Walking Shirtless Scene

"Don't tell me I need a shirt for fighting giant robots, just who the hell do you think I am!?"

"Doesn't he own a shirt?!"

— Edward Cullen (about Jacob Black), Twilight

If the cast of your favorite show happens to include an attractive male, the chances are high that he's going to wind up losing his shirt ^note probably not in a gambling parlor sooner or later. It may be gratuitous, or caused by the antagonist, and it will almost certainly bring the Squee, but it will also be temporary. Eventually, Mr. Fanservice will replace his shirt, and you'll have to resort to rewinds and freeze-frames if you haven't gotten your fill.

Unless, of course, the object of your Perverse Sexual Lust is this guy.

The typical Walking Shirtless Scene is the dude whose default attire involves parading around half-naked. His Limited Wardrobe is so limited, that it doesn't even include a shirt — or if it does, he seems to be totally incapable of keeping it shut (in a sort of Spear Counterpart to Navel-Deep Neckline). And even if he does have an Unlimited Wardrobe, every outfit would have the singularly shared trait of lacking anything that covers his upper torso. Alternatively, a variant exists where the dude does wear a shirt, though he removes or loses it a lot to evoke the same amount of eye candy as one who forgoes any upper torso covering.

As you might guess, fangirls love him. And sometimes guys, as well.

Super-Trope to No Shirt, Long Jacket. Sub-Trope of Stripperiffic. For non-Fanservice-y examples of shirtless Funny Animals/Civilized Animals, see Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal. Male Half-Human Hybrid creatures often also apply, such as centaurs or mermen (in the latter case the trope name may be a misnomer as merfolk can't exactly walk.)

For obvious reasons, this is a practically male-exclusive form of Stripperiffic-ness. Normally, the closest you can hope from someone without a Y chromosome is some bare midriff, Godiva Hair, Navel-Deep Neckline, tank tops, or a Walking Swimsuit Scene. Exceptions to this rule are very rare, and require some rather impressive design gymnastics to implement. Or are in works intended for more mature audiences in the first place, or those from cultures where female breasts aren't seen as inherently sexual.

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Examples:

Advertising

• "A Thousand Quivers" Coty Wild Musk
• The BOD Man football and soccer commercials.
• The Man Your Man Could Smell Like
• This Subaru Forester commercial.
• The Watch ESPN commercial Store Models.
• The Young and the Restless promo

Anime & Manga

• Adekan: Both Shiro and Anri wear clothing that reveals their chests. Anri doesn't wear a shirt and Shiro's kimono frequently falls open to reveal his chest and his junk.
• Battle Angel Alita: Zekka's outfit consists entirely of boots, pants, and a vest that he is physically unable to button, all leather. Toji's gi is also always much too loose on his chest. Largely justified in that not only are both epic level martial artists but in that settings about 90% of the population are cyborgs, so they don't need clothes in the first place.
• Creed from Black Cat has his chest constantly exposed due to the ridiculously gay interesting clothes◊ he wears. And when he's not a Walking Shirtless Scene, it's because he's butt naked.
• Bleach:
  • Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, whose finely sculpted abs draw about as much attention as his blue hair. He might as well not be wearing a shirt at all with the amount of coverage it provides.
  • Kensei Muguruma has an open shirt to expose the 69 tattooed on his finely sculpted abs.
  • Avirama doesn't wear a shirt, or anything else on his upper body for that matter, save for a pair of detached sleeves.
  • In the (filler) Zanpakuto Strange Tales Arc, the spirit manifestations of Ruri'iro Kujaku and Kazeshini are constantly shirtless.
  • Gerard Valkyrie dresses like a Viking caricature or an anime version of The Mighty Thor: baggy trousers, boots, bracers, winged helmet-mask, and even a superhero cape. However, his upper body is completely naked. The cape has to be strapped to his shoulders.
• Buso Renkin: While he does wear an unbuttoned jacket and Sarashi, Hiwatari is almost never shown to wear a shirt underneath them, leaving most of his well-developed chest exposed.
• Ginga from Change 123, as befitting the wild-child personality and appearance, runs around shirtless for large portions of their early appearance. Until she starts growing breasts, anyway.
• The eponymous Chrono of Chrono Crusade is this whenever he's in his true form.
• Crow of Deadman Wonderland occasionally wears a coat, but doesn't seem to want to button it up.
• Inosuke Hashibira in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba hates wearing shirts, believing that covering his torso will dull his Super-Senses. Even if he has to wear a shirt for whatever reason, he'll usually keep it unbuttoned.
• Fairy Tail:
  • Natsu's pre-Time Skip vest isn't very concealing.
  • Gray, who is prone to unconsciously stripping down to his underwear, is an even better example.
• Senzaimon Nakiri of Food Wars! sports a robe in most instances. When he tastes delicious food, he will end up bursting out of his robe to go topless. This trope is exploited heavily when he judges the Autumn Elections.
• Fullmetal Alchemist
  • Both Greed and Ling in the manga wear vest/jacket-type things that nevertheless leave their chests and tummies nice and visible. Foreshadowing?
  • In Chapter 104, after Father absorbs God, he ends up looking just like Hohenheim. Specifically, a half-naked, teenage Hohenheim. And he spends the next several chapters like this too. Quickly turns into Fan Disservice after Hohenheim's countermeasure strips him of the souls needed to comfortably contain his new power, causing unsightly, bulging veins to pop all over his body.
  • Alex Louis Armstrong is always getting his shirt ripped off when he flexes his muscles. Lampshaded by Greed in one of the outtakes.
  Greed: (talking about Father) "Within him is a Philosopher's Stone powered by many thousands of people. You could say he used its energy to claim the powers of God for himself. Now will you please put on a fucking shirt?!" (Armstrong narrows his eyes, as if genuinely offended by the statement)
• Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku: The final form of the Final Boss is, rather than the monstrous, Botanical Abomination forms of their lesser henchmen, a shirtless and mostly-humanoid being. It's also a very rare female example; the shirtlessness and attendent exposed breasts are presented in a very un-titilating, "National Geographic" style meant to emphasize her disconnection from humanity, but she's still at the end of the day a topless woman with no Barbie Doll Nudity.
• Henkyou no Roukishi Bard Loen: Jogg Ward, the illegitimate child of Kaldus, is a man that walks around with an open shirt at all times. He even refuses advice from his minions to wear any protection before dueling Bard.
• Hoshin Engi:
  • Raishinshi never wears a shirt. Justified, since the huge wings on his back probably prevent him from wearing one.
  • Tenka's upper body is covered only by his short jacket, leaving his chest and his arms exposed.
  • Nataku was initially wearing a white top, but about halfway through the manga, he stops and joins them in this trope.
• Jinzō Konchū Kabuto Borg VxV: Big Bang wears nothing but a mask, a cape, and pants.
• All four of the Pillar Men in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency. The sole exception is when Kars dons a coat-and-hat ensemble to pass as human.
• Shichika from Katanagatari. Upon removing him from his secluded island home, Togame took him to a clothing store in the hope of doing away with his ragged, half-naked state. He somehow left the store with an outfit that covers even less.
• After (quite literally) stripping off his teacher disguise in the fourteenth episode of Kill la Kill, resident Mr. Fanservice Aikuro Mikisugi pretty much never puts on a shirt (or pants, or underwear...though occasionally a labcoat) again. This trope applies to every other member of Nudist Beach too, including Tsumugu, as well as Gamagoori, Inumuta, Sanageyama, Nonon, and the Mankanshokus after episode eighteen.
• Marco Owen in King of Thorn. He loses his shirt fairly early on and never bothers to replace it, thus giving us a good view of all the tattoos he got whilst in prison. And later, all the scars he's gotten as a result of his fight with one of the Zeus Race/dying/being resurrected.
• Reg from Made in Abyss usually wears a cape with no shirt. It doesn't really come off as fanservice, though, since he looks like a skinny twelve-year-old.
• Deville of Huckebein from Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force, whose outfit consists of boots, pants, a strip of cloth hanging off from his shoulders, and nothing else.
• In Magi: Labyrinth of Magic no Djinn, male or female, has ever been depicted wearing a shirt. Likewise, every male who uses Djinn Equip, except Koumei for some reason. (Maybe because of his relatively scrawny Geek Physique.)
  • There's also Judar, who thought to cover his shoulders with a tiny choli but for some reason bares the rest.
• Merman In My Tub has Wakasa the merman, who never wears a shirt in the entire series (and contrary to the trope name he can't walk, he usually stays in the tub and can only crawl.)
• Mobile Fighter G Gundam is notable for having a giant robot pull this off. Chibodee's Gundam Maxter has a "Boxing Mode" that makes its shoulder pads become boxing gloves, and also makes its chest plate fly off. Turns out it sports some nice pecs.
• All pilots of Chryse Guard Security in Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans are prone to this. Justified, they pilot Mobile Suits with their back wired with cords and most of them have cybernetic implants jutting out of their backs that act as ports for the biometric interfaces.
• Van Fanel from The Vision of Escaflowne TV series is not a case of this, despite a certain race-related ability that renders shirts unusable. Movie Van, on the other hand, sees the futility of such clothing and instead chooses to parade◊ around◊ half◊ naked◊ — and for that, we thank him.
• In My Hero Academia, the one standout example is Eijiro Kirishima, whose costume leaves him bare-chested because he's trying to pass himself off as really manly. That, and if he's not careful when he uses his "Hardening" Quirk, he's liable to tear up his clothes with his sharpened body. Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu, his redundant counterpart, is a slightly less prevalent example, as his hero costume covers up a bit more of his chest and his Quirk, "Solid Steel", doesn't pose the risk of damaging his clothes.
• Naruto:
  • Both Sasuke in Part II (who is lean, but moderately muscular) and the Raikage (who is utterly freaking ripped) have very open shirts, and the latter takes his off completely when fighting.
    • Sasuke actually has a functional reason for his not-shirt; it's so his Cursed Seal form's wings don't rip his clothes every time he uses them as they erupt from his back. When Itachi removes this ability, Sasuke reverts to more standard clothing.
  • On the other hand, Zabuza doesn't wear anything on his upper body in his first appearance but a few straps and arm-warmers (except for some flashbacks to when he was still with the Mist Village and he wears a standard flak jacket). He later switches to a tanktop
  • Utakata, the container of the Six-Tailed Slug (believe it or not he's a bishounen) wears his kimono half open, revealing his chest and, if it weren't for his strategically-placed soap container, much more.
  • We see in a flashback that Hanzo used to fight shirtless because he can release poison from a venom sac he implanted in his abdomen and clothes apparently make it hard to release it.
  • And let's not get started on Hidan, who can't be troubled to wear a shirt or button up his cloak all the way.
  • Kimmimaro often keeps his shirt open. Justified as he needs to pull out his bones whenever necessary.
• Jack Rakan of Negima! Magister Negi Magi generally wears his shirts open, if he wears one at all.
• One Piece:
  • This could be the reason Portgas. D. Ace got so much extra screentime in the anime. There's also Whitebeard, Luffy, Marco, Mihawk, Eustass, Mr 1... the list goes on! They're pirates after all.
  • Occasionally Zoro as well, depending on the arc; same with Law, who had this during the Dressrosa arc.
  • Franky gets bonus points for only wearing Speedo on his bottom half.
  • Let's not forget Smoker, who walks around in an open-fronted jacket. For added fun, when he forcibly has his body switched with that of his female subordinate Tashigi, he decides to keep the look, much to her embarrassment. She finds it equally embarrassing for Smoker's chest to be exposed while she's in his body, and thus immediately zips up his jacket all the way.
  • Also Hannyabal and Blackbeard.
• Pokémon:
  • The Pokémon Adventures manga features Brock being shirtless at first just like the original sprite of the game.
  • Pokémon: The Series:
    • From Pokémon: The Original Series, Bruno of the Elite Four is always shirtless, just like his game counterpart. Oliver, a Canon Foreigner from Johto, spends most of his time shirtless as well, though that is to be expected of someone who spends most of the day swimming in the sea.
    • From Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon: Kiawe is always shirtless, even in class, on the plane, or in others' homes (the only exception is in the baseball game, he is wearing a baseball uniform). Professor Kukui also counts, since he just wears an open lab coat with no shirt underneath. Like Bruno, it's justified by being based on game counterparts, as well as the fact that it fits the island theme.
• Sanosuke Sagara from Rurouni Kenshin is a lean, mean, shirtless fighting machine! Complete with sarashi.
  • In the live-action movies he tends to take his jacket off pretty frequently to enhance the effect.
• Several characters from Sakigake!! Otokojuku wear their uniform jackets unbuttoned with no shirts beneath.
• In the Science Ninja Team Gatchaman original series, Joe Asakura wore a rather skin-tight shirt. In the OAV, however, he wore leather pants and jacket, but no shirt.
• In the manga Shaman King, HoroHoro's battle outfit is just shorts and a long, sleeveless, unbuttonable coat, but he tends to spend a lot of time sporting only bandages and his boxers. When he's not having a bath with all the other guys wearing only a towel. On another hand, Ren is a repeat offender (bathes completely naked even with other people), Hao is shirtless under his poncho and Yoh's uniform shirt is always unbuttoned, but they're not as bad/good.
• The anime-exclusive villain Valgaav from the third season of Slayers: first half of series: flimsy top that exposes most of his chest and all of his midriff. Second half: no shirt. And in a flashback of him in his past: no shirt. Seriously, he's allergic to shirts.
• Blair becomes this in Soul Eater, when she and the main cast go into the Book of Eibon and get gender flipped in the Lust Chapter. Her gender-swapped version wears an opened shirt.
• South Carolina of The Statetan-Project never wears shirts or shoes. Even during the Civil War. Seriously. Apparently this exposure works very well since a certain Virginian can't keep her eyes off of him...
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann:
  • Kamina (pictured). As one of our own has put it: "Kamina has no shirt. Kamina NEEDS no shirt." The one time he did doesn't count due to the local Lotus-Eater Machine — also the Kamina with a shirt was a blatant fake.
  • Simon for the entirety of the Lordgenome arc and the final battle against Anti-Spiral.
  • The aforementioned Lordgenome for 90% of his screentime.
  • The manga lampshades this in an early Yonkoma, pointing out that Leeron is the only one of the cast that actually wore a shirt at that point in the story. You Don't Want to Know why that is, or at least that's what Simon decides.
• In Tiger & Bunny, after Jake Martinez gets released from prison, he either wears an unfastened fur coat or nothing on his upper body to show off his rock-hard abs and numerous tattoos. It's compounded by the fact that he doesn't seem to know how to fasten his pants.
• Urek Mazino from Tower of God. Maybe not that great an idea, because then everyone can see that he had his own name tattooed on his back.
• Johnny Rayflo of Vassalord. Also seems physically incapable of buttoning up his PANTS.
• In Wild Rock, the young men of both clans never wear shirts. Emphasized further by wearing necklaces, arm warmers, Loincloths and leg warmers, all of which just serve to frame their bare torsos.
• Nalu Tanaka in Wave!! Let's Go Surfing!!, to the point that actual surfers on Reddit have called him out for being so irresponsibly under-dressed while surfing.
• Ryota Kajiki/Mako Tsunami from Yu-Gi-Oh!, which The Abridged Series naturally lampshaded ("I like that he doesn't wear a shirt"). Back when Yami/The Pharaoh was... well, alive, he also was one — along with pretty much everyone in Egypt. Odd, considering how much sun there was.
  • Truth in Television; the fact that it was so sunny was precisely why shirts would be impractical (you would overheat too quickly in them, and robes weren't always practical or acceptable). Sunburn wouldn't be a problem.
• YuYu Hakusho: In a sense Hiei fits this as well. For the entirety of 12 episodes of the 40-episode Dark Tournament arc, he is completely shirtless. That and in the entire first season he doesn't wear a shirt under his jacket at all, including in the intro, and he takes off his jacket whenever he fights. Later on, he wears a shirt more often, either black or light blue, and also tends to lose them less often in battle (after Zeru he only loses his shirt again to Mukuro).

