Zipperiffic

aka: Everythings Better With Zippers

Donald Duck loads himself with zippers here, even on his hat.

"I wish I had more zippers... so I could tell you to ZIP IT."

— Neku Sakuraba, The World Ends with You

Some costume designers are of the belief that Everything's Better With Zippers; if you add zippers to a character's outfit, then it makes them somehow intrinsically cooler. Even if the placement of said zippers makes no practical sense whatsoever.

This has become rather prevalent in Japanese popular media especially in the past decade or so, and may or may not have taken cues from the Goth fashion subculture. Certain other Western subcultures have crossover into this as well (e.g. bondage pants).

The cousin trope to this is Too Many Belts. Not to be confused with Zip Me Up which, while involving zippers, is about something else entirely. See also Chained by Fashion. The opposite of We Will Not Have Pockets in the Future. A subtrope of Useless Accessory.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• While most of the exorcist uniforms in D.Gray-Man have zippers (and relatively large ones at that) Allen's second uniform probably takes the cake. The longest zipper winds around his whole left arm right down to the back of his hand.
• Bruno Bucciarati from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind not only has zippers on his outfit, but his Stand allows him to attach zippers anywhere, and he makes zippers far more badass than they'd be in any other series. Ironically, the Stand is called "Zipper Man" in the dub, as opposed to his original name of Sticky Fingers.
• Franken Fran takes this to a horrifying extreme — Adorea has zippers all over her SKIN.
  • Zippers which have a horrifying function too - Adorea acts as Fran's mobile organ storage and the zippers make it easier to retrieve the organs!
• Chuck from Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is basically GIR with Zippers for ears and his tail.
• Fukurou from One Piece has a zipper in his mouth, that he (or someone else) can use to make him quite literally zip it.

Comic Books

• The character Drywall in Scud the Disposable Assassin is a blue plush being who is covered with yellow zippers. They do have a function — he contains an infinite space full of junk that is neatly sorted into labeled cubicles made of drywall (hence his name), and he can pull objects into or out of himself with gloves on cords that come out of his zippers.
• An Archie Comics story has Reggie boasting to Veronica how his outfit is so Zipperiffic. Jughead then draws him with another zipper, on Reggie's mouth.

Comic Strips

• Deconstructed in Garfield, of all places. Jon, in an attempt to be "macho", wears a jumpsuit with "six gajillion" zippers on it. Upon the realization that he doesn't remember which pocket contains his keys, Garfield exclaims "This could take months!"

Fan Works

• This gem from DeviantArt uses the title character of Kim Possible and her rival/nemesis Shego to hang a lampshade on the usage of the trope in Kingdom Hearts... before coming up with an alternative Fanservicey explanation.^note And yes, the artist is a firm Kigo shipper.

Literature

• In Alan Dean Foster's Glory Lane the character Seeth is described as wearing a jacket 'dripping with zippers'.

Live-Action TV

• Parodied in a sketch of The Benny Hill Show with Benny as a biker. After trying out all his zippers for his money pouch, his girlfriend finally zips his mouth.
• Also poked fun of much earlier in a Not the Nine O'Clock News sketch set in a gents' lavatory with a punk desperately zipping and unzipping his many zips, frantically trying to gain access to relieve himself.
• Played for Laughs in The Orville where John tries to teach Gordon a few tips on picking up women, and picks out an outfit to try and make him look good, stating "always go with one more zipper than you need." When Gordon proves he's very bad at the whole approaching women thing, John grumbles he's going to need more zippers.
• Lampshaded on Peep Show when Mark goes clothes shopping and starts ranting about pocketless zips and gratuitous symbolism.
  "So that's the way it is, is it? Let's just put a zip here, a swastika there. Who knows what these things once stood for? Who even cares?"
• In Project Runway Season 3's finale, Jeffrey's best outfit - a green and white dress - had a lot of decorative zippers. He won.
• Star Trek: Enterprise. As a prequel series the Starfleet characters wore NASA style jumpsuits with plenty of zippers, in deliberate contrast to series set later in canon.
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Cameron likes◊ her zippers and her belts — not to mention leather.

Music

• Michael Jackson in the "Bad" music video and album cover, also combined with Too Many Belts, proving the trend is Older Than They Think. And considering the popularity of Jackson's work in Japan, possibly one of the main influences on it. The red jacket◊ he wears in the "Beat It" video also counts.
• The current look of Daft Punk has the classic robot helmets lose their LED light and gain formulaic jumpsuits of sorts, covered with zippers and patches.

