake, there's Morgan, in Ellie & Awesome's kitchen. He's holding a large bowl of fruit to hide his groin. Somewhat a subversion, as if one closely examines the bowl of fruit, one sees a banana and two fuzzy kiwi fruits are humorously positioned.
Video Games
- Subverted in Devil May Cry; Dante has a sword which appears to cover the a poster of an apparently topless woman; he takes it off, and strategically blocks the view of it, but right before the "camera" changes angles, it is revealed that the woman's breasts were covered (by stars, but still).
- Metal Gear Solid 2, plays with this, possibly as a homage to the Neon Genesis Evangelion toothpick scene. Raiden is stripped of his clothes towards the end, and has to run around preserving his modesty - he can, however, press himself to the torture rack he was originally strapped to. He reverts to an arms-stretched out pose, and the camera changes view - to behind a drinks can, the close-up protruding straw◊ completely preserving Raiden's dignity.
- If you pay attention, at some point during this whole sequence, there's a frame or two where Raiden's dangly bits aren't covered... but his character model doesn't have dangly bits.
- ... as evidenced when he does sideflips.
- There's also a hilarious moment when, if he's seen by an enemy soldier, Raiden can retreat to the rack and press himself against it to fool the soldier, who looks on in envy and says, "Wish I was that big..." before leaving.
- In Bikini Karate Babes, the character Venus finds herself tied to a tree after removing another fighter's top. Aphrodite (that character) finds her and rips off her top to reveal a bra. She then rips that off and Venus's dignity is preserved only by Aphrodite holding her bra like a trophy. Oh, and did I mention it's live action?
- A Mortal Kombat: Deception promotional image shows Mileena in her second costume (where she is basically nude) or presumably naked holding her sai weapons. The thin blades manage to cover just enough to make it not explicit.
- Dragon Ball: Origins has much of the original comics' dirty humor intact, including the part where Bulma flips her skirt at Master Roshi to make him hand over his dragonball, from his POV to boot and both without the knowledge that she's not wearing any underwear at the moment. Conviniently enough, this being a DS game, the offending part is blocked by the gap between the screens. On the other hand, the game also subverts it by being true to the original comic and making no effort to block any view of kid Goku's penis.
Web Comics
- Hilarious Lampshade Hanging in this strip of Freefall. Florence's efforts to maintain her modesty make for a bit of a running gag; she's successful in keeping first Sam and then Winston from getting a good look at her completely naked... but she finally meets a robot who can see right through her clothes and her fur, and (even though readers still don't see a thing), poor, flustered Flo feels utterly exposed.
- Sluggy Freelance is fond of this.
- Megatokyo Strip #404.
- This Schlock Mercenary strip, which features the subtrope Godiva Hair as well, and even hangs a lampshade on it in the strip's commentary.
- In Questionable Content, two bottles prevent the reader from catching an eyeful when Raven flashes Sven during a concert.
- And a la Janet Jackson here
- Misfile: One naked outburst, three panels. You can guess where the panel breaks are.
- In the last panel of this Friendly Hostility strip.
- Ms. K. Fuhr is fond of this technique and uses it from time to time; see for instance this Boy Meets Boy strip.
- Dr McNinja in The Adventures Of Dr Mc Ninja. One of Dr McNinja's old college buddies transforms into a monster — rather like Hulk — and all his clothes rip off, causing a Squick moment for the Doctor.
- Last Resort uses the aforementioned comics' trick of carefully placed speech bubbles when doing an entire page featuring Jigsaw and Daisy nude, and Jigsaw actually manages to hang a lampshade on it!
- Goodbye Chains loves to do this. At one point, they used a word bubble. A very tiny one.
- This Scary Go Round strip has a conveniently placed clock keeping us from seeing Desmond Fish-man's Nightmare Fuel, if you know what I mean.
- In The Order of the Stick, when V gets balefully polymorphed into a lizard; his... her (whatever) clothing falls to the ground. Later, after being returned to normal, he/she has to get dressed again. Fortunately, modesty was maintained (and any indication of V's gender obfuscated) with a handy Black Dragon's tail to stand behind.
- The sound effects protect the modesty of undressed characters in Exiern, especially when the costumes don't.
- Angora of The Meek spends the first chapter naked. Conveniently placed props and limbs cover her nether regions, but her nipples are often showing. Needless to say, this webcomic is NSFW.
- DMFA: In this strip, Abel demonstrates his shapeshifting abilities to Dan by changing into a female form... without putting on a shirt first. Guess where one of his speech bubbles is located.
- In Everyday Heroes, Jane is in the shower after a sparring session. Speech bubbles plus a frosted glass door. Darn it.
- Done in Ansem Retort: Axel is only shown from the waist up and declares that "PANTS ARE FOR THE WEAK!"
- Done a bit in The KAMics some examples for you.
- Played straight in this Zap! strip, although the robot's head, which is normally straight, isn't here, leading to speculation in the comments about the curvature of the object concealed.