Art

• Charity: She has her shirt off to allow her to breastfeed the gaggle of children around her.

Comic Books

• Alley Oop: Alley Oop the cave man always walked around bare-chested.
• Angel Catbird: Strig usually only wears a set of shorts when he's in Angel Catbird form.
• As part of the Darker and Edgier revamp of Aquaman in the 90s, he became this (along with growing his hair, growing a beard and getting a hook hand). It's probably his most iconic look, apart from his original orange-and-green costume.
• BPRD agent Simon Anders has had a shirtless scene in most of the stories he has appeared in.
• Any number of Loincloth-wearing barbarian heroes, most notable of whom is Conan the Barbarian. Averted in the original Conan stories, where he usually wears armour or clothing appropriate to the environment.
• DC Comics' Hawkman, most of whose costumes leave his whole chest bare except for a logo and some bondage-y leather straps to attach his wings.
• ElfQuest: Cutter and Skywise, plus some other male elves, wear nothing more than vests most of the time, which bare their abs.
• In the graphic novels, Hellboy rarely wears a shirt under his Badass Longcoat. The animated films and live-action movies give him one more often.
• H'el◊ from H'el on Earth never wears a shirt over his muscled chest.
• The Incredible Hulk: The Hulk. Not Bruce Banner, though.
• In Immortal Iron Fist, both Danny and Davos, as well as Davos' father Lei Kung (though has some minor covering). Danny often does wear a shirt, but a lot of the time it either gets destroyed, discarded, or had a plunging neckline that exposed his chest, tattoo, and abs.
• Daimon Hellstrom in Journey into Mystery (Gillen). The fanservice is both pointed out in the letters column and a Running Gag in the actual story.
  Kid Loki: So...why the leather trousers and lack of shirt?
  Leah: I like the lack of shirt.
  Hellstrom: A guy's got a certain reputation, you know.
• Mike Grell's costume for the Legion of Super-Heroes' Cosmic Boy.
• Like Hawkman, Martian Manhunter usually wears nothing on his chest except crisscrossing red straps.
• Mouse from The Movement as part of his street rat look.
• Rogue, and for that matter all GIs, in Rogue Trooper aren't even given shirts when sent into battle. Justified in that the Norts have scanners specifically designed to detect Souther armour, so going shirtless gives them a stealth advantage. Still, you'd think some sort of breastplate would increase their ability to kill enemies.
• The Stalk from Saga is a rare female example, and the artists rarely resort to Godiva Hair. She also has no arms, eight eyes and the body of a gigantic spider from the waist down.
• The title character in Shirtless Bear-Fighter!.
• Nävis from Sillage spends the entire first album wearing nothing but a Loincloth, making her a female example, at least temporary.
• Most of the male Smurfs from The Smurfs, as they wear nothing but a hat and pants, even in cold weather. Not done as Fanservice except on a few occasions, such as with Hefty in the live-action film series.
• Most incarnations of The Spectre, barring Hal Jordan's brief stint, are shirtless and usually lack pants as well.
• Namor McKenzie a.k.a. Sub-Mariner. Always almost naked unless we count his iconic green speedo. And in Marvels, he wears nothing. Fanboys AND fangirls love him. In The Avengers (Jason Aaron), his Phoenixified costume is a few scraps of yellow metal that produce a negative-space Phoenix insignia on his torso. Even a cosmic force can't make him wear a shirt.
• Suske en Wiske: Jerom, the World's Strongest Man was a thawed caveman who walked around bare-chested in the early stories but gradually started wearing more modern attire. Creator Willy Vandersteen did this after complaints from readers who wrote to him that "their breakfast didn't taste anymore after seeing this primitive creature in their newspaper every morning."
• Ultimate X Men:
  • Angel often goes without a shirt. In fairness, it's hard to find anything that fits with the wings taking up all that space.
  • Juggernaut's uniform doesn't have any kind of shirt, leading to him looking like this all the time he is wearing it.
• The titular character of Werewolf by Night tends to break his shirt basically every time he transforms and we often see him just after turning back. In the dark age he sometimes just didn't bother with a shirt, although he had a leather jacket.
• The Wicked + The Divine has Baphomet,◊ whose favorite outfit is low-slung pants, a leather jacket, and, you guessed it, no shirt.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman (1942): Ronno is a merman and never wears a shirt. He doesn't walk either, rather swims, hops, and occasionally crawls.
  • Wonder Woman (1987): Hermes basically wears a helmet, scarf, sandals, and skirt.
  • Poseidon wears a bit of draped fishing net instead of a shirt in most manifestations.
  • Hawaiian god Kāne Milohai, who acts as Diana's patron in Wonder Woman (2006) after the Olympians flee Earth, has no use for shirts, and never manifests with one.
  • Achilles initially has no shirt after Zeus shoves him into a new body with the intent of having Achilles replace Diana. Unfortunately for Zeus' plans Achilles actually adapts to the modern world with relish instead of acting as his stagnant sycophant.
• Nate Grey a.k.a. X-Man, has worn only a leather jacket and leather trousers since the early 2000s. This may have had something to do with his resurgence in popularity.

