A character who is nervous or embarrassed tugs on the collar of their shirt, perhaps to give themselves a little more air. This gesture is often accompanied by a bizarre, gibbering vocal tic, Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat, or a Loud Gulp and an exaggerated facial expression.
Compare Hand Behind Head for another way for characters to express nervousness. Not to be confused with Angry Collar Grab.
Examples:
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Advertising
- A Tang commercial featuring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck sees Daffy invoking the trope, but because he doesn't wear a shirt, Daffy tugs on the white ring around his neck instead.
Comedy
- Nervously tugging at and straightening his tie was one of Rodney Dangerfield's signatures.
Comic Books
- Asterix: In Asterix in Spain, the Roman officer Spurius Brontosaurus tugs the collar of his uniform (complete with his face turning red and some nervous sweat) when he sees Asterix and Obelix brought Pepe, the son of Iberian chief Huevos y Bacon, back to Spain (the boy was supposed to be in Gaul as a hostage of the Romans).
Comic Strips
- Garfield: In this comic
, Jon nervously tugs at the colar of his shirt and breaks into sweat as he has to tell Garfield the bad news that they're out of cat food.
Fan Works
- One Thing Leads to Another by katergator has both Robin and Beast Boy tugging at their collars a number of times. It tends to involve either their girlfriends discussing some (often intimate) aspect of their relationship, or a third person inquiring about the same.
Films — Animated
- Aladdin: after Carpet beats him in a game of chess, Genie, copying Rodney Dangerfield, pulls at a collar around his neck and proclaims "I can't believe it; I'm losing to a rug!"
- Doctor Anrak from Heavy Metal addresses the Joint Chiefs and a Congressional windbag during a meeting at the Pentagon concerning a spate of peculiar mutations nationwide. Anrak starts out fine, reassuring the room that humanity is the only intelligent life in the universe, and that the mutations are an aberration. Unfortunately, Anrak chooses "phenomenon" rather than "aberration," and fumbles this word repeatedly, which leads to an index finger worming around his shirt collar.
- Make Mine Music. In the "Casey at the Bat" segment the pitcher is so nervous and anxious about pitching the game-deciding pitch to Casey that he not only pulls his collar, but his sweat and nervous fever combined to make a puff of steam come out of the collar. Watch here.
- Popeye nervously pulls at his collar in the two-reel special Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp.
Popeye: What am I going to do? I never made love in Technicolor before.
- Rover Dangerfield, a dog who wore a red tie, would obsessively tug at and straighten the tie like his namesake and voice actor Rodney Dangerfield.
Films — Live-Action
- Airplane!: When Striker, after being forced to take over the controls due to the pilots getting ill, sits down in the pilot's seat to land the plane, he assesses the situation and slowly tugs at his collar when he realizes how grave it is.
- In Downfall, one of the men in the room is seen nervously tugging the collar of his uniform during Hitler's rant.
- The Fifth Element: Dallas demonstrates Aggressive Negotiations, one guard asks where he learned to negotiate like that to the guy with an open mic. Cut to the president snarking, "I wonder...", while Dallas' superior looks distinctly uncomfortable and pulls at the collar of his uniform.
- Star Wars:
- Forced example (pun intended): in A New Hope, Admiral Motti jeers at Darth Vader's claim that the Force is a greater power than the Death Star, but is cut off mid-sentence by Vader using the Force to choke him. Motti's fingers pull at his collar the whole time until Grand Moff Tarkin orders Vader to stand down.
- Same thing in Rogue One at the conclusion of Director Krennic's audience with Darth Vader. Krennic, after one demand too many for the Sith Lord's taste, starts tugging frantically at his collar while suffocating. Luckily for him, that's just a warning shot.
Darth Vader: Be careful not to choke on your aspirations, Director.
- Thor: Love and Thunder: When Thor encounters his ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (who has claimed Thor's old hammer Mjolnir and become Mighty Thor) during Gorr's raid on New Asgard, he tugs on the collar of his armor as he tries to talk to her.
Literature
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian: In the comic strip segment asks Junior if he's poor. He explains about poverty as he awkwardly pulls the collar of his shirt.
Live-Action TV
- Babylon 5: In the season 2 finale, Zack Allen is sitting in a meeting with the Nightwatch where he starts getting questioned on why he hasn't met a quota on reports of possible sedition. As the whole of Nightwatch turns and glares at him he sits there tugging at his uniform collar as he stammers out a reply.
- Community:
- Britta is mocked for doing this as part of a low-quality Johnny Carson impression, to which she confusedly responds that she was mimicking Jon Stewart. It's unclear if she knows who Carson is.
- Later Allan does it, to which the ever-oblivious Troy responds "Man, you've got Britta down."
- The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Jon Stewart is frequently seen nervously tugging at his collar, usually in response to a salacious scandal or footage that shows a public figure decrying behavior they had displayed not too long ago.
- In Healer, Jung Hoo pulls at his collar while acting as the awkward Bong Soo. He also ends up doing it himself when things between him and Young Shin start getting uncomfortable as they learn about their biological parents and discover his father was supposedly her father's murderer.
- The protagonist of the German show Stromberg tugs his tie whenever he's in deep waters (which happens quite often).
Video Games
- The Jackbox Party Pack 4: In "Monster Seeking Monster," one of the human disguises will nervously pull at the collar of her turtleneck if another player rejects her.
- Later Alligator: When the player first heads into John Johnny's restaurant to meet Pat, who spends the game worrying about the mysterious event his family has planned for that night, he can be seen nervously pulling on his bandana.
