This is one possible reason why Cats Hate Water, albeit a pretty vain one — though cats are often stereotyped as being vain as well, so it can fit.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Delicious in Dungeon: Senshi is forced to wash his magic-resistant beard in order to cross a river with a water-walk spell. When he sits in front of the fire to dry off, his beard puffs up to the point he looks like a fluffball with arms, legs and a pair of eyes.
- Ranma ½: Exaggerated in a story in the manga: Genma Saotome has found a magic hairgrowth lotion that gives him long, spiky straight hair, but only when he gets angry. Then he fells into the koi pond, turning into a panda, and this translate into one gigantic ball of black-and-white fur, round and big enough to just roll around, forcing Ranma into an race on the streets of Nerima.
Comic Books
- In Albedo: Erma Felna EDF: The title character apparently faces this whenever she takes a shower and dries off with a blow dry chamber. Afterward, her fur is fluffed up all over her body and has to be combed down as a matter or course.
- The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers: Happens to Fat Freddy's Cat when the titular moggie becomes so revolting of smell that Freddy forcibly washes him. Out on the street again, other tomcats make unwise snarky comments about FFC's gender preferences. FFC is pretty much in the mood for serious violence by then. Mayhem ensues.
Comic Strips
- Calvin and Hobbes: Happens to Hobbes after Calvin's mom throws him into the dryer and he comes out with his fur sticking up in every direction.
Calvin: Goodness, you're a fright.
Hobbes: Tell your mom to put some conditioner in the wash next time. - Garfield: Sometimes happens to the titular cat. The image caption is from when it happens in this strip
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- Rose is Rose: A Running Gag's about Peekaboo being "all fur" (not completely to the extent of Intangible Man, but almost). There are several scenes where Peekaboo becomes a clawed poofball when startled or angered.
Films — Animation
- Asterix in Britain: Happens shortly to Dogmatix after being drenched by the rain and drying himself by the fire at an inn.
- Balto: The first film has Muk and Luk, two polar bears, who practically explode into gigantic balls of fluff when they dry themselves off after rescuing Balto from the lake.
- When the Beast from Beauty and the Beast finishes his bath, he shakes his fur, and it fluffs up.
- Downplayed in The Emperor's New Groove. When llama transformed Kuzco shakes his fur, only the hair on his head expands. Oddly, that’s the only part that wasn’t affected by the transformation.
- Felix the Cat becomes one briefly in Felix the Cat Saves Christmas.
- The Jungle Book: The Animated Adaptation of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi features the eponymous mongoose getting this treatment after falling in his young master's bath.
- The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part: When Wyldstyle and crew receive spa treatment on Planet Sparkles, a hair dryer makes Unikitty's hair all poofy. Unlike most examples, though, she seems to enjoy it.
- The Lion King (1994): Simba gets his mane all fluffed up when he shakes it dry during the "Hakuna Matata" number.
- The Lorax (2012): Happens to the Lorax after being sprayed with a garden hose in a mini-movie.
- Oliver & Company: The source of the page picture. Oliver gets drenched by a fire hydrant — courtesy of Dodger — then walks over a subway air vent.
- In Piglet's Big Movie, after Piglet receives a bath from Kanga and gets dried off, he poofs into a pink fluff ball that makes him unrecognizable to Pooh and Tigger until he gets himself wet again.
- Shrek the Third: Puss-in-Boots after the shipwreck.
Puss: How humiliating...
- Sing 2: After Buster falls in a canal, he dries off by blowing a hand dryer at his face, resulting in all his face fur being fluffed up for a while.
- The Sword in the Stone: Happens to Archimedes the Owl when drying himself after "saving" Arthur as a fish from almost being eaten by a big pike. Complete with umbrella sound and Archie yelling:
Archimedes: Pinfeathers and gollyfluff!