Fan Works

• In Blizzard Storm, the main character, Eric Elexion, does this starting from chapter 22. Justified, since his new Voluntary Shapeshifting ability would result in Clothing Damage on any clothing he wears, except his boxers at first. He later gets partial Magic Pants
• Empath of Empath: The Luckiest Smurf was a follower of this trope along with most of his fellow Smurfs until he decided to wear a shirt. His friend Tapper also averts this trope, since he most of the time wears a buttoned vest. Empath and Smurfette make a big deal about this since Smurfette finds Empath attractive without a shirt.
• Hero of Hero: The Guardian Smurf pretty much goes shirtless except when he's training. So also does his friends Fergus MacSmurf and Hawkeye Smurf.
• Defied in Imaginary Seas. Percy feels uncomfortable walking around with his pecs and abs showing in a ridiculously gaudy-looking set of armor he had no say in wearing, so he puts on a shirt the first chance he gets.
• As a Mythology Gag to the original games (see below), Brock in Pokémon: Clefairy Tales goes shirtless—only khaki pants and rubber boots according to a description of him—when Leaf challenges him to a Gym Battle.
• Sonic the Hedgehog is this in a lot of fanart. Technically, he's this in canon, but as an animal, it's a lot less noticeable or sexy.
• Mokou in Touhou: a Glimmer of an Outside World is inflicted with this due to clothing damage. Luckily, she has a sarashi to prevent ogling. Sort of.
• Voldemort in A Very Potter Musical. Once he's reborn you can understand why he wanted to get his body back so much.
• From the Pokemon Wings series, Takan Lainuiki never has a shirt on. Even if he does have one on, expect him to either strip it off or watch it get destroyed.
• A Hero's Wrath: Izuku has not worn a shirt since he was six years old. He claims that he will only ever wear one at his sister's wedding and not a second more. When Deus scolds him for breaking dress code, Izuku makes it clear that he is wearing the shirts and tie in the order that is required of him as school rules say, even if he only wears them tied around his waist.

Films — Animation

• Aladdin. Initially, because he can't afford buttons for his vest. Or a shirt. Or nipples. He is more covered up in his "Prince Ali" outfit. For the TV series he returns to his bare-chested street rat outfit despite living in the royal palace. The Genie also is completely shirtless (except when he magically conjures clothes on himself).
• Coco: An unusual example, as it isn't done for fanservice. Most models in the land of the dead are designed to draw attention to the fact that they are skeletons. This means that most men wear vests or jackets, but no shirt underneath, leaving their rib cages on full display. Both Héctor and Ernesto do this throughout the film.
• Guy from The Croods wears pants and boots but no shirt, as opposed to the body-covering fur dresses of the eponymous family.
• Being an animated swords-and-sorcery film with art style by Frank Frazetta, Fire & Ice is filled with topless (and nearly bottomless) barbarians. The blond Larn and the masked Darkwolf are most prominent, and the villain Nekron wears an open robe that he removes when he duels Larn and leaves off for the rest of the movie.
• Mowgli from The Jungle Book (1967) is a non-Fanservice example, as he's a young boy living in the jungle.
• In the first Lilo & Stitch movie, Nani's love interest David doesn't put on a shirt until the epilogue, and even then only because it was snowing.
• Every single male human character in Moana (and any female characters when they are about six years old or younger) go around topless. Justified because of the ancient Polynesian setting and the tropical climate.
• Promare: Galo wears nothing but gloves, a left sleeve, belted pants, and boots. Though he is seen wearing a shirt at some points, it later catches fire and is burned off; the only time he wore his full formal uniform without losing his shirt was the day of his badge ceremony.
• Kale from Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas is shirtless throughout the entire movie, even in freezing temperatures.
• Strange Magic: The Bog King much like his subjects, doesn't wear clothing since he's a insecty human thing. Curiously, his mother is only goblin to wear clothing.
• In Tarzan, due to his feral upbringing, the titular hero wears nothing but a Loincloth. It's especially fanservice-y when he becomes a very well-toned adult man.

Films — Live-Action

• The male cast of 300 wear only briefs, sandals, and capes when going to battle — basically the male equivalent of a Chainmail Bikini. One would think wearing some protective armor would be useful...
• In Art of the Dead, Louis starts to walk around shirtless and barefoot once he's under the effect of wrath, giving him a more "wild" vibe.
• The Jerk Jock Max in The Babysitter (2017) spends most of the film shirtless, seemingly just to show off his muscles. Cole even asks what happened to his shirt. In the sequel, Killer Queen, we see in a flashback that he wasn't even wearing a shirt at his old job as a waiter before he joined Bee's cult. Somehow, his nametag is attached to his pec.
• Barbarella: Pygar is a very handsome angel who's perpetually nude except for a Loincloth (very much in the style of classical art depictions of angels). His quite large wings must make it impractical for him to wear upper-body clothing, so it's probably justified.
• Beach Babes 2: Cave Girl Island
• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: Namor's costume consists of a pair of green shorts and a large collar with no shirt. He occasionally wears a cloak wrapped around his shoulders, but still leaves his torso completely bare.
• Christopher Atkins in much of the 1980 The Blue Lagoon, and also his 1949 and 1923 predecessors.
• In many Bruce Lee movies, the only times his torso was fully covered was when he was in one of his disguises. This suggests that his chest is more distinctive identification than his face.
• The Chronicles of Narnia: It's justified for Mr. Tumnus because he's a faun.
• Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away: The Aerialist spends nearly the entire movie without a shirt.
• Holbrooke (Mark Wahlberg) in Date Night. Might be an Actor Allusion, as in his rapper days, Mark Wahlberg often performed shirtless and appeared in Calvin Klein ads. Also lampshaded in-movie by Steve Carrell, who pleads with Holbrooke to help save his wife, concluding "and will you, for the love of God, ''put on a shirt?!''" It's later revealed that his girlfriend is wearing his shirt.
• Daylight's End: One of Rourke's first scenes shows him removing his shirt, exposing his muscular, tattooed chest.
• After being forced to run across broken glass in bare feet, John McClane uses his wifebeater to improvise bandages in Die Hard and spends the last act of the movie shirtless.
• Doctor... Series:
  • Tommy is mostly only seen with swimming shorts on as all of his scenes (barring one) are in the pool.
  • A long-haired patient is without a shirt so Dr. Grimsdyke can mistake him for a woman.
• In Ghost Rock, the outlaw known as the Barber never wears more than a leather vest over his naked torso, and he strips it off when he gets into his final fight with John Slaughter.
• In Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Drax doesn't bother with a shirt throughout the whole film (much like his comic book counterpart) showing off his muscular torso covered with elaborate tattoos. In the second movie, he admits that covering his chest disturbs his "sensitive nipples". However, in Avengers: Endgame, he wears a shirt at Tony Stark's funeral as a sign of respect.
• In Hellboy (2019), Hellboy never bothers to close his Badass Longcoat, nor does he wear a shirt underneath. Until of course the end of the movie, where he puts on the BPRD shirt with Alice and Daimio.
• In Hunk, the title character spends most of the film either shirtless or wearing his shirts fully open. He even invents a fashion trend of wearing an open sleeveless shirt with a necktie over his bare chest which becomes insanely popular.
• Vincent Perez' character in Indochine doesn't seem to know how to button the flimsy silk shirts he's constantly non-wearing.
• Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter: The muscular Hank is shirtless from the time Maria transplants the artificial brain into his body onwards.
• The title character of John Carter. Throughout the whole Mars experience, he's almost always shirtless for no particular reason. In the books, he was bare-ass naked. Anything more and the fangirls would have revolted.
• In the movie version of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, after being thrown in jail, Joseph somehow never manages to find a shirt again, despite becoming right-hand man to the Pharaoh.
• The Last Voyage: Lawson (Woody Strode) is the most muscular character in the movie and sheds his shirt while working to aid in the rescue and damage control efforts.
• In the post-apocalyptic world of The Lost Future, the population wears tatty but still recognisable clothes. Savan's outfit is so tatty that it just qualifies for this trope. Evan, on the other hand, goes the full way and wears just boots and a Loincloth. The latter's choice of attire is sufficiently incongruous that it verges on him being Exposed to the Elements.
• Nux and all the other War Boys in Mad Max: Fury Road.
• The three angels/gods in The Man Who Could Work Miracles do not wear shirts.
• In The Mummy, after Imhotep is fully regenerated, he wears first a Loincloth with an open robe over it, and then just the loincloth.
• Teddy, for the most part in Neighbors. He eventually makes money on this by working for Abercrombie & Fitch.
• The Night They Knocked: A non-erotic example, in that one of the killers doesn't have a shirt on.
• Areola in Not Another Teen Movie is a walking nude scene.
• The killer in Pitchfork doesn't wear a shirt. His outfit is an animal skin mask, dirty torn brown pants, and brown shoes.
• John Rambo is depicted in pop culture as being this in every movie, but he doesn't go shirtless in the first and fourth films.
• In Surfer Dude Matthew McConaughey chose to be shirtless throughout. He doesn't wear much on top in Reign of Fire, either.
  • His penchant for shirtlessness is mocked by Matt Damon.
  • And has made him a byword for shirtlessness amongst the RiffTrax crew.
  "Aw, this vest is just weighing me down!"
• Kai in Robot Holocaust spends the entire film in a dinky Loincloth.
• Stacee Jaxx in both Rock of Ages and Rock of Ages.
• Rocky of The Rocky Horror Picture Show spends the entire movie in golden briefs... and not much else.
• The ironically-named "Shirts" in The Sasquatch Gang is always bare-chested. His brothers and father are also bare-chested — first thing his father does when entering the house is to remove his shirt.
• In Sands of the Kalahari, O'Brien gives his shirt to Sturdevant for extra cover when the latter sets out across the desert in search of help. He spends the rest of the movie shirtless (and in short shorts).
• In Showdown in Little Tokyo, Kenner (Dolph Lundgren) spends the gunfight at his home, the electric torture scene, and the final sword fight with Yoshida continuously shirtless. Many of the Yakuza are also shirtless a lot of the time to show off their gang tattoos.
• Pyramid Head in both of the Silent Hill films only wears an apron and no shirt.
• In The Thief of Bagdad (1940), Abu's default outfit is a Loincloth. Ahmad, the male lead, wears an open vest for most of the movie, but it can't really compare.
• Nick from Tuff Turf almost always wears an open shirt.
• Twilight
  • How many stills are there out there of Jacob Black/Taylor Lautner with a shirt on? Or any of the other male actors playing werewolves in that movie, for that matter?
    • According to Chester A. Bum, they all suffer from The Curse of the Missing Shirt.
    • Lampshaded in Eclipse, where Edward asks: "Doesn't he own a shirt?"
    • Lampshaded in Valentine's Day, where the character played by Taylor Lautner is offered a new shirt, starts changing shirts but stops less than halfway through saying that he doesn't want to take his shirt off in public.
    • Originally, New Moon was going to have a scene where his character simply walked into school and took his shirt off. Lautner rejected that for being overly blatant Fanservice.
  • James from the first film is introduced completely shirtless. In subsequent scenes, he wears an open shirt that still exposes his torso.
  • Nahuel, a vampire-human hybrid who shows up in the final film, is shirtless in every scene he is in.
• In Up the Chastity Belt, Macho Camp outlaw Will Scarlet is shirtless in every scene and usually posing.
• Frankie spends much of Voyage of the Rock Aliens in an open jacket with no shirt.
• In Wild Thing, the titular protagonist wears an open vest with no shirt. During the second half of the movie, he wears nothing but cut-offs.

