Undressed to kill.note
"You wear cartoony boxer shorts, you're begging to have your clothes stolen!"
— Duckman, after having mugged two Germans for their clothes.
Exposing a character's underwear is always good for a laugh. This goes double if they have underwear with a silly or embarrassing print on it. Boxer shorts with polka dots, or better yet hearts on them seem to be popular. To the extent where it seems like nearly everyone in cartoons wears these. Well, that or these boxers cause trouser accidents.
Presumably, the fact that they wear utterly tasteless undies adds to the character's discomfort at being de-pantsed, receiving a wedgie or ripping the seat of their pants, especially if they try to maintain a hard-man reputation.
A Cringe Comedy may invoke Serial Escalation by having the victim wear elephant print underpants, with a humorous trunk on the fly which unrolls to an unrealistic length.
On the other hand, a female character in this type of underwear can be pretty potent Fanservice, especially if she looks much too mature to still be wearing them. If a woman is caught in nothing but, say, Snoopy panties, expect a male character to suddenly "remember" how much he's always admired the Peanuts gang (which, in fact, is similar to what happened to Chris Tucker in one of the Rush Hour films, only with a tattoo instead of panties).
A Sister Trope to Fun T-Shirt.
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- Comic Books
- Comic Strips
- Fan Works
- Film
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Video Games
- Webcomics
- Web Original
- Western Animation
Other examples:
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Advertising
Other-print boxers
- There was a Wisk Plus laundry detergent ad a while back that had a woman magically teleport the clothes off of a bunch of hunky construction worker types, leaving them in their underwear. Naturally, one guy had bunny rabbit print undies, leading to this memorable exchange at the end of the ad:
First Guy: You got bunnies on your shorts?
Second Guy: [archly] Killer bunnies.
Childish women's underwear
- In an ad for Carls, Jr., hamburgers shows a Turkish beauty queen walking out onto a hotel pool area. She strips off her gown and sash, leaving herself in nothing but a bikini swimsuit illustrated with little cartoons of the burger she's advertising, which looks like childish underwear when viewed from a distance. One mother covers the eyes of her little son, but whether this is Deliberate Values Dissonance or because the bikini looks like silly underwear cannot be determined.
- For one of Metlink's "Fare Evasion Karma" poster, it depicted a lady who was walking with her skirt tucked in her underwear, unaware. Such underwear was depicted as white and adorned with hearts.
- The girl in this
Levi’s commercial gets caught trying to steal a guy’s wallet, so he steals her skirt in return. She’s revealed to be wearing Pink Panties with a Teddy Bear on them, which he reacts to by giving her a flirtatious grin, which she surprisingly reciprocates, unlike a random girl who witnessed the whole thing and just reacts with an annoyed gesture.
Asian Animation
- In Happy Heroes, Big M. is shown on a few occasions to be wearing underwear with a heart pattern on it.
- Lamput: In "Airport", one of the items in the docs' suitcase is a pair of underwear with a heart-pattern print on them.
- Simple Samosa: In "Chhote Rajaji", we get to see Cham Cham's shorts, which have a heart-print pattern on them and are marked with his name.
Music
Boxers with red/pink hearts
- One of the photos in the lyric booklet for Weird Al's Mandatory Fun depicts him in a military uniform with his pants down, exposing his heart boxers.
- Near the end of Mercedes Lackey's song "The Oklahoma Weed-Whacker Massacre," about a man whose mind snaps under the pressure of competitive lawn maintenance, leading him to run around slicing people's clothing off with his weed-whacker:
Next thing you come to see,
Well, there's Tulsa County Sheriff,
Standin' there in front of God and CBS and who knows who,
Wearin' nothin' but his boots
And the belt that held his pistol
And his TV Tummy-Toner
And his best Smurf boxer shorts.
- In the music video for Theory of a Deadman's Bad Girlfriend, the titular bad girlfriend wears brief panties with "Bad Girlfriend" written across the back.
- In the music video for Pistol Annies' ''Hush Hush", Ashley Monroe flips up her skirt to reveal her frilly pink bloomers which read "Hippie" across the back, which is played for laughs and tongue-in-cheek rebellion at a church potluck gathering.
- The cover for Amanda Palmer's ''Amanda Goes Down Under" depicts Palmer wearing boyshorts depicting the Australian flag.
Pinball
- In Scared Stiff, the Stiff In The Coffin is revealed to be wearing boxers with little hearts on them.
