Dennis: (dressed as Luigi) Dude, what are you doing? Where's your Mario costume?!
Mac: (dressed as Aragorn) I went with a sexier look.
Dennis: Without my Mario, what am I? I'm just like some weird Italian plumber, I look like an asshole!
Halloween (or any other type of themed party or event) is coming up and two or more characters decide to coordinate their costumes and go as a group costume. Unfortunately, the big event arrives and their attempt fails because one of the group members either dressed inappropriately, failed to dress at all, or couldn't show up.
The result is this trope and often leads to embarrassment and frustration for the focus characters.
This is often related to Themed Party, where the failure sticks out amongst all the other partygoers wearing appropriate costumes. It also overlaps with Coordinated Clothes, as the characters attempt to invoke this trope with their costume set.
This often occurs in a show's Halloween Episode.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- Amelia Rules!: In the Halloween chapter of The Whole World's Crazy, Rhonda dresses up as a bride in hopes that Reggie would dress as a groom to match. However, Reggie dresses up as Frankenstein's monster instead while Amelia jokes that Rhonda's costume could still work as "The Bride of Frankenstein". Rhonda is not amused.
- Played for laughs in Birds of Prey (2023), where everyone on the team shows up for their stealth mission in diving-suit versions of their regular costume, except for Big Barda, who shows up in the swimsuit-like costume that she occasionally wears.
- El Deafo: When Laura asks Cece to dress like twins for a week, she gets mad at Cece when, a few days in, Cece wears a pale blue shirt that doesn't match the dark blue shirt Laura is wearing, even though Laura never specified the shade of blue. Also discussed since Cece points out in her narration that, due to her Phonic Ear setting her apart from everyone else, she and Laura can never really look alike.
Films - Live-Action
- Dora and the Lost City of Gold: When Dora's high school holds a costume party, the students are told to dress as a "star", i.e. a celebrity. Both Dora and Randy pun on this by wearing clothes that allude to real stars — Dora dresses as the sun, while Randy wears a shirt with the chemical symbol of hydrogen on it.
Literature
- INVADERS of the ROKUJYOUMA!?: Kotarou is not at all impressed that the Sun Rangers, whom he mistakes as part of a Hero Stage Show, are all in red uniforms, and yells them off the stage in indignation at their laziness in wardrobe.
- Roys Bedoys: Played for drama in "It's Spirit Week, Roys Bedoys!", when Wen doesn't dress up for the eponymous celebration alongside her classmates, because she can't afford costumes.
Live-Action TV
- Austin & Ally: During one of Disney Channel's Halloween Crossover events, the sitcom's main cast tried to do a group costume as a BLT sandwich, with Austin as bacon, Ally as a tomato, Trish as the bread, and Dez was supposed to be the lettuce... but for some reason he thought the "L" in BLT was for lemon. In a later Halloween Episode, they subvert this trope by doing a successful group costume as an Expy of the Scooby-Doo gang.
- The Big Bang Theory:
- Inverted in "The Middle Earth Paradigm" — the guys accidentally all dress as The Flash for Halloween, but since they don't want to all wear the same costume, they decide to pick new, unrelated costumes.
- In "The Justice League Recombination", the gang recruit Penny and her ex-boyfriend Zack to compete in the comic book store's New Year's Eve group costume contest with them so they can go as the Justice League of America. Penny rebels first because she doesn't want to wear the brunette wig for Wonder Woman and later because of feeling awkward around Zack and Leonard, but eventually does join, in the wig, helping them clinch victory (especially because the other groups dressed as the Justice League looked terrible in comparison).
- In "The Holographic Excitation", Sheldon and Amy struggle to agree on a couples costume. They end up compromising as Raggedy Ann and...Raggedy C-3PO. Downplayed, since Amy is just glad the costumes are somewhat related so she can say she's officially in a couple.
- Community:
- In the episode "Epidemiology", Troy and Abed go as Ripley in the power loader and the alien queen from Aliens, respectively, after spending days creating their costumes. When Troy realizes that girls are turned off by the "nerdy" costume, he switches to a shirtless "sexy Dracula" instead, upsetting Abed.
