Right Out of My Clothes

All except the Goofy Print Underwear.

One moment a character is wandering through life, oblivious. In the next, some or all of their clothing is drifting to the ground like fallen leaves.

Unlike Empty Piles of Clothing, this method of clothing loss is usually Played for Laughs, and is seen most often in slapstick comedy or animated cartoons.

Gags that often set this trope into motion include an impact strong enough to literally smack the victim's clothes off (as in Getting the Boot, or the Plank Gag), or said outfit getting snagged whole by an obstacle along the way, like a tree or briar bush. If a nearby object or character is Off Like a Shot, its field of effect may carry the victim's outfit along even if the character is not.

This can also be self inflicted by the effects of a Pain-Powered Leap, Surprise Jump, Wild Takes, a Slippery Skid, or other equally acrobatic clumsiness. Off Like a Shot can leave a character's own clothes behind, if the character dashes off fast enough.

Sometimes the victim's clothes will float for a few seconds in their original position before falling to the ground, fall neatly around the character, or simply fly offscreen piecemeal to be absorbed into Hammerspace or the next scene over.

A variation where clothing a character wears doubles as a costume and is lost in this manner can lead to The Reveal, or a Dramatic Unmask.

May cause combinations of Comedic Underwear Exposure, Goofy Print Underwear, Partial Nudity, or Defeat by Modesty, and Fur Is Clothing if clothing lost includes — or is — a character's fur or feathers. Naked People Are Funny is a frequent, but not guaranteed, destination. If the clothes snap back to reappear on the victim without particular explanation, then Magic Pants has taken effect.

Compare with Dress Hits Floor, All Cloth Unravels, The Nudifier, Clothing Damage, Wardrobe Malfunction, and Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing.

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Examples:

Advertising

• The Trix Rabbit frequently fell victim to this trope as his disguises to get Trix cereal are foiled by his excitement in having the bowl in his hands at last. Whether by The Pratfall, Facefault, or Wild Take, this would result in anything from the Rabbit's headgear to his entire costume falling off, making his not-a-kid identity plain. "It's the Rabbit!"

Anime & Manga

• An obscure special for Dragon Ball Z reveals that Goku can do this with Instant Transmission.
• Lupin III:
  • The first opening for Lupin III: Part II features the main character leaping out of his clothes to get into bed with a naked Fujiko... who promptly smacks him in the face with a spring-loaded punching glove hidden in a box under the covers.
  • In the anime itself, any of Lupin's attempts to bed Fujiko begin and end similarly.
• In a Shout-Out to Lupin, Kamon Nadaba pulls the same trick, as seen by the current page image, in FLCL... complete with boxing glove.
• Durarara!!: Shizuo Heiwajima punches a gangster across the intersection in retaliation for the guy clubbing him in the head. While skidding across the ground, his clothes also fall off.

Comic Books

• A Running Gag in Asterix, with Romans getting punched right out of their armor by one of the Gauls — usually Obelix — and ending up in underwear.
• Batman: The Dark Knight Returns: When Superman hears the nuclear missile headed toward Corto Maltese, he takes to the air so fast that he leaves his civilian clothes and glasses hanging exactly where he had been wearing them while sitting in a Jeep.

Comic Strips

• A Running Gag in Peanuts is that whenever Charlie Brown pitches for his baseball team, the opposing batter hits the ball back at him so hard it knocks him right out of his clothes, usually accompanied by a frame with socks, shoes, shirt, etc. flying through the air. He is otherwise completely unharmed.
  • There's an arc that implies he's doing this on purpose. He gets hit by a ball and is actually injured by it, forcing the team to find another pitcher (who is actually much better) and causing Charlie Brown to worry that he's losing his reflexes. He's nervous during his first game back, but on his very first pitch he's bowled over with his socks, shoes, etc. flying like normal. When Schroeder comes over to see whether he's okay, Charlie Brown smiles up from the ground. "See? I've got my old reflexes back!"
• Attack Hello, as seen in Calvin and Hobbes when Hobbes pounces Calvin when he comes back from school. Calvin's shoes are nearly always sent flying off his feet. Socks, a jacket, hat and a backpack (if he's just come back from school) have also been flung off at one time or another, by the force of Hobbes's pounce. Hobbes actually lampshades this in one strip after he hits Calvin so hard with a snowball that he LITERALLY knocks Calvin's socks off (and two layers of shoes, his gloves, and his hat):
  Calvin: Seriously, you could never have done that if my taunts hadn't boosted your adrenalin.
  Hobbes: [walking towards Calvin with his discarded clothing in hand] I can only find one of your socks.

Fanworks

• In Quirk: Incubus, Izuku's hero outfit was designed to slip off similar to clothes meant for stripping, making it easy to blindside people with the audacity of it as well as increase the amount of power he gains through his flirting.