Professional Wrestling
- This happens a lot in pro wrestling, mostly for comedic effect:
- TNA wrestler Eric Young stripped down to a pair of SpongeBob boxers during one PPV, and beat amazingly well-endowed valet Traci Brooks in a bikini contest.
- At one point in the WWE, proud Canadian Lance Storm was pantsed, revealing that he wore Power Rangers underwear.
Other men's underwear
- Jim Cornette was in the wrestling business for decades, and over those many years his pants would occasionally snag to due his own missteps, the actions of another worker or even attacks from enraged fans. Whatever the occasion, he would ALWAYS be wearing some ugly pattern on his underwear. Sometimes they were handmade, by Cornette himself, as he later revealed stores didn't always have something stupid enough to wear, literally turning this trope into an art form in of itself.
- In a Tuxedo Match, Santino Marella stripped Ricardo Rodriguez, Alberto Del Rio's manservant, down to a pair of white briefs with a silhouetted image of Del Rio's face on the seat, in a WWE moment that was definitely not disturbing at all.
Childish women's underwear
- Stacy Keibler wore a ridiculously frilly pair of pink panties when she, Jackie Gayda, Sable, and Torrie Wilson competed in a Lingerie Match at WrestleMania XX.
- Once, when she was a member of Right to Censor, Ivory was stripped down by several other Divas to her polka-dot panties. Especially embarrassing because she had a reputation as a loud-mouthed, tomboyish Dark Action Girl.
Puppet Shows
Other-print boxers
- In the Spike Milligan episode of The Muppet Show, he drops his trousers twice: the first time his boxers have the Union Jack on them, the second time, the Stars and Stripes.
Toys
- The "Deadpool and chill" Marvel Legends figure is sculpted wearing boxers that have his usual logo turned into hearts.
- The Plumber Pants game by Creator/Hasbro, in which players load the plumber's belt with tools, leading to his pants falling and exposing his heart-print boxers.
Visual Novels
- In Rewrite, Kotarou gets a view of Chihaya's panties as he saves her from being stuck in a tree (It's a long story...). After that, "cherries" is not a good word for him to say around her.
- In Little Busters!, Rikki accidentally sees Komari's panties while helping to free her from a water tank on the school roof. At first he isn't sure if the animal represented is an anteater or armadillo, and when Komari finds out he saw her she wails that now she won't be able to get a bride (not be a bride, ''get'' one).
- Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney:
- Trucy Wright's "magic panties" are blue with red hearts.
- Plum's are huge bloomers with her namesake flower on them.
- Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc:
- School Mode offers up one of the student's underwear as a prize for earning that character's ending. In here it's revealed that Hifumi wears a pair of colorful briefs modeled around a Super Robot Humongous Mecha from one of his favorite anime, which was a subject of Chapter 3 in the main story (that includes both the robot and the underwear).
- The art book reveals that Makoto (who, as the protagonist, can't receive a School Mode Ending) wears white undershorts with a pattern of yellow stars covering them.
- In the H-Game Kimihagu, Emily wears white briefs that have blue/pink hearts and the words "Sweet Baby" all over on them. At an earlier point in the game, she wears pink panties with a Tanuki face on the front.
- In ClockUp's Euphoria, Rika wears yellow panties with pink hearts on them.
Real Life
- Many stores carry "loungewear" with various patterns and designs licensed from cartoons, television, movies, or so on. However, finding boxer shorts with red hearts on them is surprisingly difficult, unless you're looking around Valentine's Day.
- Originally marketed by Fruit of the Loom there are Underoos, media themed underwear for children that has been popular since 1977.
- There are now adult-sized underoos popular as a nostalgia item.
- This pair of boxers is labelled "home of the whopper."
- Don't forget your pink "I ♥ NY" boxers when going into combat◊.
- In a similar vein, panties with "Mind the Gap" printed on them are a popular London souvenir.
- This is a regular staple of Improv Everywhere's annual No Pants Subway Ride.
- There's an online shop called Me Undies which carries underwear for both men and women in cute goofy prints, as well as standard solid colors.
- "Lazy One" has an entire line of funny boxers with cartoon animals along with butt and fart jokes on the backside.
- At the weigh-in before the 2022 boxing match between strongmen Eddie Hall and Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, Eddie showed off his cheeky humor by stripping down in front of the camera to a pair of blue briefs decorated with yellow rubber duckies.