Webcomics
- Clinton of Questionable Content nervously pulls at his collar with one finger while having an awkward conversation with his oblivious and blunt crush Brun about finding her attractive here.
Web Videos
- The Nostalgia Critic:
- During his "Top 11 Fuck-Ups" video, when showing a clip where he was mocking Mako's voice in TMNT, and didn't know at the time that the guy was dying of esophageal cancer, the present Critic nervously pulls his collar, as he is really ashamed watching that clip.
- Discussed in his Bridge to Terabithia review. When Leslie presents a paper about scuba gear foreshadowing her death by drowning, Critic responds "This reading brought to you by the Incredibly Ironic Institute of people tugging at their shirt collars going 'nyoh-ho-ho-ho'."
- In the 2015 commercial special, Critic watches an ad for an appetite-suppressing candy called Ayds... pronounced exactly like "AIDS". Disturbed that it would have such an unfortunate name (during the 1980s, no less!), he remarks that the candy "now comes with a sweaty collar to tug at" and posts a stock photo of a man awkwardly tugging his collar.
- The Spoony Experiment. Dr. Insano nervously pulls at his collar in Spoony's review of The Dungeonmaster when admitting that he's had the "girlfriend thinks you love your computer more than her" conversation a few times.
Western Animation
- Animaniacs: In "Rest in Pieces", Skippy tugs at his shirt collar and gulps when it seems like Slappy is breaking her promise not to do anything disrespectful at Walter's funeral.
- In Batman: The Animated Series, Roland Daggett nervously tugs at his collar when a woman snatches a microphone and begins listing out the horrible side effects of his newly advertised makeup. He denies her accusations but his body language tells all until she reveals herself to be Clayface in disguise.
- The Beano Video: The new music teacher tells The Bash Street Kids how to use their musical instruments properly while he's pulling his shirt collar out of nervousness.
- Classic Disney Shorts:
- In "Knight for a Day", a knight who is getting tired pulls on his shirt collar and steam comes out.
- In "Donald's Crime", Donald has just stolen from his nephews' piggy bank when he hears them call for him from their bed. As the nephews say, "Shame on you", a close-up of Donald shows him sweating profusely as he tugs on his collar. Fortunately for Donald, they just want to be kissed good night.
- In the Doug episode "Doug Throws a Party," Doug is seen nervously pulling at the collar of his shirt when Skeeter accidentally plays a children's party record instead of the new Beets album.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy: Eddy once nervously pulls the collar of his shirt when his Goofy Print Underwear is shown.
- In the Hey Arnold! episode "A Day in the Life of a Classroom," Mr. Robert Simmons pulls his collar when he realizes that the titular documentary on his class will be viewed by millions of people and that he will be humiliated if his students misbehave.
- The Magic School Bus: In "The Magic School Bus Sees Stars", Horace Scope nervously pulls at his collar when he's confronted by the kids.
- The Raccoons: In "Life in the Fast Lane!", when Bix Badger asks Bert if he can ride a motorcycle, Bert confidently says he can ride one blindfolded. When Wendo presents a blindfold, Bert nervously laughs and tugs on the collar of his sweater.
- The Real Ghostbusters: In "Janine, You've Changed", Egon pulls at his collar when asking Janine to the movies.
- Schoolhouse Rock!: In "The Tale of Mr. Morton," Mr. Morton musters up the courage to knock on his crush Pearl's door and nervously tugs his collar while sweating as he waits for her to answer.
- The Simpsons:
- In "Bart's Comet" the entire town of Springfield does this when the rocket that was supposed to blow up the approaching comet misses and destroys "the only bridge out of town" instead.
- In "22 Short Films About Springfield", the title card for the "Skinner & The Superintendent" segment features the disembodied heads of the two characters on a plain background, with Skinner nervously tugging at his collar while Chalmers intimidatingly glares at him.
- In "Wild Barts Can't Be Broken", the Springfield Kids set up a pirate radio station in which they expose the adults' secrets all through Springfield. When Lisa announces she will reveal the name of someone who has been practicing medicine without a license, Dr. Julius Hibbert is seen nervously pulling his collar. Fortunately for him, Lisa was talking about Homer.
- "The Simpsons: Tales From the Public Domain", in the "Joan of Arc" segment, Lisa as Joan nervously tugs her collar when God reveals Himself to her. Watch it here.
- In "The Great Louse Detective", Homer goes into an expensive sauna, only for someone on the outside to lock the only door with a wrench. When he expresses how hot he is getting, he tugs on his collar, which since he's only in a towel, is actually his skin. Fortunately, Krusty unwittingly saves his life Just in Time.
- Teen Titans (2003): Robin does this a lot in "Stranded" after offending Starfire due to Poor Communication Kills. He sure acts like her boyfriend despite not actually being so.
- Tiny Toon Adventures: In "Prom-ise Her Anything", Buster, enamored by how Babs looks in her prom outfit, tugs at his collar (with a jet of steam shooting out of the gap).
- What's New, Scooby-Doo?: The Roller Ghoster episode has Scooby tugging at his dog collar nervously when Shaggy wants to go on a scary ride.
- Young Justice: In "Misplaced", the members of the Justice League learn Captain Marvel's secret that he is actually a kid with an adult-body alter ego. Thus, in "Agendas", when the league is discussing potential new members, Captain Marvel gets quite nervous and pulls his collar when Superman claims they will not let children into the league.