Literature

• Like every other member of the Torturers' Guild in Book of the New Sun, Severian goes shirtless no matter how frosty the temperature is, relying on his cloak to keep him warm.
• The entire Hani species in C. J. Cherryh’s Chanur Novels, being covered in fur and not sexually dimorphic above the waist. The protagonists have to buy shirts from the stsho when their rescued human passenger, who is not covered in fur, gets cold. As for the fanservice aspect, see the cover of Chanur’s Venture.
• Nick from The Demon's Lexicon takes any opportunity to take off his shirt. It's Lampshaded by pretty much everyone.
  Mae: Is this no-shirts festival day?
  Alan: Every day with Nick is no-shirts festival day.
• There's a rare female example in The Faerie Queene, an English poem written just before the time of Shakespeare. Charissa is a beautiful mother who is shirtless because she's constantly breastfeeding many children who she happily attends to.
• The Hunger Games: Befitting his status as Mr. Fanservice, Finnick Odair is constantly shirtless before the Quarter Quell.
• Last Legionary has a villainous example in Lord Thr'un of Irruq-hoa, a huge, heavily muscled man, who never wears a shirt. As it turns out this isn't just because he wants to show off his impressive chest — it's also because Thr'un is capable of growing plates of organic armour that cover his torso, and a shirt would simply be in the way.
• One Fat Summer: Due to the book taking place at a lakeside resort his family owns and he works at, Pete Marino is rarely if ever wearing a shirt. While this is quite pleasing to some, for main character Bobby Marks, who has body image issues, this only serves to further make him self-conscious.
• Cueseg in Shadow of the Conqueror comes from a culture with very lax standards of modesty. Among people of other cultures, he covers the essential bits but leaves his chest uncovered, much to the discomfort of the women around him.
• Star Wars: Honor Among Thieves: Small Name, Big Ego thief Hunter Maas swaggers around wearing tight black leather pants and a red cape over a bare chest, acting as if he has the physique to pull off the look, instead of scrawny arms and a potbelly.
• In The Tamuli, Empress Elysoun is a female example, as is standard for her Valesian culture. While the Tamul court doesn't think anything of it, strait-laced young Westerners like Berit are a bit distracted.
• We Can Remember It For You Wholesale: Another female example in Shirley who works at Rekall without even a bra on her big bosom and just covers the lower half of her body.
• In The Wheel of Time, shirtlessness is standard costume for the Sea Folk, men and women alike, although women tend to wear shirts when visiting land to avoid unwanted attention. When the main characters book passage on a Sea Folk vessel, they're a bit startled when the ship leaves shore and the women promptly lose their blouses.

Live-Action TV

• Awkwafina is Nora from Queens, "Grandma & Chill": In the flashbacks to Nora's grandmother's youth, her grandfather for some reason did all of his garbage collection shirtless, allowing for heavy Female Gaze on Young Grandma's part.
• This is a common quality among the men with fit physiques who appear as contestants on Big Brother. Since there are so many examples per season and per region variants of the show, it's hard to pick one without naming them all.
• Leto Atreides II from the miniseries Children of Dune spent almost all of part three shirtless.
• Vaughn on Community.
• Doom Patrol (2019): Flex Mentallo only wears leopard-print briefs, which puts on display the reality-warping powers of his muscle flexes.
• Flash Gordon (1954). Once per Episode, Steve Holland (playing Flash) had a mandatory scene where he'd enter the cabin of his rocketship while still changing his shirt, revealing a well-muscled chest.
• In the 1960s Flipper, Luke Halpin was, early on, Fanservice strictly for the bubble-gum set; but toward the end of the series, at age 19, he had developed into "the real thing".
• Played for laughs in the 1986 soap opera parody mini-series Fresno, where one character was literally named in the credits as "The Man With No Shirt". The IMDB lists him as "Torch", and he was played by Gregory Harrison. At one point, Torch goes back to his room to get a fresh white T-shirt; he doesn't put the new one on, just carries it in one hand, as he did the previous one. At a costume ball, he is a bare-chested centurion and is surprised that one of the female characters—perhaps Carol Burnett's—recognizes him so easily despite his face-concealing helmet.
• The father in Friday Night Dinner is constantly shirtless.
• Khal Drogo on Game of Thrones. Never seen without his admirable pectorals on display.
• Pretty much all the male characters in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena count because those vests don't cover anything... and the fangirls (and boys) are grateful.
• Jack and Sawyer in Lost, almost every episode in ALL seasons. Sawyer spends most of the fifth season premiere shirtless, having removed it while swimming back to the island in the fourth season finale. He's actually pretty annoyed about his state of undress as it means he's too exposed to the sun and his skin starts burning.
• Bobby Lee from MADtv (1995) is regularly shirtless in sketches, particularly the ones parodying 24 where he often doesn't have pants as well. Unlike most examples of this trope, Bobby doesn't have a muscular physique and is instead very short and a bit pudgy.
• The main character of Brazilian telenovela Kubanacan was rarely seen with a shirt on, a fact that was lampshaded several times.
• Parodied on The Man Show: The No Shirt Guy.
• Axl from The Middle is too lazy to wear anything but his boxers most of the time.
• One guy in the Psych episode "Shawn and the Real Girl" never wore a shirt, though he did once partly cover up with a tuxedo jacket.
• Robin in Robin of Sherwood is always wearing a half-open shirt.
• Beck Bennett usually appeared topless while portraying Vladimir Putin on Saturday Night Live to spoof Putin's staged publicity photos hunting and riding horses topless.
• In the first two seasons of Schitt's Creek, Mutt appears without his shirt or with his shirt open in most of his scenes.
• On Sheena (2000), Matt Cutter usually is with a shirt either not completely on all the way, a workout shirt, and no shirt at all, as it is often rendered by circumstance.
• The entire male cast of Spartacus: Blood and Sand (except John Hannah), but especially the title character. When it comes to this TV series, being a Starz series and all, there's even a female version of this as some brief scenes in Batiatus' Household show some servant girls topless in an obviously non-erotic context, i.e., as they go about their duties. This TV series LIVES on this trope.
• Star Trek: The Original Series:
  • The male Feeders of Vaal in "The Apple"
  • Captain Kirk is widely perceived this way. He normally wears a shirt, of course, it's just that those shirts seem to encounter terrible fates more frequently than one would expect. However, in one episode he does spend roughly the entire last half the episode shirtless after it is damaged. All other times, he keeps his damaged shirt on or the time he is shirtless is for one short scene.
• Randy of Trailer Park Boys never wears a shirt, even in the middle of winter (in Canada!), and is quite unhappy when forced to wear one for whatever reason. The catch is that he's not all that attractive. His aversion to shirts was never given any explanation until Season 9. Apparently, he has some kind of allergic reaction to fabric and breaks out in a terrible rash when wearing anything on his upper body for too long. In one season he has a son with Lucy, who is also named Randy and wears the exact same Limited Wardrobe as his father.
• Trusty intern Taylor in this segment on Good Day America.
• Omar Little of The Wire is a downplayed version; he wears shirts (and body armor) when he's out and about, but at home, he tends to go shirtless (displaying his impressive if scarred physique).

Music

• Beth Ditto from The Gossip's regular stage outfit is just underpanties and sometimes a bra.
• Chris Cornell pre-Superunknown. Case in point
• Angus Young of AC/DC is known for his trademark schoolboy uniform, but he regularly strips down to just the shorts about 30 minutes into their concerts.
• The lead singer of Airbourne, Joel O'Keefe, never wears a shirt on stage.
• MC Ride of Death Grips.
• Rick Allen of Def Leppard used to wear only a pair of shorts onstage, but after losing his arm in a car accident and relearning to play with an electronic drum kit, he had to start wearing a shirt onstage to keep the sweat off the electronics. Bandmate Phil Collen also regularly performs shirtless.
• EXO's Kai has done this for his solo performances in concert, the most famous being "Confession," where he takes off his jacket and dances shirtless for his screaming fans.
• Fela Kuti also did this, both on stage and backstage.
• Freddie Mercury of Queen frequently ended up shirtless by the end of shows, when he didn't start that way.
• The Trope Makers with respect to rock has to be Iggy Pop, of The Stooges fame. He never wore shirts when performing (and often while not performing), to Memetic Mutation levels (yes, continuing to the present day — 73 years old and counting). Interestingly enough, he doesn't appear barechested that much on album covers. Fun House and Raw Power are the notable exceptions.
• Eugen Hutz from Gogol Bordello.
• Gorillaz bassist Murdoc Niccals.
• Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad in his younger days.
• Matt Pike from Sleep and High On Fire.
• Henry Rollins, who generally performs wearing only exercise shorts.
• Brandon Boyd of Incubus.
• Dave Navarro, guitarist of Jane's Addiction, is popularly thought to not bother owning any shirts.
• Justin Bieber has been known to do this.
• Country singer Kenny Chesney in his music videos.
• Robert Plant, quite often in his Led Zeppelin days.
• Nick Cave is shirtless on the album cover of Let Love In. He often performed shirtless during his The Birthday Party and early solo periods.
• Pete Doherty of the Libertines and Babyshambles.
• New Found Glory's bassist Ian Grushka is usually topless, big belly and all.
• Prince appeared bare chested on the cover of his album Prince.
• The Red Hot Chili Peppers. In fact, "chilipeppering it" refers to wearing a single sock on a... certain body part.
• Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy": "I'm too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt, so sexy it hurts." Fittingly, they spend a lot of the music video either shirtless or wearing open shirts, skimpy tank tops, or mesh tops.
• Taiji Sawada was not to be outdone.
• Ted Nugent, who wore a loincloth as part of his "wild man" persona.
• Toshimitsu Deyama also brought the shirtless scenes, until around 1995.
• Usher was so famous for this, The Onion once featured the headline: "Usher to Put Shirt Back on When Usher Ready to Put Shirt Back On". These days he's tended to stop the constantly topless look.
• Yoshiki Hayashi from X Japan.

Music Videos

• The video for "As Long As You Belong To Me" by Holly Dunn.
• The video for "Connection" by Elastica.
• The first guy's shirt in the video for "As If" by Sara Evans is totally unbuttoned.
• Gerardo in the videos for "Rico Suave" and "Latin Till I Die (Oye Como Va)".
• "Indian Disco" by Jasmine.
• Many promotional pictures of Creed. Scott Stapp also shed his shirt on stage on occasion.
• Ed Kowalczyk of Live usually sheds his shirt around the third or fourth song of most concerts. He also shows up shirtless in the videos for "I, Alone" and "Operation Spirit". In his older years, he's let go of this habit.
• The video for "Let's Get Physical" by Olivia Newton-John.
• Tears for Fears: In the "I Believe (A Soulful Re-Recording)" music video, Roland Orzabal spends most of his screen time shirtless.
• Tanya Tucker:
  • The video for "Hangin In".
  • Also her love interest in the video for "Soon".
• The video for "What Made You Say That" by Shania Twain has a guy who alternates shirt-free and wearing a sleeveless, unbuttoned blue shirt.
• Very, very common with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, including concerts and an EP cover where they only wore socks... and not on their feet. The exception was Josh Klingoffer, who felt cold. John Frusciante also became more modest when he returned to the band, mostly to keep the nasty scars from his addict days out of view.
• The only guy dancing with the women through out the old Macarena music video.