Films — Animation

• In An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, Cat R. Waul does a Pain-Powered Leap out of his suit.
• A Bug's Life: When the ants Zerg Rush the grasshoppers, Molt gets out of there so fast he leaves his "shell" behind (that is, he molts).
• In Pinocchio, during a scene on Pleasure Island, in which bad boys turn into donkeys after misbehaving, the Coachman interrogates a boy turned donkey wearing only a blue hat, shirt, and shoes as to his name. When the boy can only answer with brays, the Coachman rips off the boy's shirt, then kicks the donkey into a crate, knocking the ill-fitting shoes and his hat clean off him.
• A teaser poster for The Spongebob Squarepants Movie shows him launching straight up out of his and with little more than his feet still in frame.
• During the climactic battle from Wind in the Willows, a weasel gets tackled by Mole while chasing the deed, leaving his hat, gloves, and shoes still running after it.
• Wreck-It Ralph: At the end, Vanellope glitches out of her princess dress.

Films — Live-Action

• Storyboards show that this was the original way that the mugger scene was supposed to play out in Men in Black II. After she was pulled aside by the mugger, Serleena would unhinge her jaws and swallow him right out of his boots and jacket, which would fall abandoned on the ground. She would then barf him out exclusively because she didn't like being fat and takes the empty clothes. In the finalized film she eats him jacket and boots all, and barfs him up to not just get rid of her big gut, but in order to steal his clothes.

Live-Action TV

• In the 90s kids' show Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills, an episode called "A Nightmare on Rodeo Drive" had the teens discover that they're in a dream spell. To test if he's really in a dream, Gordon tries to imagine Laurie in her underwear, and her clothes poof away.
• The Candid Camera Prank show Just for Laughs: Gags and its spinoff Just Kidding have numerous gags in which victims are tricked into thinking they have caused this to happen to the pranksters.
• The MythBusters attempted this; "Knock Your Socks Off" was a segment where they wanted to see if an impact could literally knock your socks off. They concluded that anything that could actually separate you from your socks wouldn't leave you alive to tell the tale.

Music Videos

• "Best Friend" is about a female supermodel who devours her fellow models alive in order to steal their beauty. The first woman we see her eat gets yanked right out of her dress as she's Swallowed Whole, leaving her empty dress lying in a pile on the floor. When we see the woman's soul still trapped inside the Supermodel's stomach, she's only in her underwear and shoes.

Video Games

• In The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble, if Woodruff steps into the acid river without boots, he leaps out of his clothes (and then falls back into them).
• Sega Ninja (Ninja Princess in some international releases) begins with a cutscene where enemy mooks tries abducting the heroine, Princess Kurumi. Being the titular ninja princess, Kurumi simply jumps out of her kimono, revealing she's already wearing her ninja outfit underneath, and begin taking names.
• When the player is defeated in Splatoon, their clothes and weapons fall to the ground while their ghost flies away. They quickly respawn with their clothes back on, however.

Web Animation

• Team Fortress 2 content creator Arrayseven explosively punts a whiny Medic straight out of his cosmetic items in this review of Heavy's food items.

Web Comics

• In Hero Oh Hero, Burk (already underdressed) mysteriously loses his trousers (exactly how it happened occurs off-panel, but it's made clear it has something to do with the acid spewing pig that's chasing him).
• In Sandra and Woo, this happens at least twice; First, because of a surprise attack by Woo, and then in turnabout as Sandra shows how she feels about a love poem written for her.
• The Whiteboard:
  • In an homage to Peanuts, when Doc gets hit with a giant snowball launched from a catapult, he's blown off-panel with a "POW!", and Charlie Brown's clothes (which he wasn't even wearing) sent flying into view in the last panel.
  • To clean up players that have been soaked in paint from Doc's paintball machine gun, Bruno uses a pressure washer that blasts the players' clothes off of them in the process of getting them clean.

