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It's like a Wal-Mart you clip around your waist!
Robin: Where'd you get a live fish, Batman? Batman: The true crimefighter always carries everything he needs in his utility belt, Robin.
"What else have you got in there? Chocolate rations? Boy Scout knife? Army-issue contraceptives?"
Gadgets are a requisite for any Badass Normal Superhero, especially if he's Crazy-Prepared. But where does he keep all of his wonderful toys? Why, in his Utility Belt, of course!
Stuff that might be found in a Utility Belt:
Note that this is usually not the same as a Bag of Holding. A Bag of Holding is generally used to just pile in as much as you can when looting (ie removing stuff from the enemy base/dungeon) while a utility belt holds carefully chosen key items in specific, easy to access places to take them with you for use at the enemy base/dungeon.
Contrast with Too Many Belts, where the belts are fashion accessories which Do Nothing.
Not to be confused with Rob Liefeld's pouches, which are NEVER USED.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- Batman, natch. In every incarnation. There is even a Wikipedia article
 about it. In the Planetary crossover, in which it turns out that every universe has a version of Batman except the usual Planetary universe, the Batman who resembles the TV show from the Sixties pulls, from a normal-sized belt pouch, an aerosol can the size of a can of spray paint containing "Bat-Female-Villain-Repellent-Spray". It actually works, too.
- The original Kathy Kane had a utility purse.
- Nightwing shakes things up a bit by keeping his stuff in wristband/gauntlets and boot tops from time to time, since his costume does not always include a belt.
- Red Hood kept most of his gadgets in simple jacket pockets for a while.
- In one Silver Age comic book story ("The Joker's Utility Belt!", featured in Batman #73), The Joker devised his own utility belt to counter Batman's◊. It failed when Batman (stripped of his own utility belt) swiped items from the Joker's belt to use against him.
- Batzarro wears his upside down with all of the pouches open giving you the sense that everything has fallen out.
- Stephanie Brown tries to bring a bit of realism to the utility belt when assumes the Batgirl identity in her series. She wears the traditional waist-belt, but also wears numerous other belts to give her enough pockets and puches to actually carry all this equipment. She skirts the edges a bit, like all the Bats, but never outright breaks the well-established real world physics of pockets.
- And that mysterious utility belt that she's worn on her thigh since her debut? It's empty. She wears it because she likes the way it makes her look.
- Spider-Man wears a utility belt to hold extra web cartridges, spider-tracers, his camera, and his "Spider-signal" flashlight buckle. He wears it under his shirt but since it leaves only a small bulge, and he is usually moving around so much, most people don't even realize he has one. Ben Reilly wears his on the outside with his Scarlet Spider costume.
- Top Cow Productions comic book series Freshmen. The character Norrin has no abilities except for a fairly useless utility belt.
- In Quantum And Woody, Quantum has a fully-laden utility belt.
- Watchmen: As the above quote shows, Nite Owl had one.
Film
- In Star Wars A New Hope, Luke swipes a utility belt from a Stormtrooper, and later uses a grapple and line to swing himself and Leia to safety.
- In some of the later EU books Luke still carries a grappling hook and rope around despite being the most powerful jedi out there.
- Later on, R2D2 turns into a walking, mostly not talking, self aware utility belt.
- In Toy Story 2, Buzz takes one from a newer Buzz Lightyear toy, whose box says "New Utility Belt!"
- The combat robot Johnny Five from Short Circuit has a waist-mounted rotating multitool containing, among other things, wire cutters, lockpick, and a soldering iron. In the second movie, he replaces his shoulder-mounted laser with a utility pack with a magnetic grappling hook, hang glider, camera, and metal cutter.
- Spoofed in Battle Beyond The Stars, where Space Trucker 'Cowboy' has a belt that dispenses a belt — specifically Scotch, soda and ice.
Literature
Live Action TV
- Batgirl, Batman & Robin from the Sixties tv show, the show that inspired research into real life "Bat-Shark-Repellent-Spray", will always win with the "dehydrated Bat costume", a pill taken from the utility belt that, when soaked, produce a new costume complete with a new utility belt.
- Paladin has one in Have Gun — Will Travel. Not the superhero style, but his belt carries bullets, and he keeps a derringer behind the belt buckle.
- The Kamen Rider franchise famously uses belts that act as Transformation Trinkets. Some of them also have compartments to hold other gear.
- Super Sentai and Power Rangers don't use transformation belts all that much - that's Kamen Rider's shtick - but in recent years the buckle has been used to store whatever the collectible little doodad of the year is (discs in Shinkenger/Samurai, cards in Goseiger/Megaforce, keys in Gokaiger, batteries in Kyoryuger...). Dekaranger/SPD also kept handcuffs in the buckle and cop badges in a compartment in back.
Video Games
Web Original
- Ayla/Phase of the Whateley Universe was the first character to buy one. The creator, "Mobius", had made a belt that had pockets that worked like Bags Of Holding. Phase paid Mobius several times the asking price, pointed out how much the uber-Utility Belt was really worth, and offered to help market the device for a small percentage of the huge amounts of profit he would be making for Mobius.
- Several other characters have various alternatives. They tend to be Bags Of Holding.
- For instance, Hank/Lancer has a 0-range Telekinesis power that usually just makes him a Flying Brick, but he carries two sword shapes made of paper, that can roll up to fit in a normal pocket. When he applies his telekinetic forcefield to them, they work like regular swords but much sharper and much tougher.
- Trope-tan.
- New York Magician has Wibert's bandolier. Interestingly enough, it only has a few, precisely defined, very useful items in it. Strangely, Michel can apparently get away with openly wearing a bandolier in a major city in the 21st centur-oh, right, it's New York.
- In Worm, Skitter's costume includes an armor panel with an open space inside it for storing her smaller pieces of equipment.
Western Animation
- In Dynomutt Dog Wonder, his master the Blue Falcon had a variety of tools in his utility belt.
- In the Veggie Tales spinoff The Animated Adventures of Larry-Boy, the title character had a utility belt.
- In The Simpsons episode The Homer They Fall, Bart obtains a "Tactical Pants Retaining System" which contains compass, matches, whistle, saw, panic button, squirrel snare, radon/lie detector, sphygmomanometer and cute turn signals. To Bart's detriment the "Panic" button only consists of a recording which simply repeats the word help and shoots off a rocket with "Call Police".
- In Team Umizoomi Geo has a shape belt that only carries you know what, but with his powers he can still make whatever a utility belt carries with the shapes he has.
Real Life
- Swiss Army Knives / Gerbers / Leathermans fit this trope.
- Somewhat disappearing due to the integration of multiple devices into cell phones, but geeks of yore used to carry a wide variety of electronics and tools on their belts, and in geek parlance they were often referred to as "Bat-Belts."
- Many people in Real Life find a need for having a variety of tools or equipment readily accessible, though usually going by a variety of names. What handyman would be complete without his handy tool belt? Cops wouldn't have enough pockets to keep their badge, holster, handcuffs, etc. if they didn't have a belt to hang it all off of.
- American soldiers call the heavy nylon belts they wear in the field "Web Belts", and many accessories, to include canteens, flashlights, and a wide variety of pouches are specially designed to attach to it. The belt can be attached to a shoulder harness to help support the weight, or it can be replaced with a utility vest. Nowadays, most soldiers just carry their gear in pouches attached to their Bulletproof Vest.
- Band-O-Gear. You know you want one.
- Photographer's vests.
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