Video Games

• Square Enix in general, and Tetsuya Nomura in particular, are overly fond of this trope to levels that would have made Freud proud.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Sora is the reigning king of this trope and probably the first person to come to most people's minds when this trope is mentioned. Even though his Kingdom Hearts II and Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] outfits only features zippers on his jacket and zippers on his shoes, which really isn't all that weird when it comes to placement of zippers. Kairi features a pretty zipperific dress as well. In the same game, Donald Duck has a zipper on his hat, as pictured atop this page.
  • Heck, EVERYTHING Nobody-related has a zipper. Zipper mouths, anyone? It might even be said that the dynamic between the Nobodies and Heartless could parallel Nomura's use of zippers and belts.
  • A fan nickname for Pete in Kingdom Hearts II is Captain Ass Zipper. Guess why.
  • According to an interview, the more people mock him for his designs, the more he's encouraged to use zippers (and belts).
  • The World Ends with You features characters with highly gratuitous zippers as well and then hangs a gigantic lampshade on it when the main character grumbles the quote at the top of this page. The game itself ripped on Japanese fashion trends that love to revel in belts and zippers, trends that inspired Nomura's infamous art style.
  • It's a little known fact that Sora is almost identical to Sion from The Bouncer, from whence the zippers came.
  • It's almost a self-parody, as at the beginning of the first Kingdom Hearts, they said they got their belts-and-zippers outfits in order to blend in to the world full of Kingdom Hearts original characters.
• Kyle of Atelier Annie wears a Badass Longcoat with a truly righteous zipper in front.
• Rune Factory Frontier has Candy and Cinnamon, both with zippers on the sides of their hats.
• BlazBlue:
  • The most prominent feature of Tager's outfit is his two Gigantic Zippers!
  • Carl wears a giant zipper-pull as a bow tie.
  • Taokaka's outfit has a large and visible zipper running down the front.
  • Noel has a pair of them running down the front of her shirt/skirt. They are oddly hypnotic...
• Pokémon X and Y gives us Mega Banette, which has multiple zippers all over its body. Some of them are unzipped to reveal magenta claws and feet.
• Splatoon 2 gives zippered outfits to both Pearl and Marina, with both of them having particularly large zipper tabs on their tops. One discussion on Inkblot Art Academy has the two discussing one of its graduates, who designed their outfits.
• Lethal League's resident crocodile, Latch, sports a giant zipper pull on the front of his jacket.
• In Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil, Klonoa wears a T-shirt with a giant zipper pull on the front. This doesn't appear to be attached to a zipper at all — the front of his shirt doesn't open.
• A Hat in Time's protagonist Hat Kid sports a giant zipper pull on the front of her coat. She takes the concept halfway between Latch and Klonoa: her coat's zipper only reaches halfway down the front.
• LittleBigPlanet: Sackboy's species; the Sackpeople have a long zipper that reaches their entire mid-section.

Webcomics

• Square Enix from Consolers wears an outfit with a bunch of zippers. Including one on the belt worn around his head.

Web Original

• Referenced in a Ronin Dojo Community College DX short, when Barry's dad sees a picture of an unspecified Final Fantasy character.
  Dad: What's with all these zippers? No person should have this many zippers. I don't care what fantasy it is.
• Parodied in Boy and Robot's Epic jRPG Quest.
• The trailer for The Adventures of Captain Bucky and his Space Marshals, in Outer Space has a closeup montage of the heroic captain doing up each zipper on his jumpsuit, ending with his fly.

Real Life

• Truth in Television; just walk into your local Hot Topic store (or similar "Goth" clothing shop), and behold.
  • Though not clothes, there are pencil cases and bags made entirely out of zippers.
  • No longer limited to goth stores, excessive zippers were a fad that caught on even in higher-end, more fashion-forward stores as well as places such as Forever 21, at least for some time in The New '10s.
• In a more universal way, zippers were originally invented as a shoe fastener, to replace 20+ tiny buttons as fasteners for non-casual shoes (and thus ineligible by current fashion for laces). You'd better believe that zippers are better than tens of buttons when you need to get dressed in a hurry.
• Many motorbike jackets and pants have a lot of zippers that, when open, provide ventilation. It's very useful on a hot day, but can look ridiculous out of context.
  • These same jackets might include an even higher amount of concealed zippers for the enclosure/fastening for a back protector, elbow/shoulder pads, liner and connecting to a matching pair of trousers.
• Major League Baseball once featured zipper-front jerseys. In 1936, Chicago White Sox manager Jimmy Dykes started wearing a zippered jersey so he could change out of it faster (due to having regular post-game commitments). The Cubs saw his jersey and liked the idea enough to give it a try as a team in 1937. This led to several teams experimenting with zippers up until The '70s, when double-knit polyester uniforms replaced the old wool flannels, and many teams switched to pullovers or stuck with traditional button-front jerseys. The last team to regularly wear zippered jerseys was the Philadelphia Phillies, who retired the zipper after the 1986 season. Curiously, the Phillies have avoided re-creating their zipper-front jerseys on their 1980s throwbacks, preferring to go with the later button-fronts, while other teams have used zipper-front throwbacks.
• A staple of BDSM subculture and the fashions it inspired like Goth and Punk.

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Waldorf: That Nomura guy puts way too many zippers on his characters.
Statler: I don't know, I think they could still use a few more.
Waldorf: You do?
Statler: Yeah. Over their mouths!
Both: Do-ho-ho-ho-hoh!

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