Western Animation

• The Angry Beavers episode "A Dam Too Far" opens with Norbert and Daggett being drafted by the military to dam two rivers raging out of control. While being briefed by a faceless general in an airplane high above the ground, both are wearing full military uniforms. After the briefing, the general sends them on their way by pulling a Trap Door, sending both groundward. The military gag completed, the two beavers are yanked from their army uniforms by the force of gravity, and both fall out of the plane without.
• The Cuphead Show!: In "Sweater Luck Next Time", the Obliterator is said to be so fast your clothes will fall off. The Devil realizes that would include Cuphead's protective sweater and joins the cups on the line, waiting for this to happen (and not knowing that Cuphead already took it off at home). In the end, the cups walk away from the ride in their underwear.
• Cyberchase: In "Less Than Zero", Hacker loses his clothes and wig as a result of his chair spinning way too fast which the mechanic was trying to get it fixed.
• In the Dave the Barbarian episode "Beauty and the Zit", Dave encounters the monster zit for the first time. Dave asks for the monster's hat before being roared at and landing in a large pile of hats. His clothes and Lula the sword float in the air for a few seconds before falling to the ground.
  • In another episode, "The Cow Goes Moon", Princess Irmaplotz disappears for the second time, leaving behind only her dress. (She then takes it back.)
• Donald Duck has been on the receiving end of this several times in golden age Disney shorts. Goofy also has quite a few instances to his name.
  • In The Art of Self Defense (1941), when Goofy is trying to fight his own shadow (that came to life while he was shadow boxing), he tries to pull his pants up to give himself an edge, due to the "no punching below the belt" rule. In the end, the shadow gets fed up and kicks him in the butt, sending him flying out his clothes.
  • Mickey's Birthday Party (1942), Donald loses his shirt to an overzealous dance toss.
  • Bellboy Donald (1942), owing to one of Mickey's mischievous nephews snagging Donald's bellboy outfit in an elevator door.
  • The Clock Watcher (1945): Donald, working as a gift wrapper, has a huge number of gifts to wrap sent down a conveyor, passing him. The pile speeds by so quickly that his hat and shirt are sucked clear off him in the direction of the gifts.
  • Hockey Homicide (1945): During the utterly insane climax, one of the hockey players skates toward a goal gathering pucks with a snow shovel, making the goalie jump out of his uniform before he gets hit with them.
  • In The Three Caballeros, Donald is chasing after bathers in Acapulco when he is yanked right out of his bathing suit, which continues the chase on its own.
  • No Service (2013): After combining outfits with Mickey Mouse to subvert the 'No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service' policy of Goofy's boardwalk restaurant, Donald is kicked out of the restaurant (and the outfit) when he's found out to not, in fact, be Mickey.
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983): One of the Orko Eye Catches has him rushing off screen, leaving his hat and robe floating onscreen. His arms quickly reach in-frame to pull them back.
• Looney Tunes:
  • In the short The Prize Pest (1951), Porky scares Daffy with a monster costume. When Porky sees himself in the mirror, he leaps up in terror out of the costume, clinging to a chandelier.
  • In the short Case of the Missing Hare (1942), when Ala Bahma notices the "boy" is really Bugs Bunny in disguise, Bugs flees leaving the disguise behind.
• Razzberry Jazzberry Jam: In “Phantom Of The Jam”, upon being informed that the House Of Jam is haunted the Jazzberries run out of the place so fast they leave their Halloween costumes lying on the ground where they were standing.
• In a dress-up short for Shimmer and Shine, Leah wishes for her and the genies to change out of their old outfits. Shine messes up the wish, leaving them all in colorful underwear, which Leah clarifies is not what she meant.
• Literally Once per Episode with Spongebob Squarepants as it happens during the title sequence (not to mention being a frequent gag during the show itself).
• The Timon & Pumbaa episode "Kenya Be My Friend?" has Pumbaa leaning a little too close to a sleeping Timon. The resulting close up causes Timon to jump right out of his skin.
• The 1935 Disney Silly Symphony "The Tortoise and the Hare" uses variants of this several times as the lighting-fast rabbit zips past spectators. A smartly dressed owl and stork lose their snappy outfits AND feathers, and a tree is stripped of its leaves in what passes for arboreal nudity.
• In the Pixar short For the Birds, after the large bird is pecked off of the telephone wire, all the little birds lose their feathers as they are shot up into the air by the recoiling line.
• The Loud House: In "Teachers Union", during a harsh game of Dodgeball, Clyde gets hit by a ball and it knocks his clothes off, leaving him in his boxers.
• In The Real Ghostbusters episode "Flip Side", Peter, Ray, and Egon end up in an alternate reality inhabited by ghosts that fear humans and are chased by ghostly versions of themselves who hunt humans called the Peoplebusters. During the chase, the three encounter a pair of ghostly moonbathers who leap into the air in fright, leaving their bathing suits behind.
• In the Rick and Morty episode "The Rickchurian Mortydate", the President takes a shrinking pill, causing him to very slowly shrink out of his suit. Rick and Morty chuckle that his shrinking pills take a long time and don't affect his clothes, calling it "eighties-ass shrinking".
• Private Snafu: Happens to Snafu in "Fighting Tools" when his jeep is blown up by a Nazi grenade, and he ends the cartoon stark naked in a POW Camp.

Real Life

• The specific case of "Knock your socks off" (encompassed in this trope) was tested by MythBusters. Their conclusion: Busted. The kinetic energy from a battering ram, let alone a punch, could not knock the socks off of Buster by pure force alone. The team WAS able to remove socks off of dummy legs with a shockwave generated by high explosives, but the explosion would be fatal even at the maximum distance required for them to be blown off.
  • Note that one shot of the vertical pneumatic cannon did knock his shoes off and the shoes pulled the socks halfway off. Unfortunately the socks were not completely off and the cannon was far stronger than any boxer.
  • In a revisit of the myth, the team even redid the same tests, including a new set of tests using the best set of variables possible (smooth, shaven legs wearing loose-fitting woolen socks) to see whether they would get knocked off and were still unsuccessful with the original tests. However, while they ultimately were able to knock the socks off Buster (as well as his hands and his entire left leg), it required hitting him with a vehicle-mounted battering ram at 65 MPH, roughly 10,000 times the kinetic force of a human boxer.

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