Pinballs

• All of the men in Future Spa eschew shirts, except for a single man on the backglass.
• Even though they're exploring a hostile Lost World filled with monsters of all sorts, half the men in Atari's Middle Earth pinball can't be bothered to put on a shirt.
• The unnamed protagonist of Paragon, probably because a shirt would get in the way of his enormous reptile wings.
• Just about everyone in WWF Royal Rumble runs around without a shirt, for obvious reasons.

Podcasts

• Flint from The Fallen Gods only wears armour in battle; outside of it he usually just wears pants, or sometimes just a furry Loincloth.

Pro Wrestling

• The vast majority of wrestlers wrestle shirtless, probably due to a combination of sweating and Fanservice.
  • Randy Orton takes the trope even further, wearing nothing but his Underwear of Power even when he's backstage, and even on nights when he hasn't even got a match scheduled.

Radio

• On Woody & Jim in the morning, bare-chested Nashville firefighters surround Tawsha Connell and tell her stories.

Sports

• All professional boxers and mixed martial artists don't wear shirts at all. They also benefit from Limited Wardrobe.
• Calcio Fiorentino players.
• In some leagues, male beach volleyball players' uniforms are shirtless.
• Swimmers. Besides the full-body vest.
• Male divers and water polo players do not wear shirts either.

Tabletop Games

• The Dark Eye has the goddess Rahja, a goddess of love and ... related activities, whose priests wear as little as they can get away with. Which in the male's case is this. Here's a fanart. They usually have tattoos, too, though.
• Hennet, Dungeons & Dragons 3e's iconic sorcerer. And he's got dragon tattoos! It's also worth mentioning that he covers the remainder of his body purely in belts. Perhaps he's related to Lulu?
• Exalted's canon "priest", Panther, only wears a pair of pants and has a massive stylized sun tattoo on his chest.
• Magic: The Gathering has its quota of Mr. Fanservice:
  • Koth of the Hammer. Possibly justified in that, like the rest of his Vulshok kin, he has metal protruding from his torso, making it impossible for him to wear a shirt in the first place.
  • Some leonin like Raksha and Ajani Vengeant.
  • Domri Rade from Ravnica.
• Mutant Chronicles gave us Nick Michaels, whose regular attire consists of combat boots, a kilt, a leather jacket and very little else.
• Sajan Gadadvara, Pathfinder's iconic monk, wears sleeves but no shirt. The iconic Magus, Selytiel, is also frequently shirtless.
• Ra in Sentinels of the Multiverse has a habit of running around with his abs and pecs on display, mostly because Ra spends his entire time in his hero form Playing with Fire and keeping things that fire can destroy near his arms isn't such a good idea.
• Catachan Jungle Fighters in Warhammer 40,000. Rather unsurprising, them being Rambo expies after all.
  • Early editions of the game stated the Adeptus Custodes, the bodyguards of the Emperor, showed their mourning by eschewing their armor, walking around the Imperial Palace in nothing but their helmets, capes, and loincloths. Later on, the Custodes would return to wearing their armor. Lots and lots of it.

Theatre

• Cirque du Soleil examples:
  • Quite a few of the men in Mystere qualify as this at some point (i.e., the aerial cube and hand-to-hand performers), but the most obvious example is with the recurring character Red Bird, as when the role is played by a man the costume leaves the chest exposed. This is spoofed within the show when the clown Brian Le Petit encounters him — as soon as the bird has danced off, Brian mockingly mimics the dance and opens his shirt for a quick moment (that Brian is a Cool Old Guy just makes this funnier).
  • Alegría has the handbalancer, flying man, and aerial high bar performers going shirtless; the fire spinners and cyr wheel performer also have most of their chests exposed.
  • The aerial straps act from Varekai gives you two for the price of one with the very hunky, very shirtless twins.
  • The handbalancer in Zarkana. Technically he has a shirt, but it's so short it leaves his midriff bare, and his contortions quickly expose the rest of his chest. By his act's end, the shirt's off completely.

Toys

• Some (super)hero action figures come without shirts, some expected like Rambo, Jacob from the Twilight franchise, Wolverine, The Spectre, Tarzan, and The Hulk, and at least one unexpected, Suicide Squad Shirtless Joker Action Figure at http://www.superheroesdirect.com/p-44648-suicide-squad-shirtless-joker-action-figure.aspx.
• Rare Female Examples: The alien doll line Novi Stars has Mae Tallick in her default outfit as well as Tily Vizon and Roe Botik. All three are robotic aliens.
• Stretch Armstrong.
• Wrestling action figures.

