Fog Feet

"I like drawing the Genie because then I don't have to worry about legs."

— Brian McLachlan

Perhaps a combination of Partial Transformation and Super Smoke or a general characteristic of beings that aren't of this Earth, including but not limited to genies and ghosts. Characters with fog feet operate as if they have a full anatomy, but some portion of their lower body is invisible or insubstantial.

Compare and contrast Invisible Anatomy. For the trope where feet are blurred due to speed, see Wheel o' Feet. If your Humongous Mecha trades anthropomorphic silhouette for mobility see Hover Mecha or Hover Skates.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Chainsaw Man: The Gun Devil has no legs, just ammo belts hanging off the bottom of its torso.
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Gyokko has no visible legs or feet, only having his upper body appear out of his pots like a djinn. This is due to him being a snake-like demon, with his 'tail' being what appears to billow out of his pots like smoke.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Anyone who has a Dead Person Conversation will see the soul of the deceased floating in the air with half of them being a trail of indistinct mist.
• Jujutsu Kaisen: The Smallpox Deity has no legs and floats above the ground in a manner reminiscent of a djinn.
• Cute Ghost Girl Sayo from Negima! Magister Negi Magi even manages to trip over her nonexistent legs.
• Caesar Clown from One Piece constantly uses the power of his Gas Gas Fruit to transform his lower body into gas, which gives him an appearance reminiscent of a traditional Shinigami. When forced into his normal state, he ends up looking rather ridiculous.
• Undead Unluck: When Fuuko's soul is extracted from her body by UMA Ghost, she appears with her lower body forming as smoke.

Fan Works

• Dungeon Keeper Ami: The ghost fish that Mercury makes is a variant:
  ... the front half of a fish. Everything behind the main fins dissolved into a trail of indistinct mist.
• Naru-Hina Chronicles Mini-sodes: When Shizune reveals to Tsunade that the law forbidding anyone discussing Naruto as the Nine-Tailed Fox has never been revoked even after Naruto showed his powers during the Chunin Exams, Tsunade asks why it wasn't repealed. The next panel shows Hiruzen Sarutobi in the sky as a ghost with a halo and this type of feet, saying "Don't look at me... I died." Minato and Kushina are also present with the same appearance, both of them frowning at the Third Hokage and Kushina saying he could have at least repealed it when her son found out, to which Sarutobi replies that he was busy.

Films — Animation

• Aladdin: Genie has a tail of the same shape as that of an archetypical genie most of the time. When his connection to the lamp is broken at the end of the film by Aladdin's final wish, the tail is broken off of the lamp and he grows a pair of legs... though the legs are seen at least once before that.
• Hades on Hercules, whose robes dissolve into wisps of smoke.
• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Legend of Everfree: The Gaea Everfree in Timber Spruce's story doesn't have legs, but an amorphous trunk-like lower body that seems to flow from the ground, leaving a trail of gem dust.
• In Turning Red, Sun Yee is shown to have an ethereal form with no legs. This is most apparent when she is in giant red panda form.

Films — Live-Action

• The library ghost in Ghostbusters doesn't have legs — just the trailing, ragged hem of her dress.

Gamebooks

• La Saga du Prêtre Jean: In book 2 L'Œil du Sphinx (The Eye of the Sphinx), hostile desert spirits attacking a caravan look like humans above the waist, with nothing but a whirlwind below.

Live-Action TV

• Charmed has demons made of smoke; they wear cloaks and don't have feet, but still hover and such.
• In Quantum Leap, Sam leaps into a Vietnam vet who's lost both his legs. There's a mean orderly in the episode, and at one point when there's nobody else about, Sam gets out of the wheelchair, walks over to the orderly, and slugs him. Since the orderly can only see Sam as the man he leaped into, it looks to him like Sam is floating on air.

Myths & Religion

• This is a common representation of genies. While the upper torso appears solid, the legs end in a wisp of smoke, generally connected to the lamp, bottle, or whatever genie artifact they're supposedly coming from.
• In Japanese Mythology, ghosts, called yūrei (幽霊), are typically depicted as legless.
• Cartoon depictions of ghosts in Western culture often portray them as legless, but there's no real cultural evidence that ghosts are thought to be this way... it seems to simply be a visual shorthand to imply their otherworldly nature.