Web Original
- In one live-action segment of Homestar Runner, all four members of Limozeen appear on a Thanksgiving e-card. There is a conveniently placed turkey in order to hide the fact that one of the members is played by the creator's wife.
Western Animation
- In an episode of The Simpsons, used to censor a painting Marge had made of Mr. Burns. On the commentary, everyone talks about how much fun they had making those objects as small as possible.
- In another Simpsons bit, Homer and Marge's nudity is concealed by wind-powered lawn ornaments. When Homer notes that the ornament in front of him is two men sawing a log in half, he asks, "Can we trade? I don't trust these guys."
- In The Simpsons Movie, Bart, skateboarding in the nude, passes by several dozen conveniently placed objects... and then they subvert it when he passes a fence with a hole in the middle, resulting in a lengthy, uncensored shot of his animated genitalia, and only these.
- "DON'T LOOK WHERE I'M POINTING!"
- In "Call of the Simpsons" Homer and Bart wind up naked after falling from a water fall after finding each other Homer after finding out his clothes are missing he walks out into the open and a conveniently placed bird's nest covers his crotch.
- Avatar The Last Airbender gets a scene of Katara bathing on screen using water and Godiva Hair.
- There was also an earlier episode where Zuko tells Iroh to get out of a hotspring, but when he comes out, a visibly Squicked Zuko cringes while our view is blocked by the same hand he's using and he tells Iroh to go back in.
Iroh: Zuko, you shmuck, it's 5 o'clock. What happens at 5 o'clock?
Zuko: Naked Iroh Time...
Iroh: And what is the one rule about Naked Iroh Time?
Zuko: "Don't interrupt Naked Iroh Time!"
Iroh: You're damn right. Now get your tuchus out of here before I kick it!
Zuko: (moans) Now I'm scarred physically and mentally.
- Lampshaded in Tex Avery's The Shooting of Dan McGoo: the bartender, strategically positioned in front of a nude painting, announces, "I don't move from here all through the picture." When a fight breaks out, though, he ducks behind the bar — revealing that the woman in the picture is missing everything from chest to mid-thigh. (In its place she holds a sign reading "I ain't got no body.")
- Lampshaded in Sheep In The Big City, in which General Specific changes his uniform while walking past a box, which is labeled "RANDOM BOX" in flashing neon lights.
- The Spectacular Spider Man's Flint Marko is depicted as nude when he serves as an experimental subject. He is mostly shown from the waist up, but anything lower is obscured by someone standing in front of him, the glare of a pane of glass, or the process of his transformation. After he becomes the Sandman, his lower half initially remains a shapeless mass, until we cut to him maintaining human form, complete with manifested clothes.
- SpongeBob SquarePants has an unusual case of this when SpongeBob decides to shirk clothing and return to nature. Various objects cover the lower part of his body, as usual, but proceed to cover less and less over the course of the episode, until it becomes clear that there's really nothing there to cover.
- In another episode, Squidward goes crazy while he's taking a bath and runs to the Krusty Krab with bubbles covering him. Eventually, he looks down and we see a close up shot of the area directly above his legs, and all the bubbles pop except one. SpongeBob gives him his pants to save him from being completely nude. However, the Fridge Logic comes in when you realize that Squidward never wears pants anyway...
- In Justice League Unlimited, after Flash goes really fast and knocks the Brainiac out of "Brainithor", Lex Luthor is left naked which is blocked by Flash and Superman standing in front of him (and makes for an odd scheme were Supes almost strangles a naked Luthor.
- There is an episode of The Weekenders where they went to see the Venus de Milo. Of course, they only showed its head at the beginning. When the camera finally zoomed out, guess what was obscured by a conveniently placed plant.
- One Danny Phantom episode had Vlad hiding his nudity behind an armchair.
Real Life
- Many companies object to visible tattoos, although their popularity is steadily rising. In many cases where clothing is insufficient to conceal a tattoo, bandages are liberally applied. One particularly distressing example is at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, where someone's leg tattoo is regularly covered with a large piece of gauze — he's a tiger cub handler.
- Disney is unsurprisingly strict about tattoos (and haircuts, multiple ear piercings, stylish glasses frames, sock colors...). This includes employees who never interact with guests, as apparently their co-workers also require a family-friendly environment. Interesting alternatives are difficult to come across, with band-aid solutions having been noticed and banned. The only solution to a calf tattoo for a lovely lady in her early twenties was long pants (in an un-air conditioned basement in Florida), make-up (which never, ever, ever works) or... support hose. The support hose lovingly rendered a cute tattoo into an apparent giant bruise.
- Many wedding websites sell tattoo cover-up kits for those who want to permanently mark their bodies and express themselves... except for one day, when they are generally expected to look like princesses.
- Thanks to the unfortunate implications of having a tattoo in Japan, many public hot springs and bathhouses take this to an amusing extreme. Once ou're in the right bathing area, you can strut around as naked as a jaybird, without even worrying about a Modesty Towel...but there had better be a bandaid over that tattoo, or you'll be asked to leave.
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