Video Games

• The eponymous character in The Adventures of Bayou Billy wears an open vest with no shirt.
• Some units from Age of Empires 1 are shirtless, notably the villagers, the clubmen, the bowmen, and the war elephant riders.
• Avengers Academy has both Hulk and Frost Giant Loki. The former only has pants and shoes, and the latter wears a black fur shawl over his shoulders and leaves his torso completely exposed.
• Barbarian (Titus): A little over half the characters in this Power Stone-style Platform Fighter are shirtless. The characters in question are 21, Corath, Dagan, Mongo, Stitch, and Jinn (of which the last is female, though an otherworldly being with Barbie Doll Anatomy in effect).
• Bang Shishigami from BlazBlue reveals quite a bit of his chest and abs. The newcomer in Chrono Phantasma, Azrael, follows suit.
• The Glutton bloodline of Bloodline Champions never wears a shirt on their outfits. They are also fat and ugly.
• Krieg in Borderlands 2, just like the Psycho enemy type he is based on, never wears a shirt by default. In fact, he has exactly two alternate skins out of dozens where he does wear a shirt, both of them DLC: an ugly Christmas sweater and a Hawaiian shirt, and the latter is worn completely open and exposes his chest anyway. This means he spends the first chunk of the game as well as the aforementioned Christmas-themed DLC Exposed to the Elements, but a large part of his playstyle involves lighting yourself on fire, so it likely cancels out.
• Practically a pandemic in The Bouncer. Of the three playable characters, only Sion wears a shirt... and he leaves it half-open, exposing his chest and giving a peek at his abs. Volt wears a leather jacket that's constantly open, and Koh wears a small vest that not only leaves his chest on display but doesn't do all that great of a job at covering his back. Big Bad Dauragon doesn't like wearing a shirt either, although the fact that he wears overalls means that the bib from the overalls mitigates this trope somewhat.
• Castlevania:
  • Isaac in Castlevania: Curse of Darkness wears no shirt, only some odd bits of armor, nice tattoos, and absurdly tight pants.
• Vincent from Catherine has recurring nightmares about climbing block towers in nothing but his boxers, which make up roughly half the game. Generally this is not by choice, but by the end of the game he voluntarily chooses to wear them when confronting the final boss. If the player gets either of the good Cheater endings, he loses his shirt for good.
• Barbarians of Clash of Clans don't need shirts to fight. Just swords and Manly Facial Hair.
• Clunky Hero: Rufus is a peasant who's dressed in shoes, pants, and belt... but no shirt. One must wonder if he's too poor to afford one.
• Two men in Cold and Flu Invasion never wear shirts.
• Keith J. Snyder from Countdown Vampires spends the game wearing nothing above the beltline.
• Cthulhu in Cthulhu Saves the World never wears a shirt. Lampshaded in a bar in Providence.
  NPC: I'm sorry, but our fine establishment has a strict no shirt, no service rule.
  Cthulhu: No shirt can contain the awesomeness that is Cthulhu!
• In the Dark Souls games, not uncommon for the players to invoke this. Stripping off most, or all, of a character's armor lets them have very long and fast dodges and makes them very mobile, so players focusing on evasion, challenge, or simply wanting to screw around may have their character running around shirtless or even wearing only their underpants. It's a common saying in the fandom that the most dangerous players are the ones who run around in just their underwear. Of course, even more dangerous are the ones who have min-maxed their way into having the same level of agility as a character in his underwear while still wearing gigantic heavy armor.
• Darkstalkers: By all technicality, Felicia runs around, fights, and dances completely nude, forgoing any amount of clothing. She snakes around requiring censorship via conveniently placed strips of fur over her nipples and nether regions.
• Dante became this trope in the Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, to the point where his unlockable outfit is, ironically, a complete lack of anything at all on his upper body.
  • Disgaea 4 has Fenrich, the perpetually shirtless werewolf.
• All of the Qunari in Dragon Age II, apparently because they were survivors of a shipwreck and lost their armor. By the third act of the game, Merrill says she's sad that they left because they were "easy on the eyes."
  • Varric also wears an open shirt, displaying a serious Carpet of Virility.
  • The Iron Bull, a Qunari party member in Dragon Age: Inquisition, explains that this is a consequence of living in a hot climate and the difficulty of getting a shirt on over their horns. They refer to being surprised as "getting caught with your shirt on your horns".
  • When Inquisition was nominated for Game of the Year 2014, BioWare responded with a thank-you video for the fans who had caused it to happen. Varric and Cassandra talk to the viewers and snark at each other... and then, Cullen — who gets a Shirtless Scene in the game, two if romanced — wanders in.
• Dynasty Warriors:
  • Sima Zhao wears a jacket, but leaves his chest bare in 7.
  • Old Soldier Huang Gai, meanwhile, just wears various straps and shoulder pads on his upper torso in almost all appearances.
  • Gan Ning is topless in most other installments of the series.
  • Meng Huo is topless in most installments.
  • Zhang He is shirtless in 3.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Morrowind:
    • At the very start of the game, Jiub, your fellow prisoner aboard the Imperial Prison Ship, is shirtless. Despite his minor role, this is one of his many traits which made him popular enough with the fans to make him an Ascended Extra later in the series.
    • Caius Cosades, Imperial Spymaster of the Blades in Morrowind, doesn't wear a shirt. It's one of his defining characteristics, even if it's never explained exactly why he does this. (Possibly justified by his cover identity, which is a Skooma addict.) He definitely owns a shirt, though, and apparently sometimes wears it off-screen — about halfway through the main quest, as he is informing you that he has been recalled to the Imperial City, he gives you a ring, pants and a shirt, mentioning he won't need them while he's in Cyrodiil.
    • Big Bad Dagoth Ur doesn't wear a shirt, or for that matter, anything besides a golden mask and red loin cloth. Given that he is a deranged Physical God hell-bent on spreading a Body Horror Corruption around the world, it doesn't require much justification.
  • In Oblivion, Xivilai are a massive and powerful form of humanoid lesser Daedra that goes around exclusively bare-chested.
  • In Skyrim, one must travel to Sovngarde late in the main quest to pursue Alduin. There, you meet Tsun, the old Nordic god of "trials against adversity" and shield-thane to Shor. In order to prove your worthiness to enter Shor's Hall of Valor, you must best Tsun in single combat. Naturally, befitting a Barbarian Hero deity, Tsun does not wear anything on his upper body.
• Enemy on Board: Lucius, a crew member, only wears a shoulder plate and a bandolier. No shirt.
• Far Cry:
  • Joseph Seed of Far Cry 5 only very rarely ever wears a shirt. This is especially jarring considering he's a preacher, but he has a lot of scars and tattoos on his torso he evidently wants to be visible. As of Far Cry: New Dawn, he ditches his shirt permanently.
  • Far Cry Primal takes place in prehistoric Central Europe, so the majority of characters are bare-chested cavemen, including Player Character Takkar. Batari the Dark Action Girl is a Rare Female Example, strolling around with both breasts on display, covered only with blue paint.
• Female example in Fatal Frame III. The main antagonist Reika wears only hakama, but she's covered in tattoos and out of focus, so it's not exactly taughty to see her. It is, however, terrifying.
  • Same goes for the Engravers, except they have Godiva Hair.
• Fate/Grand Order has a handful, though examples are still relatively infrequent due to the tons of characters. A few notables:
  • Aŋra Mainiiu, who wears nothing but a ragged cloth around the waist, exposing the curses engraved all over his torso.
  • Fergus mac Róich wears just trousers in his first and final ascensions. In between, he gains a sort of partial vest that's too small to be fastened.
  • The Caster version of Gilgamesh, who wears a kilt and a kind of "Arabian Nights" Days mini-vest that only really covers his armpits. At one point he's referred to in-universe as the "Shirtless King of Uruk."^note This is actually sort of accurate, a rarity in the Nasuverse — Sumerian men in the Early Dynastic period when Gilgamesh's legend is set really did tend to wear nothing above the waist.
• Final Fantasy:
  • The Monk classes of most of the games tend to be shirtless.
  • Final Fantasy IV:
    • Yang, the Bare-Fisted Monk, wears nothing on his torso for the entirety of the game. He can still pull it off 17 years later.
    • In the sequel, the Man In Black actually Golbez is another such character.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics: Male Geomancers qualify for this trope in addition to male Monks. They do wear some sort of weird turtleneck/wifebeater combo, but the fabric of the wifebeater portion is so short that it only covers the nipples and nothing else.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Sephiroth combines this trope with a Badass Longcoat and suspenders. Other than variations on this outfit, the only other thing he wears are those leather pants such as at the end of the game and as his alternate costume in Dissidia Final Fantasy. Said costume is also his alternate costume in Ehrgeiz and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
    • Weiss from Dirge of Cerberus wears nothing on his upper body at all.
  • The Sorceress Adel in Final Fantasy VIII is somewhere between this and Nipple and Dimed. Though female, her bare chest was completely flat like a man's chest, and thus went completely uncensored.
  • Final Fantasy X:
    • Jecht. If he did wear a shirt, he would of course not have been able to show off the tattoo running across his entire torso.
    • Tidus himself wears an open shirt that bares his chest. In Dissidia 012, he follows in his father Jecht's footsteps and goes full-blown shirtless.
    • Kimahri wears clothing that exposes a significant part of his torso, including his pectorals and arms.
  • Vaan from Final Fantasy XII. In his guest appearance in Final Fantasy Tactics A2, he gets a shirt that goes a long way to making that vest he usually wears look... less like a battle bra. He's got both outfits in Dissidia Final Fantasy 012. Hashmal, Ivalice's earth Esper/Lucavi, is shirtless in all of his appearances except for Tactics where he wears a robe.
  • Final Fantasy XV: Gladiolus wears an unbuttoned shirt.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Hawkeye from Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade is shirtless in his character art. All the barbarian-class sprite art are shirtless.
  • Vaike from Fire Emblem: Awakening goes into battle shirtless. Additionally, the barbarian-class sprites are also shirtless, so any guy who reclasses there gets the look.
• The man hopping around in the cauldron in Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, is always shirtless. It's unclear if he's wearing anything under the cauldron, in fact, and for a while, some people weren't sure he had legs (though Word of God confirms that he does).
• Kratos from God of War. He is seen wearing armor in flashbacks and during his tenure as the god of war. Also the goddess Erinys and the various Optional Sexual Encounters, as the series has no qualms about showing exposed female breasts.
• Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Ayuthay seems to have "shirts omitted" in its male dress code. The guards may or may not wear armor, but neither the king nor his nephew wear anything on top. The latter, for protection's sake, dresses up before leaving the castle. Eoleo, another player character, comments that he never saw anyone from that place wear "real clothing" before. Word of God is that Ayuthay was in part of the Lamakan Desert — that place in the first game where your player characters would get heatstroke. So, some of the shirtlessness is justified.
• Commander Hurgh from Grapple Force Rena has two bandoliers in place of a shirt as his default appearance.
• The title character of Guy Spy and the Crystals of Armageddon, spends the whole game in an open vest with no shirt, except for the Switzerland section, where he wears a coat, averting Exposed to the Elements. In one scene, he takes off the vest.
• Rex in I Was a Teenage Exocolonist stops wearing a shirt as soon as he hits his late teens and wears nothing but short sleeves and a collar on top, and is debating the necessity of pants.
• You in Kingdom of Loathing. The ability to put on a shirt is a special skill available only to those who ascend under a Moxie Sign, and also in Bad Moon sign, after accidentally mutilating the torso stick figures would be oblivious to, the gnomes kindly teach you to identify it for free.
• Kuri Kinton: Plenty of the enemy types you encounter in the game are guys dressed only in pants and shoes. Same goes for at least one boss, and possibly also mini-bosses.
• The Last Story has Incredible Invisibility Dye, a special magical dye that renders your clothing invisible. Its sole purpose is to make your characters appear as if they aren't wearing any armor when, in fact, they are. And naturally, you get the dye that makes your shirt invisible long before the one that makes your pants invisible.
• Legacy of Kain: Kain, at least in his adult form. In fact, going topless seems to be the fashion de rigueur for male vampires. Raziel and his brothers trade shirts for leather pants and a half-cape, and Janos rocks the No Shirt, Long Jacket and the bare-chested look in turns.
• Female example: Every single character in Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars is completely topless at all times. The closest exceptions are characters who are tied up, and that's only if having a rope wrapping around one's body is counted as a "shirt." The [adult swim] version of the game censors this with Barbie Doll Anatomy in-game and bars/glitches in cutscenes, while the itch.io version is uncensored.
• The player character's grandson in Life: the Game wears only underwear, so not only is he a walking shirtless scene, he's a walking pants-less and shoe-less scene too.
• Walking Shirtless Scene + Physical God = Roark of Lusternia. He's fond of wandering around and expounding on his own superiority — justifiably.
• Mass Effect 2:
  • A rare female example is Jack, a.k.a. Subject Zero. Her entire outfit waist-up is a leather strap covering her nipples. And tattoos. Lots and lots of tattoos.
  • Thane. Justified, because covering up his chest will worsen his illness.
• Metal Gear Solid:
  • Liquid Snake wears a trench coat without a shirt underneath it. In Alaska, no less.
  • Vulcan Raven, similarly, foregoes any kind of top-wear and just attaches a giant M61 Vulcan cannon.
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: Naked Snake, abiding by his codename, has an option of having him run around shirtless. Playing on the easiest settings, you can have him fanservice you the whole game through, as you don't have to care for either camo or stamina. Additionally, he does have a few scenes in the game in which this is mandatory.
  • In Peace Walker, Naked Snake can run around in nothing but a pair of swimming trunks.
• Allen O'Neal from Metal Slug wears nothing above the waist but an ammo belt and a beard.
• Mountain Troll: The titular troll doesn't wear a shirt... or shoes.
• NieR:
  • NieR: Automata has Eve, who doesn't understand modesty since he is a machine with no genitals. The only reason he covers his crotch is because Adam won't play with him if he doesn't.
  • Nier from NieR Gestalt, showing off how ripped he is. Kinda weird seeing as how he is the father of an adorable little girl and, besides fighting the legions of darkness, grows watermelons in his free time.
• Overwatch:
  • Fat and Skinny duo Roadhog and Junkrat both go around shirtless. Suitable attire in their home country of Australia, where the already hot weather has likely gotten even hotter after the country essentially fell victim to a nuclear apocalypse. But in Nepal or Russia? Not so much.
  • Several Omnics are shown fully dressed, yet Zenyatta only ever wears a tattered pair of pants and a sash, befitting of his personality as a spiritual monk.
• In Paradise Killer, Doctor Doom Jazz wears an unclosed labcoat and nothing else on his top half, even when he's called as a witness in a murder trial. To be fair, the island is very hot, and the Syndicate he belongs to have very different norms than any mortal society.
• Planescape: Torment has the Nameless One, who wears only a belt and Loincloth, though his gray skin and vast number of scars may make this Fan Disservice.
• Pokémon:
  • Marlon, the Water-type Gym Leader in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2. His default sprite is a shirtless one. Justified as, being a Water-type Trainer, his main hobby is swimming, and thus his default outfit is a swimsuit.
  • In all games in the series, you can have one on your team in the form of the Fighting-type powerhouse Machamp, who was clearly modeled after professional wrestlers.
  • Brock started out this way when he was introduced in Pokémon Red and Blue, crossing his arms in front of his bare chest. This was later undone in Pokémon Yellow, as well as the remakes.
• In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, the Prince starts out wearing a shirt, but as he acquires Clothing Damage loses it. In Sands of Time, he tears off his sleeves one after another as they're damaged, and after falling into a hole shucks the rest of his top. In Two Thrones, he skips the sleeves part, falls into a hole, and wakes up shirtless. From thereafter, in both games, he just runs around bare-chested.
• The shirt-free, Loincloth-clad male barbarians in Puzzle Quest 2 can, like everybody else, buy extensive armor. And like everybody else's, it never appears on their avatars.
• Red Earth: Leo wears a Loincloth, boots, and nothing else.
• Kevin in Saints Row (2022). A recurring Running Gag is characters telling him to put a shirt on, which he does at the end of the game.
• SALVATOR: SALVATOR only wears a black pair of pants.
• Sengoku Basara:
  • Sanada Yukimura wears an open shirt that bares his ripped abs.
  • Chosokabe Motochika wears a Coat Cape and sleeves. Because as we know, pirates don't require shirts.
  • Maeda Toshiie wears only a Fundoshi.
• Aarbron from the Shadow of the Beast trilogy. The first two games, in which he is a beast, then a beast-man, have him in just a Loincloth (except for the Sega CD version of Shadow of the Beast II, which gave him a breastplate). In the third game, he is fully human and wearing modern clothes, but still shirtless (the opening depicts him with a shirt, but his in-game sprites are clearly lacking).
• Soul Series:
  • Mitsurugi's samurai armor always leaves a major part of his upper body, usually the right half, exposed. The first game does not have it, but he has an unbuttoned shirt in return. This is finally averted in VI.
  • Being the wrestler type, Rock is topless (or near-topless) in every game he is in. His clone, Astaroth, is likewise also topless in every game.
  • In the first two games, Hwang's second costume features no shirt.
  • Kilik, as he was trained to be a monk. In II, he is constantly half-naked, with the first costume being a Shout-Out to Dante's unzipped red long jacket, except with nothing underneath (amusingly, Dante goes through this exact same thing in Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening three years later). He becomes more prudish starting from IV, possibly to symbolize his maturity.
  • Likewise, Kilik's mate Maxi, who used to be a pirate. They seem hold a treaty in II since Maxi is also constantly half-naked there. Unlike Kilik, Maxi stays a stripper for the rest of the series.
  • Yun-seong continues Hwang's undressed legacy in II. However, he doesn't go full-blown shirtless until IV.
  • Siegfried is normally clad in full-body armor, but during the time he is possessed by Soul Edge in II and known solely as "Nightmare", he is completely shirtless.
  • Raphael's costume in III and IV is a masquerade ball outfit that is bare in the front. V replaces this with a Dracula-esque suit, which is no less bare.
  • Z.W.E.I. from V wears a fetishistic attire consisting of an open fur jacket and tight leather pants that happen to be partially unzipped, showing that he is Going Commando (it's noticeable in the concept art).
  • In V, Algol wears a white thong...and nothing else.
  • Cervantes has an open shirt in VI. Until then, he either only exposed his chest or his navel, but not both at the same time.
• In Stray Gods, Apollo's default outfit is walking around with an open jacket wearing nothing underneath.
• The Street Fighter series has several.
  • In V, Ryu gets a shirtless alternate outfit plus Manly Facial Hair.
• Swooning Over Stans: A Grunkle Dating Simulator: In Ford’s route, the player can convince Ford to take his sweater off at the community pool.
• Almost every male character in the obscure PSX beat-'em-up platformer Tai Fu: Wrath of the Tiger falls under this trope, both friend and foe, including the title character himself. And that's a LOT of bare chests, considering that every character except one or two of them is male.
• Tales Series:
• Moses Sandor, one of the playable characters from Tales of Legendia, is never seen with a shirt on, even in flashbacks.
• Zaveid in Tales of Zestiria goes about shirtless, wearing only a large necklace. In the prequel Tales of Berseria, he wears a jacket that covers up most of his arms and a good portion of his chest, though a fairly decent portion is still exposed. Magilou even refers to him at one point as "ol' check-out-my-pecs."
• Saxton Hale from Team Fortress 2 refuses to wear clothing on his upper body for "obvious reasons." To be fair, if you had chest hair shaped like Australia, would you hide it? He's also commented before that he always wears as little as possible to avoid wearing disease-contaminated clothing (such as rabies-slathered hats) and thus avoiding sickness altogether; he states he's never been sick in his life, so it must have worked.
• It is easier to count male characters of Tekken who have never been shirtless in their default costumes than those who have been:
  • Marshall Law's main costume never changes from game to game: athletic pants, a sash, shoes, and nothing else. He is a Bruce Lee Clone, after all.
  • The core Mishima family (Jinpachi, Heihachi, Kazuya, and Jin) have at least one shirtless costume in each game. The junior Kazuya and Jin wear modern karategi pants, gloves, and footpads, while the senior Jinpachi and Heihachi forgo gloves and footpads and wear antique hakama instead of gi. In 4, Jin's karategi is complemented by a buttonless shirt that still shows his impressive abs, while Heihachi replaces the hakama with a mawashi. Jin and Kazuya finally avert this in 7, where their default costumes are a hooded jacket and a slick business suit, respectively.
  • King, Armor King, and Craig Marduk are shirtless in their wrestler getups.
  • Steve Fox, because he is a boxer. In his debut game, 4, he is shirtless in both of his costumes (his P1 is the boxing getup, while his P2 has him wear an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt). He wears a boxer jacket in 7, though like Jin's karategi and Hwoarang's dobok, it is buttonless.
  • Hwoarang's dobok is open on the front side, exposing his abdomen. This is to highlight his rebellious personality because dobok is supposed to be fastened by a sash (his teacher, Baek Doo-san, on the contrary, wears his properly). This dobok is his default costume in all games except for 4 and 7.
  • Baek himself does this in 2 and Tag, where his P2 costume includes an unbuttoned vest. When he returns in 5, it changes into a formal suit, likely to show his Character Development.
  • Similar to Baek, Lee Chaolan's P2 costume in 2 and Tag includes an unbuttoned vest.
  • Lei Wulong's blue shirt in 4 is oddly unbuttoned, unlike other games where it is buttoned.
  • Until 7, Bryan Fury always has a costume where he wears military-style pants, boots, gloves, and no shirt. Like Steve, both of his costumes in 4 show his upper body (P1: unbuttoned shirt, P2: shirtless), and in 7, he complements the military pants with an unbuttoned military jacket.
  • Feng Wei is shirtless in his shaolin attire, which is weird since flashbacks show that his fellow students wore one.
  • Eddy Gordo's P1 recolored costume in Tag is sans shirt (in the original, he wears a crop top). In 4, he wears an unbuttoned shirt.
  • Ogre's sole costume features no shirt.
  • Miguel in Tag 2 gets to show his hairy abs as his red shirt is unbuttoned.
  • Other than the above, from 6 onward, virtually all male characters can be customized to fight shirtless. The only exceptions so far are Bob and Wang Jinrei.
• This would be filled out by the bounty hunter Xenetes in Trinity: Souls of Zill O'll. Matter of fact, boldans are pretty much a walking shirtless race.
• Tokyo Afterschool Summoners has plenty of characters that very rarely were any kind of shirts.
  • Horkeu Kamui, a big burly Wolf Man, does have a jacket, but he mostly wears it like a cape and it would seem to be too small to actually fit him.
  • Macan, a Weretiger that spent most of his life in the jungle, is never shown wearing a shirt, even when he gets to leave his cage.
  • Arsalan wears a cape and a shirt for his Frankenstein skin but is otherwise never shown wearing a shirt. Justified since his ability to create oil from his Sacred Artifact and using it to anoint himself would probably make for some wet and ruined shirts.
  • Surtr's only clothing he wears are a thong, a few pieces of armor, and his fiery helmet. Other than that, his only apparel for his torso is a chestpiece that showcases his muscles.
• The title character of Tomba! in his first game. In the second, his default outfit is still shirtless, but he can acquire a variety of other costumes that give him special abilities and cover his torso.
• Bam Margera in Tony Hawk's Underground. Also, this is an optional outfit choice for a created skater starting with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2.
• Warcraft:
  • Illidan Stormrage is always without a shirt. Even more so after he absorbed the powers of the skull of Gul'dan, which made him grow wings on his back, which means he cannot wear shirts anymore, As this Dark Legacy Comics strip mentions in the second panel.
  • The other Demon Hunters throughout WC3 and World of Warcraft seem to have adopted Illidan's sensibilities. Except for the one female Huntress in WoW, not that she wears much.
  • The Blademasters in WC3 and WoW, Grom Hellscream included. Ironically, in terms of gameplay, the Demon Hunter and Blademaster had the highest armor scores out of all the Hero Units in the game.
  • Ogres not only rarely wear shirts but also wear loincloths.
  • Liam Greymane, the son of the racial leader of the Worgen, walks around without a shirt in the Worgen starting zone.
  • Garrosh Hellscream seems to have given up shirts since becoming Warchief. His shoulder guards are massive enough to make chest armor somewhat redundant, anyway.
  • Fandral Staghelm never wears a shirt.
  • Malfurion Stormrage never wears a shirt (must be part of the archdruid dress code), though he did wear a cloak in WC3. Admittedly, his feathered arms in WoW would probably be difficult to fit through sleeves.
  • Night Elf males in general tend to prefer being topless. The player character can also become this by earning a leather chest armor reward from a quest in The Hinterlands that is invisible. Several other various chest armors also show quite a lot of the upper body, from a bit of fabric draped over the shoulders to an X-crossed leather harness.
• Weaponlord reaches a record by having every male character in the game (four-sevenths of the entire cast) not wear a shirt. The other three are women.
• Does it count if Brad Evans from Wild ARMs 2 wears a shirt with only one shoulder strap, leaving the other half of his chest always bare?
• In World Heroes, we have Mudman (a witch doctor) and Captain Kidd (pirate). The latter is notable for wearing a long, sleeveless coat instead of a shirt.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1:
  • Although not this by default, Dunban gets several skills that give him special effects if he's not wearing any armor, and he'll become this if the player chooses to utilize him. And thanks to the fact that characters in the game can share skills if they have high enough Relationship Values, he can spread this trait to anyone else in the cast. Including the girls.
  • Certain pieces of "armor" in the game are actually described as specialized balms or lotions that have a special effect when applied to the skin. In practice, this means that the character appears to be wearing nothing up top, thus becoming this trope. The ladies can take advantage of it too.