Pinballs

• The green jinn of Magic Girl have magic smoke where their legs should be.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: Angels in Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition have bodies made of what look like strands of light that trail off into a tail.
• Pathfinder: Wendigos have legs, just not feet.
• Changeling: The Lost: While not depicted one of The Gentry is called "A Gentleman of Spiderleg Arms and Fog-Feet".

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: In the Mysterious Console DLC, several of the enemies that wield heavy weapons are shown to have no legs beneath their cloaks and are actually hovering as fogless bottoms.
• Another Code: D appears a transparent blue ghost with a trailing bottom half.
• EXTRAPOWER:
  • The Shakun warrior ghosts who haunt stage 3 of Star Resistance have returned to life with most of their muscular shape intact except for their incorporeal legs, trailing off below the waist.
  • The bonus genie that appears in a few stages of Giant Fist also wears a ghostly tail below the waist when manifesting from his lamp. The great fire genie Magma-O does not share the limitations of lamp-dwelling, and gets to enjoy the privilege of legs.
• Skully has the air elemental, Brent, whose feet are fog. When he's in a hostile mood however it quickly turns into a tornado.
• Luigi's Mansion (Series): Nearly all enemy ghosts resemble a Bed Sheet Ghost with wavy Fog Feet.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • A Chao in Sonic Adventure 2 that plays with bats will eventually have its legs disappear; it'll hover above the ground instead.
  • Mephiles has no feet in his crystalline form and hovers just above the ground with a dark-purple mist-like effect. Interestingly enough, his legs are still present, but everything from his knees down is replaced with crystalline stumps.
• Warcraft III: The Firelord hero has a humanoid torso, but moves along on a tail made of magma. The Firelord design extends to Fire, Air, and Water Elementals in World of Warcraft, with a special mention going to Voidwalker demons. The most impressive example of this trope would be Ragnaros, who is the Fire Lord and bigger than ten lesser elementals standing on each other.
• Onmyoji: Kisei always levitates in a sitting position because of this. However, he's shown to be able to occasionally stand up in midair.
• Puzzle Pirates: Ghosts are wisps of smoke from the waist down, but act as if they had normal legs.
• Zettai Hero Project has an item that replaces the main character's legs with a cloud.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Black and White: Tornadus, Thundurus, and Landorus have clouds for lower torsos in their Incarnate Formes. Their sister Enamorus from Pokémon Legends: Arceus is the same.
  • Pokémon Uranium, a fan game, has the Ghost Pirate Navighast with a tail of blue fog instead of legs. Fittingly, it has the Levitate ability.
• In Baldur's Gate II, the genie model (used for djinn, dao and, less apropriately in terms of looks, efreet) has both a legged and a "tapering down to a point as if emerging from a bottle or lamp" version.
• Panel de Pon: Elias has normal feet, but her lower body transforms into a cyclone during her attacking animation. One of her official artworks◊ evokes this, too.
• Catacomb Fantasy Trilogy: In Catacomb Abyss, spectres (if that's really what they're called) are bat-featured vaguely humanoid insubstantial-looking creatures that taper down to a point and float just above the ground.
• Shin Megami Tensei: This is a common trait of spectral or semi-incorporeal demons:
  • The Native American cloud people Shiwanna, whose body solidifies and dissipates into purple wisps.
  • The Aztec Tezcatlipoca, who has legs and the hint of feet, but as he strides forward those feet just... fade into a vapor.
• The entire lower body is replaced by a cloud for Mega Man 7's Cloud Man and his Mega Man Battle Network counterpart.
• Yu and Rei, the ghost twins from the Puyo Puyo series, have fog feet. Which creates an In-Universe Fridge Logic situation for other characters when Yu starts dancing.
• EarthBound Series: In EarthBound Beginnings and EarthBound, defeated party members appear as floating ghosts with tails instead of legs. Mother 3 breaks this tradition by having defeated party members remain alive and corporeal, but too weak to fight.
• Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass For ghosts in general:
  • The Information Guy's ghost, which appears after the Revolting Blob fight when Buck kills him.
  • Rad Ghosts don't have feet, their bottom half just is a thin line that curls.
• The Djinn of Dungeon Crawl don't have legs; they can't wear boots, but they are permanently flying.