- In the episode "Paranormal Parentage", Jeff and Annie dress up as a boxer and Ring Girl, which Annie misinterprets as being Samara from The Ring as opposed to a boxing ring girl like Jeff intended.
- The Goldbergs: In "Oates and Oates", Adam and Barry are supposed to be disguised as Daryl Hall & John Oates, but because Barry couldn't tell which was which, they both end up dressed as Oates.
- How I Met Your Mother:
- An early episode has Robin joke with her new boyfriend over email that they should dress up as Hansel and Gretel for Halloween. He thought she was serious, resulting in him being embarrassed when he shows up at the bar in costume and sees Robin wearing regular clothes.
- A flashback in another episode reveals that one Halloween the Gang tried to dress up as The Breakfast Club. However, they failed to specify which characters they should dress as and all of them ended up dressing as John Bender.
- How to Rock: In "How to Rock Halloween", Gravity 5 planned to go trick-or-treating as a complete hand, each being a separate finger. However, Kacey chose to dress up as an old-fashioned queen with the intention of going to a party. This not only led to the band being disappointed in her breaking theme; they also questioned her loyalty to the group, and whether or not she was trying to get back with the popular crowd.
- It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia provides the page quote. During the Gang's Halloween party, Mac ruined his and Dennis' plan to attend as Mario and Luigi by changing his costume at the last minute to "that character from Lord of the Rings, Viggio Morgenstein" without telling Dennis.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000: Pearl Forrester attempts to invoke this trope in the episode "The Screaming Skull". She, along with Observer and Bobo, dress up in penguin costumes, then call Mike and the 'bots to desperately ask why they don't also have penguin costumes on—gaslighting them into thinking they'd forgotten a prior agreement to dress up as penguins together for some reason. Mike and the 'bots fall for it and scramble to put on the only animal costumes they have on hand (a dog, a sheep, and a deer). Pearl laughs at them all for being so gullible, then makes herself look even lamer than them when she boasts about how "easy" it was to set up this prank.
- Scrubs: A flashback to JD and Turk's college years has Turk introducing JD to his all-black fraternity, with JD in blackface and himself in whiteface. JD is worried about offending them, but Turk insists that as long as the two of them are together, his frat brothers will find it funny. The fail comes after they knock on the frat house door, when Turk suddenly spots a female classmate he has a thing for and leaves JD in the lurch to go flirt with her. What's worse is that he was mistaken, the girl was someone else entirely.
- Saturday Night Live: One Goth Talk sketch features Azrael's brother Glen and a friend (host Chris Farley) crashing the show's Halloween special dressed as the Budweiser Frogs. However, a third friend who was supposed to complete the trio got sick, so the two of them force Azrael to help them complete the "Bud", "Weis", "Er" croaking.
- Star Trek: Voyager: In one episode, the Voyager crew have a luau where everyone is wearing leis. However, Tuvok doesn't want to put one on, since he didn't want to go to the luau anyway.
- Stranger Things: Downplayed. The Party decides to dress up as the Ghostbusters for Halloween and all of them do get the costumes. The problem arises when it turns out both Mike and Lucas decided to put Peter Venkman's name tag on their jumpsuits when it was assumed Lucas would use Winston Zeddmore's.
Web Animation
- Minilife TV: In "A Dark Night", Chris and Ian prepare for the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises by dressing as Batman and Robin. Snowball comes also dressed as Batman when he was supposed to be dressed as the Joker since he already has white skin, and Archie comes also dressed as Robin, though Chris gives him a pass because he thinks it's cute. Michael, however, comes dressed as Waldo (minus the glasses) because he couldn't find any Batman costumes.
Web Comics
- Unwinder's Tall Comics: Invoked and subverted in the backstory for one Halloween comic
. Unwinder and Mildred initially agreed to do a couples costume by dressing up as Jon and Kate Gosselin (with dolls to represent their eight children). But at the last minute, Undwinder dressed up as Charles Darwin instead—partly to set up Mildred to go as "Kate Plus Eight" by herself, and partly to troll the church that's hosting the Halloween party. But Mildred managed to change her costume to Emma Darwin (Charles' wife) in time for the party, making their costumes match after all, much to Unwinder's annoyance.