Visual Novels

• Fate/stay night has Berserker, who wears only an armored kilt and cuffs. Though it's not fanservice in this case, because being summoned as a Berserker gives him a monstrous appearance.
• Razi in Havenfall Is for Lovers goes shirtless whenever he's in his djinn form.
• Arsenik of War: 13th Day wears only a lion's mane. Justified because this is Wildfire's dream and she sees him as a Lust Object. Plus, she has a rather massive crush on him.
• Alice of Virtue's Last Reward is a rare female example. She wears no shirt or bra and an open jacket that, due to her breast size, she probably can't close even if she wanted to. The only thing keeping her decent is the enormous gold necklace she wears.

Web Animation

• Oran from Broken Saints, who is shirtless for half the series. Also, although Kamimura always wears his cloak, he never has a shirt on underneath.
• Given Free Country, USA's lax clothing laws (and also because it's called "Free Country"), characters in Homestar Runner are not required to wear pants (or any clothes). Strong Bad is one big Walking Shirtless Scene; he thinks it's better to show off his abs. Homestar has had his shirt removed a few times, but nobody knows if he wears pants or not, so...
• In If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device, the Adeptus Custodes refuse to wear their armor, instead becoming enormously muscular, homoerotic bodyguards who spend all day oiling their abs, making sexy poses, and fapping (but only on Thursdays). They even go so far as to conveniently mishear the Emperor whenever he tells them to put on some armor, with the Captain-General being the only one who is still sane enough to stay in his armor all the time.
• Investigation of Object Nuclearity: Token Human Orange Herald doesn't wear a shirt under his jacket.
• Pucca has Abyo, the local Bruce Lee Clone, who has a habit of ripping his shirt before going Kiai.
• RWBY: Sun wears a shirt that he leaves unbuttoned under almost all circumstances. His idea of dressing in disguise or to smarten himself up is to button his shirt. He's originally from Vacuo, a place where dressing smartly doesn't happen. When the students from all four kingdoms are lined up in their formal military attire, Vacuo stands out because their "uniform" is literally "We're all wearing shirts now."
• Dr. Giselle from Rotary Park, technically a subversion as he is a merman and thus cannot walk.