Films — Live-Action
- Austin Powers: Toyed with in Austin Powers: Goldmember. During the infiltration of an enemy submarine, Foxxy Cleopatra shakes out her damp hair and it springs into a huge afro, accompanied by a humorous sound effect like an umbrella opening.
- Dolittle: A sugar glider is submerged in aquarium and shakes off water, with much longer puffed up fur than in reality.
- In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), after Sonic tries to cross the Pacific Ocean, he ends up soaking wet. When Tom agrees to help him get to San Francisco, Sonic uses his Super-Speed to rapidly dry off, causing his quills to fluff up. A second high-speed shake returns his quills to normal.
Video Games
- Bubsy: Bubsy does this after riding a waterslide and drying off.
- Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon: The Fuzzballs in the Secret Mine do this when sucked up and ejected from the Poltergust 5000.
Web Animation
- Homestar Runner: Happens a few times to The Cheat, especially after he's thrown in the dryer — he turns into a big lump of fluff.
- My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Summertime Shorts: In "Pet Project", Winona becomes suddenly fluffy after Fluttershy dries her off. The dog is a bit surprised, but it doesn't alter her mood much.
- In one of the Simon's Cat shorts, the cat falls into a fish tank and, naturally, becomes an example of this trope after climbing out and shaking himself off.
Web Comics
- Ballerina Mafia: One comic showing Melissa's (originally from The Order of the Black Dog) difficulties with a futuristic shower ends with her getting blow-dried into a poofball.
- This happens to the semi-feline robot Pluto in Stardroids after he is unceremoniously dumped into the drum of a washer-dryer. He ends up as fluffy as cat-android-ly possible, little more than an angry, spitting sphere of fur and robot claws. Static electricity must be quite a thing in the Stardroids universe.
- Lackadaisy: Tracy Butler gives a young Freckle this treatment. Noting that the hair dryer was invented in the 1920s (well after Freckle's kittenhood), she posits that he was just left out in the sun.
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender:
- Momo gets a moment of this after being dried out by Aang's airbending in one episode.
- Pabu follows suit after his Small Team Pet predecessor in an episode of The Legend of Korra.
- Johnny Test: Happens to Dukey after he fails to thwart an evil pair of pants who have taken over the title character's mind.
- Looney Tunes:
- Pepe LePew. It often has the added benefit of neutralizing temporarily his smell.
- Another cartoon has Sylvester put in a washing machine: The final step of the washing cycle is "fluff dry".
- This happens to Mr. Bogus in the third act of the episode "B-TV", after getting blow dried by Mole.
- My Little Pony:
- This happens to a few of the characters (Gusty, Licketysplit and Heart Throb) in the episode "The Glass Princess" after the enemies capture them for their hair and force them through a cleaning process similar to a car wash. After they're dried, they come out looking poofy for a few seconds. In this case, it's one of the few times it's obvious that the ponies have fur all over their bodies and not just on their manes and tails (as real horses do).
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Castle, Sweet Castle", Twilight vigorously dries off Angel Bunny with a towel after giving him a bath, resulting in his fur puffing up seconds after the towel is removed and turning him into a disgruntled sphere of white fluff.
- The Pink Panther:
- The second theatrical short "We Accept Pink Stamps" has this happen to Pink after climbing into an all-in-one laundry machine. The final fluff dry setting causes him to float out as a huge pink puffball.
- In "Tickled Pink", Pink gets a pair of magic roller skates that send him careening into a car wash. After the heat lamps dry him, Pink emerges as a large pink ball of fluff on skates.
- This also happens to him in the title sequence for The All-New Pink Panther Show.
- In Rugged Bear, a Walt Disney short cartoon, Donald Duck does such a thing with a bear who pretends to be a carpet in Donald's cabin.
- Happens on Tom and Jerry, too. Tom gets stuck in a washing machine (and survives, of course). It cycles through the usual: Wash... Dry... Fluff... and out pops Tom, now a round, grey ball of fluff, who has somehow been fluffed so much that he now floats through the air sans legs.