Unwinder: I was setting her up for a just-Kate costume, but apparently having a couples costume is more important than being on top of pop culture.
Web Videos
- In Minecraft Championship, teams will often wear themed group skins for festive events. Wilbur Soot has shown up to two of these events in a row without changing his skin, causing Noxcrew admins to forcibly put a "Sweater of Shame" on him.
Western Animation
- The second opening of Alvin and the Chipmunks had the trio going in and out of their dressing rooms when their costumes didn't match (switching between rocker clothes and white suits with matching top hats) with Alvin being the odd one out each time.
- BoJack Horseman: A flashback to Halloween 2004 in "Mr. Peanutbutter's Boos" shows Mr. Peanutbutter failing to coordinate costumes with his then-girlfriend Jessica Biel. She wanted to go as characters from The Notebook, but Mr. Peanutbutter dressed as an actual notebook.
- Garfield and Friends: Played for laughs in "Origin of Power Pig", where Orson's brothers get the idea to disguise themselves as giant knockwurst in yet another attempt to steal the harvest. Mort, however shows up in a different outfit and, when one of the others says "Hey, that don't look like a giant knockwurst", Mort replies "I couldn't find a giant knockwurst costume. I'm a Vienna sausage."
- Gravity Falls: In "Summerween", Dipper and Mabel planned to do a twin costume theme of Peanut Butter and Jelly, but Dipper tries to back out because a comment from Robbie and Wendy makes him think he's too old for trick-or-treating, pretending he's sick so he can go to a teen party. He's forced into wearing the costume when the Summerween Trickster gives them an ultimatum to collect 500 pieces of candy by the end of the night.
- Hey Arnold!: In "The Pig War", Arnold, his friends, and Grandpa Phil are all participating in a war reenactment as the American side. However, while the British team members are all wearing period-appropriate attire, their side is sporting a wide assortment of inappropriate costumes (ex. Stinky wears a Confederate soldier's uniform, Sid is dressed like Davy Crockett, and Harold looks like Rambo).
- Martha Speaks: In "Alice Covers Up", Alice accidentally dyes her skin with orange sunscreen, so her friends dye themselves orange at the pool party to keep her from being embarrassed. Ronald, Alice's brother, is embarrassed since he's the only one not dyed.
- Peppa Pig: In one episode, Peppa's preschool has a fancy dress day, where the students dress as pirates. Pedro comes to school dressed as a cowboy instead.
- Phineas and Ferb: When several kids are trying to scare Isabella so she'll stop hiccupping, Phineas tells them to dress as "something scary". However, Baljeet and Buford ruin the theming, with the former dressing as a failed Math test and the latter dressing as Suzy Johnson, whom Phineas and Isabella don't know is actually an Enfant Terrible while Buford does.
- The Simpsons: In "Pygmoelian," Homer, Lenny, and Carl show up to support Moe at a bartending contest, with the plan for each of them to have a letter painted on their chest to spell out "MOE." However, Lenny got confused and thought he was O instead of E, leading them to spell out "MOO" when they remove their shirts.
Homer: Moo? Lenny, you were supposed to "E"!Carl: See what happens when you skip rehearsal?
- Downplayed in Sofia the First. Royal Prep is having a costume contest, and James and his best friend Zandar decide to go as a two-person dragon so that they each only have to make half a costume. They don't wind up finding each other until after the judging has completed, but neither is too bothered by it and concede that they wouldn't have won anyway.
- South Park: "Pinkeye" has Stan dress up as Raggedy Andy for Halloween as part of a couple's costume with Wendy as Raggedy Ann. However, Wendy shows up at school dressed as Chewbacca instead because she decided their initial idea was stupid. She didn't tell Stan because she assumed he'd come to the same conclusion himself. The result is Stan becoming a laughingstock.
- The Venture Bros.: In the episode "Love Bheits", the Venture family is returning from a Halloween party where three of them went as characters from Star Wars, while Hank ruined it by going as Batman. Dr. Venture mentions two previous instances as well, where the family tried to go as characters from The Wizard of Oz and the members of KISS, but Hank ruined them both by going as Batman.