Webcomics

• In Alice Grove, Ardent is a Shameless Fanservice Boy from a utopian Arcology who tends to wear as little clothing as he can get away with. Lampshaded when he's given a shirt, but it vanishes off-panel.
  Alice: Wait, what happened to your shirt?
  Ardent: I got scared so I took it off.
  Alice: That's... almost an explanation.
• By virtue of being focused on nudists this is expected of almost every character (major or minor) in The Bare Pit.
• Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures:
  • Abel
  • Dan also, ever since Abel turned his robe into more of an open... vest... thing.
  • Quoth Dark Pegasus: "Insolent fool! I shirt for no one!"
• Fite! has three:
  • Gorgado only wears a Loincloth, and never once appears with a shirt.
  • Lucco only appears with a shirt in one strip. He's a boxer, so most of the time he's only wearing his trunks. Bonus points for actually turning down an offered shirt once.
  • Ricci appears with a shirt in two strips, and an unzipped jacket with no shirt in one more. He still qualifies for having more access to shirts than the other two but refuses to make use of it.
• Numerous examples in Glorianna, including Portai, Ravi, Gith, Thanaktos, and the Mountain King.
• A number of characters from Goblins have this sort of outfit.
• In El Goonish Shive, Lord Tedd wears a red cape but otherwise goes shirtless.
• Muut from Gunnerkrigg Court. Kat lampshades his fetish appeal here; her reaction upon finally meeting him is priceless.
• Burk in Hero Oh Hero starts with no shirt whatsoever and later gets an open vest.
• In Impure Blood, Roan, except when in disguise, which he finds frustrating.
• The characters Jake and (to a lesser extent) Tyrone from the gay furry webcomic ISO.
• Jordan Joan, the main character of JoJopolis, is arrested when he's shirtless at the start of the story, and he doesn't get a chance to put a shirt on before crazy Stand shenanigans start happening.
• Nebula: Mars never wears, or posssibly even owns a shirt — he lives in the void of space, after all, so who knows where he buys his clothes. In any case, all he's got over his chest is the Badass Cape tied around his 'neck'.
• A rare female example is pretty much the entire cast of Wind Spirits, where both the men and women of the tribes wear only Loincloths.
• In Satan and Me, Satan is shirtless a good portion of the time.
• In Siren's Lament, the siren Ian isn't at home with human customs, including wearing shirts. And the fangirls hope he never will be.
• Inverted in Sluggy Freelance with Zorgon Gola, an unattractive small-scale Galactic Conqueror who never wore pants.
• Ganymede in ''The Family Party'' by A-gnosis unsurprisingly. He got his job because of his good looks, after all.

Web Original

• Parodied in Cracked's 33 Special Editions That Are Too Awesome to Exist photoplasty, with Thor: Shirtless Edition and The Chest Set: [[Matthew McConaughey and Jason Statham's]] most popular movies, revised and re-edited for maximum shirtlessness.
• Gold Tongues has Five Strikes and Stix, two drifters who travel only wearing a pair of trousers and underwear.
• GoodTimesWithScar seems to be in fond with this trope alongside with No Shirt, Long Jacket.
  • Hermitcraft:
    • In Season 6, when the pufferfish trap set up by Rendog and StressMonster101 kills him, due to the fact his jacket and shirt were torn off by the pufferfish, he spends the entirety of being deceased in Demise shirtless.
    • In Season 9, Scar's initial HotGuy outfit has him shirtless. At one point, when he was set ablaze, his Scarland uniform got burnt to reveal his initial outfit before he showcases the progress he did for his HQ.
  • In 3rd Life SMP, he spends the entire season going shirtless. Because his server-mates told him to put a shirt on, he keeps the armor on. However, because of the heatwave from living in the desert, which in turn caused him to become sweaty, he would take his chestplate off, resulting in Grian (who was in a life debt to Scar because of the creeper incident on Day 1) telling him to put the chestplate back on.
  • His tendency to go shirtless in-game has since reached memetic status in the greater MCYT fandom, who would often either be jokingly exasperated by or fawn over his characters' "Scitties".
• The Legatum series has dozens of background and minor characters who freely walk around showing off their bare upper bodies. Some notable characters are listed below.
  • Lorko Maeliss and Nickolas Corveel from Smirvlak's Stone.
  • Bunng from Help Not Wanted.
  • King Chorn Torgash from The Road to Hell....
• Dolan, Carson, and Captain Lyle Krinkor from The Pirates Covered in Fur are all mentioned as being shirtless for the whole story.
• Tails Series:
  • Tails of the Bounty Hunter has Cale's partner Stollar, who seems to only wear a pair of pants wherever he goes.
  • Tails of the Space Gladiators has a justified example with Unklok Koknarf. The alien's so obese that he physically can't wear a shirt.
• Maximus Slade from T.O.T. never wears a shirt for the entirety of the story. Given that he's a giant werewolf, it's more than likely because he can't fit into one.
• The three mermen Dace, Kiyi and Varden from Three Little Fish and a Bird certainly fit this trope, never wearing any clothing at all, even to cover their buttocks that aren't quite concealed by their dolphin-like tails. Though technically, they're really more of a "Crawling Shirtless Scene", given that being mermen they can't exactly walk.

Web Videos

• Blogger Connor Murphy makes all of his YouTube videos shirtless.
• Davey Wavey is a gay Blogger who makes all of his YouTube videos shirtless.
• When Dragon Age: Inquisition was nominated for Game of the Year 2014, BioWare responded with a thank-you video for the fans who had caused it to happen. The bulk of the video is Varric and Cassandra talking to the viewers and snarking at each other... and then, for no reason whatsoever, Cullen wanders randomly through the scene without a shirt. It's hard to blame Cass, really...
• Epic Rap Battles of History: In "Rasputin vs. Stalin", Vladimir Putin spends his entire appearance shirtless, reflecting his manly image at the time.
• Same for Eight-Bit Mickey in Kickassia.
• Rats SMP: Gender-Inverted Trope with Bek, who is shirtless no matter the weather. She explains that it's to have the widest range of motion in a fight. Of course, being a Minecraft rat probably helps with getting past the media nudity taboo…
• Shirtless Anonymous.
• Benzaie provides this in Suburban Knights, since he dresses as Conan the Barbarian. Cast commentary demonstrates how much he suffered to bring us this fanservice, given the film was shot during April in Chicago.

Western Animation

• Another robot example is Ruby-Spears Mega Man.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: THE BOULDER is too busy burying people in a rockalanche to bother wearing a shirt.
  • Aang himself for much of the third season.
• In Ben 10: Ultimate Alien the first season Big Bad Aggregor never wore a shirt. Before going One-Winged Angel he wore a nice open-chested tunic.
• Biker Mice from Mars: Technically none of the Biker Mice wear a shirt, but Vinnie is especially notable since the only things on his chest are two crossed bandoliers. In the episode "The Pits", Modo and Throttle are captured and forced to work for the Pit Boss. For some reason, they lost their armor and jacket.
• In The Brothers Grunt, all Grunts walk around shirtless in their underwear.
• Jesse, the bass player for Mystik Spiral on Daria, is almost always seen wearing an open vest with no shirt underneath, revealing a muscular chest. In his first appearance, he mentions that Trent owes him a new shirt after having thrown up on him at some point—apparently Trent never got around to it.
• Filmation had an enduring affection for ripped muscle-men (Thun the Lion-Man, Tarzan, Blackstar, He-Man, Bow), all in extremely exiguous raiment.
• Fangbone!'s eponymous character doesn't wear a shirt by default due to being a barbarian and all that. The same applies to him in the original Fangbone! Third Grade Barbarian books.
• Barbados Slim, Olympian and "mahogany god" of Futurama.
• Gargoyles: Other than Hudson, all of the males in the Manhattan Clan fly around in loincloths. The reason is unknown.
• Zandor and Dorno on The Herculoids.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: Shendu in his true form and a couple of his brothers wearing loincloths and nothing from the waistline up, and Shendu's body is quite ripe with muscle. Slightly downplayed with Daolon Wong's Dark Chi Warriors and the Jiangshi, who wear only a little clothing on their torsos which renders their chests partly or mostly visible.
• Gil, from Johnny Test qualifies. While he isn't always shirtless, he very frequently takes off his shirt. It is even to the point when he starts a channel on a video platform, it is all about him taking his shirt off.
• Aquaman in his appearances in Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. He's bare-chested even while off-duty and playing chess at Doctor Fate's tower.
• Honey, Bosko's girlfriend from Looney Tunes is a very rare non-Fanservice-y female human example of this trope.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: Mr. Gar, owner of Gar's Bodega, is almost always seen shirtless.
• Remington Tufflips, from Sanjay and Craig. A washed-up action movie star who never ever wears a shirt. And since retiring from movies, never wears shoes either.
• Sea Princesses: Or rather swimming shirtless scene in this case. Marcello is always seen bare-chested. (It also applies to some of the other princes, but Marcello gets the most screen time.)
• Sideshow Mel, of The Simpsons, almost always wears his "stage" costume — which involves not wearing a shirt. Or pants: just a grass skirt thing.
• Patrick from SpongeBob SquarePants. Justified that he's a starfish.
• Storm Hawks: All four of the Raptors are never seen with anything covering their chests, only wearing shoulder pads and some armor.
• Street Sharks: The title characters and their allies Moby Lick and Mantaman all had their shirts destroyed when they first transformed and never bothered to replace them (justified in that, with their torsos, no shirt exists that they could fit into). The villain Killamari also goes shirtless. Averted with the fifth shark, Melvin Kresnik/Rox, who manages to wear a full outfit despite his transformation.
• Summer Memories: Jason's best friend Ronnie is only ever seen in a pair of shorts, so his abs are always on display. As Jason notes in one episode, something is seriously off if Ronnie puts a shirt on. The same applies with their friend Cool Louis, who always wears an unbuttoned shirt.
• Dogpound from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012).
• Geoff from Total Drama always wears an open pink shirt exposing his abs.
  • The impossibly hot Justin wears a shirt, but especially in early episodes, he would always find some excuse to remove or tear it.
• TOM's a robot, but he's designed with his robot abs exposed.
• Wakfu:
  • Kriss Krass
  • Sir Tristepin/Sadlygrove Percidal as of episode 22.
  • Also his master, Goultard the Barbarian.
• Young Justice (2010): Lagoon Boy's "hero costume" consists of a pair of black swimming trunks.

Real Life

• Ancient tropical kingdoms such as the Aztecs and Mayans in South America and numerous empires in South East Asia often portray their prominent figures shirtless.
• Comedian Bert "The Machine" Kreischer typically ditches the shirt before the first joke and spends the rest of the act that way. He's admitted it's mostly because he sweats profusely which would become more evident in a shirt.
• Pita Taufatofua, a taekwondo athlete and Tonga's flag bearer at the 2016 Summer Olympics, caused quite a sensation when he appeared topless and greased up during the opening ceremony. He was invited on various talk shows and was apparently banned from wearing a shirt. He returned for the 2018 Winter Olympics and competed in skiing.
• Terry Porter, of Porter Ridge, hardly ever wears a shirt. He claims they "irritate [his] nipples". Lampshaded on the few times he has to wear a shirt (which is usually undone).
• In Rio de Janerio, shirtlessness is very common in various public places.
• Robert John Burck, AKA The Naked Cowboy, has attained minor celebrity by strolling through Times Square clad in a cowboy hat, boots, and tighty-whitey briefs.
• Shirtlessness is very common in the gay male subculture.
• The Ukrainian feminist protest group Femen is known for having their women activists appear bare-chested with slogans written over their bodies. Naturally the nudity attracts much attention in the press.

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