Web Animation

• Homestar Runner: In "The Homestar Runner Enters the Spooky Woods", The Homestar Runner gets a "squiggly ghost tail" after getting scared to death by Strong Bad's costume.
• The deadbeats from Mystery Skulls Animated are simple purple ghosts who taper off to a lightly transparent point in lieu of having legs or feet.
• Sonic: Night of the Werehog: The three ghosts, Su, Uh, and Lah, possess foggy ghost tails.
• 義足のMoses^MeaningGisoku no Moses, "Moses with prosthetic legs": A Cute Ghost Girl does some tap dancing, except the girl has no feet and the tap shoes are just dancing on their own alongside her.

Web Comics

• Ghosts in minus. have fog-feet; but they can fly, so they don't really need feet anyway.
• Sprites in Homestuck, which is appropriate since most are prototyped with and take on the memories and form of dead people close to the player. Curiously, though, actual dead people and ghosts don't follow this trope. Which doesn't prevent John from calling it a "ghost butt".
• Ghosts in Our Little Adventure are pictured with a wisp of smoke instead of legs.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • A djinni in the flashback of Celia's job interview has a wisp of smoke for legs.
  • The visual representation of the wind walk spell is for the characters' legs to be replaced with vapor trails.
  • Unlike other gods, Hel seems to be lacking legs, her lower body ending in a wisp like a ghost's shroud. It's especially obvious when she's flying.
• The Lilitu from Underling, primitive nature demons from ancient times, have the form of female imps with a trail of smoke instead of legs. Including main character Lilith, although she can take a more humanoid shape.
• Ghosts in Paranatural have this. Played for Laughs when Dr. Zarei is treating a ghost patient:
  Ghost: Doc, I—I can't feel my legs.
  Dr. Zarei: You don't have legs.
  [stunned silence]
  Dr. Zarei: ...This is not a new development. You lost them when you died.
  [stunned silence]
  Dr. Zarei: That's not new either.
• The Blue Ghosts in The Redacverse are drawn with a stubby, legless lower body and float above the ground.

Western Animation

• Casper's Scare School: All ghosts have genie-like tails most of the time. However Casper is shown to be able to grow a pair of legs when needed, so presumably other ghosts can do this too.
• Danny Phantom: Many ghosts, including Danny himself, can form a ghost-like tail when they're flying. Some ghosts have one permanently, such as Clockwork and Desiree (justified in the latter's case, since she's a genie ghost).
• The Faceless One from Masters of the Universe was always portrayed, both in animation and comic books, as a ghostly figure with mystic smoke around his legs. When he finally received an action figure that had no representation of the smoke, many fans were displeased.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "A Hearth's Warming Tail", the Spirit of Hearth's Warming Yet to Come, portrayed by Princess Luna. The bottom of her cloak seems to be ghostly and immaterial, with wisps of smoke curling into themselves constantly, mixing the same colors as Luna's usual mane.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: The Flying Dutchman has no feet, just what he refers to his as "my ghostly tail". Sometimes he wears a sock on it.
• Teen Titans Go!: In the Halloween special, Scary Figure Dance, the Titan ghosts have ghostly tails instead of two feet.
• The Venture Bros.: Phantom Limb's legs (as well as his arms) are invisible as a result of the super-science incident that gave him his powers.
• Wakfu:
  • McDeek the Genie, in his true form, has a long trail of purple smoke instead of actual legs.
  • Rushu, lords of the Shushus, is a special case: he can replace his lower body by searing flames if he chooses so.
  • In "The Silence of the Rings", both Ecaflip spirits Melo and Sho Boubou lack legs, having instead ectoplasmic "tails" linking them to their respective cursed rings. So does Sadlygrove once he gets victim of the same enchantment.

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